All language subtitles for Gangland Chronicles S01E08 1080p WEB h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

[♪]

Gangs rule their territories
through ruthless enterprises,

fear,

and a strict code.

Deviate from this code

or challenge their power...

and retribution soon follows...

Especially at the hands

of the deadliest prison gang
in America,

the Aryan Brotherhood.

From its beginnings

in the California prison system
in the early 1960s,

to jails all over
the country today,

here are three stories

that build the Brotherhood's
terrifying reputation.

First,
one of its most feared members

takes on the national leader
of a rival gang.

He stabbed him
more than 63 times.

[stabbing]

[Narrator] Next, the Brotherhood
breaks its own code

and takes revenge
on one of their former members.

The saying in prison
is "Snitches get stitches."

[Narrator] Finally,
the gang's leadership

uses a secret message

to launch an attack
on their biggest rival.

He wrote this letter in urine,
so it was invisible,

ordering the war to begin.

[Narrator]
These are the stories

from inside
the Aryan Brotherhood.

This is Gangland Chronicles.

1964.

Marin County, California.

The state's oldest prison,
San Quentin,

has recently
desegregated its population.

White and Black inmates
are now doing time side by side.

Tensions are running high.

[Earley] What was happening
in the '60s,

the Black marches, the beatings,

that came into the prison.

It didn't matter who you were,
it was Black against white.

There were stabbings,
just random, because of color.

It was out of control.

[blows landing]

[Narrator]
Both groups form gangs

to protect themselves
from the other.

A number of whites who were
hardcore ruthless killers

decided to form a white
protection organization.

[Narrator] They call themselves
the Aryan Brotherhood.

[Earley]
They would only recruit

the most ruthless,
willing to murder convicts.

[Narrator] To join the gang,

recruits must commit
to a deadly credo

known as "Blood in, blood out."

[Thompson] "Blood in" is that
you must make a hit on someone

to get into the organization,

and "blood out"

is that the only way to get out
is to die.

[Narrator]
Once a recruit is accepted

into the Aryan Brotherhood,

he must be ready
to kill for the gang

anywhere, any time,
and without question.

[Earley] They quickly
established a reputation

for being the most violent gang.

[Narrator] During the 1970s,

the Aryan Brotherhood
expands from California

to prisons across the U.S.,

eventually setting up

a three-man national
leadership commission...

and they go from being
a prison protection gang

to a major
money-making enterprise.

[Earley] The Aryan Brotherhood

was mostly concerned
about drugs,

'cause that's where
the real money was.

[Narrator] The Brotherhood
traffics heroin

smuggled in from the outside,

generating huge revenue
for the gang.

[Thompson] There have been
FBI estimates

in 1978, the Aryan Brotherhood

took $3.5 million
out of old Folsom alone,

primarily because of drugs.

[Narrator] The Aryan Brotherhood
also sells deadly weapons

made from
whatever they can scrounge.

In the middle
of a typewriter is a bar,

and in the middle of that bar
is a little piece of metal,

like an ice pick.

It was actually used
to murder an inmate.

[Narrator] For convicts
who don't want

to get their hands dirty at all,

the Brotherhood
offers another service.

The Aryan Brotherhood
were hired by other gangs

to carry out prison murders.

[Narrator] But prison murders
breed retaliation,

and in the early 1980s,

one Brotherhood contract killing
will escalate...

into a nation-wide prison war.

1982.

Williamson County, Illinois.

At this time, the federal
penitentiary in Marion

is the most secure prison
in the country.

Marion had been built
to replace Alcatraz,

so they began sending the
worst of the worst to Marion.

Narrator] Among them

is notorious
Aryan Brotherhood member

Tommy Silverstein.

[Earley] Tommy Silverstein
was an enforcer.

He would kill without hesitancy
for the gang.

[Narrator]
Silverstein is doing life

for the recent contract killing
of Robert Chappelle,

a member of the DC Blacks,

the largest Black prison gang
in the country.

Chappelle's death
isn't sitting well

with DC Blacks national leader
Raymond "Cadillac" Smith.

[Earley] Cadillac Smith
starts calling out Silverstein.

"I'm going to kill you.
You're going to be dead,"

so it's clear to the officers

that one of 'em is going
to kill the other.

[slamming bars]

September 27, 1982.

The federal penitentiary
in Marion.

Notorious Aryan Brotherhood
enforcer Tommy Silverstein

has just had his life threatened

by the national leader
of the DC Blacks,

Cadillac Smith.

Silverstein knows
it's now kill or be killed,

but murdering Smith
could spark a mass conflict

between the two gangs.

[Earley] In those days,

when you're a member
of the Aryan Brotherhood,

as long as they weren't
killing each other,

they didn't have to get
permission to kill someone else.

