James Field tattooed stitches over his lips in a vow to never reveal the secrets of the Aryan Brotherhood.
He dreamed of one day joining the syndicate that ruled over the prison yards where he spent most of his adult life. He robbed, extorted and killed for them, he testified, until the day he became convinced the men he idolized had turned on him.
Now Field is a protected witness for federal prosecutors seeking to convict three of the Aryan Brotherhood’s reputed leaders.
“I’d been brainwashed for a long time about prison politics and how all this comes first,” he testified last week in a Fresno courtroom. “This whole life — violence, drug use, this white supremacist stuff.”
The Aryan Brotherhood was created in prison, but Field testified that its influence has seeped into the streets of Los Angeles County. In seedy motels, gambling parlors and crash pads from Lancaster to Long Beach, drug dealers and fraudsters rubbed shoulders with ex-cons like Field, who said he paroled in late 2021 with instructions to do “anything I could to bring money to the brothers.”
In Field’s world, seemingly everyone drove a stolen car and defrauded the state of unemployment benefits. Death was dispensed quickly, cheaply and allegedly on the orders of men in prison.
Field, 37, admitted killing three men in a two-week span. According to his testimony, the homicides spiraled out of a robbery in the Hollywood Hills and a kidnapping in Bellflower.
Attorneys for the defendants, who have denied being affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood, cast Field as an unreliable narrator hoping to escape a life sentence by pointing the finger at others. “Murderers, thieves, drug dealers — theirs is the basic instinct of self-protection,” one lawyer said in her opening statement.
With his crude prison tattoos, shackles and blue jail-issued jumpsuit, Field stood in contrast to the defendants, who were allowed to swap their prison uniforms for sport coats and slacks. Wearing reading glasses, the three longtime prisoners listened mostly without expression as Field claimed they used him to collect debts, peddle drugs, rob and murder.
His testimony underscored the degree to which some criminal activity on the streets of Los Angeles is directed by inmates with cell phones. He told the jury he shot a man in the head while an incarcerated gang leader listened on speakerphone.
In his lawless milieu, the only authority that people feared was the Aryan Brotherhood, Field testified.
“I’ve grown up in the California prison system,” he said. “Those dudes are considered gods in that world.”
‘The only one that haunts me’
When Field left prison in December 2021, he knew it was only a matter of time before he went back.
In and out of juvenile detention centers as a teen, he later graduated to state prison, where he served time for car theft, burglary and assault. There, he said, older convicts taught about the Aryan Brotherhood, a group of about 30 men whose word was the law for thousands of white inmates.
On the street, the Aryan Brotherhood controlled white gangs and hate groups, Field testified. He belonged to both. First a member of the Lakeside Gangsters, he later joined an outfit called the Supreme Power Skins. He tattooed a swastika on his face and “14” and “88” on his head — references to Hitler and the teachings of David Lane, an imprisoned white supremacist.
After leaving prison, Field said, he ranged from Bakersfield to San Diego, robbing people and selling drugs. He testified that he worked mostly for Jayson “Beaver” Weaver, a reputed Aryan Brotherhood member.
Weaver, 47, has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering and murder. He is scheduled to stand trial next year. His attorney declined to comment.
In January 2022, Field testified, Weaver asked him to collect some money from illegal gambling parlors in Lancaster. There he met Michael Brizendine, a 230-pound ex-con with blue eyes and blond hair nicknamed “Cornfed.”
Both men were brought into a “job” by Francis Clement, Field testified. A defendant in the Fresno trial, Clement, 58, has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering and murder. Imprisoned since 1985, Clement has denied any affiliation with the Aryan Brotherhood at parole hearings.
Field said he and Brizendine met two other men in a Long Beach motel room, where they gathered around the bed for a video conference call with Clement, Weaver and a third reputed Aryan Brotherhood member, Waylon Pitchford.
The prisoners wanted them to rob a man who had “burned” Pitchford in a drug deal, Field testified. The target lived in the Hollywood Hills. Clement said they should disguise themselves as utility workers so he would open the door, Field said.
Pitchford, 47, has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering and murder. He is slated to stand trial with Weaver next year. His lawyer didn’t return a request for comment.
The next morning, a man whom Field knew only as Nick came to the motel room. He’d brought a friend with him, a “kid” who looked about 19 years old, Field recalled. Field said he and Nick shoved the teenager into the bathroom at gunpoint, zip-tied him and took the keys to his Mercedes.
Driving the stolen Mercedes, Field bought hard hats and orange shirts at a Home Depot while Brizendine rented a U-haul to carry off belongings from the home.
