The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Aryan Brotherhood Leader Reveals How He Built A Prison Empire

Episode Date: July 12, 2026

Aryan Brotherhood leader, Michael Thompson, reveals what life was really like inside California’s most violent prisons — from Old Folsom and San Quentin to the rise of The Brand, prison gang politics, violence, survival, and ultimately walking away. In this explosive interview, he breaks down how the Aryan Brotherhood gained power behind the walls, how prison gangs controlled money, drugs, alcohol, protection, and violence, and why the California prison system of the 1970s was unlike anything seen today. He also opens up about growing up on a Native reservation, being recruited inside prison, surviving brutal conflicts, getting shot multiple times, building influence within the AB, and the moment he decided to leave that life behind. This is a rare inside look at the Aryan Brotherhood, Old Folsom Prison, prison gang history, redemption, and the reality of surviving decades behind bars. Go Support Michael! YouTube: @michaelskythompson Book: https://a.co/d/0cfbYgLn This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: Cash App! Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/1ekoiacn #CashAppPod Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Cash App Green features, Savings, Direct deposit, Round ups, Overdraft coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit https://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. Superpower! Head to https://superpower.com and use code CONNECT at checkout for $20 off your membership. Unlock your new health intelligence. 100+ biomarkers. Every year. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod #AryanBrotherhood #PrisonStories #FolsomPrison #PrisonGangs #TrueCrime #TheBrand #CaliforniaPrisons #SanQuentin #PrisonInterview #TrueCrimePodcast Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 Opening: Gangs and Violence in Prison 01:17 Michael Thompson's Background & Aryan Brotherhood 02:53 Prison System Changes Over Time 04:40 California's Prison Expansion & Crime Trends 06:08 Race, Gang Control, and Prison Culture 09:13 Growing Up on a Native American Reservation 14:09 Survival, Community, and Formative Years 21:50 This Episode Is Sponsored By Cash App 23:15 Transition: Institutional Life & Youth Ranch 27:03 Joining the Aryan Brotherhood: Gangs in 70s Prisons 33:59 Violence, Rackets, and Organized Crime Inside 41:44 Weapons and Survival in Prison 44:04 This Episode Is Sponsored By Superpower 45:27 Folsom's Culture of Violence 53:10 Structure and Economics of the Aryan Brotherhood 01:05:04 Building the Brand: Racketeering & Operations 01:13:47 Evolution of White Supremacy and Expansion 01:23:09 Moving to San Quentin & Gang Alliances 01:36:18 Forming the Commission: Running the Organization 01:46:13 Stepping Away: Moral Dilemmas and Defection 01:55:15 Testimony, Cooperation, and Attempts on His Life 02:09:41 Life After the Brand and Modern Incarcerations 02:18:28 Release, Challenges, and Reflections 02:27:32 Life After Prison & Giving Back 02:32:31 Memoir, Advocacy, and Closing Thoughts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's Maui Thai. I'm going to eat whatever that is. His name is Hayeha. Boats net. Disney's Moana. Now playing in theaters. Get tickets now. The reality is that the gang still control California

prison systems. The brand's number one currency is violence. You will not find another organization who is more violent. I've been shot 22 times total, but I was at Folsom probably 12 times. There was an attempt to kill me, and that escalated into me smuggling a 38 Smith & Wesson into the institution. I had an individual who got unruly, and I had to put him into hospital. I wouldn't stop until I was finished with what I was doing. Once the retaliation starts, and life is taken, it's a life for a life, or three lives for a life. Michael Thompson is one of the former leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood, the most ruthless, violent prison gang in the United States.

In the early 1970s, Mike was convicted of a double homicide and sent to Folsom State Prison. By the time he got transferred out in 1978, he was making almost $4 million a year just off prison rackets alone, drugs, liquor, loan sharking, even prostitutes. He had the guards and the warden on his payroll and helped transform the Aryan Brotherhood from a small, disorganized prison car into a fully-fledged criminal empire. Mike exposes the secrets of the mythological Aryan Brotherhood reveals how it's changed from his era to the modern day and how it continues to be the smallest yet most powerful criminal organization, not just in California, but throughout the entire federal prison system as well. After nearly 40 years behind bars, he is finally free and here to tell his story. Make sure to grab his autobiography, the first of a three-part book series. We'll put a link to that in the description below and check out a Patreon bonus episode that we did with him over at patreon.com slash the Connect show.

All right, without further ado, it's the great Michael Thompson right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Do you feel sorry for anything that you did in terms of, like, violence when you were with the organization? Not that you regret. I don't think that has value. Oh, interesting. I really don't. It's when you find yourself, when you make that decision, it's a choice. Yeah.

You see, I'm not one that pursues or seeks answers. I believe they're only choices. So that when I come upon a situation, I have a choice to make. I make that choice. right or wrong, you know, that really the moral aspect is irrelevant, particularly behind the Iron Gates because survival is what's at stake. And so like any other animal, I'm going to pursue and I'm going to select for that which is conducive to my survival. Well, and especially when you first went into the system in that era, it really was a deadly,

deadly place to be, especially in California. Yes. Seventies, yes. Yeah. It was a completely different prison system. So you only had two prisons. You had Old Folsom and San Quentin. Then you had, I think, seven institutions.

They didn't even have wardens. So they were structured differently and they were run differently than Folsom and San Quentin. Mm-hmm. So. What do you think about now and the fact that they were only in a place is huge California, there were only two real prisons, and 50 years later there's... 33? 33 prisons.

Has crime gone down 33 percent? No, it hasn't, and that's why you see prisons closing. So you've had so far this year seven prisons close and more on the way. And that's a, you can say that's as a result of the new deal that Governor Newsom is all offered to the Department of Corrections and so far as the California design is what it's referred to. I'm not a big fan of it. It has elements that I think do work, especially when you're talking about rehabilitation and the idea of programs that facilitate awareness, behavioral change, you know, cognitive-based theories. I think those all have value, especially when you're dealing with gangs.

But the reality is that the gangs still control California prison systems. And communities on the outside from those prisons. So that's pretty important. Until you begin to address that and deal with that, you're not going to be able to move forward progressively with corrections. Right. Yeah. One extreme to the next.

That's the pendulum itself here in California. It always has been. It runs in about a 20-year cycle. Swings one way and then it swings back the other. And, you know, there's this constant maneuvering to adjust. And, you know, the vicarious liability associated with that. So, no, I don't, I'm not impressed with the system today. I think it needs a lot of work.

And hopefully the political machine that exists here in California will continue to pursue advancements in that. Well, I'm fascinated, and thank you for being here. My pleasure. I'm fascinated by you. I'm fascinated by how somebody who grew up on a native reservation, somebody who praise every morning and uses tobacco in a way that a Native American would use it to, you know, as part of your spiritual being, how somebody like that could become a member of such a violent organization,

and a racist one? That requires clarification. It's racist now, but you mentioned a moment ago about the 70s and the difference in the prison system. So back then, you had the Aryan Brotherhood, you had the Mexican Mafia, the Emmy, La Jamee. You had Black Panthers, Black Gorilla family, the Texas Syndicate, the New Ester Familia, and other Sibonese Liberation Army.

We were all in Folsom together. And so the structure was completely different. It wasn't about racism, which isn't to say that there weren't blacks who tried to kill me simply because of my fair features. That's true. I can honestly say I've never attempted to kill a black man because of his skin pigmentation. But no, the idea back then was that the battles that occurred between the various organizations occurred because of resources and the control of those resources and the effective control of those resources so that when you're dealing with an environment like Old Folsom or San Quentin,

you're looking at a population that fluctuates between 3 and 5,000. That's a small city. And so the revenues associated with that can be enormous. In 1978, the FBI estimated that I took $3.5 million out of Volffalsam alone. Back in the 70s, that was a lot of money. And so it's a matter of what you do with that money. But to go back to your question, racism was not an element. You saw it amongst the nation of Islam, you know, the blue-eyed devil.

In some capacity, you saw it with a black guerrilla family in some capacity. Black Panthers were more progressive in their thinking. They were actually the first ones that attempted to recruit me. And so that was kind of interesting. For sure. Yeah. So the idea of the Aryan Brotherhood back then

being a white supremac group, no, that's not true. It is now and has evolved into that by way of infrastructure and subculture and otherwise. But no, I was, initially the recruitment process from the Aryan Brotherhood with me was facilitated by TD Bingham. And I like the hell out of TD, still do. But I declined his offer.

And it wasn't until four Native American members of the Aryan Brotherhood approached me and told me, said, look, brother, we live better in here than we ever did on the res. We know you're an old res dog. And I said, you're right. I said, but explain that to me. What do you mean?

And so they did, you know. We have two stills. We've got control over what most people refer to as concessions. So that would be commodities in some capacity. Booze? Very lucrative, prostitution, drug trafficking. You know, it... Alcohol?

Oh, yeah, certainly alcohol. You know, that's a big factor. Yeah, I've talked to. people that said that can be enormously profitable. It is. Behind the wall. Yeah, especially if you have a still. And in Old Folsom, we had a still in the kitchen.

And it was very effective. And then we had another still for so that we could double the still and increase the alcohol content. Wow. So, you know. And narcotics, heroin? You name it. Mexican mafia primarily controlled black tar. You know, back in the 70s, you still had China White coming in from the Triangle.

out of Indonesia, and so that was still available. But primarily black tar remains that, except now that it's being laced with fentanyl, it's a completely different animal. But, yeah, drug trafficking and prostitution, of course, and then loan sharking, you know, that's always a viable enterprise. Totally. And, yeah. So it's just like any other city, where you'll find order.

organized crime and that's the essence of what you found behind the Iron Gates was organized crime. That would include administrators and staff and the gangs and you name it, just like you find out here on the streets. You find corruption wherever you go at every level and usually that's associated with organized crime. So it was no different behind the Iron Gates. So the idea of racism didn't really enter the picture until much later. with the implosion of prison construction. So whereas you had two prisons and the seven institutions,

you now have 33 prisons. When I came in, the population was 14,000. The population is now at 180,000. So that makes a big difference in the dynamic that we're talking about, you know, where races don't interact and there's control over that for the purposes of controlling your race because of the revenue is generated through that.

Right. You see, if you allow another race to usurp that, then that's usually where the problems begin. So the racial segregation is really a practical means of controlling the rackets? It always has been. Yeah. Any time that you look at racism, you know, whether it's white supremacy or otherwise, you don't often hear about racism in the context other than white supremacy.

But- No, it's true, but it exists. Of course, the reality is, yeah. I know racism as, given my fair features, having grown up on a reservation, but you know, I know racism from that perspective, you know, where I had natives beat the hell out of me because of my fair features. And, of course, through race memory. I don't fault them for that. But that's just another form of racism. So, you know, but you don't really see it in the context of anything other than white supremacy in this country for a vast array of reasons.

I mean, it's been entrenched in this country since its inception, you know, 250 years now. And it's not going to change anytime soon, because the dialogue hasn't reached a level as yet that is meaningful. I think we'll get there. Once we start having greater and greater problems, I think it's going to unite everybody and realize that racism is silly and we have a much greater enemy. I think you may be right. But if you look at how divisive this country is right now, and at the forefront of that are militias and other hate groups that fundamentally represent white supremacy.

Yeah. And that's the biggest problem. I mean, Joe Biden said it a few years back that the biggest problem facing this country right now is white supremacy. And I don't disagree with that, particularly as it relates to domestic terrorism. And that's a pet peeve with me. It goes back to the idea of when Yogi Penel first attempted to recruit

recruit me into the Black Panthers. You know, their foundation was communist. You know, the manifesto was communist. And even though I didn't understand, I didn't have the intellectual ability back then to comprehend what communism was, I knew that I was American. And so I rejected the Black Panthers for that reason. But if you look at today and what is represented by various groups in some capacity, it doesn't matter what it is, you're always going to find that element of racism.

And it's not just white supremacy. So if the dialogue is going to continue and if it's going to be effective and meaningful, and then it needs to be all-encompassing as it relates to that, and not just a single focus on white people. Totally agree. So you grew up on the reservation, a reservation. Tell us how you grew up and where? It's the Big Pine Reservation.

It's located at the base of Mount Whitney. And within the indigenous states, Mount Whitney's the highest peak at over 14,000 feet. And maintains multiple glaciers. But it's wilderness. And, you know, back then, this was in the 50s and 60s. You know, it was tarpaper shacks and dirt floors. And I slept underneath a 12-foot travel trailer, tear-drop travel trailer for the first 12 years of my life.

And nothing about hygiene or anything else. But it was about snaring rabbits and fishing and gathering and hunting and alcoholism. Now, how can a white person grow up on a reservation, a Native American reservation? Well, with difficulty. You know, see, and that goes to that idea of racism and the race memory on the part of the natives. So the most dominant factor on the reservation is alcoholism, and what that portends by way of unemployment and abject poverty. And it's extreme and was extreme. It's since changed with the development of casinos and otherwise, but back then it was abject poverty.

