The Devil and Sherlock Holmes (39 page)

In many cases, officials in the correctional system seemed powerless to stop the gang. At Folsom prison, after A.B. leaders were sequestered from the general population, the gang’s associates protested by indiscriminately stabbing rapists and child molesters until the leaders were released. A few prison officials actually facilitated the Brotherhood’s activities. At the supermax prison in Colorado, a guard was accused of becoming an Aryan Brotherhood disciple; at Pelican Bay, two guards were discovered encouraging the beatings of child molesters and sex offenders by gang members. A local prosecutor warned that officials at Pelican Bay were unable to stop a “reign of terror.”

By the mid-nineties, Jessner says, the gang had evolved to the point that it had to appoint members to lead different branches of its operations—such as the “department of security” and the “department of narcotics.” Though the Aryan Brotherhood’s profits never rivalled those of the Italian Mafia or outside drug lords, its reputation for violence did. The gang had some of the most 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 Brotherhood 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 decided 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 government to attack the entire hierarchy of a criminal organization rather than just one or two members. The goal, as Halualani put it, was to “cut off the head, not just the body.”

In an audacious move, Jessner decided to pursue the death penalty for nearly all the gang’s top leaders. “It’s the only arrow left in our quiver,” he told me. “I think even a lot of people who are against the death penalty in general would recognize that in this particular instance, where people are committing murder repeatedly from behind bars, there is little other option.”

While Jessner was slowly trying to build a case, methodically flipping witnesses, decoding messages, and gathering forensic evidence, he had to be careful of “sleepers”—gang members pretending to cooperate with authorities in order to infiltrate the investigation. During a previous F.B.I. probe, agents reported that they were concerned that one snitch may “have in fact been a ploy by the A.B. to infiltrate the
WITSEC
program”—the witness-protection program—“and determine where all the government witnesses were housed.”

As the Brotherhood grew stronger, it developed ambitions that extended beyond prison walls. Though many leaders were serving life sentences without parole, some members were being paroled—an outcome that authorities had long feared. “Most of the A.B. will be paroled or discharged at some future date and, in view of members’ lifelong commitments, it would be naïve to think he would not remain in contact with his brothers,” a declassified F.B.I. report stated. “The rule of thumb is that once on the streets, one must take care of his brothers that are still inside. The penalty for failure to do so is death upon the member’s return to the prison system.” Given the gang’s ability to operate behind bars, the F.B.I. report warned of “what these gang members can do with little or no supervision.” Silverstein himself has said, “Someday most of us finally get out of this hell and even a rational dog after getting kicked around year after year after year attacks when his cage door is finally opened.”

  On March 24, 1995, the door at Pelican Bay finally opened for Robert Scully, a reputed A.B. member and armed robber who had spent, with the exception of a few months, the previous thirteen years behind bars—many of them inside the Hole. For an Aryan brother, he was small: barely five feet four, and a hundred and forty-five pounds. But the thirty-six-year-old was known to work out obsessively in his cell, doing an endless routine of what the gang called “burpees”—standing one moment, then dropping to the floor to do a pushup, then hopping to one’s feet again.

Brenda Moore, a lonely thirty-eight-year-old single mother who had long corresponded with inmates at Pelican Bay—and, in the process, had become one of the gang’s female followers—picked Scully up at the prison gate in her truck. Scully wore powder-blue sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and a watch cap. He had two hundred dollars in his pocket. Scully had previously sent Moore a series of seductive letters. In one, written on pink paper, he said, “All extraneous subversion manifests itself when we connect.” In another, he wrote, “I will always be with you as you are one of me now. Our synergy is infinite.”

After leaving the prison, the couple drove to the beach, where Scully walked along the shore, collecting seashells. The following day, though, he found a sawed-off shotgun, and he and Moore set out for Santa Rosa, driving south along Highway 101. Six days after Scully’s release, they stopped near a saloon in the middle of the night. A police car pulled up behind their pickup truck. As a fifty-eight-year-old deputy sheriff approached with his flashlight, Scully leaped out with his shotgun. The deputy raised his hands over his head, but Scully shot him between the eyes.

The Aryan Brotherhood was now killing on the outside with as little hesitation as it had on the inside. Similarly, the gang was expanding its racketeering operation onto the streets. In letters written in 1999 to one recent parolee, the Baron said, “We especially need for some to step-up,” and, referring to the gang’s shamrock symbol, he urged, “
START POLISHING THE ROCK
out there!!!” The gang allegedly enlisted paroled A.B. members and associates to become drug dealers, gunrunners, stickup men, and hit men. Some Pelican Bay inmates were discovered mapping out establishments to rob.

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 unloaded five bullets into the man’s chest and head, telling everyone in the room that this was for “the fellows”—the Aryan Brotherhood—up north at Pelican 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 authorities that he had been approached at the supermax in Colorado by the gang and asked for technical help in making bombs. The gang, he was informed, was planning terrorist attacks on federal 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.”

Just when the Brotherhood seemed poised to take a particularly violent turn, Jessner unleashed the United States Marshals. Nearly four decades after the gang was born, it found itself under siege.

  The courthouse where one of the first trials against the Brand would take place was in the middle of a verdant forest in Benton, Illinois, about thirty miles from Marion prison. It had been built on the edges of a circular clearing, and stood not far from a dozen or so dilapidated brick storefronts. Some of the stores had been shut down; others had signs offering discounts, as if they would soon join them.

