No one could say for sure when the talk turned serious, turned to murder. It would take some doing to pull it off, but many things had fallen in place that allowed such perfidy to advance. Foremost among these was that, by serendipity or destiny, three like-thinkers had met and, despite being in Western Penitentiary’s most secure setting, managed to intrigue and plot in the Home Block.
The first member of this fetid trio was the small, dark-haired George Butler, who had earned his place in prison through murders committed the previous year. In December 1971, Butler had entered the Beechwood Inn, twelve miles outside Bedford, Pennsylvania, looking for cash. He’d been there before, and on more than one occasion had received a free hot meal—when he was down on his luck—from the inn’s two kindly proprietors, Mary Deremer and Marguerite Snyder, both age seventy. The women, Christian and trusting, were known to have served many who could not pay. That Butler had been a recipient of their benevolence meant little to him, however. He wanted money.
It was some time later that a man stopped at the inn for cigarettes and called the police. First to arrive was Corporal Mike Toranczyk of the state police. Toranczyk had visited the inn frequently over the years. A favored customer, he was allowed to go into the kitchen and make his own sandwich on the women’s thick slices of homemade bread. Now the trooper was sickened. The place was ransacked, the cash register emptied. Mary Deremer had been shot once between the eyes; Marguerite Snyder had been shot three times, in the neck and body.
A year passed before the net closed around George Butler. In August 1972, Butler pled guilty to robbery and murder and received two consecutive life sentences. The community and law enforcement wanted the death penalty, but, only two months earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5–4 vote, had ruled capital punishment to be “cruel and unusual,” and thus had removed execution as an option for any murderer. The ruling was also retroactive; nationwide, those already under a death sentence were spared.
Shipped to Western Pen to serve his time, Butler ran afoul of the rules and earned time in the Home Block. It was here he met the second member of the trio, Danny Delker.
Delker was nearly always locked up for one thing or another. Same with his family; a few years earlier, his worn-down mother had had to visit him in turn with his three brothers and his dad, all simultaneously imprisoned in various jails. Delker was typical of the criminal class. He was only technically a school dropout, as he’d barely dropped in. Why study or work when things could be stolen? With this attitude, stirred by an explosive temper, it was only a matter of time before his first mug shot.
After assorted property offenses, Delker pulled an armed robbery at a supermarket. Only nineteen years old but already married with an infant boy, Delker’s crimes earned him six to twelve years at Western Pen. By 1973, he had dimmed his chances for parole by occasional fights, mostly with black prisoners, and by a recent incident in which he’d busted up his sink and toilet in a fit of rage. Still, all he had to do was stay quiet, out of the way for a while, and he’d soon be a free man.
In September, though, Delker took a beating when jumped by three blacks. This may have been payback for the times Delker had done the same or, with racial tension at the pen as thick as day-old stew, it may have been random, for the fun of it. Two of the three assaulters, Melvin “Whiskey” Sermons and Brady Jackson, had been grabbed up by the guards. The following day, September 22, the pair was taken into the Third Gate area and placed in a small room across from the major’s office to await a hearing. They sat quietly, handcuffed.
Though Delker’d had a day to cool off, he hadn’t. From a distance, he watched Sermons and Jackson escorted inside. Knowing from experience there was usually a wait before a hearing, Delker lied his way past the Third Gate. He was patted down, then cleared to walk in. The first room to the right held an open window. It was here Delker stuck his hand out to receive a shiv from a friend standing outside. With the blade up his sleeve, Delker moseyed along the corridor before turning into the room across from the major’s office.
Sermons and Jackson barely had time to notice just who stood before them. Handcuffed, they didn’t have a prayer. In seconds, Whiskey Sermons was dead. Jackson yelled out but was repeatedly stabbed before a guard wrestled Delker to the floor. Despite spilling as much blood as Sermons, Jackson somehow survived.
Delker was taken to the Home Block. In his cell that night he heard congratulations for the stabbings from George Butler. And from Stanley Hoss. It was these three, who’d already accumulated six bodies among them, who’d now conspire to kill again, for killing’s sake. They just needed to pick their victim.
. . .
