2015, Dylann Roof wanted to spark a race war by slaughtering nine black church goers, but that plan backfired when he was caught and condemned to death. Now he faces a new hell in prison where white supremacists are outnumbered and outcast. Police in Charleston, South Carolina say a fellow inmate assaulted the suspect in the deadly Charleston church shooting.
Charleston County officials say the assault on Dylann Roof happened outside his cell this morning. This is what happens to KKK members in prison. Larry Webster July 19th, 2000, a federal jury in Houston, Texas awarded damages totaling $55,000 to a member of the KKK who had been brutally beaten by black prisoners in a shared cell.
Well, why did that happen? 1993, Larry Webster, 42, was arrested in Galveston, Texas and sent to the county jail to wait for a trial on kidnapping and robbery charges. Well, Larry wasn’t just any regular offender. This was a man of the Ku Klux Klan, or KKK for short, a notorious white supremacist organization that has a real dark and troubling history in the US.
Now, the KKK was established right after the end of the American Civil War, formed as a social organization for Confederate veterans, but it quickly transformed into a supremacist group dedicated to upholding racial segregation and white power. Since then, the group had carried out despicable acts of violence and racism all in the name of purifying American society.
Their targets go from Africans to Asians, Americans, Latinos to Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, atheists, and the list goes on. So, you can probably imagine prison wouldn’t be a walk in the park for Mr. Larry Webster. His wonderful tattoos were bound to make him a prime target. Webster asked to be placed in administrative segregation for his own safety.
However, that request was denied due to overcrowding, and he was instead placed in a cell with black prisoners. As soon as they spotted his tattoos, they immediately recognized him as a clansman. After being kicked in the face, he would suffer various injuries to his body, forcing him to go to the ER. Webster then decided to sue Galveston County.
During the four-day civil trial, Webster remarkably represented himself in court. He argued in his lawsuit that he was placed in a cell with black inmates, although his clan background was well known to jailers, and that he was treated harshly for his beliefs. Now, get this, in the end he managed to win that case.
The jury gave him $5,000 in actual damages and 50,000 in punitive damages. The verdict also held Galveston County Sheriff’s Major Eric Nevolo, who commanded the jail, and Sergeant Leslie Hobbs, who ran the inmate classification system, liable for the damages. The jury found them negligent in their treatment of Webster, who was so obviously at risk due to his white supremacist beliefs.
Don Glewaski, the lawyer representing Galveston County, praised Webster’s legal efforts saying, He did a great job of representing himself. That’s the first case I’ve lost and I’ve been practicing for 17 years. Despite this win, though, he was still sentenced to 10 years in prison for the kidnapping and robbery charges.
Next up on this list, we have someone who proves that the danger of the KKK lurks not only amongst the inmates in prison, but also among correctional officers themselves. [Music] Thomas Jordan Driver April 2nd, 2015 Authorities charged two state prison guards and a former co-worker who were identified as KKK with plotting to kill a former black inmate.
It was all because of a fight that occurred between this inmate and one of the guards, Thomas Jordan Driver. The other guard involved was David Elliott Moran, and the third man, Charles Thomas Newcomb, had also worked as a prison guard, but was eventually fired. Late 2014, Driver told the others that the inmate in question bit him during a brawl at the Department of Corrections facility in Lake Butler in this attempt to possibly give him AIDS and hepatitis.
Driver was fuming as he ranted to his friends about that fight, being bitten, and the 9 months of blood work he had to endure. He would show them a photo of this inmate who had been let out of prison on supervised release and told them that he wanted the guy 6 ft under. Now, here’s where things get really wild.
All three of them got caught thanks to an FBI informant who pretended to be on their side. This informant convinced them that he could help them get rid of their target for good. They talked about injecting insulin into him after kidnapping him from his Palatka home or using a 9 mm to just take him out if that didn’t work.
Question just between you and me. A bullet to that guy in the chest. Sounds good? Sounds good. All right. As part of the FBI’s plan to apprehend the suspects and strengthen the case against them, they provided the informant with a burner phone containing a manipulated photograph of the inmate, making it appear as if he had been fatally shot.
The informant showed the picture to all three men, capturing their victorious reactions on a secret recording. Each suspect smiled and expressed their delight. Their words carefully documented by the informant. However, it was Driver who seemed to be the happiest. That what you wanted? Oh, yes. Are you happy with that, Bubba? Yes, sir.
Very much so. Okay. Once the FBI had their incriminating evidence, they had arrested the three triple K members, charging them with conspiracy to commit murder. In response to these events, Department of Corrections Secretary Julie Jones emphasized her department’s unwavering stance against racism and prejudice of any kind, stating that they have zero tolerance for such behavior.
