Born to Lose (47 page)

The Program Review Committee, in the form of 6 tremblers, came to see me. I told them what I will do if they keep torturing me. The officials have no programs to benefit me. They'd rather spend hundred of thousands on drugs and gases so they can make us narcotic zombies or gassed out physical wrecks, or for guards who lurk around with guns for a chance to kill us, but they won't let us have light or hot water in these cells. If we need medical treatment, we can't get it.

They encage me to destroy my personality so they can feel safe around me. Just how terrorized are the officials? The warden has publicly stated: “I will not enter the prison. It is not safe for me in there.” He hides in his office.

I could tell you something, but now is the wrong time. Maybe someday nobody will doubt the essence of my attitude as dictated by my atavistic personality. Someday.

Hoss's use of the adjective
atavistic
would have absorbed the psych staff had Diane ever shared Stan's letters, but Diane regarded many of her ex's ramblings as senseless. As to his own makeup, Stan had concluded his past and his future were not altogether in his hands: they had been destined by bloodlines of distant ancestors.

Meanwhile, violence continued to plague the penitentiary. On November 22, 1972, news stories on the nine-year anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination were forced to share column space or airtime with a new item of local interest: the serious stabbing of veteran corrections officer Joe Bodnar. Only two weeks earlier, Gil Walters had attended a memorial service in the prison chapel for Officer Cliff Grogan, slain by a convict in 1965. While danger was inherent in the job, the increasing frequency of assaults on prison staff, atop common violence between inmates at the pen, worried Walters no end. He'd have to keep locking up the untamed and readdress the vexing proliferation of weapons.

As for Hoss, he had no intention of moderating his attitude or behavior. Instead, he was working on becoming even more lethal. Hoss pounded his right fist, then his left, into the old brick of his cell. It was yet another method to toughen up. His knuckles had become indented a quarter inch, so said the guards. Most observers assumed Hoss had put on his muscle through lifting weights, but others found it hard to believe such development could come about by weights alone. They were right.

In an experimental program, the penitentiary began issuing dianabol, a steroid, to certain weight lifters and other exercisers to see how it affected muscle growth and to identify other benefits. Said medical technician Mike Farris, “About forty inmates volunteered. Half got sugar pills, half got steroids. We'd regularly weigh them, take blood pressure and other measurements. I know Stanley Hoss, Frank Phelan, and Geno Spruill were in the program, but I was not privy to who got the steroids … but you didn't need to know. After some months it was apparent.”

Now locked up and without steroids, Hoss wanted to hold on to his gains. Daily, in his cell, he put himself through an ambitious regimen. Slamming his fists into walls was an exercise he thought up himself.

Since the Spruill knifing, Christmas had come and gone. In February 1973, a hearing was held on whether to release Hoss back into the general prison population. Even though his punishment time was about to expire, the decision was no. Instead, his status of disciplinary custody (DC) was changed to administrative custody (AC). This allowed Hoss, and Phelan, to be held in segregation indefinitely. The pair were told they were risks to the institution.

Thus Hoss remained “entombed,” as he'd put it, long after completing his disciplinary time in segregation. If he wanted his administrative custody status to be lifted, he'd have to show at least a willingness to conform. This shouldn't have been terribly difficult, given Western Pen's rock-bottom expectations: Hold the fist and be praised. Yet Hoss's attitude remained unchanged, and so far he had avoided full punishment for his violent acts.

Someone calculated that if Hoss did stand trial on each of the thirty-nine felonies he was said to have committed while on the run in the getaway GTO, he'd be looking at another one hundred years, but this would never happen: the trials would be too costly, transporting the killer deep into the midwest too risky, and, anyway, Hoss was already serving a life sentence. All these reasons may have been practical, but they left Hoss unpunished and provided his victims with no redress.

By the early summer of 1973, Hoss had reason to be optimistic on other legal fronts. For one thing, he and his attorneys were planning to drag poor Kathy Defino back into court. “I know I can beat that this time. When did I ever have to rape a girl to get the cunt?” he wrote Diane. For another, Hoss was not far wrong when he wrote in the same letter: “That leaves only the cop killing. That judge made so many mistakes, there's no doubt I'll get a new trial.”

