The Underworld Podcast - Sammy the Bull, Nazis and Mormon Killers: How the Gilbert Goons Terrorized a Phoenix Suburb

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

This year, the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert has been rocked by the death of 16-year-old Preston Lord, at the hands of a group calling themselves the ‘Gilbert Goons,’ jocks and hicks combining forces to unleash violence on the city’s streets. The craziest thing? This happened before. And back then, the group’s godfather was none other than Sammy the Bull, Gambino consigliere turned super-snitch. The 90s are well and truly back in fashion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Thumping music, beer pong, joints in the yard, and the ever-present danger of a fight. Preston Lord, 16 and Rawboned, has showed up with pals from his basketball team, but they're out of their depth. Girls talk them about their age and an 18-year-old kid named Treston, Billy, dressed in a mobster's pinstriped suit, orders them to delete a phone video of two revelers locked in a heated argument. Lord and his friends decide to leave. But a group of boys follows them down the street, tall and strong and muscular, jock-looking, probably football players.

They jeer and taunt the boys, skipping after them. The boys run. One jumps a fence into a neighbour's yard, another hides in a bush. But the older kids catch up with Lord. and knock him to the tarmac. Then they surround and kick and stomp on him. Getting on him, one witness says, and going at it. Lord passes out.

His attackers scatter. He never wakes up. Two days later, he dies. A coroner rules the death of homicide. The attackers exchanged nervy social media messages. That kid was just a freshman, one of them reads. He had his whole life ahead of him. I'm just thankful I wasn't involved, raise another.

Even though I am. Gossip rages in Queen Creek, but mostly in Gilbert, a nearby suburb where Lord and his killers are from. Residents tell the parents the attackers to turn their sons in, using a pseudonymous Facebook account to leave messages of condolence, condemnation and disgust. Fierce mum seeking justice for Preston Lord and a safe community, free from violence, fraud and nonsense reads its profile. Locals tie ribbons colored in orange, Lord's favourite colour, to trees and solidarity. A week later, cops execute arrest warrants at four homes in a rich subdivision named Whitewinn.

By December, the Arizona Republic publishes a bombshell accusation. It claims that Lord's death was no solo act, but the culmination of over a year of violent acts, carried out by a group of upper-middle-class Gilbert Euse. Many of the attacks have been filmed, including drunken fights between the boys themselves. Some are on camera brandishing guns. Others, it seems, were involved in drug dealing. When police search one boy's phone, they discover a group chat. As soon as they find out we're the ones who got into all the fights, we get in charge with 30-plus assaults. One message reads.

This is no happy slapping phase. It's not a jackass imitation group, it's gang crime. And the group soon gets given a weird alliterative name, the Gilbert Goons. Many are members of the Mormon Church. There are rumours even of a religious cover-up. National News covers Lord's killing, and cops who'd written off the goons as jocks and bullies are finally forced to act. By May 2024, they designate the goons a criminal street gang

and SWAT teams execute raids across the neighbourhood. Before long, seven boys are charged with first-degree murder. They're staring down the barrel of life behind bars, or even death. The craziest part of all this, though, it happened before, right here in this wealthy, clean-cut corner of a fast-growing city. Even madder? It happened before that, too. What the hell is going on in Gilbert, Arizona? This is the Underworld podcast.

Hello, and welcome to the weekly podcast. that tells you all about baddies and wrongings and chancers and flim flam men and shysters and there do worlds and this week some goons devil dogs and a very very well-known bull i'm sean williams in wellington new zealand my partner in long-suffering colleague is danny gold in new york city we've covered everything from born again ms 13 gangsters to indian warlords and we distill the tales of the worst people on earth down into digestible 45 or so minute shows and unless you sign up to our Patreon, which costs about the same as a cup of third wave coffee per month. It is free. So bear that in mind when you comment on YouTube or the Twitter or the Facebook or the Instagram. Yeah, am I missing

any housekeeping? I mean, I don't even, I'm just kind of speechless, man. You're truly a wordsmith. But the Patreon website is patreon.com slash general world podcast to sign up or you can do it through Spotify and iTunes. Also, if you want T-shirts, merch, we do all that stuff too. We have some good shirts at underworldpod.com and you just click right there on the merch button. Beautiful. Yeah. So a lot of you are going to have kids and you're going to be gearing up and like while you're listening to this maybe exactly while you listen to this for the new school year or celebrating getting your days back. But hopefully a few of you aren't going to be dealing with the kind of stuff that has been going down in Gilbert, Arizona these past 18 or so months. As you've just heard,

