The assailant, Wade Arthur Shiflett, hesitated when a guard fired a warning shot, but renewed his attack after Tigar shouted, “Hit him again,” according to prison documents obtained by the AP. This time, the guard shot Shiflett dead.
Tigar, who has a swastika tattooed on his chin, then ordered another inmate to kill the guard, Sam Bess, as the officer descended from a guard tower, according to the documents.
“I want you to mop him,” Tigar told the prisoner, an inmate witness told investigators according to confidential prison reports.
The prisoner refused — so Tigar allegedly ordered him assaulted as well. That inmate was later granted protective custody and Tigar was eventually moved to Pelican Bay State Prison after audio surveillance of his cell discovered he was planning more retaliation.
Tigar was familiar to guards as the elected chairman of a group that serves as a liaison between inmates and management, a position that afforded him broad access throughout the prison.
According to the confidential prison reports, Tigar led the Men’s Advisory Council Executive Body even though he was accused more than 40 times of ordering and carrying out assaults, selling drugs, ferrying weapons or fomenting race riots, among other things.
Warden Scott Kernan said in a prison interview that he was aware of Tigar’s “influence over other inmates,” but that reports implicating him weren’t adequately confirmed and that inmates often have that many reports of wrongdoing.
Still, Kernan took “full responsibility for not locking him up.”
In April — five months after the Nov. 30, 2004, killing — Kernan warned staff against using inmate intermediaries unless specifically authorized.
'Inmates will not be used to walk the tiers and communicate staff expectations to other inmates,” he wrote. “Inmates are using, or could use, this unauthorized access to move weapons and other contraband, involve themselves in assaults on inmates or staff, and jeopardize the security of the prison.'"
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