The actions of these individuals are unacceptable and do not in any way represent the thousands of good, hard-working, and honorable correctional officers employed at the Department of Corrections. Jones said. 2017, Thomas Jordan Driver, David Elliott Moran, and Charles Thomas Newcomb were all convicted of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
Thomas pled guilty and was sentenced to 4 years in prison. David and Charles, on the other hand, pled not guilty, but were eventually found guilty on the same charge and were given 12 years in prison. Thomas Tarrants 1968, Thomas Tarrants was arrested after a fierce shootout with police during a failed assassination attempt on a prominent Jewish Mississippian.
He was given 30 years in prison, but there he discovered a path to redemption. You see, half a century ago, Thomas felt like the country was changing for the worse. The Civil Rights Movement infuriated him. His hatred of African Americans and Jewish people led him straight into the arms of the Ku Klux Klan. There was one more person who shared the same beliefs and harbored the same hatred as Tarrants, and her name was Kathy Ainsworth.
According to police sources and numerous acquaintances of the two, older fanatics had influenced Ainsworth and Tarrants with propaganda and hate material that came from organizations in Arizona, California, New Jersey, and many other states. They also started receiving training in firearms and explosives, getting ready to carry out a wicked plan.
May 28th, 1968, Ainsworth and Tarrants participated in the bombing of the Congregation Beth Israel. A month later, the duo drove to the home of Meyer Davidson, a Jewish community leader, planning to place a bomb on the side of his house below where they believed his bedroom to be. Ainsworth waited in their car while Tarrants attempted to blow up Davidson’s home with that homemade bomb consisting of 29 sticks of dynamite.
Unbeknownst to them, there was already a trap in place by the FBI and local police to catch them. A bloody shootout occurred. Ainsworth was shot in the neck and died immediately. Tarrants survived numerous wounds and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Now, the prosecution had sought a death sentence under a rarely used state law regarding the criminal use of explosives.
However, the jury declined to make a decision and left it to the judge, who spared Tarrants’s life. 1969, Tarrants escaped from prison with two other convicts, Malcolm Houston, who was serving a 15-year for bank robbery, and Louis Shaheen, who was serving a two-year child molestation. Shaheen was killed in a shootout with the FBI, while Houston and Tarrants later surrendered.
Tarrants spent 5 years in max security for the escape. Now, during that time, he read Mein Kampf and other books that fueled and furthered his worldview. He would start also reading Plato and Aristotle, and then some scripture. That’s when he became convinced that he had gone drastically astray. He became a born-again Christian, renouncing his racist views.
1976, with the support of a Jewish community leader who believed in his redemption, Tarrants secured an early release from prison after 8 years behind bars. He eventually obtained a seminary degree and a doctorate. Pastored a non-denominational church in DC for 5 years and spent the past 25 years working at the Evangelical C.S.
Lewis Institute in Washington. Today, he’s a soft-spoken, mannerly 77-year-old who picks his words deliberately as he talks about the rise of hate crimes and bias in America and actively advocates against racism. [Music] Edgar Ray Killen 1964, Edgar Ray Killen planned and directed the murders of three civil rights activists.
He was found guilty in state court of three counts of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison. Born in Philadelphia, Killen was the owner of a local sawmill and a former unsuccessful candidate for sheriff until he met Sam Bowers, the co-founder of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who appointed him Kleagle or Claiborne recruiter and organizer for the Neshoba and Lauderdale County Klan.
He zealously performed his duties as evidenced by the extreme measures he was willing to undertake when the Freedom Summer project took place. June 1964, Freedom Summer was a volunteer campaign launched in the US attempting to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi. Blacks had been restricted from voting since the turn of the century due to barriers to voter registration and other laws.
The project would set up dozens of freedom schools, freedom houses, and community centers such as libraries in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population. Now, during that time, James Chaney, 21, a young black man from Meridian, Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24, two Jewish men from New York, were actively involved in the campaign.
However, their efforts were tragically cut short when they were wrongfully arrested, brutally ambushed, and ultimately murdered. After receiving a message from Cecil Price, the deputy sheriff of Neshoba County and a member of the Klan, Killen arranged a meeting with a group of fellow Klan members. During this gathering, he shared the details of a sinister plan he had devised with Price to ruthlessly end the lives of the three imprisoned men.
The plan was set in motion when Price gave the order to release the men. As they drove out of town in their car, they were suddenly pulled over and kidnapped. They were driven to a different location and shot at close range. Meanwhile, Edgar Killen was busy solidifying his alibi by attending a wake for his late uncle at a nearby funeral home.
