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This is a list of federally recognized Native American Tribes in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. With its 38 federally recognized tribes, Oklahoma has the third largest numbers of tribes of any state, behind Alaska and California.Police say Indian Brotherhood members think nothing of kidnapping, raping or beating someone, especially women. A few weeks ago, they tried to cut off a girl’s finger in Tulsa.Quinton Shavers was beaten to death last November in a house on North Trenton. Police say George July and Angel Proctor did it; they’ve been charged and are waiting on trial.

Police say the people getting hurt are people involved in the methamphetamine world. They get so hooked on drugs they are willing to do anything to get their next fix.

July is an ex-con and he and Proctor have been charged with violent crimes before, but, those charges were dismissed because victims and witnesses refused to show up and testify. This is a problem police are seeing over and over when I.B.H. is involved.”I think you have to do something against their code to end up with your fingers cut off, or witnessing a murder or being murdered yourself,” Walker said.

“They use them like property, they beat them, they rape them, they taze them, they get them strung out on dope,” said Sergeant Dave Walker with the Tulsa Police.\”They use them like property, they beat them, they rape them, they taze them, they get them strung out on dope,\” said Sergeant Dave Walker with the Tulsa Police.Police say just like when the Crips gang turns violent, it’s generally on other gang members, they say the Indian Brotherhood is generally committing violence against people in their drug world, not average, law abiding citizens.Police believe there’s an I.B.H. connection to the four people shot, execution style, inside a home on North New Haven last November. They say people who know something, are so wrapped up in the meth world and so afraid of retribution, they’re not talking, so those four murders remain unsolved.

Police say July and Proctor also kidnapped and terribly beat up two women and forced them to witness that murder. They say July is an Indian Brotherhood member and enforcer.

“They’re for real. I see why people don’t want to testify, but by the same regard, with what they’re living in, how could they not testify,” Walker said.We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact [email protected] or call (918) 696-2228.

Tyner was paid for his bodyguard work and got a cut of the drug deals. He felt he was doing as much work as Phillips, but Phillips always seemed to have wads of cash too big for a money clip.Tyner would have had to do some fast and spectacular networking to set himself up as a mafia contractor. After his wrestling scholarship at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga was pulled due to poor academic performance in spring 2000, he spent one listless fall semester at Bacone College in Muskogee, Okla.; the coach bounced him for a miserable work ethic. He drank, smoked dope and never set foot on the mat — a far cry from the devotion he had displayed in high school for coach Johnny Cook, who saw Tyner as a leader and a standout wrestler.

In any case, everyone in town knew of Byrd Tyner: Oklahoma high school wrestling meets were as big as some college matches. He was happy, playful and loved being the center of attention. He was a Marine, too, though not everyone knew he once stuck an M-16 in his mouth in Iraq and was going to blow his brains out, swear to God, even though he never actually bit down on the thing until another soldier walked in. Sanders was present for two more conversations about Barrientos, who had recently relocated to a single-story brick house at 1511 SW 56th St. in Oklahoma City. He had taken over the lease payments from childhood friend and fellow dealer Jose Fernando Fierro, 30. While Phillips’ girlfriend, Sanders, perceived Barrientos as generous, often giving his lieutenants money for gas, meals and rent, she said Tyner was adamant that he was being screwed out of money. In May 2012, after several years’ worth of hearings and testimony from Fierro, Sanders and Stanton, Tyner pleaded guilty to six counts of murder: four adults and two fetuses. If he had gone to trial, he would have faced the death penalty. The plea afforded him life in prison with no option to appeal.

“Byrd was nomadic,” Cindy David says. “He never really put roots down, moving from his father’s house to his mother’s. They separated when he was young. He wanted a family.”

Ermey was good friends with Milagros “Millie” Barrera, a 22-year-old Peruvian woman who enjoyed the nightlife. Barrera worked retail jobs — cellphones, apparel stores — and had gotten involved with a man who had gotten her pregnant. It didn’t keep her from going out and enjoying herself, though: With her pregnancy nearly 12 weeks along, she told a friend that she was going to meet someone who let people party at his house.In late October 2009, Tyner told Stanton he was quitting his job as a bodyguard for Barrientos to go back to school. She noticed he had gotten a new tattoo on his left forearm.

