Justice Department Completes Aryan Brotherhood of Texas Prosecutions

The man who supervised the six-year investigation, James Trusty, told Hatewatch in an exclusive interview today that the federal prosecutions didn’t eradicate the racist gang, but dealt a “severe blow” to its leadership and ability to commit crimes.

The Aryan Brotherhood of Texas (ABT), established in the early 1980s, is considered one of the most violent racist crime syndicates in the United States, modeled after the Aryan Brotherhood, a California-based prison gang formed during the 1960s.

In going after the ABT, prosecutors -- led by David Karpel from the department’s Organized Crime and Gang Section in Washington, D.C. -- obtained 17 separate indictments in judicial districts of Texas and Oklahoma, including one in 2012 in the Southern District of Texas that charged senior ABT leaders with racketeering.

The racketeering charge encompassed various crimes carried out by the gang -- murders, attempted murders, conspiracies, arsons, assaults, robberies and drug trafficking -- as part of its enterprise. The Justice Department dropped plans in September 2013 to seek the death penalty against some of the defendants.

Karpel worked with six assistant U.S. attorneys from the four U.S. Attorney Offices in Texas, along with three state prosecutors and two other trial attorneys from the department’s gang unit. The prosecutors supervised a team of 30 federal, state and local investigators – a task force that doubled that size during raids and arrests of the assorted defendants who weren’t already in prison. Investigators compiled 50,000 pieces of evidence in the precedent-setting case.

“We also established strong relationships with several state prosecutors in Harris, Kaufman and Kendall counties (in Texas) who worked in partnership and prosecuted those ABT gang members” not federally indicted, Trusty said.

“This case serves as a model for the task force approach toward combating violent gangs,” Trusty told Hatewatch. In all, the senior Justice Department official said convictions were obtained against 73 ABT members -- the “worst of the worst and the highest level leadership of ABT.”

Only two of the cases went to trial, with convictions returned in both instances. Many of those indicted pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, some of them after cooperating with investigators. In most instances, documents in defendants’ court files are sealed from public inspection so the ABT members largely are kept guessing about who ratted on whom.

Trusty said about 180 ABT gang members are now in the federal prison system.

“Our best guess is ABT membership is closer to 1,500, as opposed to 2,600 (as previously reported by media outlets), but we have no real way of verifying,” Trusty said.

“One of the things that David Karpel and the task force accomplished was to get some ABT members to cooperate against the enterprise,” Trusty said. “Honest and substantial cooperation were ultimately considered by the sentencing judge, but it was made clear that cooperating defendants would not walk away without consequences.”

“The federal investigative team also had to take serious steps to ensure the safety of the ABT members who decided to cooperate with the government,” Trusty said.

The 73 convictions “stand as tangible proof of the ABT Task Force’s ability to devastate this dangerous gang’s operations,” the Justice Department official said. “It would be overly optimistic to assume that the prisons and streets of Texas and Western Oklahoma are forever purged of ABT criminal conduct, but these cases represent a severe blow to this criminal enterprise’s leadership and longevity.”

The 2012 indictment named 36 defendants, most of them senior ABT leaders, including six “generals” -- Charles Lee Roberts, 69; William David Maynard, 44; Terry Ross, 57; Larry Max Bryan, 53; Terry Glenn Sillers, 51, and James Francis Sampsell, 52.

The “generals” each controlled a geographic sections of Texas, using a military-style command structure to order and execute crimes in and out of prisons. The whites-only gang committed a dozen murders, including two cold- ases solved as part of the investigation.

Many of the homicides were carried out to silence members who were suspected of cooperating with investigators – violating the ABT gang’s “family” motto: “God Forgives, Brothers Don’t.”

In one of the murders, one of the victim’s fingers was cut off by the killers and returned to the general who ordered the hit.

Charles “Jive” Roberts, one of the ABT generals, admitted involvement in six murders as part of his guilty plea. When he was sentenced in October 2013, Roberts told U.S. District Judge Sim Lake: “I am done. I am fixin’ to be taken out of the game. I have pulled the wagon as far as I can.”

In one of several racially-motivated arsons linked to the gang, prospective member Steven Scott Cantrell attempted to burn down the historic Faith in Christ Church in Crane, Texas, in December 2010 in an effort to kill a disabled black man.

Members like Cantrell signed a “Blind Faith Commitment,” agreeing to follow “direct orders” from their superiors and attend secret regular meetings called “church.” Failure to comply would result in severe beatings, known as beat-downs, or death. Women couldn’t join the gang, but functioned as communication hubs, called “featherwoods.”

Here is a list of sentences handed down in the 2012 indictment:

Generals: Charles Lee “Jive” Roberts, 360 months; William David “Baby Huey” Maynard, 252 months; Larry Max “Slick” Bryan, 300 months; Terry Ross “Big Terry” Blake, 180 months; Terry Glenn “Lil Wood” Sillers, 120 months; James Francis “Skitz” Sampsell, 132 months.

Majors: Michael Richard “Lamp” Lamphere, 240 months; Jamie Grant “Dutch” Loveall, 360 months; Glen Ray “Fly” Millican Jr., 120 months; Steven “Worthey” Worthey, 240 months.

Captains: James Lawrence “Chance” Burns, 240 months; Rusty Eugene “Duke” Duke, 216 months; Kelley Ray “Magic” Elley, 264 months; Chad Ray “Polar Bar” Folmsbee, 140 months; Kenneth Michael “Hancock” Hancock, 180 months; Benjamin Troy “South” Johnson, 36 months; Stephen Tobin “Scuba Steve” Mullen, 156 months; Fredrick Michal “Big Mike” Villarreal, 151 months.

Lieutenants: Ben Christian “Tuff” Dillon, 96 months.

Sergeants/Enforcers: Shane Gail “Dirty” McNiel, 120 months; Ronald Lee “Big Show” Prince, 144 months; David Orlando “Chopper” Roberts, 135 months; Sammy Keith “Stubby” Shipman, 188 months; Christopher James “Rockstar” Morris, 120 months; Justin Christopher “Ruthless” Northrup, 60 months; Bill Frank “Billy the Kid” Weatherred, 168 months.

Foot Soldiers: Dustin Lee “Lightning” Harris, 120 months; Clay Jarrad “Diesel” Kirkland, 132 months; James Marshall “Dirty” Meldrum, 150 months; Billy Don “Big Nasty” Seay, 108 months; Brian Lee “Bam Bam” Thomas, 120 months; James Erik “Flounder” Sharron, 72 months.

Hubs/Featherwoods: Destiny Nichole Feathers, 78 months; Samantha Deann Goldman, 30 days; Rebecca Johnson Cropp, 41 months; Tammy Melissa Wall, 72 months.