Blood in the Water

by Thompson, Heather Ann

  Douglass had never been persuaded that the prisoner conditions at Attica were that grave. In his view their grievances largely came down to “the number of showers and the amount of fresh fruit you got, and whether or not they had alternatives to pork in the diet.”1 What is more, he didn’t think they were a sympathetic group. As far as Douglass was concerned, “These were…the most hardened, toughest of New York’s criminal inmate population. These guys were there for long sentences, mostly murder, arsons, rapes. These were the worst of the worst.” By Sunday it was clear in Douglass’s mind that Attica’s prisoners really just “wanted a confrontation….The prison yard [was] starting to become barricaded with mattresses. They were fashioning weapons, they soaked mattresses in gasoline, and it looked like they were getting ready for some kind of a battle.”

  Now the battle was over. As Douglass saw it, “the gunfire [had] ended very quickly…[and] we got the hostages out.” The state’s job had been to restore order and so “they went in, they did it, and they restored order.”

  Still, he knew that what mattered was how the next few days would unfold. If the media began feeding on this thing, Douglass thought, then what should be “regarded as a reasonably successful effort to put down a terrible prison riot” might turn “into a bit of a nightmare for the governor.”

  24

  Speaking Up

  On the morning of September 13, as hostages began coming out of the prison, the retaking had initially seemed like a success to the men whom Rockefeller had sent to Attica on his behalf. But within twenty-four hours, it was beginning to seem like a major disaster—one that would require significant public relations maneuvering. When Wyoming County district attorney Louis James, the man who had the most immediate legal jurisdiction over Attica, arrived at the prison late that morning, even he was shaken by what he saw, and immediately made it clear to the men on the governor’s staff that this was a far bigger mess than his office was equipped to address.1 There were simply too many dead bodies, too many people inside who were in awful shape and might still die, and, frankly, too many questions looming about why things had happened as they had. As he said to them, “ ‘Gentleman, the size of this thing, look out the window, you can just visualize the hundreds of possible cases that need to be investigated. I don’t have the staff to cope with it.’ ”2

  Alarmed, Rockefeller counsel Howard Shapiro hastened to confer with his other trusted legal advisors, Robert Douglass and Michael Whiteman, and it was decided they would ask the deputy attorney general, Robert E. Fischer, to give an early assessment of the legal situation at Attica. He was “to overlook the thing from a law enforcement point of view; that is, a prosecution of any of the criminal events.”3 In turn, Fischer sent his assistant attorney general, Anthony Simonetti, to the prison to suss things out. Simonetti arrived on the scene fairly early on the 13th as the chaos there continued to unfold.4 It wouldn’t be until several days later, on September 17, that Rockefeller made the official announcement that Fischer had assumed direction of the investigation into the rebellion and retaking at Attica, but the governor had made sure to have his keen legal eyes on the ground well before that.5 In fact, the call to Fischer, and Simonetti’s almost immediate presence on the scene, were clear indicators that the governor had very quickly understood that his troopers’ actions on the 13th might land him in hot water. That Rockefeller looked to Fischer’s office to handle this potentially messy legal situation was significant. Fischer headed up the state’s Organized Crime Task Force (OCTF), a unit that was set up to go after thugs and gangs. Rockefeller chose this unit to investigate the Attica uprising because he had from the beginning been convinced that it had been the result of a left-wing revolutionary conspiracy. He hoped that the same laws that Fischer used to prosecute organized crime might be applicable here.

