The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (4 page)

So the two Toms, Junior and Senior, wore masks and Arthur went maskless. Which didn’t work out well at all, because the cops identified Arthur and then followed him around for a few days, during which time they made up a list of his “known associates”: Tom Junior, Tom Senior and a young female who “looked like death warmed over”, according to one of the cops.

After the third robbery, the cops moved in and arrested
everybody
, recovering most of the cash from the robberies, which was $1,300. The cops took the money and the robbers, whom they booked and tossed into jail. The trial was a fiasco. Twitchy Arthur couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He was going through withdrawal and more paranoid than ever. So, pale and sweating, he rolled over on his nephew and brother without really meaning to. 

“Tommy was the leader. We just did as he told us,” chirped Arthur. “Me and his dad was just taking orders. Tommy’s a smart boy. He was the brains.”

Arthur got five years in prison. Tom Senior got five to seven years and Tom Junior got fifteen years. He was twenty-three years old. The Feds shipped Tommy off to Leavenworth, which was a maximum-security prison in Kansas. Called the Hothouse because of its heat and humidity, Leavenworth was a hellish place. Murder occurred regularly; drugs were everywhere. To control the lucrative drug trade, gangs fought ongoing, vicious wars on the battlefield of Leavenworth Prison. The place was awash in blood.

The Aryan Brotherhood ran horse, and controlled the supply in and out of Leavenworth. Horse was prisoner slang for heroin, which was number one on the narcotic hit parade in the late 1970s. Since Tom was already branded, he immediately hooked up with the Brotherhood members in Leavenworth. It was business as usual: get the drugs in, via mules or corrupt guards, distribute it, collect money owed, and, above all, keep an eye on the competition. Other gangs tried to move in all the time. When they did, the Brotherhood took care of business.

The horse business depended upon mules. Mules were convicts who transported drugs in condoms, balloons, small tubes, or
sometimes
even in saran wrap, which they inserted into their rectums or swallowed and later retrieved from their toilet bowl. Horse was smuggled in by girlfriends, wives and visitors, who transferred the drugs to the inmate, who either swallowed it if it was in a balloon, or excused himself to the bathroom, where he quickly keistered it. After the visit, the mules would deliver the drugs to the Aryan Brotherhood. For their efforts, the mules received a “cut”, which was a fee for their services. Usually the fee was a portion of the horse.

Danny Atwell was not branded. Nor was he a prospect. He didn’t want anything to do with that shit. He just wanted to do his time and get out, and meanwhile got regular visits from his wife and family members. But the Aryan Brotherhood wanted Danny to go mule. Even though he was scared to death, Danny refused. He didn’t want his family members dragged in the sewer.

Danny had signed his own death warrant.

His name “went into the hat”. Allegedly, Thomas Silverstein and two other Aryan Brotherhood members were assigned to “take care of business”. The initial accusations suggested that they caught Danny coming out of the shower and stabbed him to death. It only took about five minutes.

Tom and the other two Brothers were charged with murder. They all pleaded not guilty, because what happened in prison stayed in prison. No one saw anything, so no one would say anything. They thought.

Somebody forgot to tell the snitches. They came out of the woodwork to tell their lurid tales of drugs, mules and contract murder. Singing like rock stars, the snitches played their usual game. They said what they knew the prosecutor and the jury wanted to hear. In the end, Tom was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

The names of all the snitches “went into the hat”. Like elephants, the Aryan Brotherhood had long memories. They would not forget.

To this day, Tom Silverstein says he didn’t kill Danny Atwell. He now admits to two other murders, but not that one. Indeed, the conviction for murdering Atwell was later overturned due to false witness testimony.

The Feds moved Tommy to the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. At that time, USP Marion was the latest supermax prison and claimed the dubious distinction of being the most violent prison in America. It was the ultimate in waste management, the place where they dumped the human waste called “gang leaders” and the nutcases who killed because they liked it.

In short, Marion was the supermax supermarket of psychopaths. Tommy fitted right in.

They put Tommy in a control unit, which was a new-fangled term for the Hole. He got out one hour a day and ate in his cell. Isolation made Tommy creative. He had to do something or go bonkers from boredom. So he started reading and drawing. As Silverstein put it, “I could hardly read, write or draw when I first fell. But most of us lifers are down for so long and have so much time to kill that we actually fool around and discover our niche in life, often in ways we never even dreamt possible on the streets. We not only find our niche, we excel.”

