He Spent Years in Solitary Confinement | World’s Most Evil Prisoners | Forensic Files

SAM DOUGLAS: In the United States of America, the world's most infamous criminals are locked up.
One of the deadliest prisoners of all time is Thomas Silverstein. MIKE MARINO: They called him Terrible Tommy.
Probably one of the most dangerous human beings on Earth. - He knew how to make weapons, inflict
damage and violence on people. LINA HAJI: He manages to commit three murders in prison,
and he kills a correctional officer. No one is off limits at this point. SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein was so feared
even other convicted killers wanted him taken out of the prison. PETE EARLEY: They can't control him.
He literally changed the face of corrections. HECTOR BRAVO: All the bodies that he
left in his wake doing such acts, he didn't skip a beat. SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein killed with stealth and savagery.
MIKE MARINO: The guy put his head against the bars of the cell, and he strangled him to death.
PETE EARLEY: He grabs his 10-inch shank. The two officers go, whoa, whoa, whoa, he's got a knife.
And he starts stabbing and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing. HECTOR BRAVO: He was stabbed 67 times.
Tommy Silverstein was the perfect definition of an evil man who showed no mercy or remorse for the people
that he killed. PETE EARLEY: He liked people to know, if you get in my face, I will kill you.
LINA HAJI: If you disrespect us, not only will you be murdered, you will be put on display.
This is psychopathic bravado. - It should be hard to kill someone in prison, but he was a master at it.
SAM DOUGLAS: The federal penitentiary of Marion, built in 1963 to replace Alcatraz as America's highest
security prison. MIKE MARINO: Marion only held 380 inmates. Extremely small for a prison.
Extremely small. They just had the most dangerous people and the most violent people there.
PETE EARLEY: The theory in the Bureau of Prisons was 15% of the inmates cause all of the problems.
So let's take that 15%, and we'll put them into one place-- all the troublemakers in other prisons, all of the murderers,
the absolute worst of the worst. MIKE MARINO: In Marion, I was in H unit from '79 till '83.
It was only 55 people, and we had six murderers in that unit in a four-year period.
That was an astounding murder rate. The chances of you getting killed are a lot [bleep]
better. SAM DOUGLAS: Half of those six murders were committed by just one inmate, Thomas Silverstein.
PETE EARLEY: I'm the only journalist who's ever interviewed him. My name is Pete Earley, the author of "No Human Contact,"
a book about Thomas Silverstein and the American prison system. Thomas Silverstein, he was the most hated
by the correctional officers. In the federal prison system, he was considered this monster, this horrible, terrible killer.
HECTOR BRAVO: All the carnage he inflicted while he was housed in prison, all the bodies
that he left in his wake, normal inmates don't do that. You can tell by looking at the photographs,
his eyes are hollow. You could look into his soul. Some guys just got it like that.
MIKE MARINO: If Tommy got to disliking you, you were in trouble, man, because he
just was driven by anger. I don't know where it came from, but he was obviously an angry dude.
SAM DOUGLAS: In the coastal city of Long Beach, just south of Los Angeles, is where Thomas Edward Silverstein
was born, on February 4, 1952. PETE EARLEY: His actual father, Thomas Conway, was a bank robber from Oklahoma.
He married his mother, Virginia Price, but they both had alcohol problems and they both were vicious fighters.
They became famous in the tabloids, known as the battling Conways. They would fight in front of a judge,
and then when they were leaving the courthouse, embrace each other as if they were in some kind
of Hollywood movie-- twisted love. SAM DOUGLAS: When he was four, Thomas's father
was jailed for robbing a bank. His mother remarried to a man named Sid Silverstein, who adopted him,
but his home life didn't get any easier. PETE EARLEY: Silverstein grew up in an extremely
violent household. His mother beat him even as a small child. When he was five and he wet the bed,
she made him drink his own urine. This was the kind of atmosphere that he grew up in.
