Sammy the Bull, Nazis and Mormon Killers: How the Gilbert Goons Terrorized a Phoenix Suburb
46:55 Share

ButcherBox, you guys have heard me talk about it before. It is a service that I used even before they were an advertiser because I like getting high-quality meat and seafood that I can trust online.

right to my door, 100% grass-fed beef, free-range organic chicken, pork-raised crate-free, and wild-caught seafood. We are only like a month and a half away from chili season. You're going to want to stock your freezer with a lot of meat that's not going to cost you that much at all. It's an incredible value. There's free shipping. You can curate it to customize your box plans, and it gets delivered right to your doorstep.

No more annoying trips to the grocery store or the butcher. It's going to save you time and save you money. Sign up for ButcherBox today by going to butcherbox.com slash underworlds and use code underworld at checkout to get $30 off your first box. Again, that's butcherbox.com slash underworlds and use code underworlds.

Have you made the switch to NYX? Millions of women have made the switch to the revolutionary period underwear from NYX. That's K-N-I-X. Period panties from NYX are like no other, making them the number one leak-proof underwear brand in North America.

They're comfy, stylish, and absorbent, perfect for period protection from your lightest to your heaviest days. They look, feel, and machine wash just like regular underwear, but feature incognito protection that has you covered. You can shop sizes from extra small to 4XL. Choose from all kinds of colors, prints, and different styles, from bikinis to boy shorts, thongs to high-rise. You've got to try NYX.

See why millions are ditching disposable, wasteful period products and have switched to NYX. Go to knix.com and get 15% off with promo code TRY15. That's knix.com, promo code TRY15 for 15% off life-changing period underwear. That's knix.com.

It's around 9pm on a Saturday night, late last October, and folks are showing up for a Halloween house party in Queen Creek, Arizona. An upscale hood, suburb of Phoenix, gated communities of sprawling homes with shiny SUVs on the driveways. And the party is lit.

Girls are showing up dressed as ballerinas, cowgirls and cans of twisted tea. The boys are the usual assortment of gangsters and soldiers and jumpsuited jailbirds. Thumping music, beer pong, joints in the yard and the ever-present danger of a fight. Preston Lord, 16 and raw boned, has showed up with powers from his basketball team, but they're out of their depth.

Girls taunt them about their age and an 18 year old kid named Treston Billy dressed in a mobster's pinstripe suit orders them to delete a phone video of two revelers locked in a heated argument. Lord and his friends decide to leave but a group of boys follows them down the street tall and strong and muscular jock looking probably football players. They jeer and taunt the boys skipping after them. The boys run.

One jumps the fence into a neighbour's yard. Another hides in a bush. But the older kids catch up with Lord and knock him to the tarmac. Then they surround and kick and stomp on him. Getting on him, one witness says, and going at it. Lord passes out. His attackers scatter. He never wakes up. Two days later, he dies.

A coroner rules the death a homicide. The attackers exchange nervy social media messages. That kid was just a freshman, one of them reads. He had his whole life ahead of him. I'm just thankful I wasn't involved, reads another. Even though I am. Gossip rages in Queen Creek, but mostly in Gilbert, a nearby suburb where Lorde and his killers are from.

Residents tell the parents of the attackers to turn their sons in, using a pseudonymous Facebook account to leave messages of condolence, condemnation and disgust. Fierce mums seeking justice for Preston Lord and a safe community, free from violence, fraud and nonsense, reads its profile. Locals tie ribbons coloured in orange, Lord's favourite colour, to trees in solidarity.

A week later, cops execute arrest warrants at four homes in a rich subdivision named Whitewyn. By December, the Arizona Republic publishes a bombshell accusation. It claims that Lord's death was no solo act, but the culmination of over a year of violent acts, carried out by a group of upper-middle class Gilbert youths. Many of the attacks have been filmed, including drunken fights between the boys themselves.

Some were on camera brandishing guns. Others, it seems, were involved in drug dealing. When police search one boy's phone, they discover a group chat. As soon as they find out we're the ones who got into all the fights, we get in charge with 30 plus assaults, one message reads. This is no happy slapping phase. It's not a jackass imitation group. It's gang crime. And the group soon gets given a weird alliterative name, the Gilbert Goons.