[Narrator] With help

from Aryan Brotherhood member
Clay Fountain,

Silverstein ambushes
Cadillac Smith

in the prison showers.

Fountain attacks,
but Smith is too fast for him.

Cadillac Smith appears to have
Tommy Silverstein cornered.

Silverstein, unarmed,

throws himself
into Cadillac Smith,

knocks him down, wrestles
his shank away from him,

and begins plunging it into him.

[stabbing]

He stabbed him
more than 63 times.

[Narrator]
Tommy Silverstein receives

yet another life sentence

for the savage murder of
the DC Blacks national leader,

but the fallout
doesn't end there.

This incident
helped set off a war.

These two sides are constantly
at war with each other.

[Narrator]
Over the next 15 years,

the Aryan Brotherhood

will kill dozens of members
of the DC Blacks

and wound countless more
in prisons across America.

Rather than fearing punishment
for killing another inmate,

it would move them
up in the ranks.

It would give them
a lot more cred in the prison,

so actually, there's almost
sometimes an incentive

for them
to commit a violent crime.

[Narrator]
As the Aryan Brotherhood

wages war against the DC Blacks,

the gang will become involved
in another explosive conflict

within their own organization,

and it will take their brutality
to a new level.

1982.

Chino Prison, California.

The Aryan Brotherhood
has a problem.

His name is Steven Barnes.

[Valdemar] Steven Barnes
went to prison for murder.

He is a heroin addict.

He was accepted
by the Aryan Brotherhood

and eventually joined,

and he was a good soldier
for a while.

[Narrator] Barnes
sees the Aryan Brotherhood's

Blinky Griffin
and Junior Snyder

suddenly kill another member

for badmouthing the gang's
allies, the Mexican Mafia.

It was a brutal murder.

They cut his throat and
his jugular and his windpipe,

and they got away with it.

[Narrator]
The incident leaves Barnes

living in fear of his own gang.

And so he defected
from the Aryan Brotherhood.

He agreed to testify
against Blinky and Junior.

He was a jailhouse snitch.

[Narrator] In prison, there is
nothing inmates hate more

than a snitch
who cooperates with the law

in exchange
for a reduced sentence.

The saying in prison
is "Snitches get stitches."

[Earley] For the Aryan
Brotherhood,

an inmate who snitches
deserves death and nothing less.

The only good snitch
is a dead snitch.

[Narrator] The Aryan Brotherhood
wants Steven Barnes dead,

but he's already been placed
in protective custody.

Determined to exact revenge,

the Brotherhood considers
an unprecedented move.

And they said, Hey,
if we can't get Stevie,

we'll get his mother
and his father,

anybody from his family
that we can reach,

and we'll kill them.

[Narrator]
It's the perfect opportunity

to discourage anyone else
from snitching on the gang.

The idea is to assassinate
family members

of individuals who were
testifying

against the Aryan Brotherhood.

[Narrator] Steven Barnes
will pay a terrible price

for betraying the gang.

1982.

The California state prison
in Chino.

The Aryan Brotherhood

is considering
killing the family

of former member Steven Barnes,

but killing
innocent family members

runs against
the Brotherhood's code.

You don't harm women,
you don't harm elders,

you certainly
don't harm children.

It actually shocked me

that anyone
would even consider that.

[Narrator]
The plan is put to a vote.

I was the only individual
who voted no,

and ultimately
what I got outvoted on

was the killing of his father.

[Narrator] February 1983.

The Brotherhood hands the task

to recently released member
Curtis Price,

who goes
to the Los Angeles home

of Steven Barnes's father,
Richard.

[Thompson] He went to
where Richard Barnes lived,

hid in his closet,

and when Richard Barnes
came home,

Curtis Price...

shot him
in the back of the head.

Stevie Barnes' father
was a completely innocent man,

a good man.

[Narrator] In the aftermath,

Michael Thompson
leaves the Aryan Brotherhood

and begins
testifying against the gang.

Curtis Price is convicted

for the murder of Richard Barnes
in 1986.

He dies on death row in 2021.

Steven Barnes escapes revenge

at the hands
of the Aryan Brotherhood...

But he never escapes
his heroin addiction.

[Thompson] He simply
just could not handle life

bearing the responsibility
in his own mind

for his father's death.

[Narrator] Barnes contracts AIDS
from sharing needles,

and dies in 1992.

Snitches aren't the only thing
the gang has to worry about.

An old enemy
is gaining strength,

and to push back,

the Brotherhood must breach

America's
highest security prison...

with a secret message.

August 1997.

Florence, Colorado.

It's home to what is now

America's
most secure prison, ADX.