it's pretty grim. And just like I mentioned, the history behind this school, boy street gang is pretty unbelievable. Like, it's happened twice before in the same small neighborhood. And both times it made national headlines. So this is a developing story, right, where almost everybody has buried the lead. I mean, you could be forgiven for reading all about the Gilbert Goons without knowing at all that their predecessors were heavily involved, for example, with Sammy DeBall Gravano, the former Gambino crime family underboss, state witnessed, convicted killer, and, of course, podcast royalty. I mean, this really is a nuts story.

Yeah, I mean, even we're bearing the lead with Sammy the Bull, right? That is a man that gets headlines. YouTube loves him. He's got a weird face and he even has worse tattoos than me. That is correct. I mean, like, I read about five stories about this thing before I even heard his name, which is fully insane. And of course, it gets into the question of what it actually means to be a gang, like what a gang is and why cops to took so, so long to figure out that the goons actually were a gang.

Clue, that's mostly because it's rich white kids with a bit of a background. And you're going to hear a 38-year-old white man from London paraphrase, a white 18-year-old guy from Arizona, using black streets slang to try and sound tough, which is, I don't know, man, that's a level of cringe you might struggle with, even if you're listening to this on your own with headphones. So you are warned. I think you just lost about half our audience with that little syllogically. Yeah, but just stay with me because it's so good I might get them back.

Anyway, let's set the stage. I might not. Gilbert, as I've mentioned, this is an affluent excerpt of Phoenix, which is Arizona's largest city. It's out in the southeastern corner of the city limits. It's actually home to over a quarter of a million people, and that has gone up from just over 30,000 in the early 1990s, which is part of the problem, as we'll later learn. according to a piece by Rachel Monroe, the New Yorker, whose account of Preston Laws Death are used a lot to put together,

the cold open. Gilbert is America's number one best city for early retirement, number six cities to raise a family in the West, and the second best city for safe trick-or-treating, which is pretty macabre given what happened last October. By the way, Danny, what is the West? How do you define the West? I mean, I feel like the West is what, California and,

and Oregon and Washington. But like, this is Southwest, I feel like, you know? Yeah. I feel like when I was in Oklahoma, they described it as Southwest, but also South. And then some people call it the Midwest, which I don't think it is. I don't know, man. It's just confusing. Anyway, according to FBI stats, only one other community of its size, Gilbert, of course,

had a lower crime rate in 2022. So you get the picture, right? Bougie, big homes, big cars, big tellies, big, big box stores, Panera, Chili's. Yeah, anything I'm missing, I don't think I am really. Obviously, this does not fit the description of a place mired in gang crime, and that's partly to do with the fact that it's pretty white and pretty Mormon. So Gilbert is home to a giant LDS temple built in 2008.

I mean, I don't know about the Mormons, but those things really do look great. But to get to why the goons exist and why they hunted down and killed Preston Lord, we need to take this way back beyond that temple. In fact, 31 years ago, when Gilbert was just a wee little outpost of Phoenix, home to 30,000 people. Yes, it's 1993, folks. Skating's cool, grunge is in,

everyone's reading Brett Easton Ellis and Bill Moyers, Waco's on fire, the US is about to host a World Cup, despite knowing what football is, Doom just came out on PC, everybody's wondering what the hell was going on, that whole satanic panic thing. Yeah, I'll start.

Billy Joel over here. Yeah. It's a simpler time, a better time, where men were just men and pretty little Gilbert, Apple of Phoenix Eye, is overrun by a bunch of skin-haired neo-Nazis called White Power. In fact, Gilbert is home to 13 documented gangs in 1993,

and that grows to 21 within two years, pulling in 400 of the local youth. By this time alone, the neighbourhoods population is near double. It's one of the fastest growing places in the United States. Not everybody moving to Gilbert is white, and this naturally causes the local white population to flip out, wearing white laces in their jackboots to signify white supremacy

