Born to Lose

by James G. Hollock

  Horvat and several board members met with Walters. “There was a lot of pressure on the man and certainly he was as stricken as the rest of us,” said Horvat,

  but we put before him an agenda. Yes, they were demands.

  I’m no psychiatrist but human nature would tell you we could not guarantee the safety of any inmate. It’s the same thing as a cop-killing in a small town and having his policemen friends and irate citizens guard the culprit overnight. You know damn well what’s going to happen. We were going to be prudent and professional about this. The place was locked down anyway, so why not have the state police come in till things calmed? And that’s what happened. All our officers left for the night.

  Reeling from the insensate slaughter of his friend, it was an endless day and eternal night for Sgt. Doug Cameron. He wanted to close his eyes, block it all out.

  Once the slayers were out in the little yard, stripped, and the ambulance had gone, Cameron and others herded the four back into the Home Block. “We moved things around,” said Cameron,

  and threw these guys in the cells at the end of a range, as isolated as we could get them. We kept them stripped for the time being and in their cells was a bunk and mattress, that’s it. It’s galling, but I know how this goes … they miss so much as a chicken patty and they’re screaming we’re starving them to death, so we were told to give them their evening meal along with the others—and do you know, they ate it.

  The staties came in and our guys were told to go home, but I stayed to fill out reports. Kozak stayed too. As time passed, I looked in on each of those guys. Maybe this shouldn’t have been done, but, well, fuck ’em. Occasionally, one of our guys would give a shot of mace into those cells. You could smell it and, get close enough, feel it in your eyes. McGrogan had his mattress pulled over him, and the other three all lay the same, curled up in a fetal position. I don’t know if they were sleeping but they didn’t move and their eyes were closed.

  Trooper Bill Manning came to the Home Block after everyone else left. We went down to the basement. God, blood everywhere. It was like syrup. We found a razorblade. Bits of brain. Later I crossed the big yard to the rotunda area to hand over more reports. The whole place though … It was so quiet you could hear a mouse piss on cotton.

  25

  It was an unlikely transformation for Billy Callaway from a life of dice and women to the Reverend William C. Callaway.

  “I started thinking,” said Callaway, “and one day I gave up bad living cold turkey. I even gave up my car. I wanted to live simply. The calling to serve came a little later but when it came, I listened.”

  “Welcome to Clairton—City of Prayer.” This is what the sign reads coming into town. Rev. Callaway presided at Mt. Olive Baptist Church, a modest yellow-brick structure with a quaint belfry topped by a cross.

  “I knew the Petersons longer than the eight years I’d been with the church,” said Callaway. “Walter and Asaline were part of it all. If one was on the organ the other was in the choir. They were very involved. Now, I had to bury my friend.”

  In the few days before the funeral there was talk going around in the black community. “I began to wonder myself,” said Callaway, “how such a thing could have happened. At the funeral home, family and friends were angered by the closed casket, which begged the question, ‘What have they done to Walter?’ Everyone knew of Stanley Hoss, but all those white boys who got to Walter, we understood, were like a killers club. People were suspicious. Was there anything beyond these guys killing Walter? Were they put up to it? This was the talk going around.”

  “Somehow it was in every paper,” said Dr. Herb Thomas, “that Pete had earned his captain’s bars ‘just three hours before his death.’ This was dramatic but untrue. A day after the murder, several of us had a discussion about Pete being on the list for a captaincy, and all it would take is for the superintendent to say he’s a captain. That’s what happened. It was a posthumous promotion, a decent gesture.”

  Captain Peterson was buried on December 14, on the same day he had been born forty-three years earlier. His prison colleagues, joined by members of the police and fire departments, gathered at the penitentiary to begin the funeral cortege, and many others joined along the way. Those coming from different directions followed the same procedure. Thousands came to pay their respects. “Approaching Clairton, you could see people lining the streets,” remembered Gus Mastros, “growing thicker the closer we got to the church. The top dignitaries made it to the church, but that was about it. People had to park blocks and blocks away.”

