The Aryan Brotherhood & Redemption

all right we're live back with another episode damage done podcast for you or for those of you who don't know 2x heroin addicts stories about joy pain murder redemption life uh today pretty excited about uh very excited our guest here he's had quite a few what two or three documentaries you corrected me last time i don't know if you said it was three or two you've been in about two of them yeah there's two or three yeah so i i i used to grow up in like watching uh the gangland documentaries and i happen to have seen your face on it um we have michael thompson and michael is now running an organization named what live learn and prosper live learn and prosper and what does live learn and prosper do it's a self-help group that approaches the idea of life oftentimes addiction but behaviors and it's a holistic approach to um making whatever behavioral corrections the individual wishes to make and it's safe to say you've made some behavioral corrections before we get further into things is that is that fair to say yes that's fair to say so and correct me in introducing as well as i go forward you were in documentaries and you got into this place in your life because prior to this you were part of a notorious organization in prison named the aryan brotherhood yes and to this date you're the highest ranking member to have called it dropped out moved out left defected divorced and that's frowned upon around those parts is that is that also fairness and so how did you get to prison how did you start living that life how did you how did you join the ranks and do what you did let's let's i guess let's let's take it back to when you're younger and how you got there well i was convicted of a double homicide two individuals uh were murdered in their attempt to kidnap two little girls and my role in that was to inform the father of the two little girls that their children his children were going to be kidnapped and that's about the extent of it for that i received two first degree murder convictions a conspiracy to commit first degree murder and um kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon and so you went on a california vacation for quite some time after that i spent 45 years behind the iron gates yes okay so were you in involved in any criminal organizations or any other type of criminal lifestyle before that situation occurred where you were convicted of that plethora of charges no i'm i'm the quintessential square counter central square yes i said i um i grew up native okay and i'll just go from the point where i was living with my elder he who walks on top of the wind he had an arabian horse ranch and he ran black angus cattle so i was with him from the time that i was 12 until i was 18. and he taught me my ways to speak my language um took me through my rites of passage when i was 12. so i went to mount shasta for two weeks on the mountain there and then i swam crater lake and then lake tahoe is part of the ritual that goes along with rites of passage and then i learned horsemanship and hunting and fishing and building and the proper care of livestock and did a lot of showing in the arenas with the arabians and when i was 19 years old i wrote the rodeo circuit i was a bull rider and upon my return from the season the last rodeo then was in reading i returned orange county and my wife at the time her cousin had been released from soledad he had spent nine years there and he was working for two individuals and i've been back about 90 days and in the course of that he was complaining to me one day that he was concerned that these two individuals were going to kidnap the children of a rival cartel member okay and um so they were they were they were involved in that type of life you weren't no got it but they were fair enough so um when he told me that i said you're not going to call this man you're not going to tell this man that his children are in jeopardy and he said no i can't i can't put myself in that situation i work for these men i said well give me the phone number and i'll do it so he did and i called him and the two men ultimately attempted to kidnap the girls and in the process of that were murdered and buried and what did you have in that uh nothing yeah so but the courts thought you did of course they did yeah i wouldn't have been convicted sure so how did that how did that come apart because it seems like you had some good intentions there what's the saying the road to hell no good with uh good intentions yeah no good deals and punished yeah but you got punished well that's of my own doing let's hear it uh it's just a matter of um my naivete and going into uh particularly court you know i grew up with a western ethos okay and that western ethos was about integrity and honor and uh what it was to be a man and what a man did in the face of adversity and so it was a natural thing for me not only to call this man and tell him that his children were in jeopardy but once i was arrested along with everybody else um i naively thought that all i had to do was go into court and tell the truth it doesn't work that way no so um i did that and i took two polygraph tests to prove that what i was saying was the truth and at that time my i don't know how it's changed but at that time i got the highest plus scores in the history of polygraphy uh but that um didn't seem to matter uh other people testifying against me light they light understand yes which is not unusual i mean they were being prosecuted for the same thing and they wanted their freedom yes they did um but ultimately i was convicted and so did everybody get convicted or they made you the scapegoat i don't everyone did get convicted i was however the only one that was convicted of all counts no one ever said that i killed anyone no one ever said that i did anything other than what i said i had done and um as a matter of fact i've got a um what's called a 1437 petition before the court right now what's that it's where you are convicted based on natural and probable consequences and that's what i was convicted under natural and probable consequences so it's an aiding and abetting and the law now is is that you can't be held accountable for that and so after 45 years in prison i filed the petition because the law is new just a year old okay and um they challenged it on the constitutionality at first and their logic being that certain initiatives like prop 7 prop 15 forbid what 1437 was supposed to do the problem was is that i was convicted long before those initiatives were ever on the ballot um so my case went before the appellate court after being denied by the superior court and we won and so now it's gone back to the superior court based on the merits okay and i've been given an attorney and it looks pretty good what would a victory of that what would that mean for you exoneration got it it's one of the reasons that um i spent 45 years in prison is because um it's not that they require because they're not allowed to under the law but if you don't admit to your crime it makes it very difficult to be released and i went 19 times before the board and all 19 times just as i did at trial i denied any involvement sure and that didn't bode well yeah but uh that wasn't the only reason that i spent that long in prison yeah so let's get into that before we get into that what what did you feel when that sentence got delivered to you disappointment but it was disappointment in the system my at my sentencing hearing i remember that i wanted to speak and i did about how disillusioned i was by the system itself my belief that all i had to do was come in and tell the truth when in reality it's more about a personality contest and you have a jury there that's taking all that in so that you have prosecutors and witnesses and that are playing to the jury relative to what they want them to hear and how they present what they want them to hear and in my case um i had no prior experience with the court system i'd never even been arrested so that naivete didn't work well for me yeah you spent 45 years there so yeah after after you felt that disappointment and you get held up from jail and now you're in prison what's going through your mind what's that like for you what's that experience for you well it um it's a great question by the way um i'd never been locked up so it was the only time in my life that i actually contemplated committing suicide because they put me in a cage and and i just said to myself i can't do this you know i'd i've been running the mountains my whole life um so the idea of being in a seven by six foot cement cell with