Death Row All Stars

by Enss, Chris

  In Wyoming, Cheyenne, Laramie, Sheridan, and Rawlins became four popular rail towns. Ambitious businessmen descended upon the emerging hamlets, bought up parcels of land, and resold them to settlers eager to make a home for themselves in the territory.7 Sandwiched between the Sierra Madre and Medicine Bow Mountains and the Haystack and Seminoe Mountains, Rawlins was founded in 1867 by John A. Rawlins, a decorated Civil War general and official sentry for the railroad.8 The locale possessed fine drinking water, and after General Rawlins announced “it was the finest water he’d ever tasted,” railroad executive Grenville M. Dodge, who was traveling with Rawlins and Rawlins’s scouting party, declared that the site should be called Rawlins Springs. In time the name would be shortened to Rawlins.9

  In spite of the trappings of civilization that came west with the railroad, Wyoming was still the Wild West in many ways. The safety of the early citizens of Rawlins depended upon the troops hired by the railroad to protect them. Native Americans angry over the presence of pioneers on their land tried to attack the town on several occasions. One such attempt was thwarted in June 1870. “Couriers came into Rawlins last night to report that soldiers had stopped a band of Sioux Indians from moving in on the establishment,” the June 29, 1870, edition of the New York Herald read. “The confrontation took place twenty-­five miles from Rawlins. There were two hundred Indians in number, fifteen were killed. No soldiers were hurt. Reinforcements and ammunition left Rawlins carried by lieutenants and scouts.” By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the Wyoming Territory had largely evolved from a wild, undisciplined stretch of undeveloped West into a thriving, much-­traveled-­to state. Settlers of the big plains of Wyoming loudly sang praises of the territory’s beauty the day the area was admitted to the Union in July 1890.10 Prospectors came and extracted from the region’s mountains rich deposits of coal and some gold, silver, and copper. Farmers sunk plows into the inhospitable earth and managed to grow a variety of crops. Businessmen opened hotels, banks, saloons, and mercantiles, and ranchers drove thousands upon thousands of herds of cattle over what many cattlemen believed to be the best grazing land in the nation.11

  As the population of Wyoming increased, so did the crime rate. Authorities in individual towns across the state housed petty lawbreakers in local jails. Serious offenders were sent to a prison in Laramie. By the late 1880s, however, the facility at Laramie proved to be too small to accommodate all the convicts, and lawmakers began discussing where a new penitentiary could be constructed.12 Rawlins had a reputation for dealing harshly with criminals. Desperados caught in the act of robbery, rape, or murder in the town were not only hanged, but sometimes actually skinned. Various items were made from the hides of these unfortunate lawbreakers, sold as souvenirs, and used as a warning to other would-­be felons. Such was the case with George Parrott, alias Big Nose George, a gang member who attempted to rob a Union Pacific train.13 After shooting and killing two Carbon County deputy sheriffs, he was lynched for the murders by Rawlins citizens in 1881 and shoes were made from his skin.14

  Such dedication to seeing justice served made it easy for Wyoming’s Ninth Legislative Assembly to agree that the best place to build the state penitentiary was Rawlins.15 In 1888 state officials purchased land north of Rawlins from the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and construction on the penitentiary began. Rocks from the sandstone quarry south of town were used to build the prison. Holdups with legislative appropriations and poor weather conditions stalled building efforts over a fifteen-­year period.16

  Construction on the Wyoming State Penitentiary, affectionately known as the Crossbar Hotel, began in 1888. Wyoming State Archives, Dept. of State Parks & Cultural Resources

  The December 16, 1896, edition of the Golden, Colorado, newspaper the Colorado Transcript informed readers that the new penitentiary building in Rawlins had been completed and that the governor, secretary of state, and state treasurer of Wyoming had inspected the finished product. “They found the work of the contractor performed in accordance with the terms of the contract made with him by the state,” the article noted. “The new penitentiary will have to be furnished before the convicts can be transferred to it,” the report concluded.

