Houses of Death (True Crime)

by Gordon Kerr

  It was a tough place to do time. Discipline was harsh and punishments for breaches of the rules were harsher. Hard labour awaited the wrongdoer and, in the worst cases, solitary confinement, with only bread and water to eat and drink. The inmates were mostly young men who were serving short sentences for desertion or more minor crimes. However, soldiers were incarcerated for longer for more serious crimes such as larceny, insubordination and even murder. Work duties depended on the nature of the prisoner. Some worked as cooks and cleaners for the families who lived on Alcatraz and, on the whole, the prison could be said to be minimum security at this time. Several inmates did try to escape, but it is believed that most of them died in the icy waters of the bay.

  By the late 1920s, the prisoners had built a baseball field and, on Friday nights, the army staged what became known as ‘Alcatraz Fights’, boxing matches between inmates. The audiences for these bouts would include San Franciscans who had crossed to the island to see a good fight.

  Prohibition and the poverty of the Depression had created an organized crime explosion on the streets of the US during the 1920s and attorney general Homer Cummings, did two things to fight the crime wave. First, in 1933, he created the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Second, he acquired Alcatraz from the army to use as a federal prison. It would be no ordinary prison, however. Robert Burge, one of America’s top security experts, was brought in to design an escape-proof prison that also looked forbidding. Work began on upgrading the out-of-date old military facility. Modern tool-proof iron bars were put on all windows and doors, every cell was given an electricity supply. The tunnels carrying all the pipes and wires were filled with cement to prevent any prisoner from using them as an escape route, and special gun galleries surrounded the perimeters of the cellblock. These galleries were secure and out of reach of the prisoners, allowing the guards to patrol carrying weapons. Tear-gas canisters in the roof of the dining hall could be released remotely and metal detectors were introduced in various locations. Outside, guard towers loomed over the prison.

  Burge also designed the block so that its 350 cells were far from the perimeter wall. So, even if an inmate did succeed in burrowing out of his cell, freedom would still be some distance away.

  The man chosen to run Alcatraz was James A Johnston, who had a humanistic approach to reform. During his 13 years in charge, he would eschew the customary barbaric methods used in prisons up to then, including the use of straitjackets for restraint and the punishment of solitary confinement in darkness. During spells as warden at both San Quentin and Folsom prisons, he had become distrustful of the use of chain gangs, but did believe that inmates should have a job from which they could earn respect as well as rewards.

  However, life was still harsh for the inmates. They had to earn visitation rights and, indeed, they were not allowed visitors for their first three months on The Rock. Even when they were eventually allowed visitors, these were limited to just one a month. There was a prison library, but inmates were not allowed to have radios, newspapers or magazines. Mail was strictly controlled, it was considered a privilege that could be removed, and letters were carefully vetted before being sent or received. Above all, a good work detail had to be earned by good conduct.

  Prisoners each had their own cell, but little else apart from the bare necessities − food, water, clothing and medical care should they need it. They were marched everywhere in formation and it did not take much for a privilege to be removed. Discipline was relentlessly applied, and it had to be.

  Wardens of America’s prisons were invited to send their worst inmates to Alcatraz, men who were inveterate escapers, or who had proved unmanageable. They were also asked to send high-profile prisoners who had been receiving special treatment because of who they were. No one received special treatment on The Rock.

  Every day was the same. A roll call was taken at 6.30am. At 6.55am, the tiers of cells would be opened individually and the prisoners would march in line to the Mess Hall, where they would have 20 minutes to eat breakfast. They were then marched out to their work assignments.

  Normally, in American prisons, the ratio of guards to prisoners was one guard for every 12 prisoners. In Alcatraz, however, it was one guard for every three prisoners and the guards carried out counts of the entire prison population no fewer than 12 times a day. The gun galleries ensured that inmates were under constant supervision and guards were also able to watch out for each other.

  One of the harshest elements of warden Johnston’s regime was his silence policy. Inmates were not allowed to talk to each other and only to guards when asked a question. It drove several inmates close to insanity and was the subject of much protest by the prisoners. It was later relaxed, to the great relief of the inmates.

  The ultimate form of punishment was the Strip Cell, known by inmates as the ‘Oriental’. It was a dark, steel-covered cell with no toilet or sink − merely a hole in the ground, the flushing of which was controlled by a guard. Inmates were put into the cell naked for two days and their diet was restricted. It was cold and there was no light. A mattress was only allowed at night.

  There were 14 attempts to escape from Alcatraz between 1934 and 1963, involving 36 prisoners, two of whom were brave enough − or possibly stupid enough − to try twice. Seven were shot and killed, two drowned, five were unaccounted for, thought to have drowned in the bay’s swirling waters, and the remainder were recaptured. Only two actually succeeded in reaching the mainland, but even they were recaptured.

