00:00:06
SAM DOUGLAS: In the United
States of America, the world's most infamous
criminals are locked up.
00:00:12
One of the deadliest
prisoners of all time is Thomas Silverstein. MIKE MARINO: They called
him Terrible Tommy.
00:00:20
Probably one
of the most dangerous human beings on Earth. - He knew how to make
weapons, inflict
00:00:26
damage and violence on people. LINA HAJI: He manages to commit
three murders in prison,
00:00:32
and he kills
a correctional officer. No one is off limits
at this point. SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein
was so feared
00:00:38
even other convicted
killers wanted him taken out of the prison. PETE EARLEY: They
can't control him.
00:00:54
He literally changed
the face of corrections. HECTOR BRAVO: All
the bodies that he
00:00:58
left in his wake doing such
acts, he didn't skip a beat. SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein killed
with stealth and savagery.
00:01:05
MIKE MARINO:
The guy put his head against the bars of the cell,
and he strangled him to death.
00:01:13
PETE EARLEY: He grabs
his 10-inch shank. The two officers go, whoa,
whoa, whoa, he's got a knife.
00:01:20
And he starts
stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing. HECTOR BRAVO: He was
stabbed 67 times.
00:01:28
Tommy Silverstein was
the perfect definition of an evil man who showed no
mercy or remorse for the people
00:01:34
that he killed. PETE EARLEY: He liked people
to know, if you get in my face, I will kill you.
00:01:41
LINA HAJI: If you
disrespect us, not only will you be murdered,
you will be put on display.
00:01:46
This is psychopathic bravado. - It should be hard
to kill someone in prison, but he was a master at it.
00:02:25
SAM DOUGLAS: The federal
penitentiary of Marion, built in 1963 to replace
Alcatraz as America's highest
00:02:33
security prison. MIKE MARINO: Marion
only held 380 inmates. Extremely small for a prison.
00:02:43
Extremely small. They just had the most
dangerous people and the most violent people there.
00:02:49
PETE EARLEY: The theory
in the Bureau of Prisons was 15% of the inmates
cause all of the problems.
00:02:57
So let's take that 15%, and
we'll put them into one place-- all the troublemakers in other
prisons, all of the murderers,
00:03:09
the absolute worst
of the worst. MIKE MARINO: In Marion, I was
in H unit from '79 till '83.
00:03:19
It was only 55 people, and we
had six murderers in that unit in a four-year period.
00:03:30
That was an astounding
murder rate. The chances of you getting
killed are a lot [bleep]
00:03:34
better. SAM DOUGLAS: Half
of those six murders were committed by just one
inmate, Thomas Silverstein.
00:03:55
PETE EARLEY: I'm
the only journalist who's ever interviewed him. My name is Pete Earley, the
author of "No Human Contact,"
00:04:04
a book about Thomas Silverstein
and the American prison system. Thomas Silverstein,
he was the most hated
00:04:12
by the correctional officers. In the federal
prison system, he was considered this monster,
this horrible, terrible killer.
00:04:20
HECTOR BRAVO: All
the carnage he inflicted while he was housed
in prison, all the bodies
00:04:26
that he left in his wake,
normal inmates don't do that. You can tell by looking
at the photographs,
00:04:32
his eyes are hollow. You could look into his soul. Some guys just
got it like that.
00:04:36
MIKE MARINO: If Tommy
got to disliking you, you were in trouble,
man, because he
00:04:41
just was driven by anger. I don't know where
it came from, but he was obviously
an angry dude.
00:04:55
SAM DOUGLAS: In the coastal
city of Long Beach, just south of Los Angeles, is
where Thomas Edward Silverstein
00:05:01
was born, on February 4, 1952. PETE EARLEY: His actual
father, Thomas Conway, was a bank robber
from Oklahoma.
00:05:16
He married his mother,
Virginia Price, but they both had
alcohol problems and they both were
vicious fighters.
00:05:25
They became famous
in the tabloids, known as the battling Conways. They would fight
in front of a judge,
00:05:32
and then when they were
leaving the courthouse, embrace each other
as if they were in some kind
00:05:38
of Hollywood movie-- twisted love. SAM DOUGLAS: When he was
four, Thomas's father
00:05:46
was jailed for robbing a bank. His mother remarried
to a man named Sid Silverstein,
who adopted him,
00:05:53
but his home life
didn't get any easier. PETE EARLEY: Silverstein
grew up in an extremely
00:05:59
violent household. His mother beat him
even as a small child. When he was five
and he wet the bed,
00:06:07
she made him drink
his own urine. This was the kind of atmosphere
that he grew up in.
