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Michael McElhiney, upper right, in the mid-nineties, with reputed gang members and associates at Leavenworth, where he ran a drug
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ANNALS OF CRIME
THE BRAND
How the Aryan Brotherhood became the most murderous prison gang in America.
BY DAVID GRANN
O n a cold, damp December morn-
ing in 2002, after weeks of secret
planning, the United States Marshals
weapons “keistered” inside them, the
guards instructed them to bend down
three times; if they refused, the guards
launched one of the most unusual drag- would know that they were afraid to
nets in the organization’s two-hundred- puncture their intestines with a shank.
and-fifteen-year history. As the fog lifted Once the search was complete, the in-
on a small stretch of land in the north- mates were shackled and escorted to a
westernmost corner of California—a nearby landing strip, where they were
sparsely populated area known primarily loaded onto an unmarked airplane.
for its towering redwoods—nearly a All across the country, agents were
dozen agents, draped in black fatigues fanning out to prisons.They seized a fifth
and bulletproof vests, and armed with inmate from a maximum-security prison
assault rifles and walkie-talkies, gathered in Concord, New Hampshire.They took
in a fleet of cars. The agents sped past another from a jail in Sacramento, Cali-
a town with a single post office and a fornia. Then they approached the Ad-
mom-and-pop store, and headed deep ministrative Maximum Prison, in Flor-
into the forest until they arrived at a ence, Colorado, a “supermax” encircled
colossal compound, a maze of buildings by snow-covered ravines and renowned
surrounded by swirling razor wire and as “the Alcatraz of the Rockies.” There,
an electrified fence that was lethal to in the most secure federal penitentiary in
the touch. A gate opened and, as guards the country—a place that housed Ted
looked down with rifles from beneath Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and Ramzi
watchtowers, the convoy rolled inside. Yousef, the man behind the bombing
The agents jumped out. of the World Trade Center, in 1993—
After entering one of the buildings agents apprehended four inmates who
and walking down a long corridor lined were allegedly responsible for more than
with surveillance cameras, the officers a dozen prison murders.
reached their destination: a fortified cell- Before long, the marshals had rounded
block in the heart of Pelican Bay, Califor- up twenty-nine inmates—all of whom
nia’s most notorious prison. They could were among the most feared men in the
hear inmates moving in their ten-by- American prison system. One had stran-
twelve, windowless cement cells. Peli- gled an inmate with his bare hands; an-
can Bay housed more than three thou- other had poisoned a fellow-prisoner. A
sand inmates, men who were considered man nicknamed the Beast was thought
too violent for any other state prison and to have ordered an attack on an inmate
had, in the parlance of correctional offi- who had shoved him during a basket-
cers, “earned their way in.” But the men ball game; the inmate was subsequently
on the cellblock, which was known as stabbed seventy-one times and his eye
the Hole, were considered so dangerous was gouged out.
that they had been segregated from this Then there was Barry Mills, who was
already segregated population. known as the Baron. Soft-spoken and
Four prisoners were ordered to re- intense, with a gleaming bald head, he
move their gold jumpsuits and slide was described by one of his former pros-
them through a tray slot. While some ecutors as a “cunning, calculating killer.”
officers searched their belongings, oth- He liked to crochet in his cell and, ac-
ers, using flashlights, peered through cording to authorities, compose lists of
holes in the steel doors to examine the enemies to kill. In a previous court case,
inmates’ ears, nostrils, and anal cavities. he testified that “we live . . . in a different
ring and allegedly ordered hits. To make sure that the prisoners had no society than you do. There is justified
TNY—02/16 & 23/04—PAGE 157—133SC.
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 16 & 23, 2004 157
violence in our society. I’m here to tell you the outside world. “It is a true secret so- is a homicidal organization,” he said.
that. I’m here to tell all you that.” He was ciety,” Mark Hamm, a prison sociologist, “That’s what they do. They kill people.”
not,he conceded,“a peaceful man,”and “if told me. He was accustomed, he explained, to
you disrespect me or one of my friends, For the f irst time, on August 28, murder cases, but he had been shocked
I will readily and to the very best of 2002, that world cracked open. After by the gang’s brutality.“I suspect they kill
my ability engage you in a full combat more than a decade of trying to infiltrate more than the Mafia,” he said.“They kill
mode. That’s what I’m about.” Once, at the Brand’s operations, a relatively un- more than any single drug trafficker.
a maximum-security prison in Georgia, known Assistant United States Attor- There are a lot of gang-related deaths on
Mills was found guilty of luring an inmate ney from California named Gregory the streets, but they are usually more dis-
into a bathroom stall and nearly decapi- Jessner indicted virtually the entire sus- organized and random.” He paused, as if
tating him with a knife. pected leadership of the calculating various numbers in his head.
Along with the Baron gang. He had investigated “I think they may be the most murder-
and the other prisoners, hundreds of crimes linked ous criminal organization in the United
five women on the outside to the gang; some were cold States.”
were also seized, as well cases that reached back
as three ex-cons and a for-
mer prison guard. Most of
those apprehended—there
nearly forty years. In the
indictment, which ran to a
hundred and ten pages, Jess-
T here are hundreds of gangs in this
country: the Crips, the Bloods, the
Latin Dragons, the Dark Side Nation,
were forty in total—were ner charged Brand leaders the Lynch Mob. But the Aryan Brother-
transported on a Boeing 727, with their with carrying out stabbings, strangula- hood is one of the few gangs that were
legs and arms shackled to their seats, tions, poisonings, contract hits, conspir- born in prison. In 1964, as the nation’s
while guards patrolled the aisles, their ri- acy to commit murder, extortion, rob- racial unrest spread into the peniten-
fles sealed in compartments out of arm’s bery, and narcotics trafficking. The case, tiaries, a clique of white inmates at San
reach. Days later, the prisoners ended which is expected to go to trial early next Quentin prison, in Marin County, Cali-
up in a Los Angeles courtroom, where year, could lead to as many as twenty- fornia, began gathering in the yard. The
they were accused of being members of three death-penalty convictions—more men were mostly motorcycle bikers with
an elaborate criminal conspiracy di- than any in American history. long hair and handlebar mustaches; a few
rected by the Aryan Brotherhood, or On a recent morning, I visited the were neo-Nazis with tattoos of swastikas.
the Brand. Authorities had once dis- United States Attorney’s office in down- Together, they decided to strike against
missed the Aryan Brotherhood as a town Los Angeles, where the prosecu- the blacks, who were forming their own
fringe white-supremacist gang; now, tion was preparing to arraign the last of militant group, called the Black Guer-
however, they concluded that what pris- the forty defendants. As I waited in the rilla Family, under the influence of the
oners had claimed for decades was true— lobby, a slender young man appeared in a celebrated prison leader George Jack-
namely, that the gang’s hundred or so gray suit. He had short brown hair, and son. Initially, the whites called them-
members, all convicted felons, had grad- he carried a folder under his arm as if he selves the Diamond Tooth Gang, and as
ually taken control of large parts of the were a paralegal. Unlike the attorneys they roamed the yard they were unmis-
nation’s maximum-security prisons, rul- around him, he spoke in a soft, almost takable: pieces of glass embedded in
ing over thousands of inmates and trans- reticent voice. He introduced himself as their teeth glinted in the sunlight.
forming themselves into a powerful Gregory Jessner. Before long, they had merged with
criminal organization. “I’m forty-two,” he told me, as if he other whites at San Quentin to form a
The Brand, authorities say, estab- were often greeted with similar aston- single band: the Aryan Brotherhood.
