Cell 2455, Death Row

by Caryl Chessman

  The man doing time in prison has been locked away from women but he has retained his instincts, his hungers, his needs and his manhood. Sexually, he has three choices: to remain celibate, to masturbate, or to find an available male substitute. Such a substitute is not hard to find. In time, a man may think: “Hell, why not?” And that “why not?” is a question that every man in prison must answer for himself.

  It was a question all of us had to answer for ourselves. I mention the fact because it is one which those who write of prisons and prison life too often find convenient to ignore.

  San Quentin had a new warden, a kindly, practical, far-seeing man named Clinton Truman Duffy, and this bespectacled, thoughtful penologist was destined to write penal history in California.* It was he who would remarkably change the physical and spiritual face of this historic and what was then tough and trouble-ridden prison. Originally given a temporary appointment for a mere thirty days while a successor to a former warden was being selected, Clinton Duffy, his father a prison employee before him, proved to be the very man the appointing board and the governor were looking high and low for. He stayed on as Warden of San Quentin for more than eleven challenging years; then he accepted a gubernatorial appointment to the California Adult Authority, the state’s busy five-man board charged, among other duties, with the responsibility of deciding how long each adult male offender will serve in prison and how much time he will spend on parole. It is no exaggeration to say that today’s new San Quentin was born that July day in 1940 when Clinton Duffy, to his own immense surprise, heard himself named warden. Thus it happened that the dawning of a new summer day found San Quentin a prison of resurgent hope.

  Our warder was no longer despair. We who were doing time were treated like human beings, not caged wild animals; like men, not faceless numbers. The outside world was brought closer to us and we were given every incentive to strive to become a useful part of that world. We were offered trade training, education, recreation, a library of good books, the right to keep or win back self-respect, the chance to take a close look at ourselves and past lives and decide where we wanted to go from here. It was possible, in short, for our prison experience to lead to a better, a brighter future.

  We did very well at San Quentin. We worked hard, won good jobs, studied and took part in the sports program. We remained loyal to one another and it was a sad blow to us when we learned how Tim had secretly informed on us. We had a talk with him.

  “We just found out how you put the finger on us, Tim. Now, other guys would beat your brains out. We’re not going to. We don’t intend to tell anybody else what you did. But we don’t want you to rap to us again. From here on, you’re on your own. You’re not one of us any more.”

  I had gone to work, by choice, in the educational building, and when the Supervisor of Education’s inmate secretary and chief clerk was paroled, I was given his job. With Warden Duffy’s approval, another man and I built up the audio-visual department of the institution’s growing educational plant, made it into a highly useful arm of prison education. This was in the days before the prison budget permitted the hiring of accredited teachers; and in addition to my many other duties, I voluntarily taught as many classes as I could find the time for—typing, shorthand, English, business English and bookkeeping, among others.

  By far my greatest satisfaction was teaching an earnest group of illiterates to read and write. I scrapped the childish readers and wrote (mimeographed) my own beginning texts, and I still can hear one grizzled old convict say in awed triumph: “Hey, Chess, I read it! By God, I read it!” “It” was a simple sentence, falteringly read, but it was also a major triumph and it opened up a marvelous new world foi this old con. I was also the youngest member of the San Quentin debating team, and we established a fine record against such formidable opponents as Leland Stanford University, the University of California, San Francisco State Teachers College, and others of equally high caliber.

  Warden Duffy was no foolish coddler of felons; he ran his prison and he maintained discipline, but he didn’t make discipline an end in itself, or custody a god to be blindly served. And he didn’t hold himself up as the All-Wise One in matters penological. But he did have a constructive, pioneering program, a program that made sense, based upon his belief in the man doing time. He believed that those men who genuinely wanted another chance should have that chance. He believed the public should accept a man who had done his time and was trying for a new and honest start. He believed the public should be acquainted with his prison, that it should know what was being done here. So he invited many civic groups to tour San Quentin as his guests. He often brought them to the educational building to let them see for themselves what was being done and then, seated in the school’s combination auditorium and classroom, he and other officials would explain their program and how it worked. Quite often he would ask me to speak, and I did so gladly.

  “All of you have read about wild youngsters like me in the headlines of your newspapers,” I would tell them. “You read where we were committed to long prison terms. But did any of you ever stop and wonder what happened to us after San Quentin’s front gate clanged shut? Well, let me tell you. I think you will find what I have to say a revelation.”

  Then I would tell these groups about San Quentin. And make no mistake: I was no performing seal. I meant what I said and I didn’t pretty up what I had to say. I believed absolutely that what Warden Duffy and his staff were doing was a fine good thing, a sound sensible thing. As one who had known the meaning of other kinds of treatment, I wanted to do all I could to see that what was being done at San Quentin succeeded, whether / did or not.

  There were, frankly, those who believed that Chessman, for all his industry, his enthusiasms, his studiousness and his friendliness, was, deep down, the same old Chessman still, full of angles and violence and cunning. This perhaps may have been attributable, in part, to the fact that I had retained the good will and trust of the men in the yard, the cons, even the hating, defiant, intractable ones whom I helped when I could. I knew, too, that the prison’s chief psychiatrist had tagged me a “constitutional psychopathic personality” and predicted that my chances for living within the law after release were slim.