So growing up, I mean, we had a school. It was called the Little Red House, and it was a red brick house that housed grades 1 through 12, and all in one room. And you would go in and you would check in and then you would leave. And that was essentially it. So they meant that requirement by way of the roll call. And that was it. But a lot of violence, a lot of domestic violence. You know, you typically find that anywhere that you find alcoholism,

as prevalent as it was on a reservation, and still is on many reservations. So to answer your question, growing up on a reservation is very difficult. The presumption is that, you know, that you're within this spiritual domain, you know, that is rewarding and fulfilling, and none of that existed. You didn't have any ceremonies taking place. The people very rarely spoke their own language.

You know, I know my language. I was taught my language by my elder who raised me, but that was off the reservation. So who, your first 12 years on the res, were you raised, are you an orphan? Essentially, yes. Okay. Like, how did you end up there? My mother left me with relatives. Okay.

And so, you know, that was the difficult thing. I was not wanted. Right. And, you know, it, I suppose, could manifest into certain, psychoses. In my case, I don't believe that it did. For me, it was just a simple matter of survival. So, you know, we had many creeks, and up in that area there, you have a particular species of trout, cutthroat trout, that is only found there. So you've got a lot of fishermen that come up, mostly white people, and they camp on the river, and back then they didn't have ice chest, but they used to keep everything in a net bag, put that in the ice, cold water coming off the glacier. And so I would swim underneath the water, cut out the bottom of the bag, steal their food, bring it back and distribute it.

And, you know, that's a point of survival. Yeah. So. You'd sell the fish? No, no, no selling. It's just a matter of distribution to make sure everybody gets fed. I mean, I would go amongst the tarpaper shacks, and, you know, fry bread was the big thing. Yeah.

And so, you know, I would go to say Mother Jane's shack, and I would tell Mother Jane that I was hungry. So she would make me fry bread, but she already knew that I'd been to other shacks for fry bread that morning. And so she would make me the fry bread, and she would say, well, I know you were Mother Mary's this morning. Did she make you fry bread? And I'd say, yes, Mother Jane. She said, is her fry bread better than my fry bread? I said, oh, no, Mother Jane. You see, and that's kind of your relationship, you know, in that.

There's a community. and particularly amongst the women, they always look out for the children in some capacity. So I was blessed in that, regardless of my fair features. The men, that's an entirely different story. You know, that involved beatings

and pretty severe beatings. Yeah. Yeah. You get jumped by the other kids for being white? No, no. Or beatings by grown men? Beatings by grown men, mostly. It's what the alcohol is.

I mean, you know, it's actually where I first had my initial revelation as it relates to who my family actually was. I was very young, and I had endured a severe beating at the hands of native men who had gotten liquored up. And so I was able to get away from them, and I ran off into the wilderness, and I climbed up on these large boulders, the granite boulders. We refer to them as the rock people. back then I didn't I didn't know anything about that but I had a sense as I was on top of these boulders I was had my head thrown back and I was attempting to stop the bleeding from my face and my nose and you know I had debris all over me and I was crying and hiccuping you know how that goes along with the crying as a child and I heard the wind in the trees and

I had a sense that just as I was aware of mine environment, the tree people, the rock people, all that surrounded me, it was aware of me. And that was my first sense of family. And I've never forgotten that. Wow. So it was a profound experience for me as a child, and it served me later on. You know, you don't think about these things as a child. They just occur, and you don't, you know, you don't store them away for future reference. It just is. But when I did go to live with my older, and I began engaging.

in ceremony and learning my ways, you know, that experience always came back to serve me as a foundation for my connection to the earth. Wow. It's profound. Well, it's really simple if you think about it. You know, we all have that connection. We all come from indigenous backgrounds, all of us. And so it's just a matter of the ability to tap into that and, you know, to walk essentially

with your ancestors. and in that acquire knowledge. Yeah. I just live in L.A., and so instead of the sound of trees, it's buses and gunshots. Oh, bigger than that, what fascinates me are all these cars driving around with nobody at the wheel.

That's got to be a trip. It's my first experience with it. And it's like, whoa. Yeah. One pulls up alongside, and you can't help, but look. Yeah. You know, but it's amazing to me, the technology. Yeah, truly, truly.

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I'm actually placed in a facility called Joplin Boys Rance. That's up in Tobuco Canyon or was. It's no longer existent. But so I was placed there at the age of 12, and I was the youngest person there. But it was a good experience. You know, it was a wholesome environment. You lived in the old Quonset hut. marine military quonset huts.

And you had a chow hall and you had pigs and you had cows. You had a milk barn and so on. So you're milking cows and you're slopping the pigs. And you're eating amazingly. I mean, when I went there, I weighed 120 pounds and I was already over six feet tall. So within eight months of being there, I put on 80 pounds. I'd never eaten like that before. So that was kind of nice.

If you were a huge kid. I was, yeah. At the age of 13, I was already 220, and it wasn't quite 6'4 yet. I was still 6'3. But eventually, I grew to be 6'4. You're a tall man yourself, so you understand that process. I've never been 220, though. I actually went up to 285, and in my prime I weighed 310.

But I was pushing a lot of iron. Yeah. But back in the ranch days, I maintained 220, and I was a little. bull rider, I rode the rode the rodeo circuit and trained horses and we had a small herd of cattle and I worked for the Irvine ranch for a while as they're forming pushing cattle and you know you'd have your roundup every year, spring roundup and we held that in Carbon Canyon so that's actually how I got into the rodeo okay and bull riding but yeah I went to live with my elder and he was half Nez Pierce half Irish and what

they referred to as a man of spirit his name was he who walks on top of the wind. I just call them walks on top. It was too much otherwise. But in 1940 he brought one of the first sires and brood mares, Arabian, out of Egypt, to the United States and started his ranch up in Cleveland National Forest. And from those two brood mares and that one sire, when I got there, there were 30 head. So, you know, we continued the breeding program and working with the cattle. And he taught me horsemanship. Of course, he taught me hunting and fishing.

But more importantly, he taught me my ways. He was a World War II veteran and a martial artist and taught me martial arts. Primarily taught me that as a result of the injuries I had incurred on the reservation. and so he wanted to teach me how to fight and did. And that was really the source of my survival, if you will, once I did go behind the arundades. But an incredible man, very knowledgeable, very well read, and his foundations were, of course, spiritual.

And so I had the blessing of learning my ways from him, traveling in the United States, down into Mexico, up into Canada, in ceremony with him. And, you know, that just stayed with me my entire life. So I refer to it as the Red Road. I've walked the Red Road. I grew up native. People say, well, do you have any native blood?

And I say, well, I don't know. All I know is that in my heart, you know, I am native. I follow the Red Road. You know, and like I said, we all come from indigenous backgrounds. with our ancestors. So, you know, given the fact that I am white, I suspect there's a Nordic component there. And if you look at, you know, the Norse,

or you look at the Irish or the Scottish, whatever it is, they have very similar native-based spirituality. And, you know, they even had sweat lodges. So, you know, the sweatlod. to me is whether it's native or whether it's Scandinavian, really doesn't matter to me. What does matter to me is my connection to the Earth and all my relatives and how I pursue that in my humanity.

Yeah. I mean, look, it didn't matter when the brand tried to recruit you. No. I mean, the Black Panthers tried to recruit you. Well, they did. Which is the most fascinating thing. Not if you put it in context. I mean, I came from a prison where, you know, I got into a huge altercation because of my native beliefs.

Back then, we couldn't speak our language or practice our ways. It was actually against the law. What language was that? Anishinaabe. Okay. And that's of the Nizpiers? No, it's Ojibwe. Ojibwe.

Yeah, or Chippewa. Or Chippewa, depending on which side of the border you're on. but so because it was against the law, I went to work for a chaplain at the institution I was at, and very progressive individual. And so I would clean his chapels. There was a Catholic chapel and a Protestant chapel, and there was a garden in between. And he allowed me access to that garden to practice my ways as long as I kept his chapels clean. And that went well until one day,

some individuals were let into the garden to kill me. And because my practices were perceived as devil worship. No one really had a real understanding of the native perspective, native philosophy, or otherwise. So the only association they could make from a big white boy doing what I was doing was this must be devil worship. Yeah. It's crazy. We got to run him out. Yeah.

So there was an attempt to kill me, and that escalated into me smuggling a 38 Smith & Wesson into the institution with a box of cartridges. And I even made a suppressor for it, even though a suppressor is kind of irrelevant when it comes to a revolver. But it looked good. Would you use as a suppressor? I made it. Out of what? Fiberglass, a tube, and a baffirm. So I created baffles, inserted the baffles, fiberglass on top of that, and then it inserted over the barrel itself.

So it's like shooting into a pillow. Yeah. Would be the best analogy of it. But typically a suppressor only works with an automatic. But with a revolver, because you have your chamber, and so you're going to have the escape of gases, if you will, through the channel. chamber itself, but it could have worked. Oh, you didn't get a chance to use it? No, actually I was told on.

The individual I had smuggled the gun in told on me, so they came into Center Corridor where I was standing at the time. And the only time I've ever seen a weapon brought inside, but they put a shotgun in the back of my head and two guards come up alongside me and cut my clothes off me. And, of course, I didn't have the gun on me. So now they wanted the gun. and I had it in a number 10 can full of oil because in the smuggling in process,

it was buried on the dairy, and some moisture had gotten into the chamber and rusted it, so I had it in a barrel, a can of oil. And when this happened, so they put me in a car and they shipped me to Old Folsom. And that was where the big boys were at. That's where my introduction to the Black Panthers and the BGF and the Aryan Brotherhood and Texas Syndicate and Charlie Manson and all of them occurred. So given the fact that I was involved in altercations at the prior institution, based on my native beliefs, the MA grapevine had carried that information to Folsom prior to me arriving.

So the field marshal for the Black Panthers, who was Hugo Yogi Pannell, approached me on my first day on the yard and attempted to recruit me. And that was the thing about the Black Panthers back then. They didn't care what your ethnicity was or your race. You know, they were looking for warriors. And given where I'd come from and the stories that preceded me, he was looking to recruit me as a warrior within the ranks of the Black Panthers. And I declined. and he and I ended up going head up the next day in a knife fight. And that was the first time I was shot.

And because he ended up running from me when he began to lose the battle, the knife fight. And like a damn ass, I chased him. And got shot in the process. By the guard. Yeah. With the M14. Yeah, M14. What kind of knives did you have in that area?

Are they big ones? No, I had cut it from the pot iron in the cell. And I had been taught not only metallurgy, but forging knives at the forge and otherwise. So when I cut it, I designed it specifically for the use. I intended it. And that was a one-sided with the curve. And I always use it to the back of my hand as opposed to out in front of me. So it runs along the side of my forearm.

Do you know what I mean? Can you show me? Sure. See how I'm holding the cane? Yeah. Okay, so this is the knife handle and this is the knife blade. So I hold the knife blade here so that I still have used holding the knife handle of my fists or to strike. But I can use the knife this way or this way.

Or if my opponent throws a knife strike at me, I can come over this way, pull him forward, and come over his wrist and bleed him. You see him. So it's a simple procedure. So you can really kill somebody. You can really open an artery. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you can do it in such a way that it's irreversible. So he's going to bleed out. You should have taught Renee Boxer Enriquez how to do that because that guy stabbed like 30 people and killed none of them. It's not easy to kill somebody with a prison shank if you don't know what you're doing. That's the thing. You see, there's a lot of factors associated with that and people automatically,

assume that because you make a move or you make a hit. And Renee's a good man and a good friend of mine. Yeah, he told me, yeah. I'm just kidding. He was here yesterday. Oh, was he? Okay. So, but, you know, the idea of how you use a weapon is fundamental.

You know, people think you just need to, you know, stab at the chest area or whatever, but there's a number of ways depending on the knife that you have. You know, you can come up underneath the rib cage, you know, into the heart itself. You can pop along first from the side, you know, and then bring it over. You can use a neck piece to the throat, take the juggler along with the windpipe, depending on the circumstances. But that requires a knowledge of knife fighting and human anatomy. And most people who are trained in association with the gangs don't have that knowledge.

So many of the stabbings that occur are not successful as it relates to killing your opponent. And then, of course, if your approach is to assassinate, that's an entirely different thing, too, as opposed to back in my day, we had head up like yogi and I, and even though it was under the gun. But... Do you think you would have killed him if he had just stayed, like, were you, you getting the best of him, or would you have let him off? I've never had to take it upon myself to kill an opponent, even though I could have. And that's a choice. my perspective as a warrior is that a warrior is not that individual who has the capacity to kill, but rather that individual who has the capacity to kill and chooses not to because he realizes he doesn't need to.