Many are members of the Mormon church. There are rumours even of a religious cover-up. National News covers Lord's killing, and cops who'd written off the goons as jocks and bullies are finally forced to act. By May 2024, they designate the goons a criminal street gang, and SWAT teams execute raids across the neighbourhood. Before long, seven boys are charged with first-degree murder. They're staring down the barrel of life behind bars, or even death.

The craziest part of all this though, it happened before, right here, in this wealthy, clean-cut corner of a fast-growing city. Even madder, it happened before that too. What the hell is going on in Gilbert, Arizona? This is the Underworld Podcast. Underworld Podcast

Hello and welcome to the weekly podcast that tells you all about baddies and wrong-uns and chancers and flim-flam men and shysters and ne'er-do-wells and this week some goons, devil dogs and a very, very well-known bull.

I'm Sean Williams in Wellington, New Zealand. My partner and long-suffering colleague is Danny Gold in New York City. We've covered everything from born-again MS-13 gangsters to Indian warlords. And we distill the tales of the worst people on earth down into digestible 45 or so minute shows. And unless you sign up to our Patreon, which costs about the same as a cup of third-wave coffee per month, it is free. So bear that in mind when you're commenting on YouTube or Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. Yeah, am I missing any housekeeping?

I mean, I don't even... I'm just kind of speechless, man. You're truly a wordsmith. But the Patreon website is patreon.com slash underworldpodcast to sign up. Or you can do it through Spotify and iTunes. Also, if you want t-shirts, merch, we do all that stuff too. We have some good shirts at underworldpod.com. And you just click right there on the merch button. Beautiful. Yeah. So...

A lot of you are going to have kids and you're going to be gearing up and like while you're listening to this, maybe exactly why you listen to this for the new school year or celebrating getting your days back. But hopefully a few of you aren't going to be dealing with the kind of stuff that has been going down in Gilbert, Arizona these past 18 or so months. As you've just heard, it's pretty grim. And just like I mentioned, the history behind this schoolboy street gang is pretty unbelievable. Like it's happened twice now.

before in the same small neighborhood. And both times it made national headlines. So this is a developing story, right, where almost everybody has buried the lead. I mean, you could be forgiven for reading all about the Gilbert goons without knowing at all that their predecessors were heavily involved, for example, with Sammy the Bull Gravano, the former Gambino crime family underboss, state witness, convicted killer, and of

course podcast royalty. I mean, this really is a nuts story. Yeah. I mean, even we're bearing the lead with Sammy the Bull, right? That is a man that gets headlines. YouTube loves him. He's got a weird face and he even has worse tattoos than me. That's that is correct. I mean, like I read about five stories about this thing before I even heard his name, which is

fully insane. And of course, it gets into the question of what it actually means to be a gang, like what a gang is and why cops took so, so long to figure out that the goons actually were a gang. Clue, that's mostly because it's rich white kids with a bit of a background. And you're going to hear a 38-year-old white man from London paraphrase a white 18-year-old guy from Arizona using black street slang to try and sound tough, which is

I don't know, man. That's a level of cringe you might struggle with even if you're listening to this on your own with headphones. So you are warned. I think you just lost about half our audience with that little soliloquy.

Yeah, but just stay with me because it's so good I might get them back. Anyway, let's set the stage. I might not. Gilbert, as I've mentioned, this is an affluent exurb of Phoenix, which is Arizona's largest city. It's out in the southeastern corner of the city limits. It's actually home to over a quarter of a million people, and that has gone up from just over 30,000 in the early 1990s, which is part of the problem, as we'll later learn.

According to a piece by Rachel Monroe, the New Yorker, whose account of Preston Law's death I used a lot to put together the cold open. Gilbert is America's number one best city for early retirement, number six city to raise a family in the West and the second best city for safe trick or treating, which is pretty macabre given what happened last October. By the way, Danny, what is the West? How do you define the West?

I mean, I feel like the West is what? California and Oregon and Washington. But this is Southwest, I feel like. Yeah. I feel like when I was in Oklahoma, they described it as Southwest, but also South. And then some people call it the Midwest, which I don't think it is. I don't know, man. It's confusing. Anyway...

According to FBI stats, only one other community of its size, Gilbert, of course, had a lower crime rate in 2022. So you get the picture, right? Bougie, big homes, big cars, big tellies, big box stores, Panera Chilis. Yeah, anything I'm missing? I don't think I am really.

