The suspect in the murder of Colorado’s prisons chief may have carried out the killing to repay a favor from the founder of a white supremacist prison gang, The Denver Post reported on Monday.
Evan Ebel, a member of the prison gang known as the 211 Crew, was suspected in the March killing of Colorado Department of Corrections chief Tom Clements. Ebel died a few days after Clements’ murder, as a result of injuries sustained during a high-speed chase, car crash, and subsequent shoot-out with sheriff’s deputies in Texas.
Investigators have been working for months to put the case together.
An anonymous source with “direct access to and knowledge of the documents and the investigation itself” told the Post that the founder of the 211 Crew protected Ebel after he was targeted by a rival gang in a Colorado prison.
“Ebel had been threatened,” the source said. “[Crew leader Benjamin] Davis stepped in and saved him.”
Davis reportedly told Ebel that, in exchange for saving his life, he expected Ebel to return a favor after his release from prison. Ebel was paroled in January. Cell phone records indicate he was in regular contact with 211 Crew members. Investigators have also determined that Ebel was driving to the home of a paroled 211 Crew member who lived south of Dallas before the shootout that left him dead, the Post’s source told the newspaper.
Other questions remain apparently unanswered, including why Clements was targeted. One name that investigators have not discarded is Homaidan al-Turki, a Saudi national serving time for a 2006 conviction for sexually assaulting his maid. Just days before he was murdered, Clements had written a letter informing al-Turki that he was denying al-Turki’s request to serve out the remainder of his sentence in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Turki’s lawyers have strongly denied that he had anything to do with the murder. But according to the Post, investigators are still trying to find if there are any ties between al-Turki and the 211 Crew.
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