Little did he know the FBI received a tip from a Klan informant revealing Killen’s involvement in that murder. Now, Killen was one of 19 men arrested for the murder of three civil workers. However, Killen’s trial ended in a hung jury with the jurors deadlocked 11 to one in favor of conviction. The prosecution decided not to retry Killen and he was released, spending 40 years as a free man.
2005, due to community pressure, Edgar Ray Killen was retried and finally convicted for the murders. He was given three 20-year sentences, one for each manslaughter conviction. For Killen, who went to prison at age 80, the adjustment to not being in control appears to have been a tough one.
He was punished many times for hiding tobacco products in a seat cushion of the wheelchair he used and also for disrespecting the CO’s time and time again, especially females and African Americans. 2013, Killen’s most serious offense in prison was when he confronted corrections officer Ravonda Johnson, who went into his cell to collect multiple food trays that should have been tossed out.
Killen kept hurling racial slurs and curses at her and even attempted to physically attack her. Johnson then sprayed his face with a chemical agent to get him away. Killen was then sent to solitary and was allowed to wash off that chemical agent but declined any other medical attention. January 11th, 2018, Killen died at the Mississippi State Penitentiary 6 days before his 93rd birthday.
Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. April 13th, 2014, a horrific shooting occurred at the Overland Park Jewish Community Center in Kansas resulting in the tragic loss of three lives. The gunman, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., was arrested and ultimately sentenced to death. Miller, a native of North Carolina, dropped out of high school and joined the US Army where he served 20 years and rose to the rank of master sergeant.
He served two tours in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Now, Miller was introduced to white racialist politics when he read for the first time The Thunderbolt, a racist newspaper given to him by his father. According to Miller, within 2 minutes of browsing through that tabloid, he had found a new home within the American white movement.
1979, he joined the National Socialist Party of America, a neo-Nazi group that attacked and killed marchers associated with the Communist Workers Party in Greensboro. The following year, they kicked him out of the army for distributing racist propaganda. 1980, Miller founded the Carolina Knights of the KKK, later developing into the White Patriot Party or WPP.
Now, the WPP was pro-apartheid, adhered to the racist Christian Identity Theology, and openly advocated the establishment of an all-white nation in the territory of the American South. April 6th, 1987, a typewritten letter titled Declaration of War, signed by Miller, was mailed to 5,000 recipients. According to him, this war was against Jews, people of color, immigrants, the LGBT, abortion supporters, and church-state separation.
They searched his house shortly after that declaration and he was arrested when a cache of weapons was discovered inside. The sheer amount of weapons he had was enough to equip a small army, including explosives, dynamite, hand grenades, rifles, shotguns, crossbows, and approximately half a ton of ammunition.
This man served 3 years in federal prison following his conviction for weapons violations and also engaging in paramilitary activities. After getting out of jail, Miller had jumped back into the white supremacist movement by publishing a racist pro-apartheid newsletter. In this newsletter, he didn’t hold back in criticizing anything and everything that didn’t align with his white Christian ideology.
Miller would try several times to dip his toes into politics but found little to no support. But all this time he spent as a free man, he was a ticking time bomb and one day that bomb exploded. April 13th, 2014, Miller killed three people outside of the Jewish Community Center and the Village Shalom Care Center in Overland Park, Kansas.
Miller was identified as the shooter and promptly arrested. Minutes after his arrest, Miller shouted “Heil Hitler” while handcuffed in the backseat of a police car. In a series of telephone interviews, Miller, who was suffering from advanced lung disease, said that he was convinced he was dying at the time of the shootings and wanted to make damn sure he killed some Jews before he died.
But as it would turn out, the three victims he killed were all Christians. During his trial, Miller shouted anti-Semitic rants on multiple occasions. The day the jury found Miller guilty of capital murder and guilty on all three counts of attempted first-degree murder, Miller shouted “Heil Hitler” while giving the Nazi salute from his wheelchair in the Johnson County courtroom.
November 15th, when the judge sentenced him to death, he screamed “One day my spirit will rise from my grave and y’all will know that I was right. Heil Hitler.” May 3rd, 2021, Miller died in prison at the age of 80. The cause of his death hasn’t been identified yet, but the Kansas Department of Corrections stated that preliminary assessment indicates the death was due to natural causes.
[Music] Henry Francis Hayes March 21st, 1981, Henry Francis Hayes and another KKK member ruthlessly beat and killed Michael Donald, a 19-year-old African American, and hung his body from a tree. Henry was executed for his role in this heinous crime. During that same year, Josephus Anderson, an African American charged with the murder of a white policeman in Birmingham, Alabama during an armed robbery, was tried in Mobile where the case had been moved in a change of venue.
