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Inside the history and inner workings of prisons; covering institutions from the Tower of London to the high-tech ADX through interviews with journalists, former correctional officers and previously incarcerated individuals.
Leavenworth, located 25-miles northwest of Kansas City, K.S., was the largest maximum-security federal prison in the United States for over a hundred years; Carl Panzram, Robert Stroud and Tommy Silverstein share stories of life behind its walls.
Leavenworth, located 25-miles northwest of Kansas City, K.S., was the largest maximum-security federal prison in the United States for over a hundred years; Carl Panzram, Robert Stroud and Tommy Silverstein share stories of life behind its walls.
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00:00A CIDADE NO BRASIL
00:30A CIDADE NO BRASIL
01:00For a person to survive the hole, it would be about finding something to be able to focus on, whatever that may be.
01:07And finally, the prison's drug trade gives her eyes to the most feared inmate in the country.
01:13Staring into the eyes of Tommy Silverstein was like staring into a black abyss.
01:16These are the stories from inside Leavenworth.
01:21This is Prison Chronicles.
01:23United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth.
01:33Located 25 miles northwest of Kansas City, this was the largest maximum security federal prison in the United States for over 100 years.
01:43You can smell that it's old.
01:45Even though it's been remodeled, it's there, it lives with you.
01:49Leavenworth was where they sent all of the malefactors, all of the problem inmates from other institutions.
01:55We were the first big dog on the block and we've maintained that reputation.
02:00Before there was Alcatraz, before there was Marion, Illinois, before there was Florence, Colorado, there was Leavenworth.
02:08March 1891.
02:12Congress establishes the first federal prisons with the Three Prisons Act.
02:16They originally built three prisons, McNeil Island, Leavenworth, and Atlanta.
02:22Because prior to that, all federal prisoners were put in state facilities.
02:27July 1897.
02:29Construction begins on Leavenworth, using inmate labor from a small former military prison nearby.
02:36Every morning they would march three miles to the construction site and back one hour before sundown.
02:41It didn't matter whether it was stifling hot, frigid cold, rain.
02:46They worked seven days a week in all of the weather.
02:49The conditions are hell.
02:51But there's a special punishment for anyone who tries to get away.
02:55If you were an escape risk, they would put you in a ball and chain.
02:58You marched all the way from the institution to the construction site,
03:03carrying the ball and chain and to the inmates.
03:06That actually became known as carrying the baby.
03:08The prison campus covers almost 23 acres.
03:13It's surrounded by a 40-foot high wall that descends another 40 feet underground
03:19to prevent anyone from tunneling out.
03:21The architecture reflects the fact that Leavenworth is the first federal prison in the U.S.
03:28Leavenworth was designed to look like Congress.
03:31It's got the domed front.
03:32You have A cell house on the west and B cell house on the east.
03:37At the 2 and the 10 o'clock positions would be C and D cell house.
03:43In its early days, before air conditioning, the Kansas summer heat is almost unbearable.
03:49With the temperatures being up around 140 degrees inside, it was almost like sitting in an oven.
03:56Some guys put water on their sheets and lay on wet sheets,
04:00and some guys would just wet themselves in the sink all day.
04:03It was miserable, miserable, stifling hot.
04:07You wind up with a lot of fights, a lot of stabbings.
04:10It's basically a daily occurrence during the hottest months of the year.
04:13Add an unrepentant serial killer to this pressure cooker, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
04:27August 30th, 1928.
04:29Carl Panzram is arrested in Washington, D.C. for burglary.
04:35Ironically, it's the least of his crimes.
04:38He quickly confesses to arson and several rapes and murders.
04:41Carl Panzram was known as the meanest man who ever lived, and he definitely lived up to that title.
04:47He hated his fellow human beings.
04:50He would assault them, he would rape them, he would kill them, he would beat them, torture them.
04:57That's how Carl Panzram got his satisfaction in life.
05:01Panzram is convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life to be served at Leavenworth.
05:08As soon as he arrives, he lets the authorities know how he feels about life behind bars.
05:14He tells the warden, I'll knock off the first guy that bothers me,
05:18meaning he was giving them a warning that he'll kill anyone that messes with him.
05:22They don't really take it seriously, because they look at him as just another prisoner in the system.
05:27Leavenworth is used to tough guys.
05:28At Leavenworth, all prisoners are assigned work roles.
05:32Panzram is placed in the laundry room.
05:35Robert Warnke is the foreman in the laundry room,
05:38and he's known to harass and bully all the other prisoners.
