The Bloodiest 47 Acres in America

When you think of the oldest prisons west of the Mississippi, one of the first that comes to mind might be the Yuma Territorial Prison in Arizona, which opened its doors in 1875.  But there is a formidable structure that opened nearly 40 years earlier - and almost a century before the infamous Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay.

The current entrance into the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. This entrance
actually leads into Housing Unit #1, built in 1905, to house female inmates.

Exterior of Housing Unit #1.  The bust is that of Alexander M. Dockery, who
was Missouri's Governor when this unit was built.

Detail of the limestone wall.  The limestone was quarried on-site.

West wall of the prison, with Housing Unit #1 shown

The prison sits on a hill overlooking the Missouri River, which runs along the
north side of the property.

The Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City received its first inmate, Wilson Edison, from Green County (Springfield) on the same day in March of 1836 that the Battle of the Alamo was being fought.  The original wooden structure stood in the southwest corner of what later became a much larger prison complex.  The oldest existing building at the prison today is Housing Unit #4 (also known as "A" Hall), which was constructed in 1868 from limestone quarried on-site by prisoners.  It is also interesting to note that convict labor was used to construct several houses outside of the walls of the prison.  One of those, at 700 East Main Street, directly across from the prison, was the Warden's home, and was provided as part of his salary package.

Housing Unit #4, the oldest building in the complex, dating to 1868.  Also known as
"A" Hall, this was the "honor" cell block, housing convicts that exhibited good behavior.

Inside of Housing Unit #4  - 4 tiers of cells.  This building also has several "dungeon"
cells below it, that were used for solitary confinement over the years.



Generally, 2 to 4 men occupied each cell.  Not much privacy here, either!

 

It is hard to believe that this cell deteriorated this much in 11 years...it
probably looked much the same before the prison closed in 2004

 

Prisoners were allowed to decorate their cells.  Here's one with one thing on his
mind...or maybe that's what got him here in the first place.

Water?  Blue giraffe?  Not sure what this décor represents

 

Prisoners could get a shoeshine...

 

or a haircut in the "honor" cell block.  (Inmate showers are located at the bottom of
those stairs in the background, as is the entrance to the "dungeon" cells.))

But there were always reminders that they were in prison.

There's a dangerous-looking character!

One cell still has the original 1868 door, barely 5 feet tall.  I don't know why
it was not replaced when all of the others were, unless it was used as an
example to show inmates how bad conditions were in the "old days"

By 1885, the prison included six major shoe factories, including one owned by the International Shoe Company of St. Louis, a clothing factory, a soap factory, and a factory making saddle trees, the wooden frames onto which leather and padding were stitched to make completed saddles.  All were operated with convict labor.  The saddle tree factory at the Missouri Penitentiary was the largest in the world - until an inmate named "Firebug" Johnson set fire to it, burning it to the ground.  The fire claimed the lives of four inmates, and earned Johnson a long stretch in solitary confinement. 

The first female inmate, Amelia Eddy, arrived from St. Louis County in 1842.  Years later, in 1905, as the female prison population grew, Housing Unit #1, which currently serves as the main entrance to the prison and the starting point for all tours, was constructed to house female prisoners.  One, an anarchist by the name of Emma Goldman, was incarcerated in Unit #1 as a result of the efforts of a young J. Edgar Hoover.  Goldman was accused of crimes ranging from inciting riots to advocating the use of birth control.  She served two years of a much longer sentence but was released in 1919.  Ironically, later in her life, she was instrumental in forming Planned Parenthood.  

Exterior of Housing Unit #1, built in 1905 to house female inmates

This relief of Governor Dockery is on the interior wall of Housing
Unit #1, and his bust is on the outside of Unit #1, as well.

Housing Unit #3 was constructed in 1914.  In addition to a regular block of cells, the building contained an administrative segregation (solitary confinement) unit and a capital punishment (death row) unit.  Death row continued to house inmates scheduled for execution until 1989, when that unit was moved to a new prison in Potosi, MO.

Housing Unit #3 contains administrative segregation (solitary confinement) cells and capital
punishment (death row) cells. This photo was taken from a cell on tier 3 of Housing Unit #4

Kept separated from the general population, convicts in Unit #3 were allowed out
of their cells to exercise in this fenced in "yard" for one hour per day.

Close-up of Housing Unit #3.  Death row was on the bottom floor,
on the level with the blue doors, where the smaller windows can be seen.

It was in Housing Unit #3 that one of the worst prison riots in American history took place in 1954.  Almost 2,500 inmates were running wild through the facility.  Four building were set afire.  Numerous police departments from around the state, the Missouri Highway Patrol, and the Missouri National Guard were all mobilized to quell the riots.  By the time order was restored, four inmates were dead (all killed by other inmates), fifty more were injured, and one had attempted suicide.  Damage to the prison was estimated at more than five million dollars.  There were, however, no escapes.  Perhaps part of the cause of the unrest was the sheer number of prisoners incarcerated in the facility.  By 1932, the Jefferson City prison was the largest in the nation, housing some 5,200 inmates, a number that remained high through the next several decades.  When the prison finally closed in 2004,  1,355 inmates were transferred to a new facility east of Jefferson City.

In the mid-1930's, two additional buildings were constructed.  In 1938, the prison opened a modern, five story, 240 bed hospital.  Planning and construction of the hospital had covered a span of three years.  Just a year earlier, in 1937, a much smaller building opened.  The gas chamber is a single-story, small, square limestone building set some distance from the housing units.  In its 53 years of use (1937-1989) the building was used to carry out 37 executions. (A total of 40 executions were carried out at the prison during the time that it was open.  Most of these were done in the gas chamber, but in 1907, following a failed escape attempt, three prisoners were executed by hanging in the prison yard, as a warning to the other prisoners.)

