Hello I’m Michael crail and you are listening to the prison officer podcast a place to have a conversation about the Forgotten cops that work in this country’s jails prisons and correctional centers a place for me to try to make sense of a career spent working inside the fence with some of the greatest
People that nobody sees or recognizes for the important job they do to keep this world safe if you love this podcast hit the follow button or better yet share with your family friends or co-workers well welcome everyone to the prison officer podcast uh tonight’s episode I’m really excited about I’ve
Got a uh not only a friend but a former co-worker who’s with us tonight Kenneth I’m sorry I’m want to back up do you want to be called Ken or Kenneth how do you normally as long as they don’t call me late for dinner paychecks I don’t
Care so so K fine okay I’ll go with that tonight I’ve got a very special guest he’s a friend and a former co-worker and author of several books about leworth and the area so uh Ken L Master welcome to the podcast I’m so glad to have you
Here it’s great to be here after retiring from Corrections it’s almost great to be well that’s true that’s true I I know where you’re coming from Ken is an author and historian of the United States penitentiary in lenworth he retired after 31 years in the correction field including working at the United
States disciplinary barracks in Fort lenworth the Kansas State Penitentiary and USP lenworth and so we’re going to talk with him tonight about how he got started what it was like working in some of those and and what got him excited and involved in reaching out and learning more about the history because
Ken’s done a lot with writing about the history and Gathering uh the history of that area and those prisons well let me just start Ken um I worked in Le in 1999 to 2001 so that’s when we worked together when did you start at lenworth
I started in July of 1983 at the federal prison it started in started out at the military prison in 1979 uh worked there from uh 79 to 82 and then from 82 to 83 I worked the Kansas State penitentiary in Lancing and in 1983 I finally got the call hey
Uh come join the big leag right I I know is with with myself back then the the application process was huge how many pieces of paper did you fill out to they used to have this stack of paper oh Lord I tell you what by the time I was done I
Think I wrote my autobiography up to that point anyway it it I mean it was quite a less absolutely let me take you back a little bit before that so where did you grow up at I am originally from Louisville Kentucky that’s L UA v u l for everybody that says
Louisville and I was born in 1960 just about like everybody else got out of high school I joined the army and Uncle Sam sent me to Fort mlen and after that I got sent West they didn’t give me a horse to get back east on so I stayed
Here married a local girl uh raised started my family here been here now 43 years oh wow yep so I’ve lived in Kansas long I actually lived in Kentucky so when they sent you out there now was that your first Duty station with the the military yes you went right
Into Corrections it’s my one and only I I graduated uh from the military police school and the uh Corrections uh school it was one of those that I told the army they could send me anywhere they wanted to and while I was in basic training the drill sergeants kept telling us you keep
SC up we’re going to send you to Le more right well I didn’t realize i’ screwed up that bad so tell me what the DB was like I mean I’ve driven by it and I’ve seen pictures of it known several people that worked there like yourself but uh tell
Me about what it’s like the DB was actually a pretty good experience and pretty Breakin point for care directions one of the things that separates the military particularly from civilian prisons is you know that the prisoners somewhere along the line had indepth training as far as discipline goes when
You get into the discipline part the military uh it’s a it’s a pretty stringent or back then it was pretty stringent uh to go through and most of the inmates were pretty easy to deal with I mean we had one character there that’s pretty Infamous with uh the
Federal Bureau of Prisons and that was uh Clayton Fountain oh he was just about sent to the military or federal prison by the time I got there we’ve had several Kenny Wayne Harrington was uh at the military prison and and funny story about Kenny Wayne Harrington was is he
Had actually escaped from the prison and was gone for two or three four years and they actually knew that he was hiding out on his parents’ property but he couldn’t c one day the uh the military decided that we’re going to send somebody down there and see what they
Can find well they found him out by a fishing hole and the guy walked up to him and says hey you know how’s a fishing and he got sitting there talking to him and they were fishing and as time went on they talked a little bit more and then
They came time for both of them to leave the guy got up put handcuffs on Kenny Wayne Harrington and said you’re going back to prison oh that’s cool yeah there’s you know you can get a lot solved over fishing apparently you can even capture but the yeah and and it really wasn’t that
Bad we had that uh we had a army retraining Brigade that uh started there and then they graduated that program they went out to uh Fort Riley where the US Army retraining Brigade actually is and you know nobody prepared me for the first trip I ever took out there and
I get out there and it’s like the uh the old days in in the Army when they in Marine Corp and what have you when they got you off the buses and they ran you to death for the next 8 hours and when the guy we pull the van
In we’ve got the inmat in the back that are getting ready to be taken into that process and here comes all these guys dressed as drill sergeant out there and they start screaming and hollering you know get your out of the van and me the driver jumped out of the van too was
Like Jesus Christ did you get out get scared of looking Jesus out of us boy I’ll tell you front leaning rest position yeah we did and and the the senior walked past us and says I wasn’t talking to you you that’s funny hey I I guess the other
Thing I always wondered about I mean with military you probably had some inmates who had specialized U military training and did you run into that quite a bit at the we had a guy we had several army officers there at the time the one uh Navy I think it was a lieutenant or
Lieutenant Commander maybe that was caught uh smoking marijuana in his in his uh airplane uh he was there uh we had a guy uh that was there that um Everybody called him brick and I can’t remember I mean this guy was built like a brick weightlifting and
Everything else and his mother died and when he went out at the front gate of the DB and went to the funeral with his escort he had more Ts salad on his uniform than anybody else in the oh wow he uh he was actually a Green Beret specialist
Yeah see that’s what I always wondered about and they’ve had oh yeah they they had every type of individual in the military that you could think of was there MH wow so how many years did you spend there uh two years nine months and 28 days and I wasn’t counting a single
Solitary one of I can tell so went from there uh proba you got a family at this time so you needed to keep working and uh that’s probably what sent you to Kansas State Penitentiary actually I had interviewed with a Fed right before I left the military and uh matter of fact
I was just talking to the guy that interviewed me if you remember Gary Henman yes yes he uh he was one of the ones that interviewed me and he told me he said you know we would hire you on a spot biggest problem is is you look way too
