Former Aryan Brotherhood Leader Michael Thompson Tells His Life Story (Full Interview)

foreign here we go today we have Michael Lynn Thompson former high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood who ended up leaving the gang and cooperating with authorities against other Aryan Brotherhood members welcome to Vlad TV thank you black it's good to be here so you were born in 1951 uh where exactly did you grow up well I grew up there's a reservation on the east side of the High Sierra mountains called Big Pine it sets between bishop and Lone Pine and I spent approximately the first 12 years of my life on the reservation there okay and your parents are partly Native American well that I don't know um it's a great question I when I left the reservation at the age of 12 I was I went to live with a um Nez peers Elder he was half Nest Pierce half Irish and he's actually the one that taught me my ways whether or not uh I have any Native American blood myself I don't know I was raised native that's what's in my heart so that's what I follow okay uh and at that point when you talk about up to 12 years old uh you lived on a reservation then you moved you know was there any sort of racism early on that that you were exposed to or did you feel a certain type of way against other races or or not really no no quite the contrary um if there was racism it was directed toward me by other natives uh because of my fair features and I suppose you know my Elder used to tell me all the time the bigotry whereas many many feathers and um I think that's pretty much true so um no I I um the only Association I had with um racism growing up was um from other natives okay so 12 years old you moved away from the reservation uh uh and at one point you actually became a bull rider I did I rode the rodeo circuit for um a few years traveled the circuit itself and enjoyed that immensely so then in 1973 a very serious incident occurred let's talk about that okay yeah that was um the murder of uh Butch Nutley and Ruth Steele they were alleged to be two drug dealers that were working in conjunction with um a man who ran a cartel at that time John Solis and um it appears that uh they had gotten themselves in debt or in some kind of trouble so they took it upon themselves to attempt to kidnap the daughter of John Solis Daughters of John Solis and um I let John know that that was about to occur and um as a result they were killed and I was convicted of the murders um in addition to conspiracy okay and you were convinced of a double homicide yes okay and you were the only one actually convicted at all counts that's true so you didn't actually do the murder yourself no so who actually did the murder uh that was Mike saysman he was the right-hand man for John Solis and um he carried out the the execution of both men okay so explain to you you know to me with you not actually doing the murder and you I guess try to warn someone of an impending uh kidnapping how exactly did you get convicted of a double murder without actually pulling the trigger yourself well it's under the felony murder rule which has just been changed this last year through the legislation and under the felony murder rule if you're involved in a felony regardless of the degree of the felony in my case um cessnet suggested that I had assaulted one of the victims and that assault was the predicate for first degree murder and the conspiracy that is now actually before the Appellate Court looks like this may be heading towards exoneration I maintained my innocence from the very beginning and throughout the course of my 45 years in prison so but now it looks like it's going to Bear some fruit my way okay and you're about 23 years old at the time 22. 22. you're 22 years old barely in your 20s and you just got convicted of double homicide yes and how many years they give you at that point it was seven years to life seven years to life now seven years doesn't seem so bad but when you added two life to it it potentially could turn into a life sentence and oftentimes you have these extremely long sentences that start out with a seven years to life they do what it essentially means that is that in seven years you're eligible for parole so I was eligible for parole after seven years but I went before the board 18 times 19th time they released me and that was after 45 years okay I mean how did it feel to be a 23 you know a 22 year old who just heard to life um yeah I'm asked that question a lot particularly people are interested in the emotion associated with that the truth of the matter is is that you're so caught up in attempting to survive and adapt to the environment in which you've been placed that you don't have a lot of time to reflect on the fact that you're now serving a life sentence for a double homicide regardless of the fact that you maintain as I did that you're innocent uh you have you have to contend with what you're faced with well but I think you did say that around that time you started to consider suicide well one time yeah it's a situation where I'd never been arrested I'd never been in a cage before I've been out running the mountains working on Arabian horse ranch riding the rodeo circuit um so when I was arrested it was one thing to be uh put into a cage and go through the trial um there was some movement associated with that but I think the thing that settled with me most when I was transferred over to the prison and put into a cell was that I couldn't do this the very idea of spending the rest of my life in a cage and not a very big cage at that but um that's actually the reason I wear this rock around my neck it uh there's a very similar Rock just like it up in the corner of the cell and having been raised native The Rock people are significant to me by way of totem and so uh with this rock sticking out I just simply went up and put my hand on it and um in the spiritual sense it spoke to me and it just said it's going to be all right little one and that was enough for me okay so you get sentenced and at that point you got sent to a Folsom Prison no I went to Tracy first I went to Chino as the Reception Center that's in Chino California and then I was scheduled to go to San Quentin but uh they didn't have the bed space so they uh diverted me over to Tracy that's a dual vocational institution in Tracy California okay so how long after Tracy did you end up going to Folsom okay so I was at Tracy two years and then I was um special transport to Old Folsom Prison and I arrived there I think the end of 77 um went to the hole I wasn't on the main line I went into their um back then they didn't have a security housing unit it was just the whole and so that's where I was housed okay so you coming to prison originally Tracy like you said and you're 6'4 you could bench 600 pounds eventually you're a fairly big guy yeah I weighed um at that time I weighed 285 I eventually went up to 310 and I wasn't lifting twice my body weight at that time 620. eventually I did but at that time I was hitting over 400 pounds okay so you're a big strong guy I am essentially now there was a situation that happened where the Nuestra Familia aka the Nortenos yes uh attacked you well no it wasn't really the Nuestra Familia that attacked me what it was was um essentially Border Brothers what they call Border Brothers now they have an organization that they call Pisces but um back then they were what was considered by the Nuestra Familia as Expendables so it was a situation where I worked in the chapel that was my first job and for maintaining the chapel I was given the garden between the two chapels to practice my Native American spirituality and in so doing you want to remember that it was against the law to do that back then we weren't able to practice our ways nor were we able to speak our language and uh but the chaplain I made a deal with the chaplain he was a very open-minded individual and um he allowed me to use the garden to practice my ways which I did I was practicing my ways out there and the priest in the Catholic Chapel across from the Protestant Chapel took issue with what I was doing he considered it um devil worship and I think that uh was probably because not very much was known about Native practices at that time so he sees a big white boy out in his garden doing things that are contrary to his covenants and tenants and I think he complained to his parishioners some of whom were Nuestra Familia and then the Nuestra Familia made arrangements to have um these kids attacked me in the