Review: ‘The Takedown: American Aryans,’ starring Rich Boehning, Steve Lair, Kate Taylor, Micheal Bianculli, Caroline Canville, Cody Skipper and Shawn Hanley

April 27, 2025

by Carla Hay

“The Takedown: American Aryans”

Directed by Neil Rawles

Culture Representation: The four-episode documentary series “The Takedown: American Aryans” features a predominantly white group of people (with one African American and one Asian/multiracial person) discussing the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) of 2010s crackdown on the white supremacist gang the Aryan Brothers of Texas (ABT).

Culture Clash: Members of the ABT committed numerous crimes, including murder, until most of the group’s leaders were arrested after some members and associates of the ABT became confidential informants working with law enforcement.

Culture Audience: “The Takedown: American Aryans” will appeal primarily to people who want to know more about how U.S. federal law enforcement agencies deal with white supremacist gangs, but the documentary is sloppily constructed and leaves out a lot of important information.

“The Takedown: American Aryans” had the potential to give an insightful look into how the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) busted several key leaders and other members of the white supremacist gang the Aryan Brothers of Texas (ABT) during the 2010s. This four-episode docuseries needed better editing and becomes dull by the third episode. The admirable work of law enforcement in tackling the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is presented in a jumbled timeline and over-relies on repetitive footage. It just becomes a mind-numbing loop of descriptions of methamphetamine-abusing ABT people turning on each other in violent ways or by becoming informants working with law enforcement.

Directed by Neil Rawles, “The Takedown: American Aryans” has an irritating tendency to repeat the exact same footage in multiple episodes, as if it doesn’t trust viewers to be intelligent enough to remember the footage the first time it was shown. The docuseries also has a questionable narrative that makes it look like one man—ATF special agent Rich Boehning, the documentary’s main narrator—was the top crusader in busting these dangerous members of the ABT, a gang that was formed in the early 1980s and has a military-like hierarchy. Boehning graciously says toward the end of the documentary that the ABT takedown was a team effort from law enforcement, but the documentary still makes a statement in the last episode that Boehning should get most of the credit.

Episode 1, titled “The Innocents,” is the most compelling because it talks about a series of murders in Texas in 2005 and 2006 that were the catalyst to the ABT getting on the federal government’s radar and includes interviews with some victim family members. Episode 2, titled “The Hunt for the General,” chronicles the search for Steven Walter Cooke, nicknamed Stainless, who was considered the most ruthless ABT general at the time. Episode 3, titled “The Wheel,” details the 2008 murder of ABT major Scott Alan Freeman, as well as ATF’s efforts to do wide-sweeping busts of the ABT on racketeering charges. Episode 4, titled “The Informants,” tells the story of a few of the ABT informants who contributed to the downfall of certain ABT members, such as James “Skidz” Sampsel, who was ABT’s Midland/Odessa general.

It’s explained in the documentary that the ABT was structured like a combination of a Mafia gang (with leaders in charge of certain territories) and a military operation, with members having hierarchy titles similar to the military and having to adhere to bylaws and a constitution. Three of the biggest rules of the ABT are (1) All members have to do exactly what they are told by those with superior rankings; (2) Membership is for life; and (3) Anyone who betrays the ABT is marked for death.

The ABT hierarchy has generals at the highest level, followed by majors, captains, lieutenants, sergeants, made members and prospective members. Five generals each oversee five regions in Texas, with a general assigned to each region: Dallas/Forth Worth, Amarillo, Midland/Odessa, San Antonio, and Houston. Each general has two majors: An inside major oversees ABT members who live inside prisons. An outside major oversees ABT members who live outside prisons.

Boehning, who is a native of New York City, is a former major in the U.S. Army who says he decided to join the U.S. Department of Justice when he felt he went as far as he could in the Army and wanted to take on new challenges. At the time he began investigating the ABT in the late 2000s, he says the ABT was “the biggest domestic threat in the United States,” responsible for murders, drug trafficking, illegal weapons dealing and many other felony crimes. Boehning says in the documentary: “They were like an army, so we had to build our own army.”

Two of the ABT murder victims in 2006 were Anthony “Gino” Clark (a wannabe ABT member) and Breanna Taylor, a 19-year-old girlfriend of ABT Dallas general Jason “Trooper” Hankins. According to court records and confession evidence, Clark and Taylor (who were murdered separately) were killed because members of the ABT wrongfully suspected that Clark and Taylor were snitches working with law enforcement. Taylor’s body, which was reportedly thrown in Lake Ray Hubbard, was never found.

“The Takedown: American Aryans” includes compelling and emotional interviews with Breanna Taylor’s parents Donna Taylor and Gene Taylor; her younger sister Kate Taylor; and her younger brother Curt Taylor. They talk about their emotional devastation of losing Breanna to murder. They also talk about happy memories. Kate describes Breanna as “extremely popular, confident and charismatic.” Gene says of Breanna: “She was always the life of the party.”

Unfortunately, Kate says that Breanna’s partying ways led her down a destructive path. Breanna began abusing alcohol and marijuana and eventually became addicted to cocaine and meth. Her meth addiction got her involved with ABT, which is known for rampant meth addiction among its members. Meth is also the drug most likely to be sold by ABT members in the group’s drug trafficking, according to law enforcement officials interviewed in the documentary.