For longer than anyone could remember, the Home Block had housed the prison’s most dangerous and unruly, but that was not its earliest purpose. Originally, Western Penitentiary had incarcerated both male and female convicts. Indeed, when the huge gate had first swung open nine decades earlier, twelve forlorn souls had shuffled in, eleven men and one woman— an embezzler. To separate the genders, a stand-alone structure had been built within Western’s 11½ acres. Situated just inside the southern wall, it was as far removed as possible from the main prison’s daily hum.
The few women incarcerated in Western Pen were housed here, in the long, two-story red brick building that looked at first glance like a large house—if one with bars on its tall windows. Behind those windows, six on each side, were forty barren cells. The new female inmates, disheartened by the starkness of the interior, worked together to brighten their new living quarters, fashioning sheets into drapes, weaving rugs, covering lampshades with pretty yarns, and decorating tabletops with doilies … yes, just like home. The name stuck: the Home Block.
With the opening of a women’s prison in 1920, however, the Home Block was emptied of the fairer sex, leaving the “prison within the prison” free for another use. It was after a 1924 riot—when toughs known as the Four Horseman smuggled in guns and dynamite and killed two officers in the ensuing battle—that Western’s administrators determined that the Home Block would now be used to house those prisoners markedly jeopardous to others.
To prisoners worldwide, any place of punishment within a prison is called “the hole.” In this sense, the entire Home Block was Western Penitentiary’s hole. However, the Home Block had its own punishment area, not often seen: ten basement cells, all in a row. These cells comprised the real hole at Western.
Governor Milton Shapp visited Western in February 1972, while Joseph Brierly was still superintendent. During his five-hour tour, the governor said he was pleased the unfortunates behind bars were being granted more rights, greater freedoms. He heard no mention that in some quarters there was emphatic opposition to his views.
“I was one of the escorts for the governor,” said Sgt. Doug Cameron, “and I’ll tell you, I wish he’d never come. I took him into the hospital and no inmate was handcuffed. We weren’t even allowed in the room with the governor when he’s pow-wowing with these guys—Spruill, Logan … i mean, these were dangerous suckers.”
Governor Shapp was impressed with the mammoth north and south blocks, which had a combined capacity of some eleven hundred cells. He was particularly interested watching the production of license plates. Last on the agenda was a trip to the Home Block.
“So we go there and he walks around the whole place,” recalled Cameron,
asking questions as he goes. The lieutenant of the block, Walt Peterson, came around with us. Then Shapp asked to see “down below.” There’s no access from inside so we all go outside to a set of steps which led to the basement. He told us he heard it was called the “subterranean dungeon,” but it was clean, dry, even bright with white paint and lights, but the inmates always played up the dungeon aspect and the news media ran with it. Shapp said, “Don’t you think it’s severe putting someone down here?” Peterson explained those brought to the basement were dangerous or acting dangerous, or at the very least disruptive, often out of control. Then the superintendent chimed in: “Governor, this is a last measure for us. The ones in the Home Block are the worst of the lot and have really done something to get sent here in the first place. The basement is an important tool for us to keep order in a tough place. We’ve even, as you see, had to encase the porcelain toilets with cement as they started busting those up, too. It’s always move, countermove. We draw upon Dr. Thomas and our psych staff to see if mental health issues are involved. If so, we go that route, hospitalization and so forth, but if the inmate is just being hateful and aggressive he has to face a consequence which will stop that behavior. In all respect, sir, it works. There is a sense of isolation the inmates do not like. For serious assault a man can serve some weeks but for the most part we have to handle the disruptive ones, the yelling, keeping others up all night. Yet no one is given a set time to serve in the basement, like 3 or 5 days. They are checked hourly, and we keep precise logs on this. It’s more or less a ‘cry uncle’ situation. When the inmate makes assurance he’ll stop the offending conduct, he’ll be brought back upstairs. Frequent is the case where the mere mention of getting sent below has a corrective effect.”
“The super’s words were reasonable; I even saw the governor’s aides nodding,” said Cameron, “but then Shapp followed with, ‘Do you consider this down here, the basement, as sensory deprivation?’ The superintendent answered carefully, ‘It is in its way, Governor, but that’s the point.’
