They died inside and outside jails, stabbed in the sweltering Central Valley sun, shot on the dark streets of Pomona, Lomita and Lancaster.

One was a pimp, the other an extortionist with ties to Israeli organized crime. Two of the victims were members of a white supremacist gang. A jailed robber was killed by his fellow inmates. Another man was found dead in a stolen truck.

What they all have in common, authorities say, is their run-ins with three known members of the Aryan Brotherhood.

The trial of Kenneth Johnson, Francis Clement and John Stinson on racketeering and murder charges begins Wednesday. The defendants have pleaded not guilty and have denied ties to the Aryan Brotherhood, a gang formed nearly 60 years ago by white San Quentin inmates.

Prosecutors said they have traced Johnson, Clement and Stinson to seven homicides, including two behind bars and five on the streets of Los Angeles County. The case has been kept secret. Prosecutors did not even release the names of the victims; The New York Times identified them through public records and law enforcement sources.

The defendant is a state prisoner who is already serving a life sentence. Each followed a strange and winding path to a Fresno courtroom, where the government would eventually reveal an account of how the murders were orchestrated behind prison walls.

Accused from 'murderous society'

Johnson, 63, has been serving a life sentence since 1996 for the attempted murder of a Madera County sheriff's deputy.

Johnson, nicknamed "Kenwood," was born in Covina and raised in San Jose, according to parole records. Prison records show he served 14 months at Boys Ranch for burglary and escaped from prison twice.

As an adult, Johnson served time in prison as a felon for robbery, assault and possession of a firearm. Johnson was four months out of prison in 1994 when a Madera County deputy responded to a report of a suspicious man with a knife, according to testimony at Johnson's parole hearing.

Johnson fired four shots at the deputy, but the deputy was not injured. The deputy returned fire, striking Johnson in the arm.

Johnson was sentenced to life in prison and sent to Northern California's maximum-security Pelican Bay prison, where all of the state's alleged prison gang leaders are incarcerated.

At his parole hearing, Johnson denied belonging to the Aryan Brotherhood and attributed his disciplinary record, which included stabbings and riots, to a "murderous society" behind prison walls.

"Whether you like it or not, violence is part of the environment," Johnson said. "Even if you don't want to be a part of it, it will find you somehow."

***

Clement, 58, has been locked up since committing the murder on his 18th birthday.

Clement, a Springfield, Ore., native, was on his way to Las Vegas to celebrate when he checked in with a friend and two teenage girls, according to testimony at his parole hearing. A motel in Sacramento.

After a night of drinking Jack Daniel's and swimming in the motel pool, Clement returned to their room and found his friend raping one of the girls, he told his parole hearing. Clement took out a knife and cut his friend's throat.

Clement was convicted of second-degree murder and sent to Vacaville State Prison, where he and two other inmates tied a suspected informant to a bed before Clement cut off his Part of the tongue.

Prison authorities claimed Clement joined the Aryan Brotherhood in 1995, but he denied this.

"I do not belong to any gang," Clement told the parole board, "nor do I intend to belong to any gang."

***

Stinson, 70, is an enigma, according to law enforcement officials.

A witness testified at a recent trial that after a Los Angeles federal jury convicted Stinson of murder and racketeering in 2007, he was quieter and more reserved than Johnson and Clement, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood movement. The three-man ruling "committee" resigned.

In 1979, Stinson was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a drug dealer. Stinson and Daniel "Kut" Graheda forced their way into Alfredo Armijo's Long Beach home, according to testimony at his co-defendant's parole hearing.

Grajeda, a reputed member of the Mexican Mafia, fired a shot into the air and told Armijo: "Hand over the drugs."

A commissioner told Graheda's parole hearing that intruders led Armijo and his girlfriend at gunpoint to a house across the street where they believed heroin was hidden. Armijo and his girlfriend knelt in the street as Graheda warned police were coming.

"Should I shoot him?" Stinson asked as he pointed a .357 magnum gun at Armijo's head, according to testimony at the parole hearing.

Graheda said nothing. Stinson pulled the trigger.

Graheda and Stinson were both convicted of murder. Graheda was sentenced to 29 years to life in prison. Stinson was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

While in prison, Stinson rose to become a member of the Aryan Brotherhood's "Council," which, according to testimony at his racketeering trial, had the final say on recruiting new members and killing existing members.