00:06:13
LINA HAJI: I think
it's very significant that his mother abused
him, not just physically,
00:06:19
but that she abused him
emotionally by humiliating him, by shaming him, by making him
feel small for some things
00:06:28
that were beyond his control. Something as trivial
as wetting the bed, which is quite normal
for children, it's
00:06:36
sending the message that
something is wrong with you. And then drinking urine is
so harsh and so egregious.
00:06:44
This is likely to inflict
trauma at a young age. PETE EARLEY: When he was
little in third grade,
00:06:54
a bully beat him up,
and he went home, and Virginia, his mother,
drove to the school.
00:07:00
And when the bully
came out, she ran up and grabbed
the bully and told Tom, hit him in the face.
00:07:09
And when Tom refused, she
said, you hit him in the face, or I'm going to hit you.
00:07:14
And so Tom proceeded
to beat this bully with his mother watching. LINA HAJI: It's not
surprising that he
00:07:21
starts to become a person
who needs to be empowered, who needs to be dominant,
who needs to put down others.
00:07:28
He's learned this
from his own mother, that the way to rise
in society is to be domineering
00:07:34
and to make other
people smaller. PETE EARLEY: Later,
he became the bully. He became the one who picked on
other people, who used violence
00:07:45
to get whatever he wanted. This violence
permeated the family. He got into fights
with his stepfather.
00:07:53
At one point, his mother
hit him with a shovel in the side of the head. He ran away from home trying
to escape this violence.
00:08:02
SAM DOUGLAS: Feeling
persecuted by the parents that were present, Silverstein's
thoughts turned to the one
00:08:08
who wasn't around, his father. - And this is a picture
of his dad who sent it to him,
00:08:15
and he's in the Oklahoma
State Prison for bank robbery. This is Tommy Silverstein,
probably 14, 15 years old.
00:08:26
And he idolized
his father even-- once he found out
his father was in prison, that just made
his father seem more special,
00:08:34
and as a young man, he
dreamed that his father would come back and save
him from his mother,
00:08:39
who beat him constantly. SAM DOUGLAS:
As Silverstein grew bigger, the beatings from his
parents stopped, but
00:08:47
he was constantly in trouble,
drinking, taking drugs, and getting into fights. HECTOR BRAVO: When
Silverstein was 17 years old,
00:08:56
he got high with
his buddy on drugs, and they robbed a restaurant. So even though
he donned a mask,
00:09:03
the clerk was able
to recognize him, and which, in turn, he
was arrested and then sent
00:09:08
to the Wayside prison,
which is a step up from the juvenile facility. SAM DOUGLAS: If the aim was
to teach Silverstein a lesson,
00:09:22
he took away a very
different one. PETE EARLEY: The first
night he was there, he heard another inmate
raping another prisoner,
00:09:32
and then he heard
the inmate beating the person he had raped. And this reinforced
in Silverstein's mind
00:09:40
that in order not to be
raped, you needed to fight. It didn't matter
if you gave in.
00:09:46
You still were
going to get beaten. So you fought. SAM DOUGLAS: At that
time, Silverstein also
00:09:53
developed other attitudes. PETE EARLEY: While he
was in that prison, he was attacked
by Black inmates
00:10:01
who hated white inmates. He developed intense hatred
at that time for Black inmates.
00:10:09
He had lightning bolts tattooed
on his neck, which, of course, was meant as a Nazi symbol.
00:10:19
SAM DOUGLAS: After six
months, 17-year-old Silverstein was released. HECTOR BRAVO:
So when Silverstein
00:10:26
was released from prison, he
made an attempt to go straight. He ended up marrying
his childhood
00:10:30
sweetheart named Judy as a
result of getting pregnant. So at the time he had it
going, he had a wife, a child.
00:10:38
- And he could
have gone straight, but he starts using
heroin, and he's also just
00:10:44
enamored with the outlaw life. HECTOR BRAVO: Silverstein
had a job with construction,
00:10:50
but he would eventually
get fired for using drugs. And he began to start
robbing stores
00:10:54
and follow
the outlaw lifestyle. SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein also
became increasingly abusive
00:11:00
to his wife. - He told me once,
I had no trouble hitting a woman because
my mother had beaten me.
00:11:10
SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein's wife
eventually left him, taking their young daughter with her.
00:11:17
It's around this time
that Silverstein's father, his role model, was
released from prison.
00:11:23
PETE EARLEY: And he
reconnected with Tom. And of course,
Tom by that point had quite a juvenile
criminal record,
00:11:30
had been accused
of several robberies. His father decided
to rob banks with him,
00:11:37
and Tom thought that
was great, something to identify with
his outlaw father, who he'd always
worshipped from afar.