The gas company employee who arrived at the scene told a police officer he believed the house belonged to Jose Fierro, a former worker for the company who was recently fired for failing a drug test. The initial suspicion was that Fierro was one of the four charred bodies found in the home.Before he was sentenced, Tyner was visited in jail by Justin Wren, a mixed martial artist turned prison minister who was addressing inmates about his own tumultuous past with drugs. An official took him to see Tyner, who, according to Wren, was surrounded by four to six guards and “looked like Hannibal Lecter without the mask.” Chains and buckles tethered him to his bed. A previous visit had not gone well, a guard said, and Tyner had threatened violence.

Later, a former boyfriend of Barrera’s got a phone call: She was inebriated, he said, and was “uncomfortable” around the people she was with at Centerfolds. He first let the call go to voicemail. By the time he spoke with her and drove to the club, she was gone.

In the early-morning hours of Monday, Nov. 9, 2009, Barrientos and Fierro drove to Henry Hudson’s bar to meet Ermey and Barrera. They all ordered shots. At around 1:40 a.m., Fierro headed home while Barrientos left with the two women in Ermey’s Honda. He told Fierro they were headed for Centerfolds, the strip club where Ermey worked.

Barrientos didn’t seem to be giving Tyner as many drugs to sell. Phillips, meanwhile, had made as many as 50 or 60 trips to Oklahoma City, where Barrientos had a suburban compound worthy of Scarface: stacks of money totaling $100,000 on the coffee table, men with guns, hundreds of pounds of weed and a stream of naked women.Tyner has not responded to requests for interviews, nor has he provided any testimony regarding Denny Phillips, likely out of fear that the Indian Brotherhood will retaliate against his family. When he was arrested, his attorneys told the mother of his youngest child to leave town immediately. She didn’t return for months.Symantha Stanton awoke that morning to find Tyner gone, but she didn’t consider it unusual: He normally worked out early. She saw him around noon that day and for most of the next week. He was acting normally. Neither he nor her car smelled of petroleum. Nothing incriminating was present.

Prosecutors allege that he plotted the murders but have not ascertained whether he was in the house or simply nearby; inmate Michael Mease testified that Phillips, locked up after the Tulsa shootout, told him of the murders and that Brooke Phillips “just wouldn’t die.” (Prater, Tyner’s defense attorneys and Oklahoma City Police Department detectives did not respond to requests for comment; Denny Phillips has pleaded not guilty.)Less than two months into deployment, Fugate heard commotion and the clompclompclomp of combat boots passing him. He figured a fight was on, since that’s what Marines tend to do when boredom sets in. When he followed, he saw a small cluster of soldiers surrounding a tent. Tyner was inside, threatening to shoot himself. The others were not there for an intervention.

The Marine Wing Support Squadron 374 deployed to Iraq in February 2004, where it would first convoy to Kuwait before reaching Al-Taqaddum. Ground support in this sector never saw any live fire aside from mortars; they filled sandbags for the first few weeks. The food was hot and the danger minimal. The worst Tyner endured was rabies shots for spooking a coyote lurking near refuel bags.When he opened the door, there stood Tyner. Prosecutors later would learn that Symantha Stanton’s PikePass — an electronic sensor for tolls — had been used to get off the turnpike into Oklahoma City at 3:49 a.m. Stanton had last seen Tyner in their apartment as she was falling asleep, around 11 p.m.

Jennifer Ermey’s family thought she was a waitress. Ermey, 25, seemed to be titillated by keeping her life as an exotic dancer a secret from her well-off parents, the twilight culture unknown to them.Thirty minutes passed. Then Barrientos’ tone turned serious: “Aw, what the fuck?” Before Fierro could react, gunshots rang out and a bullet zipped through the bedroom door.

Back then Tyner stuck up for the bullied; a night of hellraising would be a few beers and maybe whizzing past some cops on the back roads. Fights were few and far between: Tyner was, in the vernacular of Oklahoma, a “hoss” — barrel-chested and built like a brick. He was so sold on wrestling that his family moved from Salina to the Locust Grove school district, where he stood the best chance of getting into a Division I program. Long-term, he thought he might transition into a career as a coach.Tyner made several phone calls that week. Speaking with Perry Sanders, Karine’s father, he said he would be seeing the incarcerated man “very soon.” He also talked to Jason Nicholson, who had U.S. marshals at his door looking for Tyner, the man they now knew to be Hooligan.

