Where would you put the most dangerous prisoner
in all of America? What lengths would you go to to keep him locked down? Barbed wire, steel
doors, motion sensors, guard dogs, sharpshooters? Inside his cell, how many liberties and basic
necessities could you strip away and whittle down while still keeping him alive? At what point
do you cross the line from detention to torture? We’ve all seen Alcatraz. A huge looming block
of cells isolated on an island. The waters are icy, and the currents are vicious. Even if you
could somehow break out of your cell and off the island, you’d drown or be thrown against the
rocks before you made it halfway to the mainland. What if we told you that there’s a prison that’s
even more severe? A facility that’s infamous for its utter inescapability, where prisoners
will spend decades of their lives in the same two concrete rooms, never breathing fresh air,
never feeling sunlight on their faces. A place where you send the men so dangerous that human
contact is strictly off-limits at all times. Welcome to Florence ADMAX. Nicknamed the Alcatraz of the Rockies, this
supermax prison was purpose-built near Florence, Colorado, to be for the worst of the worst. Go
anywhere near the 37-acre site, and you will see watchtowers dotting the landscape. In
those towers, you won’t just find lookouts; you’ll see sunlight glinting off the scopes of
sniper rifles. Beneath the ground at your feet are hidden pressure pads. Sweeping the area
are an undisclosed number of laser beams, detecting any kind of motion. A team
of highly trained guard dogs patrol the grounds constantly, ready to chase
down any escapees at the drop of a hat. But before we can even use
the word ‘escape’ seriously, you need to consider what’s on the
other side of the 12-foot-high razor wire fences encircling the whole facility.
Floodlights illuminate the entire place, day and night. Motion detectors watch most of
the ground, but anywhere they can’t see, you can bet will be covered by the extensive network
of security cameras, each one remote-controlled. There are no external windows to bust
out of. At least none larger than a few inches and equally as thick. Your
best bet would be to get out of one of the doors. Should be doable. There are only
1,400 of them, each one reinforced steel. The concept of breaking out of Florence ADMAX is about as close to impossibility as it
can get. You would need nothing short of the US military to get in or out of
this place if they didn’t want you to. Looking at it from above, we can see the different
blocks. There are the general population units "Delta," "Echo," "Fox," and "Golf" where most of
the prison’s approximately 350 inmates are housed. Then there’s the Special Housing Unit (SHU),
used for solitary confinement, where inmates may be moved temporarily as punishment for bad
behavior. But wait, it gets worse. Much Worse. Beyond the SHU is the Control Unit, where gang
leaders are housed, cutting them off from their followers as well as the kind of prisoners who
tend to incite violence in the larger units. Here, you’ll find some of the most notorious gang
leaders Chicago and New York have ever seen. James ‘Little Jimmy’ Marcello, who has
a decades-long rap sheet of extortion, loan sharking and murder, is neighbors with
Omar ‘OG Mack’ Portee, who founded the Nine Trey Gangsters and the United Blood Nation while in
Rikers. But they’re nothing compared to the main man on the block: Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera.
You probably know him by his other name, El Chapo. Under his rule, the Cartel raked in at
least $3 billion per year in revenue. Experts have estimated that around 25% of
all illegal drugs that enter the U.S. via Mexico come through El Chapo’s ring.
He was such a danger that the city of Chicago branded him as ‘Public Enemy Number
1’, the first of that title since Al Capone. That’s got to be the worst of the worst right there. You can’t get much higher
security than El Chapo, right? Wrong. Beyond the Control Unit
is the Special Security Unit or “H” Unit. It’s here that America sends
some of its most dangerous terrorists, people who have special rules and regulations made
just for them due to the nature of their crimes. In these cells, you will find some of
the most infamous murderers, terrorists, and serial killers in US history.
The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, was here all the way up to 2021. Past his cell,
serving three life terms plus 110 years in prison without parole is The Shoe Bomber, Richard
Reid, who tried to take down a transatlantic flight in 2001 with an explosive in his shoe.