garden attempt to kill me actually in the garden okay and how bad was that attack well um not very um there was seven of them and they had knives that the knives they had are usually used for um neck shots they're called neck pieces the Boot factory is located in Tracy and back then when they made boots they used to put a spring steel piece of um a bar in the arch of the boots and it was about four to five inches long so they would take that then they would draw that back on both sides put a handle on it and it made an excellent neck piece but it really wasn't good for anything other than that I mean you could poke some holes in an individual but that's about it but these individuals you know they um they weren't trained they didn't know what they were doing they actually had the pieces taped into their hands and the only time you do that is when you're either afraid of losing it or having it taken away from you and um so they'd come out the side door I was out in the garden practicing my ways and um the point man they formed a wedge coming out the door and the point man once I realized what was happening I just simply um knocked him out and rolled away from the rest that were coming out and they kind of Keystone cop fumbled out the door out into the outer into the yard um these were not individuals like I said that were I've heard people say oh trained assassins no they weren't they were they were um what like I said the new Oscar familiar calls Expendables and um I doubt very seriously if they'd ever held a knife before um so and I doubt very seriously if they'd ever been in a fight in their life but um so no this this was when you say you know was it a serious situation certainly I took it seriously and certainly they were trying to kill me and um so I I dealt with it accordingly and this happened in Folsom no this happened to Tracy that's actually that's actually what led to me going to Folsom aha oh so that situation sent you to Fossil it was one of a couple situations um there was a major altercation on the yard and um same day that I was also involved in so I went from the garden setting it was a lieutenant that opened the door and told me that the people that had ordered my killing the new Lester Familia were out on the yard as an alibi when I was going to be murdered so um he let me out to the main yard and in conjunction with that there were some um there were a couple bikers I knew that were taking issue on behalf of another individual that had been threatened by the by the NF so the three of us and perhaps there were a few more we went out to the yard um picked up a few baseball bats and um began to um handle those individuals on the yard and it was only after shots fired that that was stopped I was placed into the hole let out two weeks later with no charges um pretty much set up in the unit got into another altercation and um so smuggled the gun into the prison with a box of shells and made a a what amounts to a silencer but it's not really a silencer because it was a revolver but um it suppresses the sound somewhat so I was charged with a suppressor but they never found the gun they never found the the cartridges and as a result they put me in a car and took me up to Old Folsom so that uh the old guard up at Old Folsom could convince me to tell them where the gun was at okay one once you got to Folsom was that when gang started to try to recruit you it is yeah the first to recruit me was um Hugo Yogi Pannell he was their leader of the Black Panthers at that time um he's oftentimes confused with the black gorilla family but he was not a member of the black gorilla family you had to be black to be a member of the black gorilla family he was Nicaraguan but he'd been with um the Black Panther since about 1970 he just come from San Quentin where he and George Jackson had taken over the adjustment Center and cut the throats of guards and white inmates there Jackson was killed but uh Yogi wasn't so he was sent to Folsom so he had the yard at Folsom and he was in the hole and he approached me what had happened to Tracy preceded me via the inmate Grapevine and uh so he approached me and attempted to recruit me into the Black Panthers were there any white people in the Black Panthers I don't know that there was or wasn't um I I know at one time they established what they called the white panthers but um I don't think actually that they discriminated um I think that if you were down for their cause um then you know you were recruited and used in whatever capacity that uh they saw fit so like I said Yogi was Nicaraguan he wasn't black um and perhaps that answers your question but uh okay well you ended up not joining the Black Panthers I declined Yogi's um attempt to recruit me [Music] and instead you end up joining the Aryan Brotherhood aka the a b eventually I did yes I was approached by TD Bingham at that time and he attempted to recruit me and when he did I declined um at that time I was still fighting uh members of the Black Panthers and the bgf usually pretty much every time I went to the yard and in the time that I was at Folsom I was in uh 18 knife fights and I'd been shot um numerous times with um M14 shotgun and one time with a 30-06. as a result of those knife fights but eventually I did um join the Aryan Brotherhood yes okay and I mean the Aryan Brotherhood is considered a very racist organization I mean in fact the Anti-Defamation League calls it the oldest most notorious racist prison gang in the United States well the Anti-Defamation League is um correct in part I think that could probably be said now but back then in the 70s uh I don't believe that was true um the people that actually recruited me into the Aryan Brotherhood were Native American and the four of them were members um so you know the racism doesn't hold TD Bingham who attempted to recruit me at first uh is Jewish um you know people say well he's only half Jewish but his mother was Jewish and he's Jewish and he wears the star David on his on his body with pride and but he's not a practicing Jew which is to me irrelevant but back then the idea of the Aryan Brotherhood along with the Black Panthers and the black gorilla family and the Nuestra Familia and the Texas Syndicate and the Mexican Mafia were all about controlling their resources racism was not high on the ticket it isn't to say that you didn't have racists within the organization as you did in every organization but um it creates a problem I think when we talk about the history of the Aryan Brotherhood or any other organization and so far as racism um certainly now they should be considered right up there um with hate groups and um the equity Central racist organization but that was an evolving process over the last 40 years or so okay and I mean back then were they you know putting like Nazi tattoos on themselves I know it was like a share there's a shamrock and there's a Nazi swastika and they're used sometimes together or yeah that's fairly contemporary no you didn't have individuals with uh with um swastikas you had the Shamrock like something that's on my finger right here and um I don't know if you can see it I can't get that ring off but it's right there it's it's the only Mark I have relative to the Aryan Brotherhood but it was a shamrock and the idea of the Shamrock was that um oftentimes you'll see three sixes in the clovers themselves and that was the the Antichrist or the Beast if you will and really what it was was anti-establishment but you did not see the swastikaans as a matter of fact the knife fights I engaged in in San Quentin were with the neo-nazis um you know I I took out their so-called Fury at San Quentin uh because he was constantly talking out the side of his neck and uh when the riot would start he and his other neo-nazis were nowhere to be found so I don't have a lot of regard for Nazis and never have and you'll find that true but again I'll say that you do have racists in any organization did some individuals in the Aryan Brotherhood have um swastikas on them not not that I know of not at the time that I was a member okay and every Brotherhood is headed by a 12-man council which is taught by a three-man commission it is now yes okay but back then was the structure that way or no no the structure was that uh you know you had one man one vote you didn't actually have that many members and it was very difficult uh to get into the organization I didn't know for instance when I had declined TD's recruitment offer uh that uh that's what most individuals