“After that, we’re going up the stairs after leaving the basement,” recalled Cameron, “when the governor said, ‘I don’t want to see that basement used again.’ Brierly said, ‘But we have to have this … ,’ but Shapp cut him off, saying again, spacing each word, ‘I don’t want to see that basement used again.’ Lt. Peterson and me looked at each other and just shook our heads.”
The next morning’s press announcement jolted prison administrations statewide: “The basement section called the ‘hole,’ a solitary confinement symbol of prison punishment for years, has been abolished at Western Penitentiary, according to Governor Milton J. Shapp, who disclosed that Warden Joseph Brierly agreed to closing the ‘hole.’ Eliminating the medieval character at Western is part of a statewide prison reform program.”
On the day of the hole’s closure, discipline in the Home Block, always tenuous, began to crumble. In the months following the governor’s dictum, it fell primarily to Lieutenant Peterson, the ranking officer in the Home Block, to make the best of a bad situation. With little backing from the administration, however, and stymied by ever-changing policy, Walter Peterson’s worries were great.
. . .
“Walter loved Asaline and Asaline loved Walter. Just neighborhood kids, they got sweet on each other at 13 or 14 and, oh lordy, neither of them ever looked at anyone else.” So spoke Oralee Coon, mother of Asaline.
“To go back a bit, our family came up here from the south,” explained Oralee. “My grandmother was a slave—this was Alabama—and my granddaddy was ‘mixed.’”
My father was very light, straighter hair. When we were kids, my father had land, a horse and buggy. No formal education, but he had skill. He knew how to handle things, so when I was comin’ up we had some of everything. He owned a farm. Then in 1925 my father bought a new Ford. Now here it was my father, who had no schoolin’ and couldn’t count, had a new car and, by hard work, three little houses in the country. So we grew up fine. Now this is nothing compared to many white folk, but we lived well. Still, for us younger people, jobs were scarce and many blacks migrated north. The mills were the draw. My parents stayed on their land, but my husband and I came to Pennsylvania, here in Clairton. The town was segregated but friendly. Blacks lived here, whites lived there, but we all interacted. A lot of the men got jobs at U.S. Steel. When we first got here, the mill’s rate was four dollars a day.
William Coon gave a hearty laugh. “Maybe we were a bit poor, but everyone lived the same way, the whole neighborhood, but we were never hungry because we learned to eat what was prepared, and mother was great at making supper out of, well … whatever. We were very happy.”
“Of my children, Shirley came later,” said Oralee, “but Alvin, William, and Asaline were all born within a few years of each other, and to speak of Walter Peterson, well, he practically grew up in the house, too, and he was as much a son to me as my own boys. He was born the same month and year as my Asaline, in 1930. His family came up from Virginia and lived just down the road. Walter never knew his father, who was thought to be Puerto Rican. By the time Walter was born, the man had gone his way.”
“Yes, Walter was very fair, with blue eyes,” added Shirley. “He could easily have passed, but he always made it a point to let people know he was black.”
“So we all played and grew up together,” said William.
It was good times. The elementary schools were white or black only, but the high school was integrated, and here Walter excelled. Smart as a whip, he’d help out us kids with math. He ran track and threw discus. By this time he was a good-looking fella, a solid six-footer, active, and a churchgoing man. Asaline was an organist, and our Dad was the director of the choir. The church was our center.
Walter and Asaline graduated in ’48. He joined the air force and was with the APs, a version of the army’s MPs, and got home when he could, always straight back to Asaline, too. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before those two would marry.
“And that’s just what happened,” said Shirley.
After Walter was home for good, he found a job in the mill then, yes indeed, married my big sister, his childhood sweetheart, on a perfect day in April 1957.
Asaline and my older brother, Alvin, were the backbone of our family. Dad died young and they stepped right in. We came to Asaline for guidance all the time. She was an absolute leader and, really, a pioneer around here because she was the first black secretary for a company in Clairton called Picco. Then, again, she became the first black secretary for the Clairton School District. She was so good, so personable, she wound up secretary to the superintendent.
