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in the United States of America some of the world's most dangerous and notorious
00:00:12
prisoners are locked behind bars he was incredibly strong to the point where prison guards started
00:00:20
calling him the Hulk Tyler Davis Bingham is one of them TD was probably the most
00:00:26
dangerous man I've ever known he was feared by inmates he was an imposing figure Bingham
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started out as a petty criminal spending time in Youth Correctional Facilities almost like an Alcatraz
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system for kids what you learn is you got to fight and you got to be violent in order to survive he was a Fearless
00:00:46
fighter and his physical prowess made him a natural gang leader he stabs a guy multiple times I
00:00:55
think over a dozen times TD never allowed anyone to live when he engaged in an individual it was
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to the death even when moved to a Maximum Security Prison bingum remain a deadly
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threat what makes him so dangerous was the fact that he could literally just write a couple letters down on a piece
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of paper and have somebody killed thousands of miles away that level of power just doesn't exist in
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society [Music] [Music] San Quinton Rehabilitation Center is the oldest prison in
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California it has a reputation as being a really violent place where you know you kind of
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have to fight for your life it was a dangerous place for anybody that had to serve time there or work
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there you have not only the smell of flatulence and urine but also testosterone and
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sweat in some instances depending blood and um [Music] decay all of the major gangs and gang
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leaders and all the problem inmates went to San Quenton it was maybe the most violent
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prison in California there was some blind spots in the prison where Tower officers with
00:02:52
guns could not see and that's where some of the stabbings and some of the meetings would
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occur this maximum security Correctional Facility has the largest death row in the US and houses nearly 4,000
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inmates Tyler Davis Bingham AKA The Hulk was one of [Music] them TD is a man's
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man and probably the most violent individual I've ever met in my life he started excelling in this prison gang
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structure and within just a few short years basically became a leader of the ab the Aran Brotherhood they were white
00:03:38
supremacist group they wanted to protect the white inmates from the other gangs whether they were Black Or Hispanic or
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whatever Bingham committed his first crime as a child and throughout his teens was in and out of juvenile
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detention centers it was literally a situation where kids would would just kind of
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fight it out and um you know guards either were repressive and violent towards them or just kind of let the
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violence happen between the kids bingham's criminal career escalated and he ended up in an adult prison where he
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ruled with his fists this guy's won every single fight he's ever fought in
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his life Bingham he he took his weightlifting seriously he was a big sly guy they called him the
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[Music] Hulk if I were to create the image of a prototypical Aryan Brotherhood gang
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member it would be T [Music] Bingham born in Sacramento California Tyler Davis Bingham grew up with his
00:05:02
parents an older brother he started getting into trouble with the law from an early
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age his first arrest was when he was 9 years old for petty theft and by 14 he was in the California Youth Authority
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which is basically like a prison hellhole for kids what got TD Bingham sent to the
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California Youth Authority as a teenager was kind of a Romeo and Juliet story when he was 14 he fell in love
