Lil Ronnie Irwin and Federal-State Reciprocity
The testimony in the Sacramento Aryan Brotherhood RICO Trial called into question whether it actually exists, at least on the California end.
“Lil” Ronnie Irwin of San Pablo was a name that came up multiple times during the big Aryan Brotherhood RICO Trial in Sacramento. Irwin has the distinction of having become an AB member via a rather unusual route: Federal-State Reciprocity. And it didn’t end well for Irwin.
2001 Murder Case
Ronnie Irwin, 27, and another man, Eric Bell, 28, killed 67-year-old Charlie McCarthy of unincorporated Bayview (CoCo County) in early March 2001 in an apparent inside job home invasion robbery gone wrong. McCarthy, who had suffered a stroke seven years earlier, allowed people to stay at his house rent free in exchange for caring for him. A female who knew Irwin was staying with McCarthy at the time of the robbery. She opened the door to let the perpetrators in and then departed.
Irwin was arrested two days later at a Pinole motel after he tried to pass counterfeit bills. Bell was arrested two months later in Sacramento. Irwin was convicted of murder and sent to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in 2005.
Ronnie Yandell caught his own West Contra Costa murder case in May 2001—the Mother’s Day Massacre—and both he and Irwin were housed in the Martinez Detention Facility (MDF) while the legal process played out over the next several years.
(Side note: There were some real notorious figures locked up in the MDF during this time period, including Yandell, Irwin, and the Helzer Brothers).
Becoming A Brother
Jeremy “Zap” Beasley recounted how Yandell made Irwin an AB member in a May 2022 episode of Stories Written By A Current Prisoner. The story begins while Irwin and Yandell were locked up in the MDF.
“And while [Yandell] was in CoCo County, some of the federal guys told him, look, you can make whoever you want to make so you have a Brother wherever you’re at. So he found a kid named Irwin, Ronnie Irwin and he made him a Brother overnight…This is in county jail. He’s never been to prison before. Never done nothing. For whatever reason, he likes this kid. The kid ends up going to Corcoran… He’s down there with [James] Mickey and [Mark] “Buzzard” [Glass] and some of these other Brothers down there and they send word up to us at the Bay saying, hey, who is this dude Ronnie Irwin? He says he’s a Brother and nobody’s ever heard of him. Their ain’t a single person here that’s ever heard his name before. But he’s saying that some dude named Ronnie Yandell fuckin’ made him. Who the fuck is this dude?…We recognized Ronnie Yandell’s name, or Renegade, from being from the feds.”
Beasley was tasked with investigating how Irwin allegedly became a Brother inside the Pelican Bay SHU:
“So finally we get in contact with [Yandell]—I was in B pod, he was in A pod—and I was asked to pull him up and ask, hey, what’s the deal with this. So he told me. Hey, this is what I did. I made this dude a Brother…I had permission to do it. So I went back and relayed the message to [Todd] Ashker and Danny T [Troxell]—this was when Danny was still on the Commission. They said look, do us a favor. I need you to pull him up and explain how this shit works in the State. That he just can’t be going around making Brothers. There’s actually a process for it. So I went and pulled Ronnie up and that was the first time him and I bumped heads. He didn’t take too kindly to be pulled up and told what he can and can’t do in the State. He was used to following the guys’ rules in the feds.
Beasley and Yandell bumped heads on other issues over the years. During the Sacramento trial, Yandell made a point of mean mugging Beasley while he testified and when he entered and exited the court room.
Donald Mazza testified that Yandell’s gambit did not go over well with most of The Tip. Whether other AB members regarded Irwin as an equal is uncertain, but it was clear Yandell regarded him as a Brother.
Flaming Out
By April 2016, Ronnie Irwin had arrived at Calipatria State Prison, where Travis “The Perjurer” Burhop ran the whole prison for the Woodpile. Yandell had told Burhop to “accommodate” Lil Ronnie. So, Burhop provided Irwin with drugs and a cell phone. And then in Burhop’s words, Irwin went “nuts.” Lil Ronnie was high on meth and assaulted a Southern Mexican with a bar of soap inside a sock. Afterwards, Irwin PC’d up, and that was the end of his AB career.
“He totally flamed out,” Troxell attorney Todd Leras noted about Irwin’s prison career.
Lil Ronnie was all bad for Burhop because there was a lot of tension between the Woods and the Southern Mexicans over drug debts at Calipatria during this time. This incident no doubt contributed to Burhop being stigmatized as running a “Loose Yard.” Between Burhop flooding the prison with dope and enabling Lil Ronnie to assault a member of an allied group, his leadership abilities were in question.
Four months later, in an August 2016 intercepted call, Yandell and Troxell discussed hitting James Mickey, who had just landed at Calipatria State Prison. During the conversation, Troxell noted the urgency of the situation and mentioned something to the effect of “We can’t have another Lil Ronnie,” perhaps rubbing it in.
Lil Ronnie Irwin, 49, is currently incarcerated at the California Correctional Institution (a/k/a Tehachapi). He has a parole eligibility date of October 2024.
Federal-State Reciprocity
Ronnie Yandell became a full-fledged California AB member in the 1980s. Yandell then became a full-fledged Federal AB member when he went to federal prison in the 1990s. Whether he earned his Federal rock or became a made man through reciprocity is unclear.
“These are things we don’t know,” Leras said about the inner workings of the AB.
In sum, the Sacramento trial revealed that Federal-State Reciprocity is not universally recognized among the California AB and probably won’t be anytime soon courtesy of Lil Ronnie Irwin.