Chatting peacefully on the floor of a Nevada casino, a senior Hells Angels leader and a 27-year veteran of the rival Vagos motorcycle gang thought they had negotiated a truce between competing members who'd been wanting to fight at biker festival.

"Everything is going to be all right," the Vagos member recalls his rival telling him. "He said, 'I'm getting too old for this.' And I said, 'I'm getting too old for this too.'"

An hour later, a brawl erupted and a shootout ensued, killing one of the highest-ranking Hells Angels in the U.S. and wounding two Vagos members.

Now a transcript entered into the court record this week offers a look at the mayhem that has shaken America's best-known biker gang this year — much of it captured in graphic detail on the Nugget casino's 448 security cameras.

Federal, state and local police have pursued the Hells Angels for decades, infiltrating it with undercover agents, prosecuting suspects with harsh charges once reserved for the Mafia and indicting members on charges ranging from drug trafficking to mortgage fraud. But the group, which says it is a club of motorcycle enthusiasts, has flourished. The U.S. Department of Justice says it now has as many as 2,500 members in 230 chapters in 26 countries.

The California Hells Angels' current problems are partly rooted in a battle with its bitter enemies the Vagos, a California-based motorcycle club founded in the 1960s.

Tensions came out in the melee and deadly shooting at the Nevada casino on Sept. 23.

More violence has followed, but the longtime Vagos member told a grand jury in Reno earlier this month that the deadly gun battle was not part of some assassination plot or formal declaration of war.

Rather, he testified under the condition of confidentiality that it was the result of the unauthorized behavior of a drunken, fellow Vagos nicknamed "Jabbers."

"Jabbers has a big mouth. He's always had a big mouth," said the witness.

Jabbers, whose real name is Gary Stuart Rudnick, was the vice president of the Vagos Los Angeles chapter but since has been kicked out of the club, according to the confidential witness. He's one of three men indicted on murder charges in the killing of Jeffrey "Jethro'" Pettigrew, the late president of the Hells Angels San Jose chapter.

The grand jury witness said Rudnick taunted Pettigrew, who the witness said "in the Hells Angels world is one of the most important guys in the United States." Finally, he said Pettigrew had enough and punched Rudnick in the face, touching off a series of fights that led to the gunfire.

"All hell broke loose," the witness testified. "Just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam."

Another Vagos, Ernesto Gonzalez, is accused of shooting Pettigrew four times in the back and is being held without bail on an open murder charge. Rudnick and Cesar Villagrana, a Hells Angel member accused of shooting two Vagos that night, face second-degree murder charges for their role in the fracas.

Investigators later retrieved dozens of shell casings and bullets — one lodged in a slot machine, others in bar stools, a card table and a metal poker chip holder.

"It was a madhouse on that casino floor," said Sparks police officer Jean Marie Walsh. She testified that she arrived at the casino to find Pettigrew shot in the floor before she noticed Villagrana with a black semiautomatic handgun.

"One gentleman was screaming at me when he saw me see Villagrana with the gun in his hand — 'Kill him, kill him, kill him, he's right there. Kill him!'" she said.

She instructed friends of Pettigrew to carry him closer to an exit so paramedics could safely treat him.

In addition to five gunshot wounds, Pettigrew suffered multiple stab wounds to the face, said Dr. Ellen Clark, the Washoe County medical examiner who performed the autopsy. His wounds were "distributed literally from his head to his pelvis," Clark said.

The Vagos witness also described an element of the surveillance tapes to the grand jurors.

"There's Jabbers putting on his gloves. The reason he is putting on his gloves is for one reason only, it is a premeditated thing they are going to start some action. This thing is going to go off."