Historians note that many old plantations in the South became prisons after the Civil War. It was seen as slavery by another name, a way of continuing a tradition that was supposed to be dead. In the years after the Civil War, convicts were brought in to replace one imprisoned workforce with another. Between 1870 and 1900, inmates were regularly tortured, beaten and maimed. Over 3,000 were killed during this period.
Today, the black prisoners mostly work the fields under the gaze of armed white guards on horseback. Over 80 per cent of the inmates are African American. At the end of each the day, they are marched off to their modest cells, just as they were 200 years ago. It leaves a bad taste and it disturbs my social conscience. It’s easy to make the leap from one era to another because the images remain the same.
At the prison golf club, lunch is served by shockingly servile inmates who pander to the predominantly white diners like silver service waiters. The wardens and deputies can call upon these ‘trustees’ to cook and clean in their own homes on the prison grounds. The lifers are expected to be grateful for the opportunity to do this work.
You can see how easily the slavery model fits in with that of the prison. The inmates do have a choice: they can stay in their cells for ever or they can work and engage with the community. If they choose to work, they at least get to build a life that involves some sort of reward and social interaction. If they choose to stay isolated in their cells, suicide is often the only option left to them. The prison farm, it seems to me, has originated as one way of perpetuating slavery, but today the economics of prison management make the prison farm a necessity to provide for the running of the whole enterprise.
* * * * *
Angola is a reservoir of extremes and perhaps the most potent example of this is Jon Barry Simonis. A former high school athlete with an IQ of 128, Simonis is one of the most prolific sexual predators in US criminal history. He is one of the most notorious inmates in the US penitentiary system and has admitted to raping over 130 women. His sentence amounts to over 2,500 years. I wonder if the caution of the US court system is designed to punish the perpetrator or comfort the victim. It seems to say: ‘Should he live and live, we will still have him inside, don’t you worry.’
An entire wing of the prison was locked down for my meeting with Simonis. Extra officers were drafted in and the atmosphere was tense. He is known as the Ski-mask Rapist, because of the distinctive disguise he wore when committing his horrific crimes. He is about 6 ft tall with greying hair and deep-set blue eyes, and appears to have changed little since his arrest in 1981, at the age of 30.
Soon after he arrived at Angola, the former Public Enemy Number One found God. Adopting a strong religious belief here is encouraged and is the easiest way to escape the reality of what you have done. Once you find God, you can treat your past as an irrelevance. Your present comes out of a rebirth and is completely divorced from everything that went before. Certainly, religious conversion is one way for the prisoners to make life easier for themselves. It is a way to earn more credits and to gain valued privileges. Warden Cain is explicit in his support of religious practice: ‘The choice is: do the men become better people here, or not. We put religion at the forefront of personal rehabilitation here and make no apologies for it.’ The New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary has 12 full-time pastors working on-site, and there are ministers of other faiths, including an Imam. While this philosophy had clearly worked for some, I wonder how appropriate it is for a state penitentiary to reward religious practice.
When I met Jon Barry Simonis, Prisoner 95868, he had already served 26 years in solitary confinement, locked in his 7 ft by 11 ft cell 23 hours a day, seven days a week. The bare cell had one small table, a bar of soap, a slim mattress and bare concrete white-washed walls and floor. A CCTV camera monitored his every move. His little luxuries were a bible and Fox News. I asked him how he had endured such austerity over the years.
‘People were never a necessity in my life, so when I was isolated, it wasn’t that traumatic for me living in the cell. My cell is the equivalent of a small bathroom. Instead of a tub you have a bed. Life is as good or as bad as I want it to be. I had to accept that, and that this is where I will live and die. Once I did that, life became easier.’
Simonis’ preference was to rape women in front of or within earshot of their partners. He sometimes acted with random accomplices, sometimes alone, but always with a viciousness that ruined lives forever. It takes a certain kind of arrogant pathology to pursue such a campaign of destruction, yet for Simonis it was only a game. His spree came to an end after an off-duty police officer noticed his red Pontiac Trans Am and realised that it was similar to the vehicle spotted near a number of the attacks. Simonis was put under surveillance for five days before being arrested and charged.