The first trial of Anderson ended with a deadlock of a mixed white-black jury. A meeting was immediately held in Mobile after the trial ended. Members of Unit 900 of the United Klans of America or UKA, Alabama Realm, which is part of the KKK, complained that Anderson wasn’t convicted since the jury had African American members.
Bennie Jack Hayes, Henry’s father and second highest ranking official in the UKA, reportedly said “If a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man.” March 20th, 1981, Anderson’s case was retried, but again the jury couldn’t reach a verdict. Now, following a meeting held together the same day, Henry Hayes, along with James Tiger Knowles, both drove around Mobile looking for a black person to attack, armed with a gun and equipped with a rope. While cruising through one of
Mobile’s most predominantly black neighborhoods, they spotted Michael Donald walking home after he bought a pack of cigarettes at a nearby gas station for his sister. Without any link to the Anderson case or even a past criminal record, Donald was chosen at random for being black. The two Klansmen lured him over by asking him for directions to a local club and forced Donald to get into the car at gunpoint.
The men would drive out to another county and then take him to a secluded area in the woods near Mobile Bay. Donald attempted to escape, knocking away Hayes’ guns and trying to run into the woods. The men pursued him, attacked him. Hayes wrapped a rope around his neck and strangled him while Knowles continued beating him with a tree branch.
Once Donald had stopped moving, Hayes slit his throat to make sure he was dead. The men left his lifeless body hanging from a tree on Herndon Avenue, across the street from Hayes’ house in Mobile, where it remained until the next morning. The same night, two other clansmen burnt a cross on the Mobile County Courthouse lawn to celebrate the murder.
While the local police chief suspected the Klan, officers first took in three suspects in custody based on their possible involvement in a drug deal gone wrong. However, it became quickly evident that this was not the case, leading to the release of the men. Despite that, for nearly 2 and 1/2 years, no arrests were made.
1983, the FBI investigated this case and finally found some links that led them to Henry Hayes and James Knowles. They were both arrested and Knowles wasted no time in giving a full confession. Knowles was given life in prison for his testimony. Henry Hayes, on the other hand, was convicted of capital murder.
The jury voted in favor of life imprisonment, but the judge overruled the jury’s verdict and sentenced this man to death. He was incarcerated in the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, while on death row. June 6th, 1997, Hayes was fried on Yellow Mama, Alabama’s infamous electric chair. Now, Hayes was Alabama’s first execution since 1913 for a white-on-black crime.
Hayes is also the only known KKK member to have been executed in the 20th century for murder of an African-American, but the 21st century is a different story. Daniel Lewis Lee. In 1999, Daniel Lewis Lee received a death sentence, while his partner in crime only got life. 4 years before this, Lee’s path would cross with Chevie Kehoe, who recruited him into his white supremacist organization, and from that point on, Lee’s life took a dark turn toward hatred.
Things would get a lot worse when Lee lost his left eye during a bar fight in Spokane, Washington. It all started when he called a Native American a racial slur and then got hit by a cue ball. Despite the injury, he refused to wear an eye patch. Among his neo-Nazi skinhead friends, he earned himself a nickname, Sai, short for Cyclops.
1996, Daniel had a plan to establish a white ethno-state. Now, to make that happen, he needed money and weapons. Him and his father had previously robbed this rich guy named William Mueller, so David believed there would be valuable items at Mueller’s house. But that wasn’t the only reason. Mueller was also a firearms dealer.
So, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to achieve two goals at once. January 11th, dressed in police raid uniforms, Lee and Kehoe broke into Mueller’s house. The pair were looking for guns, ammunition, and cash. After collecting all three, the two men incapacitated Mueller, his wife Nancy Mueller, and her daughter Sarah Elizabeth Powell, then knocked them unconscious, duct-taped plastic bags over their heads so they’d suffocate, and weighed their bodies down with rocks before tossing them into a swamp.
Now, for Lee, the horrific murders capped off a life marked by abuse, mental health struggle, and time spent locked in juvie. Also, despite joining Kehoe’s militia, he was still described by many as Kehoe’s subordinate, the faithful dog to the ringleader, as one judge, a prosecutor, and members of Kehoe’s family characterized the men’s dynamic.
According to reports, Kehoe’s mother and brother testified that he’d personally killed Sarah because Lee lacked the stomach for it. Most evidence pointed to Kehoe in the planning, initiating, and carrying out of that crime, which seemed bound to condemn Lee to a comparable fate, life in prison, or possibly something less.
