Born to Lose
Page 45
On a smaller scale, another relationship was poisoned within the Hoss constellation. Betty had always been friendly with Diane. Even when Diane began divorce proceedings against Stanley, Betty understood and wrote to Diane, “We’re all for you.” But now, after letters from her brother citing Diane’s selfishness in keeping their kids from him, Betty wrote, “You were never any good for Sonny. You’re just someone I used to know.”
Diane’s pattern, after enough coercion, was to periodically respond to Stanley. His replies were always prompt.
2/24/75
Thank you for sending the kids birth dates. I just can’t remember anyone’s birthday except mine and LeAnn’s. When I come to Pittsburgh to be sentenced, I’ll let you know, but I still might get a new trial. I don’t give a good shit because I’m going to kill again and again. Crazy, huh? Here at Graterford I’m surrounded by niggers. Of the 1500 inmates, there’s only 200 or 300 white guys. I’m one honkey devil they don’t want any trouble with. They know how much I hate them because I tell them every day. I’d like to throw all their black asses in an oven.
They still want to send me to a mental hospital. Just because everyone thinks I am their god, that’s no reason to send me to a funny farm. I can’t help it I am a god.
The end was approaching fast for Betty, but it came sooner than need be. On August 15, 1975, Betty visited her daughter Laura. When Betty left, Laura stayed on the front porch, watching her mother drive away. As she watched, Betty speeded up, then smashed her car into a cement retaining wall. Betty died instantly. Soon after, Hoss wrote to Diane.
I’ve been really fucked up since Betty got killed. She told me and only me last year she had leukemia. She didn’t want people to have to take care of her. I don’t have to tell you the accident was no accident. The last time she visited me she took a ring off her finger and, believe me, it’s killing me but I’ll never take that ring off as long as I’m alive. I don’t know what I will do without her. I have a few things I must take care of then I think I will join her because my life has no meaning anymore.
Several weeks later, Stanley sent Diane a picture of himself taken in Graterford’s visiting room. For one whose existence was in a barred cubicle, he looked remarkably well. Standing in front of a large piece of cardboard painted in wild psychedic colors, he wore prison-issue cocoa-colored pants and a white short-sleeved shirt. His pose showed long, wellgroomed hair, resting on broad shoulders. His waist was trim. He sported sunglasses and a happy smile. In the accompanying letter he wrote:
I’m sorry about the handcuffs. I must keep them on at all times, even when on a visit. Well, I just got word I’m going to Pittsburgh to be sentenced for killing that nigger.
The sentencing hearings for the three killers, held in September 1975, confirmed assumptions that the convicts would get the max. Danny Delker got Life. As the sentence was read, Delker turned his back on Judge Lewis. George Butler got Life. As sentence was delivered, Butler, too, turned his back on the judge and said loudly, “You’re a senile old fucker.” In the course of these hearings, held several days apart, Judge Lewis said only what was required for the formality of the occasion. This reserve was dropped, however, when it came to Stanley Hoss.
Commenting on the jury’s verdict, Judge Lewis said directly to Hoss, “Why they were so charitable is hard to imagine. If ever there was a first-degree murder, it was that of Captain Peterson, a decent and honorable man. It was cold-blooded murder by you and fellow thugs who have killed before and will kill again if given half a chance.”
Hoss, seated before the judge, laughed out loud.
Ignoring the insolence, Lewis went on. “Men like you are a menace to society outside of prisons and a danger within. I am sorry I cannot impose the death penalty. It is what you deserve. The sooner the death penalty is restored in full to this country, the sooner society will be protected against the likes of you.”
In imposing a sentence of ten to twenty years, Lewis ordered the term to run consecutively, adding, “I hope this sentence, along with your others, will forever foreclose the possibility of you ever being released.”
Hoss’s parents had long since discontinued use of their own last name, but shortly after their son’s most recent sentencing, Stan Sr. and Mary asked the Allegheny County Common Pleas Court to legally change their surname to Meyers, the name they’d been using. The couple said the Hoss name had subjected them to vilification and harassment.