lished drug-trafficking, prostitution, and ishment.“Believe it or not, I used to look While there had always been cliques in
extortion rackets in prisons across the much younger.” He reached in his pocket prison, known as “tips,” these men were
country. Its leaders, often working out of and revealed an old office I.D. He looked now aligned by race and resorted to a
barren cells in solitary confinement, al- seventeen. kind of violence that had never been seen
legedly ordered scores of stabbings and He led me back into his office, which at San Quentin, a place that prisoners
murders. They killed rival gang mem- had almost nothing on the walls and ap- likened to “gladiator school.” All sides,
bers; they killed blacks and homosexuals peared to be decorated solely with boxes including the Latino gangs La Nuestra
and child molesters; they killed snitches; from the case, one stacked upon the Familia and the Mexican Mafia, attacked
they killed people who stole their drugs, other. On his desk were several black- each other with homemade knives that
or owed them a few hundred dollars; and-white photographs, including one were honed from light fixtures and radio
they killed prison guards; they killed for of an inmate who had been strangled parts, and hidden in mattresses, air vents,
hire and for free; they killed, most of all, by the gang. and drainpipes. “Everything was seen
in order to impose a culture of terror “An Aryan brother went in his cell through the delusional lens of race—
that would solidify their power. And, be- and tied a garrote around his neck,” Jess- everything,” Edward Bunker, an inmate
cause the Brotherhood is far more clois- ner said. He held out his hands, demon- at the time, told me. (He went on to be-
tered than other gangs, it was able to strating, with tapered fingers, how an come a novelist, and appeared as Mr. Blue
operate largely with impunity for de- Aryan Brotherhood member had braided in “Reservoir Dogs.”)
cades—and remain all but invisible to strips of a bedsheet into a noose. “This Most prison gangs tried to recruit
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“fish,” the new and most vulnerable in- tically for a weapon; he broke a piece of son and to other gang members, each
mates. But according to interviews with steel off his cell door and began to file its recruit had to “make his bones,” which
former gang members—as well as thou- edges. It was at least ten inches long, and often meant killing another inmate. (One
sands of pages of once classified F.B.I. he sharpened both sides. Before the cell recruit told authorities in a sworn state-
reports, internal prison records, and court doors opened and the guards searched ment that the rite was intended to “cre-
documents—the Aryan Brotherhood him, he said, he knew he needed to hide ate a lasting bond to the A.B. and also
chose a radically different approach, so- the weapon. He took off his clothes and prove that he had what it takes.”) Thomp-
liciting only the most capable and vio- tried to insert it in his rectum.“I couldn’t,” son also recited a “blood in, blood out”
lent. They were given a pledge: he recalled. “I was too ashamed.” He oath, in which he vowed not only that he
An Aryan brother is without a care,
tried again and again, until finally he would spill another’s blood to get in but
He walks where the weak and succeeded. also that he would never leave the gang
heartless won’t dare, The next morning in the yard, he unless his own blood was fatally spilled.
And if by chance he should stumble could see the guards, the tips of their ri- While many new members had a pro-
and lose control,
His brothers will be there, to help fles glistening in the sun. The leader of bationary period, which often lasted as
reach his goal, the Black Guerrilla Family circled to- long as a year, Thompson, because of
For a worthy brother, no need is ward him, flashing a steel blade, and his physical strength and his ability with
too great,
He need not but ask, fulfillment’s Thompson lay down, trying to extricate a knife, was voted into the gang almost
his fate. his weapon. Eventually, he got it and immediately. He was “branded” with a
For an Aryan brother, death holds began to lunge violently at his foe; an- homemade tattoo gun (which inmates
no fear,
Vengeance will be his, through his other gang member came at him and made out of a beard trimmer sold at
brothers still here. Thompson stabbed him, too. By the time the commissary, a guitar string, a pen,
the guards interceded, Thompson was and a needle stolen from the infirmary).
By 1975, the gang had expanded into covered in blood, and one of the mem- Sometimes members were tattooed with
most of California’s state prisons and bers of the Black Guerrilla Family lay on the letters “A.B.” or the numerals 666,
was engaged in what authorities describe the ground, near death. symbolizing the beast, a manifestation
as a full-fledged race war. Dozens had Not long after this incident, several of evil in the Revelation of St. John. On
already been slain when, that same year, white convicts approached him in the Thompson’s left hand, just above one of
a fish named Michael Thompson en- yard.“They wanted me to join the Brand,” his knuckles, he received the most recog-
tered the system. A twenty-three-year- Thompson said. Initially, he hesitated, nizable symbol: a green shamrock. “All I
old white former high-school football in part because of the gang’s racism, but had to do was show that ’rock and I was
star, he had been sentenced for helping he knew that the group offered more in charge,” he said.
to murder two drug dealers and burying than protection. “It was like being let He was moved from one state prison
their bodies in a lime-filled pit in a back into a sanctuary,” he said. “You were in- to the next, often for disciplinary rea-
yard. Six feet four and weighing nearly stantly the man—the shot caller.” sons, but these transfers only helped him
three hundred pounds, he was strong To be accepted, according to Thomp- garner more influence, and he gradually
enough to break ordinary shackles. He
had brown hair, which was parted in the
middle, and hypnotic blue eyes. Despite
the violent nature of his crime, he had no
other convictions and, with a chance for
parole in less than a decade, he initially
kept to himself, barely aware of the dif-
ferent forces moving around him. “I was
a fish with gills out to fucking here,” he
later said.
Unaligned with any of the emerging
gangs, he was conspicuous prey for roam-
ing Hispanic and black groups, and sev-
eral of them soon assaulted him in the
yard at a prison in Tracy, California; later,
he was sent to Folsom, which, along with
San Quentin, was exploding with gang
wars. On his first day there, he says, no
one spoke to him until a leader of the
Black Guerrilla Family, a trim, angular
man in shorts and a T-shirt, began to
taunt him, telling him to come to the yard
“ready” the next day. That night in his
cell, Thompson recalled, he looked fran- “I won’t need a bag. I’ll eat it here.”
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Earley, in the 1992 book “The Hot
House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison,”
“In your society I may not be anybody,
but in here I am”; and Clifford Smith,
who lost an eye after a black-widow spi-
der bit him at San Quentin and who,
when asked to carry out his first hit, said,
“Yeah, bro, I’ll do the bastard.”
Thompson, who had only a high-
school education, was being tailored for
leadership. He was given many books, a
curriculum that formed a kind of world
view. He read Sun Tzu’s “The Art of
War” and Machiavelli’s “The Prince.”
He read Nietzsche, memorizing his
aphorisms. (“One should die proudly
when it is no longer possible to live
proudly.”) And he read Louis L’Amour,
whose pulp novels about romantic gun-
slingers who ride for “the brand” inspired
the gang’s nickname. “It was like you
went to school,” Thompson said. “You
already hate the system, hate the estab-
lishment, because you’re in jail, you’re
buried, and you start to think of yourself
as this noble warrior—and that’s what
we called each other, warriors. It was like
I was a soldier going out to battle.”
Thompson said that, like other new
members, he was trained to kill without
blinking, without reservation. One A.B.
“You’re on, kid. Break a string!” instruction manual, which was seized by
authorities, stated, “The smell of fresh
• • human blood can be overpowering but
killing is like having sex. The first time is
not so rewarding, but it gets better and
rose through the Brotherhood’s rarefied of another reputed Aryan Brotherhood better with practice, especially when one
ranks. He met Barry Mills, a.k.a. the inmate, he told the jury, “There’s a code remembers that it’s a holy cause.” Dur-
Baron, who had initially been incarcer- in every segment of society. . . . Well, we ing a confidential debriefing with prison
ated for stealing a car and became the have a different kind of moral and ethi- officials, one Aryan brother described
gang’s vanguard member, seemingly cal code.” He later added,“It’s a lot more how members studied anatomy texts, so
concentrating all his energies not on re- primordial.” One of his friends, referring “that when they stab somebody it was
turning to the outside world but on re- to his propensity for violence, told me, a killshot.”
maining in the inside world, where he “Sometimes he got the urge, you know In 1981, according to prison records,
was, in the words of Thompson, “the what I mean? He got the urge.” Thompson approached one of the gang’s
hog with the biggest balls.” And he met Thompson soon became acquainted enemies “from behind and began stab-
T. D. Bingham, a charismatic bank rob- with the Brotherhood’s inner sanctum. bing him,” and “continued” striking his
ber who was nearly as wide as he was tall There was Thomas Silverstein, a talented victim “as he lay on the floor.” Thompson
and who could bench-press five hun- artist with long flowing hair who, a once wrote in a letter, “Knife fighting,
dred pounds. Nicknamed the Hulk and counsellor noted in his prison file,“seems at its best, is like a dance. Under ideal
Super Honkey, he spoke in a folksy man- to be easily influenced by these men conditions, the objective is to bleed your
ner that concealed a burning intelligence, and is eager to please them.” After shed- opponent—cutting hands, wrist, and
friends say. In photographs from the ding an enemy’s blood with a hand- arms and as the opponent weakens from
time, he has a black walrus mustache crafted knife, he would often retire to blood loss, inflicting further damage to
and a ski hat pulled down over his eye- his cell and draw elaborate portraits. the face (eyes) and torso.”
