Cell 2455, Death Row

by Caryl Chessman

  As soon as the police permitted, Judy visited me at the Glendale station. She was glad, not that I was back in jail, but that my hectic misadventure was over and that I was still alive. But even with my safety assured, she remained troubled. I was Judy’s husband; she loved me greatly, yet more and more I was a stranger to her, a man she didn’t understand. Still her heart wouldn’t let her admit she had been wrong to marry me.

  After our visit, the police had a talk with Judy. They told her she was a good girl and that her husband was no good, a confirmed criminal. She should divorce me before I ruined her life. Their words made Judy cry, quietly. And later, one of the more cynical ones made a play for her, going to our home and questioning her thus: “That husband of yours got an $18,000 rare perfume collection from one of his burglaries. We think he gave all or part of it to you, and you know they put young ladies in jail for receiving stolen property. Now, of course, I could see that that didn’t happen to you if . . .”

  Actually, she never had received any perfume from me. Nevertheless, however innocent she might be, I saw how vulnerable she was as the wife of a notorious hoodlum and escaped convict who was headed back to prison to serve a lot of years. So, when she visited me again, I insisted she divorce me, be legally freed from me. She could wait or not wait at her option; that way, if the right young man came along, she could make a new life for herself; that way, she would not carry the stigma of being Mrs. Caryl Chessman. That way was the only way, I insisted, but Judy wouldn’t listen.

  I was transferred to the Los Angeles County Jail and confined to the “High Power” tank while the wheels of justice made the necessary turns. There I met a renegade ex-convict who, while in prison, had made a name for himself as a writer. However, his larcenous inclinations had led him back to jail as a result of involvement in the burglary of half a million dollars’ worth of gilt-edged securities. The federals had charged him with transporting these stolen securities, in violation of federal law, from one state to another, and a jury had convicted him. He was positive, however, he would win on a technicality in the appellate court, which he ultimately did, and was then trying to raise the money—$2500—for an appeal bond. He made me a proposition: if I would go his bond, he could set it up so that a smart attorney could spring me from prison on a writ of habeas corpus. While his plan was not exactly legal, it was foolproof if handled correctly and if. certain devious preliminaries were attended to. Since I had nothing to lose but the $2500, I arranged to make bond. All I could do then was wait and see it he would hold up his end of the bargain. I doubted it.

  I was returned to San Quentin in January, 1944. During this period, all escapees, on arrival at the prison, were sent to the “shelf”—the isolated punishment unit behind Death Row—for twenty-nine days and often then shipped directly to Folsom, the state’s grim maximum security prison. However, largely through the good offices of Tuffy and other friends, I avoided the shelf, which was an early and significant victory in my campaign to regain freedom as soon as humanly possible. A few days later I won another and somewhat ironical victory—assignment to the local Selective Service office, which was under the supervision of Mr. George Oakley, a very well-liked free man. The chief inmate clerk in the office was scheduled for parole release within a week and I was given his job. There was an abundance of work to be done and I welcomed the opportunity to keep busy while I awaited word of my friend’s labors in my behalf.

  I soon received that word, and it was disgustingly negative. My pal, as he had been confident he would, had won his case on appeal but then, inexcusably finding himself in serious financial difficulties, had turned to the pistol. Presently, for robbing several federally insured loan companies, he was a widely sought fugitive from justice. He had done nothing for me. That was that. Although his banditry grossed him more than |6o,ooo, he never repaid the $2500.

  Tuffy was transferred to Chino the day following my return to San Quentin. As a matter of policy, local officials had temporarily held up his transfer until my return, feeling that this would be in the best interests of all parties concerned. I had a long talk with this old comrade. He was sorry to see me back and facing all that additional time. Personally, he was determined to straighten out and make a go of it. “Dammit, Chess, I just don’t like these places,” he explained. “I don’t like the idea of throwing my life away doing time.” I heartily agreed. But it was a little late. However, even then I had made up my mind that I was serving my last jolt. If I ever gambled again, the stakes would be my life, not my freedom. Tuffy and I wished each other luck, shook hands, and said so long. We were headed in opposite directions, and both of us knew it. I was destined to be the spectacular failure of that much-publicized boy bandit gang of 1940-1941.

