A former longtime fugitive leader of the Outlaws motorcycle gang has pleaded guilty in exchange for a 15-year term in federal prison.
Randy "Mad" Yager, 60, was indicted on charges of racketeering and conspiracy that could have landed him in prison for life. Yager had been set to go to trial this week.
Yager, originally of Crown Point, Ind., was first indicted with 16 others in 1997.
Yager is accused of participating in murders, arson and bombings aimed at rival clubs in the 1990s, while he was a regional boss of the Outlaws. The crimes did not occur in Milwaukee, but Yager was boss of the region that included Milwaukee, a stronghold of the gang.
On the day of the bust in 1997, Yager was at a Las Vegas hotel and fled. He landed on the U.S. Marshals Service Most Wanted list and was arrested in October 2014 in Mexico, where he had been using an assumed name.
Weeks after Yager appeared in court here, his brother was killed in Indiana — found inside a burning house, his hands cuffed and his throat cut.
An evidentiary hearing in December focused on evidence gathered in a police stop in 1994 after a murder in a motorcycle raceway battle in New York.
Yager pleaded guilty in a hearing in late March. The sentencing before U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller has not been set.