05:41The conditions in there were brutal.
05:43It was hot, you had the dryers.
05:46So that's going to make any man miserable, even with a mild temperament.
05:52Will Panzram be able to keep his cool?
05:54Leavenworth Penitentiary, 1929.
06:03Serial killer Carl Panzram works in the prison laundry room
06:06and gets bullied by his foreman, Robert Warnke.
06:15Warnke antagonizes Panzram about sodomizing men and murdering children.
06:21And Panzram tells him to lay off or I'll get you.
06:24And then there's another time where Panzram was selling cigarettes.
06:28Warnke wrote him up for trafficking, and that was the final straw for Carl Panzram.
06:33So what he does is he takes an iron bar off of one of the pieces of machinery in the laundry,
06:38and he hides that, waiting for the perfect time to murder Warnke.
06:43June 20, 1929.
06:46Panzram decides it's time to strike.
06:48Arriving early at the prison laundry for work.
06:53He waits until some of the guards are out of view and just goes up to Warnke and smashes him over the head with this iron bar.
07:02Busts his skull, leaving a huge bloody mess.
07:04Instead of fleeing the scene of the crime, Panzram decides he wants to take out the guards, too.
07:12And all hell breaks loose.
07:14There's a frenzy.
07:15The guards were actually afraid of Carl Panzram.
07:18They ran away from him outside of the laundry.
07:20So he's running around outside the yard and into other buildings while the guards are trying to get a shot at Panzram.
07:26But Panzram knew the layout of Leavenworth, so he knew where to hide.
07:30For several minutes, Panzram and the guards play a deadly game of cat and mouse.
07:36Panzram wants to get within striking distance, but the guards are armed with shotguns.
07:41Eventually, Panzram is cornered, and he throws the iron bar down and says,
07:45Well, I've killed one of you. I can't get any more, so you might as well take me now.
07:48The game is up.
07:50But this isn't just any prison.
07:52It's Leavenworth.
07:52Panzram pleads guilty to murdering Warnke, for which he receives a death penalty by hanging.
08:07The only issue is, Leavenworth does not have a gallows on the prison property,
08:12so they had to build one just to execute Panzram.
08:16As he awaits his final days, Panzram writes a memoir and manifesto raging against the world.
08:24It's been called his legacy of hate, because Panzram in the end said he was only sorry for two things.
08:30That he harmed some animals in his lifetime, and that he was sorry he couldn't kill the entire human race.
08:35September 5th, 1930, is the day of his scheduled execution.
08:45He was actually excited.
08:47He wanted to die.
08:49Panzram's leading the jail guards.
08:51They're behind him.
08:52So it's almost like an animal on chains that they're following.
08:55Once Panzram arrives on the gallows, before the hood is put over his head, he looks at the executioner and says,
09:03Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard.
09:05I could have killed a dozen men while you're fooling around.
09:08Carl Panzram is the first federal prisoner in the United States to be executed.
09:14He escapes Leavenworth only through death.
09:17In a sense, he took the easy way out.
09:20To go on living means enduring the prison's terrible conditions day in and day out.
09:27Many prisoners seek a mental escape.
09:30One of Leavenworth's most famous, literally, went to the birds.
09:36September 1912, Robert Franklin Stroud arrives at Leavenworth, serving a sentence for manslaughter.
09:44Robert Stroud was one of the most repugnant inmates that has ever been housed with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
09:50It was a malcontent that ran away from home at the age of 13 from supposedly an abusive father
09:56and became a pimp from Detroit, Michigan, all the way to Genoa, Alaska.
10:02He was a psychopath.
10:04He had no regard for human life whatsoever.
10:07Four years into his time at Leavenworth,
10:10Stroud is thrown into solitary confinement for stabbing a guard to death.
10:16The isolation is oppressive.
10:18For a person to survive the hole, it would be about finding something to be able to focus on, whatever that may be.
10:26In the brief time he gets to spend in the rec yard each day, Stroud discovers his focus.
10:32Stroud's out on the rec yard inside the segregation unit and comes across three baby sparrows that are injured
10:41and decides to pick them up, and he takes them back to his cell.
10:46Once he gets them back to his cell, he makes a makeshift eyedropper into a device where he can feed them.
10:52He shares part of his food with the birds, and he nurses them back to health.
10:57Instead of taking the sparrows away, prison officials see this as a rare chance
11:02to keep the otherwise ultra-violent inmate occupied.
11:06But Stroud sees it differently.
11:13Leavenworth Penitentiary, January 1930.