  On 11 June 1962, two brothers, John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris carried out one of Alcatraz’s most daring escape attempts. They chiselled their way through the damp concrete around a steel grille, giving them access to a utility corridor that ran behind their cells. They contrived tools such as a metal spoon soldered with silver from a 10 cent coin and ingeniously constructed an electric drill using a stolen vacuum cleaner motor, the noise of which was hidden by accordions that were played during the prison music hour. The rivets from the grill were replaced by rivets fashioned from soap. They left dummies made from papier mâché and were in the bay by 10pm. They had stolen several raincoats from which they created a makeshift raft. Needless to say, articles relating to their escape were found washed up on a nearby island and the official report into the escape states that the three men drowned.

  Alcatraz opened its doors to a number of infamous residents over the 29 years it served as a federal prison. Robert Stroud arrived there in 1942 and spent 17 years at Alcatraz for murder. He became famous as the Birdman of Alcatraz, taking solace from keeping birds in his cell. The most notorious gangster of them all, Al ‘Scarface’ Capone, arrived in 1934 after having received special treatment in his former prison in Atlanta, running his organisation while incarcerated and receiving special privileges by bribing guards. After four-and-a-half years, however, he began to show the debilitating effects of the syphilis, that would kill him a few years later, and was transferred to Terminal Island prison in Los Angeles. George ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly spent time there, as did several members of the Purple Gang, the leader of Boston’s Winter Hill Gang, James ‘Whitey’ Bulger and Alvin Karpis, Public Enemy Number One and member of the murderous Karpis-Barker Gang during the 1930s. Karpis became Alcatraz’s longest-serving inmate, spending more than 25 years there, from August 1936 until April 1962.

  Alcatraz became prohibitively expensive to run, however. While at the start of the 1960s it cost $3 (£1.50) a day to keep a prisoner in an ordinary American institution, it cost almost $10 (£5.00) a day to keep a prisoner in Alcatraz. There was also a serious pollution danger posed by the sewage from the 250 prisoners and 60 families who lived on The Rock. A new prison to replace ‘The Rock’, was built at Marion in Illinois, and Alcatraz was closed for good on 21 March 1963.

  The Manson Family

  10050 Cielo Drive, Los Angeles, USA

  Charles Manson and his 'family' have gone down in folk history as the most notorious serial killing cults of all time, but th
ey were largely unknown until the night of 9 August 1969 - when 'helter skelter' was unleashed on the wealthy celebrity inhabitants of 10050 Cielo drive. The extraordinarily violent events that took place there that night, meant the whole world would find out just who the Manson family were, and what they stood for.

  10050 Cielo Drive was designed by Robert Byrd for the French actress Michèle Morgan, in 1944. This French country-style structure sat in 1.2 hectares (three acres) of land at the end of a cul-de-sac in Benedict canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains, west of Hollywood. Facing east and overlooking Beverly Hills and Bel Air, past residents had included Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon, Henry Fonda and record producer, Terry Melcher (son of Doris Day) and his girlfriend, Candice Bergen.

  Charles Manson had spent more than half his 32 years in prison and institutions. In 1968, he was the leader of a group of hippies and drop-outs, called ‘the Family’ which had been living in the house of Beach Boy, Dennis Wilson. Wilson had expressed enthusiasm for some songs that Manson had written and introduced him to Terry Melcher at 10050 Cielo Drive. Melcher, however, was not as impressed as Wilson and decided he did not want to record Manson’s songs. Eventually, Wilson and Melcher stopped taking his calls, and Manson was infuriated.

  Not long after this, Melcher moved out of the Cielo Drive house, and it was rented by film director, Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate. Every so often, however, Manson would turn up at the house looking for Melcher, to be told, on more than one occasion, that he had moved.

  Manson developed a strange philosophy that was partly based around the music of The Beatles. He assimilated their work, especially the newly released White Album into his belief that the blacks in America’s cities would shortly rise up and slaughter the whites. He believed that The Beatles were talking directly to the Family through their lyrics.

  In Topanga Canyon, he finessed his vision of the impending apocalypse, calling it ‘Helter Skelter’, after a track on the White Album. The Family would be safe while the killing was going on, he said; they would go into hiding in ‘the bottomless pit’, a secret city beneath Death Valley.

  A few months later, on the night of 9 August 1969, Manson, having come to the conclusion that he would have to show the blacks the way, unleashed Helter Skelter. He ordered Family members, Charles ‘Tex’ Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins and Linda Kasabian to go to Cielo Drive and ‘totally destroy everyone in it as gruesome as you can.’

  Arriving at the quiet, secluded house, they cut the phone lines and climbed the fence into the grounds. A car approached and Watson instructed the girls to hide in some bushes. Pulling out a gun, he shot the car’s driver dead. The young man in the car was eighteen-year-old Stephen Parent, who had been visiting William Garretson, a caretaker living in the guest house on the property. Watson then cut a hole in a screen at an open window and told Kasabian to wait at the gate. He and the two other girls climbed in through the window.

  Wojciech Frykowski, a friend of Polanski, was sleeping on the sofa in the living room. ‘I’m the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s business,’ Watson chillingly announced. The other occupants of the house were rounded up: Tate, Jay Sebring, (America’s top men’s hair stylist) and twenty-five year-old Abigail Folger (a coffee heiress).