  DOCS deputy commissioner Walter Dunbar surveys D Yard after the retaking. (Courtesy of the Democrat and Chronicle)

  As the Rockefeller administration readied itself for a backlash, and as civil rights lawyers from across the state were working any angle they could think of to get into Attica to see what was happening, the county morgues near the prison were receiving the bodies. The number of corpses lying on the floor of the prison’s maintenance building was such that pathologists from three different counties were alerted of the many autopsies needed. Some bodies were in nearby hospitals in Batavia, some went to the office of the Erie County medical examiner in Buffalo, and the remainder—nineteen prisoners and eight hostages—went to Rochester to the Monroe County medical examiner’s office of Dr. John Edland and his assistant, Dr. G. Richard Abbott.6

  When Dr. Edland received the call requesting that his office take the bulk of the Attica victims, he agreed but had to put his office’s disaster plan into effect, thus allowing for him to bring in three additional medical examiner physicians to assist with the work.7 These doctors quickly made their way to the ME’s office, only to have to wait until past midnight for the bodies to arrive. Edland and Abbott were speechless as they watched state troopers back two large trucks into the garage bay of their facility, lock the garage door, and proceed to unload stretcher after stretcher onto the cement floor.

  By 12:20 Tuesday morning, September 14, the morgue’s garage was full—crowded not just with dead bodies but with troopers and other state officials who insisted on remaining in the room. The state troopers, as well as various members of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, were determined to watch as each body was undressed and autopsied, and State Police photographers were on hand to snap pictures. Members of law enforcement were clearly fearful of what the autopsy process might reveal, and like Rockefeller’s men, they wanted to maintain as much control over the aftermath of the retaking as they could.8 Dr. Edland had been the one to autopsy William Quinn on September 12, and in that case he had had no trouble ruling that the cause of death had been “severe head injuries” due to “alleged assault by prison inmates.”9 These deaths, however, were much more controversial.

  Another body is unloaded at the morgue. (Courtesy of the Democrat and Chronicle)

  But Dr. Edland was a consummate professional who did not think politics and medicine should mix. It wasn’t that he had no interest in the world around him; indeed he was a registered Republican and had vacillated between a career in law or medicine—deciding to become a pathologist precisely so that he could have a foot in both arenas. He considered it his job to provide accurate answers about the cause of death to the family members of the deceased—whatever those causes were. How his findings might affect public opinion about the Attica retaking, or the political careers of those in charge, would have no influence on how he did his work.10 He had been the chief medical examiner of Monroe County for three years and in that time had earned a solid reputation as both a hard worker and a decent man.

  Dr. Edland and his assistant, Dr. Abbott, got to work immediately. First, they had to hose down each body because of their “heavy contamination with pepper gas,” and then, before starting on any autopsy, the doctors made sure that the medical photographer, Ed Riley, took X-rays of the body.11 Meanwhile, the fact that state troopers kept milling around and trying to oversee everything was unnerving to the morgue personnel. From the moment Riley turned on the X-ray machine, and they could clearly see the many bullets and buckshot pellets lodged deep in the prisoners’ bodies, both Abbott and Edland understood why the troopers were so concerned. By 4:30 a.m. it was patently obvious that “the hostages had all been shot, and that there were no slashed throats or genital mutilations.”12 This, of course, was not at all what state officials had told the media and the doctors were aware of this. With more than forty troopers crowding the hallways, hovering over them and mumbling under their breath, the two pathologists continued to search dutifully for any signs of slashed throats as cause of death. But all that they could find were two knife cuts near hostage throats, and “the wounds [were]…on the back of the neck,” and “less than a tenth-of-an-inch deep.”13 As bot
h doctors knew, if someone is going to try “to seriously harm or kill somebody with a knife wound to the throat, he’s going to do it from the front.”14

  Perhaps even more alarming to the troopers than the fact that none of the men had died from knife wounds was that everyone was well aware that the only people at Attica who had guns on the 13th of September were members of law enforcement.