bars on the front that's preposterous dehumanizing well it is i mean i hold even to this day that the worst thing that you can do to a human being is put them in a cage it's actually the worst thing you can do to any animal but uh more particularly because we've been blessed with uh cognition um you know those four layers of the brain that makes us human beings um it's a very difficult thing to contemplate the idea of living in a cage for the rest of your life yeah i couldn't imagine that i i thought the longest i ever did in l.a county jail was six months and that was like a long time for me well that is a long time see that's what i mean whether 45 years or one day that's too much sure because of what it does to the human being and i don't think enough is said about that it isn't to say that people who commit crimes shouldn't stand by some way of punishment for their crimes okay but i think europe is far ahead of us um in norway that's an excellent excellent example a whole different system now i actually just watched uh an episode of inside the world's toughest prisons and it's not one of the world's toughest prince's most unique prison where these people have a it's like what i call it like a rehabilitation a true rehabilitation type of model where you're like interacting with the staff there and you have your own bed and it's nice and it's comfortable they want you to get real jobs and actually put you in a position to reacclimate yourself to society and change those behaviors no what you're saying is they treat you like a human being yeah i said way more words than that but that's exactly what they do yeah and that's what is that issue even today as we talk about um reform you know it's a subject that needs to be addressed you know fortunately through the efforts of very very courageous people like scott butnick they've shut down the security housing units throughout the state of california what is that like the shoe exactly where they keep you confined for 23 hours a day and no interaction with anyone yeah you know and that's um really doesn't even begin to express uh the impact that that type of confinement has upon a human being uh you adapt uh because you must if you wish to survive yeah and you make whatever adjustments are necessary but living in what we call bedrock um has its challenges so when so from and we'll get into this right now but from the man you were before you got convicted so when you got convicted to when you went to prison obviously 45 years there were some significant changes to who you were before to when you got in there because you know you ran and associated yourself with aryan brotherhood and how did that how did you even how did that even become possible from how you were raised to the beliefs you had to everything you stood for obviously you know the circumstances presented themselves but i'd like to get some clarity on how that kind of went down yeah it's a good question it is it um when you render it all down it comes down to survival okay and even in that you need not forfeit your humanity i'm not suggesting that doesn't happen because it certainly did with me um but in my case you know my first time in prison i was a fish and for the people that don't know what to fish it's uh someone who's new to the prison system that has never done time and so it's a matter of acclimating yourself to an extraordinary environment a controlled environment a whole new world it is a whole new world you are 6'4 280. yeah for the people that can't see it he's not a small guy buying these trucks i saw your pictures on that documentary i mean yeah i'm a shadow of my former self yeah you still got stuff yeah but i wouldn't want to cross you um back when in those photos i mean not even now but you know that you were you in fact you m maybe you had like a target on your back too right your that is one of the problems i mean the blessing is is that my elder taught me martial arts so you know how to fight um yes yeah and the reality is is that most men don't they think they do but we're talking about an extreme form of violence so in my case um being new to the system i was supposed to go to san quentin but they sent me to tracy instead and i went to work for the chaplain his name was chaplain leon england marvelous man marvelous human being and he was the one that discovered that i couldn't read or write oh wow and um but in any event we had an agreement and i grew up native as i said so back then it was actually against the law to speak your language or to practice your ways and so it was forbidden but chaplain england and i had an agreement that if i took care of his chapels in his garden he would allow me to practice my ways in the garden and that actually led to my first encounter with gangs in tracy at the time it was a noester familia and you had some black gorilla family but dominantly the noester familia and so while i was practicing my ways out in the garden i mean i had an eagle fan and a drum and a rattle and i would sing and i would dance and across from the protestant chapel the garden separated the two chapels was the catholic chapel and the priest there took issue with my ways and probably it's just a conjecture on my part but probably because of the way i look um he was unable to associate that with any indigenous culture so he rather associated it with devil worship and so one day the side door to the catholic chapel busted open and seven guys with knives come out to kill me and once i had dispatched them there was a lieutenant who watched the whole thing at the center corridor window hold on one second what are you trying to tell me dispatch seven humans um disarm them so seven on one and you stood your ground and well i mean clearly you're telling the truth you're alive but that's [ __ ] wild dude oh it's documented actually i'm sure i mean i'm not even doubting that no yeah no we're not we're not calling you out on anything we just that's fine it's um and i don't take it that way it's perfect i don't spend a lot of time emphasizing war stories nor my abilities uh nor my prowess but it was actually my physical prowess that was the basis for myself i'm sure for the rest of this episode i'll try to spend some time trying to define those things and pull out that that [ __ ] blows my mind well seven humans it's you gotta know some things you do it's impressive so you dispatch them they tried to kill you it didn't work you said a lieutenant came so what happened he opened the door and said it's about time somebody stood up to them and this was part of the new astro familia yes okay and they're a rather large organization themselves yeah it's not like um you know i'm not gonna say names from the area that i'm from because maybe one of them will listen they'll be pissed at me for talking uh they're a big deal so it was kind of a big deal that you were able to dispatch of seven people from that organization depends on who you ask i'm gonna say it is okay yeah you can do that yeah yeah um so he opened the door and he said it's about time that somebody stood up to them he said if you want to know who ordered your death they're out in the main yard right now and their captains and their lieutenants were in a circle out in the main yard and he said i said well were you let me out will you key the door and he said yeah so we walk down and he key the door and he says oh by the way he says there's a uh there's a cart full of baseball bats to the right of you as you go out this is a lieutenant as in prison guard his name was lieutenant johnson okay lieutenant johnson and they in the western family actually killed him for what he did but i'm getting ahead of myself fair enough um so i went out and wreaked havoc with the baseball bat yes got it um so i was put into the hole and um two weeks later they let me out of the hole no charges put me in g-wing third tier last cell all the way in the back so i may have been a fish but even i could see what was coming and sure enough the next morning it did i heard the bar box and which opens the doors and pushed my door open and looked and saw four guys that were suited and booted beanies jackets boots with knives and they were coming up the stairs so as they made the turn on the second tier to come up to the third tier i swung over the banister down to the second tier and came up from behind them and um when i encountered two went into my cell and the last two that were still attempting to go into my cell i threw them off the tier and then i went into the cell and dispatched the two in there in the course of that i took a knife in the hand and it went through