Third Aryan Brotherhood member pleads guilty to role in fatal shooting

Nearly six years after a McCurtain County farmer’s plow turned up a human skull, three members of the white supremacist prison gang, the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, have pleaded guilty to charges related to their involvement in a fatal shooting of one of their own.

The three Texans were accused of beating their fellow gang member, driving him across the Red River and fatally shooting him in rural southern Oklahoma.

Brian Thomas Green, 44, of Mount Pleasant, Texas, became the third and final member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas to plead guilty to the 2011 killing of Kenneth Earl Ayres, 48.

Green entered a guilty plea Wednesday in federal court here for the use or carry of a firearm during a crime of violence causing death. Two other men, Kalvin Kyle McCown and Travis Lee Hill, have previously pleaded guilty to kidnapping.

The beating and deadly assault that Ayres endured in July 2011, according to federal court documents, was the result of stealing from his fellow gang members.

“Green admits the kidnapping and shooting were necessary to maintain discipline within the gang,” the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, which assisted with the case, said in a news release.

Just what Ayres stole from behind McCown’s shed in Longview, Texas, is unclear. Some witnesses said it was methamphetamine or cash, others claim it was a cache of stolen guns, prosecutors wrote. Whatever Ayres may have taken, it was enough to enrage McCown for violating the brotherhood’s code to the point he, along with Hill and Green, beat Ayres in that very shed, shot him in the hand and foot and drove him to southern Oklahoma where he was shot in the head.

Ayres’ remains and the .22-caliber bullet that ended his life were found two months later scattered across the farmer’s field south of Idabel. The State Medical Examiner’s Office noted a skull fracture and metal fragments, but less than 14 percent of Ayres’ bones were recovered, leaving the official cause of death undetermined.

For many white inmates across the U.S., joining the Aryan Brotherhood is a means for protection. But members quickly learn that crossing a fellow member or disobeying a direct order can get you killed. Striking fear into its members has been an effective control mechanism for the brotherhood.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, classifies the prison gang as a national crime syndicate with thousands of members in Texas alone.

After Ayres was beaten, witnesses saw Green and Hill escorting him to McCown’s truck, prosecutors stated in court documents. Green was visibly bloodied, wearing only boxer shorts and a sheet wrapped around his hand. When Ayres hesitated to get into the vehicle, Green told him to “get in or it will be worse for you.”

Ryan Keith Smith was present that night, along with his wife and two toddler-age children, prosecutors said. Smith was attempting to join the Aryan Brotherhood, and when he was told to follow McCown’s Ford F-150 as they drove off with Ayres, he piled his family into their vehicle and told his wife to follow the truck. Smith’s wife eventually turned a different direction, telling her husband she wanted no part in the crime.

Later that night, a distressed and hysterical Smith woke his wife with a rifle, adamant he would face punishment for disobeying orders. After a struggle for the weapon, which Smith fired several times in the home, Smith cycled the rifle’s action, sat on the bathroom floor, placed the muzzle to his throat and shot himself. He died instantly.

In an attempt to cover their tracks, investigators said Green and his coconspirators later would send a series of jailhouse letters to each other and to potential witnesses, discouraging them from testifying.

All three men face up to life in prison.