brows. Part Jewish, he wore a Star of One ink sketch showed a man in a cell Inmates were frequently killing each
David tattooed on one arm and, without with a claw reaching down toward him. other not because of any actual slight
any apparent irony, a swastika on the Thompson also met Dallas Scott, a drug but because of the color of their skin. In
other. Once, when he testified on behalf addict who once told the reporter Pete one incident, Silverstein and an A.B. as-
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sociate, Clayton Fountain, who, accord- with the profusion of violent gang mem- the Hole in the most secure prison, and
ing to a friend, was eager to “make his bers—in particular, men like Silverstein, they were still able to get to the guards. It
bones,” stabbed a leader of the rival gang who by then had been convicted of mur- sent a simple message: We can get to you
D.C. Blacks sixty-seven times in the dering three inmates and had earned anywhere, anytime.”
shower, then dragged his bloody corpse the nickname Terrible Tom (as he often
through the tiers while other white in-
mates chanted racial slurs. After Silver-
stein was charged with murdering an-
signed his letters, with looping strokes).
Before taking Silverstein to the bath-
room, the guards frisked him, to make
A s the gang’s reputation for brutality
was growing, so, too, were its ranks.
Although the Brand continued to per-
other inmate, he boasted in court,“I have sure he hadn’t fashioned any weapons. mit only a select few to become “made”
walked over dead bodies. I’ve had guts (He often had pens and other sketching members, it had thousands of followers,
splattered all over my chest from race tools for his art work.) They also shack- known as “peckerwoods,” who sought
wars.” led his wrists. Three guards surrounded out the perks of being associated with it:
To try to rein the Brand in, prison him, one of whom was a hard-nosed, permanent protection, free contraband,
officials, in desperation, had begun to nineteen-year veteran with military-style better prison jobs (which were often dic-
place its members throughout the cor- gray hair named Merle Clutts. Clutts, tated by trusty inmates who did whatever
rectional system. (No inmate would pub- who was to retire in a few months, was the gang demanded). As Thompson put
licly admit being in the gang, and, when perhaps the only guard in the unit who it, “The guards controlled the perimeter
asked under oath, would typically say, didn’t fear Silverstein; he once reportedly of the prison and we controlled what
“Sir, I will not answer a question like told him, “Hey, I ’m running this shit. happened inside it.” But as the number of
that.”) The dispersal measures, however, You ain’t running it.” gang members, associates, and hangers-
only spread the Brand’s reach to peni- As the guards escorted Silverstein on swelled, managing the organization
tentiaries in Texas and Illinois and Kan- through the prison, he paused outside grew increasingly difficult.
sas, and still farther east, to Pennsylva- the cell of another gang member—who, When the Brotherhood was in its in-
nia and Georgia. A once classified 1982 as planned, suddenly reached between fancy, every member had an equal vote
F.B.I. report warned that leaders were the bars and, with a handcuff key, un- on critical matters; by the early eighties,
“recruiting for the A.B., only now they locked Silverstein’s shackles. Silverstein this policy was creating chaos. In a pre-
had the entire country to pick from.” pulled a nearly foot-long knife from his viously undisclosed briefing, Clifford
One letter from a gang member, which conspirator’s waistband.“This is between Smith told authorities, “We used to be
was obtained by Texas prison sociolo- me and Clutts,” Silverstein hollered as one man one vote, included damn near
gists, said, “All members shipped from he rushed toward him. everything. I mean, damn near every-
here last week have written back and it One of the other guards screamed, thing. Somebody getting in, whacking
looks like the family is in the process of “He’s got a shank!” But Clutts was al- somebody . . . You damn near had to
growing.” Another stated,“We are grow- ready cornered, without a weapon. He have the whole state’s okay. . . .You had to
ing like a cancer.” raised his hands while Silverstein stabbed send some kites”—notes—“and runners
Upon entering a new prison, Brand him in the stomach. “He was just stick- and lawyers and this and that. It always
members would often carry out a “dem- ing Officer Clutts with that knife,” an- got tipped off by the time we got back to
onstration” killing or stabbing, in order other guard later recalled. “He was just you and said, ‘Yeah, dump the guy.’ . . .
to terrorize the inmate population. The sticking and sticking and sticking.” By You can’t have someone in the yard that
Baron reportedly ordered that one foe the time Silverstein relinquished the you want to bump and let them be out
be “taken out in front of everyone, to knife—“The man disrespected me,” he there for two or three weeks.” Smith said
let these motherfuckers know we mean told the guards. “I had to get him”— the gang members were becoming “like
business.” Indeed, rather than conceal Clutts had been stabbed forty times. He twelve horses teamed to one wagon, with
its murders, the gang flaunted them even died shortly afterward. each of them going in a different direc-
in front of the guards, as if to show it A few hours later, Clayton Fountain, tion.” An internal report at the time by
had no fear of repercussions, of being Silverstein’s close friend, was being led the California Department of Correc-
shot or sentenced to life without parole. through the prison when he paused by tions went so far as to predict that “the
“We wanted people to think we were a another inmate’s cell. In an instant, he, A.B. will probably not propose a serious
little crazy,” Thompson said. “It was a too, was free.“You motherfuckers want a threat to law enforcement agencies in the
way, like Nietzsche said, of bending piece of this?” he yelled, waving a blade. future unless it gains a clear and well en-
space and reality to our will.” He stabbed three more guards. One died forced chain of command.”
in the arms of his son, who also worked Thompson started to push for just
O n a Saturday morning in the fall of
1983, at Marion federal prison, in
southern Illinois, Thomas Silverstein
in the prison. Fountain reportedly said
that he didn’t want Silverstein to have a
higher body count.
that.“I wanted to eliminate the irrational-
ity and make it into a true organized-
crime family,” he said.“I wasn’t interested
waited for guards to take him for a rou- It was the first time in the history in killing blacks. I was interested in only
tine shower. Marion, which is about a of American federal prisons that two one thing: power.”
hundred miles southeast of St. Louis, guards had been killed on the same day. He and other leaders hatched a plan
was opened in 1963, the year that Alca- “You got to understand,”Thompson said. with gang members who were incarcer-
traz closed, and was designed to cope “Here were guys in restraints, locked in ated at a prison in Chino, in Southern
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 16 & 23, 2004 161
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California. These men, who were await- from there we’d work our way down the son was thought to have as many death
ing trials for the assaults or murders of list. . . . That was policy that we’d estab- threats made against him as anyone in
fellow-inmates, were encouraged to rep- lished that we’d do from then on.” prison; his family had been relocated, and
resent themselves as attorneys, thereby To carry out its new policy, Brand he was being held in the correctional sys-
allowing them to subpoena their col- leaders needed to find a hit man, some- tem’s version of the witness-protection
leagues around the country as witnesses. one who could, in the words of the gang, program. He was moved from prison to
Each time a Brand member sent out a “step up.” And so they allegedly turned prison anonymously, and was often kept
“writ,” another member would have to to Curtis Price, a forty-one-year-old in a protective-custody unit, walled off
be relocated to Chino. For several days, made A.B. member who was about to from most inmates.
using what one member called “sub- be paroled from Chino prison, and who After weeks of searching, I called the
poena power unlimited” and exploiting would, according to a former gang mem- prison where I had heard Thompson was
the very legal system that was trying to ber, “kill as to directions received from incarcerated.The authorities insisted that
stop them, most of the Brand was able the A.B. council.” Described by his pa- there was no one there by that name.
to meet for hours in the yard, in what role officer as “one of the most danger- Moments later, I received a call from a
amounted to a private convention. ous state prisoners I’ve dealt with in my law-enforcement official who knew I
As Smith recalled,“We all get over in twenty-two years” of service, Price was was trying to find Thompson. “They
the corner one day and say,‘Damn, man, six feet tall, with short brown hair and think you’re trying to kill him,” she said.
check this out, we got all the power right vacant blue eyes. In photographs, the “They’re moving him out of the prison
here. Let’s take this one step further.’ ” bones around his pallid face protrude right now.”
