Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements shot dead

Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements shot dead

www.bbc.co.uk

Tom Clements was shot on Tuesday evening when he was called to the front door of his home in Monument, north of Colorado Springs, officials said.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This was a headline news article on the BBC news site. Colorado runs the notorious Supermax prisons that hold the worst of the worst.

Anyone think one of the famous inmates like Ted Kascynski housed at the Florence unit could be behind this?

With all the famous media criminals in this guys prison system there might be a conspiracy afoot.

www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by Cauliflower


There could have been a few reasons. Maybe he was seeing someone's wife or girlfriend?? Maybe it was a political murder? Maybe the wife had him done for insurance?? He had only been in his position for less than two years. Maybe he uncovered some kind of conspiracy within the corrections department???

reply to post by GrantedBail


Clements superseded a former police chief named Ari Zavaras as director of corrections in Colorado in 2011.

I haven't had time to dig for clues, the investigators are not giving out any information at all in the first announcements.
If there is a story within a story developing there should be some follow up news.
If this was made for TV, could be just another call for gun control. I'm not sure why the two Supermax prisons in Colorado registered on my coincidence meter.

Apparently he was not murdered with an assault rifle..........
or it would be breaking news here.

reply to post by butcherguy


The primary reason I jumped on this story is that the supermax prisons in Colorado are a different kind of prison than you usually think of.

A brief look at notable former inmates of the Florence facility would seem to suggest that there will probably be no lack of suspects. Some of those famous imprisoned inmates had a loyal following outside prison walls that could have found the directors house and shot him in his doorway.

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Cauliflower

Oh that will definitely be something to look out for.
I thought the Ted Kazinsky thing was an interesting idea. He is a character that thought well in advance of any planned action. Who knows how far ahead he thought. as far as having someone available on the outside to do 'things' for him.

This is obviously linked to a former inmate, I have not doubts about it, somebody he crossed lines with and now revenge is been taken.

I imagine that they will find the person that committed this crime in not time.

I hope he had insurance to take care of his family. This was probably a political hit orchestrated by jealous rivals.

reply to post by Cauliflower


Well, I am going to disagree here. He was a Director of Corrections, and entirely administrative position. He would have had no hands on at any of the prisons. He wasn't a warden or high ranking corrections officer.

Having said that I will take a shot: He uncovered some kind of graft, or corruption amongst private prison contractors and the state. You know they paid a contractor a kazillion dollars for product that was either not delivered or many times overpaid for and there were kickbacks.

On edit: Aren't supermaxes federal prisons?? A state DOC would have nothing to do with them at all.

reply to post by GrantedBail


From an older article I read that Clements Predecessor Zavaras was involved in the states construction of a second supermax prison so apparently the State builds and runs the Federal supermax prisons in Colorado?

Although he vowed to battle for efficiency as well as public safety, Zavaras seemed to make few inroads into the established build-baby-build culture within the agency. On his watch, the state constructed its second supermax prison, at a cost of $200 million, while the prison population grew at a rate twice the national average, thanks largely to sentencing legislation well beyond his control.

blogs.westword.com...

You make a good point that most inmate beefs happen between the inmate and the parole boards or guards that directly oversee them. Some of the supermax inmates like Ted Kaczynski targeted the people at the top of their organization for political effect.

Your conspiracy theory would be a lot more interesting. Murdering a director of corrections would obviously spark an intense investigation that might uncover the very information they were trying to silence him for.

Huffington post claims Clements may have been killed over his failure to allow a Saudi National to be transferred back to Saudi Arabia from Limon Correctional Facility, so apparently the DOC does get involved in decision making at the prisoner level sometimes.

www.huffingtonpost.com...

reply to post by Cauliflower


Colorado is not the only state to have a supermax prison. Almost every state has one. Colorado has the ADX Supermax which is the only Federal Supermax in the country but that is also run by the Federal Department of Prison.

Every State besides possibly Alaska have Supermax Prisons or Seg Units. MA has MCI Walpole and Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, Cal has the Pelican Bay SHU. Colorado's Max is CSP, Varner Supermax in Arkansas the list goes on.

en.wikipedia.org...

I don't believe this man was killed because of Colorado having supermax capabilities.

Supermax's are not just for FEDS but most state run departments have them. They are Seg units where inmates who have visiously attacked Officers or even other inmates will end up. They are on lockdown for 23 hours a day and have in full restraints when taken out of their cells.

As for this murder it could really be anything, I think that it was a gang hit put on him from the inside.

reply to post by caf1550

Every State besides possibly Alaska have Supermax Prisons or Seg Units.

