SPECIAL ISSUE IntelligencePUBLISHED BY THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER ROLL CALL VIDEO ON ARYAN PRISON GANGS Report j ENCLOSED INSIDEARYAN PRISONARYAN PRISON GANGS THE CONSPIRATORIAL IDEOLOGY BEHIND A DOUBLE COP-KILLER IS SPREADING RAPIDLY A VIOLENT GANGSMOVEMENT SPREADS FROM THE PRISONS TO THE STREETS PLUS ‘SOVEREIGN’PRISON LEADERSHIP BREAK TIPS FOR LAWTIMELINE ENFORCEMENT ‘SOVEREIGN’SMASHING THE DICTIONARY SHAMROCK 211 CrewProfiles Member of Implicatedtop activists in Killing A ChronologySovereign ofdanger Crime signsLinked to FederalDecoding Indictments the bizarre Expose of Colorado Prisons Chief White Supremacist Prison Gangs Aryan Brotherhood Violence special report I Intelligence Report INTELLIGENCE REPORT EDITOR Mark Potok INTELLIGENCE PROJECT DIRECTOR Heidi Beirich SENIOR WRITERS Ryan Lenz, Don Terry STAFF WRITER Evelyn Schlatter CHIEF INVESTIGATOR Joseph Roy Sr. SENIOR INTELLIGENCE ANALYST Laurie Wood INFORMATION MANAGER Michelle Bramblett RESEARCH ANALYSTS Anthony Griggs, Janet Smith PROGRAM ASSOCIATE Karla Griffin RESEARCHERS Angela Freeman, Karmetriya Jackson DIRECTOR OF CAMPAIGNS Josh Glasstetter DESIGN DIRECTOR Russell Estes DESIGNERS Shannon Anderson, Valerie Downes, Michelle Leland, Sunny Paulk, Scott Phillips, Kristina Turner PRODUCTION MANAGER Regina Collins SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR Leanne Naramore 1 Smashing the Shamrock MEDIA AND GENERAL INQUIRIES Heidi Beirich Imprisoned leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood have long laughed off au- LAW ENFORCEMENT INQUIRIES Joseph Roy Sr. thorities’ attempts to prevent them from running a criminal enterprise SUBSCRIPTION REQUESTS Karla Griffin from prison. Now, a huge capital case seeks to silence the so-called “shot Southern Poverty Law Center INTELLIGENCE REPORT FALL 2005 400 Washington Ave. • Montgomery, AL 36104 callers” — permanently. (334) 956-8200 • intelligencereport.org 7 Inside the Brotherhood PUBLISHED BY John Greschner, who is serving a life sentence for murder, spent 24 THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER’S INTELLIGENCE PROJECT years in the Aryan Brotherhood, many of them as one of three “commis- sioners” overseeing the deadly gang’s activities in federal prisons. Now, Greschner is going public about the racist group’s murders, its banking and collection system, and a whole lot more. INTELLIGENCE REPORT WINTER 2012 SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER PRESIDENT J. Richard Cohen 11 Blood Out SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER FOUNDERS Leaving the Aryan Brotherhood can be a dangerous business. One Morris Dees Joseph J. Levin Jr. former leader explains why he nevertheless quit the prison gang. INTELLIGENCE REPORT WINTER 2012 SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER BOARD OF DIRECTORS Alan B. Howard, Chair Henry Solano, Vice Chair 12 Prison Break Marsha Levick, Elden Rosenthal, Will Little, James Rucker, Lida Orzeck, The execution-style murder of the Colorado prisons chief was almost Ellen Sudow, Brian Fair, James McElroy certainly the work of a white supremacist prison gang member. Was Julian Bond, Emeritus he operating on orders? INTELLIGENCE REPORT SUMMER 2013 The Intelligence Report is published quarterly by the staff of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center and provided free of charge to law 15 Timeline: Extremist Gangs Spill Into the Mainstream resources renewable 27.3% containing with inks Printed enforcement officials, journalists, scholars and others. The Southern Poverty Law Center is supported entirely by private donations. No government funds are A chronology of violence and other criminal acts linked to white involved. © 2013 Southern Poverty Law Center. All rights reserved. supremacist prison gangs since 1997. II splc intelligence report SMASHING THE SHAMROCK A massive federal indictment names the senior leadership of America’s most frightening prison gang. But will it work? BY DAVID HOLTHOUSE SANTA ANA, Calif. — Within the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and United “Brothers grow as close as vets do when they go States Courthouse here is a courtroom into battle fighting for a common cause. We are called the “Nuremberg room” for its resemblance to the famous chamber in there for each other even on the outside.” which 22 leaders of the Third Reich were tried in 1945 and 1946 for crimes against his bloody, mutilated corpse through a prosecution. “I think even a lot of peo- humanity. cellblock while white inmates cheered ple who are against the death penalty Both halls of justice have three-tiered and chanted racial slurs. in general would recognize that in this docks where multiple high-profile defen- “I have walked over dead bodies,” particular instance, where people are dants are shackled to anchors in the floor one of the AB assassins in that case later committing murder repeatedly from by chains hidden from view behind boasted in court. “I’ve had guts splattered behind bars, there is little other option.” tables and podiums. Like the docks in all over my chest from the race wars.” The indictment alleges that over the Germany’s Palace of Justice 60 years past quarter century, Aryan Brotherhood