Former FBI agent turned Soviet spy Robert Phillip Hanssen is serving 15 consecutive
life sentences just around the corner. Seeing the conditions in Guantanamo Bay, it’s
apparent just how detested terrorists are in the United States prison system, but that’s
a video for another day. Unit H must be the final stage in this supermax prison. The most
secure wing for the most dangerous prisoners. But no. There is one more. Prison officers describe the place as ‘a
cleaner version of Hell’. The smallest unit in the whole complex, it has just four
cells. This is Range 13. In all of the prison’s 30-year history, we only publicly
know of three men who have been held here. And it is here we will find a prisoner so
dangerous that this entire facility was designed because of his actions. The prisoner who
holds the record for the second longest time spent in solitary confinement in US prison history -
beaten only by Albert Woodfox, who was kept in solitary for 43 years. It’s the former leader of
the Aryan Brotherhood, Thomas Edward Silverstein. We’ll give you a tour of his
cell soon enough, but first, we should dive into what one man can possibly do
that’s so heinous that he is barred from any and all human contact for the rest
of his life multiple times over. ‘Terrible Tom’ Silverstein was born
February 4th, 1952, in Long Beach, California. Even before he was born,
his life was in turmoil. His mother, Virginia, was having an affair with a
man named Thomas Conway. As an adult, Tommy claimed that Thomas Conway was his
biological father, which is likely part of what led Virginia to divorce her husband and
remarry Conway before little Tommy was even born. Born Thomas Conway, named after
his mother’s brand new husband, the little boy didn’t have long to get used to
his family life before it was upended again. The marriage broke down, and by Tommy's
fourth birthday, he had another father. A man named Sid Silverstein. Silverstein adopted
the boy as his own and passed on his surname, but it was clear from a young age that Tommy
Silverstein was not going to have an easy life. Virginia was a drinker. The more she
drank, the more violent she’d become, something Thomas would become more familiar
with. One of Silverstein’s earliest memories was a time when he had wet the bed. His
mother flew into a rage and grabbed a paper cup from the kitchen. She demanded
that he pee into the cup and then drink it. She warned him that this was going to happen
every time he wet the bed from that point on. Silverstein was incredibly timid growing up, always shying away from other kids and not
wanting to engage at school. The other kids, having heard the Jewish surname Silverstein and
seeing him as a weak target, started picking on him. This anti-semitic bullying started from
a young age. Tommy returned home from school one day with a bloody nose, which was
the work of an older boy called Gary. The next day, Virginia waited outside the
school for Gary to leave. When she saw him, she grabbed the boy and held him still, demanding
that Tommy punch him in the face as hard as he could. Tommy did what he was told. The next
day, Gary’s father tried to return the favor, snatching Tommy on his way home, but the
boy escaped and ran home. That night, in a drunken rage, Virginia took Tommy to Gary’s
family home and threw bricks through the windows. Virginia would frequently beat and humiliate her
son in his early years, ordering him to strip below the waist and bend over for a beating.
If he cried, she would mock him and beat him even harder. The lesson she was doing her best
to drill into him was that violence was always the solution, and any kind of vulnerability was
weakness. And she would not have a weak son. It was Tommy’s job to do the worst jobs
in the house. Virginia had a chihuahua who would defecate everywhere, so she decided it was
her son’s job to clean it up for her. One day, as he was doing the job, the dog bit him on
the hand. This time, it was Tommy’s turn to fly into a rage. He hauled the dog outside
and hung it from the tree by its leash, lynching the animal to within an inch of its
life. Realizing the horror of what he was doing, Tommy let go and cradled the dog in his arms
as it panted feebly on the edge of death. At that moment, looking down at the dog, Tommy saw
himself. But something else clicked, too. As much as he felt like a monster for what he’d done,
he just couldn’t help but savor the sweet taste of revenge. That dog was smaller than him; for the
first time in his life, he was bigger and tougher. Sure enough, once Tommy got to high school, the
tables started to turn. He hit a growth spurt and soon towered over his mom. Just before
his fifteenth birthday, Tommy snuck out of his bedroom in the middle of the night. He knew
where Sid kept the shotgun, and he tiptoed over to the weapon, peering at it in the light from
the streetlamps coming through the window. Reaching out a trembling hand, Tommy took the gun, surprised by how heavy it was. Quietly as
he could, he crept into his mom’s room, where she and Sid were lying fast asleep. Tommy
took a deep breath and walked over to her side of the bed. Looking down at her from his new
height, he felt hatred filling his entire being. Gently as he could, he raised the shotgun
and laid the barrel perfectly under her chin. His hands were trembling, but
his mind was surprisingly steady. He pulled the trigger. Click. The gun was empty. Tommy let out a shaky breath,
took the gun away from his mother’s head, and put it back where he’d found
it. The next day at breakfast, he didn’t talk about what had happened,
but he sat there feeling a strange sense of peace. He could do it. He knew that now. He
had what it took to kill her if he wanted to. From that moment on, he fought back. He wouldn’t
put up with his mother’s aggression any longer. He’d fight with Sid whenever the man would try to
discipline him. Despite having the man’s surname, Tommy had never seen Sid as his real father.