the bone and it stuck and i was unable to dislodge it so i walked down to the clinic with the knife sticking out of your hand yes and um when i did back then they didn't have alarms they just had whistles so the nurse on duty started blowing her whistle anyway that led to a full-scale uh encounter with the nuestra familia yeah you just took out eleven of their guys in uh two weeks yeah well i took out many more than that because he did the baseball bat that's right well i mean probably more throughout i don't know yeah after that occurred um then it was uh kind of a field day so where they just come after that point how how were you living with sanity anymore every day it's like or it's today they're gonna be the day like what was in your head today gonna be the day that i'm gonna die like well you you i think um i won't say you i'll say i understood that um a certain amount of insanity is essential to insanity and so i engaged the nuestra familia on every level yeah to the point where the warden made the decision to ship me to old folsom so they brought a convoy in and they put me in the car and they convoyed me up to old folsom and i was the youngest person there is folsom a harder prison than tracy yeah tracy is considered gladiator school and that's where all the youngsters go and that's where you get your bones okay and um so you know you're tried and tested so i hit the yard at old folsom and they took me to the hole and um so what had happened to tracy preceded my arrival so the first group to approach me on the yard in the hole was the were the black panthers and they attempted to recruit me because you're native yes okay got it um his name was yogi pannell he was just killed two years ago at old folsom after they let him out of the hole he spent over 50 years in prison kind of he has a name uh like like a infamous black panther that was in the news yes he was a warrior and i would not ever attempt to take anything away from him sure i have the utmost respect for who he was but he attempted to indoctrinate me and to what essentially was a communist manifesto sure and while chaplain england had begun teaching me to read um i had absolutely no comprehension of what communism was other than john wayne said it was bad and that's actually what i told yogi when i declined i said john wayne says his bad is bad so it's bad so he said well he said he called me young mike he said young mike he said you're either with us or against us [ __ ] and i said well then i guess i'm against you and he says well he says then you go on in and you make yourself a knife and he says i'll meet you out here in the morning and i said all right so i just casually just challenged you to a knife fight oh yes just like all joking aside like it was casual thing like all right man yeah well as sure as the sun's gonna rise tomorrow i'm gonna meet you and we're gonna we were just two men talking yeah and um there was a mutual respect um immediately so um i did i went in and um i made a knife and uh the next morning i um actually i had to keester it and that was my first experience with that which is another um hurdle yeah and um key string i'll just explain it for some people it's where you have to uh put something in a cavity that usually things come out of on your body that's more diplomatic yes right yeah that's a very nice way of saying yes yeah um that you secrete a weapon into your rectum yeah yes and um like i said yes and it was um my first experience with that so i had some difficulty uh had had i had i had it to do over i think i would have shaped my life a little bit different yeah so and the problem was once i got out to the yard i had no experience with this so i was unable to get the knife out of my rectum stressful it can be ultimately i just laid down in the yard and started rubbing my belly uh-huh and uh just before yogi came out now he was a master at what he did so you know how to do a fast efficiently three steps into the yard and he had his in his hand and so uh i got up and we commenced to fight and um at one point when he realized that um he was losing the knife fight um he decided to run and um i chased him and i ended up actually stabbing both his bodyguards really yeah but uh is your first experience stabbing someone or yes yeah yes that that moment first first experience making your shame keep stringing the shank and now stabbing someone with your own made shank okay yeah i didn't actually stab the two guys the the one approached me from the left and i gutted him and the other one approached me from the right and i just split a skull open peeled it open did you realize what was going on in those moments or was it just like kind of a survival mechanism did you even have a transfer process well i just did that like what happened i knew precisely what i was doing got it and even fighting yogi and um there was a point when i saw the fear in his eyes and he knew he was losing and that was unusual for him because he went that's oh yes yeah so he made the decision and it's actually a a tactic you know that you you run to live to fight another day and but because he had called me out and because he was their highest in command there um that was frowned upon so that actually created a rift or split in the black gorilla family and the black panthers who were pretty good at that time yogi went on to and you'll hear um in the history of these organizations there will be people that will contest what i'm saying right now because he started his own group they say well he wasn't a black panther but in fact he was and but he was aligned with the black gorilla family and it's probably true that he never was black gorilla family but he was black panther and um but at any rate that created a real rift because by some he was seen as a coward because he had run not fit to lead yes yeah you don't call a man out and then and then run right so um thereafter every time we went to the yard they would send a challenger at me so i was in this [ __ ] does not stop for you yes so i was in total there at folsom probably um at least 20 knife fights and i was shot 20 times shot with like warning shot bullets or like rubber bullets no what we're talking about no it's a 223 from a m14 live round yeah oh wow actually the first time i was shot was with the third yacht six i take that back and that was in the leg and that was by an officer by the name of talbot who was in tower two and i was fighting a fellow by the name of roland he was one of the soledad six and he saw that six they were six individuals who killed a guard in solidad got it and so they had been transferred to folsom got it and uh so he and i squared off use your own race you were fighting at that point in time no these are black oh these are black and um so um talbot shot me from tower two which is way outside the hole it's it's a the trajectory is actually phenomenal it was a hell of a shot because then they were using a a 30 odd 6 with a full buckhorn sight and a gold gold shear bead so it was it was a hell of a shot and he had shot me in the leg and they just take you in and they probe the wound and and if the bone isn't broken because the odd six has that capacity and mine wasn't so they put me back in my cell and then just like that right after yeah so you know i remember that he i heard the bar box it was a crank they had to crank the bar box to open the cells and i heard someone slap them the top bunker above the bar box and my cell came open and talbot walked into my cell and he said he said we all right and i said you're the cat that shot me and he said yeah and i said yeah we're all right you were doing your job i was doing mine i said but i got to tell you i said that was a hell of a shot and he says not really he says i was aiming for your head oh he got lucky yeah he actually when he became a lieutenant years later in corcoran he was the only convict that um i was the only convict that he would allow around him i actually worked for him oh you ended up going over to corcoran yeah but at any rate so um a lot of violence at folsom um and um so people start noticing you your your reputation reputation already preceded you but now you're it had constantly i was approached by the aryan brotherhood also yeah uh during the course of this and um matter of fact it was t.d bingham who started it he's one of them yeah and um so i didn't know because i was a fish that many people strive to become members of the various gangs the aryan brotherhood being no exception and so i listened to him as i had yogi and then i refused him and how did he take that he took it well better than yogi did