SACRAMENTO — For the second time in a month, a California prisoner has pleaded guilty to a federal murder charge as part of a massive investigation targeting the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.
This time, Patrick “Big Pat” Brady, 53, pleaded guilty to the July 20, 2018 fatal stabbing of Donald “Joker” Pequeen at High Desert State Prison. Pequeen was targeted by the Aryan Brotherhood for fraudulently posing as a member of the all-white prison gang and for failing to pay for drugs he’d obtained from another person, both violations of an unofficial code of conduct at the prison, prosecutors say.
Brady was among two dozen alleged Aryan Brotherhood members and associates charged in 2019 as part of a massive probe led by the Drug Enforcement Administration and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. While on pretrial detention in the Sacramento jail, Brady filed a federal lawsuit that publicly revealed Sheriff’s employees had been recording attorney/client meetings in a jail booth, a practice that county officials claimed was accidental.
Prosecutors say that on July 20, 2018, Brady and a co-defendant, Jason Corbett, stabbed Pequeen more than 10 times while two other unnamed inmates helped chase them down. Brady’s plea agreement says only that “another person” also stabbed Pequeen, but doesn’t name him. It says Brady used a homemade knife with a Nazi symbol etched into it.
The agreement also references statements Brady allegedly made to two co-defendants, Travis Burhop and Donald “Popeye” Mazza, who have already pleaded guilty to federal charges. It says Brady told Burhop about the murder plot before Pequeen was killed, and that he told Mazza that using that particular knife was a bad idea, since it would help authorities establish Pequeen’s murder as gang-related.
The plea agreement offers no leniency and Brady is expected to receive a mandatory life sentence. Last month, his co-defendant, Brant “Two Scoops” Daniel, pleaded guilty to a murder at Salinas Valley State Prison and was immediately sentenced to life in federal prison.
Four remaining co-defendants — Ronald Yandell, William Sylvester, Corbett, and Danny Troxell — are scheduled to stand trial in February, assuming none of them decide to change their pleas as well.
In a separate case, federal prosecutors have accused other alleged Aryan Brotherhood members and associates of carrying out six murders, including two prison killings and two separate double homicides in Southern California.