The Brand’s California leaders decided and give him a slightly ghostly air. Price, After explaining to officials why I
to establish a chain of command mod- who had once expressed hope of going wanted to speak with Thompson, I was
elled loosely on the structure of the Ital- into law enforcement, had in more re- able to get a letter to him, and, with his
ian Mafia. A council of about a dozen cent years stabbed another inmate and agreement, I headed to the maximum-
members would manage gang opera- taken two guards hostage, telling one, security prison where he was being held
tions throughout the state prison sys- “I’ll blow your partner’s head off.” under the name of “Occupant.” To get
tem. Each council member would be Court and prison records reveal that inside the prison, I had to submit my car
elected by majority vote. He would be upon his release, on September 14, 1982, to a search, and I was given a checkered
responsible for enforcing all of the gang’s Price met a twenty-two-year-old mother shirt to replace my blue oxford, which
policies, which would now be codified; of two children named Elizabeth Hickey happened to match the color of some in-
he also could authorize a hit at any mo- and stole several weapons from her step- mate uniforms and was therefore for-
ment, as long as it wasn’t on a fellow A.B. father’s house, including a twelve-gauge bidden. There were several children with
member. The council’s actions would shotgun and a Mauser automatic. Price their mothers filing in alongside me;
be overseen by a three-man commission. then drove to the home of Steven Barnes’s they wore white dresses or neatly pleated
Authorities say that Thompson and Smith father, Richard, in Temple City, Califor- pants, as if they were attending church.
served on the California council. In the nia, and shot him three times in the head, We passed through several steel gates,
federal prison system, where the gang set execution style. Barnes’s neighbors found each door clanking loudly behind us,
up a similar hierarchy in roughly a dozen him lying on his bed, face down, his cow- before reaching a brightly lit room filled
maximum-security prisons, the Baron boy hat resting nearby. with wooden chairs and tables. While
and T. D. Bingham allegedly became Afterward, Price returned to Eliz- the other visitors were allowed to sit
high commissioners. abeth Hickey’s home and beat her to freely with inmates, I was led to the back
The A.B.’s new structure strength- death, crushing her skull in five places, in of the room, where a three-foot-by-
ened its grip, but there remained one an apparent attempt to eliminate her as three-foot bulletproof window was cut
outstanding obstacle: snitches. Though a potential witness. He then bought a into the wall. A chair was placed in front
other crime families had to worry about ticket to see the movie “Gandhi.” The of it, and I sat down and peered through
members “rolling over,” in prison every- gang soon received a postcard in prison. the scuffed plastic. I could see a small ce-
one had an incentive to “flip,” and all It said,“Business has been taken care of.” ment cell, with a telephone and a chair.
an inmate had to do was whisper in a The room was sealed on all sides except
guard’s ear. In the early nineteen-eighties,
a former gang member, Steven Barnes,
had testified in a murder rap against
O ne day not long ago, I tried to find
Michael Thompson. I had been
told that he had mysteriously dropped
for a steel door at the opposite end. A
moment later, the door clicked open and
Thompson, a giant of a man, appeared in
one of the new commissioners and was out of the Aryan Brotherhood shortly a white prison jumpsuit with his hands
housed in protective custody, where no after the Barnes killing, and had testified shackled behind his back. As a guard re-
one could get to him. In response, the against Price, who, in 1986, was con- moved his chains, Thompson bent for-
Aryan Brotherhood settled upon a new victed of the two murders. Thompson ward and I could see his face. It was cov-
policy: If it couldn’t get to you, it would became the highest-ranking defector in ered with a hermit-like beard. His hair
get to your family. “What we wanted to the gang’s history. (“He’s big, he’s tough, reached to his shoulders and was parted
DAN WINTERS
do was hit . . . Barnes’s wife,” Smith ex- he’s mean, he’s killed, and then all of a down the middle, in the style that was
plained. “If we couldn’t get to her, we’d sudden he’s gone, just rolled over,” one fashionable in the seventies, when he was
move then to his brother . . . or sister and A.B. associate said in disbelief.) Thomp- first convicted of murder. As he came
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A cell in Pelican Bay. The Brotherhood was able to develop murder schemes even under maximum security.
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closer to the glass, I could see, amid the ture of the gang. “I thought that by or- get to him; after he was placed in the
thickets of graying hair, his bright-blue ganizing we could make the gang less protective-custody unit,he said,the Brand
eyes. He sat down and reached for the bloody. I thought we could strip away sent in a “sleeper”—a secret collabora-
phone, and I picked up mine. the irrational killings. But I was foolish, tor—who had tried to stab him. “You
“How was your trip?” he asked. because at some level you could never need to understand one thing,” Thomp-
He spoke in a soft, courteous voice. I remove that. And the structure only al- son said. “The Aryan Brotherhood is
asked him why he had dropped out of lowed the gang to be more deadly.” not about white supremacy. It is about
the Brand, and he said he made his deci- During our conversation, Thompson supremacy. And it will do anything to
sion after the debate over whether to kill cited various philosophers, including get it. Anything.”
Steven Barnes’s father and other family Nietzsche, whose “true genius,” he later A guard banged on the door. “I have
members.“I argued with them for days,” wrote me in a letter,“the gang often mis- to go now,” he said.
he said. “I kept saying, ‘We’re warriors, interprets.” It was hard to reconcile this As he stood, he pressed his hand
aren’t we? We don’t kill children. We cerebral figure with a man who said he against the glass, and I could see some-
don’t kill mothers and fathers.’ But I had once helped to stab sixteen men in a thing green on his left hand. I looked
lost. And they killed him, execution style, single day. But, when I asked him about closer: it was the faint outline of a sham-
and then they killed Hickey, an innocent his training, he reached out with his hand rock. Armed with that tattoo, Thomp-
woman, just because she knew where and began, in almost clinical fashion, to son had told me, a man could take over
Price had gotten the gun.And that’s when show how to assassinate someone. “You an entire United States penitentiary.
I walked away. That’s when I said, ‘This can do it here on the right side of the
thing is out of control.’ ’’ He leaned to-
ward the window, his breath steaming
the glass.“I am still willing to fight some-
heart, in the aorta, or here in the neck, or
back here in the spine, which will para-
lyze someone,” he said, moving his hand
I n the fall of 1994, a bus filled with
prisoners arrived at Leavenworth,
Kansas, a maximum-security federal
one in here, head up, if I have to. That’s back and forth, as if slicing something. prison built almost a century ago. Out
the culture of where I live. But I was not “I’ve been in jail thirty years now, and I stepped a tall muscular man with a black
for killing people on the outside, people know I am probably never going to get mustache. His arms were covered with
in your world.” out. I am a dangerous person. I don’t like tattoos, and he soon appeared in the yard
When I asked him what he initially violence, but I am good at it.” without a shirt, revealing a large sham-
found compelling about the gang, he He had tried, he said, to isolate him- rock in the middle of his chest. He was
paused for a long moment.“That’s a very self from other prisoners. “I don’t go in immediately surrounded by a group of
good question,” he said. There was the the yard much,” he said. “It’s not safe.” white inmates. Many went to the com-
protection, he suggested, ticking off the He said the only people he could really missary and paid to have their photo-
reasons. There was the sense of belong- interact with were the guards, for fear of graph taken with him, which they car-
ing. But that wasn’t really it. For him, being recognized. “In here, I am lower ried around like passports. “If you . . .
at least, he said, it was the rush of power. than child killers and child molesters. were able to show that picture, it was
“I was naïve, because I saw us as these Because I defected from the A.B., I am just like standing next to your favorite
noble warriors,” he said. In the eighties, the lowest there is.” pop star,” one prisoner said.
he added, he had tried to change the na- The gang had tried several times to The man’s name was Michael McEl-
hiney, but everyone called him Mac. A
reputed A.B. member, he had just come
from Marion, where he had been housed
with Barry Mills, the notorious Baron.
Mills, who later testified in court on
McElhiney’s behalf, said, “I look at him
like a son.”