Obviously, this does not fit the description of a place mired in gang crime, and that's partly to do with the fact that it's pretty white and pretty Mormon. So Gilbert is home to a giant LDS temple built in 2008. I mean, I don't know about the Mormons, but those things really do look great. But to get to why the goons exist and why they hunted down and killed Preston Lord...

We need to take this way back beyond that temple. In fact, 31 years ago, when Gilbert was just a wee little outpost of Phoenix home to 30,000 people. Yes, it's 1993, folks. Skating's cool, grunge is in, everyone's reading Bret Easton Ellis and Bill Moyers, Waco's on fire, the US is about to host the World Cup despite nobody knowing what football is.

Doom just came out on PC. Everybody's wondering what the hell was going on with that whole satanic panic thing. Yeah, I'll stop. Billy Joel over here. Yeah, it's a simpler time, a better time, where men were just men and pretty little Gilbert, apple of Phoenix eye, is overrun by a bunch of skinhead neo-Nazis called White Power.

In fact, Gilbert is home to 13 documented gangs in 1993 and that grows to 21 within two years, pulling in 400 of the local youth.

By this time alone the neighbourhood's population has near doubled. It's one of the fastest growing places in the United States. Not everybody moving to Gilbert is white and this naturally causes the local white population to flip out wearing white laces in their jack boots to signify white supremacy and throwing up racist hand gestures

I mean, I don't know what they are, just like a wanker sign with little white hats on your fingers. I don't know. But one of the members is actually African-American. I'd just like to believe he's into basket and the specials. But despite running around scaring people, police report few problems with, checks notes, the white power gang. Yeah, this seems fine, eh?

One of the young men that joins white power in Gilbert is named Michael Papa. His family have moved from New York to Gilbert and he helps coalesce the gang into something a bit more organized. These guys call themselves the Devil Dogs. There are several dozen of them, many athletes in the local high school, and they take white power's bluster up several notches. They crow racial slurs and Nazi slogans in the street.

And when they're attacking people, which they do a lot, they're on steroids. So this is the steroid era, of course. The average MLB leadoff hitters' testicles are the size of walnuts and pro wrestlers' arms look like they've got bird shit running down them. The Devil Dogs, almost all white, upper-middle class football players, they are hard juicing. It's no wonder they're always desperate for a fight.

But the Devil Dogs go from street thuggery to organised crime in 1998. And that is when Michael Papa makes friends with a guy named Gerard Gravano.

who introduces Papa to his father, Salvatore. You're listening to an organised crime podcast, so you know who Salvatore Gravano is. But I'll do a little intro. Born in 1945 in Brooklyn, Sammy, as he's known, begins his criminal life as an associate for the Colombo crime family before joining the Grambinos and rising to become an underboss under legendary mobster John Gotti.

That nickname? He gets it aged 10 when some older kids steal his bike and Sammy goes at them, quote, like a bull. And it sticks. Sammy is part of the team that conspires to murder Gambino boss Paul Castellano in 85, but he's whacked way more, at least 19 people.

In 1991, he's busted, he takes a plea, he breaks his omerta, and he turns state witness on Gotti, sends in the big guy down. And in 1994, a judge gives him an unbelievably generous five years for his crimes, four of which he's already served.

I know you've mentioned Gravano a bunch, Danny, and he's becoming something of podcasting royalty in recent years. You should go meet him for the show, actually. But by 1998, Gravano enters the Federal State Witness Protection Program and he moves to sunny Arizona. Yeah, I feel like we're not even doing it justice enough here. Like he is probably the most infamous rat in the history of the American mafia ever.

And he went free after a few years for giving up the boss despite murdering many, many people. Yeah, he got five years for... I think he got done for 19, which is insane. Age 55, it seems from the outset that Sammy has settled into his new life. He's changed his name to Jimmy Moran and he's gone under the surgeon's knife to alter his appearance enough that he might not get whacked on a whim on the streets of Phoenix.

He operates a poor construction company, big business in Arizona, and he gets into real estate. So what else? His ex-wife, Debra, also living under the scheme. She even runs a place called Uncle Sal's Italian Ristorante. I mean, you can't really call yourself Italian if you don't have an uncle named Sal. It's Scottsdale, which is on the northeast side of the city.