11:17Convicted murderer Robert Stroud has made the study of birds his passion
11:22while cooped up in solitary confinement.
11:24His new hobby keeps him occupied, but requires the warden to give him special treatment.
11:30They start allowing him to build an aviary.
11:33He's given the opportunity to purchase a microscope.
11:37He starts getting other pieces of laboratory equipment in.
11:41They start providing him with different types of chemicals from the hospital,
11:45and he starts experimenting on these birds that other inmates are giving him.
11:49Stroud becomes an expert on birds and writes a book titled Diseases of Canaries.
11:57He's become a world-renowned ornithologist because he has now found several cures
12:04for several different bird diseases.
12:06The book is an unexpected success and garners a lot of attention from other bird enthusiasts.
12:12Robert Stroud got so much fan mail that they had to hire a separate secretary
12:18just to go through it all.
12:19And it's not just his fan base that's causing problems.
12:23It just becomes an unsanitary situation by far.
12:28There's dead bodies of canaries laying about.
12:31There's bodies of dissected canaries that he's just tossed in the floor.
12:36There's canary droppings everywhere.
12:38He's not a very sanitary person himself,
12:41and this creates arguments with the officials at the prison.
12:46It's creating a situation to where they needed to do something.
12:50But the popularity that he has gained is kind of putting that on a back burner.
12:58May 1930, the newly formed Federal Bureau of Prisons issues a rule
13:03that would prevent Stroud from keeping his beloved birds.
13:06With all the popularity that Stroud is receiving at this point in time,
13:10it's putting a lot of pressure on the administration of the institution
13:13and the director of the Federal Prison Service.
13:16The rule is an excuse to get Stroud to request a transfer out of Leavenworth.
13:22But he fights back with the help of a letter-writing campaign from his supporters.
13:26Not only does Stroud get to keep his birds, he's granted a second cell to keep them in.
13:33He has discovered that this might be a way to keep himself occupied
13:38and manipulate the prison system going forward.
13:42But the administration will not give up that easily.
13:45They wanted to move this guy, so they go in and they shake down Stroud.
13:49In the cell, they find that a lot of the equipment that he had used
13:53had been turned into a still, and he was manufacturing homemade alcohol.
13:58They sent him to Alcatraz on the next train going west.
14:01On December 16, 1942, Robert Stroud is transferred to the only prison
14:07with higher security at the time, Alcatraz.
14:10It's where he gets his famous nickname, the Birdman of Alcatraz.
14:16Ironically, he's not allowed to keep any birds on the rock.
14:19He spends the rest of his days in solitary, until his death in 1963.
14:25His birds were a way for Stroud to mentally escape his cell.
14:31Many other inmates turn to drugs for the same reason,
14:34and there are always people on the inside willing to supply them.
14:38In Leavenworth, it was the Aryan Brotherhood,
14:41led by a cold-blooded killer, Tommy Silverstein.
14:45Tommy was extremely a violent individual.
14:47Staring into the eyes of Tommy Silverstein was like staring into a black abyss.
14:52While you're having a conversation with Tommy, he's answering you,
14:56but you can tell that in the recesses of his mind,
15:00he's going over how he could kill you.
15:03March 1977.
15:04Tommy Silverstein begins a 15-year sentence at Leavenworth for armed robbery
15:10and quickly climbs the ranks of the prison gang, the Aryan Brotherhood.
15:15The Aryan Brotherhood is a white supremacist gang that was formed in the late 60s
15:21in the California prison system.
15:23It eventually grew into the most respected or most feared white supremacist gang,
15:30depending upon which side of the law you're on.
15:33The Brotherhood seeks to control the profitable drug smuggling trade inside Leavenworth.
15:39Drugs are smuggled in Leavenworth, commonly through the visitation room.
15:44Guys will have girls bring them in.
15:48They're usually sealed up in balloons.
15:49They either pass them during the kiss in the beginning,
15:52or they'll go into the bathroom.
15:55The creativity of the smugglers knows no bounds.
15:58They'd spray methamphetamine on postcards,
16:01and then the postcard would come in and you'd just eat the square,
16:04snort it, just inject it, whatever guys were doing.
16:07Drugs would often also come in legal mail,
16:10and you would have big legal briefs with metal binders over the top.
16:14Underneath those metal binders, there was holes that people would hollow out
16:17and put drugs in those holes.
16:19Even with all this ingenuity,
16:21they still need people to be drug mules inside the prison.
