Blood in the Water

by Thompson, Heather Ann

  Later that night, Dunbar sat down with several reporters, including Lawrence Beaupre of the Rochester Times-Union, and repeated this story, which had already been spreading like wildfire among the troopers who’d seen Mike Smith bleeding from the gut and then heard that this was because he had been castrated by the biggest black man in the yard. By that hour so-called eyewitness accounts included not only this castration, but claims as well about how the prisoners had also “mutilated faces with knives and…disemboweled a guard.”16

  These horrific stories electrified the press as much as the day’s earlier news that all of the dead hostages had been murdered in cold blood by knife-wielding inmates.17 And to top off these stories, according to a statement sent out on the AP wire by the end of the day: “A spokesman for Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller said several of the hostages had been dead for several hours before State moved into the prison in force.”18 This news item from the highest office in the state of New York would turn out to have been based on nothing but the wholly unfounded opinions of at least five correction officials, who had called into a hotline set up by Wim Van Eekeren, a deputy commissioner of corrections based in Albany, to discuss their thoughts on the retaking. During one such call, Allen Mills, the director of the Department of Correction Industries, offered his opinion that the hostages had “been dead a long time,” which indicated to him that the prisoners “never intended to release them.”19

  The inflammatory stories of prisoner depravity reported by New York state officials found their way onto the front pages of the nation’s most highly regarded newspapers as dawn broke the morning after the retaking. “In this worst of American prison riots,” The New York Times reported, “several of the hostages—prison guards and civilian employees—died when convicts slashed their throats with knives.” The paper then went on to editorialize, “The deaths of [the hostages] reflect a barbarism wholly alien to our civilized society. Prisoners slashed the throats of utterly helpless, unarmed guards.” The piece noted that the “inmates responsible for the killing of the hostages at Attica Prison will be liable for the death penalty under New York State law.”20 The New York Daily News, in an article headlined “I Saw Seven Throats Cut,” recounted the ordeal of one trooper who experienced “the agony of witnessing the massacre etched into his sweating face,” after seeing the “cons” “just slit throats.”21 After informing its readers that “nine hostages were killed by inmates,” the Los Angeles Times quoted Governor Rockefeller’s view that these were “ ‘cold-blooded killings’ by revolutionary militants.”22 The Washington Post also reported “Convicts Kill Nine Hostages.”23 Thanks to the Associated Press wire service, the story of prisoner barbarism made headline news in the local newspapers of almost every midsized city and small town in America.24

  Whipped into a frenzy by all the inflammatory press reports, citizen telegrams flooded state and prison officials from the governor on down, expressing both support for the strong stand they had taken for law and order and fury at the prisoners who had launched the rebellion. One of the more blunt messages read “Amnesty no, Smith and Wesson yes. Good job.” Another writer expressed his opinion that “there should have been no surviving inmates after the cellblock was cleared.”25 The observers were also attacked: “Too bad [that] Wicker and Kunstler got out alive,” read one letter jointly signed by a husband and wife.26

  The “Letter to the Editor” sections of the country’s magazines and newspapers were soon filled with equally virulent expressions of rage toward the “murderous convicts,” those “desperately sick men whose…lawlessness cannot be tolerated,” and those “evil, vicious enemies of society”—not to mention “the thoughtless idiots on the outside who support them.”27

  In the immediate aftermath of the retaking, though, not all citizens and media wanted prisoners to pay an even higher price than they already had for their uprising. Some felt that the nation needed to take more time to assess what had happened at Attica and openly questioned the violence of the retaking. A week after the retaking, talk show host David Frost, for example, scrapped his regularly scheduled 8:30 Monday night show on New York City’s Channel 5 (WNEW) in favor of moderating a live ninety-minute discussion of Attica that offered some more critical perspectives on the way the rebellion had been ended. Those he invited to join him included Leo Zeferetti, head of Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association of New York City, Attica observers Clarence Jones and Lewis Steel, and one guard who had been held during the Tombs rebellion the previous year.28 After a heated discussion with various opposing views, Frost closed by saying gravely, “We end with a prayer for everybody who lost somebody.”29

