Since formation in California in the 1960s, Aryan Brotherhood members have amassed a lengthy record of brutally violent criminal activity, including the murders of many prison inmates as well as people outside the prison walls.
Some of the most brutal killings associated with the Aryan Brotherhood have claimed police and corrections officers as their victims. At least six corrections officers and four police officers are known to have been victims of Aryan Brotherhood related murders in the past 25 years; the actual number is probably greater. Known murders include:
June 2007. Utah. Incarcerated prisoner Curtis Michael Allgier allegedly shot and killed corrections officer Stephen Anderson, 60, after Anderson brought Allgier from Utah State Prison to the University of Utah Medical Center for an MRI. Allgier allegedly took Anderson's gun off of him, shot him in the head, and then fled, leading police on a high speed chase before being recaptured.
November 2005. Texas. Fort Worth Police Department officer Henry "Hank" Nava was allegedly shot in the head while serving a warrant on an identity theft suspect, Stephen Lance Heard, said by police to be a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. Nava died in the hospital two days later. Jury selection recently began on Heard's murder trial.
December 2004, New Mexico. A member of the Aryan Brotherhood killed Otero County Sheriff's Deputy Robert Hedman, who had responded to a domestic disturbance call at that house. The Aryan Brotherhood member was subsequently killed by Hedman's partner.
October 2001. Oklahoma. Pawnee County Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Woodrell was shot and killed while investigating suspicious activity at an oil field business outside of Cleveland, Oklahoma. One of the two men convicted in the murder was James Craig Taylor, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood gang.
March 1995. California. Sonoma County Sheriff's Deputy Frank Trejo was captured and shot to death by members of the Aryan Brotherhood after he noticed them staking out a possible robbery target. One of the men convicted in his murder, Robert Scully, had been paroled from jail just five days earlier.
April 1993. Ohio. A prison riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville, Ohio, resulted in Muslim inmates, members of the Aryan Brotherhood, and members of the Black Guerrilla Family seizing control of a cellblock and holding it for eleven days. During the incident, the rioters murdered nine inmates and corrections officer Robert Vallandingham. Vallandingham was murdered after Aryan Brotherhood member George Skatzes threatened to kill someone unless power and water were restored to the cellblock and his stated deadline passed without his demand having been met.
June 1992. Ohio. Aryan Brotherhood member Roy Slider attacked African American corrections officer Thomas Davis, Jr., with a padlock in a sock and a homemade knife at the Mansfield Correctional Facility. Davis died a day after the attack because of an accidental drug overdose administered at the hospital while trying to save his life.
October 1983. Illinois. Aryan Brotherhood leader Thomas "Terrible Tommy" Silverstein (who had already murdered three inmates), obtained a knife with the help of other inmates at the federal prison at Marion and attacked guards escorting him to take a shower. He killed corrections officer Merle Eugene Clutts by stabbing him 40 times. Just a few hours after the first incident, another Aryan Brotherhood member, Clayton Fountain, did the exact same thing, stabbing three guards and killing one of them, Robert L. Hoffman.
July 1983. Missouri. Aryan Brotherhood member Robert "Rabbit" Driscoll stabbed corrections officer Thomas Jackson to death during a riot at the Moberly Correctional Center. Driscoll was later convicted of manslaughter for the fatal stabbing.
Other Extremist Attacks on Corrections Officers
Although the Aryan Brotherhood has compiled one of the bloodiest records of fatal attacks on corrections officers, it is not alone. Members of racist prison gangs and other extremists in prisons have plotted or actually carried out attacks on corrections officials, some of which have been fatal. At least one corrections officer has been killed outside prison walls while helping to deal with an extremist standoff.
January 1988. Utah. Utah Department of Corrections Lieutenant Fred House, a canine officer, was killed by members of an extremist religious group during a standoff that followed the bombing of a Mormon center.
January 1970 and August 1971. California. In early 1970, George Jackson, a left-wing radical associated with the Black Panther Party and the Black Guerrilla Family, took part in the murder of a Soledad corrections officer, John Mills, in retaliation for a recent incident in which a guard shot three convicts. In 1971, shortly before his trial for that murder was about to begin, Jackson launched an uprising in the maximum security wing of San Quentin prison, in which three guards were killed, as well as two inmates suspected of being informers. Several other corrections officers were seriously injured. The officers slain were Jere Graham, Frank DeLeon, and Paul Krasnes.