no knife fight no no when i fight and um he said well just you know keep us in mind and i said that i would and then shortly thereafter i had um four natives who were abe approached me and said they knew that i had lived on the res and uh reference to being a res dog and they said look brother we live better in here than we ever lived on the res and i said well what do you mean because the res is abject poverty got it and so they began to explain to me how they controlled the prison and the revenues that they generated as a result and just all that that involved um and that appealed to me the idea of controlling your environment wow um as opposed to being controlled it's like your own sense of freedom or something like that you can be yes or illusion of such got it so i joined on that basis and based on my activities um of violence um within a year i assumed a leadership role in that organization so that in the course of a day um i ended up um in knife fights with um this was the bgf and i ended up stabbing 16 of them in one day yeah on on the yard and so the warden shipped me and td bingham spotsberg and um bobby moore to san quentin and so um essentially we were kicked out of folsom and since san quentin so we went to san quentin went to the hole there and i almost immediately got into it with the mexican mafia so at this point you go from this like uh peaceful individual and now you're a full-blown warrior i would say you're battling i understand what you're saying mm-hmm is it fair to label at that you're you're at war all the time it seems to me it's yeah it's fair to label it that yeah nothing had really changed in in my makeup or my demeanor sure um as i said i respected my enemies and um there was a mutual respect so that um you know back then you hear a lot about um murders that happen as a result of assassination attempts okay or assassinations but back then it was a head up uh if you wanted to go head up with a man you called him out if he didn't have a knife you gave him a knife sounds like the wild west duels very much so yeah gunslinger yeah type situation so um everything was up front everything was honorable sure and um you meant you had a winner you had a loser and um that was the extent of it so not only are you i'm assuming now correct me over wrong of course you said within a year you took a leadership position so we've been talking about battle i just labeled it warrior but the aryan brother is a it's a vast enterprise it's not some little outfit they uh were you telling about they were ran protection for people like john gotti mm-hmm yeah they run it like uh like a fortune 500 company there's the hierarchy there's bylaws there's you know i mean just from from the research that i've done i mean you know you know obviously much better than i do but um you know what was it like being a a part of that or part of that like what's the day-to-day you're in leadership so not only are you fighting i'm sure you're operating or you have some say in the business aspect how does that how does that happen how does that well actually work it didn't oh you didn't no you had individuals who for the most part um use the resources that they were acquiring to stay loaded stay drunk and to live large you're talking about members of the brotherhood are getting high off their own supply yes isn't that typically frowned upon to be using drugs with that belief system it became that way as a result of uh td and myself um sitting down together and deciding that uh white boys don't get high off their own supply it's not just that uh business people business people business people it's not just a question of being a white boy sure uh because the i just say that because that's the that's kind of the things i've heard growing up where i've grown up the little time i've done in jail that's kind of like the belief oh you don't do this how however you know that's contemporary it's okay yeah we're talking back in the 70s okay what are the views with the aryan brotherhood to and i might be naive but my what i think of is like you know aryan i equate with like kind of like nazis nazis hate jews we don't like black people um you know latinos all of that that you don't strike me as someone that has those views though the way that you were raised i don't i never have but were were your counterparts was that how they felt or was it just the business to survival and to you know get the things that they wanted to get and to live large as you say behind bars great question because that's exactly what it is it's a matter of controlling your resources not it has changed don't get me wrong um the aryan brotherhood today is a white supremacist organization but it wasn't back then no td bingham is jewish really yes i told you that five natives i'm jewish he's jewish that's why i was i was curious you know no uh tommy silverstein was jewish um definitely blows my mind though like that's that's why i was saying to him is like i wonder if it's the same views and everything that it is out on the streets well not really it's about controlling your resources got it you see you you were correct in your presumption the black gorilla family controlled their resources the mexican mafia controlled the resources the black panthers controlled their resources and so on so did the aryan brotherhood well can i can ask you another question i don't understand like money in jail and again correct me if i'm wrong it's more or less useless it's not useless in the fact that you can get what you want but like you could have a hundred thousand dollars cash let's just say what's that going to do for you in prison well another good question the fbi estimated in 1978 that the aryan brotherhood took 3.5 million out of folsom alone and then you take that and you develop fronts on the streets oh so yeah you're funneling that money outside and you're actually creating washing money and legitimate businesses or what yeah that was the whole idea behind making that shift from supporting personal addictions to becoming a business enterprise so you're basically saying before you you and bingham put your heads together it was more of small time let's support our habits too let's make some major moves here yes god were people actually getting out and going to have resources though like who who was handling all of this stuff like because like at the end of the day human beings are greedy you can have all these plans and you can you're it seems like you were executing them but like it just doesn't seem like it just seems too storybook to be like well this is what we're gonna do and god forbid i mean you didn't even know that you were gonna be getting out but i mean here we are so what what's the that's what's the big picture i don't that doesn't make sense to me to most people it doesn't yeah you see and that's the problem and that's why typically what happens is they make the association to you know white supremacist organization whose um sole focus is hatred and everything that goes along with that privileged attitude um so if you can see the potential business-wise i mean i attended synagogue just to learn business you know and later when it comes it's a good place to learn business you better believe it yeah you see but and then later went to college for it but um it's about business and it's about the potential right but so i'm so you guys are putting it into organizations hands right but i'm gonna speak freely i don't think those organizations give a [ __ ] about what's going on if you guys are sponsoring them great but if i was a guy i'm just thinking in my own way like if some people were doing some people that might not ever get out of prison and i understand they have contacts and they have people around but if they're funneling me all this money i'm going to do whatever the hell it is i want to do with the money they're in there we're communicating but like at the end of the day they're well you're not going to under penalty of death i mean it's really that simple so you have people paroling all the time you have associates and then you have people who are members who are paroling got it and so it's a matter of keeping your finger on the pulse of what's going on but before you do any of that like any business you have to have an infrastructure so it was actually developing the infrastructure that became um paramount checks and balances you bet and that doesn't always work because as you correctly point out if you send the dope fiend out to the street and you give that doping large sums of money he might not go do what he was supposed to do well if he's got the bag you know