by Pete Earley
There was no longer any need for Bowles to make copies of the story, but he made one for himself anyway. “I spread the word about Hicks because I wanted everyone to see how the cops in here work,” he said. It wasn’t the fact that Hicks was a sexual deviant that bothered Bowles. It was the fact that he was a snitch. “The guards will deny it, but I know exactly what happened,” Bowles said later. “Some hack from Michigan called up a lieutenant here and said, ‘Hey, I got a prisoner and I got to get him out of my state institution before someone kills him.’ Now a lieutenant here says, ‘Well, why should we take him? Does he cooperate?’ and the guy in Michigan says, ‘Fuck yes, he’ll cooperate, because if he don’t we’ll tell everyone he’s a baby-raper and they’ll kill his ass.’
“When Hicks gets down here, the lieutenant says, ‘Hey, boy, we will put you in population, but at the same time you got to come to us every once in a while and tell us things, because if you don’t, then someone might just slip up and let folks know your past.’ Don’t you see what happens next? Suddenly, some lieutenant is breaking up a big helicopter escape.”
Lieutenant Gallegos discounted Bowles’s scenario. “He’s telling how he operates, how he thinks, how he manipulates people,” said Gallegos. “We don’t do that. No one forced Hicks to say or do anything. Believe me, we don’t have to do anything to force these guys to snitch. Most will tell on each other in a second.”
Prison officials acknowledged that they had accepted Hicks from state officials in Michigan because he would have been harmed in a state prison. But they denied that Hicks had been planted in Leavenworth or coerced into providing Gallegos information. “This prisoner was sent to Leavenworth because of the length of his sentence,” a prison spokesman said. “We felt he needed to be placed in a high-security environment.” A few days after Bowles exposed Hicks, however, the young inmate was quietly transferred to a lower-security federal prison in another state. “The prison grapevine is such that we had to move this prisoner to a much lower security prison,” an official explained. “Otherwise his past would have been exposed and he would have been in danger.”
Bowles saw things differently. “I don’t care what they say, they used Hicks and now they are rewarding him by moving him to an easier joint. That’s how both sides work in this place. When someone weak like Hicks comes in, then each side preys on him.”
A short time after Hicks had gone, Bowles heard through the grapevine that another fish was coming to Leavenworth, and that he, like Hicks, was scared. No one knew why prison officials were sending Thomas Edgar Little to a maximum-security penitentiary. Little had never been to prison before and he was young and weak.
Bowles figured Thomas Little was someone he wanted to meet.
Chapter 2
DALLAS SCOTT
Dallas Earl Scott sounded mean as he spoke into the telephone. “Now this has already gone on for a week and a half,” the forty-two-year-old convict complained. “The position you’re putting people in, particularly your boyfriend, Bill, you’re putting a lot of pressure on him … and a lot of people are beginning to get upset.”
Scott had emphasized the word upset He was trying to make it clear to the woman on the other end of the line that her boyfriend, Bill, was going to be hurt if she didn’t do what Scott had asked. Scott didn’t want to come right out and say this, because he knew all prison telephone calls were recorded. A card posted above the phone warned: ATTENTION: ALL INMATE TELEPHONE CALLS ARE MONITORED AND TAPE RECORDED.
The woman that Scott was trying to frighten had promised to bring 2.73 grams of heroin into Leavenworth. Scott had paid $500 to buy the drug from his contacts in Sacramento, California, and had paid another $500 to the woman’s boyfriend, Bill Hutchinson, an inmate who claimed that he could get the drug smuggled safely inside. Hutchinson had seemed so confident that his girlfriend would agree to be a “mule” that Scott had arranged for the drug to be mailed directly to her from California, assuring his financial backers in prison that the heroin was on its way.
But Hutchinson’s girlfriend balked. She was refusing to bring in the heroin, and Scott was indeed upset. Earlier that morning, he had confronted Hutchinson, and it had been Hutchinson’s idea to use the telephone located inside the cellhouse to call his girlfriend and then put Scott on the line to intimidate her. Inmates at Leavenworth are allowed to use cellhouse telephones whenever they wish without first asking for permission from a guard. But they can only dial collect calls, and a prison computer automatically logs the number and records the entire conversation. Hutchinson had told his girlfriend that he was in trouble and then handed Scott the telephone receiver.