  There were also those who went public with their feelings that the men in the prison might have rebelled for good reason and had shown remarkable humanity toward others throughout the siege. As one citizen wrote to Time, “The inmates, branded ‘animals’ by many, were animals only by virtue of the conditions under which they were forced to live. For a fact, zoo animals live better than do these prisoners, and zoo animals are not even supposedly being ‘rehabilitated.’ ”30 Several notable penal reformers also expressed their dismay at how law enforcement handled the retaking, as did several prison reform publications such as Penal Digest.31 The NAACP also chimed in. Its official publication, The Crisis, referred to what had happened as “the awesome Attica tragedy.” Mainstream black publications such as Ebony tried to focus on the necessity of finding the “cure for prison riots” rather than simply blaming them on depraved inmates.32

  After the rebellion’s end some members of Congress weighed in as well. Henry Bellmon, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, stated that he was “stunned and outraged” by the “violent and bloody episode at New York State’s Attica State Prison…[a] slaughter of human life [that] was more horrifying than any such event in recent times.”33 To him prison riots were “inevitable as long as our prisons remain in the condition they are in” and, as important, “the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration [set up in 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson to offer substantial new support to both police and prisons] has not used its resources to change the system, but rather to perpetuate it.”34 Perhaps no congressman was more outspoken, though, than Attica observer Herman Badillo. He tried to make clear to his fellow members of the House that the retaking had been a tragedy of monumental proportions. There should have been no rush to end the rebellion in this violent way, particularly, he pointed out, since the prisoners were going nowhere and the hostages were being protected. Even the early demand for transport to “a non-imperialist country” had had “no support at all” as the rebellion wore on, he explained, which in his view was “extraordinary, because I understand there were more than 200 prisoners who had life sentences.”35

  While the state tried to focus Americans’ attention on alleged prisoner depravity, younger Americans and those in the antiwar and civil rights movements also weren’t buying it. An article that appeared in The Nation on September 27, 1971, summed up their views and concerns:

  Attica will evoke the bloodiest prison rebellion in U.S. history. It will take its place alongside Kent State, Jackson State, My Lai and other traumatic events that have shaken the American conscience and incited searing controversy over the application of force—and the pressures that provoke it….Since most of Attica’s prisoners are black, many blacks saw the event as yet another manifestation of America’s deep-rooted racism….White liberals—and not liberals alone—interpreted Attica as, at the very least, a measure of the bankruptcy of the U.S. prison system.36

  People from all political persuasions and age groups could at least agree that the American prison system was in serious trouble. From the point of view of the left this stemmed from racism and neglect, whereas from the perspective of conservative power brokers like Nelson Rockefeller this was thanks to “the highly-organized, revolutionary tactics of militants.”37 Indeed, it was Rockefeller’s deeply held belief that he had thwarted a revolutionary plot to destabilize the nation th
at allowed him to take such undiluted pride in how things had transpired on the morning of September 13. When the governor faced the media on the day after the retaking, he not only reiterated the falsehood that the prisoners had “rejected all efforts at a peaceful settlement, forced a confrontation, and carried out cold-blooded killings they had threatened from the outset,” but he shared with the media his enthusiasm for how the Attica rebellion had ended.38

  “We can all be grateful,” he began, “that the skill and courage of the state police and correction officers, supported by the National Guard and sheriffs’ deputies, saved the lives of 29 hostages, and that their restraint held down casualties among prisoners as well.”39

  Governor Nelson Rockefeller takes the podium at a press conference on September 15. (Courtesy of The New York Times)

