THAT’S JUST LARRY
“When’s the last time we burned someone at the stake? It’s been too long! Put it on TV on Sunday mornings… You don’t think that would get big ratings? In this sick fucking country?! Shit, you’d have people skipping church to watch this stuff!”
George Carlin, American comedian
“I said I was going to tell a joke…”
The last statement of Patrick Knight, executed June 26, 2007
I loved being a reporter, and never thought I would leave journalism, even though the hours were shit and the money was worse. Because I worked hard at The Huntsville Item and wrote a ton of in-depth features, a lot of my stuff got picked up by the Associated Press and was sent out on the wires, which in turn led to job offers from bigger newspapers, such as The Beaumont Enterprise, the Waco Tribune-Herald and the Galveston Daily News. But I stayed at the Item because I hoped that if I kept writing in-depth prison stuff, I’d eventually get the opportunity to work for one of the really big newspapers, like the Houston Chronicle or The Dallas Morning News.
Then, toward the end of 2001, a spokesperson’s job came up at TDCJ. I’d been offered a potential job at Sam Houston State and in an insurance office, which would have paid more money, but neither of them interested me. The job with TDCJ was the only job I would have left journalism for, because the prisons were so fascinating to me.
It helped that they were offering double what I was making as a journalist, and I’d become such good friends with Larry, and got to know his boss Larry Todd well.
When I was at the Item, Todd and Fitzgerald arranged for me to visit prison units all over the state, covering the prison system’s various industries, and they would often come with me. One thing the Texas prison system was very good at was teaching inmates vocational skills, especially as they were approaching their release dates. At one unit, there was a garage where inmates repaired school buses. Those buses would get shipped down there from all over the state, and the inmates would learn mechanics and body repair and fix them up to look like new. Some inmates learned how to fix and rebuild old computers, which were then sent to low-income school districts across Texas. There was a mattress factory, which churned out all the mattresses the inmates slept on, as well as the students at state universities, including Texas A&M. My mattress came from that factory, although when I got him home I started thinking, “You know what would be a genius way to escape from prison? Sew yourself inside a mattress…” That was the best mattress I ever had, but for the first couple of weeks, I kept imagining someone cutting themselves out in the middle of the night and attacking me. At another unit, they made braille books for the blind; at another, they made toys. Working for TDCJ is about the only public information job where you don’t want a lot of media attention, because there’s usually only media attention in the prison system when something bad happens. But these were good news stories, and I made that the thrust of my interview, that there needed to be more positivity and proactivity.
Todd had a TV background, Fitzgerald had a radio background, so they wanted a writer. They also wanted someone younger, preferably a woman, and thought it would help if the successful candidate spoke Spanish—my mom’s family is Greek and Hispanic, so while my conversational Spanish mostly sucked, I understood it pretty well. They tailored the job description for me, decided that I’d aced my interview, and in November 2001, I cleared my desk at the Item and started in my new role at TDCJ.
A couple of weeks in, Fitzgerald said, “I’m gonna take you to the Byrd Unit. It’s important you see the classification process, we get a lot of questions about that.” The Byrd Unit is an intake facility in Huntsville, where male offenders enter the prison system. We showed up, met the warden, I followed Larry down a corridor, heard water running, and suddenly I was surrounded by about 40 naked men, showering and preparing to don their new prison garb. Larry looked at me and started laughing. I stared back, shook my head slightly and thought, “You motherfucker.” I was determined to show it didn’t bother me, but of course it bothered me. I was surrounded by 40 potentially dangerous and very naked men. I was terrified to look anywhere, in case one of them accused me of eying up their junk. With Larry it was all about tests, and he loved making me squirm.
Next, he marched me through all the different levels of administration segregation in the Estelle Unit’s High Security building. “Ad Seg” is where the worst of the death row inmates are housed, as well as inmates from the general population with behavioral problems. Offenders in Ad Seg are confined to their cell 23 hours a day and have very little interaction with fellow inmates. Most gang members are housed at level one, where they are segregated for their own safety, and it’s eerily quiet in that cell block. Level two is more rowdy, and three is like a living nightmare, the most intimidating thing I ever saw in the prison system. The day Larry gave me his guided tour, one inmate was smearing his own feces (at least I assume it was his own feces) all over the window of his cell door.
