Sunday, June 08, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

IN DEPTH: Awakening

His story sounds like a Hollywood cliche: bad boy turned ordained minister and adviser to the powerful. But Garry Steinman's tale resonates with Nevada prison inmates and key players in Gov. Kenny Guinn's effort to reform the state's corrections system.

Ex-con turned ordained minister Garry Steinman prepares for church in the bathroom of his two-bedroom northeast Las Vegas mobile home on Sunday, May 11. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

Garry Steinman's arms and chest are covered with tattoos, the sort that draw wary glances from knowing cops. Three inked teardrops dangle beneath his left eye, marking 15 years in the Aryan Brotherhood.

He was a member of the minority-hating gang in Soledad, Chino and San Quentin prisons during the 1970s and claims a link to the deaths of 87 inmates, men who crossed the Brotherhood.

"I judged every person that came in. If I got a letter from above that said kill them, I still held court. I was a just judge. I was given good moral teachings as a child. I was always taught to be fair," says Steinman, whose prison nickname was T.J.: the judge.

"I'd look in their eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul," he reflects. "I could tell by body movement, body language, by how they spoke. Did they have a quiver in their voice as they spoke? A quiver told me they were guilty."

He refuses to offer names or dates and was never charged with any killings.

"Every witness who ever would've said I did something ... never made it to an interview with police because they died. You can't question a dead person," he says. "They were hit, murdered."

The 55-year-old Las Vegan served 22 1/2 years in California, Nevada and New Jersey prisons and jails for armed robbery, burglary and receipt of stolen weapons.

"I'm just glad those days are over," he says. "I wouldn't change my life right now."

He's now a prison minister and an activist for veterans rights who is an informal adviser to the leaders of Nevada's prison system, a man who's on a first-name base with state corrections boss, Jackie Crawford.

She has witnessed countless scams during her three decades of corrections work and is convinced that Steinman's social and religious awakening is legitimate.

"I think there's a story there to be told and it does have tremendous impact on other offenders," Crawford says.

A spokesman for California's Department of Corrections doubts Steinman's most audacious claims.

"There is probably some question about this guy in terms of his bona fides," says department spokesman Russ Hemrich. "If he was who he said he was he would have been named in indictments."

Steinman has visited Nevada's eight major prisons since 2000, meeting with more than 500 Vietnam-era vets who are doing time.

During a recent visit to the High Desert State Prison, Steinman sits with six aging inmates. Three are convicted murderers, all in their 50s.

Jim Burke is one of the crew, an armed robber who is seven years into a 27-year sentence that won't see him released from the state's prison system until he's in his late 60s or early 70s.

He grabs two hand-rolled cigarettes, gives one to Steinman and keeps one for himself. They fire up both.

"You know someone out there you can talk to?" Burke asks Steinman. The men view themselves as mentors to young inmates.

"We gotta set up a pre-release program for parolees so they know what to expect when they're let out. We'd have a lot better chance of not seeing them again if they were ready with outside help."

Steinman visits several times a month, meeting with convicts and prison administrators, pushing for anger management classes, counseling programs, vocational training, anything that will ease the tension of prison life and give these guys a shot at something better when they get out.

"He's our contact to the streets. One of the problems we've had is there's almost like a radiation bubble around this thing," Burke says of the prison, 35 miles north of Las Vegas.

Three-piece suits, jewelry and drugs

Steinman's childhood was a textbook case of social dysfunction. His mother left when he was 7. His adoptive father cared for him in a Lake Michigan fishing town, prompting young Garry Dale Welch to take the railroad man's family name.

He says at 8 years of age he stabbed another boy in the back for kissing a young girl both liked. "He didn't die. He just was stabbed. It was a rage, and at times back in those days, praise God I'm beyond that, I would just totally black out," he recalls. "You could tell me that I did it. I could be covered in blood and see it and go, `Don't remember a thing about it,' but that was the intensity of the anger."

He joined the Navy in 1964 and discovered an affinity for weapons. He was discharged a year later after repeated run-ins with higher ups.

Steinman's 20s saw him knock around from job to job, drive big trucks, work construction, run numbers, serve as a bodyguard, and sell drugs from Seattle to New York. He dressed the part, wearing three-piece suits and silk shirts. He sported diamonds, gold, big wads of money, a pocketful of dope and a shoulder-holstered pistol. Lincolns and Cadillacs were his ride of choice, a .44 Magnum always stored beneath the front seat.

"In those days you're young, you think you know it all. I thought I was Mr. Big, prideful. I was full of pride. Praise God that he loved me," he says, closing his eyes for several seconds. "At that time I thought no way, God could never love an animal, and I considered myself an animal, and sometimes even prided myself as an animal. I bought into it. The power, money, partying."

