The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison (11 page)

Matthews didn’t react, Smith said later. “If it was intimidating to him, it never did show.”

Killing a warden was something that inmates simply didn’t do. In the entire history of the bureau, Matthews had never heard of a warden being murdered. The most sensational attack by inmates on a warden had taken
place fifty-six years ago and it had happened at the Hot House. On December 11, 1931, seven inmates appeared at the front gate armed with several revolvers which they had smuggled into the prison.

“Open it or we’ll kill you!” one of the inmates yelled at a guard named Oscar Dempsey, according to newspaper accounts. At the time, the front gate was opened and closed by a single guard stationed outside.

“Go ahead and shoot!” Dempsey was quoted as saying. “I’m an old man, so it don’t matter. I’m not opening the gate for you!”

Frustrated, the inmates had grabbed Warden Thomas B. White who happened to be inside the compound. When the guard saw White, he opened the gate and the convicts commandeered a car and fled, still holding White as hostage. The police chased them into a farmhouse a few hours later, and in the gun battle that followed, three convicts were killed. The others eventually surrendered but not before shooting the warden. White recovered and eventually returned to his post, but after that incident the bureau adopted a regulation for all of its prisons that ordered guards never to open a gate for anyone holding a hostage, regardless of who it was.

Matthews didn’t believe the AB death threat was legitimate. Later, he said that it was probably just inmates bragging among themselves. But he knew that his reaction to the rumor was important. There are no secrets in a prison, and convicts and guards would be watching to see his response.

“No warden can sit around fretting and saying, ‘Jesus Christ, they might kill me today! I’d better not make any convicts angry!’ ” Matthews explained. “You’ve got to show everyone that you aren’t afraid. If I ever get to the point where I am afraid to walk inside the institution, then I’d better resign.”

Under previous director Norman Carlson, the bureau had adopted a practice in all its prisons that was
called “standing mainline.” Each day during the noon meal, all the prison’s senior officials stood in the dining hall while inmates ate. The main reason for doing this was to provide inmates with an opportunity to talk to staff members without being accused of being a snitch. In the old days, convicts always went in pairs to speak to prison officials. This enabled them to vouch for each other when they returned to the cellhouse, thus assuring other inmates that neither had snitched. Now because convicts could walk up to a prison official in the dining hall and talk in full sight of everyone, there was no need for a witness. If other inmates thought someone was snitching, they could walk up beside him and overhear what he was saying to the staff.

There was also a more subtle but equally important reason for standing mainline. Having the top officials stand in front of the inmates at mealtime was a reminder that despite the fact that the staff was vastly outnumbered and completely unarmed, they were in charge. “Image is a thousand times more important in a prison than on the street,” explained psychologist Dr. Thomas White. “The fact that the top leaders of this institution are standing before them at mealtime sends an important psychological message.”

Some wardens hated standing mainline; they felt it encouraged sniveling over inconsequential matters. But Matthews, with his ever-present notepad, was a mainline junkie.

The dining hall began serving lunch shortly after 10
A.M
. Matthews hurried there seconds before the first convicts were scheduled to arrive.

Most officials stood along a wall away from the doors, out of the way of the serving line where each inmate collected a tray, plate, and plastic eating utensils before proceeding down a food line. Matthews positioned himself directly in front of the tray area. It was impossible for a convict to eat lunch without first walking past the new warden. There were no guards near
him. No one was protecting him. With his arms folded across his chest, rocking back and forth on his heels, Matthews waited.

You could hear the rush of convicts coming before they appeared in the doorway. Like children scurrying out of school, they raced through the double doors and came face-to-face with the new warden. Immediately, the wave stopped. No one, it seemed, knew exactly what to do. The inmates at the front of the pack simply stared, and then moved forward cautiously, each grabbing a tray and walking past Matthews. Some ignored him, a few glared at him, some whites acted as if he weren’t there. Not a single convict spoke to him. After the meal, Matthews walked back to his office. But just before the evening meal, he returned to the dining hall and once again positioned himself by the entrance. Again, no one approached him.

Smith met with Matthews the next morning and told him informants were still claiming that the AB intended to kill him.

