“When you look at the policies and goals of the Security Management Unit, it blows my mind that there was [even] one homicide” – Jack Donson, corrections consultant and former FBOP official on violence at USP Thompson.
Edgar Garcia and Mark Snarr couldn’t have scripted the murder of Gabriel Rhone any better. Given that each of them were in single cells and were only allowed out after a thorough strip search and handcuffing, such a feat seemed more like a Pipedream,or a fantasy. It would first require an insurmountable plot, straight out of an action packed prison escape movie. Anything less wouldn’t work.
Guards would have to forget, or ignore, strip searching them coming out their Security Management Unit (SMU) cell for recreation, and going back in.Check!
They would have to overlook the fact that one of these inmates was under a two man guard escort only order,which would over emphasize that two inmates can’t be pulled out at the same time. Double check!
A prison disturbance would have to ensue, causing recreation to be terminated early and discombobulation.Triple check!
The guards would have to believe that the inmates’ need to use the bathroom is more important than the need to follow policy, allowing two inmates in particular to be removed from their recreation cages at the same time,for security convenience. Quadruple check!
No different than a blockbuster suspense thriller, every element that needed to be met, was met. A disturbance in another part of the prison ensued,resulting in guards being ordered to stop rec and put each inmate back in their cell,one by one. Since one of them claimed he had to use the bathroom, officers Dewight Baloney and Josh McQueen took a routine gamble and skipped the order they were going in and removed Garcia and Snarr from their single man recreation cages together.
Since time was limited these inmates weren’t strip searched, according to policy, coming out or going back into their cells. Thus the makeshift handcuff keys and shanks weren’t discovered. Fellow neighbors and Rhone, who had listened to Garcia and Snarr plot this movie-like murder through their cell doors days before, silently listened as the plot thickened down the corridor from them and the handcuffs fell free from behind Garcia and Snarr’s backs.
Officer Baloney was stabbed twenty three times until he slipped to safety. McQueen was approached by Snarr and stabbed while a demand for the cell door keys was made. A poke of the shank by Garcia and the keys were yielded to Snarr from McQueen’s duty belt. Both inmates excitedly dashed down the corridor to Rhone’s cell. It was time for him to pay for talking shit and ejaculating on a female guards shoe,through his cell door slot.(1)
It took a minute of Snarr fumbling with the keys to get the right one into the keyhole, while threats were made to Rhone as a pregame filler. Just like that, the cell door opened and out came a panicking Rhone. One inmate in particular that watched the gruesome stabbing claimed both killers were in a “frenzy” stabbing Rhone over fifty times in the heart, lungs and liver, as guards pleaded for them to stop. On May 24 2010 a jury sentenced them to death by lethal injection.
Overkills like this one is why inmates in the federal United States Penitentiary in Beaumont Texas, USP Beaumont, quickly named the maximum security prison ‘Bloody Beaumont’ not long after it opened in 1997.
It would only take until 2001 before the USP claimed its fifth victim, Luther Plant, who was killed in a two man recreation cage by Shannon Agofsky. Agofsky was serving a life sentence for the 1989 kidnapping and murder of State Bank of Noel president, Dan Short. Plant’s head was repeatedly stomped in the ground by Afgosky, until he choked to death on his own blood.
On July 17 2004, a jury sentenced Agofsky to death by lethal injection. Inmates that were questioned about the incident, claim that guards often place at odds inmates in the two man cages together and watch them fight, thus giving the recreation cages names such as ‘gladiator school’ and ‘thunder dome’.
Officer Christopher Matt, who admitted placing Agofsky and Plant in the same cage together, denied having knowledge of the gladiator school activities. And surmised that he didn’t know a murder was about to take place, nor did he see the fight.(2)
Bloody Beaumont had only been in business for two years, when on December 16 1999 one of its first five murders occurred. The victim, Daryl Brown. The accused, Arzell Gulley and David Lee Jackson. According to court documents all three inmates were seen arguing with each other in an area of the prison called the compound. Here, inmates throughout the prison are allowed to intermingle between 5:00pm and 8:30pm.
