The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison (21 page)

When you asked one of the veteran grunts about leadership in the Hot House, he would mention the names of Ralph Seever and John Drew, two Hot House lieutenants who still resided in Leavenworth and were idolized for their extraordinary skill at manipulating inmates. No one mentioned the twenty-three wardens who had passed through over the years. The same was true whenever guards got together at Benny’s. They swapped tales about Fat Jack, a four-hundred-pound guard who called everyone “shitbird” and used to butt convicts up against the wall with his huge belly. They recalled the practical joker who, in 1973, when inmates were routinely referring to guards as pigs, wore a pig mask to work and passed by each cell oinking rather than calling out numbers during the four o’clock count. They remembered the time when lightning struck the prison power plant and the guards circled the Hot House with their cars and illuminated the walls with their headlights to prevent escapes.

The split between the grunts and transients had
prompted a saying: “There are two ways to do every job—the bureau way and the Leavenworth way.” Bureau Director Quinlan had worked at Leavenworth earlier in his career and he was familiar with the lasting power of “the Leavenworth way.”

“We spend thousands of dollars each year sending each new employee to our training center in Glynco,” Quinlan explained, “but when a correctional officer returns home, the first thing that happens is a lieutenant tells him, ‘Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but I’ll teach you what you really need to know.’ ”

Even O’Brien had run into trouble with the grunts when he was warden. O’Brien was the creator of the bureau’s first SORT team, the squad specially trained in handling emergencies. “I outfitted them with their own helmets, vests, holsters, and even their own guns, and gave them special training. They were the best of the best,” he recalled. “I was very, very proud of SORT and then it became a monster.” Associate Warden Smith remembered that guards assigned to SORT “got to thinking that they didn’t need us. The warden and the rest of us in management would be gone in a few years, but they were the real core of Leavenworth.”

O’Brien began hearing rumors. If trouble broke out, the SORT team would handle it “the Leavenworth way” regardless of what O’Brien said. Finally, when a SORT member got into a fistfight in a bar after making several racial slurs, O’Brien disbanded the entire team. A year later, he formed a new SORT squad, but this time he put it under much tighter rein.

“At Leavenworth, either you are going to control the staff or they are going to take control,” said Smith. “That’s just how things are.”

The institution that Warden Matthews inherited from O’Brien was a much different place from the one O’Brien had found when he arrived in 1982. Back then the Hot House was averaging three stabbings per month, three murders per year. “Inmates at Leavenworth didn’t
believe in fistfights,” O’Brien recalled. “Their response to every problem was to pull out a knife.” O’Brien took all metal grinders out of the inmate hobbycraft area, where they were being used to make knives. Overnight, he replaced all the stainless-steel flatware in the inmate dining room with plastic knives, forks, and spoons. “The Aryan Brotherhood tried to buck me by breaking all the plastic utensils after every meal,” he recalled. “They figured it would cost so much to replace them that I’d be forced to go back to stainless steel. They were wrong.”

O’Brien installed metal detectors, like the kind used in airports, in the east prison yard and required inmates to walk through them when going to and from work in the prison factories where most of the weapons were made. He distributed hand-held metal detectors and ordered guards to frisk inmates at random.

The number of stabbings began dropping dramatically and, for the first time in recent memory, Leavenworth went for one complete year without a murder.

Under O’Brien, security was always the number-one priority, and the Hot House soon led the bureau in developing and implementing various safeguards. It was the first federal penitentiary to develop a sophisticated telephone monitoring system to track inmate calls, the first to string steel wire across the yard to prevent helicopters from landing, the first to do mass urine testing of inmates to detect illegal drug use.

O’Brien began each morning by going directly to the lieutenant’s office to confer with the lieutenants about the day’s activities. Employees from other areas of the prison, such as recreation, education, religious, and psychological programs, were jealous. O’Brien didn’t care. He had seen the bureau introduce dozens of rehabilitative programs and, as far as he was concerned, none had worked. “The only real thing that rehabilitates a convict in Leavenworth,” O’Brien said, “is old age. When they get so old they can’t run out of a bank, they retire.”