He can subdue his opponent without having to kill him. That's actually more powerful. I think so. That's how I was taught and that's what I believed. So that's a critical element of my own self-afficacy as it relates to being a warrior. You know, you can take various constructs like Bushido, and you can incorporate those and make them your own. And that is another element of self-efficacy. But it's a designer-specific to the individual as it relates to that individual's construct of what it is to be a warrior.

So let's back up a little and tell us how you got to prison in the first place, how you became incarcerated. That was a double homicide. And that occurred when I was 20 years old. It was two individuals that were attempting to kidnap two little girls for ransom. Their father was the head of a drug cartel. And they knew that he kept large sums of money in his home. He had two children, two young daughters. And these two individuals were out on federal bail for drug trafficking.

Their intent was to kid. kidnapped the two little girls for ransom and abscond to Canada with the ransom. In the course of that attempt, they were disarmed. One had a 375 magnum, the other had a double-barreled, sawed off shotgun, and they were killed and buried. And I was convicted of that and went to prison. What was your sentence? It was seven years to life.

It was under the old structure. so I was eligible for parole in 1979. I went in in 1973, but I was not released until essentially 2020. Right. Okay, so we're going to talk about that whole journey. But do you think if back then they were paroling guys that had life, I believe, right? If you had, you know.

Well, back then, the sentencing structure, you didn't have the indeterminate, I mean, the determinate sentencing structure that you have today. that was Senate Bill 42 that facilitated that. And what it did was that prior to its enactment, everybody was serving a life sentence. But vast majority were serving one to life, five to life or seven to life. And as such, everybody was required to go before the Board of Prison Terms,

which is what it was called back then. And they had to be eligible for parole in the eyes of the board before they would be released. But they were releasing people. Oh, yes. Because now, it might have changed now, because as you said, the pendulum has kind of swung the other way. But for many, many years, I believe if you had 15 to life, 20 to life, whatever, you'd go before the board and they would just deny you. Yeah, that's ultimately what it came to.

But back then, not so. Right. So, you know, you would go before the board. I mean, I remember that when I was in San Quentin in the Adjustment Center at the time, that was the overflow for, death row. I'd been on death row, but had come down into the adjustment center, into the overflow area of the adjustment center. And so what had happened was when SB 42 was enacted, they were so far behind in the release of prisoners that they did a wholesale release as a result. So where I was at, they came in one morning and they walked down the tier and they were just

pointing to cells and say, roll it up, roll it up. Everybody jumped to. up and said, where are we going? They thought they were being transferred. It said, it's called a RUAP, immediate release. So everybody on the tier I was on was released with the, I was the only one left. So, you know, they'd say, roll it up, hell, open the door, let me out, they left all their stuff in their sales. And 400, 400 guys that morning walked out of San Quentin. Wow. Yeah. They probably thought it was a mistake and they were like, let's just get the book out of here. That was the whole idea. I'm pack. I'm not packing a thing. And so, yeah, they were released and, you know, that, a lot of public outcry over that. But once the dust settled,

then they moved into this indeterminate term, determinate term situation. So now you had individuals such as myself who had a seven to life that still had to appear. The one to life and five to life were eliminated. But those of us who had seven to life still had to appear before the board and did. Right. And we're lifers. All of us were lifers. So seven to life.

So you're considered a lifer in 1973, even though you're eligible for parole in seven years? Yes. How did you look at it when you went in? Did you think, well, yeah, let me just keep my head down and I'll be able to get out of here in a decade? I wasn't that intelligent. That would require, I think,

an experienced intellect, especially as it relates to the prison system and legal system, and I was neither. I was green. I was a fish. Yeah. And it showed. So, you know, I'd run the mountains my whole life. Now suddenly I find myself incarcerated and being in a cage, is very difficult. And it was for me. Yeah, we don't fit on the beds. There's that. Did you find that to be disheartening?

Yes. No, no, that didn't bother me a lick. It was being confined to a cage. Yeah. You know, I... Yeah, because your childhood, even though it was poor, it was such freedom. Yes.

And even with my elder, you see, you know, it's ranch life. So, you know, you're riding horses every day, you're moving cattle, you're training horses, you're rodeoing, you know, you're bucking hay, you're mucking out stalls, you're stringing line for the fence. I mean, so, yeah, I mean, the only time we ever went into the city from the ranch was to buy chewing tobacco and to purchase bags of grain for the horses. Yeah. So that was from a feed store that was just at the outskirts of the foothead.

Right. So. So you had a hard time at the beginning when you first went in psychologically. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there's no question about that. You know, I think had it not been from my spiritual beliefs, it could have turned out differently because it's the only time in my life that I contemplated suicide.

You know, I just told myself there's no way I can do this. I cannot live in this cage. It's so contrary to who I am as a human being. So in that contemplation, in the construction of the cells, they use a lot of aggregate stones. And there was one protruding from the wall up toward the ceiling, and the rock people are one of my totems. And so I went up and I put my hand on that rock,

and it fortunately spoke to me. And it just said, it's going to be all right, little one. Wow. And that was enough for me. Wow. So, you know, with that spiritual foundation, that was enough. So essentially, I just had to man up. Yep.

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And when they ask you how you heard about them, tell them that the Connect sent you to support our show. Go to superpower.com and use code Connect. Your body will thank you. So you get to old Folsom. It was just Folsom back then. Yeah. Right?

They didn't have new Folsom. Right. So it was just called Folsom, and you reject the Black Panthers violently. Yes. You get shot. Tell us your progression and how you eventually came to know who you have tattooed on your finger, the Irish clover leaf. Yeah, the Aryan Brotherhood. That came as a result of TD Bingham approaching me.

Along the same lines as Yogi had, however, the difference was. is that each time I went out to the yard now, I was engaging in combat with either a black guerrilla family member or a black panther member because of what it occurred with yogi. And there was actually a split between the two because they were pretty much unified at that time because he had run from me. And of course, he had taken a guerrilla perspective

in that lived a fight another day. And you'll see that amongst, most militia and guerrilla outfits. So in TD's case, he had observed me each time I'd coming out to the yard, I'd come out to the yard, engage in battle successfully. And are these with knives or just fists? Knives, typically. Okay.

Did you get poked at all? No, no, I got shot a lot. I was shot, I've been shot 22 times total, but I was at Folsom probably 12 times. Where? Well, you want to remember they're old Folsom. They shoot from a 50-foot wall, and they shoot down. So most of my injuries are at the top of my back, and you can see the entry wounds.

Most of them have exit wounds because the 223 was developed as a sniper weapon, and then it evolved into a much hotter weapon, but it's still meant to go pass through you. When it was developed originally as a sniper weapon, it was meant to pass through you so that people will come out to get the person and then they could snipe more people. In this case, pretty hot rounds. And they typically pass through you and in my case did with one exception. And I had one lodged next to my spine and they didn't remove that for 30 years. And then the rest were shotgun blasts. At Old Folsom, they still used, in some instances from the towers, like in this case Tower 2, an Ot 6,

and that was just with a gold shear bead and a full buckhorn site. And I took a shot to the leg with that. Kind of an interesting story. It was a cat named Talbot. And he'd shot me out. I was in a fight with one of the Solidad 6, one of the Roland brothers. They'd killed the guards at Solidad. and they were at Folsom, and he and I were going head up.

And anyway, I took a shot to the leg, and it dropped me. And, you know, back then they just took you to the clinic, and they probed the wound, stuffed it. And if it hadn't hit anything vital, you know, where I was shot, you have those primary arteries. Right. So that's what they were looking for. It didn't hit that.

And so I hear somebody pound on the bar box, and my cell door opens and Talbot steps into my cell. And he looks down at me, I'm on my bunk, and he says, are we all right? And I said, you're the one who shot me? And he said, yeah. I said, well, you were just doing your job and I was doing mine. I said, but I got to tell you, man. You see, Tower 2 is quite a ways out there, and it was a hell of a shot.

And so I told him that. I said, that was a hell of a shot. And he said, no, not really. He says, I was aiming for your head. And he'd hit me in the leg. So, and. So you lucked out. Why were you the one getting shot?

Is that because you were winning the knife fights? Typically, yes. When you're winning, as you say, the fight, and then you're the target. Even though you're technically the victim, you're the one. It's not really so much being a victim. I've never thought of myself in that context. I guess you're not initiating these headups, are you? It's mutual.

You know you're going out there to fight. You know, it's just who you're going to fight today. is really what it comes down to. So after your 12th, 20, or 22nd time getting shot, why not just go to like the shower? There's no cameras. Well, you don't have showers in those settings that you can frequent together.

The kitchen? You don't have a kitchen. You're fed in cell. Okay, so you're already on, you're already in special... Oh, yeah. You're in the hole. Okay.

See, they don't have a shoe then. No such thing exists. They only do. developed those later in the 80s. I see. So back then you had the adjustment center, and then you had what they called 4A and old Folsom, which was the hole.

And then you're in a strip cell, so you've got a hole in the floor, and that's essentially it. You have double bars, and then you have an area in between, and they have plates that have windows to the outside of the cell with another door. They put those plates up so that you're in complete darkness.

And so, you know, And that's an experience in and of itself. It's time you get shot, your body goes into shock so you can't move. But they have a slot in the bottom where they come back then, they would feed you on a tray, and they would slide the tray up underneath. And, you know, in my case, you would roll over and put your face in the food because you couldn't lift your arms. And you'd eat what you could, and then you'd roll back over. And when I say roll back over, it wasn't that immediate.

It would take you about an hour and involve a lot of exertion. So, but you couldn't lift your hand to wipe the food off your face, so the cockroaches would come out of that sewer hole in the floor and eat the food off your face. You know, and they were two to three inches, pretty big. And so you adjust to that. I mean, just a cockroach. How long are you kept back there? Like, how long is the whole shot for getting a knife fight? You know, I spent a year at a time.

So you're in this kind of nightmare where you go to the whole. because you're fighting and you get shot or you stab a guy and then because you stabbed them now somebody else wants some smoke so when you get out you have to fight again you get shot and it's just over and over it's a matter of honor you know they had to attempt to redeem yeah you can't let a white boy beat you especially not as a black guy back then that was a bad look that's very true yeah you see So, you know, that's the context. You have the context appropriate.

Can you sue? Like now people will get sued if they got shot by a prison guard. I reckon you can. Back then, no. It wasn't even a thought. Being litigious, yeah. Well, I mean, you were doing what you were doing. Like I told him, that's where Talbot come up.

You know, he told me, I told him, you were just doing your job. I was doing mine. and that's how you looked at it. Yeah. If I had a beef with a guard, there was always an empty cell on the tear, even in the hole. And if I thought he had disrespected me or he thought vice versa, he would take his badge off and his Sam Brown,

and they'd bring me out and we'd go in that cell, and they'd shut the door and we'd get down. And no more was said about it, whoever won. Wow. So it opened the door. There was no write-up. There was no you, you know, taking issue with him.

That was the end of it. You guys were men. Mano or M. Men. Yeah. Men on men. Yeah. So how did you get out of this situation?

How did you, how were you able to move on from this constant battling with the blacks? You don't move on. You escalate it. And in my case, once I did join the Aryan Brotherhood, I initially had declined T.D.'s offer. but I was approached by four Native Americans who were A.B. Brand. And they told me, they said, I said, look, brother, we know you're an old res dog, and we live better in here than we ever did on the res. Now, that resonated with me.

I said, what do you mean? So they explained it to me, and so I said, okay, I'm in. So from that, within a year, I had advanced to a leadership role based on essentially nothing more than my physical prowess and my ability to fight. And so with that, I got together with TD and we started talking about restructuring, creating an infrastructure, taking the monies that were being created within the prison itself and applying that more business-like. Creating that business infrastructure. Because back then, very few members, all of them were strung out.

So all the money that was being generated was being used to party. you know, to live large, as they say now. And, you know, I don't use drugs, I never have. Didn't drink. I'll now kick back a shot of bullet on occasion, but, you know, other than that back then, I never drank. And so the idea was to give it that formal infrastructure. So we started working on that. And meanwhile, I was educating myself.

I'd learned to read. I'd learn to write. I started writing articles for filled in stream and outdoorsmen and, you know, horsemen. And each time I sold an article, I would buy a college course. And eventually I started off at Berkeley and my undergraduate studies as a biologist. And then I advanced from there to Ohio University for my graduate studies. Again, pained from my own way. Right.

And so they would just mail you. like the workload for the semester? It was all correspondence. When I went into my doctoral program, I had to have advisors. So that required a sponsorship, essentially because of where I was at. But I did have advisors.

I had, of all people, Linus Pauling and Ed Hoffman. Linus Pauling was a two-time Nobel laureate and brilliant, brilliant man. So, you know, I had that help. But yes, it was to answer your question, other than my doctoral advisors. It was all correspondence. The exams, the final exams, were always proctered.