  Even with hostile stares boring into their backs, Edland and Abbott pushed on, trying to learn as much as possible about how each man at Attica had died. It was clear, for example, that hostage John Monteleone had died from a gunshot wound to the chest that had entered his body, then traveled downward until it perforated his “aorta and the left lung.”15 Deeply embedded in Monteleone’s chest Dr. Abbott found “a mushroomed lead, partially jacketed bullet bearing numerous rifling grooves,” which he identified as coming from a “forty-four caliber.”16 It was equally obvious that prisoner L. D. Barkley had been shot in the back, where there was “a 1 x ½ inch gunshot entrance wound with well-defined contact ring,” and that this bullet had caused “extensive destruction of the lower lobe of the right lung.” The bullet, “a badly fragmented jacketed bullet of slightly greater than 25 caliber,” was lodged in his right fourth rib. Barkley had been shot at close range.17 Sam Melville, whom police had particularly hated, died when bullet fragments tore up his lung, causing him to bleed to death.18 Whether this supported later prisoner reports that Melville had been alive after the retaking with his arms up in surrender could not be settled by his autopsy.19

  As the long hours dragged on, and still finding nothing but gunshot wounds, Edland and Abbott decided to go home to get a bit of sleep before finishing the fifteen autopsies they still had to do. The doctors and their staff had been up for over twenty-four hours, and by 6:30 a.m. they felt “that a break was necessary in order for us to complete our work in the careful objective manner that was required.”20 After what amounted to little more than a catnap, however, within ninety minutes the pair were back at it, and both were growing ever more unsettled. From the moment the bodies had arrived in his facility Edland in particular had felt intimidated by the presence of the troopers, and, once it became clear what the autopsies revealed, he felt that he was being “subjected to pressure” to change his findings.21 He had also been told to pay special attention to the bodies of two prisoners, Barry Schwartz and Michael Privitera, whom troopers had found in D Block after the retaking and who had died, these same troopers insisted, under suspicious circumstances. Edland immediately knew why he had been instructed to focus on these bodies—these men had clearly been killed before the morning of the retaking—presumably by prisoners. The autopsies revealed not only that Schwartz had been badly beaten up, but his neck had been cut so deeply that it had severed both of his carotid arteries and his neck muscles were fully exposed, and his body had more than thirty-six stab wounds.22 Michael Privitera’s end hadn’t been any prettier. His skull had been fractured, his throat slashed, and he had suffered twenty-one deep stab wounds.23

  Although the troopers might have hoped that all future media attention would focus on these savage killings, not those of the hostages’, it was clear to both doctors that the real news story here was how many of its own men the state had killed and how many prisoners had been shot to death when they themselves had no guns. Once the public knew how many men had died from trooper bullets, Edland suspected, all hell was going to break loose.24 And, he also knew, it wasn’t going to be long before this news broke given that newspaper reporters were “besieging” his office “with requests for more information.”25

  With each passing hour, Dr. Wendell Ames, the director of the Monroe County Health Department, grew more worried about the media. Indeed, he specifically asked Dr. Edland not to speak to reporters until something official was set up because, as he said, “We don’t want a trial in the press in advance of the investigations that are to be done.”26 As soon as Governor Rockefeller’s team heard what Edland was discovering they too panicked. The governor’s office immediately sent its own directive that no news be leaked and made clear that Edland’s autopsies were going to be reviewed before any news conferences were called.

  To the dismay of all parties concerned, however, this news could not be contained. For starters, it was obvious to anyone who had been in the ME’s office and had seen the bodies that they were riddled with bullets and buckshot. And as soon as the hostages’ autopsies were completed and their bodies were released to funeral homes, countless other people would be able to see their wounds.27 But what really forced their hand was that Edland’s office supervisor leaked the autopsy findings to Dick Cooper, a reporter at a local paper, the Rochester Times-Union. Cooper ran back to his car and headed for the city room to file the story. “I knew the information I had was important but the weight of my knowledge did not hit me until I was on the road. If the hostages did not die from slashed throats and did in fact die of bullet and buckshot wounds then they must have been shot by the state police who were sent into Cellblock D to save them.”28 When Dick told his colleagues at the paper, they were stunned. Another Times-Union reporter, Lawrence Beaupre, recalled hearing the news. “I gasped. Everyone knew what that meant, since the prisoners reportedly had no firearms at all.”29