Brown could be seen fleeing the compound and into unit 3B-1, and eventually cell 125, while knife-wielding Gulley and Jackson chased after him. Just under a minute later, Gulley and Jackson strolled out of the cell and were met by prison guards,who apprehended them. A bloody and half dead Brown then stumbled out of the cell,collapsing near one of his killers where he died.(3)
In 2006 Jackson was sentenced to death by lethal injection for his role and Gulley received life in prison. As a whole, administrative officials have no control over any federal prison within the Federal Bureau Of Prisons(FBOP). So in an effort to tone down the violence, it is expected that gang leaders will run the prison for them, creating unwritten rules, punishing violators and warring with gangs that try to impose their own counterproductive authority. And many try.
One gang,mainly consisting of El Salvadoran immigrants, MS-13 is not only the most violent prison and street gang in America, it was undeterred by the intimidation tactics imposed by the other federal prison gangs.
Federal prison officials saw this too, so the federal government created a gang intelligence group within the FBOP called Joint Taskforce Vulcan, which focuses on the activities of gangs in general and MS-13’s violent rise within the federal prison system in particular.
On January 31 2022, this joint task force operation proves ineffective. 54 year old Guillermo Riojas, 34 year old Andrew Pineda and two other Hispanic inmates belonging to the Mexican Mafia and Sureños gangs respectively, were ambushed by seven members of MS-13.(4) The group felt it was time to bust up the unity that Mexican Mafia and the Sureños created to strengthen their numbers against the larger MS-13.
Riojas and Pineda received the worst of the punishment as Pineda was stabbed around 45 times and Riojas was stabbed multiple times in the heart and lungs.The other two unnamed inmates were the only survivors. The 15 count indictment includes charges of racketeering, murder and attempted murder. All 120 of the FBOP’s prisons were placed on temporary lockdown status, in anticipation of subsequent riots and vengeance.
On February 24 2022, the lockdown was fully lifted and normal prison operations continued. On May 1 2022, Bloody Beaumont would give up her latest victim. This time, it’s 35 year old Eric Jermaine Leday, who has no documented gang affiliation. He was serving a 37 month sentence for gun related charges.(5)
Since his death was deemed unrelated to the prior ambush, his body was shipped to the morgue and immediately thereafter, prison business carried on as usual, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
According to the Department Of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, the federal prison population has grown 1% since 2001.While the annual murder rate inflated by 44% from 39 a year to 120 in 2018. But in regards to the accuracy of these numbers, the full extent of FBOP mismanagement can’t be fully reported because of the highly effective damage control routine by its press corps and its ability to restrict public access to information.
Many relatives of victims that died while incarcerated, find themselves being fed partially true statements, outright lies, being given the run around and having their Freedom Of Information Act requests denied, or painstakingly delayed. In many instances, it isn’t administrative prison officials who know the truth about what goes on in prison, but unspoken inmate witnesses and their ilk.
If prison walls could talk, the amount of in-custody deaths that are ruled suicides, erotic asphyxiation, overdoses and undetermined would literally clog up the courts dockets with staff-instigated murder cases and their co-conspirators, who sometimes are other inmates and their relatives in the free world.(6)
One thing that is widely known among staff and the incarcerated, is that when death calls your name, it can only be prolonged or countered, but never escaped unscathed.
The violence that goes on at places like Bloody Beaumont, on its face, is senseless. Though there are many contributing factors that can compel someone to play within, or step out of their comfort zone and commit murder. To believe violence exists in prison without a spark is buffoonery.
One factor lies in the clutches of the underground drug trade. Another can stem from violating inmate-created penitentiary rules. Another is behooved by the kind of inmates you have in federal custody, the resources they bring with them and the fact that their reputation from the free world is jocked by those on the lower rungs of criminalization. In effect, they must hold themselves to this same standard or lose social value, which connects to respect, power and their chances of surviving among the masses.