LINA HAJI: I think it's very significant that his mother abused him, not just physically,
but that she abused him emotionally by humiliating him, by shaming him, by making him feel small for some things
that were beyond his control. Something as trivial as wetting the bed, which is quite normal for children, it's
sending the message that something is wrong with you. And then drinking urine is so harsh and so egregious.
This is likely to inflict trauma at a young age. PETE EARLEY: When he was little in third grade,
a bully beat him up, and he went home, and Virginia, his mother, drove to the school.
And when the bully came out, she ran up and grabbed the bully and told Tom, hit him in the face.
And when Tom refused, she said, you hit him in the face, or I'm going to hit you.
And so Tom proceeded to beat this bully with his mother watching. LINA HAJI: It's not surprising that he
starts to become a person who needs to be empowered, who needs to be dominant, who needs to put down others.
He's learned this from his own mother, that the way to rise in society is to be domineering
and to make other people smaller. PETE EARLEY: Later, he became the bully. He became the one who picked on other people, who used violence
to get whatever he wanted. This violence permeated the family. He got into fights with his stepfather.
At one point, his mother hit him with a shovel in the side of the head. He ran away from home trying to escape this violence.
SAM DOUGLAS: Feeling persecuted by the parents that were present, Silverstein's thoughts turned to the one
who wasn't around, his father. - And this is a picture of his dad who sent it to him,
and he's in the Oklahoma State Prison for bank robbery. This is Tommy Silverstein, probably 14, 15 years old.
And he idolized his father even-- once he found out his father was in prison, that just made his father seem more special,
and as a young man, he dreamed that his father would come back and save him from his mother,
who beat him constantly. SAM DOUGLAS: As Silverstein grew bigger, the beatings from his parents stopped, but
he was constantly in trouble, drinking, taking drugs, and getting into fights. HECTOR BRAVO: When Silverstein was 17 years old,
he got high with his buddy on drugs, and they robbed a restaurant. So even though he donned a mask,
the clerk was able to recognize him, and which, in turn, he was arrested and then sent
to the Wayside prison, which is a step up from the juvenile facility. SAM DOUGLAS: If the aim was to teach Silverstein a lesson,
he took away a very different one. PETE EARLEY: The first night he was there, he heard another inmate raping another prisoner,
and then he heard the inmate beating the person he had raped. And this reinforced in Silverstein's mind
that in order not to be raped, you needed to fight. It didn't matter if you gave in.
You still were going to get beaten. So you fought. SAM DOUGLAS: At that time, Silverstein also
developed other attitudes. PETE EARLEY: While he was in that prison, he was attacked by Black inmates
who hated white inmates. He developed intense hatred at that time for Black inmates.
He had lightning bolts tattooed on his neck, which, of course, was meant as a Nazi symbol.
SAM DOUGLAS: After six months, 17-year-old Silverstein was released. HECTOR BRAVO: So when Silverstein
was released from prison, he made an attempt to go straight. He ended up marrying his childhood
sweetheart named Judy as a result of getting pregnant. So at the time he had it going, he had a wife, a child.
- And he could have gone straight, but he starts using heroin, and he's also just
enamored with the outlaw life. HECTOR BRAVO: Silverstein had a job with construction,
but he would eventually get fired for using drugs. And he began to start robbing stores
and follow the outlaw lifestyle. SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein also became increasingly abusive
to his wife. - He told me once, I had no trouble hitting a woman because my mother had beaten me.
SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein's wife eventually left him, taking their young daughter with her.
It's around this time that Silverstein's father, his role model, was released from prison.
PETE EARLEY: And he reconnected with Tom. And of course, Tom by that point had quite a juvenile criminal record,
had been accused of several robberies. His father decided to rob banks with him,
and Tom thought that was great, something to identify with his outlaw father, who he'd always worshipped from afar.
LINA HAJI: They formed a bond because they had both lived their life in a similar fashion.