We used, at the time that I completed that, I was already away from the brand, but so we used numerous aliases because of my protection and all that. But I did complete everything that I set out to do. I received my first PhD in 1988, my second PhD in 2000. Wow. So.

I mean, imagine you getting a degree in biology around the kind of people that are at Folsom. Yeah. You must have, you must have to just keep a lot to the best, as we say. Yeah, you do. But it depends on how you use that. And of course, there's always an ulterior motive in the pursuit of education behind the Iron Gates. It wasn't about being a biologist. The thing that remembered that in the pursuit of that higher education, there's really no value in it other than a piece of paper. Right. You know,

the only thing I actually learned from the pursuit of higher education was how to do research. So I use that ability to research the law, to research physics. You know, quantum physics has always been a favorite field of mine, but that's how I ended up beating the metal detectors in old fulsome. When they brought the metal detectors in, it was simple physics. you know, that allowed me to run tests. I used Charlie Manson's girls to run out to the San Francisco airport and test my theories. And they worked. So then I started smuggling buck knives in and five-shot derringers, 38 derringers.

Okay, so tell us about that. Tell us about the physics of that. How does a buck knife not go off in a metal detector? Yeah. In this case, it's really simple physics. So all metal detection is predicated upon electrical eddies. So you have a transmitter. It sends out electrical eddies at a right angle,

and it's called an electrical flux or magnetic flux. And those electrical eddies are contained within that flux. So it goes across to a receiver. And as you walk through, if you have no metal on you, it passes through you and hits the receiver, and you're okay to go. But if you have any iron on you, the electrical eddies penetrate that iron, thus disrupting magnetic flux and setting off the alarm.

It's that simple. So that if you take any alloy and you insulate that with electrical tape, and that's what I used initially, I used a specific weave to prevent electrical eddies from penetrating into the metal object. And so you could walk right through with a buck knife or a gun or a handcuff key or whatever it may be. And it's really that simple. Now they use scanners, and those can be beat also, but there's a different model involved in that because of what they use, the technology they use. How big is a buckknife?

Well, a buck knife open is eight inches, but when you close it, it's four inches. Okay. A little over four inches, about four and a half. And how do you get that into the facility? That's the Kieser stash. So I have Charlie's girls stash it actually vaginally and bring it in, and then I'd have it. and leave it with the porter for the visiting room because I was behind glass.

And then when I would come out to be processed in, I would use it, and then you keister stash it, and then bring it in. And then the Derringers, same thing? Same thing, yeah. Okay, tell us what a Derringer, just for the camera. It's very small. Freedom Arms uses one.

They have a single shot, breakdown that you can use, 38. And it's stainless steel, 440 stainless steel. so the alloy is such that it doesn't have a lot of iron in it. But you insulate that the same way. It's a little bit bigger than a buck knife and width, so it's a little bit more difficult to keister stash. Sounds like it hurts, man. It does.

That's something that is a human being, you have to get over, because that's about survival. And we used to call it the vault, so that if you go to the vault with something, you know, it can be a stainless steel garrote, which we use for, of course, strangulation. It can be a gun. It can be a buckknife.

It can be a handcuff key. Or it can be all of the above. And how many shots does a little Derringer hold? Usually a single shot. Actually, they make one that is a five shot, but that's a different critter. When you put it in the vault, are you sticking it up high enough in you to where, if you get strip search, they're not going to find it? if you have to cough or if you have to cough, it's going to come out.

Well, that's understanding human anatomy. So you're looking at the anus of course, and that prior to entering that cavity, you have two spank through muscles. Right. And so it's a matter of going past those, and then the rectum holds it itself just like a vault. Right.

So the only problem there is given the weight, for instance, of a buck knife or a danger, it's going to put pressure on those sphincter muscles. And as such, you have to clench to hold that so that when you squat and cough, that it's value really in a strip search is psychological more than anything else. It really doesn't work. It's not like when a person bend over and coughs that, you know, whatever they have secreted within the rectum is going to pop out

That doesn't happen. So it's more psychological than anything else. And in a strip search... Oh, you mean it's psychological from the guard's perspective, making you strip search? It's just humiliation. Yes. Okay. So, you know, what the guard may look for if he's got any wits about him is telltale signs of petroleum jelly, the smell of lotion, something like that.

Okay. Wow. So you know how to keister a gun cough, but whilst holding it above your sphincter muscles? Yes. Okay. And was anybody shot in the course of doing this? Was anybody ever assassinated with a derringer? No.

We had two derringers at the time. Wendell Norris, Blue had one, and I had one. I retained mine until I stepped away from the brand. Blue used his in an escape attempt driving down to freeway he pulled it out on the two guards that were escorting him and they bailed out of the car

and the car went down to freeway and of course that foiled the escape attempt so those are the only two instances that I'm aware of and I had made what I referred to as zip guns you know in the hole

in 1975 they gave us TVs black and whites there was a 300-oam connection that transferred to a 75-oam coaxal connection and that would chamber a 22 round perfectly so it was a matter of gutting that acquiring a cross pin that most guards used in their class A's

and that would chamber 22 perfectly so you attached that cross-pin to the the coaxal connection, and then the nut came off, that chambered the 22 round. The pin was the barrel, and then you created from your plastics, which were usually cassette tapes. Back then it was eight-track cassettes. So you would carve the plastic to create a platform for that, and then you would take the three-piece razors that they allowed back then.

You put the screw in it. You'd hone that down. That became your firing pin, and you would put it. a cross piece on that from the clip on the pen, and that would be on a plastic slide with rubber bands, and it would fire. It wasn't very accurate, but if you were from you to me, it was effective. And that was used. That's genius. Not really. It's just, it's convict ingenuity. It's a form of genius. It can be considered that. We'll call it ingenious. All right. I'll buy you. You grant me that? Yeah. So it sounds like most of your studies and your higher education was in

pursuit of practical purposes? Depends on who you ask. But yes, yes. So going back to the mid-70s, you talk about building up the infrastructure of the brand. Can you talk about what some of that infrastructure was? Sure. To use Charlie's term, Helter Skelter would be the most appropriate. definitive answer.

So that you had no accountability is really what it comes down to. So you had a lot of things going on, drug trafficking, alcohol, prostitution, but the revenues generated from that typically were to purchase product that you would again sell, but you would clip that, and the membership would party. So, of course, they were all living large in their cells. Anything that they could have at that time they had. But mostly it was about the use of drugs. So that multiplies very quickly.

You had a very low membership at that time. But you figure within the course of a very short time, $100,000 is not much to go through by way of that habit, you know, when you're using large quantities of the drug on a daily basis. And then, of course, the party extends to your associates and those individuals that you're using. In other words, if I had associates and all the clerical positions within the institution so that I could monitor what was going on in the warehouse and otherwise in the kitchen

to bring commodities in like sugar for the stills. And otherwise, then you're going to kick them down. They're going to get a percentage of what you have coming in. But there was no organization to that. Right. It was just, here, bro, and you kick them down. Kick them down in Graham, kick them down an ounce, whatever it may be. That adds up very quickly.

So the infrastructure construct was to take what was going on and now apply accountability to it. So that a large portion of the revenues coming in were now going. into accounts that were then going to be used towards acquiring businesses on the street, houses for the family, vehicles for the family, bank accounts for the family, and so on. Right. So in the way that Boxer Enriquez sort of was on the forefront of taking La M.A. from just a prison gang to now having this synergy with the street and the taxing of drug dealers in greater Los Angeles.

Sounds like you kind of did that with the brand. I did, except what you're talking about with Renee is more sophisticated because of what it involves and what it entails. Sure. Not only by way of population, but population dynamics. And, you know, Renee came after me, and in those years, that taxation, became huge by way of generating revenues. So it was control over a populace of subsets of organized crime, if you will.

In my day, you didn't have those subsets. They were generated later through the Nazi lowriders, for instance, NLR, and PNI and other organizations. What's PNI? That PNI is out of Orange County and White Supremus Group. Okay. You know, that's how, you know, when we talk about the evolution of white supremacy within the brand, when I started, the white supremacy didn't exist. Right.

It evolved into that as a result of the creation of vangards for the Aryan Brotherhood. And those vanguards like the Nazi lowriders were put out front, and in essence, we're an expendable resource. So kind of like what the serenios are to the L'A. That's what the Nazi lowriders and groups like them are to the brand. It's the effective utilization of your resources. And in that you always have an expendable factor. That's just the reality of it.

And the Aaron Brotherhood is, even today, I believe, much smaller in numbers than Llemy. Yes. How many, at the time, in the 70s, how many members were there? Ten. Ten. Yes. In the whole damn organization. And were they all at Folsom?

No, you had a couple at San Quentin. Okay. Barry Mills, probably the most famous brand guy. Barron was at San Quentin, then he went into the feds. Okay. TD, certainly his equal by way of influence and otherwise, was at O'Folsom. Eventually, when they kicked TD and I out of Old Folsom and sent us to San Quentin, Barron had just left and gone into the feds, and then TD and I were at San Quentin.

But we only had, at that time, two members of that. at San Quentin. So with such small numbers, like minuscule numbers, why, first of all? I mean, I know there's more, probably more Latinos overall as a population in California prisons, but there's still a lot of white guys. Yeah. Why are your numbers so small? Is it because it's harder?

You have more rigorous standards for who becomes a member? It's not a question of rigorous standards. It really goes to the caliber of individual. And if you want to equate that the rigorous standards, you can. But it was more looking at the caliber of the individual. You know, that goes back to the idea of your question about infrastructure. So that in bringing an individual into the brand, that was based primarily on his physical prowess,

but also his ability to go to any institution that he might go to and control that institution by himself. You see, and the way that you do that is through currency. And the brand's number one currency is violence. You will not find another organization who is more violent. A matter of fact, they're infamous for it. Of course. And that's their foundation, really.

Is that currency is violence. Do you think that you were more violent, even at the time when you started with them, than the average gang member? I had the capacity for violence because of my training in martial arts and knife fighting in general. My elder taught me both. So not only that, but how to make a knife. So that's an attribute that would be looked upon favorably.

So, yeah, it certainly had nothing to do with a perceived intellect on my part, because that didn't exist at that time. As I began to read more and write more and educate myself, that evolved so that I was able to use that in developing that infrastructure. But the infrastructure itself, when it came into place, you went from the idea of the origins of the AB and why they formed and the caliber of individual associated with that to not requiring an individual that was recruited into the AB to get his bones as the term goes, blood in, blood out type thing. But rather to recruit that individual that had a capacity for clerical work or finance or trafficking or prostitution and focus on that and only that,

not put the knife in the hand of an individual that doesn't have the ability to use it, but still has value to the organization. Right. And that makes more sense in your eyes, right? Of course. like you don't have to be so violent anymore. You guys already made your stamp, your mark. Now let's get a guy in here that's a whiz with accounting. That's it. You know, it's the effective utilization of your resources.

Any business endeavor is going to incorporate that of necessity if they want to be successful. So that if you're only currency, if you only have one currency, you see, then when you expand on that, Now you're drawing from additional resources by way of currency. So now I have a very intelligent person that knows his way around the prostitution ring or the loan ring or whatever it is. And he's now viable as it relates to his service to the organization. And will you actually make him a member? Yes. Even though he's not really a killer.

It doesn't have to be a killer. You see, you have what we're developed, call him enforcement. So you have those individuals that, you know, he still needs to know how to fight. I taught a lot of men how to fight that didn't know how to fight. And you'll find in general that most men don't know how to fight. Right. You know, they know how to, what's the term, brawl maybe? Yeah.

At their best. Right. So, you know, a lot of the films that you see, you know, where these guys come up and they're fighting and they're stabbing somebody, it's not. very effective. You know, when you have to stab a man 101 times, you kill them, that's not efficiency. Right. See, and you're certainly not going to get away with it. Right. So the idea is, is that, you know, if you're going to do something like that, ideally, you know, you don't want it to come back on the organization. You don't want it to intrude or impede upon your business

activities. So you want to get away with it. You know, um, So you guys aren't sending people out on these, like, dummy missions, if you can help it? No. No, you're not. You want to remember that any time violence is involved, it intrudes upon business. And if business is your focus, as opposed to just violence for the sake of violence, or if you are indeed racist and you're only killing blacks because they're black, then business doesn't matter. And that's my point relative to the organization not being racist. Yeah.

You see? I mean, personally, of course, you had racist. You know, I've known black racists and Mexican racists. I mean, it's really irrelevant, you know, to business. Right. The brand is driven by business. Right. You said by the time you left Folsom, 1978 or something, you had like 3.5

million dollars. That is, well, it's incredible, first of all. That's, I mean, how does that work? And so far as the generation of that revenue? The generation of that revenue and where you store it. You don't store it. You invest it. There you go.

