SAN FRANCISCO — The attorneys for five Hells Angels members have been granted a hearing that could lead to a stunning and rare occurrence in criminal law: an overturned verdict in a major racketeering case involving murder, mayhem and betrayal.

At the center of it all is an FBI agent’s handwritten scrawl, detailing an alleged murder confession by a man who is missing and widely believed to have been murdered. The confession was relayed by a mysterious woman, scheduled to soon take the witness stand, known in court records only by the acronym CHS — for “confidential human source.” If defense attorneys’ hopes are realized, her testimony could lead to the freedom of five men who stand little chance of ever leaving prison otherwise, and embarrass the U.S. Department of Justice in the process.

Four of the five Hells Angels were convicted of murdering Joel Silva, a Livermore resident and longtime Hells Angels member who prosecutors contend was shot in the back of the head by Brian Wendt, as part of a conspiracy hatched with Wendt’s co-defendants Russell “Rusty” Ott, Jonathan Nelson, and Christopher Rainieri. The fifth man, Raymond Foakes, was convicted of mayhem for allegedly maiming a former Hells Angels, but his lawyers hope that this new hearing will undermine testimony from a crucial witness who helped bring about Foakes’ guilty verdict.

The Silva murder plot was described in great detail, in two separate trials, by an ex-Richmond Hells Angels member named Joseph Hardisty, who testified that he helped plan the murder of Silva, his longtime friend, after the victim’s behavior became so erratic that the notorious outlaw motorcycle club saw no way he could be allowed to live. Hardisty’s detailed confession played a key role in murder convictions for Ott, Nelson, Rainieri, and Wendt, and a subsequent guilty plea by a one-time Hells Angels Fresno chapter president, Merl Hefferman, who admitted to organizing a clandestine cremation of Silva that ensured his body would never be found.

Now, defense attorneys contend that prosecutors got the whole thing wrong. The key to their theory is an alleged confession uttered by Robbie Huff, another longtime Hells Angels member who supposedly admitted that he shot Silva inside a pickup truck at close range, over a botched marijuana deal that led to a $30,000 debt between Hells Angels chapters. The only problem is Huff won’t be able to testify — he has been missing since early 2015 and prosecutors believe he met the same fate as Silva and two other Hells Angels who went missing around the same time — a murder, followed by an illegal cremation at a local funeral home.

So Huff’s alleged confession will have to be recounted by CHS, if the defense has any hope of convincing Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of taking their side. While the woman’s identity remains a mystery for now, some clues have appeared in court filings and at a July 30 hearing where her value to the case was discussed at length.

The woman admitted to the FBI that she aided the Hells Angels in their efforts to ship huge amounts of marijuana from the West Coast to the East Coast, renting moving trailers for this purpose, and later agreeing to work for the FBI as a paid informant. She was at one point an apparent confidante of Huff, but also a target of his anger and aggression — she accused him of threatening her family and shooting up her home.

The agent’s note from her statement says that Huff told her he “killed Joel and burned (his) truck.” On that last point, federal prosecutors agree. In fact, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Barry said at the July 30 hearing that Huff had done a magnificent job torching Silva’s truck in an effort to destroy any trace of his trip to Fresno before his July 2014 murder. Huff removed the gas tank, doused it in diesel fuel, and set ablaze. It would have turned to ash had a passer-by not noticed and called 911, Barry said.

Otherwise, Barry argued, nothing that CHS said lines up with the evidence. He also argued that her accounting of the alleged confession might not be admissible under federal law, and that the backstory about the marijuana deal definitely wouldn’t be.

The defense doesn’t agree. They think her story, if jurors had heard it, would have “destroyed” Hardisty’s credibility and presented a reasonable alternative theory behind Silva and Huff’s disappearances: that Huff killed Silva to ease tensions within Hells Angels chapters and shift blame away from whatever role Huff may have played in $30,000 going missing.

“If the story is true, Huff killed SIlva without permission or involvement. It was not done, sanctioned with the advanced knowledge of either Hefferman, Nelson, Ranieri or Wendt,” Nelson’s lawyer, Richard Novak, said at the hearing.

But everything might not even be that simple. The most recent court filing, from Aug. 11, suggests that the defense hasn’t been able to track down CHS, who is supposed to testify on Aug. 18. The joint filing says, “if the defendants have been unable to serve a subpoena” on her by Thursday’s end, “they will promptly move this Court for a continuance of the evidentiary hearing and for other relief.”

Huff, similarly, remains nowhere to be found. Anyone with knowledge of his whereabouts can call Fresno police at 559-621-7000.

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