When I asked him what drove him to commit these crimes, he said: ‘Some people are into sports; I was into excitement and adrenalin. Crime was my drug of choice. I could have done the same thing if I was into racing cars or climbing mountains.’ Taking occasional sips from a tall vanilla-coloured mug, he continued: ‘Crime had so much more to offer in terms of the different excitement.’ It was disturbing to hear him explain his crimes as being the result of some kind of deviant adrenaline addiction.
He was a gambler playing a game of chance with the Police as he raped and brutalised his victims in a sexual blitzkrieg. I’m against the death penalty, but as I looked at this man I thought I could do the job myself. He was so matter-of-fact about what he had done. He told me that he has regrets, but that it doesn’t do to dwell on the past. ‘I have remorse for my victims but at the time you don’t care too much about the consequences or the victims.’
And it wasn’t just the victims who suffered because of Simonis’ crimes. 42-year-old Clarence Von Williams was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison for an aggravated sexual attack on a 40-year-old Bridge City woman and her teenage daughter. When the Police caught up with Simonis two months later, he admitted that he had carried out the crime alone, and Von Willaims was released.
In that instance, the victim, Sally Blackwell, awoke to find Simonis at the foot of her bed. She tried to speak but was warned that if she made any noise he would kill her children. Over the next two hours he raped and abused Sally and her daughter, Janet, while they were blindfold and bound.
In 1981, aged 30, Simonis was sentenced to 2,527 years in prison. In addition he was given 20 life sentences (just in case he survived the duration of his initial sentence). He will spend the rest of his life and more in Angola, as he has chosen to be buried here, too. He escaped the death penalty because rape did not become a capital offence until after his conviction.
‘I probably deserved to die,’ he told me. ‘I am guilty of these crimes. I knew extremely well what I was doing beforehand and while I was doing it, throughout. I have found a place now where I can be at peace. I have already filled out a will to be buried here. This is where I came when I was 31. I figure this is an appropriate place to be when I am dead. When I’m dead, I’m dead.’
* * * * *
Point Lookout Graveyard, which will be Simonis’ final resting place, is a beautiful little cemetery overhung by trees and carefully tended by the inmates. Simple white crosses mark the graves and American flags blow in the wind. A white picket fence surrounds the area and a simple ironwork sign indicates that this is the prison cemetery. The dead murderers are treated well in their final repose and are laid to rest in coffins crafted by fellow inmates.
The coffin makers operate out of a rustic barn a few miles from the cemetery and well away from the main prison blocks. Outside, there are thoroughbred horses in the fields and a pet dog running around the yard. The scene could be out of a tourist brochure. Indeed, tourists are allowed here on supervised visits.
Joseph Greco and David Bacon are the craftsmen who work here. Both are serving life sentences for murder. Their output is solely for the prison’s needs. ‘In total we have made about 70 or 80 casket
s,’ David told me. He is in good shape for a 40-yearold and has a thick shock of greying hair, parted in the middle as was the fashion when he arrived here 20 years previously.
Because in Louisiana ‘life means life’, both coffin makers will die here unless the law changes. Their constant hope is that it will, and that they will be given a second chance to contribute something to society.
‘I am not the same young man I was 20 years ago. There are so many things that brought us here. It could happen in the blink of the eye. There is a lot of men here, like ourselves, who if given a second chance would be successful in society and would even be an asset in society.’
I turned to his pal and fellow craftsman, Joseph Greco, Prisoner 124401, and asked him: ‘What was your mistake?’
‘My mistake was going out drinking and taking someone’s life. I am ashamed,’ he said.
‘Who was that?’
‘A patron in a bar. I found myself in an 8 ft by 10 ft cell in maximum-security lockdown 23 hours out of 24. I was cut down to my bare soul. I didn’t have anyone or anything in that cell, and I realised that that was the end of my life.’