It's like any other investment or any other business that invest in its infrastructure. You know, there are a number of ways to do that, not the least of which is the stock market, but also legitimate enterprise. You know, that's taking a page out of the Italian Mafias organization. So it's the investment of that, but also the investment towards the family structure into resources necessary to ensuring that the families are taken care of, provided for,

have houses to live in, vehicles to drive, bank accounts to draw from. You know, the children are being cared for, and so on. You know, that's a warrior's first responsibility. You know, people think that to be a warrior is, you know, that ability for physical prowess. It's not, you know. Within the context that we're talking about now, it's to provide and protect. So that really is some old school Italian mafia kind of thinking is everybody's family

is careful. Yeah, it's, you know, its origins aren't really with the Italian mafia. You can go back to Machiavelli, you can go back to Sun Su and Van Klauswitz and Nietzsche and you name it,

you're going to find elements, you know, the Ubermensch as it relates to Nietzsche and what that means. Bushido, as it relates to the Japanese, and what that means. Masuchi and, you know, his school of two swords. Those are all elements

that carry over into what it is to be a war. and, you know, the Italian mob doesn't have a handle on that, never has had. They were perhaps one of the first ones, not the first. You had your Irish mobs, you know, in New York prior to the Syrians coming in and establishing themselves who had that same infrastructure. So, no, but the idea is that, believe it or not, it's about community. And it's important. And what kind of businesses, legitimate businesses, were you investing in?

Boat manufacturing would be one of the first ones that come to mind, that immediately comes to mind down in Long Beach. And, you know, taking individuals at parole and putting them to work, you know, in that. And so, you know, building that, you have meatpacking houses, slaughterhouses, different things, you know, that the Italian mob utilized. Same thing. You have, when you align yourselves with certain individuals, particularly within the Jewish community, now you're getting into merchants and what that merchandise is, whether it be jewelry diamonds or textiles,

whatever it is. But it's about investments. And then, of course, the stock market itself, you know, blue chip stocks and otherwise. Tell us about the rackets. You're bringing, you're obviously making tons of money with. the stills, with the prison liquor. Narcotic trafficking is your biggest. But you're also making it in prostitution, loan sharking.

You know, that loan sharking can go outside families of individuals that are incarcerated. So at a pretty high percentage. So you're lending money to people on the street. Oh, of course. That's incredible. Yeah. And what are you charging them? What's a interest rate on that?

It depends on the family dynamic. So it's important to be mindful of that. You never want to put a person in a situation where they're unable to repay it. The thing about that is that there's a barter system associated with that that I always thought was important. So that if the family is not able to pay it, now this individual owes me, now he's going to do what I need him to do to pay off his debt for his family. His family will continue to be taken care of in that, but now he's working for the organization. Right.

And as such, that's pretty wide open. You know, that can be a torpedo mission. That can be any number of things. That can be bringing product into the facility, utilizing his family in that capacity. There are a number of things that come into play. And did you guys have your own narcotics sources, or were you mostly dealing with the Mexicans for that?

Or did you have your own outside connections? Only the Mexicans as it relates to black tar. You know, and Joe Morgan had excellent connections as it relates to that, and it was the primary supplier of black tar in that capacity. Methamphetamine came through our association with the Hells Angels. So Sonny Barger, an old friend and others, you know, they were paying taxes inside at that time, which is another way of saying they were paying protection. Right.

But many Hell's Angel members became Aryan Brotherhood members. Then when they would go back out, they'd put their Hell's Angel patch back on. But there was a lot of development in that area. So methamphetamine, so by way of example at Old Folsom, you would pay a guard who was making minimum wage at that time. They had no union to speak of, and they certainly didn't have peace officer status. So to give that guard $10,000 a pop to bring product in was a lot of money. You see, and to pay the warden $50,000 a pop to allow his guard to bring that in, you see, that's how it works.

So that's the dynamic at play. Did you set that up? Did you go to the warden at Fulham? Yeah. And that is something that I always find enviable, is how you work up the balls to make that pitch. I don't know that it really requires that. It is, as long as you keep it within a business structure.

See, it's looking, now oftentimes it isn't a business. say that we wouldn't use extortion and did. I can think of one lieutenant that, you know, he was a horrohound. And so, you know, he liked those horrors. So set him up in a hotel and you film it. And now we got you. And he's married. So, and he's also, you know, at a, that middle level echelon within the department. Right. So, you know, that becomes extortion. And so you do have that in play. In this case, with the warden no. It was simply a matter of economics. How did you get to him? Tell us about how you did that. I invited him to my cell and poured him a shot of wild turkey. And so, and the conversation began from there. Wow. Yeah. And so you paid him

50 Gs to basically allow you guys to pay the guards. And now things are rocking. Yeah. You'll find that most of your corruption, even to this day, is linked to either a liaison to the warden or something similar. Is that right? Oh, yes. So it's not just a one-off with a rogue guard. Back then, I could approach the warden. He would walk the tear. You see, he would walk the yard.

So he got to know personally. So I would say, hey, Art, want you come on in for a minute. Let me talk to you. And so they'd racked the door and he would come in and he'd sit down and I kept a supply of whiskey and myself. And I also had CB radios in there. But so, you know, I'd pour him a drink and then we'd talk business. And back then you could do that because you didn't have the oversight that you have now. And the warden, you know, if he told somebody get off the tier, they got off the tier.

You know, if he wanted to walk hand in hand with me, he could without any problems, without any repercussions, without any scrutiny. Now, no, that's not the case. You have liaisons, and they protect the warden. He doesn't even walk the yard. He doesn't mark the tier unless there's an entire entourage with him. And that has to do with the vicarious liability. Yeah.

So, you know, most of the things that exist today are the product of, vicarious liability and the lawsuits associated with that. Right, right. And the behavior of inmates during that era, that too. There's a difference between an inmate and a convict. A convict, I'm sorry. It's all right, you don't need to apologize. I'm just making that distinction because it's an important one.

In dealing the way that we dealt with the administration back then, you were a convict and recognized as such, and were actually trusted as such. If you gave your word, that was good enough. When I stepped away, you know, I didn't throw everybody to law enforcement. You see, I didn't give up the warden. I didn't give up to guards. And no value in that.

And I wouldn't do that. You see, when I stepped away, I did cooperate with law enforcement, but that was toward those individuals who were taking innocent life, in my opinion, killing women and children, elders. I don't hold with that. I'll never hold with that. But insofar as, you know, tell us who the family members are. No, that's not going to happen.

Tell us what the warden did. That's not going to happen. You guys made money together. Yes. And that's how you're going to keep it. Business. Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely no value in destroying that man's life or his family or otherwise because of what was occurring behind the iron gates. Yeah. Yeah. And plus, look at what he helped you do. Yes. You're a wealthy man now at 26 years old. But it's more than that. You gave you word.

That's right. You see. And that's important. And the only thing that would allow you to deviate from that would be something so severely at odds with your moral code and your moral compass that you would have to usurp that. And I did. And I have no regrets about that. I'm still doing it. So at this time, you know, 1977, 78, when you're running Folsom.

Had you killed anybody in prison? I've never killed anybody. In prison. Otherwise. You see, that's the thing that people don't understand about me. Even my commitment offense, I wasn't the shooter on that. You see, I'm the one that made it happen, but I wasn't the shooter. Okay.

So in prison, I never had the necessity of taking life. And my skill set is such that I didn't need to, even under the gun. Oh, I don't know if you can answer this. If you can't, excuse me for crossing a line or a boundary. Don't worry about that. Did you ever give an order? Did you ever have to give an order? I've never given an order in anybody that I wouldn't do myself.

So anything that I ever gave an order on, I was involved in it. So if I said this needs to be done, I'd say you, you, and you come with me. And then you engage. Mm-hmm. You know, I've never assassinated anybody. Every altercation I was ever involved in was head up. One exception. I had three individuals who kidnapped a 12-year-old white girl, and they were black, and held her at their house.

Actually, during Christmas, over Christmas, sodomized her, raped her. I initiated the stabbing of them myself. I was manicled, leg irons on, and I got the guard who was a cousin to one of our members to let me in the tunnel when they were going to court, and he didn't take the restraints off me, but I had a knife, and I stabbed all three. And I initiated that, and I was trying to kill him.

I didn't succeed, but they did have to be medevaced out. That's the only exception. Where was that? That was in the San Bernardino County Jail. Oh, wow. Okay. And so yeah, I mean, that's an interesting point is that, you know, the Aryan Brotherhood and just the white guys in prison in general really do not tolerate sex offenders within their ranks, if they can help it, at least real ones, right? Yet at that time, you're running prostitution in prison.

Did you see any kind of contradictions in that? No, I don't. When you have those individuals that of their own volition are engaged in that activity, there's a distinction between that, someone who comes of their own volition as opposed to somebody who's turned out. Okay, so you weren't turning people out.

No, okay. I don't do that. You see, it's not a question of, I need to manifest horrors, so you, you and you, you're going to be a whore. No, it's not like that. With those individuals who have that inclination and all the proclivities that go along with that, then, of course, you're now going to become a part of this stable.

And, you know, that's one of your greatest sources of counterintelligence. You see? So, Pillow Talk. By the way, you have a pimp cane. You have a very nice pimp cane right there. I don't know that I would call that a pimp cane. I'm just kidding. That's elk.

and that's American Blackthorn and that's mule deer. It's absolutely beautiful. Did you make it yourself? No, it was made for me. Oh, my God, it's gorgeous. You just said stable, so I wanted to make a pimp joke. Yeah. Right.

So, first of all, who wants to sell their body in prison as a convict? Who's doing it? Yeah, you want to remember that one of the primary factors associated with prison is survival. And survival for back then just referred to a, is homosexual as opposed to LGBT community. He's just a gay guy. He's a fag.

Right. So he wants to survive. So given his orientation and his choice relative to that, he's going to use his body as a commodity. And that's going to keep him safe. He's going

to be protected. And he's going to have everything that he wants. Okay. And are you simply just protecting these individuals? Are you collecting from them? Like, where do you guys come in? Well, they're in a stable. They're protected. All their needs are provided for. And sometimes they're even paid. Okay. You know, depending on the situation. But if they're providing information or counterintelligence as it relates to the guards, you know, you have those that get off the hook.

You know, I've known instances where a girl would orally copulate a guard, hold the semen in her mouth, and then collect that and use the DNA to prosecute that guard. And as an advantage towards leaving the prison system going into the law enforcement community and saying, I've got this information on this guard, that type thing. So that's a rare instance. Right. But for the most part, they're protected and as such, seen as a resource. But for me, I used them primarily for intelligence and counterintelligence.

So I would find out various conduits, feed that conduit information, see how it came back to me, and so on. Okay. How many, at Folsom at this time, how many prostitutes did you guys have in your stable? It varied, depending on the... transient characteristic associated with moves, blocks, but

typically you can count on a dozen in that. That's not much for a population of 3,000. Yeah, right. Geez, they were busy. They were. My goodness. With the guards, too? Oh, yes. Male guards? Yes, there were no female guards back then.

That changed in San Quentin. Okay, so why were you transferred to San Quentin? Well, when they'd brought the metal detectors into Old Folsom and then I'd learned how to beat them, when they brought the metal detectors in, they brought the National Guard in with minesweepers and metal detectors, and they cleared out all the weapons, I mean, everywhere. They found them all.

And so what Black Panthers and BGF did is they went to the kitchen and they got steak bones. They had a butcher shop there. And, you know, some of those T-bones, for instance, can be pretty long. They'd sharpen those down and they'd harden them with floor wax. So they can be lethal. But those were their weapons. But what they didn't know is that I had already had Charlie's girls bringing me the buck knives. I had two in.

and then how to beat the metal detectors so they didn't get the buck knives. So that when we went out to the yard and we engaged in combat, the presumption was is that there were no actual knives. And so that in that particular day, Wendell and I stood back to back

with two buck knives and T.D. on his own was on the mainline at that time. So he killed a man at the canteen that morning and Wendell and I stabbed 16 BGF and Black Panther members. It was a blood bath. Two on 16. Yeah.

So, no, it was actually two on more than that, but 16 is how many we stabbed. And because you guys had the buck knives. Yeah. Okay. But they had to bring the fire truck out in the yard to worst the blood out. There was so much blood.

It was a blood bath. Wow. And so as a result of that, they didn't take Wendell, But they took TD, myself, Spotsberg, and Bobby Moore. And they put us in a car, and they shot us to San Quentin. And so, you know, when we got to San Quentin, that was an entirely different thing in place there.

We only had two members there, and there was nothing really in place by way of infrastructure or otherwise. It was a stronghold for the Mexican Mafia. We had some associates there, and Mo Farrell, who was a black-hand. man, mafia, shot me a kite and said he was going to hit Hawaiian John, who was an associate in the morning, told him don't do it. He did it anyway.