“Let’s take a walk,” Matthews replied. With the warden taking the lead, the two men went directly into the west yard and into a two-story, brick building—the Hole. There was a time when going to the Hole at Leavenworth meant exactly that. Inmates were stripped and put into a windowless, dark cell that was completely bare. A hole in the floor served as a latrine. If the inmate’s behavior still didn’t improve, guards reduced his rations until he only received enough food to stay alive. Such cells were supposed to be used only in the most drastic cases. Other inmates sent to the Hole were assigned to isolation cells, where they were locked up twenty-three hours a day. Even though the majority had never been put in a windowless cell, it was those cells that the inmates recalled, and the tag, the Hole, stuck.

While the Hole was no longer so gruesome, it still contained two types of cells. Inmates were locked in isolation cells that were not much different from any other
cells in the prison. The solitary confinement was supposed to be their punishment. But because Leavenworth’s inmates were constantly getting into trouble, the Hole was always overcrowded and there weren’t enough single-man cells to keep the prisoners apart. Most shared cells with three or four other inmates. They passed their time by playing cards. The only real discomfort for them was being locked up for all but two hours a day.

If a convict caused trouble in the Hole, he was moved to a punishment cell. These were known as “side-pocket” cells because they were off to the side of the building, away from other inmates. Each cell contained only a bed bolted to the wall, a sink, and a toilet. The men in these cells were isolated from everyone else. They were not given cards, books, or anything to occupy their time. If a convict continued to be disruptive, guards could spread-eagle him on the bunk in what the bureau called a “four-point position” and chain each limb to a corner. This was supposed to be the harshest punishment allowed, and could only be done if one of the Hot House’s lieutenants supervised the chaining. The bureau prohibited inmates from being intentionally deprived of food or being kept for hours in total darkness.

The Hot House’s Hole was notorious because it is where the most famous prisoner in the bureau’s history had been kept for twenty-six years. Robert Franklin Stroud, better known as the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” was put into the Leavenworth Hole in 1916 after he murdered a guard in the dining hall. After several days in the punishment cell, he was moved into an isolation cell. One day while Stroud was outside in an exercise area, he found a sparrow lying on the ground near death. He nursed the bird back to health in his cell and eventually trained it to do tricks. That experience sparked an interest that eventually led Stroud to become a self-trained expert on birds and to write a book about bird diseases. At one time, he had more than twenty birds in his single-man
cell. He remained in Leavenworth’s Hole until 1942, when the bureau decided to silence him. At the time, Stroud was receiving national and international acclaim and had become a vocal critic of the bureau through his correspondence with the media. Without warning, the bureau moved Stroud to its penitentiary at Alcatraz where he wasn’t permitted to have a single bird. Despite this, Hollywood’s 1962 hit movie about Stroud centered the story in Alcatraz because the “Rock” was better known than Leavenworth. Stroud eventually died of old age in an isolation cell in the bureau’s medical center.

Matthews decided to go to the Hole because Aryan Brotherhood gang member Dallas Scott was confined there along with other gang members. The warden wanted them to know that he wasn’t afraid of any gang threats. Inside, he walked from cell to cell, asking prisoners if they had any complaints. Scott and the other white inmates in his cell ignored him. When Matthews reached the sidepocket, a white racist peered up from his bed. “Nigger,” he snarled.

“If Matthews had any sensitivity to racial remarks, it was unknown to me,” Smith recalled later. “If he heard him at all, he didn’t react, and the incident didn’t faze him.”

After visiting the Hole, Matthews returned to the main penitentiary and positioned himself, as always, near the entrance of the dining hall for lunch. Nothing happened. The evening meal found him at his post without incident once again.

When Smith met with the new warden the next morning, he told him that rumors about an AB hit had stopped. Smith figured Matthews would be relieved, but he wasn’t. “The inmates weren’t talking to me,” Matthews explained. How could he jot down inmate complaints on his notepad if no one spoke to him?