Young he said get when you get out of the military grow your mustache out you know the where it doesn’t look like Adolf Hitler and uh grow your hair ler interesting and reapply in six months and I did I grew my hair out uh longer grew my mustache out reapplied six
Months later and got interviewed right away and they pretty much basically told me my second interview was a formality that they had to go through and they gave me a start date I worked out at the State Penitentiary for just under a year but I also think that was actually a
Good building blf for career too because I think going from the military where everything was regimented and there was a disciplin uh code to the inmates uh to the State Penitentiary where uh boy I tell you what you run into all kinds there uh right and I
Actually did see my first murder there so it was kind of the the DB when I was there I wasn’t there too long before uh an inmate had attempted to stab me wow and it was in the dining room uh and we were clearing the dining room and and
In the military when the last inmate comes in the dining room and goes through the serving line and sits down at the table one of the uh officers stands there at the table with him and so they know who the last guy was and what time he got there okay and you give
A signal to the guy in the back of the dining room when he’s been there for 20 minutes right right and then we start clearing the dining room from the serving line to the back door or the entrance way to the dining room and we were clearing the dining room one
Morning after breakfast and this guy just looked at me and I told him this was time to go and he says you best be cool around me I said you know I said I ain’t being nothing around you it’s time to go right and he says I told you you
Need to be cool around me and he jumps up and all all I saw was something uh something bright in his hand shiny right and he was on my left side his hand was above his my head and all I did was I threw my arm straight up in the air my
Left arm and he went up my arm about six times with a he had evidently stolen and back then they were still using steel table wear and he had stolen the out of the dining room and honed it down into a point and he got me a good five six
Times up the arm right uh one of the things I didn’t one of the things out of this whole incident that I don’t ever recall doing uh is I broke his nose oh so just and I have no clue I really don’t have any recollection he even hit
Right because I I immediately started trying to back up and he had me backed up into a corner um I kept cutting you know how they teach you to cut angles right they don’t always get you out of the problem right yeah I mean I’m sure that was just
Reaction oh yeah it and it was just kind of as I’m back I’m trying to get away from him I saw something on a table that was shiny and you know everything’s going through your head at about 90 M hour at that point I grab it and I just
Throw it MH and because right before I’d seen this shiny object on the table I look up and all of the staff are walking out of the dining room getting ready to lock me in with his knucklehead to try and kill me wow and uh I looked down and I see
This this shiny object I just picked it up and slung it and when I slung it it hit the wall and it I I mean it made 25 different sounds as it went down the wall and one guy everybody called him Doc Savage because his last name was Savage and he turned around
And just happened to look at the noise and he called for he called for the troops to come back in and and they got the guy subdued and we got him down to six base which is the segregation unit there and it was you know it was history
After that and they I didn’t even have to appear before a court Marshal they sentenced him right out of right off of my written statement of witness statements right uh to more time in jail and they immediately got him out of the milit president sent him straight to the
FED which I understand he didn’t stay too long because uh uh apparently he got Crossways with somebody else and they took care of him in the federal system he was there probably about six months and he killed him oh but fix that problem yeah and yeah he didn’t run his
Mouth to anybody else after that one of the things that is was interesting about the military as well too is most people that work in penitentiaries they look at Special Operations response teams andert teams uh and and they see it as the never everyday function in their
Operation well I was part of the group that developed Special Operations response teams oh excellent for the that actually they started out in the military and a whole group of us were they called us the crash test dummies because we had no you start any program like that anywhere
In the military is no different it’s kind of one of those that uh here we’re going to start this program you guys are volunteered for it and by the way we don’t have any equipment such as flagfest helmets and stuff like that but we’re going to go out and beat you beat
Each other with broomsticks and mop handles and uh anything else we can we can procure out of the warehouse and cut the ends off sounds about right I will say if there’s a guy out there by the name of Angel Figaroa uh got two crushed
Fingers uh at the DB courtesy of be uh I did tell the VA that I had done it so he can lay his claim in now absolutely no those are the good times we had this guy oh yeah and we had this guy by the name of John Horn and he was
A Vietnam VD he had started out as a North Carolina highway patrolman and he got shot on duty he survived that and he was also a hostage negotiator and he was NE negotiating uh with a woman that was wanting to commit suicide and take her baby with her and by jumping off a
Building and he talked to her out of handing over the baby well she handed him the baby and he turned around to hand it off to another guy and when he turned around uh she opened him up from his shoulder all the way to his waist with a pair of librarian scissors
And he decided screw this it’s too dangerous I’m going to go to I’m going to join the Marine Corps and go to be ATN wow and and while he was there he trained with the rock Army the Korean military in a Kido and this guy became like a seventh or eighth degree black
Belt at a Kido so he’s he’s training us the the art of self-defense with no uh no mats no here we’re going to walk you through it no it’s I’m going to throw you if you eventually feel pain tap out of it well eventually did not enter into the
Conversation at all with him he it was pain right off the bat well I believe that because he trained you just exactly how he trained himself well doesn’t that help you uh build a memory quicker when you feel the pain well it it helps you build something I mean now that I’m 62
Years old I’m I’m I’ve built a lot of arthritis is that the truth yeah all those times that we did put on a vest or we we went in on those cell extractions with nothing but our hat turned backwards you feel them after you retire and and a lot of people don’t
Understand that that you know when we started doing this we would use a video camera to video what we did and we critiqued everything that we did to the point to where we got got different things like the fiveman force cell moves The Stomp and drag routine with the the
All of the different uh formations and stuff that that we do in that and it was one of those things that um we would go back and we would look at it and we’d say you know we need to do something different with this we need to do
Something different with that we like this we like that and that’s how all that’s got started right and and it was um it was a a by the name of uh Pat cohane that used to come over from the federal prison all the time and watch us
And Pat cohane carried all that stuff into the federal prison system and it eventually branched out and now every single solitary prison in the world uses it right yeah and I was surprised i’ had been doing a disturbance control for a long time and somebody handed me the