00:11:45
LINA HAJI: They formed
a bond because they had both lived their life
in a similar fashion.
00:11:52
And there's a sadness
to that, that you are bonding with your father
after him, having been absent
00:11:58
in your life for so long, but
yet the way that you're bonding is through shared, really
horrible experiences
00:12:05
that have hurt other people. SAM DOUGLAS: Father and son
wore questionable disguises
00:12:12
to carry out their crimes. HECTOR BRAVO: Silverstein
would paint his face black and wear an Afro wig,
and along with his father,
00:12:20
they would rob three banks and
hold the employees at gunpoint. PETE EARLEY: They
terrorize everyone.
00:12:27
They take all the money
and then run out. Well, of course
they're all on camera,
00:12:32
and it doesn't take
long for the FBI to figure out, because of Tom's
juvenile history and
00:12:38
his father, who
these people are. But they're not quite sure. SAM DOUGLAS: The FBI
took the robbers'
00:12:45
images to Silverstein's
mother to see if she could identify them. PETE EARLEY: Virginia
says, is there a reward?
00:12:56
And at age 23, he is turned
in by his own mother for reward money, and the FBI arrest him.
00:13:06
And that's the last time he's
ever a free man on the streets. LINA HAJI: You
think, as a mother,
00:13:14
that that's the natural
instinct, to put your child's needs before your own. But Silverstein's mother didn't
seem to have that capacity.
00:13:21
She's been
so horrifically physically abusive, mentally abusive. She seems to have a lot
of narcissistic traits
00:13:29
herself, where she's really
trying to serve her own needs. So for me to hear
that she's the one
00:13:38
who turned in her own son
doesn't surprise me at all. I don't think she probably even
put too much thought to it.
00:13:46
SAM DOUGLAS: For bank robbery,
Silverstein was given 18 years. The bulk of his sentence was to
be served in federal prisons.
00:13:53
But first, in 1975, he was sent
to the infamous Californian state prison, San Quentin.
00:14:08
PETE EARLEY: Thomas Silverstein
is entering one of the most violent prisons in the United
States, especially
00:14:16
in the 1960s and '70s. SAM DOUGLAS: In San Quentin,
like other US penitentiaries,
00:14:23
up until the 1960s,
prisoners were officially segregated by race. When desegregation came in,
inmates formed their own groups
00:14:33
for power and protection. HECTOR BRAVO: So the type
of prison gangs in the '70s, '80s, and '90s
were your Gangster Disciples,
00:14:41
your Latin Kings,
your Nuestra Familiar, Mexican Mafia, Black Guerrilla
Family, Aryan Brotherhood.
00:14:47
SAM DOUGLAS:
The Aryan Brotherhood are a neo-Nazi outfit rooted
in the idea of white supremacy.
00:14:55
HECTOR BRAVO:
So the Aryan Brotherhood is feared in prison due
to their organization,
00:14:59
their structure,
their manpower, their ability to make
excellent weapons and utilize them in prison.
00:15:06
So as an inmate, that's
the force that you do not want to go up against. PETE EARLEY: When he
got to San Quentin,
00:15:12
Silverstein really
didn't have many options, especially when he entered
prison with the lightning
00:15:19
bolt tattoos. He developed a close
relationship with a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.
00:15:26
That's when he
became what's known as an AB wannabe, a person who
was not part of the gang yet,
00:15:33
but who was becoming
affiliated with it. He was under its protection. SAM DOUGLAS: In 1977,
Silverstein was transferred
00:15:45
to Leavenworth federal prison. MIKE MARINO: In any
maximum security prison like Leavenworth, we
have the worst of the worst.
00:15:57
PETE EARLEY: There are
about 1,200 inmates. Leavenworth was the depository
for bank robbers, murderers,
00:16:06
kidnappers, high-level
crimes, and Silverstein was thrown into this mix. He doesn't even know where
Leavenworth, Kansas, is.
00:16:16
He's always been in California. SAM DOUGLAS:
But the Aryan Brotherhood know where Leavenworth is.
00:16:28
- He's a cellmate
with two known members of the Aryan
Brotherhood from California.
00:16:35
They're known
as the California Crew. And the Aryan
Brotherhood is just beginning to take a strong
foothold in Leavenworth.
00:16:46
MIKE MARINO: Drugs are
one of the main things that make prison money
and create power in prison.
00:16:52
Who has the most drugs,
they call the shots. HECTOR BRAVO: They wanted
to dominate and create
00:16:58
a stronghold
in the drug trade, and their main competition
was the Black gang called the DC Blacks.
