December 10, 1973.
“We’re gonna kill Peterson today.”
If that had been spoken by just about anyone else, it would have been a joke, but Bob McGrogan knew Danny Delker meant it. If certitude was needed, standing with them in the basement, not five feet from Delker, was a mirthless Stanley Hoss, who appraised McGrogan for any reaction.
Having spent thirty-four of his fifty years behind bars, McGrogan was thin but wiry and categorized himself as “one of the 15 or so thoroughbreds at Western.” He was known as a good shank man and had twice killed in prison. But that was then. Facing Hoss and Delker, McGrogan knew he was out of his league. “Hoss kept staring at me,” said McGrogan, “while Delker said, ‘Got it, Bob? You want in on it?’”
McGrogan knew there’d been rumors he was working with the administration. That he was an admitted homosexual didn’t help either, not circled by these Nazis. McGrogan reasoned to himself that he was a killer like them, and he was white. Still, he sensed they didn’t trust him.
“What’s it gonna be, Bob?” asked Delker.
“You’re kiddin,’ right? I mean, why do you wanna do this?”
“Peterson’s always fuckin’ with us,” Delker answered flatly, “givin’ us a hard time upstairs, but as soon as we can get him down here …”
“Look, why not wait a couple days and I will think on what I wanna do?”
After conferring with Hoss but not Butler, who was further off to the side, Delker told McGrogan, “All right, we’ll do that.”
Voices were kept low, for aside from the four inmates, one other man stood nearby, Officer Patrick “Bus” Reilly.
Once the basement hole had been reinvented as a rec room, it was thought wise to post an officer there as an observer. For his own protection, Officer Reilly was situated at the far end of the rectangular area, in a small room separated from the corridor by bars. During his shift he was locked in; he had no keys to let himself out, but he did have an intercom that connected him with upstairs. Bus Reilly was unarmed. To the conspirators, his presence posed no threat.
Upstairs, Lt. Peterson was working the 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. shift, but Sgt. Doug Cameron and three others had just come on for the 2 P.M. To 10 P.M. shift.
“Once I got seated,” Cameron recalled,
I took care of the log and started to ready for the meal which would be sent over early, about 3:15, and me and Pete was catching up on the weekend. Pete said he was busy with family things and that he’d come to the prison Saturday night for the Lifers banquet, then on Sunday he had an uncle’s funeral, but like always he still looked better than anyone else. Shoes like mirrors, pressed creases, spit-polished brass, squeaky sharp … damn, if he sat down he’d break.
Pete tells me a couple inmates are out cleaning the range, a couple showering, and the white guys are downstairs with Reilly. Pete also said Reilly called up about 1:30, saying Hoss wanted to see him about someone’s illness, so Pete called Hoss’s counselor Gary Boyd to see if he could check it out. Routine stuff.
“By two o’clock I thought they’d forgotten about killing Peterson,” said McGrogan. “I’m talkin’ to them about just anything to keep their minds off that. I had a visit comin’ around two-thirty and I was just prayin’ I’d be called so I could get the hell out of there. Then Hoss said to me, ‘We’re not waitin’, we’re killin’ him now. If you don’t want in on it, you better go upstairs.’ I figured that was a set up against me in that if I went to leave they would try to kill me. I didn’t say I wanted in or out. I just stood there.”
“We gotta hurry,” said Hoss. “Get everything ready.” George Butler knelt down at a bucket on the floor. He pulled out a bed sheet, put it in a wall sink and turned on the water. Watching from a distance, Bus Reilly saw nothing unusual. Inmates were always bringing things into the basement to wash.
In another attempt to lure Peterson to the basement, Delker moved a small table beneath an electrical outlet on the ceiling, stood on the table, and, taking the plug from his radio, held it near the outlet but did not insert it. Hoss then asked Reilly, at the far end of the corridor, to summon Peterson to fix the outlet. Reilly relayed the message but the scheme was foiled when Peterson replied he’d send down an electrician to check the plug.