Field manual uh from the Army uh for disturbance control and uh I forget what they call it I it wasn’t mobile Field Force back then but riot control and everything that we were doing in the Federal Bureau of Prisons come was right in that manual and there might be an
Ugly picture of me in that manual God Only Knows uh I’d be the real skinny guy with no hair right so only time my life I was bald absolutely so you go from Kansas State Penitentiary you get hired on the feds now your big time what was that like I I
Know for me you know I I had to come back in there cuz I had 10 years in the state before I went feds so I wasn’t a rookie anymore but you can’t walk in there with that attitude you have to walk in with your ears open and your
Mouth shut and try to learn the the way of the new place so what was that like for you coming into the feds when I first started there in 1983 we actually had two guys and there were several other guys that started just a little
Bit later than they had but we had two guys there that started in 1948 1949 oh my gosh and it was definitely an experience working with some of those guys that had been there since the late 40s early 50s through the 50s and 60s um and trust me those guys were
Sharp I mean they they knew everything that was going on in that institution from the top to the bottom right they knew everything about that institution there wasn’t nothing that they didn’t know but boy I’m going to tell you what you talk about a group of individuals
Was a pain in the you know what when you go to Glenco and you’re down there and the instructors are saying uh this is how the Bop does it uh this is not how lenworth does it right they have the levven worth way and and I’m going to
Tell you what there’s no bigger truth to it than there is anything else because it’s just those guys are tough on you and I mean you talk about tough love if you can’t take take them you’ll never take the Ines and that was absolutely the thought and once you and it’s we had
One guy Charlie Nance I swear to God I didn’t think that guy could talk I thought he was a mute he wouldn’t look at you if you were a rookie he wouldn’t look at you wouldn’t talk to you wouldn’t say anything to you I remember one night we
Got in a tussle with an inmate in ACL house we finally got the guy subdued and down right and and I we get up get the guy out door and Charlie n turns around looks at me and he says great job there and I was stunned I looked at him
And I just gave him this look and he looked at me and I said damn you can told right you know you had John Drew as a lieutenant you had Ralph C as a lieutenant uh Jake guess and a lot of them guys had been around the went
Around the barn a couple of times and I tell you it it it was it was a TR tough crew to get through but once you got through it they pretty much basically you were part of the fraternity absolutely so I just I just realized so you started at uh lenworth in
1983 was that before or after uh clutz and Hoffman were murdered at Maran uh it was before Oh okay cuz that was kind of a I don’t know that was a lot of I can remember the day a lot of changes happened in the bureau I mean that was a
Shocking thing we lost two officers offers at the penitentiary at Maran in 83 uh if you tell me what you thought that day God didn’t work that more than that’s actually working day shift when that happened and when the uh Kutz got killed first thing in the
Morning the Bop went on a 12-hour shift operation and uh sent all the inmates back into work from work uh put them in the sail house it was open sail housee but and stuff but all the movements and everything were being really really tight andr and what the really big concern was
Is the fact that was this an isolated incident or was there’s something more to this because it involve Tommy silver stre right before I left that night because like I said we went on 12-hour shifts at that point Tommy Silverstein was are right before I left that night yeah Tommy Silverstein was
Aryan Brotherhood no he was part of the Aran Brotherhood so absolutely they were wondering if that spread and and that was their biggest concern so they they went to that operation well before I left that evening hawman was killed by Clayton Fountain and Clayton Fountain uh was Tommy Silverstein’s
Bestie and the the whole next couple of days out of that I mean it was it was quite an interesting time frame because everybody was on their toes everybody was watching all of the inmates and how they were going to respond and and I mean lenworth had a group of uh rather
Large group of the Aryan Brotherhood plus the Hell’s Angels at that point in time no and it was like I said I think it was shocking they had for two officers back then most people oh yeah you know when you start running into all of a sudden two officers in one
Institution are killed in separate incident is six hours apart six seven hours apart whatever it was uh it’s an eye opener and back then the bop’s operations was way different than it is now back then uh when you took inmates to the shower you would handcuff them in the
Front if you took them in an on an escort from a segregation unit or a holdover unit into the hospital or something like that they were all handcuffed in the front and the reason for that was is because there had been several incidences throughout the o where inmates were handcuffed from the
Back right and they either slipped and fell or whatever and got hurt or there was also incidences where because of the inmates had to be moved from one area to another they had to be passed by population inmates the population inmates would recognize them or they
Would you know there would be a hit on this guy and they would kill him right well the B thought was is if we handcuff them from the front they’ll be able to defend themselves and that opened the door for the ability for the inmates to also assault other inmates or assault staff
Absolutely and the incidences with with Kutz and Hoffman was is as they were escorting the inmates back from a shower and Silverstein turned around and looked at Kutz and said you mind if I get a book out of this sill Comm and practice back then I mean I’d seen it at lenworth
I’d seen it at other places right and I’d really thought at the time boy that is that is not the best thing in the world to be doing and Silverstein reached in the cell guy handed him shank took a homemade handcuff key and un hooked one shackle off the Handcuff and
He spun around and when he spun around he started stabbing cluts right and it was over before anybody could really react and what was going on so and it was the same thing with the other officer it was just a a situation that it happened so quick that
The by the time your brain responds to it it’s almost over sure just shocking and it did changed a lot of policies in the bureau and changed a lot of what we do let me ask you another question you mentioned some of the older officers that were there now uh alcatra has
Closed I think 63 64 did you still have some of those guys running 63 did you still have some of those guys running around because I know some of them came to the Federal Medical Center in Springfield um so I wondered if several of them came to leworth when
I got there uh I’m trying to think there was probably I think four or five staff that was there that had worked at alcatra one of them was Tom Lamar I can remember him uh because I worked with him when they did the um renovation of a house from
The old saell house to the new okay I worked on a uh that was a relief officer for uh the guys that were going on vacation and stuff like that they would put me in there uh cuz by the time I’d got to leworth I had already worked uh
Work details and outside Road details and stuff like that correct at the milit OR at the at the State Penitentiary and uh when I got to the DB uh they were Chang in two of the cell hous they were changing all the cell houses to Electric
