May 24, 2019 — Aryan Brotherhood leader Thomas (Terrible Tom) Silverstein, one of the most infamous men in the American prison system for the past four decades, died of heart failure behind bars this month in Colorado at 67. Terrible Tom spent 35 straight years in solitary confinement after killing four people as a part of his role in the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.
Federal officials cite Silverstein as the impetus for creating the Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado, opened in the early 1990s to house the worst of the worst inmates in the nation’s prison pool. However, Terrible Tom didn’t land in the Florence facility until 2005.
Silverstein had surgery on his bad ticker in February and never recovered. He was originally jailed for a string of armed robberies that he pulled off with his dad and first cousin in California in the late 1970s. Incarcerated in Leavenworth, Kansas, the Irish Silverstein joined the Aryan Brotherhood and rapidly ascended through the organization’s pecking order, building a reputation for being violent, fearless and criminally savvy.
Less than two years into his sentence, he allegedly killed fellow inmate Danny Atwell for refusing to act as a courier for his drug deals. The following year in 1981, Silverstein strangled rival prison gang member Robert Chappelle to death in his cell at a high-security unit in Marion, Illinois. Chappelle was in the D.C. Blacks, an African-American prison gang with power on the East Coast and in the Midwest.
Shortly after Chappelle’s slaying, D.C. Blacks boss Raymond (Cadillac Ray) Smith was transferred into the Marion facility and he and Silverstein circled each other for several months until Terrible Tom stabbed him to death. Silverstein and an Aryan Brotherhood soldier named Clayton Fountain plunged makeshift knives into Smith nearly 70 times and then proceeded to parade his dead body around the cell block showing off their butchery.
In October 1983, Silverstein and Fountain carried out a systematic double murder of two correctional officers at the Marion prison. Silverstein stabbed Merle Clutts to death and an hour later in a separate section of the facility Fountain shanked Robert Hoffman. Terrible Tom and Clutts had been bumping heads for a while and Silverstein carefully plotted and coordinated the Clutts and Hoffman hits for almost a year. It was the murders of Clutts and Hoffman that resulted in him being confined to the “hole” for the rest of his life.
Silverstein’s conviction for the Atwell murder would be overturned in 1985. Among the Aryan Brotherhood hierarchy, Terrible Tom was revered and admired. His legacy grew to practically mythical proportions as the decades went by and he remained in isolation. Aryan Brotherhood Godfather Barry (The Baron) Mills was also serving his time in the Florence Supermax until his death of natural causes last summer.
Even though he was locked up 23 hours a day, Silverstein stayed busy. He blogged about prisoner’s rights, painted, sketched, and was working on his autobiography with retired Washington Post reporter Pete Earley. Silverstein filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons in 2007 challenging the constitutionality of the conditions he was being forced to endure but eventually lost the case in court.
The post The Iron Will Of Terrible Tom – AB Boss Did 35 Years In “Hole,” Dies As Mythic Prison Figure appeared first on The Gangster Report.