Ignoring McGrogan, Hoss, Delker, and Butler discussed the situation, then Delker stood on the table again, inserted the plug and turned on the radio, Hoss telling Reilly, “It’s okay, we got it working.”
Worried about further delay, Delker said to Hoss, “You sure we can get ’im down here?”
“Yeah, with luck,” Hoss answered. “I’ve been playing him, ya know. He thinks he’s getting me in his confidence. He’ll want to keep that up by doing me a favor. If he wasn’t a dead man, next week he’d be showing me pictures of his kids, and pumping me for information at the same time.”
After Peterson’s call to Gary Boyd an hour earlier, Boyd had gotten through to Hoss’s girlfriend, who confirmed her mother had had surgery but would be fine.
Then two things happened in quick succession.
Lieutenant Peterson got the return call from Boyd, telling him the mother of a Hoss girlfriend was doing well. At the same time, downstairs, Hoss approached Reilly, asking him to call Peterson about the very same thing, as he’d inquired earlier but no one had gotten back to him.
Bus Reilly eventually called upstairs, but it was Sgt. Cameron who answered. Getting the lieutenant’s attention, Cameron said, “Hey Pete, do you know about this hospital thing with Hoss?”
“Yeah, I know about it, everything’s okay. I’ll go down there and tell him.”
“Hell Pete, why go down? We’re gonna bring ’em all up in fifteen minutes anyhow.”
Peterson shrugged this off. “Ahh, I’ll go down.”
Cameron hit the intercom button. “Bus, Pete’s comin’ down to see Hoss.” It was 2:15.
Hoss smiled at his confederates. “Okay, this is it.”
McGrogan’s mind was spinning, made worse when Delker remarked, “We should have showered. I don’t expect we’ll be getting showers after today.”
Delker retrieved the soaked bed sheet from the wall sink, then wrung it out, commenting, “This should do it.” He handed the sheet to Butler, who knew what his job was. In turn, Butler produced a package of tobacco he was carrying and removed two double-edged razors, giving one to Hoss, the other to Delker. The blades had one edge taped, for a better grip.
“Butler took position by the door,” McGrogan later said, “while Stanley and Danny took seats at a table. I kept moving further away then sat down with my back to one of the cells, about twenty feet from them. I was halfway to Reilly and did everything I could to signal him, but he didn’t know what I meant.”
At the table close to the door, Delker’s back was to Reilly. Sitting opposite Delker, Hoss was shielded from Reilly’s view, who couldn’t see what McGrogan saw: Hoss was holding an electrical cord with wooden handles he’d fashioned into a garrote. Frozen to his spot, McGrogan thought, Oh Christ, Oh Christ, Oh Christ …
“Pete made ready to go,” said Cameron, “so I offered to go down with him. He said, ‘No, stay at the desk, I’ll just be a minute.’” Cameron thought nothing of this, as officers went to various places and into cells alone with regularity.
Moments later, with Peterson by the door, CO Ronnie Hagmaier, a cadet, arrived from the back of a range.
Pete says to me, “Here, take the keys, I’m going downstairs,” so I said I’d go with him but it was, “Nah, you got showers, stay up here.” So Sgt. Cameron and me stood at the main door and watched Pete leave. I still had his keys but he wouldn’t need them because inmates could go from yard to basement at will so the door down there was left unlocked. At the landing Pete called to me, “Hag, lock your door.” I don’t know why he said this, because with the in and out traffic through the main entrance, it was usually left unlocked, too, but when we went back inside I locked up behind us.
Peterson turned the corner of the Home Block then took the steps to the basement door. “When he came in, I looked directly in his eyes,” said McGrogan, “as if to say, ‘Jesus Christ, Pete, why did you come down here?’ hoping he’d run away, but he smiled at everybody, said, ‘Hi guys,’ then waved a greeting at Reilly.”
Watching from a distance, Reilly heard Pete’s greetings but could not make out the subsequent exchange. Nothing struck him odd, but in those few seconds he didn’t like the inmates’ encircling movements, didn’t care for their proximity to the lieutenant … Then came the lightening attack that transfixed Reilly for several quickening heartbeats before he sprang to sound the alarm.