The support squadron at Twentynine Palms never expected never to see him again. Instead, here came Tyner pulling up in a jeep, wearing a hard hat and orange vest.

Fierro and Brooke were in the bedroom when Barrientos arrived a short time later. Fierro heard female voices, which he assumed to be those of Ermey and Barrera. Brooke went out to greet them; Fierro stayed behind. He heard music and amiable chatting.

Fierro spent a half-hour chatting with Tyner; the two had met while helping Barrientos move over the summer and had an easy rapport. Tyner asked when Barrientos might be coming back. Fierro suspected it would be soon, since few places would still be open.Tyner and Phillips discussed their options in Sanders’ presence. Both had reason to trust her: Sanders, 20, had known Tyner since she was 4 years old. He’d often babysat her. Phillips knew Sanders’ father, Perry, a fellow member of the Indian Brotherhood: The two had once escaped Mayes County Jail together.

Denny Phillips was aware of all of this, having smuggled drugs into prison cells and gained status in the process; he was high in the tribal hierarchy of the Indian Brotherhood, a volatile Native American prison gang that began making noise in the early 1990s. Violent and organized, they deal drugs and call shots from the inside with freed members spread across the Midwest. Opposing gangs and their families visit on alternating days to avoid any eruptions.

Later, you could ask someone about David Tyner in Oklahoma City and get that same blank stare. Byrd doesn’t register, either. So you describe him: 5-foot-9, built wide, the pride of Locust Grove High. Half Cherokee Indian. Ears like chewed-up bubblegum.Fierro drove her back to the Barrientos house, where he had a key and was free to come and go as he pleased. According to Fierro’s later testimony, Brooke requested that he take a shower so they could have sex. She also snorted more cocaine. The two were alone for approximately 45 minutes before Fierro began to hear someone knocking and whistling at the door. Barrientos had been the primary target: big, fearless and known to be armed. He took four shots to the torso and one to the head. The pregnant Millie Barrera most likely was the second kill; as with Barrientos, shots to the back indicated she had been trying to flee. Clean and easy. He fought once in late 2006 and six times in 2007, including a bout he accepted just 10 days after fighting. Even with the extra weight, Tyner was formidable: He won all of his contests in the first round. Except for an October bout, he spent more time golfing than training. After feeling the sting of a kickboxer’s strikes — like having a baseball bat swung at you — he promptly quit both the fight and the sport.That didn’t pay the bills, though, so she insisted he get a job. Tyner started work as a cook at Boomerang’s. But every other waking moment was being spent with Phillips, to whom he began to refer as “brother.”

Denny Phillips was described as a “person of interest” in the case, but evidence was scant. He remained below the radar until January 2010, when he was arrested for possessing a weapon as a convicted felon. He had the audacity to rob the home of Tulsa homicide detective Mike Huff, stealing a police uniform, guns, family heirlooms and even Huff’s Chevrolet pickup. Police feared he was desperate and organized a task force to hunt him down.

Phillips was sentenced to seven years for the Huff burglary and assorted weapons charges: Oklahoma District Attorney David Prater built his case glacially but finally indicted Phillips in August 2012 for the six murders and on one count of conspiracy. He’s currently awaiting trial; witnesses have paraded through the court room during preliminary hearings to detail how proud he seemed of the crime. A commanding officer talked the gun out of Tyner’s mouth, then put him on suicide watch. Some Marines remember him getting a troubling letter from his wife, who may have confessed infidelity. (The two soon separated.) Having put on weight since college, he also was badgered for not “taping out,” or having proper body measurements for a soldier. It forced him into remedial physical training, which the once-decorated athlete despised. Maybe you needed to look at alternative sources of revenue, and, when it comes down to it, prove you’re the man you say you are by stealing someone’s last breath while they fight for both their life and the life of their unborn child. Fierro may have been a dealer of ill repute who once met with Mexican cartel members while his children played in the backyard and who was barely two hours removed from selling cocaine to a pregnant woman, but he was not stupid. He continued to run until he smashed into a horse kept in a neighbor’s yard. Dazed, he climbed up a tree, where he waited for a thought to come into his head as to what to do next. Mostly, Tyner would play the one-upper game. Other times, he’d sit stone-faced and tell the men in the barracks about being a hit man for the New York and Chicago mobs. One job, he said, netted him $50,000. The client wanted the target to drop dead in front of his wife, so Tyner posted himself on the roof of a building in Milwaukee and waited for the couple to situate themselves on a patio. He shot the man dead at 300 yards. No scope.