now he's big man on campus yeah and um you know you had a lot of associations back then many of the members were hell's angels on the street carrying brotherhood inside yeah so when you leave when you leave prison as an aryan brotherhood member is that is that is that organization gang whatever you want to call does that continue out on the street or you just go back to your your old set let's call it well the the idea was that it would continue on the street but it didn't it eventually did it morphed to that it's it's actually one of the reasons why i stepped away from the brand okay um i was confronted with two truths okay but i suppose we can get into that at some point in time but as it relates to the business structure itself it was the infrastructure so it was a matter of the monies that you were generating at folsom and san quentin primarily that you would take those monies and you would invest them in legitimate enterprise got it utilize that i mean you have many many different models that you can draw upon costa nostra would be one and many of the other gangs were far more organized than the brand ever thought about being the biggest thing the brand had going for it was violence and that they excelled at so but that has little value as it relates to attempting to provide an infrastructure to a business organization i mean of course we've all seen the movies where the italian mob does just that but their foundations don't come from prison and that makes the difference so you're saying though way better well a way more well-oiled machine business-wise because it's it's not trying to be built from within it's it's being built on the outside yes and if they end up inside they're still continuing what they have outside and there's a greater check and balance upon that of necessity got it so it's uh it's about consequences and so that goes to the heart of your your quarry you know what are the consequences well how did it how did that all that play out because at some point obviously you had your differences and you stepped away and we'll talk about that but were those things actually happening revenues were growing things were taking off money was being made yes and then some of those people started getting on dope themselves or no at issue was really um we had allies all along like the mexican mafia but we didn't really have a business relationship so that if it was say methamphetamine then most your cookers were hell's angels but um well that year i told you about in in 78 79 um you know pj morris was the warden at folsom he was taking fifty thousand dollars a pop the guards that were transporting the uh methamphetamine and other product in the prison we're getting ten thousand dollars a pop no so you're actually paying them off oh yeah yeah that's a real thing it's not a movie thing it's a real thing and then you're selling it to people inmates in prison and you're collecting the money on the streets yes you know and i'd like to emphasize it because it makes the department look bad in the context that i just explained it but the fact of the matter is is that back then your guards they had a union dick novi started the union i think in 56 but you know they were barely making minimum wage so they could make almost a half a year's salary by bringing in some you've done that you bet yeah um and so that when don novi dick's son took over the union he changed everything and you know the department of corrections the officers working for them actually um became just that um guards you're saying that finally they had a vested interest in doing the job without risking consequences they had the training they had the equipment they were receiving the pay they were getting the money they had the benefits yeah got it and um so there was a huge shift and you know that's actually what brought about the building of um well i think it was 30 new prisons and um you know you had to staff those prisons and uh you had to fill those prisons so that's right and they did yeah very very big business didn't have any problem it is a business and anybody that thinks otherwise is in my opinion mistaken um numbers don't lie look at the revenues yeah well the fact that they're [ __ ] private too yeah well i have those geo pretty much runs all your private prisons what is it called geo geo yeah they have all the private prisons in california they're interestingly enough ceo is john campbell who used to be the director of institutions for the department of corrections but again a good man he's actually when i stepped away from the brand he's the one i phoned in sacramento and he assisted me greatly i have the most respect for him so you know it's like anything else any organization that you go to you have good people and you have bad people i don't care what it is and the department of corrections even back then had some really good people that really cared about what they did and how they did it but you knew who they were so that if you were engaged in illicit activities um you went just the opposite way so what what was the tipping point and breaking point of view kind of you know ending severing your ties with the aryan brotherhood i was um essentially confronted with what i considered two truths the truth that i was living and the truth that i was raised by you brought that up earlier yes and they were in conflict because the idea was is that for instance if you could not get to an individual who was testifying against a member of the aryan brotherhood in court say for a murder then the contemplation was that you would kill his family he would kill his children and his wife his parents at this point in time you're again you're even further along this is probably more than a year after you've taken a leadership role as you yeah we're four or five years ago or five years in and what i know is you're on something called the california commission so you are a part of big decisions yes so these are the things that are being discussed amongst you guys is how do we get retribution for people uh testifying against us if we can't get to them right and you're conflicted amongst other individuals saying hey we should not go after their family and they're saying we are yes okay i just want to make sure i actually argued against it yeah and really in my own mind um believed that i was doing everything i could to move the organization away from that i to this day believe that um man on man um i don't have a problem with that um let me clarify that by saying that i took about non-violence many years ago and have adhered to it sure but principally i understand man on man okay um my father back in the day when you called somebody out and that applies whether you're in prison or out here you know i'm a great advocate of communication but um believing that then what i could not condone and would not condone as the killing of innocent people who didn't know what the rules were you know who didn't know what the organizations were about you know you've probably heard blood and blood out and yeah that whole concept you know the families well i don't hold with hurting women children elders sure period well clearly no we started this whole thing by you phoning another man at a different rival gang and told him his kids were going to be kidnapped right um so i had a decision to make in being confronted with those two truths would i condone the killing of children and women and elders innocent people and they're arguing fiercely for this i'm assuming that this is what we need to do we actually took a vote and i was the only one that voted against it how many people are on this commission four five three three so [ __ ] but imagine sitting in a circle of men and having this discussion about who we murder yes yeah so you're you're almost like playing god here well there's no question about that and you know and to my shame okay i didn't take uh matters into my own my my own hands soon enough with the individuals that are part of the decision-making process well yes yeah so that what ultimately happened was that the father of one of the people that was testifying against the aryan brotherhood was assassinated and in the course of acquiring weapons to fulfill that assassination a young woman was murdered so two people died yes innocent yes and um so i uh actually cooperated with law enforcement uh in that so in the actual murder of those two individuals that's what prompted you to start cooperating with law enforcement is that what you're saying yes and you you laid out the blueprint of how the inner workings of the gang you know were and operated and what was that