Pummeled and shoved, Peterson was dragged to a corner. While Delker struck with fists, Hoss tried to loop his garrote around the victim’s neck but lost the cord in the general melee. Hoss then proceeded with methodical punches. Peterson raised his arms to protect his face and head but still suffered serious blows. Blood streamed from his forehead into his eyes.
“It wasn’t long after Pete went downstairs,” said Cameron, “that I went over to the sink, then heard Bus Reilly yelling, ‘Hoss! Hoss! Hoss!’ I jumped to the intercom at the desk. ‘Bus, what’s wrong?’ But he just kept yelling ‘Hoss! Hoss!’ I thought something is damned wrong. Hagmaier had gone out the main door so I yelled, ‘Ronnie, what’s going on down there?’”
“From my position at the bottom of the steps,” said Hagmaier, “I couldn’t tell anything was going on, didn’t know what Cameron meant, but he yells again so I ran up to him and we’re both listening to intercom noises, scuffling and cursing. I said we ought to push the button. This was an alarm that registered in the control booth in the admin building. The alarm buttons were numbered so the trouble spot could be identified by its number.”
Watching the assault unfold, locked in without a handgun, Reilly was impotent. Further, every use of the intercom put him several yards to his left, behind the corner of an end cell, cutting his line of sight into the corridor.
“Already Pete was hurt,” said Reilly, “and I wondered how far this was going to go? But it got worse so fast. McGrogan was standing off by himself, Butler was hunched down fussing with something, but Hoss and Delker were all fury. When Hoss landed a particularly vicious blow, and Delker laughed … I knew it wasn’t going to stop.”
“Tie the door! Tie the door!” Hoss yelled. Clutching a wet bedsheet, Butler jumped over to what was a two-door setup, not unlike any house’s screen and main doors, but in the Home Block’s basement, the inner door was made up of thick vertical bars, while the outer door, except for a seven-inch-square section of thick glass at eye level, was solid steel. Yet there was a design flaw that the inmates exploited: in addition to a handle on the outside, there was a big brass handle on the inside of the steel door, allowing Butler to double loop one end of the bedsheet through the brass handle and then, tugging for all he was worth, through and around the bars. Several sets of knots held it secure. Free of this first responsibility, Butler joined in the battery.
Suffering under a terrific flurry of punches and kicks, Peterson had been beaten down to a sitting position, but, with strength born of desperation, he broke away.
“After we hit the alarm,” said Hagmaier, “Cameron and me grab blackjacks and mace and run down the steps.”
Cameron recalled arriving at the basement door to find it closed,
and I mean shut tighter than a drum. It felt like it was locked, no movement at all. I was pulling and shaking that handle and looking in the window. At first I see nothing, and with the angle of that door and window you could not take in all the basement area, maybe only the middle half…. but then I seen Pete come by my line of sight, staggering, and I seen blood on his head. He went past and Hoss was after him. Then they disappeared and I didn’t see no more. I yelled in, “Hoss, open the door … Hoss, open the damn door now!” McGrogan was standing to one side. I yelled, “Bob, open the goddamned door!” but he just shook his head.
I knew that door couldn’t be locked because we had the keys … but with that door, there wasn’t a budge, a gorilla couldn’ta opened it. I yelled again at McGrogan but he stood there with a wide stare. Not getting anywhere, we ran back upstairs to hit the button again.
After Reilly had sounded the alarm, much was in motion. Lieutenant Kozakiewicz was in the front rotunda right beside the control booth when the alarm sounded. “I looked in the booth and they yelled out, ‘Home Block,’ so I ran and picked up guys on my way.”
Outside in the yard and in other locations, the initial alarm could not be heard, but “it was word of mouth, walkie-talkie, or simply by sight,” said CO Steve Dutkowski. “When we saw our guys running in one direction, we knew there was trouble and we’d join up at a dead run. You have to remember, over the past year that alarm was always going off—inmate fights … a lot of false alarms—but it never mattered. Inside, all we had was each other, and every alarm call was a sprint. In these first moments we didn’t know exactly what the problem was, but we got there ASAP.”