Observing an active member of a drug cartel, mafia, or street enterprise carousing on the compound, is as common as a cavity search. And adding this with the lethal mix of convicted millionaires and money-hungry guards that are overworked and underpaid, and you have an unregulated, untaxable, underground economy and environment, that is virtually indestructibly violent, extortive and bribable within the highest levels of the administration.
Before Bloody Beaumont came into fruition, the inmates living in the federal prison system called it Club Fed. Which was due to the average prisoner residing there being either affluent, or were involved in crimes and schemes designed to meet that status quo, making it a felon’s Club Med.
Remember the commercial? Likewise, they spent their prison sentences enjoying the fruits of their labor and the vast amount of privilege given to them, that has since been slowly stripped to a bare minimum. Which has a lot to do with the fact that many small-time cases that get prosecuted under federal law now, never left the clutches of state prosecutors then.
Plus the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), created to bring down entire Mafias, for the actions of one of its members, eventually began preying on ineligible, neighborhood gangs that had never risen above low-level drug dealing.
On top of the fact that anybody convicted in the District of Columbia (D.C.) and sentenced to prison, does their time in a federal facility, regardless if it’s a federal charge or not, as D.C. doesn’t have a state prison system.
As a consequence, Club Fed was watered down with reams of petty criminals that brought their petty tendencies and violence with them. In effort to match this speed, the FBOP took away most of the privileges and leeway that the new wave started taking for granted. Which was masked by accommodating budget cuts.
BLACK MARKET DEATH SENTENCES – THE USP WAY
On May 6 2005, an inmate named Keith Barnes arrived to Bloody Beaumont, well aware that he would be killed immediately. In 1998 Barnes and several others were convicted for the murder and robbery of Israel ‘Dog’ Jones in a Washington D.C. apartment. Despite receiving hand-written death threats from James ‘Rat’ Carpenter, a co-defendant who actually killed Jones in his apartment, Barnes testified against his cronies in exchange for a lesser sentence.
This resulted in Barnes being threatened and sought, each time he was transferred to a different federal prison to protect him from his co-defendants’ vast connections within the FBOP.
Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a D.C. congresswoman, wrote letters to the FBOP on his behalf, just as relatives did to no avail. Barnes explained his situation to his case worker, upon arriving to Bloody Beaumont, but he was sent to the general population anyways.
Marwin Mosley, Michael Bacote and Charles Sherman (all D.C. residents) approached Barnes as soon as he hit the cellblock. He didn’t give them his real name because he knew there was a hit out on his life.
It is routine that newly arriving inmates are asked who they are and where they’re from, in which they are pointed to where the denizens of their geographical location mingle, or are dealt with accordingly if their name has a green light on it.
Mosley thought he recognized Barnes as being the one that testified against Carpenter and explained this to Joseph Ebron.His real name was quickly figured out and a plot to kill him made. Within less than twenty four hours of Barnes arrival to Bloody Beaumont, he was discovered on his top bunk with over one hundred stab wounds in his body.(7)
After Sherman was investigated by officials, he fingered Ebron, Mosley and Bacote as the killers. In 2005 Ebron, Mosley and Bacote were convicted for Barnes’s death. Ebron was the only defendant that was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Mosley died in 2006,resulting in the dismissal of his pending court appeals.
A LITTLE TOO MUCH TOUCHING UP?
Christopher Cramer and Ricky Fackrell are members of a federal prison based group called Soldiers of Aryan Culture(SAC). Cramer served as its General, while Fackrell held the rank of Lieutenant during their stay at Bloody Beaumont. Among other rules and regulations, all members must sustain from drinking alcohol, doing drugs and gambling.
According to Fackrell’s own statement during his trial, one of the penalties of rule violations is to “touch the violator up a little bit”. Members are recruited based on their belief in white supremacy and paganism.
According to both Cramer and Fackrell, an unranked member by the name of Leo Johns had been caught drinking and gambling, in violation of SAC rules. While Johns was in his own cell, Cramer and Fackrell entered it with shanks. Johns was stabbed up until he died.