“Pressure is being put on Bill, you see,” Scott said carefully. “You got him, ah, well … he’s in a spot, because you said yes from jump street and that triggered a lot of things. That leaves him holding the bag … and now you got cold feet.”
Scott had sounded threatening at first. Now, his voice became sympathetic. “Look, I can understand why you are scared and I appreciate that, but we got to get this thing resolved.… If you just do what Bill asks you, it’s not going to be near as bad as you think.… In your mind, you got pictures of being beaten with rubber hoses and being dragged off. That’s not gonna happen.…”
Hutchinson had explained the procedure to her. The heroin was delivered inside a balloon, no different from those used at children’s birthday parties. She was supposed to hide it in her vagina, like a tampon. Once inside the prison visiting room, she would step into the women’s bathroom, remove the balloon, and conceal it in her mouth. Visitors were allowed to kiss an inmate once when a visit began and once when it ended. The balloon would be exchanged during the first kiss. Hutchinson would swallow it and either regurgitate it later when he was alone in his cell or reclaim it after it passed through his system.
“It’s just a simple matter of boom, boom, and that’s it,” Scott continued. “Believe me, this thing happens a thousand times a year. Don’t make monsters in your mind.”
Scott decided he had said enough, but before he handed the phone back to Hutchinson, Scott decided to remind the woman that her boyfriend was in trouble.
“Now, I’m sure you understand what goes on in here,” Scott said firmly. “You know, this place, well, it’s dangerous.…”
Had Scott been talking to the girlfriend in person, there wouldn’t have been any need for him to make thinly disguised verbal threats. Scott was intimidating even when he didn’t intend to be. A bank teller had once described him during a trial as being “really mean-looking,” and it fit. Scott had been in prison off and on for twenty-four years, and his body language sent out a signal as clear as a diamondback’s rattle. He was built like a pit bull. Short, with massive shoulders made hard by weight lifting, Scott wore his ink-black hair combed back in the greasy pompadour style popular among bikers in the 1950s when Scott was a teenager. A nearly fatal heroin habit acquired in prison and an incurable liver disease brought on by hepatitis had left his skin jaundiced, his face gaunt. There were dark circles under his eyes, and when he became angry, his black eyes shone with rage.
Ironically, among his convict pals Scott was considered easygoing, funny, street-smart, and, as much as an inmate could be, devoted to his wife, son, and daughter. But even his closest friends knew better than to double-cross Scott. There was no question in anyone’s mind that he was deadly.
The collection of tattoos that adorned Scott’s arms, chest, legs, and even his hands was a sign that he was a professional convict. Daggers dripping blood, half-naked women, even Donald Duck’s laughing face, were cut into his yellowish skin. These were not parlor tattoos, applied from patterns in rainbow colors. They were convict tattoos, carved freehand by cumbersome tattoo guns made from melted-down toothbrushes, sewing machine needles, and motors stolen from portable tape players. Even though they had been drawn by different inmates in different prisons at different times, each tattoo was done in the identical color: a bluish-green ink—the standard ink used f
or printing forms in prisons. In the outside world the tattoos would have made Scott look like a circus sideshow freak, but in Leavenworth they were badges of honor, particularly one tattoo cut directly over his heart. It was a cloverleaf with the numbers 6-6-6 printed over it. Even fish knew what that tattoo represented. It was the insignia of the Aryan Brotherhood, the most savage white prison gang ever formed. The three sixes referred to a mark given by “the beast”—the antichrist, or son of Satan—to the wicked as explained in the Book of Revelation, chapter 13, verses 16–18. The cloverleaf was a symbol of white supremacy.
The fact that Scott’s chest bore the “triple sixes” was evidence that he was one of the gang’s earliest members, because it had abandoned the use of tattoos shortly after it was formed, when it realized that guards and the police used the tattoos to track gang members.