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with a girl who was you know from his area in California and her mother didn't approve
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she didn't like TD Bingham and her daughter was like head over heels in love with him so they decide hey we're
00:05:46
going to run away to Texas in a l what they did was they stole a car and they drove all night long into the next
00:05:54
morning and they you know fell asleep in each other's arms in the backseat of the
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car that night and when they woke up there was a sheriff's deputy right there you know
00:06:07
knocking on their window trying to figure out what the hell they were doing there and they tried to play it off and
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say oh hey we're from this area you know we're just sleeping overnight but the
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cop didn't believe him and you know he comes to find out hey this is a stolen
00:06:21
car out of California and takes TD Bingham into custody and he ultimately ends up going to the California Youth
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Authority [Music] the California Youth Authority known as cya was designed as a state level
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Detention Facility for people under the age of 18 it was the largest youth prison
00:06:44
system in the country at one time they had 10,000 what we called Wards not inmates they called them CU they were
00:06:51
Wards of the Court juveniles who enter a correctional facility at a very young age are already placed at risk it's kind
00:06:58
of the chicken the egg was the risk prior to them being arrested or is the juvenile correctional facility going to
00:07:04
be the risk factor or is it both if the juvenile correctional facility is equipped to handle the youth
00:07:12
rehabilitate the youth and put the youth on a right track it may be the best thing ever this however was not the case
00:07:19
for Tyler Davis Bingham at cya the reports out of the California Youth Authority are just horrifying this
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was not just a punitive environment but it was B basically a prison hellhole I mean the the CIA system was worse than a
00:07:34
lot of adult prisons in California I got hired by the courts to go in and do an assessment on gang
00:07:42
violence so I walked and talked in 11 institutions came back wrote a report said the place is a
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mess kids were being held in like Dark Cells as a form of punishment you know no windows and lights get turned
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out kids were getting tortured in there kids were living in completely unsanitary
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environments guards would throw gas canisters into their cells as a punishment and just let them sit there
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in it for a while you know urine and feces all over the place chronic under Staffing sometime you'd have one guard
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looking after 60 or 70 kids and you know these kids just ran a muck and and assaulted each other stabbed each other
00:08:25
the other risk factor with juvenile's going to Correctional Facilities is peer
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influence so if a juvenile goes to a correctional facilities and they are surrounded by other juveniles who tend
00:08:34
to be maladaptive who tend to engage in criminal activity lying cheating stealing and violence that might
00:08:41
actually make the juvenile worse so to speak because now the juvenile is wanting to impress his peers or her
00:08:47
peers the juvenile wants to up the anti the juvenile starts to realize that in this circle of friends this is the way
00:08:54
you are supposed to behave and so that can certainly be a risk factor for the juvenile to enter Correctional
00:09:00
Facilities later on in life the California Youth Authority was a training ground and a breeding ground
00:09:09
for the state prison system this is where young gang members hone their skills you know it was almost like an
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Alcatraz system for kids you know it's hard to understand the psychological impact that that has
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and also you know ultimately what you learn is you got to fight and you got to be violent in order to survive TD
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Bingham was released from the C at around the age of 19 his time there would have made a huge impact on his
00:09:39
life I think like it did for a lot of people the C turned TD Bingham into basically a troubled kid into a
00:09:47
