Quantcast
Channel: Reaktionære Refleksioner
Viewing all 606 articles
Browse latest View live

Homo-højre

$
0
0

Although Rockwell speaks against “queers”, there is evidence that some homosexuals have sought refuge in the ANP.
FBI, juni 1965.

Her den seneste tid er jeg blevet gjort bekendt med, at flere ledende medlemmer på højrefløjen i ind- og udland er homofile. Nu er det jo ikke helt uden fortilfælde, at sådanne har søgt til højre. Alle kender nok beskyldningerne mod f.eks. SA-chefen Ernst Röhm. Beskyldninger jeg dog ikke giver alverden for. Dertil er beviserne for spinkle. Det samme gælder for SA-manden Edmund Heines – ophavsmanden til SA’s “Braunhemd” – der ligesom Röhm blev skudt under de lange knives nat.

Derimod var intellektuelle såsom franskmanden Robert Brasillach og japaneren Yukio Mishima beviseligt homofile, selv om begge tilhørte deres tids højrefløj. Af nyere tilfælde kan jeg huske tyskeren Michael Kühnen fra Aktionsfront Nationaler Sozialisten , der døde af AIDS i 1991; englænderen Nicky Crane fra Blood & Honour, der i 1993 ligeledes døde af AIDS, samt Ewald Althans, der i 1994 forsøgte at sælge fortrolige oplysninger om den nationale bevægelse i Tyskland til Forbundsrepublikkens hemmelige politi.

Som kristen fordømmer jeg selvsagt homofili. Jeg skal ikke udelukke, at nogle er født til denne last, men er deres afsky for den naturlige kønsakt så intens, at de aldrig vil kunne indgå i et normalt forhold, så må de leve i cølibat. Seksuel tilfredsstillelse er ikke en menneskeret.

***


Big Al – A Story of Blood And Betrayal.

$
0
0

Allen “Big Al” Benton’s road into the Aryan Brotherhood began when the Florida Highway Patrol stopped Rhett Zambito on January 16, 1977, for speeding in a car full of drugs, guns and human blood. Zambito later testified that the drugs belonged to John Charles Piazza III, a well known playboy in South Florida.

La Cosa Nostra
John Piazza financed his lavish lifestyle by dealing in drugs. Mostly marijuana, but at a later stage also cocaine. He bought the drugs from Thomas Farese, a made member of the Colombo crime family, who at that time smuggled tons and tons of marijuana and cocaine from Columbia into South Florida through a shipping company Farese – AKA “Tom Mix” –  ran in Fort Lauderdale. John Piazza was not himself a member of La Cosa Nostra, but operated through his uncle under the protection of the Gambino crime family. He also had a cousin who was a capo regime in the Lucchese crime family (Eddie Coco, a well known name to boxing historians.)

Thomas Farese

Mugshot of Thomas Farese AKA “Tom Mix”.

John Piazza had been dealing in drugs since 1968, but his operation seems really first to have taken off when he met Charles Keck in 1974. Keck was a street wise former mob connected fence from Philadelphia who had settled in South Florida. Keck was a natural born salesman with a vast network of contacts in the underworld of Southeast USA. With Keck as junior partner John Piazza expanded his operation from hundreds to thousands of pounds of marijuana, delivered mostly to distributors in Philadelphia and Atlanta.

Along the way Piazza had a man murdered. The murder and accumulated debts resulted in a fallout with Thomas Farese and Piazza had to get his drugs somewhere else. He started dealing in low quality marijuana from the “Ching group” in Jamaica and dealing more heavily in cocaine. A Colombian woman by the name of Nubia Gonzalez was a central player in the latter dealings. Somebody murdered her too.

John Charles Piazza III got heavily addicted to cocaine and therefore more and more paranoid. Street wise Charles Keck withdrew from Piazza’s criminal organisation and went into legitimate business with him instead. After Keck’s departure Piazza had to rely more and more on his strongman and bodyguard William Rhett Zambito, a former auto mechanic, and on a relative newcomer to his organisation, a red haired giant by the name of Allen Clifton Benton.

The Zambito murder
When Rhett Zambito got busted in January 1977 he ratted not only about the drugs in his car. He also confessed to the recent murder of Leonard Parrotta, a drug dealer from Philadelphia. The murder was ordered by Piazza and Zambito had committed it together with Allen Benton. Zambito also implicated Benton in at least one other murder.

John Piazza and Charles Keck both jumped ship and corroborated fully with the authorities. Piazza became the star witness against Thomas Farese who got thirty years in prison. Piazza and Keck later disappeared into the federal Witness Protection Program. Allan Benton received eighth years on federal charges of narcotics trafficking and was sent to United States Prison (USP) Atlanta.

Rhett Zambito recieved seven years on the same charges and was send back to Florida to help in the investigation into the Piazza drug ring murders. Though he had testified against his co-defendants – including Allen Benton – at the federal drug trial, Zambito refused to enter the Witness Protection Program. He also refused to corroborate any further in the murder investigation and started fighting against his indictment for the murder of Leonard Parrotta. On March 22, 1978, Rhett Zambito arrived in USP Atlanta to begin serving his federal drug sentence. Fifteen hours later he was found stabbed to death in his cell.

The murder of William Rhett Zambito was a major scandal for the authorities. Not only was USP Atlanta with now eight murders in sixteen months the most dangerous federal penitentiary at that time, but it housed Allen Benton who earlier had sworn to kill Zambito on sight. How could a prisoner who should have been kept in protective custody be sent to such a place?

The Californians
The Federal Bureau of Prisons appointed a board of inquiry to investigate how Rhett Zambito ended up in USP Atlanta. His murder also led the bureau to appoint a team of investigators to thoroughly examine why USP Atlanta was so violent.

Just three days before the investigators from the Bureau of Prisons arrived in USP Atlanta on April 13, 1978, yet another prisoner was stabbed to death. The victim this time was Dominique Orsini, a member of the Corsican Mafia and a major player in the so-called French Connection, a heroin pipeline from Turkey via France to the US.

The 58-year old drug lord had only been at USP Atlanta since December 1976. His much younger cousin Jean was also an inmate at the prison and was immediately put in protective custody. Jean “The Shepherd” Orsini, too, had been busy in the French Connection and was sent to USP Atlanta in 1972. In March, 1973, Orsini was caught with nine other inmates in an elaborate – if comical – escape attempt. Among his co-conspirators was George Harp, the very first member of the Californian prison gang the Aryan Brotherhood – AKA The Brand – to be sent to the federal prison system. Other deadly Californians such as William “Puppet” McKinney, Barry Mills, David Owens, Edgar Hevle, Christopher Gibson, and Charles “Preacher” McEvoy soon followed

George Harp

Second from right George Harp, who defected from the Aryan Brotherhood in 1983. With hat and glasses convicted AB-killer William “Puppet” McKinney who was murdered by his own in USP Lompoc in 1993.

“Mad Dog” Pruett
While the federal bureaucrats during 1978 toiled with their Zambito-related investigations, the law came gunning for Allen Benton. Everybody in the prison system knew he was responsible for the killing of Rhett Zambito. For the authorities it was only a matter of getting someone to talk. They got three. On their testimony Big Al – as Benton was known in the prison – was charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The jury acquitted him of murder, but convicted Big Al of conspiracy, for which he drew a life sentence.

Among the three inmates who testified against Al Benton was Marion “Mad Dog” Pruett, who occupied the bunk beneath Zambito’s during the murder. Pruett was a former member of the Tasmanian Devils MC in Charlotte, North Carolina, home to the more famous Tar Heel Stompers (who donned the Death Head in 1978). Pruett was serving twenty years for armed bank robbery and had been in various federal prisons since 1971.

Marion Pruett went into protective custody after he testified against Big Al. He was released into the Witness Protection program in 1979, but – contrary to John Piazza and Charles Keck – “Mad Dog” did not disappear. He and his common law wife – a dedicated biker chick – settled in New Mexico under new identities and quickly became part of the local outlaw biker scene where Mad Dog soon got heavily addicted to cocaine. In 1981 he murdered his wife in a fit of rage and went on a robbery, kidnapping and murder spree through several states. He was caught after five months and five murders.

The case became a major scandal for the Federal Protective Witness Program with new inquiries, investigations and reports in its wake. Pruett kept the pot boiling with numerous interviews to the press. He now claimed to be the actual killer of Rhett Zambito and later also claimed to have committed a double murder that a fellow inmate on Arkansas’s death row was convicted of. Marion “Mad Dog” Pruett was executed in 1999. Allen “Big Al” Benton was at that time himself in protective custody.

Marion Pruett

Marion “Mad Dog” Pruett on death row.

The Aryan Brotherhood
In May 1977 yet another mobster with ties to the French Connection, 59-year old Vincent Papa, was murdered in USP Atlanta. Three inmates were tried and convicted for the murder. Inmate Herbert Sperling, a member of the Jewish Mafia, was acquitted of paying for Papa’s death. Among the convicted killers were the Californians Ronald Perrin and Daniel “DC” Cavanaugh, both members of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Barry Mills Red Baron

Barry Mills when he was known as Red Baron.

It is not known when or where the Aryan Brotherhood was formally formed in the federal prison system. But as previously mentioned George Harp, a member of the Brand almost since it’s beginning in 1967 in California’s San Quentin state prison, was in USP Atlanta as early as 1973. In 1977 Cavanaugh’s partner in crime, Aryan Brotherhood’s “Red Baron”, was transferred from USP McNeil Island to USP Atlanta. Later known simply as “The Baron” Barry Byron Mills would become the most famous member of the Aryan Brotherhood. According to former AB John Greschner, who first met Barry Mills in 1977 when they both were en route to Atlanta, it was “The Baron” who took the initiative and asked California for permission to start a section of the Aryan Brotherhood in the federal prison system.

It therefore seems plausible that the federal Aryan Brotherhood was formed in USP Atlanta around 1977-78. And it seems plausible that Big Al was recruited to the Brand in that prison during that period. What is known for sure is that Big Al rose to the absolute top of the extremely feared brotherhood. For many years he was a member of the three man Commission who ruled the organisation with an iron fist. Together with the two Californians Barry Mills and Tyler Davis “TD” Bingham he had the ultimate say over who was to live and who was to die.

TD Bingham

Second from right TD Bingham, AKA “The Hulk”, in his prime. On the far left Christopher Gibson who years later was tried and convicted together with Bingham, Mills and Hevle as the four major leaders of the federal faction of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Trouble in Lewisburg
Big Al’s downfall began in November 1996 when racial turmoil started brewing in various federal prisons. It began in USP Lewisburg in Pennsylvania where Big Al held sway over the white prisoners. Among them were a group of White Nationalists formed around Richard Scutari, the former chief of security for Robert Matthews’ group of militants known variously as The Order and Brüder Schweigen.

The WN-group in USP Lewisburg took it personal when Randall Scott Anderson, a wannabe Klansman convicted of trying to bomb a roller skate park, became a Muslim. On November 8, 1996, Anderson was stabbed to death. The blacks retaliated three days later and killed Perry York, who was not a member of the WN group.

In 1997 “Highlander”, the official voice of Blood & Honour Scotland, published a letter from a certain Marek Kowaalski who gave the WN group’s version of the events in USP Lewisburg:

KowaalskiHighlander

Marek Kowaalski – formerly known as the skinhead Mark Frank Kowaalski – was a former member of Bob Heick’s American Front, convicted of bombing a local NAACP-headquarter. Kowaalski sounded uncompromising in his letter to “Highlander”. But when he years later was charged with the murder of Randall Scott Anderson, he immediately rolled over and testified against his accomplice in the killing, Peter Georgacarakos, the co-founder of The White Order of Thule society.

The killing of Perry York by blacks could have escalated the conflict between the White Nationalists and the Muslims to an all out race war in USP Lewisburg. In modern prison politics you do not lay a hand on a member of another race. However, under the leadership of Big Al Benton the Aryan Brotherhood in USP Lewisburg played an important role in calming the situation.

Richard Scutari

Richard Scutari, former chief of security for The Order and weapons trainer for The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord.

War with DC Blacks
That very same month race troubles were also brewing in USP Marion in Illinois. A member of the DC Blacks, the by far largest black gang in the federal prison system and an old adversary of the Brand, assaulted without provocation Joseph Tokash from the Dirty White Boys.

In those days the Dirty White Boys played more or less the same role in the federal prison system vis-à-vis the Aryan Brotherhood as the Nazi Low Riders did in California’s prison system. The assault on Tokash should on paper have caused the Dirty White Boys to immediately retaliate against the DC Blacks. However, the attacker was in serious trouble with his own gang and had assaulted Joseph Tokash in order to be placed in isolation, a well know tactic among those who want to go into protective custody without appearing to do so.

As such there was much room for not letting the situation escalate any further. But it did. A fortnight later a handful of Dirty White Boys were attacked in the yard by a dozen DC Blacks. After that the shot callers for the Aryan Brotherhood in USP Marion stepped up to the plate and ordered any black that attacked at white to be killed. In Marion the war was on between the Brand and the DC Blacks. When Barry Mills and TD Bingham in USP Florence in Colorado – the “Alcatraz of the Rockies” – learned that DC Blacks had put a hit on AB’s two shot callers in USP Marion, they declared total war on the black gang.

Defection
On August 28, 1997, Big Al in USP Lewisburg recieved a secret message from TD Bingham. “War with DC Blacks”. Within sixteen hours Big Al had organized two hit teams, one led by himself, the other led by the formidable Wayne Bridgewater. The two teams attacked simultaneously and stabbed all in all five members of DC Blacks and a white associate of the gang. Two shot callers – the main targets – died. It was a spectacular attack, even in the violent history of the Aryan Brotherhood, and the most bloody in the Brand’s war against DC Blacks, which continued for the next three years. But without Big Al. Just fourteen hours after the murders in USP Lewisburg he defected from the Aryan Brotherhood and later went into protective custody.

Allen Benton

Allen “Big Al” Benton as shot caller in the Aryan Brotherhood.

A law enforcement officer later described how unexpected and inexplicable Allan Benton’s move was perceived by the authorities by comparing it to the sudden defection of a four star American general to North Korea. Later in court Big Al explained that he had picked his victim Abdul Salaam because he liked him and wanted his death to be quick. A former federal prosecutor has refused the notion that Benton’s defection was caused by a crisis of conscience. However, it is a fact that right before the killings Big Al had a heated argument with Wayne Bridgewater because Bridgewater refused to kill two DC Blacks shot callers, at least one of them because Bridgewater knew him too well.

Although Bridgewater almost single-handedly stabbed, killed and wounded four DC Blacks in one ferocious attack, Bridgewater had been a reluctant participant. He stood to be released from prison in a short time and thrice refused to hit targets designated by Benton, his formal superior in the Aryan Brotherhood. According to the iron rules of the Brand Wayne Bridgewater stood himself to be killed and only let the attack after heavy pressure from Big Al.

RICO-trial

Wayne Bridgewater

Wayne Bridgewater.

Back in the nineteen eighties the FBI had tried to build a RICO-case against the Aryan Brotherhood. The case went nowhere when the federal prosecutor in Los Angeles threw in the towel in 1989. Then the ATF took up the mantle in 1995 and began building a case against the Californian faction of the Brand. The killings in USP Lewisburg came timely to a case against the federal faction as well, and the defection of Allen Benton – the highest ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood ever to defect – made a RICO-conviction against especially Barry Mills and TD Bingham within the desired reach.

In return for his full corporation in the investigation Big Al Benton pleaded guilty to assault and received a mere nine years for the murders and attempted murders in USP Lewisburg. He became the star witness in the US government’s trial against Barry Mills, TD Bingham and two other high ranking brothers. The government wanted to kill Mills and Bingham. The jury said no. Both got multiple life sentences.

Big Al also testified against Wayne Bridgewater, the soon-to-be-released brother he had pressured into the bloody attack in USP Lewisburg. Bridgewater drew a life sentence.

Barry Byron Mills died in USP Florence of old age in 2018. Tyler Davis Bingham is still locked up in Florence. So is Wayne Bridgewater. None of them have renounced the Aryan Brotherhood. Big Al Benton probably lives – if alive – in some Special Needs Yard somewhere in the American federal prison system.

***

Løkkefonden: Fiduser og Bragesnak

$
0
0

Send aldrig jeres drenge i kløerne på Lykkefonden. Det gjorde vi i år, hvor vi sendte vores søn på Løkkefondens sommerskole “Drengeakademiet”, der blev afholdt i ugerne 27-28 på Flakkebjerg Efterskole ved Slagelse.

I en senere post vil jeg redegøre for vores særdeles ubehagelige erfaring med såvel “Drengeakademiet” som med Løkkefonden. Her vil jeg redegøre for alt det, jeg burde have sat mig ind i, inden vi sendte vores knægt i kløerne på folk, vi den den i dag knap ved hvem var.

Løkkefonden
Løkkefonden blev stiftet i 2012 af daværende formand for partiet Venstre, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, som en almennyttig fond. Løkkefonden må derfor ikke i nævneværdigt omfang drive erhvervsvirksomhed, men skal finansieres af frivillige bidrag. I praksis skal mindst 90% af Løkkefondens indtægter stamme fra donationer og sponsorater.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen indsatte sig selv som formand for fonden, hvis formål er at drive undervisningstilbud til folkeskolens “drenge på kanten”. Dertil oprettede Løkkefonden “Drengeakademiet”, et først tre-ugers, siden to-ugers kursusløb lagt i skolernes sommerferie.

Efter en lidt mat start begyndte donationerne at strømme ind efter Løkkefonden i 2014 søsatte en pressekampagne, der, på baggrund af en rapport fra Institut for Uddannelse og Pædagogik (DPU), hævdede, at “Drengeakademiet” var en dundrende succes: “På tre uger løftede drengene sig i snit med en læringseffekt, der svarer til to læringsår i stavning og tre læringsår i læsning og matematik.”

Løkkefonden smedede mens jernet var varmt og oprettede “Københavnerakademiet”, der drives med støtte fra Bikubenfonden. “Københavnerakademiet” er det samme som “Drengeakademiet”, men forbeholdt elever fra Københavns kommune. På Løkkefondens hjemmeside kan man læse, at “KøbenhavnerAkademiet er et klassisk eksempel på, hvordan DrengeAkademiets campkoncept kan udrulles i kommuner og være til gavn for fagligt udfordrede drenge i lokalområdet.”

“Københavnerakademiet” er altså regulært et udstillingsvindue, der skal få danske kommuner til at aftage Løkkefondens “campkoncept”.

Turbo indlæring
Men hvad er “Drengeakademiet” egentligt? Det synes at være et amerikansk, kommercielt koncept, hvor man sælger kursusforløb rettet mod børn og unge med løfte om markant forbedring af deres præstationer i skolen. Man hævder, at man gennem noget man kalder “intensiv indlæring” eller “turbo indlæring” kan forcere et færdigheds- og kundskabsløft hos eleverne.

Konceptet er smart, for det kan sælges til alle forældre, uanset om deres børn er dårlige, middelmådige eller dygtige i skolen, for med “turbo indlæring” kan alle slags elever angiveligt rykke fremad i indlæringskøen. Konceptet kan derfor sælges både til bekymrede forældre og til ambitiøse forældre. Konceptet har også den styrke, at det appellerer til både borgerlig “man-kan-hvad-man-vil” moral og til socialistisk “alle-kan-det-samme” moral og derfor kan afsættes til begge lejre.

“Turbo indlæring” er gammel vin på nye flasker. Det går helt tilbage til i hvert fald det såkaldte “Head Start”-program, som USA søsatte i 1965, for at løfte negerbørn op på intellektuelt og skolastisk niveau med hvide børn. Den amerikanske psykolog Arthur Jensen blev lagt for had, da han allerede i 1969 i en omfattende artikel i Harvard Educational Review påviste, at sådanne programmer stort set ikke virker, fordi børnenes intelligens ikke ændres og derfor begrænser, hvad de overhovedet kan indlæres.

Skattekroner til turboforløb
Turbo indlæring er altså ikke noget at råbe hurra for. Men der er penge i det. Lars Løkke Rasmussen blev i 2015 statminister og indsatte derfor sin kone som formand for Løkkefonden. Men Lars Løkke Rasmussens interesse for turbo indlæring var dermed slet ikke slut. I 2017 afsatte han halv milliard skattekroner over tre år til belønning af skoler, der “hvert af de tre år reducere andelen af elever, der får under karakteren 4 i dansk og matematik, fem procentpoint“, gennem “indsatser, der tidligere hat vist sig at have positiv effekt, blandt andet intensive læringsforløb, de såkaldte turboforløb.”

I samme ombæring påpegede en forsker, der gennem to år havde fulgt Egmontfondens mindre opreklamerede turboforløb “Lær for Livet”, at der ingen dokumentation er for, at turbo indlæring har nogen varig effekt. Forskeren konkluderede forsigtigt – men helt i overensstemmelse med Arthur Jensens 50 år gamle resultater – at “Hvis man har forventninger til at eleverne skal gå fra at være i den nedre del i forhold til deres gennemsnitlige score i faglige test og bevæge sig over middel, så vil jeg sige at vi ikke når i mål med de intensive læringsforløb“.

Egmontfonden og Bikubenfonden gik sammen og hyrede Rambøll Gruppen til at følge og evaluere Løkkefondens turboforløb. Løkkefonden kunne dårligt modsætte sig en uafhængig undersøgelse af sine opreklamerede resultater, og druknede i stedet nyheden om, at dens “camps” nu kom under lup, i en omfattende, selvforherligende pressemeddelelse hvori Løkkefonden nu hævdede, at “På bare 14 dage kan LøkkeFonden få fagligt udfordrede drenge til at rykke sig over 2,5 læringsår inden for stavning, læsning og matematiske færdigheder.”

Negativ effekt
Løkkefondens bragesnak fik statistikeren Peter Allerup, professor emeritus, Aarhus Universitet, til tasterne. I en klumme på netmediet Altinget rettede han i februar 2018 en sønderlemmende kritik af Løkkefondens misbrug af det statistiske begreb “læringsår”. Senere samme år udkom Rambøll Gruppens første rapport om Løkkefondens flagskib “Drengeakademiet”. Resultatet var katastrofalt:

Skoletilfredshed og motivation i 9. klasse er lavere for elever, som har været på DrengeAkademiet end for elever i sammenligningsgruppen. Dette peger i retning af, at de elever, som har deltaget på DrengeAkademiet, efterfølgende bliver mindre tilfredse med deres almindelige skoletilbud og har en lavere motivation for skolearbejdet end elever, som ikke har været afsted på et intensivt læringsforløb.

