The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison (12 page)

It was in this climate that the Aryan Brotherhood was born. Bureau officials claim that Dallas Scott was one of its founding members. I asked Scott if he recalled the birth of the AB, and without acknowledging that he was a member, he explained why the gang had formed at San Quentin. He didn’t hide his racist attitude. “Whites are everyone’s natural enemies,” he said. “Minorities stick together, but the white man by nature walks alone. I’ve seen whites sit by and watch a bunch of niggers attack a white kid in a cell. These yahoos were sitting there thinking, ‘Goddamn, I’m sure glad it’s not me being fucked!’ But if one white guy had the courage to say, ‘Hey, leave that kid alone!’ and he stepped forward, then there was a good chance that the pack will back off.

“See, people who herd together deep down are afraid of anyone who has the balls to stand up on his own. Now I ain’t saying that the white man who stands up isn’t going to get his ass kicked. But when he stands up, he’s letting everyone know that he’s willing to do what it takes, and get killed if necessary, because he don’t like what’s going down, and that is intimidating to someone who runs in a herd like blacks do.

“At San Quentin, the herds were getting out of hand and a bunch of old white bulls simply said ‘Fuck this’ and they decided to stand up, and you can be damn sure that when these old bulls formed the tip [Aryan Brotherhood], there were a bunch of white guys, who either weren’t strong enough on their own or were just afraid, who were damn glad.”

Scott’s explanation, it turned out, was largely based in fact. The Aryan Brotherhood was originally formed to
protect white inmates from being victimized by black and Hispanic prison gangs. The Black Guerrilla Family, a militant, black revolutionary gang with ties to the Black Panther party, was the first known prison gang, and was strong at San Quentin at the time. Chicanos were divided into two gangs: the Mexican Mafia, composed of urban Hispanics from the Maravilla section of East Los Angeles, and their hated rivals, the Nuestra Familia (Our Family), made up of rural Chicanos. The black and Hispanic gangs preyed on whites, as well as on members of their own races.

A study by the Criminal Intelligence Section of the Arizona Department of Public Safety later suggested that several outlaw bikers who called themselves the Diamond Tooth Gang were the forerunners of the Aryan Brotherhood. The gang members, each of whom had diamond-shaped pieces of glass embedded in his front teeth, tried to recruit other whites at San Quentin but failed to attract sufficient “soldiers.” Next came the Blue Bird Gang, so called because its members had bluebirds tattooed on their necks, but it too didn’t last. The Aryan Brotherhood was born when remnants of the Blue Birds joined forces with several neo-Nazi groups. It is unlikely that it would have survived, either, except for an unusual tactic adopted by its original members. Black and Hispanic gangs had always relied on numbers for strength, and routinely pressured new inmates to join. The Aryan Brotherhood took the opposite tack. It based its membership on each member’s physical strength and willingness to kill. Anyone who wished to join the AB had to meet a “blood in, blood out” rule.

“ ‘Blood in, blood out’ simply means that to join the AB, an inmate had to ‘earn his bones’—in other words, had to kill someone to get in,” explained Craig Trout, the bureau’s gang expert. “It also meant that there was only one way
out
of the gang. Death.”

As soon as it was organized, the members of the AB put themselves under what they called “kill on sight”
orders. When the cell doors at San Quentin opened each morning, AB members were required to hunt down and attack black inmates regardless of whether they belonged to a gang. The white gang was convinced that the best way to keep other gangs at bay was to prove that the Aryan Brotherhood was the most ruthless and savage gang in the prison.

California prison officials do not know the precise time when this kill on sight order went into effect. But in 1970, the California system began seeing a dramatic increase in gang-related violence. Seventy-nine gang-related assaults and eleven deaths were reported that year. In 1971, there were 123 assaults and nineteen deaths and in the following year, 186 assaults and thirty-four gang-related deaths. The Aryan Brotherhood was not wholly responsible for the increases, but among convicts at San Quentin it did earn a reputation for being bloodthirsty. Its founding members, estimated by prison officials to be one hundred men, tolerated “zero disrespect” from other inmates. Even a casual comment about the Brotherhood could result in a stabbing if members felt their “brothers” had been insulted.

Legend has it that the best and most respected AB warriors at San Quentin had tattoos of fierce Norsemen drawn on their arms.

Why would anyone join such a group? I asked Scott, after once again making it clear that the question was hypothetical and did not imply that he was a gang member. In his mind, personal honor drove white convicts with principles to join. “A few older white convicts still have principles. They don’t let other convicts or the administration push them around,” he said. I noticed that Scott had a Norseman tattoo, among many others, on his forearm.

When black militancy began to wane in the mid-1970s, the various gangs decided to sign a truce. This brought to a close what convicts call the California race wars, but none of the gangs dispersed. The politically
motivated Black Guerrilla Family was eventually replaced by the 1980s drug-dealing Crips and Bloods. A 1982 study, by bureau employee Michael Lee Caltabiano, described the transformation of the AB thus:

The white gang also began to specialize in contract murders for other gangs and individuals, Caltabiano wrote, maintaining its savage reputation.

In 1985, the bureau released a detailed study of what it described as the alarming problem of prison gangs. Investigators concluded that the Aryan Brotherhood was not a potent force in most lower-level federal institutions, but it continued to have strongholds in two penitentiaries: Leavenworth and Marion. In both, AB members played key roles in drug smuggling, extortion, and gambling, and were responsible for several contract murders.