Dressed as utility workers, Field, Brizendine and Nick knocked on the door of the five-bedroom Spanish Revival on Outpost Drive. No one answered, so Brizendine kicked in the door, Field said. Guns drawn, they went room to room until Field found a man talking on a phone.
Field testified that he zip-tied the man and called Clement. He asked if they were robbing the right person, as the victim “didn’t seem to know what was going on,” he recalled. According to Field, Clement said they were at the right house and told them to start loading the U-Haul.
They fled when Field saw a text message on the victim’s phone that indicated the police were coming. He told Clement the plan went wrong when Brizendine kicked in the door. Clement got angry.
“Dude f—ed up,” he said, according to Field. “Take care of it.”
Field met Brizendine at a gambling parlor in Rosamond. Brizendine was driving a red Dodge Ram that his girlfriend had rented with a fake driver’s license and never returned.
Field followed the truck to a house in a remote stretch of Lancaster. He was on the phone with Weaver when he opened the Ram’s passenger door.
“I had Weaver on speaker and told Cornfed the brother wanted to talk to him,” he recalled. As Brizendine leaned toward the phone, Field drew a gun from behind his back and shot him in the head.
The next morning, Brizendine’s girlfriend checked his phone’s location and saw he was at the home of a woman she knew. Thinking Brizendine was cheating, she drove to the house on 48th Street West and threw open the door of the Ram, she testified.
She was yelling at Brizendine before she realized he wasn’t moving.
The woman, who was pregnant with Brizendine’s child, confronted Field. At first he denied killing Brizendine, she said. Then he told her, “Michael’s is the only one that haunts me.”
‘A dark quiet place’
A week after he killed Brizendine, Field drove the stolen Mercedes to Bakersfield to pick up a load of fentanyl for Pitchford, he testified. As he drove off from a gas station in San Fernando, a police car “lit me up,” he said.
Inside the car was a gun, a bag of 1,000 fake M30 pills and a quarter-pound of fentanyl. Field hit the gas, speeding several blocks until he broadsided a pickup truck.
Treated for a broken ankle and a gash on his head, Field walked out of the hospital without facing charges, he said. Four days later, he testified, he got a text from Clement on Signal, an encrypted messaging app.
“We’ll have some fun,” Clement wrote, according to messages shown in court. “I think I need you to dome somebody for me.”
Ronnie Ennis and James “Jimbo” Yagle were members of the PEN1 gang, short for Public Enemy Number 1. They’d botched a kidnapping, allowing two hostages to escape from an apartment in Bellflower, Field testified. Ennis and Yagle had also taken from the hostages two duffel bags that “belonged to the brothers,” Clement told Field.
It wasn’t clear what was inside the bags — but the gang wanted them back.
Field said he went with three PEN1 members to Lakewood, where Yagle and Ennis surrendered the bags. Ennis knew he was in trouble, Field testified. Figuring he was in for a beating, he handed Field his gun as a sign of trust.
They drove in two cars toward Pomona. “Find a dark quiet place now,” Clement wrote to Field, according to the Signal messages shown to the jury.
They pulled off the freeway, made a U-turn on Reservoir Street and stopped. Field handed Yagle a gun and said he needed to kill his friend Ennis.
“I wanted him to think that he had a chance,” he testified.
Yagle got out of the car. Field pointed his gun at Yagle and pulled the trigger. It jammed. He chambered another round and shot Yagle in the chest.
Ennis took off running, Field recalled. The other PEN1 members chased him. He heard a barrage of gunfire.
Then Field’s phone rang. It was Clement, he testified. “Frank asked me, ‘What the hell is that?’” Field recalled. “I said, ‘That’s Ronnie screaming.’”
As he drove back to his motel room, Field said, he got a text from Clement that read: “Proud of you guys.”
‘This is what it’s come to?’
Field was indicted in 2023. Held at the Fresno County Jail, he told Weaver that he’d been tricked into speaking to an informant about the Brizendine homicide.
Weaver rebuked him for talking about “the brothers’ business,” Field recalled. Other inmates shot him strange looks or avoided him. One day, while held alone in the jail’s recreation area, Field said, he heard the sound of a prisoner trying to jimmy his door. He wondered if the man would get free and stab him to death.
“I sat there for three hours, ready to take it because that’s what you’re supposed to do in this life — accept your punishment,” he testified. “I went back to my cell that night and thought to myself, ‘This is what it’s come to?’”
Field said he thought about all he’d done for the Aryan Brotherhood, but also the people he’d hurt. “I was just done,” he testified.
Field cut a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to three murders. In exchange for his testimony, he hopes he will receive something less than a life sentence, he said.
After he testified, federal agents led Field out of the courtroom. The shackles on his wrists and ankles clinked as he shuffled past two women who’d wept as he described killing Brizendine.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
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