I 2019 udkom Rambøll Gruppens anden rapport om Løkkefondens ‘camps’. Rapporten omhandlede mestendels hvad Løkkefonden havde gjort for at rette op på de elendige forhold, herunder problemet med frafald. Konklusionen lød:

På baggrund af interviewene har vi imidlertid ikke belæg for (endnu) at konkludere, om den nye udvælgelsesstrategi øger drengenes udbytte af campen. Samtidig er der ikke noget, der tyder på, at den skærpede udvælgelse mindsker fx frafaldet.

Lille eller ingen effekt
I år (2020) udkom Rambøll Gruppens tredje og sidste rapport om Løkkefondens “camps”.  Om “Drengeakademiet” fastslog forskerholdet, at

Deltagerne på DrengeAkademiet får ikke bedre karakterer ved folkeskolens prøver i dansk og matematik i 9. klasse sammenlignet med andre drenge, der ligner dem mest muligt med hensyn til de mange karakteristika, som vi kan observere.

Der var dog også en lille, målbar positiv effekt at spore:

Blandt deltagerne på DrengeAkademiet i 2017-2018 er der cirka 6 procentpoint flere, der samlet set har bestået folkeskolens afgangsprøve end blandt de sammenlignelige elever. Da der i løbet af de to år er 95 drenge, som har deltaget på DrengeAkademiet efter 8. klasse, svarer det til, at 5-6 af disse drenge har bestået folkeskolen, hvilket de ikke ville have gjort uden DrengeAkademiet.”

En fem-seks procent af drenge har altså konkret udbytte af opholdet på Løkkefondens sommerskole. Til sammenligning har Løkkefonden til mig oplyst, at i 2020 stak 13 % af drengene af, blev smidt ud eller fik deres forældre til at hente dem.

2020-rapporten behandlede også Løkkefondets kommunale flagskib “Københavnerakademiet”, hvis resultater var endnu mere sølle end “Drengeakademiets”:

Deltagerne på KøbenhavnerAkademiet klarer sig ifølge evalueringen ikke bedre end sammenlignelige elever, der ikke har deltaget på KøbenhavnerAkademiet. Det gælder uanset, hvilke udfaldsmål vi anvender.”

Helt i overensstemmelse med Arthur Jensen 50 år gamle forskningsresultat, så måtte det danske forskerhold erkende , at “de intensive læringsforløb i de fleste tilfælde havde ingen eller små effekter for elevernes faglige, sociale og personlige udvikling. ”

Skærpet opsyn med Løkkefonden
På papiret får Løkkefonden ikke nævneværdig del i den halve milliard skattekroner, som Lars Løkke Rasmussen i 2017 bevilgede til turboforløb, idet Løkkefonden som nævnt kun i meget begrænset omfang må sælge sine “camps” til skoler og kommuner. Men i 2018 blev det afsløret, at Løkkefonden i sine regnskaber – under posten “øvrige donationer” – havde skjult millionindtægter fra salg af konsulentbistand til flere danske kommuner, herunder Københavns som betalte Løkkefonden et millionbeløb for “intensive læringsforløb”.

Civilstyrelsen, tilsynsmyndigheden for almennyttige fonde, gik ind i sagen og kunne efter en kulegravning af Løkkefondens regnskaber konstaterer, at fondens erhvervsindtægter var over det dobbelte af de tilladelige ca. ti procent. Civilstyrelsen pudsede derfor Erhvervsstyrelsen, tilsynsmyndigheden for erhvervsdrivende fonde, på Løkkefonden for at få opklaret om fonden burde omregistreres til en erhvervsfond med bl.a. større åbenhed til følge.

I 2019 lod Erhversstyrelsen Løkkefonden beholde sin status som almennyttig fond, men holder stadig øje med dens drift. Samme år blev Civilstyrelsen opmærksom på, at Løkkefondens administrationsudgifter var eksploderet og derfor holder også denne styrelse i dag skærpet opsyn med Løkkefonden.

Med myndighederne pustende i nakken er Løkkefonden tvunget til at holde sine erhvervindtægter nede under 10% af fondens samlede indtægter. Løkkefonden er i dag derfor særdeles afhængig af frivillige bidrag. Medens Lars Løkke Rasmussen var statsminister, var der adskillige afsløringer af, hvordan forskellige aktører – såsom kommuner, kvotekonger og forbundsformænd – kunne mødes med ham, hvis de spyttede i kassen til hans fond. Denne indtægtskilde er uden tvivl ved at rinde ud i og med, at Lars Løkke Rasmusen i dag hverken er statsminister eller partiformand for Venstre.

Persongalleriet
Stifter og tidligere formand for Løkkefonden, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, har i årenes løb været rodet ind i mange sager om misbrug af borgernes penge, samt om at lade snart sagt hvem som helst betale for hans tøj, rejser, natteliv og øvrige privatforbrug.

Nuværende formand for Løkkefonden, Lars Løkke Rasmussens kone Sólrun Rasmussen, blev i 2018 fyret på grund af samarbejdsvanskeligheder fra N. Zahles Gymnasieskole i København. Da hun i sin tid blev udnævnt til bestyrelsesformand i Løkkefonden, havde Sólrun Rasmussen overhovedet ingen erfaring med hverken fonds- eller erhvervsledelse.

Lars Løkke og Sólrun Rasmussens fælles søn, Bergur Løkke Rasmussen, har ingen formelle poster i Løkkefonden. Men i 2018 blev det afsløret, at han havde i opdrag at skaffe sponsorer til Løkkefonden. Det gjorde han bl.a. ved at arrangere et møde mellem sin statsministerfar og formanden for Akademikernes A-kasse mod, at Akademikernes A-Kasse betalte 50,000 kroner til Løkkefonden. Givet Løkkefondens lukkethed blev det aldrig klarlagt, hvor meget Løkkefonden havde betalt Bergur Løkke Rasmussen for sådanne manøvrer.

I marts 2017 blev Frederik Meyer hyret som direktør for Løkkefonden umiddelbart efter, at han som salgsdirektør i flaskevandsproducenten Aqua D’Or havde gjort firmaet til grin med en salgskampagne for “skolevand” som forældrene skulle købe til deres poder på linje med skolemælk.

Blot Syv måneder efter Frederik Meyer tiltrådte som direktør, fik hans bror, Niels Christian “Bubber” Meyer, sæde i Løkkefondens bestyrelse. “Bubber” Meyer blev i 2004 fyret fra stillingen som redaktør af TV 2’s børneprogrammer efter det blev afsløret, at han misbrugte sin stilling til mod betaling at gøre reklame for restaurantkæden “Jensen Bøfhus”.

Et andet bestyrelsesmedlem i Løkkefonden, Allan Søgaard Larsen, måtte i 2019 trække sig efter Konkurrencerådet anmeldte Falck til bagmandspolitiet for en række forhold, der fandt sted mens Søgaard Larsen var koncernchef for Falck.

Der har været antydninger i pressen om et eventuelt misbrug af Løkkefondens midler til privat forbrug. Givet Lars Løkke Rasmussens historie og Løkkefondens lettere anløbne persongalleri, så kan dette såmænd ikke udelukkes.  På den anden side har Løkkefonden seks til ni ansatte, herunder en direktør, der alle skal have løn. Dertil skal i hvert fald lægges udgiften til fjorten dages husning, bespisning og undervisning af 100 drenge, når “Drengeakademiet” henover sommeren afvikles.

Alt i alt kan der derfor ikke være meget tilbage af de omkring syv millioner kroner, som Løkkefonden årligt henter ind på donationer og sponsorater, til at betale for Lars Løkke Rasmussens cigaretter, whisky og underbukser.

***

Drengeakademiet: Lukkethed og Løgne

$
0
0

Mandag den 29. juni klokken 9.30 afleverede jeg vores søn Knud til Løkkefondens turboforløb “Drengeakademiet”, som Knuds mor Anette havde hørt om fra en anden mor, hvis søn havde været glad for opholdet.

Anette gik med vanlig effektivitet til sagen. Det stod tidligt klart, at Drengeakademiets målgruppe primært var skoletrætte drenge. Det overraskede mig derfor ikke, da jeg senere faldt over en statistik, der viste, at eleverne på Drengeakademiet overvejende havde en baggrund præget af brudte hjem, mange skoleskift, klassenedrykning, højt fravær og den slags.

Knuds baggrund er den diametralt modsatte og han tager hver dag glad i skole. Men han kæmper hårdt for at følge fagligt med. Knuds IQ fejler ingenting, men han er ordblind og har hvad psykologerne kalder “lav arbejdshukommelse”. I vores ansøgning til Løkkefonden blev Knuds baggrund og situation omhyggeligt forklaret, og i sin egen ansøgning forklarede Knud, at han håbede Drengeakademiet kunne hjælpe med, at det blev nemmere at gå i skole.

Både Knud og vi søgte Knuds optagelse på Drengeakademiet, fordi Drengeakademiet profilerede sig på “Et stort fagligt løft” af drengene. Som jeg tidligere har dokumenteret, så viste denne påstand sig at være en grim lille løgn. Den første af mange.

Læs Løkkefonden: Fiduser og Bragesnak.

Tilbagemeldingen fra Løkkefonden var, at man hovedsageligt optog drenge, der stod foran deres afsluttende skoleår, hvorfor der muligvis ikke var plads til Knud – der efter sommeren skulle op i ottende – dette år. Men optaget blev han, antageligt som den yngste.

Det skulle efterfølgende vise sig, at flere blandt Knuds nye kammerater var så institutionsvante, at de bl.a. havde indsmuglet mobiltelefoner på Drengeakademiet. Det burde Knud også have gjort.

Flakkebjerg
Af det tilsendte materiale fra Løkkefonden fremgik det, at Drengeakademiet ville forløbe i ugerne 27-28 og blive afholdt på Flakkebjerg Efterskole ved Slagelse. Det sidste studsede jeg en anelse over, for da jeg i 1990’erne var aktiv på den politiske højrefløj, da var Flakkebjerg hjemsted for en aktiv afdeling af den kommunistiske ungdomsorganisation “Rød Ungdom”. Organisationen er i dag næsten glemt, men det var f.eks. et tidligere ledende medlem af “Rød Ungdom”, der i 2003 blev dømt for vold mod  daværende statsminister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Flakkebjerg Efterskole bakkede den gang helt op om “Rød Ungdoms” militante aktiviteter og sendte busfulde af sine elever afsted til de optøjer, der i årene 1996-98 tilbagevendene gjorde Greve usikker, når det yderste venstres sammenrend “Antiracistisk Netværk” samlede sig i forsøg på at fordrive Danmarks få nationale socialister fra deres lille hovedkvarter i den ellers fredelige københavnerforstad.

Som tidligere efterskoleelev ved jeg, at det ikke er usædvanligt, at visse elever bevarer en tæt tilknytning til den efterskole, de har været på. Nogle søger endog – efter endt uddannelse – tilbage som lærer på deres tidligere efterskole. Det er således ikke utænkeligt, at tidligere medlemmer af den i 1990’erne huserende kommunistiske ungdomsorganisation “Rød Ungdom” tyve år senere er at finde som – måske ledende – ansatte på Flakkebjerg Efterskole.

Jeg undrede mig derfor lidt over, hvordan det borgerlige foretagende Løkkefonden var kommet i kontakt med Flakkebjerg Efterskole, som jeg kun kendte som et rødt foretagende, og hvem der konkret havde skaffet Flakkebjerg en nærmest fast indtægt fra Løkkefonden henover sommeren, hvor efterskolerne lider økonomisk tab som følge af skolernes obligatoriske ferie.

Afleveringen af Knud
Da jeg mandag morgen den 29. juni kørte afsted mod Flakkebjerg med Knud, havde jeg ingen klar forestilling om Drengeakademiet, men dog en forventning om, at man ville tilstræbe et maskulint miljø omkring drengene.

Vi ankom omkring kl. 9.30 og holdt ind på nogle boldbaner bag Flakkebjerg, der i dagens anledning fungerede som parkeringsplads. Vi blev mødt af drønende høj dansemusik, der gav indtryk af, at man havde gang i en festival eller et karneval. Drengeakademiets personale var til identificere, for de var alle sammen iklædt ens sorte T-shirts.

De voksne, som Knud nu skulle være i hænderne på, var ikke særligt robuste at se på. Mændene var tynde og blege og jeg så flere gråhårede kvinder, der syntes lige at have rejst sig fra det brune hjørne. De voksne var heller ikke specielt unge, men deres opførsel var derimod  særdeles ungdommelig. Nærmest pubertetsagtig euforisk. Mens en håndfuld var beskæftiget med at modtage drengene, stod de øvrige i baggrunden, hvor de i smågrupper vuggede og smådansede til den drønhøje musik, gav hinanden begejstrede “high fives” og råbte “Er det ikke bare den fedeste tid i vores liv!” og den slags.

Medens vi rykkede frem i køen til Knuds indskrivning bemærkede jeg, at drengen foran os kun præsenterede sig ved sit fornavn, hvorfor Drengeakademiets ansatte måtte spørge til han fulde navn. Jeg sagde derfor til Knud, “Husk at sige dit fulde navn.” En høj, tynd mand kom over og spurgte Knud, hvad han hed. “Knud”, svarede Knud lidt beklemt. Jeg skulle lige til at sige “Husk dit fulde navn” til ham, da den høje mand begyndte at udvise en besynderlig opførsel.

Han stak pegefingeren op til munden, mens han nikkede med hovedet og sagde noget i retning af “Ja, Knud.. Ja, ja, Knud… Ja…” Jeg holdt blikket på ham, parat til at høre hvad problemet var, men hans blik flakkede rundt alle steder end mod mig. Til sidst drejede han rundt, gik over til bordet med indskrivningslisterne, sagde kort noget til en anden ansat og krydsede så af på en liste. Dernæst kom han tilbage med et kort, hvorpå Knuds navn og gruppe – Echo – stod anført og viste os over til en anden kø, hvor Knud skulle fotograferes. Først længe efter fik jeg – med hjælp fra Knud og google – identificeret den høje mand som identisk med Kristian Hulmose Nørgaard, leder af Drengeakademiet.

Medens vi stod i denne kø, kom en yngre kvinde af formodentligt tamilsk herkomst over og præsenterede sig som Mette fra Ehco-gruppen. Hun var såmænd venlig nok, men også hendes blik flakkede underligt nervøst rundt. Efter Knud fik taget foto kom en tredje ansat – en ældre kvinde, der optrådte fuldstændigt normalt – og hentede ham. Det sidste jeg – spøgefuldt – sagde til Knud var “Opfør dig ordentligt og husk at ringe til din mor.”

Ubehag
Jeg kørte hjem lettere ubehageligt til mode. Mit førstehåndsindtryk af Drengeakademiet var bestemt negativt. Den opgejlede, euforiske stemning blandt personalet havde jeg to gange i mit liv tidligere personligt oplevet: Blandt lærerne (og visse elever) på Tvind Efterskole og Realkursus, hvor jeg årene 1974-1977 var elev, og tyve år senere i den amerikanske frikirke “Carpe Diem”, hvor en kærestes bror var medlem. Det er derfor en opførsel som jeg klart forbinder med en sekt-lignende mentalitet.

Dernæst var der Kristian Hulmose Nørgaards ejendommelige opførsel, da han skulle indskrive Knud. Eller ejendommelig var den sådan set ikke. Hans opførsel viste tydeligt, at han var i vildrede. Og så vidt jeg kunne se, så kunne Kristian Hulmose Nørgaard i situationen kun være i tvivl om, hvorvidt Knud skulle indskrives på Drengeakademiet eller ej. Hende Echo-Mettes nervøse opførsel synes i hvert fald at bekræfte, at Knud på en eller anden måde var et problem, som man havde snakket om inden man overhovedet havde set ham.

Jeg kunne ikke se nogen logisk grund til, at Drengeakademiet på forhånd skulle have et problem med Knud. Jeg fik derfor en mistanke om, at Drengeakademiets problem med Knud ikke handlede om Knud, men om hvem han var søn af.

Knud smides ud
Drengene fik på Drengeakademiet konfiskeret deres mobiltelefoner og måtte kun ringe hjem i tidsrummet 12.15 til 13.30. Først senere slog mig, at det jo er mens de fleste forældre er på arbejde.

Den første mandag måtte drengene slet ikke ringe hjem. Om tirsdagen hørte vi ikke noget fra Knud, hvilket vi tog som at han oplevede en masse nyt. Onsdag ringede Knud til sin mor og fortalte, at han havde det godt. Han var begejstret for sine nye kammerater og glad for undervisningen. Knud fortalte også, at deres holdleder Tom var homoseksuel, hvilket et par drenge i baggrunden grinende bekræftede. Der blev ikke serveret svinekød i svinekødsretter såsom frikadeller og spegepølse, og de voksne pakkede tingene ind i indsmigrende udenomssnak. Knud mente derfor alt i alt, at Drengeakademiet var et meget venstreorienteret sted, men virkede klar på at tage den oplevelse med.

Samme aften omkring klokken 20.30 smed Drengeakademiet Knud ud.

Drengeakademiets første forklaring
Onsdag aften ved 20.30-tiden slukkede Anette – som hun plejer – sin telefon og gik til ro. Jeg sad på mit kontor til omkring kl. 22, hvorefter også jeg gik i seng. Drengeakademiet har efterfølgende hævdet, at man ikke havde mit nummer. Det er vi ikke helt sikre på om sandt. Men under alle omstændigheder så vidste Drengeakademiet, at Knud havde mit nummer på sin telefon. Så ville man have haft fat i mig, så havde det været en smal sag for Drengeakademiet at få mit telefonnummer.

I stedet kimede Drengeakademiet løs på Anettes slukkede telefon helt frem til omkring klokken 23, ligesom hun fik den foruroligende SMS-besked “Knud er OK, men vi skal snakke sammen i morgen tidlig.”

Selv om Anette per SMS også fik oplyst, at Drengeakademiets telefon var åben fra klokken 7.00, så tog man ikke telefonen, da Anette om morgenen begyndte at ringe. Efter flere forgæves opkald lagde hun en besked, men først klokken 7.30 ringede en vis Mette tilbage. Hun præsenterede sig som Drengeakademiets “campleder” og fortalte Anette, at Knud var blevet smidt ud. Men campleder Mette ville ikke nærmere ind på, hvad årsagen var. Som Anette senere skrev:

“Årsagen er noget diffus; noget med at Knud ikke gør hvad der bliver sagt og har fået 3 advarsler. Men HVAD han har gjort specificeres ikke. Noget med forkert attitude – han er homofob og racist. Og han kritiserer stedet for at være venstreorienteret, samt at der er for lidt svinekød i maden.”

Anette fik fat i mig omkring klokken kvarter i otte og fortalte, at Knud var blevet smidt ud. Jeg spurgte med det samme “hvorfor?”, hvortil hun svarede, at det havde hun ikke helt kunnet få en forklaring på. Men Knud har fået tre advarsler og var derfor ude. Anette fortalte videre, at vi var blevet lovet en “grundig overlevering” når han blev hentet. Anette nævnte også, at hun havde en underlig fornemmelse af, at det var presserende for Drengeakademiet, at Knud blev hentet.

Knud hentes
Vi fik aldrig den lovede “grundige overlevering”. Det gav Drengeakademiet senere mig skylden for, så lad mig derfor give en detaljeret skildring af, hvordan afhentningen af Knud forløb.

Jeg sagde til Anette at jeg nok kunne være der ved ti-tiden. Kort efter ringede hun tilbage med et telefonnummer jeg skulle ringe på fem minutter før ankomst. Jeg tog afsted tidligere end beregnet og da jeg ramte Slagelsevej holder jeg ind efter ca. 500 meter og ringede op. Drengeakademiet svarede ikke, selv om jeg lod telefonen ringe ud.

Seks-syv minutter senere – d.v.s. omkring 9.30 – drejede jeg ind ad Flakkebjergs indkørsel og gjorde holdt på parkeringspladsen. Da jeg steg ud af bilen, mødte jeg en stor flok drenge, der var på vej ind i bygningen på min venstre side. En lyshåret fyr brød lidt ud af rækken og råbte “Skal du hente Knud?”. “Ja”, svarede jeg, “Ved du hvor han er?”

Det gjorde knægten og vi bevægede os ned mod, hvad der senere viste sig at være administrationsbygningen. Da vi nærmede os indgangsdøren, dukkede Echo-Mette, som jeg traf da jeg afleverede Knud, op. Echo-Mette kommanderede skarpt drengen tilbage, men uden at gøre tegn til at træde i hans sted. Drengen stod derfor bare og pegede forvirret op på mig og så ud som om han ville sige noget, hvilket fik Echo-Mette til næsten rasende igen at kommandere ham tilbage.

Jeg bliver ret pikeret over hendes opførsel og nikker derfor kun kort tilbage, da hun efterfølgende servilt hilser på mig. Jeg vendte mig og gik op ad trappen for åbne den store glasdør ind til bygningen, men i det samme dukkede en ældre, gråhåret og tynd kvinde op på den anden af døren, som hun åbnede.

Hun gjorde ikke tegn til at byde mig indenfor, men stod med et lettere forvirret udtryk i ansigtet og holdt i dørhåndtaget. Bag mig sagde Echo-Mette noget i retning af, “Ja, det er Knuds far”, hvilket fik den ældre kvinde til at se nærmest endnu mere forvirret ud.

Hvis hun præsenterede sig, så husker jeg det ikke. Men med hjælp fra Knud og google fik jeg hende senere identificeret som Mette Bloch Andersen, Drengeakademiets “campleder”. Jeg fik en stærk fornemmelse af, at de to Mette’r ikke rigtigt vidste, hvad de skulle stille op med mig. Dette undrede mig, for ganske vist var jeg kommet cirka en halv time tidligere end de sikkert havde regnet med, og som nævnt kunne jeg ikke få meldt min ankomst, men de var jo udmærket klar over hvorfor jeg var på Flakkebjerg.

Jeg var omsider kommet ind i entreen, men havde svært ved at blive klog på, hvor jeg nu skulle hen. Mette Bloch Andersen gjorde en ejendommeligt flagrende bevægelse, som jeg opfattede som en retningsangivelse hen mod en trappe på min venstre side. Men hun optrådte så ubeslutsomt, at jeg for en sikkerheds skyld spurgte “Opad den der?”, hvilket hun – forvirret og flaksende – nikkede ja til.