He’d always remained attached to Thomas Conway, who, for much of his life,
had been in and out of prison. Everybody was poor, but Thomas Conway always
had schemes to try to change that. At age 19, Tommy Silverstein got roped into a chain of
events that would change his life forever. Thomas Conway was in the robbery game. Armed
robbery, to be specific. He liked to have a crew with him to hit target spots hard and
get out quickly. Looking for new recruits, he brought along Tommy as a new recruit,
but the robbery went wrong. They got caught, and Tommy was locked up in San
Quentin Prison in California. Four years later, Tommy got paroled, but
rather than try to turn his life around, he committed to the job, going out for another
string of robberies with his father. This time, when they got caught, the sentence
was much more severe. Now 23 and a repeat offender for armed robbery, Tommy
was given a much harsher sentence of 15 years. A young man now, he wouldn’t be
out of prison until he was nearly 40. When he was to get out, what
would he even do? Who could he be? Starting your life at 38 with
little education, a criminal record, childhood trauma, and the life experience
of a 23-year-old is a bleak future indeed. For all intents and purposes, Tommy’s life became
a prison. The four walls around him became the limits of his existence, and, like an animal
raised in a zoo, he adjusted to his environment. Tommy was sent to prison in Leavenworth,
Kansas. With a fierce racial gang culture inside, Tommy found acceptance in the Aryan
Brotherhood. No longer was he being picked on for kids thinking he was Jewish, now he was the
bully. This was in the late 70s and early 80s, so heroin usage was rampant in the
prison system. Tommy was involved in trafficking it around, a job he
found that he was pretty good at. It wasn’t Tommy’s first experience like this.
When he was 14, Tommy had been sent off to the California Youth Authority reformatory, a facility
designed to reform young teenagers and change them from their ways before it was too late. The
reality was almost the total opposite. When talking about the place near the end of his
life, Tommy said that all it did was reinforce the lessons he’d learned as a kid. In his own
words: "Anyone not willing to fight was abused." But one day, in Leavenworth, somebody said
no to him. Danny Atwell, a fellow prisoner, refused to be a heroin mule for the Aryan
Brotherhood. Tommy dealt with the situation the only way he knew how. He stabbed
Danny Atwell to death. Allegedly. You see, while this conviction was later overturned
in 1985 as it came to light that those giving evidence against Silverstein were lying, it was
enough to have him transferred to more secure confinement at USP Marion, Illinois, with a
life sentence added to his time behind bars. He was placed in the Control Unit, essentially
solitary confinement, when he arrived as he was deemed to be a highly disruptive and dangerous
presence. At Marion, he had a ceiling light in his cell that would be on permanently so that the
security cameras pointed at him wouldn’t miss a thing. He struggled to sleep and reported that the
prison guards were antagonistic and cruel to him. In 1981, Silverstein was on trial again. This
time, it was for killing Robert Chappelle, a member of the DC Blacks Gang. Much like his
first trial, this was based on witness statements, which Silverstein had strenuously denied for all
of his life. This murder had caused a real stir throughout the prison, which was only made worse
when one of the leaders of the DC Blacks Gang was transferred from another prison entirely and
put just a couple of doors down from Silverstein. With the trial still dragging on, Raymond
Lee "Cadillac" Smith arrived at USP Marion and immediately made threats that he was going
to kill Tommy Silverstein the first chance he got. Silverstein protested his innocence, but
it fell on deaf ears. The guards in the prison did little to keep the two men apart;
Silverstein even believed that they were deliberately putting the men together all the
time in the hopes they would kill each other. And sure enough, it happened. Silverstein, along with his friend Clayton
Fountain, stabbed Cadillac 67 times. They then paraded his body up and down
the walkways outside of the cells, showing everybody in prison exactly what they
had done and why they weren’t to be messed with. You’re either the bully or the victim.