00:17:06
SAM DOUGLAS: For Silverstein,
who wasn't yet a fully fledged member
of the Aryan Brotherhood,
00:17:12
a turf war was a chance
to forge a reputation. LINA HAJI: There's a reason
that people say that the prison
00:17:19
system makes criminals worse. And I don't agree with that
statement for everybody,
00:17:23
but I also believe that
for somebody like Silverstein, prison is only likely
to exacerbate the violence
00:17:31
in order to maintain
his ranking, in order to be respected
and feared by other inmates.
00:17:38
So for somebody
like Silverstein, prison is conducive
to bringing out the worst version
of himself, which for him is
00:17:48
the best version of himself. PETE EARLEY: The lightning
bolts kind of defined who he was, but it
took more than a
00:17:56
tattoo to get the attention
of the Aryan Brotherhood. It took murder. SAM DOUGLAS: One
of Silverstein's neighbors
00:18:08
at Leavenworth was 32-year-old
inmate Danny Atwell. MIKE MARINO: Danny
Atwell used to be
00:18:15
my cell partner in Leavenworth
for a couple of months. He was a good guy. He didn't bother me any.
00:18:21
He was quiet. Then he moved to another cell. Danny went to prison
when he was 30 years old.
00:18:29
He had a drug charge,
and he only had 10 years. He never-- you know, he'd
never been in prison.
00:18:35
PETE EARLEY: He's white,
and he's bullied by Black gang members to bring in drugs.
00:18:43
He got his girlfriend to bring
drugs in hidden in her body, and he was selling
them to the Black gang.
00:18:50
And the Aryan
Brotherhood wanted him to bring drugs to them. - He was refusing
to bring in drugs
00:19:00
for the Aryan Brotherhood. SAM DOUGLAS: Refusal
wasn't taken kindly. Alone in his cell,
Atwell went to use
00:19:09
the toilet for the last time. MIKE MARINO: Danny
got brutally murdered. They just went in and just
stabbed him over and
00:19:27
over again. I understand he was
sitting on the toilet, so he couldn't really get away.
00:19:34
Yeah, it's a hell
of a way to go, huh? SAM DOUGLAS: With
his dying breath, Atwell gasps
to correctional officers.
00:19:44
- Atwell said to him,
Tommy, California crew. Two prison snitches
come forward, and they testify
that Silverstein
00:19:57
told them that Atwell
was going to be murdered. And that's good enough
to get Silverstein
00:20:03
arrested for the murder
of Danny Atwell, which he vehemently denies. - Ultimately, Silverstein
was charged with the murder
00:20:14
and given a life sentence. SAM DOUGLAS: Being charged with
the murder of an inmate meant
00:20:23
in 1980, Silverstein,
now 27, was transferred to Marion, Illinois,
America's highest
00:20:31
security prison where
the country's most dangerous inmates were sent. Former convict Mike
Marino was already there.
00:20:49
MIKE MARINO: Well, when I was
young, I wasn't very mature, so I did a lot
of crazy things--
00:20:57
all kinds of robberies,
and finally, for the murder
of a fellow prisoner. And that's what got me put
into the Marion control unit.
00:21:05
PETE EARLEY: The control
unit, it's a very small cell block isolated from
the rest of the prisoners,
00:21:12
and the people there
are the ones that are the most difficult to control. MIKE MARINO: Nobody's
in a two-man cell.
00:21:20
Everybody has a one-man cell. They let you out of your cell
for an hour a day. You had to take a shower and go
back in for another 23 hours.
00:21:31
- Nearly everyone
in that control unit has committed one
or more murders. SAM DOUGLAS: Now Thomas
Silverstein was joining them.
00:21:42
MIKE MARINO: The first time I
ever met Tommy Silverstein was in the Marion control unit.
00:21:47
He was walking by my cell. They'd just brought him
in from Leavenworth. I heard people yelling
at him and stuff.
00:21:54
PETE EARLEY: Silverstein has
lost any of that boyish charm. He has become
a hardcore convict.
00:22:02
- He was strong. He was a physical guy. He liked to box. I never knew Tommy
Silverstein before I met him.
00:22:10
All I heard about was that he
had killed one of my ex cell partners, Danny Atwell.
00:22:15
LINA HAJI: The murder of Danny
added bravado and clout, if you will, to Silverstein.
00:22:22
Reputation is extremely
important in gang culture. There is actually
a lot of communication,
00:22:29
not just between prison
inmates and the outside world, but also between inmates
at different facilities.
00:22:37
So you're potentially
gaining a reputation within the entire
United States. SAM DOUGLAS:
Silverstein's conviction
00:22:45
for the murder of Danny
Atwell would eventually be overturned when
witnesses were found
00:22:51
to have committed perjury. But by that time, Silverstein's
later actions meant this would prove immaterial.