And so T.D. and I went out to the yard and beat the hell out of Moe and a few other Emmy. And that created the potential for a war between the Emmy and Mexican Mafia, I mean, in the Erie Brotherhood. So we had a lot of other stuff going on, too. not the least of which was the assassination of Margo Compton, her two six-year-old twin daughters and her boyfriend. I'm not familiar with that. Okay, well, that was a situation that was ordered out of Old Folsom by Buck Garrett, 1997.

He had sent, well, Margo Compton was a witness for the feds, and against Buck Garrett. She worked in one of his massage partners. And so she testified against him for the feds. He got a four-year sentence. The feds hit her out in Oregon. She got a hold of her connect in the Bay Area. She was a meth head.

And, of course, the connect turned right around and gave her a location to the Hells Angels. But Garrett sent two shooters, Psycho and Bug Eye Bob McClure, up there. They went into a suicide door. Her boyfriend, Gary, was on the couch. They capped him in the head. They went into the bedroom. And Margot had two six-year-old twin daughters.

And they wrapped their arms around their teddy bear. They held Margo and they shot the little girls in the head. Then they shot Margo. The shooter on that was one guy Bob McClure. He was in San Quentin at the time that TD and I arrived. So my focus was on killing him. Unfortunately, the situation with the Mexican mafia came up. And because that impacted upon the whole organization,

it had to take priority. So I made arrangements for me to go down to L.A. County where Joe Morgan was housed at the time in the jail there, and I was going to meet with him, and we were going to talk about this potential for war. On the way down there, I had an individual who got unruly, and I had to put him in the hospital, so they took him off the bus and put him in the hospital.

They wouldn't let me into L.A. County jail, because when I got into it with this individual, the deputy threw down on me with this weapon, and I wouldn't stop until I was finished with what I was doing. I was chained up, and this individual was. But I'd slipped my chains and used that chain with lock on the end to beat them down. And so when I got to LA, they were upset with me. So they wouldn't let me get off at LA.

They took me over to Chino Palm Hall, which was the hole there. And ultimately we brought Joe over to Palm Hall where we negotiated the terms of a truce. And so that was really what was really what was going on at San Quentin at the time, but because I left San Quentin and went down to Palm Hall, then we had a whole new dynamic there at Palm Hall. Okay. So you didn't spend much time at San Quentin? No, it, maybe a year.

Okay. Yeah. Are you glad that you didn't go to war with the LMA, considering you guys were outnumbered? That was irrelevant. As a point of business, it would have been foolhardy. And Joe realized that. Well, because the MA and the MA and the brand are known for being allies. They are allies and always have been.

But when you have a situation like that where they publicly get beaten down on the yard by the brand, now that infringes upon their reputation and the projection, their business, because if the brand's going to do that, who else can do it? Is the perception. Right. So it's something that has to be rectified and was. Okay. So, you know, the issue here is that a member of the Emmy was told not to do something and went contrary to that anyway.

And that's what facilitated the problem. Did you have to give up anything, pay any money? I mean, because you guys went out there. No. You put your hands on another made guy. Yeah. Okay. No.

In fact, the guy that I put my hands on was. killed. So, you know, that in a few other killings resolve the problem. Right. But nobody out of the brand. Right. Okay. Wow. So now it's the 80s and you're at Palm Hall. So that's Chino. Yeah. Colloquially known as Chino. Yeah. What was that like? What was Chino like? Palm Hall was off the hook. So you had two tiers. We had second tier and the third tier. There was a cement slab over the first tier and that's where they kept protective custody and others. But the second tier was all brand, third tier was all Emmy.

And so we went to the yard together. They gave us, there was different halls, what they call halls within the facility of Chino itself, reception center. So you had units. And Medrome was the last one and they actually had a yard, physical yard where they were allowed to visit. Well, we took that over. And now we were using that to have contact visits with our family and our associates. So we had a lot of smuggling going on at that time. We had a lot of babies born at that time. And a lot of drug trafficking going on at that time. We also use that opportunity to develop the infrastructure.

So we had approximately six, seven individuals who were all brand members now. And the idea come up of forming a commission in California. And we did. And I was elected to that commission along with TD. And it went back and forth between Wendell and Bobby Crane at that time. And then we went into the feds and did the same thing with a federal commission. Okay, explain the commission. The commission was that you, the entire body of the Aryan Brotherhood,

both state and federal, elected a three-man commission to oversee the activities of the organization. So they would now determine who would come in as a member and what the activities of the organization would engage. And on what level and who would be in charge of them and so on. So it's like the officers of a corporation or the board of directors. Right. Depending on how you choose to look at it. As you know, in a corporation, you can be on the board as well as be an officer. And that includes the feds and state.

Yes. Okay. So at this time, I mean, Barry Mills is in the feds. Have they started these big investigations, these federal investigations, inside of California prisons yet? They have, but only as it relates to the Neuster Familia. They were the first to be targeted by the feds for RICO, but not as it relates to the brand.

The Hells Angels had been targeted, but they had been unsuccessful in their attempts to RICO prosecute the Hells Angels. They actually lost. not so with the New Wester Familia. But the interesting thing about with the New Estre Familia is that in their indictments, they brought administrators within the prison into the fold by way of being members or associated with the New Western Familia. And that was the first time that had happened in that,

and they were quite successful in it. The prosecutions against the Arian Brotherhood didn't come until much later. And that's when a lot of the publicity associated with the murders of people on the street, as well as people inside became public knowledge. And they realized that they need to do something to essentially attempt to cut the head off the snake. So at what point does the brand go from this highly profitable prison organization, taking money off of yards through all these rackets to, expanding onto the street. That would have occurred really functionally in the 80s. So you figure it just started really when I made the decision to step away.

Really? So you didn't have a part in that? No. No, I set up the infrastructure. And that was one of the reasons when I stepped away that I made the decision to work with long. enforcement. I was responsible for evolving, if you will, the infrastructure of the brand. So I felt they had a responsibility to address it in some capacity. That capacity represented the taking of innocent lives. And that was obviously strictly against your moral code. Oh, yes. Was that written

into the laws of the organization itself? There are no written laws. I hear people talk about that all the time. You know, even having a brand on you, like the shamrock on my finger, you know, that was iffy. You know, you didn't allow individuals coming in. You see it now. They've got the shamrock on their chest with a 666 or swastika or whatever it is. Back then, we didn't advertise.

See, once you were validated and they knew you were who you were, then it really didn't matter. But if you could maneuver within the system, if you could, what we refer to as a sleeper, then that was advantageous to the organization. You were obviously not a sleeper at this point. No. When you hit Chino, you were validated? Yes. Okay.

But you were on the main line? No, in the hole. Okay. You're still in the hole. Yeah. It sounds like you guys had the run of things. Yes. If you control the whole visiting area, essentially.

I'll give you an absurd example. We would have visiting on the weekends, Saturday and Sunday, and that yard I was telling you about, Madrone. And so we would go out and families would come in and they would bring whatever they wanted, really, baby bottles full of whiskey and you name it. So the part of the part of the thing. Hardy would go on all day. And because I didn't drink or use drugs, by the end of the day, I always brought a flat

cart with me. And what I would do is I would pick up the unconscious members of the M.E. and the brand and load them onto that cart and push them back, put them on my shoulder, carry them up to their cell, and put them in their cell. That's how absurd it was. Yeah. The lieutenant that ran our unit used to write as Harley Davidson down center corridor. I mean...

Try that one now. Yeah. Wow. Not happening. So, in any rate, and that's oftentimes what people really don't understand when I talk about prison and the way prison was back then. You know, they see it within the lens of today or even the last couple of decades, and it doesn't apply at all. Yeah. So, you know, when you talk about having a head-up confrontation with somebody where you could be in an eye fight, you know, that doesn't exactly.

exist anymore. Everything in hours about assassination. So much, much different. So at this time, you're supposed to go see the board. You're supposed to, you've got a seven-to-life sentence. By the time you got to Chino, Palm Hall, had you been to see the board of parole yet? Yes. Okay. Yes. And you were obviously denied. Yes. Did, had you thought about? trying to get out at this point? No. Okay. So that hasn't, you haven't become conscious of that yet. You're still living in the moment. No, it's a situation where when I did make the decision to step away, the difficulty in

that was that you, by way of example, when they, when they brought me out, they put me in a big room and that room was full of law enforcement. ATF, FBI, state agency, sheriffs, and so on, all wanted Intel. And that's when I made the decision that that's not happening. As it relates to this, this and this, if innocent life was taken, you have my cooperation. You know, you want intelligence? Okay, we can talk about that. You know, again, that responsibility for building it. So, you know, when you think about that, it's just a shift in the paradigm, nothing more. I really couldn't give them anything that the brand couldn't take and just shift that paradigm and move into a new arena. that's not that difficult.

So, but it is, you know, they wanted to know how I beat metal detectors. They wanted to know, you know, how certain things occur. And I didn't have a problem with that. So I would use myself as an example, and I would do training films for them, you know, to facilitate educating law enforcement. Then I made that step into the arena of the public and educating the public. I went on a lecture tour, much as Renee did. What year did you leave the brand? 83.

Okay. And why did you choose to do that? Because I won't condone the taking of innocent life. Can you tell us what that was about? I told you about Margo Compton. Right. The other one was Steve Barnes and his father. And so the issue there was is that once we had formed the commission,

the discussion became whether or not to kill. We couldn't get to Steve Barnes. So the issue was to kill his wife and his daughter, his parents. I couldn't believe the conversation I was hearing. This went totally contrary to so-called warrior code. And what was happening is that there were a couple individuals who had killed a guy on the yard there at Palm Hall and they were being prosecuted. Steve stepped away from the brand and began cooperating with law enforcement on that case.

So, like I said, because they couldn't get to him, then the idea was take out his family. And so in that discussion, there was a vote on it, a three-man vote, and I voted against it, and the other two outvoted me. So it became set. With that, I actually looked for a way, I used this in my training, actually, but I looked for a way to redivert everyone's attention. So I planned an escape attempt out of San Bernardino, brought Joe Morgan and all of the brand

and the Emmy over to San Bernardino County Jail. I facilitated cutting out the doors of all the cells and the back bars. And we all went out and we're standing out there and cutting through the last bars on the window that went out to the river, had a contact waiting for us. We're going to Belize.

And just then, A young officer had it in mind to bring an explorer in to show him around. But in that, when they come in, I'd monitored the whole thing. When they come in one side, they have ten minutes to come around to the other side and check in with control. And if they don't do that, then there's a response as a result thinking something's wrong. And I knew that. So when he came in, of course, you know, everybody wanted to kill him and the explorer. I told him you're not doing that, everybody back in your cell.

So I sent everybody back to their cell. And, of course, I stayed out in a tier with this young deputy and this explorer, told him, call your watch commander. So watch commander come in. And the interesting thing about that is that just hours prior to that, the watch commander come to my cell, I was in the in-cell. And where I'd cut out the bars, he put his hand on that and was telling me, well, I was told you guys were intelligent,

him, but you're just a bunch of thugs. And I said, yes, sir, we are. And so he went on his way, and a couple hours later, we made that escape attempt. So now he come back to thank me for not killing his officer and that explorer because he knew that could have happened. But I wasn't going to allow that to happen. First of all, how were you able to get all of these heads of the MA, Joe Morgan, and all of these big-time gang leaders?

How are you able to get them down to San Bernardino County? It's something that I developed starting at the time that I brought Joe Morgan over from Los Angeles County Jail to Palm Hall. The issue there was utilizing cases that people had, active cases in that county, to bring witnesses over. So we would subpoena them. And through the subpoena process, bring them in. Now everybody's together. And so you make this mass move. looked at an escaped attempt having somebody from the outside come into the prison and cut the

outside windows out and then the bars, we would cut our bars out and then go out that way. But the San Bernardino County Jail was, I think, more practical in that. How were you guys, what did you guys use to cut open the bars? Axel blades. And how were those procured? The same way you do knives or guns, you know, you smuggle them in and beat the metal detectors, of course. Oh, in the vault? Oh, yeah.

You vault those. You keester those. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So what thwarted this attempt? The officer and this explorer were coming in while we were at the back window getting ready to leave.

There wasn't enough time to cut out that last bar. I see. And I knew it. And what was the plan? And kind of speaks to the man you are, if I may. You could have killed these guys and fled. You made the escape. I don't think so.

No, that's a misnomer. The whole idea I shut it down was because I knew there wasn't enough time to get that bar out. So to kill them would have just been futile. Right. I mean, why kill these individuals? When you're not going to get the bar out, they're going to respond. You're going to have to deal with this response team. you see, and you're not going to get out that window.

What was the plan if you could have gotten out? We had a contact set up. This window overlooked the river. To go out the river, come up the other side, we'd be picked up. We had a boat waiting to go to Belize, and we would have gone to Belize, and then from there restructured. Do you think you would have restructured as in like organized crime? Organized crime.