The bureau’s Special Investigative Service (SIS), which operated much like the FBI inside prisons, had a thick file of alleged gang activity by Scott. The most damning was an affidavit given by a former AB gang member who had turned against his former friends in exchange for an early release and a new identity through the Justice Department’s witness-protection program. He had identified Scott as a top gang member and had implied that he had once been a gang “hit man,” although there was absolutely no proof that he was linked to any murders.
Scott denied the hit-man charge and pointed out that his entire criminal career consisted of only two felonies: a 1966 armed robbery and a 1975 bank robbery. That was it, yet the government had managed to keep him in jail for nearly three decades by tacking on extra time for various violations that it said Scott had committed while in prison.
“My criminal record ain’t shit,” Scott complained, “but if you look at how they treat me, you’d think I was some sort of Jesse James or Godfather!”
As a matter of fact, that is exactly how the bureau viewed him, and without apology. “He is definitely Aryan Brotherhood and once a convict becomes an AB, he is an AB for life,” the bureau’s gang expert, Craig Trout, explained. “What we are dealing with is a professional, lifelong criminal.… An AB member like Dallas Scott is actually doing a life sentence—only he’s doing it on the installment plan, serving a few years at a time.”
After Scott had finished speaking to Hutchinson’s girlfriend, he had gone to wait outside Hutchinson’s cell.
“She’s gonna do it,” Hutchinson announced when he returned from the phone call. “This week sometime.”
Scott didn’t know whether or not to believe him, nor was he confident that the girlfriend really understood the seriousness of what was happening. Scott hadn’t been bluffing on the telephone. If she didn’t bring in the heroin, Hutchinson was going to be hurt. Scott couldn’t afford to let word leak out that he had paid $500 to the man and then simply let him off the hook when his girlfriend didn’t deliver. Every convict in Leavenworth would think that Scott was either getting soft or was afraid, in convict slang, to “make a move on Hutchinson” for fear of being punished by the guards. Either way, Scott would look weak and other convicts would quickly take advantage of him. If Hutchinson didn’t deliver, why should the inmates who gambled at the nightly poker game that Scott operated in the cellblock television room pay their debts? If Scott was reluctant to punish Hutchinson for fear of getting caught by the guards, wouldn’t he be equally afraid of attacking someone who came into his cell and took his radio, shoes, mattress? Scott didn’t really have any choice. For Hutchinson’s sake, he hoped the girlfriend delivered.
The next afternoon, Scott was standing inside his cell near the front bars as required for the daily four o’clock head count. At Leavenworth, every inmate is counted at least five times a day to make certain no one has escaped. These counts are held at ten P.M., when inmates are locked in their cells for the night, and at midnight, three A.M., and five-thirty A.M., before the cells are unlocked for the day. Each afternoon at exactly four o’clock, inmates are required to return to their cells for the most important count of the day. It differs from the others because convicts are required to be standing up when guards pass by and count them. By making them stand, guards can be certain that they are counting a breathing human being, not a papier-mâché dummy tucked under the bedclothes. Because the inmates are locked in their cells for the four o’clock count, it is the easiest time during the day for guards to make arrests. Not only do they know where every convict is inside the prison, but they can also arrest an inmate without worrying about his friends jumping into the fray.
When Scott looked through his cell door, he spotted a group of guards coming down the tier. Instinctively, he lowered one shoulder and slightly bent his knees. Scott was no stranger to fistfights with guards. In the 1970s, he had beaten an associate warden in the prison yard. He was charged with assault by the bureau and given additional time to serve for that attack, but what wasn’t mentioned, Scott claimed later, was that after he was wrestled down and handcuffed, he was taken to the Hole and beaten by guards in retaliation. The officers at Leavenworth didn’t doubt his claim. It used to be common within the bureau for guards to give inmates an “ass-whipping” if they struck a staff member. If anything, the beating made Scott more resolute. The only way for convicts to avoid being picked on was to fight back. “There are two sides in prison and only two. If one side gives an inch, the other side tries to grab two inches. That’s just how it is; you never willingly give up ground.”