The father-of-one knows that his chance of ever being free is negligible in this state, which is unlikely to repeal its ‘life means life’ law anytime soon.
‘You don’t know what you are missing until it is gone,’ he said.
Of all the inmates I met, David and Joseph showed the most remorse and regret. Their attitude made me question if ‘life’ should mean a life without any hope of freedom ever again.
‘What sentence would you give yourselves?’ I asked.
David Bacon hummed and hawed, perhaps nervous of being too lenient on himself.
‘You’ve had 20 years to think about it?’ I added, rather insensitively.
‘Twenty years is plenty,’ David answered.
‘Ok,’ I went on, ‘but what do you think is fair?’
The grey-haired Bacon, with his baleful eyes, looked like he carried the worries of the world on his slumped shoulders.
‘It’s a hard answer to give; it’s a hard answer. I’m almost getting emotional because a man lost his life.’
On the brink of tears, 20 years after the offence, David seems to be reliving the moment that cost both him and the victim their lives in different ways.
‘He had two daughters. He won’t see them again. For me to put a number on it …’ his voice trailed off for a moment, ‘I may be wrong in that respect, because that is a man who is not coming back. But if I am forced to put a number on it, then I would say 20 years is fair,’ David concluded.
This was a man who has given an enormous amount of thought to his crime and the consequences of it. This was a man, a murderer, who I would have in my house and feel safe.
Now that a figure had been mentioned, Greco took the baton and ran with it. ‘I would say 15 years. When I first came here, I went straight to lockdown. Then I went to cellblock, which is a unit that went out on the line [worked the fields] and stayed there all day. [There were] times when my face done split in half because of the sun done beat me so bad. I stayed out in the field five years before I got my first job. My first one was cutting grass. I worked hard. I don’t make any excuses about it because I’m glad because I earned every privilege the hard way, and it’s made me the person I am today.’
These men were contrite and were, I felt, the best argument for release before death. Their rehabilitation was revealing and appeared genuine. I began to understand how Angola worked. Take the worst of men who have done the worst of things and break them down through hard labour. When they have lost all hope of release, rebuild them slowly and try to make them productive members of prison society.
* * * * *
‘It takes good food, playing, praying and good medicine to have a good prison,’ according to Warden Burl Cain. He has done his best to ensure that prisoners understand that the path to rehabilitation is the path to Christianity. A devout Southern Baptist, he tells everyone who will listen that it is religion that gives the men morality and meaning in their lives.
This prison reserves a special place for prisoners who find God. Religion provides a kind of safety valve that releases the pressure of guilt. For many of the men, God is their only option if they want forgiveness, and forgiveness is the only thing that will allow them a fresh start.
Under Cain’s watch, over 150 inmates have graduated as prison ministers and the explosion in religious conversions has necessitated the construction of six new churches on the complex.
‘The Bible became the sword in here. Once they took religion into their hearts, then came morality and then care for one’s fellow man. We showed the way by building the churches, and they changed the prison,’ says Cain.
But Cain’s zealous approach to bringing Christianity to the prison has come under fire from the American Civil Liberties Union which said in one statement that, ‘Cain’s job is to be Warden of Angola, not the Chaplain of Angola.’ They believe that the religious ethos put in place by Cain is unconstitutional and they have consistently challenged his management of the prison.
Cain has created a community from the worst of society, out of killers, rapists and paedophiles. My time there left me thinking that if he could do that inside, then surely we should be able to do better outside prison walls. If a prison can rescue those seemingly beyond redemption, perhaps there are some clues as to how we should remedy the ills in our own society.
At Angola I learned that bad men can turn good over time. And if given the chance, they can make a valuable contribution to our communities. Everyone builds their own prison with their habits, peculiarities and thought patterns. I had seen more freedom inside this prison for well-behaved inmates than I have seen in many workplaces where people feel trapped by wages, commitments and expectations. The message that I took from Angola was that we are all free to reinvent ourselves. Sometimes it is not necessary to understand the past to move forward – you can park it and forge ahead with the future if you allow yourself that freedom. It was a striking lesson to me.
