Thomas Silverstein

Thomas Edward Silverstein (born Thomas Edward Conway; February 4, 1952 – May 11, 2019) was an American criminal who spent the last 42 years of his life in prison after being convicted of four separate murders while imprisoned for armed robbery, one of which was overturned.

Silverstein spent the last 36 years of his life in solitary confinement for killing corrections officer Merle Clutts at the Marion Penitentiary in Illinois.

Prison authorities described him as a brutal killer and a former leader of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.

Silverstein maintained 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 was the longest-held prisoner in solitary confinement within the Bureau of Prisons at the time of his death.

Correctional officers refused to talk to Silverstein out of respect for Clutts.

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, whom Silverstein claimed was 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, in part because his peers mistakenly believed he was Jewish.

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 (~$53,000 when adjusted for inflation in 2022).

In 1977, Silverstein was sentenced to fifteen years for armed robbery, to be served at United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

While at Leavenworth, Silverstein developed ties with the Aryan Brotherhood.

In 1980, Silverstein was convicted of the murder of inmate Danny Atwell, who reportedly refused to serve as a mule for heroin being moved through the prison.

He was sentenced to life and transferred to the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois (USP Marion), which was then a high-security facility.

In 1981, Silverstein was accused of the murder of Robert Chappelle, a member of the D.C. Blacks prison gang.

Silverstein and another inmate, Clayton Fountain, were convicted and Silverstein received an additional life sentence.

He avoided a possible death sentence since capital punishment on the federal level had not been reinstated yet.

Silverstein maintained his innocence.

While Silverstein was on trial for Chappelle's murder, the Bureau of Prisons transferred Raymond Lee "Cadillac" Smith, the national leader of the D.C. Blacks prison gang, from another prison into the control unit in Marion.

From the moment Smith arrived in the control unit, prison logs show that he began trying to kill Silverstein.

"I tried to tell Cadillac that I didn't kill Chappelle, but he didn't believe me and he bragged that he was going to kill me," Silverstein recalled.

"Everyone knew what was going on and no one did anything to keep us apart. The guards wanted one of us to kill the other."

Silverstein and Clayton Fountain killed Smith with improvised weapons, stabbing him 67 times.

After Smith was dead, they dragged his body up and down the catwalk in front of the cells, displaying it to other prisoners.

Silverstein received another life sentence.

On October 22, 1983, Silverstein killed correction officer Merle Clutts at USP Marion.

After being let out of his cell for a shower, Silverstein used a ruse to get Clutts to walk ahead of him and positioned himself between Clutts and other officers.

He stopped outside the cell of another inmate, Randy Gometz.

The conviction was overturned in 1985 after it emerged that the jailhouse informants who testified at his trial had perjured themselves on the stand.

At Marion, Silverstein was housed in the "Control Unit", a virtual solitary confinement regime reserved for extreme "management problems" (prisoners prone to assaultive and disruptive behavior) in the prison.

Thomas Silverstein spent his time in solitary confinement with a constant ceiling light, ensuring uninterrupted camera surveillance.

He was allowed only two phone calls per month and received his meals through a slot.