were shooting for was the ability and opportunity to become a member um so it was you had very I'll say this you had influential members like TD Bingham and others um but it was essentially one man one vote Okay so you know at one point I don't know whether it was the same back then but new new members had to take a blood oath and take a pledge well no that is uh you know I hear these things all the time you know Blood In Blood Out is what it's called and um usually it's law enforcement that coins that term in order to describe the dedication of the individual that belongs to the organization um there is no oath taken there's no loyalty oath uh the idea was that if you wanted to become a member that you had to get your bones and you got your bones through combat um and I think that's probably true um you know getting your bones it didn't require that you kill somebody but that um you put in work essentially that's the term we used if you put any work in and um so you know to that extent yes but you know the Blood In Blood Out you'll get that mostly from law enforcement um you know who fancy themselves experts on not only the Aryan Brotherhood but other gangs but um you know to me they're the equivalent of uh you know the weekend warrior armchair quarterback um you know their intelligence is um lacking and usually comes from individuals that really have no association whatsoever with the organization and but you know it's taken this gospel because it's coming from law enforcement well when you look at you know you look up the area Brotherhood and you look at what they do in prison you know in terms of you know the work they put in it's drug trafficking extortion inmate prostitution and murder For Hire yes it was that accurate back then as well I think so yes um you know when I talk about controlling your resources that's actually what I'm talking about so you have a obviously a limited population but it could be as high as 3 500 and even more and so it's a small City so the idea is is that if you're introducing um drugs narcotics into the institution and then that's one of your resources if you're making uh alcohol at Folsom we had two Steels so you had single still and double distill and that's sold you have prostitution as you correctly point out you have loan Sharkey you have Stores um back then an individual could receive a 50 pound package from home so that was another means by which to generate revenues so on average oh I think that the FBI one point estimated that uh the brand took 3.5 million out of Folsom in 1978 alone and I think that's fairly accurate okay the inmate prostitution part how does that work exactly well what you have is you have individuals who are either turned out or that they're um gay by choice and um essentially they become the women Behind the Walls and um and so they're prostituted um along that line so you have a stable you have an individual that pimps that stable and um you have your revenues as a result of that you know the greatest value I think probably with uh prostitutes behind the iron gates um is there's resources their source of information you know because they're intermingling with all the races and they're gathering information they're bringing that information by way of counterintelligence even as it relates to staff because they're also being prostituted to staff so it um is extremely viable from a business perspective well I mean just today we had we did a post there's a a post that's basically circling around the internet there's a guy named Aaron Cox who was locked up for 32 months in the state of uh Pennsylvania Corrections Department and he basically describes how he was 20 years old he was young and he was stupid he got busted for a gun and two ounces of cocaine he got sent to state prison for only 32 months uh and when he got there he was a little skinny kid and his cellmate was a big muscular guy and essentially he became a prison wife yes and he agreed to basically have sex with this man he he said that he never the guy never prostituted him to other people he basically kept him to himself uh and he said this happens actually you know very often yes and he actually said there's a name for it called protective pairing it is protective parent in other words the individual that takes him in first it becomes what we call a cell Mouse and so he he launders he cleans up the cell he cooks he does things like that but if he is in fact turned out um to become um a woman in that context and then yes he's it's he's paired with that individual and that becomes that individual's uh wife I've seen many of those relationships turn into um extremely dangerous situations um because of jealousy somebody attempting to push up on that individual's girl and um is killed as a result I mean you you coming into this situation I mean you know you've been free up to 22 years old and suddenly you're going in and men are being wives and being prostituted and and just the insanity of this all uh how did you really get your head around all that well it isn't to say that I wasn't approached by um Queens at the time I was you know they'll slide up next to you as you're walking down Center Court or Corridor and talk about ooh baby who baby I need a daddy and they're serious but you know my response once I understood what I was dealing with was um I hear you sweetheart but I don't use so it's a matter of respect I always treated um individuals that were doing that with me with respect and I think that was appreciated so um it's all in how you deal with things it's your mindset it's your demeanor it's your character um and how you approach the situation in which you're in if you're going to allow yourself to be dominated then you will be dominated um that's not my character well the murder for higher part yes how exactly did that work well it's the best example I suppose is in um with John Gotti for instance now John Gotti was under the Airing brotherhood's protection in the feds so one of the things from a business perspective that the brand looked at was picking up contracts from the Italian mob to carry out for them that would that would be the highest point of that murder For Hire concept that you're talking about within the concept of the 70s and prison it was extremely rare you had individuals who did engage in that um but um you know I'm sitting here right now trying to think of an instance that I can give you by way of example and I can't think of one you had many knife fights um but back then all that was head up you didn't have assassinations you had knife fights um so that if you had a a murder For Hire um that usually involved drugs and that was usually the payoff relative to that you want to remember Vlad the back then a pack of Lee Max a pack of camels tailor-mates would facilitate a murder so pretty cheap you join the area Brotherhood and within a year you actually became a leader in that group I did yes and you became a commissioner a California commissioner of the a b yes so at that point you're a shock collar yes so what were the type of things that you were doing in that leadership role at that point well my focus one of the reasons I Rose to a position of leadership was one because of my physical prowess the various knife fights I'd been in so that was a a proven commodity if you will there was an asset to the Aryan Brotherhood um but um I also took steps even before rising to that level to stop the drug use by the members you want to remember that the Aryan Brotherhood at that time had control of all the resources in Old Folsom and all the resources in San Quentin and as I said that represented a lot of money but all that money was going into the arms of the membership they were all drug addicts and just bad business um I'm not a drug addict never have been and so I looked at it from a different perspective that the revenues that were being generated tens of thousands of dollars were being used so that the membership could party and live large and just kick back um so my focus was to turn that create an infrastructure that was business orientated and invest those resources and legitimate Enterprise I mean it's not novel many many organizations have done it and um this side in my opinion this organization at that time was um ripe for making that turn towards organized crime and that was really my interest was organized crime um well at one point Charles Manson ended up in prison in Folsom he did yeah and the Aryan Brotherhood had some sort of level of connection with Manson