Even Ronnie Hagmaier didn’t know the gravity of the situation. “After Reilly’s yelling in the intercom, I ran down with Cameron, but with that window so little we both couldn’t see in at once, so I didn’t know … but we couldn’t get that door opened, then Cameron yells, ‘Come on!’ and we rushed back up. Cameron said, ‘We got trouble.’ I thought the inmates were fighting each other. It’s not like I panicked or anything—an inmate fight, no big deal.”
Cameron and Hagmaier had no sooner gotten upstairs when help started arriving. “They were trying to get in,” said Hag, “and I had to keep opening the outside gate for them to run up to the Home Block. I was running the keys back and forth so much I didn’t know anything beyond my thinking there was an inmate fight going on.”
Fear swept through the inmates. They heard the alarms, the shouts, Reilly screaming, and saw the frantic activity of the officers, their faces strained. On top of this, there were the recent rumors of a black takeover of the Home Block, or, alternately, a white insurrection—a killing spree against the blacks.
“Just before Lt. Peterson went downstairs,” said inmate John Keen, “I was in the shower with Sistrunk, who was head of the Black Muslims. I could see the desk area and saw Peterson on the phone, then he say somethin’ to a guard, then goes outside. Almost right away we hear all this noise. Somethin’s’ goin’ down. There’s only the blacks left upstairs an’ I ran to get two knives I had, then get in front of Fred Burton’s cell. See, after Burton killed two at Holmesburg Prison an’ stabbed a captain in the back, he almost got beat to death by the guards. He was still real weak so I stood in front to protect him. Then I see Sistrunk come from the shower still all soaped up. He ran into his cell and I think if he coulda’ burrowed through the brick, that’s where he’da gone.”
“When I hit that alarm again,” said Cameron, “I hear Reilly in the intercom shouting loud, in a panic, “Help! Help! They got Pete! They’re killin’ him! They’re killin’ him!’ I didn’t have time to lose but now we got trouble upstairs. Sistrunk’s running around buck naked an’ I see Johnny Keen tearing down a range—with a fuckin’ knife! Keen looked scared shitless, scared to death, and when Keen is scared there’s something to be scared about. Mike Stangler and Frank Salvay were on duty so I yelled for Frankie to lock those sons-a-bitches up. Lock it all down. We got problems.”
Right at this time the first contingent of officers rushed into the Home Block, led by Kozak. They all knew there was trouble, but none knew what the trouble was about.
Cameron looked at Kozak, the ranking officer. “They got Pete downstairs.”
Winded from his two-hundred-yard run, Kozak asked, “Who got Pete?”
“Hoss an’ them. I think they’re killing him. That’s what Bus is yelling.”
Not understanding that Cameron had been to the basement door, failed to get it opened, and had just hustled back upstairs, Kozak exclaimed, “Well, what the hell we up here for?! Let’s go, bust in there! Get in there! Get in there!”
After having thrust free of the initial pounding, Peterson, dizzy and unsteady, shuffled toward Reilly, shouting, “Help, Bus, help!” Pressed up against the front of his bars, Reilly yelled, “I called, Pete, I called! Hold on! They’re comin’! They’re comin’!” Then before he could think of its uselessness, Reilly grabbed the whistle clipped to his shirt and blew it, over and over, like he could signal the end of a match.
Halfway to Reilly, Peterson was intercepted by Butler, who hit the struggling man over the head with a folding chair. Stunned but remaining upright, the lieutenant lurched toward a wall for support. Having slipped down a moment before, Hoss caught up with Butler, took the chair from him and with all his might collapsed it over the back of Peterson’s head. Peterson slid down the wall to one knee. Hoss, with Delker, kicked down Peterson. Then the razors came out.
“I don’t know how many of us were at that door all at once,” said Kozak, “but the landing down there is not too big so we had to watch against getting in everyone’s way. We’re pounding, pulling, but that door wasn’t moving. When I looked in, I couldn’t see anyone except McGrogan, who wouldn’t respond to us.”
