Fugitive's accomplice was informant before escape

(AP) — An Arizona fugitive's accomplice was acting as a drug mule for a white supremacy group and agreed to become a police informant weeks before she helped him escape from prison, authorities said Friday.

Casslyn Welch, and her fiance and cousin John McCluskey, are now considered among the most wanted fugitives in America after authorities say Welch helped McCluskey and two other men escape...

Did you see the tattoo on his shoulder? German eagle. I don’t know if the Aryan Nation group exists any longer, but I thought he was probably some kind of white supremacist meth-gang member as soon as I saw that.

Welch was visiting McCluskey at the medium-security prison in June when a random search of Welch and her vehicle turned up marijuana, heroin and drug paraphernalia, Mohave County sheriff’s spokeswoman Trish Carter said.

Welch wasn’t jailed because she agreed to become an informant, and she provided information about the suppliers of the drugs, Carter said. Welch told investigators she was being paid by members or associates of supremacists to smuggle heroin into the prison as she had successfully done three times before, but she declined to say who the items were intended for at the prison.

I should have included this in the initial excerpt above.

Thanks, I didn’t know whether these groups still existed or not. They don’t seem to be really common here in the Southeast, although possibly they exist in our prisons. However, when I lived on the West Coast, they were pretty visible even outside of prison.

As you are probably aware of, inmates separate along racial lines in prison and join the 'appropriate' gangs, though when outside of prison they can and will work together in criminal pursuits. Aryan Brotherhood and the Aryan Circle are some of the biggest losers I've ever encountered - they live for the dope. They're either furiously looking for it, making it, selling it, or using the stuff. And they certainly use it with merry abandon to the point of brain damage. When I saw the details about Welch being a "drug mule" and somehow organizing an "escape", I went to leaning towards Aryan Circle, since women actually can have standing in that particular organization.

From the article - Fidencio Rivera, chief deputy U.S. marshal for Arizona, said authorities believe Welch and McCluskey have minimal ties to white supremacy groups in or out of prisons and “we’re not expending much resources on that right now.”

Nonsense. If they as much as lift a little finger for a gang they have serious "ties". It's just that the Marshals cannot have much effect against those gangs or their networks. They don't have the resources for it.

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