  Rockefeller’s positive feelings about the decision he had made to take Attica with force had everything to do with the reaction he had received from the White House. At about 11:30 on the morning of the 13th, he first recounted the events of the retaking to Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, who soon afterward conveyed Rockefeller’s message to the president.40 By 12:37 p.m. President Nixon was in the Oval Office discussing all that he had just learned about the retaking with fellow Republicans Robert Dole, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., and H. R. Haldeman.41 “They killed seven of the guards….A bloody business,” Nixon told his aides, and worse, he went on, “one of [the guards] had been castrated.”42 Nixon was clear to the men assembled that, in his view, “Rockefeller handled it well” because, as the president put it, “you see it’s the black business…he had to do it.”43 To a one, these men felt strongly that this rebellion was of a piece with the revolutionary plots that had recently been hatched in the California system by black activists such as Angela Davis, famed leader from the Communist Party. All those assembled in the president’s office agreed that while the morning’s events made a particularly “gruesome story,” news of the slashings and castration would go a long way toward discrediting America’s “bleeding hearts” like “the Tom Wickers of the world.”44 “I think this is going to have a hell of a salutary effect on future prison riots,” Nixon said. “Just like Kent State had a hell of a salutary effect….They can talk all they want about force, but that is the purpose of force.”45

  When the president finally spoke with Rockefeller at 1:38 p.m., he wanted him to know that the White House was behind him one hundred percent.46 “I know you have had a hard day,” Nixon greeted Rockefeller, “but I want you to know that I just back you to the hilt….The courage you showed and the judgment in not granting amnesty, it was right….I don’t care what they say…you did the right thing.”47

  The governor was thrilled. Given the “castration of the guard,” Rockefeller stressed, they did indeed need to go in with force.48 When Rockefeller went on to report that, actually, the prisoners had killed some guards prior to the retaking, Nixon reacted more cautiously. “You can prove that can’tcha?” he said warily, to which Rockefeller gave his assurances.49 Of course, the governor conceded, it was likely to be “a Catholic hospital” that would be dealing with the hostage deaths, and therefore, “it’s outside of our jurisdiction” (implying that he might have had some sway over media reports had the hospital been a publicly run and funded institution), but he was confident that his information would nevertheless be corroborated.50 The bottom line, Rockefeller confirmed for Nixon, was that the entire rebellion had been masterminded by African Americans. “The whole thing was led by the blacks,” he said, and he assured the president that he had sent in the troopers “only when they were in the process of murdering the guards.”51 Rockefeller did warn the president that he was probably going to get some flak from New York City’s mayor, John Lindsay (whom Nixon referred to dismissively as “the New Democrat…the convert” since Lindsay had recently changed political parties), and that the mayor would “probably say that I should have gone up and all these deaths would have been saved,” but Nixon seemed unconcerned.52 To the idea that Rockefeller should have gone to Attica he said, “No Sir, no Sir.”53 After Nixon reiterated how much everyone in Washington supported his moves at the prison that morning, Rockefeller thanked him profusely, and signed off by saying, “We’ll do the mopping up now.”54

  As far as the families of the hostages as well as the prisoners were concerned, the “mopping up” was extremely slow, and didn’t seem to take them into account. Although the families of several hostages had been at the prison when they heard helicopters swooping over the yard, they had had to leave, because, as Richard Fargo’s wife, June, explained, “the tear gas was so bad we couldn’t stay.”55 Still, they felt certain that as soon as there was word on the fate of their loved ones inside, someone from the Department of Corrections would call them and let them know where to go and what to do next. But in fact there was no system in place for communicating injuries and deaths to family members.56

  Family members of hostages wait outside the prison. (Courtesy of the Democrat and Chronicle)

  Most of the news the hostage families received on the 13th came via the grapevine and rumor mill. Not surprisingly, much of it was inaccurate. As hostage wife Paula Krotz remembered it, “Early on the morning of the 13th I was at home and heard on the radio that they were going in….I hurried to the prison.”57 When the tear gas was dropped, Paula crawled into “Mike Smith’s father’s car with a towel over my face, and still the gas was terrible.”58 While she was sitting there, however, she heard someone say that her husband had been taken to St. Jerome’s Hospital so she drove off in a frenzy. Once there, though, she could learn nothing. Not locating her husband there left her “feeling so faint that I knelt down on the floor and held my head down.”59 Hours later she did find her husband, Paul, at Genesee Hospital, but by then she was so distraught she could barely believe that the man lying there was really her husband.