Sounds pretty curb so far. Maybe that terrible series Lilyhammer with Steve Vincent. You know, I never watched it, but I'm, you know, always pro Silvio and I

Was it really that bad? I remember watching a couple of episodes and it was excruciating. The genre of crazy gangster goes to live in, I don't know, Norway slash Djibouti or whatever. That is a good genre, but this is not good. Is that a genre that a lot of things exist in? Maybe it's just a genre in my head because it's pretty much the only TV show I want to write. But also running an Italian restaurant called Uncle Sal's 2, I mean, that's just a little too...

on the nose even for like witness security like come on man like what do you think that that's like the joke that you would make for a guy running a restaurant called uncle sal's in the middle of nowhere arizona you know what i'm saying yeah hey jimmy moran why are you running uncle sal's uh

Yeah. Anyway, Gravano, he might enjoy the odd chicken parmigiano at Uncle Sal's, but he is no fan of the WITSEC life, as the name of the restaurant suggests. He lives in a 590 buck a month unit, but he drives a 40 grand Lexus. And before long, he, Jimmy Moran, becomes a mentor to Michael Papa, who's now 23 years old.

Like I said, this is 1998, so this is raving, happy hardcore. The band Underworld, who are amazing but still smash us on the Spotify searches. I mean, Born Slippy is still one of the best songs of all time. These are all UK references that have nothing to do with Scottsdale and zero of our American audience understands, including me. I

I feel like I wrote that line and then I wrote the rest of the script while listening to like mad hardcore underworld songs. So yeah, tuck in. I think this could be wild. Anyway, so what could be more 1998 than starting a multi-million dollar ecstasy ring with the guy who took down John Gotti?

Papa is, of course, in. He's only been two-bit white supremacist grunt up until this point, and he starts hiring his fellow devil dogs as muscle for Gravano.

At one point, he gets 30 devil dogs to shake down a restaurateur who owes the gangster money. In the meantime, these guys are getting more and more violent. Papa is a former wrestling big gun, and his boys carry out most of their worst acts at Gilbert's Taco Bell, which according to the LA Times, quote, is a nexus for bullying and violence. Yeah, I mean, fast food parking lots, they're just a center of action for teenagers in the American suburbs. It's true. Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure what I wanted more than like hot sauce and a punch up.

Age, what, 18? Yeah. I'll let the same article sum them up now from a piece in 2000. Quote, A picture from a prom where the theme was Welcome to the Jungle shows four beefy boys posing with hands chest high, fingers forming a white power salute in front of their ruffled tuxedo shirts. A snapshot, confiscated from a bulletin board in one young man's bedroom, reveals teenagers pointing their handguns at the camera lens.

It was there too, in the anabolic steroids stashed in closets, the guns hidden under false floors of cars, the white supremacist literature on dressers, the bare-knuckled fight club party in an empty backyard swimming pool, the way the young men surrounded their victims and barked like dogs before beating and stomping them. No phones in sight, guys, just young people living in the moment.

This is also the heyday of American newspaper feature writing, the kind of stuff that first got me into magazine writing, so there's tons more of this to come. But the devil dogs, they only carry on ramping up.

Tim Hughes is, according to a brilliant Phoenix New Times piece from the Turner Millennium, a six-foot-tall string bean of a teenager who clocked in at 150 pounds when he was stomped in a squad of bullies, including devil dogs Barry Nutter, Kevin Papa and Glenn Cribbin. Yes, Kevin Papa is Michael Papa's kid brother.

I'll carry on with the New Times article. Quote, On November 13, 1998, a brawl erupted at the East Valley Taco Bell where the devil dogs hung out. After being kicked in the head numerous times while he was held on the ground, Hughes was taken to Chandler Regional Hospital by his mother Raina. Hughes puked, then collapsed in the emergency room and remained unconscious. Dr. Matthew Wilkes reported that the young man had a depressed skull fracture resulting in fragments of bone damaging the surface of his brain.

Flown to Good Samaritan Hospital, where brain surgeons awaited the helicopter, Hughes was rushed into the operating room. The nurse sounded as if she was preparing Rainer for the worst, Hogan said. I overheard the nurse explain that there was nothing more they could do. Rainer immediately broke down crying. Hogan called police supervisors and requested that grief counselors be dispatched quickly to the hospital to comfort the family.

I mean, this is pretty messed up, right? This one has a kind of happy ending, thankfully. Hughes undergoes a successful operation on his brain and he pulls through. But the devil dogs are, in a great turn of phrase by the New Times, omnivorously violent.

We call that pulling the old Mark Wahlberg. What an inspiration for young men.

