- 7 months ago
Prison walls couldn't contain these killers' violent tendencies. Join us as we examine notorious inmates who committed murder while behind bars! Our countdown includes dangerous offenders who shocked the system, from the man who killed Jeffrey Dahmer to the infamous "Birdman of Alcatraz" whose dark reality was far from his Hollywood portrayal.
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00:00A man who is part of the reason the Supermax prison was built has died.
00:0467-year-old Thomas Silverstein died this month.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:09And today, we're breaking down cases in which dangerous criminals proved lethal, even behind bars.
00:16But it was the bite marks that were to link Smith to the killing of Greenhaven prison guard Donna Payant on May 15, 1981.
00:25Thomas Eugene Creech.
00:27It's pretty hard sometimes to live with all the things I've done.
00:31I mean, you have dreams about it, like, in the middle of the night.
00:34You think you see somebody in your cell that you've killed or something.
00:37It's kind ofāit gets kind of hard sometimes, so.
00:40Even incarceration couldn't contain Thomas Eugene Creech.
00:44By the early 1980s, he was already serving time in Idaho after convictions for multiple murders, including killings committed in more than one state.
00:53But Creech was far from finished.
00:55Even while housed at the Indiana State Correctional Institution.
00:59Former Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Roger Bourne made this statement in court in 1995.
01:05If the death penalty doesn't fit this defendant, who doesn't fit?
01:08This defendant is a mass murderer.
01:10He's shown extreme violence while he's in the penitentiary.
01:14If the legislature didn't intend it to fit this defendant, who could it fit any better?
01:21In 1981, he attacked fellow inmate David Dale Jensen, fatally beating him with a sock weighted with batteries.
01:28The homicide occurred inside the institution and led to a first-degree murder charge.
01:34Creech pleaded guilty and received a death sentence specifically for the prison killing.
01:38Decades later, he remains a stark example of the grim reality that some inmates pose an extreme risk, even in maximum security confinement.
01:47Donald Henry Gaskins has made national headlines for many things over the years.
02:13One of those is serial killer Donald Pee-wee Gaskins, who died in the electric chair in 1991.
02:21Few prison murders exposed institutional vulnerability as starkly as the one committed by Donald Henry Gaskins.
02:29Already incarcerated in South Carolina's high security unit for murder, Gaskins somehow managed to carry out a killing inside the prison itself.
02:37He was a total sociopath.
02:39He was fairly intelligent, very outgoing.
02:45I would never turn my back on him.
02:48And when I say he was a total sociopath, I mean that.
02:51He had actually no empathy.
02:53He cared for no one but himself.
02:55Nothing ever bothered him.
02:58We know that he murdered at least 11 people.
03:02I think it probably meant more than that.
03:04In September 1982, he murdered fellow death row inmate Rudolf Tyner using an improvised explosive concealed inside a radio.
03:12Detonated within the secure housing unit, Gaskins later admitted responsibility, was convicted for the prison killing, and received an additional death sentence.
03:22The case stands as one of the most extreme examples of how even condemned inmates can exploit security gaps to deadly effect.
03:30After his execution, when he was in the hearse, he was coming through the front gate at the Broad River complex on the way to Newbury for an autopsy.
03:40And I thought to myself, you know, when he was on the street killing all these people, he would drive an old hearse.
03:48That's what was his method of transportation.
03:50Robert Maudsley.
03:51As we're going around the prison hospital, they opened one of the cell doors, and there was a wire mesh still remaining there.
03:59And behind the wire mesh was this sort of Moses figure.
04:02Long, dragly beard, gaunt face.
04:05That's Maudsley.
04:06Infamy followed Robert Maudsley long before he became one of the most securely isolated prisoners in British history.
04:13Born in Liverpool, Maudsley's violence began with the killing of a man who had shown him material depicting the exploitation of minors.
04:20While confined at Broadmoor Hospital, he murdered a convicted abuser.
04:24Then, at Wakefield Prison in 1978, he killed two fellow inmates in a single day, garrotting one and stabbing another with a makeshift weapon.