It actually is a facility

where you are in a single cell
23 hours a day.

You get one hour
out of your cell.

It is built specifically

for the inmates that the prison
realizes they cannot handle

in a regular prison setting.

[Narrator]
Locked up here are two-thirds

of the Aryan Brotherhood's
national leadership,

TD Bingham and Barry
"The Red Baron" Mills.

Barry Mills, they call him
the Red Baron...

because like
the Red Baron of Germany,

he had killed a lot of people.

TD Bingham is arguably
the most dangerous man

I've ever met in my life...

and TD was a fighter.

He's a big man,

and I think he probably still
goes by the handle "The Hulk."

[Narrator] It's been 15 years

since Tommy Silverstein
sparked the war

between the Aryan Brotherhood
and the DC Blacks.

Violence between the two gangs
in East Coast prisons

has been on the rise,

culminating with the killing
of a Brotherhood member

at Lewisburg in Pennsylvania,

where the DC gang
has strength in numbers.

[Earley]
For the Aryan Brotherhood,

that could not stand,

because then... you have
to understand in prison,

it's all about
the projection of power.

[Narrator] Back at ADX,

Bingham and Mills are fed up

with reports about
the DC Blacks at Lewisburg,

and want
the Brotherhood members there

to do something about them.

They decide that it's time
to take revenge

and show the DC Blacks

that they're not going
to be pushed around.

[Narrator] But how will they
send a secret message

1500 miles from ADX

to Lewisburg prison
in Pennsylvania?

1997.

Aryan Brotherhood leaders
jailed in Colorado

want to send a secret message

to Lewisburg prison
in Pennsylvania,

ordering the Brotherhood there

to launch an attack
on the DC Blacks.

TD Bingham has a plan

to get it past the tight
security at both facilities.

He uses his own urine to write
in invisible ink on a letter.

[Thompson] Urine, of course,

the active ingredient in that
is ammonia.

Once that dries,

you can hold a flame
under that piece of paper.

It acts with the ammonia

so that the message comes
right out on the paper in brown.

[Narrator] With the invisible
ink message complete,

Bingham then writes
an everyday personal letter.

[Thompson] There's always been

a censoring process
of prisoner mail

for anything in it that
it's not supposed to have.

[Narrator]
Bingham sends the letter

via a member
working on the outside

to ranking Brotherhood member
"Big Al" Benton at Lewisburg,

who holds it over an open flame.

[Earley] And what does
that letter say

when they hold it up
against a match?

It says, "War...

with DC Blacks."

[Narrator] The Aryan
Brotherhood at Lewisburg

now has no choice

but to plan a decisive blow

to its long-time rival
at the prison.

August 28, 1997.

The Brotherhood launches

an unprecedented blitz-like
shiv assault on the DC Blacks.

Two men enter the cell
with knives in three cells,

and that's six assailants
entering three cells,

two on two.

[Narrator]
Six inmates are stabbed,

and two are killed

in the most notorious attack
of the 15-year conflict.

The incident will spur
a nationwide investigation

into the Aryan Brotherhood.

Five years
after the Lewisburg attack,

40 members, including
TD Bingham and Barry Mills,

are rounded up and indicted

on more than 30 charges
of murder and attempted murder,

and brought to trial
under the RICO Act.

[Earley] Which means you didn't
have to be at a crime,

but if you're a gang member,

you were responsible
for that crime,

just like a mafia kingpin.

[Narrator]
Prosecutors seek death sentences

for the ringleaders.

Since all the leadership
of the Aryan Brotherhood

are all doing life without
possibility of parole.

If they got another life, that
would mean nothing to them...

so we were hoping
for the death penalty.

[Narrator] In the end,
the California jury returns

with 30 convictions,

but the gang's leaders
avoid the death penalty.

It didn't
take the head off the snake,

which is Barry Mills,
"The Hulk" Bingham,

and other key members
of the gang.

[Narrator]
Mills dies in prison in 2018.

TD Bingham
remains incarcerated in ADX.

Today, led by Bingham,

the Aryan Brotherhood
continues to inspire fear

throughout American prisons

with an estimated
20,000 members nationwide.

[Earley] There are
very few prisons

that don't have some kind
of Aryan Brotherhood affiliate.

They're well organized,
and they're extremely dangerous.

[Narrator]
According to the FBI,

Aryan Brotherhood members

make up less than one tenth
of one percent

of the nation's
prison inmate population,

yet they are responsible
for 18% of all prison murders.

They're responsible for
hundreds, hundreds of deaths,

and they're still
committing crimes.

It's imperative both for the
safety of correction officers

and the safety of other inmates

to keep the Aryan Brotherhood
under control.