One afternoon, Ermey returned home and saw her boyfriend kissing her roommate. Furious, she got her own apartment and began cozying up to her roommate’s ex in an act of emotional revenge. He was not quite her type, with horns inked on his head and known gang affiliations. But Casey Barrientos bought Ermey nice things and had easy access to cocaine, for which she had acquired a taste.As Fierro left the living room, he heard Tyner on his cellphone telling someone that the only people in the house were Fierro and his girlfriend. A few drinks in, he thought little of it.

He was shipped back home and tried cage fighting, and that was fun until he realized his halfhearted approach to training could get him seriously hurt.“He didn’t look well,” recalls Cindy David, Austin’s mother, who frequently hosted Tyner at her family’s country property, where he would bow-hunt or shoot deer from tree stands. “He had a smile you couldn’t miss. But he became very serious, solemn.” Once, he left a carnival when the fireworks started, unsettled by the noise.

Sanders was chilled. She pleaded with Tyner to walk away from the situation; he did the same, telling her to get away and pursue her dreams of being a writer. Phillips explained to Tyner that Barrientos needed a bodyguard, that threats had been made against his life. Tyner’s fantasies of being a gunslinger were coming true. Some of his friends say his mother gave him the nickname because he ate sparingly as a child. Others believe it was because he enjoyed climbing trees and nearly fell once, though birds generally don’t do that.Wren noticed a stack of journals two or three feet high in his cell. “Dreams and prayers,” Tyner said. A well-worn Bible was nearby. His hands chained, he wiped tears from his face with his knee.Tyner reconnected with some of his old wrestling buddies that summer, taking out a boat and going fishing. They drank and joked about hellraising in the old days. He gave his friend Austin David a turquoise ring set in a bear’s claw and claimed that his grandfather, a medicine man, had blessed it. He also said his grandfather had once turned into an owl, then woke up naked. He talked of moving to Norman, Okla., where David was, and being roommates.

The times she accompanied Tyner into Oklahoma City, she noticed that people there would refer to him as “Hooligan,” a reference to the tattoo he’d gotten splayed across his chest. But back in Salina, Hooligan was unknown — he was still Byrd. With Tyner incarcerated, Symantha Stanton began dating Denny Phillips. She was pregnant with his child when both were cornered in a Tulsa Motel 6 in April 2010. Phillips brandished a gun he had stolen from Huff and hopped around in a fighting stance; police opened fire, careful not to shoot into the windows behind Phillips that might have obscured guests. He suffered bullet wounds to his torso and crotch; his testicles were unsalvageable and his penis partially severed. He also lost a toe in the melee. At the crime scene, police established that Barrientos was wearing $10,000 worth of jewelry the night he was murdered. It was now missing. And in a house typically stuffed with thousands of dollars, only $221 remained.

Despite his newfound freedom, Barrientos had no intention of giving up illicit activities or the twilight culture. From his home in Oklahoma City, he filtered drugs — weed, coke, meth — passed along by a Mexican cartel, dispatching Phillips and Tyner to traffic them a few hours away in Tulsa or Grand Lake, Okla.Denny Phillips was someone who noticed Tyner around the gyms. A wiry 5’9″ and 165 pounds, the tattoos snaking up his neck guaranteeing he’d never work an office job, Phillips — also known as Phil DZ or simply D — struck up an easy conversation with him. Both were Cherokee, both into fighting, both from Mayes County, Okla. He knew Tyner was a good cornerman, well-versed in mixed martial arts, and asked if he would help train him for a fight.