and throwing up racist hand gestures. I mean, I don't know what they are, just like a wanker sign with little white hats on your fingers. I don't know. But one of the members is actually African-American. I'd just like to believe he's into basket and the specials. But despite running around, scaring people, police report few problems with,

checks notes, the White Power Gang. Yeah, this seems fine, eh? One of the young men that joins White Power in Gilbert is named Michael Papa. His family have moved from New York to Gilbert and he helps coalesce the gang into something a bit more organised. These guys call themselves the devil dogs. There are several dozen of them, many athletes in the local high school,

and they take White Powers bluster up several notches. They crow racial slurs and Nazi slurs. slogans in the street. And when they're attacking people, which they do a lot, they're on steroids. So this is the steroid era, of course, the average MLB lead-off hit as testicles of the size of walnuts and pro-wrestlers' arms look like they've got bird shit running down them. The devil dogs, almost all-white, upper-middle class football players, they are hard-ducing. It's no wonder they're always desperate for a fight. But the devil dogs go from street thuggery to organized crime in 1998 and that is when Michael Papper makes friends with a guy named Gerard Gravano who introduces

Papa to his father, Salvatore. You're listening to an organised crime podcast so you know who Salvatore Gravano is, but I'll do a little intro. Born in 1945 in Brooklyn, Sammy as he's known, begins his criminal life as an associate for the Colombo crime family before joining the Grandbino's and rising to become an underboss under legendary mobster John Gotti. That nickname, he gets it age 10, when some older kids steal his bike and Sammy goes at them, quote, like a bull, and it sticks. Sammy is part of the team that conspires to murder Gambino, boss Paul Castiano in 85, but he's whacked way more, at least 19 people. In 1991, he's busted, he takes a plea, he breaks his own matter, and he turns state witness on Gotti, sends in the big guy down. And in 1994, a judge gives him an unbelievably generous five years for his crimes, four of which he's already served.

I know you've mentioned Gravano a bunch, Danny, and he's becoming something of podcasting royalty in recent years. You should go meet him for the show, actually. But by 1998, Gravano enters the federal state witness protection program, and he moves to Sunny, Arizona. Yeah, I feel like we're not even doing it justice enough here. Like he is probably the most infamous rat in the history of the American mafia. And he went free after a few years for giving up the boss despite murdering many, many people. Yeah, he got five years for Serbs. I think he got done for 19, which is insane.

Age 55, it seems from the outset that Sammy has settled into his new life. He's changed his name to Jimmy Moran and he's gone under the surgeon's knife to alter his appearance enough. that he might not get whacked on a whim on the streets of Phoenix. He operates a poor construction company, big business in Arizona, and he gets into real estate. So what else? His ex-wife, Deborah, also living under the scheme, she even runs a place called Uncle Sal's Italian restaurante.

I mean, you can't really call yourself Italian if you don't have an uncle named Sal. In Scottsdale, which is on the northeast side of the city. Sounds pretty curbs so far, maybe that terrible series, Lily Hammer with Steve Van Sant. You know, I never watched it, but I'm, you know, always pro-Silvio. And was it really that bad? I remember watching a couple of episodes and it was excruciating. Like, the genre of like crazy gangster goes to live in, I don't know, Norway slash Djibouti or whatever.

That is a good genre, but this is, nah, this is not good. Is that a genre that, like, a lot of things exist in? Maybe it's just a genre in my head because it's pretty much the only TV show I want to write. But also like running an Italian restaurant called Uncle Salz too. I mean, that's just a little too on the nose, even for like witness security. Like, come on, man. Like, what do you think? That's like the joke that you would make for a guy running a restaurant called Uncle Salz in the middle of nowhere, Arizona.

You know what I'm saying? Hey, Jimmy Moran, why are you running Uncle Salz? Yeah. Anyway, Gravano, he might enjoy the odd chicken parmigiano uncle Salz, but he is no fan of the Witsack life, as the name of the restaurant suggests. He lives in a $590 a month unit, but he drives a 40 grand Lexus. And before long, he, Jimmy Moran, becomes a mentor to Michael Papa, who's now 23 years old. Like I said, this is 1998, so this is raving, happy hardcore.