And there's a sadness to that, that you are bonding with your father after him, having been absent
in your life for so long, but yet the way that you're bonding is through shared, really horrible experiences
that have hurt other people. SAM DOUGLAS: Father and son wore questionable disguises
to carry out their crimes. HECTOR BRAVO: Silverstein would paint his face black and wear an Afro wig, and along with his father,
they would rob three banks and hold the employees at gunpoint. PETE EARLEY: They terrorize everyone.
They take all the money and then run out. Well, of course they're all on camera,
and it doesn't take long for the FBI to figure out, because of Tom's juvenile history and
his father, who these people are. But they're not quite sure. SAM DOUGLAS: The FBI took the robbers'
images to Silverstein's mother to see if she could identify them. PETE EARLEY: Virginia says, is there a reward?
And at age 23, he is turned in by his own mother for reward money, and the FBI arrest him.
And that's the last time he's ever a free man on the streets. LINA HAJI: You think, as a mother,
that that's the natural instinct, to put your child's needs before your own. But Silverstein's mother didn't seem to have that capacity.
She's been so horrifically physically abusive, mentally abusive. She seems to have a lot of narcissistic traits
herself, where she's really trying to serve her own needs. So for me to hear that she's the one
who turned in her own son doesn't surprise me at all. I don't think she probably even put too much thought to it.
SAM DOUGLAS: For bank robbery, Silverstein was given 18 years. The bulk of his sentence was to be served in federal prisons.
But first, in 1975, he was sent to the infamous Californian state prison, San Quentin.
PETE EARLEY: Thomas Silverstein is entering one of the most violent prisons in the United States, especially
in the 1960s and '70s. SAM DOUGLAS: In San Quentin, like other US penitentiaries,
up until the 1960s, prisoners were officially segregated by race. When desegregation came in, inmates formed their own groups
for power and protection. HECTOR BRAVO: So the type of prison gangs in the '70s, '80s, and '90s were your Gangster Disciples,
your Latin Kings, your Nuestra Familiar, Mexican Mafia, Black Guerrilla Family, Aryan Brotherhood.
SAM DOUGLAS: The Aryan Brotherhood are a neo-Nazi outfit rooted in the idea of white supremacy.
HECTOR BRAVO: So the Aryan Brotherhood is feared in prison due to their organization,
their structure, their manpower, their ability to make excellent weapons and utilize them in prison.
So as an inmate, that's the force that you do not want to go up against. PETE EARLEY: When he got to San Quentin,
Silverstein really didn't have many options, especially when he entered prison with the lightning
bolt tattoos. He developed a close relationship with a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.
That's when he became what's known as an AB wannabe, a person who was not part of the gang yet,
but who was becoming affiliated with it. He was under its protection. SAM DOUGLAS: In 1977, Silverstein was transferred
to Leavenworth federal prison. MIKE MARINO: In any maximum security prison like Leavenworth, we have the worst of the worst.
PETE EARLEY: There are about 1,200 inmates. Leavenworth was the depository for bank robbers, murderers,
kidnappers, high-level crimes, and Silverstein was thrown into this mix. He doesn't even know where Leavenworth, Kansas, is.
He's always been in California. SAM DOUGLAS: But the Aryan Brotherhood know where Leavenworth is.
- He's a cellmate with two known members of the Aryan Brotherhood from California.
They're known as the California Crew. And the Aryan Brotherhood is just beginning to take a strong foothold in Leavenworth.
MIKE MARINO: Drugs are one of the main things that make prison money and create power in prison.
Who has the most drugs, they call the shots. HECTOR BRAVO: They wanted to dominate and create
a stronghold in the drug trade, and their main competition was the Black gang called the DC Blacks.
SAM DOUGLAS: For Silverstein, who wasn't yet a fully fledged member of the Aryan Brotherhood,
a turf war was a chance to forge a reputation. LINA HAJI: There's a reason that people say that the prison
system makes criminals worse. And I don't agree with that statement for everybody,
but I also believe that for somebody like Silverstein, prison is only likely to exacerbate the violence
in order to maintain his ranking, in order to be respected and feared by other inmates.