full-fledged gangster they start to view entering Correctional Facilities as something
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normal as part of their track to becoming an adult and that's when it becomes dangerous because that means
00:09:58
that in carceration is completely normalized in the juvenile's brain and so they start to think that going back
00:10:06
to prison and recidivating and reoffending is just a normal part of life for the next few years was in and
00:10:12
out of prison you have multiple Escape attempts now an adult TD Bingham had chosen his criminal career path and he
00:10:21
had upped the ante and then in his early 20s he robbed a liquor store what he did there was he
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basically you know know held the clerk at gunpoint walked the clerk into a bathroom whacked him on the head with a
00:10:36
pistol and then when he was arrested for that his excuse was well hey I needed money so I took it TD Bingham pleaded
00:10:43
guilty to robbery of the first degree and assault with a deadly weapon he was initially sent to San Quinton prison but
00:10:50
in 1973 moved to old fome old fome state prison is one of the oldest prisons in California it's kind of easily
00:10:59
recognizable because it has this iconic guard Tower okay old fome you know was built
00:11:05
in the 1850s it looks like something out of the movies five tiers in each soul block
00:11:14
Gunners on the rail Gunners and gun Towers worst of the worst for years back in the' 7s 80s and even in
00:11:26
the '90s there were kind of constant stabbing I mean certain prisons were War
00:11:32
zones Infamous fome inmates included Sunny Barger a founding member of the Hell's Angels and Charles Jackson AKA
00:11:41
the East Bay Slayer convicted of killing at least seven women and a man it was here in fulam that TD Bingham
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had his first contact with prison gangs T Bingham is a guy who who spent most of
00:12:00
his life in prison including during his childhood who's basically a product of
00:12:06
the system originally prison gangs were essentially like a Loosely formed group of guys that would sort of band together
00:12:13
for protection typically most prison gangs go by ethnicity you have Mexican gangs
00:12:21
you have black gangs you have white supremacist gangs being part of a gang in prison is
00:12:29
pretty common and a lot of these inmates may not have been gang members on the outside but when you come into prison
00:12:38
it's for your own protection and survival if a race riot starts or an intergang brawl starts you're going to
00:12:48
have to choose a side and let's say you're a white inmate and the whites and
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the blacks are fighting on the yard or the whites and the Mexicans are fighting on the yard if you don't get involved
00:12:59
and support the whites when it's over they're going to hit you and there was
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an obvious choice of prison gang for TD Bingham the Aryan Brotherhood is a California originated prison gang that
00:13:15
started in the 60s and they basically formed as a defensive they were kind of outnumbered by the Hispanics and blacks
00:13:24
so they wanted to form a group of white inmates to defend themselves the Aryan Brotherhood was pretty well
00:13:31
established by the time TD Bingham found himself in prison he immediately joins up with the Aryan Brotherhood and
00:13:36
becomes kind of this you know uh like almost heroic figure within the gang right
00:13:44
away TD Ming's reputation during those years was somebody who had the strength
00:13:49
of like four or five dudes who if you were next to him and you were guys were fighting people together you weren't
00:13:55
going to lose he presented a pretty imposing figure within fulam the prison gang was
00:14:05
evolving into a much bigger organization they kind of got into from the whole white supremacist ideology and
00:14:14
more into drug dealing and being in business uh they have a very strong reputation of being assaultive and in
00:14:23
killing people and things like that and being a very violent gang with his intimidating presence and Authority TD
00:14:30
Bingham fitted right in with the gang he started excelling in this prison gang structure and within just a few short
00:14:38
years basically became a leader of the ab and become one of the most powerful gangsters in American
00:14:53
history in the mid-70s TD Bingham was locked up at Old fome prison in California
00:15:00
he had joined a white supremacist gang the Aryan Brotherhood and quickly Rose to the ranks to become one of its
00:15:08
leaders when I got to Old fulam I was the youngest man to be at Old fulam pretty much everybody else had
00:15:15
gray hair and they put me in the hole there my name is Michael Thompson and I'm a
00:15:22