Redemption wasn’t part of Tommy’s niche. There was a D.C. Blacks member in the control unit. Robert Chappelle was his name. The only thing Chappelle hated more than whites was whites who were Jewish. To him, Silverstein was “a kike – one of them what four-pointed Jesus on the cross”.

Tommy felt Chappelle didn’t respect him. And in Tommy’s world disrespect was more than flesh and blood can bear. So Tommy decided to take care of business. One day when he was let out for his hour of exercise, Tommy passed by the cell of another Aryan Brotherhood member, Clayton Fountain. Fountain reached into his crotch and pulled something out: a thin length of wire. He slipped the wire into Tommy’s hands. As Tommy continued his exercise walk around the tier, he passed Chappelle’s cell, where Chappelle was asleep. As luck would have it, Chappelle’s head was near the bars of his cell. Tommy poised the wire above Chappelle’s throat. The powder-grey wire looked like chrome against Chappelle’s black skin.

Eyes narrowing with malice and delight, Tommy looped the wire around Chappelle’s neck and began strangling him. Tommy was caught up, held almost, in those few moments. He found ease. Moving through it the very edges of his strength were sharpened like the blade of a knife. Chappelle’s struggles diminished into shadow and continued to recede until there was nothing at all in the world, but death.

The murder of another human being took less than five minutes this time.

Tommy left the wire wrapped around Chappelle’s dead throat, and went on walking. The next time he passed Fountain’s cell, he smiled and gave Fountain a thumbs up.

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” said Fountain, grinning. “I will repay.”

Tommy nodded and kept walking.

Like most criminals, Silverstein and Fountain overcompensated for their lack of self-esteem. In other words, they couldn’t keep their mouths shut. They had to brag about their crimes because that was the only thing they had to brag about. Soon the two Aryan Brotherhood members boasted to any inmate who would listen about how they had snuffed Robert Chappelle. Murder gave them status, elevated their reputations.

Prison officials charged Silverstein and Fountain with Chappelle’s murder. A trial took place. The inmates to whom Silverstein and Fountain had boasted played the snitch game, telling the jury of the grotesque deed. The jurors cringed in horror, then found them both guilty of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced both men to life in prison. Which meant Silverstein now had to serve two
consecutive
life terms. Which meant his life was over.

They couldn’t execute him because at that time, 1981, a federal death penalty for one inmate murdering another inmate did not exist.

Once again, Silverstein maintained his innocence. He didn’t kill Robert Chappelle. He declared that federal officials framed him, because they hated him. In the next breath, he blamed the D.C. Blacks.

It wasn’t too long before the Bureau of Prisons moved the D.C. Blacks leader, Raymond “Cadillac” Smith from another prison to USP Marion, where Tommy was. They put Cadillac in a cell near Tommy.

Cadillac Smith was a drug pusher and cop-killer from Washington, D.C. He hated “honkey red-neck motherfuckers”. Robert Chappelle had been his friend. Now he was dead. And Tommy had done it. Cadillac Smith was a religious man. He believed in tit for tat. His motto was “Dirty deed for dirty deed”. Tommy had done a dirty deed. Therefore, Tommy had to die.

From his cell, Cadillac Smith could see Tommy’s cell. “Goin’ kill your white ass, Jew-boy,” announced Cadillac.

Tommy pressed his face close to the bars of his cell, looking down the way toward Cadillac. “Look, Cadillac,” said Tommy. “I didn’t kill Chappelle. I mean it, man. I did not do it.”

Cadillac gave an untamed laugh. He stuck his arm out between the bars of his cell, holding his fingers in a V-shape. “White boy speak’n with forked tongue,” he said. “I’ze gonna kill you, Jew-boy. Real soon.”

Cadillac tried to keep his promise. First he tried to stab Tommy, but Tommy was too quick – “faster ’n greased lightning” – and got away. Then Cadillac got his hands on a zip-gun smuggled in by another D.C. Black. Zip-guns were beautiful in their simplicity: a telescoping car aerial with a .22 calibre bullet clamped into its fat end. Collapsing the aerial acted as a firing pin and discharged the bullet. Neat and effective. The only problem was accuracy.

One day Tommy was on his exercise walk and passed Cadillac’s cell. Cadillac took aim and slammed the aerial shut. Bang! The bullet missed Tommy by a foot or more, ricocheting off the opposite wall. Tommy stopped and stared at Cadillac.