So for somebody like Silverstein, prison is conducive to bringing out the worst version of himself, which for him is
the best version of himself. PETE EARLEY: The lightning bolts kind of defined who he was, but it took more than a
tattoo to get the attention of the Aryan Brotherhood. It took murder. SAM DOUGLAS: One of Silverstein's neighbors
at Leavenworth was 32-year-old inmate Danny Atwell. MIKE MARINO: Danny Atwell used to be
my cell partner in Leavenworth for a couple of months. He was a good guy. He didn't bother me any.
He was quiet. Then he moved to another cell. Danny went to prison when he was 30 years old.
He had a drug charge, and he only had 10 years. He never-- you know, he'd never been in prison.
PETE EARLEY: He's white, and he's bullied by Black gang members to bring in drugs.
He got his girlfriend to bring drugs in hidden in her body, and he was selling them to the Black gang.
And the Aryan Brotherhood wanted him to bring drugs to them. - He was refusing to bring in drugs
for the Aryan Brotherhood. SAM DOUGLAS: Refusal wasn't taken kindly. Alone in his cell, Atwell went to use
the toilet for the last time. MIKE MARINO: Danny got brutally murdered. They just went in and just stabbed him over and
over again. I understand he was sitting on the toilet, so he couldn't really get away.
Yeah, it's a hell of a way to go, huh? SAM DOUGLAS: With his dying breath, Atwell gasps to correctional officers.
- Atwell said to him, Tommy, California crew. Two prison snitches come forward, and they testify that Silverstein
told them that Atwell was going to be murdered. And that's good enough to get Silverstein
arrested for the murder of Danny Atwell, which he vehemently denies. - Ultimately, Silverstein was charged with the murder
and given a life sentence. SAM DOUGLAS: Being charged with the murder of an inmate meant
in 1980, Silverstein, now 27, was transferred to Marion, Illinois, America's highest
security prison where the country's most dangerous inmates were sent. Former convict Mike Marino was already there.
MIKE MARINO: Well, when I was young, I wasn't very mature, so I did a lot of crazy things--
all kinds of robberies, and finally, for the murder of a fellow prisoner. And that's what got me put into the Marion control unit.
PETE EARLEY: The control unit, it's a very small cell block isolated from the rest of the prisoners,
and the people there are the ones that are the most difficult to control. MIKE MARINO: Nobody's in a two-man cell.
Everybody has a one-man cell. They let you out of your cell for an hour a day. You had to take a shower and go back in for another 23 hours.
- Nearly everyone in that control unit has committed one or more murders. SAM DOUGLAS: Now Thomas Silverstein was joining them.
MIKE MARINO: The first time I ever met Tommy Silverstein was in the Marion control unit.
He was walking by my cell. They'd just brought him in from Leavenworth. I heard people yelling at him and stuff.
PETE EARLEY: Silverstein has lost any of that boyish charm. He has become a hardcore convict.
- He was strong. He was a physical guy. He liked to box. I never knew Tommy Silverstein before I met him.
All I heard about was that he had killed one of my ex cell partners, Danny Atwell.
LINA HAJI: The murder of Danny added bravado and clout, if you will, to Silverstein.
Reputation is extremely important in gang culture. There is actually a lot of communication,
not just between prison inmates and the outside world, but also between inmates at different facilities.
So you're potentially gaining a reputation within the entire United States. SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein's conviction
for the murder of Danny Atwell would eventually be overturned when witnesses were found
to have committed perjury. But by that time, Silverstein's later actions meant this would prove immaterial.
- On November 22, 1981, a correctional officer was doing his rounds when he found inmate Chappelle
unresponsive in his bunk. MIKE MARINO: I knew Robert Chappelle. He was a Black inmate, and we were in the control
unit in Marion together. He was an antagonistic person. He was in there for some kind of an assault.
There was an argument between a Mexican guy, and Chappelle choked him against the bars.
PETE EARLEY: He was a member of the Mexican Mafia. He wanted Chappelle murdered, but
Chappelle got moved into the control unit and he couldn't get to him. SAM DOUGLAS: Since being marked as the one
responsible for Danny Atwell's murder, Silverstein was now a full member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and he could get to Chappelle.