former member of the Aran Brotherhood I was introduced to the big boys you had all the major gangs you had
00:15:36
the Aran Brotherhood the Mexican Mafia the Texas Syndicate the black gorilla family the Black Panthers you had
00:15:43
Charlie Manson these were veteran convicts and uh for the most part skilled Warriors often times the cost of joining
00:15:56
a gang might even involve egregious type of activities such as having to prostitute yourselves having to smuggle
00:16:02
drugs having to carry out assaults that you don't want to carry out even murders
00:16:07
and so in order to have this protection which is basically a false sense of protection in a lot of ways you have to
00:16:15
sometimes compromise your own values and possibly your own freedom in order to engage in criminal activity that may not
00:16:21
benefit you directly but will benefit the gang one prison gang the Black Panthers soon approached Young new
00:16:29
prisoner Michael Yogi approached me on the yard as the head of the Black Panthers uh with the idea of recruiting
00:16:38
me he gave me a Spiel that included The Communist Manifesto and the pig establishment and
00:16:48
all things that I really did not have the intellectual capacity to comprehend I couldn't read or write
00:16:59
and um I had no understanding of politics in this country but the one thing I did know was that I was
00:17:08
American and so that I declined and my decline basically for that reason I told him um I'm not really
00:17:18
smart enough to understand everything that you're telling me what I do know is
00:17:21
that I'm American and um if I understand you correctly you're a communist
00:17:30
and so the answer is no and he said well he said you're either with us or against
00:17:38
us and I said well I reckon I'm against you then declining an invitation to join
00:17:44
a gang was insulting it meant that Thompson had to fight just to stay alive and as I walked through the gate of the
00:17:53
yard four blacks rushed me with knives took me to the ground and they started stabbing me and they were stabbing me
00:18:00
high they weren't hitting anything vital really and in a couple of instances I
00:18:06
felt the knives go all the way through me and [ __ ] the asphalt underneath me but it seemed almost as quickly as
00:18:12
they had jumped on me they jumped off and the second they jumped off shots were fired and I could feel
00:18:21
the asphalt penetrating my body from the shots as well as some of the shrapnel but I was determined to walk off the
00:18:34
yard so when the guards came out with their gy and were going to roll me over onto
00:18:40
it I refused to let him do that and I told him I'm going to walk off this yard
00:18:46
took me a minute to get up and I eventually got up and I shuffled off the yard the same way I shuffled
00:18:53
on and the injuries were such that once we got past the doors I said okay put me
00:18:59
on the gurnie but it was a matter of Pride and that I walk off that yard and it had an enormous impact on
00:19:08
those individuals who had attempted to kill me one they had failed and two I'd
00:19:13
gotten up under my own Steam and walked off the yard and that did not bode well for them
00:19:20
another gang member was impressed by his courage and Michael was asked to join a
00:19:25
different gang you know the next person to a approached me was TD Bingham he came up
00:19:31
and uh extended his hand and we shook hands and he told me that uh he liked the way I handled myself he asked me
00:19:39
well what do you think would you like to join up with us and I told him TD I said for right
00:19:48
now I'm just going to do my own thing he spit and then he laughed he says but we
00:19:53
got your back and I said that isn't necessary I I can fight my own fights and um he laughed again and I
00:20:03
like the hell out of TD TD is a man's man and um probably the most violent individual I've ever met in my
00:20:14
life I didn't know a thing about the Aran Brotherhood back then you know my initial impression was like so many
00:20:21
people that uh they were Nazis or they were racists and I certainly knew that they were dope FS cuz they all had the
00:20:28
phys iCal characteristics of that track marks on their arms and in truth I wasn't
00:20:34
impressed if you're targeted by the Aran Brotherhood you you know if they can get
00:20:40
to you they're going to kill you they're a very dangerous gang and not a gang to
00:20:45
be taken lightly eventually Michael Thompson gave in and accepted TD's offer they actually lived pretty good in
00:20:53
prison they had everything they wanted they had drugs they had commodities they had clothes back then and um that
00:21:01
resonated with me so what he was really telling me was that they controlled their
00:21:07
environment and that appealed to me it was 1977 and by now the Aryan Brotherhood was a powerful structure in
00:21:16
the California prison system the Aran Brotherhood gets involved in anything that they think will be profitable for
