Feb. 13, 2006 issue - Barry Byron Mills is a bank robber who will spend the rest of his life in prison. An alleged leader of the notorious Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, Mills stabbed a fellow inmate to death with a handmade knife 27 years ago, adding two life sentences to his time. Now 57, he likes to project a softer side. He spends his spare time crocheting, and writes love letters to lonely women on the outside who have a weak spot for prison toughs.

But in those same letters, prosecutors say, Mills passed along secret instructions to Aryan Brotherhood members, enabling him to help run a nationwide extortion and drug-trafficking enterprise from behind bars. Now Mills and three other alleged members are the first set of defendants facing multiple counts of murder, conspiracy and racketeering in the most sweeping indictment to date of the Brotherhood. Rather than chase down the members one by one, frustrated officials are hoping to take down the enterprise en masse, the way prosecutors once did with the Mafia. Forty alleged members have been charged in the case. About half have pleaded guilty. Jury selection for the trial of the rest began last week. Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against at least eight of the defendants—including Mills—making it one of the largest capital cases in U.S. history. (Dean Steward, a lawyer for Mills, says his client, who pleaded not guilty to all pending charges, was just doing what it took to survive in prison. "Federal penitentiaries are dangerous, violent places," he says. "My client and these others are small minorities within the system.")