MIKE MARINO: The Mexican Mafia and the Aryan Brotherhood had an understanding. If the Mexican Mafia wanted to kill somebody
and they couldn't get next to him, the Aryan Brotherhood would do it, exchange for being able to expect
the same thing in return. In other words, you kill one of my enemies, and I'll kill one of your enemies.
And Tommy agreed to do it. PETE EARLEY: It's a Sunday afternoon. It's quiet in the cell house.
Chappelle has propped his head up against the bars at the front of his cell. - How could this guy be that stupid to lay
his head up against the bars? You got to ask yourself, is this guy trying to kill himself or what?
PETE EARLEY: The inmates are allowed to exercise in pairs and run up and down in front of the cells.
Silverstein and Clay Fountain, an Aryan Brotherhood wannabe came down the tier with a strand of metal wire,
and they wrapped it around his neck and then pressed their legs against the bar,
pulled his head up against it, and strangled him to death. If you strangle someone, their legs are kicking,
and they're flailing, and they're trying to get this off, and it takes you several minutes.
That's personal. That's violent, and it's brutal. LINA HAJI: That's the really interesting
thing about Silverstein. He had never committed a murder that we know of until he came to prison, which we don't know
if he might have ended up being a serial killer out in society had he never gotten
caught for his prior crimes. We really don't know. SAM DOUGLAS: For Robert Chappelle's murder,
Silverstein and his accomplice, Clayton Fountain, were each given another life sentence.
PETE EARLEY: You have to remember, at this time, there was no federal death penalty unless you tried
to kill the president, so there was no alternative but life in prison. LINA HAJI: He's extremely dangerous.
There's no signs that he's slowing down or going to stop. Is it the chicken or the egg?
Was it that he was a high-ranking gang member and so he had to facilitate these murders in order
to keep that position? Or was it that he had a thirst for murder, and so he became a high-ranking member of the gang
in order to fulfill that need? Probably a combination of both. SAM DOUGLAS: But reputation brings challenges.
HECTOR BRAVO: Raymond Lee Cadillac Smith was the leader of the DC Blacks in the prison system.
So on May 11, 1982, Silverstein was sitting on his bunk when he heard a loud voice, who was Cadillac Smith, and said,
I'm going to kill you, Silverstein. Silverstein turned around. He did not recognize the inmate.
And Cadillac Smith said, you killed my brothers. I'm going to kill you. PETE EARLEY: Raymond Lee Cadillac Smith
was a notorious gangster out of Washington DC, and he was a cold-blooded killer.
He was a big, giant guy. MIKE MARINO: He was very violent. He was a racist. He was a predator.
PETE EARLEY: He was sent initially to a different prison than Marion. He raped two men.
Both of those men attacked him. He was able to fight them off. One of them stabbed him, and Cadillac Smith
bragged that the knife broke because he was so tough. Chappelle, he was a cousin.
Cadillac Smith was not going to let it go. He was going to kill Silverstein. MIKE MARINO: He wasn't smart enough to know that--
[laughs] that he was dealing with probably one of the most dangerous human beings on Earth.
He picked a fight with Tommy Silverstein. It was the dumbest thing he could have ever did.
SAM DOUGLAS: After Robert Chappelle's murder, inmate pairs were now locked in a special cage
on the prison floor outside the cells when they exercised. PETE EARLEY: Silverstein and Clay Fountain
are in this exercise area. They have a piece of hacksaw blade that has been smuggled into them.
They're using this to cut through the wire mesh, slowly cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting a space big enough
for them to get through. SAM DOUGLAS: When they left the cage, they applied a paste they'd managed to make in their cells,
sticking the mesh together so it looked intact until the next time they could work on it.
MIKE MARINO: And once they got it all the way done, they waited for Cadillac to come out of his cell.