  With the church filled to capacity, overflow crowds listened to the service over loudspeakers set up outside. Superintendent Walters sat in a pew near the front. “We heard the family didn’t want him there,” said Mastros. “You could feel the tension.”

  As the church bell clanged to mark the commencement of rites, the Rev. Callaway led a procession down the aisle while intoning the twenty-third psalm. Asaline burst forward to kiss the American flag covering the bier. “Lord help me,” she sobbed. “He was all I had.”

  At the pulpit the reverend was to begin when the front door opened. “The governor just doesn’t show up at a funeral,” Callaway remembered, “but it was Milton Shapp himself. I was surprised. The seating for the family was reserved but after that, it was first come, first serve. Whether directed to or not, he came right up to the pulpit. This is usually set aside for the clergy, but we were to get him a seat, so this we did. I wasn’t angry or anything, but I just didn’t want his presence to steal away from the family, you know, by people looking at the governor. I think he was sincere, though, and wished to make a statement. I recall in part he said, ‘We live in troubled times. When will we learn to live in peace?’ Several others also spoke before me … but the Message is always heard last.”

  Mastros was blunt. “Yes, there were comments about the eulogy, but you have to understand the black community learned very quickly about how Shapp forbade the basement of the Home Block to be used for isolation of really bad actors, how Superintendent Walters created that rec room, ordered the bars removed that protected staff … and what do we have now? We have Shapp and Walters—both uncomfortable, you could tell—sitting right near Pete’s coffin and among the grieving congregation. Some thought Reverend Callaway was out to fan the flames.”

  The reverend shook his head and smiled. “I heard that, too, the fanning of flames, but that wasn’t my intent. Listen, here we are with a fine man dead, lying not fifteen feet from the organ his wife played every Sunday! We were at the bottom of despair. I was speaking in the Lord’s house, saddened, but I was angry, too.”

  The eulogy, entitled “Beyond the Call of Duty,” spoke of faith, and the enduring hope that “bread be shared, swords be broken,” but other lines were distinctly heated. A dramatic speaker, Callaway drew all eyes.

  “Walter gave his life in what was above and beyond the call of duty,” began the reverend. “It was his duty to make an honest living for his family, but it was above and beyond to face convicted killers all alone. It was his duty to be a good captain, but beyond his call to be murdered while performing a good job. Walter was a victim of our sin-sick society. The Bible tells us that in the last days perilous times shall come!”

  The congregation nodded in assent, some shouting out, “Yes, is the truth!” Callaway paused until quiet prevailed before continuing, speaking of anguish “wrought by senseless murder,” then took two long breaths before becoming more pointed: “I pray that Walter’s dying shall not be in vain—and we assist by seeing this is not swept under the rug. I say let justice be done for those found guilty!

  “Through Walter’s death, I trust the rules of Western Penitentiary can be changed to the extent that never will another guard be beaten or killed and no other family feel pain like the Petersons are now suffering.

  “Let us pray that no other correction officer will lose his life in what is above and beyond the call of duty!”

  Considering th
e church retinue, the mourners outside, the hundreds in uniform—police blues, sheriff browns, the guards in grey, white-gloved— it was another two hours for the cortege to manage the ten-mile journey to Round Hill Cemetery. Under heavy skies and cold winds, obsequies ended with the playing of taps and rifle volleys from a nearby hill. To the piercing cries of Asaline, Captain Walter “Pete” Peterson was lowered into the ground.

  “It was a beautiful tribute, yes,” Asaline’s sister, Shirley, later said, “but we didn’t want the TV cameras set up inside the church. I didn’t like how the media hounded Asaline. It got so she would open a door and there was someone with a microphone.

  “We’re a God-fearing family and refute the idea that Governor Shapp or penitentiary leaders were not welcome. Speaking of officials, if someone wanted to come up to us to offer condolences, we would have been much pleased. But no one did. The officer Bus Reilly did come out to see us, and he and Asaline just comforted each other. He’s a good man.”