John Harper, a former member of the gang, testified that Stinson's power was self-evident.

"We know who's calling the shots," he said. "You know who that person is."

Los Angeles County and Jail Victims

On October 4, 2020, Allan Roshanski and Ruslan Magomedgadzhiev were found shot to death in Lomita.

Roshanski, 36, was released from the California prison system in 2018 after serving a year for a Hollywood pimping conviction. In exchange for 20-30 percent of the revenue, Roshanski advertised female services on Backpage, negotiated prices with customers and booked hotel rooms for "dates," prosecutors wrote in court documents.

Magomedgadzhiev, 40, was born in Chechnya and immigrated to Los Angeles in 2001, according to a letter Magomedgadzhiev wrote to a judge. Seven years later, an Israeli organized crime figure in Tarzana asked Magomed Gagiev for help in resolving a dispute with a Las Vegas businessman who owned a business selling cosmetics in a shopping mall. kiosk.

Magomedgagiev and his brother attacked the businessman, who pulled out a gun and shot Magomedgagiev in the buttocks. Magomedgagiev pleaded guilty to crossing state lines to assist in racketeering and served two years in federal prison.

Justin "Sidetrack" Gray is accused of shooting Roshansky and Magomedgagiev on the orders of Johnson and Clement. All three pleaded not guilty.

A detective wrote in a search warrant affidavit that an informant overheard Gray saying he was promised membership in the Aryan Brotherhood after he "caught those two Russians."

***

On the evening of March 8, 2022, James Yagle Jr. and Ronnie Ennis Jr. were shot to death in Pomona.

According to the search warrant affidavit, both men were members of a white supremacist gang known as Public Enemies No. 1 (PEN1).

The alleged killers, Brandon "Bam Bam" Bannick and Evan "Soldier" Perkins, were also members of PEN1, a detective wrote in an affidavit. Clement was accused of ordering the murder.

Perkins has pleaded not guilty. Bannick pleaded guilty last week to two counts of murder in connection with the slayings of Yeager, Ennis, Roshanky and Magomedgagiev.

***

The coroner's report states that when Michael Brizendine did not come home on the night of February 22, 2022, his girlfriend tracked his phone to a house in Lancaster.

A stolen Dodge Ram 1500 was parked in the driveway. The driver's side rear window was shattered. Brizendine fell behind the wheel and was shot in the head, according to the coroner's report.

Brizendine was recently released from prison after six years for assaulting a police officer.

Two months after Brisendine was killed, Los Angeles County prosecutors charged "suspect" James Field with murder. Field, 34, was indicted in the Fresno case, accused of killing Brizendine on Clement's orders before the charges were dropped.

***

Brandon Lowrey was serving a 10-year prison sentence for robbery and drug trafficking and had been in prison for six years when he was killed by an inmate at Kern Valley State Prison.

Authorities described a plot to kill Lowry in prison disciplinary records. An informant told prison officials that Johnson, Clement and a third so-called Aryan Brotherhood member, David Chance, drafted a list of all white inmates in Kern Valley who had drug debts.

The informant said Lowry owed nearly $1,000 and was given a "red flag," meaning no inmate could sell him drugs until he paid off his debt. Lowry ignored the order and purchased more drugs instead of paying off the money he already owed.

The tipster said Thrasher Holmeyer, a murderer from San Bernardino, volunteered to kill Lowry.

"Look at the news," he said, according to sources. "I will definitely take care of this."

Holmeyer became Lowry's cellmate on Jan. 10, 2016, according to jail records. Two weeks later, prison guards found Lowry dead in his cell.

***

In 1991, Robert Hargrave was unemployed and needed money to pay off his father's car loan, so he opened an adult bookstore in Rubidoux.

He shot the 23-year-old clerk eight times and stole the cash register, which contained $140, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported. Hargrave was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Prosecutors said he died on April 30, 2020, on a Kern Valley playground, stabbed to death by two inmates on Stinson's orders.

According to prosecutors, Hargrave assaulted Andrew "Misfit" Collins, an inmate with whom Stinson ran a profit during the COVID-19 pandemic Generous scheme to defraud the California Employment Development Department.

After Hargrave's death, Collins allegedly boasted: "We ditched that bastard."