ago, the docks in Santa Ana this year have The Last Arrow members either personally committed or filled with self-avowed Nazis, Aryan war- Law enforcement authorities and prison solicited 32 murders and attempted mur- riors, and followers of Hitler. officials have until now been unable to ders in order both to promote the gang’s But the Nazis standing accused in destroy the Aryan Brotherhood mainly stature in prison and to maintain the AB’s California are Nazis of a wholly differ- because so many top leaders of the gang are iron-fisted control of narcotics traffick- ent strain than Nuremberg War Crimes serving life or multiple life sentences with ing, male prostitution, gambling, and Tribunal defendants like Hermann no possibility of parole. These men laugh at extortion among white inmates. Goering and Rudolf Hess. They are criminal penalties that only add more time In one example, the indictment alleges white supremacist pimps, drug dealers to their already infinite sentences. that in 1997, AB leaders responding to an and backstabbing shower-stall killers, Isolating the gang’s leaders in soli- outbreak of racial violence inside the glorified thugs with swastika tattoos. tary confinement hasn’t worked either, federal penitentiary in Marion issued They covet power and oversee a crim- because they always find way to commu- a “formal declaration of war” on black inal empire, but they are motivated nicate with each other and to transmit inmates throughout the federal prison less by furthering their die-hard rac- and receive reports, requests, and orders system by using coded phone calls and ist ideology than satisfying their crude from prison to prison and down through messages written in a secret double alpha- greed. They are the leaders of the Aryan the ranks, whether by bribing guards, bet invented by Sir Francis Bacon in 1652. Brotherhood (AB), the most notorious, subpoenaing each other to appear at When they received their orders, AB oper- powerful, and violent prison gang in court hearings where they employ hand atives in the federal pen in Lewisburg, America. Also known as the Brand or signals and speak in code, or writing let- Penn., executed a carefully coordinated, the Rock — a reference to the Shamrock ters in a form of invisible ink made with simultaneous attack on black inmates, tattoos AB members favor in addition to their own urine. killing two and severely wounding four. Nazi insignia — the gang in recent years These methods are time consuming. “My brothers and I have went to war, has established criminal networks out- But time is one luxury the leaders of the (make no mistake it is war) with all of side prison walls in cities, small towns, Aryan Brotherhood possess in abun- mongoloid races at one time or another, and suburbs across the country. dance. One sure way to stop them is to using knives, pipes, locks/rocks in socks,” Their nicknames are worthy of pro- kill them, which is exactly what the fed- a member of the Aryan Brotherhood in fessional wrestlers — Super Honky, The eral government is threatening to do in Oklahoma who identified himself as “tree Baron, Lucifer — but the blood they have a sweeping racketeering indictment that 1488” posted to a forum on prison gangs spilt by the bucketful has been all too has drawn a rogue’s gallery of 40 Aryan on the white supremacist Stormfront real. Aryan Brotherhood members make Brotherhood members and associates, Web site in June. (The numbers 14 and up less than one-tenth of one percent of including virtually all of the gang’s vet- 88 are both common white supremacist the nation’s prison inmate population, eran leaders, or “shot callers,” to the identifiers.) “At the end of some of these yet the white power gang is responsible Nuremberg room in Santa Ana. confrontations somebody is needed to be for 18% of all prison murders, accord- Twenty-one of the defendants are medi-flighted out, nearly always some- ing to the FBI. eligible for the death penalty, making one has had to go to medical. I carry my The AB’s carnage has spanned four the Aryan Brotherhood indictment the scars/badges of battle. Death is a very real decades. In 1981, two members of the largest death penalty case in the history possibility.” Brotherhood who were incarcerated at of the American justice system. It is a The racketeering indictment further the federal prison in Marion, Ill., mur- decapitation attack. alleges that Aryan Brotherhood leaders in dered the leader of a rival gang, the D.C. “Capital punishment is the one prison have contracted killings and other Blacks, by sneaking up behind him in the arrow left in our quiver,” said Assistant violence by operatives in the free world shower and then brutally stabbing and U.S. Attorney Gregory Jessner, who is to collect debts, silence witnesses, and slashing him 67 times. They then dragged spearheading the Aryan Brotherhood crush competition. Wives and girlfriends 2 splc intelligence report Originally published in the Fall 2005 issue of the Intelligence Report THE of incarcerated AB commonly help smug- Honor,’” but that he gradually won them Manson’s lieutenant Lynette “Squeaky” gle drugs into prison, and deliver messages over with his gardening and baking acu- Fromme wrote in a letter.