Born to Lose (51 page)

Worried about further delay, Delker said to Hoss, “You sure we can get 'im down here?”

“Yeah, with luck,” Hoss answered. “I've been playing him, ya know. He thinks he's getting me in his confidence. He'll want to keep that up by doing me a favor. If he wasn't a dead man, next week he'd be showing me pictures of his kids, and pumping me for information at the same time.”

After Peterson's call to Gary Boyd an hour earlier, Boyd had gotten through to Hoss's girlfriend, who confirmed her mother had had surgery but would be fine.

Then two things happened in quick succession.

Lieutenant Peterson got the return call from Boyd, telling him the mother of a Hoss girlfriend was doing well. At the same time, downstairs, Hoss approached Reilly, asking him to call Peterson about the very same thing, as he'd inquired earlier but no one had gotten back to him.

Bus Reilly eventually called upstairs, but it was Sgt. Cameron who answered. Getting the lieutenant's attention, Cameron said, “Hey Pete, do you know about this hospital thing with Hoss?”

“Yeah, I know about it, everything's okay. I'll go down there and tell him.”

“Hell Pete, why go down? We're gonna bring 'em all up in fifteen minutes anyhow.”

Peterson shrugged this off. “Ahh, I'll go down.”

Cameron hit the intercom button. “Bus, Pete's comin' down to see Hoss.” It was 2:15.

Hoss smiled at his confederates. “Okay, this is it.”

McGrogan's mind was spinning, made worse when Delker remarked, “We should have showered. I don't expect we'll be getting showers after today.”

Delker retrieved the soaked bed sheet from the wall sink, then wrung it out, commenting, “This should do it.” He handed the sheet to Butler, who knew what his job was. In turn, Butler produced a package of tobacco he was carrying and removed two double-edged razors, giving one to Hoss, the other to Delker. The blades had one edge taped, for a better grip.

“Butler took position by the door,” McGrogan later said, “while Stanley and Danny took seats at a table. I kept moving further away then sat down with my back to one of the cells, about twenty feet from them. I was halfway to Reilly and did everything I could to signal him, but he didn't know what I meant.”

At the table close to the door, Delker's back was to Reilly. Sitting opposite Delker, Hoss was shielded from Reilly's view, who couldn't see what
McGrogan saw: Hoss was holding an electrical cord with wooden handles he'd fashioned into a garrote. Frozen to his spot, McGrogan thought, Oh Christ, Oh Christ, Oh Christ …

“Pete made ready to go,” said Cameron, “so I offered to go down with him. He said, ‘No, stay at the desk, I'll just be a minute.'” Cameron thought nothing of this, as officers went to various places and into cells alone with regularity.

Moments later, with Peterson by the door, CO Ronnie Hagmaier, a cadet, arrived from the back of a range.

Pete says to me, “Here, take the keys, I'm going downstairs,” so I said I'd go with him but it was, “Nah, you got showers, stay up here.” So Sgt. Cameron and me stood at the main door and watched Pete leave. I still had his keys but he wouldn't need them because inmates could go from yard to basement at will so the door down there was left unlocked. At the landing Pete called to me, “Hag, lock your door.” I don't know why he said this, because with the in and out traffic through the main entrance, it was usually left unlocked, too, but when we went back inside I locked up behind us.

Peterson turned the corner of the Home Block then took the steps to the basement door. “When he came in, I looked directly in his eyes,” said McGrogan, “as if to say, ‘Jesus Christ, Pete, why did you come down here?' hoping he'd run away, but he smiled at everybody, said, ‘Hi guys,' then waved a greeting at Reilly.”

Watching from a distance, Reilly heard Pete's greetings but could not make out the subsequent exchange. Nothing struck him odd, but in those few seconds he didn't like the inmates' encircling movements, didn't care for their proximity to the lieutenant … Then came the lightening attack that transfixed Reilly for several quickening heartbeats before he sprang to sound the alarm.

Pummeled and shoved, Peterson was dragged to a corner. While Delker struck with fists, Hoss tried to loop his garrote around the victim's neck but lost the cord in the general melee. Hoss then proceeded with methodical punches. Peterson raised his arms to protect his face and head but still suffered serious blows. Blood streamed from his forehead into his eyes.

