The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has arrested a high-ranking member of the notorious Ghostface Gangsters street gang.
Tyler Estes, 25, was arrested Tuesday and has been charged with conspiracy to commit battery and two counts of violation of the Georgia criminal gang statute.
The Meriwether County Sheriff’s Office requested the GBI investigate Estes on Aug. 13.
GBI officials said members of the Meriwether County Sheriff’s Office intercepted a letter that was allegedly written by Estes while he was in jail to another member of the gang who was not in jail.
Estes had been in the Meriwether jail on charges of probation violation and destruction of government property.
In the letter, Estes indicated his status as a high-ranking member of the gang and ordered a physical beating of another member who had “violated the gang’s codes of street conduct of being disloyal and disregarding the vows of membership,” the GBI wrote in a news release.
The dispute was allegedly about the member stealing money from other gang members.
The Ghostface Gangsters is the largest gang founded in Georgia, according to the Department of Community Supervision. Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit Drug Task Force Commander Dewayne Brown has said there are more Ghostface members in Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade and Walker counties than anywhere else in the state.
According to a U.S. District Court indictment for a pending racketeering case, seven Cobb County Jail inmates formed the Ghostface Gangsters in 2000. For years, it was largely a prison gang for white inmates, offering protection, drugs and cellphones. Unlike other white gangs like the Aryan Nations, it was not centered on racist ideology.
In the early years, Catoosa County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Jeremy Keener said, the gang was unorganized outside of prison. Members tried to participate in the drug trade, with little success. But according to the federal indictment, one of the founding members started to organize the group more in June 2016. From Hays State Prison in Trion, he allegedly kept a roster and instructed one member to appoint leaders over 12 regions throughout the state – basing the gang’s division of labor on the structure of the Georgia Division of Family and Children’s Services.
Brown said the gang’s local rise is a matter of demographics. Among Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade and Walker counties, 90% of the 175,000 residents are white. Naturally, most of the defendants sent to prison from here are white. While locked up, they connect with Ghostface leaders. They then return home, some of them holding onto their connections.
During an interview, Estes confessed to being a high-ranking member of the Ghostface Gangsters and writing the letter to “orchestrate the physical attack and expulsion of the gang member,” GBI said.
GBI will continue its investigation and when it’s finished, the case will be brought to the Coweta Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office for prosecution.
Contact Patrick Filbin at pfilbin@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6476.