Larry also made me eat “food loaf,” which is what inmates are given as a punishment if they start acting up and throwing their real food around. Food loaf is basically lots of food items blended into a glob. It’s nutritious, but completely bland—like dry cornbread that needs a lot of salt. He claimed I had to eat it in case any reporters asked me how it tasted, which was, of course, bullshit. He did stuff like that all the time, had a very mischievous sense of humor.
Larry was child-like, but also very smart, and I think he saw me as a kindred spirit. He nicknamed me “Little Larry,” and I’d say, “I’ll come to the bar with you, but I’m not drinking Scotch or smoking those unfiltered cigarettes, and I’m definitely not growing a moustache.” My favorite poet is Dorothy Parker, but there aren’t many people in Huntsville who’d know who she was. Larry knew immediately, and he sometimes called me “Miss Parker.” Other times he’d call me “Patches,” from a song by Clarence Carter, which had the line, “I was so ragged, the folks used to call me Patches.” Larry said to me, “You’re ragged, so I’m gonna call you Patches.” That was kind of mean, but it was Larry, so I loved it. He’d send me funny emails after a big night out, describing his hangover—“Jesus, man, my breath could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon”—and another thing he loved to do was suddenly start using some huge, obscure word. Because I never pretended to know what it meant, he’d have to tell me and that would delight him. He loved words, and I swear he sat at his computer looking new ones up, just so he could try them out on me.
Larry Fitzgerald
There was a certain amount of gallows humor that went with the job. When you’d seen as many executions as we had, there had to be. One offender was going to fight, and a correctional officer said to him, “You don’t wanna fight, because if you do, you’re gonna get scuffed up.” I thought that was the funniest statement—this guy was about to die, like he cared about getting scuffed up.
Officers were always good for a funny line. I was over on death row one day, and the major said to me, “Hey, we’re bringing Brewer in, do you wanna come back to the infirmary and take a look?” Lawrence Brewer was one of three white supremacists convicted of killing James Byrd, a black man, in Jasper in 1998. Brewer, Shawn Berry and John King dragged Byrd behind a pick-up truck for three miles, before dumping his decapitated body in front of an African-American cemetery. Nothing funny so far. But when Brewer came in, they told him what to expect—he was going to be medically examined, they were going to take photos of his tattoos—and when they told him they were going to give him a few shots, he said, “Oh man, I hate needles!” And the officer said, “You’ve come to the wrong place, partner…”
Lesley Gosch and his accomplice murdered the wife of a bank president when an attempted kidnapping went wrong. He wore eyeglasses, and they were very, very thick, like the bottom of Coke bottles. He was essentially blind without those things, but the warden, in his wisdom, decided to remove them on the night of his execution. After the chemicals hit, the warden summoned the physician to check for signs of life. One of the exercises they do is to open an offender’s eyes, and when the physician did so, one of them popped out. The physician caught it in mid-air and stuffed it back into the socket. Afterward, he stormed into the warden’s office, shouting, “Why the hell did nobody tell me the convict had a glass eye?”
There was another gentleman we executed, an old, feeble black man, who had been on death row for so long that nobody turned up. Either everybody else involved with the crime had died off or they just didn’t care, so it wound up that it was only myself and Graczyk in the witness room. The old man gave some real disjointed final statement, to the extent that we couldn’t work out what he was saying, but as the chemicals started flowing, he strained against the straps and roared, “How “bout them Cowboys?” Boom, he was dead. The Dallas Cowboys had played the night before and somehow managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Me and Graczyk looked at each other and couldn’t help laughing.