The band Underworld, who are amazing, but still smash us on the spot of high searches. I mean, Born Slippy is still one of the best songs of all time. These are all UK references that like nothing to do with Scottsdale and zero of our American audience understands, including me. I feel like I wrote that line and then I wrote the rest of this script while listening to like mad, hardcore underworld songs. So yeah, tuck in. I think this could be wild. Anyway, so what could be more 1998 than starting a multi-million dollar ecstasy ring with the guy who took down John Gotti? Papa is, of course, in.

He's only been two-bit white supremacist grunt up until this point, and he starts hiring his fellow devil dogs as muscle for Gravano. At one point, he gets 30 devil dogs to shake down a restaurateur who owes the gangster money. In the meantime, these guys are getting more and more violent. Papa is a former wrestling big gun, and his boys carry out most of their worst acts at Gilbert's Taco Bell, which according to the LA Times, quote, is a nexus for bullying and violence. Yeah, I mean, fast food parking lots, they're just a sense. center of action for teenagers in the American suburbs. It's true. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure what I wanted more than like hot sauce and a punchup age, what, 18? As the Krispy Chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper?

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bedroom reveals teenagers pointing their handguns at the camera lens. It was there too. In the anabolic steroids stashed in closets, the guns hidden under false floors of cars, the white supremacist literature on dressers, the bare-knuckled fight club party in an empty backyard swimming pool, the way the young men surrounded their victims and bark-like dogs before beating and stomping them. No phones in sight, guys, just young people living in the moment. This is also the heyday of newspaper feature writing the kind of stuff that first got me into magazine writing so there's tons of more of this to come but the devil dogs they only carry on ramping up tim hughes is according to a brilliant phoenix new times piece from the turn of menium a six-foot tall string bean of a teenager who clocked in at

150 pounds when he was stomped in a squad of bullies they including devil dogs barry nutter kevin paven yes kevin papa is michael papa's kid brother I'll carry on with the New Times article. Quote, on November 13, 1998, a brawl erupted at the East Valley Taco Bell where the devil dogs hung out. After being kicked in the head numerous times while he was held on the ground, Hughes was taken to Chandler Regional Hospital by his mother, Rainer. Hughes puked, then collapsed in the emergency room and remained unconscious. Dr Matthew Wilkes reported that the young men had a depressed skull fracture,

resulting in fragments of bone damaging the surface of his brain. flown to Good Samaritan Hospital where brain surgeons awaited the helicopter Hughes was rushed into the operating room The nurse sounded as if she was preparing Raina for the worst Hogan said I overheard the nurse explain that there was nothing more they could do Rainer immediately broke down crying

Hogan called police supervisors and requested that grief counsellors be dispatched quickly to the hospital to comfort the family I mean this is pretty messed up right This one has a kind of happy ending thankfully Hughes undergoes a success operation on his brain and he pulls through. But the devil dogs are, in a great turn of phrase by the new times,

omnivorously violent. On April 27, 1999, three of them swim out from shore at an elderly Vietnamese couple who are paddling about in a town lake rowboat. The trio rocked the boat as the old lady screams that she can't swim. Then they clamber into the boat and yell racist slurs, I won't repeat. They steal the couple's cell phone and they swim away. We call that pulling the old Mark Wahlberg. What an inspiration for young men.

These guys love beating the crap out of people. They're big UFC fans at a time when UFC is very new. Baz Rotten has just won UFC's top card in Birmingham, Alabama in May 1999. And as I mentioned, Michael and Kevin Papper even set up a fight club in a drained backyard swimming pool in homage to the MMA contest. And this is going to come back to bite Kevin in the backside, so watch this space. To be fair, you know, that's just kind of normal American high school stuff. Like, we definitely had backyard or basement boxing matches in high school. We don't beat the crap at each other at soccer games like you guys do.

So we still kind of need an outlet, you know? Yeah, did you go around stomping kids' heads in at the Taco Bell as well? No, no. That's like a lovely little teenage thing to do. There was none of that. No, we used to have fights around the back of the bakery, I think I've mentioned this before, at lunchtime at school. And if you got your head kicked in too much, you just kind of had to go home because you get suspended. So yeah, that happened to be a couple of times. I don't know why that Benji

kid wore a sovereign ring when he was cracking up. But thanks. Hope you listen. Anyway, the devil dogs hunt these people down about three times a week. They recruit Mormon kids more than any other religious group because they believe the LDS Church will protect them, which, by the way, it's pretty clear that it does. When incidents at the previously mentioned Taka Bell get two out of hand, workers don't call the cops. They call the LDS Bishop. More than this, though, is this weird kind of bourgeois, hot fuzz, greater good thing bleeding through all the crimes in Gilbert right now. Basically, this place is up and coming.