Although the AB’s power had diminished over the years, in the summer of 1987 it retained a certain status at the Hot House. There were only three or four actual members being housed in the prison and Scott was identified by the bureau as one of them. Had he not been sitting in the Hole, he would have had several “AB wanna-bes,” younger convicts enamored of the gang, washing his laundry and performing other chores for him. Being a gang member gave an inmate an identity as well as protection. The Aryan Brotherhood, in particular, liked to portray itself as family. At one point, bureau officials found a copy of the AB’s secret creed.

An Aryan Brother is without a care,

He walks where the weak and heartless won’t dare,

And if by chance he should stumble and lose control,

His brothers will be there, to help reach his goal.

For a worthy brother, no need is too great,

He need not but ask, fulfillment’s his fate.

For an Aryan Brother, death holds no fear,

Vengeance will be his, through his brothers still here,

For the Brotherhood means just what it implies,

A brother’s a brother, till that brother dies.

And if he is loyal, and never lost faith,

In each brother’s heart, will always be a place.

So a brother am I and always will be,

Even after my life is taken from me.

I’ll lie down content, knowing I stood,

Head held high, walking proud in the Brotherhood.

But while members might have rhapsodized about gang membership, the bureau claimed most members spent their time dealing and using drugs.

Although Scott would not admit he was a gang member, he did acknowledge that he was a career criminal. “It is how I make my living. It’s a job. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have any ethics or code that I live by. Most Square Johns don’t believe criminals live by any code or rules, but I do. You have to have standards, because they are the only things that set you apart from the real scumballs in here. You got to embrace something, some sort of principles, and if you keep those standards, you develop a reputation. Society may think you are a piece of shit, but in here, you are respected because everyone knows you are strong enough to stand by your own principles.… You see, in here, principles are the only things a man has. You are as good as your word.”

An avid reader of the late western novelist Louis L’Amour, Scott said he had patterned his conduct after that of the Old West. “I never rat. I don’t tell on anyone. I don’t say something to the weakest, smallest individual
in here that I wouldn’t say to the biggest motherfucker. If I give another convict my word, I’ll keep it. I try to be professional when I do a job.”

None of these principles applied to guards or Square Johns. “You can lie and steal and scam a Square John because he is not part of the criminal society. It’s just like I am not really part of your society. Your society rejected me, doesn’t want to have anything to do with me, so I owe you nothing. It’s like there are two different worlds—your society and the criminal society—and those of us in the criminal world don’t have to follow your rules, only our own, and the rules that I choose to follow may be different from another convict’s.

“For example,” Scott continued, “I don’t rob mom-and-pop stores. I don’t think it is right to take a working-man’s money. That is bread out of his kid’s mouth. But a Safeway or bank, hey, who’s that really hurt? I don’t kill innocent people or shoot the place full of holes. But if some teller tries to play hero when I’m pointing a shotgun in his face, sure I feel bad about that, but it really isn’t my fault because I tried to be professional and plan the robbery and do a good job without anyone getting hurt. He’s the one acting like a fool trying to stop me.”

When I went to see Scott a few days later, he was unusually mellow. He had received an unexpected gift the night before, he whispered. A convict, later identified by guards as an AB wanna-be, had been sent to the Hole for arguing with a guard. What no one realized was that he had wanted to be arrested because he was carrying a package of marijuana in his rectum for Scott.

If anyone knew how difficult it was to get drugs into the Hot House, it was Scott. After all, he was in the Hole because of a botched heroin deal. The fact that his friends had sent him such a valuable present showed that he, as Scott put it, was “loved and respected.” I later learned that Scott’s use of those two words was no accident. They are the standard salutation that a member of the Aryan Brotherhood uses when he addresses
another member. There was little question who had sent the package of marijuana.

An anonymous letter was waiting in Lieutenant Bill Slack’s mail slot when he came to work shortly before 7
A.M
. one July 1987 day. As the operations lieutenant working the day shift, Slack was the equivalent of a desk sergeant in a police precinct. He poured himself some coffee and took his position behind the glass-topped desk, the biggest piece of furniture in the cramped lieutenant’s office. Besides the desk, the room contained a bench, a typewriter, and a row of metal file cabinets. Slack lighted the first cigarette of what would be two packs that day and began reading the letter.

Although he was only in his early forties, Slack seemed older. He was nearly bald, had a smoker’s hacking cough, and was no longer the trim-waisted marine he had been when he first joined the bureau direct from a combat tour in Vietnam. But it was his manner that set Slack apart. He was fatherly, always calm, slow to criticize. Many considered him the best desk lieutenant in the Hot House.

The anonymous letter contained one line:
Loook undur matress B-215
. The writer was either the world’s worst speller or intentionally trying to appear dumb. Slack telephoned Steve Lacy, head of the prison’s shakedown
crew, and told him to search cell 215 in B cellhouse. Slack didn’t mention anything about looking under the mattress. He figured he shouldn’t have to.

Twenty minutes later, Lacy strutted into the lieutenant’s office with a “sissie shank,” a knife made by melting a toothbrush around a razor blade. It wasn’t much good for stabbing, but it could be used to slice someone’s face.

“Want me to bring in the shithead whose cell we found this in?” asked Lacy, who nearly always called inmates shitheads. Slack nodded, and a few minutes later, a white convict was led into the office by Lacy and two other guards.

Slack lifted up the sissie shank so the convict could see it and then dropped it safely in a desk drawer.