Just before O’Brien stepped down as warden, he had outraged other wardens and proved himself just as independent as many of the Leavenworth grunts who worked for him. For years, convicts had been allowed to receive cookies and clothing from their families and friends at Christmastime, but in 1986 the warden at the Lewisburg penitentiary in Pennsylvania claimed that the gifts were a threat to security. Cookies could be laced with illegal drugs, pieces of hacksaw blades might be concealed in clothing. Examining each Christmas gift would waste time and result in higher overtime pay. The argument made sense at bureau headquarters, but O’Brien would have none of it. “We have used an X-ray machine to check Christmas packages for years here in Leavenworth,” O’Brien argued, “and we have never found any contraband nor spent a penny on staff overtime.” O’Brien claimed the presents were important to maintaining good inmate morale, particularly in the Hot House, where convicts were serving long sentences. “Getting a sack of hard candy might not mean much to most people, but I’d seen these inmates’ eyes when their kids sent one,” he said, “and it meant a lot to them.”

Because of O’Brien’s resistance, the bureau decided to allow each warden to choose for himself whether or not his institution would accept packages, and the computer that links federal prisons soon was pouring forth bulletins as wardens announced their decisions. “Day after day, we were getting these messages over the computer that said no one was allowing Christmas packages anymore and it really irritated me,” O’Brien recalled. He sat down and sent out his own response. “Leavenworth will accept all packages,” he wrote, adding, “At Leavenworth, we
still
celebrate Christmas and have the Christmas spirit!” It was that last sentence that irked other wardens, particularly the one at Lewisburg. The regional director ordered O’Brien to apologize. “I never did,” he recalled. “I figured the hell with it.”

The guards at Leavenworth loved O’Brien’s independence.
His attitude, they said, was summed up on a plaque that he kept hanging behind his desk in the warden’s office. It said: “
When rules and regulations are in conflict with common sense, common sense will prevail
.”

Robert Matthews took down that plaque when he took charge of the Hot House and put up one of his own. It was entitled
Loyalty
. “
When you work for a man, don’t complain behind his back
 …” it read.

Under Matthews, Leavenworth stopped accepting Christmas packages for inmates. “I believe,” Matthews explained, “in being conservative and following a strict chain of command. If the central office tells me to do something, we will do it—immediately.”

Matthews did not give the guards preferential treatment as O’Brien had, nor did he begin his days by visiting the lieutenant’s office. Adjusting to Matthews’s style was difficult for many at the Hot House, particularly the associate wardens who had worked closely with O’Brien. The new warden had inherited all of O’Brien’s top staff, except for one associate warden, Lee Connor, who had arrived at the prison on the same day as Matthews.

Soon stories about communication problems between Matthews and his inherited managers began to circulate. An incident involving manhole covers in the prison yard was typical. Matthews told his executives that he wanted the metal drain-covers painted. The next morning, he was shocked to find that the covers were all a gaudy bright green. Matthews said he wanted a less jarring color. The next day, he found that the covers had been painted fire-engine red. Once again Matthews complained, and the covers were painted again, this time stoplight yellow, the color of a child’s rain slicker. Matthews gave up.

In the spring of 1988, the central office in Washington announced that all four of O’Brien’s associate wardens were being transferred from the Hot House. Associate Warden Richard Smith was the only one being
promoted. The other three were being shifted to what were perceived to be less glamorous jobs.

No one at the Hot House missed the significance of the transfers. In one swift move, all of O’Brien’s men were gone. Like it or not, the prison had a new boss, and he was going to run things his way.

Carl Bowles hadn’t paid much attention to the staff changes that Warden Matthews was making. Besides trying to help Thomas Little get documents that would prove he didn’t belong in the Hot House, Bowles was busy with his prison job.

It was Associate Warden Richard Smith who had hired Bowles to look after a patch of grass outside the hospital about the size of a tennis court. Smith had known Bowles nearly twenty years and he had created the groundskeeping job just for him. “You got to treat someone who has been down as long as Carl differently from some kid fresh in from the streets,” Smith explained. It was not just kindness that moved Smith to pay Bowles $50 per month from a special discretionary account in his office. Smith wanted the troublesome Bowles somewhere out in the open where he could be easily watched.