Meanwhile, the capture of Geno Spruill in August brought more bad press to Western. In his year of hiding out, not only was Spruill sought for killing John Beck but for four more deaths that had followed. News reports noted that all this happened after Spruill had walked away from the prison's supervised leave program.

. . .

Stanley never wrote of Jill Joy to Diane but was candid about another woman, one named Sharon:

Betty thinks she is being pushed aside since Sharon came into the picture. Me and Sharon are trying to get married. She has to have an interview with Dr. Thomas, a psychiatrist who's been working with me since I came to this place. He has the final say. What's important in this is our daughter Nicole. She's getting around the age she knows who I am, so Sharon wants her to have my name legally.

This news may surprise you but it's just one more part of the life I lived when I was out there.

Later, he wrote of Sharon again.

I've never been so happy in my life. Sharon is beautiful. She just turned 21, has long hair and a body that's out of sight. She dances in Pittsburgh and Ohio but not topless anymore. She keeps her job away from our daughter and doesn't bring any men to the house.

We're still trying to marry but the people here keep putting walls up as if they're happy to see me stabbing people because they know marriage would make me want to settle down. If they fuck it up for me, I'm going on one more bloody rampage which will make anything I've done before look like kid stuff. The only ones who get anything in here are homosexuals and snitches.

Jill Joy was still visiting as often as she could. Stan kept her in the dark about Sharon, and remained fairly closemouthed about the women in his past. Jill shared that she was divorced with no kids. She kept angling for an evening visit (more romantic, she told Stanley) but lamented that she worked the night shift in a bolt factory and slung hash browns part-time. She also had to accept that Stanley got only a set number of visits each month and that she couldn't hog them. Within these limits, she did her best by dressing the way Stanley liked and becoming a sympathetic listener. Occasionally, though, Hoss would say something that gave even Jill pause.

Once, when Stanley spoke of the merriment that came with shooting cops, Jill took his hand while crossing her leg to edge her skirt higher. “Seriously, honey, the one in Verona … it was you or him, right?”

“Yeah,” Hoss said, “me or him, that's how it was.”

“See,” Joy whispered, “I knew you'd never do something like that unless you had to.” But at another time, when Jill mildly raised the subject of the “woman and baby,” Hoss changed the subject.

Other women aside, Hoss resented that it had been a year since Diane had visited with the kids.

I want to see my children! Forget Jodine. You don't believe I ever loved her, do you? Do you still have that boyfriend, Ron? I was wondering if it's hard pulling a trick since you're not as young as you once was.

I'm not in the mood for anything today. It's been a bad life.

Diane indeed had the boyfriend, a man who treated her well and had a job, and she finally revealed their plans to marry. Stanley wrote to say he accepted the situation, but added, “If its marriage you want, you may as well make some money off it. I tell the girls I know that if they don't sell it they are fools.”

. . .

However Hoss's sister Betty felt about his girlfriends, she remained his staunchest ally. Angered by his complaints of his treatment at the penitentiary, she sent a petition to Governor Shapp requesting a redress of grievances. Signed by thirty-four “family and friends” of Hoss, the petition blasted a system that, in her view, unjustifiably held her brother in solitary confinement. “My brother is harassed, intimidated, threatened with bodily harm, and subjected to punishment over and above the sentence imposed on him by the court,” she wrote. Following other criticisms, Betty accused the prison of forcing her brother to exist on a “subhuman animal-like level.”

Infuriated over Betty's public appeal, Barbara Sizemore fired back. She was a sister as well, to the beloved Joe Zanella, dead four years now by Hoss's hand. In a two-column letter published in its entirety by the
Pittsburgh Press
, Barbara wrote that Hoss's conditions in prison “would be fitting if they were accurately described. Is he to have every comfort of home? Further, from what I understand, the taxpayer has paid for plastic surgery that Hoss has undergone in an effort toward rehabilitation. No amount of surgery on the outside will change what is in that man's heart.”

