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- Robert Eversole had never met Allan Roshanski or Ruslan Magomedgadzhiev, but he told the authorities he knew “everything” about how they died the morning of Oct. 4, 2020, in Lomita.
- A convicted robber and drug trafficker, Eversole wanted to cut a deal with prosecutors before he revealed why Roshanski and Magomedgadzhiev were killed.
The key to solving a mysterious double homicide in the South Bay city of Lomita was a convicted robber imprisoned 200 miles away.
Robert Eversole had never met Allan Roshanski or Ruslan Magomedgadzhiev, but he told the authorities he knew “everything” about how they died the morning of Oct. 4, 2020.
But first, Eversole wanted to make a deal. He’d gotten his daughters and wife involved in fraud, drug dealing and gun running schemes that he’d orchestrated from prison. He wanted their charges dropped and his own sentence reduced.
The only currency Eversole had to barter with was his knowledge of crimes he said he’d committed for the Aryan Brotherhood, the syndicate of white inmates that dominated the prison yards where he’d spent the last 21 years.
In January, Eversole explained how Roshanski and Magomedgadzhiev ended up on the Aryan Brotherhood’s hit list, his account part of a saga that unspooled over three days in a Fresno courtroom.
It all came down to a stolen car, unemployment benefits and Russian prison tattoos.
The pimp and the thief
The first part of Roshanski’s story was told by his former lover.
Testifying in Fresno in January, Lana Haley said she was addicted to methamphetamine and supporting herself through fraud and theft when she met Roshanski in 2020. He was two years out of prison, having served four years for pimping women in Hollywood.
Haley said she had a “friends with benefits relationship” with Roshanski, who was living out of hotel rooms around San Diego. Roshanski, then 36, made his money by defrauding the California Employment Development Department, which was doling out benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic, Haley testified.
In August 2020, she accompanied Roshanski on a trip to Wisconsin. While he was asleep, Haley stole his rental car.
“I was struggling, homeless and on drugs,” she testified. “It’s just something I decided to do to survive.”
Inside the car were two pounds of methamphetamine. Haley used some and sold the rest, she testified. Then she got a call from Francis Clement, she said.
Clement is a member of the Aryan Brotherhood who has been imprisoned for murder since 1985, prosecutors say. At parole hearings, the 58-year-old has denied being affiliated with the gang.
Testimony delivered at the ongoing trial of three accused Aryan Brotherhood members delved into Los Angeles County’s underbelly: Cheap hotels, gambling parlors and crash pads from Lancaster to Long Beach, drug dealers and fraudsters.
Clement told Haley she’d stolen drugs that belonged to the Aryan Brotherhood, she testified. She owed them $5,000. Haley said she returned to California and gave the money to a man who worked for Clement.
She never saw Roshanski again.
‘Smoke his a—’
Eversole, 51, filled in the rest of the story. A compact man with no neck, a salt-and-pepper beard and close-cropped hair, Eversole was at North Kern State Prison in Delano when he heard about Roshanski’s fraud racket.
Defrauding the state of pandemic benefits was “the big thing” at the time, said Eversole, who admitted getting his own family involved. “A lot of people were getting a lot of money.”
The Aryan Brotherhood collected a “tithe” from white criminals inside and out of prison, Eversole said. At North Kern, where Eversole said he used corrupt kitchen staff and drones to bring in drugs and phones, he paid for the privilege of doing business in the Aryan Brotherhood’s “house.”
“We always said among ourselves, ‘This isn’t your prison. This is the Aryan Brotherhood’s prison,’” he testified. “They let you be on their yards.”
The same rules applied to criminals on the street. Eversole wanted to extort Roshanski — but he needed to find out whether he could get away with it.
From his prison cell, Eversole said he’d heard Roshanski had “Russian mob-style tattoos.” According to a coroner’s report, Roshanski had inked stars on his knees, a symbol in the Russian penal system that can only be worn by a high-level criminal.
“I’m not sure what this guy is,” Eversole said he told Kenneth “Kenwood” Johnson, a reputed Aryan Brotherhood member who has been incarcerated since 1996 for attempting to kill a Madera County sheriff’s deputy. Johnson, 63, has denied at parole hearings being affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood.
Prosecutors suspect a powerful prison gang was behind the mysterious killings of two men with ties to Russian and Israeli organized crime.
Eversole said he ran a background check on Roshanski, asking some Armenians he knew if they were aware of him. They sent word back to Eversole: Roshanski wasn’t part of any Russian mob and shouldn’t have gotten those tattoos.
According to Eversole, Johnson wanted Roshanski to turn over EDD debit cards loaded with cash. Once Roshanski came under Johnson’s protection, no one else would be allowed to extort or rob him, Eversole testified.
Then the plan changed. Johnson said Roshanski had “disrespected” Clement, according to Eversole. It wasn’t clear if this had to do with the methamphetamine stolen from Roshanski’s car.
“We’re going to smoke his a— and take all of them, all the cards,” Johnson said, according to Eversole.
Johnson’s attorney, Andrea Luem, called Eversole “the definition of an incentivized witness” and said he only implicated Johnson after prosecutors suggested it. Hoping to sweeten his deal, Eversole offered a “made-up theory,” she said in her closing argument.
When he learned who Johnson had picked to be the killer, Eversole testified, he was stunned.