McElhiney, a convicted metham-
phetamine dealer who had conspired to
kill a witness, was so charismatic that,
according to authorities, a juror once fell
in love with him. However, in private
letters, which were later confiscated by
prison officials, Mac spoke openly of
“the beast” inside him and referred to
himself proudly as “an angry mother-
fucker.” An F.B.I. agent at Leavenworth
described him as probably “a psycho-
path,” while a close friend put it this way:
“He likes to have everybody know that
he’s God.”
“I am just being hysterical, but I do hate you.” An Aryan Brotherhood presence had
TNY—02/16 & 23/04—PAGE 164—133SC—LIVE OPI ART A8850
long existed at Leavenworth, which was
known as “the hothouse,” because of its
sweltering, catacomb-like cells. But Mc-
Elhiney was determined to extend the
gang’s reach.
Although the Brand maintained rem-
nants of its racist ideology, it had increas-
ingly sought, according to a declassified
F.B.I. report, “to launch a cooperative ef-
fort of death and fear against staff and
other inmates . . . in order to take over the
system.” The Brand aimed, the F.B.I.
warned, to control everything from drug
trafficking to the sale of “punks”—in-
mates forced into prostitution—to extor-
tion rackets to murder contracts behind
bars. It sought, in short, to become a rack-
eteering enterprise. The council member
Clifford Smith had told authorities that
the gang was no longer primarily “bent on
destroying blacks and the Jews and the
minorities of the world, white supremacy
and all that shit. It’s a criminal organiza-
tion, first and foremost.”
Using an array of white associates,
who either coveted membership in the “The tumbleweed probably set it off.”
gang or needed protection, McElhiney
set out to dominate Leavenworth’s un- • •
derground economy. His men went from
tier to tier, demanding a tax from the sale
of “pruno”—prison wine that could be used its leaders as surrogate power bro- McElhiney later acknowledged that he
brewed out of almost any cafeteria fruit kers. In one instance, a guard at Leav- was funnelling the proceeds to his men-
(apples, strawberries, even ketchup). At enworth went to McElhiney to get the tor Mills and to other reputed leaders
the time, a man named Keith Segien O.K. before he released another pris- of the Aryan Brotherhood, with whom
was running a friendly poker game in the oner in the yard. One longtime A.B. he had “a pact” to take over the “gam-
prison’s B unit. One night on his way to member compared the illicit operations bling business.”
his cell, Segien later testified in court, in maximum-security prisons to boot- McElhiney, who presided over the
Mac was waiting for him. He told Segien legging during Prohibition and to the yard wearing sunglasses, his nails often
to sit down. high-roller tables in Las Vegas. stained yellow from chewing tobacco,
Segien hesitated.“What’s this about?” Currency is not allowed in prison, then decided to focus on drug smug-
he asked. and inmates typically paid their smaller gling. In the past, the Brand had sought
“If I wanted you killed,” Segien re- debts to the Brotherhood by offering out almost anyone who could bring in its
calls him saying, “you’d have been dead free contraband or items from the com- merchandise. In one instance, several in-
by now.” Then Mac added, “Someone missary: cigarettes, candy, stamps, books. mates involved in a scheme told me, the
told me you don’t want me . . . to run At the high-roller tables at Leavenworth, gang offered to protect Charles Manson,
the poker game, and I’m here to make where imprisoned drug lords could place and even conspired in a failed bid to help
money. I’m going to run the poker game.” bets in the thousands of dollars, partici- him escape; in return, Manson’s cult of
He asked if Segien had a problem with pants were allowed to play for a month women on the outside helped to smug-
that. on credit.The man in charge of the table gle dope into prison for them.
“I said no,” Segien testified. “That kept a tally of wins and losses. At the According to authorities and court
was the last day I ran the poker game.” end of the month, inmates say, Mac’s records, Mac now started to canvass the
Mac soon had gambling rackets op- men would collect the losses; usually, population for the most vulnerable in-
erating in nearly every unit, on nearly gamblers would pay up by having a rel- mates—those who were drug addicts
every tier. As with the sale of pruno, in- ative or a friend send an untraceable or in debt to the gang or simply scared,
mates say, the guards often turned a blind money order to a designated A.B. person and could therefore be forced to serve
eye, perhaps to mollify a seething pop- on the outside. If an indebted inmate as “mules.” One such person was Walter
ulation. Some guards, it seemed, had didn’t have the money mailed on time, Moles, a drug user who was terrified of
come to consider the Aryan Brother- internal prison records show, he was typ- the gang. His father, who was terminally
hood presence as inevitable, and even ically “piped”—beaten with a metal rod. ill with emphysema, was planning to
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travel to Leavenworth to celebrate his
son’s birthday. According to Moles’s later
testimony, Mac instructed him to have SOCCER MOMS
his drug contact on the outside send
Moles’s father six balloons filled with They remember Gene Chandler topping the charts with “Duke of Earl”
heroin. Using coded language on the when the boys were set on taking the milk bar’s one banquette
prison’s tape-recorded pay phones, Moles and winning their hearts, Mavis and Merle,
then persuaded his father to transport
the package. as it seemed their hearts might be first to yield,
Weeks later, when his father arrived, hearts before minds. Time for stilettos. Time for spivs with shivs.
he sat beside Moles in the visiting room, The time of day when light fails on the field
under the guards’ scrutiny. He carried
the package in his underwear. Moles in- while their daughters, themselves now tweenie girls,
structed his father to go into the bath- crowd round a coach for one last tête-à-tête.
room, place two of the balloons in his They remember Gene Chandler topping the charts with “Duke of Earl”
mouth, then return and spit them into
Moles’s cup of coffee. His father said he while the world still reeled
couldn’t do it. The heroin wasn’t in six from the anti-Castro Cubans going to sea in a sieve,
balloons. “It’s in one big one,” he said. as it seemed. Their hearts might be first to yield
“How big?” Moles asked.
“A Ping-Pong ball.” if only after forty years of one plain, one purl,
Eventually, his father managed to on the sweater they’ve sweated over for a Bay of Pigs vet,
drop the balloon into his son’s coffee cup. and winning their hearts, Mavis and Merle,
Moles tried to swallow it, but it got stuck
in his throat. may now be faintly likelier for a well-heeled
His father started to panic. “Son, just schlub to whom they once wouldn’t so much as give
give it back to me,” he begged. “I’ll send the time of day. When light fails on the field
it back to where it came from.”
“No, Dad, I can’t,” he said. He ex-
plained that the heroin wasn’t for him- Heroin was now flooding into Leav- for as much as a thousand dollars. A for-
self. “These guys I’m bringing it in for enworth. According to authorities, in- mer council member told me that the
want their stuff.” mates received more than twelve hun- gang was bringing in anywhere from half
His father didn’t seem to understand: dred positive tests for heroin during a million to a million dollars a year from
Who were these people? 1995. One prisoner estimated that forty a single prison. As one F.B.I. agent put
Moles saw a guard’s attention wan- per cent of the population was shooting it, “You just do the math.”
der, and said that he had to say goodbye. up. “Heroin deadens everything,” an in- With his empire expanding by the
“Is it the end of the visit?” his father mate at Leavenworth said.“Speed, man, day, Mac seemed more and more “out
asked. you’re bebopping around and you’re doing of control,” as one former ally said.