Oh, Walter and Asaline were wonderful together. I was 13 when they married. When Asaline worked I used to iron her clothes. One day while ironing, Walter was there. Something came on the TV about sex and I asked Walter what it meant. He turned red as a beet and said I ought to talk to Asaline about such things. Well, the next week Walter gave me a book he got from the library. He said, “Here, maybe this can answer some of your questions.” Walter … a quiet and thoughtful man.
If it wasn’t the strikes, it was the intermittent layoffs that eroded stability for mill workers up and down the Monogahela Valley. Walter Peterson’s tenure at the Clairton plant was no different. He and Asaline wanted children and a future less plagued with the uncertainties of mill work. So, recalled Oralee,
Walter started looking around, then he heard of openings at the penitentiary in Pittsburgh. This was in 1959 and things were changing a little, can’t say they weren’t, but police departments, the prison system, fire stations, it seemed, were closed to us, but didn’t Walter go up there and get that job, didn’t he just? Everyone was so happy. After some years he made sergeant; then, of all things, Walter was promoted to lieutenant. Oh my, white shirt with silver bars and a white cap, a real position of authority. This might be nothing to think of for white people, but for us this was truly a journey of a hundred years.
. . .
Hoss’s racist conversations with Danny Delker and George Butler had proceeded from idle banter to intrigue, conspiracy, and finally, a pact to kill. Ensconced as they were in the Home Block, the three had plenty of time together, especially because of other changes in the block that followed the closure of the hole.
“The basement was just sitting there, dormant,” said Superintendent Gil Walters. “Now that its purpose was taken away by Governor Shapp, it was space that ought to be used somehow. To exercise the Home Block inmates we’d put them in a side yard, but in bad weather they’d be kept in. I decided to reopen the basement as a rec room where they could play cards or checkers. We put tables and chairs down there.”
Sgt. Cameron’s view probably represented that of most Home Block officers:
So all of a sudden it comes down about this day room. They were washing their clothes down there, bringing their radios; oh man, nothin’ was locked. They could go in and out, take their showers when they wanted. If it started to rain they could go back down and play chess. In and out. In and out. You gotta control the Home Block, ’cause if the Home Block blows, the [general prison] population will go in sympathy with them, then you got a goddamned riot. As long as the place was secure and controlled, ya know, even the things that was done in the Home Block, as long as it don’t get out to the main population … but we had to go along.
Cameron’s veiled allusion to “things … done in the Home Block” referred to unauthorized disciplinary measures that were indeed employed. Employed with cause, but employed. Sometimes there was no other way to maintain order.
Even to inmate John Keen, the Home Block was a dangerous place. A two-time killer, Keen was also an aggressive booty bandit:
We got liver on the menu about every couple weeks. You have to laugh, really, but liver was stolen from the refrigerators for personal use or to trade for cigarettes. You see, a guy would take the liver to his cell, cut a hole in his mattress then stuff that raw liver in there and just like that he got his woman for the night. For me though, there’s plenty of the real thing walking around. My preference was the young white boys. Some can be cajoled, brought along by talking, small gifts, lingering walks in the yard, almost like courting. Other times you have to shove someone around a corner, then a quick knife to the throat. Of course, this takes the romance right outta things.
In late autumn of 1973, Keen was in the Home Block because of an aggressive record. “They’d put us down there, gave us a little leeway but that’s where we stayed,” said Keen.
Hell yeah, everyone there was a stone killer, the top names, every mutha badass. I had two bodies on me, had my own fuckin’ rep—and I was scared shitless.
It got so loose because the people in power were tryin’ this therapeutic thing. They were gonna be buddy-buddy with us, give us more trust. They had that thing for years where they beat up on people. Now, let’s face it, they wouldn’t beat you up for nothin’, but if you did somethin’ wrong, you were gettin’ an ass-whoopin’, wasn’t no rap on it. They did this for years and maybe thought it wasn’t workin’ so they’d try somethin’ else. We got more yard, could walk around free in the Home Block a lot. They even made the guards play basketball with us. This was a big change, because before, you wasn’t even allowed to talk to a guard, a silence rule, but now we’re jabberin’ all the time, which really pissed off the guards. And yeah, we’d bring reefer in all the time in our shoes. We’d walk to and from visits without bein’ shook down.
