I'm Kelly McEvers and this is Embedded, an NPR podcast where we take a story from the news and go deep.

And today we're going to Waco, Texas, where last spring there was this huge shootout between two rival biker groups

at a restaurant called Twin Peaks.

From the 239 people detained, there were 475 weapons recovered at Twin Peaks,

including 151 guns and other weapons like brass knuckles, bats, even tomahawks.

Back behind me, the scene is still so active that the bodies of the victims are still lying behind me.

We talked to an officer today who said out of his 34 years,

this is the most violent and most gruesome scene that I have dealt with in my nearly 35 years of law enforcement experience.

There were so many rounds fired.

That shootout ended with 9 people dead, 7 from one biker group, the Cossacks,

1 from the other biker group, the Banditos, and 1 biker who wasn't affiliated with either group.

When the story first broke, it was all over the place.

Two notoriously criminal biker gangs of Banditos and the Cossacks.

The Banditos and the Cossacks have been around in Texas since the 60s.

The Banditos are definitely the dominant group.

A handful of federal agencies list them as a gang.

A recent indictment charged three of their leaders with racketeering crimes,

including murder, drug trafficking, and extortion.

The Banditos deny this, but many of them do call themselves 1%

a small minority of bikers that does not like to follow the rules.

The Cossacks are smaller. They like to call themselves a club.

Like a lot of bikers, they hold fundraisers going campouts and Sunday rides.

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