These guys love beating the crap out of people. They're big UFC fans at a time when UFC is very new. Baz Rutten has just won UFC's top card in Birmingham, Alabama in May 1999. And as I mentioned, Michael and Kevin Pappa even set up a fight club in a drained backyard swimming pool in homage to the MMA contest. And this is going to come back to bite Kevin in the backside. So watch this space. To be fair, you know, that's just kind of normal American high school stuff. Like we definitely had Baz.

backyard or basement boxing matches in high school we don't beat the crap out of each other at soccer games like like you guys do so we still kind of need an outlet you know yeah did you go around stomping kids heads in at the taco bell as well no no there was that's like a lovely little teenage thing there was none of that now i we used to have fights around the back of the bakery i think i've mentioned this before at lunchtime at school and if you got your head kicked in too much you just kind of had to go home because you get suspended so uh

Yeah, that happened to me a couple of times. I don't know why that Benji kid wore a sovereign ring when he was cracking up. Thanks. Hope you listen. Anyway, the devil dogs hunt these people down about three times a week. They recruit Mormon kids born in any other religious group because they believe the LDS church will protect them, which, by the way, it's pretty clear that it does. When incidents of the previously mentioned Taco Bell get too out of hand, workers don't call the cops. They call the LDS bishop.

More than this, though, is this weird kind of bourgeois, hot fuzz, greater good thing bleeding through all the crimes in Gilbert right now. Basically, this place is up and coming. It's hot property and nobody wants to upset the apple cart. A councilman says he's told to keep quiet about the devil dogs because speaking out would, quote, hurt economic development. Here's a New Yorker's Rachel Monroe again, quote,

Police who regarded certain teenagers with a boys will be boys tolerance, parents in willful denial of their children's crimes, and a community that prioritised a reputation for safety over actual safety. By the year 2000, Gilbert's population has swelled to almost 120,000. And not only has this shaken race relations, but local schools are, quote, bulging at the seams, according to a local administrator.

This is a problem, not only because of the overcrowding, but because since the mid-90s, Arizona has had open enrollment, meaning students can attend any public school in a given district. There's no catchment area here, son. This is prime, don't tread on me, libertarian USA. Some schools have thousands of students, huge enrollments, and any kids who play up, they can just switch schools, move on.

There's basically no big comebacks for kids who are expelled or whatever the American equivalent is. Same thing, expelled. Yeah, cool. Okay. I remember one time two of the boys in our school got expelled for – I might remember this wrong, but it was pretty funny. In case anyone's listening from DGS, do email me. But I think they stole a car, broke into a warehouse, they nicked a bunch of stuff, and

And then one of them ran over the other one's toes in the stolen car, which is all very, very funny. I think one of them was also dealing heroin. Very, very cool score. And I almost got chucked out for fighting around the back of the bakery anyway. Very funny place. Yeah, it goes down in the halls of Hogwarts, huh?

Yeah, we did play a lot of Quidditch. What comes next, though, it is not funny. Not in my school. In May 1999, an 18-year-old named Jordan Jarvis drops some friends at a party. After waiting around for a while, Jarvis heads into the home to let a friend know that he's leaving. A woman confronts him, asks for his name. He tells her. She calls for her boyfriend.

Within moments, a group of men accuse Jarvis of beating up one of their pals. He says he's no idea what they're talking about. He heads outside and he buckles himself into his friend's jeep.

Devil dogs and up to 50 others surround the vehicle. They break in. Then, as Jarvis is strapped in and unable to move, they kick, beat and choke him. Some shout white power as they're doing it. Blood is pouring from Jarvis' head and nose. Here is the LA Times quote. When his buddy finally managed to get away, he drove Jarvis to a hospital. Jarvis had been beaten so badly that he was unrecognizable. His mother, Shelly,

sherry and her oldest son passed him in the emergency room without even knowing him his head was too swollen for treatment that night other than some stitches he has since undergone surgery three times to among other things realign his nose remove bone spurs at the base of his skull and scrape calcification from his eye sockets and that is one hell of a beating jarvis's mother sherry gets to the er soon after the attack when i arrived at the hospital i did not even recognize my son she says

He was covered in blood and his head was swollen and his nose was everywhere on his face. He had so much blood caked on his teeth and mouth that they thought at first that all of his front teeth had been knocked out. Now cops first called the assault a case of mistaken identity, which doesn't matter either way right? They almost killed him. Highland School, where a lot of the devil dogs study and play football, it fund-raises for Jarvis' medical expenses.

