Aryan Brotherhood member sentenced to life in prison

JACKSON, Miss. – A member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Mississippi has been sentenced to life in prison on charges including racketeering and murder following the 2010 beating death of a man over an unpaid drug debt.

Frank George Owens, 44, was sentenced Wednesday to serve an additional 120 months for attempted murder, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release Thursday.

In April, a federal grand jury found Owens and fellow Aryan Brotherhood member, Eric Glenn Parker, 35, of Richton, guilty of racketeering conspiracy and murder. Both were also convicted of attempted murder.

Parker hasn’t been sentenced yet.

The Justice Department described the Aryan Brotherhood as a violent “whites only” group that operates inside and outside of state prisons.

According to trial evidence, Owens and three co-defendants served at varying times on the gang’s three-member “wheel,” which oversaw and directed gang activity throughout Mississippi during the conspiracy.

Owens and other group leaders were accused of ordering others to lure Michael James Hudson to a Brotherhood house in December 2010. Owens and Parker then beat the victim to death for an unpaid drug debt and delivered the body to a co-defendant, who burned the body for days, prosecutors said.

“Our neighbourhoods deserve to exist without fear and intimidation inflicted by violent drug gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood of Mississippi,” said Special Agent in Charge Stephen G. Azzam. “The sentencing of this gang member should be a warning to others who prey on the weak and defenceless through their drug trafficking and violent acts.”