00:23:00
- On November 22, 1981,
a correctional officer was doing his rounds when
he found inmate Chappelle
00:23:08
unresponsive in his bunk. MIKE MARINO: I knew
Robert Chappelle. He was a Black inmate,
and we were in the control
00:23:15
unit in Marion together. He was an antagonistic person. He was in there for some
kind of an assault.
00:23:22
There was an argument
between a Mexican guy, and Chappelle choked
him against the bars.
00:23:28
PETE EARLEY: He was a member
of the Mexican Mafia. He wanted Chappelle
murdered, but
00:23:35
Chappelle got moved
into the control unit and he couldn't get to him. SAM DOUGLAS: Since
being marked as the one
00:23:45
responsible for Danny
Atwell's murder, Silverstein was
now a full member of the Aryan Brotherhood,
and he could get to Chappelle.
00:23:55
MIKE MARINO: The Mexican Mafia
and the Aryan Brotherhood had an understanding. If the Mexican Mafia
wanted to kill somebody
00:24:02
and they couldn't
get next to him, the Aryan Brotherhood
would do it, exchange for being
able to expect
00:24:08
the same thing in return. In other words, you
kill one of my enemies, and I'll kill one
of your enemies.
00:24:15
And Tommy agreed to do it. PETE EARLEY: It's
a Sunday afternoon. It's quiet in the cell house.
00:24:29
Chappelle has propped his
head up against the bars at the front of his cell. - How could this guy
be that stupid to lay
00:24:39
his head up against the bars? You got to ask yourself,
is this guy trying to kill himself or what?
00:24:48
PETE EARLEY: The inmates are
allowed to exercise in pairs and run up and down
in front of the cells.
00:24:56
Silverstein and Clay Fountain,
an Aryan Brotherhood wannabe came down the tier with
a strand of metal wire,
00:25:06
and they wrapped
it around his neck and then pressed
their legs against the bar,
00:25:11
pulled his head up against it,
and strangled him to death. If you strangle someone,
their legs are kicking,
00:25:20
and they're flailing, and
they're trying to get this off, and it takes you
several minutes.
00:25:25
That's personal. That's violent,
and it's brutal. LINA HAJI: That's
the really interesting
00:25:32
thing about Silverstein. He had never committed
a murder that we know of until he came
to prison, which we don't know
00:25:40
if he might have ended
up being a serial killer out in society had
he never gotten
00:25:43
caught for his prior crimes. We really don't know. SAM DOUGLAS: For Robert
Chappelle's murder,
00:25:50
Silverstein and his
accomplice, Clayton Fountain, were each given
another life sentence.
00:25:57
PETE EARLEY: You have
to remember, at this time, there was no federal death
penalty unless you tried
00:26:04
to kill the president,
so there was no alternative but life in prison. LINA HAJI: He's
extremely dangerous.
00:26:11
There's no signs that he's
slowing down or going to stop. Is it the chicken or the egg?
00:26:16
Was it that he was
a high-ranking gang member and so he had to facilitate
these murders in order
00:26:22
to keep that position? Or was it that he had
a thirst for murder, and so he became a high-ranking
member of the gang
00:26:28
in order to fulfill that need? Probably a combination of both. SAM DOUGLAS: But reputation
brings challenges.
00:26:39
HECTOR BRAVO: Raymond
Lee Cadillac Smith was the leader of the DC
Blacks in the prison system.
00:26:45
So on May 11, 1982, Silverstein
was sitting on his bunk when he heard a loud voice, who
was Cadillac Smith, and said,
00:26:52
I'm going to kill
you, Silverstein. Silverstein turned around. He did not recognize
the inmate.
00:26:56
And Cadillac Smith said,
you killed my brothers. I'm going to kill you. PETE EARLEY: Raymond
Lee Cadillac Smith
00:27:03
was a notorious gangster
out of Washington DC, and he was
a cold-blooded killer.
00:27:11
He was a big, giant guy. MIKE MARINO: He
was very violent. He was a racist. He was a predator.
00:27:22
PETE EARLEY: He was sent
initially to a different prison than Marion. He raped two men.
00:27:28
Both of those men attacked him. He was able to fight them off. One of them stabbed
him, and Cadillac Smith
00:27:36
bragged that the knife broke
because he was so tough. Chappelle, he was a cousin.
00:27:43
Cadillac Smith was not
going to let it go. He was going
to kill Silverstein. MIKE MARINO: He wasn't
smart enough to know that--
00:27:52
[laughs] that he was
dealing with probably one of the most dangerous
human beings on Earth.
