Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
a man who is part of the reason the supermax prison was built has died
63- year-old thomas silverstein died this month,he was in intensive care following a sugergy earlier this year.
silverstein went to prison back in- 78 for armed robbery , he was later found guilty of killing a prison guard and two inmates at a federal pen in Indiana
while those murderes inspired the designe of the supermax prison here in florence colorado .
silverstein was moved there in 2005 its believe he spent more time in solitary confinement than any other federal inmate.
he was in solitary at various prisons since 1980 .
october 14, 2007
you’ve heard about the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo bay ,but you probably don’t know there’s another prison , a secretive installation in colorado, where more than 40 terrorists are locked away .
the government won’t say much about this place ,it calls adx , short for united states penitentiary administrative maximun ,public has never seen the operation inside , but you will ….
the so-called supermax prison is sort of a 21st century Alcatraz and after months of reporting ,we’ ve pulled together a picture of this little known facility where we found convicted al quada terrorists are being force -fed and some guards are worrying about their own safety.
supermax is the place that America sends the prisoners it wants to punish the most a place former warden hood described as a” clean verison of hell”
this is as close to it as we could get with our cameras.
The adx lies low and sprawling by the foothills of the rockies 100 miles south of denver there have been six wardens since it opened in 1994 but this is the first time one of them has described his experiences inside.
robert hoood ran the place from 2002 to 2005 at the end of 20 years in the bureau of prison.
when the supermax job came up robert were excited about takin it . robert explain that in our system there’s 114 prisons, and only one supermax.it’s like a harvard of the system.
exept the Ivory Towers of haward may be easier to get into.
supermax holds fewer then 500 prisoners most are here because they’re to vilolent to be anywhere else
but this is also where America keeps convicted terrorists.more than 40 of them .
the general public has never seen supermax in operation.
but we found this rare if poor quality pictures in the files of a court case.
thevideo shot by the staff , shows a new inmate lawrence clacker a member of a prison gang being brought in through the underground garage.
most prisoners spend up to 23 hours a day in their cells every minute , evert meal, the window in their cell is blocked so they can’t see the mountains.
the inmates can watch 12 -inch black and white television or read books to pass the time. and if they behave they get limited exercise in aone -man recreation pen.
this was the life that terrorrist richard reed saw when he was brought into supermax. shortly after 9/11 it was reed who tried to blow up an airliner with a bomb in his shoe.
we’ve learned that reed seen her in his cell is in as special wing for terrorists called Hunit,
others included zakarius masawi who wanted to be oneof the 9/11 hijackers
and Wadih el-Hage, osama bin laden’s former privat secretary
another terrorist in supermax is ramsey yousef
the leader of the first world center attack in 1993.
yousef has lived in the adx for 9 years,sacrificing to live by his own code
8 years after yousef’s world trade center attacked
came 9/11 and the inmates saw it on the TVs in their cells.
lot of the inmates jump up and down ,screami and yell and clap and they were very exited.
about islamiskt extemist the terrorist in the prison , as a group, a lot of them behave self- righteoursly,very needy , they want more than what they have coming. kike basics, they want extra toilet paper and extra paper , writing paper,extra envelopes.
and if you can’t give them they want to see a supervisor right then and there and that doesnt alwys happen.
they have been concessions tot th islamic terrorists, we got a hold of the commissary list and we found prayer tugs for 18 dollars and a menu with no pork.
but still they’re ordered around by female guards and that really upsets them.
and a Terrorist inmate threatened to kill a femal guards family because she was doing her job
there have been frequent hunger strikes among the islamisk terrorists inmates inside supermax and to keep the inmates alive there are often force feedings, that’s when an inmate is restrained and liquid nourishment is poured down a tube in his nose,
there have been a dozen hunger strikers and one of them uset to be Osama Bin laden’ secretary former warden robert hood told that he supervised many of this feedings.
Hood probably conduct authorized conducted 350 maybe 500 hundred of involuntary feedings.
