Five years after a parolee killed Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements and Commerce City father of three Nathan Leon, the white supremacist gang that some officials have linked to the deaths continues to grow more powerful and deadly behind bars.
The gunman, Evan Ebel, died days later in a shootout with Texas lawmen, but the questions remain: Did he act alone? Did he have help from fellow members of the 211 Crew prison gang?
Only one person has faced justice in the case since the March 17, 2013, killing of Leon and the assassination two days later of Clements, the head of the Department of Corrections. That was Stevie Vigil, the woman who pleaded guilty to buying the gun that Ebel used. A federal judge in 2014 sentenced her to 27 months in prison.
El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder, who office oversees the investigation, said in an interview this week that he believes Ebel acted alone when he killed Leon for his Domino’s pizza uniform, and then shot Clements on the doorstep of his home in Monument on the night of March 19, 2013.
Elder said he asked an investigator in 2016 to go over all the evidence for a third time, on the chance that new evidence could be uncovered pointing to possible conspirators. An investigator from Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman’s office also independently reviewed all the evidence over a span of nine months, he said.
“They’ve looked at everything and anything. To date (they) have not turned over any evidence that disproves that Evan Ebel acted alone,” Elder said. “I would love nothing more than to prove a conspiracy to the 211 Crew.” But so far the only things tying the case to others, he said, are suppositions not unlike conspiracy theories in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Ebel left behind many intriguing clues that point to a conspiracy, including a hit list that mentioned other Colorado officials, and he had contact with fellow members of the 211 Crew in the days before and after the shootings. Ebel called one 211 Crew member on March 21, 2013, just moments before he died in a chase and shootout on a Texas highway, according to Texas investigators.
The perception behind bars is that 211 Crew leaders, including gang general Daniel “Jimbo” Lohr, ordered Ebel to kill Clements, Lohr said in a telephone interview last year from a Pennsylvania federal prison. It doesn’t matter that Lohr denies involvement, or even that Elder believes otherwise — that is the widely held belief, Lohr acknowledged. That perception has increased the respect fellow prisoners have for the gang and helped swell its ranks, he said. But the consequences have been a mixed blessing, he added.
Texas Rangers and key Colorado investigators have said the gang’s leaders ordered Ebel to kill Clements. In fact, a confidential informant whose claims are partially confirmed by phone records claims that Lohr boasted that “I ordered that,” meaning the Clements hit, a report by the Texas Rangers says.
A Texas official familiar with the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation recently said all evidence points to a gang conspiracy. Colorado officials who previously led the Clements murder investigation, including John San Agustine, have also said they repeatedly recommended that District Attorney Dan May’s office file charges against co-conspirators including Lohr and other 211 Crew members. Lohr said he was surprised they didn’t charge him.
Prison gang merger
In an effort to diffuse the power base of the 211 Crew, Clements’ successor, executive director Rick Raemisch, moved the gang’s “inner circle” members with a rank of general — all with a vote when it comes time to order hits and beatings — outside Colorado’s prison system to state or federal prisons in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Kentucky, Colorado and Ohio.
But the 211 Crew has merged with other white supremacist prison gangs, including the Aryan Syndicate and the American Nazi Party. Leaders of the reconfigured gang have been charged with or accused of carrying out gang hits behind bars, court records indicate.
On Aug. 11, 2014, gang members Robert “Nugs” Sprowles and Thomas “Frosty” Johns allegedly stabbed gang member Cody Gray at Sterling Correctional Facility at the behest of Aryan Empire generals Vernon Templeman, John Dehmer and Brandon “Creeper” Cox, according to court records.
District Attorney Brittny Lewton charged Sprowls and Johns with first-degree murder in 2014. But she didn’t charge Templeman and Cox until the summer of 2017 when Templeman agreed to testify about how the hit was ordered. Templeman agreed to turn over evidence in Gray’s slaying in exchange for a transfer from a federal prison in Ohio populated with a large number of black gang members to a prison more friendly to white supremacist gang generals, Lewton said. Dehmer has not been charged.
On June 6, 2015, William Pettigrew, an Aryan Empire soldier, entered the cell of rival gang member Joshua Edmunds at Limon Correctional Facility and stabbed him to death with a shank, according to court and coroner’s records and a former 211 Crew member.
Pettigrew was ordered to kill Edmunds for stealing food from the gang’s store at Limon, according to the former 211 Crew member who spoke to The Denver Post on condition of anonymity because a hit has been ordered on him for snitching on the gang. According to court records, Pettigrew, 33, was charged with first-degree murder after deliberation, second-degree murder, possession of contraband (a shank) and six counts of being a habitual criminal.
Since Clements’ murder, the Aryan Empire has grown more brazen because it believes that if it can kill the executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, it can get away with anything, the former gang member said.
A founder of the 211 Crew, Benjamin Davis — a man some investigators and even those inside the gang have speculated ordered Ebel to kill Clements — killed himself in a Wyoming prison last year.