Yeah. In Belize. Yeah. Why Belize? It was isolated. no extradition policy and you could stay low-key. We had a number of individuals with us, of course, that spoke Spanish.

And so it was a logical choice. Yeah. Yeah, and you could have spread out into Central America, especially at that time. Well, look at your cartels today. Yeah. You see, and back then they were just formulating. So, you know, that potential existed relative to the cocaine trade.

and, you know, now it's the methamphetamine trade, you know, coming through from China into Mexico and then to the cartels. Yeah. And then into the United States. So had your decision to leave precluded this escape attempt? Your decision to leave the brand? I actually developed, yeah, yeah, to answer your question, yes. You know, I had it in mind.

I mean, my elders had come to see me prior to coming down. to Palm Hall and essentially busted my bones, told me, look, this is not the way you were raised, choose. And so that was in my mind, and that was already there. But truth be told, had it not been for the plan and the idea of taking innocent life, I probably would have stayed with the organization, regardless of what my oldest told me. But that had planted the seed and so that had planted the and certainly that was there. But with the killing of Steve Barnes' father, you know, that was kind of like the, you know, escaped attempt didn't work. The execution of Steve Barnes' father was carried out. So they went ahead with it. Yeah. And I said, that's it. So I stepped away. And how do you defect? How does that, how did

that work? I called the lieutenant down to the back door of my cell in San Quentin, which I'd gone back to. Okay. and said, I need you to get a hold of somebody in Sacramento. I'm going to step away. They didn't believe it because I was in control. And so they didn't believe it. So, you know, they brought in polygraph examiners and, you know, now they want intelligence,

they want this, they want that. So I gave them San Quentin. And so far as that intel, and so far as weapons, and I had a gun and different things. And, of course, they didn't like the fact that I had a gun. But that adds credibility to what you're doing, of course. And so then it was a matter of, you know, when they found out that I had defected, they took me up to New Miller Hospital, put me in a wing by myself.

And then when it became clear to the brand that I had defected, they said they received intel that they were going to rush the hospital to kill me. And so they moved me out to a one-of-a-kind unit into Hatchpee called a restricted housing unit. and Mundo was there. And there's only six of us in this unit. And it was run by the special services unit. And oversight was provided by the associate warden and no other contact. So there's no getting to you there.

No. Were you required to give up info? Because I know back then I've heard that it was a lot harder to to PC up, as they say. Yeah, no, I don't think you're required to give up info. You know, the debriefing process, I never went through a debriefing process.

I actually did that with other law enforcement agencies, you know, towards their intel gathering. The main thing they were interested in was my counterintelligence and how I use that. And the main thing that I pointed out to them was their lack of sharing between

agencies and how that placed them in a disadvantage and placed me at an advantage. So then it was a matter of instruction relative to that. Metal detection, no big thing. When you say counterintelligence, what do you mean by that? Well, it's not something that typically comes up when you talk about gangs. But it is something that comes up within the construct of organized crime. And it seemed prudent to me to utilize resources that

law enforcement were using to identify them and then feed them misinformation. The problem with that is that when I stepped away, that misinformation came back to haunt me because they now thought this was the intel that they had and it was all false. And I tried to point that out to them and we got this. I said, yeah, you know, here's how I gave it to him.

Yeah. You see, and then they finally snapped and realized, but it was, you know, the killing of guards is really what brought it home for them to understand that what I was telling them, was the truth, you know, and that I was legitimate about my desire to step away and contend with this idea of taking innocent life. So in that context, Tommy Silverstein and Clay killed two guards, actually three up in Marion, Illinois. But I told them that was going to happen, and they disregarded it.

How did you know that? Because they had to vote on it? they had to ask the commission? No. It was, see, it need-to-know basis. So on a need-to-know basis, you know these things are coming, but you're not handling it because it's in the feds. You're not voting on it because it's in the feds.

But you still know about it because of the repercussions associated with it. And there were repercussions. You know, the killing of brand members, you know, head shots on the yard, otherwise setting them up. Right. You see that retaliation. Mm-hmm. But the rule had always been, you don't put.

hands on staff. Right. You know, because of the repercussions. So it's bad for business. In this case, I told them this was coming. The whole dynamic was changing. It was going to change in the state too. In my opinion, it did.

You know, they did drive-by shootings on guards on the freeway and their homes and so on. In this case, it was in the feds and they took the life. Tommy Silverstein was having problems with the guard. And so when the guard brought him up, he was in the guards, he was having a guard. out. Tommy backed up to a cell that took the cuffs off, gave him a bone crusher. He butchered the man on the tear. His son was also a guard standing at the grill gate watching his father being slaughtered. And Tommy cut his head off and rolled the head to the father to the son. And that changed the perception and created a dynamic shift in the paradigm within law enforcement.

Now they knew that this was real. Unfortunately, those guards had to die to facilitate that. And you warned them that this exact thing was going to happen? Yes. And they even polygraphed me on it. Wow. Yeah. So even before, had you dropped out at the time that you warned them? Yes.

Okay. How were you able to know that was going to happen if you had already dropped out? No, it was happening. The dynamic was happening before I dropped out. Oh, I see. So you were... I had the information. Okay.

that these guys, that Tommy Silvestry was... The guards were going to be killed. Oh, wow. And the feds. And it changed everything. That's how come you know it's going to come to the state. Starts in the feds, but it's going to come to the state because of the repercussions. Once that starts, once the retaliation starts and life is taken, it's a life for a life.

Or three lives for a life. You see? Wow. That's how it works. And does it remain that way to this day? Yes. So guards are legitimate targets now if they, if it's seen as like retaliatory? Not just that, not just the retaliatory factor.

But if they're infringing, if they're encroaching on the revenue gathering of the organization. Wow. And obviously none of that was okay with you. No. That, to me, is taking of innocent life. Yeah. I know a lot of guards, even to this day. You know, and a lot of people on law enforcement, they're just doing their job.

You know, the same way I as a gang member of doing my job. But there's a line there, in my opinion, that you don't cross. That's a family man. That's somebody's father. That's somebody's uncle, so on. You see? If they're in the mix, as it relates to the gang, that's an entirely different thing. Right.

But they're not in the mix. They're a civil servant working on behalf of the public to provide a service, a civil service. If they're bringing in stuff for you? Different. They're in the mix. Okay, but these guards that were killed at Marion weren't in the mix? No. Yeah, that's wrong.

It is. Um. And that's not a moral judgment. It's an observation. Yeah. You see? That's wrong. Correct.

So you're debriefed and- No, it didn't debrief. Or you, what's the word I'm looking for? Well, what they did was is that they took me to to Hatchpee and in that special unit there, and And then we had the Stephen Barnes case, and I went and testified in that case. Then we had the Margo Compton case, and I went and testified in that case. As like an expert witness, or as an actual, you had actual information? I had actual information.

Okay. And I did testify in other cases where I was an expert witness, you know, on the brand. When it came at me about the RICO prosecution, I declined. The feds came to you. Yeah. Okay. Why did you decline that? Because I knew that the individuals that they were using as witnesses to testify again.

the brand and testify about their alleged activities were lies. And I was aware of it. What was being said, what the intel was and otherwise, and I told them that. I said, the individual you are using are lying. I'm not going to be a part of that. It's that simple. So they said, well, we'll consider you on our team anyway. And I said, no, you won't.

No, you won't. And so they attempted to discredit me as a result of that. You know, by saying that I had made the allegation that the brand was not racist, and that discredited me. But this was made by an individual that now we're in the 90s and knew nothing about the 70s. Right. So. Okay. So what did this kind of cooperation do for you in terms of the parole board?

Nothing. I wouldn't allow it to be considered. Pro board didn't know anything about it. Wow, is that right? When I stepped away, I did an additional 38 years. I wanted to ask you that. So where did all that time come from? You never, like, when you're at Tadjupi, you're not getting in trouble anymore.

Yeah, no, I'm not, but I'm not interested in 30 pieces of silver. I'm not interested in giving up information to get out. That's not why I did it. I did it because I believed it was the right thing to do. Again, that's a warrior's code. Yeah. You see, so I'll do my time. You know, and that's not why I'm doing this.

You know, I wouldn't even allow it to be discussed. Wow. So, and, you know, I had to address that in going before juries. Same thing. And I would tell them the same thing. I'm not doing this to get out. No, this isn't about going before the board or I want out or... There's been no deal made with the DA.

No deal made, no special treatment. Actually, my life became miserable as a result because now I got dirty guards after me and I got the gangs after me and anybody else in between that they can get to come at me. You know, last attempt on my life was in 2015. And that was in a sensitive need yard. What happened? The individual received a call from Pelican Bay, Emmy. And, you know, he was going to use a bone crusher. But they told him don't use it.

he'll take it away from you. And so he used a box cutter instead, closer to the hand. And but I was work, I'd worked a double shift. I was sitting on a bench helping a guy that was going to go to the board the next morning. I was tired. Too tired. He came up from behind me, did a roundhouse kick, took me off the back of the bench. I went semi-unconscious.

I couldn't see, but I could still hear. Grab me by the hair, reached in to cup my throat. I blocked it. He cut my ear off. Dr. Sowed it back on is why you can still see it. Choked up on my hair again, came in deeper, I think, to get the windpipe. I blocked it again. He got the back of my throat at the anterior artery, missed it by one millimeter.

And the third time when he choked up, I got my eyesight back, took the weapon away from him. And in a nanosecond, it occurred to me I was going to break his neck. But I heard my wife's voice. And she said, no, Scott. And so I had been advocating and preaching nonviolence. Right. So, you know, it was a matter of practicing what you preach. But again, it's that warrior, it's that true power that we talked about at the beginning,

where the true power is actually letting a man that you've bested who you can kill, letting him live. Yes. That's like real mercy. It is, but it's, you have to be able to see and know instinctually because as men, we function off instinct, not intuition. That's for women. But as it relates to our instinct, the idea is that do I need to take this life? And you don't have to think about that. It comes second nature. If that's your training, if that's innate within you, then it's not

something you think about. In this case, it took my wife's voice to trigger that. Your intuition. My wife's voice. That's right. Wow. That's incredible. That's so, that shows you the state of certain inmates. I mean, because he would have been caught for that. Yeah, I mean, it was right out in the day room.

And, you know, staff responded. And one staff member was standing up on the second tier watching the whole thing and actually documented it. Yeah. And said exactly what happened and that I took the weapon away and stopped there. And you're in, by 2015, you're no spring chicken. No. I'm 65 at that time. Yeah.

So, yeah. My uncle always said, look, if a young man tries to fight me, he's fucked because I know I'm going to get hurt. I'm trying to kill him. Yeah. So what were some other, you said, dirty guards tried to fuck with you, trying to get at you? How did that? Set up numerous times, you know, they'd bring you into a unit, put you in. a cell. Suddenly your cell door opens and two other cell doors open and four guys come out

or two guys come out, whatever. Now you're on the tier. The gunners suddenly disappeared, no longer to be seen. And so you've got to fight for your life. And you had to do that. Oh yeah. Against four guys. Oh, yeah. With what? My hands. And they've got steel with them? Not always, no. Okay. No. Not always. But I'm sure they're planning to try to beat you until you're... Yeah, they just stomp you out. if they can. Now, that dynamic, those guards, that's the brand getting to them?

Yes. But also, administrators who think that I'm going to tell on them, you see, they want to quiet me. Because your association with them still persists? Like, they're still... Well, I still got all that in the memory bank, and there's a whole lot of it.

But I told you, that's not my function. Right. I have no interest in that. They eventually understood that and left me alone. Wow. But it took a minute. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, so that's obviously not as fun living that way as it was at Folsom. No, I mean, I actually had associate wardens and a captain that were members of the Hells Angels. And so when I was going up to testify against the Hells Angels, you know, they tried a number of things. They tried to discredit me. They won the associate warden went up and testified for the defense, but I was incredible. You know, they called me into their office one day, and they had my wife on a speaker phone. And just then two Hills Angels roared up on their motorcycles with the intent of killing her. The idea was is that if I go testify, you know, tell them now I'm not going to testify and they won't kill her.

So I said, hold on a minute. I picked up another phone. I called Sunny Barger, told him what was happening. He saw Mike I didn't condone that. So I pulled out my address book, and I started reading off his name and other members. members' names and their families. He said, you're a call, Sonny. You know me. Go ahead and kill her. He's, oh, no, Mike, no, Mike, no, Mike. I said, all right, there's a bluff, of course. Calculated bluff. But my wife didn't appreciate it. But so, you know, that's just one instance,

you know, of what you deal with. Then you have the Senate Select Committee that's investigating gladiator fights at the same place. You see that, you know, I'm the only inmate, prisoner, convict whose name comes up in that investigation. And in that, well, there was a captain involved. And with the gladiator fights, you know, I was aware of a situation where an individual was shot in the head by a guard who had no business being up in the tower with the gun. But the day before, the prisoner had spit in his face, so they set him up.