On June 13 2018, Cramer and Fackrell were convicted of Johns’ death and sentenced to death by lethal injection. While Fackrell suggested to the courts that their intention wasn’t to kill, but only meant to “touch up [Johns] a little bit”.(8) One can only wonder where the line to what one uses to “do a little touching up” with is drawn. And the illogical thought that, had Johns survived, he would’ve held his allegiance with the group.
United States attorney, Britt Featherston who prosecutes federal cases in the eastern district of Texas, promised that any inmate who causes physical injury to another person will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Nowhere in her diatribe did she suggest,or recommend, remedies that would curtail the death sentences that are being handed out like candy. And you can see from the frequency in overkill deaths, that the punishment for doing such a thing isn’t a hardcore enough measure, that will deter future inmates from attempting to top past slaughterings.
Nor have past reform measures done anything besides increase sentences and already full court dockets. Since the 1994 crime bill was signed into law by Bill Clinton, making all murders committed in federal custody death penalty eligible, the amount of murders that were committed afterwards skyrocketed, while the amount of inmates placed on federal death row increased to unprecedented numbers.
BLOODY BEAUMONT’S EVIL TWIN
While Bloody Beaumont might be the most violent federal prison in Texas, when measured up to the rest of the United States Penitentiaries (USPs) under the jurisdiction of the FBOP, it can bee seen as the nicer twin of a more sinister, more diabolical Juggernaut.
Bloody Beaumont is just one of the three federal correctional complexes grouped together in Beaumont, Texas. The other two complexes are minimum and medium security compounds, that contrast to Bloody Beaumont’s reputation for violence.
Overall, every USP in America is virtually a house of death. Factors that determine who goes to a USP and who doesn’t, is based off of criminal history, gang affiliation, current criminal charges and the amount of points all of these factors generate. There are other factors that can reduce these points,such as taking responsibility for the charge, becoming a government informant and maintaining good behavior while there.
The majority of inmates incarcerated at USPs used to be mob bosses, gang leaders, drug lords, high profile drug dealers and terroristic and paramilitary networks. Now it’s this same mixture, coupled with obviously nonviolent inmates. With a twist of sociopaths that were sent to them from other prisons because of recent and past disciplinary issues, like assaulting and murdering other inmates.
In 2002, Carlos David Caro was serving time at a low security prison in Oakdale, Louisiana. As he had risen to the rank as leader of the Texas Syndicate (TS) prison gang, Staff approached him and gave him the heads up that rivals of TS were scheduled to be transferred to Oakdale. They asked him if he would keep the peace.
Upon their arrival to Oakdale, Caro launched an attack on them. He beat one so bad that he was hospitalized. With bloody clothes and boots, Caro told guards “I don’t give a fuck if they send me to the USP. My brothers follow orders. They know what they’re getting themselves into. It doesn’t even matter if we’re prosecuted”(9)
Shortly after the assault, Caro was transferred to USP Lee in Jonesville, Virginia. In August 2003, Caro and another member of TS stabbed another inmate twenty nine times, resulting in Caro being placed in the prison’s Secure Housing Unit (SHU). The SHU and SMU are basically one and the same. Double man solitary confinement.
Caro eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to an additional twenty seven years in federal prison. On December 17 2003, less than two days after Roberto Sandoval’s arrival as Caro’s new cellmate, Caro wet a towel, wrapped it around Sandoval’s neck and strangled him to death.
As guards walked by during their security check, Caro got their attention, showed them Sandoval’s body and demanded that they remove it because it was stinking up the cell. Caro justified this act by claiming Sandoval had disrespected him for confronting Caro about eating Sandoval’s breakfast while he was asleep.
Days later Caro jokingly confronted a guard about when they would give him another cellmate. Of course, Caro was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection for Sandoval’s death. On September 14 2018 around 4:06pm, USP Lee guards were doing a security check when they discovered Samuel Silva standing at his cell door with his prison I.D. and shower shoes in his hands. Upon further observation, Silva’s cellmate, Abraham Aldana, could be seen laying on the ground, face down in a pool of his own blood. Medical examiners would learn that Aldana had been stabbed over one hundred times, with the murder weapon, a metal shank, still lodged into his skull.(10)
Silva was serving a 564 month sentence. At the time of the murder, USP Lee was on an institutional lockdown, which can last over a month, and stops all inmate movement and recreation until the lockdown is over.