  Hostage Mike Smith’s wife, Sharon, passed an equally nightmarish morning. She had been at the prison when the shooting had commenced and, like June Fargo, had been so overcome by terror and by the effects of the CS gas that a member of the news media brought her into their Winnebago camper trying to calm her by telling her “Don’t worry Mrs. Smith, they aren’t shooting real bullets, they are using rubber bullets.”60 When the hostages who had survived were finally brought out, she had no idea if Mike was among them or, if he was, where they had taken him. Frantically calling hospital after hospital, she finally got word at 4:00 p.m. that he had been taken to St. Jerome’s. When she met with a doctor in the intensive care ward there she was told, “Your husband is in critical condition. We will be lucky if he lives through the night.”61

  Ann D’Arcangelo, the young wife of guard John D’Arcangelo, was equally in the dark about what had happened to her husband. “I was at my apartment,” she remembered, when, at about 10:30 that morning, she finally received a call from someone at Attica telling her the wonderful news that her “husband was out on his way to a hospital and to stay off the phone.”62 Elated, she thought, “Oh my god, they saved him,” and then waited patiently for someone to call with more information.63 She received no further news for several hours, and “finally, around two in the afternoon, I started frantically calling every hospital in the phone book from Buffalo to Rochester….The hospitals had never heard of him. Then around four or five in the afternoon I received a call from Superintendent Mancusi. He told me that John was a casualty.”64 The prisoners had killed her husband, the warden told her, and now she was supposed to “go to some church basement to identify John’s body.” When she arrived, she felt so light-headed and ill that she could barely walk. “The place,” she described, “smelled of blood and dirt.”65

  Ann Valone also spent all of Monday morning desperate to know what had happened to her husband, Carl. Finally, to her tremendous relief she received a call from a nun who told her “your husband is in Genesee Memorial ER.”66 Thrilled, she shared the news with their children, and daughter Mary Ann began planning a party at the hou
se—calling all of the family’s friends to share the great news.67 Meanwhile, Ann rushed to the hospital. Once there, however, all was ominously quiet, and no one would tell her anything about where Carl was or how he was doing. “Then Dr. Jenks came out,” she recalled. “He said I couldn’t see him because he was dead. That was really traumatic for me. I just went to the chapel to pray.”68 She couldn’t in that moment bear to think about going home. Her “kids were all at home celebrating,” and she just couldn’t imagine being the one to have to tell them, “No, he’s dead!”69 Deep down, she also wondered whether she could even believe the doctor. After all, someone had told her he was alive, and now this doctor was saying he was dead. Did he know what her husband looked like? Finally, though, she “got someone who knew him to ID him” and she realized that she now had to go home to break four children’s hearts.70 Break their hearts she did. Mary Ann just kept yelling, “No, no, no!” and, furious with her mother, insisted that she didn’t know what she was talking about because on the phone they had told her “that my dad is alive.”71 But when she saw the priest at the door, she understood with a monumental sense of betrayal and despair that her father had indeed been killed.

  For the families of the prisoners there was even less information available regarding their loved ones’ fate. Hearing nothing at all from prison officials, approximately forty relatives of Attica prisoners from Rochester, “mostly women,” converged on the Monroe County Medical Examiner’s Office and “gathered in the drizzling rain…in a vain effort to get from the autopsy reports…the names of the dead and the hospitals to which the injured had been taken.” Doris Session, the mother of three children, trying desperately to learn news of her husband, Josh, begged, “If they’re in the hospital, why can’t we know what hospital so that we can see them? They’re people.” Ethel Whitaker was frantic to know what might have happened to her brother. She first tried to call the prison and the police department but, she explained, “They hang up on us, they won’t even call us.” Prisoner relative Ella Greer had a similar account. “The police department cursed my mother-in-law out” when she had tried to get some news the previous night.72 Families from Buffalo also grouped together to learn some news and, finding out nothing, they began dubbing the city of Attica “Up South.”73