Jeg gik op ad trappen og stod nu igen og forsøgte at orientere mig. Til venstre for mig løb en lang, øde gang med – så vidt jeg kunne se – alle døre lukket. Jeg var netop begyndt at spejde efter liv på min højre side, da Echo-Mette og Mette Bloch Andersen omsider nåede op ad trappen. Mette Bloch Andersen viste – igen med denne underlige usikre armbevægelse – mig ned ad den lange, tomme gang. Begge kvinder holdt sig bag mig, så jeg gik lidt tøvende frem, for jeg kunne simpelthen ikke forstå hvor de ville have mig hen.

Pludselig så jeg nede i bunden af gangen en døråbning vinkelret på gangens retning. Døren stod og med siden til mig sad en mand i en sofa med korslagte arme, knejsende nakke og benene skudt frem foran sig. Efter et skridt eller to frem kunne jeg bag ham skimte en anden mand, sidende i nøjagtig samme positur. De lignede et par politibetjente, der passede på en forbryder.

Jeg kunne ikke se Knud, men vidste med det samme, at han måtte sidde et sted til venstre for mig inde på kontoret. Jeg tog hurtigt de sidste meter frem, stoppede op i døråbningen, fik øje på Knud, der sad på en stol bag et bord, og kastede et hurtigt blik ned på manden yderst i sofaen. Det ene sekund sad han og stirrede hårdt på Knud, det næste sekund stirrede han forskrækket op på mig. Knud identificerede ham senere som Kristian Hulmose Nørgaard, lederen af Drengeakademiet.

Jeg gav Knud et kort nik og et hurtigt smil, som han glad besvarede. Mens vi pakkede hans grej, fumlede jeg lidt rundt for at trække tiden ud. Det var på dette tidspunkt min klare opfattelse, at de fire voksne jeg til da havde truffet enten ikke måtte eller ikke kunne give den lovede forklaring på Knuds bortvisning, så jeg ville lige give en endnu mere voksen tid til at dukke op.

Det skete ikke, så Knud og jeg hankede op i hans grej. Alle fire voksne fulgte efter os ned ad gangen og i hvert fald tre fulgte efter os ned ad trappen. Da vi nåede hoveddøren, var Mette Bloch Andersen foran mig. I stedet for at åbne døren for Knud og mig, der stod med hænderne fulde af hans grej, stoppede hun foran døren og kiggede sært søgende ud. Hun spurgte så, hvor jeg var parkeret. Jeg nikkede ret frem mod parkeringspladsen, hvor min bil holdt mutters alene, og sagde “Lige derovre”. Hun stod en stund og kiggede ubeslutsomt ud i luften. En eller anden, jeg tror det var Echo-Mette, spurgte “Den blå bil der, er det din?” “Jeps”, svarede jeg og havde faktisk lyst til at spørge “Hvad er problemet?” I stedet begyndte jeg så småt at sætte mig i bevægelse, hvorefter Mette Bloch Andersen omsider åbnede døren.

Ude på trappestenen nikkede jeg kort farvel, men da Knud og jeg gik hen mod bilden, fulgte de alle tre-fire voksne efter os. To hastede op foran os – en på hver side. Mens vi pakkede bilen bemærkede jeg, at Echo-Mette lynhurtigt var henne og mandsopdække en håndfuld nysgerrige drenge, der pludseligt dukkede op. Alle tre voksne stod og kiggede på os, da vi kørte ud fra matriklen.

I bilen hjem fortalte Knud, at man havde forbudt ham at sige farvel til sine kammerater. Da han havde spurgt en voksen, om han ikke ville gøre det for ham, var Knud blevet børstet af med et “I er vel på Snapchat.”. Endnu senere fortalte Anette, at grunden til jeg skulle ringe inden ankomst til Flakkebjerg var, at man ville anvise mig en parkeringsplads. Da hun nævnte dette, faldt brikkerne på plads.

Meningen havde været, at jeg skulle have hentet Knud ved en eller anden bagudgang i administrationsbygningen, så han kunne forsvinde som en tyv i mørket. Da Drengeakademiet ikke passede sin telefon, mistede man aldeles kontrollen over situationen, fordi jeg ankom en halv times tid tidligere end de troede, og havde parkeret et andet sted end Drengeakademiet havde planlagt. De involverede voksne fra Drengeakademiet havde derfor været mere optagede af, hvordan Knud og jeg kunne ekspederes uset væk end at få givet den lovede forklaring på, hvorfor man havde smidt Knud ud.

Klage til Løkkefonden
Allerede i bilen på hjem afviste Knud kategorisk, at han havde fået tre advarsler. Han havde aftenen før fået et “gult kort” – skridtet før udsmidning – og torsdag morgen efter morgenmad fået af vide, at han var blevet smidt ud. Han mente – men var ikke sikker – at han havde fået det gule kort fordi han under aftensmaden ikke havde sat en dressing fra et fællesbord tilbage lige så hurtigt, som holdlederen Tom havde ønsket det. Knud kunne derimod ikke give nogen forklaring på, hvorfor han var blevet smidt ud. “Du må da have gjort et eller andet?”, pressede jeg på. “Nej!!”, garanterede han spontant.

Knud nævnte, at Echo-Mette havde været fin nok, men at Tom havde været en slibrig karl, der med seksuelle antydninger og bevægelser tilbagevendende overskred drengenes blufærdighedsgrænse, uden at nogen på Drengeakademiet havde grebet ind. Udenfor undervisningen, der tog fem-seks timer af dagens forløb, tilbragte drengene oceaner af tid på at vente på ingenting, og fritidsaktiviteter var der stort set ingen af. Knud havde f.eks. flere gange spurgt efter den boksning, som Drengeakademiet havde reklameret med, og var hver gang blevet spist af med tågede svar.

I de næste par dage fik Anette og jeg stadig flere detaljer fra Knuds ophold på Drengeakademiet og specielt Anette blev i stigende grad vred over den måde, man havde behandlet Knud på. Især var hun vred over, at Drengeakademiet lod en type som Tom have ansvaret for drengene, og over, at hverken Knud eller vi havde fået en ordentlig forklaring på, hvad Knud konkret havde gjort for at blive smidt ud. Anette formulerede derfor lørdag den 4. juli en klage til Løkkefonden.

Lemfældig undersøgelse
Dagen efter svarede Løkkefonden tilbage. Man hævdede, at “team Echos holdleder, Tom, forlod DrengeAkademiet torsdag eftermiddag“. Det lød jo umiddelbart betryggende, men Løkkefonden fortsatte, “han ikke kan genkende de anklager, der er rettet imod ham, hvorved disse altså afvises.”

Løkkefondens svar omkring Tom undrede os, for Tom havde været holdleder for omkring 25 drenge, der altså også havde oplevet ham. Det havde været en relativ smal for Løkkefonden at kontakte disse drenge for at høre, om deres oplevelser med Tom stemte overens med Knuds. I stedet afviste Løkkefonden blankt klagen over Tom alene på hans ord.

Løkkefondens overfladiske undersøgelse af Tom-sagen var så meget mere påfaldende, fordi vi havde gjort fonden opmærksom på, at Knud havde fortalt ting som kunne betyde, at Tom havde forsøgte sig med seksuelle tilnærmelser mod vores 13-årige søn.

Vi begyndte derfor at få en ubehagelig mistanke om, at Løkkefonden ingen ægte interesse havde i at føre justits med forholdene på Drengeakademiet. En mistanke, der blev bestyrket af, at Løkkefonden efterfølgende ikke ville oplyse, hvem der førte tilsyn med Drengeakademiet, så vi kunne være sikre på, at man havde indhentet børneattester på personalet.

Anonymt personale
Jeg blev derfor nysgerrig efter at se, hvem Løkkefonden egentligt havde hyret til at stå for driften af Drengeakademiet. Jeg mente nemlig at have set en liste over personalet i det materiale, som Drengeakademiet havde sendt os. Men da jeg så materialet igennem, opdagede jeg noget ejendommeligt. Under overskriften “Teamet” var der indsat nogle billeder, men intet om hvem der rent faktisk var på billederne.

I min efterfølgende research opdagede jeg, at det som forældre ganske enkelt ikke var muligt at finde ud af, hvem der havde haft det konkrete ansvar for drengene, end ikke gennem Løkkefonden. Jeg opdagede også, at Løkkefonden ingen steder nævner, om man overhovedet indhenter børneattest på det af offentligheden ukendte personale, som man hyrer ind til driften af Drengeakademiet.

“Racistiske udbrud”
Løkkefonden fremsendte i sit svar tillige hvad man kaldte et “hændelsesforløb”, forfattet af Drengeakademiet som forklaring på Knuds bortvisning. Nu hed det ikke længere, at Knud havde fået tre advarsler. I overensstemmelse med, hvad Knud havde forklaret, så forklarede Drengeakademiet nu, at Knud om onsdagen havde fået “en henstilling” og senere samme dag et “gult kort”.

Drengeakademiet forklarede, at Knud havde fået henstillingen “onsdag morgen”. Knud havde mere præcist forklaret, at samtalen fandt sted umiddelbart efter morgenbriefing – d.v.s. omkring klokken 9.00 – hvor han var blevet trukket til side af Tom og Echo-Mette.

Ifølge Drengeakademiet havde Knud nemlig gjort sig skyldig i “racistiske udbrud”. Da vi bad om en nærmere forklaring på, hvad dét drejede sig, så kunne eller ville Drengeakademiet ikke pege på andet end at Knud havde sagt “lægge en muhamed” om toiletbesøg.

Dette bekræftede Knud. Han forklarede, at han havde hørt udtrykket på Drengeakademiet, hvor det var i omløb blandt i hvert fald drengene i Echo-gruppen. Selv havde han anvendt det måske 2-3 gange, men var stoppet med det efter henstillingen onsdag morgen.

Vi forelagde Drengeakademiet Knuds forklaring, men fik ikke noget svar.

“…. sin uacceptable adfærd”
Det gule kort havde Knud – ifølge Drengeakademiet – fået, fordi “Knud vælger i timerne efter henstillingen at fortsætte sin uacceptable adfærd (racistiske kommentarer fortsætter, samtidig med at Knud udviser en truende adfærd overfor staff/øvrige drenge og fortsat ikke retter ind iht anvisninger fra staff)”.

Dette afviste Knud kategorisk. Han mente tværtimod, at resten af onsdagen var forløbet rigtigt fint. Dog havde Knud under aftensmaden onsdag haft et mindre kontrovers med den sexfikserede holdleder Tom om en dressing.

Vi bad igen Drengeakademiet uddybe og konkretisere anklagerne mod Knud. Hvad havde han rent faktisk sagt og gjort i løbet af onsdagen, der kunne udløse et gult kort? Det svarede Drengeakademiet aldrig på.

Drengeakademiets første løgn
Men uanset den af Drengeakademiet skabte mystik om årsagen til Knuds gule kort, så var det ikke til nogen nytte. I hvert fald ikke ifølge Drengeakademiet. Om Knuds bortvisning forklarede man:

Det drejer sig ikke om at Knud ønsker at tage salatdressing med ned til sit bord, men derimod om nedladende kommentarer vedrørende muslimer, homoseksualitet og venstreorienterede. Knud gør fx meget ud af at forklare, at partiet Venstre skal betragtes som værende venstreorienteret, da de tillader indvandring. Efter gentagne henstillinger og advarsel uden ændret adfærd, herunder truende adfærd overfor en kvindelig medarbejder, der blandt andet blev kaldt ”stikkerso, fører det til hjemsendelse fra DA.

Drengeakademiets beskyldning mod Knud for at have sagt “stikkerso” til en kvindelig medarbejder, viste sig på flere niveauer at være lodret løgn:

For det første havde Knud under en gåtur lavmælt sagt til en kammerat “Hende der kan jeg ikke lide, for hun stikkede mig i går.”

For det andet hørte den kvindelige ansatte ikke Knuds bemærkning (det gjorde derimod en anden ansat, der sprang frem, greb Knud hårdt i trøjen og hvæsede ned i ansigtet på ham “Hvem tror du, du er?!”)

For det tredje vidste Drengeakademiet intet om denne episode, da man onsdag aften smed Knud ud, thi episoden fandt sted torsdag morgen.

Flere løgne fra Drengeakademiet
Drengeakademiet beskyldte også Knud for “hærværk” i form af “flere skader på inventaret“. Også denne anklage mod Knud viste sig at være lodret løgn. Knud havde overhovedet ikke (i denne sammenhæng) rørt inventaret. Han havde med en finger ridset et lille “K” i malingen på en afskallet ydermur, mens han onsdag aften i over en time stod alene ude i Flakkebjergs gård og ventede på at få lov af Kristian Hulmose Nørgaard til at gå.

Ifølge Drengeakademiet var Knud også blevet smidt fordi han havde skrevet “neger” på sin arm og tegnet et hagekors på sin hånd. Sandheden var, at Knud og en ældre kammerat sent onsdag aften havde overtegnet hinanden med alverdens krimskrams. Kammeraten havde bl.a. skrevet “neger” ned ad ydersiden på Knuds højre arm, hvorfor Knud havde skrevet “Du er homo” i panden på ham. Knud afviste kategorisk at have tegnet et hagekors, men derimod et solkors på sin hånd.

Men mere afgørende så havde Drengeakademiet ikke kendskab til de to drenges eskapader før torsdag morgen, altså omkring ti timer efter man havde smidt Knud ud. Igen så vi Drengeakademiet begrunde udsmidningen af Knud med (påståede) forhold, som Drengeakademiet ikke havde kendskab til da man besluttede at bortviste Knud.

Endnu flere løgne
Mens vi forsøgte at få hoved og hale i Drengeakademiets historie, sagde Knud noget, der fik mig til at kaste et ekstra blik på, hvad Drengeakademiet faktisk havde skrevet i sit “hændelsesforløb”. Knud nævnte, at han havde fået det gule kort – skridtet før udsmidning – af Tom og Mette Bloch Andersen umiddelbart efter onsdagens aftenbriefing. Det vil sige – ifølge Drengeakademiets eget skema – omkring klokken 19.30. Drengeakademiet, derimod, hævdede at Knud havde fået det gule kort “få timer” før aftenmaden, altså en gang onsdag eftermiddag.

Knuds forklaring var klart den mest troværdige. Dels havde vi – som forventet og i modsætning med Drengeakademiet – ikke grebet ham i usandheder omkring, hvad der var foregået på Flakkebjerg, og dels havde Knud konsistent forklaret, at han fik det gule kort efter sit kontrovers med holdlederen Tom om en dressing.

Det stod altså klart, at Drengeakademiet igen havde løjet. Men hvorfor? Jo, Drengeakademiet hævede, at man fra kl. 20.30 onsdag aften forsøgte at kontakte Knuds mor. Denne påstand er heller ikke sand, for det første opkald fra Drengeakademiet indløb først på hendes telefon klokken 20.57. Derfor passer 20.30 mere med, at det var tidspunktet hvor Drengeakademiet besluttede at bortvise Knud.

Skulle Drengeakademiet altså holde sig til sandheden, så skyldte de en troværdig forklaring på, hvad Knud havde foretaget i timen fra det gule kort klokken ca. 19.30 og til han blev smidt ud klokken ca. 20.30. Det siger sig selv, at en dreng må have opført sig rimeligt drastisk, hvis man smider ham ud blot en time efter hans definitivt sidste chance. Det siger derfor også sig selv, at havde Knud opført sig på en sådan måde, så havde det ingen sag i verden været for Drengeakademiet at forklare, hvorfor han var blevet smidt ud.

Så hvad havde Knud konkret gjort efter han klokken 19.30 onsdag aften havde fået det gule kort? Han havde bedt om lov til at ringe til sin far.

Politisk begrundelser
Drengeakademiet forbød Knud at ringe til mig kommentaren “Der er ingen særregler for dig”. Dette var en helt igennem beskidt kommentar, for Knud havde ikke bedt om særlige regler for sig. Tværtimod havde Drengeakademiet selv  givet drengene muligheden for at ringe hjem udenfor den tilladte telefontid, hvis ellers Drengeakademiet mente det var nødvendigt. I stedet for at forklare Knud, hvorfor man ikke mente det var nødvendigt for ham at tale med sin far om det gule kort, så afviste Drengeakademiet ham med en perfid anklage om at angle efter privilegier.

Knud gav flere eksempler på, hvordan han på Drengeakademiet blev tiltalt hårdt og afvisende, hvis ikke ligefrem truende. Udover de allerede nævnte eksempler, fortalte Knud også hvordan voksne på Drengeakademiet – heriblandt lederen Kristian Hulmose Nørgaard – ved mindst to lejligheder vrængende havde afvist en undskyldning med “Det mener du jo ikke!”

Vi spurgte aldrig Knud om han havde sagt, at “partiet Venstre skal betragtes som værende venstreorienteret, da de tillader indvandring”, for det er en legitim politisk holdning som kun ekstremt venstreorienterede ville finde på at vælge som eksempel på “nedladende kommentarer vedrørende muslimer, homoseksualitet og venstreorienterede.” Ifølge Drengeakademiet var det ydermere et stort problem for dem, at Knud “ikke mente ordet “neger” var problematisk“.

Til os nævnte Knud af egen drift, at på Drengeakademiet havde en af de voksne udtrykt, at han mente udtrykket “neger” var forkert at bruge. Knud havde derfor spurgt “Hvad skal man så kalde dem?”, hvorefter den voksne opgivende havde rystet på hovedet.

Sammenholdt med Drengeakademiets mange løgne stod det derfor efterhånden klart, at sagen ikke handlede om Knuds konkrete opførsel, men dels om hans kritiske holdning til den knugende politiske korrekthed – nu om dage kaldet wokeness – der hersker på Drengeakademiet, og dels om, at Knud er søn af mig.

Dette indtryk skulle Drengeakademiet selv bekræfte.

Anonym anmeldelse fra anonymt personale
Mandagen efter vi havde fået Knud reddet hjem fra Drengeakademiet, blev vi af Kalundborg kommune indkaldt til et møde, fordi nogen havde anmeldt os anonymt for vanrøgt af Knud. Det stod hurtigt klart, at den anonyme anmelder var Drengeakademiet, der altså fortsatte sin forfølgelse af Knud efter han var rejst derfra.

I sin officielle begrundelse for at bortvise Knud, havde Drengeakademiet gjort et dårlig forsøg på at skjule, at årsagen var Knuds holdning og ikke hans opførsel. I sin anonyme anmeldelse kunne Drengeakademiet få anderledes luft for, hvad sagen virkeligt handlede om, og angreb nu Knud for manglende “anger” over sine “racistiske holdninger”, som Drengeakademiet derfor ville have myndighederne til at “normalisere”.

Anonymt lagde Drengeakademiet heller ikke skjul på, at man udmærket havde vidst, hvem Knud var søn af, ganske som jeg havde haft på fornemmelsen fra den dag jeg afleverede ham. Endvidere benyttede Drengeakademiet sig i sin anonyme anmeldelse af samme ondskabsfulde retorik som anonyme venstreekstreme – kaldet antifa – anvender i sine breve til f.eks. skoler og arbejdspladser, når politiske modstandere skal chikaneres.

På grund af skolernes sommerferie er Kalundborgs kommunes behandling af Drengeakademiets anonyme anmeldelse i skrivende stund ikke afsluttet. Men som svar på Drengeakademiets nedrige manøvre, skrev jeg til dem, at myndighederne

vil kort og godt finde, at Knud er en velfungerende dreng fra et velfungerende hjem og at kommunen derfor ikke ser nogen grund til at foretage sig yderligere i sagen (troede Drengeakademiet i øvrigt på sin sag, så havde man som ansvarligt undervisningstilbud ikke anmeldt os anonymt.) Kommunens fund vil bekræfte, at der ikke er noget galt med Knud. Og dermed også indirekte bekræfte, at der er noget galt på Drengeakademiet. 

Vi skulle selvfølgeligt aldrig have sendt Knud på Drengeakademiet, ligesom ingen af vores børn skal på Tvind, Det Fri Gymnasium eller lignende steder. Set i bakspejlet var der nogle små faresignaler, men bestemt ikke nok til at fortælle os, at vi sendte vores dreng ind i et lukket, sekt-lignende miljø med en skjult politisk dagsorden. Skal man se positivt på sommerens oplevelse, så er det at Knud tidligt har erfaret det yderste venstres ondskabsfulde mentalitet og metoder.

***

Rød fondsdirektør styrede brutalt tæskehold

$
0
0

Så har jeg omsider fået læst Ulrik Dahlins “Autonom Pusher Mentor” (2015) om Søren Lerche Mørck, der i en årrække levede på en farlig diæt af hash, vold og antifascisme. I det kriminelle miljø var han kendt som ‘Trafikministeren’, der styrede logistikken bag hash-ringen De Brune Bude. I det autonome miljø var han kendt som medlem af “Knytnæven”; et tæskehold som rykkede ud på ordre fra en vis ‘Dan’.

Da bogen om Søren Lerche blev udgivet i 2015, havde han officielt lagt hashen, volden og antifascismen bag sig og var blevet mentor for unge bandemedlemmer i exit-forløb. Men Søren Lerche skandaliserede sig selv, da det samme vinter kom frem, at han af frygt for repressalier havde organiseret selvsamme bandemedlemmer, som han var mentor for, i et privat og ulovligt vagtværn, der dels patruljerede omkring hans bolig og dels blev “’sendt i byen’ for at afskrække eventuelle fjender, der måtte føle sig krænket i forbindelse med bogudgivelsen.

Læs Kriminelle agerede vagtværn for profileret bande ekspert.

Gamle kendinge
Efter at have læst “Autonom Pusher Mentor”, så forstår man sådan set godt, at Søren Lerche rekrutterede kriminelle indvandrere til at beskytte sig. For selv om bogens forskellige aktører optræder under dæknavne, så er langt de fleste ret nemme at identificere. Således blev “Niels” fra Antifascistisk Aktion (AFA) hurtigt identificeret som Enhedslistens Pelle Dragsted, der under dæknavnet “Jesper” i 1998 optrådte som talmand for tæskeholdet (nedenfor.)

Pelle Dragsted som "Jesper", talsmand for Antifascistisk Aktion 1998.

Dog har Søren Lerche formentligt ikke frygtet repressalier fra Dragsteds side. Omend det uden tvivl var Pelle Dragsted, der fra Christiansborg i 2009 pudsede det voldelige Redox på Uriaspostens redaktør Kim Møller, fordi denne havde været kilden til formiddagsavisen BT’s afsløring af Dragsteds voldelige fortid, så afslører Lerche i 2015 ikke noget om Dragsted som ikke allerede var kendt.

Læs Overvåget af yderste venstrefløj: Voldeligt netværk fik ordrer fra ‘Borgen’ og Tidligere medlemmer af nazi-tæskehold: Autonom forfatter lyver om fortiden.

