Three California inmates allegedly tied to the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood prison gang ordered seven Los Angeles-area murders in recent years, according to federal prosecutors.
Kenneth Johnson, Francis Clement, and Johnson Stinson are charged with ordering the killings and racketeering, and a secretive federal trial against the men, all of them state inmates serving life sentences, began on Wednesday, The Los Angeles Times reports.
They all pleaded not guilty and have denied being gang members. The murders took place around the Los Angeles area and occurred both on the streets and behind bars.
The victims include Allan Roshanski and Ruslan Magomedgadzhiev, who were fatally shot in Lomita in October 2020, allegedly on orders from Clement and Johnson.
The killings reportedly came as the Aryan Brotherhood sought to intervene in a dispute between an Israeli organized crime figure and a Las Vegas businessman.
The shooter reportedly said near an informant that he had been promised membership in the Brotherhood if he “got those two Russian guys.”
California inmate Johnson Stinson, along with alleged associates Kenneth Johnson and Francis Clement, are accused of ordering scores of murders connected to the Aryan Brotherhood white supremacist prison gang (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation)
Another incident under scrutiny is a 2022 shooting, in which James Yagle, Jr., and Ronnie Ennis, Jr., alleged members of the Public Enemy Number 1 white supremacist gang, were killed by fellow gang members, allegedly on orders from Clement.
A separate killing in February 2022, an execution-style shooting of Michael Brizendine in Lancaster, is also named in the case.
Prosecutors allege the men facilitated killings inside prison, too, including the 2016 stabbing death of Brandon Lowrey at Kern Valley State Prison, allegedly over drug debts, and the 2020 stabbing of Robert Hargrave as payback for allegedly attacking one of Stinson’s co-conspirators in an alleged scheme to defraud a state employment agency during Covid.
The accused men all have a lengthy criminal history.
Johnson has been serving a life sentence since 1996 for attempting to kill a sheriff’s deputy. Clement was convicted of second-degree murder and allegedly tied up a suspected prison inmate and cut out part of his tongue.
Stinson has convictions from a 1979 murder of a drug dealer and a 2007 murder and racketeering case. He also allegedly served on the ruling “commission” of the Aryan Brotherhood.
The Aryan Brotherhood gang formed in 1964 in California’s San Quentin prison, as the state carceral system desegregated and racial conflict broke out between the newly integrated inmates.
“Today, the gang operates both inside and outside prisons, and although it clearly has a white supremacist ideology, it is above all a criminal enterprise,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Given the choice between making money and showing their racism, members virtually always go for the cash, meaning the gang has often worked with Latino and other gangs for profit.”
Members live by a motto of “blood in, blood out,” committing acts of violence and gang war to earn their place in the group, and are required to read Nazi literature and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.
One estimate suggests the group, less than one-tenth of one percent of the U.S. inmate population, is behind nearly 20 percent of prison murders.
The gang’s primary presence is in California and federal prisons, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
