Background
Michael Thompson was born October 2, 1951 (according to prison records), in Bakersfield, California, coming from a European and Native American background. He stands almost 6 feet, 4 inches (192 cm) tall and has a massive figure. He was a former high school football star. Contrary to some reports, Michael was never a troubled teenager, but his mother's boyfriend didn't want all seven of her children. The two systematically started to place the children elsewhere, and Michael was put in a boys' home. His sister was sent to an orphanage, and later put up for adoption. His older sisters were pregnant and married by the time they were 16, and his older brother was forced to enlist in the military by his mother, who had forged his birth date.
Thompson moved from the boys' home to a foster home, which was a working horse ranch in Orange County, California. He attended Villa Park High School, where he excelled in football and was an A-B student. A family took him in and mentored him, and he became the first to graduate high school in his immediate family.
After high school, Thompson attended Orange Community College. At 19, he married a woman twelve years his senior, a go-go dancer and bartender at a local bar. Through her, he was introduced to a dangerous new crowd; she got Thompson a job as a bodyguard for a drug dealer. He later killed two other drug dealers with a ball-peen hammer, and was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder. He claimed this was to prevent an assassination plot against his boss, but it is generally believed that he wanted to be with the wife of one of his intended victims. In fact, he did marry Patricia Nunley, the widow of one of his victims, before she discovered he had murdered her husband.
Following the murder, Thompson was placed into Corcoran State Prison on a life sentence. Upon his entry, he was introduced to the Aryan Brotherhood and quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the gang's leaders. Thompson and his colleagues were so powerful, Charles Manson approached the Brotherhood upon his entry to prison for protection.
Read more about this topic: Michael Thompson (Aryan Brotherhood)
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