00:27:57
He picked a fight with
Tommy Silverstein. It was the dumbest thing
he could have ever did.
00:28:06
SAM DOUGLAS: After Robert
Chappelle's murder, inmate pairs were now
locked in a special cage
00:28:11
on the prison floor outside
the cells when they exercised. PETE EARLEY: Silverstein
and Clay Fountain
00:28:18
are in this exercise area. They have a piece
of hacksaw blade that has been
smuggled into them.
00:28:26
They're using this to cut
through the wire mesh, slowly cutting, cutting, cutting,
cutting a space big enough
00:28:34
for them to get through. SAM DOUGLAS: When
they left the cage, they applied a paste they'd
managed to make in their cells,
00:28:42
sticking the mesh
together so it looked intact until the next
time they could work on it.
00:28:48
MIKE MARINO:
And once they got it all the way done, they
waited for Cadillac to come out of his cell.
00:28:54
SAM DOUGLAS:
Their moment arrived. Cadillac Smith was
let out of his cell to take a shower at the same
time Silverstein and
00:29:01
Fountain were
exercising, apparently, safely secured
in the exercise cage. PETE EARLEY: Silverstein
doesn't have a shank.
00:29:13
The shank he was going
to use has been discovered. Clay Fountain does have access
to a shank, so they say,
00:29:21
let's go. Cadillac spins around. He sees them coming toward him. Cadillac Smith throws
the towel off of his arm.
00:29:30
He has a shank that he's
made from a towel rod. Fountain runs forward. Cadillac Smith stabs
him in the chest.
00:29:38
Fountain falls backward. Silverstein is so keyed up. He slams into Cadillac Smith.
00:29:44
He takes Cadillac Smith's
shank away from him, and he starts
stabbing and stabbing
00:29:49
and stabbing and stabbing and
stabbing more than 40 times. He stabbed him
so hard the blade
00:29:56
goes all the way through
and hits the concrete. SAM DOUGLAS: Guards
arrived but stayed
00:30:01
back for their own safety. - The correctional officers
in the federal system, they're not armed.
00:30:08
The best they can
get is a billy club. SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein
and a wounded Fountain drag
00:30:13
Cadillac Smith's body. PETE EARLEY: He
wanted to drag him down the tier in front of one
of the DC Black cells and say,
00:30:21
you're next. You're next. SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein
and fountain eventually gave themselves up, allowing
guards to enter the floor
00:30:33
and recover the body. - An autopsy of Cadillac's
body revealed that he was stabbed 67 times.
00:30:41
LINA HAJI: 67 stabbings
is not necessary. It's overkill. Him and his accomplice
drag Cadillac's body
00:30:49
throughout the prison
to send a message, if you disrespect us, not
only will you be murdered,
00:30:54
you will be put on display. You will be humiliated. This is bravado. This is psychopathic bravado.
00:31:06
SAM DOUGLAS:
As punishment, Silverstein racked up another
life sentence, plus another lengthy spell
in solitary confinement.
00:31:14
But his influence soared beyond
the walls that contained him. PETE EARLEY: Marion,
at this point,
00:31:21
is literally out of control. The head of the Bureau
of Prisons, Norm Carlson, would later say that
the Aryan Brotherhood
00:31:28
was running that prison. Silverstein was
known as the shot caller, which is
an inmate who could say,
00:31:36
we want this person dead. MIKE MARINO: They called Tommy
Silverstein Terrible Tommy.
00:31:42
Tommy had the power
to have somebody killed wherever they were. All he had to do was say so.
00:31:49
He gave an order
to Barry Mills to kill a guy in Atlanta
federal penitentiary. He sent him a letter, and when
the guy got to Atlanta,
00:31:59
Barry killed him
and actually got convicted for murdering the guy. I'm sure Tommy could get
somebody killed on the streets
00:32:07
if he wanted to. He had enough power to do that. SAM DOUGLAS: Though
Silverstein's next target
00:32:17
was far closer to home. PETE EARLEY: Merle Clutts
was from the local area. He was a cowboy.
00:32:24
He liked to ride horses. He had a wife and kids. He was respected
inside the prison
00:32:30
because he'd been there
as a veteran guard for many, many years. MIKE MARINO: Clutts was
a pretty decent guard.