  I had been back at San Quentin approximately a month when I received written notice that the institutional Classification Committee had classified me “Maximum, Folsom.” This meant I was a maximum custody prisoner and Folsom bound. I told Mr. Oakley about the action of the committee and he went to bat for me on the ground that I was working hard at a key job, that I was staying out of trouble, that I deserved at least a chance to earn the right to remain at San Quentin. As a result, in subsequent weeks, those who made up the transfer lists kept skipping my name. Thus I managed to stay at San Quentin.

  In the spring of 1944, Mr. Ward J. Estelle, institutional secretary to the two former prison boards, was looking for a skilled inmate stenographer and I was recommended to him.

  In this job, too, I worked sometimes as many as twelve hours a day, voluntarily. I had no easy job because I didn’t like easy jobs. I worked not only as Mr. Estelle’s secretary but also as secretary to Mr. Fred R. Dickson. Mr. Dickson was then Associate Warden in charge of the prison’s care and treatment program, and today is Business Manager at Chino. Additionally, Warden Duffy often used me on special occasions when he needed someone to take dictation or to record special events. And both boards seldom failed to have some project or assignment for me when they were meeting at the prison.

  After a year I appeared before the Adult Authority and had my term fixed at forty years, with further parole consideration postponed another year. That afternoon the Audiority reconsidered and reduced the forty years to twenty-eight.

  Judy had moved north and was living near the prison. When she came to see me I told her bluntly about my twenty-eight years and again urged her to get a divorce. Before, she had put off a decision, saying there was no hurry. But twenty-eight years looked like an eternity and Judy had met a handsome young soldier whom she liked, perhaps loved, and who loved her. Still she refused to desert me, and so her divided love and loyalty left her in an impossible position.

  “Judy, dammit, I want you to get that divorce,” I lied, then becoming even more emphatic, more cruel. “I demand that you get it. I don’t want a weepy, unfaithful wife to add to my troubles. Besides, a happy home isn’t included in my plans for the future. I’m going to be busy looking out for myself, and I sure as hell don’t want to have anybody around nagging at me about reforming.”

  My words stunned Judy. She looked stricken but she didn’t cry.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said. “I didn’t know you felt that way or that you would think that about me.”

  “Well, you know now,” I told her.

  ’Tes, I know now.”

  Ashen-faced, Judy left, and I didn’t think I would ever see her again. I tried to convince myself that I had acted in Judy’s best interests. Surely one quick, clean thrust had been best.

  I buried myself deeper in my work, and after work for a few minutes each day I would stand and look out across the sometimes turbulent waters of the bay, thinking thoughts that were not bright, not pleasant. I studied law from legal books and reports used in the office and was tutored by a former attorney serving a term for forgery. As a discipline, I wrote and rewrote—one bad book and one rather promising one. I severed almost all contact with the outside world, corresponded only with my mother and one friend.
I was sardonically amused when the teletype began to chatter, demanding proof that Chessman was still at San Quentin. It turned out that the victims of a string of robberies in the Los Angeles area had been shown a picture of Chessman and had “positively” identified him as the perpetrator in each instance. This time I had a perfect alibi. My cell partner was a smiling, black-haired, coldly brilliant young man who was wanted for murder in Ohio. In the cell at night we often discussed life in terms of honesty versus criminality, examining every conceivable facet of our subject.

  And in those discussions my twenty-eight-year jolt and Ohio’s electric chair loomed large. . . .

  In the spring of the year there was some unrest and a food strike at San Quentin. The rank and file involved, as well as the strike’s leaders, asked me to act as spokesman for them, which I did—and found myself under a cloud with Department of Corrections officials.