Steinman moved to Seattle, hooked up with a biker gang, The Outlaws, and committed crimes throughout the West. In 1972 he was sentenced to prison for an armed robbery, leading to stints in Soledad, San Quentin and Chino, among the harshest prisons in the country. That's where he hooked up with the Aryan Brotherhood.

The California Corrections Division's Hemrich believes Steinman might be pumping up his prison reputation to make himself appear bigger on the streets, to hold a greater aura for the cons he counsels today. Steinman rejects such talk.

"They're never going to have a record of the Aryan Brotherhood. That wasn't under their control at the time," he says. "In those days the gangs ran the prisons. You got to remember we're talking about a different generation of administrators, correctional officers, wardens back then."

Steinman was paroled from the California prison system in 1981 and moved to Las Vegas. Like so many, he was drawn by the action: the money, the gambling, the women. He occasionally picked up the Bible, but his religious awakening was more than a decade off.

"It just wasn't time I guess," he says.

Amen, amen

Christianity and Judaism have traditions of conversion.

Moses killed an Egyptian guard, went into hiding for 40 years and returned to lead the Jewish people to the Promised Land. Paul encouraged a mob to stone Stephen, then had a roadside conversion.

"Of the Bible's four major characters -- Moses, Paul, Abraham and Jesus -- two are murderers," says the Rev. Jim Poling, a professor of pastoral care and counseling at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill.

"On the one hand the genuine conversion is amazingly inspiring. If someone worse than me can turn their life around then I can, but of course there's nothing worse than a false conversion, to go through a pseudo-conversion and use religion as another con."

Steinman's aware of the doubts.

Standing 5-foot-8 and weighing 240 pounds, he offers an imposing presence at the Sunday services at Las Vegas' Hallelujah Fellowship on North Rancho Drive. He introduces a visitor to "Brother Jesse," and "Brother Mike."

As a preacher speaks to the 150 gathered, Steinman jots down messages in his personal Bible.

"God loves to bless people who do not deserve to be blessed, which includes everyone in this room," pastor Dennis Lee tells his congregants. "You can't get a better deal than this. It's priceless."

"Amen," Steinman mutters softly. "Amen."

He occasionally attended church in his younger days, but it never took, at least not until 1993 when he was in a Hawthorne jail awaiting trial for the receipt of stolen weapons. A Spanish-speaking prisoner charged with murder was in a nearby cell, and Steinman watched as a Mineral County deputy sheriff named Jerry shared the Bible with the inmate, using an English-to-Spanish dictionary to translate. Jerry visited the man daily for weeks, and Steinman spotted a change.

"He was angry, mad, always yelling, screaming. He was traumatized," Steinman remembers. But the more Jerry sat with the killer, the calmer he grew. "Jerry would just tell the guy that God loves him."

That's when Steinman picked up the Bible. He pored over it, considered its meaning. The guy rarely knew shame in his life, but one day his ex-wife and father visited the Western Nevada jail. A guard led Steinman to the visiting area. He wore shackles about his wrists and ankles, which were linked to a chain about his waist. He spotted his visitors and sobbed, confessing much of what he had done in his life: the robberies, the scams, the gun running, the cheating with other women. "I asked them both to forgive me," he says. Then he returned to his cell and read the Bible some more.

Senior pastor Lee has known the ex-con for eight years. He's counseled him, watched him grow in religious education and become ordained as a nondenominational Christian minister. Steinman works with troubled teens at the church and regularly prays for ex-cons seeking guidance.

"He brings a whole lot of love and a whole lot of presence of himself," Lee says.

Lee is asked whether he doubts Steinman's sincerity.

"That's a tough question. Do I question the sincerity of people? That's within me on everyone," he says. "What I do is let the person's life show whether they do or do not believe. What I do is allow the fruits of their life to show their faith or their beliefs. You see it's very easy to say to your wife, `I love you,' but it has no credibility until you back up those words with actions."

Ron Cornell is an active member of Steinman's church and has spotted the ex-felon at Sunday services, Saturday fellowship breakfasts and regular Bible discussions. They have shared religious testimony and swapped hugs. "He seems to be a very neat brother in the Lord," Cornell says.

Steinman's fellow-churchgoer is also president of Families of Murder Victims, a local organization that lobbies state and local governments to strengthen the rights of crime victims. Cornell's 16-year-old son, Joey, was killed in a July 1998 shooting in the family's Henderson neighborhood.

