Tracy Lee Kendall continues his profile of Monty Lee Johnston, a white supremacist gang leader who got out of prison and returned to volunteer at prisons.

One sterile, concrete and steel night on the Beto Unit, Monty Lee Johnston came to my cell, handed me a red chain bag (basically like an onion sack given to prisoners being transferred to put their property in) with some food in it, and told me goodbye. The next day, he was released from the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). But that’s not the last time I saw him. He came back a few months later.

You may remember Monty from a prior article. He was a cofounder of the Aryan Circle (a notorious Texas prison gang). Thus, it is not surprising that he came back, like so many others — except that Monty did not return as a result of committing new crimes (as is the norm). Instead, he came back as a free world volunteer to help foster change in those who need it in prison.

Monty has been doing a lot of good since that night. Soon after release, he went back to Blossom, TX to take care of his mother. This was a good way to start again in a small town of county fairs, high school football, miniature cattle, country scenes, and simple living under open skies. To make ends meet, Monty receives Social Security as well as whatever jobs arise, as he leads an honest life contributing to his community and beyond.

Monty also got married to the same woman on the same day as he had decades earlier. She is the mother of his estranged son, the same son who Monty quoted as the name of his ministry (‘Thank God I’m Not You Ministries’).

Wait — “ministry?” Is Monty another ex-con exploiting an umbilical cord between penitentiary religion and the growing nonprofit prison-for-profit industry? Well, Monty left the gang and consciously denounced control of about 60,000 people worldwide and access to immense resources, instead, choosing a life wherein there is barely enough for gas after expenses. So Monty does not at all seem like a counterfeit who pretends to change according to the proceeds involved.

The simple truth is that something happened at some point between the coldblooded “Iceman” (Monty’s Aryan Circle call name) who I met on Coffield in 1999, and the warmhearted Monty I reunited with a few years ago. During that time, he found something in the Bible conducive to rehabilitation. Whereas the “Iceman” spent a lot of time sacrificing others for criminal reasons, Monty is spending his current life sacrificing for others.

Whether taking care of friends and family locally, or through frequent volunteering at prisons all over Texas and beyond, Monty will go anywhere to touch lives, including Death Row on the Polunsky Unit. There, he formed an unlikely relationship with someone who, in years past had almost gotten him the death penalty. This person is Eric Williams, who would seem an unlikely candidate for Monty to visit.

Who is Eric Williams? Eric is the former justice of the peace out of Kaufman county in Texas, who with the help of his wife, murdered two district attorneys and one of their wives. These murders were part of a scheme to cover up embezzlement by Eric, which had been discovered by one of the DAs who was later murdered.

After the murders, Eric tried to shift blame by alleging the murders were revenge killings by the Aryan Brotherhood and Aryan Circle prison gangs over the convictions of their members. This led to about twenty law enforcement personnel raiding Monty’s home and hauling him to jail as a suspect.

Later, Monty was released after a remarkable series of events. A kid who was burglarizing Eric Williams’s car found murder evidence in the trunk and alerted authorities. This ensured Eric’s death penalty and his wife’s 40-year-aggravated sentence.

But get this. Not only has Monty forgiven Eric, he has befriended him. He even visits him whenever he goes to Death Row. It’s a long way from when he stepped away from a leadership position in one of the most notorious of the Texas gang. Monty sacrificed his hate to embrace compassion for Eric. Who would forgive someone who tried to send them innocently to Death Row?

At the beginning of 2025, Monty began visiting the Gib Lewis Unit (where I am currently housed) as part of a ministry he travels with. The first day, he appeared behind the window in a steel door that slowly opened, and he walked in wearing a dark hat, leather motorcycle jacket, T-shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. With him were two people dressed similarly, both from the ministry. These types of volunteers bring a lot of compassion and charity into prisons which would not come in otherwise, and they also bring change which saves lives outside of prison too.

The man who came in with them was the same Monty, just with different clothes, a mustache and goatee. We met, caught up, and began visiting the worst areas of the high security Extended Cell Block. These areas are basically dungeons where inmates, usually with disciplinary problems, are housed in pre-hearing detention, medium and closed custodies. Once inside, we walked through the shouting, filth, open drug use, and misery, spending time with people and trying to encourage them in better directions. Among those we met was the young son of a prisoner housed in a Louisiana prison that Monty would be visiting shortly after.

Later we moved on to less intense areas where a lot of the people who knew Monty before were now living. All of us have made sacrifices across decades in prison. Four of us — Monty, Firewood, Mr. Brown (known years earlier as, “Lumpy”), and myself — stood reunited after a past including the darkest corners of the Coffield Unit.

Our past includes Firewood (a nickname due to his severe burn scars) giving me my first prison haircut after I stepped into Coffield before Lumpy (then affiliated with the Mandingo Warrior prison gang) and I worked together as janitors in high security and segregation where Monty was housed. So the past carried us across years of Texas prisons (and other places in Monty and Lumpy’s cases) to meet again as who we are now, because Monty sacrificed the time to step into the Gib Lewis Unit.

In a world where so many people are willing to sacrifice others for selfish reasons, Monty’s life is a testimony about sacrificing for others, and the power of leaving behind more than we take.