The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison

by Pete Earley

  “For me,” Greschner continued, “what I found was a hard, cold ball. I discovered that all I really needed to survive in this world is the will to live and a knife.”

  The best way to “do time,” Scott and Greschner explained, was by “beating the man.” Pour breakfast cereal in the sink in your cell, add water, and let it curdle for several days. It will become potent enough to get you drunk. You’ve just beat the man. Remove the thin steel wire from inside an eyeglass case and rub it against the bars. It will saw through them. You’ve just beat the man. Take the plastic wrap covering your food and roll it tight around a toothbrush. Heat it with matches until it becomes hard, and then spend several hours rubbing it against the floor, making its edges sharp. You’ve just made yourself a plastic knife and beat the man. All of these things had been done at Marion at one time or another, and just when guards were certain they had seen it all, convicts like Scott and Greschner would come up with proof that they hadn’t. Greschner recently hid a piece of hacksaw blade up his nose. “This is the best fucking thing you have done in a long time, Greschner,” a guard marveled when the blade was removed.

  Beating the man was lesson number one. Lesson two was to feed off the hate. “Anything they do that doesn’t kill you in prison, should make you stronger,” Scott explained. “The more they try to break you, the more you want to beat them.” Pure, unadulterated hate could sustain a man for years. Hate gave a convict a thirst for revenge and a will to survive, if for no other reason than simply to deny his captors the satisfaction of beating him. This was why the convicts were constantly belittling guards, Scott said. Even in prison, they had found someone to look down on. Every day was a contest of wills, a game of “them versus us,” a challenge.

  “I don’t care what your track record is for the last twenty or thirty years, a man can wake up in the morning and, for whatever reason, throw in the towel and give up,” said Scott. The opposite was just as true. Every day that an inmate survived in prison without breaking, he had won a silent victory. He had beat the man.

  Armed with a dictionary, Scott began plowing through the yellowed transcript of his trial, reading each word, studying every objection made by the lawyers and the judge’s rulings. Each morning, afternoon, and night, Scott scoured lawbooks. Because much of what he read was lawyer gibberish, Scott frequently would look up each word’s definition. He spent weeks going over and over his trial transcript, and when he finished, he was disheartened. He hadn’t found any glaring errors.

  And then Scott made an amazing discovery. One of the documents that he had obtained was the pre-sentence report prepared for the judge who had sentenced him. The report was written by a parole officer who had routinely outlined Scott’s family history, cited his previous crimes, and recommended that Scott receive the maximum eighteen-year sentence. But buried in the report was a bit of information that Scott had never known. It was about the gun that was introduced at his trial as the weapon used during the crime.

  Scott had been charged with robbing a bank on December 12, 1975, near his home in Sacramento. A lone gunman had walked into the bank, fired a pistol into the ceiling, and scooped the cash out of the tellers’ cages. The police had stopped Scott a short time later while he was driving his truck, and had found a black-and-white shirt and .38 caliber revolver underneath the driver’s seat. The bank robber had worn a black-and-white shirt, and a ballistics check showed that Scott’s pistol was the same caliber as the one fired into the bank ceiling. Those two pieces of evidence had been enough to convince the jury at his March 1976 trial that he was guilty.

  What Scott learned for the first time as he sat in his prison cell at Marion was that the Sacramento police had found someone else’s fingerprints on the pistol.

  Scott quickly realized that his attorney had made a critical error during the trial. The attorney had asked the police whether Scott’s fingerprints were found on the gun, and the detective who testified said they were not. But the attorney had not asked whether someone else’s fingerprints were found, and neither the detective nor the U.S. attorney had volunteered that information.

  The pre-sentence report also revealed that the police had found several fingerprints inside the bank that they believed belonged to the gunman, yet “no similarities were found between these latent prints and fingerprints of Dallas Scott.”

  The fact that someone else’s fingerprints were found on the gun was significant, Scott claimed, because he frequently loaned his truck to his friends, most of whom had criminal records. Had his attorney known about the fingerprints, he could have argued that someone besides Scott had borrowed the pickup, found the pistol under the front seat, and used it to rob the bank.

