Prisoners Security

Hit with death threats ever since her arrest, Selena's killer will do her time alone, in a small cell, for her own protection. Yolanda Saldivar, 35, was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for murdering the Tejano singing star in a falling-out over business. The founder of the Selena fan club won't be eligible for parole for 30 years. Some of the most vocal warnings have come from the Mexican Mafia, a prison gang, which had vowed revenge for Selena's death regardless of the trial's outcome.

FT. MEADE, Md. - The top security officer at the detainee compound on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, testified Wednesday that prison cells for high-value inmates and a special visitation room include monitoring equipment that the FBI had installed and later turned over for use by U.S. intelligence officials. The testimony by Army Col. John Vincent Bogdan, the military police commander of the prison since June, was elicited by defense attorneys for five alleged Sept. 11 plotters to bolster their complaints that law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including the FBI and CIA, have been monitoring their confidential meetings with the defendants.

For Hung Thanh Mai, the Anaheim man accused of killing a CHP officer during a traffic stop, the 10 days since his arrest have been the "worst of my life." Mai declined Friday to talk about charges that he killed Officer Don Burt, who was shot seven times. But the 25-year-old suspect emphatically denied allegations that he is tied to a roving gang based in Long Beach. "I was never in a gang," said Mai, who immigrated to Orange County from Vietnam in 1975 with his paternal grandmother.

John Carl Willy, who admitted using investor funds to buy himself luxury cars and a home in Newport Coast, was sentenced Wednesday to 6 1/2 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $4.2 million in restitution, according to the U.S. attorney's office. In a plea agreement before U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney, the 64-year-old defendant admitted falsely promising to put investors' funds in a European investment program endorsed by the Federal Reserve that would preserve the money in an insured London bank account while earning 10% every quarter.

Federal prisoner Hung "Henry" Thanh Mai, the convicted killer of an Orange County CHP officer, has been held in Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles under some of the most extreme security in the country, a federal prosecutor said Thursday. Because Mai has a history of violating prison rules and court orders, his cell light is on 24 hours a day, he cannot make phone calls, he is denied any writing instruments and he cannot flush his toilet.

Daniel Garner always walks alone in the prison yard. He avoids the television room, where convicts gather each evening. He never talks about his case with the men in neighboring cells, even though many inmates do little else. The former Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, convicted in 1990 of money-skimming, keeps his past a zealously guarded secret because being a lawman in prison can mean living in unrelenting danger.

Friends and family of Pablo Escobar, the notorious Medellin cocaine boss, have formed a private security knot around their jailed chief by following his lead and surrendering themselves under a government leniency program. The trickle of Medellin Cartel figures into a mountainside prison continued Friday as Escobar's older brother, 44-year-old Roberto, and another member, Gustavo Gonzalez, arrived in a government caravan of seven four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Federal marshals say they have spent more than $360,000 on safely transporting Manuel A. Noriega to and from jail since the deposed dictator was escorted out of Panama after the U.S. invasion. The Marshals Service has cited "the extraordinary costs of security details" each time Noriega makes a court appearance in Miami, 24 miles away. The information was obtained by the Miami Herald on a Freedom of Information Act request.

Despite a history of staunch opposition to racial segregation, American Civil Liberties Union leaders said Thursday that keeping blacks and Latinos apart in Los Angeles County jails may be the only way to defuse explosive tension that has erupted into prisoner brawls in recent weeks.

Because of safety concerns, murder suspect John J. Famalaro is being housed in a single-person cell and is escorted by an Orange County sheriff's deputy whenever he leaves it, officials said Thursday. Famalaro gained notoriety as the accused killer of Denise Huber, a young Newport Beach woman who disappeared in June, 1991. Her nude, handcuffed body was found in July in a freezer stowed inside a stolen rental truck parked at Famalaro's home in Prescott, Ariz.

The 82nd Airborne Division is sending about 700 soldiers to Iraq to provide extra security for detainees, whose numbers have doubled over the last year, Pentagon officials said Wednesday. The 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, based at Ft. Bragg, N.C., has begun preparing to deploy over the next two months. It will be the battalion's second tour in Iraq. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the deployment did not indicate any decision had been made to increase U.S.

Jose Uribe lasted only two days in the Los Angeles County jail before the Mexican Mafia ordered him murdered for being a rata, a snitch. Three witnesses who identified the alleged killers will also be killed, prosecutors insist, if the prison gang learns their names.

Janice Cooper's son got slashed in the face so deeply he could see bone. Evelyn Womack's son was stabbed in the back with a homemade blade. Jennifer Usher's son was jumped by 15 men and beaten with lunch trays. Half a dozen mothers of inmates housed in Los Angeles County's Castaic jails spoke out Tuesday against conditions they say leave African American inmates vulnerable to attack. The women talked of their sons as if they were still boys and detailed their suffering in emotion-choked voices.

Fearing outbreaks of similar racial conflicts in other prisons, authorities put California's 33 adult prisons on security alert in the wake of the bloody Pelican Bay melee that ended with guards shooting prisoners to quell the disturbance, officials said Thursday.

Federal prisoner Hung "Henry" Thanh Mai, the convicted killer of an Orange County CHP officer, has been held in Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles under some of the most extreme security in the country, a federal prosecutor said Thursday. Because Mai has a history of violating prison rules and court orders, his cell light is on 24 hours a day, he cannot make phone calls, he is denied any writing instruments and he cannot flush his toilet.

Jeremy Strohmeyer has been placed in administrative segregation at the Ely State Prison to begin serving a life sentence for killing a young girl in a Nevada casino. Strohmeyer was not placed in the general inmate population, but in his own cell in a special secured section designed "for people who have security issues," Glen Whorton, chief of classification for the Nevada Department of Prisons, said Thursday.

The government is spending about $12,000 to build a two-room jail "suite" for Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman. Besides the standard bed, sink and toilet, Abdul Rahman will have his own shower and a conference room with table and chairs in New York City's Metropolitan Correctional Center, according to jails spokeswoman Sandra Burks. Authorities cited security reasons for the construction. Abdul-Rahman, 55, of Jersey City, N.J., is accused of masterminding a terrorist conspiracy that included the Feb.

A New York City woman who abandoned her newborn daughter in the lavatory of a cross-country jetliner in July, 1988, began serving a six-month jail term Saturday. Christina LoCasto, 25, pleaded no contest to a child endangerment charge after giving birth on a New Jersey-to-California flight and leaving the infant under a lavatory sink. The baby was discovered by a cleaning crew at San Francisco International Airport.

At the end of each workday since May, Willis has driven from his job as a wheel manufacturing supervisor and checked into one of the most exclusive rooms in Southern California. The cost is only $55 a night, but if he fails to check in by 8 p.m. he will lose his spot and be forced to live in a far less comfortable place: Los Angeles County Jail.

A former inmate at the Orange County Central Men's Jail has sued the county, alleging he was severely beaten by another inmate last December despite a formal request for protection from the assailant. Jerry Joseph Diak, 35, asked to be housed separately from another inmate on Dec. 16, saying he had "a case pending" against the man and "this is going to be trouble, I just know it" according to the suit filed Friday in Orange County Superior Court.