Derimod er Søren Lerche den første venstreekstremist, der åbent fortæller om samarbejdet mellem Foreningen Demos og tæskeholdet “Knytnæven”:

Der var mange almindelige venstreorienterede, som afleverede oplysninger til foreningen Demos, hvis de var stødt på tegn på nazistisk aktivitet, f.eks. hvis de så en løbeseddel eller et naziklistermærke. Det kunne de gøre med god samvittighed, fordi de ikke havde nogen anelse om, at oplysningerne sivede videre til et tæskehold, der i visse tilfælde rykkede ud og gennembankede folk.

Men Søren Lerche har heller ikke haft noget specielt at frygte fra Foreningen Demos’ side. Efter bruddet med Antifascistisk Aktions nye kuld af unge gadekrigere, der omkring 2005 dannede det rivaliserende efterretningsorgan Redox, samt førerskikkelsen Erik Jensens død i 2008, er Demos svundet ind til en skygge af sig selv.

‘Dan’ er ‘Generalen’
Som allerede nævnt, så blev Søren Lerche og de andre i tæskeholdet “Knytnæven” styret af en vis ‘Dan’. Lerche blev i 1999 rekrutteret til tæskeholdet og beskriver det første møde med ‘Dan’ således (mine fremhævninger):

Rundt om bordet i kælderen sad flere personer, som Søren kendte i forvejen. Han havde også hørt om de to, som talte mest på mødet. Begge var fem-ti år ældre end ham, og de var vidt forskellige. Mens Dan i 1970’erne som barn havde været involveret i gadekampe mod politiet og var politisk skolet, havde Oliver hovedsageligt hadet politiet, fordi de spolerede hans glimrende hashforretning på Christiania. Det var iøvrigt angiveligt dér, de to mødte hinanden i begyndelsen af 1990’erne.
Ifølge en avisartikel havde Oliver haft ansvaret for at træne et decideret tæskehold, der havde optrådt med en brutalitet, der ikke lod rockerne noget tilbage. Tæskeholdet skulle bestå af trænede politiske sympatisører og AFA-medlemmer og havde bl.a. slået til i 1994, da en tysk turistbus blev sat i brand under en nazikoncert i Gladsaxe. Kun i sidste øjeblik nåede to sovende chauffører ud af den brændende bus.

Her skal det indskydes, at ifølge hæftet “Vi Tilstår” – udgivet af Antifascistisk Aktion i 1997 – så var brandattentatet i 1994 en AFA-aktion. Attentatet var formodentligt hævn for et forgæves AFA-overfald på Den Danske Forening en uges tid tidligere, hvor det røde tæskehold var blevet slået på flugt af københavnske skinheads.

Nå, men i december 2002 offentliggjorde BT en artikel med overskriften “Generalen og Doktoren”, om to mænd der i det autonome miljø netop styrede et hemmeligt tæskehold.

Læs Generalen og Doktoren.

I BT-artiklen anføres det bl.a. (mine fremhævninger.):

Mens Generalen allerede i 1970erne som barn var involveret i gadekampe mod politiet og er politisk skolet, har Doktoren hovedsagelig hadet politiet, fordi de spolerede hans glimrende hash-forretning på Christiania…

Ifølge B.T.s oplysninger fra kilder i miljøet blev resultatet af deres venskab hurtigt, at Doktoren fik ansvaret for at optræne og stå i spidsen for et decideret tæskehold, der har optrådt med stor brutalitet, der ikke lader rockerne meget tilbage.

Det står altså klart, at formuleringerne om ‘Dan’ og ‘Oliver’ i bogen om Søren Lerche er løftet direkte fra BT’s artikel om ‘Generalen’ og ‘Doktoren’. Det er derfor uden for enhver tvivl, at ‘Dan’ fra bogen “Autonom Pusher Mentor” er identisk med ‘Generalen’ fra BT-artiklen “Generalen og Doktoren”.

Balder Forvalter
Som forfatteren Peter Øvig påpeger i sit murstensværk “BZ” (2016), så blev ‘Generalen’ allerede i begyndelsen af 2004 udpeget som identisk med Balder Bergman Johansen. Det skete i den sagnomspudne Xerxes-rapport:

Dog var Balder Johansen allerede før Xerxes-rapporten blevet udpeget som en af generalerne i det autonome miljø. Vi skal tilbage til 1999, hvor Københavns Kommune besluttede at sælge det såkaldte ungdomshus på Nørrebro, der i årevis havde været centrum for tysk-inspirerede venstreekstreme – de såkaldte autonome – og deres vold og hærværk i bydelen. Beslutningen berørte ‘Balder Forvalter’ – som den lille mand blev kaldt i det autonome miljø – så meget, at han i spidsen for en gruppe autonome kort efter stormede ind og afbrød TV Avisen på DR i en slags protestaktion. Blandt Forvalterens håndlangere var hans unge kærste Maria Sønnøve Pagels (i dag Maria Sønnøve Bergman Pagels), der gennem en årrække huserede under dæknavnet ‘Maria Jensen’.

Balder Johansen | Junikredsen

Balder Johansen | Junikredsen

Se Politisk aktion i TV-Avisen på DR Bonanza.

Balder og UBR
Balders ballade havde dog ikke den ønskede virkning. I stedet fandt de autonome på en helt anden manøvre, der som utilsigtet konsekvens fik, at pressen for første gang begyndte at interessere sig for Balder Johansens person. I september 1999 skulle der for første gang afholdes valg til den kommunale forsøgsordning Ungdomsborgerrepræsentationen (UBR), som havde fået bevilliget en halv million skattekroner af kommunen. Til politikernes bekymring viste Københavns unge ikke den fjerneste interesse for UBR-valget og blot en uge før den planlagte valghandling var der ikke opstillet kandidater nok til, at UBR ville kunne godkendes.

I en voldsom slutspurt fik de autonome henved tyve af deres folk opstillet som kandidater og mobiliseret deres tilhængere til stemmeurnerne. Af de knap 500 stemmer gik de fleste til de autonome, der med 17 pladser fik et snævert flertal i UBR. De autonome UBR-medlemmer ville ikke stå frem med navn og på en række hemmelige UBR-møder vedtog de autonome med et spinkelt flertal at bevillige 310,000 kroner til en nødtørftig renovering af “ungdomshuset”. De autonomes kup af UBR og misbruget af borgernes penge vakte bestyrtelse i Borgerrepræsentationen, der dog ikke kunne stille noget op.

Læs Autonome forgylder sig selv med skattekroner og Unge politikere holder hemmelige møder.

Logik & Co
Det spinkle autonome flertal i UBR hyrede Ringsted-firmaet Eget Vinding og Datter Aps., der i København drev en mindre afdeling med lokaler i Korsgade på Nørrebro. Egen Vinding og Datter havde små ti år tidligere stået for istandsættelsen af ejendommen Baldersgade 20-22 og det var angiveligt i den forbindelse, at Balder Johansen blev ansat i firmaet. I hvert fald kom han efterfølgende til at stå for Egen Vinding og Datters københavnerafdeling.

De autonomes misbrug af UBR-ordningen fik for første gang pressen til at interessere sig for Balder Johansens person. Kilder i miljøet kunne bl.a. fortælle, at Johansen med næsten tyve års erfaring var en af de helt tunge drenge i det voldelige undergrundsmiljø, samt at han adskillige gange havde været anholdt.

Læs De autonomes anonyme general.

Herefter tabte pressen tilsyneladende interessen for Balder Johansen. Trods afsløringen af hans position i den autonome miljø var ingen f.eks. opmærksom på, at han havde ledt aktionen i 1999 mod TV Avisen. I 2001 blev Egen Vinding og Datters københavnske filial skilt ud som selvstændigt selskab, der fik navnet Logik & Co. og med Balder Johansen ved roret.

Billedet
Lad os nu vende tilbage til Peter Øvig og hans omtale af Xerxes-rapporten i “BZ”. Øvig overvejer om rapporten kan være fantasteri fra højrefløjens side. Men det afviser hans mange kilder:

Men mine samtaler med BZ’ere, autonome, christianitter, politi og PET fortæller mig, at rapporten trods vildskud tegner konturerne af en stort set ubeskrevet, voldspræget gråzone mellem politisk aktivisme og berigelseskriminalitet i 00’ernes begyndelse.

Selv om Xerxes-rapporten altså giver et rimeligt sandfærdigt billede af miljøet omkring Balder Johansen, så er Peter Øvig omhyggelig med ikke selv at udpege ham som den mand, der dirigerede Søren Lerches tæskehold. Og det forstår man godt, for Xerxes-rapporten udpeger ganske vist Balder Johansen som “Generalen”, men den dokumenterer ikke sin påstand. I det centrale afsnit anfører rapporten blot, at

“Xerxes har genkendt et billede af “Generalen” som BALDER JOHANSEN.”

Hverken Peter Øvig eller andre har efter alt at dømme gravet ned i spørgsmålet om, hvilket billede af “Generalen” Xerxes-rapporten henviser til. Det er uden tvivl dette her:

Balder Johansen - Generalen

Billedet viser Balder Johansen og Maria Pagels blive ført væk af politiet efter deres aktion mod TV Avisen i 1999. Oprindeligt illustrerede det net-versionen af BT-artiklen “Generalen og Doktoren” og billedteksten lød den gang:

Et af de få billeder af den autonome general. Her efter en aktion i DR, hvor aktivister protesterede mod salget af Ungdomshuset.

Balders AFA-træf 1994
Men allerede længe før BT indirekte og Xerxes-rapporten direkte afslørede Balder Johansen som leder af et hemmeligt, særdeles brutalt tæskehold, var kræfter på højrefløjen på sporet af ham. Vi skal tilbage til året hvor Antifascistisk Aktion nær havde brændt to tyske buschauffører ihjel her i Danmark, nemlig 1994.

Forskellige nationalsocialistiske grupperinger i Tyskland og Skandinavien forsøgte at gå sammen i et “anti-antifa”-samarbejde. Det blev så vidt vides ikke den store succes. Bortset fra i Norge, hvor det lykkedes en yngre kvinde at infiltrere den norske AFA-gruppe, hvor hun blev nær veninde af gruppens leder Espen Lauritzen.

I sommeren 1994 tog nordmændene til AFA-træf i København. Den unge kvinde var med og skrev efterfølgende en rapport om træffet, hvori hun bl.a. fortæller om de danske ekstremister som hun mødte:

Som det fremgår af rapporten, så blev AFA Norge i København modtaget af Balder Johansen, der korrekt beskrives som “småvokst med briller, ca. 30 år… lysbrunt hår”. En anden dansker nævnt i rapporten kan også med sikkerhed identificeres. Nemlig “Adrian, høy skinhead, ca. 25 år, altid ubarbert, arbeider i DEMOS”, der ikke kan være andre end den gamle kending Adrian Frank.

Mens den norske AFA-leder Espen Lauritzen under træffet bor hos Balder Johansen, så bor de øvrige nordmænd i AFA-kollektivet Baldersgade 20-22, kendt som “Bumzen”. AFA-møderne foregår på et gymnasium, som ligger mindre end ti minutters gang fra Demos. D.v.s. Det Fri Gymnasium, hvor Søren Lerche og hans forskellige medskyldige senere blev rekrutteret fra.

Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theils
Videre fremgår det af Anti-Antifa rapporten, at Balder Johansen, Adrian Frank og “Pernille ca. 25 år, pent kledd” var aktive i AFA’s researchgruppe (hvilken uden tvivl senere blev til Redox.) Kombinationen af Pernille og Det Fri Gymnasium gør det fristende at udpege det pågældende AFA-medlem som Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theils, der har en fortid som vejleder på netop Det Fri Gymnasium. Men da Rosenkrantz-Theils i 1994 kun var 17 år, punker og gik på Vester Borgerdyd Gymnasium, forekommer det ikke videre sandsynligt.

Men alligevel er Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theils lidt interessant for historien her. Hun var vejleder på Det Fri Gymnasium i årene 1996-97, hvor Søren Lerche var elev på stedet. Han fortæller, at han til en vejleder “… havde forpligtet sig til at skrive artikler til Propaganda og Internationalt Forums blad ‘Gaia’.” Pelle Dragsted var aktiv i begge udgivelser og sad lejlighedsvis i Gaias redaktion. Det samme gjorde den dømte postrøver Torkil Lauesen, samt gadekrigeren Sebastian Østergaard Truelsen, der i Lerches bog gemmes under dæknavnet ‘Lars’, og som i dag kalder sig Sebastian Østergaard Ngelia.

Vejlederen, der fik Søren Lerche til at arbejde for slænget på Gaia, kan meget vel have været Rosenkrantz-Theil, der samme år blev anholdt i Holland sammen med bl.a. Pelle Dragsted, Maria Sønnøve Pagels og den senere terrordømte Ulrik Sebatian Kohl. Alle fik efterfølgende erstatning af de hollandske myndigheder for ulovlig anholdelse. Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theils fik tildelt 10,000 kroner og gav halvdelen til tæskeholdet AFA.

Frygten for Balder Johansen
Men tilbage til Balder Johansen. Bliver dæknavnet ‘Dan’ i Søren Lerches beretning udskiftet med Johansens navn, så får man en idé om Balder Bergman Johansens lyssky aktiviteter alene i årene 1999 til 2002, hvor Lerche tæskede løs for ham:

Lige før sankthansaften får tæskeholdet en opgave af Balder Bergman Johansen… (s. 140.)

Da Søren senere mødtes med Balder Bergman Johansen fra tæskeholdet på en cafe, blev han skældt ud for at have skudt raketterne af… (s. 157.)

Midt på sommeren flyttede Søren fra ‘Svinefarmen’ og ind hos Balder Bergman Johansen, der boede i en stor lejlighed i en sidegade til Nørrebrogade. Selv om Søren så op til Balder Johansen og respekterede ham som en myndig person, der kunne give ordre til tæskeholdet… (s. 171)

Har man de rette oplysninger, så står det altså klart, at Søren Lerche i den grad røber Balder Johansen og hans voldelige virke. Som Peter Øvig påpeger, så har Balder Johansen stadig stor magt over undergrundsmiljøet på Nørrebro, og ifølge Øvig så er der i miljøet en regulær frygt for Balder Johansen og hans håndlangere:

Flere af de tidligere BZ’ere, som ikke ønsker at bidrage til min bog, henviser nemlig til en ubehagelig og angstprovokerende stemning omkring den personkreds, som Xerxes-rapporten omtaler.

Og

I mine samtaler med gamle BZ’ere er det tydeligt, at flere af figurerne i rapporten fremkalder en vis frygt, og at denne ikke altid særlig veldefinerede frygt har afholdt nogle BZ’ere fra at fortælle deres historie.

Alt i alt synes der altså ikke at herske tvivl om, at når det tidligere medlem af Balder Johansens tæskehold, Søren Lercke Mørck, efter udgivelsen af sin fortælling søgte beskyttelse hos bandemedlemmer, så var det af frygt for Balder Johansen og hans slæng på Nørrebro. ‘Balder Forvalter’ er i dag direktør i X-Fond (tidligere Rød Fond), der formelt ejer byggefirmaet Logik & Co, hvori han samtidig er bestyrelsesmedlem og ansat som byggeleder.

***

The San Quentin Nazis

$
0
0

George Lincoln Rockwell founded the American Nazi Party (ANP) in 1958. It quickly became notorious due to Rockwell’s knack for publicity stunts like his famous “Hate Bus” that trailed the so-called “Freedom Riders” during the summer of 1961:

Dette billede har ingen alternativ tekst; filens navn er hate-bus.png

It was also in 1961 that the public first heard of organised National Socialism behind prison walls.

Around 1972 a White convict in San Quentin wrote to a so-called prison project:

When I first got here ten years ago there was a real Nazi party with a real political outlook. If the spooks started anything, the Nazis went out and took care of things. They would stab a few spooks and get things under control so no real trouble would develop.

Who were these San Quentin Nazis? And why did White convicts embrace such an ostracized ideology? To answer the latter question we have to take a look on how prison life in California changed dramatically from around 1960.

With less than one percent of it’s population being black, California never had a Negro problem before the Second World War. That changed during the war when lot of Negroes migrated from the South to well paid jobs in California’s defense industry. With them came the usual black crime rate and by 1960 the Negroes comprised 5.6% of California’s population and 22% of new prison inmates overall

Among these young bucks were James Carr, a violent gang member from Los Angeles. According to his autobiography the Negroes brought with them a vicious rape culture. A favorite pass time was “the train” – gang rape. Outside prison young women were the victims, inside it was weaker inmates. The Negroes mostly raped each other, but both Whites and Mexicans were targets for the roaming gangs of black “booty bandits”.

While California was hit by this rising tide of violent black convicts the racist Nation of Islam began to recruit heavily in America’s prisons. By 1958 the “Black Muslims” were a small but firmly established group in San Quentin. With it’s gospel of black supremacy they soon caused racial violence among the black and white convicts. James Carr met the Black Muslims around 1964 in San Quentin and later wrote:

They’d give their racist rap, then split when a riot started. They excused their cowardly behavior by saying that the white devil wanted them to fight and they weren’t falling for the trap.

Out of this Muslim inspired Negro violence against Whites rose the San Quentin Nazis. The public first became aware of organized National Socialism in ‘the Bastille on the Bay’ in March 1961, when the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported that “a neo-Nazi group of prison inmates” had been send to San Quentin’s Adjustment Center.

The Bluebirds are today mostly known as the forerunner of the Aryan brotherhood. Indeed, during the famous RICO-trial in the early 2000s against the leadership of the Aryan Brotherhood a defense lawyer claimed that the Bluebirds changed their name to Aryan Brotherhood because they needed a more “formidable name”. As we’ll see later this claim seems to be wrong.

The prison authorities’ attempt to curb the rise of National Socialism in San Quentin did not succeed. Six years later an inmate in San Quentin told a journalist:

Although authorities have banned Adolf Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf from the San Quentin library, the book has found it’s way into many of the Nazis’ prison cells. They also have literature about George Lincoln Rockwell and have made many secret attempts to contact the Rockwell forces.

In those early days the Nazis and the Black Muslims in San Quentin seem to have had a more or less live-and-let-live attitude towards each other. James Carr writes:

Tha Nazis and the Muslims usually got along. Their philosophies complimented each other; each group was certain of its own racial superiority and neither were overly aggressive. They left each other alone; each group had its own turf to look out for.

However, that has changed by 1963 where a group of Muslims attacked a handful of Nazis in the yard. A rifle shot from a guard killed a Muslim and a state of war between the two groups became the new normal. In february 1964 the public once more heard about the Nazis in San Quentin. That month a series of non-fatal stabbings in the prison culminated with the stabbing of a certain Stanley Owens, whom the writer and ex-convict Edward Bunker later described as the “lead Nazi”.

Stanley Owens was 27 years old at the time of his stabbing and had been in prison at least since 1958, where he drew an indeterminate life sentence for knifing another convict. Prison staff at the time described Owens as “an agitator who headed a neo-Nazi gang prior to his prison sentencing.”

As a committed National Socialist Stanley Owens may have been the the driving force behind the seriousness with which the San Qunetin Nazis took their ideology. The black convict James Carr met them around this year and contrasted them with the so called pseudo-Nazis from Soledad:

“The white guys called themselves Nazis, but they were nothing like the Quentin Nazis. In fact, the latter disowned them as punks who knew nothing about National Socialism but were rather just white supremacists.”

Shortly after the stabbing of Stanley Owens the official organ of Rockwell’s American Nazi Party – “The Stormtrooper” – told with some pride its readers about the party’s loyal followers in San Quentin:

Former San Quentin Nazi Harry Blair leads a meeting in the American Nazi Party.

Prison staff confirmed the existence of a “neo-Nazi group” in San Quentin and expressed concern that the stabbing of Stanley Owens would result in a war between the Nazis and the Black Muslims. Which indeed it did. According to Edward Bunker the Nazis in quick succession stabbed three Muslims – one fatally – after which the gang war turned into a full fledged race war.

The race war in San Quentin culminated in January 1967 when around 2000 convicts met in the yard, ready for battle. A barage of riflefire from the guards kept the race warriors from getting at each other. Once again the Jewish Telegraph Agency reported about “at least 40 hard-core Nazis among convicts at San Quentin”. In April that same year the notorious White rapist “Pincushoin” Smith was stabbed almost to death in Soledad by three Whites who “wore skull caps with swastikas painted on them”.

However, later that year the charismatic George Lincoln Rockwell was assasinated and by 1969 the San Quentin Nazis seem to have been a thing of the past. The race war, however, was worse than ever:

Some Nazis – like “Tank” Noah and “Moose” Forbes – joined the newly formed Aryan Brotherhood. Others regrouped with Dennis Lee Hanson, a newly arrived convict whose co-defendant Richard Terflinger went to the Aryan Brotherhood.

I 1972 the Nazis and the Aryans corroborated in the killing in Chino of a high ranking member of the Nuestra Familia. Later that year Dennis Hanson personally killed a rapist in Folsom and his group seem to have dissolved thererafter.

By 1977 a group called the American National Socialists operated in San Quentin. They got caught up in a bloody war between the Aryan Brotherhood and the Black Guerilla Family; they fought a day long battle with the Black Muslims. When the smoke cleared one Muslim and two Nazis lay dead.

After that both the Black Muslims and the San Quentin Nazis disappeared as a figthing force. A few years later the Aryan Brotherhood forbade other White organisations.

Some San Quentin Nazis continued their political activities on the streets. Harry Blair joined the American Nazi Party in 1962 and became one of Rockwells most active storm troopers. In 1965 he protested in Selma together with Allan Vincent, another former San Quentin Nazi.

From left: Stormtroopers Allan Vincent, Dan Skelly and Harry Blair protest in Selma, March 1965.

Harry Blair seems to have left the ANP sometimes after 1965. Allan Vincent stayed on in Rockwell’s party, which in 1966 was re-named the National Socialist White People Party (NSWPP). After the murder of Rockwell in 1967 Matt Khoel became the new Führer. Vincent rose to leader of the San Francisco branch of the NSWPP. He broke with Khoel and formed his own short lived National Socialist White Workers’ Party, which in 1975 was portrayed in the documentary “California Reich”:

James Carr mentions a certain Mike Nelson, but apart from him we only know Stanley Owens, Harry Blair and Allan Vincent from the original San Quentin Nazis. Their story has never been told and are today mostly known through the writing of James Carr and Edward Bunker. George Jackson called them “Hitler’s Helpers” but that’s all. They were not the forerunner of the Aryan Brotherhood, but the Bluebirds were the forerunner of a kind of prison underground chapter of the American Nazi Party. Simply put; they were the White answer to the Black Muslims.