decision like man because uh you're talking about these uh consequences of death for people not doing what they're supposed to be doing on the outside this is a you're you're a leader of this enterprise let's call it um sure it wasn't just an emotional snap decision maybe it was were you tormented with it uh actually it was a snap it was a snap decision okay yeah it's again being confronted with those two truths i mean it didn't take much for me to realize that i could not and would not condone this um because it's like pandora's box has been opened now they've done it and it's gonna keep happening yeah you have to i had to act on act on that and i did um so yeah there's a lot that comes with that and how and so how did this how was it so i mean you made the snap decision but what did you ultimately do because people are seeing you every day and they're relying on your direction at this point you're you're in charge you just disappeared went to the the medical ward say i'm sick what happened no i just simply called one of the lieutenants down to the back door and told him i needed to use the phone and so he pulled me out and i got on the phone and i called john campbell in sacramento and i told him what i was about to do so they took me and they put me over in new miller hospital and um so like for a medical situation no no no no [ __ ] no not for medical just because it was the most secure place because i was in the hole and you know it you perhaps heard the story of uh when yogi pannell and others took over the adjustment center in san quentin killed the guards killed the white inmates um i'm sure i read about it no that was the same place the same place yes so when they learned that the aryan brotherhood was going to rush new miller hospital to get me then they moved me out got it and that didn't take long so they immediately knew what you were doing when you just disappeared and you from that point forward became a marked man yes how happy was law enforcement for you to debrief on them because you guys are a major thing at this point in time people are dying inside outside because of this it was a big deal yeah i suppose it depends on who you ask sure um but for me uh earlier we were talking about integrity yes we were and um i like to believe that my integrity is intact uh even then so while i was responsible for the development of the organization its infrastructure yeah changing it into a national organization i had to accept responsibility for that and so the idea was just as i'd helped build it my responsibility was to bring it down and um of course there are many who still take issue with that and i don't fault them for that um given their thinking and their own sense of integrity um you know we are not at loggerheads when it comes to our opinions about what is right and what is wrong i don't stand against anything or anyone but i do stand for not taking the life of women and children and others and that's what you and that's what you've always done yeah from the like you said and like you said from the day you got locked up it was for that similar situation here we are at the ending of your full leadership involvement of that yeah so how much longer did you serve or how much time after you know you severed ties were you still inside oh good 30 35 years okay so it was about like 15 years into your bid you decided to 10 years i think is a better estimate too they moved you from san quentin after you did that yes yeah and then that's around the time of the years you fast-forward years later it's when national geographic comes and does where i originally saw you on uh what prison was that at that was it uh corcoran that was that quirk were you shacked up with their famous prisoner at that point in time charles manson i was with yeah i was it's all right i was with charlie i was with sirhan sirhan and uh juan corona and um a few others were you around them enough to have conversations with those types of individuals well we lived in the same pod all right interesting guys not by my estimation really yeah so we can go on the record and say charles manson was not that interesting charles manson was a punk oh there we go that's what i wanted i mean he was a pedophile okay the first thing he did when he came into the unit is he walked over to me and he put his head on my chest and um which is an act of submission okay and um but no i um i suppose some people are fascinated i know a lot of i know a lot of the women that watch the show are quite fascinated as i look into the camera so it's good that you said that about them i don't see it i don't get the fascination you don't stand for anything that that man embodied either so sure to you it's like the guy was no actually when i was leader of the airing brotherhood i i took his girls from him really yeah we were in folsom together prior to that yeah and um utilized them uh they would smuggle stuff in for you guys and you pretty much used them as a pawn to well i taught them how to smuggle weapons in i i um when they brought the metal detectors in in the 70s i was able to figure out how to beat them and so i heard there was some tape or something that you guys used or i don't know the extent of it but electrical tape is part of it yeah but it's more about understanding the um technology itself it's very very simple most people don't understand how simple it is all you have is a magnetic flux um electrical eddies that are generated and you have a receiver so as you walk through that if you have any metal on you ferrous iron content then the electrical eddies penetrate that and that disrupts the magnetic flux which sets off the aluminum it's that simple that's that yeah so how do you figure all that out you said earlier that you you know weren't the best at reading and writing but you seem very very knowledgeable i mean obviously you learn those things but pretty pretty sharp individual thank you when i um as i said went to prison i couldn't read or write but you know i learned i started learning to read from chaplain england and then when i got to old folsom the um the black panthers and the bgf both had mile's little red book and they would read on the tear at night so i got a copy and i would follow along and that increased my skill at reading my basic problem was comprehension because i'm dyslexic but eventually by the time i got to san quentin i had educated myself sufficiently to apply to uc berkeley for undergraduate studies and it was a correspondence course and uh of course the only reason i made it through that is that i had some extraordinary assistance from the professors there at uc berkeley got it at one point one even came to san quentin and uh drug a cherry down the tear and pulled it up in front of my cell and said okay mike what's the problem just um amazing human being interesting you have that experience there yeah it's one of many sure but um so i went from from berkeley to ohio university and got my masters and then to pacific got my phd but so in the course of that you learned how to take charles manson's girls and do some interesting stuff well that's what i mean you learn how to you're learning you're learning physics yeah um in my opinion the whole value of uh higher education is that it teaches you to research just that nothing more if you're writing a dissertation whatever it may be they teach you how to research and write relative to what you've researched but research is the key i mean a lot of people put a lot of stock on the credentials of the diplomas to me they're just pieces of paper sure if you apply yourself and you learn and then you give that practical application to me that's a success as it relates to education and i'm also a firm believer that there's nothing more powerful than education bar none so i was blessed in that i had countless people along the way that helped me sure and i'll always be grateful for that of course so it was using at that time the knowledge i was acquiring uh to have to beat the metal detectors at the san francisco airport and then in turn beat the metal detectors at old folsom and bring in buck knives and and like because you imagine i mean just by way of analogy when um the colonials gave the natives muskets it increased their potential to control their area amongst other tribes who were still using hand weapons and the same is true here rather than cut a piece off the bunk you had a buck knife that was four inches and when you opened it it was eight inches much much more efficient much more powerful yes made of 440 stainless steel and you could make a sheath for it that was not detectable by the metal