00:21:27
them in prison violence is the number one currency and gangs use it extensively it is via the mechanism of
00:21:39
violence that the gangs control so violence is the number one currency it was not easy to join the
00:21:50
Aryan Brotherhood in fulam TD Bingham held the keys getting to be a member you had to
00:21:58
be be sponsored by a member and recommended by that [Music] member you had to do work for them and
00:22:09
usually that work meant assaulting somebody at their [Music] behest The Gangs only want people that
00:22:20
they think will help them uh produce that fear and intimidation at that time TD was probably the most
00:22:32
influential member of the Aryan Brotherhood and the reason he was because he had established himself his
00:22:39
physical prowess was unparalleled extremely wellb built extremely strong and extremely skilled
00:22:49
in combat there's this sort of cliche line of Blood In Blood Out which basically
00:22:56
means that you have to kill somebody or come pretty damn close to join the ab and in order to get out you have to
00:23:04
die each time you go out to the yard you knew you were going to fight so say for
00:23:10
instance the black Rea family would go down to one end of the yard and the Aran Brotherhood and Mexico Mafia would go to
00:23:16
the other end of the yard and at a pre-agreed upon signal they would merge to the center of
00:23:24
the yard and begin combat and that happened every time we went to the yard by 1978 Michael Thompson had proved
00:23:37
himself to the Aryan Brotherhood and joined TD Bingham on the battlefield it was a blood bath so much
00:23:46
so that they had to bring the fir truck out in the yard to wash the blood away TD ended up killing a man that
00:23:56
day TD never allowed anyone to live when he engaged an individual it was to the death and his intent engaging that
00:24:08
individual was to kill him he did so efficiently effectively and swiftly Tyler Davis Bingham was one of
00:24:21
the leaders of the Aryan Brotherhood a white supremacist gang that controlled many of the West Coast prisons Michael
00:24:29
Thompson was bingham's right-hand man TD bingham's role with the Aran Brotherhood
00:24:34
at that time it was one man one vote and you did have those individuals who were
00:24:38
more influential than others and TD was one of those individuals together Bingham and
00:24:44
Thompson regularly got involved in bloody and fatal battles with gang rivals in the prison
00:24:50
yard that upset the administration considerably because so many people have been injured and killed
00:25:01
California prisons back then were extremely dangerous I don't think that there was a
00:25:07
prison in the United States a prison system in the United States that was more dangerous people would get stabbed and
00:25:16
killed and The Yards would get briefly shut down they'd bring the victim out in
00:25:21
a gurnie and then they just reactivate things just like you know business as usual TD and I were kicked out of fome
00:25:29
was because of the violence in 1979 TD Bingham and Michael Thompson were transferred to San Quenton
00:25:38
State Prison in California San Quenton was sort of Ground Zero for a lot of violence
00:25:44
between prison gangs all of the major gangs and gang leaders and all of the problem inmates went to San
00:25:53
qu it was a dangerous place for for anybody that had to serve time there or work there San Quinton back in the 70s
00:26:01
was falling apart San Quinton cells were smaller I could take one elbow and put it on the wall and outstretch my other
00:26:12
arm and I could touch wall the wall there was some blind spots in the prison where Tower officers with guns
00:26:22
could not see and that's where some of the stabbings and some of the meetings
00:26:26
would occur but gang violence continued for the Aryan Brotherhood and business was
00:26:34
booming they controlled all fome in San Quenton so you had transient populations
00:26:40
there from 3,000 to 5,000 depending on the time a lot of overcrowding it's like
00:26:45
a small City they want to control whatever they can in the in the institution um and and they do that by
00:26:58
by fear and intimidation well urine brotherhood's primary racket if you will was violence
00:27:07
violence For Hire it hired out to um other organizations but it was also again used
00:27:13
again his currency towards controlling the resources in prison if you borrow from them and you
00:27:23
don't pay it back they'll kill you if you buy drugs from them and don't pay
00:27:28
them they'll kill you any legitimate or illegitimate business that they can sink their teeth
00:27:35
into they're going to do because first and foremost the Aryan Brotherhood is a
00:27:39
money-making organization essentially my observation of the Aran Brotherhood is their rivals or anybody that interferes
00:27:48
with the rackets that they're controlling they're controlling the drugs they're controlling the pro