Silverstein had made his mind up which he’d be. Another life sentence was added to his
time, confirming that Tommy Silverstein would never be a free man again. So he got used
to life inside. One hobby that he took up was painting. But little did he know that this was
to be the start of the worst years of his life. United States prisons have a rule that any
artwork created by prisoners that depicts murder is to be confiscated and destroyed. Tommy
had a number of his paintings taken away from him, for what we may never know. The officer
responsible was Merle Clutts. Not only did Tommy hate the man for taking his artwork
away, but he alleged that the man had been harassing him and bullying him without
anyone stepping in to do anything about it. So he decided to do something about it. Walking behind Clutts one day, Tommy had
another prisoner sneak him a homemade key to his cuffs and a shank. He
leaped at Clutts and stabbed him to death before the other officers could
pull him away. Just a few hours later, his friend Clayton Fountain did the
exact same thing to another officer. The prison was placed on lockdown
immediately. This ran the risk of getting out of control fast. Prison stabbings
were common, but when it was between prisoners, it was often seen as an acceptable casualty. That
was just the natural order. But when prisoners started stabbing guards, that could start
a riot that would threaten the security of the entire facility. If prisoners suddenly
start seeing their guards as vulnerable, able to be killed, what’s to stop them
from doing that at every opportunity? The prison system needed to send a message.
To make an example of Tommy Silverstein. USP Marion’s lockdown was indefinite, lasting
for 23 years in total. Silverstein was sent to Atlanta, where he was placed in
solitary confinement with strict instructions that he was to have ‘zero
human contact.’ But in the background, larger pieces were starting to fall into place.
The BOP began working in earnest on a new project: a new supermax prison in Florence, Colorado,
that was to be the ultimate deterrent. Silverstein was in his cell 23 hours a
day, on his own, for close to four years, until all of a sudden, his door was opened.
It was 1987. Cuban detainees had rioted and taken control of the prison in what became
known as the Atlanta Prison Riots. The Cubans unlocked Silverstein’s cell and allowed
him to walk freely through the facility, where he eventually found the guards
who were being held as hostages. Silverstein knelt down in front of one of them
and began to talk. Aware of Silverstein’s history, the Cubans were growing nervous. These
hostages were negotiating power. If the guards were to be killed, they’d have nothing
protecting them from the military storming the facility and putting the riot to
a painful end. Fortunately for them, the guard Silverstein was talking to was his
favorite. The man had always made a point of asking Silverstein if his handcuffs were
too tight and loosening them if they were. Wiping the sweat from their brows, the Cubans
released Silverstein, sending him to the hostage negotiation team outside before he could
do any damage. He was transferred back to Leavenworth for 18 years until, eventually, the
security status of that prison was downgraded. But fortunately, a new facility was up and
running now. It was one of the most secure prisons in all of human history, with
a cell made specifically for punishment and deterrence. ADX Florence,
specifically a cell in Range 13. At this point, Tommy Silverstein had already
spent 22 years in solitary confinement, but in Florence, it was about
to get a whole lot worse. Welcome to Tommy Silverstein’s cell in Range 13. Every inch of this cell has been
specially designed to do the bare minimum possible to sustain human life and to
remove any last sliver of connection with the outside world. The cell is just 3.5m x 2m or 7ft
x 12ft. The total floor space with the room’s curved wall amounts to 80 square feet. That’s the
smallest legal limit for a New York City kitchen. The bed is made from concrete. There’s
a stool at the foot of the bed, also made from concrete. The toilet
bowl itself is made as part of the wall, also concrete. There is an open shower in the
corner of the room, so close to the bed that any shower will inevitably wet the bedding. The
water is on a timer, activated by a button push. On the wall at the head of the bed is a window.