A single alleged A.B. murder, which was included in Jessner’s sprawling indictment, also fell under the jurisdiction of the United States Attorney in the Southern District of Illinois. The trial, which began in September, 2003, centered on David Sahakian, McElhiney’s most feared cohort, the man who had once reputedly had an inmate stabbed for bumping him during a basketball game. He was charged with ordering two alleged associates to murder a thirty-seven-year-old bank robber named Terry Walker during a 1999 race war at Marion. Sahakian, along with his two associates, faced the death penalty. The trial offered a glimpse of what would happen in Los Angeles, where Jessner planned to prosecute forty people, including McElhiney and the Baron.

Even though the Benton trial involved only one A.B. member and two associates, the United States Marshals walled off the entire building. For the first time in the court’s history, cement barricades had been placed around the exterior. To get inside, I had to pass through two metal detectors.

Nearly a dozen marshals, dressed in black suits and black shoes, led the defendants, whose wrists and ankles were shackled, into the courtroom. Sahakian wore gray slacks and a gray short-sleeved shirt. Everything about him was big: his hands; his stomach; his long, sloping forehead. Whereas in old photographs he had an unruly beard—it apparently had inspired his nickname, the Beast—now he had only a goatee, which made his face look even larger.

His wife was in the gallery, and he winked at her as he sat down. She told me that they had met twenty-five years ago, and that for twenty-three of those years he had been behind bars. Petite, with blond hair and a blue miniskirt that exposed well-toned legs, she gave off a strong scent of perfume. She sat right behind him, taking notes throughout the trial. At one point, she told me, “They keep saying he’s a boss of the Aryan Brotherhood and that he ordered everyone around. But I don’t believe it. He can’t even order me around.”

When a pathologist took the stand, the prosecution projected on a large screen a photograph of Walker’s body. It was stretched out on a metal table. There were bloodstains on his chest, his eyes were open, and his mouth appeared to be frozen midspeech. The pathologist described each stab wound. Then he pointed to a hole in the heart—it was the one that killed him, he said.

None of the defendants looked up at the screen, and, apart from the marshals and Sahakian’s wife, the gallery was empty. Nobody from the victim’s family was there. Jessner had told me that most of these victims had already been cast out by society, and, when they were killed, few people, if any, cared. “I feel a certain obligation to defend those who have no one to defend them,” he had said.

After a break in the trial, the defendant who had purportedly held the victim down during the attack refused to come out of a holding room. The judge ordered the marshals to forcibly carry him out. Sahakian leaped to his feet and said that that wasn’t necessary. “If I go back there,” he said in a commanding voice, “he’ll come out.” At last, a marshal went out to the holding room and escorted the defendant into the courtroom. He walked with pointed slowness and stared at the prosecutor. “What the fuck you looking at!” he yelled.

Six marshals quickly hovered around him. As he sat down, he slammed his chair into the groin of one of the agents. Eventually, order was restored, and, when an inmate who had helped stab several black inmates took the stand as a government witness, Sahakian rubbed his fingers along the arm of his chair. Each time the witness made allegations against Sahakian, he seemed to grip the chair more tightly. His knuckles turned white. Finally, he glanced toward me in the gallery and said, “Don’t believe a word he’s saying. He’s nothin’ better than a shit-house rat.”

“Don’t use that language, honey,” his wife said.

“Metaphorically speaking,” he said.

Several inmates who had told authorities that they were prepared to come forward had also said that they were frightened to do so. One said that since he had turned on the A.B. his family had been threatened. Another, who had provided evidence, was staying in his cell, clutching his rosary beads. He said, “I’ll say my prayers that I don’t get about seventy-five holes in me.”

  Jessner was sitting at his desk at his headquarters in Los Angeles, preparing pretrial motions. While he was awaiting a verdict in the Benton trial, he needed to get ready not just for one trial but for potentially five or six—since not all forty defendants could be held safely in one courtroom. Security was already a challenge; most of the inmates, including the Baron and McElhiney, were being held in single cells at the West Valley Detention Center, outside Los Angeles. Some defendants had been found with drugs and concealed razor blades.

Fearing that the gang might turn on its own, Jessner had placed a few A.B. members in other prisons. In a letter, the Baron had told another gang member, “It’s likely necessary for us to step-up and conduct a thorough evaluation of every brother’s personal character and level of commitment, as we currently possess some serious rot that is in fact potentially a cancer!” He added that it should be “a top priority to wipe them off the face of this earth!”

Jessner said he knew that the gang was trying to hold on to its operations, but he was optimistic about the upcoming trials. “I can’t say for sure if another gang will take the Brotherhood’s place, or if new leaders will replace the old ones,” he said. “But I know that if we succeed it will send a message that the Aryan Brotherhood can no longer kill with impunity.”

Jessner got up and started heading toward the courtroom, to attend a pretrial hearing. He was wearing a charcoal suit that seemed too loose for his small frame. I asked him if, as some feared, he had been “put in the hat”—marked for assassination.

He blanched. “I don’t know,” he said. He later added, “It’s a pretty big hat.”

The United States Attorney had arranged extra security for him, including a secure parking space nearby. One of his colleagues had declined to work on the case after his wife objected. “I worry,” Jessner admitted. “You can’t help but worry.”

He paused and looked at me. He wouldn’t feel right if he stopped, he said. “I don’t believe that because you rob a convenience store you should receive a death sentence. I don’t believe that our prisons should be divided into predators and prey.” As he headed into the courtroom, he added, “I don’t believe that that is what our system intended by justice.”