Joseph Faulder killed an elderly lady in a robbery in Gladewater, way back in 1975. Because Faulder was a Canadian citizen, he had a ton of appeals and was on death row for almost 25 years. Faulder and I got along real well, and when he received a last-minute stay of execution, I ran from my office to the death house to give him the good news. When I busted in, Brazzil asked me what I was doing there, and I said, “Faulder, you got a stay!” He replied, “Far out!” And I said, “Faulder, how long have you been in here? Nobody has used that expression in 20 years.” After a long pause, he said, “Let me ask you this, Mr. Fitzgerald, when is your birthday?” I told him, and he said, “Well, how about that, you’re older than I am, turkey…” We all laughed, including Brazzil. The Sinister Minister took his job as a man of God very seriously, but laughter was as important to him as it was to me…
“Before Joseph Faulder was executed, Larry called me and said he needed me to do an interview with a Canadian television station. This young lady was interviewing me, I was getting pretty deep into the spiritual aspect of an execution, and she said, ‘I have one final question for you: I understand you have a very strong ministry at Rubber Ducky’s, here in Huntsville. Would you care to elaborate on that?’ Rubber Ducky’s was a sex shop in town. I blushed and said, ‘Have you been talking to that pervert Fitzgerald?’ The young lady burst out laughing.
“I was being interviewed by this other lady, when all of a sudden I heard this great big noise. I thought it was her, and she thought it was me. A few minutes later, I heard another noise, this time a big, juicy one. When there was a third noise, I cracked: ‘Look, that’s not me.’ She said, ‘Well, it’s not me either.’ So I flipped over my chair and there was this fart box taped to the bottom. I could hear Larry in his office, dying with laughter…”
Jim Brazzil, former Huntsville Unit chaplain
Later, I got to hear stories about Larry’s younger years, when he was as wild as the wind. When he was a student, he drilled a hole in the trunk of his car, filled the trunk with ice and rode around selling booze. Larry loved telling me, “Students were lining up at my goddamned car every day for weeks.” When a landlord gave him permission to renovate an apartment, he painted the whole thing black, including the windows.
Larry was a rock and roll guy, spun music on the radio during the sixties and seventies, and had this free spirit. But he was very serious about his job at TDCJ, and very good at it. Larry knew what journalists wanted and taught me just about everything I know about being a public information officer. He knew how much access you needed to give to journalists and valued transparency. When Karla Faye Tucker was executed in 1998, the first woman to be put to death in Texas in the 20th century, the warden lied to him about her whereabouts beforehand, which he then relayed to the media. When Larry found out, he was livid. The journalists had come to expect the truth from Larry, and the warden had undermined his credibility. Larry knew you could not lie, which was never to be confused with telling the media everything. He used to call us “the professional secret keepers.”
Because he was so good at his job, and so respected by journalists, he got away with plenty of things that anyone else would have been fired for. You’d hear people say all the time, “Oh, that’s just Fitzgerald…” There was an Italian reporter he hated, absolutely despised, and every time Larry saw him he flipped him the finger, while all the other journalists were looking. I’ve no doubt Larry also called him a “cocksucker,” because that was his favorite insult. There were two French reporters in town for another execution and it started raining. When they asked Larry if there was anywhere they could shelter, he replied, “Quit moaning, this is probably the first bath you’ve had in ten years.” I’d be thinking, “Larry! You’re gonna get us into trouble!” It was a tobacco-free system, but he used to help sneak cigarettes to inmates who were due to be executed. You weren’t allowed to smoke in state cars, but Larry was heavy-duty, and his ashtray would be spilling over with tons and tons of unfiltered cigarettes. All these newfangled rules just weren’t for him.
One time, there was an escape, and Larry was in the car with the big boss director of the prison system and some other high-level officials. They stopped at a convenience store, for water and snacks, and Larry came back with a six-pack of beer. He didn’t pass them around, but sat in the back seat and drank the lot of them. What got me about that story was that the big boss director said nothing. It was just accepted that Larry was like that. He was a character from another time, when everyone smoked in the office, had decanters of Scotch on their desks and did things in their own way. You couldn’t rein Larry in, and they didn’t try, because he was just too good.
