CHINO — A former high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood who dropped out of the gang and testified against its members was recommended for parole late last month.
The April 23 decision by a California parole board marks the first time that Michael Lynn Thompson, 67, has been recommended for parole, after more than a dozen denials going back to 1986. He was convicted of two murders in 1973, killings Thompson continues to insist he was less involved in than evidence at his trial suggested.
Still, Thompson has some hurdles to overcome before he is granted a release from prison. A second parole board will review of the decision, and if the recommendation stands, Gov. Gavin Newsom could still step in and prevent his release.
Thompson is known as an Aryan Brotherhood dropout in part because he has willingly appeared in television documentaries about the gang, including a 2007 episode produced by National Geographic. He dropped out because he was outraged the gang authorized the murder of another dropout’s father, he said on camera.
Today, Thompson says he has taken a “vow of nonviolence” that withstood one of the truest tests imaginable: In 2015, a Mexican Mafia hitman got to him in prison and attacked him with a homemade knife, slicing his ear in half and cutting him in the throat. When the would-be assassin stabbed him a third time, Thompson disarmed him and grabbed the shank.
“There was a window of opportunity. I saw it. I played it through in my head. I knew what I could do to him,” Thompson told the parole board. “And instead, I took the weapon, and I put it underneath me, and I laid down until staff got there. And that was in keeping with my vow of nonviolence.”
That attack, Thompson said, proves that his nonviolent beliefs are sincere. The commissioners seemed to agree, despite voicing skepticism that Thompson was ready for release. His lack of violence over past decades “clearly shows that you know how to manage yourself for a prolonged period of time,” commissioner Vijay Desai said, according to a transcript of the hearing.
“Whatever reservations we have about your personality, I mean, is basically overcome by that huge objective fact,” Desai added.
Still, Thompson continues to insist that he didn’t participate in beating and shooting two men to death, which he was convicted of in 1975. The victims, Rue Steele and Butch Nunley, were allegedly involved in marijuana trafficking with a man named John Solis, who owned ranches in Southern California.
According to authorities, Thompson wanted to move in with Nunley’s wife, so to get him out of the way he invented a bogus story that Nunley and Steele wanted to kidnap Solis’ children. Solis believed Thompson and told him and another man, Mike Sesma, to kill Nunley and Steele.
Sesma and Thompson lured the victims over to Solis’ house, held them at gunpoint, and beat both men severely, then put them in the trunk of a car and drove them to a pig farm to bury their bodies. When they arrived, they realized Nunley was still barely alive, so Sesma shot him in the head as he begged for his life, authorities said.
Thompson’s story is very different. He says he heard that Solis’ kids were in danger of being kidnapped so he warned Solis. Weeks later, he says he was working at a pigsty at the ranch when another man told him not to dig too deep because two bodies were buried there.
“I’ve never killed anybody,” Thompson told the parole board. Still, he said he feels he is responsible for the murders because he warned Solis, setting off the bloody chain of events that followed.
“Had I called the police as opposed to John Solis and said I knew about the kidnap plot, the outcome probably would have been different,” Thompson said, later insisting that: “Whether I issued the fatal blow or not is irrelevant. I caused it by not taking a responsible position as it relates to these victims and their families and the communities.”
After the murder, Thompson did in fact move in with Nunley’s wife and start a new life in Oregon, until police discovered the bodies and arrested him. He, Solis and Sesma were all convicted. Thompson received a sentence of seven years to life.
Soon after being admitted to Folsom Prison, he joined the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood, despite the fact that Thompson’s half-Native American heritage would have barred him from most racist groups. He said he joined the gang “for protection,” and that several groups recruited him because of his formidable size — he is 6 foot 4 and could bench press 600 pounds back then, he said.
“It’s live or die, and I choose to live. It’s that simple,” he told the parole board.
Back then, Thompson said the Aryan Brotherhood — also known as The Brand — was not about white supremacy so much as “controlling resources” and the prison drug trade. He made friends with the gang’s leaders Tyler “The Hulk” Bingham and the late Barry Byron Mills, who died in a “Supermax” federal prison last June.
The National Geographic documentary claims Thompson admitted to killing 22 people in prison, which his supporters say was a misattribution, and that was actually the number of murders tied to the Aryan Brotherhood at the time. Thompson denied ever committing a homicide in prison, but said knife fights were common.
“There was no sneaking behind somebody and hitting them or anything else,” Thompson said. “If I called a man out, and he didn’t have a knife, I gave him a knife and we went head up, and that’s the way you did it back then.”
Thompson was a proud Aryan Brotherhood member, he says, until 1983 when the gang commissioned a hitman named Curtis Floyd Price to murder Richard Barnes, a Los Angeles resident whose son, Steven Barnes, had dropped out of the gang and agreed to testify against its members. Steven Barnes was in witness protection, so the gang settled for murdering his father.
Thompson says he was the only high-ranking member to vote against the hit, and that it left a bad taste in his mouth. He dropped out of the gang soon after and testified against Price, who was sentenced to death for murdering Barnes and a woman, Elizabeth Hickey.
“I felt I had a responsibility to combat that which I had created,” Thompson told National Geographic. He also co-founded a nonprofit called Live, Learn & Prosper, a self-help program for folks trying to make positive changes in their lives. He said he will work there if he is released.
Others familiar with the Aryan Brotherhood say Thompson had also angered another leader, Robert Lee “Blinky” Griffin, around the same time he dropped out. A representative for the Orange County District Attorney asked that Thompson not be paroled, citing his unwillingness to confess to the murders, describing Thompson as a “narcissist” and unwilling to change.
Butch Nunley’s daughter also spoke at the hearing, saying that her father’s life insurance money was spent on Thompson’s defense and that her father’s death caused a ripple effect and decades of harm. Her mother became a heroin addict and died alone, she said.
“I get really angry and jealous that you’ve got these educational degrees (in prison). I have nothing,” Nunley’s daughter told Thompson, later adding, “The Nunleys have never been the same.”