at one point and the Manson family well yes they did I used uh Manson's girls as a resource to smuggle knives and other weapons into Old Folsom but the thing to remember about charity was that Charlie was a punk and uh literally a punk as well as a pedophile so you know where he had the so-called Charisma to move these youngsters out there on the street mostly women but to their credit intelligent women but um obviously not emotionally intelligent that we're looking apparently for some kind of guidance yeah he played him and he used them but he himself is an individual was not well thought of by the Aryan Brotherhood and was simply used for the resources that he had which were substantial well at that point did Manson have the swastika uh on his forehead or no he did yeah you know he he did that um um I think while he was still in the county jail but it wasn't if not then it wasn't too long after he hit uh um prison the joy that he did that and um his girls followed but um I was in communication with most of them it um Chino where they were housed and then I was in communication with a number of them on the street there were a number of them that were associated back then with an organization called tribal thumb and they were interested in putting together a commune you want to remember that back in the 70s the idea of a egalitarian society was very big on the agenda of most revolutionary forces and so this was a group of girls that attended Berkeley University of California at Berkeley and um I did recruit him do smuggle weapons in and they did smuggle those weapons in and I continued that relationship with them and as well as individuals on the street to chart his credit I suppose uh there were individuals like Sandra good and and squeaky Fromm whom I also talked to that remained loyal to Charlie but just that well you know when you see these interviews with Charles Manson he looks like a crazy person but in terms of off camera in terms of you know your relationship was Manson crazy or was it all an act it was all an act Vlad you know I spent 10 years in lock up with Charlie and I know I'm on a very very intimate level I know his fears I mean he's passed over now but you know then I knew his fears his anxieties and what he would do was that he had um he had a portfolio of choreographed um Acts that he would just kind of you know pull off the shelf and it depended on who whom he was talking to whether it was a woman or a man and um but if you listen to him closely in all those interviews he's not really saying anything at all um and um he's just bumping his gums you know Charlie is one of the original jaw jackers it's a term I use to describe most methamphetamine users but I now find that uh in my experience with the internet that the internet's full of jaw jackers and um they just can't seem to help themselves and Charlie was one of them individuals you know the media made charity um is really what it comes down to you know the there's no question that the crimes in which he was associated with were heinous and um and I can understand why the media did make them that way um they were atrocious crimes right I mean from what I understand a lot of members in the area Brotherhood didn't like him because he murdered a pregnant Sharon Tate that's correct so you weigh that against the resources that he has available to him you don't allow him to become too close but you do give him protection and because there were a lot of people that wanted to kill him but you know I mean it's no different I spent time the same 10 years that I spent with Charlie I spent with Sirhan Sirhan and Juan Corona and other individuals of that ilk if you will and it really all renders down to the same thing um it's a matter of providing protection for them and utilizing whatever resources they have available to them to the benefit of the organization well uh here you are at Folsom and you're sort of building a stature and you're building the Aryan Brotherhood and then there's a situation where you stab 16 members of the black gorilla family well that one day yeah that was a one-day altercation but there was a lot that led up to that I'd been in a head-up knife fight with yogi pinell after I declined his offer to join the Black Panthers and I defeated him but I was shot in the process now I was shot while he was running from me so that kind of created a split between the Black Panthers and bgf so there were a number of other fights that followed that and eventually what they did was they brought the National Guard in and they checked for knives and they found them all and everybody thought that that was it well the bgf and the Black Panthers took to using bones out of the kitchen and uh hardening them with floor wax as their knives but I had been working with these girls out of Berkeley uh Charlie's resources again and I'd had them smuggling buck knives so the incident of the 16 people being stabbed on the yard was it was uh Wendell Norris and myself we each had a buck knife and it was a um about a four on one situation there was maybe not that great figure between 30 and 40 of them and uh maybe at best eight to ten of us um but only two of us had knives so Wendell and I stood back to back and they rushed us and in the course of rushiness um 16 of them were pretty well bloodied matter of fact it was a bloodbath and Wendell and I both used the blood from them on our knives to re-keyster the weapons but the problem with that is is that the bgf uh told the authorities that actually they didn't tell the authorities they told the press that the authorities had smuggled buck knives and made them available to the Aryan Brotherhood to use on them that wasn't true but I didn't discount the fact but as a result of that TD Bank and myself spottsberg and Bobby Moore were shipped to San Quentin as a result of that um that altercation that you're talking about and now you're in San Quentin yes and then there's a situation with the Mexican Mafia yes we were there what happened there that was Mo Farrell and Bosco but um Mo Farrell was Blackhand and um which is the um they're marked like the the Shamrock is for the brand the black hand is for the Mexican Mafia um but uh upon our arrival TD and I were placed in the adjustment Center which uh joins by way of overflow to death row and uh Bobby and spots were sent to East block but when we hit the tier Mo sent me a kite and told me that um an associate of the Airing Brotherhood had disrespected him on the tear and that he was going to kill him in the morning and um so I shot him back a kite and told him not to kill him and that I would I would deal with it but um Moe was a hothead and that's eventually why the Emmy killed him but um he went out the next day him and Bosco and they stabbed um Hawaiian John um 18 times but they didn't kill him so when TD and I were eventually cleared for the yard we went out and um to make a long story short beat the hell out of Mo Farrell and and Bosco and a few other fellows that were on the yard uh TD and I both took five rounds each from shotgun for that effort um but that created a potential war between the Mexican Mafia nearing Brotherhood excuse me which um you know had to be dealt with but how was that dealt with well um Joe Morgan who was the essentially the leader of the Mexican Mafia at the time was housed in L.A County Jail so I made arrangements to have him pull me down to LA County jail so that we could confer and um so that was done and but in on the way down to LA County Jail I had an individual that I got into an altercation with and they had to stop the bus and take him off the bus called an ambulance and Med back him to the hospital so when I arrived at the county jail they wouldn't let me in the jail um so they took me over to Chino to Palm Hall which is the hole there and eventually we pulled Joe over from the LA County Jail to Chino and had our meeting and our talks there and worked out our differences right you talk about Joe Peg Leg Morgan yes right and he was actually the first non-hispanic member of the Mexican Mafia yes yeah you've got I've got some great photos of him in 1967 at San Quentin with the founders of the Mexican Mafia and then you know he and Benjamin Peters Topo Peters um it was really Joe's right-hand man um but yes you're you're right he was um non-mexican non-hispanic right and you know years later uh there was a movie that came out called American me right you watched it no uh okay well I interviewed uh Danny Trejo who was an affiliate of the