I don't know, America, healthcare, Jesus. Anyway, Gilbert town officials also create a human relations committee to address gang issues. Despite that, throughout the subsequent plea negotiations with Jarvis' attackers, the Jarvis family says it suffers a campaign of intimidation. They have their homes and cars egged, they're harassed at work, and they keep getting prank calls by kids barking down the phone.

We're up to February 2000 now. It's the 24th, 6.30am and law enforcement agents have had enough of the gang and their association with the supposedly going straight Sammy the Bull. A multi-agency task force raids several properties across Metro Phoenix.

They arrest 45 people, making 201 indictments for drug trafficking and other crimes. Feds capture Gravano, his ex-wife Deborah, their son and daughter, and Michael Papa, the Devil Dogs founder who'd met him just two years previous.

Uncle Sal's Ristorante had been used to wash drug cash, which is, I'm sure you'll agree, a massive surprise. And Gravano's Post-Whitset Construction Company is also a drug front. One absolute mess-up from US law enforcement. Gravano and the Devil Dogs are shifting over 30,000 ecstasy pills a week,

I think half a mil a month or something. This is said to be the largest ever drug ring uncovered in Arizona at the time. Damn, like imagine screwing up that kind of money just because you were so juiced up you had to fight kids at high school parties. You'd think, you know, Sammy the Bull would have run a tighter shop. Yeah, I mean like what is the lesson? Like no UFC, no steroids, like no drained swimming pool. I mean, I guess a combination of all three, but yeah, pretty dumb.

Incredibly, despite this, state prosecutor Hugo Zettler refuses to try the eight young men for Jordan Jarvis' horrific beating and association with Gravano as gang-related.

Look, the kid's nose was broken, which is not earth shattering in and of itself, he tells the New Times, completely falsely. And he goes on, quote, it's a stretch to think of the Devil Dogs as a gang. Maybe technically. They were kind of wannabe gang members. All these guys were wrestlers and football players. Bullies is what they are.

He's wrong, by the way. There are seven official criteria for a group to be considered a street gang, and the Devil Dogs fulfill five, if not six of them. They should 100% be treated as a gang. Says a former Arizona detective at the time, quote, they're white. They don't fit the stereotype of a gang member.

That was the whole issue. That's where the blinders were. Yeah. I mean, this kind of, this kind of thing where it just reminds me of, of alpha dog, which is kind of a bad movie, but also a great watch. I think it was based on a story from the Inland empire, like, which is California. So not that far from Scottsdale and kind of like a very similar vibe. I,

I guess sort of late 90s, early 2000s. Are we still talking about gang crime like Bloods and Crips and stuff like that that's in the public conscience in the US? I guess that's what people think a gang is, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Writes the New Times then, quote, They are a new kind of street thug. Suburban children with all of life's advantages. One drove a Volvo. Sorry, that fact is funny. From stable to parent families.

The Devil Dogs are high school athletes and bodybuilders so pumped up on the steroids they sold, used, and distributed that police reports repeatedly quote victims' astonishment at the sheer size of their attackers. I don't, like Volvo, like makes a nice car and I guess they're thought of, they were thought of as like the safety, you know, the safety car, but like, I don't know, I would leave out that detail because I don't think it's making like a great, like he drives a Volvo, like it's making a great car, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I know, I know. Also, fun fact, Volvo's lights are always on, no matter what. Didn't I know that? From Sweden, where it's very dark, yeah. It's a fun fact, yeah. Of all those charged for the Jarvis and Gravano cases, only Kevin Pappa, handsome, personable, straight-A student, gets more than a year in prison.

And that is only because he's caught in an incredible act of hubristic perjury in court. Quote, I feel that in whatever I do, I will be successful, he tells the judge about to sentence him. Incarceration for me would not suit me. I no longer hang out or are friends with those kids.

I mean, even Hugo Zettler, this blinkered prosecutor, rolls his eyes. He plays a videotape to the judge. It shows that Papa, even after the arrest, has organised a so-called fight club of devil dogs in his parents' drain pool, again, as classmates cheer them on. For that, the judge doubles his sentence from one to two years. But I mean, it's all chicken feed. Sherry Jarvis is rightly outraged.

