Chapter 18
The Ralph Steele Murder I was convinced, as I still am today that Warden James Meko is a decent man of integrity and I was sure that I could take my mail problems to him. But getting to see the warden one on one proved next to impossible. The BOP has one of the best bureaucracies in the U.S. government based on a strictly enforced chain of command. I could not even write a confidential letter to the man without three other people reading it and sending it back to my unit manager without the warden ever seeing it. It seems the warden is ostensibly too busy to be bothered with letters from inmates so, all letters to him must be submitted to a unit team member comprised of the unit manager, and a counselor.
When someone like Blackwell is
one of those people, your chances of seeing the warden are almost nil. He’ll read your letter or request and arbitrarily decide that your issue is petty and does not merit the attention of the warden, especially if it’s about misconduct of a staff member. I must have tried writing to Warden Meko about a dozen times, and each time my correspondence took unintended detours. 365
Occasionally the warden would walk around the compound making inspections or he’d drop in the cafeteria for lunch. But he was never alone – probably for security reasons. He was always accompanied by one of two deputy wardens or Lt. Foster and they were excellent at making sure the warden wasn't bothered with the trivial problems of inmates.
So, even though he told me to come see him when I got
out of the hole, the word was out to keep me away from Mr. Meko. My efforts to talk or correspond privately with the man were effectively stifled.
This left only one resort which often did more
harm than good – filing a BP-10 form.
The BP-10 was the formal complaint form used by inmates to make a grievance. warden.
This blue form would have to be seen by the
The problem is that filing one puts the prison staff on the
defensive and could easily get one flagged as a “troublemaker” and alienate the warden from helping you. But for me, it turned out to be the only way to communicate with the warden.
In retrospect, I feel
that over half of the BP-10s I filed would never have been filed if I had only been allowed to speak privately with warden Meko. As it turned out, the some two dozen complaints I filed over 38 months
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only served to aggravate the warden and my unit management team.
Less than half of my BP-10s received replies even though BOP policy says that every one must receive a written response. The response of the prison staff was to turn up their harassment which took many forms, like spreading rumors that I was still a federal agent working undercover to set up other inmates. Another favorite was giving me my mail with it’s contents missing – just envelopes!
My commissary
account suddenly suffered incredible accounting deficiencies, and for over two months I was unable to buy anything from the prison store until my account was finally reconciled. Cutting of my phone calls in mid conversation was happening quite frequently, and what few visits I received were always cut short for a variety of bogus reasons. But one of the most creative tricks they played on me is one I can laugh at today, but was anything but funny back then.
One particular prisoner named Butch had a horrible temper, a very short fuse, and a very beautiful wife who visited him on a regular basis. One night as I left the library to return to my unit for the nightly 367
lockdown, I was knocked flat on my ass by a fist that seemingly came out of nowhere. It was soon joined by it’s brother and only after I dragged myself up off the ground did I realize the one throwing the brutal punches was Butch. “What’s that for!?!” I shouted as my head throbbed in pain and felt to see if I still had a face. “There’s plenty more where that came from if you so much as look at my wife!” he retorted. “What the fuck are you talking about Butch?” The fire in his eyes could melt steel as he just threw a letter at me.
It was a
cheesy but raunchy love letter addressed to his wife, and lo and behold, it was supposedly from me! Butch said one of the guards “tipped him off” that I was writing and calling his wife! I picked up one of my papers which were now scattered all over the ground and handed it to Butch. “What’s this asshole?” he demanded. “It’s my handwriting Butch. If you compare it to that stupid letter, you’ll see I didn’t write it!” After a brief inspection, Butch realized he had been taken in by the guard. “I’m sorry man” is all he could mumble. “Yeah, so am I” I replied as I realized my lip had been split open by his fury. It was only a few minutes til lockdown so we parted ways and headed for our respective units. I was determined to find out which guard orchestrated that little gem, but it would have to wait until morning.
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A migraine kept me awake most of the night and when I did finally fall asleep, it was only two hours later that I’d have to report for work in the kitchen. I was the pot and pan man in the kitchen and during the course of a eight hour day, I’d soak, scrub, and wash some 300 pots, pans, and bakery trays.
It was a dreadful and boring job
assignment but it was one of the highest paying jobs at MCC Miami for prisoners (about $52 a month) and my boss Joe Kuhn was a good guy to work for. He’d let me leave as soon as I finished which was usually about five hours. This would give me an extra three hours every day to spend in the library, my unit, or to lift some weights or read a book.