Nearly three years after the Peterson murder, in June 1976, a Western Pen inmate named Terry Fishel wrote to correction’s headquarters, claiming that prison personnel were involved in “offing the guard,” but within ninety days it was Fishel who was charged with making false statements. Of the two staff members he had named, one had not even been working at the prison at the time and the other had been on a pass day when Peterson was killed. Fishel’s motivation became clear when prison officers intercepted a letter he wrote to another inmate. The contents revealed a plan to implicate guards so Fishel (after heroically coming forward) would be transferred to a county jail to serve his lengthy sentence, a transfer that would improve his chance to escape.
Peterson’s killers all appealed their convictions. George Butler’s appeal came to naught. As for Hoss’s appeal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court addressed it in a ruling on October 8, 1976. Hoss had made several objections—voir dire, venue, excessive publicity—but they were knocked down one by one. Then came Hoss’s claim that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence. Justice Robert Nix reacted with scorn. “This argument is preposterous. This was one of the most pernicious killings within the Commonwealth in many years. The evidence was overwhelming. The de-fendant’s motion is denied.”
Having dismissed the Hoss and Butler appeals, the state wanted to get the same result for Delker, the “hat trick,” but it was not to be. When Judge Lewis instructed the jury in the Delker trial, he followed case law when explaining an insanity plea: “It is the defense’s role to prove the accused is insane.” Unknown to Lewis, or to Delker’s attorney, John Dean, the state supreme court had, only two weeks earlier, written a new ruling that switched responsibility on this issue: it was now the prosecution’s obligation to prove the accused sane. It was only when Dean was researching an appeal that this came to light. Fearing “reversible error,” Lewis wrote a twenty-eight-page persuasive opinion, but the high court was unswayed. Delker was awarded a new trial, and he again pled not guilty.
As trial began in May 1977, the jury studied Delker carefully. Few would recognize the man—full head of hair, twenty pounds lighter, wearing rimless glasses—as the same “skinhead” who had yukked it up with Hoss at the coroner’s hearing days after the murder, shouting racial slurs, giving people the finger, and punching his attorney, all the while sucking on a broomstraw.
Prosecuting the case was Assistant DA Pete Dixon, who left nothing to chance. He called the same witnesses as in the original trial and used four full days re-proving guilt.
The battleground, though, was the issue of sanity versus insanity. Dixon had the jury listen to four psychiatrists say Delker was not then or now insane, and rested his case with a slow reading of Delker’s confession of the crime.
Undaunted, Dean Foote opened the defense. “Yes, my client took part, but he was incapable of understanding the nature of his act. We are interested in his state of mind.”
And who better to weigh in on that state of mind than Delker’s friend Stanley Hoss? Hoss had arrived at the county jail the afternoon before. Foolishly placed in adjacent cells that night, the two killers had plenty of time to get their stories down pat.
On the morning of the sixth day of trial, Hoss took the stand dressed in plum-colored jail fatigues and oval sunglasses. In leading Hoss, Foote’s strategy would attempt to suggest that it was the Pennsylvania prison system that created people like Hoss and Delker.
“Maximum security units are all the same, no good,” said Hoss. “Shrinks, counselors, any of the screws, nobody did not
hing for me all these years I’ve been in prison.”
Q. Is there a possibility you’d kill again?
A. Yes, I would kill again.
Q. Why would you kill again, Mr. Hoss?
A. I’d kill again because I’ve always been willing to rehabilitate myself but prison officials did not, will not, help me.
Nodding toward Delker, Hoss explained, “Danny probably feels the same way because the lousy jail treatment was a common rap with us guys in the Home Block, the hole. But Danny never told me he would kill anyone, because we don’t get into emotions.”
Q. Do you hate blacks?
A. Yes.
Q. Guards?
A. I’d kill them all. I’d do anything to get the point across I want to better myself through counseling.
Q. So what you want is treatment, someone to be caring. What you really want is a caring Bureau of Corrections, and, if so, you will change your ways?
A. Right.
For the next three days Foote continued to argue that Delker should be absolved of the crime as a “by-product of a harsh and discriminatory penal system.”
