Down a long hall
You may stumble, you may fall
Truth steers this ride
On November 23rd, 1973, Craig was transferred from the County Jail to the California Institute of Men in Chino, San Bernardino County. There he was photographed, fingerprinted and processed into the state prison system. (Term: 6mos-Life, Occupation: Song Writer.) He looks composed in his prison mug shot. One of his front teeth had yellowed with decay. Another feature jumps out right away, though, jarringly so: the black widow spider tattooed on his forehead. I had always been skeptical of its existence, figured that what only a couple of people had reported seeing was only a temporary marking. But after 215 days of incarceration, there it was, exactly as described. It can’t have made a favorable impression on the judge. Strangely, Smith’s prison ID and fingerprint document makes no specific reference to it. Under “Marks and Scars” they note only a dragon tattooed on his right forearm “& others.” This can probably be attributed to sloppy paperwork; in addition to the spider on his face the mug shot clearly shows large dragon tattoos on both arms.
A second mug shot buried deeper in his file shows a different side of Craig Smith. His eyes glisten with fear, his mouth is set in a painful grimace, his lank, greasy hair is plastered behind his ears. He looks frightened, like a caged animal. He looks like someone who needs some serious help.
From Chino Smith was sent to D.V.I. (Deuel Vocational Institute) near Tracy in the San Joaquin Valley. He arrived there on December 6th, 1973. On his Inmate Record Card he gave his occupation as song writer and his religion as Buddhist. D.V.I. is a minimum-security prison often used as a reception center for newly processed prisoners. Here it would be decided whether Smith should serve out the rest of his sentence, however long it might be, at a medical facility like CMF Vacaville, as Judge Hughes had specifically recommended, or elsewhere in the California penal system.
In a statement dated January 15th, 1974, Craig gave his version of the events of April 22nd, 1973, and made his case for a transfer to a regular prison rather than a medical facility. It’s a fascinating glimpse into his state of mind at the time, and helps give at least some clarity to the rather confused series of events laid out in the court documents.
“The case is finally finished,” said Craig. “I did it and now I regret my actions. I would not do it again now, this is for sure. I had a temper tantrum, and this is the extent of it. If temper needs rest then I need rest. I will serve my time with dignity and reserve. My attorney thought I would get less time if I pleaded temporary insanity, so I did. I regret doing so now, as it was just a temper flare-up resulting from insults from the victim, plus the victim refused to relinquish $800.00 of my money, which was needed desperately by me, to me. In short, I was pushed to a point where I chose to force rather than back out of a confrontation.”
Craig’s choice of words is interesting. A “temper tantrum” seems a wholly inadequate way of describing such a vicious assault, but it implies more deeply rooted issues in the mother-child relationship: a spoiled child who didn’t get his own way. While he appears to regret his actions, Smith also places some of the blame on his mother because of her “insults” and refusal to give him the money he needed and felt was rightfully his, most likely his songwriting royalties. Nothing excuses what Smith did that day, but he was clearly dangerously unstable at the time, and was pushed beyond all rationality.
If Craig feared for his sanity, as he had in the past, he was now doing everything in his power to suppress and contain those feelings and appear normal again. His statement ends: “I would rather do time in a state penitentiary than at a state mental institution as I realize my crime and am adjusted quite well to prison as long as I am in a one-man cell. I see no reason why rest cannot be more possible at prison than in a rest home like Vacaville or Altadena.”
Rest. Twice he states that he needs “rest.” The mind of a schizophrenic is in a constant state of alert, receiving and processing information, finding patterns and assigning meanings even to the most meaningless stimuli. Hence the construction of elaborate paranoid delusions—in Smith’s case, his reinvented self as a Messianic superbeing called Maitreya. His months of incarceration had no doubt given him time to reflect on those delusions. Without hallucinogenic drugs magnifying and multiplying them, perhaps he was able to calm the voices in his head and find a measure of clarity. Certainly he’d regained enough clarity to realize that if he was assigned to a psychiatric facility like CMF Vacaville he might be looking at an indefinite term behind bars, possibly a lifetime, especially if the doctors there diagnosed his condition unfavorably. On the other hand, if he was sent to a regular medium-security prison, he’d likely be released after a much shorter period of time. At this point he’d already served over nine months of his minimum six-month sentence. All he’d need to do was lay low, and keep a cool head. All he needed was to rest.