Bureau of prisons records , show that there have been as many as 900 of what the bureau calls” involuntary” feeding”of terrorist in Hunit since 2001.
they stop eating because of condition of confnement
some of the condition that they object to are outlined in this document.
inmates gets letters only from people approved by the prison and they get one monitorid phone call a month for 15 minutes.
as strict as that seems there is an even higer level of confinement sort of a ultramax inside supermax. its a group of cells, where is virtually no human contact, not even with the guard.
and there are only two prisoners who are Considered so dangerous that they’re locked in this place that’s known as range 13.
onE of them is Tommy silverstein who killed a prison guard
and the other is world trade center bomber ramsey yousef. warden hood says yousef is on range 13 for just one reason.
robert hood.” he has a charlie manson look ,he just has the eyes,he has some carisma about him. he’s in uniform , but you know there’s a powerful person you looking at .”
robert didn’t wanted yousef in a place where he could give anybody orders . something strange is happening with yousef he now insists has renounced islam and converted to christianity ,he’s even begun leaving his cell for exercise
warden hood left before all this happen but still he doesn’t by it.
robert hood ” he´s playing a game with someone,if he doing that he’sdoing it for the reaction ,he’s doing it for whatever he is the real deal.”
there penty of other real deals at supermax.they’re the all stars of infamy.
there’s ted kazinski ,the unibomber.
Oklahoma city bomber terry nichols
and tim McVeigh ,berfore mcVeigh was executed.
and robert hansen, the FBI supervisor turned soviet spy.
Olympic park bomber eric rudolph is here.
so are the al Qaeda terrorist who bomb the US embassies in Africa.
mob informant sammy the bull gravano has been here.
60 minutes overtime werent allowed any interviews with prisoners in super max
but they found garrett linderman an inmate who actuall got out .
linderman had been in another prison for robbery until his xellmate there was found stabbed to death.linderman wasn’t tried for for the murder .
but they transeferred him to the adx or supermax,he was released, then robbed a bank
and 6o minutes overtime , find him here in washington.
Linderman: the different between adx and other locksups , was the conections to the outside ,your family ,through pohne calls, vistis ,all those are pretty much stopped. at the adx. there is no comparison.the brtutality of isolation, it breaks down the human spirit , it breaks down the human psychic , it breaks your mind.
what does the world look like to a supermax inmate, with his own pictures linderman gave us a tour of his former 7X12 foot cell.
this is the shower
the concret bed or mattress.
and this is the windwow with the red concret bricks behind it.
linderman: only prison ‘ve heard of that allows you to take a picture in your cell, i guess they’re quite confident in their security.
but there has been trouble like this until 2005 some general population inmates were allowed in the wreck yard together and there were occasional figthts
in the 13 years it’s been open two inmates have been murdered.
and remember lawrence clacker, the inmate you saw being brought into supermax, he later killed himself.one of four prisoners who committed suicide
there emeains another concern for safety today. barbara ,the head of the officer’s union told 60 minutes overtime that the prison is dangerously understaffed witg more than a quarter of the staff jobs unfilled.
60 minutes overtime have been told that entire housing units that house notorious gang members, members and terrorists have gone undcovered and have been monitored by officers elswhere in the prison during this staff shortage.
barbara:um , i can’t really say anything about that , that’s internal security and i cant talk about that ,um i can, i can tell you that we asre very ,very short staffed”
60 minutes overtime wounder: what’s at stake?
barbara :lives ,ifirmly believe staff lives are at stake.
it’s not just her opinion ,last year a federal arbitration judge agreed that the prison was short staffed and said thaty assaults and threats from inmates were increasing.
the current supermax warden met with 60 miuntes overtime and told them that the staffing shortage is overblown by the union, but he wouldn’t appear on camera.
infact , no one at the federal bureau prisons would sit down with 60 minutes overtime for an interview.
supermas remains the least known prison in america.