  There was another tidbit of information in the record that Scott found interesting. The black-and-white shirt that was discovered in his truck had short sleeves. None of the bank tellers who testified at the trial had described the gunman as having tattoos, yet Scott’s arms were covered with them, and in a short-sleeved shirt, they would have been easy to spot.

  The trial transcript provided Scott with one more discovery. After the U.S. attorney introduced the gun as evidence, Scott’s attorney had objected. He claimed the gun and shirt had been seized illegally because the police had searched the truck without a warrant. The judge heard the complaint, overruled it, and then adjourned the trial for the day because it was getting late. When Scott reached page 375 of the trial transcript, he realized that the court reporter had not transcribed his attorney’s objection and the judge’s ruling on it. That meant the official transcript was incomplete. “This was crucial,” Scott claimed later, “because my appeal was handled by a different attorney, who had not been at my trial.”

  Scott felt optimistic. He believed he had found two reasons for a judge to set aside his conviction and order a new trial. If that happened, Scott figured the robbery case would most likely be dismissed. After all, the robbery had taken place in 1975 and Scott was certain that most of the witnesses wouldn’t remember enough to testify against him at a new trial.

  Scott began writing a “request for relief.” In it, he claimed that federal prosecutors had failed to disclose evidence favorable to him (the fingerprints on the gun), that the official court transcript was incomplete (since his attorney’s objection and the judge’s ruling were missing), and that his attorneys had done an inadequate job of representing him.

  Scott buttressed his request by painstakingly listing other legal precedents. “See Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83,” Scott wrote, and “Bauman v. U.S. Ca (Ariz.) 1982, F2d. 565.” To make certain that he hadn’t missed any applicable cases, Scott added, “See also the fourth and eighth amendments to the United States Constitution!” Before mailing his petition, Scott added a final personal note to the judge. He didn’t have any money, he explained, nor did he have the “experence to muddy clear waters with wiley tricks.” His only experience inside a courtroom was as a defendant, but he had spent twenty-two years in prison because he had been found guilty of breaking “the law.” Now, for the first time, he said, “the law” was on his side.

  My complaints here are serious and legitimate and are easily verifiable through any effort at all on the court’s part. The petitioner is painfully aware that any court in the land could easly find a dozen way to subvert this petition, but trusts and prays this honorable court to weigh and judge these issues honestly, fairly and strickly on their own merits, then render a fair and honest decision.

  Scott mailed his request to the appropriate court. If the judge ruled in his favor, it would be the ultimate irony: a convict legitimately beating the man at his own game with his own rules.

  Chapter 32

  THE LIEUTENANT’S OFFICE

  “Knife fight! Kitchen!”

  Lieutenants Edward Pierce and Tracy Johns ran toward the kitchen when the alarm came over their portable radios. Johns had only been at the Hot House for a short time, replacing Shoats, and even though he came from Marion, Pierce wasn’t certain how the
novice lieutenant would react to a knife fight. Some staff members were reluctant to step in between two fighting inmates, especially if they had knives.

  As the two lieutenants burst through the kitchen doors, Pierce noticed that there were at least six prison employees watching the fight and none had done anything to stop it. The onlookers were food stewards, not guards, which meant they were paid to supervise inmate cooks and help prepare the meals. But that didn’t matter. Every male employee who worked inside the penitentiary was required by bureau regulations to react to emergencies and had been trained in how to stop fights. Every one of them. Later, when one of the stewards was asked why he hadn’t tried to stop the brawl, he said, “Most of us have wives and kids or grandkids. You tell me: Are you going to risk your life by stepping in front of a knife when you have one lousy piece of shit trying to kill another lousy piece of shit?”

  Lieutenant Pierce didn’t feel that way. “It’s my job to keep these assholes from killing each other, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to end up in some federal court somewhere trying to explain to a judge why I watched two inmates stab one another and didn’t do anything to stop them.”

  Pierce had noticed something else as he entered the kitchen. Lieutenant Johns, longer-legged than Pierce, had passed him when they were racing to the fight, but when they reached the kitchen’s double doors, Johns had slowed down.