At lunch that day, he searched the face of each inmate, looking for someone he knew from his previous
jobs. He recognized a black inmate and flashed a smile. The convict grinned, and walked over to talk. By the time they finished, another black stepped forward to complain that the guards were not delivering his mail promptly. Matthews pulled out his pad and wrote down the inmate’s name, number, and complaint. When he looked up, two other inmates had lined up. Later that day, Matthews ordered his associate wardens to investigate each of the complaints. “I want word to spread that I take inmates’ complaints seriously and get them an answer even if it isn’t what they want to hear,” he said. Soon a line of convicts waited for Matthews each day in the dining room. But Matthews was still not satisfied. Every convict who had come forward was black. Whites were still boycotting him.

Twice each day, Matthews took up his post. Each day, blacks came forward. Each day, he returned to his office without talking to a single white inmate. By week’s end, he was thoroughly discouraged. He stood his ground during the Friday lunch and shortly after twelve o’clock, he started back toward his office.

“Excuse me, uh, Warden, can I have a moment of your time?”

Matthews turned around. At the time, he didn’t know the inmate’s name. All he saw was that he was white.

“What’s the problem?” Matthews asked, pulling out his notepad.

Carl Bowles told the new warden that he needed some supplies for the flower beds that he took care of outside the prison hospital. Matthews made a note.

That night, Matthews stepped outside the front grille of the administration building and smiled. “I was happy,” he said later. “I had broken through the barrier.”

Now there was only one other group that he still had to deal with, and that was Leavenworth’s staff. Being accepted by them would prove to be much harder.

When I asked Dallas Scott if the Aryan Brotherhood had planned to kill Warden Matthews, he laughed and then became angry. “Snitches are always making up things,” he explained. “If someone really wanted to kill the warden, do you think they would talk about it?” Leaning close to the bars that separated us, he added, “If the AB wanted someone dead, the first you’d know about it is when they found the body.”

I spoke to Scott repeatedly for this book and he talked candidly about his crimes and his criminal lifestyle. But he always refused to admit that he was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood or even discuss the gang. I was not surprised. Of the prison gangs, the Aryan Brotherhood is one of the most secretive, and with good reason. Any member who betrays its secrets is automatically sentenced to die.

As we talked that morning, I noticed that Scott marked events in his life by prison incidents. “I hit the federal system the same year they executed the Red Light Bandit,” he said. Seconds later, he added that something had happened “about the same time as the race wars at San Quentin.” When this was called to his attention, Scott shrugged. “I’ve never really had much
concept of life outside jail. I was twelve years old the first time I went in and I haven’t really been out long enough since to know anything else but this life.”

Scott claimed his childhood was ordinary. “Prisons are full of guys like me,” he said. “You start out doing small things, you know, bucking authority, and the next thing you know you are in juvenile hall or jail, and that is where you form your basic personality. For me, it was in 1957 and 1958, when I was in various reform schools. I began smoking dope real big, and whenever I got out on the streets, I got myself into another beef and landed back in jail, and the next thing I knew, I was spending more time in than out. I suddenly found myself caught up in the lifestyle.

“As the years go by and you get older, you realize more and more that your life is considered a failure by society’s standards,” Scott continued. “You are a jailbird. You don’t have any money, no house, no job, no status. In society’s eyes you’re a worthless piece of shit. Now, you can buy into what society says and decide you really are a piece of shit or you can say, ‘Fuck society, I’ll live by my own rules.’ That’s what I did. I decided to live by my own standards and rules. They aren’t society’s but they are mine and that’s what I’ve done. In your society, I may not be anybody, but in here, I am.”

There was a point in his early twenties when Scott tried to go straight. He married, had two children, and worked as a welder in the Texas oil fields. But it didn’t last. Scott became addicted to heroin. In 1966, he robbed a bank in California, was caught, and was sentenced to San Quentin. At the time, San Quentin was in the midst of what prison officials now acknowledge was an all-out race war. The racial turmoil in the world outside prison, where fires were burning in Watts, Detroit, and Chicago, was magnified in San Quentin. Blacks and whites were stabbing one another, not because of anything anyone had done, but simply because of their skin color. “Your hate was at a peak,” Scott recalled. “Your
adrenaline was at a peak, everything was at peak level all the time. It was like a jungle. You’d get yourself fired up, so by the time that the cell doors opened, you’d be ready. You’d have a whole head of steam. You didn’t have time to analyze and rationalize or philosophize, you just got strapped [got yourself a knife] and went out of your cell and did what you had to.”