the adx described as a clean version of hell. the perfection of isolation painted pretty the perfection of isolation.
lingering in the shadows of colorado’s rocky mountains lies the country’s only federal supermax prison . adx florence is closed off to the rest of the world.
outside armed security guards.
gun towers .
and cameras
on the inside, pure isolation
inmates spend an average of 23 hours ,a day in 7 x1 by 12 T concret cell
with a bed desk, toilet , sink, and shower.
meals are slid throug a smalll hoe in the door , the only glimps of the outside world is a tiny window
was specifically designed to keep every inmate in solitary confinement
no one has escaped since it opened in 1994.
the supermax incarcerates criminal deemed to dangerous for the average prison.
like the notorious El chapo Guzman woh was transferred in july after escaping two prisons in mexico.
Boston marathon bomber djokhar tsarnaev, unibomber ted kazinski and oklahoma city bomber terry nichol are aösp omcarcerated here.
of the 400 inmates on considered the most dangerous. terrible tommy silverstein,he killed three inmates and a prison guard in jail before being transferred to the supermax.
tommy spent more than three decades insolitary confinement before before dying this year.
the few hwo have been inside and made it out call the supermax ” life after death”
other say it’s a clean version of hell
allan prendergast a senior reporter at westward magazin in denver, spent 30 years writing on high security prisons and historic crimes and also one of the last reportes allowed at the supermax prison.
allan describe a typical day at supermax
allan: it’s a very disorienting experience , you go a maze of locks doors, sally ports, surveillance. the staff are in this control rooms with these panel of lights ,sort like the starship enterprise. and they controlling remotely wjhats going on.
Allan: and intensely monitoring what is happening with the inmates, who are mostley in their cells.
they never interact ever ,like ted kazinski interact with el chapo.
the only way would probably happen is during a recreation period if their both in different cages on the yard .
but most the real high profile ones tend to be even more isolated so that they might not be allowed on the yard.
someone like silvestein wouldn’t be allowed in the yard with other inmates he would have been alone.
allan written alot about isolation cells and an article that said because they’ve been in there for 23 hours a day , they start to see things.he reffered to torture.
so could this violate united stated states anti- torture laws because of like what they’re being subjected to?though they are despicable people .
allan said there is a serious issue ,the international right organizations do consider that degree of isolation to be torture.
he says it is debilitating that we have studies that show people that are isolated like they become very sensitive to noice and light
they sometimes become paranoid ,they do hallucinate sometimes,if they already have some mental illness and a lot of inmates do , it can be exacerbated by that
that there are instances of suicide, mutilation, things like that .its a problem, because on one hand we do want to keep these people isolated because they are extrermely dangerous, some of them .
but at what point does that become not a good things .at state level a lot of prisons are rethinking solitary because if these people are going to get out some day they’ve been very damaged by this and some people in adx the supermax do get released at some point down the line .so you have to think about that in terms of public safety as well as wheter you’re being human .
We just learned about terrible tommy silverstein which a lot of people might not knaow about and allan wrote back and forth with him ,he never interviewed him in person.
he’s one of the reasons adx was built, because this murders took place at another high security prison but the security wasn’t adequate enough to keep him futher isolated
he particularly regretted, he murdered a correctional officer at that prison and over the years he did really have change of heart about some of the things he did when he was an Aryan brotherhoood leader and thought that was following the convict code about this things.
allan and thomas corresponded for years .
he was very thoughtful guy, he had done a lot of thinking and a lot of contimpation over the years, he was probably the most isolated prsoner in America for much of his career.
and if you want to talk about torture,he was certainly in position to do that but he didn’t seem to lose his marbles when he was in there.
there are all kinds of people in these places and some of them are by any social standards really bad people.
but allan says that you can learn a lot from peoplewho have been through some of these experiences, sometimes they’ve had an opportunity to look at a side of life that most of us just don’t experience.
an inmate held in solitary confinement for 35 years longer than any other fedral prsioner hasdied ,thomas silverstein was held at the supermax prison in sothern colorado
he entered in 1979 on an armed robbery convicton ,he was later convicted killing two inmates and a prison guard.
with no federal death penalty in place at the time of the Guard slain the denver post reports , the bureau of prisons put silverstein in indefinite solitary confinement
where he remained until he was hospitalized in february, he had surgery and was placed in intensive care the AP did not immediately report on cause of death.he was 67.