  “We hit the door at the same time,” Pierce said, “and I wondered to myself, ‘Hey, what’s happening here?’ So I put Johns to a test. I said to myself, Okay, let’s see what you are made of,’ and I intentionally went for the victim. That left the guy with the knife for Johns. I wanted to see if Johns had enough guts to do what was necessary.”

  Pierce knew both inmates. Drew McCabe, a stocky bank robber from Oklahoma, was swinging a large knife at a New Jersey crook named Nick Funicelli, who was unarmed and trying to block the blows with his arms. Blood spurted from at least a dozen cuts on Funicelli’s hands, forearms, face, and chest.

  “Put the weapon down!” Pierce screamed as he dashed past McCabe and tackled Funicelli, knocking him to the floor. Pierce shielded the inmate’s body with his own.

  McCabe lunged forward. Johns didn’t hesitate. He grabbed McCabe from behind, wrapped his arms around his chest, and jerked them up, forcing McCabe to raise his hands over his head. Johns locked his hands behind McCabe’s neck and fell to the floor, taking McCabe with him. As soon as they hit, the knife fell free and the food stewards rushed forward to help subdue McCabe.

  McCabe was not injured and was taken to the Hole. But Funicelli was spitting up blood.

  “I’m bleeding!” Funicelli screamed. “Why am I bleeding so much?”

  “Hey, the medical staff is the only one who can tell you that!” replied Pierce, as he led Funicelli to the hospital.

  “This guy had blood squirting out of every hole in his body,” Pierce recalled. “I got his blood all over my ears, shirt, pants, forehead, tie, tie tack, I mean, he was cut from asshole to appetite.”

  A few hours later when Pierce was typing his report about the fight, he glanced at McCabe’s record and noticed that he only had four more months of his six-year prison sentence to serve.

  “This asshole was practically out the front door,” Pierce said. Why had McCabe risked getting more time in prison when he was about to be released?

  Over in the Hole, McCabe later explained that he had been forced to stab Funicelli. The trouble began three days earlier, he said, when an inmate rushed into his cell and said, “Hey, Funicelli says you’re a rat. He says you snitch to the cops to keep from going to the Hole. What are you gonna do about it?”

  “What the fuck business is it of yours?” McCabe replied. “Keep your fucking nose out of it.”

  But he was worried. “If I don’t do nothing, Funicelli is gonna keep telling everyone I’m a rat, and guys are gonna believe him, ’cause they’re gonna say, ‘McCabe must be a snitch or else he’d do something to shut Funicelli up.’ ”

  McCabe said he tried to resolve the problem by asking a mutual friend to talk to Funicelli. “I wanted to know if Funicelli was willing to apologize. He was drunk when he said it, you know, and probably just shooting off his mouth. I figured it won’t be no big deal this way, if he apologizes. But no, when my friend asks Funicelli, the dumb motherfucker repeats it. He calls me a snitch again.

  “I couldn’t believe the son of a bitch was doing this,” McCabe continued, “putting me in this sort of spot, ’cause I’m about to go home. But I got no choice now. You gotta understand that in here, you can’t let nothing slide. It don’t matter if you are ten years or ten minutes away from going home. If I let Funicelli get over on me, let him call me a rat, then all sorts of guys would’ve moved on me. I’d have guys telling me to bring ’em back ice cream cones from the commissary, telling me to do their laundry, and then bending me over and fucking me, ’cause word would go out: ‘Hey, McCabe won’t fight ’cause he’s about to go home.’

  “I know these guys in here, and a lot of them is okay, but some are animals, and I mean dirty, stinking, rotten, filthy scum of the earth, and they’ll make your life one fucking long nightmare if you ain’t willing to draw blood. So you see, I didn’t really have a choice. I had to stab him.”

  McCabe’s explanation and rationalization was of no concern to Pierce. “It’s an FBI matter now,” he said. Besides typing his report, Pierce filled out another piece of paper. It was a recommendation to the bureau’s regional office that Johns receive a $500 cash bonus for risking his life while on duty.

  “Johns, why, he did me proud,” Pierce explained. “He showed he had what it takes to be a Leavenworth lieutenant.”