Barbara didn't stop at her own family's grief. “Hoss said he murdered the Peugeots. Yet, the courts tarried and he wasn't brought to trial before a certain time. Now he will never stand trial. Talk about getting away with murder! Maybe our courts have let him slide by, but the High Court won't. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”

The petition and letters prompted a cascade of public responses rejecting pity for the killer. Nonetheless, the airing of Betty Matecka's plea to
the governor obliged Western Penitentiary's superintendent to defend his position. Walters confirmed that Hoss's status restricted him from most prison facilities, recalling Spruill's knifing a year earlier that had brought matters to a head but added, “There are other reasons for Hoss's confinement which I will not make public at this time.”

What Walters kept to himself was Hoss's influence over and complicity with other violent men. When out in the general population, he ran with a band of white men who intimidated the blacks. Hoss was, if not
the
prime player, at least one of the prime players in widening the white/black chasm within the prison, an untenable situation for its administrators. For even minimal peace prospects, Hoss had to be removed from the equation.

For the record, Walters repudiated any brutal treatment of Hoss and denied telling Hoss that he'd never again see the light of day. “Mr. Hoss is in segregation with a lot of other men,” said Walters. “Much is up to him as to when he gets out.” If Western's officials had been privy to Hoss's letter to Diane of September 6, 1973, though, he would have assured himself of a vastly extended stay in isolation:

Yes, I find those things that was in the newspaper amusing, and I can assure you there's alot [
sic
] more to come. I'm going to make the infamous Stanley B. Hoss, Jr., the most feared person in the whole state.

Finally, mightily sick of Hoss, Walters executed a petition of his own, one for the transfer of his contumacious charge.

I'm at Graterford Prison near Philadelphia. It's a long story how they got me here but if I can help it, I'll be back. Needless to say, they got me in the hole, and I mean hole. We get a paper spoon. When it gets wet, that's it.

They sent me across the state just to kill someone. They know that's what will happen because it's 25 black to every one white, and you know how I am.

Hey Diane, you think we got problems? The guy in the next cell stands in his toilet, plays with the water and laughs all night to himself.

Within two weeks Hoss was back in Pittsburgh, writing Diane he felt like an orphan, as “every prison I got to did not want any part of me. I wonder why? And these people sure as hell hated to take me back.”

True. But Walters had got the message from headquarters: Hoss is your problem. Deal with it.

. . .

Jill Joy felt Hoss was a man who could guard his emotions, for sure, but she saw him opening up more and more each visit. Given her sweet words to him, even mush, Stanley could be excused if he thought she was smitten. She hoped, maybe soon, he'd feel the same.

Advancing the relationship in whatever small ways she could, Jill said, “Do you know we have the same color eyes? We like country music, and”— in funny reference to the flowers Hoss had sent Jodine—“I like roses, too. My favorite's the Sterling Rose.”

But there was more on Jill's mind this day. She was nearly bursting with excitement. “Stanley, did you see the paper today, about the reward? I guess back in 1970 a magazine called
Inside Detective
ran a big story on you. Well, just yesterday they announced a four thousand dollar reward for information to find the Peugeots.” (Jill pronounced the name “Poo-jits.”)

Hoss raised an eyebrow but remained silent as Jill leaned closer, her voice a whisper. “Stan, listen … I understand about the cop. You didn't have a choice. He'd have killed you, I know. And I know you, too. I won't ask you why it was with the Peugeots but I know you
had
to do whatever you did. No one could ever tell me different. All I know is I trust any decision you've ever had to make.” She kissed his cheek and his hand. “But think of all that money, Stan, and really, all that family wants is to bury them back home. As a woman, Stan, I can understand that, and maybe you can, too. It sort of would be a good thing to do and,” Jill giggled, “you get a big payday out of it, because you know why?” She squeezed his hand harder. “Because if we work this out, I'll give you all the money. They said the recipient can be anonymous.” Jill hesitated before she mentioned that out of all that money, perhaps she could have just a few hundred. “It's just that I need to get my phone turned back on so you can call me, and catch up on some rent … but that's all, Stan. I'll put the rest in a bank account for you. It's all yours!”