And so I went to the lieutenant at that time and told them it was a set of. up, he investigated it, found out it was true, and took the paperwork that I had provided to him relative to that, to the feds. That initiated a Senate Select Committee investigation into it. They did a drive-by shooting on his captains. He was promoted to captain. On his house, he had to retire because they went to his house and beat him down. Who's they? People associated with his guard? Yes. Other guards. Did a drive-by on his house? was there? He appeared before the Senate Select Committee,

and Gloria Romero, who was the chairman at that time, she's now a United States senator, but she was a state senator at that time. She said, excuse me, she stopped the proceedings, and she said, I need to know, are you wearing a bulletproof vest? And he said, yes, I am. And so she said, why?

So he broke it down for her, the drive-by, the whole thing. Were they convicted? No. What prison did this happen at? Corcoran. What year did this happen? 1996.

The corruption is stunning. Oh, you have no idea. I know I don't. You have no idea. I've only scratched the surface of it. People can't believe because it's just the best place in the world, the state of California. I think people are shocked by how corrupt it is. They should be shocked.

I'm shocked because I'm from Oregon. I'm shocked because I'm from Oregon and I, and California is this like... Well, Oregon is where I testified against the Hells Angels. See, and they were brand new. I mean, Mike Graham was the detective that took over the case. And ultimately, the information I provided to him that he knew was true because that information wasn't available to the public. So it opened up a cold case.

Case went back to 1977. This is the 90s. But this is the most tenacious individual I have ever met in my life. He followed up on that, and he facilitated convictions for Buck Garrett who ordered the hit and the shooter, a guy Bob McClure, four consecutive life sentences for both men. And that's just to remind people that's for killing Margo. Margo Compton or two twin six-year-old girls and her boyfriend, Gary. Yeah.

But, yeah, I mean, just by my estimation, amazing. Just tenacious. Oh, my goodness. But he didn't give up. And he was threatened with his own life and his family's life. Wow. You see? His prosecutor.

Yeah. No. This detective. Right. Just detect a cop. Yeah. He's retired now. Wow.

But he went through it. And I have the utmost respect and admiration for what he did. Yeah. Yeah. Those people need to be put away. Yes. We're doing stuff like that. Now, throughout all of these years, after you left the organization and you're testifying and there's

these attempts on your life, are you getting, how many board appearances do you make? 18. 18 board appearances. Why are you rejected, especially as you're getting older. What are these rejections for? Well, one, because I won't admit to my commitment offense. That's the biggest one. But saddled with that is the idea that I still deal with to this day.

The allegation is that I continue to do. to be an active leader of the Aryan Brotherhood. And that everything that I've done is just a snow screen to hide my activities. I hear it all the time. We know you're dirty, Thompson. We just can't catch you. And that's unfortunate. But that's the reality amongst some law enforcement personnel.

They're still saying that. And the vast majority asked me to work with them, asked me to teach them. I provide workshops. I provide instruction. I do seminars. I'm a presenter speaker at gang conferences. I work with probation departments. And so far as there's safety and security within a controlled environment, I do the same thing with sheriff departments.

But you're always going to have those old salts that take that position that I'm dirty. Well, I half don't blame them. Well, at least I half don't blame the board of parole knowing if you know anything about the sophistication of real OGs like you, maybe they thought it was you were a plant. It was to gain information to then pass on to the brothers. We're a good one, wouldn't it? Yeah. But that's a little far. It's a little much.

Not really because I did a critique of. the 1984 Olympics, VIP, foreign dignitaries. So they took me out as a VIP and I critiqued their security. And I blasted him on it because I was able to put holes in it. I mean, they had air coverage just to give you an example. And so the convoy, huge convoy, we go in, we circle up the convoy to regass the air coverage. Well, that's predictable. If you know that they're using a B-series helicopter,

you know that it has to be regassed, so at some point in the destination, you're going to have to convoy up. I set out snipers knowing that. And so when they convoyed up, my snipers engaged, and all they had was short-order arms. So I blew them out of the water. It's funny that it takes guys like you,

like all these brains in law enforcement, can't figure that out. I think they can, but they have to have a reference point. You see, and that's the difficulty. If you don't have a reference point, and I have the reference point, it's called survival. Right, right. And you don't admit, well, at least you didn't.

Well, no, you don't admit to being the killer of the two individuals. Did you take responsibility for giving the order, though? Absolutely. Okay. They just wanted to hear, you just weren't telling them. Yeah, what happened was is that the actual shooter, when he became eligible for parole, he was paroled before me. He actually went before the board, in his testimony, under oath, said that he was the actual shooter and that I had nothing to do with that. Right.

So did that make a difference? No. Yeah, no. Clearly. How did you get caught? You buried these bodies? Yes, they were buried. Okay.

Did you have a hand in burying them? Yes. Okay. Somebody told or how do you get? Yeah, essentially what it came down to is you had a young lady that, well, I say a young lady, my sister, who was charged with, what is it when you write bad checks? Yeah, check fraud. Check fraud. And so she had information about my participation in this and gave that to law enforcement.

That started an investigation. Have you forgiven her for that? Forgiven. You made peace with it? That's really the better one. I made peace with it at the time. Uh-huh. You know, I don't take issue with survival.

And, you know, she saved her husband. She saved herself. She had kids. I don't take issue with that. Did you ever have a relationship with her again? Yes. Okay. She's my sister.

Wow. You see? Yeah. How fascinating individual you are. Oh, thank you. So what year you got paroled when, 2020? It was actually the end of 2019. Okay.

But 2020 is, I round off. Yeah, sure. Depending which is closer to. Why do you think they let you out this time? I think that the commissioner that, the board commissioner, his name is Randy Grounds. And Randy, I knew Randy when he came in as a CEO, he became a warden, then he became a commissioner on the board. He was old school, and he's the real deal.

He listened, but he also knew me. And so, you know, normally when I went into the board, I knew what was going to happen, so I had no expectations. I didn't anticipate release, and this was the case this time also. So I went in, and Randy was there, and I was just going to take my ID card out of my pocket as I usually did. and put it on the table, turn around and walk out. And Randy said, he saw it. And he said, Mike, you want a cup of coffee? And I said, sure.

So I sat down, they brought a cup of coffee, and we had coffee, and we talked for eight hours. And he asked me questions that no one had ever asked me about why I did what and when and how. And he knew that I was telling him the truth. and that's really all he was concerned with is that I was authentic in who I was projecting myself to be.

Just that. And whether or not, of course, I posed a threat to the public. And in his estimation, I did not. So they sent me out and he brought me back in and he stood up and he reached over the table and shook my hand and said, I'm going to let you go. And then he walked around the table and he shook my hand again and he said,

you're a very humble man. He said, if you'll embrace that humility daily, he says, you'll be fine. And I'm beholden to Randy. You know, he's, by my estimation, of course he did the right thing, but it's not just me that he's helped. He's done this with other individuals

that really stood no chance of ever getting out. But he used that experience, that body of experience that he had coming through the department to know what's real and what's not. And has let not only myself go, but others go. And of course, Governor Newsom, you know, he could have stopped it, but he didn't. And, you know, the California District Attorneys Association, in my case, opposed that, that the governor let me go. And because I was

released under the Youthful Offender Act and the Elder Offender Act. What is that? Well, the Youthful Offender Act is when you're under the age of, in my case, I was 21, I was 20 at the time of the crime, that the mind does not have the frontal lobe, frontal lobe, does not have the capacity to develop fully, to mature. And so that as it relates to your judgment in the commission of a crime, that that may be a factor that should be considered. In my case, given the circumstances of my commitment offense, and my involvement, in it, I qualified for the Youthful Offender Act. Then it was up to the board to determine whether or not I meant the criteria.

Randy and his deputy commissioner made the determination that I meant the criteria. That's what the conversation was about. And so having meant the criteria, they released me under the Youthful Offender Act, and because I meant the criteria for the Elder Offender Act, you know, also, I was released under that also. And that's if you're at a certain age, they deem you not... Over 65. Yeah.

So I was at 65. No, it was I. I was at 70 at that point. So the District Attorney's Association took issue with that. So they took steps to ensure that they could attempt to repeal that by going to after me again and did. How so? Well, they charged me with EDD fraud

and not checking the box on a loan application to the SBA that said I was on parole. And convicted me of it, and I did an additional 10 months and just got out two months ago. Get the fuck out of here. I'm serious. So you got out and you were released in 2019.

You went, you're married, so you went with your wife. in the town that you live in. And you've started a business, you're a writer, you've got a media company, all this stuff. I had a nonprofit. I was attempting to put in place a fire abatement structure. Unfortunately, I had a business partner who was corrupt

and all the heavy equipment I purchased in my wife's name and the $100,000 that she put up toward the business, he extorted. he defrauded us. So by the time I found that out, we informed law enforcement of it, and they turned around and did an investigation on me relative to that, determined that I had committed EDD fraud, and that I had made this loan application even though it wasn't processed.

Was EDD again? Unemployment. Okay. So, yeah, I represented myself. They charged me with 33 charges, and all fell in. charges. I represented myself, brought that down to five, and they said that I had defrauded to homeless. Never happened. That was a press release that the District Attorney's Association put out. They were trying to make me the poster boy. This is what happens when you release a person

under the Youthful Offender Act. Right. So in any rate, I felt it was, even though I did 10 months, they were trying to make me do 15 years, 10 of which I would have had to serve, so I would have died in prison. And so I felt that my representing myself was successful. It took me three years. And like I said, brought the charges down to what I did and I did 10 months. In California. Yeah. It was a state charge. Yeah. Just got out two months ago. Did you have any funk in there for who you are? Always. Always. I'm on a a non-designated yard, so there's active members. What's this institution?

Kern. Wow, that's a real prison. It is. Kern Valley. You know, had an individual that was stabbed 101 times by two other individuals, white. Yeah. Signature move. I won't get into the particulars because it's under investigation.

You know, just like I won't get into any more into this crime I'm telling you about that I just served time on because it's under appeal. There's also a Racial Justice Act contention in it because me being the active leader of the Aryan Brotherhood was advocated on behalf of the prosecution, and that's why it remains alive. Wow. Geez, they just won't let a soldier just...

I'm not a soldier. Warrior. You're a podcaster now. I am. Welcome to the family. You're a YouTuber. Thank you. Yes, I am. They just won't let a motherfucker be.

That's it. However, you're doing pretty well for a guy that just came off of 38 years. 45. Oh, my goodness. You served 45 years from 1970. 1973 to 2019. Oh, my God. I mean, what do I really ask you?

What do you say to that? Do you have any regrets? None, other than not having to. having children. That is the wisest thing for anybody watching this. Well, this is incredible, man. There's more questions I want to ask you just writ large about the Aryan Brotherhood. So we'll do just a little bonus episode after this if you're okay with that.

But I just want to, you know, this is heavy for me. So I just want to sit for a little bit. And I want to promote War Horse. Thanks for bringing it up. Of course. I want to promote your channel. to promote you and I want, you know, law enforcement watching this to book you and, you know, because you're on the circuit.

You're in demand. I just came back from San Diego at the San Diego Gang Conference where I was a presenter speaker. And I have a business called Asymmetric Threat Dynamics that deals with the very thing that I addressed at the gang conference. And I am being contacted by various law enforcement agencies. And I'm grateful for that. Yeah.

But the approach here is not just to monetize my experience, but to give value to that body of experience toward the benefit of not only law enforcement, but the public at large. Yeah. Law enforcement we like. We don't like DAs. I'm not a big fan, but I have known a few that are retired now, that I work with now. Yeah. You know, especially in these workshops that I like and that I know and believe are good people. And I know others that are, you know, former Homeland Security that I have on my board of directors.

Well, there you go. We just need them to be better. We just need more ethical ones. So let's talk about War Horse. Where can they get War Horse? 45 years in prison and a remarkable life of Michael Thompson. It's, you can get the paper back from Synchronic Press, Synchronicpress.com, and you can get the e-book on Amazon, either one. And this is book one of three books.

And I would advocate anybody that has the desire to read it, in reading it, to provide feedback. You know, there's a lot of information in there. But the feedback, I think, is always important. It goes towards furthering that education. This is not an educational book. This is a memoir. So it talks about, you know, my growing up, how I grew up, you know, what my self-efficacy is, how that's evolved. You know, who I am as a human being.

And, of course, you know, the war stories are in there. You can't get away from them. You know, I don't like glorifying that, but they have value because they provide a reference point. That's right. Well, hopefully somebody's watching this from behind the wall. and if you're part of the A, B, or you're in that world and you read this book, maybe, you know, you'll do the right thing. That'd be great. So Michael Thompson, I would say I'm honored, but that would be an understatement.

Thank you so much for coming down here. Pleasure is mine. You got it. All right, you guys. We'll see you very soon. Thanks so much.