  In another respect, I knew I was one of the luckier ones, for Judy, who still believed in me, still loved me, was waiting for me faithfully. She was then living with my mother and father, which proved a great comfort and help to my parents. The idea had been hers. “With Caryl gone, I think you’ll need me,” she had told them. Judy wrote almost daily and visited me regularly. She, my parents and all my friends were standing solidly behind me. I was by no means the forgotten man.

  The Duke had never paid me. With my arrest, I had expected him to default, and was preparing to take desperate steps to collect through tough friends when I was informed the neurosurgeon had decided, after conducting further tests and studies, that my mother could not stand the shock of an operation and that an operation would be futile even if she could. There was, it appeared, nothing medical science—or stolen money—could do to help her, so I called off my tough friends, telling them that I would settle accounts with Duke when I got out.

  When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor I again desperately wanted to go to war. It became a torment to find myself locked away from freedom when I had come so close to occupying the cockpit of a fighter plane and fighting for it. Now it appeared that I was doomed to spend most of the war in prison. And that hurt. Not until May, 1943, did California pass a “special service parole” law and even then, because of my many consecutive sentences, I was ineligible for induction for several additional months.

  In July, 1941, California had opened a unique minimum security institution in the southern part of the state, and I was convinced for many reasons that my chances for induction would be greatly enhanced if I was at this Chino Prison. Further, in the interim, while shooting for induction, I wanted to be near my parents and Judy. When I began making inquiries about the possi
bility of a transfer to Chino, I was told to wait until I appeared before the Board of Prison Terms and Paroles, the old board which has since been replaced by the Adult Authority. Perhaps then I might be considered. The board saw me at the end of a year.

  “Of course you realize, Caryl, that we cannot possibly fix your term or grant a future parole date this early?”

  Yes, I realized that.

  “However, we have some splendid reports on your work and attitude and urge you to maintain this fine record you’ve been making for yourself.”

  The board postponed further consideration of my case one calendar year. During that year I worked and studied harder than ever.

  “San Quentin on the Air” was being broadcast from coast to coast by the Mutual network’s more tlian three hundred radio stations; an immediate success, the program’s national reception had been nothing short of amazing. Happily, I was privileged to be one of those who helped write the weekly scripts.

  All the while I kept plugging for Chino. I didn’t suspect it at the time, but Fate cunningly cold-decked me a few short weeks after my initial appearance before the old Board of Prison Terms and Paroles. Ironically, the day this happened, I was positive the world had been handed to me on a silver platter. So feverish and unbounded was my enthusiasm, I triumphantly scribbled these words on a piece of notebook paper:

  “Deus ex machina—with a twist.”

  * * *

  * If the implications weren’t so tragic, this excited, periodic rediscovery of the juvenile delinquency problem by the press would be amusing. The problem is always good for a splash, but never a penetrating sustained drive. The same huge metropolitan daily which ran the above series of articles in March of 1941 was doing the same thing during April, 1953, this last time in knock-down, drag-out competition with another Los Angeles daily. And every time these articles appear they almost invariably ascribe a new cause or new causes for juvenile delinquency, which reflects a certain admirable originality on the part of staff writers but hardly a devotion to the facts. Since the problem of juvenile delinquency is presently a greater problem than ever, one must question whether such articles ever do any good.

  * Clinton Duffy has himself engrossingly told the story of his years as warden of one of the world’s largest prisons: The San Quentin Story by Clinton T. Duffy, as told to Dean Jennings (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1950). His book eloquently demonstrates what a clear-headed faith in people and humaneness can accomplish with even hardened felons.

  • 24 •

  Operation Adolf

  I had been at San Quentin about a year when I met an intellectual, darkly handsome young man with an unpronounceable Slavonian surname, a keen interest in literature and a remarkable talent and inclination for burglary. A couple of confirmed bibliophiles, we promptly struck up an acquaintanceship which ripened into friendship.

  In the course of time, Renny told me how he had gone to Hollywood from the Midwest, how he’d spent several mondis prowling bookshops by day and the homes of the affluent at night. I gathered he had developed a proficiency for locating and getting into concealed wall safes and other places for the keeping of money and valuables. On one of these nocturnal excursions he had struck it rich, finding several hundred dollars in cash and a thick sheaf of documents in the safe of a palatial home in an exclusive residential district near Beverly Hills. Renny had pocketed the cash and had intended, as was his practice, to leave the documents behind when he had chanced to glance at them—and had his breath taken away.

  “All right, all right,” I said impatiently, my curiosity whetted. “Don’t keep me in suspense. What the heck were those documents?”

  “Chess,” Renny said, “you won’t believe me if I tell you.”

  “Try me and find out,” I urged.