00:32:37
He never bothered me, but I
didn't really come into contact with him that much. There's four tiers, A, B,
C, and D. Officer Clutts
00:32:48
ran C range, and that's
where Tommy was. PETE EARLEY: Merle Clutts
was a stand-up officer,
00:32:55
but he was a tough
guy, convinced that he needed
to be in charge and that he was going to control
the control unit and
00:33:03
Silverstein, who was the major
troublemaker in that unit, who felt like no one's
going to control me,
00:33:11
no one's going
to tell me what to do. And this led
to a clashing of heads. HECTOR BRAVO:
100%, correctional
00:33:18
officers will take things
personal with inmates and vice versa. Now, should that be happening?
00:33:23
Absolutely not. When it comes to working
in a prison system, everything should
be all business.
00:33:28
However, we're
all still humans, and the emotional
characteristics take effect. So yes, sometimes
things do get personal.
00:33:38
MIKE MARINO: Every time
officer Clutts stripped down Tommy's cell, Tommy felt
that he disrespected him
00:33:45
by throwing his pictures
around or messing around with his personal
photographs and legal papers
00:33:52
and stuff like that. They had a very
antagonistic relationship. - Silverstein told
me, from the moment
00:34:01
he heard Clutts
voice on the tiers, he would be walking back
and forth in his cell
00:34:08
like a wild animal. SAM DOUGLAS: Pete
Earley would later record a prison interview
with Silverstein,
00:34:16
talking about Merle Clutts. PETE EARLEY: And he
would later claim that Clutts told
him that he could
00:34:39
have him killed if he wanted. When you confront
Silverstein and he believes he's threatened,
he's going to kill you.
00:35:07
LINA HAJI: We
hear the narrative that Silverstein
felt that he was disrespected by Officer
Clutts, but that's
00:35:14
a matter of perspective. Silverstein knew very well
that he was in prison, that he was not
going to be liked
00:35:19
by officers, that officers
have the ultimate control. To kill an officer, as he
had stated previously,
00:35:28
was the ultimate act
of showing the system that he doesn't care about the system.
00:35:34
Rules and regulations, they
just don't apply to him. PETE EARLEY: His gang members
had said, don't do it.
00:35:41
Don't do it, Tommy. If you murder an officer,
you will never be released from solitary confinement.
00:35:50
HECTOR BRAVO: Attacks
on correctional officers are extremely, extremely
common, more common
00:35:56
than the public knows, ranging
from getting spit in the face, feces throwing in their face,
punched, assaulted,
00:36:04
stabbed, slashed daily. It's by sheer miracle we do not
have more correctional officer
00:36:09
deaths in the line of duty. LINA HAJI: The good
thing about prison is it's very structured
and predictable.
00:36:16
The bad thing about
prison is it's very structured and predictable. And what I mean by that
is that they know what
00:36:21
time they're going to eat. They know what time they're
going to the rec yard, when the officer's
shift starts,
00:36:27
when the officer's shift ends. And they have 24 hours a day
to study these routines
00:36:33
and where there might
be a weak kind of area that they can tap into. [alarm blaring]
00:36:41
SAM DOUGLAS: After
Cadillac Smith's murder, security had tightened even
further on the control unit.
00:36:47
Any inmate out
of their cell needed three officers with them. On October 22, 1983,
Silverstein was escorted
00:36:57
out of his cell for a shower. PETE EARLEY: He's handcuffed. They've checked him.
00:37:05
He doesn't have any weapons. On the way back,
Clutts is behind him, officers on each side of him.
00:37:13
- When in turn, another inmate
distracted Officer Clutts and had him go to his cell.
00:37:19
SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein
used the distraction to head to a neighboring cell. - And he stops to talk
to another inmate,
00:37:28
a member of the Mexican Mafia. This inmate has a key
that's been smuggled in. He unlocks Tommy's handcuffs.
00:37:37
- He lifted his shirt
and exposed a 10-inch weapon. PETE EARLEY: Silverstein
pulls that out.
00:37:43
He spins around. The two officers on each of his
side go, whoa, whoa, whoa, he's got a knife.
00:37:49
The two officers run
to safety to get billy clubs. And it's Silverstein,
and behind him
00:37:56
is Clutts, has nowhere to go. So he flies at Clutts,
who is unarmed. LINA HAJI: There's a very
callous, unemotional manner
00:38:26
in which Silverstein describes
how he stabbed Officer Clutts, and I think there's
more than just
00:38:33
callousness and lack
of empathy when he's delivering this information. I think he's actually
getting off on it.
00:38:39
I think he's reliving it. He's proud of it. - He stabbed him
and he stabbed him and
00:38:45
he stabbed him about 37 times. SAM DOUGLAS: Somehow,
Officer Clutts managed to escape Silverstein.
00:39:05
- Officer Clutts was
able to get away, but he ultimately succumbed
to his wounds and died.
