Idaho manhunt subjects tied to prison gang. Who are the Aryan Knights?

BOISE, Idaho (NewsNation) — The brazen ambush at an Idaho hospital that injured three corrections officers, led to a manhunt and spawned two homicide investigations has thrust the white supremacist gang at the center of the case into the spotlight.

Nicholas Umphenour, 28, and accomplice Skylar Meade, 31, were arrested near the Twin Falls area Thursday after 36 hours on the run.

Now, Idaho State Police claims it can connect the pair of white supremacist prison gang members to two killings that happened hundreds of miles away from where they were arrested. Both victims were adult men and an active investigation is ongoing, police said.

Who are the Aryan Knights?

Meade and Umphenour were both members of The Aryan Knights, a gang formed in the mid-1990s in the Idaho prison system to organize criminal activity for a select group of white people in custody, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in the district of Idaho.

In 2021, Harlan Hale, described as a leader in the group, was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a plot to traffic drugs behind bars and use violence to collect unpaid debts. In a court document, federal prosecutors described the Aryan Knights as a “scourge” within the state’s prison system.

“The hate-fueled gang engages in many types of criminal activity and casts shadows of intimidation, addiction, and violence over prison life,” prosecutors wrote.

In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League counted 75 different white supremacist prison gangs in federal or local facilities in at least 38 states. The ADL said two of the largest such groups, the Aryan Circle and Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, had at least 1,500 members.

How many people are a part of the Aryan Knights?

Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow for the ADL’s Center on Extremism, estimates the Aryan Knights has approximately 150 members behind bars and roughly 100 more on the streets. He said the group operates in other states, including Washington and Oregon.

“With all white supremacist prison gangs, the ideology takes a backseat to the organized crime. That’s just a given,” he said. “They use that as a sort of a glue to help keep them together and help keep them loyal to the gang.”

Pitcavage said white supremacist prison gangs are a very different phenomenon from neo-Nazi groups like Aryan Nations, which had a compound in north Idaho at its peak in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.