Doors and I was on a security detail there working with those guys and actually learned how to work on uh the cells from some folder atoms when they changed them over to sliders at the DB so they put me in as the the second annual individual that relieved those
Guys at summer for vacation and Tom Lamar I know was one of the alcatra staff and I also had worked with a guy um out at the Kansas State Penitentiary and his name was Ross Perkins okay and me and Ross were were were good friends all the way up to the
Day he passed away he passed away a couple of years ago Ross was one of the last uh Correctional supervisors hired at Alcatraz and was there when it closed M and you talk about a textbook correctional officer Ross Perkins I always dubbed as the most professional correctional officer i’ ever seen in my
Life right never strayed from that personality when he was at work at any given time he treated everybody like they were human beings he treated them with respect he was firm he was fair he didn’t tell One inmate one thing and tell another inmate another if he didn’t know the answer he
Went and found it and got back with the inmate he was what a professional correctional officer looks like and if you could take a if you could take a diagram or a picture of professional correction officer it would be him right he was amazing individual to work
With I mean there was nothing that the guy was very astute in what he could do he knew his job inside and out uh and like I said he treated inmates like human beings right and sometimes that’s where you correctional officers and even older ones that have been around a while
Kind of getting a little bit of a problem area is is that some some guys want to be a tough guy when they put a uniform on and it’s not generally the case that that really needs to be I mean you can be firm and fair not be a brute
And when I tell people all the time you know I hear guys all the time in the industry now well I don’t care what you call me you can call me a guard you can call me this call me that well you know first of all there’s a lot of difference
Between a correctional officer and a guard yes guards were pre1 1930 they were hired because they were they had the ability to put down brute force with Brute Force right they were the guys that that you know they were 6’4 220 PBS of of raw muscle and steel and they met force with
Force and they had no formal training in anything they were just pretty much basically there if ity gets out of gets out of line take this club and whack him with right and then that’s what they did well after 1930 when the federal prison service developed into the
Federal Bureau of Prisons and they started educating their staff and sending them to training centers and and and the the early Bureau of Prisons officers didn’t accept the guys that were hired after 1930 they called them school boys oh wow and when they come back they come back from
Their training a lot of those officers back then would tell those young staff uh you know get your butt up on the Range and learn it how I did right they can’t teach you that in the school book and there and one of the big disparities
With the bureau back then and even with prisons all across the country was it didn’t matter whether you had 30 years or 30 minutes you were making the same pay ah so the animosity amongst the older staff towards the younger staff was was pretty Apparent at that
Point in time and then you had your you had your civilian staff that operated the hospital hospital all of the uh the construction details were all ran by civilian employees they weren’t ran by uh staff that were considered law enforcement mhm and the the disparity there was is is
That you had to have at least one officer on every work detail to supervise it because it wasn’t the Foreman’s job to supervise it it wasn’t the Foreman’s job to write a pass for an inmate to go somewhere right it wasn’t a Foreman’s job to break up two inmates
Fighting in the middle of the floor it was the officer’s job wow so when you had that disparity going on as well and I mean when I started researching the 1930 uh Riot that happened at Le all of the all of the noncustodial staff walked out of the
Institution and set up chairs on the front lawn and sat out on the front lawn and waited until they was all cleared and they were told they could go back to work to take a look at what happened in at their areas of operation and wow th ly you had 70 correctional officers
Putting down a riot in 1930 in an institution that had almost 4,000 inmates in it wow and that’s so foreign to us now with you know of course the way the bureau works now everybody’s trained as a law enforcement officer first you know everybody gets trained in disturbance control every year of course
We keep you know equipment on hand to outfit 10% of the staff not just 10% of the officers but 10% of the staff it was 30% for a long time but that’s recently changed so that’s just wow that’s that’s so different than what we’re used to now
But and one of the things I F found out yesterday talking with somebody was is that the Bureau of Prisons is actually thinking about separating uh non-custodial staff and civilian St and custody so going back to the way they’re talking about going back to the way it was back previous to 1930
Going back to hiring people you know as CMS workers as librarian Hospital workers as food service workers that are not custodial staff they’re they’re there because they can cook or put a Band-Aid on somebody or fix something and it’s not their job to enforce the institution’s rules or
Policies wow and I think that’s I think that’s going to take a lot kind of disturbing since I know that sorry about that go ahead I think that’s going to take a lot away from those staff you know the fact that they have the same power as an officer to do discipline I
Think helps them control their areas like a teacher or you know uh a CMS Foreman uh the inmates know that he can write an incident report and get them in just as much trouble as an officer could I think if you take that away from them
That’s going to hurt their job and their legitimacy inside there it’s going to hurt that but it’s also going to hurt because you’re going to get back to the uh two headmates rolling around in the middle of the floor and an officer or two or three trying to break it up and
Civilian staff just standing there saying it’s not my job to jump in the middle of that right right wow I I don’t know and it’s it’s I’ve also heard that yesterday and I found out yesterday from the same guy that there’s a pilot program to uh give officers uh billy
Clubs again wow interesting like I you know what I’m not he just said he just said clubs interesting and I’m thinking probably like you know like night sticks or something along that line but it really kind of it’s really kind of interesting to think about it that that the bureau is not going
Forward it’s going backwards wow and it’s you know you’re going back to and if you’re in this career long enough you find out that this this career is cylindrical yes you find out that you know you go through a period of the worst the worst word in Corrections is
Rehabilitation it it’s the most worn out word that actually means nothing in Corrections there’s you don’t rehabilitate if you ever take a look at definition of rehabilitate it means to put something back into its original form right well if it comes from if it comes from a deprived area of violence drugs gangs
Uh what have you uh then what are you going to rehab that guy into exactly the actual proper word for that is habilitate not rehabilitate okay you try to train the individual to be something different yeah and that’s where you go through eras of have College Programs they have educational programs they
