The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison

by Pete Earley

  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.

  Chapter 9

  DALLAS SCOTT

  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 fed
eral 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.”

  It was in this climate that the Aryan Brotherhood was born. Bureau officials claim that Dallas Scott was one of its founding members. I asked Scott if he recalled the birth of the AB, and without acknowledging that he was a member, he explained why the gang had formed at San Quentin. He didn’t hide his racist attitude. “Whites are everyone’s natural enemies,” he said. “Minorities stick together, but the white man by nature walks alone. I’ve seen whites sit by and watch a bunch of niggers attack a white kid in a cell. These yahoos were sitting there thinking, ‘Goddamn, I’m sure glad it’s not me being fucked!’ But if one white guy had the courage to say, ‘Hey, leave that kid alone!’ and he stepped forward, then there was a good chance that the pack will back off.

  “See, people who herd together deep down are afraid of anyone who has the balls to stand up on his own. Now I ain’t saying that the white man who stands up isn’t going to get his ass kicked. But when he stands up, he’s letting everyone know that he’s willing to do what it takes, and get killed if necessary, because he don’t like what’s going down, and that is intimidating to someone who runs in a herd like blacks do.

  “At San Quentin, the herds were getting out of hand and a bunch of old white bulls simply said ‘Fuck this’ and they decided to stand up, and you can be damn sure that when these old bulls formed the tip [Aryan Brotherhood], there were a bunch of white guys, who either weren’t strong enough on their own or were just afraid, who were damn glad.”

  Scott’s explanation, it turned out, was largely based in fact. The Aryan Brotherhood was originally formed to protect white inmates from being victimized by black and Hispanic prison gangs. The Black Guerrilla Family, a militant, black revolutionary gang with ties to the Black Panther party, was the first known prison gang, and was strong at San Quentin at the time. Chicanos were divided into two gangs: the Mexican Mafia, composed of urban Hispanics from the Maravilla section of East Los Angeles, and their hated rivals, the Nuestra Familia (Our Family), made up of rural Chicanos. The black and Hispanic gangs preyed on whites, as well as on members of their own races.

  A study by the Criminal Intelligence Section of the Arizona Department of Public Safety later suggested that several outlaw bikers who called themselves the Diamond Tooth Gang were the forerunners of the Aryan Brotherhood. The gang members, each of whom had diamond-shaped pieces of glass embedded in his front teeth, tried to recruit other whites at San Quentin but failed to attract sufficient “soldiers.” Next came the Blue Bird Gang, so called because its members had bluebirds tattooed on their necks, but it too didn’t last. The Aryan Brotherhood was born when remnants of the Blue Birds joined forces with several neo-Nazi groups. It is unlikely that it would have survived, either, except for an unusual tactic adopted by its original members. Black and Hispanic gangs had always relied on numbers for strength, and routinely pressured new inmates to join. The Aryan Brotherhood took the opposite tack. It based its membership on each member’s physical strength and willingness to kill. Anyone who wished to join the AB had to meet a “blood in, blood out” rule.

  “ ‘Blood in, blood out’ simply means that to join the AB, an inmate had to ‘earn his bones’—in other words, had to kill someone to get in,” explained Craig Trout, the bureau’s gang expert. “It also meant that there was only one way out of the gang. Death.”

  As soon as it was organized, the members of the AB put themselves under what they called “kill on sight” orders. When the cell doors at San Quentin opened each morning, AB members were required to hunt down and attack black inmates regardless of whether they belonged to a gang. The white gang was convinced that the best way to keep other gangs at bay was to prove that the Aryan Brotherhood was the most ruthless and savage gang in the prison.

  California prison officials do not know the precise time when this kill on sight order went into effect. But in 1970, the California system began seeing a dramatic increase in gang-related violence. Seventy-nine gang-related assaults and eleven deaths were reported that year. In 1971, there were 123 assaults and nineteen deaths and in the following year, 186 assaults and thirty-four gang-related deaths. The Aryan Brotherhood was not wholly responsible for the increases, but among convicts at San Quentin it did earn a reputation for being bloodthirsty. Its founding members, estimated by prison officials to be one hundred men, tolerated “zero disrespect” from other inmates. Even a casual comment about the Brotherhood could result in a stabbing if members felt their “brothers” had been insulted.

  Legend has it that the best and most respected AB warriors at San Quentin had tattoos of fierce Norsemen drawn on their arms.

  Why would anyone join such a group? I asked Scott, after once again making it clear that the question was hypothetical and did not imply that he was a gang member. In his mind, personal honor drove white convicts with principles to join. “A few older white convicts still have principles. They don’t let other convicts or the administration push them around,” he said. I noticed that Scott had a Norseman tattoo, among many others, on his forearm.

  When black militancy began to wane in the mid-1970s, the various gangs decided to sign a truce. This brought to a close what convicts call the California race wars, but none of the gangs dispersed. The politically motivated Black Guerrilla Family was eventually replaced by the 1980s drug-dealing Crips and Bloods. A 1982 study, by bureau employee Michael Lee Caltabiano, described the transformation of the AB thus:

  The Aryan Brotherhood developed during the 1970s into an organize
d predatorial gang [whose] main interest became protection, extortion, and narcotics in prison.

  The white gang also began to specialize in contract murders for other gangs and individuals, Caltabiano wrote, maintaining its savage reputation.

  In 1985, the bureau released a detailed study of what it described as the alarming problem of prison gangs. Investigators concluded that the Aryan Brotherhood was not a potent force in most lower-level federal institutions, but it continued to have strongholds in two penitentiaries: Leavenworth and Marion. In both, AB members played key roles in drug smuggling, extortion, and gambling, and were responsible for several contract murders.

  Although the AB’s power had diminished over the years, in the summer of 1987 it retained a certain status at the Hot House. There were only three or four actual members being housed in the prison and Scott was identified by the bureau as one of them. Had he not been sitting in the Hole, he would have had several “AB wanna-bes,” younger convicts enamored of the gang, washing his laundry and performing other chores for him. Being a gang member gave an inmate an identity as well as protection. The Aryan Brotherhood, in particular, liked to portray itself as family. At one point, bureau officials found a copy of the AB’s secret creed.

  An Aryan Brother is without a care,

  He walks where the weak and heartless won’t dare,

  And if by chance he should stumble and lose control,

  His brothers will be there, to help reach his goal.

  For a worthy brother, no need is too great,

  He need not but ask, fulfillment’s his fate.

  For an Aryan Brother, death holds no fear,

  Vengeance will be his, through his brothers still here,

  For the Brotherhood means just what it implies,

  A brother’s a brother, till that brother dies.