  August 6, 1945: for me, the date has a personal as well as a historical importance. A few minutes after a newscaster excitedly announced that the world’s first atom bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, a bomb was dropped on me. I was escorted into the warden’s private office. Behind his large desk sat Warden Duffy, his face a stern mask, his blue eyes searching my face, accusingly—for what? On each side of the warden sat other high prison officials, their expressions equally stern.

  I stood before the desk. “You sent for me, Warden?”

  Warden Duffy nodded. “Caryl, I’m transferring you to Folsom immediately.”

  To say that I was surprised is to state my reaction mildly. I recall uttering one word that was laden with astonishment.

  “What?”

  Warden Duffy repeated that he was transferring me to Folsom immediately—for safekeeping. But why? I asked. The warden said he wasn’t at liberty to tell me right then. I learned later that he was acting on a tip he couldn’t very well afford to ignore. I was then under suspicion of falsifying prison records, dealing in large sums of contraband money, and planning an escape.

  So, handcuffed, legcuffed and chained, I found myself occupying the back seat of a new Chevrolet speeding toward Folsom.

  Folsom is an old, grim-looking prison that squats broodingly on the bank of the American River in Sacramento County, not many miles from the state’s capitol. In the summer the sun beats down like some celestial blowtorch and the prison is . . . hot!

  We arrived after the night lock-up and I was placed into a barren cell in the Back Alley—the segregated punishment unit. I managed with some sleight of hand to keep my cigarettes and a box of matches. When I stretched out on the mattress which, placed atop a cot-sized slab of cement, served as a bed, I learned that I had about a million hungry bedbugs for company. Figuring I didn’t have enough blood to go around, and not wanting to show any favoritism, I paced the floor, smoked and thought for the rest of the night. And the more I thought, the more I was ready to give the cell back to the bedbugs. After all, they had been here first.

  A great rattle of keys and slamming of doors heralded the arrival of morning. A guard and a trusty came along with a food cart. The guard unlocked and pulled open the almost solid steel door and the grinning trusty said, good-naturedly, without malice, “All right, here it is. Straight from the Ritz.” He handed me a big tin cup full of potent black coffee and a pan containing what was officially called diet loaf and what the prisoners called a dog biscuit—an unappetizing but edible and dietetically adequate baked concoction containing vegetables, cereal, beans and occasionally some stew meat. I drank the hot, black coffee, poked with wonder at the dog biscuit, and inexplicably felt much better.

  What was next on the schedule? Exercise, it developed. Half a dozen other men and myself were marched out to the main yard and allowed to walk back and forth near a guard tower. The day was a scorcher and the sun was blinding; still, the more I saw of it the more I was taking a liking to this hot, drab, grim gray prison.

  Prisons, you see, have personalities, as distinct as those of the men doing time in them, and Folsom’s was tough, contemptuous, challenging. Treatmentwise, a new administration had reformed the old Fol-som—tamed it, you might say—and thus it was no longer a brutal, hopeless place, but its brooding, violent ghosts were still there to mock the change, and its function still was to hold California’s most dangerous felons. As many prisoners told me in the next few days: “Chess, this is it. This is the end of the road.” It was for a fact, and, strangely enough, I felt right at home. At the end of the road.

  Judy came to see me one last time, in September, 1945. She had decided finally that she should not wait for me. In the spring of 1946 she filed for divorce; a year later she received her final decree.

  Folsom was (and is) full of men serving long terms who, in the matter of their freedom, have turned rather savage and dream desperate dreams of escape. They continually scheme and plot and look and hope and curse their fate, the walls, their keepers, even each other on occasion. Among this group were many friends and men I had known for long years.

  In January, 1947, I again appeared before the Adult Authority. “Gentlemen,” I quietly told its members, “my mother is dying of cancer and my father also is in very poor health. I’m needed at home and I’ve had my fill of prison. You can believe me when I say that I don’t intend to do any more time.”