It's hot property and nobody wants to upset the apple cart. A councilman says he's told to keep quiet about the devil dogs because speaking outward, quote, hurt economic development. Here's a New Yorker's Rachel Monroe again, quote. Police who regarded certain teenagers with a boys will be boys' tolerance, parents in willful denial of their children's crimes and a community that prioritised a reputation for safety over actual safety. By the year 2000, Gilbert's population has swelled to almost 120,000.

And not only has this shaken race relations, but local schools are, quote, bulging at the seams, according to a local administrator. This is a problem, not only because of the overcrowding, but because since the mid-90s, Arizona has had open enrollment, meaning students can attend any public school in a given district. There's no catchment area here, son. This is prime, don't tread on me, libertarian USA.

Some schools have thousands of students, huge enrollments, and any kids who play up, they can just switch schools, move on. There's basically no big come-dacts for kids who are expelled, or whatever the American equivalent is. Same thing, expelled. Yeah, cool. Okay. I remember one time two of the boys in our school got expelled for,

I might remember this wrong, but it was pretty funny. In case anyone's listening from DGS, do email me, but I think they stole a car, broke into a warehouse, they nicked a bunch of stuff, and then one of them ran over the other one's toes in the stolen car, which is all very, very funny. I think one of them was also dealing heroin, very, very cool score, and I almost got chucked out for fighting around the back of the bakery anyway. Very funny place. Yeah, it goes down in the halls of Hogwarts, huh?

Yeah, we did play a lot of quidditch. What comes next, though, it is not funny, not in my school. In May 1999, an 18-year-old named Jordan Jarvis dropped some friends at a party. After waiting around for a while, Jarvis heads into the home to let a friend know that he's leaving. A woman confronts him, asks for his name. He tells her. She calls for her boyfriend. Within moments, a group of men accused Jarvis of beating up one of their powers.

He says he's no idea what they're talking about. about. He heads outside and he buckles himself into his friend's Jeep. Devil dogs and up to 50 other surround the vehicle. They break in. Then as Jarvis is strapped in and unable to move, they kick, beat and choke him. Some shout white power as they're doing it. Blood is pouring from Jarvis's head and nose. Here is the LA Times quote. When his buddy finally managed to get away, he drove Jarvis to a hospital. Jarvis had been beaten so badly that he was unrecognizable. His mother, Sherry, and her older son, passed him in the emergency room without even knowing him. His head was too swollen for treatment that night other than some stitches.

He has since undergone surgery three times two, among other things, realign his nose, remove bone spurs at the base of his skull, and scrape calcification from his eye sockets, and that is one hell of a beating. Jarvis's mother, Sherry, gets to the ER soon after the attack. When I arrived at the hospital I did not even recognise my son, she says. He was covered in blood and his head was swollen and his nose was everywhere on his face. He had so much blood caked on his teeth and mouth that they thought at first that all of his front teeth had been knocked out. Now cops first called the assault a case of mistaken identity, which doesn't matter either way, right? They almost killed him. Highland School, where a lot of the

devil dog study and play football, it fundraisers for Jarvis's medical expenses. I don't know, America, healthcare, Jesus. Anyway, Gilbert Town officials also create a human relations committee to address gang issues. Despite that, throughout the subsequent plea negotiations with Jarvis' attackers, the Jarvis family says it suffers a campaign of intimidation. They have their homes and cars egged, they're harassed at work, and they keep getting prank calls by kids barking down the phone. We're up to February 2000 now.