This window is just 4 inches wide with incredibly thick reinforced glass. In reality, it’s
more of a slit to allow light through. Tommy Silverstein was to spend 23 hours there
per day, receiving food through a slot in the door. The instructions from his previous
detention carried over. ‘Zero human contact’. For the other hour in his day, he was taken
to what’s called the ‘Empty Swimming Pool.’ This room had marginally more space
than his cell but with much less inside. It was just an empty room. The
one feature that made it the equivalent to having ‘outdoor’ time was a
4x4 inch skylight in the ceiling. If Tommy behaved, he would be given books
to read and eventually a small black and white TV. He could have two phone calls per
month. Aside from that, he was on his own. But there is a big question that we haven’t
answered in all of this. Why him? ADX Florence houses prisoners like El Chapo and the Unabomber,
gang leaders, and terrorists. Tommy Silverstein was locked up for armed robbery and committed
up to three murders. These are obviously awful crimes, but they pale in comparison to running a
drug empire larger than dozens of countries' GDPs. The truth is that Tommy Silverstein
was there to send a message. An unnamed prison officer talking to author
Pete Early explained it bluntly. “When an inmate kills a guard, he must be
punished. We can't execute Silverstein, so we have no choice but to make
his life a living hell. Otherwise, other inmates will kill guards, too.
There has to be some supreme punishment. Every convict knows what Silverstein is
going through. We want them to realize that if they cross the same line that
he did, they will pay a heavy price.” Silverstein’s case is a controversial one.
The punishment, in comparison to the crimes, is extreme. Over the course of his lifetime, Tommy
Silverstein spent a total of 36 years in these conditions, eclipsing the sentences of people who
have done far worse crimes, had stronger evidence, and shown less remorse. As humans, we tend to
argue that everyone’s life is equally valid, but it is clear that the ‘who’ of Silverstein’s
victim is the reason for his punishment. If he had killed another prisoner, no one would have
batted an eyelid. Yet because it’s a guard, he’s now infamous and the subject of
a number of human rights complaints. The prison system, rightly or wrongly,
has taken extreme actions against one individual to make him a symbol for other
prisoners of what happens when they step out of line. Much like all of Silverstein’s
childhood, it comes down once again to who is the biggest and strongest. You are either
the bully or the victim. In this case, the prison system has chosen to be the
bully. They have time and again within these facilities where guards exercise their
powers unfairly to keep prisoners in line. Tommy Silverstein, by the end of his life,
claimed to have been reformed. He talked openly over the phone about how self-reflection,
meditation, and Buddhism had shown him the damage he had caused and the errors of his previous
life. A foundation was set up by his family to campaign for reform to prevent what was
happening to him from happening to others. This begs the question of what prison is
for in the first place. Is it to reform convicts? To educate them and show them right from wrong so that they can be released
as productive members of society? Or is it there to punish them? To serve justice
for the crimes they have committed and act as a deterrent to scare others off from doing the
same? Is prison for the people inside it at all, or is it for those outside? To help the
general population feel safe at night and scare the criminals straight
at the thought of being caught. Tommy Silverstein had his
own views on these questions. “Even though we may not execute people by
the masses, as they do in other countries, our government leaders bury people alive
for life in cement tombs. It’s actually more human to execute someone than it is to
torture them, year after year after year.” It’s hard to know the kind
of trauma, mental illness, and fury that could drive somebody to
commit the kinds of crimes for which these prisoners are responsible. For many
of them, their crimes are like the flames licking out of the windows of a burning
apartment block as the true inferno rages inside. Their actions are the lashings-out
of a dark mind twisted beyond recognition. Any of us would find it unbearable to be
left alone with just our thoughts for more than a few days. Imagine how it would
feel to be alone in that concrete box with only that kind of mind for company
year after year, decade after decade. Would death be less cruel? At what point
does a monster become a victim? And at what point do the men punishing
him become themselves monsters? Now check out “Man So Violent Even Other Prisoners Fear Him and Other Insane Prison
Stories.” Or watch this instead!
