17 Feb. 7th–Feb. 13th, 2019 phoenixnewtimes.com phoenix new Times | Contents | FeeDBACK | oPInIon | neWs | FEATURE | nIght+DAy | CULtURe | FILm | CAFe | mUsIC | Mirssa Araiza-Reyes got into an argument with his cellmate, Frank Melendez, whom he suspected of being a snitch. Araiza- Reyes had strong feelings about snitches, having attacked another suspected infor- mant with a padlock and razor. He required all his roommates to sign affidavits swear- ing they that they weren’t snitches. Unable to come to terms with Melendez, Araiza- Reyes beat and strangled him. He kept the body in his cell for four days, a period dur- ing which staff paperwork indicates Me- lendez went through several counts, received meals, and was taken to showers and the exercise yard. When he could no longer stand the smell, Araiza-Reyes noti- fied a guard that Melendez was dead. “I took care of that snitch for you,” he said. The incident became known as the Weekend at Bernie’s killing. But that grotes- querie was soon overshadowed by a more extravagant foray into corpse abuse. In Oc- tober 1999, bank robber Joey Estrella was killed and eviscerated in the Special Hous- ing Unit (SHU) by his two cellmates, cous- ins William and Rudy Sablan, after a night of drinking and playing cards. It’s not clear if the Sablans regarded Estrella as a snitch or just a nuisance, but the cousins removed portions of his liver and spleen. By the time officers arrived to videotape the aftermath, the Sablans were covered in gore, mock- ingly gnawing at Estrella’s excised organs and drinking his blood. While the camera rolled, they stuck a cigarette in the dead man’s mouth and used his hand to flash the finger at the guards. Years later, when federal prosecutors sought the death penalty for the Sablans, two federal juries declined to vote for exe- cution. Defense attorneys had argued that poor supervision in the SHU, the scene of many of the Cowboy beatings and snitch killings, had contributed to the crime. Byerly hit the yard at Florence three months after Estrella’s murder. He could feel the tension in the air. The weight pile was full of shaved-head, shirtless badasses showing off their Nazi ink, and it was clear that everyone stuck to their own clan. Many prisoners wore canteen-issued wraparound sunglasses that prevented you from seeing their eyes. Byerly felt like they were all studying him, and he resolved to get a pair for himself quickly. “I’d been in prison, but this was a differ- ent world,” he says now. “I was walking around with these guys who were the big- gest knucklehead killers and lived by this bullshit code.” Because he was from Idaho, they called him Spud. Prisoners often know each other chiefly by nicknames, and Byerly encour- aged this one, trying to keep his real name from circulating as much as possible. An Aryan Brotherhood member who was an alumnus of the Idaho state pen quizzed him about people he might have met there, and soon Byerly was allowed to sit with the Odinists at meals. Byerly had no gang affili- ation, but the Odinists were something of a catch-all for various strains of white su- premacy, cloaked in Nordic mythology and hoo-ha. He merely had to sit there and nod as skinheads and Dirty White Boys and nut jobs like David Lane, the getaway driver in the 1984 murder of Denver talk-show host Alan Berg, blathered about the “mud peo- ple” and Asatru and the race wars to come. It was good camouflage. No one ques- tioned his bona fides as a separatist, be- cause after all, he was from Idaho. But he knew his snitch jacket could surface at any moment. All it would take is someone com- ing off the bus who’d been in jails in Ari- zona with Leonard, Dixon, or the Tigues. The first test came after just a few weeks. He was fooling around in the music room when Super Dave, an AB shot-caller, told him he wanted a word. Super Dave and his shark-eyed sidekick, Tank, took him down the hall to an empty bathroom, where a third gang member, Youngster, stood guard. Byerly scanned the room anx- iously as they walked in, wondering if someone was going to burst out of one of the stalls and shank him. Super Dave got right to the point. “Somebody says you’re a rat,” he said. Byerly had heard that when a bear ap- proaches, you’re supposed to make yourself look bigger. He did that now, summoning all the aggrieved outrage he could muster. “Who says that?” he demanded. “Fuck him! Take me to him right now.” Super Dave seemed taken aback. His source was an old dude, he explained, who’d just arrived. Byerly knew the name; the guy looked like a shorter version of Colonel Sanders and was known for rob- bing banks and using a taxi for his get- away. He’d apparently come across Leonard in the Central Arizona Detention Center and heard about how his partner had done him wrong. “This is bullshit,” Byerly shot back. “Did he bring paperwork?” In prison, paperwork is the ultimate ar- biter of who’s okay and who’s “no good.” People can run their mouths all they want, but the contents of their PSI, the pre-sen- tence investigation report, reveals their ac- tual crimes and whether they rolled on anyone to cut their time. Super Dave con- ceded that the old dude might have got it wrong, but it was up to Byerly to produce his paper pronto and clear things up. Byerly promised to have his PSI over- nighted to him and available for inspection. He went from the bathroom meeting to ar- range a phone call to his lawyer. Carmen Fischer remembers the call. Byerly told her he was in over his head, that he needed paperwork that showed he wasn’t a rat, and that it had to be impecca- ble. She ginned up a new version of his PSI, matching the font of the original and eradi- cating any hint of cooperation. “I spent the whole day,” she recalls. “I had to make the sentencing guideline numbers add up to the sentence he got.” The bogus report bought Byerly some time, but it also set other events in motion. Just hours after he’d shown Super Dave his PSI, he was summoned to the office of Lieutenant John Carr, the peniten- tiary’s intelligence officer. Fischer Way from p 14 >> p 18