The prison’s swiss cheese security or, better put, sanctioned permissiveness allowed the murder plot of Hoss and his pals to roll on. The open basement provided the place, but were it not for another crucial factor, all calculations would have come to a halt.
“You see, the basement itself had a safety feature,” said Lt. Charles “Kozak” Kozakiewicz, the security chief. “About halfway from the door to the row of cells, there were floor-to-ceiling bars that ran the length of the basement. This meant that when staff went down there, the inmates were on the other side of the bars. Even though the inmates down there were playing cards instead of getting punished, that didn’t make them any less treacherous. You have to understand that any staff working a prison is virtually always outnumbered, so the bars were crucial for protection. But now we learn the bars are to be dismantled.”
This decision, like many other recent changes from the administration, frustrated the old-school Lt. Kozak with the wrongheaded thinking of his superiors. With eighteen years in, Kozak’s stature inside the walls was considerable. “I tried to treat inmates with respect,” said Kozak, “but still had my run-ins, and got the scars to prove it. Stabbed, kicked, held hostage, busted vertebrae … neck still aches in damp weather.” But Kozak was far from an easy mark. It was usually the other way around.
“If we was up to somethin’, we made sure Kozak wasn’t around,” said inmate Keen. “I seen that man rumble many times in the Home Block. He’d hit you so hard in the head, your feet would swell up.”
“I was there from the fifties, remember now,” said Kozak. “In my career I can say I’ve never seen at Western a greater concentration of cutthroats, white and black, at one time. We had trouble keeping everyone in check, and that’s why taking out those protective bars was pure lunacy.”
Issue of the bars aside, another new order further hampered the staff’s efforts to keep order in the Home Block. U.S. District Judge Wallace Gourley had mandated that inmates have at least two hours of exercise outside their cells. This was never a problem except in the Home Block. As the numbers swelled there, Walters was forced to exercise the inmates in groups of four, instead of singly or in pairs, a safer practice. In poor weather, as many as four could now congregate in the basement. If his officers felt hamstrung by the administration, Walter’s own bosses in Camp Hill provided little but shifting sand under his feet. Further, dissension was growing within his administration. Mistrust was pervasive.
“I felt pretty much on my own,” said Walters. “I trusted Kozak and some others but we often banged heads. I understood Kozak’s thinking as security chief. Much going on must have rubbed him the wrong way.
“The basement as a punitive measure should not have been closed down, but to whom could I protest? Is there someone higher than the governor? And sure, in hindsight that rec room was a blunder, but when it opened up there were all sorts of regulations about the place but these were largely ignored by the officers who ran it.” As for the removal of the bars in the basement, Walters added meditatively, “Inside that rec room, I would have not myself ordered the bars torn down, but it may have gone through me. I might have given the order but I think it was an agreement reached at a much higher level than mine.”
Walters’s explanations may be perfectly credible, but at least some of the rules broke down when unsupported by other rules or policy. “You have to remember,” said CO Ron Horvat, “the concerns of the officers had been routinely thwarted for some time. I think gradually there came a resigned acceptance of the situation.”
With the removal of the bars, another piece had fallen into place for the conspirators. And as their theoretical plan become more concrete, Hoss and his pals picked their victim. They ruled out all whites. They could choose a black inmate but that was too small-fry. So wasn’t it fortuitous that Lt. Walter Peterson, a rare black officer, was running the Home Block? They would kill him.
Even after the decision to kill Peterson, someone might have developed cold feet or a change in the circumstances might raise obstacles that would cause the plan to fizzle. But just at this time, a series of events fueled the conspirators’ rage and racist resentment.