00:39:19
HECTOR BRAVO: Tommy Silverstein
was a cold-blooded killer, a perfect definition
of an evil man
00:39:24
who showed no mercy or remorse
for the people that he killed. LINA HAJI: I think
Silverstein saying
00:39:30
that he was so happy that
Clutts was finally dead is probably one of the few
times that he was being honest.
00:39:39
People have a misconception
that psychopaths don't have emotions and that
they don't have feelings,
00:39:43
and that's not
exactly accurate. It's just that
their emotions are different than yours
and mine, per se,
00:39:49
and they're also
interpreted differently. Having engaged in a murder
that will now end this
00:39:56
disrespect and this
nuisance, for him, is interpreted as "happiness." PETE EARLEY: Silverstein was
sent to the US penitentiary
00:40:04
in Atlanta. They couldn't keep him
in Marion because the officers there wanted him dead.
00:40:11
Norm Carlson, the director
of the Bureau of Prisons, said, how am I going
to keep my officers safe
00:40:17
and keep this guy from
killing anyone else? SAM DOUGLAS:
To prevent Silverstein from being able to kill again
or order others to for him,
00:40:28
he needed to be isolated. A new extreme form
of solitary confinement was devised especially for him,
known as no human contact.
00:40:38
HECTOR BRAVO: You don't
have any interactions with correctional
officers or other inmates.
00:40:43
You are solely
locked in your cell, and that's the only thing
you see, is your four walls.
00:40:48
SAM DOUGLAS: The only
communication Silverstein had was food
coming through the slot
00:40:53
in the steel door. PETE EARLEY: There
was no other sounds. There was no radio, no TV,
no letters, no communication,
00:41:02
totally isolated. And they weren't
ashamed to say it. They were hoping he
would end his own life.
00:41:08
Instead, it made him even
more determined they were not going to break Thomas
Silverstein no matter
00:41:15
what they did to him. SAM DOUGLAS: Three years pass. Then on November 23,
1987, Cuban inmates
00:41:26
rioting in Atlanta prison freed
Silverstein from his cell. PETE EARLEY:
The Bureau of Prisons
00:41:33
is so worried about
him being free. They issued a memo that said,
if you see Thomas Silverstein,
00:41:41
shoot him on sight. Otherwise, he may murder
a guard or other prisoners. SAM DOUGLAS: After realizing
who they were dealing with,
00:41:50
the rioting inmates themselves
feared for their own safety. They wanted
Silverstein removed.
00:41:56
- They drag him, they overpower
him, they handcuff him, and they turn him over
to prison officials.
00:42:09
SAM DOUGLAS: Sent
to Leavenworth prison again, Silverstein was placed
in a special isolated
00:42:14
unit built just for him,
dubbed the Silverstein Suite. He spent the next 15 years
alone with limited access
00:42:23
to just three rooms. Among other artwork,
he would draw cartoons displaying his
frustration at his treatment.
00:42:32
PETE EARLEY: After
the murders in '83, Silverstein legacy led to the
building of the first supermax
00:42:39
in Florence, Colorado. SAM DOUGLAS: In 2005,
Silverstein himself was transferred to the supermax
prison in Florence
00:42:48
to live out the rest
of his days. - Another dungeon-like
cell at the ADX isolated from other people.
00:42:58
- Once Tommy killed
Clutts in Marion, from that moment
on, Silverstein was on 24-hour lockup
for the rest of his life.
00:43:08
He just couldn't play
well with others. I mean, he just
kept killing people. PETE EARLEY:
The Bureau of Prisons,
00:43:16
they refused to lift any
kind of punishment off of him because they said he
is such a monster.
00:43:23
MIKE MARINO: They
never wanted him to be in contact with
anybody ever again for the rest of his life.
00:43:31
- Silverstein spent
36 years in isolation. LINA HAJI: A lot
of research shows that solitary confinement
can actually really
00:43:41
be horrific for somebody's
mental health, but when you look
at somebody like Silverstein,
00:43:46
what else are you supposed
to do with an inmate like this? The system is broken,
and solitary confinement is all
00:43:52
that we have at this point. There really was
no other option for somebody as dangerous
and evil as Silverstein.
00:44:02
SAM DOUGLAS: Incarcerated
since the age of 23, Silverstein left prison
for the last time, age 67,
00:44:09
when he contracted pneumonia
and suffered a heart attack. PETE EARLEY: Silverstein
died in February of 2019
00:44:19
at a hospital in Colorado. When he died,
the Bureau of Prisons announced it back
at the ADX to the staff,
00:44:28
and they broke out
in thunderous applause and cheering that
they were finally rid of Thomas Silverstein.
00:44:40
[theme music]