  A plaster cast of “Big Nose” George Parrott’s head and the shoes made from his skin. Wyoming State Archives, Dept. of State Parks & Cultural Resources

  It would be five more years until the Wyoming State Penitentiary opened its doors to its first residents in 1901.17 According to the December 14, 1901, edition of the Rawlins Republican, prisoners were transferred to the new structure on Thursday, December 12, 1901. The newspaper covered the momentous event in some detail:

  The prisoners are being transported in a baggage car which has been fitted up for that purpose with cages for the guards in each end. The prisoners are shackled and handcuffed together. Benches are placed in the car for the men to sit upon.

  It is impossible to secure a sufficient number of shackles, so it was necessary to have a number of pairs made. These are riveted by a blacksmith after they are placed around the men’s ankles and are cut off with a cold chisel after the men are delivered safely into the cell house of the new prison. The transfer is being affected without difficulty, and the authorities laugh at the sensational stories published in the Cheyenne and Laramie papers regarding an alleged plot to hold up and liberate some of the desperate ones.

  Several armed guards accompany each shipment. The second car load of fifty men arrived yesterday afternoon and another will be brought up tomorrow. There is considerable curiosity on the part of the people to get a view of the men in stripes, but they seem to enjoy the attention given them.

  . . . The weather is quite cold for them in their ordinary prison clothing, and they are no doubt glad when the prison walls again protect them from the piercing winds. Better weather could not have been chosen for the transfer, as no man no matter what his opportunity would ever attempt to get away in weather like this.

  In the first lot brought up were a number of the most desperate characters, men serving long terms for murder and other crimes. There will be two hundred two men held under confinement while there are cell bunks for two hundred eight men in the Rawlins’ prison.

  The State Board of Charities and Reform appointed J. P. Hehn as the first warden of the Wyoming State Penitentiary. Established by the Wyoming State Legislature in 1890, the State Board of Charities and Reform was responsible for all state reformatory and penal institutions “as the claims of the humanity and the public good require.”18 Hehn, acting under the direction of the board and following practices that were common all over the United States, put a convict leasing program into place as one of the prison’s standard practices.

  The system of penal labor practices, referred to as lessee programs, began in the southern United States. The convict leasing program provided prisoner labor to private parties. In the case of the Wyoming State Penitentiary, millionaire Otto Gramm, a Laramie drugstore owner, sheep rancher, railroad tie contractor, and mining speculator, was the penitentiary’s lessee.19 Gramm provided work for the prisoners in a broom-­making factory set up at the prison, and the state paid his company for the convicts’ daily support in the amount of fifty-­seven cents per prisoner per day.20 The profits from the sale of the brooms were intended to reduce the cost of the prison to the taxpayers, and having a leaseholder in place as part of the prison management was intended to lessen the administrative burden.21 While the system achieved its economic goal, Gramm’s reign as the head of the penitentiary lessee program was marred by accusations of abuse of the prisoners and malfeasance.22 Corruption and lack of accountability were chief complaints about the lessee system nationwide.

  The broom-­making factory Gramm oversaw at the prison was called the Laramie Broom Company because it was originally run from the prison in Laramie. Several months after the Rawlins penitentiary was built, the company relocated to the new
structure along with the inmates. Prisoners produced about sixty dozen brooms daily, not only constructing the brooms but also sorting the corn delivered by train that was to be used in the making of the different grades of brooms.23

  Gramm had been embroiled in a scandal more than once in his career. While serving as state treasurer from 1888 to 1892, he was accused of misappropriation of funds. Although the money was eventually found, some prominent political leaders in Wyoming, including Governor Joseph Carey, questioned Gramm’s integrity.24 Gramm’s time as the Wyoming State Penitentiary lessee was fraught with complaints from prisoners about neglect, and heated debates between Gramm and those who speculated that he and Warden Hehn personally benefitted financially from the program played out in the newspapers. Gramm was accused of skimping on provisions and medical care for inmates and pocketing a large percentage of the money given to him by the state to care for the prisoners.25