Breanna was considered a missing person until an ABT member named Devarin Manuel was hauled into the Mesquite Police Department to be questioned about a series of burglaries. Manuel thought he was being going to be questioned about Breanna’s murder, so he told details about what happened. In the end, four people were arrested and convicted for Breanna’s murder: Manuel, Wlliam Chad Williams, Dale “Tiger” Jameton, and Jennifer McClellan, who was Jameton’s girlfriend at the time.

Investigative journalist Caroline Canville is also interviewed in the documentary. She says that she began corresponding by letters with Jameton, thereby establishing trust with him, in order to find out more about why he committed the crimes that he did. The documentary shows Canville doing a short interview with Jameton in a Huntsville prison and asking him some questions that Kate Taylor (who has publicly said she forgives Jameton) wanted Canville to ask.

One of the questions was if Breanna fought back while she was being viciously tortured. Jameton refuses to go into details but does say about how Breanna reacted to the torture: “She was a fighter. She asked for her mother.” Jameton also shows no remorse for the murder. He says that at no point did he think of stopping the torture. And he blames the victim by saying that Breanna made a “big mistake” by associating with law enforcement. “I did what I did because she did what she did,” Jameton says coldly.

Cody Skipper, a former trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice’s organized crime and gang section, explains in the documentary that it was easiest to arrest large numbers of the ABT on charges related to RICO (racketeer-influenced corrupt organizations) and VICA (violent crime in aid of racketeering), instead of trying to arrest ABT members one at a time. The ATF began sting operations that included a six-year undercover investigation of the ABT. These stings operations relied heavily on some ABT members becoming paid confidential informants.

Also interviewed in the documentary are former ABT captain Micheal “Crash” Bianculli and his wife Betty “Jewel” Bianculli. They both admit to having longtime meth addictions and they talk about the lifestyles they had when they were associated with the ABT. Women associated with the ABT are not allowed to be members are are instead called “featherwoods,” who are expected to always be obedient and subservient to the men of ABT. Violence among ABT members and their women is expected, says Betty: “You’ve got to be willing to take a beating.”

Micheal became a confidential informant who played both sides, according to people interviewed in the documentary. He says he left the ABT after he spent three years in prison. Steve Lair, an ATF task force officer, comments about Micheal: “I’m surprised Crash hasn’t been killed yet.” Micheal quips in a separate interview, “I’m not easy to kill.”

Micheal also says that even though the ABT is a white supremacist group, they didn’t have a problem with doing business with people of color, as long as there was money to made for ABT. He brags about running crack houses and being a pimp. What the documentary irresponsibly overlooks are details of racist hate crimes that white supremacists gangs commit. The documentary only focuses on ABT’s crimes against other white people.

Boehning says the takedown of the ABT became personal to him when he found out in 2008 that notorious ABT general Cooke was living not far from where Boehning was living at the time in Tomball, Texas. Boehning is an engaging storyteller who leads the narration for the docuseries first three episodes. But in the fourth episode, the narration mostly shifts to ATF task force officer Lair. It’s one of the reasons why the docuseries is uneven.

Adding to the inconsistency, “The Takedown: American Aryans” mentions the outcomes of some ABT murder investigations but not others. For example, the 2005 murder of Tonia Porras and the 2006 murder of Robert McCartney are listed as two of the murders that sparked a federal investigation into the ABT. The documentary mentions that Porras was murdered by a jealous boyfriend (who was a member of the ABT), while McCartney was murdered for his truck parts. The documentary doesn’t mention who was convicted of these murders and what their prison sentences were.

The documentary also skimps on details on who was convicted for the 2007 murder of Christy Brown. Brown’s friend Kristen Reid and Brown’s daughter Rayvn Henson are interviewed. They tell another sad tale of a meth-addicted person who got murdered because of being involved with the ABT.

In the Episode 4, the documentary goes into details about Carol Blevins, an ABT featherwood who became a confidential informant. It’s mentioned that she has gone into hiding and lives in a secret location. However, the documentary shows photos of Blevins. And even though she could look different now compared to how she looked in the photos, it still seems unnecessary and inconsiderate for the documentary to show the face of someone who is in hiding because of death threats.

One of the few things that the docuseries did fairly well was cast actors and actresses who have strong physical resemblances to the real-life people whom they portray in the documentary’s re-enactments. But that’s not necessarily an asset when many of the re-enactments are tacky and sometimes awkwardly placed. “The Takedown: American Aryans” could have benefited from having more information and less re-enactments.

Because “The Takedown: American Aryans” is determined to make Boehning the biggest hero of the story, all other commentary from law enforcement is treated as secondary. Other people interviewed in the documentary are Shawn Hanley, former detective at the Mesquite Police Department; Kurt Hibbets, former detective with the Dallas Police Department; Byron Lyons, sheriff of Polk County in Texas; Texas ranger Brandon Bess; Ricky Childers, deputy sheriff of Polk County; former Texas ranger Grover Huff; Bill Ball, retired chief deputy of the Nacogdoches County Sheriff’s Office; and Patrick Smith, former group supervisor for Homeland Security Investigations.

Worst of all, “The Takedown: American Aryans” is very contradictory in what type of message it wants to send about the ABT. On the one hand, it presents a lot of evidence that violence is a way of life for ABT. On the other hand, the documentary makes a hard-to-believe statement at the end that ABT is no longer a violent gang because of the work of Boening and other people in law enforcement. “The Takedown: American Aryans” is a documentary about a white supremacist gang but the documentary doesn’t give any examples of racist crimes that this gang committed. And this documentary’s failure to have this information gives the documentary a questionable credibility that is too obvious to overlook.

Max premiered “The Takedown: American Aryans” on February 6, 2025.