White supremacist gang member pleads guilty to beating another

“Like everybody else, the vicissitudes of time are a factor.” Tom Berg, Rodney Holt’s lawyer, who described Holt as “a bit player”

A member of a white supremacist prison gang pleaded guilty Thursday to helping brutally beat a fellow gang member who’d wanted to leave the group.

Rodney Shane Holt, aka “Turbo,” 48, of Tyler, pleaded guilty to an assault charge in aid of racketeering, as well as conspiring to sell firearms to a convicted felon, according to a Department of Justice news release. He faces a maximum sentence on the charges of up to 25 years in prison.

Holt was a member of the Aryan Circle, one of the largest, most widely established white power prison gangs in the United States. The group counts hundreds among its members and operates in more than halfdozen states.

The group is well organized and lethal, ordering hits in and out of prison and running illegal drug and arms trafficking operations. It demands total allegiance and punishes those who stray. Law enforcement officials warn that the group’s violence extends beyond prison walls and can harm innocent victims.

Holt came under scrutiny of investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies during a sprawling multi-year investigation.

Court records indicate that Holt planned and helped carry out the vicious beating in 2016 of another AC member who wanted to leave the group to join a different gang.

Holt’s lawyer, Tom Berg, defended Holt by describing him as “a bit player” who was tangentially involved in “some of the worst excesses of the AC.”

He said that Holt now is on bond because he suffers from

end-stage kidney disease and needs dialysis three times a week.

“Like everybody else, the vicissitudes of time are a factor,” he said. “It was less expensive for the federal government to have him on bond and tend to his dialysis on his own than to pay to keep him incarcerated and take him to treatment.”

Holt’s guilty plea comes three weeks after another man admitted in court to selling multiple kilograms of meth to in 2016 to gang members living in the Houston area — who then trafficked it across state lines and sold it to other gang members in Louisiana.

Eulalio Torres-Cadenas, or “Yayo,” 43, of Houston, faces a sentence of 10 years to life in prison. Torres-Cadenas’ attorney declined comment.

Sentencing dates have not yet been set.