  Once Cooper broke the story of the gunshot wounds, suddenly “the shy, unassuming Dr. John Edland was thrust into the nation’s spotlight.”30 At 3:00 p.m. Tuesday, September 14, Edland held a national press conference. In it he gave only brief statements regarding his autopsy findings and then he took a few questions.31 Still, the effect of his words was electrifying. Attica observers like Arthur Eve, while appalled by Edland’s revelations, could not have been more grateful for this ME’s commitment to the truth. As he put it some months later, “Thank God for an honest medical examiner whose integrity was questioned for weeks by those whose integrity is questionable.” With guilt Eve recalled that he too had “repeated those lies [about the throat slashings] that evening in reporting to a large black group in Buffalo. I did not conceive that the Governor would so debase the truth in order to justify his actions.”32

  Within minutes of Edland’s press conference, the offices of Governor Rockefeller were bedlam. As Rockefeller attorney Michael Whiteman later put it, news of Edland’s findings “staggered us.”33 They had watched in dismay as Dr. Edland stood in front of a bank of reporters and calmly stated, “The first eight autopsies were on the cases identified to us as hostages. All eight cases died of gunshot wounds.”34 He then went on to say that “only one hostage had a ‘slight slash’ on the back of his neck.”35

  Rockefeller heard the news at his Fifth Avenue apartment in New York, and “was tremendously upset” by what he later described as a “very unfortunate and embarrassing situation.”36 He knew that he had to get to his office right away. He was not yet ready, however, to talk to the press. He managed to elude throngs of reporters waiting outside for his reaction to Edland’s report by “slipping through a side door when he left his apartment”; he escaped them once again “by entering a back door” of his office.”37

  But the governor’s attempt to spin Edland’s revelations had already begun, much of it focused on trying to cast doubt on the doctor’s competence and integrity.

  25

  Stepping Back

  Before making any public statement, Governor Rockefeller wanted to find out if Dr. Edland’s findings were correct. His main advisor at Attica, Robert Douglass, immediately advised George Infante, one of the top-ranking NYSP officials who had been on the scene during the retaking and its aftermath, to “make an extensive investigation and take notes on wound marks and so forth so that we would have a record to make sure that the coroner’s findings were accurate.”1 Rockefeller also dispatched Assistant Attorney General Anthony Simonetti, the man who would be conducting Fischer’s official investigation into what had happened at Attica, to meet personally with Edland about his autopsies.2

  When Edland sat down with Simonetti it w
as clear to him that state officials were very upset about his findings, and that they were now planning to have someone double-check his work. Sure enough, by 7:30 p.m. on September 14, he was informed that Dr. Henry Siegel of the Westchester County Medical Examiner’s Office would go to the various funeral homes where the hostages’ bodies had been sent to reexamine them.3

  Dr. Siegel wasn’t the only state official to be visiting those funeral homes. Terrified about what might come out about the retaking, troopers went out to obtain affidavits from directors and employees of these morgues stating “that there were in fact no gunshot wounds” to the hostages.4 Meanwhile on both the 13th and 14th troopers were themselves “running around to various morticians’ parlors and attempting to look at bodies…to see whether or not they could discern injuries other than those which were reported to have been recorded by the medical examiner,” and attempting to lean on funeral personnel to cover up the fact that gunshot wounds had killed the hostages.5

  Carl Valone’s widow, Ann, later recounted getting a call from the mortician at Gilmartin’s Funeral Home who wondered what he should do because, as he told her in a hushed breath, “a bunch of State Troopers wanted to be alone with his body.”6 An employee of the H. E. Turner Funeral Home on Main Street in Batavia received his own visit at home from troopers who wanted him to certify that slain hostage Richard Lewis had “no visible bullet wounds on the body.”7 And when the widow of Edward Cunningham went to see her husband’s body at Marley’s funeral parlor in downtown Attica, to her surprise she was greeted by Mr. Marley himself. Looking harried and scared, Marley proceeded to take her into the room where her husband’s body lay, put a finger to his lips, looked nervously around the area to make sure that none of the many troopers in the building were watching, and then slowly turned the body over so she could see for herself that he had been shot in the head.