If these same crimes were committed in another part of Phoenix by a different ethnic and less affluent group, we would have no trouble punishing them, she writes. I'm not going to go into too much detail about the effects on Jordan Jarvis of the attack, but it's all out there if you want to look. It's really, really not good. He suffered for years of breathing and cosmetic problems, mental health issues, etc.

And as far as I can see, I could be wrong, but I think this is right. He died this March, aged just 42, leaving behind a young daughter. So yeah, these guys really, really did a number on him. The Jarvis and Gravano sentences bring the devil dogs of Gilbert to a close.

They spring up ominously, however, in July 2011, so many years later, when white supremacist terrorist Dennis Mahn, leader of the white Aryan resistance, says he wants to move to Metro Phoenix to recruit from its youth. Okay. I mean, Danny, I'm not getting it. I know about Sheriff Joe and the Balder and the don't tread on me thing, but...

Like, what the hell is going on in Phoenix? Did the Diamondbacks suck that bad? The Suns? I don't know. True story. Charles Barkley showed up at the hotel I got married at in Oklahoma City years ago and a bunch of us got drunk with him. He is a really nice guy. Yeah, he absolutely rules. But I have, you know, I don't know that much about the Southwest. It's a mystery to me. I know Southern California always had a neo-Nazi problem, a hunting beach like Nazi lowriders, but it's not really my forte. I was doing research on a doc series years ago

about white power music stuff that they used to like drop off at schoolyards but i can't remember much but yeah i don't know man like uh where was breaking bad what was that albuquerque oh yeah that yeah like easy rider is that arizona i don't know like all the kind of biker gangs no that was that was they were riding to new orleans right but i think they were in texas for part of that okay and louisiana not arizona i don't think

I could be wrong. I don't know. Weird place. I went there once. Went to the Grand Canyon. Very nice. But this, not so nice. Anyway, we're rattling up to speed with the goons now. A few stats because this is a school gang episode. According to Sassista, around 9.8% of students in US public schools report that gangs are a problem, while almost 16% of Native American or Native Alaskan students say the same thing. I interviewed Josh Hunt a few years back at

who's a Tlingit from Alaska about his family and crime like on the pod and we'll do some more stuff on Native Gang soon because there is some really really interesting stuff going on there but this stuff is big right according to an NGO there were 1.06 youth gang members in the United States in 2022 around 400,000 join a gang each year and roughly the same number drop out and there are around 17.3 million high school students countrywide which is

Quite a shocking fact. Yeah, I mean, I went to high school in the late 90s, so the big thing was kids claiming they were in the Bloods back then. I feel like those numbers, some of it could be playing pretend or just inflated. Yeah, I feel like every kid who got their hands on Nike Air Max back where I was from said they were in a coke-dealing gang, but...

Yeah, only about two of them were. Anyway, this is going to bring us all the way up to the Gilbert Goons. So in December 22, 10 months before Preston Lord's death, two goons order a 16 year old to his knees. And then when he refuses, they surround and punch him to the ground, beating him unconscious.

Two weeks later, goons attack a 16-year-old with brass knuckles. One of the ringleaders is a guy named Kyler Renner, who lives in that wealthy subdivision I mentioned before, White Wing. Which is, now that I look at it, written down, a crazy name for a place riven with white...

terror anyway here is the new yorkers rachel monroe again quote he drove a turbocharged camaro with a custom paint job and was surprisingly well dressed for a 17 year old gucci belt louis vuitton backpack burberry boxer shorts

kyler and his brother's parents divorced in 2020 and kyler lived with his father in a house south of white wing that was ostentatious even by gilbert standards it had an indoor golf gym a basketball court and a lazy river snaking through the expensive backyard dude having a lazy river at your house is actually pretty sick like that's that's incredible yeah also a golf gym i mean uh

What's that? Is that like a little putt-putt thing? Yeah, maybe like an indoor driving range thing, you know, where you hit into the screen? That's what I assume, I guess.

I love those things. They're so good. Now I want his house, although not his clothes. A local woman basically then finds out this kid's burner IG account, which has pics of silence, machine guns, speeding, fingers going through rubber banded stacks of cash. What do we tell you, dummies? I mean, does this sound like the devil dog story or what? Soon enough, locals paint a picture of two divisions of goons.

The ones from the north end of town are the so-called hicks. These ones drive F-150s, they've got big American flags flying off the back, they hold bonfires and ride motocrosses on the edge of town. And then the kids in the south, they're all matinee idol looking guys. Says one parent, quote, some of them are pulling a 3.8 and have a job and play a sport and they're just beating people up on the weekend.