  “I’ll have to tell you,” added Shirley’s brother, William, “after the service Governor Shapp didn’t pause a moment to console us or say a kind word. He walked straight past us. That hurt.”

  . . .

  Coroner’s inquests were usually held in the courthouse, but problems of movement, citizen anger, and “Hell, yeah, official anger, too,” said Warden Robinson, led to a change of plan. “So Hoss and company were brought into my jail, where we’d have tighter control. I arranged a classroom for the hearing. First time ever for such a thing.”

  For Edward Fagan, lead prosecutor of Hoss in the Zanella case, it was déjà vu. Once again, Fagan was asked to represent the people against Hoss, along with his fellow killers. He thought Peterson’s murder, “looked as cut and dried a case as ever was.”

  Because of certain injuries, McGrogan was confined to the prison infirmary, but Hoss, Delker, and Butler took seats at the defense table, each sporting a mustache, Hoss and Butler with long hair while Delker favored a shaved skull. “They didn’t seem the least worried,” said Fagan, “Butler slouchy, like a high school smartass, Delker chewing on a broom straw, and Hoss with that half smile. They’re conversing among themselves, laughing, when Hoss caught everyone’s attention by saying—knowing full well Mrs. Peterson was in the room—‘I don’t know what the fuss is about. He was only a nigger.’”

  “Initially, all three were represented by Ralph Cappy of the Public Defenders Office,” said Fagan, “and straightaway Cappy’s at it, complaining about the TV cameras and radio hookups, then goes on about the number of guards standing behind the prisoners, and the deputies ringing the room. To him, this suggested guilt, and, he protested, ‘has prejudiced the rights of my clients.’ I could see Cappy was going to be quarrelsome at every turn.”

  Forty-five people had crammed into the makeshift courtroom. Aside from Mrs. Peterson and Peterson’s several relatives, the spectators included one of Hoss’s girlfriends (Sharon, the erstwhile stripper), and, always in his corner, his sister Betty, who, since her brother appeared roughed up, cried, “Stan, they’ve hurt you!”

  When photographs were introduced of Peterson’s battered body, the accused studied them avidly, then smiled and playfully punched at each other. Later, witness Patrick “Bus” Reilly told in detail what had happened to Peterson, and who did what.

  At the hearing’s end, coroner’s solicitor Bernard McGowan ruled Hoss, 30, Delker and Butler, both 25, and McGrogan, 50, to be held for trial on murder charges.

  The day following the coroner’s inquest, Jill Joy rode the elevator of the Federal Building to the FBI offices, where waited Ian MacLennan.

  Never sure if she was chief girlfriend to Stanley Hoss, Joy finally felt she was getting there. No question he was opening up to her, telling her things. To hurry this along hadn’t she, perfumed and dolled up, visited as much as possible? She’d given him small gifts and, despite what she described to Hoss as her straitened circumstances, placed money in his prison account. In addition—and this was the coolest—it was Joy who’d introduced the ploy to get Stanley the thousands in reward money offered by Inside Detective for finding the Peugeots. Joy had even agreed to have sex with a guard to pave the way for Stanley and her to be “together.” How’s that for love? She’d been slowly but surely gaining ground, but now she worried over the turn of events.

  Seated before Pittsburgh’s agent in charge, the soft-spoken, conservatively dressed college grad listened to MacLennan’s disappointing words. “‘Jill,’ is it?” he said, laughing before becoming serious. “It’s time to go back to ‘Maureen.’ From your reports, Hoss has been coming round, and who knows? Maybe eventually he’d tell you where the bodies are, but too much has happened. Hoss is shipped out. He’ll never be permitted back at Western. You’ve seen the papers, each story recapping his crimes. And now Peterson. No, Stanley won’t be spilling secrets anytime soon. You’ve done a good job getting as far as you did, but it’s over.”

  Signaling an end to the meeting, MacLennan extended his hand. “Maureen, I’ll have something in your file. Again, you’re doing good things for the bureau.”

  Special Agent Maureen Vignovic—aka Jill Joy—appreciated her boss’s kind words, but she knew her first undercover role had come up short.