“If I’m going to do it, this is my only more time than you would normally be- Although A.B. leaders were forbidden,
chance,” Moles said. While his father cause you ain’t sleeping at night. . . . But under gang rules, to use heroin them-
distracted the guard, Moles untucked the heroin, yeah . . . you’re feeling no selves, associates say that Mac would
his shirt and forced the drugs into his pain.” hole up in his cell with “a rig”—a home-
rectum. After he got past the guards, he Because of the scarcity of supply and made syringe typically constructed out
said, he gave “the stuff ” to one of Mac’s the unusually high demand in prison, of a needle stolen from the infirmary
henchmen. authorities say, a gram of heroin that and a hollowed-out ballpoint pen.There,
The next morning, Moles waited was bought on the street for sixty-five in what inmates describe as a heroin-
behind the bleachers in the yard for his dollars was selling inside Leavenworth induced haze, he would allegedly sit with
cut. Suddenly, he felt something hard A.B. henchmen and mete out his own
against the back of his head, and he col- form of justice, including murder.
lapsed to the ground. “I tried to get up,” McElhiney eventually became con-
Moles later testified, “but I kept getting vinced that a snitch was trolling for evi-
kicked.” dence against him. Then one day, associ-
Mac’s men told Moles to stay down. ates say, Mac sent word to his men that he
“What did I do wrong?” Moles asked. had found the rat: Bubba Leger, a trusted
“What did I do wrong?” associate who did most of the A.B.’s tat-
Afterward, when an A.B. associate too work and who only a few months
asked Mac why he had assaulted Moles earlier had posed proudly next to Mac
and taken his share of the dope, Mac re- for a photograph. In the rec cage one day,
portedly replied, “Fuck the little punk.” according to witnesses, one of Mac’s
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occasionally bumping into walls and doors,
he arranged them on a long wooden con-
ference table, and caught his breath.Then
he said,“These deal with just one murder
a schlubster linesman will unfurl in the indictment. It’s nothing.”
an offside flag that signals some vague threat, Jessner had started investigating the
they remember. Gene Chandler topping the charts with “Duke of Earl” gang in 1992. A convicted murderer was
found strangled in his cell at a federal
for three weeks only in 1962 might have taught them to shield prison in Lompoc, California, and Jessner
themselves against the lives their daughters briefly relive, was assigned the case. Law-enforcement
as it seemed their hearts might be first to yield officials often dismiss such crimes as
N.H.I.s—“No humans involved”—be-
to this free kick that forever curls cause the victims are considered to be as
past the goal mouth, a ball at once winging into the back of the net unsympathetic as the perps. Trying to
and winning. Their hearts, Mavis and Merle, break through a web of perjury, Jessner
located several witnesses who claimed
hanker for the time when it was not yet revealed that the A.B. had murdered a fellow
failure’s no less literal than figurative, gang member for, among other things,
the time of day when light fails on the field falling in love with a gay prisoner. Al-
though the Brotherhood had a long his-
and gives back a sky more muddy than mother-of-pearl, tory of trafficking in “punks,” and al-
so it’s with a deepening sense of regret though some of its members were known
they remember Gene Chandler topping the charts with “Duke of Earl” to receive sexual favors in return for pro-
and winning their hearts, Mavis and Merle. tection, the gang considered open homo-
sexuality a sign of weakness, a violation
of the A.B. code. “The member made
—Paul Muldoon the mistake of kissing on the stairs,”
Jessner said.
Jessner was able to prove that an A.B.
associates nicknamed Ziggy, who was trust him—Our code word will be Mary recruit had gone into his associate’s cell,
purportedly eager to make his bones, Mary Quite Contrary.” tied a bedsheet around his neck, and
pulled out a knife and started stabbing Ziggy received a twenty-seven-year strangled him while an accomplice held
Bubba. “Why you doing this?” Bubba sentence and later appeared with a tattoo his legs. Yet Jessner realized that he had
pleaded.With blood flowing from his of a shamrock on his leg, but authorities done little to impede the gang; as with
chest, Bubba stumbled over to the steel were never able to prove that McElhiney previous isolated prosecutions, he may
door of the cage and pounded on it, try- had ordered the killing (though they did have only strengthened it. The recruit
ing to get the guards’ attention. In full later convict him for smuggling drugs). was later said to have hung a photo-
view of the guards, Ziggy stabbed Bubba During the investigation, one unexpected graph of his target on his cell wall, like
at least five more times. Bubba died mo- fact emerged:Bubba had not been a snitch an honorary plaque, and held a celebra-
ments later. after all. tion with pruno on the anniversary of
It was then, witnesses say, that they the murder.
saw one of Mac’s men take another
weapon, a sharpened toothbrush, and
plant it near Bubba to make it look as
“
T his isn’t in the job description,”
Gregory Jessner said. The Assis-
tant United States Attorney was standing
As Jessner dug deeper into this violent
subculture, he learned that there were no
definitive statistics on A.B. crimes, be-
though he had used it first. Afterward, on a loading dock outside the Los Ange- cause so few of them were prosecuted—
McElhiney was said to have enforced a les federal courthouse, stacking onto an and because so many associates from
long-standing Aryan Brotherhood pol- old wooden dolly boxes of transcripts for other gangs, including the Dirty White
icy, which required all witnesses to per- his case against the Aryan Brotherhood. Boys and the Mexican Mafia, did its bid-
jure themselves. “ ‘I’m going to give you There were thirteen in all, and as he ding. More general statistics on inmate
a choice,’ ” an associate said that McEl- worked a small circle of sweat appeared violence provided a glimpse of what one
hiney told him.“ ‘You can either lie or die on his starched white shirt. The son of a sociologist once described as “the upsurge
on this one.’” In a note, McElhiney, who mathematician, he had a slightly cerebral of rapacious and murderous groups” in-
shaved his head after the murder, in- air.“I don’t really have a bulldog persona,” side American prisons. According to the
structed Ziggy what to do:“The defense he said. “I’m not like Marcia Clark.” He most recent Justice Department census,
you’re going to have is self-defense.” He had never read a John Grisham novel, fifty-one inmates were murdered in pris-
went on, “Hang tough, Stud. As soon as and was known to pick up books by Cer- ons in 2000. Moreover, there were more
you get a lawyer direct him to me with- vantes and David Foster Wallace be- than thirty-four thousand reported as-
out further ado. . . . Got it? Stress to him tween trials. saults by inmates on other inmates, and
that it’s a must he come see me ’fore you After he wheeled the boxes upstairs, nearly eighteen thousand on staff. Rape
THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 16 & 23, 2004 167
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is common; one study of prisons in four harder to repent and ask for forgiveness, gave birth to a strapping eight pound
states estimated that at least one in five because deep inside I can feel that hatred seven ounce baby boy.” Jessner feared
inmates has been sexually assaulted. and anger growing.” that the reference to the baby’s weight
Jessner eventually started to dig into Jessner told me, “Within the gang’s was code for 187, the California legal
hundreds of violent crimes linked to the lore, Silverstein has become its Christ statute pertaining to murder; the fact
Aryan Brotherhood. Working with an figure.” that the baby was a boy suggested that a
officer from the Bureau of Alcohol, To- Even under these conditions, which hit had been approved. Then analysts
bacco and Firearms named Mike Halu- some civil-rights groups considered a vi- noticed that several of the letters had
alani—a half-Japanese, half-Hawaiian olation of human rights, the Aryan squiggly marks, almost like tails, on
agent who was as brash as Jessner was Brotherhood continued to flourish. Its them. The words “eight pound,” for in-
genteel—Jessner attempted to members developed elaborate stance, had curlicues on the letters “e,”
devise a strategy to break the ways to communicate. They “g,” “n,” and “d.” It appeared to be a
gang’s stranglehold. But the dropped notes through pipes code within a code.
more he investigated the more it that were connected to nearby After scrutinizing the letters, au-
seemed that the gang defied any cells; they tapped Morse code thorities determined that the note was
conventional notion of a prose- on prison bars; they forced or- in fact written in a biliteral cipher, a
cution. Jessner told me that he derlies to pass kites; they whis- method invented by Sir Francis Bacon,
kept asking himself, “How do pered through vents in “carnie,” the seventeenth-century philosopher. It
you stop people who see a mur- a convoluted, rhyming code involved using two distinct alphabets, de-
der rap as a badge of honor? language. (“Bottle stoppers” pending on how the letters were drawn.
