He joined a white supremacist gang for protection. It led to his gruesome death

FORT WORTH - Meth sent Bryan Childers to prison.

Attaching himself to a gang, he thought, would help him survive.

But his decision to join the Aryan Circle, an often-violent bunch of white supremacists, was one he would come to regret.

After getting out of prison in 2004, a fight with a rival Aryan Brotherhood member left Childers certain of one thing - he was going to be killed.

"I was trying to get him out and get him into a different life," said Carrie Childers, Bryan's sister. "He kept saying there was no way he could get out. They were going to kill him. He kept saying this over and over and over. Terrified. I've never seen my brother scared, ever, in my life."

On April 17, 2014, inside the garage of a home in the Summerfields, a middle-class neighborhood in north Fort Worth, Childers' premonition would come true.

In a vicious and deadly attack by four Aryan Brotherhood members, Childers was beaten, strangled and bound with an extension cord, and stabbed. Days later, his body was dismembered with a reciprocating saw inside a Hurst dog-grooming business; his body parts were tucked inside cement-filled buckets and tossed into the Trinity River.

His remains have never been recovered, but seven Aryan Brotherhood members and associates were charged in connection with the case on charges ranging from murder to tampering with evidence, providing a glimpse into the dark and dangerous world of white supremacist gangs and the rules by which they live - and die.

"My son did not deserve to die like that," said June Smallwood, Childers' mother. "He was not a great person but the man had a heart."

The cases were prosecuted earlier this year: Five members received prison sentences ranging from 10 to 50 years, three in plea deals reached with prosecutors. One had his case dismissed after cooperating with investigators. The only female defendant received two years' deferred adjudication probation.

"I felt like they did the best they could," Carrie Childers said. "I wasn't satisfied with a lot of the sentencing but it's something I'll have to live with and I'll always have to worry about because they're always going to be out there."

A teen when she had Childers, Smallwood said she sent her son to live with his father, Riley Odom, in Keller when he was 2 as she recovered from a wreck. But the temporary plan eventually became permanent.

"I was young and dumb," Smallwood said. "I got into the partying scene and became a weekend mom."

Living in the rural area of Keller, Childers liked to ride horses and was often left to fend for himself while his father and stepmother worked. A student at Keller High School, he began getting in trouble - partying, smoking pot and eventually quitting school, his father said.

His father, Riley Odom, bought his son a class ring before he quit school, which he discovered was later hocked by Childers for cash.

"I found a ticket on it and went and got it out of the pawnshop," Odom said. "I've still got it in my desk drawer today. I'm thinking about giving it to his daughter. That class ring might as well belong to that girl."

By 1997, Childers had served small stints in jail for evading arrest and assault with bodily injury.

But a relationship with methamphetamine would lead to his downfall.

In 2001, he received probation for possessing more than 4 ounces of methamphetamine. That probation was revoked a year later after Childers picked up a new charge of unlawful possession of a firearm.

A few months after his girlfriend gave birth to their daughter, Childers was sentenced to two years in prison.

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