Larry Fitzgerald
As well as treating the offenders with respect, my main responsibility was to accommodate the media, pure and simple. It would always amaze me when people said, “You’re just a mouthpiece for the prison system.” No shit. That was my job. But I recognized what journalists needed, which was for me to help them by being as open as I possibly could. I wasn’t constrained at all, I just told the truth, which is why reporters liked me. Even when things got dicey—if there was a hostage situation, an escape or a riot—I’d always think, “What does the media want at this point? What do I need to do to bring them into the picture?”
We had an incident in a little town called Dilley, which is south of San Antonio. There was a prison riot—or a disturbance, as we liked to call it—and all the San Antonio media immediately reacted. Those early reports were just horrible. They said guards’ uniforms were being stolen, prisoners were breaking into the armory, that there was gunfire. So I had to take control of the situation. The next day, I brought television crews inside the prison, to show them the actual damage that had been done. They were amazed, they thought they were just going to do a piece to camera out front. But I gave them a tour, and it suddenly turned into a good news story for the prison system. “Yeah, there was a disturbance, but look how efficiently we dealt with it.” Another time, there was a reporter who was convinced we were allowing inmates to smoke in one of the warehouses while they worked. In the end, I said to him, “You know what? I’m gonna open the door so you can see for yourself.” I did the same when a rumor went round that inmates were luxuriating in air-conditioned cells. Our philosophy at TDCJ, at least when I was there, was to be out front.
If anything bad was happening inside a penitentiary, we would call the Associated Press first and the Texas State Network, which is the largest state radio network in the US, second. We would rather tell the story to the media first, even if it had warts on it, rather than have them reacting and coming to us. That’s how to handle the media. That way, you’re not on the defensive. Why would we hide anything? The public needed to know, and I thought it was wrong not to be honest with them. I always used to think of Richard Nixon and Watergate: the cover-up was worse than the crime. Sure, being honest means that some bad stuff is going to come out, but at least if you’re upfront about it, you can have some control over the situation.
To be honest, there were more ethical reasons: we were carrying out the ultimate bureaucratic act by executing offenders, and the media was the public’s eyes on the inner workings of the system. That’s why I always thought it best to get the media in there, let them interview as many offenders as they could. I thought it was to everyone’s benefit: the public learned about the offender and his or her life on death row, and the offender had an opportunity to influence people’s opinion of him or her. And when that offender died on the gurney, there had to be media there to witness it. We tried not to turn anybody down, because the public had a right to know we were doing things properly, not just in Texas, but all over the world.
It bothered me when there were empty media seats for an execution. I thought people should have been paying more attention. The state was taking someone’s life, and most people had no idea. Even in Huntsville, there were executions that went virtually unnoticed. A guy would die on the gurney and it wouldn’t even make the front page of The Huntsville Item. A few months after Karla Faye, we executed a guy called Johnny Pyles. He shot a sheriff’s deputy to death in Sunnyvale in 1982, although he said it was in self-defense. Pyles was on the paint crew at Ellis, and I used to stand out in the hallway and talk to him. He’d be leaning against his podium and talking about his religious conversion, and I had no doubt he was born-again, just like Karla Faye. But, unlike Karla Faye, nobody showed up for him when he was executed. That troubled me.
When they had the first execution in Texas after the moratorium, in 1982, there were hundreds of people out front, protesters burning candles and college students swilling beer, cheering and waving signs. And I recall that when Ronald Clark O’Bryan was executed in 1984, people turned up dressed up in Halloween costumes, not because it was October 31, but because O’Bryan had murdered his son by poisoning his trick or treat candy. I thought it was great when anti-death penalty people showed up to protest, not so much when people wanted to party. But at least they cared.
Wayne Scott, TDCJ’s executive director, was real media savvy and understood that if reporters couldn’t see what was happening inside the penitentiary, we should see it with our own eyes, give them the information and let them do whatever they wanted with it. If we were honest in our dealings with them in other areas, then they were more likely to trust us.