“It wasn't long after Pete went downstairs,” said Cameron, “that I went over to the sink, then heard Bus Reilly yelling, ‘Hoss! Hoss! Hoss!' I jumped to the intercom at the desk. ‘Bus, what's wrong?' But he just kept yelling
‘Hoss! Hoss!' I thought
something
is damned wrong. Hagmaier had gone out the main door so I yelled, ‘Ronnie, what's going on down there?'”

“From my position at the bottom of the steps,” said Hagmaier, “I couldn't tell anything was going on, didn't know what Cameron meant, but he yells again so I ran up to him and we're both listening to intercom noises, scuffling and cursing. I said we ought to push the button. This was an alarm that registered in the control booth in the admin building. The alarm buttons were numbered so the trouble spot could be identified by its number.”

Watching the assault unfold, locked in without a handgun, Reilly was impotent. Further, every use of the intercom put him several yards to his left, behind the corner of an end cell, cutting his line of sight into the corridor.

“Already Pete was hurt,” said Reilly, “and I wondered how far this was going to go? But it got worse so fast. McGrogan was standing off by himself, Butler was hunched down fussing with something, but Hoss and Delker were all fury. When Hoss landed a particularly vicious blow, and Delker laughed … I knew it wasn't going to stop.”

“Tie the door! Tie the door!” Hoss yelled. Clutching a wet bedsheet, Butler jumped over to what was a two-door setup, not unlike any house's screen and main doors, but in the Home Block's basement, the inner door was made up of thick vertical bars, while the outer door, except for a seven-inch-square section of thick glass at eye level, was solid steel. Yet there was a design flaw that the inmates exploited: in addition to a handle on the outside, there was a big brass handle on the
inside
of the steel door, allowing Butler to double loop one end of the bedsheet through the brass handle and then, tugging for all he was worth, through and around the bars. Several sets of knots held it secure. Free of this first responsibility, Butler joined in the battery.

Suffering under a terrific flurry of punches and kicks, Peterson had been beaten down to a sitting position, but, with strength born of desperation, he broke away.

“After we hit the alarm,” said Hagmaier, “Cameron and me grab blackjacks and mace and run down the steps.”

Cameron recalled arriving at the basement door to find it closed,

and I mean shut tighter than a drum. It felt like it was locked, no movement at all. I was pulling and shaking that handle and looking in the window. At first I see nothing, and with the angle of that door and window you could not take in all the basement area, maybe only the middle half…. but then I seen Pete come by my line of sight, staggering, and I seen blood
on his head. He went past and Hoss was after him. Then they disappeared and I didn't see no more. I yelled in, “Hoss, open the door … Hoss, open the damn door now!” McGrogan was standing to one side. I yelled, “Bob, open the goddamned door!” but he just shook his head.

I knew that door couldn't be locked because we had the keys … but with that door, there wasn't a budge, a gorilla couldn'ta opened it. I yelled again at McGrogan but he stood there with a wide stare. Not getting anywhere, we ran back upstairs to hit the button again.

After Reilly had sounded the alarm, much was in motion. Lieutenant Kozakiewicz was in the front rotunda right beside the control booth when the alarm sounded. “I looked in the booth and they yelled out, ‘Home Block,' so I ran and picked up guys on my way.”

Outside in the yard and in other locations, the initial alarm could not be heard, but “it was word of mouth, walkie-talkie, or simply by sight,” said CO Steve Dutkowski. “When we saw our guys running in one direction, we knew there was trouble and we'd join up at a dead run. You have to remember, over the past year that alarm was always going off—inmate fights … a lot of false alarms—but it never mattered. Inside, all we had was each other, and
every
alarm call was a sprint. In these first moments we didn't know exactly what the problem was, but we got there ASAP.”

Even Ronnie Hagmaier didn't know the gravity of the situation. “After Reilly's yelling in the intercom, I ran down with Cameron, but with that window so little we both couldn't see in at once, so I didn't know … but we couldn't get that door opened, then Cameron yells, ‘Come on!' and we rushed back up. Cameron said, ‘We got trouble.' I thought the inmates were fighting each other. It's not like I panicked or anything—an inmate fight, no big deal.”

Cameron and Hagmaier had no sooner gotten upstairs when help started arriving. “They were trying to get in,” said Hag, “and I had to keep opening the outside gate for them to run up to the Home Block. I was running the keys back and forth so much I didn't know anything beyond my thinking there was an inmate fight going on.”