The prosecution team certainly thought so. It made little sense to pursue the death penalty for Lee when Kehoe had gotten life. Even the victims’ family members agreed. The mother of Nancy Mueller, Earlene Branch Peterson, actually pled for clemency on behalf of Lee. She stated, I can’t see how executing Daniel Lee will honor my daughter in any way.
In fact, it’s kind of like it dirties her name because she wouldn’t want it, and I don’t want it. But Justice Department officials overruled them, claiming that Lee was too dangerous even for prison. The DOJ insisted that the prosecutors seek capital punishment, and a jury obliged. The decision haunts many of those involved to this day.
Lee indeed had other convictions ranging from carrying a concealed weapon to robbery. However, many people believed that these offenses alone weren’t sufficient to condemn him, especially when Kehoe received a more lenient punishment. July 14th, 2020, Lee was executed by lethal injection. When asked for a final statement, he denied committing the crime, stating, I didn’t do it.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer. You’re killing an innocent man. Lee was pronounced dead at 8:07 a.m. that day. Dylann Roof. 2015, 21-year-old Dylann Roof committed the Charleston church shooting in South Carolina. This tragic event resulted in the loss of nine lives, all of whom were African-Americans.
Roof is currently on death row awaiting execution. Now, Roof was born in Columbia, South Carolina, to parents who were divorced. According to reports, Roof showed signs of obsessive-compulsive behavior as he grew up, obsessing over things like germs and insisting on a specific hairstyle. During his time in middle school, he started smoking weed and got caught spending money on it.
Over the course of 9 years, Roof attended at least seven schools in two counties in South Carolina. In 2010, he stopped going to his classes and dropped out of school. Instead, he spent his time with drugs and video games. Ever since he was young, Roof had always held white extremist beliefs and spent a significant amount of time in Charleston.
He believed the city had a unique history, being a place where the most enslaved people in the country once lived. Charleston was filled with remnants and buildings that reminded him of a time when the white men were mighty and the masters of their dominions. Roof also had previous run-ins with the police, resulting in two arrests just months before the attack.
One was a misdemeanor for drug possession, and the other was for trespassing. Despite all of this, nobody ever believed that he was capable of committing such a horrendous act, even when there were so many red flags. According to a childhood friend, Roof went on a rant about killing Trayvon Martin and the 2015 Baltimore protests that were sparked by the death of Freddie Gray while Gray was in police custody.
He also often claimed that blacks were taking over the world. Roof always told his friends and neighbors of his plans to kill people, including a plot to attack the College of Charleston, but his claims weren’t taken seriously. That’s until he did the unimaginable. June 17th, 2015, during a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roof gunned down nine people, all African-Americans, including senior pastor and state senator Clementa C.
Pinckney, and injured three more. After several people identified Roof as the main suspect, he became the center of a manhunt that ended the morning after the shooting with his arrest in Shelby, North Carolina. During questioning, he admitted to carrying out the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war. I had to do it because somebody had to do something.
Following the incident, a significant collection of photos was seized from Roof’s room. These photos were selfies of him wearing the white KKK hood, raising his hand in the air with a high Hitler salute, and additionally, a Glock .45 caliber handgun, believed to be the murder weapon, and a Confederate flag were discovered in Roof’s car.
June 19th, 2015, Roof faced charges of nine counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder, and one count of possessing a firearm during the commission of a violent crime. But that’s not all. Roof was also indicted on 33 federal charges, including nine counts of using a firearm to commit murder, and 24 counts of violating civil rights, with 18 of the charges carrying the federal death penalty.
August 4th, 2016, while awaiting for his sentence, Roof was beaten by a fellow inmate while detained at the Charleston County Detention Center. The assailant was identified as 25-year-old Dwayne Marion Stafford, who was awaiting trial for charges of first-degree assault and strong-arm robbery.
Stafford was able to exit his unlocked cell, pass through a steel door with a narrow vertical window, and go down the stairs to the jail’s protective custody unit, reaching Roof. At the time of the attack, Roof was alone after the two officers assigned to him left, one being on break and the other called away to do another task.
When Stafford saw Roof, he struck blows to the face and body before officers broke up the fight. Roof would have many bruises all over, but not seriously injured, and was allowed to return after being examined by medical personnel. Surprisingly, Roof decided not to press charges against Stafford. January 10th, 2017, the jury found Roof guilty of all charges, recommending the death penalty.
The following day, the judge formally sentenced Roof to death. Dylann Roof is currently serving time at the US Penitentiary, USP Terre Haute, in Indiana. The location that houses the federal death row and execution chamber for men.