The first time I met Michelle properly was at that hostage situation we had, with Ponchai Wilkerson and Howard Guidry. I watched that situation go down. At one point, Scott said to me, “Do Ponchai and Howard know who you are?” I told him they did, and Scott said he wanted me to lure Ponchai toward the bars, I assume so they could take him out. I was prepared to do it, but Scott changed his mind, and I’m glad he did. If I had done that, I could have kissed my job goodbye, because no inmate would have had anything to do with me. Another time, Ponchai’s parents came to see him, just before his execution, and he wouldn’t come out of his cell. Me and Brazzil went over there to try to talk him out, so he could say goodbye, but he just wouldn’t budge. Under TDCJ rules, you were supposed to give an offender three warnings before you gassed them. I can honestly tell you, I did not hear any warnings. All of a sudden, boom! There was gas everywhere, and me and The Sinister Minister were the only staff who didn’t have masks. We were beating on the door, trying to get out of the place. One good thing happened that night, though: I quit smoking, because the gas damaged my lungs so bad.
I did things in that job I shouldn’t have. On Thanksgiving Day 1998, I had this feeling something weird was going to happen. Sure enough, it did. Larry Todd was the duty officer that night, and he called me up and said, “We’ve had an escape from the Ellis Unit.” I said, “Really? What’s his name?” Todd told me the escapee’s name was Gurule. I didn’t know him, so I asked what Gurule’s number was. Todd said, “619.” I said, “Jesus Christ, that’s a fucking death row inmate…” I got dressed immediately and hauled myself down there.
It was so foggy that night, which didn’t help with the search, and there was media everywhere. I was working with a reporter from The New York Times, and he had an editor checking in on him. I spoke to the editor on the phone, and I just couldn’t make him understand the situation. I kept saying, “I believe the man is still on our property,” and the editor from New York kept saying, “If he’s still on your property, why can’t you find him?” What he didn’t get was that the prison was on 17,000 acres of Texas real estate. I explained that there were all these hunting camps around the prison fences, full of guys with rifles, who would have shot Gurule in a heartbeat; there were feral hogs; fire ants; there was every poisonous snake in North America. That was me saying, “Gurule didn’t stand a chance,” but also, “Don’t come to Texas…”
Seven days after his escape, Gurule’s body was hooked by a couple of TDCJ employees, who were fishing in Harmon Creek, off the Trinity River. They were not expecting to land something that big. Gurule was wearing two sets of heavy underwear and had stuffed cardboard and magazines inside his clothes, so he could roll over the razor wire without being cut up. He ran about a mile, came to a bridge and jumped off, maybe because he heard traffic coming. The river was very deep and swift-moving at that point, and they think he drowned immediately, because of all the cardboard. He must only have been free for about 45 minutes. The next day, I went out in front of the Walls Unit, where a bunch of reporters were, tore up a “wanted” poster and said, “Gurule is no more!” God, did I catch hell for that.
Glen Castlebury, the director of the public information office, called me “a cowboy,” and I pissed off a whole bunch of death row inmates. Gurule had a lot of fans inside the penitentiary, he was a hero to them. When they heard he’d escaped, they were all inside saying, “Keep going, man, don’t stop!” I should have said “we got the guy,” rather than being all theatrical. I just got carried away. It was an exciting job, it got the adrenalin pumping. Every time the phone rang, it was like Russian Roulette, anything could be happening…
A few of the death row inmates never spoke to Larry again. Before one execution, an inmate turned his back on him. But he won most of them round, partly because of his roguish, anti-establishment streak, partly because they needed him. Larry was the man who could land them a shot. Maybe Bianca Jagger would read about them in a newspaper and take up their cause, as happened with Gary Graham. Or maybe the Pope would get wind of their plight and make a pronouncement, denouncing the death penalty.
Larry knew offenders in a way I never got to know them, because he used to walk around death row almost as if he owned the place, dropping by for visits and chewing the fat. As he was strolling the corridors, inmates would yell out, “Hey, Mr. Fitzgerald!” Or they’d call him “the media man.” And he loved it. All the officers loved him, too, although he could never remember their names. He called all the men “brother” and all the women “gal,” and they’d feel so special that he’d acknowledged them at all.