Aryan Brotherhood Chief Gets 50 Years in State Prison
Aryan Brotherhood of Texas kingpin James Lemarc “Byrdman” Byrd –– described as a sadistic, racist torturer –– will spend the remainder of his life in a state prison for violent criminal activities related to the white supremacy gang.
His past includes stabbing a fellow ABT member, dabbing his blood with bread and taking a bite before forcing the victim to eat the remainder. In another sadistic assault, he stabbed a man 37 times. Byrd’s eyelids are tattooed with the ABT logo.
Byrd was convicted in August of kidnapping and assault by a Tarrant County jury, and recently sentenced to 50 years in a Texas prison after completing a term in a federal penitentiary for parole violation.
County prosecutors wanted to lock Byrd up in a state prison where he can be kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day because of his gang affiliation, the Houston Chronicle reported. That will restrict his ability to direct ABT criminal activities in and outside prison through contact with other inmates.
“He will be in a box for 23 hours a day,” said Tarrant County prosecutor Allenna Bangs told the Houston newspaper. “That will be 50 very hard years.”
There was “no more-devoted person to the precepts of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas than James Byrd,” Tarrant County Prosecutor Joshua Ross told the Fort Worth Star-Telegraph.
Byrd was fond of saying, “What’s hard for some is just right for me,” Ross said. “He was a true believer. His dedication bordered on theology. For him, the brotherhood came first.”
Byrd joins at least 73 other high-ranking leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas –– considered the largest and most-violent racist gangs operating in and out of the nation’s prisons. ABT is accused of carrying out murders, attempted murders, conspiracies, arsons, assaults, robberies and drug trafficking as part of an enterprise that goes back to at least 1993. Much of the gang’s criminal activities have centered in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but its presence is known along the Interstate 35 corridor leading from Dallas to San Antonio.
In 2009, the Justice Department’s Organized Crime and Gang Section launched a major investigation, obtaining 17 separate federal indictments in Texas and Oklahoma and charging senior ABT leaders with racketeering. There are now about 180 ABT members, including five former “generals,” serving lengthy or life sentences in federal prisons.
The enforcement effort diminished but didn’t eradicate ABT ranks –– busting the gang’s numbers from 2,600 to an estimated 1,500, a senior Justice Department official told Hatewatch earlier this year.
Even as the federal investigation was underway over the past six years, though, other ABT criminal violence continued, including retaliation murders linked to attempts to silence or intimidate members from cooperating with investigators. County prosecutors are now following up with other prosecutions.
Few ABT members, however, are as vicious and legendary as “Byrdman.”
While in various federal prisons, Byrd became an ABT major, reportedly terrorizing other inmates. “Some inmates complained about the power-hungry threats he would make in prison living areas [and others] were stabbed on his orders,” the Fort Worth newspaper reported.
After his supervised release in November 2013, Byrd was ordered by ABT generals to supervise other ex-cons back on the street, in part “because of his penchant for artfully-applied violence.”
He once took cell phone selfies of himself “covered in of blood” to impress a recalcitrant member “what a bad day with Byrd might look like,” the newspaper reported.
On Feb. 1, 2014, Byrd ordered ABT members to kidnap Lovick Stikeleather for infighting. Quoting court documents, the newspaper reported that Stikeleather was taken to a Tarrant County residence, stripped of his clothes, tied up and restrained under guard for hours.
When Byrd arrived, he assaulted Stikeleather with a gun, kicked him, and stabbed him twice in the shoulders. “Byrdman” then shoved a piece of bread in Stikeleather's wounds to absorb the blood, before eating half the bread. Byrd then ordered Stikeleather to “eat the other half to make a point about how brotherhood members should live,” the newspaper reported. Stikeleather survived.
