Two people from Timperley have been sentenced following a five-year Greater Manchester Police investigation into a violent feud between two rival motorcycle clubs that uncovered a web of firearms, drugs and criminality stretching across the country.
Leslie "Diesel" Lamb, 43, of Hartford Gardens, Timperley, has been sentenced to 27 months in prison after pleading guilty to criminal damage and cultivating cannabis.
Lamb played a key role in planning a revenge attack on the Hells Angels clubhouse in Cadishead in August 2020 - a rival of the Manchester Bandidos, the club with which he was associated.
A search of his Timperley home uncovered a cannabis farm capable of producing up to half a kilogram of the drug. His DNA was also recovered from a 3D-printed firearm seized in Manchester.
Victoria Priestner, 38, also of Timperley, received a 10-month suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice.
Priestner, the partner of Lamb, was arrested after officers discovered a 3D-printed revolver hidden on top of a wardrobe at her home in Trafford.
She had also reported a Peugeot 2008 as stolen - the very vehicle that had been used to ram the Hells Angels clubhouse the night before - after claiming it had been taken during a hospital stay. Officers found discrepancies in her account, with records showing she had only been in hospital for six hours rather than the four days she claimed.
The investigation began in the early hours of Sunday 23 August 2020, when a vehicle was reported to have collided with an address on Liverpool Road in Cadishead. What initially appeared to be a routine road traffic incident quickly unravelled into something far more serious.
Earlier that day, members of the Hells Angels had visited a pub close to the Bandidos' clubhouse on Chester Road in Trafford in what police described as a deliberate show of disrespect.
That evening, officers believe, a revenge plan was hatched. A hired Peugeot was reversed into the front of the Hells Angels' Cadishead clubhouse before midnight, with phone data placing Lamb and a co-defendant in the area at the time.
The wider investigation, which involved officers from Greater Manchester Police and other forces, eventually led to the conviction of six people in total.
The ringleader, Steve Mason, 36 - Sergeant-at-Arms of the Bandidos - was sentenced to nine years in prison for manufacturing and possessing prohibited firearms and possession with intent to supply Class A drugs.
Forensic evidence linked him to the manufacture of a PG22 Maverick 3D-printed revolver, with his DNA found on the trigger. Officers also recovered a Llama .38 Special revolver, six rounds of live ammunition, multiple 3D printers, and digital blueprints for other printable weapons.
Some of the weaponry uncovered during the investigation
Retired Detective Constable Mike Armstrong-Porter, who worked on the case from GMP's Salford district, said the investigation had been unlike anything officers anticipated.
"This, in essence, was a real-world 'Sons of Anarchy' dispute between two motorcycle clubs," he said.
"From that initial road traffic collision report, this investigation escalated into an operation that would see us recover deadly, homemade, manufactured firearms capable of causing serious harm."
The investigation lasted five years in total, finally concluding with all six defendants convicted.