  He did. When he finished, my look of amazement prompted him to say, “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”

  But I did believe him, yet I couldn’t help being staggered by what I had heard. I knew without doubt that the whole course of my life had been altered. That much was certain. Life suddenly held promise of being rare and good. Here was an undreamed-of chance to redeem the errant Caryl Chessman—or a truly inspired and speedy way for the said Caryl Chessman to join his ancestors. But then, emotionally, I was jerked to a momentary halt. Had Renny saved those documents? Were they where I could get them?

  They were. “But what would you do with them?” Renny wanted to know. “Blackmail?”

  I laughed the question away. “No, Renny, not blackmail; something much bigger than that. Something as big and as ironic and as marvelous as life itself.”

  Understandably, Renny failed to perceive the least justification for what amounted to poetic ecstasy, and he was puzzled. “You wouldn’t turn them over to the F.B.I.?”

  Promptly and emphatically I replied: “Hell, no!”

  “Then what?” he asked.

  My grin was knowing. “Now, friend Renny, it’s my turn to say you won’t believe me if I tell you. But I have an idea; if you’ll pardon the adjectives, an impossible, irresistible, fantastic idea. And, with any kind of luck at all, it’s just preposterous enough to work. If it does I am, thank you, a self-made man with a million dollars to spend.”

  “And, thank you, if it doesn’t?”

  “I’d probably get my neck stretched for treason.”

  Renny, burglar and bibliophile, winced. Even the thought of mild physical violence he found distasteful.

  My unbridled enthusiasm, however, mocked at danger. The neck-stretching possibility simply added zest, spice to my plans. Wanting one such or not, Uncle Sam now had a brand new and singularly unorthodox ally who intended to direct a boiling, restless, tireless energy toward giving the Herrenvolk a lively time of it.

  I hastened to make it clear to Renny that I had absolutely no intention of committing treason but would be obliged to convince certain fascistic personages that such was my intention, and if Uncle Sam found out, I might have a tough time explaining.

  Renny’s puzzlement had reached the point of acute agitation. Would I kindly stop talking in adjectival circles and explain?

  “And if I do, you’ll never say anything, no matter what happens, without my personal O.K.?”

  “Not a word,” he promised.

  “All right. Here’s the idea.”

  The idea was to take those papers Renny had acquired and return them to their rightful owner, a surprisingly important Hollywoodian who apparently was actively engaged in a sly plot to use the movie industry for propaganda purposes on behalf of Der Fuhrer & Company. By returning those papers I would, I hoped, win that fascistic gentleman’s confidence. I would be on the lam; I would be darkly angry at this country for making me what I then would be, a hunted outlaw; I would be out for revenge; I would have a suggestion on how I could get it and, at the same time, gloriously aid The Cause; I would get myself shipped to Germany; I would proceed cheerfully to sell Brother Adolf’s strutting stooges a curious bill of goods; I would be aiming toward wangling myself into the presence and confidence of the Third Reich’s Chancellor; my object then, with the Schutzstaffel lulled, would be to ventilate said Chancellor’s head with holes or put the snatch on him.

  Renny’s reaction to my idea, now that he understood it, was immediate and unreservedly enthusiastic. That the odds against successful execution of any plot to ventilate der Fuhrer’s cranium or snatch him were probably a million to one troubled us not in the least. For here was that magic chance-of-a-century to fire a shot that not only would be heard around the world but that would reverberate far down the corridors of time. Thoughtfully, moreover, a million-dollar reward had been offered by certain solvent citizens to any enterprising party who succeeded in writing finis to the astonishing dictatorial career of Herr Hitler.

  And certainly Herr Hitler was fair game. It was he and his gangster crew who insisted that man is a beast of prey. These worthies screamed the virtues of hatred, especially racial hatred. And Renny was a Jew
whose grandparents had come from Eastern Europe; Renny was a burglar with some explosive hidden papers and a jubilant monster for a friend.

  From such oddments could history be written.

  But not without painstaking preparation.

  So we tore the problem apart, examined all the kinks and angles. We turned to a bright, blond lad for some needed technical assistance. We studied propaganda techniques and the characteristics of German fighter craft. With a gimlet eye I pored through Mein Kampf. I began evolving the fantastic bill of goods I intended to sell the Third Reich’s Mighty Ones. Artfully disguised, I reduced this plausible hokum to book form. Meanwhile we kept marshalling facts, figures, incidental intelligence. We got all the dope we could on truth serums, so-called. I quietly contacted Gabriella, who’d figured in my past, and a friend I’ll call Jay.

  We did all this without attracting attention or arousing suspicion. I stepped up my campaign to get transferred to Chino. I walked a tightrope. Whether I was rationalizing or not, I didn’t regard what I intended doing as involving the betrayal of those who felt I was a changed and sobered young man who had earned a transfer to California’s unique minimum security institution. Here was a chance to stand alone and pit myself against the forces of history, to rise up from the bowels of prison and reach out for the moon and stars. Only the tiniest, grayest, narrowest mind could have branded my proposed and preposterous gamble betrayal. That it failed so conspicuously attests only to the fact that, by and large, man has lost his capacity to dream boldly. And because that is so, I weep for him unashamedly.

  On May 27, 1943, my twenty-second birthday, I was transferred by ordinary passenger bus with a group of thirty-three other prisoners to Chino.