***

The Truth About AB Dropout Michael Thompson’s Original Murder Case

$
0
0

In 2019 California gave up its Felony Murder Charge that “automatically made anyone participating in felony activity liable for any death occurring during the incident.” The new law means that “if you have a felony murder conviction under the old law but if tried under the new law, a jury or judge would not have convicted you, then you can petition the court for resentencing.” However, “if you were committing a felony and your actions were reckless to the point that you knew what you were doing could lead to someone’s death, then you are still liable under this law.”

Read California Penal Code 1170.95 Could Shorten Your Sentence

Long time member of Aryan Brotherhood (AB) Edward Tyler Burnett pertitioned in 2021 with succes for a resentencing for a 1978 felony murder conviction.

Read Judge vacates man’s murder conviction tied to 1978 Seal Beach robbery.

Short time AB member Michael Lynn Thompson tried the same with his two 1975 murder convictions. He became a member of the Aryan Brotherhood around 1978 and defected in september 1983. Until his parole in 2019 Thompson was in protective custody (PC) with the likes of Charles Manson and other vulnable inmates.

While in PC Michael Thompson appeared in three documentaries about the Aryan Brotherhood. The British made Reigning In Hell (AKA America’s Deadliest Prison Gang) in 2006, where his words were spoken by an actor. In 2007 he appeared as himself in two American dokumentaries, Gangland’s “Aryan Brotherhood” and National Geographic Explorer’s production of the same name.

In the spring of 2021 Thompson appeared on various Youtube channels. In June he was arrested on charges of massive fraud. His wife went on Youtube to defend him and his daughter to attack him. In the summer of 2022 Thompson was back on Youtube, defending himself both against the charges, his daughter and his many critics.

This writer was – and am – one of those critics. The problem for Michael Thompson is that he lies. Actually, there is no doubt that he is a compulsive liar. A braggart in the exstreme. But Thompson is also a calculating liar who lies to conceal who he really is and what he really has done.

One of the many lies that Michael Tompson peddles on the Youtube circuit is that he is on the verge of being exonorated for his original murder convictions because he was convicted under the Felony Murder Charge. This he claimed as late as September 2022. Two months earlier a Court of Appeal had confirmed the sentencing court’s decision that Thompson wasn’t convicted of the murder of Butch Nunley on the Felony Murder Charge. In the case of the murder of Rue Steele the appelate court found that the lower court had erred in it’s legal reasoning and sent the case back for an evidentiary hearing.

Read People v. Thompson.

In an effort to bolster his claim of being wrongly convicted of murder Michael Thompson claims in Youtube interviews that his co-defendant Mike Sesma recently has admitted that he killed Butch Nunley and Rue Steele. Whether Thompson’s claim is true or not is irrelevant because Mike Sesma is already convicted of being the actual killer of both victims.

In December 1973 Michael Thompson and Mike Sesma both worked for Orange County drug lord John Solis. Thompson claims on Youtube that his only role in the murders of Butch Nunley and Rue Steele was that he warned John Solis that Nunley and Steele planned to kidnap Solis’ wife and kids. Thompson also claims that Mike Sesma recently has confirmed the existence of the plot because the two would-be kidnappers told him about it. If Mike Sesma today really claims that Buth Nunley and Rue Steele told him of the kidnapping plot then he is lying. Otherwise Michael Thompson is lying:

Shotly after Michael Thompson’s convictions in September 1975 for murder and conspiracy to commit murder The Los Angeles Times published an in-depth story about the ugly case. It transpires that 24 year old Michael Thompson was convicted on a combination of police wire tappings and the combined testimony of his two co-defendants, his wife, two of his sisters and his brother-in-law. Mike Sesma beat Rue Steele to death. Michael Thompson tried to do the same to Butch Nunley, but couldn’t manage it. Sesma then shot Nunley through the head. An important aspect of the story is that neither Michael Thompson nor Mike Sesma knew Rue Steele. Not even by name. Michael Thompson had accused only Butch Nunley, a wealthy drug dealer and one of Solis’ biggest costumers, of the kidnapping plot. A story Mike Sesma didn’t believe until he saw an unknown man accompany Butch Nunley to a planned drug buy in John Solis’ house where Thompson and Sesma armed with guns waited for Nunley.

Bottom line is that 22-year old Michael Thompson planned to have Butch Nunley killed so that Thompson could steal Nunley’s wife, his cars and his money, and that Rue Steele got murdered as a direct consequence of Thompson’s plan.

***

The Killing of Castillo

$
0
0

Fred Charles Castillo Jr. went to prison as a burglar. By 1968 he was in Folsom and by 1970 in California Institute for Men (CIM) at Chino. During an escape from there with three other prisoners Castillo graduated to kidnapper and armed robber and was sent back to Folsom.

Escapee Fred Castillo (in the back) caught, February 1970.

The experiment
In 1972 Charles Castillo was back in Chino as part of an experiment. It was a harebrained idea, possibly fostered by some true believer in the goodness of men. Or perhaps it was just a desperate move to ease the pressure on the various adjustment centers and security wings in California’s prisons. In the early 1970s the whole system was hit by an unprecedented amount of violence primarily stemmning from race and gang wars within the walls. One idea to curb the violence was to mix violent prone inmates with inmates in protective costudy. The two groups were housed in Chino’s security wing Palm Hall and as part of the program an inmate’s council was formed where the two groups of prisoners could meet and talk.

Fred Charles Castillo a year and a day before his murder.

William Michael Noah was a representative for the dangerous inmates. “Tank” Noah made his prison reputation back in 1967 when he and two other young Nazis in Soledad stabbed inmate Roger Dale Smith more than fifty times. Smith survived and became famous as “Pincushion” Smith due to his many scars. Five years later Pincushin was on California’s death row in San Quentin and Tank was the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood in Chino.

During Fred Castillo’s second stint in Folsom he went into protective custody. Prison rumous had it that the Aryan Brotherhood had a murder contract on him. Somehow he was found to be a good candidate for the experiment in Chino. The thought may have been that if only Fred and members of the Aryan Brotherhood could meet and talk everything could be worked out for the betterment of man. Whatever the case might have been 33 year old Fred Castillo arrived in Palm Hall on February 3 1972 and was stabbed to death on April 21.

The prosecution’s case
Two inmates from the group of dangerous prisoners were apprehended and placed in Cypress Hall, another security unit in Chino. While Fred Steve Mendring, 24, and Donald Ray (or Raymond) Hale, 28, awaited trial for the murder of Fred Castillo they passed the time by chasing women in the personal ads section of The Los Angels Free Press.

Add in the LA Free Press, Sep. 24, 1972.

Their trial began in October 1972. The prosecution had a good case against the pair. Nine inmates from the protective custody-group in Palm Hall were prepared to take the stand against them. The prosecution claimed that the inmates wouldn’t testify if their names and faces were publicized and asked the court for a gag order. The court complied and the news media appealed to a higher court. They won their case a few days after the trial was over.

Several witnesses described how they saw Mendrin and Hale stab Fred Castillo and how a fight broke out after the killing between Fred Mendrin and other inmates. A handfull of prison officials testified about the physical evidence – homemade knives, bloody clothes etc. – in the case and how they broke up the fight between Fred Mendrin and other inmates.

The judge refused to extend his gag order to two “surprise witnesess” that the prosecution had dug up, inmates Stanley “Scotty” Walker and Lewis Pettijohn. Scotty Walker testified how he by chance had overheard a secret meeting between Fred Mendrin, Donald Hale, Tank Noah, Robert Griffin and Charles “Charlie Tuna” Gibbs. Walker heard a voice he couldn’t recognize say “We have to get him now before he leaves and worry about the other one when he gets to where he is going.” Walker also testified that on the day of the killing Mendrin and Griffin came to him and Griffin warned him not to leave his cell because “they were going to “hit” Fred”.

Lewis Pettijohn
Inmate Lewis Pettijohn testified that he in Cypress Hall had overheard Mendrin and Hale brag about the killing of Castillo in a conversation with inmates Robert “Dida” Medina and Steven “Chief” Tabbytite. Castillo was lured to his death with the promise of drugs. “It was like leading a sheep to the slaughter”, said Mendrin, who also said he enjoyed the killing so much that he wanted to “go on and on”. It had been a contract killing for the Aryan Brotherhood and Mendrin expected they would go free because they had all the names of the witnesses and “if he couldn’t get the witnesses he could get their families.” Mendrin told Medina that the weapons were supplied by an inmate named Valasques.

Inmate Lewis Pettijohn further testified that Mendrin and Hale had threatened to kill both him and his family when they found out that he had overhead their conversation with Medina and Tabbytite. A prison guard confirmed that a shaken Pettijohn had asked to be removed from the unit because he was in fear of Mendrin and Hale.

Lewis Pettijohn also testified about an earlier attempt in Folsom on Fred Castillo’s life. Pettijohn had been celled between inmates Edward Vaughn and Ronald Lancaster and was one day asked by Vaughn to give Lancaster an “object” wrapped in a newspaper shortly before the two inmates jumped a guard and at knifepoint stole the keys to Castillo’s cell. When Lancaster tried to unlock the celldoor Castillo fought him off and managed to grab the keys from him. Pettijohn later refused to testify on behalf of Vaugn and Lancaster and there had since been several attemps on his life, ostensibly by the Aryan Brotherhood. However, most of this testimony from Pettijohn was stricken by the court.

The testimony of Paul Dobreff
Edward Vaughn’s name came up again in the testimony of Paul S. Dobreff, program manager in Palm Hall and the prosecution’s expert witness on prison gangs. According to Dobreff several underground groups operated in California’s prisons and “named Aryan Brotherhood. El Paso, Texas Group. National Socialist Party, Hell’s Angels, Mexican Mafia, New Family, Aryan Warriors, Venceremos, San Antonio. Texas Group. American Nazi Party and several motorcycle clubs.”

According to Dobreff the Aryan Brotherhood was formed in Folsom by Red Fenton, Edward Vaughn, Gino Maher and the brothers John and James Schreckengost. The Aryan Brotherhood had about 200 members and was aligned with the American Nazi Party and the Mexican Mafia, and the three groups traded murder contracts if one organisation couldn’t get to the intended victim.

The Aryan Brotherhood did not follow the teachings of Adolf Hitler but shared the “white supremacy beliefs” with the American Nazi Party. Members of the two groups often wore tatoos with the symbols “AB” and “ANP”, respectively, like the “AB” on Mendrin’s neck. Since Donald Hale drew swastikas and “ANP” on his letters Dobreff thought him aligned with the American Nazi Party. Dobreff also testified that several inmates had told him that the Aryan Brotherhood had a contract out for Fred Castillo and that Castillo himself had told him so.

Since Fred Castillo wasn’t available for cross examination the defense moved for a mistrial. The court refused but stroke the Castillo-part from the record. Then the defense moved to have all of Paul Dobreff’s testimony stricken from the record because Dobreff “was not qualified to speak about the organisations”. The court found he was and let the rest – the majority – of the program manager’s testimony stay.

The defense
The defense presented a string of witnesses from the ranks of the dangerous inmates. Michael Carmichael testified that he had seen Fred Castillo make a knife while they in 1971 were housed in San Bernardino County Jail. Carmichael also testified about Castillo’s homosexual activities and his fear of blacks, but that part was stricken from the record by the court.

Tank Noah, Robert Griffin and Charles Gibbs all rebutted Scotty Walker’s testimony. “Charlie Tuna” testified that he had made the knives used to kill Fred Castillo and given them to Castillo the day before he was murdered. Castillo wanted the knives to defend himself against black inmates. Gibbs admitted he was a member of the American Nazi Party and knew that Donald Hale also was a member. The Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican Mafia were thought to exist by the prison system, but Gibbs had no concrete knowledge of either of the organisations.

Inmate Dennis Lee Hanson was brought down from Folsom to testify that he was a founder of the American Nazi Party in prison and that Hale indeed was a member. Hanson strongly denied that the party was a violent organisation.

Tank Noah and inmate Nick R. Valasques both gave alibis to Fred Mendrin and Donald Hale. Noah testified that he didn’t knew if the Aryan Brotherhood existed, but couldn’t really explain why both he and Mendrin had “AB” tatooed on their neck. “Nico” Valasques flatly denied that the Mexican Mafia existed and explained that the “EME” after his signature on a greeting card to Mendrin and Hale had been a joke.

Dida Medina and Chief Tabbytite both rebutted Lewis Pettijohn’s testimony. The alleged conversation with Mendrin and Hale had never taken place. Tabbytite – an American Indian – argued that he had spottet Pettijohn in his shaving mirror and warned the others of a “rat”.

Inmate Jerry “Wino” Pena testified that he had heard two blacks threatened Fred Castillo about two weeks before the murder. But Wino refused to name the two blacks so his testimony was tossed out by the court.

Edward Vaughn testified that Fred Castillo had been his friend and that he never had tried to kill him. Vaughn denied that the Aryan Brotherhood had a contract on Castillo. Vaughn also testified that he in 1968 had helped “organizing” the Aryan Brotherhood in San Quentin. He described the organisation as a non-violent “culture group” that helped whites with their problems. Edward Vaughn denied that he was “boss” in the Aryan Brotherhood and he denied that the organisation was involved in criminal endavours such as drug smugling into the prisons or murder contracts.

Inmate Robert Galloway testified that he was one of 8 to 10 inmates that founded the Aryan Brotherhood and that there now were about thirty members.

Inmates Billy Harris, Robert Wendekier, Robert Salas and Donald Galez also testified for the defense. Fred Mendrin and Donald Hale took the stand, too. They admitted membership in respectively the Aryan Brotherhood and the American Nazi Party. Both denied that their respective organization was violent and they both denied having killed Fred Castillo.

On November 30 1972 Fred Steve Mendrin and Donald Raymond Hale were convicted of murdering Fred Charles Castillo and both were sentenced to life in prison. During the trail Fred Mendrin one day greeted the court with a Hitler salute and a “Sieg Heil!” and two weeks later he and inmate Henry Rivera succeeded in cutting through the bars of their cells. Rivera then cut the bar of a little window and escaped. The bigger Mendrin got stuck in the window where the guards found him. Donald Hale had also tried to saw his way out of his cell but couldn’t make it.

Fred Mendrin during his trial for the killing of his Fred Castillo, Chino 1972.

The myths about the killing of Castillo
In his testimony Palm Hall’s program manager Paul S. Dobreff named the “New Family” as one of the underground organisations operating in California’s prisons. In the early 1970s “New Family” was a common misnomer for La Nuestra Familia, a fearsome rival to the older prison gang the Mexican Mafia (also known as La eMe). Familianos and emiros fought each other with a vengeance and in 1973 prison authorities estimated that between half and two thirds of all prison murders in California were caualties from that war. Fred Castillo was one of a record 35 murdered inmates in 1972 and at least two emiros – Nico Valasques and Robert “Robot” Salas – were defense witnesses in the murder case against Aryan brother Fred Mendrin and Nazi member Donald Hale.

Nowadays it seems an established truth that the killing of Castillo was a contract hit for the Mexican Mafia. According to this narrative Fred Castillo was a member of La eMe’s archenemy La Nuestra Familia and was murdered by the Aryan Brotherhood on behalf of the emiros. The murder is highly significant because it was the first joint murder between the Aryan brotherhood and the Mexican Mafia, and/or because it sealed a war pact between the two gangs against La Nueastra Familia. Some sources claim that the killing of Castillo was orderede by La eMe’s legendary American-Croatian “godfather” Joe Morgan. No less an authority on the early history of the Mexican Mafia, former member Ramon “Mundo” Mendoza confirms in one of his podcasts on Youtube that Fred Castillo was a familiano known as “Mosca” and claims that the murder was a favor from Aryan brother Tank Noah to emiro Nico Valasquez.

If prosecution witnesses Scotty Walker and Lewis Pettijohn are to be believed then Noah and Valasques were most certainly part of a conspiracy to kill Fred Castillo. But in a later podcast Mundo reads from an actual internal report by Palm Hall’s program manager Paul Dobreff about the background for the murder. According to Dobreff’s internal report the killing was ordered by Tank Noah who was about to be transferred out of Palm Hall. With the murder Fred Mendrin would be the new leader of the Aryan Brotherhood in Chino’s security wing. Since Fred Castillo was of Mexican extraction the killing had to be cleared with Nico Valasques of the Mexican Mafia.

Mundo Mendoza’s own source then seems to confirm that it was the Aryan Brotherhood that wanted Fred Castillo dead and not the Mexican Mafia, who merely gave it’s blessing to the murder. And if La eMe did have a contract on Castillo they could have killed him themselves. At least two emiros – Nico Valasques and Robot Salas – were in Palm Hall, both were proven killers and could just as easily have killed Fred Castillo as Mendrin and Hale could.

Furthermore; Paul Dobreff in his report – as quoted by Mendoza – is completely silent about La Nuestra Familia. So Mundo Mendoza’s source also seems to confirm that there was no connection between La Nuestra Familia and the killing of Fred Castillo. There’s simply not a shred of evidence for the claim that Castillo was a familiano or that the Mexican Mafia had a contract on him. And even if he at one point in time had been a member of La Nuestra Familia Fred Castillo was in protective custody by the time of his death and therefore without any doubt no longer a member (actually, La Nuestra Familia would in all probability have had a murder contract on Castillo themselves if he as a familiano had gone into protective custody.)

The source of the myth
The myth that Fred Castillo was a member of the Nuestra Familia and was murdered by the Aryan Brotherhood on behalf of the Mexican Mafia seems to have arisen quite early. In 1978 an official report entitled “Prison Gangs In the Community: A Briefing Report for the Board of Corrections” stated the following about the famous alliance between the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican Mafia:

An early example of this alliance is evidence accepted by the California Senate Subcommittee on Civil Disorder in 1973. It detailed the killing of a Nuestra Familia member named Castillo (no first name given) who was wanted killed by the Mexican Mafia. The contract was filled by two Aryan Brotherhood members approximately one hour after the victim was transferred to the California Institution for Men.

Since no sources are given it’s wholly unclear how the writer(s) of the 1978-report to California’s Board of Corrections knew what the California Senate Subcommittee on Civil Disorder accepted as evidence in 1973. But Fred Castillo wasn’t murdered by “two Aryan Brotherhood members”, but by one member of the Aryan Brotherhood and one member of the American Nazi Party. Nor was Castillo killed “approximately one hour” after his transfer to Chino, but almost two and a half month later. Whoever provided the California Senate Subcommittee on Civil Disorder in 1973 and/or the Board of Corrections in 1978 with information about the Castillo murder case seems to have been an unreliable source who may have confused the killing of Castillo with another prison murder in 1972.

The FBI began around 1980 to investigate the Aryan Brotherhood and in that endavour wrote a brief historical overview of the gang. According to the FBI it was the murder of Jessie Renteria Castro on July 3 1972 in Deuel Vacational Institute (DVI) at Tracy that spawned the alliance between the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican Mafia against La Nuestra Familia. According to Mundo Mendoza familiano “Bozo” Castro was killed in Tracy when Aryan brother Barry “Red Baron” Mills and emiro Martin “Kato” Vargas armed with knives attacked a group of familianos in the mess hall. Several got wounded and Mills stabbed Castro to death.

This attack is the first documented instance where the Aryan Brotherhood joined forces with the Mexican Mafia against La Nuestra Familia and may very likely have laid the foundation for an alliance between La eMe and The Brand. And some bureaucrat may have confused the killing of Castro with the killing of Castillo which brought an end to the experiment in Chino’s Palm Hall.

The reason why
In an interview many years later Fred Mendrin gave a brief explanation as to why Fred Castillo was murdered. According to Mendrin Castillo had “wronged a brother on death row”. Edward Vaughn was on death row. He sat there for the attack and kidnapping in 1968 of a prison guard in Folsom that inmate Lewis Pettijohn had witnessed. Vaughn wanted the keys to Fred Castillo’s cell. Not to free him but to stab him because Castillo was a “rat”.

Edward Vaugh on death row, San Quentin 1969.

Other death row inmates like Bobby Beausoleil, Joshua Hill and “Crazy Joe” Morse have been tied to the Aryan Brotherhood. But none of them had a beef with Fred Castillo and probably didn’t even knew him since none of them had been outside death row since their incarceration. And none of them carried the weight that Edward Vaughn did in the prison underworld. At thirty-six he was about ten years older than Aryan brothers like Tank Noah, “Mike” Carmichael, “Buzzard” Harris, “Snake Eyes” Mendrin and “Blinky” Griffin, who all testified in the Castillo murder trial. Though nowadays almost forgotten Edward Vaughn was a true prison legend. A die hard criminal and hard core convict with a legendary escape attempt and three prison killings to his name. He’d been in prison for almost twenty years and lived by the convict code that basically said “Never rat. Never be a coward.” The quintessential Aryan brother even before the gang existed.

Edward Vaughn obviously lied when he told the court that the Aryan Brotherhood was nothing but a non-violent culture group for whites and that he never had trid to kill Fred Castillo. So it seems safe to assume that Vaughn also lied when he denied being a boss in the gang and lied when he denied that the Aryan Brotherhood had a murder contract on Castillo. Indeed, it seems safe to assume that Edward Vaughn was behind not only the murder of Fred Castillo but also the murder attempts on Lewis Pettijohn. He was the only one with both the motive, the prison status and the gang connections to have been the prime mover behind the hunt for Pettijohn and the killing of Castillo.

***

SOURCES

Press clippings:
“Convict is found guilty of attack on guard”, Sacramento Bee, Dec. 20, 1968.
“Ontario judge gags press”, Redland Daily Facts, Nov. 1, 1972.
“‘Surprise’ witness due in murder trail”, Ontario Daily Report, Nov. 7, 1972.
“New witness found”, Pomona Progress-Bulletin, Nov. 7, 1972.
“Murder trial hears testimony of two CIM staff members”, San Bernardino County Sun, Nov. 7, 1972.
“Witness tells of murder threat in CIM murder trial”, Ontario Daily Report, Nov. 9, 1972.
“Witness heard tale of murder”, Pomona Progress-Bulletin, Nov. 9, 1972.
“Testimony links CIM defendants to inmate’s death”, San Bernardino County Sun, Nov. 9, 1972.
“Mendrin-Hale motions denied”, Ontario Daily Report, Nov. 14, 1972.
“Defense to begin today in Chino trial”, San Bernardino County Sun, Nov. 15, 1972.
“California inmates deny talking about CIM murder”, Ontario Daily Report, Nov. 16, 1972.
“Trial testimony centers on whereabouts of 2 defendants”, San Bernardino County Sun, Nov. 17, 1972.
“Witness made weapons”, Ontario Daily Report, Nov. 21, 1972.
“Made murder knives, witness says”, Pomona Progress-Bulletin, Nov. 21, 1972.
“Two defy judge; keep tight lips”, Ontario Daily Report, Nov. 22, 1972.
“Hale denies death guilt”, Ontario Daily Report, Nov. 23, 1972.
“CIM murder jury gets case today”, Pomona Progress-Bulletin, Nov. 28, 1972.
“Two convics guilty of CIM murder”, San Bernardino County Sun, Nov. 30, 1972.
“CIM death convictions upheld”, San Bernardino County Sun, May 17, 1974.