Mexican Mafia if it was not actually part of it and essentially in the movie um you know they they showed the leader of the Mexican Mafia getting raped in juvenile and after that movie came out um a bunch of people end up getting killed yeah they were associated with the movie Yes because I mean from what I understand it wasn't true and to depict that on a big screen like that really angered the Mexican Mafia to the point where Edward James almost who starred and put the movie together had a hit on him and he did and from what I understand some of the people featured in that movie like I think a lot of got killed because of them being in that movie four out here and about I think six in prison six people got killed over American me yeah probably but just being part of it yeah but and uh it was funny because I remember Donald Garcia another Mexican Mafia that got out and turned Christian just straight out said you know they were they were talking about no no no and he go yeah that falls on you Eddie you know so you know there's a whole so you know about that oh I do yeah yeah okay so what did you hear about that well just that it was an open contract I mean um you know I had a very good relationship with Joe and other members of Mexican Mafia and they were upset about that uh you want to remember at one point in time that coincides with this movie uh Joe had a stroke um and that's not widely known so we had smuggled the steroids into the prison to help him contend with that but he was dealing with um a lot of inside uh drama individuals attempting to usurp his standing within the Mexican Mafia so but yeah you're right in so far as the movie upsetting the Mexican Mafia it did that yeah I just looked up while you're talking 10 people were killed that sounds about right yeah like 10 people that were used in the production as you know uh you know either extras or were were used to get you know in terms of getting background information and so forth uh yeah it was essentially a bloodbath over that movie yes from what I understand I almost actually um made a contribution a financial contribution um to one of the organizations aligned with the Mexican Mafia and um that squashed his contract okay so he basically paid him off that's what I'm told whether or not it's true I couldn't tell you but um my sources like yours are fair I mean was the Mexican Mafia the biggest gang in San Quentin when you got there um biggest Mexican gang yes but period in terms of just raw numbers probably because I'm thinking you know the bgf had a fairly substantial um membership at that time in San Quentin and so they were pretty strong um and but I would say it'd be a toss-up between Mexican Mafia and the black gorilla family Okay so a situation happened um I guess in the early 80s where an Aryan Brotherhood uh member actually dropped out Steve Barnes right and they couldn't get to Steve Barnes because I guess I mean not only did Steve Barnes drop out but he actually agreed to testify against other members of the a b right yes it's a little more complicated than that you know I mean that you've you've given I think an adequate overview of that but uh you know Blinky Griffin and Junior Snyder as a result of the potential war with the Mexican Mafia assassinated and a young man named Steve Gibson T-Bone Gibson and Steve was witness to that um and for whatever reason it made him paranoid um so as a result he stepped away from the brand and cooperated with law enforcement and testifying against Blinky and Junior Schneider in court as a result of the death of T-Bone Gibson um so as you probably know his father was assassinated as a result of that right because T Barnes was in witness protection at the time they couldn't get to him so they end up killing his father um someone named Curtis price did the murder yeah right yeah and then after killing uh the father they also killed a woman named Elizabeth hickey uh who I guess knew about prices involvement in the father's murder well know what happened was is that Elizabeth hickey um Curtis cultivated her dated her and then upon gaining entrance to her home learned that she had a number of weapons that were her fathers and so he bludgeoned her to death took the weapons came back down south because she was in Northern California and used a pistol that belonged to Elizabeth hickey's father to shoot Richard Barnes in the back of the head in his bedroom haha got it well was that the moment that you felt that you wanted to move away from the area Brotherhood yeah it was leading up to that I mean I think that's probably um kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back I had been dealing with a number of issues not least of which was the idea the original discussion for instance about killing Richard Barnes Steve barnes's father uh was that uh his wife and daughter be assassinated and um you know I was a part of that conversation I was a part of that Circle and um it went totally contrary to everything that the the brand was supposed to stand for and certainly what I believed I stood for and by way of um what a person would or would not do and The Taking of innocent life is bad enough but the very idea of contemplating taking a woman in her child's life um was so totally foreign to me that I argued against It ultimately the only concession I suppose if you want to call it that I got out of that is they moved away from killing his wife and daughter to killing his mother and father and ultimately what it ended up with was killing his father and um I was actually the only one that voted against that so um yeah it it um it was very instrumental and um my decision to step away from the brand okay so murderers would actually involve votes um yes okay and how many people are voting at a certain time well at that time you want to remember we had just formed the council in the commission and all that was going Nationwide and so this was one of the um aspects of moving toward organized crime we were building an infrastructure um and this came up into context as a matter of fact from Blinky um that because Steve Steven Barnes could not be had that the brand should kill his wife and daughter so it was um I suppose I should preface that with the idea that when Blinky and Junior killed T-Bone they got away with it um Snyder hit him in the back and Blinky cut his throat and um took his windpipe in his juggler and uh just left him laying on a table on the yard and they got away with it well Steve's testimony then became critical uh relative to that so whereas he otherwise would have gotten away with that now he was looking at a life sentence for the murder of T-Bone Gibson and so he was advocating this and of course the logic in that doesn't um wash yeah maybe just simply think about it how is killing these individuals going to keep Steve from testifying it's not matter of fact it's going to add to it so then you move on to the well it'll deter others from doing the same in the future not likely I mean that's kind of like people saying that the death penalty is a deterrent to people committing murder to begin with it's not that's simple science um so that was my argument actually but um really what you're dealing with are individuals that um are incapable unfortunately of seeing the logic in that when you finally decided to turn and drop out yes um were you involved in the Curtis price uh murder trial or no I was yes okay so at that point you approached the authorities and said that I'm going to cooperate on this murder no no I just simply I I told the lieutenant that I need I wanted to use the phone and he pulled me out and took me up into his office and I called uh the director of Corrections and I told him that I was going to step away so he flew down from Sacramento to San Quentin and he and um a whole lot of law enforcement feds and state both met with me in new Miller Hospital and um so you know I was asked obviously a lot of questions um I was in part responsible for building the infrastructure of the brand at that time and um controlling what was going on with the brand at San Quentin and Folsom and um so they were looking for intelligence and not necessarily uh testimony but um the Richard Barnes murder happened in L.A County so the LA sheriffs were there and their investigators talked to me and um so they wanted to know if I knew anything about it and of course I did and I gave them that information what I did know about it and so then they asked if I would be willing to testify in court as to that and I