Interview with Thomas Silverstein

Thomas Silverstein entered the federal prison system in 1975 after he was convicted of three bank robberies that he pulled with his father and his uncle. He was 19 years old. Three years later, he was convicted of murdering an inmate who had run afoul of the Aryan Brotherhood, the most feared white gang in prison. Silverstein was identified as a member of the AB, convicted, and sent to the federal prison in Marion, Illinois, the harshest in the country at the time. A judge later overturned this conviction after ruling that the witnesses against Silverstein, which included a prison guard, were not believable. His ruling came too late, however. By then, Silverstein had been convicted of a second prison murder -- this time the strangulation of a black prison gang member. Another murder soon followed. It involved Raymond "Cadillac" Smith, the national leader of a black prison gang who had sworn to avenge his fellow gang member's death. Prison records show that Smith made several attempts to murder Silverstein, yet prison officials kept the two men in cells close to each other. Silverstein and another inmate, Clay Fountain, broke out of an exercise area and caught Smith as he was leaving a shower area. They stabbed him 67 times and then dragged his body up-and-down the prison tier so that other prisoners, still locked in their cells, could see the bloody corpse. Officer Merle Eugene Clutts was assigned to help bring order to the cellblock where Silverstein and Fountain were housed. Silverstein claims Clutts immediately began harassing him, but an investigation by the federal Bureau of Prisons and FBI would later clear Clutts of any wrongdoing. Silverstein would claim those two probes were whitewashes. Regardless, Silverstein became obsessed with Clutts and spent months plotting his murder. On October 22, 1983, with the help of other inmates, Silverstein slipped off his handcuffs while he was being led to a shower. Brandishing a home make "shank" -- knife -- Silverstein broke free from the two guards escorting him and attacked Clutts, who was not carrying any weapons. An autopsy later showed Clutts had been stabbed forty times. Read more about Thomas Silverstein.

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