Thomas Silverstein
| Thomas Silverstein | |
|---|---|
Thomas Silverstein
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| Born |
February 4, 1952 Long Beach, California, U.S. |
| Other names | Terrible Tom, Tommy |
| Known for | Former leader of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang |
| Criminal charge | Murder, Armed Robbery |
| Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment (without parole) release date: 11/02/2095 |
| Criminal status | Convicted; Incarcerated at ADX Florence supermax prison Federal Correctional Complex, Florence Fremont County, Colorado |
| Parent(s) | Virginia Conway, Thomas Conway |
Thomas Edward Silverstein (born February 4, 1952) is an American convicted murderer. He has been incarcerated continuously since 1977 and has been convicted of four separate murders while imprisoned, one of which was overturned. He has been in solitary confinement since 1983, when he killed prison guard Merle Clutts at the Marion Penitentiary in Illinois. Prison authorities describe him as a brutal killer and a former leader of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang. Silverstein maintains that the dehumanizing conditions inside the prison system contributed to the three murders he committed. He was held "in a specially designed cell" in what is called "Range 13" at ADX Florence federal penitentiary in Colorado. He is currently the longest held prisoner in solitary confinement within the Bureau of Prisons.
Thomas Silverstein was born in Long Beach, California, to Virginia Conway. Conway had divorced her first husband in 1952 while pregnant with Silverstein and married Thomas Conway, who Silverstein claims is his biological father. Four years later, Virginia divorced Conway and married Sid Silverstein, who legally adopted her son.
Silverstein was timid, awkward, shy, and frequently bullied as a child in the middle-class neighborhood where the family lived. Virginia Silverstein demanded that her son fight back, telling the boy that if he ever came home again crying because he had been beaten up by a bully, she would be waiting to give him another beating. Silverstein states, "That’s how my mom was. She stood her mud. If someone came at you with a bat, you got your bat and you both went at it." At age fourteen, Silverstein was sentenced to a California Youth Authority reformatory where, he said, his attitudes about violence were reinforced. "Anyone not willing to fight was abused."
In 1971, at age nineteen, 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. In 1977, Silverstein was sentenced to fifteen years for armed robbery, to be served at United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
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