Fear swept through the inmates. They heard the alarms, the shouts, Reilly screaming, and saw the frantic activity of the officers, their faces strained. On top of this, there were the recent rumors of a black takeover of the Home Block, or, alternately, a white insurrection—a killing spree against the blacks.

“Just before Lt. Peterson went downstairs,” said inmate John Keen, “I was in the shower with Sistrunk, who was head of the Black Muslims. I could see the desk area and saw Peterson on the phone, then he say somethin' to a guard, then goes outside. Almost right away we hear all this noise.
Somethin's
' goin' down. There's only the blacks left upstairs an' I ran to get two knives I had, then get in front of Fred Burton's cell. See, after Burton killed two at Holmesburg Prison an' stabbed a captain in the back, he almost got beat to death by the guards. He was still real weak so I stood in front to protect him. Then I see Sistrunk come from the shower still all soaped up. He ran into his cell and I think if he coulda' burrowed through the brick, that's where he'da gone.”

“When I hit that alarm again,” said Cameron, “I hear Reilly in the intercom shouting loud, in a panic, “Help! Help! They got Pete! They're killin' him! They're killin' him!' I didn't have time to lose but now we got trouble upstairs. Sistrunk's running around buck naked an' I see Johnny Keen tearing down a range—with a fuckin' knife! Keen looked scared shitless, scared to death, and when Keen is scared there's something to be scared about. Mike Stangler and Frank Salvay were on duty so I yelled for Frankie to lock those sons-a-bitches up. Lock it all down. We got problems.”

Right at this time the first contingent of officers rushed into the Home Block, led by Kozak. They all knew there was trouble, but none knew what the trouble was about.

Cameron looked at Kozak, the ranking officer. “They got Pete downstairs.”

Winded from his two-hundred-yard run, Kozak asked, “Who got Pete?”

“Hoss an' them. I think they're killing him. That's what Bus is yelling.”

Not understanding that Cameron had been to the basement door, failed to get it opened, and had just hustled back upstairs, Kozak exclaimed, “Well, what the hell we up here for?! Let's go, bust in there! Get in there! Get in there!”

After having thrust free of the initial pounding, Peterson, dizzy and unsteady, shuffled toward Reilly, shouting, “Help, Bus, help!” Pressed up against the front of his bars, Reilly yelled, “I called, Pete, I called! Hold on! They're comin'! They're comin'!” Then before he could think of its uselessness, Reilly grabbed the whistle clipped to his shirt and blew it, over and over, like he could signal the end of a match.

Halfway to Reilly, Peterson was intercepted by Butler, who hit the struggling man over the head with a folding chair. Stunned but remaining upright, the lieutenant lurched toward a wall for support. Having slipped down a moment before, Hoss caught up with Butler, took the chair from him and with all his might collapsed it over the back of Peterson's head. Peterson slid
down the wall to one knee. Hoss, with Delker, kicked down Peterson. Then the razors came out.

“I don't know how many of us were at that door all at once,” said Kozak, “but the landing down there is not too big so we had to watch against getting in everyone's way. We're pounding, pulling, but that door wasn't moving. When I looked in, I couldn't see anyone except McGrogan, who wouldn't respond to us.”

Wielding his night stick, Kozak bashed at the thick glass of the door's small window but, “that club bounced off like I was hitting an iron beam.”

CO Jimmy Weaver stood by the railing, eight feet above the landing.

A lot of us weren't sure
what
was going on, except that we had to get in there. Some of us heard Reilly yelling about Pete, some didn't. Guys are whacking away at that door and window … looked fruitless. Everyone's yelling and at the same time the boiler house whistle blew, loud short blasts, meaning the whole prison was going into lock down. Kozak's the lieutenant but he's in the middle of everything, so I ran over toward no. 6 tower. Thad Moore was up there with his 30.30 rifle. I didn't have authority for this but I shouted to shoot the window open, shoot it out! Thad yelled back, “‘I don't have orders to shoot.” But now Sgt. Vargo is beside me and he yells up, “Christ! Pete's trapped! I'll clear everyone away. I'm givin' you a direct order … Fire!” But Thad Moore would not fire.