SAM DOUGLAS: Their moment arrived. Cadillac Smith was let out of his cell to take a shower at the same time Silverstein and
Fountain were exercising, apparently, safely secured in the exercise cage. PETE EARLEY: Silverstein doesn't have a shank.
The shank he was going to use has been discovered. Clay Fountain does have access to a shank, so they say,
let's go. Cadillac spins around. He sees them coming toward him. Cadillac Smith throws the towel off of his arm.
He has a shank that he's made from a towel rod. Fountain runs forward. Cadillac Smith stabs him in the chest.
Fountain falls backward. Silverstein is so keyed up. He slams into Cadillac Smith.
He takes Cadillac Smith's shank away from him, and he starts stabbing and stabbing
and stabbing and stabbing and stabbing more than 40 times. He stabbed him so hard the blade
goes all the way through and hits the concrete. SAM DOUGLAS: Guards arrived but stayed
back for their own safety. - The correctional officers in the federal system, they're not armed.
The best they can get is a billy club. SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein and a wounded Fountain drag
Cadillac Smith's body. PETE EARLEY: He wanted to drag him down the tier in front of one of the DC Black cells and say,
you're next. You're next. SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein and fountain eventually gave themselves up, allowing guards to enter the floor
and recover the body. - An autopsy of Cadillac's body revealed that he was stabbed 67 times.
LINA HAJI: 67 stabbings is not necessary. It's overkill. Him and his accomplice drag Cadillac's body
throughout the prison to send a message, if you disrespect us, not only will you be murdered,
you will be put on display. You will be humiliated. This is bravado. This is psychopathic bravado.
SAM DOUGLAS: As punishment, Silverstein racked up another life sentence, plus another lengthy spell in solitary confinement.
But his influence soared beyond the walls that contained him. PETE EARLEY: Marion, at this point,
is literally out of control. The head of the Bureau of Prisons, Norm Carlson, would later say that the Aryan Brotherhood
was running that prison. Silverstein was known as the shot caller, which is an inmate who could say,
we want this person dead. MIKE MARINO: They called Tommy Silverstein Terrible Tommy.
Tommy had the power to have somebody killed wherever they were. All he had to do was say so.
He gave an order to Barry Mills to kill a guy in Atlanta federal penitentiary. He sent him a letter, and when the guy got to Atlanta,
Barry killed him and actually got convicted for murdering the guy. I'm sure Tommy could get somebody killed on the streets
if he wanted to. He had enough power to do that. SAM DOUGLAS: Though Silverstein's next target
was far closer to home. PETE EARLEY: Merle Clutts was from the local area. He was a cowboy.
He liked to ride horses. He had a wife and kids. He was respected inside the prison
because he'd been there as a veteran guard for many, many years. MIKE MARINO: Clutts was a pretty decent guard.
He never bothered me, but I didn't really come into contact with him that much. There's four tiers, A, B, C, and D. Officer Clutts
ran C range, and that's where Tommy was. PETE EARLEY: Merle Clutts was a stand-up officer,
but he was a tough guy, convinced that he needed to be in charge and that he was going to control the control unit and
Silverstein, who was the major troublemaker in that unit, who felt like no one's going to control me,
no one's going to tell me what to do. And this led to a clashing of heads. HECTOR BRAVO: 100%, correctional
officers will take things personal with inmates and vice versa. Now, should that be happening?
Absolutely not. When it comes to working in a prison system, everything should be all business.
However, we're all still humans, and the emotional characteristics take effect. So yes, sometimes things do get personal.
MIKE MARINO: Every time officer Clutts stripped down Tommy's cell, Tommy felt that he disrespected him
by throwing his pictures around or messing around with his personal photographs and legal papers
and stuff like that. They had a very antagonistic relationship. - Silverstein told me, from the moment
he heard Clutts voice on the tiers, he would be walking back and forth in his cell
like a wild animal. SAM DOUGLAS: Pete Earley would later record a prison interview with Silverstein,
talking about Merle Clutts. PETE EARLEY: And he would later claim that Clutts told him that he could
have him killed if he wanted. When you confront Silverstein and he believes he's threatened, he's going to kill you.