Wielding his night stick, Kozak bashed at the thick glass of the door’s small window but, “that club bounced off like I was hitting an iron beam.”
CO Jimmy Weaver stood by the railing, eight feet above the landing.
A lot of us weren’t sure what was going on, except that we had to get in there. Some of us heard Reilly yelling about Pete, some didn’t. Guys are whacking away at that door and window … looked fruitless. Everyone’s yelling and at the same time the boiler house whistle blew, loud short blasts, meaning the whole prison was going into lock down. Kozak’s the lieutenant but he’s in the middle of everything, so I ran over toward no. 6 tower. Thad Moore was up there with his 30.30 rifle. I didn’t have authority for this but I shouted to shoot the window open, shoot it out! Thad yelled back, “‘I don’t have orders to shoot.” But now Sgt. Vargo is beside me and he yells up, “Christ! Pete’s trapped! I’ll clear everyone away. I’m givin’ you a direct order … Fire!” But Thad Moore would not fire.
Unaware of Weaver’s and Vargo’s pleadings, in the same minute Kozak ran up the steps to order Thad Moore to throw a rifle down. “Thad was just preparing to lower the rifle by rope,” said Kozak, “but now the boiler house whistle is blowing like hell and I didn’t know if we had a general riot starting up. Now I’m thinking a rifle inside is too dangerous, so I countermanded my order.”
After twice being hit over the head with a chair, Peterson went to one knee, then slumped down altogether, onto his back. If he could hear anything anymore, it was his attackers screaming racial epithets.
Butler’s long, stringy hair was wet with blood. Straddling Peterson’s knees, he held the victim’s head back. At this, Hoss and Delker pounced. Kneeling on either side, the killers used razor blades on Peterson’s throat.
In a blood lust, both hacked away. Referring to the jugular, Hoss said, “Are you gettin’ it?” Delker laughed, “Yeah, I’m gettin’ it.”
Reilly thought Peterson—supine and still, white shirt crimson—had died. Bludgeoned as he was for … how long now? And the slashing … the horrific cutting … no man could … But no sooner had Reilly thought this than Peterson showed movement.
“I walked over to the door,” said McGrogan, “thinking of untying it and getting out of there, but I’d be trapped in the yard behind a wall with barbed wire. I looked to where Peterson was and seen he somehow got Butler off his legs and was getting up. Hoss hit him again but he’s up, on his feet.”
Peterson stumbled toward Reilly—“They’re at the door! Pete, they’re coming!”—but Pete was sluggish, uncoordinated. He turned to Reilly, extended his hands in a gesture of helplessness, then dropped to the floor, his arm and leg twitching. Delker bent over the lieutenant and spit in his face.
After more whips with a razor, a corduroy coat was thrown over Peterson’s face. Hoss, Delker, and Butler, all the while shouting, “The nigger’s dead! The nigger’s dead!” stomped the lieutenant before each picked up a folding chair to take turns slamming, over and again, Peterson’s body and head. Finally, exhausted, they urinated on the man.
“Then they just went crazy,” said McGrogan, “like they were in some kind of madhouse. Hoss yelled at Reilly, ‘Pete’s dead, fuckin’ dead! And we’re gonna kill you, too!’”
A couple of the folding chairs had splintered. All three got pieces, like clubs, and hit Pete further, then swung away at the florescent lights on the ceiling, busting everything up. They went back to Pete and stabbed him with the shards.
With a large force of guards on the other side of the door, the desperate McGrogan blurted to Hoss, “That door’s not gonna last forever. Open it or they’re gonna come in here an’ kill us.”
Hoss, all wild, whirled around to McGrogan, and screamed, “We’re all dead anyway!” Delker yelled the same, “We’re dead, yeah, all dead!”
Using the coat covering Peterson’s head, Hoss wiped blood from his hands, then looked Reilly’s way.
“Hoss came up to me, right to the bars,” remembered Reilly, “and said— he didn’t yell, but said, like giving a weather report—‘The nigger’s dead, and that’s what’s going to happen to all of you. You better tell your friends to bring their guns.’”
