Life will be a lot more interesting if all the evil criminals lurking in our neighborhoods are locked behind bars or in solitary confinement for good measure. Only then will you be able to come out, look your neighbor in the face and be assured that “he ain’t got a pint of murderous blood in him”.
Hey, hey, don’t go snooping on your neighbor to know if he’s got some shady activity going on his basement – you might end up there if he does.
Less of the scary gentle-looking neighbor talks. Today we will take a look at some vile criminals, who are thankfully behind bars, but even their fellow inmates consider them dangerous. And most correctional officers won’t want to cross their paths for any reason. These are people that nobody wants to be their neighbor – even the toughened criminals in the same facility with them.
The thoughts of people like that existing give me the chills.
One thing that most of these criminals have in common is their tendency to break local laws as teenagers, and there current abode being the United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) in Florence, Colorado. A supermax facility for the worst of the worst, who are considered extremely dangerous to society, correctional officers and fellow inmates.
There are lots of them, but let’s take a look at five of such criminals.
Thomas Silverstein
Thomas has left his mark in three U.S prisons – Soledad, San Quentin, U.S.P Leavenworth, Atlanta, and Marion in Illinois before hitting his final respite in ADX.
His first stay in prison was for an armed robbery while he was 19, back in 1971. From then, it was an in-and-out prison trip across the country for robberies he carried out with his father and cousin. Somewhere along his life outside the prisons, he joined the Aryan Brotherhood, and from that point, it was a free fall.
Violence mixed with racial or religious prejudice have never done any good to the world.
While at Marion, Thomas was charged for killing a D.C Blacks prison gang member by strangling him, a case which he pleaded innocence to. Nevertheless, one of the top dudes in D.C Blacks swore he would kill Thomas, as revenge. And as the system will have it, they were neighbors in prison; long story short, dude got killed by Thomas instead.
No big deal right? Such probably happens in prisons all the time.
Here is the big deal; Thomas stabbed him 67 times, and proceeded to drag his ragged body all around the tier like he is celebrating his spoils of war. Chills.
It is important to note that Thomas has delved into art while in prison, and was pretty good at it. A prison officer Merle E. Clutts in an attempt to establish order and reign supreme, destroyed some of those artworks in the process. Thomas took that as a personal attack; it is needless to say that Thomas gave him a fair those of multiple stabs unto death, and dragged his lifeless body around the prison.
As a reward for his heartlessness, Thomas is currently serving his time in solitary confinement at ADX, where he continues to paint.
From minimum to maximum to supermax, he hit the trifecta of the correctional system. He is due for release in 2095 – probably on the other side.
Ramzi Yousef
There are those who would rather the world perishes if the world wouldn’t stand by them. Ramzi is one of those individuals – an unremorseful cold-hearted terrorist. In his short life on the outside, he piled up a list of attempted and successful bombings.
He holds a reputation as being the man behind the attack on the World Trade Center, just when he was 25. A brazen attempt if you ask me, ‘cos Ramzi dared to carry a 1,336-pound urea-nitrate hydrogen gas bomb in a truck into the North Tower. In hopes that the crashing North Tower will smash the South Tower. Such an evil genius; luckily for us, his plan didn’t work out but he got six people dead and thousands injured.
He championed the bombing of Philippine Airlines’ Flight 434; plotted to crash a plane into CIA headquarters; planned the Bojinka plot with his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to have plotted 9/11. If you have no idea what Bojinka plot is all about; it was a single plan to assassinate Pope John Paul II, and plant bombs in several Delta and United Air Lines’ flights.
Frankly speaking, this dude plotted numerous bombings to keep count. On his last hearing, he prided himself in being a terrorist and was quoted as saying, “I support terrorism so long as it was against the United States Government and Israel because you are more than terrorists.”
He is serving a life sentence plus 240 years in solitary confinement at the supermax ADX.
Let’s hope he never gets to breathe another air of freedom.
Theodore John Kaczynski
Hatred will do you no good. Ted probably didn’t know about that, and it ruined his life. And then he tried to ruin every other person out there. Ted had a long list of things – concepts and ideologies – that he hated and government and technology took the high seats.
Ordinarily, Ted was an academic genius, a mathematics prodigy, and professor and an anarchist author. His inclinations towards anarchism led him to quit his professorial appointment and move to a remote cabin to live in isolation; feeding on rabbits and vegetables while learning to be self-sufficient and without reliance on electricity and running water.
When he concluded that his attempts to live in peace with nature was unsustainable, he resorted to sending bombs most directed to universities, airlines and computer stores. Following a series of carefully orchestrated bombings, each leaving behind misleading clues, the FBI tagged him with UNABOM (University and Airline Bomber) leading to him being referred to as Unabomber. His bomb delivery service spanned over 17 years and is till date one of the most expensive and prolonged investigations carried by FBI.
He met the end of his freedom in 1995 when he started sending articles to media outlets which he demanded to be published, or he will carry out a series of bomb attacks. Till date, he is serving 8 consecutive life sentences in ADX.
Terry Nichols
Here comes another hater and bomber. Terry is currently living out his life in the same cell block with Ted and Ramzi at the ADX. He doesn’t have a lot of history surrounding his life, other than his anti-government and anti-black views for which he was quite vocal. To prove that he meant business, he tried to renounce his US citizenship twice, declaring himself as a non-resident alien.
Other than the aggravations, Nichols lived a normal life and had the average American jobs until his short time in the military when he met Timothy McVeigh. The duo plotted against the government and planned the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, which saw 168 people dead. Timothy was captured and given the death sentence while Nichols turned himself in and earned a Guinness world record.
You read right; he holds the record for an individual charged with the most life sentences – that’s 168 life terms in the supermax ADX.
Dennis Rader
Unlike other criminals that made our list, Dennis is a self-obsessed and dramatic serial killer. He was the stuff novels and movies were made from and he ensured he got a fair share of the industry in Stephen King’s novella A Good Marriage, Netflix’s Mindhunter, and the feature film Full Dark, No Stars.
There are a lot of creepy things about Dennis
- He sent FBI letters praising his abilities and asking them to regard him as BTK – Bind, Torture and Kill.
- In his confessions which he gave gleefully, he said he gained sexual pleasure from his methodic killings.
- He loves to strangle his victims and is quite patient about it.
- He sent letters to authorities with every death
- And worst of all, he lived life like a good neighbor holding executive posts in local councils and church.
In his first murder in 1974, he killed a Mr. and Mrs. Otero and two of their kids and left his semen in the crime scene. Ok. That’s enough.
Authorities caught up him in 2005, when he resurfaced after a long break from his favorite hobby. He is currently serving 10 consecutive life sentences in El Dorado Correctional Facility.