Longest prisoner in the history of the United states prison system,born februar 4th 1952 born in Long beach ,californa. spent about 42 years in prison,35 of those years were spent in total and extreme isolation overa couple different prisons.
this gentleman along with clayton fountain basically inspired the supermax prison i particular adx over in florence ,colorado.
where the big dogs go, if you’re a terrorist , if you are the top of the top of your gang leaders.
Aryan Brotherhood, Bloods, Crips, Mexican mafia, theNuestra familia
this is wehet you go.
if your’re the Unibomber,this is where you go. thomas silverstein inspired this.
basically tom was a life of crime. he’s childhood didn’t seem like the easiest.his mom had divorded and remarried a couple of times during the childhood. tom was described as shy ,timid, almost akward at times growing up.
he was picked on because the kids thought he was jewish, bullied ,beat up when he would runhome crying to his mom wanting his mom to do something about it.his mom demanded that he fight back
he would ge a beating far worse from her when he got home. then he went out and handled his buisness
went into the california youth authority CYA. at the age 14, where again his beliefs and violence were reinforced
he was quoted as saying , anyone not willing to fight was abused
and if you know anything about the CYA at california Youth authority – people said adult prison was 10 times easier than the california youth authority and the things that went on inside of those places.
so from a young age breeding this thought and basically acceptance,that violence will get you throuh anything and violence will get you what you want in the end.
1971
at the age of 19 ,Silverstein was sent to San Quentin Prison in California for armed robbery. Four years later, he was paroled, but he was arrested soon after along with his father, Thomas Conway, and his cousin, Gerald Hoff, for three armed robberies. Their take was less than $11,000 (~$53,000 when adjusted for inflation in 2022)
In 1977
Silverstein was sentenced to fifteen years for armed robbery, to be served at United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
Murders at USP Marion
While at Leavenworth, Silverstein developed ties with the Aryan Brotherhood. In 1980, Silverstein was convicted of the murder of inmate Danny Atwell, who reportedly refused to serve as a mule for heroin being moved through the prison. He was sentenced to life and transferred to the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois (USP Marion), which was then a high-security facility. The conviction was overturned in 1985 after it emerged that the jailhouse informants who testified at his trial had perjured themselves on the stand.
At Marion, Silverstein was housed in the “Control Unit”, a virtual solitary confinement regime reserved for extreme “management problems” (prisoners prone to assaultive and disruptive behavior) in the prison. Thomas Silverstein spent his time in solitary confinement with a constant ceiling light, ensuring uninterrupted camera surveillance. He was allowed only two phone calls per month and received his meals through a slot.
In 1981
Clayton Fountain
Silverstein was accused of the murder of Robert Chappelle, a member of the D.C. Blacks prison gang. Silverstein and another inmate, Clayton Fountain, were convicted and Silverstein received an additional life sentence.
He avoided a possible death sentence since capital punishment on the federal level had not been reinstated yet. Silverstein maintained his innocence.
While Silverstein was on trial for Chappelle’s murder, the Bureau of Prisons transferred Raymond Lee “Cadillac” Smith, the national leader of the D.C. Blacks prison gang, from another prison into the control unit in Marion. From the moment Smith arrived in the control unit, prison logs show that he began trying to kill Silverstein
Thomas silverstein
“I tried to tell Cadillac that I didn’t kill Chappelle, but he didn’t believe me and he bragged that he was going to kill me,” Silverstein recalled. “Everyone knew what was going on and no one did anything to keep us apart. The guards wanted one of us to kill the other.”Silverstein and Clayton Fountain killed Smith with improvised weapons, stabbing him 67 times. After Smith was dead, they dragged his body up and down the catwalk in front of the cells, displaying it to other prisoners. Silverstein received another life sentence.