It's the 24th, 630 a.m. and law enforcement agents have had enough of the gang and their association with the supposedly going straight Sammy the Ball. A multi-agency task force raids several properties across Metro Phoenix. They arrest 45 people making 201 indictments for drug trafficking and other crimes. Feds capture Gravano, his ex-wife, Deborah, their son and daughter, and Michael Papa, the Devil Dogs founder who'd met him just two years previous. Uncle Sal's restaurante had been used to wash drug cases. cash, which is, I'm sure you'll agree, a massive surprise. And Gravano's post-wit-set construction

company is also a drug front. One absolute mess-up from US law enforcement. Gravano and the devil dogs are shifting over 30,000 ecstasy pills a week, I think half a mill a month or something. This is said to be the largest ever drug ring uncovered in Arizona at the time. Damn, like imagine screwing up that kind of money just because you were so juiced up, you had to fight kids at high school parties. You think, you know, Sammy the Bull would have run a shop. Yeah. I mean, like, what is the lesson? Like, no UFC, no steroids, like

no drained swimming pool? I mean, I guess a combination of all three, but yeah, pretty dumb. Incredibly, despite this, state prosecutor Hugo Zetler refuses to try the eight young men for Jordan Jarvis's horrific beating, an association with Gravano as

gang related. Look, the kid's nose was broken, which is not earth shattering in and of itself, he tells the new times, completely falsely. And he goes on, quote, it's a stretch to think of the devil dogs as a gang. Maybe technically. They were kind of wannabe gang members. All these guys were wrestlers and football players.

Bullies is what they are. He's wrong, by the way. There are seven official criteria for a group to be considered a street gang, and the devil dogs fulfill five, if not six of them. They should 100% be treated as a gang. So as a former Arizona detective at the time, quote, they're white. They don't fit the stereotype of a gang member.

That was the whole issue. That's where the blinders were. Yeah, I mean, this kind of thing just reminds me of Alpha Dog, which is kind of a bad movie, but also a great watch. I think it was based on a story from the Inland Empire, which is California. So not that far from Scottsdale and kind of like a very similar vibe. I guess sort of late 90s, early 2000s, are we still talking about gang crime like bloods and crips and stuff like that that's in the public conscience in the U.S.? I guess that's what people think a gang is, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure.

writes the new times then, quote, they are a new kind of street thug, suburban children with all of life's advantages. One drove a Volvo. Sorry, that fact is funny. From stable two-parent families. The devil dogs are high school athletes and bodybuilders so pumped up on the steroids they sold, used, and distributed,

the police reports repeatedly, quote, victims' astonishment at the sheer size of their attackers. I don't, like Volvo, like, makes a nice car, and I guess they were thought of as like the safety, you know, the safety car, but like, I don't know. I would leave out that detail because I don't think it's making like a great kid. Like he drives a Volvo. Like it's making a great kid.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know. I know. Also, fun fact, Volvo's lights are always on no matter what. Did not know that. From Sweden, where it's very dark. Yeah. It's a fun fact.

Yeah. Of all those charred for the Jarvis and Gravano cases, only Kevin Papa, handsome, personable, straight A student, gets more than a year in prison. And that is only because he's caught in an incredible act of hubristic perjury in court. Quote, I feel that in whatever I do, I will be successful, he tells the judge about to sentence him. Incarceration for me would not suit me. I no longer hang out or are friends with those kids. I mean, even Hugo Zetler, this blinkered prosecutor, rolls his eyes. He plays a videotape to the judge. It shows that Papa, even after the arrest,

has organized a so-called fight club of devil dogs and his parents drained Paul, again, as classmates cheer them on. For that, the judge doubles his sentence from one to two years, but I mean, it's all chicken feed. Sherry Jarvis is rightly outraged. If these same crimes were committed in another part of Phoenix by a different ethnic and less affluent group, we would have no trouble punishing them, she writes.

I'm not going to go into too much detail about the effects on Jordan Jarvis of the attack, but it's all out there if you want to look. it's really, really not good. He suffered for years of breathing and cosmetic problems, mental health issues. And as far as I can see, I could be wrong, but I think this is right, he died this March, age just 42, leaving behind a young daughter. So, yeah, these guys really, really did a number on him. The Jarvis and Gravano sentences bring the devil dogs of Gilbert to a close. They spring up ominously, however, in July 2011, so many years later, when white supremacians,

is terrorist, Dennis Mann, leader of the white area and resistance, says he wants to move to Metro Phoenix to recruit from its youth. Okay. I mean, Danny, I'm not getting it. I know about Sheriff Joe and the border and the don't tread on me thing, but like what the hell is going on in Phoenix? Did the diamond back suck that bad? The sons, I don't know. True story. Charles Barclay showed up the hotel. I got married out in Oklahoma City years ago and a bunch of us got drunk with him. He is a really nice guy. Yeah, he absolutely rules. But I have, you know, I don't know that much about the southwest. It's a mystery to me. I know Southern California always had a neo-Nazi problem, a hunting beach, like Nazi lowriders, but it's not really my forte. I was doing research