00:27:58
stitution they're controlling the lone sharking they're controlling everything the product that they're
00:28:04
moving into the prison paying off the guards to do that whilst TD Bingham ramped up the
00:28:11
Aryan Brotherhood operations it caused tension between rival prison gangs TD and I weren't at San Quenton
00:28:19
more than a week and we got into it with the Mexican mafia they had stabbed an associate of the ab right after TD and I
00:28:27
got there next time we went out to the yard TD and I we didn't have any knives but we beat
00:28:33
the hell out of them but this time an armed guard in the prison gun Tower intervened the Gunner that Tower was
00:28:41
only 12 ft off the ground so if he leaned over the rail he was probably 8 ft away from us he was shooting TD and I
00:28:49
in the back while he was loading he was that damn good TD and I both took five rounds
00:28:56
in the back and the only reason we stopped what we were doing is that the the damn lead from the shotgun got so
00:29:03
hot that it was unbearable doctor said the only reason that it didn't kill us is that didn't
00:29:09
puncture along with the heart was because TD and I both had so much muscle on our
00:29:16
backs events like that usually lead to Warfare but the Mexican Mafia and the ab were
00:29:25
allies so you don't really want to go to Warfare because what that Warfare does
00:29:30
is it intrudes upon business it's not because you like each other it's because
00:29:35
you're in business together and you're making a lot of money and you don't want
00:29:38
to stop that money is green and really there's no color when it comes to money so you
00:29:46
often find that these racially motivated gangs are willing to put all of that aside in order to get their needs met
00:29:52
and usually those needs are Financial the Aryan Brotherhood continued to grow and despite all all the gangs activities
00:29:59
and crimes TD Bingham managed to get paroled in 1981 Tyler Bingham was briefly paroled
00:30:09
and it seems like he attempted to go straight and start a new life with a family he fell in love and married this
00:30:17
woman and basically they moved their family out to Texas and he became an oil rig guy while he was paroled he was
00:30:25
still a full-fledged Aran brother Ood member it was harder to communicate with prisoners during those days and you also
00:30:33
have to remember just how much clout that he had within the ab I think this is a guy who could pretty much do
00:30:37
whatever the hell he wanted TD Bingham formerly adopted two of his partner's
00:30:43
children they also had a third one together but family life only lasted for 4 years that time period ended because he
00:30:53
went into a bank with a revolver and robbed a bank at gunpoint and stuck the revolver underneath the door and pointed
00:30:59
it right at the clerk and then he made off with $112,000 and was arrested a day or two later and sentence to 25 years in
00:31:07
federal prison that's not surprising considering that you know he started engaging in
00:31:16
criminal activity at the age of nine and so he has a lifelong history of this pattern it's really the only thing he
00:31:24
knows how to do convicted for bank robbery a federal crime 38-year-old TD Bingham was sent to Lok federal prison
00:31:33
in California the Aryan Brotherhood was already present there and welcomed TD Bingham with open arms when certain
00:31:42
members of the Aran Brotherhood from California got convicted of federal crimes they took the gang to the federal
00:31:49
prisons as the Aran Brotherhood in California started to evolve they needed better
00:31:56
organization so they decided they were going to have maybe three leaders be the commission that would make decisions
00:32:03
serious decisions who gets into the ab who gets hit TD Bingham was ready to take back the
00:32:12
leadership he was basically made a commissioner in the federal system instantaneously pretty much the same
00:32:18
same time that he put his foot down in the first prison yard TD's role on the
00:32:23
commission was essentially if TD says that this needs to happen pretty much the commission votes that way but he
00:32:32
wouldn't just send orders he made sure to prove he was still a Hands-On gang
00:32:37
boss when T got to Lum par he learned that there was an individual there that was marked for hit and he didn't
00:32:45
hesitate the Fell's name was Gary evilsizer so he goes up to Gary evilsizer with a prison m shank and
00:32:52
stabs him he stabs a guy multiple times I think over a dozen times attempting to
00:32:58
kill him but evilsizer somehow survives he made no effort to get away with it TD
00:33:04
Bingham would be moved to a maximum security facility but nothing would stop this gang Leader's reign of
00:33:11
terror the Bureau of Prisons thought that maybe they'd solved the problem by
00:33:14