  Watson tied Tate’s and Sebring’s necks together and threw the other end of the rope over a beam so that they would choke if they tried to escape. Watson then stabbed Folger several times. Frykowski freed his hands from the towel they had used to tie him up and tried to escape, but Watson shot him twice. At this point, Kasabian appeared, trying to bring a halt to proceedings, saying that someone was coming.

  Folger, bleeding profusely, ran to the pool area where Krenwinkel and Watson stabbed her repeatedly. Frykowski was also stabbed by Watson while trying to crawl across the lawn. He was found later with 51 stab wounds to his body. Meanwhile, in the house, Sharon Tate was pleading for her life and that of her unborn baby. Atkins told her she did not care about her or her baby and she and Watson stabbed her 16 times.

  Manson had asked them to leave a sign when they left. So, Atkins grabbed a towel and wrote the word ‘pig’ on the front door in Sharon Tate’s blood.

  The following night it was the turn of Leno LaBianca, a supermarket executive, and his wife, Rosemary, who were brutally murdered.

  Eventually, it became clear that Charles Manson and his followers were connected to the killings and, in October, the desert ranches on which they were living were raided, and a couple of dozen people, including Manson, were arrested. Meanwhile, Susan Atkins confessed to detectives that she had been involved in the killing of a man called Gary Hinman. She also shared her story about the Sharon Tate murders with the women with whom she shared a cell.

  Warrants were issued for Charles Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian in the Tate case, and they were noted as suspects in the LaBianca case. Soon after, Kasabian had handed herself in to police, they were all under arrest. Kasabian had not taken part in the actual killings, and was granted immunity in exchange for testifying against the others.

  The girls tried to twist their stories to take all the blame themselves and spare Charles, but, on 25 January, 1971, Manson, Krenwinkel and Atkins were found guilty of all seven charges of murder, and, Leslie Van Houten, who had been involved in the LaBianca murders, was found guilty of two counts of murder. Watson was found guilty on all seven counts later in the year. They were sentenced to death, but their sentences were commuted to life after the US supreme court declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972.

  10050 Cielo Drive was occupied for a while by rock star Trent Reznor, of the band Nine Inch Nails, and was the site of sessions for his album Downward Spiral as well as sessions for Marilyn Manson’s Reznor-produced Portrait of an American Family.

  In 1994, the owner, American television producer, Jeff Franklin, demolished the house and built a new house called Villa Bella. It was allocated the new street address of 10066 Cielo Drive.

  Jonestown

  Northwestern Guyana, South America

  Reverend Jim Jones was a power-crazed lunatic, who claimed, like so many others of his ilk, that God was on his side. He subjected his 'followers' to mental and physical torture at his jungle hide-out in Guyana, and killed those who tried to break free. The People's Temple became the people's prison and, ultimately, the people's grave.

  Jim Jones called them ‘White Nights’. His followers were ordered to line up. Then, when they had shuffled forward and arrived at the table, they would be given a small glass of red liquid to drink. They were informed that the liquid contained poison and that they would be dead within 45 minutes. However, when 45 minutes had passed, the Reverend Jones would explain that the poison was not actually real and that they had just been through a loyalty test. Chillingly, he would add that the time was approaching when it would not be a test – it would be necessary for them to take their own lives.

  It was a grim dress rehearsal for what would occur on the night of 18th November 1978.

  Jim Jones was born, in 1931, in Crete, Indiana and became obsessed with religion after finding it hard to make friends as a child. By 1947, aged just sixteen, he was preaching on street corners in both black and white neighbourhoods, sharing the wisdom and knowledge that he believed he possessed and was obliged to share with others. After selling pet monkeys door to door, to raise sufficient funds to start his own church, he founded Wings of Deliverance, later changing the name to the People’s Temple. In 1964, his tiny church became affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, and Jones had access to a much larger congregation. His message became one of social justice and racial equality and this, coupled with the miracle healings he carried out during his sermons, helped to recruit many poor, uneducated Afro-Americans to his church. The People’s Temple worked to feed the poor, find employment for the jobless and help ex-criminals and drug addicts put their lives back together. Many of these people, weak and disconnected from society would, in turn, become me
mbers of the church.

  The People’s Temple expanded, recruiting large numbers of new members and opening several churches and a headquarters in San Francisco. New recruits would find an organization based on brotherhood. They would witness Jones’s miracle healings with putrid, cancerous tissue being ‘torn’ from people’s insides and listen to his predictions. Little did they realize, however, that he had other members rifle through congregation members’ rubbish to find out things about them that he could ‘miraculously’ surprise them with during his sermons.

  Members had to undergo different levels of commitment until, eventually, they had given Jones everything – property, social-security payments and savings – and had renounced all outside ties. They could not leave because they, quite simply, had nowhere to go. They received room and board and a $2.00 (£1.00) a week allowance.

  In Jones’s eyes, this type of socialism or communalism was the manifestation of God. His miracles, healing of the sick and care for the poor were proof that he was, indeed, the living Christ.