Teach inmates to read they teach them to write they teach you know everyday Pro everyday life skills to an individual and then you go back to you where you’re just warehousing individuals in a prison you’re not teaching them a skill you’re not teaching them anything other than to
Sit in a Cell 23 hours out of the day and pick their nose and to me that’s not a successful way to one operate no absolutely um you know you can’t take the old adage put going to sell and throw away the key that’s that’s you
Can’t do that to an individual no that’s and you know once you go back into that you’re going to go back into the staff getting the the bro you know some some staff it’s not going to be all of them but there’ll be those few that this
Inmate look at me Crossways and I’m going to whack him with my club just straighten him out it it’s not good in any way shape form or Fashions because your officer assaults go up your staff assaults go up your inmate on mates assaults and things go up your your
Chances of riots go up it’s just violence be gets violence you know when they exactly it becomes a it becomes a violent atmosphere and you know when I started when I started leworth in 1983 I mean I’ve already seen uh two murders out at the Kansas State Penitentiary by
The time I got to lenworth uh in the first 24 months I was there we had 18 homicides wow and they were were killing each other like was a sport I mean it it was pretty bad and the ‘ 80s was like that the ‘ 80s was
Rough in the prisons Attica I mean you think of some of the major lands in the US that was 1980s I was working well in the N beginning of the ’90s I went to work at Missouri State pen and they called it the bloodiest 47 acres in
America at that time and it was nothing oh yeah yeah killing was nothing back then yeah they I’m actually amazingly enough I am on the first video recorded homicide at lenworth it was an inmate killing another inmate we got I’m in Center Hall at the time I can remember Howard Harden
Calling on a radio from the control center officer needs assistance a Dell house inmate with a knife well I’m not 50 ft away from the front door at Dell house support point and so I I’m one I’m the first officer there and I literally almost fell over the guy stabbing the
Other one and I mean it was this guy was it was a white on black incident uh the guy was trying to gain his bones with the Aryan Brotherhood Dell house at that point all of the older guys lived down on the first floor Dell house and uh it included guys like Russell
Buffalino uh Christian deid MH a lot of your Heavy Hitters in in organized crime roll on a downstairs of dous unless the inmate would get during a 9:00 rack up and they had what they called the the 9:00 rack up and then the 10:00 rack up where all the inmates had
To go to bed but the 9:00 rack up if you wanted to go to your cell and lock in your cell and get ready for bed that was fine and then they would lock down the Galleries and whoever was left out till 10:00 would uh be downstairs until right
At 10:00 then we’d send them up and then we’d lock them in and they go back and C the saell housee well the inmate would get upstairs and he would turn a radio on as loud as he could turn it on he’d be up here singing and dancing and stuff well the older
Guys are getting ready to go to bed you know and they sent this guy up there and told him tell this guy to knock it off right and the guy told him he says I’ll make a punk out of you get away from my c about two weeks later this guy walks
In the sail housee he had a same routine every night he walk down to the dining room eat CH come out bum an ice cream off of somebody in the commissary line because commissary was in the main quarter at that time at 11 worth he’d
Walk back down to the cell housee and he would go around to the what we call the dark side which was the inside facing wall of Dell house see what was on TV down there if it was nothing he wanted to see he would turn around and he would
Go over to the light side which is the side of the cell housee that was facing the outside of the wall and he walked around there and once he walked around there that’s when uh this inmate started hitting him with a shank I mean it was quite something we we were
There and at that point in time officers didn’t carry mace they didn’t carry handcuffs they didn’t carry nothing it was you a radio a body alarm and a smile and that was it and we’re down there trying to find something to hit this guy with and get him off this guy and
Uh had a lieutenant there by the name of Danny Williams uh he’s black lieutenant he’s screaming I’m screaming other guys are screaming we’re throwing things at this guy and everything else and anything we could find and finally he just one last big fail swoop he screamed die you mother die and he drove
The shank all the way through him uh and out his back and anytime I’ve ever been in tour situations with that institution I point out to spot on the floor where he broke the tile on the flooor when the knife went through the guy’s back wow and he jumps up and
Lieutenant looks at him and says you know Danny whims black guy looks at him and he says turn around put handcuffs on you and he said there ain’t no nword touching me at all okay he said Mr Lam Master handcuffs on me so I had to handcuff him and of course we’re getting
You know I handcuff him and we’re trying to get this headmate on a gurnie out to the hospital we’re doing this and I’m handcuffing that guy and trying to get him to Lieutenant’s office get this guy out to the hospital he was gone before he ever got to the institution hospital
But um I mean it it you know if you really want a job where you’re your day can go from zero to0 crap in less than 60 seconds become a correctional absolutely yeah I always even when we work together I love sitting around listening to you and you have such a
Grasp of details and is is that um what is it that took you towards the history was it you list into those oldtimers uh was it you with a need to to capture that and you know for people later on cuz that’s kind of why I’m doing this
Podcast I I want to capture some of these stories I want to capture some of these people uh and their stories uh what was it that that took you down that direction of becoming a historian cuz anybody in lenworth that wants to talk about history knows Kenneth lamaster is
The one that you know keeping track of this stuff the longest what was it it started out for me as is I’m the youngest of of five siblings and they were born in an era when TV wasn’t a common practice in a house so they
Taught me to read there you go uh age difference between being my oldest sister was 18 years so and my my 18 the sister was 18 years older than me was my best friend so it was you know and I started reading in the fact
That my father was was a World War II vet and I had several I had my father’s brother died at eima on the first night in my dad went ashore in French Morocco at the start of the American movement into World War II and left Berlin in 1945 oh wow and seeing every
Place in between to include uh operation Market Garden Biser ccy poo uh he was a uh uh guest at the uh Hotel Bastone on Christmas Eve in 1944 wow uh history will tell you that the 105th Airborne Division was there but my dad was part of the second Armored
Division 14 field artillery uh if you ever hear the story of how they kept the Germans out of Bast Stone uh it’s pretty interesting but and he actually went ashore on Omaha Beach with the first wave on June the 6th 1944 and he often said that the reason
Why he went with the first wave was as if it was his if it was his day to die he wanted to get it over with early okay I can respect that and and it was kind of one of those that I’d been into history I’d been into I’ve read all
Kinds of different different historical things um I had a very good teacher in the ninth grade the name of Judy Pard I think I’m responsible for her gray hair um but she would give me a book report or something to read and a lot of times