  The repercussions from Peterson’s murder continued through December. Attempts to assign blame to others besides the murderers became highly contentious. The rank and file of the prison staff blamed the administration; the administrators blamed headquarters and the politicians; and they in turn blamed the courts. Meanwhile, prisoners’ rights groups blamed everyone but “the oppressed”—that is, the criminals. Fagan joked that by the time of the trial, “I didn’t know who would be on the docket.”

  Editorials asked if there was a better argument for restoration of the death penalty than the senseless bludgeoning of Captain Peterson. After all, noted the journalists, current law ensured that the assailants would face nothing worse than added confinement—a joke to lifers—“all which is an open invitation for violence-prone convicts pathologically beyond rehabilitation.” From the courthouse steps, District Attorney Duggan told reporters that the restoration of capital punishment would be “given warm applause by Pennsylvania residents and law enforcement officers.”

  Led by Officer Ron Horvat, the prison’s union met with Governor Shapp, who, in an about-face, acceded to a reopening of the Home Block’s basement “for greater control of bad actors and better protection for officers.” Over his political career Shapp would never ungrip his opposition to the death penalty and seemed always willing to downplay criminal responsibility by citing “prison overcrowding” or “the violence of our time.” Nevertheless, Shapp did come to favor a single-purpose prison to house the worst offenders, the sanguinary, the predatorily wicked. (Only hazily defined at the time, this concept was the forerunner of the supermax prison.) “We’ve been working on this for over a year,” Shapp stated in a show of concern. This was a surprise to Horvat and others in corrections.

  One headline referring to the killers, “Officials Mum on Report Cons Were Worked Over,” forced an initial tap dance by the corrections commissioner, Steward Werner. “We’re not sure of the cause of the injuries,” he hedged, a response that provoked still more skepticism, more questions. Employing a notable Watergate phrase, Gus Mastros said to a colleague, “Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s hard to get it back in.”

  Indeed, Butler was marked up, Delker’s head was bruised, and Hoss’s right eye was blackened, while McGrogan nursed a busted rib and punctured lung. Reluctantly or not, internal affairs got involved and a few attorneys sniffed about. Rumors that charges would be brought, worried the officers suspected—until CO Steve Dutkowski adjusted the attitude. Hand still bruised from throwing punches, the veteran officer declared, “Screw these people and any other pansy-assed liberal. They weren’t there, to see your friend butchered like that. If they wouldn’t have done the same, shame on them. They want to throw me in the clink? I�
�ll go … be honored to.” On top of Dutkowski’s defiance, Bus Reilly, for whom everyone felt sympathy, weighed in: “Yeah, they were beat up … but not enough. They’re still alive, aren’t they?”

  “Correctly,” said Gus Mastros, “any charges died away.”

  Amid all the finger-pointing, influential members of the black community made the most distressing allegation of all: conspiracy—that is, prison complicity. Sala Udin of the Congress of African People, local NAACP head Tim Stevens, and state legislator K. Leroy Irvis jointly announced the formation of a task force. Said Irvis, “We are concerned about a prison atmosphere—conditions—that encouraged the murder of a black man, a captain of the guard.” The “conditions” were nowhere near a secret, but Irvis’s next statement implied a cover-up: “There’ve been other mysterious killings of black men at Western Pen, such as the stabbing of black inmate Melvin Sermons.”

  This stabbing was not a mystery to anyone at the pen. Said Kozak, “Sermons whopped Delker, disrespected him in front of his friends. Sermons didn’t know who he was dealing with. Delker killed Sermons. This is just like when the white Charlie Gans ran his mouth to the black Clifford Futch, disrespected him in front of others. Gans didn’t know who he was dealing with. Next day, Futch kills Gans. Normal society sees this as craziness, but it’s what you get with impulsive, low-esteem guys whose first option to a slight is to murder someone.”

  The task force further questioned if prison administrators would “share the guilt. This is not an open-and-shut case. We hope there is no conspiracy.”