8 people indicted in supremacist gang killing

BATON ROUGE (AP) — Eight alleged members or associates of a white supremacist prison gang called the Aryan Circle have been indicted in Louisiana on federal charges in the 2016 killing of a fellow alleged member of the gang.
Court records unsealed on Tuesday show Jeremy Wade Jordan, 38, of Orange, Texas, pleaded guilty on March 2 to the first of two counts in his indictment. The first count in his Dec. 14 indictment charged Jordan with “violent crimes in aid of racketeering” in the murder of Clifton Hallmark in Evangeline Parish.
A separate indictment, also unsealed Tuesday, charges seven other people — residents of Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma or Arkansas — with being accessories after the fact to the slaying. The two-page indictment, handed up last Thursday, says they helped Jordan “in order to hinder and prevent his apprehension, trial and punishment.”
All eight defendants are in custody, said Justice Department spokeswoman Nicole Navas.
KLFY-TV has reported that Hallmark, a Shreveport resident, was shot and killed on July 1, 2016, during an argument at a Turkey Creek home. Jordan’s 12-page indictment, which a grand jury handed up on Dec. 14, says he and others participated in Hallmark’s killing “for the purpose of gaining entrance to and maintaining and increasing position in” the Aryan Circle. The Aryan Circle was founded around 1985 within the Texas prison system, emerging during a “period of internal turmoil” within the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, the indictment says.Aryan Circle members have engaged in drug and firearms trafficking, killings, robbery and kidnapping and other crimes, the indictment says. The gang’s influence recently has expanded to other rural and suburban areas in Texas and other states, including Louisiana. The seven people indicted on the accessory charge are: David Wayne “Big Dave” Williams, 36, of Sulphur, Louisiana; Christina Marie Williams, 38, of Sulphur; Brian Elliot “Sneak” Granger, 36, of Beaumont, Texas; Leland Edward Hamm, 43, of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Richard Alan Smith, 47, of Little Rock, Arkansas; Michael Paul Auxilien, 34, of Mamou, Louisiana; and Stone Haynes, 49, of Beaumont, Texas.