Witness: Aryan Brotherhood plotted to avenge Gotti attack
" KEVIN ROACH SNITCHING LIKE IT'S IN STYLE " Witness: Aryan Brotherhood plotted to avenge Gotti attack ! Roach stop SNITCHING !
A former Aryan Brotherhood prison gang member testified Friday that he was slipped two .22-caliber bullets and ordered by an alleged gang kingpin to hide them until they could be used to kill a black inmate who had assaulted mob leader John Gotti.
Kevin Roach, his head shaved and arms covered with tattoos, testified for a second day in one of the largest capital cases in U.S. history, a sweeping prosecution aimed at the Aryan Brotherhood’s leadership.
Roach said another inmate slipped him one of the bullets by pushing it under the door of a prison law library using a thin pole made of tightly twisted papers. The inmate, also a brotherhood member, told him that alleged gang leader Barry “The Baron” Mills would soon contact him and tell him about a planned hit on Walter Johnson, an inmate who had punched Gotti in the eye.
Roach said that Gotti had in the past paid the Aryan Brotherhood to protect him in prison. Roach said Mills ordered gang members to stop protecting Gotti in 1994 because the mob leader had not followed through on a promise to help Mills find an attorney to appeal a decades-old murder conviction.
But in 1997, Gotti is suspected to have offered to pay to have Johnson killed and Mills agreed to take the offer. Roach did not specify how much Gotti offered to pay, but in previous testimony another former gang member said Gotti had offered $500,000 for the hit.
At the time, Gotti was in prison in Marion, Ill., while Mills and Roach were in a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo.
Mills “told us that he wanted us to accept the contract and he wanted me to send word to all the brothers because John Gotti was willing to pay a good sum,” Roach testified.
“He wanted to show that the Aryan Brotherhood could get anyone, anywhere and … that shooting someone in a maximum security prison would make an impact on the prison population.”
Roach said the gang never was able to carry out the hit on Johnson.Gotti died in prison in 2002.
Roach, a convicted murderer serving two life sentences, also testified about a violent campaign against the DC Blacks, a black prison gang, that he said began after the DC Blacks placed a hit on two Aryan Brotherhood members.
The suspected race war — and the deaths of two black inmates that resulted from it — are at the center of the government’s case against two of the defendants currently on trial. The government claims that Mills and another gang leader, T.D. “The Hulk” Bingham, ordered the attack on the black inmates and later mobilized brotherhood members for an all-out gang war.
Roach’s testimony has also tied the defendants to many of the 32 murders and attempted murders detailed in an indictment targeting the violent gang founded in 1964 at California’s San Quentin prison.
Defense attorneys claim Roach defected after the gang war began because he was afraid of being killed himself by the DC Blacks and needed government protection. They also contend Roach was coached in his testimony by federal officials and had access to the defendants’ criminal files so he could piece together the testimony that prosecutors wanted.
Prosecutors hope to dismantle the Aryan Brotherhood — nicknamed the “Brand” — in a series of racketeering trials. Of 40 men initially charged, as many as 16 could face the death penalty for crimes going back 30 years.
The first group of four defendants — Mills, Bingham, Edgar “The Snail” Hevle and Christopher Gibson — are on trial in Santa Ana. All have pleaded not guilty. The remaining defendants are scheduled to be tried in Los Angeles beginning in October.
Mills, who is already serving two life terms for a 1979 murder, could face the death penalty in the 1997 killings of two inmates in a Lewisburg, Pa., prison. Bingham, 58, also faces a possible death penalty for the 1997 inmate killings. He is currently serving time on robbery and drug charges.
Hevle, 54, and Gibson, 46, could face life in prison if convicted.
Feds stash Aryan gang general turned government witness . That's stupid , risk it all over lie's . Roach you are not shit ! PawneShope
Roach said he decided to drop out of the gang and become a government informant in 1998 because he was aging and the gang lost its appeal.
“I was too old to believe all the hype anymore and to believe that it meant anything more than murder, mayhem and robbery,” he said. “I was on the fast track, I had power and prestige. … But who do I have power over? A six-by-eight foot cell and a range of 20 guys. It was like king of the dead, all smoke and mirrors. I was tired of it and I wanted to get out.”
Roach said he declined assistance from the prosecution in getting his sentence reduced in exchange for his testimony because, “I don’t want my freedom to be based on doing ill to them.”
When asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Wolfe how he felt about testifying against Mills and the others, he replied: “I feel uncomfortable about it. I like Barry Mills. He’s an honorable guy and a good guy and we always got along.”
Roach, who is in the witness protection program, left the gang and became a government witness in 1998. He said Friday that he has testified before three grand juries and in a federal murder case in Illinois since he left the gang.
Roach also participated in a Bureau of Prisons educational film for prison guards by showing them how gang members fashioned crossbows, knives and spears out of plastic, rolled newspaper, metal bits and elastic underwear bands, he said.
Posted by PAWNESHOPE
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