LINA HAJI: We hear the narrative that Silverstein felt that he was disrespected by Officer Clutts, but that's
a matter of perspective. Silverstein knew very well that he was in prison, that he was not going to be liked
by officers, that officers have the ultimate control. To kill an officer, as he had stated previously,
was the ultimate act of showing the system that he doesn't care about the system.
Rules and regulations, they just don't apply to him. PETE EARLEY: His gang members had said, don't do it.
Don't do it, Tommy. If you murder an officer, you will never be released from solitary confinement.
HECTOR BRAVO: Attacks on correctional officers are extremely, extremely common, more common
than the public knows, ranging from getting spit in the face, feces throwing in their face, punched, assaulted,
stabbed, slashed daily. It's by sheer miracle we do not have more correctional officer
deaths in the line of duty. LINA HAJI: The good thing about prison is it's very structured and predictable.
The bad thing about prison is it's very structured and predictable. And what I mean by that is that they know what
time they're going to eat. They know what time they're going to the rec yard, when the officer's shift starts,
when the officer's shift ends. And they have 24 hours a day to study these routines
and where there might be a weak kind of area that they can tap into. [alarm blaring]
SAM DOUGLAS: After Cadillac Smith's murder, security had tightened even further on the control unit.
Any inmate out of their cell needed three officers with them. On October 22, 1983, Silverstein was escorted
out of his cell for a shower. PETE EARLEY: He's handcuffed. They've checked him.
He doesn't have any weapons. On the way back, Clutts is behind him, officers on each side of him.
- When in turn, another inmate distracted Officer Clutts and had him go to his cell.
SAM DOUGLAS: Silverstein used the distraction to head to a neighboring cell. - And he stops to talk to another inmate,
a member of the Mexican Mafia. This inmate has a key that's been smuggled in. He unlocks Tommy's handcuffs.
- He lifted his shirt and exposed a 10-inch weapon. PETE EARLEY: Silverstein pulls that out.
He spins around. The two officers on each of his side go, whoa, whoa, whoa, he's got a knife.
The two officers run to safety to get billy clubs. And it's Silverstein, and behind him
is Clutts, has nowhere to go. So he flies at Clutts, who is unarmed. LINA HAJI: There's a very callous, unemotional manner
in which Silverstein describes how he stabbed Officer Clutts, and I think there's more than just
callousness and lack of empathy when he's delivering this information. I think he's actually getting off on it.
I think he's reliving it. He's proud of it. - He stabbed him and he stabbed him and
he stabbed him about 37 times. SAM DOUGLAS: Somehow, Officer Clutts managed to escape Silverstein.
- Officer Clutts was able to get away, but he ultimately succumbed to his wounds and died.
HECTOR BRAVO: Tommy Silverstein was a cold-blooded killer, a perfect definition of an evil man
who showed no mercy or remorse for the people that he killed. LINA HAJI: I think Silverstein saying
that he was so happy that Clutts was finally dead is probably one of the few times that he was being honest.
People have a misconception that psychopaths don't have emotions and that they don't have feelings,
and that's not exactly accurate. It's just that their emotions are different than yours and mine, per se,
and they're also interpreted differently. Having engaged in a murder that will now end this
disrespect and this nuisance, for him, is interpreted as "happiness." PETE EARLEY: Silverstein was sent to the US penitentiary
in Atlanta. They couldn't keep him in Marion because the officers there wanted him dead.
Norm Carlson, the director of the Bureau of Prisons, said, how am I going to keep my officers safe
and keep this guy from killing anyone else? SAM DOUGLAS: To prevent Silverstein from being able to kill again or order others to for him,
he needed to be isolated. A new extreme form of solitary confinement was devised especially for him, known as no human contact.
HECTOR BRAVO: You don't have any interactions with correctional officers or other inmates.
You are solely locked in your cell, and that's the only thing you see, is your four walls.