When it came to guards, Scott said he followed a simple philosophy. “If they are respectful, I return respect. If they speak in a courteous manner, I will speak in a courteous manner, but if they want to start that silly shit, then I’m going to push back—hard.”
When the cell door popped open, Scott took a deep breath and made fists. But the lieutenant in charge of the guards said matter-of-factly, “We need you to come with us.”
If the guards had wanted to fight, they would have rushed him. Scott stuck out his hands to be handcuffed. He was marched down the tier as other inmates pressed their faces to the bars and watched. Scott strutted along, holding his head up proudly.
“You are being charged with attempting to smuggle contraband inside a federal penitentiary, to wit, two point seven three grams of heroin,” the lieutenant on duty explained once Scott was downstairs inside the lieutenant’s office, a room that serves the same role inside the prison as a police headquarters. “Got anything to say?”
“This is bullshit,” Scott replied. “I didn’t do a fucking thing and I don’t know anything about any heroin.”
The lieutenant didn’t bother asking any further questions. Guards escorted Scott to the Hole, where he continued to fume.
“This is a bum beef,” he told the guards there. “Total bullshit.” For days he complained, and then one morning he got some news from a friendly guard. The FBI had a copy of the tape-recorded telephone conversation of Scott threatening Bill Hutchinson’s girlfriend, the guard told him.
“No one has my voice on tape,” Scott insisted. “They may have someone’s voice on tape, but they will never be able to prove it is mine.”
They might not have to, the guard said. The word circulating among the guards was that inmate Bill Hutchinson had been whisked out of Leavenworth during the night and taken to another prison so that Scott couldn’t get to him. Hutchinson and his girlfriend had cut some sort of deal with the FBI, according to the guard. They had agreed to testify against Scott in return for a plea bargain.
If the guard was waiting for Scott to react, he was disappointed.
“Fuck the government,” Scott said. “This is a bullshit charge. I don’t know nothing about any heroin.”
Chapter 3
WILLIAM POST
As he walked briskly around the blacktop track in the prison yard, William Post felt hopeful. The federal Parole Commission was reviewing his request for leniency and Post was optimistic about his chances. After all, he had served fifteen years of his forty-five-year sentence for bank robbery, and most par
ole boards turned a criminal loose after he completed one-third of his prison term. Post also had an exemplary record while in prison. He had earned a college degree in psychology, participated in thirty-four psychotherapy group sessions (a prison psychologist had described Post as “a highly motivated and cooperative individual who has made a positive contribution to the group”), and he had kept out of trouble. A prison counselor had even congratulated the forty-two-year-old convict for “gaining significant insight into his behavior” and “making an excellent institutional adjustment.” Surely with that kind of record, the Parole Commission would grant him his freedom.
As a rule, Post didn’t think about the outside world. “You got to cut yourself off from such thoughts,” he explained. “You have to deal with the reality of where you physically are, not daydream about the streets.”
But as he strode along the outdoor track that July 1987 day, Post let his mind wander. He thought about what he would do when he was freed, where he would go, and then, in a flash, he recalled the crime that had landed him in Leavenworth.
It was supposed to be an easy heist. At least, that is what Post and his partner, Gary Tanksley, thought when they burst through the doors of a bank in Dearborn, Michigan, waving pistols and screaming at the tellers and customers to get down on the floor. At most, the robbers figured, it would take five minutes to grab the cash and escape. It was not the first time they had robbed banks together and they had perfected their technique.
Leaping over the counter, Tanksley scooped bills from the tellers’ drawers while Post hustled the bank manager into the vault and ordered him to open the safe. But during the excitement neither robber had taken time to check behind a door near the front entrance. It looked as if it were a storage closet, but it actually opened onto stairs that led to an employee lounge in the basement. Seconds before Tanksley and Post had entered the bank, a security guard had gone down the stairway into the lounge for a cup of coffee, and now he was on his way up. As soon as he opened the door and saw the customers on the floor, he realized a robbery was under way. Pulling the door closed, he put down his coffee and slipped out his revolver. But Tanksley had spotted him. When the guard opened the door for a second time, Tanksley was waiting, and leveled his pistol at the guard’s head.