Delker was facing trial for the September stabbing death of Whiskey Sermons and the attempted murder of Brady Jackson. Then, “at the end of November,” recalled inmate John Keen, “me and David Rydell went to court in Montgomery County and while we was there Danny Delker’s brother got shot to death by a man—a black man—in Delker’s hometown. When Rydell and me get back to Western, I didn’t say nothin’ but Rydell razzed Delker, ‘Hey Danny, your brother got killed by a black dude, how do ya feel ’bout that?’ Soon after, we heard those white boys made a plan to take a guard hostage then kill Rydell and every other black who was gettin’ under their skin.” Delker’s anger was further fueled when, on November 28, prison counselor Gary Boyd informed Delker that he would not be allowed to attend his brother’s funeral. Delker said to Boyd, “Yeah, well, I’m gonna hurt somebody.” This was duly noted, but threats by inmates, particularly after not getting their way, were typical.
This time though, barred from a final goodbye to his brother and enraged by the color of his killer, Delker’s commitment to the murder plan was sealed.
In the same week that Delker learned of his brother’s death and was denied permission to bury him, Dr. Herb Thomas, the prison’s psychiatrist, called for Stanley Hoss to be brought to the hospital. “I’d been working with Hoss the past three years so I knew him well,” said Thomas.
Hoss was hugely impulsive with lowered ability to control his behavior when ruled by some emotion. Once he got here after killing that young mother and her child, I spent a lot of hours with him. He told me he didn’t know where he buried the bodies, said he was drinking, exhausted, and hardly knew where he was 90 percent of the time. I don’t know, though. From what I saw of him, Hoss was so trapped by his rage for authority figures that anything that sounded like he was going over to the other side … I mean, to do the right thing … would be tantamount to becoming a law-abiding decent citizen, and there was no way he was going to do that. He was going to play his role out to the end.
On this Saturday afternoon, two corrections officers arrived at the hospital with Hoss. Though perhaps an unwise practice, Thomas would never see men unless their shackles were removed. “So Hoss came to this room,” said Thomas,
and the officers went upstairs. After just a moment I realized I was in great danger. Hoss was beside himself with rage, pacing back and forth. At first I thought it was about my decision to not allow the marriage between him and a girlfriend, but he never mentioned it. He was, though, upset that the administration transferred out his friend Frankie Phelan, and other things were getting to him. I’d never seen him so agitated. I felt at any moment he’d grab something as a weapon. Even if he just slugged me I’d be in trouble as he was so powerful. Then Hoss voiced his chief complaint. He was worried he’d never be allowed out of the Home Block, and it was a public fact that custody was going to keep him there forever. Hoss said officers would tell him this, like with Kozak’s phrase, “We’re going to weld your door shut.”
Returned to his cell, Hoss smoldered. He was sure the prison wanted to bury him. When he thought about it, maybe Diane did too. Furious and frustrated, Hoss dashed off a letter to her.
I know what you did with the picture I sent the kids. You stinking bitch, you fat cum drunk whore. I’ve put up with your bullshit long enough. I couldn’t stand living with you all those years but did it for the kids. Your sister was around too. That was nice for me. I’m sure this is no surprise, is it? Just ask her why she went to New Jersey that one time to live for 4 months.
I never loved you. The kids know who their father is so there’s no reason to hide anything but believe me they will come to know what a fat, stinking pig their mother is. Just look in the mirror, bitch. Take a good look at yourself before you blame me for being bad for the kids. I’m sure they know the little bastard you brought home ain’t one of them. I can say one thing. I never brought my sins home to the kids. You should have flushed the little bastard down the toilet. Who the fuck would want you? Well, when the boys get older they can always put your stinking ass out on the streets and have you sell that stinking pussy of yours. Goodbye, you lousy cunt.
Dark mood prevailing, Hoss, the most Machiavellian of the three plotters and chief engineer of the murder scheme, was determined to wreak a general vengeance and, if nothing else, sustain the notoriety he held so dear.
And what of the third schemer, George Butler? He wouldn’t falter, he swore to himself. At 5 feet, 4 inches, he was just happy to be associated with the big dogs. He didn’t want to admit it, but just to be seen talking and laughing with Hoss and Delker draped a protective veil over him: Don’t fuck with me. I’m with them.
Hoss, Delker, and Butler got busy with specifics. When and where, the exact role of each plotter, what weapons and who would use them—all these details were discussed and decided, as well as the central problem: how to get Lt. Peterson in their presence. This reminded Hoss that he’d more than once called the lieutenant a nigger to his face, so he determined to moderate his manner, to lull Peterson to a more benign appraisal of him.