  From the spring of 1903 until the summer of 1911, it is estimated the Ohio-­born Gramm accumulated close to a quarter of a million dollars in revenue from the broom manufacturing operation at the prison. The finished products were shipped by train not only to hamlets within Wyoming, but also to Nebraska, California, Utah, Montana, Minnesota, South Dakota, Colorado, and Idaho. The price of brooms varied from $0.52 to $2.15 each.26 Inmates were subjected to stiff penalties if quotas set by Gramm were not met. He rewarded guards who helped keep the system going with cash and made sure certain prisoners who helped keep the number of brooms produced high were provided with extra food or clothing.27 According to historian T. A. Larson, Governor Carey vehemently condemned the state contract that enabled Gramm to add to his bank account with what amounted to free labor.28 Much later, a report compiled by Wyoming state attorney Robert Murray revealed that the condemned “looked with distaste on the whole range of implications of the [lessee] contract.”29

  One of the objections to the program was that the labels affixed to the brooms did not identify the product as having been manufactured at the penitentiary, probably part of the prison’s attempt to “skirt the contentious issue of free labor.”30 Prisoners often voiced their opinions about this dishonest behavior. Years after he was released, convict Harry A. Pendergraft wrote about the procedure. “The practice of that company of placing deceptive and misleading labels upon their products and similar questionable business methods of that nature were held up to the public as a menace to all honest free labor and to the great industries of the state.”31

  Pendergraft referred to conditions at the penitentiary under the rule of Warden Hehn and Otto Gramm as “a system of the dark ages.” In a letter he wrote in the April 25, 1912, edition of the Laramie Republican, he claimed that Gramm and Hehn were “merciless” and that the penitentiary was an “incubator that breeds and nourishes criminal instincts and sends men from prison in a worse state of degradation than when they entered here.” Other prisoners wrote that under Gramm’s administration, tomato cans were used for drinking cups and meals were calculated down to the last bean so that just enough food was served to prevent starvation.32

  State auditor Robert Forsyth and Charles Blydenburgh, leading members on the State Board of Charities and Reform, disagreed with the complaints about the prison administration. They insisted that Hehn and Gramm were adequately operating the facility with the least amount of taxpayer dollars.33 Regardless of how well Forsyth, Blydenberg, Hehn, and Gramm believed the lessee system worked, a powerful opposition was about to eliminate Gramm’s involvement in the program in spite of the influence of those who stood to benefit the most by keeping him in place.34

  In April 1911, after more than a decade of being in operation, the lessee program was struck down by the Wyoming State Legislature.35 Gramm, Forsyth, and Blydenberg were less than thrilled by the decision. Gramm and Warden Hehn’s successor, Fred Hillenbrand, left their positions, and Governor Carey made Big Horn County sheriff Felix Alston the first state-­appointed warden.36

  Within days of Alston taking on the job, members of the State Board of Charities and Reform who disagreed with Gramm’s ouster were questioning the new warden’s ability to manage the prison. There were also questions surfacing about Governor Carey’s honesty and his motives in removing Gramm and appointing Alston.37 The issue of the governor’s honesty had initially been brought up in 1895 by his political opponent for senate, Francis Warren, who accused Carey of being a “tax dodger.”38 Senator Warren, along with his supporters Forsyth and Gramm, implied that the governor and Alston saw the potential of financial gain for themselves at the penitentiary and in time would find their own way of exploiting the system.39

  In spite of the backlash against his appointment, forty-­six-­year-­old Alston was eager to begin work as warden of the Wyoming State Penitentiary. There were a number of programs, such as the lessee program, that he was pleased to see eliminated. He also wanted to introduce new opportunities, including physical fitness programs. Warden Alston also believed that inmates should give back to the community and began a program that put crews of prisoners to work making road repairs in the state.40 The broom factory would remain a part of the prison’s programs, but it would be managed by the prison administration and not as part of a lessee system.