Quiet for once, Hoss, Delker, and Butler drifted to the body, hovering over it like lions after a kill.
. . .
Mission accomplished, Hoss untied the door. When it was finally pulled open, Hoss and Delker stood with their arms to their sides, Butler just behind with his hands up. Head down, McGrogan stood separately, ten feet away.
“We grabbed them to take up to the little yard,” said Cameron. “Because I didn’t go in, I didn’t know what all happened inside.”
As soon as the doorway cleared, Kozak stepped in, thinking Peterson must have taken a good beat-up, but instead “he’s lying there, and it was awful. I told someone to get our medics and call an ambulance.”
Don Madera and Steve Dutkowski came in with Kozak. “You have to know that Pete was so respected, so well liked,” said Madera. “I remembered when we’d have yard duty, we’d stand out there with billy clubs. Every few minutes Pete would come out and look to see us. He’d say, ‘Are you all right?’ We’d say, ‘Yeah Pete, we’re okay.’ Then he’d go back in, and if it was chilly, door closed, we could still see him in the window looking out. He was always concerned for us. That was Pete.
“But now we run in and kneel beside him. Steam was coming out of his head and his face was twice the normal size. Steve checked for pulse and I put a small mirror under his nose to detect any breathing, but Pete was dead. Lengths of splintered wood were stuck in his chest, stomach, all over, and florescent lights were stabbed in his body and face. Couldn’t see his eyes, only two slits. He wasn’t decapitated as some later said, but his throat was so ripped apart, gouged … His teeth were knocked out and his mouth was caved in. His head was crushed, split open, and on the left side brain matter was hanging out … We got so damn mad we went out there and kicked the shit out of those bastards.”
Subsequent reports stated, “Only the force necessary was used to subdue …” Some who were there stuck to this line but others, over time, spoke of what happened.
“A bunch of us, including Kozak, ran up to the little yard,” said Dutkowski, “It was cold out, snowflakes coming down. Cameron had them all lined up against a wall. We told him and others about inside the basement. Ringed as they were, McGrogan’s yelling, ‘I didn’t do nothin’! I didn’t do nothin’!’ and with Butler it was, ‘Don’t hurt me, I’ll tell you anything,’ but Hoss and Delker were there braced, ready.”
Kozak shouted up to Thad Moore on the tower, “If these guys make a move, shoot them.” They were standing there under threat of batons. Everyone was tense. Then, in a spontaneous utterance, Kozak ordered the four to take their clothes off. “I wanted them with naked skin,” Kozak later explained, “thinking a naked man is less likely to fight you.”
The inmates made no motion to comply, so Kozak ordered his men to strip them. “We rushed them,” said Jimmy Weaver. “They wore those blue-and-white-striped jumpsuits, now all bloody. We tore into them, getting licks in while we’re tugging at the clothes. Hoss and Delker tried to put up a fight, McGrogan, too, till he got jacked up and just dropped down. Butler got doubled over with a night stick. But we got them stripped.”
While this action took place in the yard, hospital staff had entered the basement and already an ambulance was pulling up. “People were bringing Bus Reilly out, and he was catatonic,” said Hagmaier, “and when I looked back to the yard our guys were still at it. Several were on Hoss, punching hard with their fists, same deal with the others. Delker scrambled up off the ground yelling his head hurt, then Kozak grabs him and smashes his head into a wall and says to him, ‘How’s that?’”
The highest rank who’d now arrived was Deputy Bill Jennings. After viewing Peterson, it was said (but never attested to) that Jennings placed a .38 on a table, and then announced to the officers present, “This is your block. Do what you have to do.” In the next minute Jennings got to the yard and watched with everyone else while Pete was brought up on a stretcher. “The body had every eye,” said Weaver, “then someone said, ‘Look what they did to Pete!’ followed by—I swear—Deputy Jennings shouting out, ‘Kill them, kill them all!’”