detector so i have a question so sure so you so you found that opportunity you obviously identified that through your learning and to go back to the did you see charlie manson someone that you didn't like as an avenue to uh i guess make that happen where you're like you know what his women will do what he says there are these types of people so this is my avenue to bring this in here or that just just happens no like i said no no it's not didn't happen accidentally okay it's calculated yeah that's what i mean how calculated was that yeah because he seemed like he would be a useful tool not him not him but his women yes yes that's what i was saying yes so you kind of used him to get to the women's like okay charlie you're trash yeah after the introduction yeah then it was just a matter of of um they wanted to start a commune and you know my studies at that time were in biology yeah and of course growing up on a ranch so it was a trade-off but they also had a certain degree of militancy uh in them to facilitate that and the light bulb went off and you said this is how i'm going to take our the brand to the next level remember that uh the key in any organization in prison is to objectify god so you objectify everyone and you determine in that objectification their value sure and so it's about manipulating that maneuvering that um toward whatever goal you have yeah and that's keeping your finger on the pulse it's um not just generating revenues but networking and the effect of utilization of resources seems you did that yes and so we're fast forwarding back now back getting towards the end of the time but we're going to close it out okay these last few things um so you're at that part of the documentary you've been away from the brand uh for some years now and you still stayed in i think was that 2007 so you got out of prison which year uh just last year just last year yes so welcome home thank you also but uh so there was more attempts on your life and you said you took a vow of non-violence and that vow of non-violence from my understanding is what helped you get released from prison or a big part of it i think it had a lot to do with it yeah so let's talk about that okay well i was obviously involved in a lot of violence for many many years sure extreme violence so in 2015 an attempt was made on my life and um i unfortunately let the individual get behind me where were we you were explaining where so we were back at the vow of non-violence and you being tested because people are trying to assassinate you you're a marx man since you [Music] left the brand yeah well there was an attempt on your life and that helped you get out of prison and you really did see my wife and i started an organization inside prison called live learn and prosper yes and we had um uh 25 groups actually 15 groups of 25 members in each group and one group was gang members one group was addiction and so on um but my wife had written the curriculum and i was teaching it and part of what i was teaching wasn't pacifism but non-violence that the ability to communicate to that integrity again that if you attempt to communicate as opposed to just act out violently because you're afraid or whatever the reason may be so that when this occurred this individual attempted to kill me and um he came pretty close what happened what was what was the situation well i had i was working a double shift and i just finished the second shift and an individual was going to the board the next day and needed some help with some paperwork okay so i sat down on the bench with them and was focused on the paperwork and an individual who had received a phone call on his cell phone from pelican bay that morning to hit me um came up from behind me and you know that's on me i let him get behind me sure but he did a roundhouse kick and took me head over heels off the back of the bench and i went semi unconscious must be a big man to knock you semi unconscious no that's a good kick there's a good kick fair enough and i think size in that context is irrelevant okay but so he grabbed me by the hair and he had a box cutter and he i couldn't see but i could hear her and so is he grabbed me by the hair and reached in to cut my throat i blocked it and it cut my ear in half and he choked up on my hair again and he reached inside even deeper and i blocked it again but he got the back of my throat at the anterior artery and missed that by one millimeter and the third time um after he adjusted himself again um i got my sight back so i saw the weapon and i took the weapon away from him and in an instant um a nanosecond i played it through my head that i was going to break his neck and the blessing in that was my lovely wife i heard her voice say no sky no and so i took the weapon and i put it up underneath me and i laid down on top of it and waited for staff to arrive you were about to kill that man and for some reason that valve non-violence your wife prevented that she's an extraordinary woman seemingly so creating this organization stopping you from being in prison the rest of your life because i'm sure that would have helped your cause to get out oh there's no it's not just that i i credit her with my release from prison okay were it not for her i don't know that i would be out i want to i want to ask a question that kind of is in between that story and your vow of non-violence how what was it inside of you or something that awoke in you or whatever it was that propelled you to finally say this isn't serving me anymore and i want to try something different or i need to live differently because from everything that you went through the trajectory to where you came to having that epiphany in that moment especially when it's life or death situation very remarkable in my my opinion thank you again it's a good question i um people often ask me how i survive 45 years in prison yeah and my answer is easy by staying connected to my way of life and i pretty much did that throughout like i said it did at one point obviously i i lost my connection to my humanity but the journey back wasn't that long because it was a simple matter of connecting um to that way of life again connecting where uh spiritually like this deep down within you to well it's what do you mean by spiritually i'm native so it's a connection to the mother and that way of life so it um you know i built sweat lodges i attend sweat lodge i was a lodge leader at one point the elders allowed me to hold the people's pipe behind the iron gates i conducted ceremony and that was all part of reacquainting myself with the mother and all my relations and that's huge so um it's by no means a giant step uh to reacquaint myself with that integrity which i once held so dear um i don't know if that answers your question no it does okay um and i'm a firm believer that that connection is important to all of us as human beings i couldn't agree more i'm a member of what's referred to as the seventh generation and we believe that at some point in time that all people will turn to indigenous people toward reconnecting with the mother in that way of life on behalf of not only our humanity but the earth itself and i believe that did you get a sense of um like wholeness and purpose from starting that inside with your wife and probably seeing changes and other other inmates that were once off the beaten path and lost and were able to kind of reconnect to their innermost selves or whatever it is that they found solace and to also take paths of non-violence and i don't know if some of them have got gotten out now and you keep in touch and maybe maybe you were spark or catalyst and changing their lives for for the rest of their life well i became an alcohol and drug counselor aod counselor but that's only part of it um essentially what it comes down to is love it's really that simple when you approach other human beings with love in your heart and they're able to sense and feel and understand the sincerity of that the authenticity of that it opens them up my wife has a famous quote that she often shares and that is once you know someone's story you can't help but love them and i believe that beautiful so it was a matter of just sitting down with other men and telling our stories uh and learning from each other you know um where that took us insofar as our humanity i love being human i do and it's the pursuit of that humanity that motivates me um and so i i fancy myself a servant um and that's why my wife and i do the work that we do uh and i know many other people i'm staying with friends right now that uh are the most incredible people i have ever met the most