I turned the report in before I even left the class because I’d already read it right right so and uh so she would get agitated with me but and then she’d throw it back at me and say this ain’t your best work do it again
I’ve been kind of a history geek most of my life and when I got to lenworth one of the most interesting things about Fort lenworth is the history of that place is amazing okay not only do you have the command at general staff college but it its predecessor the the
The school of application for infantry and Cavalry that was developed by William tumy Sherman the Civ Civil War General Sherman had actually a lawyer in lenworth City prior to the Civil War and the mccor brothers were all attorneys in lenworth at that point in time a lot of
Those a lot of those early Generals in the Civil War were all lenworth attached uh Wild Bill Hickock uh joined the military at Ford lenworth Buffalo Bill Cody joined the military at U Ford 11worth you had the US 7th Cavalry led by kuster uh bued here for the winter
Several Winters in a row and he actually outfitted for day in Destiny from Fort lenworth on that trip to the Great Northwest and you know the development of the the Buffalo Soldiers which was the ninth and 10th us Cavalry the first true black all black companies uh was
Developed here so the history of for amazing U so and then I met the girl that I married still married I married 40 years this year congratulations and yeah um and it’s it’s kind of one of those things that the town is really the same way the history of this town is
Just from day one the the struggles of of being in a Border Town of a state that is fighting slavery bordering with a state that is fond of slavery and the the Border war is truly what it was it was a border war and you know you take a look at
Jennison’s JW Walkers and the the groups that were on the this side of the river and then you look at the people from Weston and East and even Acheson County in Le it’s right above lenworth about 20 miles were all pro slavery and you know I’ve read letters of uh the first
Settlers that you know were demanding protection because they were guys were coming over from the Missouri side and throwing them out of their houses and burning their houses down or killing their husbands or or whatever in the streets at night you know everybody can sit there and say the first shot of the
Civil War was shot here but in all actuality the first battles of the Civil War were fought in lenworth Kansas and it was fought because one side believed in slavery and the other didn’t it it was quite an ordeal leading up to the 10 years before the Civil War
And part of the underground rail road uh was here the U am church was built on a hillside here and when they built the AMA Church on this Hillside overlooking the valley on the Missouri side it was built there purposely with the Bell Tower and everything to show the slaves over in
The Missouri side that there was Hope Oh interesting it was just across the river the prison aspect of the history of it and the whole situation with the history of of the prisons and what got me with the Fed was uh the guy that introduced us was our training officer at the time
Bobby Lawrence he uh started talking about this escape and he was given a brief overview of the institution and this Escape you know basically all they told us was is is that they had taken the warden hostage went down the front steps of the institution there were shootouts
All over town and so on and so forth and that just kind of peaked my interest and from that point forward I started looking for everything that I could find about that escape and along the road right I I sent to the FBI I thought you
Know I’ll send to the FBI and see what they got on file for this Escape uh I’ll be lucky if I get 10 pages out of it you know well they sent me back this you know after I’d sent my fouryear request to them they sent me back and saidwell
We have this you know we have two envelopes coming to you with the information on Escape look for it in the mail and I got them about 10 days later um I wound up with uh two envel two envelopes full of printed documents and uh two CDs full of digitized documents
For a total of almost 2700 Pages oh my gosh wow so this is what started your book um the 11worth 7 The Deadly 1931 Prison Break yep and you know the the the whole the whole aspect of that uh case one of the most interesting things
That I found while I was doing research on that and I’d actually gone down to the Kansas City archives national archives in Kansas City Missouri and asked them if they had had the court case for the aftermath of that escape well when they come back and they said
Yeah we do and you know they set up a time for me to come down and take a look at it I went down and took a look at it and it was amazing because they had the forged passes that the inmates that used that day to gain access to the warden’s
Office they had several other pieces of evidence that um were involved in that case one of the most interesting pieces of evidence in that entire packet was they had a hotel register from the arietta hotel in cisero Illinois okay and it was a big gangster Hideout they
Would all go there and and plot things and different things and Frank Nash Thomas James Holden Francis keading had all been in that hotel at one point or another meeting over this escape and planning how it would go because this Escape took three years to pop off wow and when they were actually
Planning this Escape Frank Nash stayed in a room and the FBI in the reports shows you how they figured out who their aliases were and how what times they were there and different things by looking at the hotel register well one of the most interesting things that I found in that hotel
Registry was there was a time frame when Frank Nash was in that hotel and the person in the room very next to him very next room next to him was Evelyn forette okay Evelyn Billy forette who was John dellinger’s girlfriend oh interesting and the 1931 escape from lenworth actually spawned
The 1934 escape on Memorial Day from the Kansas State Penitentiary Frank Nash Thomas James Holden Francis keading were all involved in that escape as well smuggling guns into the institution and breaking out Harvey Bailey and uh welber the Tri-State Terror Underhill and several other smaller gangsters went
Over the wall with them but there was also the same premise behind the uh Dillinger crew escape from uh the Indiana State penitentiary they all smuggled weapons into the institution uh it was the same premise of the Escape that Bonnie and Clyde pulled off with their counterparts at
Eastom prison they smuggled weapons into the institution they gained access to get out by having the weapons so it was kind of you know that that escape actually kind of Spawn other escapes down the road and one of the most interesting interesting things that I read was one
Of the guys that helped with the Escape was a Canadian he’d been here on uh he had been put in prison uh on the illegal alien status charges and when they let him out he met with Nash and he became the the intermediary between the prison and the the actual Escape
Plot and because he had a connection with an officer inside that was dirty and that’s how they got Communications back and forth they used a dirty staff member and then they got the weapons in by by watching the uh routines of things coming into back gate of the prison wow so the the
Whole gamut but this guy was up in Canada and he was talking to a guy in a Cell next to him well he didn’t realize that the guy sitting next to him was passing along all of that information to the Canadian authorities which the Canadian authorities was passing back to