“Now we got a real situation,” said Kozak. “Other officers were arriving all spit and fire, and here we got our own people yelling for blood. I had to step in fast.”
“It was Kozak and Captain Krall who stopped the assault on Hoss first, then Delker and Butler,” said Weaver, “but me, Kohut, and the rookie Kostalanski were still doing McGrogan. There was no calling us off. We were pulled off.”
Hagmaier later reflected, “Yeah, we were stopped from killing those inmates, but evil is hard to kill. Evil is hard to hurt.”
. . .
The ambulance sped the two miles to Allegheny General Hospital where Lieutenant Walter Lee Peterson was pronounced dead at 2:55 P.M.
As her husband worked police auxiliary in Clairton, it wasn’t so strange for Asaline to see a squad car in front of her house. She knew the officer, Bob Cantrell, but as he approached her door, Asaline had to wonder why his wife was with him.
Twenty minutes later, dropped off from his school bus, eight-year-old Walter Jr. walked up Mitchell Avenue. Nearing home he noticed a police car in front of his house, then one that had just pulled up, parked at an angle. The boy broke into a trot.
Brother-in-law William Coon was home from California for the weekend to attend a funeral. “When I flew back on Monday, the Red Cross was waiting for me at the airport with the news, so I flew right back to Pittsburgh.”
Asaline’s sister Shirley returned home from work to find “the phone ringing. It was my mother and she said, ‘They’ve killed Walter.’”
Radio and TV interrupted regular programming, and again the name, that name, as familiar to the region as Billy the Kid or Jack the Ripper, came out over the airwaves. After giving what facts were known, KDKA’s Bill Burns editorialized, “Stanley Hoss should have been executed a long time ago.”
News of Peterson’s horrible death brought back into public consciousness patrolman Joe Zanella, gunned down in his hometown…. Wasn’t that the biggest manhunt ever? … The courts letting Hoss off death row … The young mother and child, never seen again, the monster never called to account … Hoss’s thuggery behind bars, the knife fights … his neverending appeals … and now Stanley Hoss had struck again. What’s wrong with him? And what about our courts? And what the hell’s wrong at that prison?
To many, particularly the officer corps, many things were wrong at Western Penitentiary. Allegheny General Hospital confirmed what everyone already knew: Peterson was dead. Shock and profound grief soon were companioned by hostility, and by a certain acrimony toward the administration. Hadn’t it been cautioned, even forewarned? Of course no one could predict where, when, and who would be attacked, but over time, the guards on the ranges had had a presentiment, a foreboding … The result was succinctly stated by veteran Gus Mastros: “Well, when you let a place run amok …”
What followed directly after Peterson’s murder was—depending on who you talked to—unrestrained, sad, over-the-top, necessary, uncalled-for, fair or unfair, accusatory … “but you have to understand,” said Mastros, “there was a breaking point, and it was reached.”
Superintendent Gil Walters was at a meeting in the state office building, downtown, when he got word of Pete. “I started back right away. When I arrived, I was told he was dead. I went to my office. I didn’t go to the Home Block because the situation was over. Deputy Jennings had ordered a general lockdown. I did talk to him.”
When Bus Reilly was brought up from the basement, a blanket was thrown over his shoulders and he was helped to the infirmary. According to Ron Hagmaier, he was “very shaken, in a kind of stupor. Bus was injected with a sedative. He sat slumped and staring.” Word spread. This was an image that stuck. But another image predominated for all the staff, present at the scene or not: the image of Peterson’s battered, mutilated body. “No one, even our ’Nam vets,” Kozak said, “had seen, or understood, such deliberate mutilation upon a single human being.”
When the staccato of the boiler house whistle signaled an immediate lockdown, the prison’s 845 inmates were to drop everything, go to their cells. Hurried along by officers with clubs and leather-gloved fists, with rifles trained on them from atop the walls, most complied without a word, knowing something really bad had gone down. “But there’s always those few who are going to say something,” said range officer Pat Malloy. “A few got it pretty good for mouthing off at a time like this. I was still a new kid, really, and thought this place was no Sunday school.”