Joe was one guy who realized that prisoners were
already under enough stress and didn’t need any more from prison staff. The inmates respected him for this and those who worked for him considered him a good friend.
As I was scrubbing some pots, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turn around to find none other than Lt. Foster. “Where did you get those shiners Gorcyca?” With my two black eyes, lumpy head, and swollen lip, I was surprised that he could even recognize me. If I answered that question truthfully, I knew it would mean a trip to the hole for both me and Butch, so I casually replied “I tripped and fell down the stairs” 369
“Sure you did”. He knew better. “Hands behind your back – you know the routine”. Once again he marched me off to segregation. Once there he told me I’d stay in the hole until I told him who gave me the facial.
Through my many visits to the hole, I realized that it had some permanent residents that never seemed to get out into general population. Some were the government’s prosecution witnesses but others were there for unusual reasons.
One guy from Guyana
named Udhistir Diciarian (phonetic) was there because he refused to take medicines he claimed were against his religion. He would occasionally talk to me in the exercise cage and he seemed like such a passive and peaceful guy. I learned that he was married with some toddlers at home. He missed his family badly and was growing manic depressive. By keeping him in the hole, prison staff could ensure that his unwanted medicines would be administered. Udhistir never made it out of prison alive. By mistake, he received an overdose of medicine and was found dead in his cell. I never did learn why he was behind bars in the first place.
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Another segregation regular was Carlos Quesada, a member of Miami’s Cuban Mafia who was the trustee for the seg unit.
The
Trustee was allowed to be out of his cell because he would sweep, mop, and wax the floor, collect and distribute the weekly laundry, etc. It was rumored on the compound that Carlos was snitch, but he never caused me any grief.
For his work, the guards let Carlos enjoy his
daily cigar out of sight in his cell.
Chris Simmons was another permanent resident of the hole and to me he appeared to be perfectly harmless, but the staff insisted that without his daily doses of Thorazine, Chris grew too agitated and aggressive to be placed in general population.
I can’t comment one way or
another whether that was true or not because he was forever doped up and that was the only Chris I got to see and know.
Then there was a little guy named “Jumper” whose real name eludes me. In his late 20s Jumper was a comedian and a very good escape artist. When he wasn’t telling jokes through the air vent, he was plotting his next escape attempt. He had a track record of several escape attempts including one that was successful, so he earned 371
himself a permanent home in the only place that could keep him in prison – the hole.
Last but not least, there was Ralph. Ralph Steele was a white male in his mid to late 20s who always made sure to provide some commotion on a daily basis.
Ralph was very intelligent, quite
articulate, and very annoying. Ralph could not stand silence, a treasured commodity in prison for those trying to read a Bible, write a letter, or take a nap. So if there was a fifteen minute stretch of silence, Ralph would be sure to interrupt it with anything from singing, to drumming on his steel door, to shouting out for the guard or another prisoner.
Anyone who answered his calls typically received a
meaningless greeting or dumb question like “What time do you think it is?” The last people who care anything about the time of day are prisoners in solitary confinement.
I sincerely believe Ralph suffered
from Attention Deficient syndrome because he could not help himself and was restless during every waking minute.
He was
genuinely friendly and would readily take up conversation with anyone willing to talk with him, even it was just to poke fun at him.
His
knowledge base surprised me. Ralph seemed to know quite a bit
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about very diverse subjects from the Bible to sports, to world politics. He was anything but stupid.
To the many guards who worked in the segregation unit, Ralph Steele was their source of daily entertainment and break from the boredom. Some guards like Bouchard and Williams routinely provoked Ralph to set him off on one of his infamous shouting tirades that could easily last an hour. Ralph and the guards would trade insults frequently and it could grow comical or ugly. Ralph was not a racist but if a black or Hispanic guard would provoke him, Ralph would use the only weapons at his disposal to defend himself – words. The bigger the reaction he’d evoke from the guard, the more he’d go after them with racial slurs just to get under their skin. He toyed with the guards like this every time they made Ralph angry or the butt of one of their sick jokes. They would routinely add unauthorized ingredients like urine, feces, laxatives, acid, and insects to Ralph’s food and drinks just to watch him explode in a fit of rage when he discovered them. To the other prisoners in the hole it was always interesting to see who grew angrier, Ralph or the guard he’d be verbally dueling with. But Ralph’s worst flaw was his gullibility. He’d believe almost anything and the guards exploited this for their own amusement that often went too far. 373
A case in point is an incident that involved one particular nurse, an attractive and friendly young Cuban lady with blonde hair and bluegreen eyes who took pity on Ralph and would chat with him to calm him down and cheer him up.