‘Throw the gun on his body, grab the briefcase and leave’
Eversole had met Justin “Sidetrack” Gray at Calipatria State Prison, where they worked out together under the desert sun.
Gray was a good soldier, according to Eversole. He said that, on his orders, Gray had “stabbed the s— out of” a convicted sex offender, who somehow survived. Eversole came to see Gray as a little brother, he testified.
Gray was paroled and started a family in Los Angeles. Eversole had talked with Gray about moving to get away from his past.
Then, he said, he learned Gray had been tapped to kill Roshanski. His voice cracking with emotion, Eversole testified he called Gray from prison and asked: “What the f—’s wrong with you? Why are you doing this?”
According to Eversole, Gray said his imprisoned brother was in trouble with the Aryan Brotherhood. If Gray didn’t kill Roshanski, they were going to kill his brother, Eversole testified.
Understanding the dilemma Gray faced, Eversole said he “walked him through” how to kill Roshanski. The target was supposed to bring a briefcase filled with EDD debit cards. “I told him to walk up, shoot him, throw the gun on his body, grab the briefcase and leave,” Eversole testified.
Gray has pleaded not guilty to murder charges. He is scheduled to stand trial in Fresno in September. His lawyer didn’t return a message seeking comment.
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Eversole said the next time he heard from Gray was a text message that read, “It was done.” He called Gray and asked if he’d gotten the briefcase.
Gray said he hadn’t. The plan had gone awry. “Two guys showed up,” he said, according to Eversole. There was no briefcase.
‘He got away with murder’
Looking down at the bodies on the sidewalk, Det. Louie Aguilera of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department knew this “wasn’t your typical L.A. murder,” he recalled in an interview.
Lying next to Roshanski was Magomedgadzhiev, 40, a former boxer from Chechnya who had served in the Russian military. Both men had been shot once in the head.
As a coroner’s investigator examined the bodies, “I started seeing tattoos I’ve never seen in my life,” said Aguilera, who investigated the homicides with his partner, Det. Maria Maciel. The stars on Roshanski’s knees. A sickle and star tattooed across Magomedgadzhiev’s abdomen.
“I worked gangs for 12 years in South Central,” Aguilera said. “I’m familiar with gang tattoos. These were not gang tattoos.”
Using contraband cellphones and women that he called his ‘wives,’ a California prisoner oversaw a sprawling drug ring that spread death and addiction to the most remote corners of Alaska, prosecutors say.
Within days, anonymous tipsters told detectives Gray was involved in the slayings, Aguilera said. Sheriff’s deputies arrested him at a motel in Ontario. Gray had a handgun in his waistband and two rifles in his room, according to a police report.
Gray refused to talk, Aguilera said. He carried himself with the confidence of someone who could weather prison time. “This guy’s not going to break,” Aguilera recalled thinking.
The tips were uncorroborated hearsay. They let Gray go.
An agent from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives called Aguilera a few months later. Eversole knew about their double-murder in Lomita, the agent said.
Aguilera and Maciel went to Fresno, where Eversole was being held at the county jail on new charges of trafficking guns and drugs from prison. Eversole laid out why and how the killings happened. He said Gray had made a big mistake — he’d brought Brandon “Bam Bam” Bannick on the hit, Aguilera recalled.
Bannick was Gray’s friend and member of the same South Bay gang, the Baby Blue Wrecking Crew. Whereas Gray was a hardened criminal who’d been tested in prison, Bannick was, “in one word, lost,” Aguilera said. “I don’t think he had a mind of his own.”
Eversole didn’t think Bannick could be trusted to keep his mouth shut. He testified he told Gray to kill Bannick.
In 2022, a grand jury in Fresno charged Johnson and Clement with ordering the slayings in Lomita and Gray and Bannick with carrying them out. The week before he was scheduled to stand trial, Bannick pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Johnson and Clement.
Authorities say they have traced seven homicides — two in a California prison, five on the streets of Los Angeles County — to three men suspected of being top members of the Aryan Brotherhood.
At their trial in Fresno earlier this month, Bannick said he knew “somebody needed to get killed” as he drove Gray to a dark street off Pacific Coast Highway, but he wasn’t sure how it was going to happen.
Bannick said he pulled over and got out to greet Roshanski and Magomedgadzhiev. Gray walked up and shot them without saying a word, Bannick testified.
“I was startled because I didn’t know anything was going to happen right there,” he said.
Bannick, 36, said he hopes U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston will spare him from spending the rest of his life behind bars in exchange for his testimony, which helped convict Johnson and Clement of ordering Roshanski and Magomedgadzhiev’s slayings.
For a time, Eversole said, he spoke nearly every day with Johnson and Clement using contraband cellphones. Because they were held in a different prison, he had never seen them before that day in the courtroom.
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Eversole said he felt conflicted about testifying against his onetime friends — but his turn as government witness got him all that he wanted. His family’s charges were dropped; his own sentence for racketeering and drug trafficking was cut in half.
He left prison in July and is now attending college on a Pell grant, he testified. He was never prosecuted for his role in Roshanski and Magomedgadzhiev’s deaths.
“You saw him sit up there, get teary-eyed,” Clement’s attorney, Jane Fisher-Byrialsen, said in her closing argument. “When you think about that, think about who he was. Who he is. He got away with murder.”
Eversole told the jury he felt “ambivalent” about his freedom, his voice breaking again, because “I don’t feel I deserve it.”
Then he finished testifying and walked out into the free world.
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