agreed um but that was in conjunction with a whole lot of other cases the Margot Compton assassination up in Oregon by the hills Angels her two six-year-old twin daughters and uh a few other murders so this all happened simultaneously with all these people in this room I don't know if that answers your questions that or not but no no it did okay and the Hell's Angels were they affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood as well yes okay but there are still separate organizations right they were you had individuals who were in Brotherhood in prison and when they stepped out they'd put their Hell's Angel patch on and um that's pretty much how it worked but you know here you are you cooperated was it in 1984 yes okay so you were 33 years old yes at the time and for all these years you pledge allegiance to this group uh you're a shock collar you were part of the commission you were involved in a lot of crimes you're involved in a lot of violence you're involved in drug dealing and prostitution and so forth how hard of a decision was it to say I'm going to throw all this away all the stuff that I claim to be part of and now work against the organization um I'd like to tell you that it it wasn't hard but you know really what I was confronted with were two truths the truth that I was living and the truth by which I was raised I had to make a decision when I joined the brand um that I was going to do things that were contrary to my own personal code and I and I did that um I did that willingly and openly um but when it comes to um taking what I regard his innocent life um and that's what had occurred and that's what was happening that I would not be a part of that and would not condone that so faced with that um it was not a difficult decision I simply was not going to be a part of that no and so far as still going head up with somebody that remains True to this day um I don't have a problem with that um those individuals I mean I hear it all the time you know aren't you afraid for your life aren't you this aren't you that no I'm living my life I'm not I'm not in the witness protection program um you know I haven't changed my name um my address is common knowledge now that's not a challenge but it's emphasized to you that you know I don't allow others to dictate how I live my life and that applies now and it applied back then well at this point you're being labeled a rat or a snitch or whatever whatever the terminology of that of that time is and you know based on Prison politics you know there's probably a price on your head well there is I still have an open contract on me you know but the idea you want to remember that the idea of a rat is something that's used primarily by the organizations is a deterrent you know to those individuals that they're attempting to recruit you see so that's that's kind of like brainwashing if you will you hear it a lot and again you you particularly hear it from the Jaw jackers and the front men for the various organizations they're the ones that will use that term I don't have a problem with it you see because here's the bottom line that lad if you like chicken grab a wing it's that simple you know you can jack your jaw all you want if I'm chicken grab a wing that's a that's a hell of a statement right there yep yeah okay and ultimately uh Curtis price for the the double murder ended up getting the death penalty uh he ended up dying on death row uh in 2021 at the age of 74. so he wasn't actually executed but he stayed on death row pretty much for all those years and was that you know his conviction was partially based on you taking the stand Harvey's the principal witness in that case and so I I take the position that his conviction was based on me taking the stand by you were you the highest ranking member of the ab to actually turn at that point yes at any point at any point yes okay and with that you are now giving them information about how the organization functions and the inner workings and so forth so did that start to kind of tear down the Aryan Brotherhood and their influence uh you know around the country it did I mean obviously whenever you um give up the information relative to the infrastructure the inner workings um you know even even codes if you will to carry out um Escape attempts and just the activities of the organization so yes um it required that they restructure okay and there was this one case you testified uh as a witness where I guess they had to sneak you in in like a hollowed-out vending machine yeah that was the Margot Compton case that uh was two Hells Angel members that had killed Margot Compton her two six-year-old twin daughters you know they wrapped their arms around their these little girls teddy bear and kept them in the head while they made Margot watch and then they kept turn ahead it previously shot her boyfriend on the couch in the head um they did this because she testified against um Buck Garrett who was the second in command of the Hell's Angels for pimping and pandering case you know he got four years for that he would have done half of that um but the feds she testified for the feds they hit her out in Oregon but she contacted her connection here in the city and um you know the city is the nature stronghold so the connection gave up her location Buck Garrett sent two Shooters up there so I testified against Buck Garrett and I testified against one of the shooters they were both convicted but the courthouse at that time was you know full of H.A and um there were oh I'll just call them rumors that um they had found out which Transportation car I was on so they planted a bomb on that so they switched Transportation cars they put me in a a sub uh substation now this I know to be a fact at least um and uh at one point one of the deputies brought a Polaroid to me and showed me an individual and I identified them so they x-rayed him and found that he had a 25 auto keister and his his assignment was to assassinate me in the substation um and then the other one perhaps the most bizarre one was that uh an individual dressed as a priest was attempting to snipe me from a building outside the courtroom so with that in mind they hollowed out a vending machine and stuck me in it and ran me into the courthouse well I think in 1985 you testified against Joseph Michael O'Rourke yeah George work Little Joe or work yes okay and that was over a murder of Ricky helt yes and uh I guess it was part of a dispute about uh basically stealing drugs from a rose Girlfriend yes and you cooperate in that trial as well yes and I guess on the stand that's we kind of talked about the inner workings of the Aryan Brotherhood and everything else like that okay but even with your testimony he ended up getting found not guilty yes okay because I guess there's still a reasonable doubt in the whole situation yeah I think so and and I can see why um I don't have a problem with that I mean they had a pretty good jury the jury Foreman was an attorney um you know that can go either way for you but you know my position is that um I'm not a witness for the prosecution or the defense I talk to both when they send investigators to me I talk to both when I take the stand you know my position is is I'm there to tell what I know and only that I'm not advocating for the prosecution or the defense so and that was the case with a little drawer work um you know I went into court I took the stand I told what I knew and left it at that well I mean this whole time when you're cooperating you're still in prison yes the entire time yes so as you're going through all this how are they really keeping you safe while you're locked up well they're not really worried about that um I mean that's a Miss misnomer perhaps I mean at one time in in the unit they have special housing units I was in a restricted housing unit there was only I think four four or five of us in there it um it was a highly secure unit you know they would fly in a helicopter put you on the helicopter fly you out the court that type thing um but you know whether or not you're safe you know that's anyone's guess you know anybody can be had I don't care who you are um well but are they keeping you in particular in protective custody this whole time no not at that time it wasn't protective custody it was called a restricted housing unit so um eventually I did end up in in protective housing and Corcoran that's where I was with uh Charlie Manson and sir hanserhan and others um but at that time no I was out Court uh probably three