[A] judge kept hidden from the public testimony from a prison informant who says killer Donald Fell was seeking to join a violent white supremacist gang while behind bars, according to newly released documents.
And Fell was willing to kill to get in, the informant testified.
At a late August hearing in Fell’s case, which federal Judge Geoffrey Crawford closed over the objections of VTDigger, prisoner Greg Storey testified Fell asked him about joining The Aryan Brotherhood, a notorious prison gang.
“He thought he was going to win this case and get out of death row, if not onto the streets, and would be put into an open population setting and stab somebody for The Aryan Brotherhood,” Storey testified, according to the documents released late Thursday.
Storey said at the hearing he had been a high-ranking member of the white supremacist gang, but had dropped out in 2006. Storey said Fell was not aware that he was no longer a member of The Aryan Brotherhood, and tried to impress him with what he could do if allowed in.
“He said he was good with a knife,” Storey testified Fell told him in the summer of 2015 when they were both locked in a Brooklyn, New York, facility. “He liked it up close and personal.”
Prosecutors at that closed-door hearing were trying to bolster their case that Fell deserved the death penalty for the November 2000 slaying of 53-year-old Teresca King of North Clarendon, in part, because he would pose a continued danger even while locked up.
Fell’s attorneys contended that their client could be managed by corrections staff while serving out a prison sentence.
During a two-day hearing in federal court in Rutland before a plea deal was reached a few days later — sending Fell to jail for the rest of his life without the possibility of parole — prisoner Storey was called to the stand by prosecutors.
Judge Crawford had closed that two-day hearing that mostly featured Storey on the stand, citing the “volatile” testimony expected and the possibility that it could “taint” the jury selection process that was about to begin.
In a closed-door meeting with the lawyers in his chambers before the second day of the hearing, Crawford again addressed the issue of barring the public from the courtroom.
The judge said, according to the transcript, his concerns about the testimony proved out one day in, with Storey testifying a day earlier about, among other things, Fell’s lack of remorse, his use of racial slurs, and his interest in “joining this top predator gang” in prison.
“All of those things struck me as highly volatile, highly inflammatory,” the judge said.
“I see no way that if that information reached a potential juror that that juror, unless we had a person of abnormal ability to put things in perspective, would be able to serve in this case,” Crawford added. “So those were very specific reasons I closed the courtroom.”
The hearing took place to determine if Storey would be allowed to testify during Fell’s case, with the trial set to begin in late fall.
A plea deal was soon worked out after the hearing and before the judge could issue a ruling on whether Storey’s testimony would be permitted.
U.S. Attorney for Vermont Christina Nolan has said that it was the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington that issued the “directive” to withdraw the pursuit of the death penalty in the case against Fell.
She said she could not comment specifically on who made the request, though she did say it happened in late August.
With the case now over, Judge Crawford earlier this week ordered that federal prosecutors release a redacted transcript of that closed-door hearing.
Over the course of the several hundreds of pages, Storey, a convicted killer and robber, testified how Fell communicated with him about his strong desire to become a member of The Aryan Brotherhood and his willingness to do whatever it took to join.
Storey said he exchanged notes and had conversations with Fell over several months in 2015 when they had cells nearby, and at times next to each other, in the high-security setting of the Brooklyn facility.
Storey said they talked with a wall between them and exchanged written messages by sliding notes on strings outside their cells.
During those conversations, Storey testified that Fell spoke about his crime.
“He told me he enjoyed stabbing his mother’s boyfriend and stomping and killing the witness,” Storey said Fell told him. “He said that he remembered it well and that it quote, was a good memory.”
Fell and his late accomplice, Robert J. Lee, were fleeing the scene of a double homicide when they carjacked King as she arrived for work at downtown Rutland’s Price Chopper supermarket.
Earlier that morning, police said, the two men stabbed and killed Fell’s mother, Debra Fell, 47, and her friend Charles Conway, 44, in Rutland after a night of heavy drinking and playing cards in Debra Fell’s apartment.
After carjacking King, police said, Donald Fell and Lee drove to New York state, where they later beat and stomped her to death. The two men were arrested days later, still driving King’s car, in Arkansas.
No charges have been filed in connection with the deaths of Debra Fell and Conway.
Lee died in prison in 2001 before he could be tried in King’s death.
Fell’s ties to the white supremacist gang have been raised before, in a civil case pending in Indiana where he allegedly assaulted another death row inmate.
That inmate, James Roane Jr., has sued the federal prison bureau and staff members at the facility in Terre Haute, alleging they were aware of the danger Fell posed and did not act to prevent the attack and then did not properly investigate it.
According to the civil rights lawsuit, Fell stabbed and seriously injured Roane. The Aryan Brotherhood, according to filings, directed Fell, termed a “student” member of the gang, to carry out the hit on Roane, who the group claimed was a “snitch.”
Fell, 38, was on death row because he had previously been convicted and sentenced to death for role in King’s slaying. However, he was later granted a new trial due to juror misconduct.
Storey testified at the late August hearing under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sonia Jimenez, a member of prosecution team, that he came forward because he was “disturbed” by what Fell had been telling him.
“And what is it that disturbed you about what he was saying?” Jimenez asked.
“It was his demeanor about it, him wanting to do it, to continue to kill,” Storey responded.
Later in the hearing, Storey elaborated.
“I started being disturbed,” he said of Fell, “as far as he’s concerned, when he was talking about murder and about how he liked the stab, how he, he enjoyed stabbing this guy Roane.”
Storey then added, “He told me he liked using a knife, is what he told me. He told me um, that he liked blood. That he liked gory scenes, you know.”
Storey had also previously faced a possible death sentence in the 1995 stabbing death of Charles “Bubba” Leger to death at Leavenworth prison. Storey had been serving time at the Kansas facility for a series of bank robberies in Nevada and Colorado.
He eventually cut a deal with prosecutors in Leger’s death, pleading guilty to a charge of second-degree murder.
An FBI agent testified in that case that Leger’s slaying stemmed from a conspiracy among members The Aryan Brotherhood in the prison, according to a report from that time in the Las Vegas Sun. The agent testified that gang members had identified Leger as an informant and ordered his slaying.
Storey was pressed about the slaying by Fell’s attorneys during the hearing in Rutland, questioning claims he previously made that he acted in self-defense in killing Leger.
Storey repeatedly said during the hearing in responses to those questions that while he did stab Leger it wasn’t his intent to kill him.
“You are an admitted perjurer, are you not sir,” attorney Michael Burt, representing Fell, asked Storey at one point.
“In the past. Yes, sir,” Storey replied, adding that he has since changed his life around.
“And your ultimate goal was that you were going to get in front of the judges that had sentenced you and these prosecutors were going to come forward and speak on your behalf and you were going to get out?,” Burt asked Storey.
“I mean, that is a hope,” Storey replied. “That is a desire in my heart, yes. I mean, do I um, believe in reality that’s going to happen? Probably not.”
It’s not clear from court records how many years Storey had remaining on his sentences, though he did receive 333 months, or a little more than 27 years, for Leger’s slaying.
Since leaving The Aryan Brotherhood, Storey testified that his life was in danger behind bars.
Fell’s attorneys asked Storey whether that provided him strong incentive to do whatever he could to get out of prison.
“It’s a matter of life and death for you, correct?” Burt asked him.
“Yes, sir,” Storey answered.
“And you now have joined a new organization, not the AB (Aryan Brotherhood), but the U.S. Government, you are on their team now, correct?” Burt shot back.
“I don’t — I don’t look at it like that,” Storey replied.
“Well, you still believe though that your life is in danger, correct?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Storey responded.