How do you stop people who meant “coppers.”) In addition, An unadorned “c” referred to alphabet
have already been stopped by the law the leaders had developed a devoted co- A, whereas a curlicued “c” represented
and sentenced to life imprisonment?” terie of women on the outside who had alphabet B. Investigators went through
By the nineteen-nineties, authorities, fallen in love with them through visits the note, categorizing each letter by al-
hoping to create at least some deterrent, and correspondence and could serve as phabet until they had a cluster of letters
and to protect other inmates, had relo- couriers, relaying messages back and that all seemed to be a play on the initials
cated nearly all the Aryan Brotherhood’s forth between members. One woman of the Aryan Brotherhood:
top leaders, including the Baron, to what who coöperated in the gang’s illegal busi- bbbaaaaabbabaaabababbabaaaba-
were then a new breed of prisons, called nesses later claimed she had Stockholm baaabaaabbbababbaabbaaabbaabbabb-
“supermaxes.” These prisoners were held syndrome. baabb . . .
in single cells, locked down nearly the With the help of prison authorities,
entire day, without, as one gang mem- Jessner began to intercept a series of It still made no sense. But after ana-
ber put it, “seeing fresh earth, plant life, covert messages. Portions of the letters lysts broke the letters into clusters of
or unfiltered sunlight”; they exercised appeared to be blank, as if someone had five, Jessner says, they started to real-
alone in an indoor cage, were fed meals been interrupted. After analysts applied ize that each cluster represented an indi-
through a tray slot, and had little, if any, heat with an iron and placed the paper vidual letter. Thus “ababb” was an “A,”
human contact. under ultraviolet light, letters would ap- “abbab” was a “B,” and so on. They had
In the case of Silverstein, who was al- pear, revealing “a secret message,” as finally cracked the code; now they went
ready serving multiple life sentences the F.B.I. wrote in an internal report. through the letter again. It said:
when he killed the guard Clutts, in 1983, Cryptographers analyzed the “ink” of Confirm message from Chris to move
the Bureau of Prisons had established a one such note, and discovered that the on DC.
separate unit for him at Leavenworth, message was written with urine. The
where he was held in a Hannibal Lecter- message itself was baffling; it had been Officials knew that “DC” meant the
style cage. Though Silverstein continued scrambled into a code. “They have cer- D.C. Blacks, a prison gang against
to sketch, he was for years not permitted tain words that mean a certain thing,” whom the Aryan Brotherhood had re-
to have a comb or a hairbrush, and when one former member said. “If they tell cently declared war. But, by the time au-
the reporter Pete Earley visited him, in you that ‘somebody’s going to build a thorities decoded the letter, two black
the late eighties, he had long wild hair house in the country,’ the prevalent inmates had been found dead in their
and a beard.“They want me to go crazy,” word . . . is ‘country,’ because . . . that cells in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: one
he told Earley.“They want to point their means ‘murder.’ ” was stabbed thirty-four times, the other
fingers at me and say, ‘See, see, we told Jessner and his team spent hours thirty-five.
you he is a lunatic.’ . . . I didn’t come in breaking sentences apart and recon- The Brotherhood began developing
here a killer, but in here you learn hate. structing them. He started to see pat- murder schemes that could succeed even
The insanity in here is cultivated by the terns in the messages: “baby boy” meant in maximum-security environments.They
guards. They feed the beast that lingers yes, and “baby girl” meant no. One day, started to befriend their foes, so they
within all of us. . . . I find myself smiling prison authorities intercepted a note could one day “rock them to sleep.” At
at the thought of me killing Clutts each sent by T. D. Bingham, the A.B. com- Pelican Bay, where friends could apply
time they deny me a phone call, a visit, or missioner, to the Baron. It said, “Well I to be cellmates, they sought to room
keep the lights on. I find it harder and am a grandfather, at last my boy’s wife with the very men they wanted to kill.
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“Deception was key,” one member who In an audacious move, Jessner decided would be naïve to think he would not re-
strangled his cellmate acknowledged. Be- to pursue the death penalty for nearly all main in contact with his brothers,” a de-
tween 1996 and 1998, A.B. members at the gang’s top leaders.“It’s the only arrow classified F.B.I. report stated.“The rule of
Pelican Bay murdered three inmates, and left in our quiver,” he told me. “I think thumb is that once on the streets, one
were suspected in at least three additional even a lot of people who are against the must take care of his brothers that are still
slayings. death penalty in general would recog- inside. The penalty for failure to do so is
In many cases, officials in the correc- nize that in this particular instance, where death upon the member’s return to the
tional system seemed powerless to stop people are committing murder repeat- prison system.” Given the gang’s ability to
the gang. At Folsom prison, after A.B. edly from behind bars, there is little other operate behind bars, the F.B.I. report
leaders were sequestered from the general option.” warned of “what these gang members
population,the gang’s associates protested While Jessner was slowly trying to can do with little or no supervision.” Sil-
by indiscriminately stabbing rapists and build a case, methodically flipping wit- verstein himself has said,“Someday most
child molesters until the leaders were re- nesses, decoding messages, and gathering of us finally get out of this hell and even a
leased. A few prison officials actually fa- forensic evidence, he had to be careful of rational dog after getting kicked around
cilitated the Brotherhood’s activities. At “sleepers”—gang members pretending to year after year after year attacks when his
the supermax prison in Colorado, a guard coöperate with authorities in order to in- cage door is finally opened.”
was accused of becoming an Aryan filtrate the investigation. During a previ-
Brotherhood disciple; at Pelican Bay, two
guards were discovered encouraging the
beatings of child molesters and sex of-
ous F.B.I. probe, agents reported that
they were concerned that one snitch may
“have in fact been a ploy by the A.B.
O n March 24, 1995, the door at Peli-
can Bay finally opened for Robert
Scully,a reputed A.B.member and armed
fenders by gang members. A local prose- to infiltrate the WITSEC program”—the robber who had spent, with the exception
cutor warned that officials at Pelican Bay witness-protection program—“and de- of a few months, the previous thirteen
were unable to stop a “reign of terror.” termine where all the government wit- years behind bars—many of them inside
By the mid-nineties, Jessner says, the nesses were housed.” the Hole. For an Aryan brother, he was
gang had evolved to the point that it had As the Brotherhood grew stronger, it small: barely five feet four, and a hundred
to appoint members to lead different developed ambitions that extended be- and forty-five pounds. But the thirty-six-
branches of its operations—such as the yond prison walls. Though many leaders year-old was known to work out obses-
“department of security” and the “de- were serving life sentences without parole, sively in his cell, doing an endless routine
partment of narcotics.” Though the some members were being paroled—an of what the gang called “burpees”—
Aryan Brotherhood’s profits never ri- outcome that authorities had long feared. standing one moment, then dropping to
valled those of the Italian Mafia or out- “Most of the A.B. will be paroled or dis- the floor to do a pushup, then hopping to
side drug lords, its reputation for violence charged at some future date and, in view one’s feet again.
did. The gang had some of the most of members’ lifelong commitments, it Brenda Moore, a lonely thirty-eight-
highly trained and ruthless hit men in the
country. And inside the prison system
the Baron had so grown in stature that he
overshadowed the imprisoned head of
the Italian Mafia, John Gotti. According
to authorities, in July, 1996, after a black
inmate attacked Gotti at Marion prison,
bloodying his face, the Mafia leader, who
seemed ill prepared for the explosion of
prison violence, sought the Baron’s help
in murdering his assailant. The Brother-
hood seemed receptive to the idea—the
Baron allegedly used sign language to
communicate the price of the hit to an
associate—but Gotti died before the hit
could be executed.
It was around then that Jessner de-
cided that the only way to take down the
gang was the way authorities had taken
down the Italian Mafia—by using the
RICO statutes, which allowed the gov-
ernment to attack the entire hierarchy of
a criminal organization rather than just
one or two members. The goal, as Halu-
alani put it, was to “cut off the head, not
just the body.” “Honey—this is sooooooo special!”
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That same year, a reputed Brand
member on the streets walked into the
Palm Springs home of a drug dealer who
wasn’t sharing enough of his profits with
the gang. Witnesses told police that the
A.B. member pulled out a .38 and un-
loaded five bullets into the man’s chest
and head, telling everyone in the room
that this was for “the fellows”—the
Ayran Brotherhood—up north at Peli-
can Bay, and warning that new brothers
were being released every day.
A year later, in a letter disguised as
privileged legal mail, the gang spoke of
plans to “buy a warehouse with offices on
some large acreage.” The letter’s author,
a member who was about to be released,
added, “I’ll outfit it with a well-stocked
law library, computer research desk, copy
machine, iron pile, pool table, big screen
TV, car and bike garage with tools,
handball courts, etc. This will be the
Brand Ranch. . . . This will be home
base for us out there.”