The FBI day before they come to extradite him back to the United States he makes the the guy sitting next to him he says well it looks like you’re going back to the States and be tried for that case and he says it’ll never happen and they said he says what do you
Mean it’ll never happen he says well he says it’s going to be delayed the next couple of days so he said it’s it it’s never going to happen because by the time they get to the point where they want to come up and get me something
Big’s going to happen ah and the FBI and everybody in America is going to forget I even exist and the guy kept asking him for the next couple days what is going on what’s happening what’s happening he would never he would never disclose what the big event was going to happen right
Well right as the time as they’re getting ready to uh pull him out of out of the jail in uh Canada and bringing back to the States the Lindberg baby got kidnapped oh and that absolutely did take over kind of like law enforcement yeah and and they he was wrong they did
Go up and get him right so one of the things I learned from your book and I I found it interesting when I when I interviewed for The Bu Bureau of Prisons they always have these series of questions that they ask you and uh one
Of them of course that they ask is you know you’re working Control Center and an inmate comes through and they’ve got a knife to the warden’s neck and they’ve taken him hostage and they say open the gate uh or I’m going to kill him what do
You do and then later on in my career I became a captain so I opened up a new prison I did hundreds of interviews well guess what question is still being asked you know 15 years later now that I’m a captain and that’s all a direct result
From uh Escape tell me a little about that exactly the when they got to the warden to they couldn’t have picked the worst warden in the world dude to take host Thomas Bruce White was a former Texas Ranger oh wow and former railroad detective and he had
Became uh he had tried to enlist during World War I and failed a physical and there was this fledgling young upand coming superstar in law enforcement Fields by the name of John Edgar Hoover M that approached him and said hey would you would you be interested in joining
This group as a member of the Bureau of Investigation white you know he’s got a wife and a couple kids and it was like sure I’ll join up and he did and Thomas Bruce White was instrumental in busting numerous cases wide open and one of them was the
Atlanta prison debacle where the warden actually spent time in his own prison uh after the case was over with they had the Dixie Mafia what they would have been called now but back then all of the bootleggers and everybody that was sent to Atlanta right um they were given time
But they were all living in hotels downtown uh partying away the nights uh within made numbers the warden was frequented by a Rockette wow and and and they had nightly gambling uh staff of the institution and stuff going on down there and finally it was Thomas Bruce White that busted that
Whole case wide open and then you had uh the O Indian murders he was the instrumental he was the lead investigator on that because they called him in and said you know we’ve been trying to solve his murders for almost 10 years now and right Tom white looked
At him and said well that’s the problem you’re sending guys down there in suits to talk to these people and they ain’t going to talk to anybody that looks like a cop right and they ask him what what do you do and he says well you know the
Best way to look at this case is to start putting people that know how to work the oil fields in the oil fields people that know how to run cattle put them on cattle ranches the people who uh can do farming make them a farmer right
Hand and they even had one guy that was a full-fledged full Native American Medicine Man interesting and they broke that case wide open and by the time the two main principal parties were sent to lenworth Tom white was the warden of lenworth and not only did he send them
To prison he welcomed him to prison one of Tom White’s Brothers also joined up with the FBI and it was actually his brother who shot John Dillinger in that alley in Indiana wow small circles everything comes around and white oh yeah white was sharp as attack I mean he he by that
Time he’d already spent the bulk of 30 years in law enforcement in one form or another and when he came to lenworth it was one of those things where he was seeing things and he had been a deputy warden in Atlanta that that’s how they got him into the institution down there
When he started seeing officers that were bashing inmates in the head and stuff like that he thought no knock it off that’s not how we do business and he changed the whole complexity of everything going on and when white got here uh there were problems at Levan worth had caused the
Dismissal of of a warden one of the most most intriguing things was is that white was a Republican and they had a democrat congress and this will show you how how politics plays they had to kind of Congress went on a vacation and white became the
Warden that way they didn’t have to say they yeah when when the W when Congress came back from vacation uh it was already too late to say hey wait a minute uh we’re supposed to have a democrat in that position and well it didn’t quite work that way they smuggled
Him into the institution right while Congress was out on vacation but uh I mean you take a look at what he had to deal with at lorth while he was here I mean he had a riot while he was here um he had an execution of Carl Panzer Ram
Which was a serial killer to deal with and then he had numerous escapes while he was here and he had actually knew that there was an escape culminating and happening but several inmates had snitched off another escape and he thought that was the one that they were
Talking about but on the day that he was sitting in the warden’s office uh he was talking to one of mul Barker’s sons that morning and he heard the commotion in the outer office and he took his keys and he threw them under the desk well
They got him and and several they took all the inmates hostage that worked in the office areas and stuff like that all of the staff and they had a couple typewriter repairmen there marched them out into the lobby and when they got out to the the area that now is between the
Second and third grills M there there back then uh there was two grills but there was there was a grill in the front that it was a grill that led out into the Rotunda well the warden’s office had a back door at that point in time which
Was since you know the layout of lenworth was in the area there near by uh B sell house okay yep you could actually get into the warden’s office with an inmate pass for an appointment to see the warden uh through that bypass the grill right and they get out to the first
Grill and there’s an old officer there by name of Dempsey mhm and he’s standing there at the grill and inmates told him open up the door and he says there’s only one manne can word of me to open up the door and that’s the warden well they shove Warden white up there
And he’s standing there and Dempsey’s looking at him the Ward’s looking at him and one of the inmates pulls up a stick a dynamite oh and says you know this front door don’t get open I’m going to like to stick a dynamite I’m going blow us all to hell
And and the officer looked at the inmate and says well I I’m an old man I guess we’ll be seeing each other in hell wow and Warden white took control of the situation and said okay didn’t stop and what his biggest fear was is is that if
He allowed this to happen then the possibility a further Escape would happen and that was not what he wanted sure plus you know loss of life and and Etc so he just told the guy to open the door right well Dempsey opened the door they took Dempsey hostage took the keys