On October 22, 1983
Correction Officer Merle Clutts
Silverstein killed correction officer Merle Clutts at USP Marion. After being let out of his cell for a shower, Silverstein used a ruse to get Clutts to walk ahead of him and positioned himself between Clutts and other officers.
He stopped outside the cell of another inmate, Randy Gometz. Gometz passed a homemade prison knife to Silverstein and unlocked Silverstein’s handcuffs with a homemade key. Silverstein then attacked Clutts, stabbing him multiple times.
Silverstein later claimed that he murdered Clutts in retaliation for Clutts’ deliberately harassing him.Among other things, Clutts was accused of destroying paintings by Silverstein. BOP (Bureau of Prisons) confiscates artwork when it depicts murder.
USP Marion was subsequently placed on an indefinite lockdown, which ultimately lasted for 23 years. Following the murder of Clutts, Silverstein was transferred to the United States Penitentiary, Atlanta, where he was placed in solitary confinement.
His security status was recorded as “no human contact.” The events surrounding the murders of correction officers Clutts and Hoffmann inspired the design of the federal supermax prison, the United States Penitentiary, Florence: Administrative Maximum Facility (USP Florence ADMAX) in Colorado, which opened in 1994 and was built to house the most dangerous inmates in the federal prison system.
Silverstein and Gometz were both held at ADX Florence. Fountain died in 2004 at the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri.
During the 1987 Atlanta Prison Riots, Cuban detainees at the Atlanta federal penitentiary released Silverstein from his isolation cell. They handed Silverstein over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Hostage Rescue Team one week later. Bureau of Prisons officials were reportedly afraid that Silverstein would begin killing correctional officers held hostage by the Cubans.
Before the Cubans released Silverstein to Bureau of Prisons, the Cubans let Silverstein out of his isolation cell and Silverstein was able to roam freely about the prison.
One of the prison guards being held hostage had a history of being kind to Silverstein. (When the guard would handcuff Silverstein he would make it a point to ask Silverstein if his handcuffs were too tight.)
He was confronted by Silverstein and was ultimately spared by him. Bureau of Prisons negotiators were able to convince the Cuban riot leaders to hand over Silverstein as a gesture of good faith, a relatively easy decision for them, given that Silverstein’s status was peripheral to the aims of the Cuban leaders during the riot.
Silverstein was subsequently moved back to Leavenworth, where he stayed for the next 18 years.
In 2005, when USP Leavenworth was downgraded to a medium-security facility, Silverstein was moved to ADX Florence, a supermax facility in Colorado. His earliest theoretical date of release was November 2, 2095
Silverstein claimed that the “no human contact” status is essentially a form of torture reserved for those who kill correctional officers. “When an inmate kills a guard, he must
peter Earley/ author
be punished,” a Bureau of Prisons official told author Pete Earley. “We can’t execute Silverstein, so we have no choice but to make his life a living hell. Otherwise other inmates will kill guards, too. There has to be some supreme punishment. Every convict knows what Silverstein is going through. We want them to realize that if they cross the same line that he did, they will pay a heavy price.
“Ted Sellers, a former convict who met Silverstein during 25 years spent in prison, said he became a “legend” at Leavenworth.
Sellers told BBC News Online, “(h)e is not as bad as they portray. Sure, he is dangerous if they push him to the wall. But there were some dirty rotten guards at Marion… They would purposely screw you around. You are dealing with a person locked up 23 hours a day. Of course, he’s got a short fuse.
The St. Anthony Hospital, located at 11600 West 2nd Place in Lakewood, Colorado.
Silverstein died on May 11, 2019, aged 67, at St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, Colorado, after spending 36 years in solitary confinement; he died due to complications from heart surgery.