on a doc series ago about white power music stuff that they used to like drop off at schoolyards, but I can't remember much. But yeah, I don't know, man. Like, where was Breaking Bad? What was that Albuquerque? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like easy rider? Is that Arizona? I don't know. Like all the kind of biker gangs? No, that was, that was, they were riding to New Orleans, right? But I think they were in Texas for part of that. Okay. Or Louisiana. Not Arizona. I don't think. I could be wrong. I don't know. Weird place. I went there once. Went to the, went to the Grand Canyon. Very nice. But this. Wireless can feel like a world of traps. But not with visible. It's one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot. Powered by Verizon for $25 a month. Taxes and fees

included. Plus, for a limited time, new members pay just $20 a month for one year on the Visible plan using the code Fresh Start. Refresh your wireless with Visible. Tap the banner to switch today. Terms apply. Limited time offers subject to change. See Visible.com for plan features and network management details. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and side tics or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board.

They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Ministurfer. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history.

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then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. Not so nice. Anyway, we're rattling up to speed with the goons now. A few stats because this is a school gang episode. According to Cister, around 9.8% of students in US public schools report that gangs are a problem,

while almost 16% of Native American or Native Alaskan students say the same thing. I interviewed Josh Hunt a few years back, who's a clingette from Alaska, about his family and crime on the pod and we'll do some more stuff on Native Gang soon because there is some really, really interesting stuff going on there. But this stuff is big, right? According to an NGO, there were 1.06 youth gang members in the United States in 2022, around 400,000 join a gang each year and roughly the same number drop out. And there were around 17.3 million high school.

students countrywide, which is quite shocking fact. Yeah, I mean, I went to high school in the late 90s, so, you know, the big thing was kids claiming they were in the bloods back then. I feel like those numbers, some of it could be playing pretend, you know, or just inflated. Yeah, I feel like every kid who got their hands on like Nike Air Max back in, back where I was from, said they were in like a Coke dealing gang, but yeah, only about two of them were. Anyway, this is going to bring us all the the way up to the Gilbert Goons. So, in December 22, 10 months before Preston Lord's death, two Goons order a 16-year-old to his knees, and then when he refuses, they surround and punch him to the ground, beating him unconscious. Two weeks later, goons attack a 16-year-old with brass

knuckles. One of the ringleaders is a guy named Kyla Renner, who lives in that wealthy subdivision I mentioned before, White Wing, which is, now that I look at it, written down, a crazy name for a place, Riven with White Terror. Anyway, here is the New Yorker's Rachel Monroe, again, quote. He drove a turbocharged Camaro with a custom paint job

and was surprisingly well-dressed for a 17-year-old, Gucci belt, Louis Vuitton backpack, Burberry boxer shorts. Kyla and his brother's parents divorced in 2020, and Kyla lived with his father in a house south of White Wing

that was ostentatious even by Gilbert standards. It had an indoor golf gym, a basketball court, and a lazy river snaking through the expensive backyard. Dude, having a lazy river at your house is actually pretty sick. Like, that's incredible. Yeah.

Also, a golf gym? I mean, what's that? Like, do you just, is that like a little putt-put thing? Yeah, maybe like video walls. Indoor driving range thing. You know, where you hit into like the screen. That's what I assume, I guess. I love those things.

They're so good. Now I want his house, although not his clothes. A local woman basically then finds out this kid's burner IG account, which has picks of silence, machine guns, speeding, fingers going through rubber bandage stacks of cash. What do we tell you dummies? I mean, does this sound like the devil dog story or what? Soon enough, locals paint a picture of two divisions of goons. The ones from the north end of town are the so-called Hicks. These ones drive F-150s.

They've got big American flags flying off the back. They hold bonfires and ride motorcrosses on the edge of town And then the kids in the south They're all matinee idle looking guys Says one parent quote Some of them are pulling a 3.8 and have a job and play a sport And they're just beating people up on the weekend And no matter which side of town you're on

If you're a goon you get into fights And you share them in a group named social studies More social media Guys do not do this Speaking of which Here's the part you've been waiting for and the part I've been dreading because these Abercrombie assholes, they're desperate to appropriate the language of Black Street gangs.

