Biker asks forgiveness, gets 35 years for dealing drugs

The gun-toting, chief drug-supplier and top lieutenant of a violent biker gang was sentenced yesterday to 35 years in a federal prison for trafficking in a multi-million-dollar crystal-meth operation in Lower Bucks County.

Moments earlier, William "Tattoo Billy" Johnson, 32, an executive board member of the Pennsylvania Breed Motorcycle Club which operated in the Bristol-Levittown area, had apologized to his family and the court.

He told U.S. District Chief Judge Harvey Bartle III that he had been battling drug and alcohol addiction for much of his life and was "under a tremendous amount of stress" during his trial.

"I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive me," he told Bartle.

During his two-week trial, an agitated Johnson repeatedly disrupted proceedings, challenged his own lawyer and briefly wanted to represent himself - until co-defendant and Breed president John Napoli talked him out of it during a recess.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea G. Foulkes said Johnson had engaged in an "extraordinary level of criminal conduct in a short period of time," adding that if he was not incarcerated for a significant period he would very likely continue down a criminal path.

Defense lawyer Stephen Patrizio had asked Bartle to sentence Johnson to 15 years, noting that Johnson was a first-time drug offender, that his two prior convictions for assault, which happened years earlier, were simply "altercations" that resulted in probation, and that Johnson was "abusing steroids" at the time he was dealing drugs.

But Bartle didn't see any of that as justification for leniency.

"You have shown little regard for human life by engaging in violence," he told the father of three. "You're a menace to civilized society."

Then, the judge continued: "This is a very tragic situation. You were a young man with a lot of promise and you have a good, supportive family. Apparently, it didn't do any good," as Johnson's family members sobbed in the courtroom.

Last Oct. 4, an anonymous jury had found that Johnson sold or intended to sell 22 1/2 pounds of crystal meth to Napoli and lesser amounts to others for four months in 2006; viciously stomped on the chest of a past Breed president "like an accordion;" and stored 44 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition at his Philadelphia residence.

Johnson was convicted of conspiracy to distribute meth, violent crime in the aid of racketeering, possession of a firearm to further drug activity and possession of a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon.

He was one of 19 members of the meth-dealing Breed convicted in the last two years of drug offenses.

Five Breed members and associates testified against him, including Napoli and Thomas "Fuzzy" Heilman, 54, of Bristol, who was sentenced in January to a 19 1/2-year prison term.

Napoli is to be sentenced next Wednesday.

Though Patrizio was appointed for Johnson's sentencing, the eighth-grade dropout - apparently aided by a jailhouse lawyer- filed his own 25-page sentencing memo, replete with factual errors.

Johnson argued "The case was a paradigmatic example of overrepresentation" of him as a career criminal. He claimed he was not "an organizer, leader, manager or supervisor" despite testimony that he ran drug activities on the street, collected Napoli's drug debts and had dealers threaten customers they'd be beaten by Johnson. *