  The Authority granted me an eleven-year parole and set my release date for late January of the following year. My effective parole date was later advanced to December 8, 1947.

  The intervening months passed swiftly. The day before my scheduled release I said goodbye to all my friends. I wanted to know if there was anything I could do for them after I got out.

  As I was being checked out the next morning a wiseacre shouted: “If you promise to hurry back, Chess, I’ll have the Captain save your cell for you.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said. “Chess won’t be back.”

  • 27 •

  “O Villain, Villain, Smiling, Damned Villain!”

  The receiving and release sergeant drove me from the prison to the little town of Folsom. The instant we left behind us the walled, gray place that had been my home for so many months I experienced a sudden hungry awakening of mind, a quickening of keen sensory awareness, an angry triumph. I’d made it! I’d made it to the end of the road —and beyond!

  That was all. I got up and left.

  When I got to Los Angeles I hailed a taxi, giving the driver the address of my father’s florist shop out on Los Feliz, between Riverside Drive and San Fernando Road, and telling him the kind of place it was.

  I got a shock when I saw my father, who was sitting in the back of his shop reading a trade journal, his glasses resting on the tip of his nose. Hell, I thought, that’s the way old men read. Then I was jarred into the realization that my father was an old man, older than his fifty-six years. His once handsome face was lined and drawn. My mother had written me that he had a serious heart condition. And his once highly profitable retail florist business had gone bust. He had given up one shop and was losing money on this second one. The debts were piling up. He was just about at the end of his rope.

  I was his one hope. Somehow he had been sure all along that when I got home everything would work out for all of us. He looked up, saw me and was immensely pleased.

  “Hi there, old timer,” he said.

  “Hi, Dad.” We shook hands.

  I got my second shock a few minutes later when, after we closed up the shop and drove home, I walked into my mother’s bedroom. My mother was lying flat in bed; she was thin to the point of emaciation and her face was haggard. Still paralyzed, she was dying, slowly and terribly, of cancer.

  She cried for joy at the sight of me. I bent down and kissed her and her thin arms encircled my neck. “We need you, Hon,” my mother said in a whisper. “We desperately need your love and your strength.”

  And they had both, without reservation. But hate was hardly love’s best servant. Loving my parents, I hated what had happened to them. And I hated myself b
ecause I was partially responsible. It was a bitter, bitter pill to swallow to know that, urgently wanting to be proud of me, they had to find pride in the fact that I had managed to get myself out of the state’s toughest prison in almost record time.

  My return home was a dark and hollow victory: looking again at my mother and father, seeing the brutal ravages of time and sickness and pain and worry written in their eyes, their faces, their bodies, I knew that I hadn’t changed. I knew the hate was still bottled inside me, that it would soon find release. I knew that my strength was a betraying strength. For it would demand revenge. It would seek out an enemy, the most terrible enemy it could find to pit itself against. And in that moment of reunion I became aware of an ironical truth: the strongest, the most powerful man in the world is no more a free agent than the weakest and least powerful.

  I smiled. After that I never stopped smiling. I hated and smiled. My mother was dying and my dreams were dead. I had no future. My mother had no future. My father had no future. We had perhaps a few tomorrows. But tomorrows weren’t a future. War and violence and hating and savagery weren’t a future. Before there can be a future there must be certainty that the war being fought has a purpose, that it will lead to a peaceful place beyond, to a place of meaning where one may live usefully, creatively, unmenaced, without hate and without discord. But such a place did not exist except in one’s imagination. It had no reality. Only the jungle had reality. And goddamn such a reality! I would personally destroy it yet!

  I kissed my mother tenderly. I put a hand on my father’s shoulder. For their sake I would pretend to be happy. I would pretend that all was going to be well for us now, that a miracle would take place, the God-given miracle of a future. I would promise my mother to keep at creative writing. I would sit nights away at her bedside and when the pain in her side were not too great we would talk about the books I would someday write.