  Warden Alston’s first months at the penitentiary were rocky. His plans for change were neither quickly nor easily embraced by either the inmates or the citizens of Rawlins. People in both groups refused to believe Warden Alston had the experience or ingenuity to be effective that his predecessor had possessed.41 According to historical accounts found in the book Annals of Wyoming, prisoners began plotting their escape almost from the moment Warden Alston arrived on the scene.42 He tried to reason with the inmates by agreeing to meet with those convicts who were considered leaders at the facility to address their concerns about him. But almost immediately he committed a grave error, by carelessly failing to invite an influential prisoner named Lorenzo Paseo to the summit.43 Paseo took offense at the oversight and vowed to get the warden’s attention and make him pay.

  Irrespective of the turmoil, Warden Alston pressed on with reform at the prison. No change he instituted was as controversial inside or outside of the prison as the creation of an inmate baseball team.44 Wyoming citizens, like people all over America, were enthusiastic about the sport. The entire town turned out to watch games, and the local ball field was another version of the town square, a place to be seen. It wasn’t unusual for local businesses, politicians, and churches to sponsor teams of their own and to offer better jobs to the best players in order to keep them happy in the community.45

  The front pages of the Rawlins Republican, the Carbon County Journal, and the Cheyenne Daily Leader covered in detail the winners and losers of the season’s games between the Laramie Cowboys, the Cheyenne Indians, the Rawlins Team, the Rock Spring Ball Club, the Union Pacific Players, and the Green River Sluggers. Wyoming clubs also played games against teams in California, Arizona, and Utah.46

  Warden Alston was an avid baseball fan, as were many of the inmates interred at the Wyoming State Penitentiary during a time when the entire country had been swept away by the sport. Shortstop Honus Wagner, center fielder Ty Cobb, and pitchers Christy Mathewson and Cy Young were the most well-­known major league players of the time.47 The 1911 season produced one of baseball’s best rookie crops, led by Shoeless Joe Jackson, the only man to hit .400 as a rookie.

  Fans cheered for players such as the Rawlins team pitcher “Slim Jim” Jenson and second baseman Jackie Weibrecht, and their on-­field talents were the topics of much discussion.48 An article from the September 21, 1911, edition of the Rawlins Republican noted that a preoccupation with baseball and a specific team’s stars was a “cure for insanity.” “Baseball dope, the batting averages, league standings, vital statistics, and the rest of the assorted, is first-­aid to the curious and information is now being put to practical use in curling backward minds and incorrigible students in high school,” the comm
entary read. “You may say without departing from the literal truth that baseball makes the insane sane.” Doctor W. O. Kohn from the University of Illinois is quoted as saying “watching baseball and investing yourself emotionally in a game makes your mind as clear as glass.”

  Inmates at the Wyoming State Penitentiary received updates about their favorite major league baseball teams from family and friends. Oftentimes those letters would include newspaper clippings and postcards with statistics and photographs of popular players. Members of the penitentiary baseball team would study the information and desperately try to emulate their favorite athletes.

  Warden Alston hoped the souls of players on the baseball team he organized would be uplifted by the game. The roster of inmate players he pulled together consisted of a dozen men ranging in age from nineteen to thirty-­eight, and their crimes were heinous. Shortstop Joseph Guzzardo had been convicted of manslaughter. Eugene Rowan, who played first base, and the catcher, James Powell, had both been convicted of rape and attempted rape and attempted breaking and entering. Sidney Potter, convicted of forgery, played center field. The left fielder, Earl Stone, and second baseman, Frank Fitzgerald, were both in for breaking and entering. Ora Carman, another left fielder, had been sentenced for grand larceny, as had third baseman John Crottie. Thomas Cameron, convicted of rape, was one of the team’s pitchers; the backup pitcher, H. A. Pendergraft, had been convicted of grand larceny. George Saban, convicted of murder, was team captain, and Joseph Seng, also convicted of murder, alternated between playing catcher, shortstop, and right field.49