doing this and that these guys weren't going to to find a way to you know get
00:33:19
around those restrictions and kill more people but of course they were wrong TD Bingham one of the leaders of the
00:33:31
Aryan Brotherhood was back in prison and he immediately asserted his power within
00:33:38
1 month of going to federal prison he stabs somebody gets arrested for attempted murder gets another 12 years
00:33:44
tacked onto his prison sentence on top of the 25 he's already doing because of
00:33:48
that stabbing he's shipped off to uh more restrictive housing TD Bingham was
00:33:54
quickly sent far away from California to the United States Penitentiary Marion in
00:34:00
Illinois USP Marion was the first sort of supermax prison after Alcatraz kind of collapsed and couldn't really be used
00:34:10
as a prison anymore and so for many years it was kind of seen as the go-to place to house the most dangerous or
00:34:18
otherwise violent you know offenders in the uh federal prison system rather than
00:34:23
cut TD Bingham off from any contact with the Aryan Brotherhood he is was locked up with another Power leader of the
00:34:30
white supremacist gang Barry Mills I think T and Mills were already well acquainted and they're already
00:34:37
friends and they already obviously were cohorts at that point so you know here's
00:34:43
two Aran Brotherhood Commissioners in the same place they were the most influential
00:34:50
members of the ab commission they were both housed in Maran Illinois and um responsible for the
00:34:58
death of a lot of people at this point have the ability to spread their wings out and not just grow
00:35:05
the gang but organize it in in ways that you know haven't really happened before now they're all across America
00:35:15
and they're recruiting people who have never been to California into the Aran
00:35:19
Brotherhood and all of a sudden it turns into you know a California prison gang to something with a nationwide reach the
00:35:28
gangs are very sophisticated you know you can't take them lightly every time
00:35:34
that law enforcement adjusts to how prison gangs operated they would adjust and change their method of
00:35:43
operation from the perspective of the Department of Justice the advantage of getting these guys into federal prison
00:35:50
is kind of seen as a way to break the gang up but there's this giant caveat to
00:35:54
that because really the only way to do that is to cut off their ability to communicate with the outside and that
00:36:01
legally is restricted communication is the lifeblood of the gangs today it's cell
00:36:08
phon smuggled cell phones prior to cell phones they used people paroling they would take out a message or they would
00:36:15
talk to visitors they had written correspondence most of it coded well communication amongst the Aryan
00:36:23
Brotherhood and prison was multifaceted we used code s and kites that we would send through
00:36:31
Messengers if it was going to the street we had people come visit us and often times we would send coded messages out
00:36:38
through the mail you had the most common way was to take urine on yellow legal paper and you would write the message
00:36:46
and Ur on the legal paper it would dry and you couldn't see it but when the party who received it got it they would
00:36:52
take an iron or just a torch and heat it and the wording would come out I think TD Bingham and Barry Mills had
00:37:01
sort of worldwide domination aspirations they wanted to grow this gang into something the likes of which had never
00:37:09
been seen before and that's what they were attempting to do in 1995 the government sent TD
00:37:16
Bingham Barry Mills and other high ranking members to the federal supermax prison USP Florence admax in Colorado
00:37:25
that's the most secure prison in United States so there's terrorists in there
00:37:30
there's gang leaders from all over the country well they got moved to adx because the Federal Bureau of Prisons
00:37:37
wanted to restrict their ability to communicate and Order AB members throughout the federal bureau prison
00:37:43
system to do different you know acts of violence so they moved them to adx to restrict their ability to
00:37:50
communicate the Cali of individual there you have are jihadist and I think um the
00:37:56
idea there was to to essentially cut off the head of the snake via that isolation
00:38:01
it's pretty isolated their mail is heavily censored I don't believe they receive contact
00:38:07
visits so they receive video visits from inside the supermax prison TD Bingham still managed to send out
00:38:20
messages and engage in Conflict remotely with another gang the DC blacks there was plenty of violence
00:38:28
between DC blacks and the Aryan Brotherhood there were murders back and forth you kill one of ours we kill one
00:38:33
of yours type of thing and then um it kind of the tension came to a head where the Aryan brotherhood's commission you
00:38:41