Cornell knew nothing of Steinman's criminal background until he was questioned by a visitor. "I'm not one to judge a man, and I'm not going to judge a man," Cornell says. "That final thing is up to God to do. ... I can see from an outward appearance God is using him in a remarkable way."

A strange charisma

They're hard to miss sipping coffee in a neighborhood Starbucks. There's Steinman, decked out in a leather vest and a confederate bandana covering his head. The right side of his vest is covered with pins honoring Jesus Christ, local charities, the state of Nevada. The left side displays pins commemorating the Vietnam Veterans of America. He's on the group's Nevada State Council.

Next to him sits his ex-wife, a businesswoman wearing a blue dress, high heels and a gold crucifix. She was drawn to Steinman in 1982 while working as a legal assistant for one of his lawyers.

"He's charming as all get out," says the woman, who requested anonymity fearing that their friendship could hurt her business. "Garry never had a problem with women. He's kind in a lot of ways. You don't believe some of the things he's done."

The two were romantically linked for more than a decade, married for a year and a half, living together the rest of the time. Today, they are friends.

"He was handsome, had a great body on him, was a great roll in the hay," she says, chuckling at the memories. "We were a great team."

He called her, "Darlin'," still does.

She knew about his troubles, the gun running, the robberies, the costly video poker addiction.

"I never saw it. I heard about all the things he did," she says of their early days. "He never physically hurt me. He'd say, `You know I've beaten guys for a lot less.' "

They were practicing Buddhists, but Steinman would burglarize homes to feed his video poker addiction.

She says his religious awakening is real, that he's an earnest counselor of inmates and a devout reader of Scripture. She's seen his scams in the past, but this, she swears, is not one of them.

"He's got what it takes when he wants to do good," she says.

Return to prison

A spiny crucifix of nails and a single silver-plated medallion that reads HOPE are pieces of Steinman's faith-based arsenal. He might employ them to minister to a homeless junkie walking the Fremont Street Experience or a lonely person riding a city bus. He'll ask his audience of one to shut his eyes and open his hands. The crucifix and word are placed in the palms. The hands close.

Steinman tells how God has changed his life. He'll have his listener open his eyes.

"I've seen them moved to tears, I've seen them confess right there that they need God in their lives," he says.

Steinman carries the crucifix and medal into prisons where he'll provide witness to troubled inmates. He listens to their stories and speaks of another road.

"He has the ability to communicate with these guys in a manner that they develop a trust relationship with him," says Kenneth Braker, president of Chapter 17 of the Vietnam Veterans of America.

Braker never had much sympathy for cons. "I used to have the opinion that we should lock 'em up and throw away the key," says the shop foreman for the Las Vegas Fire Department.

Then he saw Steinman organize prison chapters of the veterans organization. They raised money for school supplies in Carson City, quarried prison rocks for retail sale, designed a Vietnam War memorial from rock and soil at the High Desert Prison at Indian Springs.

"I think he's what made the difference," Braker says. "They were looking for someone out there to take an interest."

Steinman's efforts coincide with the reform work of Nevada prisons boss Crawford and her staff. She assumed the system's top job a little more than a year ago and was brought in to create vocational programs to rehabilitate the state's 10,500 inmates at eight major prisons, 10 minimum security camps and a restitution center.

Gov. Kenny Guinn appointed a panel to hear reform options before the start of the current legislative session. Steinman testified, recommending vocational classes, basic schooling, the teaching of life skills and additional job training for prison guards.

"I'm pleased with Garry. He shows total respect for this department. He's not in an adversarial role trying to champion some causes. Garry is a team worker," Crawford says.

Prison visits can be draining for Steinman. His health is not good. He's suffering from thyroid cancer and is reluctant to seek full treatment. "God's in control," he says.

Steinman also has diabetes and a bad back, the result of a 1979 trucking accident. He lives on $748 a month in Social Security and Veterans Affairs payments, gets around town by city bus and shares a two-bedroom mobile home in northeast Las Vegas with a roommate. His ex-wife gives him some money so he can buy food for the homeless and Christmas gifts for street kids.

While some inmates hold Steinman in high regard, prison guards often are wary of the ex-con. He can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices when he greets them with a "hello brother" or "praise God" while walking the prison yard.

As he leaves the High Desert State Prison at the close of his recent visit with Burke and the five other vets, Steinman speaks of the mixed emotions he feels whenever he departs. He has spent almost half of his life behind bars and understands the prison world as well as he does anything on the outside.

"Every time I leave, I leave a part of me there," he says. "I battled when I was in there, and I see things changing now because of Jackie Crawford. Praise God for her. Still I cry every time I walk out of there."