Earlier on, Delker, as polite as he could be, enlightened the jury. “I remember grabbing Mr. Peterson, but when I saw the cross he wore around his neck, I had an epiphany … asked myself what I was doing? I don’t remember anything after that.”
“Did you want to kill him?” asked Foote. “Yes,” answered Delker, “but everyone wants to kill everyone else down there. That’s the way it is.”
At every opportunity, the prosecutor, Dixon, did an exceptional job tripping up Delker, even getting him to admit he knew right from wrong during the many other crimes of his life. Dixon also thrashed the defense’s theory that Delker suffered from psychomotor epilepsy—a malfunction of the brain. Still, the thirteen-day trial was a slugfest. It would come down to who the jury believed.
In the end the jury decided Delker was not the product of an inhumane prison system, that he’d never been insane, and that he had planned and carried out a butchery.
For the second time, Delker was sentenced to serve “Natural Life.” Prison authority would dictate the terms of that incarceration, and, like those of Hoss and Butler, those terms were summed up by the phrase “your door welded shut.”
. . .
After testifying against Peterson’s killers Bob McGrogan did need protection, but the homosexual couldn’t very well be kept indefinitely at a house for wayward boys. He was eventually transferred to Greensburg Prison, a place where most inmates were nonviolent and many had work-release privileges. McGrogan stayed clean and bided his time, until he thought the moment was right to seek an early release from prison.
Jack Hickton, no longer the district attorney since he had failed to win reelection and had entered private practice, appeared before the State Board of Pardons on McGrogan’s behalf. Asked by a reporter if his involvement was to repay a debt, Hickton replied, “I told the guy in the beginning I couldn’t do anything for him but if something came up in the future, I’d express my feelings.”
To the board, Hickton elicited what compassion he could by pointing out that, at age eight, McGrogan had witnessed his mother’s murder, that his father had been poisoned to death when the boy was twelve, and that since the age of fourteen, McGrogan had been out of prison only twice, never for more than six months. Hickton knew, though, that he was not playing to a sympathetic audience. Broaching the meat of the matter, Hickton stated that it was McGrogan’s eyewitness testimony that had led to the important convictions in the Peterson case. “He did a hell of a job under frightening circumstances, and I was sure his testimony would lead to his death in the prison system. Since that testimony, it is my belief Mr. McGrogan has had a reawakening of consciousness.”
Not everyone felt the same. Hickton’s successor, Robert Colville, opposed any cut in McGrogan’s sentence, and although he didn’t testify before the board, Officer Bus Reilly—the other eyewitness—said privately, “McGrogan’s as guilty as the rest of them.”
. . .
“Locked up so tight, I don’t know how Hoss could still cause so much trouble. He needed executed. It’s the only thing that would stop him.” These words came not from prosecutor, cop, or guard, but from a murderer.
John Gergel had been a “marine, four years,” but after his discharge somehow things went south, and Gergel ended up in jail on suspicion of burglary. “It was a forty-eight-hour hold, that’s what they told me,” said Gergel, “but I decided to escape.” During the attempt, Gergel was confronted by Officer Sam VanAucker. “We fought, and I got his night stick,” said Gergel. “When I hit him over the head, it killed him. I didn’t mean to do that.” Gergel got a life sentence and wound up in Graterford’s Behavior Adjustment Unit (BAU).
“One day this guy is by my cell,” remembered Gergel, “and he stared in at me. Not knowing Hoss, I said, ‘What the hell you lookin’ at?’ Hoss liked someone like that, from a white guy that is. I later learned he asked that I be permitted to yard with him, but this was in the months to come. At the time Hoss got yard by himself. This was a couple years after he killed that guard at Western, but Hoss had it worse than any of us. His restrictions approached that of Hannibal Lecter. These procedures were put in place for Hoss alone. I could see why.”