Entrance to the gas chamber. The left door leads into the viewing room, where
witnesses to executions sat. The right door leads into a room that contains
two holding cells and the gas chamber, itself.

 

Two chairs in the gas chamber. Only once  were both used at the same time.

 

Holding cell where the prisoner would eat his last meal and await his execution.

Keys to the gas chamber building and the holding cells

This phone hangs on the wall outside the gas chamber.  If a last-
minute stay of execution was granted, the call would come on this phone.

Of the thirty-seven people executed in the gas chamber, the youngest was 19 and the oldest was 73.  Thirty-six were men and one was a woman.  The woman was Bonnie Heady.  She and a partner, Carl Austin Hall,  kidnapped a young boy.  After getting a $600,000 ransom, they killed and buried the boy.  They were arrested in 1953, tried and convicted, sentenced to death, and executed all within the space of a year.  So heinous was the crime that authorities decided to execute them together.  There are two chairs in the gas chamber at the prison; this was the only time that both of them were used simultaneously. The last execution took place in January of 1989 when George "Tiny" Mercer was put to death by lethal injection (in the gas chamber building) for the rape and murder of a waitress in the Kansas City area.

Photos of all 40 inmates executed as the Missouri State Penitentiary with their
date of execution are displayed inside the gas chamber building.

Typically, guards at the prison did not carry weapons.  Cell blocks had only a minimal number of guards on duty, and at meal time, when as many as 600 prisoners were moving from a cell block to the mess hall, only two guards would be on duty...one on each end of a long hallway through which the convicts were moving.  If a fight broke out or an assault took place in the hallway, there is no way the guards could make their way through the mob of men to break up the altercation.  Over the years, inmate-on-inmate violence and killings were so prevalent that in a 1967 article, Time magazine called the Missouri State Penitentiary "...the bloodiest 47 acres in America."

Among the thousands of prisoners incarcerated over the years, three names stand out.  Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd served a three year term from 1925 to 1928 for the armed robbery of a Kroger Store in St. Louis.  following his release, Floyd embarked on a life of crime, and was named "Public Enemy #1" following the capture of John Dillinger.  Floyd died in a shoot-out with police in Ohio in 1934.

Charles "Sonny" Liston was sent to the penitentiary for armed robbery in 1950.  The prison Chaplain recognized his potential as a boxer and encouraged him to train.  His story caught the attention of a newspaper publisher, who arranged for his parole in 1952 and entered him in the Golden Gloves tournament.  A year later, he turned pro.  in September 1962 Liston won the Heavyweight Championship of the World, a title that he held for 17 months, until he lost to a brash young fighter named Cassuis Clay on February 25, 1964.

A life-size cut-out of Sonny Liston is displayed outside of the cell
that he occupied for two years in Housing Unit #4

James Earl Ray was serving time in the Missouri State Penitentiary for a 1959 armed robbery of two grocery stores in St. Louis and one in Alton, IL.  During eight years in prison, Ray had attempted to escape a number of times, but failed.  However, in 1967, Ray escaped by hiding in the false bottom of a box in a truck that was delivering bread from the prison bakery to other corrections facilities in mid-Missouri.  Ray travelled to Chicago, then to Canada, and eventually back to Alabama, then Mexico, before ending up in Memphis in April of 1968.  On April 4, 1968, firing from the bathroom of a rooming house near the Lorraine Motel, Ray shot and killed civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The decommissioned state penitentiary, the oldest prison west of the Mississippi River, hosts a number of tours including history, paranormal activity / ghost hunting (many believe the prison is haunted), and photography tours.  Tours are led by experienced guides...in some cases, the guides actually served as guards at the prison.  Our tour guide, Ray, is a retired deputy sheriff.  In addition to hosting tours in Jefferson City, Ray and his wife often "winter" in Las Vegas, where he works as a tour guide at Hoover Dam.  A knowledgeable and personable gentleman, Ray told us several stories that, I believe, were not part of the "script."  When I asked about a small wooden cross in the prison yard, Ray told us that "Mike" is buried there.  Mike was a cat that roamed freely around the prison.  The prisoners would feed Mike scraps of food to get him to come to them on command...Mike had a regular routine that he would follow, going from cell block to cell block for food.  The inmates fashioned a set of "saddlebags" for Mike, and used his free access to the buildings to send messages and smuggle contraband around the prison via the cat.

Mike and our tour guide, Ray - a great story-teller and a really nice man.

Another story Ray told us is that mid-Missouri Little League baseball teams sometimes came to the prison recreation yard to play games.  They were escorted to the field by the guards.  Prisoners served as umpires (thus avoiding any disruption of the game or un-sportsman-like conduct by parents.)  Often, as the players warmed up, the prisoners would talk to them, asking about their season, how the team was doing, their won-loss record, and so on.  It turned out that, far from being merely interested, the inmates were using this information to place their bets on one team or another for that afternoon's game.

 

View of the wall and a guard tower from what was once the ball fields.  That part
of the prison is now a parking lot for state-owned motor pool vehicles.

The rear of Housing Unit #4, as seen from what was once baseball fields and exercise area.

A visit to the Missouri State Penitentiary offers a fascinating glimpse into history.  Imagine, if those walls could talk, couldn't they tell some interesting Road Stories.



http://www.missouripentours.com/                                       Admission charged