“Motherfuck!” shouted Cadillac. He tried to reload but couldn’t. The fat end of the zip-gun had mushroomed and wouldn’t hold the bullet in place. A pair of pliers would remedy that, but of course he didn’t have any pliers.

“Strike two, you stupid shithead,” snarled Tommy. He took a step closer. “Game over cuz there won’t be a third time.” Tommy walked away.

Three days later, Tommy and Clayton Fountain were in an exercise cage, where they did push-ups and ran on the spot. While the two white Brothers did callisthenics, Cadillac Smith was escorted to the showers by a guard. “You got one hour to get beautiful,” the guard told Cadillac. Then the guard left to get some coffee.

In the cage, Fountain pulled his pants down, bent over and pulled a hacksaw blade and a shiv from his rectum. Tommy carried a shiv in his rectum, too. He eased it out with care, because he didn’t want to slice his sphincter. Using the hacksaw blade, the two inmates cut their way out of the exercise cage and scurried toward the showers.

Cadillac Smith had just finished lathering himself up, when Fountain and Tommy jumped him. “Bye-bye, Cadillac,” hissed Tommy as he plunged his shiv into the man’s flesh.

“Yeah,” chimed Fountain, goring his shiv into Cadillac’s stomach. “Say hello to Chappelle for us.” With diabolical energy he thrust again and again.

They stabbed Cadillac Smith sixty-seven times.

The Medical Examiner said, “The man was probably dead after the first dozen wounds, many of which were fatal.”

The other white inmates at USP Marion started calling Silverstein “Terrible Tom”. They whispered his name in awe. In the subculture of prison, Terrible Tom became a demi-god. Like a rock star, his notorious reputation preceded him.

Again, there was no death penalty at that time for one inmate murdering another inmate. Already serving two life sentences in the Hole, it seemed Terrible Tom would get away with murder yet once more. Prison officials couldn’t execute Tom, but they could sure make him wish he was dead. So they withheld his mail and shook down his cell every time he turned around. Three guards escorted him everywhere.

Officer Merle Clutts didn’t like Terrible Tom. In fact, Clutts thought Tom was “the spawn of Satan”. So did a lot of the guards. Still, Clutts was a professional. He did not torment Terrible Tom. But the rules were the rules and Clutts enforced them by the book.

During a shakedown of Tom’s cell, Clutts discovered contraband material, so he confiscated Tom’s art supplies. “You’ll get them back when you earn them,” Clutts said. “By following the rules like everybody else.”

Flaming with righteous energy, Terrible Tom wanted to rip off Clutt’s ears and piss in the wounds. He made a promise to himself that he would. And soon.

Seething inside, Terrible Tom plotted his revenge. He communicated with Aryan Brotherhood members in USP Marion, arranging for weapons and help. On 22 October 1983, Terrible Tom had just finished his shower. Shackled, handcuffed and freshly scrubbed, he was being escorted back to his cell. Merle Clutts was one of his three escorts.

As the group passed an exercise cage, an inmate inside the cage said, “CO Clutts, need a hand here.” Clutts strolled over to see what the inmate needed, while the other two officers walked on with Terrible Tom.

“Permission to speak with a friend, sir?” asked Tom, pausing in front of a cell. The cell belonged to Randy Gometz, who was an Aryan Brotherhood member.

“Sure. Go ahead,” replied one of the two guards. Guards often allowed prisoners to chat on their way to and from the showers.

Terrible Tom grasped the bars of Gometz’s cell and began talking. Gometz pulled a stolen key from inside his mouth and unlocked Tom’s handcuffs. Tom reached through the bars and pulled a shiv from Gometz’s waistband. Turning, Tom ran as fast as his shackled legs allowed toward Clutts.

Dumbfounded, the two guards hesitated. Then they took off in pursuit.

As he neared Clutts, Terrible Tom shouted, “This is between me and Clutts!” Tom slammed into Clutts, stabbing him with extreme ferocity. The shiv plunged in, blood flowed out.

While he perforated Clutts, Tommy said, “I felt wickedly angelic, like the Angel of Death descending on Egypt.”

Finally, the other two guards pulled Clutts away, leaving a smear of red as they dragged him to safety. Lying senseless in puddles of his own blood and drool, Clutts died within minutes of his rescue.