And no matter which side of town you're on, if you're a goon, you get into fights. And you share them in a group named social studies. More social media. Guys, do not do this. Speaking of which, here's the part you've been waiting for.

And the part I've been dreading. Because these Abercrombie arseholes, they're desperate to appropriate the language of black street gangs. One white wing goon messages a pal, quote, I'm on my trap phone. I've got a revolver and a 12 gauge shotty. I don't trust myself to go around your crib. Which is...

Just awful, man. Do not do that. Jesus Christ. I mean, that's not that bad. Are people doing this? I don't know. Anyway, you've got all these privileged, out of control kids. The parents don't want to admit there's a problem. There's a church keen to keep a lid on it. And just like in the 1990s, the cops and local authorities are more concerned with maintaining Gilbert's shiny image, which has done nothing to earn from getting tarnished.

But eventually Preston Lord's killing sends all these firmaments crumbling.

City meetings get rowdy, folks call for the resignation of the mayor and police chief, then the arrests. Then, in May this year, so not long ago, the Gilbert Police Department officially declares the Gilbert Goons a quote, criminal street gang, or rather, quote, hybrid gang. I'll let Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell take it from here, quote, hybrid gangs are very hard to document as a street gang.

As you know, your traditional gang usually has one race or one ethnicity and they have a territory that they claim. Hybrid gangs are usually mixed gender, mixed races and all various ages. Also, your traditional gang has a code of conduct typically. Hybrid gangs are mostly juvenile gangs and they have no code of conduct or no hierarchy.

The members also claim and participate in multiple gangs and your hybrid gangs. Where traditional gangs, they stick to their territory or their bios or whatever they have and they are proud of their gangs. The hybrid gangs also work with other criminal gangs that you may not see. You may see a car full of different gang members together in a hybrid gang where traditionally you wouldn't see that. There are no specific colours, symbols, hand signs, territories or anything such as that.

In a hybrid gang where traditional gangs usually have a standard colour, a gang sign or something to that, the hybrid gang is always evolving and the names are challenging. Lots of pearl clutching, hand wringing here. This is a live case. Nobody's been sent down yet. And I know kids in gangs is nothing new at all. I mean, just look at the UK with its county line system. We spoke about it a bunch in the Sam Walker episode. Really grim stuff. Really abusive.

But the fact this has happened not once, not even twice, but thrice, three times, in the same smallish neighbourhood, that is pretty insane. Especially given just how many similarities there are between the goons and the devil dogs, and how a near death in the 90s has now grown into what will likely be found a murder now.

Right, so the Arizona Republic a couple months ago, quote, police reports detailed drug and alcohol use among several Gilbert goons. Hold on. That's like 90% of the kids I knew in high school. Like this is actually, this actually is like media pearl clutching right here. Yeah, that is a bit much, right? It's more the fact that they're like dealing it, I guess. It carries on, quote, one parent is now facing drug possession charges. I mean, yep, okay. Court records also reveal that parents of some accused teens have been

convicted of drug dealing, stealing cars, illegally possessing weapons and propositioning an undercover police officer for all sex. I mean, you want to find out who that parent is. Lots of folks knew about their behavior, it carries on, yet few stepped in to stop it. It's not fully clear why.

But it suggests that beneath Gilbert's low crime rates and family-friendly image, holes have formed not only in the institutions that are supposed to protect young people, but in the fabric of the community itself. Yeah, I don't know, man. It's a little preachy, right? Like some of the parents have caught charges. Does that matter that much? I don't know, man.

And, you know, we know that a few of you have been done for stealing cars and a drug possession and in one case propositioning an officer for oral sex. And there's everyone's just looking around like, yeah, I don't know who that is, man.

Yeah. Anyway, that is the Gilbert Goons as it stands. But I guess you can Google what's happening right now. I mean, I only wrote this like a few days ago, so it's pretty up to date, but it could change from day to day. I guess we're going to coin a new term instead of don't Instagram your crimes, which will definitely stick with after this show. You could probably don't let your kids steal pills on behalf of convicted mafia underboss. That could be a new one for a T-shirt. But anyway,

Yeah, pretty crazy story. I mean, like, the fact that it's happened already is just mad. Although, as you just mentioned, like, there is quite a lot of media stuff going on with this. So, yeah. All right, till next week. ♪♪♪

so