211 Crew leader found dead
Benjamin Davis was among the suspects in killing of prisons chief Tom Clements.
Benjamin Davis, the founder and leader of a white supremacist prison gang suspected in the assassination of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements, has been found dead behind bars, the state Department of Corrections said Sunday. His death is being investigated as a possible suicide.
Corrections staff found Davis, 42, dead Saturday. He was serving a virtual life sentence for 211 Crew gang activities behind bars. His death is under investigation by the DOC’s inspector general.
“We’re not confirming any location,” said Department of Corrections public information officer Mark Fairbairn.
“You have a high-ranking member of 211, and issues his death could cause in our facilities — it could cause disruptions for us,” Fairbairn said, specifying fights. “That’s what we are trying to avoid.”
It was unclear whether Davis was being held alone in a cell.
In 2013, Clements was gunned down on the doorstep of his home in Monument, north of Colorado Springs, by parolee Evan Ebel, who also killed 27-year-old Commerce City father Nathan Leon.
Ebel was a member of the 211 Crew, a violent prison gang that Davis founded and led. Authorities investigated the possibility that Ebel was acting on orders from 211 Crew leaders, including Davis, who was a “shot caller” for the gang.
The Denver Post reported in May 2016 that Texas Rangers had named possible co-conspirators in Clements’ murder. The report also tied numerous members of the 211 Crew by text messages and phone records to the case, and indicated DNA from a third murder victim from Colorado Springs was found on a pipe bomb taken from Ebel’s car trunk. Ebel was killed in a shootout with Texas lawmen on March 21, 2013.
After investigators retrieved phone numbers from the phones Ebel had been using, authorities in Texas and Colorado made six arrests, half of them never previously reported.
The arrests stemmed from the gang members’ dealings with Ebel, but none was directly linked to Clements’ killing, which remains officially unsolved more than four years later.
El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder told reporters last year that the Clements investigation was coming to a conclusion, but he backtracked on that after other law enforcement agencies ex-
pressed concerns.
Elder has previously said “Evan Ebel stood on the doorstep and killed Tom Clements alone,” and added that making the leap that there was a conspiracy is not supported by evidence.
But a May 28, 2013, report of investigation by Texas Ranger James Holland could not have been more clear about investigators’ theory on the case at the time.
“The murder of the Colorado Department of Corrections director was ordered by hierarchy of the 211 prison crew,” the report says.
Some law enforcement officials have suggested that Ebel killed Clements to repay a debt to Davis.
Davis was sentenced to 96 years for violating the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act and an additional 12 years in prison for conspiracy and solicitation to commit second-degree assault.
He was one of 19 people indicted for their roles in the 211 Crew. The indictment details the gang’s elaborate communication through coded notes and secret slang.
Davis used LSD more than 100 times, huffed gas and tried methamphetamine, according to court records. At age 19, he started using cocaine and went on a robbery spree.
In November 1994, he donned a ski mask and brandished a gun, robbing a Subway store and then an Ace Hardware store in Denver. On Nov. 30, 1994, he shot a man in the butt while robbing a Bennigan’s Restaurant, also in Denver. Davis was arrested at a Las Vegas bus terminal after his father alerted authorities.
According to the court records, Davis and Danny Charles Shea founded the 211 Crew in the Denver jail after a black inmate broke Davis’ jaw.
“His perception was that the Hispanic jail population and the African-American jail population were well enough organized that they could protect each other against assault or homicide attempts by other race members,” a psychologist wrote in court documents. “He became convinced that if he was going to make it in prison, he would need to organize enough people of similar beliefs that they could protect each other from the Black and Hispanic gangs.”
Davis surrounded himself with close criminal associates, including his companion in a 1994 robbery spree, and appointed inmates with track records for brutality as his enforcers, court records show.
The 211 Crew, apparently named after the California penal code for robbery, “a 211,” took on Irish, Nazi and Viking identities. Members often tattoo themselves with shamrocks, Nazi swastikas or Viking horns. By 2005, state officials said the gang had 300 members.
The judge who resentenced Davis to 108 years in prison for gang activities behind bars cited his activities with the 211 Crew.
“Mr. Davis over the last 20 years has endeavored to make himself a thoroughly dangerous individual,” said Judge William D. Robbins, who didn’t oversee Davis’ earlier trial. The judge added, “The long and the short of it is you don’t need to be out on the streets in 40 or 50 years.”