And locked the door on the way out and made their way down the front steps well they get down the front steps and yeah lo and behold they one Tower is going two officers on it at that point in time and one of them is Manning a uh Browning
19 something World War I era belt fed machine gun wow and White’s like oh wait a minute there’s 11 of us hostages and seven inmates not right let’s not get too far here but and it all stems from that it’s they decided that at that point in time from that point forward
And they even make that’s one of the first things they make prevalent to the inmates they make known to the inmates wow I I always enjoy listening to you and your story so much uh I can’t thank you enough for being on here I do want
To talk for a second about U now you’ve got four books out there three of them are from like the uh images of America where you’ve collected images from different places uh about the US uh penitentiary in lenworth the DB and then the town of lenworth right MH I actually
U i did the United States Penitentiary lenworth came out first okay uh Fort lenworth came out second and lenworth came out uh about a year before Lev worth seven a good friend of mine by the name of uh Pete Grande who just retired here short not too long ago uh he would
Have been equivalent to an executive assistant in the Bureau of Prisons at the usdb right Pete good guy Pete uh wrote the book on the US disciplinary bricks at Fort lenworth and in the in the introduction of the book I didn’t even know uh didn’t even know it this
Book was being wrote at the time and I didn’t even offer to write the book as a followup to the US Penitentiary book and they already told me that somebody was writing it so I said it was good that somebody was taking the time to do that
Well he he lists me as his inspiration for doing that book and I I had met him at that point but us penitentiary fort lenworth and lenworth are all pictorial histories okay of the development of the fort development of the city and the development of the federal prison at
Lenworth and uh for those people out there that are listening that don’t know uh this is officially the 125th anniversary of the United States Penitentiary lorth Kansas excellent the as in the institution that they’re they’re housed in now they were originally housed 3 years at the military prison on Ford 11worth
Uhhuh and I’ve uncovered a lot of information that uh once I get done with a I’m on a committee that is uh beginning what is known as the first city history Festival uh here in lenworth on the 29th and 30th of this month and it it’s bringing all of the
Entities of the history of the town from the all of the historical societ ities all of the museums and other groups and stuff of people bringing them all together and then vendors and food and we have a marel championship being done we have reenactors old west reenactors we have
Native American reenactors that are going to be there it’s an all day affair on Saturday and it it’s something that this town is really needed because a lot of times in the back in the old days the the historians of the Town didn’t want to play nice with each other right right
And now there’s a group of folks that are running things that really want to do this and get together I’m glad we did it and we want to make it an annual thing so what’s the date for this is it this coming week uh it’s the 29th and
30th the 29th vendors can come in and set up after 5:00 we’ll be there from 2 o’clock on trying to get things sorted and figured out and that evening a couple of Lo local singers are going to be doing songs from like the 1950s and previous and and uh for people to come
Out and enjoy and then the next morning at 10:00 we kick off the festival for the first time and we want to go back to the the old traditions of like the Buffalo Field Days festivals right SI and cider Day festivals that they had back then uh that they lost years ago
And and we want to kind of bring that feel back but also expounding the history of the Town yeah put more of the history out there out front on Front Street and let them see it so excellent my hair used to be a lot a lot darker when I started this
Project you’re always doing a project though aren’t you you never filed for a grant no yeah you’ve never filed for a grant or or or wrote for you know an LLC or or Articles of of of Corporation right you should do that one time in your life and think there you
Go well I don’t know if the listeners can hear it but I’ve got thunder and rain rumbling here where I’m recording at so um I I want to get you back and I hope we can have another conversation um why don’t you tell listeners where they
Can find those books and if they want to contact you where people can contact you at my email address is actually my proper name all one word Kenneth lamaster at yahoo.com just to spell it for those that uh don’t know that’s k n n e t h l
A m a s t e r yahoo.com I’m also on Facebook under kenam master uh they can reach me there they can also get copies of the book from uh Arcadia publishing in the history press uh I know there’s a lot of people that like to use Amazon they can get it from
Any of the book sellers out there n nationally uh I will kind of let people know that when they buy from places such as that uh a lot of your authors or a lot of your uh independent film people or whatever don’t get any residuals out
Of that ah so y I kind of put that plug in there for sure because I’ve got good friends in both areas independent film and and stuff like that and other authors and and yeah most people don’t know that the people that put the work but but I understand people that want to
Save money absolutely it’s their desire to save money and I don’t knock them for that either so if you get them from me I personally autograph them and I personalize them for the person that is actually requesting um I’m a real stickler about spelling people’s names right and doing
The right thing for people I mean if you’re going to take your time out uh send me an email and buy a book I think it’s just right for me to take my time out of the day and write something to you as a thank you exellent and I I do
That every book I I I do and and I’ve even you know worked with other authors and stuff on different projects and help build uh true to life prison atmospheres have done that with Alan Jacobson and and U the I can’t remember the author’s name she wrote a book called
Um Christina McMorris answerers of questions and yeah Christina McMorris that’s her name thank you sorry Christina I apologize I’m sorry the edge of lost is the name of the book by Christina MC Morris the I actually did some technical advisory work for Chicago PD the episode that they they sent a guy
Undercover into prison uh it was supposed to be sort of like the the uh MCC Chicago where they sent him and uh I gave gave them advice on what the uniforms look like and how different things went down when how staff would respond to institution emergencies Etc
And so on so I did that and I’ve done all kinds of different things over the last well it sounds good God knows how many years absolutely well thank you so much for being here today I want to get you back on here I still have a ton of
Questions uh so hopefully we can get that done but hey I thank you for being here Ken you have a great day hey you do the same be safe buddy if you enjoy these podcasts the best way to support the prisoner officer podcast is to share these episodes with your friends or or
Family on social media let me invite you to visit www thee prison officer.com if you haven’t already check out the prison officer podcast on Facebook and click that little follow button or leave us a message or better yet leave us a review and if you’re listening to us on Apple
Podcast Google or Spotify please click the Subscribe button till next time I’m Mike canel watch your back and please take care of each other out there behind those Walls
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