(Daily Beast)  Amid a streak of violence, a Texas prosecutor has pulled out of a major Aryan Brotherhood case. Christine Pelisek digs into the chilling indictments at the center of the controversy. Plus, Michael Daly reports on the likeliest new suspects in the Kaufman County killings.

James Marshall Meldrum, a.k.a. Dirty, is a 40-year-old career criminal from Fort Worth and self-proclaimed soldier of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Last year he was pulled out of the truck he was driving. The man with the gun, another member of the white supremacist group, wanted his truck back, and he aimed a pistol at the head of Meldrum’s wife.

Drop-out member of the Aryan Brotherhood at the Calipatria State Prison in Calipatria, California, in 2004. (Mark Allen Johnson/Corbis file)

Brotherhood members had stolen the man’s truck to make a point, and Meldrum was using it for his electrical business. A few days later, Meldrum dragged the man out of his house and severely beat him as retribution for threatening his wife. Although the man was taken to the hospital, he knew better than to disclose the name of his attacker.

That’s no big surprise. The group’s trademark is the use of extreme violence and threats of violence to maintain internal discipline. They are also hell-bent on seeking retribution against members who turn their backs on the gang or snitch to the police. Their own tattoos spell it out threateningly: “God forgives. Brothers don’t.”

The details of Meldrum’s case are included in a sweeping federal indictment that came down like a hammer on the gang’s Texas branch in November of last year, busting some 30 members and four senior leaders. The documents are getting an even closer look now that the Brotherhood is speculated to be involved in the murder of two local prosecutors and one of their wives. And in another troubling development, on Monday Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hileman, who was set to prosecute the Aryan Brotherhood, withdrew from the case citing “security concerns.”

“I ratted on the Aryan Brotherhood. They want to chop me into pieces.”

To be sure, any connection between the Aryan Brotherhood and the recent killings of the prosecutors is unclear—police are now reportedly eyeing as a “person of interest” a former local official who lost his job in a corruption probe and was prosecuted by the two dead men. And with its chilling details about the extreme internal discipline that gang leaders often mete out, the documents may even detract from the theory that the perpetrator could have been a rogue member of the group. In any case, they provide a chilling glimpse into the way the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas operates.

In one instance, according to the documents, leader Kelley Ray “Magic” Elley ordered members to kill a recruit and make “the killing as messy as possible,” directing the killers to “return the victim’s severed finger as a trophy.” Elley ordered the attack as a way of intimidating other recruits from cozying up to the police. In another instance, three members took a blowtorch and burned off the gang’s insignia tattooed on another member’s arm as a punishment for refusing to take an order.

Members of the Aryan Brotherhood (clockwise from top left): general Charles Lee Roberts, James Meldrum, general Larry Bryan, Benjamin Dillon, general William Maynard, and general Terry Ross Blake.

“You have a list of 10 rules,” says Mark Sullivan, a former member of the Arizona faction of the Aryan Brotherhood. Sullivan uses an alias because he fears retaliation. “If you break any of the rules, you die. The only way to have a successful organization is to be sealed tight. You can’t have any cracks. The No. 1 rule is never ever rat.”

The November crackdown was one of the state’s largest ever on the group, charging members with multiple acts of murder, robbery, arson, kidnapping, and narcotics trafficking that date back to 1993. Meldrum admitted to trafficking in methamphetamine and severely beating the gang member with the truck. He entered a guilty plea along with Ben Christian Dillon, who admitted to acting as an enforcer to collect drug debts, committing arson, and attempting to kill a fellow member who was marked for death by senior leaders, on January 31.

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