JACKSON (AP) – Federal prosecutors say two members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Mississippi have been convicted on charges including racketeering and murder.
A news release from the U.S. Justice Department says 44-year-old Frank George Owens of D’Iberville and 35-year-old Eric Glenn Parker of Richton were convicted last week.
The guilty verdict from a federal jury followed guilty pleas by 40 others involved in the case.
Both men were convicted of racketeering conspiracy and murder. Parker also was convicted on a methamphetamine charge. Owens also was convicted of kidnapping and attempted murder. Each could be sentenced to life in prison. No sentencing date has been set.
The indictment in the case said Owens, Parker and others murdered a subordinate Aryan Brotherhood gang member, Michael Hudson, in 2010 because they believed he owed a drug debt to the gang.
The Justice Department describes the Aryan Brotherhood as a violent “whites only” group that operates inside and outside of state prisons.
“The convictions in these cases reflect a major disruption of a large organization that incubates in our prison systems and spills over to our streets,” Donald Alway, who leads the FBI’s Jackson office. He said the investigation involved work by the FBI, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and state agencies including the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
“ABM members often had tattoos incorporating one or more Nazi-style symbols as well as state-specific symbols including, but not limited to, the Swastika, the Iron Cross and the number ’13,’ which represented M, the 13th letter in the alphabet for the state of Mississippi,” the Justice Department news release said.