Original subtitles

[♪]

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.