Despite the secrecy of the plotters, rumors sprouted. Snippets of dubious information began to surface within the routine mixture of hearsay and tattle in this house of whispers. Inmate “Georgia” Buoy heard something.
“Georgia” Buoy liked Peterson. Unlike some blacks, who’d sneer at Peterson as an “Uncle Tom,” Buoy was proud of Peterson, that he’d made lieutenant. A few days into December, Buoy saw Peterson crossing the yard, and called to him. “‘Hey Pete, got a minute? Listen, be careful down there. Some shit may happen. Just don’t get caught flat-footed.’ Pete says back, ‘Wait, what are you talking about?’ an’ I said, ‘Pete, just listen to what I tell ya. Watch yourself.’
“But damn, a few hours later Pete brings me into the captain’s office,” Buoy continued. “Everybody sittin’ there an’ Pete says, ‘Okay, tell them what you told me.’ I looked at Pete an’ said, ‘What I said was for you, not these people. I’m not your rat. Fuck you.’ An’ I left.”
Buoy’s wasn’t the only warning, though. In the following days, CO Jimmy Weaver heard that Peterson had found a note on his time card that read, “Watch your ass. They’re going to get you.”
If Lt. Walter Peterson was worried over the recent scuttlebutt, he set it aside, rationalizing it as no more than other staff had gone through. Still, Asaline, his wife of sixteen years, knew better:
Though my husband talked little about his work, I could tell when there was trouble. When you live with a man so long, you can read him. I wanted him to get out, really, but it was his profession. He’d been commended for his work with dangerous inmates but there’d been a subtle change over the past year. Yet only once did I see him visibly upset, and that’s when the Supreme Court banned capital punishment. Speaking of his job, he said, “Where does that put us? We won’t get any protection now.”
Though it was a longer drive for Walter, we stayed in Clairton, buying the place we’d been renting on Mitchell Avenue. Family, friends, our church, we wouldn’t leave. And by this time our only child, Walter Neil, was eight and well situated in school. Everything was good, but gradually I noticed Walter had fewer smiles, less twinkle in his eyes. He was always a strong man and I knew of occasions where he’d have physical confrontations in that prison, but now Walter was into his forties…. I worried.
On December 7, Superintendent Walters signed a memorandum to the deputy commissioner at Camp Hill headquarters. His opening lines clarified the issue. “As I have previously indicated to you, our institution has received an overload of problem cases from other bureau institutions without any degree of relief from the present problem cases we continue to hold. I therefore request that certain problem cases be transferred from our institution….” Listed in the memorandum were ten troublemakers, including the inmate suspected of passing a shiv to Danny Delker, who a minute later used it to murder Whiskey Sermons and nearly kill Brady Jackson.
The top four of six other problem cases cited were Stanley Hoss, George Butler, Daniel Delker, and Robert McGrogan, but “these men we are keeping and are not requesting transfer.”
Also by this Friday, December 7, Peterson’s mood had brightened. Maybe it was the season. Christmas trees were going up in the big blocks, but no tree had ever been put in the Home Block. Maybe now, as a lieutenant running the place, he could see about that. Maybe a more conciliatory manner in Stanley Hoss helped too. Stanley Hoss seemed to have come around these past days toward the Home Block staff, and even more so toward Peterson.
“Hoss was out of his cell a good bit, cleaning the steps and ranges,” recalled CO Horvat.
He took to talking with Pete, something he’d never done before, Pete being black. I watched this exchange for about a week. After the insults Pete had earlier taken from Hoss, I don’t know how Pete could be receptive to Hoss’s friendly talk, but we all knew of inmates who credited certain officers with helping them turn their lives around, even if it’s just a better attitude, and maybe Pete thought he was doing some good. I even saw Hoss show pictures of his kids to Pete, and on this Friday, just before Pete’s shift ended, I heard Hoss say, “Okay, Lieutenant, have a good weekend, see ya Monday.” Hoss just wasn’t normally that chummy. Only later did I piece this together.