Reports:
“Prison Gangs In the Community: A Briefing Report for the Board of Corrections”, June 1978.
“Aryan Brotherhood Part 1 of 1”, FBI ca. 1986.

Podcasts:
“The Brand and the Mexican Mafia”, Perplex News, Youtube, June 2021.
“The Powder Keg Explodes – The EME vs. NF War of 1972”, PFP Publishing, Youtube, Sep. 2022.


Killer Witnesses

$
0
0

If we look into the history of some of witnesses who testified for the defense in the Mendrin-Hale muder trial, they were truly violent men.

We’ve already briefly covered Aryan Brotherhood’s Edward Vaugh and Tank Noah. Not much is known about inmates Donald Galez and Jerry “Wino” Pena. The same goes for Nazi member Charles “Charlie Tuna” Gibbs. However, his party boss Dennis Lee Hanson has left some interresting spoor behind. He was convicted in 1968 of murder and robbery and escaped briefly in 1970 from San Quentin with Victor Carrafa, another convicted murderer who in his own right became a prison legend.

Victor Carrafa, ca. 1975.

In November 1972 Dennis Hanson came to the Hale Mendrin murder trial from a fresh kill in Folsom, where he on September 5 stabbed convicted rapist William Johnson to death. Hanson’s crime partner and co-defendant in 1968 were none other than Richard Lloyd Terflinger, who in 2006 was convicted with Robert “Blinky” Griffin in the federal RICO trial against the leadership of the Aryan Brotherhood.

According to former Mexican Mafia member Ramon “Mundo” Mendoza both Blinky Griffin and emero Nick “Nico” Velasques also showed up at the Mendrin Hale trial with a fresh kill. On June 28 1972 they murdered inmate John Taylor in Sierra Conservation Center.

Nick “Nico” Velasques, ca. 1980.
Robert “Blinky” Griffin, ca. 1980.

The same year that Hanson and Terflinger got convicted of murder emero Robert “Robot” Salas killed inmate James “Sonny” Pena from the Maravilla street gang in San Quentin and shortly thereafter started the famous “Shoe War” when he stabbed two future members of La Nuestra Familia over a pair of shoes.

Robert “Chuko” Wendekier was a veteran of the race war that rocked Soledad state prison in the late sixties. In 1975 he testified in a court case against the prison about how the whites and the blacks “shouted at each other, threw shit at each other, threw hot water on each other, made zip guns and shot at each other, threw darts at each other and threw bombs at each other”. Chuko Wendekier also testified that “If I was on a tier with a black inmate, I did whatever I could to hurt him in any way I could.. If I had a knife, I would try to kill him.. If I had a zip gun, I would try to shoot him.”

Robert “Chuko” Wendekier, ca. 1970.

Chuko Wendekier was the first to be attacked by blacks in a famous incident in January 1970 where a tower guard in Soledad killed three blacks to stop a brawl between the two races. Three killings that in the next few years led to the death of more than a dozen people and to the creation of the Black Guerilla Family.

In that same famous incident Billy “Buzzard” Harris was wounded in the groin. Harris made his reputation back in 1967 when he – together with a certain Clifford “Joker” Jones – stabbed inmate Nick Detervis almost to death on behalf of Ronald “Spots” Berg and Richard “Mosca” Solis. While Solis went to La eMe both Harris and Berg became Aryan brothers.

Billy “Buzzard” Harris, ca. 1970.

In 1971 Buzzard Harris was stabbed eight times in Soledad by two blacks who got stabbed themselves in the fight, presumebly by Harris. Three years later he was attacked in San Quentin by four or five blacks and stabbed in the neck. Fellow Aryan brother John “Butch” Calfy hid in his cell. He was later strangled, beaten and stabbed almost to death by Ronald “Scalphunter” Krueger and Calfy’s sponsor into the Brand Blinky Griffin. An incident that cost future prison legend Griffin his first life sentence.

Ronald “Scalphunter” Krueger, ca. 1970.

Billy Harris seems to have left the Aryan Brotherhood shortly thereafter, because in 1976 he testified against emero Martin “Kato” Vargas who – together with Aryan brother Barry “Red Baron” Mills – had pulled off the biggest heist in the history of the city of Fresno. Harris’ fellow race warrior Robert Wendekier was paroled in 1972 and in 1975 (see above) he testified on behalf of the families of the three slain blacks from Soledad.

***

The Semi-Wild Bunch: Hunting A Rhino

$
0
0

The picture above of three members of the Aryan Brotherhood was taken in California’s state prison San Quentin, sometime in the first half of the 1970s. Not much is known about “Dirty Red”. Michael Thompson mentions a “Dirty Red Thomas” and he is in all likelyhood the man we see here.

“TD” is of course Tyler Davis “TD” Bingham. He was convicted in 1968 of robbery. Paroled in 1975 and almost immediately sent back to prison on weapons charges and parole violation. Paroled again in 1980 and kept out of trouble until 1985, wehn he was convicted of armed bank robbery and sent to federal prison where he quicly became a member of Aryan Brotherhood’s federal commission.

Richard Frank “Rhino” Andreasen was paroled in 1975 and struggled to keep out of trouble. It didn’t work out and Rhino took to robbing supermarkets with three other former convicts. A cashier was shot to death and when Andreasen later was arrested as a suspect in the robberies, he helped identify the killer. Andreasen was later arrested on federal charges of bank robbery. While housed in Orange County Jail he was stabbed in March 1983 by Ricky Lee Rose, a fellow Aryan Brotherhood member. Rhino beat up his attacker and Rose later claimed it had all been about a card game.

After his conviction of bank robbery Rhino Andreasen was sent to USP Leavenworth, where he promptly was bludgeoned and stabbed to death by John Greschner and Ronnie Joe Criswell. They claimed that the big man had tried to muscle in on a racket they had going (Criswell was not a member of the Aryan Brotherhood and later declined membership.)

As time went by both Rick Rose and John Greschner defected from The Brand and it transpired that it had been the Brand’s California commission that wanted Rhino Andreasen dead. They has somehow obtained proof that Andreasen had snitched his way out of the old supermarket case. When Rick Rose didn’t succeed the Cali commission had sent word to the federal commission. There would be more but this was the first murder on behalf of California in the federal prison system. According to gang dropouts Barry “The Baron” Mills was much satisfied with the murder because it showed that the Aryan Brotherhood could get it’s target anywhere in both CDC and BOP.

***

The Russian Duke

$
0
0

Fred Steve Mendrin grew up in a strict Russian Orthodox home. He also grew up during the cultural revolution of the 1960s with it’s gospel of Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll. Young Mendrin took to the streets and a life of drugs and fighting. He was convicted in 1970 of drug possession and sent to California’s low security state prison Sierra Conservation Center. Here Mendrin quickly found himself in the frontline of the bitter race war that in those years rocked California’s prison system. He established himself as a troublemaker and a ringleader, so Sierra gave up on Mendrin and shipped him to Chino’s security wing Palm Hall, where he hooked up with Tank Noah and Buzzard Harris, and in 1971 joined the Aryan Brotherhood.

After his conviction in 1972 of the murder of Fred Castillo Mendrin was sent to San Quentin’s Adjustment Center (AC), where program manager Edward George first met him. George later wrote:

I had never met a man like him. He was the avenger, who terrified the weak and strong. His reckless defiance made him the top Aryan Brother assigned to the AC. Over six foot, an imposing frame and with huge hands, he strolled down the tier, disdaining everyone except his brothers. Inmates dared not stare at him.

Among Fred Mendrin’s Aryan brothers in the AC were an admiring Robert Edward “New York” Crane and in the Mexican Mafia he became prison pal with Mundo Mendoza. He signed his kites “Snake Eyes AKA Russian Duke”, but was also known as “Fast Fred”. In late 1975 Mendrin sneaked out of his cell and stabbed a black convict named Preston. Preston barely survived and the district attorney refused to press charges because Mendrin was already serving a life sentence.

The famous photo of a defiant “Snake Eyes” in Chino, taken after his murder of Fred Castillo in 1972.

Right after the attempted murder of Preston a blood soaked Fred Mendrin gave his knife to a fellow white convict, who flushed the evidence down the toilet. Shortly thereafter this unnamed convict was paroled, only to be charged in Los Angeles with an unspecified crime (according to Edward George the white convict was a fellow Aryan brother and the crime was murder). From the AC up in San Quentin Mendrin sent word to him and asked the convict to subpoena him. Not because “Snake Eyes” knew anything about the case, but simply to get a break from the boring life in the AC.

In the Los Angeles County Jail Fred Mendrin met another freshly paroled San Quentin inmate involved in a murder case. James “Doc” Holiday was paroled in October 1975. Three months later he and Michael “Pygmy” Cowans were arrested and charged with the execution style shooting of four heroin addicts. Both were housed in LA County Jail where Mendrin met them in the law library. Doc Holiday was the darling of the terrorist group Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). He was also not stupid. After the white terrorists lost their black leader in a shoutout with the LAPD, they offered Holiday the post. He refused.

BGF-general James “Doc” Holiday cirka 1980

More important to Fred Mendrin was the fact that Doc Holiday was a general in the Black Guerilla Family. On May 14 1976 he armed himself with a knife, went to the library and stabbed Doc Holiday. Fast Fred had stabbed both Castillo and Preston about twenty times. He hit Doc once before Pygmy Cowans beat him to the floor with a typewriter. Holiday grabbed Mendrin’s knife and stabbed his attacker ten times, mostly in the face. Doc wanted to close those snake eyes for good.

While in hospital Fred Mendrin began to feel vague doubts about the life he lived. He returned in June 1976 to a white hero’s welcome in San Quentin’s AC and program manager Edward George spotted no change in the Russian Duke. On the contrary:

Wounded and resentful, wrapped in bandages with a patch over his eye, he repeated his vow to take revenge. He began preaching racial hate and renewed efforts to organize the entire ABs gang in the various prisons into a lethal fighting force, believing they had become too lax and undisciplined to be effective. He wanted nothing less than all out war on the militant blacks.

Edward George had Fred Mendrin transferred to Folsom. To Mendrin it was a relief because Folsom at that time was nowhere near as violent as San Quentin. However, in 1978 Mendrin was transferred back to Palm Hall in Chino, where he had murdered Fred Castillo. Though Chino was considered a stronghold for the Aryan Brotherhood, “Snake Eyes” Mendrin and AB veteran Ronald Harold “Spots” Berg were the only made members in Palm Hall. Spots was the shot caller and a die hard race warrior.

Fred Mendrin had long since realized that he had to get out of the gang life. He had reached the pinnacle with his attack on Doc Holiday. But the reward was emty. Inside he didn’t bask in his enhanched gang status and prison reputation. He knew that if Doc had killed him that day in the law library of Los Angeles County Jail, his brothers would have forgotten him in a few weeks. Fred Mendrin also knew that if he ever wanted to be a free man, he had to leave the gang life.

But to leave the Aryan Brotherhood was a dangerous move. Though there weren’t any “blood in blood out” rule in the Brand, several associates and members had been killed or hurt real badly for breaking with the Aryan Brotherhood. But defection was not in and of itself a death sentence. In 1973 Robert “Lucifer” Beausoleil and Jushua Hill confronted “Danny Dog” Rawlinson and his group of Aryan brothers in the yard of San Quentin. In the ensuing fight on knives and baseball bats alle three got hurt, but both Lucifer and Joshua stayed on the mainline. The politics seem to have been that you didn’t so much got hurt for leaving the Brand, as leaving showed you to be a snitch or a coward. Fred Mendrin was neither.

In October 1978 Fred Mendrin was locked up for yet other race battle. He then decided to quit. When Spots Berg told him to get ready for an assualt on blacks in the yard, Mendrin told Spots that he would only fight in selfdefense. Spots made a gesture of contempt but later accepted in good will Mendrin’s resignation from the Aryan Brotherhood. Fighting was in Fast Fred’s blood and though out of the Brand he afterwards did at least once come to the aid of white convicts fighting blacks. Since he also stayed in the yard with his former brothers, prison authorities had a hard time believing that Mendrin’s defection wasn’t part of some AB plot.

New York Crane on trial in 1981.

A few month after his defection form the Brand, Fred Mendrin was again subpoenaed to a trial in Southern California. His former brother from San Quentin’s Adjustment Center, Robert “New York” Crane, was on trial with fellow AB Edward Tyler Burnett for the robbery murder of jeweler Wayne Golin in Orange County. Mendrin knew nothing about the case and testified that he feared for his life because of his recent defection. Mendrins’ fear was not unfounded. Another witness for the defense, AB veteran Ronald “Harpo” Harper boasted “Myself personally I would kill anyone who tried to leave the Aryan Brotherhood.”

It was a difficult and dangerous time for Fred Mendrin. Both inside and outside of prison Aryan brothers were killed right and left for various transgressions. Even hard liner Harpo Harper sought refuge in Protective Costudy when the Brand learned he’d become a complete homosexual. But as a born again Christian Mendrin found the strength in Jesus Christ to renounce violence and a program manager in Chino became convinced that Mendrin’s change was sincere. He contacted Edward George, who now ran a program in Vacaville, and asked him to take Fred Mendrin into it.

Edward George refused at first. He thought that Mendrin was too dangerous. Both because of his violent history and because of his prison reputation. But in 1980 Fred Mendrin was transferred to Vacaville and went through George’s three month program, before being released to the mainline. True to his Russian roots Mendrin became the chess champion of Vacaville. He met a good woman through his Christian work and married her the day he left prison in 1985. They joined the Exodus Brethren Church and lived for many years a life out of the public eye. Today Fred Mendrin is a high profile member of Prison Fellowship and have told his story in several documentaries. He has also toured with former member of the Mongols MC, Alfonso “Big Al” Aceves, and former member of the Mexican Mafia, Ernest “Kilroy” Roybal; born again Christians like Fred Mendrin and also with a story of redemption to tell.

Former AB Fred Mendrin flanked by former eMe “Kilroy” Roybal (left) and former Mongol “Big Al” Aceves, 2010.

“New York” Crane and Tyler Burnett were found guilty of the murder of jeweler Wayne Golin. In January 1981 Ronald “Spots” Berg was shot to death. Eigth months later the “Sein Fein”-tattooed Crane pleaded guilty to the 1977 execution “IRA style” of fellow Aryan brother Kenneth Wayne “Hogjaw” Cochran.

***

Murky Waters: The Founding of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club

$
0
0

In the years after the Second World War the name “Hell’s Angels” was floating around quit a bit in California. Up north is was the name of a model flyer club in Napa County and of a car club in the Bay Area. Down south “Hell’s Angels” was known as a black street gang in Los Angeles. East of LA in San Bernardino County it was also the name of an obscure motorcycle club, that spelled the paradoxical name without apostrophe.

The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) was founded on March 17, 1948, in the town of Fontana, San Bernardino County, California. The name “Hells Angels” was suggested by Arvid Olsen, a friend of some of the club’s founders and the former leader of the “Hells Angels” squadron of the famed “Flying Tigers” mercenary unit.

So goes the HAMC’s own – very short – narrative about the birth of the club.

The exact date “March 17, 1948” gives a certain credence to HAMC’s claim, and Arvid Olsen was indeed leader of the “Hell’s Angels” squadron in China. But that’s all. Neither written nor oral history has to this date confirmed or corroborated HAMC’s brief version about its founding. And to this date HAMC has never identified any actual founder of the club (Otto Friedli was certainly not one of them, regardless of Wikipedia’s claim).

Ian “Maz” Harris, Ph.D. and charter member of HA Kent.

Dr. Ian “Maz” Harris (1947-2000), founding member of Hells Angels Kent (UK) and Ph.D. in sociology, has a slightly different and slightly more detailed version of the founding of HAMC. He gives the same date, which is actually Saint Patrick’s Day 1948, but claims that the club’s name was taken from the 303rd Bombardment Group of the US Air Force, nicknamed “The Hell’s Angels”. Harris also claims that the POBOBs were “in 1948 to become the Berdoo founder chapter of the Hells Angels”

POBOB was a club out of Bloomington, a neighboring town in San Bernardino County to both Fontana and San Bernardino. The acronym POBOB stood for either Pissed Off Bastards Of Bloomington or Poor Okie Boys Of Bloomington (the latter which was apparently what the members told their mothers). POBOB was in existence as late as 1953, so it seems rather certain that this club wasn’t the direct forefather of HAMC.

There’s a third version of the founding of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. Dick White was a member of the motorcycle club Redlands Road Runners. He wore a deathhead tattooed on his arm, based on drawings made by a friend. After waching the classic aviator film “Hell’s Angels”, White went to the seamstress Betty Supernaw with a drawing based on his tattoo. She then sewed both a patch and a “Hells Angels” rocker for him.

This all happened before Dick White was draftet in June 1951. After his discharge he one day showed up in the Merry Go Round Bar in the city of San Bernardino, San Bernardino County, in his Hells Angels jacket and announced he was starting a new club, and about thirty patrons joined more or less on the spot.

Dick White’s detailed story is not implausible. Contemporary clubs like the Boozefighters, the Galloping Goose and the McCook Outlaws were all founded in bars; in the 1950s there indeed were a club named Redlands Road Runners in San Bernardino County, and Betty Supernaw of the city of San Bernardino was for many-many years the supplier of patches to the Hells Angels.

Dick White served at least six month in the armed forces, so the founding of the HAMC would have happened at the earliest in January 1952. In accordance with the Military Training and Service Act of 1951, Dick White may have served for up to two years. This would push the birth date of HAMC forward to at least the latter half of 1953.

That year the POBOBs ordered ten patches from Betty Supernaw, but the order may have been the last gasp of a faltering club and homeless POBOBs may have joined Dick White’s new club. That would at least allow Ian Harris to be not completely off the mark.

All in all: The only thing that can be said with any any certainty is that the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club was founded in the county of San Bernardino sometime around 1950.

***

The Path of the Patch

$
0
0

Dick White’s story has in recent years been colported by Bo Bushnell, a Los Angeles collector of outlaw biker memorabilia and founder of Outlaw Archive. As descibe in the previous post, Dick White not only claimed to have founded the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC), but also that he was the creator of the original club logo, the so-called Bumblebee Patch:

According to Outlaw Archive the photo below is of Dick White in his heydays:

The photo seems to document that Dick White indeed was involved with the early HAMC. It does not, however, support White’s claim that he was the creator of the first deathhead patch. White is wearing no club colors at all, and though his back seat lady friend wear a top and bottom rocker, there’s no center patch to be seen. The picture does in fact seem to suggest what other pictures from the early fifties do; that the Hells Angels’ top and bottom rocker both were in place before the patch:

Cf. Outlaw Archive the earliest photos of patch carrying members of HAMC are from around 1953. They wear the Bumblebee Patch and there’s no real reason to doubt that this patch is the original patch of the Hells Angels. And it therefore seems reasonable to assume that it was this patch that Rocky Graves wore when he in 1954 moved to San Francisco and blew the mind of the Market Street Commandos to such a degree that they became the second chapter of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.

Allegedly a photo of Rocky Graves (man with bottle) and early members of Hells Angels Frisco.

The story about Rocky Graves and the founding of HA Frisco was told in 1964 by Birney Jarvis, the vicious “Preetam Bobo” in Hunter S. Thompson’s famous 1966-book about the Hells Angels. According to Jarvis, Rocky wore “the leering winged deathhead that has become so well known to California lawmen.” So it seems safe to assume that Rocky’s deathhead patch was the same as the one HA Frisco wore ten years later, e.i. the Bumblebee Patch.

The legendary president of HA Frisco, Frank Sadilek, with the Bumblebee Patch in 1963.

Birney Jarvis rode with the Market Street Commandos and became a charter (founding) member of HA Frisco, leaving the club in 1958. He served as vicepresident under Frank Sadilek, who was president of the charter from 1955 and until he left in 1963. Sadilek is very often credited with being the creator of the Bumblebee (or original, as HAMC nowadays prefer it called) patch. Birney Jarvis and Frank Sadilek were good friends right up to Sadilek’s death by drowning in 1971, so Jarvis would undoubtedly have given Sadilek full credit for the patch if there had been credit to give.

Birney Jarvis as member of HA Frisco, 1955.
Frank Sadilek around 1956. Like Birney Jarvis he earned his living as a motorcycle messenger.

In 1956 Vic Bettencourt down in Gardena in Los Angeles County started a chapter of the Hells Angels, that he designated “So. Cal.” (Southern California). Bettencourt choose a different patch for his club, ostensibly designed by his wife Barbara.

Vic and Barbara Bettencourt the day after rheir marriage, Tijuana 1958.

Yet another patch emerged in 1959 when the Oakland chapter up north aired what later was to be called the Barger Larger Patch:

The broad back of Charles “Magoo” Tinsley displaying the “Barger Larger”, 1964.

The patches of both the So. Cal. and the Oakland chapters seems very much based on the deathhead that the tattoo artist Robert “Sundown” Kestner, who ran a shop in San Francisco’s Market Street, created for a membership card that HA Frisco paid him for in September 1954:

Around 1961 there was no less than five different patches around. HA Auckland down under in New Zealand used a deathhead clearly based on those membership cards that Frank Sadilek unceremoniously had send them after their American founder, Jim Carrico, had asked him for a charter. Auckland didn’t even use rockers and their colors were red and golden instead of red and white:

Early HA Auckland.