know decided like hey are we going to call an allout War here there was a number of notes that that went out but
00:38:48
the note that came from TD Bingham basically just said war with DC blacks It Was Written in invisible ink and it
00:38:55
was attached to a letter that just had a bunch of written on it that was totally
00:38:59
innocuous if you know how to read it and you you reveal the invisible ink it's
00:39:04
really a Kill Order TD Bingham declared a war against the DC blacks gang at the federal prison
00:39:12
Lewisburg in Pennsylvania it kicked off a number of other stabbings I think two murders and
00:39:18
two other attempted murders that same day in Lewisburg the letter was written in adx Florence where TD Bingham and
00:39:26
Barry Mills were already housed and it did underscore how dangerous he was because he was able to write you know a
00:39:35
couple letters on a piece of paper and kick off basically a Nationwide race war within the prison
00:39:42
system there are a number of ways to communicate you know you and I could stand here and look at each other and I
00:39:49
could use Morse code with my eyelids and here's the thing when you have nothing
00:39:55
else to do but sit in yourself and conceive ideas that will circumvent that which they're attempting
00:40:06
to impose upon you sooner or later you're going to find a way to circumvent that Authority in
00:40:17
2002 the government finally indicted several members of the Aran Brotherhood including Bingham under the racketeer
00:40:25
influenced and corrupt organization act known as Rico Rico is a federal statute that was
00:40:34
originally used against organized crime back in New York New Jersey and Chicago uh they used it against the loosa Nostra
00:40:42
and it's based on a conspiracy it's a very very effective way to prosecute a
00:40:49
gang the federal government indicted about 40 AB members they were seeking the death
00:40:56
penalty against 40 individuals that's pretty damn significant I had just retired and they brought me back to
00:41:07
organize the security for that trial because number one we had 40 defendants we had to keep track of I think we had
00:41:15
70 defense Witnesses we had to keep track of and we had over a 100 prosecution witnesses one thing as the ab is known
00:41:24
for is they always want to escape so we were always dealing with Escape plots the death penalty was on the table okay
00:41:33
so the ab was saying hey if if any AB member gets executed they'll take out four or five
00:41:41
cops well during the course and these Rico prosecutions take a couple of years during a course of this several
00:41:48
prosecutors changed and they decided to take the death penalty off the table the
00:41:55
RICO prosecution of the aring Brotherhood was an absolute failure they failed in that the best they could get
00:42:01
out of that was life sentences life sentences for individuals that were already serving life so that was the
00:42:07
expenditure of millions of dollars so that they could have another life sentence added onto their life
00:42:14
sense in November 2006 TD Bingham and other AB gang members were convicted of violent crimes in Aid of racketeering
00:42:23
and murder Bingham received a sentence of life without parole Bingham remained at the supermax
00:42:35
prison USP Florence admax in Colorado I think that because of how restrictive TD
00:42:42
bingham's prison conditions are he doesn't wield any direct power over the
00:42:47
ab right now but he's kind of an icon or he's seen as sort of this influential
00:42:53
figure who's almost like a martyr or kind of you know something approaching a
00:42:58
saint within the gang my feelings about the Aran Brotherhood today is that um they
00:43:06
parallel most your hate groups I despise it I despise the idea that young minds are being
00:43:14
influenced by individuals who by my best estimation and opinion are sick in their own
00:43:23
minds what makes TD Bingham one of the most dangerous prisoners in history is not his ability as a fighter which was
00:43:32
pretty incredible but what makes him so dangerous was the fact that he could literally just write a couple letters
00:43:40
down on a piece of paper and have somebody killed thousands of miles away like that level of power just doesn't
00:43:47
exist in society giving him 15 minutes a day outside of his cell could result in
00:43:53
in people getting killed giving him you know phone calls with whoever he wants could result in getting people
00:44:01
killed I've always understood something about TD and that his he has no compulsion against
00:44:10
killing regardless I think if TD Bingham got out of his current you know cell he'd still be a
00:44:18
threat for right now I think the feds are pretty confident they've got him locked down to the point where he can
00:44:24
interact with people and if that's not true true they probably won't realize it
00:44:28
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