Inside Pelican Bay Prison, Part 4
Mounds of mail spill over the desks of the three prison investigators who are assigned to monitor the contents of hundreds of pieces of correspondence flowing daily in and out of the complex.
Sometimes an imprisoned gang leader writes his directives in his own urine on the back of an innocent-appearing drawing before sticking it in an envelope and mailing to an outsider. When the urine dries, the contents of the message remain invisible to the naked eye until the recipient holds the paper to heat so its secrets can be revealed.
Or messages called “ghost writings” are lightly embossed with a pointed object on the inside of a manila envelope. The envelope is glued back together, and mailed with other documents to an outside contact, who rubs pencil lead lightly over the markings so the message can be read.
From these intercepted messages, investigators gleaned chilling new insights into the gang’s inner workings.
One ghost-written message from imprisoned Nuestra Familia leader Javier Zubiate, convicted killer of Joseph “Littlewolf” Lincoln in a Santa Rosa motel in 1995, asked a gang leader in the East Bay to travel to Sonoma County and kill a Zubiate rival. Another Zubiate message asked the same East Bay gang leader to organize a Nuestra Familia “colony” in Sonoma County.
Prison authorities acknowledged they’re unable to keep pace with the underground communications network that serves a rapidly expanding prison population. At Pelican Bay, a facility with an operating budget of $83.8 million and a custody and support staff of 1,317, a total of four prison investigators handle the task of monitoring prisoners’ communications.
“I probably sound like another government bureaucrat complaining that we don’t have enough staff to do our jobs, but it’s the truth,” said Pelican Bay Warden McGrath. “Just look at the numbers.”
McGrath is lauded by Sonoma County authorities for assigning Piland to work full-time with local and federal investigators who secretly probed the inner workings of the Nuestra Familia leadership during “Operation Black Widow.”
Brian Parry, chief of the state Department of Corrections’ law enforcement unit, said that a total of 40 gang investigators currently are in place inside the state’s 33 prisons to monitor thousands of gang members’ contacts with the outside world.
“We could use just that number alone at Pelican Bay and Corcoran state prisons,” Parry said.
During a three-year investigation into criminal activities of the Nuestra Familia prison gang, a special organized crime task force uncovered “hit lists” sent through the mail or delivered by prison parolees on behalf of gang leaders.
Targets included disloyal followers, gang rivals and even tenacious prosecutors.