Around the same time – 1961 – two small, shortlived chapters – Oceanside and San Pedro – used a deathhead seen neither before nor after:

Around 1961 HA Vallejo up north seems to have used an enlarged and slightly altered version of the Bubmlebee Patch used by Frisco and Dago (San Diego):

By the middle of 1965 only two deathhead patches remained in California; the Bumblebee and the Barger Larger. When two Englishmen in 1969 each got a charter for HA England, one – Wimbledon – had to wear the Barger Larger and the other – London – the Bumblebee. Apparently HA Wimbledon never materialised, but HA London used the Bumblebee as late as 1973:

Sometime thereafter the Bumblebee patch was dropped for good and since 1983 the HAMC have used the “Fuki patch”, named after the designer John Fukushima, which is directly based on Sundown’s deathhead from 1954:

***

The Brand and Satan’s Maidens

$
0
0

In 1972 the local press in Southern California gave exstensive coverage to the trial against Fred Mendrin, member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and Donald Hale, member of the American Nazi Party, for the murder of fellow inmate Fred Castillo in Chino’s security wing Palm Hall. But it was a murder case in Northern California that brought the Aryan Brotherhood to national attention.

On Monday November 13th, 1972, Palm Hall’s program manager Paul S. Dobreff testified in the Mendrin-Hale trail about the Aryan Brotherhood and the inner workings of the prison underworld. Asked by the prosecutor about how murder contracts were circulated between the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia and the American Nazi Party, a local newspaper reproduced his explanation as follows:

Dobreff said that they were circulated through coded and un-coded letters and movement of inmates. He said another way was through the Manson girls. He said the Manson girls have been carrying messages and have been involved in escape plots.

As if to confirm Dobreff’s claim about a connection between the Manson Family and the Aryan Brotherhood, that very same Monday the police up in Stockton, coincidently the hometown of Fred Castillo, arrested three Manson girls and two Aryan brothers for double murder.

Former convict Charles Millet Manson. The Man Son to his hippie disciples.

Though handsome Michael Monfort and stocky James Craig both wore “AB” tattoos on their chests, they were not in the big league, former inmates at the minimum security prison Susanville as they were. Both men were wanted by the law, Monfort for escape and Craig for parole violation. For six months the two desperados had led a gang of eight on a crime spree all over California that culminated in the murder of two gang members.

The gang consisted of four couples: Michael Munfort and Nancy Pitman AKA Red Eye and Brenda. James Craig and Priscilla Cooper AKA Spider and Tuffy. Fellow ex-con William Goucher and Maria Alonzo AKA Iceman and Chrystal. And lastly James and Lauren Willett and their infant daughter Heidi. They all had met about a year before the arrests in Stockton in some kind of halfway house in Los Angeles, run by Charles Manson’s most devoted follower, Lynette “Squaky” Fromme.

Nancy Pitman and Lynette Fromme were both original members of Satan’s Maidens, a group of devoted female followers of Charles Manson, who had sworn death and destruction if anything happend to the Man Son. Former stripper Maria Alonzo had been recruited in jail by murderess Susan Atkins, but never rose to prominence in The Family. Priscilla Cooper was also a former stripper and wore the same “X” carved on the forehead as the Satan’s Maidens, but had never been a member of The Family. She was a follower of Spider Craig, not Charles Manson

Members of Satan’s Maidens. Pitman to the left and Fromme in the middle.
Vests confiscated after a firefight in 1971 with the police, after which Satan’s Maidens dissolved.

26-year old James Willett was an unhinged veteran of the Vietnam War. A former marine he came from a wealthy family on the East Coast, but in California had driftet into the hippie counterculture. Along the way he met Lauren Olmstead, seven years his junior and a runaway at 17. After their marriage the couple somehow hooked up with Fromme’s little operation and then joined the Monfort-Craig gang.

In October 1972 the gang settled in Guerneville, a rural center for hippies and outlaw bikers in Northern Californian. One night Red Eye, Spider and Iceman lured James Willett out into the woods where they executed him with pistol shots and shotgun blasts. The former corporal seems to have grown tired of the outlaw life and told his wife that he contemplated going to the police. The three killers buried his body in a shallow grave. Wild animals ran off with his head.

James Willett.

Young Mrs. Willett, who called herself “Reni”, phoned her mother and asked for money, claiming her husband had left her. When the gang moved to Stockton shortly thereafter, Reni happily went along. They drove in her husband’s car and Michael Monfort used fake ID in his name. On the night they settled in Stockton “Red Eye” Monfort and “Iceman” Goucher were caugth robbing a liquor store. Red Eye as “James Willett” got out on bail, paid for by the mother of Iceman, and promptly went to Florida to buy a gun, skipping bail.

Lauren “Reni” Willett with baby Heidi. Nancy Pitman to the right.

An old man hiking the woods found the halfeaten body of James Willett on November 6th. When it was clear to the police that they had a murder case on their hands, they tentatively first assumed the dead man was a victim of the Hells Angels. The famed and feared outlaw club was known to hang out in Guerneville and three dead bodies had just been discoverede in a neighboring county, buried on the rural property of a former vicepresident of the mighty Oakland chapter.

However, it only took a couple of days before the local police knew that the victim was former marine James Willett and that the “James Willett” who’d been arrested down in Stockton and since skipped bail, was identical to escaped convict Michael Monfort. The police began to put pressure on William Goucher, still in jail on robbery charges in Stockton. Iceman had already given self preservation some thought. Prison rumors had it that the Aryan Brotherhood planned to kill him. When girlfriend Maria “Crystal” Alonzo was booked for carrying an illegal switchblade during a visit, the police pressured her too. With information gained from Iceman and Crystal the cops quickly found the gang’s hideout in Stockton.

Iceman and Crystal in a tender moment.

That very same day Lynette Fromme was in Stockton, visiting Iceman in the jail. During the police raid she called the hideout and asked to be picked up. The police obliged and arrested her, Nancy Pitman, Priscilla Cooper and two men who identified themselves – papers and all – as Gordon Foot and Earl Blake. It didn’t take the cops long to blow the cover of Michael Monfort and James Craig. When the police found the fresh body of Reni buried in the cellar of the gang’s rented house, all five were charged with the murder of James and Lauren Willett.

Chained together by foot suspects Michael Monfort (left) and James Craig on parade for the press.

Young Mrs. Willett had been killed by one shot through the head. Nancy Pitman first claimed that Reni had shot herself in a game of Russian roulette. Red Eye later admitted that he had been the player. He had done it in a fit of anger because the girls had played around with his brand new saturday night special, a .38 Röhm RG-40 revolver.

William “Iceman” Goucher testified for the grand jury and pleaded guilty to second degree murder of James Willett.

James “Spider” Craig pleaded guilty to second degree murder of James Willett and guilty of being an accessory after the facts in the murder of Lauren Willett.

Michael “Red Eye” Monfort pleaded guilty to second degree murder of Lauren Willett and guilty of being an accessory after the fact in the murder of James Willett.

Former stripper Priscilla Cooper and original Satan’s Maiden Nancy Pitman pleaded guilty of being an accessory after the facts in the murder of Lauren Willett.

Priscilla Cooper at her arrest.

All charges against Satan’s Maiden Lynette Fromme were dropped. In 1974 she showed up for the trial of Fred Mendrin’s old gang boss in Chino, Michael “Tank” Noah, and Richard “Bear” Clemence, charged in the stabbing of fellow Aryan brother Thomas Horn in Vacaville. Gun inexpert Fromme became real famous when she in 1975 tried to shoot the president of the United States.

Wannabe assassin Lynette Fromme caught in the act by Secret Service agents.

Low level Satan’s Maiden Maria “Crystal” Alonzo married snitch William Goucher. Iceman feared he would be laid on ice. His lawyer demanded that his client served his time in protective costudy because of death threats against him, presumebly from the Aryan Brotherhood. His wife drew headlines in 1974 when she was arrested in a harebrained kidnapping plot to free two convicts. Crystal now claimed her name was Karen Forbes and that she was the wife of Bobby Forbes, one of the convics she wanted to free. His real name was Bobby Hedberg.

In 1975 Mexican Mafia member Ramon “Mundo” Mendoza met Crystal in the home of Joe “Pegleg” Morgan, the American-Croatian godfather of La eMe. According to Mendoza, Bobby Hedberg was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood and had from Folsom basically given Crystal to Morgan as a kind of parole present. Egged on by Morgan the former stripper stripped for the gathering of canales in his apartment. She divorced William Goucher in 1979 and died a few years later.

Crystal as the trophy wife of Joe Morgan.

While in prison low level Aryan brother Michael “Red Eye” Monfort married former Satan’s Maiden Nancy Pitman. He was paroled in 1984 and moved in with his wife and their three sons. It worked out well until it didn’t: in 1996 Red Eye was sentenced to 878 years in prison for 32 armed robberies. He died in 2005. By that time his old Aryan brother Spider had been long dead.

39-year old James “Spider” Craig was paroled from Folsom in March 1978. He immediately hooked up with convicted robber Edward Barabas, another freshly paroled convict from Folsom. Barabas was not a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, but known as tough, young race warrior he probably was an associate. Spider moved in with with Priscilla Cooper, long since paroled for her part in the killing of Lauren “Reni” Willett. The ex-cons’ great money making scheme was to rob drug dealers and for the next months they committed several succesful robberies in the Sacramento area. At one point they discussed robbing cocaine dealers with Luis Rodriguez and Margaret Klaees, a wannabe Bonnie & Clyde pair that later gained fame for the execution style murders of two California Highway Patrol officers.

The arrest of cop killers Rodriguez & Klaess.

Another crime partner, Robert Chrisman, began to suspect that Craig and Barabas planned to rob him. He allied himself with Chester Lee Hunt, who came armed and dangerous. He wounded Edward Barabas in the neck in a short firefight and what followed became a hellish night of kidnappings, robberies, torture, beatings, rapes and murders involving twelve adults and five children. Hours later firefighters were alerted to a car in flames. In the trunk they found the charred bodies of Craig and Barabas, hands tied behind their backs and both shot.

Spider Craig was still alive and according to the first press report, he kept groaning “She’s dangerous”. However, it was later established that his jaw had been shot off with a 12 gauge shotgun. He died a few days later in hospital. During the night Ches Hunt had shot Edward Barabas through the head and then forced a terrified Robert Chrisman to helped load both Craig and Barabas into the trunk of the car and later forced Chrisman to shoot Spider Craig.

Edward Barabas.

As soon as the news of their evil deed broke, Robert Chrisman broke down crying and turned himself in. When Chester Hunt was approached by the police, he opened fire and was shot in face for his troubles. Hunt, his wife, Robert Chrisman and his girlfriend were all convicted on a string of charges, ranging from burning of personal property to first degree murder.

During the hellish night Ms. Domer, the girlfriend of Edward Barabas, was kidnapped, robbed and raped by Chester Lee Hunt. She was babysitting Priscilla Cooper’s one months old infant, who went with Domer into captivity. Hunt didn’t hurt the baby. Priscilla Cooper was by sheer luck out of town that night. In despair over the loss of her beloved Spider she later committed several armed robberies.

Little Heidi, the orphaned infant daughter of James and Lauren Willett, was adopted by her maternal grandparents.

***

The Bakersfield Terrors

$
0
0

The picture below shows a proud Bobby Brimage after he won a boxing match:

Brimage is flanked on the left by Wayne “Bulldog” Ladd, and on the right by Wayne Odom. Both were known members of the Aryan Brotherhood, and the picture is presumebly from San Quentin in the late nineteen-seventies. It’s not known if Bobby Brimage was an associate or a made member of the Brand, but there are a few other pictures floating around with him and Aryan brothers, so there’s no doubt that he at one point in time was close to them.

Robert Lee Brimage was rounded off a violent clan of Oklahomans, that had settled in Bakersfield, Kern County, California. He first rose to prominence in 1962, when he at the age of seventeen was arrested with his older brother Joe and two other young men for a 70.000 dollar robbery, to that date the biggest heist in the history of Bakersfield. Bobby Brimage was described as a parolee from the California Youth Authority, so his trouble with the law had started earlier.

Below: Arrest photos of Joe and kid brother Bobby, 1962.

In 1970 Bobby Brimage was 24 and a married man. His brother-in-law was at the same age, and the two young men seem to go along fine. At least they went fishing together in June of 1970. When Bobby Brimage decided to burglarize a Snack Bar, his brother-in-law tried to stop him. Brimage smahed a beer bottle over his head and stabbed him with a knife. A year later he was himself stabbed to within inches of his life by a group of inmates in Kern County Jail, where he was in for theft and other minor charges.

In April 1972 Bobby Brimage was sent to California state prison Chino, convicted of one count of assualt with a deadly weapon on Benny Brimage, one of his older brothers, and two counts of assault on a peace officer. The charges were on appeal reduced to one count of assault.

In 1975 Bobby Brimage’s nephew Glenn was arrested for robbery. While housed in county jail he stabbed a fellow inmate. When Glenn was sent to Chino, there were no less than three Brimages in the institution. Glenn, uncle Bobby and uncle Charlie, older brother of Bobby and in prison for killing a bartender who had refused to serve him

Yet another of Bobby’s older brothers, Danny, was imprisoned in Nevada for a crime spree that culminated in the murder of a taxi cab driver. And another of Bobby’s nephews, Benny, was in jail for stabbing a man over a radio. At 17 Benny was almost killed by uncle Danny in a drunken car chrash

In May 1976 Bobby Brimage was back on the streets of Bakerfield. He tried to steal a car, but was arrested after a gunbattle with the car owner and sent back to Chino. He died in Kern County in 1980, but how or why is not known. He apparntly never did time in San Quentin, så he may have hooked up with the Aryan Brotherhood in Chino. But Bobby Brimage was a violent man, so he might have been shipped off to San Quentin for disciplinary reasons during one of his stints in state prison.

***


The Abortive Birth Of the Outlaw Biker

$
0
0

The American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) has always represented a mere fraction of the number of motorcycle riders in the US. Its claim to be the only legitimate American motorcyling organisation rests on its status as being the American member of the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme, the global sanctioning body of motorcycling racing.

However, the AMA is not only an organisation for competitive motorcycle riders. Its stated purpose is “to promote the motorcycling lifestyle and protect the future of motorcycling.” To promote both aspect – lifestyle and racing – the AMA began in the late nineteen twenties to sanction the Gypsy Tours, a kind of festivals for motorcyclists centered around various local, state and national competions, sponsored by local AMA clubs.

Below: A typical nineteen-fifties ad in AMA’s magazine The American Motorcyclist, catering to and promoting the clean cut, law abiding image of the AMA rider.

The Gypsy Tours became popular events, especially in rural America where small towns like Hollister in Northern California were only happy to host the motorcycle people. With about 4000 souls Hollister in the late nineteen thirtiees was known for cow fairs, rodeos and the annual Memorial Day Gypsy Tour, sponsored by the local AMA club the Salinas Ramblers.

Hollister, Independence Day 1947
When all the young men went to war after the attack on Pearl Harbor the tours was put on hold until 1946, when AMA’s first post-war Gypsy Tours took place. In 1947 the Salinas Ramblers and the Hollister Veterans Memorial Park Association choose to celebrate Independence Day with a three day Gypsy Tour with races in both the local park and at a lager race track a few miles out of town.

The event was well attended. Too well. Around 3500 motorcyclists showed up and too many stayed the nights over with nothing to do but drink beer and horse around. And that they did. Drunk on alcohol and their overpowering numbers about 500 motorcyclists took over the main street of Hollister. The town’s small police force of seven officers came under enormous pressure from the more and more defiant motorcycle riders. The press reported:

Riders, both men and women, steered their machines into bars, crashing fixtures and bottles and mirrors. They defied all traffic regulations racing full speed through the streets and intersections. Hundreds loosed bottle barrages. Bartenders halted the sale of beer, believing the group could not afford whiskey. Riotous activities continued. The bars closed two hours earlier than permitted by law.

When the police force started to arrest the troblemakers they reacted with exstreme defiance:

Threats of bodily injury drifted indirectly to police officers and one such vow, ‘to bust open your jail if our pals aren’t turned loose,’ was realized shortly after 10 p.m. Saturday when companions of three locked up riders applied a crow-bar to the door of the jail behind the City Hall and freed their friends. Three cyclists who had collapsed in a drunken stupor and were unable to walk, remained in the jail.

Below: A defiant motorcyclist arrested in Hollister by overworked police officers.

Since the number of arrests far outnumbered the local jail’s capacity and most of the arrests were for misdomeanor, a improvished night court was set up for super speedy trials. Before law and order broke completely down the local police called the California Highway Patrol (CHP) for help. They send forty officers armed with teargas, enough to calm the situation and get the troublemakers to leave town. When it was all over about a hundred arrests had been made and about fifty injured had been treated at the small-staffed local hospital, which had been under such pressure that they stopped register incoming patients.

Riverside, Labor Day 1947
Three months later around 6000 motorcyclists gathered in Riverside, Southern California, for AMA’s 100 mile national championship. Again drunken riders marred the event, but no more than this time a well prepared local police could handle themselves. Only about a dozen charges for fighting and drunkeness were made. A female motorcyclists was killed when her beau hit a car, and another rider killed himself when he hit another car. Not without justification the press drew parallels to Hollister.

Ensenada, April 1948
In the first weekend of April 1948 the American press followed the self-described “cycle hounds” to the annual gathering in the little Mexican town of Ensenada. Again massive drinking and wild driving in public streets dominated the event, but there were no serious injuries and no arrests, though the American press talked of “Blitzkrieg” and “invasion”. A spokesman for the Mexican police said the American motorcyclists had behaved better than two years ago, thereby indicating that problems with drunken cycle hounds were nothing new.

Below: Self-described cycle hounds in the streets of Ensenada, April 1947. In the middle members of Yellow Jacket MC, a well known AMA-club from Los Angeles.

Riverside, Independence Day 1948
To celebrate Fourth of July 1948 the Sheriff’s Training Association in Riverside sponsored a 100 mile dirt track race, co-sponsored by the AMA. Up to 6000 motorcyclists showed up to the event. A more sinister mood could be gauged among some of them. They claimed to be veterans of Hollister and promised to raise hell on the same scale.

So far what violence that had been had stemmed from fighting among the cycle hounds. This time the violence was also directed both at citizens and at law enforcement officers. A car was thrashed and the driver beaten when he tried to honk his way through the drunken crowd. A three year old was badly hurt when a hit-and-run rider broke through a fence. One cycle hound killed himself when he hit a bridge some miles out of town.

This time deputy sheriffs and local policemen were not enough to handle the situation. Help was called not only to the California Highway Patrol, but to military police and the US Forrest Service. 54 arrests were made over the weekend before law and order in Riverside was restored.

County sheriff Carl F. Rayburn, who personally had been attacked by the motorcycle hoodlums, was widely qouted in the press for blaming the disturbance on “”outlaw” motorcyclists barred from membership of the American Motorcyclist Association”. The expression quickly caught on, probably because it was backed by the AMA and because it was a rather precise description of the lawless breed on wheels.

An AMA veteran from Iowa, who had been in Hollister ’47 and Riverside ’48, put the blame specifically on the Boozefigthers:

He described the Boozefighters, and their auxiliary, the Boozettes, as an “outlaw” outfit, not recognized by the staid American Motorcyclist Association.
“The A.M.A. wouldn’t let them in with a name like that,” Irwin declared, “so the Bozzefighters attend A.M.A.-sanctioned meets and cause trouble.”

Below: Two Boozefighters and a Boozette in the streets of either Hollister or Riverside. The press’ widely used photo in 1948 to illustrate the story about Riverside. “Boozefighter” was post-war slang for an alcoholic.

More than a months later under sheriff Lester Abbott of Riverside County issued a letter to the press where in he decried the “neither honest nor factual” coverage of the events in Riverside. It was an odd letter that hotly defended both the local police and the AMA. In conclusion under sheriff Abbott wrote:

Definitely, a change of attitude and acts of the 1 per cent of irresponsible, intemperate and sometimes vulgar motorcyclists, hiding behind the cloak of the decency of the 99 per cent must be accomplished.

And then…
… it stopped. For the next ten years press reports about wild motorcyclists invading towns or about a conflict between the AMA and outlaw riders were absent. Riverside 1948 had pointed towards a sinister escalation of the conflict, and for the first time the expressions “outlaw” and “1%” had been used to designate and marginalise the troublemakers, but nobody seems to have taken up the mantle. Certainly not the Bozzefighters, the very first club to be baptized an outlaw club. With chapters in both Los Angeles and San Pedro in the south and San Francisco in the north, and veterans of both Hollister and Riverside, they were the dominant “outlaw” club, but neither they, Galloping Goose, POBOB, Sharks or any other of the well known non-AMA clubs embraced the label “outlaw”.

Except for Galloping Goose all these clubs had more or less fizzeled out by the time Laslo Benedek’s “The Wild One” hit the cinemas in December 1953. For the next years things were brewing before a new generation of clubs and yet an AMA Gypsy Tour saw the real birth of the outlaw biker phenomenon, helmed by the Hells Angels.

***

The Almighty Gaylords

$
0
0

In the early nineteen-fifties the McCook Outlaws MC dropped “McCook” for “Chicago” and moved in to Chicago proper. Local youths formed a gang called Gay Lords to fight the intruders. Over the years it grew under the name Almighty Gaylords to become one of Chicago’s largest white street gangs.

Like the rest of America the white street gangs in Chicago came under tremendous pressure from the rising tide of color during the nineteen-sixties and -seventies. Black and brown gangs began to swarm the streets of the City of Big Shoulders. In an effort to stem the tide the Gaylords, C-Notes, Lazy Gents, Playboys and Ventures joined forces under the banner United Five Organisations (UFO).

The UFO didn’t fight a gang war, but a race war:

“UFO was strictly about racial identity. I asked Sal if at times money making entered into the rationale for UFO. “No, No, it was race, it was race. It wasn’t money, it was race. It was ‘you stayed on your side of the tracks, we stayed on our side’ – they were trying to protect their neighborhood from the growing influx of Hispanics moving in and blacks moving in. And you know who won that war.””

By 1982 it was game over for the white boys. UFO dissolved and the Gaylords tried to survive by joining the People Nation, an alliance dominated by black and brown gangs. They ceased to exist during the nineteen-nineties.

The Chicago Outlaws dropped “Chicago” in 1967 when they absorbed the Iron Cross MC in Florida. They don’t allow black members and are still going strong.

***

Barry Byron Mills: Portraits

$
0
0

Wyatt Earp – What does he want?
Doc Holliday – Revenge.
Wyatt Earp – For what?
Doc Holliday – Bein’ born.

Tombstone.

According to former gang investigator Gabriel Morales’ “The History of the Aryan Brotherhood” Barry Byron Mills killed black inmate Charles White in San Quentin in 1970. Mills was serving his first year of a five-to-life sentence for first degree robbery. A quite violent hold-up that netted Mills and his crime partner less than 800 dollars. Two years earlier Mills had escaped from Sonoma County Honour Farm, where he was serving time for auto theft. According to Morales, Barry Mills got a year in state prison for the escape and was sent to Soledad. Before his release in March 1969 young Mills was direspected by Charles White and when they met in San Quentin about a year later Mills killed him.