The Colorado ADX supermax holds a lot of *media celebrity* inmates though.

Larry Hoover of the Gangster Disciples, and Barry Mills and Tyler Bingham of the Aryan Brotherhood. ADX also houses foreign terrorists, including the only person convicted in civilian court of the September 11 attacks, Zacarias Moussaoui, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef; as well as domestic terrorists, including serial bombers Ted Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph. Timothy McVeigh, who carried out the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was housed at ADX before he was sentenced to death in 1997 and transferred to the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, which houses federal death row inmates. McVeigh's co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, is serving a life sentence at ADX. Robert Hanssen, the former FBI agent who betrayed several spies to the Soviet Union and Russia, is serving a life sentence at ADX for his crimes.

Some of these inmates might have been seen as political prisoners by extremist groups.

The Huffington post conspiracy angle didn't make complete sense to me, the inmate involved was convicted of sexual slavery and was trying to get his sentence served in Saudi Arabia. The letter from Tom Clements denying the transfer looked like typical "press kit" rather than an actual investigation leak. Presumably Al-Turki would be more comfortable serving time in a Misogynist state?

Guess I was expecting Clements to have intervened in a political action against an inmate with a murder MO like Kaczynski. For example allowing his property to be sold at public auction or something.

The story this morning just link the murder back to that new Colorado gun legislation.

Very strange. In the last few days someone had started a thread on this guy, concerning the refusal to send some prisoner back to the middle east (possible motive?). They also posted information on his house...tax records, zillow, his and his wife's salary, etc. There were links posted that I am pretty sure contained his exact address. The thread is now gone probably because of the posting of personal info.

I thought the thread was strange because it was making him out to be a bad guy, although the information presented sure didn't do so on it's own. i kind of reamed out the guy who made the post for jumping to the conclusions he made. Anyways, I would hope ATS would forward that post to the authorities. Can't assume we don't have bad people here.

reply to post by sligtlyskeptical


Wasn't really any smoking gun on that thread when I looked either, Clements apparently owned a $500,000 house paid for with a $150,000 income plus the income of his wife who was a professional. You would have to stray quite a ways from the media reports to call this a "current event". Presumably it was a tragic criminal act that is being investigated in a manner that gives the family as much respect and privacy as possible.

It makes me think this:

1) Odd story and timing with the gun control issue
2) Colorado Cowboys - Sheriff's have stated opposition to gun laws, what was his opinion?
3) Mysterious shooter in a black squarish car, met him at the door, did he know him?
4) Where did he drive? South on I-25 - they know he headed to I-25 from Monument. Perhap's he took a right, to Security, then a right to Cheyenne Mountain
5) Media plays endless stories. No script - hard to make mistakes when you don't say anything. Easier on the ears too.
6) YET TO HAPPEN - lone wolf angry at the government, seemingly more sane, making a stand about the gun issue. Hmmm, search warrants for others.

Am I not allowed to think this I wonder

...So at first glance, I thought hey, bummer, someone got angry, and bumped him off.

..then I got a bit irritated with the much repeated media theme associating this story with the signing of the gun control measure, in spite of really no relation between the two. Example:
www.npr.org...

..and now, with this guy in Texas that they're linking to the story, I am now into full something fishy mode.
www.cbsnews.com...
Really, imagine you dug up the address of some relatively high ranking dude, then successfully whack him, and get away with pretty much no trace. Many might try to lay low for a bit, but supposing you didn't, what are the chances you would get into a shootout, and car chase, then take a bullet to the brain, so as not to be able to ever give witness to anything, let alone if you'd done it? Seems like a classic hit-setup-coverup for something.

-cheers.

reply to post by do7phin


The Texas shootout suspect is said to have connections with the 211 prison gang. 211 appears to be the "son organization" to the original Aryan Brotherhood founded in 1965 by Barry Mills and Tyler Bingham who are locked up in the Colorado supermax.

A divide and conquer scheme in prison might empower the inmates that employed it. Isolation is one of the primary goals of the supermax prison system. Once inside these criminal kingpins are not supposed to have any way to communicate with their followers. This effectively means they can no longer run their crime syndicates from inside prison.

The link to the Clements murder is still pretty muddy, Bob Dylan drives a Cadillac of similar description and the Domino's pizza impersonation theory sounds kind of bizarre.

Clements was a friend of a friend. I know little to nothing about the man, but my buddy requests prayers for the man's family at this time.