“Around six o’clock several of us went into the employees’ cafeteria, and more kept coming in,” said Jimmy Weaver, who’d been at the basement and had seen as much as anyone. CO Weaver was also vice president of the prison’s fledgling union.
Ron Horvat, our president, was off, but was on his way in, so while waiting we took a table to begin writing a statement to Superintendent Walters recommending the state police come in to man our posts, to relieve us for twenty-four or forty-eight hours because, if not, with emotions the way they were, if one inmate would have opened his mouth and said, “Fuck that man” or “Fuck that nigger,” that guy would have gotten himself jacked up bad or killed.
“I hadn’t even seen the superintendent all day, but after not too long, in he walks. Remember, he was never much liked, at least by us rank and file, and now his very presence is the embodiment of blame and hate. Gil Walters asked for calm but I asked him who was responsible for turning the Home Block’s basement into a rec room, taking out the protective bars, and getting Peterson killed. Walters said he had to take partial responsibility for it. When he said that, Officer Eddie Lockhart, standing next to Walters, jumps up on a table and yells, “No, you’re taking full responsibility for it!” Lockhart’s holding an ebony night stick, swings it, misses Walters, but breaks the night stick on one of the large pillars Walters stood next to.
Hearing the commotion, Gus Mastros ran from the deputy’s office to the cafeteria. “A bunch of white hats rushed in, grabbed up the superintendent, and got him to his office. But I never saw so much deterioration of our staff. Close to anarchy.”
Soon after Walters had been whisked away, Ron Horvat got to the prison. He knew something had to be done, and quick.
As union president I was vocal but not militant, but with Pete’s death I became militant. I felt the only way to deal with these people was to embarrass them. In order to do that you had to risk your job, but with Pete’s murder it gave us strength to realize, What’s worse than jail? Death. What’s worse than losing your job? Losing your life. So I promised myself I would never have to face another family knowing I didn’t do everything in my power to correct matters which surely put us all in harm’s way. If you sit idly by and allow this to happen, you have to carry the consequences the rest of your life … and for what? To say I was afraid to get fired?
Horvat and several board members met with Walters. “There was a lot of pressure on the man and certainly he was as stricken as the rest of us,” said Horvat,
but we put before him an agenda. Yes, they were demands.
I’m no psychiatrist but human nature would tell you we could not guarantee the safety of any inmate. It’s the same thing as a cop-killing in a small town and having his policemen friends and irate citizens guard the culprit overnight. You know damn well what’s going to happen. We were going to be prudent and professional about this. The place was locked down anyway, so why not have the state police come in till things calmed? And that’s what happened. All our officers left for the night.
Reeling from the insensate slaughter of his friend, it was an endless day and eternal night for Sgt. Doug Cameron. He wanted to close his eyes, block it all out.
Once the slayers were out in the little yard, stripped, and the ambulance had gone, Cameron and others herded the four back into the Home Block. “We moved things around,” said Cameron,
and threw these guys in the cells at the end of a range, as isolated as we could get them. We kept them stripped for the time being and in their cells was a bunk and mattress, that’s it. It’s galling, but I know how this goes … they miss so much as a chicken patty and they’re screaming we’re starving them to death, so we were told to give them their evening meal along with the others—and do you know, they ate it.
The staties came in and our guys were told to go home, but I stayed to fill out reports. Kozak stayed too. As time passed, I looked in on each of those guys. Maybe this shouldn’t have been done, but, well, fuck ’em. Occasionally, one of our guys would give a shot of mace into those cells. You could smell it and, get close enough, feel it in your eyes. McGrogan had his mattress pulled over him, and the other three all lay the same, curled up in a fetal position. I don’t know if they were sleeping but they didn’t move and their eyes were closed.
Trooper Bill Manning came to the Home Block after everyone else left. We went down to the basement. God, blood everywhere. It was like syrup. We found a razorblade. Bits of brain. Later I crossed the big yard to the rotunda area to hand over more reports. The whole place though … It was so quiet you could hear a mouse piss on cotton.