years so after leaving the gang you essentially pledged a vow of non-violence I did and that basically means that you're no longer going to be attacking anyone you're no longer going to try to kill anyone and so forth and I guess there's a situation with the Mexican Mafia a Hitman that actually attacked you in 2015. yes so what happened there um well unfortunately I let him get behind me but I'd worked a double shift and I had a fellow that was going to the parole board the next morning and he'd asked for my help so I was sitting on a bench with him going over the paperwork and the sailing came from behind me did a roundhouse kick hit me in the face took me Head Over Heels over the back of the bench I went semi-unconscious but he had a box cutter and he reached in grabbed my hair reached in to cut my throat um I couldn't see but I could still hear and um so in feeling his movements uh he reached in to cut my throat at the windpipe and juggler and I was able to block it and he cut my ear in half instead and um second time Annie kind of choked up on my hair and reached in again and I blocked it again and he caught the back of my throat he missed the anterior artery by about one millimeter one centimeter um and then the third time I got my site back so I took the weapon away from him and um waiting for staff to respond after I took the weapon away from him as opposed to use it on I mean in truth um I thought about breaking his neck but didn't and just simply took the weapon away and um waiting for staff to arrive okay and by 2019 after being up for parole I guess what 18 times yes they finally granted you parole they did and was that situation where you you know were attacked and you end up not retaliating was that part of the decision for them to actually uh Grant your parole I think so I mean that's coupled with the fact that at the time that that was going on I my wife and I had started a group called live learn and prosper in the prison and so we were running groups every day of individuals it was the influence that my actions had upon those groups I think is what the board and the administrators looked at other words I was practicing what I was preaching to them I was talking to other gang dropouts and and other individuals and telling them that um there were other methods available to them other than violence um and so in this one particular instance that held true and um that example uh had a huge impact on the population um I guess their thinking was that if I could um take a knife away from somebody and not use it on them after he just cut my ear off and and my throat cut my throat that um day too could seek alternatives oftentimes people confuse a valve non-violence with pacifism I'm not a pacifist um I want to make that clear but my valve non-violence remains in place well uh at the time Governor Gavin Newsom could have actually stepped in and reversed the decision yes he could have but he actually took no action and allowed you to get paroled he did you know one of the things to note was around that time there was another guy named Renee Enriquez who was I guess more or less your counterpart in the Mexican Mafia uh who end up dropping out and cooperating with the police um you know he was actually granted parole several times but Newsom would come in and actually deny it every time yes why do you think that was I think it had primarily had to do with boxer's history um you know he wrote the book um I think it was called the black hand and um you know he provided information testimony and like uh but uh one of the things that he didn't reveal was that um uh one of his crimes was statutory rape and uh whenever you have a crime against a woman particularly um in a sex crime at that I think that's something that's looked on I think actually that um our society and and those who administer to our society um will accept violence although rape is violence um but you know like knife fights and being shot and shootings and the like that happened in prison as opposed to a crime against a child for a crime against a woman and um I happen to agree with that well then in 2020 you're officially released from prison yes uh by that time how many years had you served 45 45 years so you essentially spent twice as much time in prison than you spent outside yes you know I I stepped away from the brand in 84 so I spent an additional 35 years in prison after stepping away from the brand you know this wasn't um this wasn't a 30 pieces of silver situation or I was in trouble so I was testifying to get out of trouble or to save myself um it wasn't any of that and that's why I spent an additional 35 years in prison uh I mean did you expect to get out a little earlier considering the cooperation no my cooperation was never considered by the board I wouldn't allow it really why is that because that's not why I cooperated you know I wasn't interested in um receiving anything you either my thinking was that I either do what I'm going to do because I believe it's the right thing to do or I'm not going to do it now there were decisions I made in the RICO prosecutions where I declined I told him no you know and and that's my prerogative um and um so I elected not to be involved in some cases um but in other cases I did elect to be involved Margot Compton was the killing of two girls Curtis price was the killing of Steve's father um there are those who say well you're in for a penny in for a pound I don't believe that you know the discretion and the decision is mine and remains mine um so that upset a lot of people within law enforcement and so you know I got a lot of pushback from law enforcement a lot of setups um attempts on my life as a result of law enforcement setting me up so I mean um that comes with the territory when you make a decision like I made they want what they want for the reasons that they want it well what was it like you you went in in 19 was it 74 yes and you come out in 2020 uh I mean the world to say the world is different is an understatement is a massive understatement it is uh when you came in I mean there were no cell phones there was no internet there were no electric cars there I mean there's just too many differences to name uh it's just a completely different planet that you're now stepping into we are in agreement yeah what was the hardest adjustment in the beginning it Remains the hardest adjustment and that's sensory overload um I what they call post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD and um I didn't think that I would um fall victim to that but I certainly did it they dropped me off in the middle of East L.A and um that was an experience you want to remember when I went to prison I came from the mountains remember I talked about the idea of taking my own life because I couldn't live in a cage well I lived in that cage for 45 years so that's a controlled environment then I come out of that cage into East L.A you know in the first week that I was there three cats around the corner were capped in the head one was stabbed to death out in front of the place I was staying I thought this isn't much different so um but yeah to answer your question sensory overload there are a lot of things I mean I was not computer literate um so the learning curves are astronomical I was fortunate enough to educate myself while in prison when I came to prison I couldn't read or write but while in prison I learned to read and write and then educated myself and um so nonetheless the learning curve was enormous and remains enormous um I live in an area right now that is fairly isolated not a lot of people and um I can practice my way of life if I remain a native and I've continued to follow that way and and practice that way so that helps me immensely but I also work as an aod counselor and a life coach but um you know that requires internet access and right now I'm forbidden internet access um working on that um so um it's a matter of just working and um moving forward and hopefully evolving in my Humanity well when you look at uh the Aryan Brotherhood these days yeah it seems like the neo-nazis and the Aryans are essentially one organization yeah uh it's a very racist organization a non-white person cannot join a Jewish person cannot join right um you know when you look at what's it's what it evolved into what are your thoughts about it my thoughts parallel those of um all the hate groups and of which they're are plenty unfortunately you know it's one of the biggest issues probably that I deal with I mean I I