Around the same time, a longtime
reputed A.B. member confided to au-
thorities that he had been approached at
the supermax in Colorado by the gang
and asked for technical help in mak-
ing bombs. The gang, he was informed,
“How do I feel about us? I feel that America is a safer place today because of was planning terrorist attacks on federal
the steps taken by this Administration. That’s how I feel about us, Carolyn.” facilities across the United States. “It’s
become irrational,” he told authorities
• • after declining to help. “They’re talking
about car bombs, truck bombs, and mail
bombs.”
year-old single mother who had long middle of the night. A police car pulled Just when the Brotherhood seemed
corresponded with inmates at Pelican up behind their pickup truck. As a fifty- poised to take a particularly violent turn,
Bay—and, in the process, had become eight-year-old deputy sheriff approached Jessner unleashed the United States
one of the gang’s female followers— with his flashlight, Scully leaped out Marshals. Nearly four decades after the
picked Scully up at the prison gate in her with his shotgun. The deputy raised his gang was born, it found itself under
truck. Scully wore powder-blue sweat- hands over his head, but Scully shot him siege.
pants, a sweatshirt, and a watch cap. He between the eyes.
had two hundred dollars in his pocket.
Scully had previously sent Moore a series
of seductive letters. In one, written on
The Aryan Brotherhood was now
killing on the outside with as little hesi-
tation as it had on the inside. Similarly,
T he courthouse where one of the first
trials against the Brand would take
place was in the middle of a verdant for-
pink paper, he said, “All extraneous sub- the gang was expanding its racketeer- est in Benton, Illinois, about thirty miles
version manifests itself when we con- ing operation onto the streets. In letters from Marion prison. It had been built
nect.” In another, he wrote,“I will always written in 1999 to one recent parolee, on the edges of a circular clearing, and
be with you as you are one of me now. the Baron said, “We especially need for stood not far from a dozen or so dilapi-
Our synergy is infinite.” some to step-up,” and, referring to the dated brick storefronts. Some of the
After leaving the prison, the couple gang’s shamrock symbol, he urged, stores had been shut down; others had
drove to the beach, where Scully walked “ START POLISHING THE ROCK out signs offering discounts, as if they would
along the shore, collecting seashells. The there!!!” The gang allegedly enlisted soon join them.
following day, though, he found a sawed- paroled A.B. members and associates A single alleged A.B. murder, which
off shotgun, and he and Moore set out to become drug dealers, gunrunners, was included in Jessner’s sprawling in-
for Santa Rosa, driving south along stickup men, and hit men. Some Pelican dictment, also fell under the jurisdiction
Highway 101. Six days after Scully’s re- Bay inmates were discovered mapping of the United States Attorney in the
lease, they stopped near a saloon in the out establishments to rob. Southern District of Illinois. The trial,
170 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 16 & 23, 2004
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which began last September, centered None of the defendants looked up month, he needed to get ready not just
on David Sakahian, McElhiney’s most at the screen, and, other than the mar- for one trial but for potentially five or
feared cohort, the man who had once shals and Sahakian’s wife, the gallery was six—since not all forty defendants could
reputedly had an inmate stabbed for empty. Nobody from the victim’s family be held safely in one courtroom. Secu-
bumping him during a basketball game. was there. Jessner had told me that most rity was already a challenge; most of
He was charged with ordering two al- of these victims had already been cast the inmates, including the Baron and
leged associates to murder a thirty-seven- out by society, and, when they were killed, McElhiney, were being held in single
year-old bank robber named Terry few people, if any, cared. “I feel a certain cells at the West Valley Detention Cen-
Walker during a 1999 race war at Mar- obligation to defend those who have no ter, outside Los Angeles. Some defen-
ion. Sahakian, along with his two associ- one to defend them,” he had said. dants had been found with drugs and
ates, faced the death penalty. The trial After a break in the trial, the defen- concealed razor blades.
offered a glimpse of what will happen dant who had purportedly held the vic- Fearing that the gang might turn on
early next year in Los Angeles, when tim down during the attack refused to its own, Jessner had placed a few A.B.
Jessner will begin to prosecute forty peo- come out of a holding room. The judge members in other prisons. In a letter, the
ple, including McElhiney and the Baron. ordered the marshals to forcibly carry Baron had told another gang member,
Even though the Benton trial in- him out. Sahakian leaped to his feet and “It’s likely necessary for us to step-up
volved only one A.B. member and two said that that wasn’t necessary. “If I go and conduct a thorough evaluation of
associates, the United States Marshals back there,” he said in a commanding every brother’s personal character and
walled off the entire building. For the voice,“he’ll come out.” At last, a marshal level of commitment, as we currently
first time in the court’s history, cement went out to the holding room and es- possess some serious rot that is in fact
barricades had been placed around the corted the defendant into the court- potentially a cancer!” He added that it
exterior. To get inside, I had to pass room. He walked with pointed slowness should be “a top priority to wipe them
through two metal detectors. and stared at the prosecutor. “What the off the face of this earth!”
Nearly a dozen marshals, dressed in fuck you looking at!” he yelled. Jessner said he knew that the gang
black suits and black shoes, led the de- Six marshals quickly hovered around was trying to hold on to its operations,
fendants, whose wrists and ankles were him. As he sat down, he slammed his but he was optimistic about the upcom-
shackled, into the courtroom. Sahakian chair into the groin of one of the agents. ing trials. “I can’t say for sure if another
wore gray slacks and a gray short-sleeved Eventually, order was restored, and, gang will take the Brotherhood’s place,
shirt. Everything about him was big: his when an inmate who had helped stab or if new leaders will replace the old
hands; his stomach; his long, sloping several black inmates took the stand as ones,” he said. “But I know that if we
forehead. Whereas in old photographs a government witness, Sahakian rubbed succeed it will send a message that the
he had an unruly beard—it apparently his fingers along the arm of his chair. Aryan Brotherhood can no longer kill
had inspired his nickname, the Beast— Each time the witness made allegations with impunity.”
now he had only a goatee, which made against Sahakian, he seemed to grip the Jessner got up and started heading
his face look even larger. chair more tightly. His knuckles turned toward the courtroom, to attend a pre-
His wife was in the gallery, and he white. Finally, he glanced toward me trial hearing. He was wearing a charcoal
winked at her as he sat down. She told in the gallery and said, “Don’t believe a suit that seemed too loose for his small
me that they had met twenty-five years word he’s saying. He’s nothin’ frame. I asked him if, as some
ago, and that during twenty-three of better than a shit-house rat.” feared, he had been “put in the
those years he had been behind bars. Pe- “Don’t use that language, hat”—marked for assassination.
tite, with blond hair and a blue miniskirt honey,” his wife said. He blanched.“I don’t know,”
that exposed well-toned legs, she gave “Metaphorically speaking,” he said. He later added, “It’s
off a strong scent of perfume. She sat he said. a pretty big hat.”
right behind him, taking notes through- Several inmates who had The United States Attorney
out the trial. At one point, she told me, told authorities that they were had arranged extra security for
“They keep saying he’s a boss of the prepared to come forward had also said him, including a secure parking space
Aryan Brotherhood and that he ordered that they were frightened to do so. One nearby. One of his colleagues had de-
everyone around. But I don’t believe it. said that since he had turned on the A.B. clined to work on the case after his wife
He can’t even order me around.” his family had been threatened. Another, objected. “I worry,” Jessner admitted.
When a pathologist took the stand, who had provided evidence, was staying “You can’t help but worry.”
the prosecution projected on a large in his cell, clutching his rosary beads. He paused and looked at me. He
screen a photograph of Walker’s body. He said, “I’ll say my prayers that I don’t wouldn’t feel right if he stopped, he said.
It was stretched out on a metal table. get about seventy-five holes in me.” “I don’t believe that because you rob a
There were bloodstains on his chest, his convenience store you should receive a
eyes were open, and his mouth appeared
to be frozen midspeech. The pathologist
described each stab wound. Then he
J essner was sitting at his desk at his
headquarters in Los Angeles, pre-
paring pretrial motions. While he was
death sentence. I don’t believe that our
prisons should be divided into predators
and prey.” As he headed into the court-
pointed to a hole in the heart—it was the awaiting a verdict in the Benton trial, room, he added,“I don’t believe that that
one that killed him, he said. which was expected as early as this is what our system intended by justice.” o
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