Craig’s statement had the desired effect. After assessment at Tracy’s Reception and Guidance Center he was assigned to the California Men’s Colony (CMC), a state prison located on the central California coast near San Luis Obispo. He arrived there on February 7th, 1974. So much for the Vacaville strategy.
CMC housed its then approximately 3,000 inmates in two separate facilities, East and West. The West facility has minimum-security housing and open dormitories. A few years earlier Timothy Leary had escaped from there, with the assistance of the Weathermen. The East, on the other hand, is a medium-security facility with individual cells, fenced perimeters, and towers with armed guards. Craig was sent to CMC East, and appears to have spent the duration of his sentence there. His fellow inmates included a couple of Manson Family members, Tex Watson and Bruce Davis. Craig would have spent between nine and eleven hours of each day in a one-man cell, a room of approximately 54 square feet, with a bed bolted to the wall, a toilet, a small desk, some shelves, and a chair. There were no bars on the cell’s one small window, which could be opened for ventilation and light. The prison offered a large, well-stocked library, four outside quads where inmates could mingle and exercise, and a variety of academic and vocational classes. There was also a hospital unit to provide medical and psychiatric care.
Presumably Craig received some kind of psychiatric treatment while incarcerated. However, it’s impossible to know for sure because the medical and disciplinary files of California inmates remain sealed by law for 75 years.
Five weeks after arriving at CMC, Smith had his first parole hearing. Parole was denied and his next hearing was scheduled for one year later. In February 1975, a prisoners’ advocacy group called The Burning Truth filed a writ of habeas corpus on Craig’s behalf in San Luis Obispo Superior Court. Citing the recent case of People vs. Thomas (September 18th, 1974), in which it was ruled that the life term for violation of Section 245 (a) (the same assault charge Smith had been convicted of) was unconstitutional, the petitioner requested that the wording of Smith’s sentence be revised to include the words “term prescribed by law, not to exceed ten years” rather than “six months to life.” This legal move may have offered Craig some momentary hope, but it had no effect—in part because it was filed in the wrong jurisdiction. Craig had been tried and sentenced in Los Angeles, not San Luis Obispo. The paperwork was filed away in the court’s archives to become yet another tiny piece of an unsolvable puzzle.
Smith was denied parole a second time on March 21st, 1975, and faced another 12 months wait before being allowed to reapply. He filed to have that decision reconsidered in August, and was again turned down. His next hearing was on April 22nd, 1976—exactly three years after he had attacked his mother. This time parole was granted, although it would take six more weeks before the paperwork was finalized. All the usual terms of parole applied: he would have to report regularly to an assigned parole officer, could not leave the State of California without prior written consent, was not allowed to own or use a firearm, could have his home searched at any time without a warrant, and be placed in a community hospital or prison if he was deemed incapable of conducting himself in “an acceptable manner.” Three additional conditions were attached to Smith’s parole: Firstly, he had to attend a Parole Outpatient Clinic, a program designed to address his mental health issues. Secondly, he must abstain from the use of any alcoholic beverages, and, last, he would undergo regular anti-narcotic testing. These terms of parole would remain in effect until January 12, 1984 (that date was later amended to July 1st, 1978). Craig signed the paperwork agreeing to all of these terms on June 4th.
On June 7th, 1976, Craig Smith was released from prison and returned to Los Angeles County. Where he lived and how he got by is not known. It’s not impossible, but it seems highly unlikely that he would’ve been welcomed back to his family’s home in Studio City. More missing puzzle pieces. The record shows that he did not violate any of the conditions of his parole, so on July 1st, 1978 he was officially discharged, and could put that chapter of his life behind him. He was now 33 years old.
One more missing puzzle piece: the spider tattoo. It was gone.