give talks I do lectures at synagogues and other churches and before other groups and it's primarily about um that very hate that you're talking about and where that comes from you know these uh latest mass shootings is a good example you know the very idea that youngsters are being recruited um just like Jihad you know I did some work over in the Netherlands with the um the Hague and the policy makers at the Hague relative to their job unit and um it's along the same lines you're dealing with a hate group um whatever the premise for their hate that becomes Irrelevant in this country we're dealing with white supremacy it's off the hook um the problem is is that nobody is really talking to anybody that actually understands or knows anything about white supremacy or hate or the recruitment process and everything that goes along with that and you're right the hearing Brotherhood and the neo-nazis and the skinheads are at the Forefront of that and um um I mean if you just look at the southern Law Center and what they're doing but I think one of the things that needs to happen is educating educating the public about where this hate comes from and distinguishing you know between the politics of that hate and the reality of that hate the propaganda associated with it and what's their motive what are they after you know the the so-called whites now being disenfranchised that's ridiculous uh last year you ended up showing up in the news uh all over the place yes where you're actually charged with fraud I was um you were charged with uh frauding four hundred thousand dollars in unemployment benefits yes what's going on with that case well the case is still pending but um nothing is really going on with it other than the fact that they've charged me with it um they have no evidence they have an individual that says that uh as the former leader of the Aryan Brotherhood that he just did what I told him to do but uh and they've now given him a deal to testify against me um but it would be ridiculous of me to say that uh I'm not concerned about it I am so it's it's really a matter of dealing with the evidence that they think they have which I believe I will be able to do I have an amazing defense team Curtis Briggs and the outfit out of the city here um over on Gary Street um peer five law offices and uh you know they took my case pro bono because they see the politics associated with that you know it begged the question where my wife and I are the ones that provided the information that facilitated this investigation because we saw what was happening and the investigator in that case the chief investigator in that case has attempted to turn it around because I'm involved and he sees the politic associated with that um you know how that works at this point we're unsure but um by way of example they accuse me of laundering money through live learn and prosper uh its bank account and its website well all this investigator had to do was ask for the bank statements and he would have seen that that wasn't true but instead what he did is he went to the Sacramento Bee and he released this article about um how I was laundering money from these so-called homeless people these weren't homeless people this was a crew that was working out of Ukiah on behalf of this individual who's now testifying against me you see most of them Dope fans that that don't make them bad people but most of them Dope fiends this crew's been together for years this fella and his and his sister were operating it you see but the investigator isn't even looking at that and the irony is is that when he was the head of the task force over in Ukiah he knows all these people but now he calls them homeless people they're not homeless people they know exactly what they were doing and how they were doing it and there's not one shred of evidence that ties me to this not even circumstantial the only thing he's got going for him right now is this Witness and like I said that will contend with that in court it's that simple meanwhile I have to live my life so I have to rehabilitate the LLP because they've they've made allegations in the Press they're absolutely untrue now he comes at me and he says can I get your bank statements I said no I'm sorry you can't you can get him at the time the jury gets him when they make their determination what you said in the Press was a lie you see but unfortunately not always but often that's how law enforcement Works they want what they want I said it earlier for the reasons that they want it in this particular case um they want me the investigator has told Witnesses in our case not to get involved he's discouraged them from cooperating and he's openly said that he disagreed with newsom's decision to let me out of prison and that he's going to put me back in prison for the rest of my life so is it personal I don't know at this point I don't care all I know is that in the press releases that he's made not only absurd allegations but false allegations so that when we get to the point when we disprove this either before a jury or it's all dismissed before we even get to a jury then we're going to have to take issue with that by way of civil litigation and we will oh yeah you've only been out for two years right if that well if you look at it I'm not into um um fraud that's I guess a white-collar crime um you know I started the business from in prison and continued to business once I got out of prison and that business continues to this day um and it's difficult it's been difficult on my wife they tried to implicate my wife um and you know I think that upsets me more than anything but um unfortunately we have to we have to deal with this we have to contend with it and we will foreign yeah well I hope it works out for you I believe you just got out you just got out after doing you know a lot of years yeah uh well Michael Thompson I appreciate you uh you know sharing your story uh to actually be part of an organization as fearsome as the Aryan Brotherhood and to actually turn against that organization because of your ideals and not not to turn on it just to get out of jail quickly but to actually turned because you felt what they were doing was wrong yes uh really just shows your character thank you and uh you know I hope whatever case you're going through right now uh works out you can get back to to living your life you know outside of a cage which is where we all belong uh yeah you know I don't think people realize you know I I did a few days in jail here and there for little things and you know the shock you know that you talked about of someone who's used to moving around the world freely to suddenly being in a small cage yes it is um it's something that no one really comprehends unless they actually go through it I'm glad you said that Vlad because whether you do one day or 45 years it's the same to me that one day is the same to put another human being in a cage is inhumane so you know one of the things I'm after here is judicial reform and I think I have a bully pulpit if you will for that based on those 45 years I know what it's like to live in a cage and I can address that and I think there are more Humane ways I think Europe is leading the way in that you see and they're very innovative I'm not saying that people shouldn't be incarcerated that there shouldn't be punishment to go along with the crime I'm saying that the punishment should be Humane and this disproportionate um arrest and conviction relative to the minorities so-called minorities whether it be blacks or Mexican or whatever they may be is outrageous you see a black man in this state doesn't stand a chance that's already a strike against him you know we talked about that three strikes crap that's already a strike against him the fact that he's come up in poverty that's the second strike against him and then if you unfortunately has to go before an all-white jury he's done and I think our prison system shows that demonstrates that [Music] very well said very well said well Michael Thompson I appreciate you sharing your story I wish you all the best and like I said I hope the case that you were working on gets dismissed and you're able to recover somebody in a Civil Trial as well thank you Matt I appreciate that absolutely until next time all right peace peace

Channel: djvlad

Views: 1,892,973

Keywords: VladTV, DJ Vlad, Interview, Hip-Hop, Rap, News, Gossip, Rumors, Drama

Id: RxVm2AOeN4E

Length: 84min 24sec (5064 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 17 2022