But do I feel guilty for putting men in prison? Well, I still struggle with that question. But I do know that it genuinely changes some men for the better. And, by opening my eyes to the reality of the experience, I think that’s what it did for me.
7
DYING AIN’T MUCH OF A LIVING
It was 1992, and I was on a military aircraft nose-diving into Sarajevo Airport in the middle of a civil war. I had hitched a lift with the German Air Force into the city while it was still effectively under siege. The Luftwaffe C-160 transporter was carrying journalists and humanitarian aid, but nevertheless had to avoid attacks from the Serbian forces. While en route from Zagreb in Croatia to the stricken city, the pilot was informed that the plane had been locked onto by a weapons system on the ground and was being targeted and tracked, so he initiated a Khe Sanh dive – a manoeuvre named after the US military base in Vietnam, where aircraft would fly in at high altitude and drop sharply from 10,000 ft before dramatically leveling out for a very late landing.
I had been hoping to compete as a canoeist in the 1992 Olympic Games, but I had tragically failed to qualify for the team because I wasn’t good enough. As my dreams of representing Ireland faded, I had been offered a chance to report on the Balkan conflict and I dived at the opportunity. The death of one dream had allowed me to pursue another. I had always wanted to be a war correspondent but had never thought that my Olympic odyssey would end on the thousand-metre-long runway of Sarajevo Airport where the fishbowl topography of the area made us sitting ducks for gunners and artillery.
But taking risks had never bothered me. I wasn’t afraid to fail and, at the age of 26, I wasn’t really afraid of death either.
It wasn’t that I had some kind of death wish – I simply didn’t believe that the worst could happen to me. I have been accused by many of being slightly unhinged and of being an adrenalin junkie. Indeed, I have had a few close calls in the line of duty.
But this has never been my driving force: I have grabbed the opportunities on offer because life is for living, and a life without adventure holds little sway with me. In a way I treated the most dangerous of my assignments as arcade games where the consequences were not real. It is a coping mechanism that has allowed me to deal with the most acute dangers.
It’s not that I don’t feel fear, but I have the ability to postpone it until after the event and that has kept my mind clear at the critical moment. Flying into a warzone is a calculated risk that can be managed to a certain extent, but the real threat comes when danger takes you by surprise. The unexpected is the greatest of tests and is often the time when you find out more about yourself than perhaps you ever wanted to.
* * * * *
My first significant brush with death came, rather ironically, while canoeing on the river River Liffey. It was 1990, and I was a young reporter working for the Irish Press. I was too broke to afford my own car, so I was driving my mother’s. I had rather carelessly clocked up £1,000 in parking fines around the paper’s offices on Burgh Quay and I was struggling to pay them when the fairy godmother of advertising came unexpectedly to my rescue.
Mars were shooting a commercial to help the transition of the Marathon brand to Snickers in the public’s consciousness, and had chosen canoeing as the theme. They had lined up about 40 canoeists including my brother, Tadhg, who suggested I come along to the audition. I got the gig. The fee was £1,000 and I was looking forward to paying my fines before my poor mother ended up in court for my sins in her Ford Fiesta.
There were about 50 people on the set, just to shoot a 30-second commercial. Wardrobe rigged me out in an early nineties day-glo ensemble that was hard to wear with a straight face. The script called my character the ‘hero’ and I was treated like a star. It all felt a bit embarrassing. I had two assistants and I wasn’t allowed to do anything for myself. Instead, I was told to concentrate on learning my line: ‘Snickers really satisfies – peanuts, chocolate, caramel – it really keeps you going.’ It took me 18 takes to say the line and get the bite into the bar just right. To my mind, all the takes were the same, but the director had a different opinion.
Hitman, Gangsters, Cannibals and Me Page 9
