“They totally destroyed the house, they took everything out of there,” said Lester as he described the Dec. 31 raid in a residential neighborhood off Western Avenue. “They took all our TVs, our microwaves. … It was just really crazy stuff. All they found was some alcohol and sandwich platters.”

According to Lester, the most painful loss was that of a group of stone monuments in the clubhouse yard that had been set up to memorialize fallen Outlaws.

“The stones in the front yard for brothers who have died over the last 15 years, they dug those up and took them,” Lester said. “It was just ridiculous.”

Lester and local chapter president Kenneth Foster, 55, have been charged with aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping for a Dec. 23 incident in which they allegedly detained an undercover Sheriff’s Office deputy who had infiltrated the club and stripped him at gunpoint of his leather Outlaws vest, which had been given to him when he became a full-fledged member. Lester and Foster are free on bond.

While the Sheriff’s Office declined to comment last week on the case, an 18-page affidavit filed by the undercover officer, Joseph Linger, shows that police view the Outlaws as a criminal street gang with international ties and a proven propensity for “large-scale violence.” Outlaws chapters have been tied to crimes such as murder, extortion and drug trafficking, Linger wrote, and the Knoxville chapter did more than just flirt with a bad-boy image.