So could Graterford’s first black superintendent, Julius Kyler. “There was that time Hoss climbed up top of the BAU roof so now we have a kind of standoff. I’m on the phone with Commissioner Robinson, who knew Hoss from a teen. ‘Tell Hoss he got five minutes to get down—or shoot the bastard.’” Kyler laughed in the retelling. “Yeah, that’s what Robby said. Hearing this, and who gave the order, Hoss yelled back, ‘Robby said that? Well, I know that sunnuvabitch wants me dead.’ Hoss climbed down. But, yeah, Hoss was always a risk.”
“Hoss was not allowed in pop for any reason,” said inmate Gergel.
He had to be exercised—that’s the law, I think—but he was put out in a dog run by himself. If someone was given yard with Hoss, he’d complain and the guy was removed. There was a special setup when Hoss had a visit. He went out cuffed and shackled at count time or after hours with no other visitors present. That’s the way it was for him.
In this time, ’75 and ’76, I knew Hoss as well as anyone. He didn’t speak to many and few talked to him. No black officer dealt with Hoss. They weren’t allowed. But after a while Hoss and me would yard together. It was okay at first. We’d swap home stories and he’d go on about girls, cars, or crime, and he told me about Betty. He’d get amped up for these visits. He never said anything about sexual matters with her but he was very close. I’d see pictures he got taken in the visiting room. You’d think Betty was a girlfriend, the way they posed and hugged together. Stanley told me he believed the state police drugged Betty, causing the crash that killed her. He was inconsolable. That was the end of any lucidity he may have had. He became even more dangerous after Betty’s death. Exercising constantly, he was a beast. He made a brine out of beet and pickle juice, and this would toughen his skin to a hide, on his hands. He’d punch the walls. He requested free weights. Denied. So he went off, broke his sink and toilet. They put him all by himself for a couple weeks. He calmed down after that but he was always so dangerous.
But Hoss was charismatic when he wanted to be. You could see at these times how he could influence men and how women could be drawn to him. But usually I was extremely uncomfortable around Stanley. He was forever coming up with plans to kill—which included me as a partner. One plan was to escape from the BAU then, “kill five or six blacks before we’re stopped.” Jesus! You can see how I was always walking on eggshells. Another plan was to get into court by filing lawsuits, but his purpose was to kill a judge. I know Stanley wanted to kill this Judge Strauss he talked about. He said he’d leap over a railing or table then snap the guy’s neck with his bare hands. Stanley lived to kill again.
But here’s what happened to me … once staff thought you were too close to Hoss, you were
transferred out. I got sent to Pittsburgh, too, and there, considered a “friend of Hoss,” I was given the rough treatment, put in the hole an’ all for about eight months.
“Hoss put in more than one lawsuit on us,” said Bill Robinson, who over the years had gone from an assistant at the Allegheny County Workhouse to a jail warden and now to Pennsylvania commissioner of corrections.
Hoss said he wanted things like education and work therapy. Then Judge Ray Broderick got a Hoss lawsuit in his office. Hoss made his case for this or that, plus he wanted to learn Spanish. I’d decided to let Hoss learn Spanish on his own in his cell, and I considered allowing dry ceramics but Judge Broderick said he needed to have a hearing to get everything on record. I made tight arrangements for this court trip, even with helicopter security because this was Hoss’s last time out. I’d also heard Hoss wouldn’t mind killing another official so when in front of Broderick, Hoss was virtually strapped around, and I borrowed a trick from the Peterson trial when a detective, a marksman, was pointed out to Hoss along with a quiet message, “You try anything at all in court, Stanley, that man has orders to shoot you through the head.” I had my own man in Broderick’s courtroom and Stanley was given the same cheerful warning. You might think this was going too far but let me tell you something interesting. In the months preceding this hearing, Graterford staff noticed a certain woman who’d gotten on Stanley’s visiting list. She was one of those volunteers coming into the prison with a religious group to save souls. We checked her out. She was in her late twenties, married. She’d fallen for Stanley and left her home but not before cleaning out her husband’s bank account. The plan was to meet Stanley when he went to federal court. He would escape. I don’t know how, but she was ready with her part. She’d chartered a private plane for the two of them to fly to Mexico. Spanish!