04:34Every day is the next day.
04:36I don't appear to have nothing to look forward to.
04:39I've always got a sense that no officer takes any interest, and I resent that.
04:48Because, uh, they only seem to be concerned with opening the door, and then making sure I get back in as soon as possible.
04:57Sensationalist claims that he ate a victim's brain were debunked by post-mortem reports.
05:02Yet the prison still dubbed him Hannibal the Cannibal.
05:05From that day forward, authorities kept him in near-total solitary confinement, escorting him only under heavy security during rare, permitted movements.
05:16I at least spend 23 hours every day in here, and I've done so for almost four years.
05:24It's true to say my whole world revolves around the actual cell itself.
05:27Carl Panzram.
05:29Almost 100 years ago, a serial killer from East Grand Forks faced the executioner.
05:34Carl Panzram was born in 1891 outside what was a small farming community.
05:38After being convicted of five murders and committing countless other heinous crimes, he was executed at Leavenworth Prison in 1930.
05:46Historians say his childhood in East Grand Forks shaped the person he'd become.
05:50A lifelong offender who claimed responsibility for numerous murders, Carl Panzram saw prison not as punishment, but as another battleground.
05:59While serving time at Leavenworth Penitentiary, his hatred of authority boiled over.
06:04June 15th, 1929.
06:06I'm still on my same job and like it less each day.
06:09I'm getting all set for a change.
06:12It won't be long now.
06:13In 1922, he murdered prison employee Robert Warnke, a laundry foreman, an act that ultimately sealed his fate.
06:21Unlike inmates whose prison killing stemmed from impulse or circumstance, Panzram's actions were consistent with his own written confessions, which openly celebrated cruelty, domination, and destruction.
06:34The Leavenworth killing led to his conviction and execution by hanging in 1930.
06:38Panzram reportedly expressed satisfaction with his sentence, remaining defiant to the end.
06:44For all of these things, I am not the least bit sorry.
06:47I have no conscience, so that does not worry me.
06:51I don't believe in man, God, nor devil.
06:54I hate the whole damn human race, including myself.
06:59I am Carl Panzram.
07:01Christopher Scarver
07:03Do you remember when you learned that your father murdered Jeffrey Dahmer?
07:07Yes.
07:09Um, it was about 10.
07:12I saw it on TV.
07:14And that's how I found out.
07:15So, yeah.
07:17So you suddenly see your father?
07:19Yeah, it's a big picture that popped up.
07:22And I was just shocked at that point.
07:26Scarver's name is forever tied to one of the most poured over prison murders of the 1990s.
07:31Already serving life for a 1990 murder, he was assigned to a work detail at Wisconsin's Columbia
07:37Correctional Institution in 1994, with fellow inmates Jesse Anderson and, maybe you've heard
07:43of him, Jeffrey Dahmer.
07:44In 1991, Dahmer was sentenced to live out his life here at the state prison in Portage, Wisconsin.
07:50But those who knew him say that Dahmer never believed that he'd survived behind bars for
07:56very long.
07:57I am not surprised.
07:58I had predicted that he would be killed in prison because he had a death wish.
08:03He always had a death wish.
08:04Unsupervised in the prison gym, Scarver retrieved a hidden metal bar and bludgeoned Dahmer in
08:10a staff locker room, fatally wounding him, then attacked Anderson.
08:14Dahmer died at a hospital about an hour later.
08:17Anderson succumbed days afterward.
08:19Scarver was convicted on the additional counts and received two more life sentences.
08:24So it appears that Jeffrey Dahmer may have wanted to die to end his tortured life, to
08:31rid himself of his inner demons.
08:33And to the families of his victims, Jeffrey Dahmer's death sentence finally brings an end
08:38to their private suffering.
08:41Whoever did kill him, he's my hero.
08:43I will be sending a thank you card to this hero.
08:46Thomas Silverstein.
08:47Silverstein went to prison back in 78 for armed robbery.
