Programming was suddenly interrupted when an inmate's radio suddenly exploded. Little did he know that he was the target of a prison gang hit.

So how could such a thing happen behind the bars of a maximum security prison in Texas?

I spoke with the reputed prison gang hitman while he held a hoe weeding the warden's vegetable garden at a maximum security unit in East Texas.

He was never charged or convicted of carrying out hits, but he certainly had a reputation.

Although he claimed to be out of the gang -- there's no such thing. It's blood in, blood out -- I asked how you could make a bomb behind bars.

He grinned and slowly tilted his head down. He tapped his foot on a bag of fertilizer and said, "I knew about the explosive properties of ammonium nitrate long before those boys in Oklahoma City."

He referred to Timothy McVeigh, who murdered 168 people, including 19 children, by blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.

In this episode of the True Crime Reporter® Podcast, I open up my old reporter's notebooks to recall moments from inside the Texas prison system when I was on the trail of corruption.

These short stories are from the darkest and most dangerous corners of maximum security prisons in Texas.

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