FBI agents arrested a member of a notorious white supremacist gang in Louisana over a murder-for-hire scheme, The New Orleans Advocate reported.
Jeffery A. Howard of Mississippi, a known member of the Aryan Brotherhood, was taken into custody Thursday. He had agreed to execute a black drug dealer for $5,000, federal authorities said.
The FBI New Orleans Division Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Howard on a federal charge of use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire. The FBI was assisted by the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Pearl River County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities accused Howard of being involved in methamphetamine trafficking and said he sold drugs to an undercover law enforcement officer on numerous occasions.
The FBI has been investigating Howard since at least June, The New Orleans Advocate reported, but their investigation was stalled because potential informants “believed Howard was violent and would kill their families.”
Howard's mother told the Advocate that her son spent 10 years in prison for a burglary conviction after becoming addicted to methamphetamine.
The Aryan Brotherhood is one of the "largest and most-violent racist gangs operating in and out of the nation’s prisons," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The white supremacist group "is accused of carrying out murders, attempted murders, conspiracies, arsons, assaults, robberies and drug trafficking as part of an enterprise that goes back to at least 1993."