Much to Smith’s delight, Bowles had always taken the job seriously. He was constantly pulling weeds and planting flowers. Bowles nursed his tulips and morning glories with such care that guards began calling the triple murderer a “flower child.” Smith was so pleased that he allowed Bowles to plant a small garden in one corner of
the lot just for himself. He also arranged for Little to work with Bowles.

A few weeks before Smith was scheduled to leave Leavenworth to take up his promotion, Bowles stopped him and Warden Matthews as they walked past the hospital. He needed wood chips for his flower beds, Bowles explained, and he needed them immediately.

Later that day Matthews mentioned Bowles’s request during his daily afternoon meeting with his executive staff.

“Bowles is beginning to act like he’s one of us,” Matthews said good-naturedly. “The way he fusses about how the flowers look—we’re going to have to start calling him Lieutenant Bowles.”

Everyone in the room chuckled, but there was one associate warden who found the remark troubling. Lee Connor didn’t like Carl Bowles and didn’t think he should be getting special treatment. Nor did Connor get along well with Richard Smith. As soon as Smith left Leavenworth, Connor became the new associate warden for custody, and one of the first things that he did was visit the east yard where Bowles and Thomas Little were tending flowers.

“What is it?” Bowles asked, when he saw Connor approaching.

“I’m not happy,” Connor replied coolly. “I’ll send someone around to tell you about it.” Lieutenant Tracy Johns appeared an hour later.

“The garden has to go,” Johns said bluntly.

“
What?
” Bowles replied, but Johns simply shrugged. It was an order from Connor. “No more personal gardens. Period,” Johns said.

Bowles and Little began ripping out the seedlings, tossing them into a trash container.

Four days later, Connor again strolled into the east yard to make certain the garden was gone. Bowles and Little scowled at him as they leaned against a wall of the
hospital smoking cigarettes. An hour later, Lieutenant Johns appeared with another order from Connor.

“You both have been fired,” said Johns.

Carl Bowles’s face was blood-red as he stormed back to his cell. Before Bowles was notified of his firing a lieutenant had told me what was going on, and I was waiting near Bowles’s cell when he and Little came up the tier. “The man didn’t have the decency to fire me himself!” Bowles said, his voice filled with hatred. “I know what he’s doing, he’s pissing on me ’cause he and Dick Smith didn’t get along.”

Little scrambled to fix Bowles a Coca-Cola. He hurried down the tier to get ice, poured Bowles his drink, and climbed up onto the top bunk where he sat silently as Bowles continued to complain.

“I’m forty-seven years old,” said Bowles, “and during all of my life, Dick Smith is the first person who ever gave me anything to be responsible for. Look around. The guards tell me when to eat, when to sleep, even when I can take a shit. What have I got to be responsible for in here? Not a damn thing. Do you know I’ve never lost a tool out there? In three years, I’ve never taken advantage of the trust that Dick Smith showed me. I worked my ass off ’cause I wanted to show that I could be responsible. Good old Carl Bowles, that worthless piece of shit, could actually be responsible. And what did all that hard work mean to these people? Nothing. Connor just blows in and fires me.”

At that point, Bowles wanted a cigarette. Little hopped off the bunk. “I’ll get ’em, Carl,” he volunteered.

“I took human life and that was a bad thing, a terrible thing,” Bowles said as he inhaled, somewhat calmer, “but I have spent twenty-three fucking years of my life in prison. Doesn’t that count for something? Is there some redeemable value to me? If not, then what the fuck is the point of all this?

“If all of this is meaningless, then why not take me
out to the city dump, hit me in the head with a hammer, and leave me there with the garbage? You could have done that, but, you see, society didn’t. ‘Oh my,’ society said, ‘all life is precious. Why, even Carl Bowles’s life is worth rehabilitating.’ So society put me in here under a ‘correctional officer’ who I assume is supposed to correct my behavior.”

Little laughed. Bowles shot him an angry look. Little stopped chuckling.