A year later at USP Lee’s SHU, a mentally ill and delusional Eric Horne murdered his cellmate as an inmate in another cell watched. The inmate testified to the grand jury that he saw Horne place his arm around the victim in a headlock.
When he later asked Horne where his cellmate was at, Horne said “gone”. Then Horne said “you can’t be, you can’t be afraid of death if you want to go to heaven, game over.” Then Horne used a finger to mimic slicing his own throat.(11)
Days before the murder, Horne was acting psychotic, prompting other inmates housed in the SHU to warn the victim to get out of the cell immediately.
Readers that are interested in more recent accounts of this nature, whether occurring at Bloody Beaumont or her evil twin, should visit the United States Attorney General’s website in the relevant state and district sought, as I based much of this article on inmates that received the death penalty, not those who pled guilty through a plea agreement, whose cases are outstanding to this article.
Through trial and error, the FBOP has learned to conceal the ongoing epidemic of murders at USPs, even making it difficult for the media and journalists to get details until years after the incident. I had trouble myself getting up to date records. Consequently, it will be years before a lot of Bloody Beaumont’s affairs will become public records.
As you can see, most of these events weren’t actually prosecuted until many years later, and the general public wasn’t updated until the inmate was convicted, as was the case of an inmate that was killed in 2013 at USP Victorville, listed in records as J.S.
It wasn’t until January 18 2023 before 39 year old Aurelio Patino, 48 year old Christopher Ruiz and 41 year old Jose Villegas, were convicted of punching and stomping J.S to death after a guard escorted him to the recreation yard they were on.(12)
Inmates have fought the federal courts for years in a failed attempt to have double man solitary abolished, as well as being forced to live in a cell 24 hours a day with inmates that have reputations for attacking and killing past cellmates.
David Paul Hammer revolutionized the art of killing cellmates, again and again. At the time he was serving a life sentence for shooting a gay man in the head three times. Originally sentenced to death for the murder of his cellmate, the courts vacated his death sentence to life in a maximum security federal prison, only for Hammer to kill another cellmate(13)
Despite that taking place decades ago, the horrors of double celling in Security Housing Units, uncontrollable violence at USP Beaumont, the invisible ink note that jump started a white suprmacists war on blacks(14)and security breaches that result in movie scripted style murders continue.
USP Thomson in Illinois is clear evidence that the FBOP has absolutely no control or interest in upholding a mission that they claim is designed to prioritize protecting the health and safety of inmates in their care.(15) The institutional goal is all bark. Inmates are the only ones doing the biting.
Write to Jason:
Jason Renard Walker 1532092
TDCJ Powledge unit
P.O.Box 660400
Dallas,TX 75266
Jason’s support crew:
JRW Support Network
PO Box 6777
Colorado Springs, CO 80934
Sources
1) U.S v. Snarr,704 F.3d 368
2)Leah Caldwell, USP Beaumont,Texas: Murder and Mayhem In The Thunder Dome
3)U.S v. Gulley,562 F.3d 809
4)Keith Saunders, Gang Violence In Texas Federal Prison Results In Two Deaths, Nationwide BOP Lockdown
5)Beaumont Examiner and Port Arthur News
6)Reported in a past issue of PLN
7)U.S. v .Ebron, 683 F.3d 105
8)U.S. v. Fackrell, 991 F.3d 589
9)U.S. v. Caro, 597 F.3d 608
10)U.S v. Silva, 2022 U.S.Dist. Texas 221466
11)U.S v. Horne, 2020 U.S.Dist Lexis 9724
12)California U.S Attorney General report
13)See U.S v. Fackrell (citing David Paul Hammer)
14)U.S v.Bingham, 653 F.3d 983
15)Christie Thompson and Joseph Shapiro, How The Newest Federal Prison Became One Of The Deadliest.
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