Below: Barry Byron Mills around the age of 17.

Gabriel Morales is the only public source to the story about Barry Mills’ killing of Charles White in San Quentin, and Morales doesn’t give any details about the alleged murder. So there’s room for doubts. However, there’s reason to believe that a young Barry Mills was perfectly able to graduate very fast from small time armed robber to stone cold prison killer. He was the driving force behind the robbery that sent him back to state prison, and his weaker crime partner William Hackworth testified against him. When Hackworth was about to be sentenced, public defender Miller pleaded with the court not to send his client to state prison. The local press wrote:

Mr. Miller told Superior Court Judge Kenneth Eyman Mills has “friends” in various prisons in the state and for this reason Hackworth’s life would be endangered if he’s sent to any of the California prisons.

If William Hackworth’s fear was rooted in reality then Barry Mills during his stint in Soledad seems to have hooked up with some convicts so hard and so loyal that they would kill for him. Which further suggests that Barry Mills was so hard and loyal that he would kill for them. Seeing young Mills in this light makes it seem highly probable that returning to state prison he would himself have settled in blood an old prison score with a black inmate.

Below: Barry Byron Mills around the age of 21.

According to the FBI Barry Byron Mills was born in 1948 in Salem, Oregon. He seems to have grown up in Windsor, Sonoma County in northern California. By the age of 15 he was a runaway and described by the local press as an “enraged boy”, when he smashed all the windows in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Philpot with a baseball bat. In his prime Mills was around 5 foot 11 inches and 180 lbs.

Barry Mills may have joined the Aryan Brotherhood – AKA The Brand – as early as late 1968, when he was doing time in Soledad. In the late nineteen-sixties several early members of the Brand like “Tank” Noah, “Snake” Titman, “Buzzard” Harris, “Big Ron” Perring, “Bear” Clemence and “Harpo” Harper were housed in Soledad and Mills may very well have joined their group. This could explain why it was later claimed that he had dangerous “friends” in most of California’s state prisons, since the Aryan Brotherhood quickly spread from prison to prison right after its formation in 1968.

Whatever the case may be, Barry Byron Mills was allmost certainly a made member of the Aryan Brotherhood when he and Martin “Kato” Vargas of the Mexican Mafia in 1972 attacked a group of familianos (members of the Nuesta Familia) in the mess hall of Duel Vocational Institute, the notorious “gladiator school”. During the attack Mills wounded one familiano and stabbed Jessie “Bozo” Castro to death. Members of the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican Mafia had previosly jointly committed several prison murders, but the attack by Vargas and Mills was the first documented instance where the two gangs joined forces against the Nuestra Familia.

Below: Members of the Mexican Mafia and the Aryan Brotherhood, San Quentin around 1973. Barry Mills is seen standing second from right. Standing first from the right and first from the left are, respectively, Nick “Nico” Valesques and Adolfo “Champ” Reynoso of the Mexican Mafia. Sseated in the middle is Leonard, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Known among his peers as “Red Baron” 27-year old Barry Mills was paroled in 1975 and rather quickly arrested in Oregon by the FBI and charged with the armed robbery of the United States National Bank of Oregon in Eugene. In 1976 he was back in California, where he teamed up with his old emero-buddy “Kato” Vargas, and Daniel “DC” Cavanaugh, another member of the Aryan Brotherhood. On June 8, 1976, Red Baron, Kato and DC robbed the Mayfair branch of Lloyd’s Bank in Fresno of 110.000 dollars, the biggest heist in the history of Fresno.

The trio was quickly caught and in December 1976 Barry Mills was given twenty years in federal prison. According to former correctional officer David Layman, who runs the podcast As The Key Turns on Youtube, Mills began his federal sentence in United States Penitentiary (USP) Lompoc, California. In april 1977 Barry Mills killed Garland Berry, a member of the Black Guerilla Family, in San Quentin. Why the Red Baron was in the Bastille of the Bay at that date is not known. But in late 1977 he was transferred from Lompoc to USP McNeil Island, where he – according to Gabriel Morales – was behind the murder of inmate Rober Conley.

Below: Barry Mills seated second from the right, surrounded by members of the Mexican Mafia, unknown date & prison.

According to gang drop out John Greschner, he first met Barry Mills in 1977 while they were both held in USP Terre Haute, Indiana, en route for USP Atlanta, Georgia. Mills, according to David Layman, was first tranferred from McNeil Island to Terre Haute around May 1978, and from there sent to Atlanta three months later. John Greschner was a state prisoner from Minnesota, who, on account of his many violent escape attemps, was sent to USP Marion in 1976. But it’s not impossible that he later was transferred first to Terre Haute and then Atlanta, just like Mills had been. But with or without Greschner, Barry Mills arrived in Atlanta in August 1978.

Mills was not the first Aryan brother in Atlanta. George Evans Harp, a drug dealer and escape artist from the Bay Area, tried to flee the institution in 1973, and in May 1977 Ronald “Big Ron” Perrin and Mills’ old bankrobber-buddy “DC” Cavanaugh had murdered a Corsican mobster in the yard. The next documented murder in the federal prison system by members of the Aryan Brotherhood took place in February 1979 in USP Leavenworth, Kansas, when Thomas Silverstein and Edgar “Snail” Hevle (another Fresno bankrobber) stabbed inmate Danny Atwell to death over a drug dispute. Silverstein was sent to Marion where he quickly had a drug dispute with John Sherman Marzloff, a bankrobber known as the Sailor Hat Bandit in his homestate of Texas. In April 1979 Marzloff was transferred from Marion to Atlanta. A few days later he was found stabbed and hacked to death.

At that time the violence and murders in USP Atlanta had become a political problem (see Big Al – A Story of Blood And Betrayal), so the FBI was immediately called in to investigate the latest murder in “The Big A”. A host of inmates were interviewed, among them Robert E. Lee Hogan. The scarred swastika-tattooed, twice convicted rapist from Ohio gave a detailed description of his whereabouts on the day of Marzloff’s murder. Another inmate complained that every time something happened in Atlanta “they always pick on the guys from California”. Mills and several others flatly refused to talk to the FBI.

While the federal detectives tried to solve the latest murder in Atlanta, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) shipped Barry Mills and three other members of the Aryan Brotherhood, all suspects in the killing of Marzloff, off to Marion, at that time the most secure federal prison. Back in Atlanta Robert E. Lee Hogan raped and murdered the prison’s dietary consultant, Janet Hylen, on November 21, 1979. He confessed right away and also confessed to the murder of John Marzloff. Hogan was shipped off to Marion, where he in June 1980 was stabbed to death by Everet “Sonny” Burkett, a twice convicted prison killer.

Out in Kansas Thomas Silverstein was charged with the murder of Danny Atwell, and called Barry Mills and one other member of the Aryan Brotherhood as witnesses. The pair was transferred to Leavenworth in January 1980, where they promptly attacked two guards. Mills was indicted in May 1980 for the assault, but two months later the court dismissed the indictment.

In January 1981 Barry Mills was indicted for the murder of John Marzloff. Sometime between July 1980 and January 1981 prison guards intercepted a letter from Mills to an Aryan brother in California. In the letter Mills discussed the recent formation of the Arizona Aryan Brotherhood and told of how Marion was becoming a stronghold for both the Aryan Brotherhood and the Mexican Mafia. According to Mills they were about ten Aryan brothers in Marion, and he asked California for permission to ​independently recruit new members.

The letter seems to confirm that Barry Mills was the driving force behind the creation of the federal faction of the Brand, as John Greschner years later claimed to be the case. According to the FBI 1980 was also the year when the federal Aryan Brotherhood created a three man commission to rule the new gang. This structure was copied two years later by the California faction of the Brand. According to court documents the first federal commission were comprised of Barry Mills, Edgar Hevle and Thomas Silverstein.

Below: Barry Mills, unknown date & prison

Not long after Barry Mills’ indictment for the murder of John Marzloff, staff in the Federal Correctional Instituion (FCI) Butner, North Carolina, intercepted a written murder contract on an inmate, signed “The Baron”. The letter was given to the FBI, which opend a case against Barry Mills for conspiracy to commit murder. He was never charged because it could not be conclusively proven that the handwriting was his. “The Baron” may have been a misreading of “Red Baron”, but later on it was feeded to the press by the prosecution and stuck with Mills for the rest of his life.

On March 11, 1981, a federal judge in Georgia threw out Barry Mills’ and 51 other criminal indictments because “certain classes of people” had been excluded from the Grand Juries. Mills was promptly reindicted and in November 1981 brought to trial on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. It was revealed during the trial that Barry Mills had “Weiss Macht” (German for “White Power”) tattooed across his stomach. But also that he had had his AB tattoes removed.

Mills was found guilty on November 13 of both counts and on December 14 sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, running consecutive to his twenty years for bank robbery. According to prison authorities Mills was by the time of his murder trial “directly responsible” for at least five other prison murders.

It was the prosecution’s theory that John Marzloff had been killed in Atlanta because of his drug dispute with Thomas Silverstein in Marion. Nine days after Barry Mills was found guilty of Marzloff’s murder, inmate Robert Marvin Chappelle, a member of the black prison gang DC Blacks, was strangled to death in Marion. Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain, another convicted prison murderer, were quickly apprehended and charged. But the investigation didn’t end there.

David Owens was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood from California. In 1978 he and AB killer Robert “New York” Crane were convicted of bank robbery. While Crane was held up in California, facing two murder charges, Owens was sent to Marion. Owens had pressed for the murder of Chappelle, but when he saw the law came gunning for him, he defected and testfied. According to David Owens, Robert Chappelle was killed because he had disrespected Martin “Kato” Vargas, member of the Mexican Mafia and Barry Mills’ old bankrobber-buddy home in California. Since Vargas couldn’t get to him, the Aryan Brotherhood stepped in.

Thanks to David Owens charges of conspiracy to commit murder were filed against Thomas Silverstein, Edgar Hevle, Barry Mills, AB associate Michael Bartosh and Adolfo “Champ” Reynoso of the Mexican Mafia. All were convicted in August 1982, except for The Baron, who was acquitted.

Just a month after their conviction for the murder of Chappelle, Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain stabbed Raymond “Cadillac” Smith, another member of the DC Blacks, to death in Marion. Barry Mills was charged with aiding and abetting in the murder. In April 1984 Silverstein and Clayton pleaded guilty in a plea bargain that saw the charges against Mills dropped. During the sentencing phase of the trial Thomas Silverstein made a point of asking the court if the charges against The Baron really had been dropped. This the judge assured him.

In October 1983 Thomas Silverstein stabbed a prison guard in Marion to death. Ten hours later Clayton Fountain did the same. Three months later a guard in FCI Oxford, Wisconsin, was murdered by a couple of inmates who wanted to ingratiate themselves with the Aryan Brotherhood. However, the murders of the two guards in Marion had not been “Brand business” and none of the Oxford killers made it into the Aryan Brotherhood.

Gregory “Buzzard” Keefer never made it into the Aryan Brotherhood either, but his murder in September 1983 had indeed been the business of the Brand. Keefer was an AB associate in Marion who kept breaking the rules.He ran seroiusly afoul of little William “Puppet” McKinney, sent to federal prison in 1977 for bankrobbery with his crime partner Adolfo “Champ” Reynoso, the Mexican Mafia member later convictd in the Chappelle case.

Puppet McKinney wanted badly to kill Buzzard Keefer and in early september 1983 The Baron gave his blessing. It took four years before McKinney was charged with the murder, and before he and Mills were charged with conspiracy to commit it. The Baron had his case severed from McKinney’s, but the outcome of this conspiracy case against Barry Mills has apparantly never been made public.

Puppet McKinney was convicted on both counts. Several inmates took the stand against him. Among them George Harp, the drug dealer and escape artist from California, who claimed to have been the very first member of the Aryan Brotherhood to be sent to federal prison. Harp defected in 1983, claiming that the killings had gone out of hand. Harp also claimed that he back in 1980 had transmitted an order from Barry Mills to Sonny Burkett to murder Robert Hogan. A claim that Burkett later verified.

Another witness for the prosecution in Puppet McKinney’s 1987-murder trial was Ronnie Joe Chriswell, a veteran of the race wars in Georgia’s harrowing prison system. In October 1983 Chriswell had helped John Greschner murder Richard “Rhino” Andreasen in USP Leavenworth, but later refused to join the Aryan Brotherhood. When Greschner in 1999 defected from the Brand, he revealed that the order to murder Andreasen had come from Barry Mills.

Below: A balding Barry Mills seated on the exstreme left. Unknow date, unknow prison.

USP Marion opened in 1963 as a modern substiture for the old federal maximum security prison Alcatraz. In 1979 Marion was upgraded to unheard of security Level VI, a kind of super maximum status. Within Marion control unit H was the most secure unit; the maximum security prison’s maximum securtity prison. All four murders done by Silverstein and Fountain had been done in the H-unit and the murders demonstrated that Marion wasn’t designed to safely hold a new breed of exstremely violent convicts, ruled by an uncompromising and viciuos gang culture.

A few days after the murders of the two guards in H-unit, a white prisoner was found murdered in his cell. Fearing a race war the prison locked all convicts down in their cells. When the grip was loosened after a few days, a guard was beaten down and only saved after a bitter fistfight betweeen guards and convicts. Marion was again in lock down and guards from Leavenworth were called in to help restore order. They found a prison where the guards lived in fear of the prisoners.

It was found that the only way to safely mangage the prison was to have it permanently locked down. This tough policy did curb the violence, but also rose the ire of outside do-gooders, who quickly began a campaign for the poor lambs behind bars. A series of “testimonies” from inmates about the evil conditions in Marion was published in 1985. Barry Mills wrote:

When one finds himself chained and beaten up against the wall, his actions and thoughts manifest into total madness. This is the situation Marion finds itself in and this view is shared by both the kept and the keepers. No deed is too vile, as all reason and humanity cease to exist.

Among the “vile deeds” was a murder in Marion in 1988. The victim was Thomas Lamb, a bank robber and member of the Aryan Brotherhood from California, whose death had been sought by the California commission since 1982. Lamb was strangled to death in his cell and then hanged to make it look like suicide.

Around this time – the middle 1980s – Edgar Hevle and “Terrible Tom” Silverstein had been replaced in the commission of the federal Aryan Brotherhood by Tyler Davis Bingham and Allen Clifton Benton. TD Bingham had been a feared member of the Brand back in the 1970s in San Quentin and Folsom, before he in 1985 was sent to federal prison for robbing a bank in Texas. Big Al Benton was a killer from Florida, sent to federal prison on a drug conviction.

When Al Benton defected in 1997, he was replaced by John Greschner, the AB killer from Minnesota. When he defected two years later, Mills and Bingham continued without a third commissioner. According to both Benton and Greschner it took the vote of two commissioners to run the show, so the two Californians did de facto follow protocol.

Arva Lee Ray was a car thief from Texas. In 1978 he got three years in federal prison for threats against two federal judges, and send to USP Lompoc in California. In 1980 “Baby Ray” was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a white inmate in Lompoc, ostensibly because the victim mingled with black inmates. By 1989 Ray was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, but because of his homosexuality not a very respected one. He was strangled to death in August 1989 by Glen Filkins, who thereby became a member of the Brand.

Below: Barry Mills, possibly at Marion.

Next in line was AB veteran Puppet McKinney. In December 1992 he was also housed in Lompoc and like Arva Ray had descended into homosexuality. Two members of the Aryan Brotherhood smashed his head in with an iron bar and a week later the little man died of his wounds.

In 1994 Barry Mills and other members of the Aryan Brotherhood were transferred from Marion to ADX Florence, the federal Bureau of Prisons’ brand new, cutting edge maximum security prison in Colorado. Three years later Big Al Benton in USP Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, led two teams of assassins from the Aryan Brotherhood in an attack that left two high ranking members of the DC Blacks dead and five others wounded. Hours later Benton defected the Brand and told investigators that the order for the attack had come from Florence, more than 1500 miles away.

Below: Barry Mills, possibly ADX Florence.

In February 2002 a federal grand jury indicted forty members and associates of the Aryan Brotherhood on RICO charges. Press releases from federal prosecutors pointed out Barry Mills as the lead defendant. According to the indictment The Baron had over two decades conspired to commit more than twenty murders. He had ordered seventeen, eight of which had been carried out and nine attempted, and personally committed one himself (e.i. John Marzloff). The eight other murder victims were Robert Hogan, Gregory Keefer and Thomas Lamb in Marion; Richard Andreasen in Leavenworth; Arva Ray and William McKinney in Lompoc, and the two DC Blacks shot callers in Lewisburg. The indictment made it clear that if convicted Mills would be eligible for the death penalty.

Below: The most famous picture of The Baron, ADX Florence 2002.

But a possible death sentence seems not to have pertubed the now 54-year old Barry Byron Mills. Robert Russo, a former member of the white prison gang the Dirty White Boys, tells on his podcast Convict Inc. about how he and others from the gang in November 2002 was housed in Leavenworth with Mills and TD Bingham. Mills foresaw that in the near future a host of members from white state prison gangs would be sent to federal prison. To avoid furture infighting among the white gangs Mills offered the much lager Dirty White Boys to be absorbed into the more feared Aryan Brotherhood. In Mills’ vision this would make the Brand strong enough to dissolve the new gangs, absorb their best members and wholly dominate the white prison population.

According to Russo the Dirty White Boys refused the offer from Barry Mills. But, as Russo points out, The Baron foresaw the future correctly. From about 2005 a lot of white state prison gangs have been hit with RICO and other federal charges and are now represented in the federal prison system. Some of them like Soldiers of Aryan Culture from Utah quite prominently.

Barry Byron Mills was brought to trial in 2006. The principal witnesses against him were recently defected Aryan brothers like Allen Benton, Kevin Roach and code expert Jonathan McGinley. He was convicted on all charges, except for the murder of Puppet McKinney. The prosecution did seek the death penalty, but Mills got a hung jury on that one. Instead, the court sentenced him to four life sentences, which meant nothing to Mills who knew he would die in prison. He was sent back to ADX Florence, where he died in his sleep a day after his 70th birthday in 2018. When the news broke a former warden told the press, “I’m not trying to glorify him, but I can tell you this: He had the admiration of a lot of inmates, but he was also feared.”

Below: Last known photo of Barry Byron Mills.

***

Identities (David Allen Chance)

$
0
0

A reader more perceptive than I has convinced me that the Aryan brother with his arm around AB killer Curtis Price on the picture below is not Barry Byron Mills:

The identity of the blond convict is unkown, but as the reader points out, he is the same guy standing on the exstreme left on the picture below:

That Aryan brother is certainly not Barry Mills, så I have removed the first photo from the article about The Baron.

The man seen on both photos with sunglasses and red thick mustache is Tyler Davis “TD” Bingham. To the right of him (with cap) on the first photo we see Michael Lynn Thompson. If we look at the back row on the same photo, we have second from the left Wayne Odom, and third from the right Steven Barnes, known as “Nate” and the time the AB’s tattoe artist.

According to a source on Youtube we have standing exstreme right with sunglasses, on photo number one, none other than David Allen Chance, AKA “Country” AKA “Big Country”.

Chance is not one of the most famous ABs, but he has for years been one of the most powerful members of the organisation. More than twenty years ago he became a member of the ruling troika – the commission. As such he was indicted in 2002, together with fellow California commissioners John Stinson and Richard Terflinger, in the US government’s biggest RICO case to date against the AB.

Below: David Allen Chance, possibly Pelican Bay cirka 2000.

Since then both Stinson and Terflinger have withdrawn from the commission. Their seats have been taken over by Danny Troxel and Ronald “Renegade” Yandell, who back in the 1990s was recruited by The Baron himself. Both Troxel and Yandell are today indicted in yet another RICO case against the Brand. Big Country isn’t. Next to possibly TD Bingham he is the longest sitting commissioner in the history of the Aryan Brotherhood.

***

The San Quentin Race War 1977

$
0
0

In the winter of 1974 a couple of young filmmakers were allowed into San Quentin, were they interviewed several inmates. Most prominetly Roger “Pincushion” Smith, but also the cop killers Gregory Powell and Gene Myrick. All three saved from the gas chamber by California’s 1972 stay on capital punishment.

The young filmmakers were actually filming in San Quentin on the very day – Dec. 19th – when the Mexican Mafia hit the the Black Guerilla Family (BGF) in two brazen attacks that left two dead and four severely wounded, and managed to film some of the victims being carried away.

Though they may not have known it the filmmakers even managed to interview an actual member of the BGF. His name was Garland Berry, a known troublemaker housed in the Adjustment Center. When the filmmakers years later released the San Quentin tapes, they inserted a brief text telling that Berry was later killed in the prison:

Garland Berry was known as “Poncho” in the BGF and in May 1975 he was still (or again) in San Quentin’s Adjustment Center. So was Richard Terflinger, a convicted murderer and known member of the Aryan Brotherhood, the arch enemy of Poncho’s gang.

Below: Back row, second from right, is Richard Terflinger in his prime, possibly Chino 1982. He later rose to the absolute top of the Aryan Brotherhood.

On May 23th Poncho armed himself with a shank and attacked Terflinger while he was excersing on the tier. Though stabbed in the face and shoulders Richard Terflinger survived and Garland Berry was never charged for the assualt.

Instead Poncho was paroled. In May 1977 he was sent back to San Quentin on parole violation. Three days later Garland Berry was stabbed to death by Barry Mills and one other member of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Fearing that the killing of Garland Berry would trigger a full blown race war, the prison authorities reacted swiftly and locked major parts of San Quentin down. Each time the lock down was eased the black and white convicts were at each others throats. It culminated on July 12th when members of a group called Satan’s Few – described as “Nazi bikers” – mistook a Black Muslim for a member of the BGF and killed him. Later that day a group of well armed Black Muslims ambushed members of the American National Socialists and killed two of them.

After the attack two whites were carried away seriously wounded. But so were also two blacks. The outgunned and outmanned Nazis seem to have fought well. And they wanted payback. Around 60 Black Muslims were placed in a seperate unit to protect them from revenge attacks. Around 45 members of the Aryan Brotherhood, Satan’s Few and American National Socialists were sent to Folsom, where race troubles immediately flared up.

The 1977 race war in San Quentin only began to fade-out after a white convict was killed in August with a rifle shot from a guard while he was trying to stab a black to death. The war, however, did continue for the rest of the year in both Folsom and Tracy, though with no mortal casualties.

***

Viewing all 606 articles
Browse latest View live