One white wing goon messages a pal quote, I'm on my trap phone. I've got a revolver and a 12 gauge shoddy. I don't trust myself to go around your crib, which is just awful, man. Do not do that. Jesus Christ, I mean... That's not that bad. Are people doing this? I don't know.

Anyway, you've got all these privileged, out-of-control kids. the parents don't want to admit there's a problem, there's a church keen to keep a lid on it, and just like in the 1990s, the cops and local authorities are more concerned with maintaining Gilbert's shiny image, which has done nothing to earn from getting tarnished. But eventually, Preston Lord's killing sends all these firmaments crumbling.

City meetings get rowdy, folks call for the resignation of the mayor and police chief, then the arrests. Then, in May this year, so not long ago, the Gilbert Police Department officially declares the Gilbert goons a, quote, criminal street gang, or rather, quote, hybrid gang. I'll let Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell take it from here, quote, hybrid gangs are very hard to document as a street gang. As you know, your traditional gang usually has one race or one ethnicity and they have a territory that they claim. Hybrid gangs are usually mixed gender, mixed races and all various ages.

Also, your traditional gang is a code of conduct typically. Hybrid gangs are mostly juvenile gangs, and they have no code of conduct or no hierarchy. The members also claim and participate in multiple gangs and your hybrid gangs. Where traditional gangs, they stick to their territory or their bios or whatever they have and they're proud of their gangs. The hybrid gangs also work with other criminal gangs that you may not see. You may see a car full of different gang members together in a hybrid gang where traditionally you wouldn't see. there. There are no specific colours, symbols, hand signs, territories or anything such as that. In a hybrid gang where traditional gangs usually have a standard colour, a gang sign or something

to that, the hybrid gang is always evolving and the names are challenging. There are lots of pearl clutching, hand-wringing here. This is a live case. Nobody's been sent down yet. And I know kids in gangs is nothing new at all. I mean, just look at the UK with its county line system. We spoke about it a bunch in the Sam Walker episode. really grim stuff, really abusive. But the fact this has happened not once, not even twice, but thrice, three times, in the same smallish neighbourhood, that is pretty insane. Especially given just how many similarities there are between the goons and the devil dogs, and how a near death in the 90s has now grown into what will likely be found a murder now.

writes the Arizona Republic a couple months ago, quote, police reports detailed drug and alcohol use among several Gilbert goons. Hold on. That's like 90% of the kids I knew in high school. Like this actually is like media pearl clutching right here. Yeah, that is a bit much, right? It's more the fact that they're like dealing it, I guess. It carries on, quote, One parent is now facing drug possession charges.

I mean, yep, okay. Court records also reveal that parents of some accused teens have been convicted of drug dealing, stealing cars, illegally possessing weapons and proposition an undercover police officer for all sex. I mean, you want to find out who that parent is. Lots of folks knew about their behavior, it carries on, yet few stepped in to stop it.

It's not fully clear why. But it suggests that beneath Gilbert's low crime rates and family-friendly image, holes are formed not only in the institutions that are supposed to protect young people, but in the fabric of the community itself. Yeah, I don't know, man. It's a little preachy, right?

Like some of the parents have caught charges. Does that matter that much? Like, uh, I don't know, man. I love that there's this like community meeting where the cops are like. And, uh, you know, we know that a few of you have been done for stealing cars and a drug possession.

And, uh, in one case, a propositioning an officer for oral sex and there's, everyone's just looking around like, uh, yeah, I don't know who that is, man.

Yeah. Uh, anyway, that is the Gilbert Goons as it stands. But, uh, I guess you can Google, what's happening right now. I mean, I only wrote this like a few days ago, so it's pretty up to

date, but it could change from day to day. I guess we're going to coin a new term instead of don't Instagram new crimes, which will definitely stick with after this show. You could probably don't let your kids steal pills on behalf of convicted mafia underboss. That could be a new one for a T-shirt, but yeah, pretty crazy story. I mean, like the fact that it's happened already is just mad, although, as you just mentioned, like, there is quite a lot of. There is quite a lot of media stuff going on with this. So yeah. All right, till next week. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story.

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