Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Takedown: American Aryans’ on MAX, A Docuseries About Fighting A White Supremacist Gang And Finding Justice For Its Victims

The four-episode MAX docuseries The Takedown: American Aryans recounts a 2008 investigation led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives into an organized criminal group known as the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Operating inside and outside of state and federal prisons in Texas, and driven by their violent white supremacist ideology, the ABT were well-known to authorities for their long list of crimes. But it was the torture and murder of a woman in suburban Dallas – “slaughtering innocent people at will,” a federal agent says in The Takedown – that brought the six-year investigation to bear.      

THE TAKEDOWN – AMERICAN ARYANS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: “Little did I know, when I was assigned to Houston, Texas,” says retired ATF agent Rich Boehning, “that I would be targeting one of the most violent extremist groups in the country.”  

The Gist: “She was a naive 19-year-old, and didn’t see that the people she was around could be evil.” For the family of Brianna Taylor, their concern over her use of methamphetamines turned to dismay in 2006, when she stopped returning their phone calls. Taylor had been dating a man named Jason Hankins, who as an Aryan Brotherhood of Texas “general” coordinated the group’s drug-selling and gun-running activities. But as authorities circled the ABT for a series of crimes, they discovered another shocking truth: Hankins’ associate, Dale “Tiger” Jameton, had murdered Brianna over the unfounded suspicion that she was a snitch to the cops. 

In The Takedown: American Aryans, Rich Boehning describes how the ATF’s investigation unfolded, and how it involved numerous other agencies as well as infiltration of the ABT at significant risk to life and limb. Whether inside a prison or out on the streets, these guys were indiscriminate killers, to the point that Boehning describes their torture and murder of someone just to steal his pickup truck. As is usual for true crime stuff, The Takedown often relies on reenactments for its visuals. But it also has access to police interrogation tapes, footage from inside the prison system, the account of a former ABT “captain,” and a collection of still photos from inside the brotherhood, where tatted-up men strike menacing poses with weapons in front of flags emblazoned with Nazi imagery.

The access goes even further. Armed with a series of lingering questions about the senseless murder from Brianna Taylor’s sister Kate, investigative journalist Caroyln Canville interviews Dale Jameton inside the Texas prison where he is serving a life sentence. Why did he feel the need to abduct and hurt Brianna, to kill her and dump her body in a Dallas lake? (Taylor’s body has never been recovered.) But while Jameton admits he did it, his allegiance to the brotherhood is unshakeable. Takedown makes it clear that there is no credence to the ABT’s suspicion that Brianna was working with law enforcement. But incredibly, Jameton, completely unmoved by the questions from her family, still says she had it coming.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Once it gets into its jailhouse interview sessions with Dale Jameton, The Takedown begins to feel like a mirror on the Netflix series I Am A Killer. Takedown director/producer Neil Rawles has also helmed numerous episodes of Locked Up Abroad, and in the Apple TV+ docuseries Cowboy Cartel, a Texas-based FBI agent leads an investigation into a Mexican criminal organization’s infiltration of the American quarter horse industry.   

Our Take: The crimes and investigations detailed in The Takedown: American Aryans are by now years-old. But they still resonate, especially as white supremacist beliefs and apparent Sieg Heil salutes are now part of the daily news cycle. And while the juggernaut of true crime content doesn’t seem like it will ever stop populating the world of streaming, and which creates an open window for a docuseries about violent Nazi-worshipping gangs, for Brianna Taylor’s family, it’s the resonance of her murder that provides The Takedown with its most effective emotional peg.

Documentary-style material like this series can also benefit from a strong personality at its center, and The Takedown has one in former ATF agent Rich Boehning, whose Queens New York accent and deeply-felt descriptions of how crucial the case against the ABT became – “I realized the Brianna Taylor murder was just the tip of the iceberg” – lend it a strident sense of urgency     

Sex and Skin: None, but be aware that in addition to its lead disclaimer about the mayhem and racism of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, The Takedown also describes incidents of torture and sexual violence toward women.

Parting Shot: We’re back with Rich Boehning, who says his investigation of the supremacist gang took another significant turn when it hit even closer to home. “I discovered one of the ABT generals was living in my neighborhood…”

Sleeper Star: Interviews with Michael Bianculli, aka “Crash,” who describes himself as a former captain in the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, provide firsthand insight into the group’s command structure. The rigid hierarchy Bianculli describes supports Rich Boehning’s statement about the ATF’s investigation of the ABT: “They were built like an army, so we had to build our own army.”  

Most Pilot-y Line: “Tiger treated her with the kind of violence that you can’t imagine,” journalist Carolyn Canville says in The Takedown. “Violence that you can’t imagine any human being could feel against another human being, no matter what.” 

Our Call: STREAM IT. True crime fans should have a lot to chew on with The Takedown: American Aryans, as the docuseries details not only the broad federal response to the violence perpetrated by a criminal group of white supremacists, but the emotions felt by the loved ones their victims left behind.

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.

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