  Chapter 33

  CARL BOWLES AND THOMAS LITTLE

  Norman Bucklew was drunk and itching for a fight when he slid into a metal folding chair in the television room on the fifth floor of A cellhouse. It was seven P.M., and Thomas Little had just turned the channel to America’s Most Wanted, a weekly program that reenacted actual crimes and asked viewers to call a toll-free number if they could help solve them.

  Little had asked the other ten convicts in the room if they objected to his tuning in the show. None had—but that was before Bucklew came in.

  “This is a fucking snitch program,” Bucklew bellowed.

  No one in the room reacted.

  “Oh, looky, looky, there’s the rat number on the screen to call,” Bucklew continued. “Everyone grab a pencil and write down the rat number.”

  Two or three inmates, sensing trouble, left.

  “Fucking show is turning everyone into goddamn snitches. Shouldn’t be watching this motherfucker.”

  An inmate sitting near Bucklew turned toward him. “You calling me a rat?” he asked angrily. “ ’Cause if you are, then we need to deal with it.”

  “I’m saying this is a fucking rat program,” Bucklew replied, not backing down. “And we shouldn’t be watching it. I’m not going to watch it.”

  Bucklew left the room.

  The next morning, Carl Bowles woke up angry.

  “What fucking right does Bucklew have to tell me what I can and can’t watch on television?” he asked Little.

  “C’mon, Carl, he was drunk and this ain’t worth the trouble,” Little replied.

  For the rest of that morning, Bowles and Little avoided Bucklew, but that afternoon it was Little’s turn to get upset. He and a few other inmates went into the television room to watch the afternoon movie, but Bucklew had turned the channel to MTV, and even though he wasn’t in the room, no one wanted to risk changing the channel. They were afraid of him.

  Each floor of A cellhouse had two television rooms and each was large enough to accommodate forty inmates. According to bureau policy, inmates were supposed to select programs based on a vote of the men who wanted to watch television. But this democratic process simply didn’t work. All the television rooms in the cellhouse were controlled by blacks except for the one on the fifth floor used by Bowles, L
ittle, and Bucklew. No votes were taken in it; instead inmates wrote down their preferences on a sheet of paper hanging near the television. On this particular afternoon, Bucklew had claimed the afternoon time slot as his.

  After several minutes of grumbling, Little marched up to the sign-up list and wrote the word VOTE across the entire page.

  “Anyone who thinks they are running this television room is wrong,” he declared. “You can tell ’em to stick it in their ass. This is a public room.” Then he went to tell Bowles what he had done.

  Within the hour, Bucklew confronted Little and Bowles in the television room.

  “Carl,” Bucklew began, “I’ve known you for years and I got all the respect in the world for you and I don’t disrespect you and I don’t mean to ever disrespect you.”

  Then he turned and faced Little. “But you,” Bucklew said, his voice rising in anger, “you I don’t know, and you’re a fucking asshole.”

  Having “disrespected” Little to his face, Bucklew stepped outside the television room and waited for Little to join him. But it was Carl Bowles who came through the door.

  “Why did you call Tom an asshole?” Bowles asked calmly.

  “Because he spoke behind my back,” Bucklew replied.

  “As long as I’ve been around Tom, and as much as I’ve been around him, I’ve never heard Tom say nothing behind your back,” said Bowles, “and he won’t say nothing behind your back that he won’t say to your face.”

  “Then why ain’t he out here right now?” Bucklew demanded.

  “ ’Cause I told him not to come out.”

  “Well, the only reason, and I mean the only reason why I’m letting this ride is out of respect to you,” Bucklew said. “The kid I don’t respect.”

  This is how Bowles later recalled his reaction. “I told him, ‘Hey, don’t cut Tom any room because of me. Tom catches what he catches. If he disrespects you, then you take it to him and deal with it. I got no problem with an ass-kicking, but I ain’t gonna stand by and let you kill my friend over a fucking television show. That’s stupid for both of you. It’s not a killing offense. An ass-whipping, sure, but a killing over a television show? It don’t call for no killing.’ ”