08:51He was later found guilty of killing a prison guard and two inmates at a federal pen in Indiana.
08:57Well, those murders inspired the design of the Supermax prison here in Florence, Colorado.
09:02In the crucible of maximum security prison violence, there aren't many who loom as large as Thomas
09:09Silverstein.
09:10Already serving time for armed robbery, he killed fellow inmate Danny Atwell at USP Leavenworth
09:15before being transferred to more restrictive USP Marion.
09:19There, alongside another inmate, Silverstein stabbed Raymond Lee Cadillac Smith to death in 1981, amid
09:26escalating gang tensions.
09:28It's believed he spent more time in solitary confinement than any other federal inmate.
09:34He was in solitary at various prisons since 1983.
09:38The violence culminated in 1983, when Silverstein murdered correctional officer Merle Klutz during
09:44a brief lapse in restraints.
09:46Klutz's killing triggered sweeping changes within the federal prison system, and is widely regarded
09:51as a key catalyst in the development of the modern Supermax prison model.
09:56Even if the behaviors are good, though, it's pretty much a 23-hour-a-day in the cell, one
10:01hour outside.
10:03And even outside, it's not a walk in the park.
10:06It's a caged environment.
10:07Lemuel Smith.
10:09A psychiatrist revealed that Smith's dead brother, John, controlled him during his rampage
10:13of violence.
10:14The dual personality developed when Smith's mother burned his only companion, a stuffed
10:19panda bear.
10:20Smith was 14, and from then on, the voice from the grave commanded him to kill.
10:25The insanity plea failed.
10:27He got another term of 25 to life.
10:29When Lemuel Smith murdered a corrections officer in 1981, the case drew intense scrutiny over
10:35prison security and inmate supervision.
10:38Smith was already serving a life sentence at Greenhaven Correctional Facility for multiple
10:42violent crimes when he murdered officer Donna Payant while she was on duty.
10:48Lemuel Smith, the son of a minister, accused of luring Donna Payant into the prison chaplain's
10:53office where he was free to roam.
10:55The charge, first-degree murder.
10:57The possible sentence, if convicted, death in the electric chair.
11:01The killing occurred inside the prison and led to Smith's conviction for murder.
11:05He became a particularly notorious example of an inmate killing staff while incarcerated.
11:10The case prompted heightened examination of security protocols within New York State's
11:15prison system, hitting home a sobering lesson that confinement alone can't neutralize
11:21every threat.
11:22Do you think you'll die in the electric chair or by injection or some other state-imposed
11:28means?
11:30No.
11:30God knows the future.
11:32I don't.
11:32Are you scared about that?
11:34No.
11:34Should I be?
11:36Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified
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11:51Robert Stroud
11:53The curious lore surrounding Robert Stroud, known as the Birdman of Alcatraz, often centers
12:19on birds and solitary confinement.
12:22But behind the myth was a deadly reality.
12:25Convicted of murder in 1909, Stroud's violence didn't end once he entered federal custody.
12:31You ain't got much, Stroud, but you keep subtracting from it.
12:34Don't you know I gotta put you on report for touching a guard?
12:37In 1916, while incarcerated at Leavenworth Penitentiary, he stabbed corrections officer Andrew
12:43Turner through the heart in broad daylight after being reprimanded.
12:46The killing led to a first-degree murder conviction and a death sentence, later commuted to life
12:52imprisonment.
12:53Turner's murder permanently altered how authorities handled Stroud, consigning him to decades of
12:58extreme isolation and cementing the conditions that would define his infamy.
13:03Already you've taken the lives of two human beings and you haven't even felt a twinge of conscience.
13:08What do you want me to do? Cry? Say I'm sorry?
13:11I'm only sorry for Kramer's wife.
13:14And the dead man?
13:16He was fixing to brain me with his club.
13:19I protected myself.
13:22No remorse, huh?
13:23Which murderer on our list shocked you the most?
13:27Are there any we missed?
13:28Be sure to let us know in the comments below.
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