loving they go inside the prisons and they they visit with men they write them letters they talk to them on the phone and that's important stuff oh where they're standing feeling connected and seen yeah in a place where that's just that that doesn't doesn't exist and we talked about this before we got on but i want to touch on this before we end the the touchstone of everything of where a lot of violence addiction substance abuse any any anything really is is sorted and rooted in some form of trauma or traumas i personally believe that i mean i have nothing against the various programs again i don't stand against anything i do stand for a specific modality that is my wife is primarily responsible for and that's a holistic approach to healing and that involves a journey into one's past and potential traumas and then um you know what you can bring to that by way of a holistic approach you know you've perhaps heard it that biopsychosocial spiritual component that holistically balances the individual but when you're dealing with addiction particularly it's about brain chemistry it's about your environment i mean it's something as simple as your circadian rhythms your the food that you eat uh the people that you socialize with you know the voice that you hear in your head that talks to you um cellular regeneration the term for that is epigenetics and all it simply means is the environment's impact upon cellular regeneration every seven days cells regenerate throughout the course of seven years the entire body regenerates we now know that the brain is plastic so neuroplasticity is the field of science that addresses that so that when trauma occurs it creates a fragmented memory in the medial cortex of the brain so that based on that trauma as you and i were discussing when something feels the same the hpa access is triggered that's the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal gland that sends a message to the limbic system that sends a message to the frontal cortex of the medial cortex where that fragmented memory is contained and it's a very simple question that it asks the brain it says am i in danger and because it feels the same the answer is yes yeah and so you see this pattern repeated over and over and over again well through epigenetics in other words altering your environment altering your diet being aware of your circadian rhythms that cellular regeneration we now know that the cells dna are contained within the nucleus we used to think that was the brain but we now know that it's not it's the membrane so it's what you feed that by way of your environment that determines the trigger is associated with that dna code and you can actually shift your entire change your whole life everything you can reprogram the brain and that can it take it takes time and it takes work and like you said it takes looking at your past it does but that's the essence of neuroplasticity you can actually generate new dendrites to become that new memory that new pathway and i don't mean to oversimplify it but in truth it's not really that complex it is simply a matter of of um what environment do you choose you see there are no answers only choices so what environment do you choose to live in you know what do you choose to say to yourself of course that's the most important it is literally the most important aspect but at the root of all that i'll say it again it can't be said enough is love it's real simple you see it's not said enough love for yourself and love for others yes sure look look what's happening in our country right now sure you see what's it devoid of love that's right tolerance connection well those are all subsets of love of lack of of the lack thereof yes that's right and this is uh so everything you were just going over i don't think i think you did a perfect illustration of it i think it was too over simplified too complex this is the crux of the work that your and your wife's organization does with all all humans including people on death row as well yes i understand that correctly yes so your wife does that out there they're not probably letting you back into prison so you're probably doing this work out here well ultimately i am going to go back into that that's wild yeah it's it's a matter of having our programs in there yeah and um again um creating a cooperative state with other organizations including the cdcr and focusing on what it is to be human humanizing rehabilitation in our prison systems that's essentially what's going on there are many people who've done extraordinary work toward that goal yeah and very successfully um arc is a good organization and he's another good organization quite a few people from arc arc on here yeah great organization scott budnik is the president of it he's the founder of it and he's done some amazing things with juveniles sure and they're writing laws on house we could sit here for the next hour talking about his accomplishments it's some amazing stuff but he's given he's getting given the opportunity of some amazing men that we've had the privilege to speak to to come home and then add value to other people's lives people that most people will attach the stigma to this person's a murderer he'll never have any value what a monster you know so they're some of the best people you've ever met in our entire lives like we truly we talked to quite a few people in those situations spend many days live with them he's lived with them i lived with them it's like you would think this people that take people's lives they're they're past the point of no return and i've seen that to be false i would agree with you i mean the idea of redemption yeah and accepting responsibility for your actions um and then applying it for an extended period practical application becomes all important it really does absolutely you see and how you assess that what other people think of me is none of my business yeah that's a tough one it is a tough one for a lot of people because we unless we make it our business and you're [ __ ] up over here it's all right but it can be yeah it has its place you see absolutely and that's what's important is you know one size doesn't fit all it's designer specific and so it's taking that designer specific approach to what works for you and and making the effort to pursue that and whatever that may be fantastic got anything to close with yeah i just want to say this um you know your story embodies darkness hope redemption light and um i just want to say thank you for opening up to us and you know the audience and the world and you know if there's anything that we can ever do to help or support you let us know thank you um i'm sure we'll definitely stay in touch and truly an amazing story thank you so much thank you my pleasure actually yeah do you have a website anywhere people can find you guys yet anything like that yeah we have livelearnprosper.org livelearnprosper.org fantastic we're restructuring the website um shauna is our administrator and and she's done an amazing job under coven 19 we've been somewhat restricted so we haven't been able to do but yeah we'll be meeting um hopefully sometime this week and um maybe put some podcasts up there ourselves yeah you'll have some good content to uh to work with we're going to clip quite a few segments of this show some people to get them in here to listen to the full thing great so i'm very very uh grateful that you took the time to come here i mean you came from not only to see us but you came from northern california and uh it's very impressive that you could uh make the shifts that you've made and then apply that the one thing i never lose sight of is my gratitude i embrace it daily absolutely and i've had many many people over the years that have been kind enough to me yeah to assist me in my journey and i'm deeply grateful for that so my responsibility in that is to the extent that i can to get back and you're doing it thank you thank you for being here you

Channel: The Damage Done Podcast

Views: 629,716

Rating: 4.7622943 out of 5

Keywords: aryan brotherhood, the brand, the ab, ab, prison, prison gangs, notorious prison gangs, murder, podcasts, the damage done, damage done, damage done podcast, podcast, prison gang, white supremacy, redemption, spirituality, 12 step recovery, the 12 steps, 12 steps, the aryan brotherhood, anti racist, social justice, prison reform, true crime, true crime stories, true crime podcast, drug addiction, heroin addiction, inside the aryan brotherhood, Michael Thompson, mike thompson

Id: sFiugIZo13I

Length: 85min 51sec (5151 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021