16:25When someone refuses,
16:27Silverstein and the Aryan Brotherhood have to make an example out of them.
16:36Leavenworth Penitentiary, 1980.
16:39Tommy Silverstein and the Aryan Brotherhood have a mule
16:42who quit smuggling drugs for them.
16:45They decide to make an example out of them.
16:47to keep their other drug smugglers in line.
16:50The Aryan Brotherhood take a contract on an individual
16:53that was refusing to move heroin through the institution,
16:56and they kill him in the main corridor.
16:58They would check his pulse every few minutes,
17:00and if they could still feel the pulse,
17:02they would continue stabbing him until it's stopped.
17:06Silverstein takes the fall for the killing
17:09and is transferred out of Leavenworth.
17:11He commits more crimes at other prisons,
17:14killing a guard
17:15and joining a riot.
17:18So in 1987, it's back to Leavenworth.
17:23But this time, they're ready for him
17:25with a personalized isolation cell
17:28dubbed the Silverstein Suite.
17:30The Silverstein Suite was built in the late 80s
17:34on what was the old baseball yard of the facility.
17:39The design basically was to build
17:41a more sufficient security system
17:44for the segregation building.
17:46It's designed to deprive Silverstein
17:49of any human contact.
17:50You could not come in from the inside.
17:53You had to go all the way
17:54on the outside of the facility.
17:57It had its own door
17:58that the officer had to open
18:01through the camera.
18:03They had to see who's there.
18:04There was an outer door.
18:05There was an inner door.
18:06The officer would open the outer door,
18:09place the food on a shelf,
18:11close that tray slot,
18:12and then by a lever mechanism,
18:15open up the tray slot on his side.
18:17He could gather up
18:18what it was left for him.
18:20I took his tray to him,
18:21his food tray.
18:22That's pretty much it.
18:24I've done that several times.
18:25But as far as communication,
18:27no, he wasn't a talker.
18:29He had no contact with anybody
18:32at all except for feeding.
18:35One time, I was on the team
18:38that escorted him to the dentist.
18:40And we had a five-man team
18:42escort him in, you know,
18:43handcuffs, leg irons, belly chains.
18:46And then we took him
18:46right back to his cell.
18:49Cut off from the world,
18:51Silverstein turns to the very thing
18:53that landed him in solitary.
18:55They put drugs in his laundry.
18:57So laundry comes out
18:58in a laundry bag.
19:00So the general population people
19:01would then do the laundry.
19:03Then they would bring
19:04the clean clothes back in.
19:06You have a tag number on it.
19:07So if you knew I lived in cell A20,
19:10you knew that bag was coming to me.
19:11So if you're trying to send me cigarettes
19:13or drugs, you can send it
19:15through my laundry bag.
19:17Silverstein uses drugs
19:18to cope with the crushing isolation
19:20of his custom-built cell.
19:22A lot of the inmates
19:23don't know he's there.
19:24A lot of the staff
19:24don't know he's there.
19:26Very limited staff contact.
19:28July 12, 2005.
19:30After 18 years
19:32in the Silverstein suite,
19:34Tommy Silverstein
19:35is transferred
19:36to a supermax prison
19:38in Colorado
19:38specifically constructed
19:40for violent inmates
19:41like him, ADX.
19:44He remains there
19:45in solitary confinement
19:47until his death
19:48in 2019.
19:50Meanwhile,
19:51the aging Leavenworth
19:52is downgraded
19:53to a medium-security prison.
19:55It is still running today.
19:57Leavenworth now
19:59is so steeped
20:00into American culture,
20:01there's no way
20:02that the legacy
20:03of Leavenworth
20:03won't live on.
20:05Leavenworth had
20:06the most notorious,
20:07the most violent,
20:09the most dangerous
20:11of inmates
20:12the world has ever seen
20:13for the first 110 years
20:16of its history.
20:18Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary
20:19is not a place
20:21I would want
20:22to be a resident in.
20:25Working there,
20:26I loved it.
20:27I loved my job.
20:30I treated everybody
20:31with respect,
20:32but I wouldn't want
20:35to be an inmate there.
20:37Leavenworth serves
20:39as a reminder
20:39of some of the wildest
20:41days of violent crime,
20:43drug smuggling,
20:44and the very foundation
20:46of the federal prison
20:47system itself.
20:49And while more modern
20:50prisons have left it
20:51in the past,
20:52one thing is sure,
20:54the tens of thousands
20:55of inmates
20:56that have called
20:57this place home
20:58will never forget
20:59Leavenworth.
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