LAFAYETTE, La. — A Little Rock man is among eight suspected members or associates of a white-supremacist prison gang called the Aryan Circle who have been indicted on federal charges in the 2016 killing of an alleged member of the gang.
An indictment unsealed Tuesday charges Jeremy Wade Jordan, 38, of Orange, Texas, with “violent crimes in aid of racketeering” in the slaying of Clifton Hallmark in Evangeline Parish.
Seven other members of the Aryan Circle, including Richard Alan Smith, 47, of Little Rock, are charged separately with being accessories after the fact to the slaying.
The two-page indictment, handed up Thursday under seal, said they helped Jordan “in order to hinder and prevent his apprehension, trial and punishment.”
Others indicted on the accessory charge are David Wayne “Big Dave” Williams, 36, of Sulphur, La.; Christina Marie Williams, 38, of Sulphur; Brian Elliot “Sneak” Granger, 36, of Beaumont, Texas; Leland Edward Hamm, 43, of Tulsa; Michael Paul Auxilien, 34, of Mamou, La.; and Stone Haynes, 49, of Beaumont, Texas.
KLFY-TV reported that Hallmark, a Shreveport resident, was shot and killed July 1, 2016, during an argument at a Turkey Creek home. The indictment doesn’t state whether the suspects were in or out of prison when Hallmark was killed.
Jordan’s 12-page indictment, which a grand jury handed up Dec. 14, said he and others participated in Hallmark’s killing “for the purpose of gaining entrance to and maintaining and increasing position in” the Aryan Circle. Jordan also is charged with illegally using a firearm.
Jordan’s indictment doesn’t include any other details of the killing, but it outlines the structure and operation of the “violent, race-based, ‘white’s only’ prison-based gang” to which he allegedly belonged.
The Aryan Circle was founded around 1985 within the Texas prison system, with members engaged in drug and firearms trafficking, killings, robbery, kidnapping and other crimes, according to the indictment.
The gang’s influence recently has expanded to other rural and suburban areas in Texas and other states, including Louisiana and Missouri, and members often had tattoos incorporating Nazi-style symbols, the indictment said.