SAM DOUGLAS: The only communication Silverstein had was food coming through the slot
in the steel door. PETE EARLEY: There was no other sounds. There was no radio, no TV, no letters, no communication,
totally isolated. And they weren't ashamed to say it. They were hoping he would end his own life.
Instead, it made him even more determined they were not going to break Thomas Silverstein no matter
what they did to him. SAM DOUGLAS: Three years pass. Then on November 23, 1987, Cuban inmates
rioting in Atlanta prison freed Silverstein from his cell. PETE EARLEY: The Bureau of Prisons
is so worried about him being free. They issued a memo that said, if you see Thomas Silverstein,
shoot him on sight. Otherwise, he may murder a guard or other prisoners. SAM DOUGLAS: After realizing who they were dealing with,
the rioting inmates themselves feared for their own safety. They wanted Silverstein removed.
- They drag him, they overpower him, they handcuff him, and they turn him over to prison officials.
SAM DOUGLAS: Sent to Leavenworth prison again, Silverstein was placed in a special isolated
unit built just for him, dubbed the Silverstein Suite. He spent the next 15 years alone with limited access
to just three rooms. Among other artwork, he would draw cartoons displaying his frustration at his treatment.
PETE EARLEY: After the murders in '83, Silverstein legacy led to the building of the first supermax
in Florence, Colorado. SAM DOUGLAS: In 2005, Silverstein himself was transferred to the supermax prison in Florence
to live out the rest of his days. - Another dungeon-like cell at the ADX isolated from other people.
- Once Tommy killed Clutts in Marion, from that moment on, Silverstein was on 24-hour lockup for the rest of his life.
He just couldn't play well with others. I mean, he just kept killing people. PETE EARLEY: The Bureau of Prisons,
they refused to lift any kind of punishment off of him because they said he is such a monster.
MIKE MARINO: They never wanted him to be in contact with anybody ever again for the rest of his life.
- Silverstein spent 36 years in isolation. LINA HAJI: A lot of research shows that solitary confinement can actually really
be horrific for somebody's mental health, but when you look at somebody like Silverstein,
what else are you supposed to do with an inmate like this? The system is broken, and solitary confinement is all
that we have at this point. There really was no other option for somebody as dangerous and evil as Silverstein.
SAM DOUGLAS: Incarcerated since the age of 23, Silverstein left prison for the last time, age 67,
when he contracted pneumonia and suffered a heart attack. PETE EARLEY: Silverstein died in February of 2019
at a hospital in Colorado. When he died, the Bureau of Prisons announced it back at the ADX to the staff,
and they broke out in thunderous applause and cheering that they were finally rid of Thomas Silverstein.
[theme music]

One of the most feared men in US prison history, Thomas Silverstein became a gang leader for the Aryan Brotherhood on the inside. After savagely killing multiple inmates and a correctional officer, he spent 36 years in solitary confinement.

World’s Most Evil Prisoners is a chilling exploration of the terrifying offenders sentenced to a lifetime behind bars. Locked away, yet still driven by their twisted desires, these inmates delve into acts of torture, abduction, and homicide. Prepare to confront the criminals from the darkest facets of humanity.

Brief Summary

Thomas Silverstein, a notorious inmate, committed multiple murders in prison, including a correctional officer, and was feared by all.

Key points

The Infamous Thomas Silverstein. Known as Terrible Tommy, he was one of the deadliest prisoners in history.
A Life of Violence. Silverstein's upbringing was marked by abuse and violence, shaping his future.
Turning Point: Bank Robbery. At 17, Silverstein's life of crime escalated with a robbery that led to prison.
Mother's Betrayal. In a shocking twist, Silverstein's mother turned him in for a reward.
Murder in Prison. Silverstein's violent reputation solidified after he was charged with murder.
The Overkill of Cadillac Smith. Cadillac Smith was stabbed 67 times, a brutal act of revenge by Silverstein.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He liked people to know, if you get in my face, I will kill you.

Silverstein's chilling warning to others.

1:34WatchFeb 19, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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