I’m sure she did this out of the
goodness of her heart and not in any official capacity. The guards noticed the rapport she built with Ralph and used it to drive him nuts. They told Ralph that the young nurse had admitted that she was madly in love with him and was asking around to find out when Ralph would be released from prison. Of course, none of this was true but they had Ralph convinced otherwise. As time passed, Ralph’s conversation with the nurse would grow more and more personal and he would recite poetry to her and even asked the woman to marry him! The poor nurse grew quite uncomfortable and finally had to tell Ralph that she never had any romantic feelings for him. That was the only day that silence filled Ralph’s cell. He was devastated and the guards ridicule rubbed salt into his wounds.
But the peace and quiet didn’t last long and soon Ralph let his rage be known to any guard who even spoke to him. The bad joke had a lasting effect on Ralph who began throwing things around his cell, or push his food tray out the door slot no quicker than it came in. 374
Williams and Bouchard picked up on Ralph’s anger and decided to fuel it by telling Ralph the nurse lost interest in him after she found out he was gay or that she was having an affair with the warden, or other ridiculous things – all of which Ralph truly believed. When the other prisoners finally convinced Ralph that the guards fabricated the whole thing as a joke, he was even angrier and his words for the guards became more acidic and venomous. The racial slurs intensified and soon Williams and the other guards would find themselves in heated arguments with Ralph as they hollered insults at each other through the door.
Only officers Black and Harrison tried to calm Ralph down. Everyone else just antagonized and tormented the man as they laughed while Ralph’s face would grow red with anger. One of the guards even convinced Ralph that his mother was gang raped by some black men in the parking lot of a shopping mall, and that they heard about it on the nightly news. You can just imagine the rage that filled Ralph when he would not be allowed to make a telephone call after they gave him the news about the phony rape. How he could believe all this stuff is not so bizarre when you consider how isolated a person becomes after a few months in solitary. Your mind is so hungry for news from the 375
outside that it no longer functions logically.
Instead, you tend to
believe things that you’d normally question. In their quest for laughs, the seg guards were slowing pushing Ralph to his emotional limits with their incessant mental abuse. But that abuse soon grew physical as well.
Within two weeks Ralph had refined his insults to razor sharp arrows that were released instantly upon being provoked. arrows seldom missed their mark.
These verbal
Some guards simply couldn’t
control themselves, and when they took Ralph out for a shower or to the exercise cage, they’d smack him around a bit. Since prisoners in seg were cuffed any time they are out of their cell, Ralph had no way to defend himself from the assaults, and in frustration he’d either kick or spit at his attacker. To be clear, I want to emphasize that Ralph never once instigated these confrontations – but he sure as hell reacted to them and seldom backed down when provoked. After a while, Ralph began refusing to take a shower or go for exercise because he knew any trip out of his cell might result in yet another beating.
Once when I was returning to my cell after taking a shower I heard sobbing coming from Ralph’s cell so I slowed down long enough when 376
passing his cell to peek through the open slot in his door. He was naked and hog-tied with his hands and feet cuffed behind his back as he layed on the floor belly down. There was a bowl of water placed near his head and there was a pool of urine and feces beneath him. “Hang in there Ralph” was all I could say before the guard pushed me away and back towards my cell. It was a long three day holiday weekend, and it wasn’t long before Ralph was screaming in pain as he complained of cramps and began coughing badly. He was left tied up like an animal for the entire weekend, and I could not imagine any possible justification for such inhumane treatment. Before the year would end, I too would know the same humiliation and pain of being hog-tied for three days and sleeping in my own waste.
Things came to a head a few days later at lunch time when Ralph drank half a cup of lemonade before realizing it also contained urine. “You fucking people are sick! Which one of you assholes pissed in my cup?!” Bouchard and another guard whose face I could not see from my cell just cracked up laughing as usual. But Ralph was dead serious. “I want to see the warden”. When he received absolutely no response, he must have repeated that line a dozen times before Bouchard just shouted back “Shut up and eat your lunch Ralph”. Surprisingly, Ralph 377
remained silent.
But when Bouchard went around to collect the
food trays after lunch, he got a dose of his own medicine when he pulled Ralph’s tray out through the door slot. “Fuck! You crazy sonof-a-bitch” Bouchard shrieked in surprise as he ran to his office to retrieve some paper towels. Ralph had peeed in his cup and flung it through the door slot at Bouchard. laughing as he jokingly asked Bouchard
Now it was Ralph who was “Hey Bouchard, what’s that
cologne you’re wearing?” Another shouting match ensued but was cut short when the kitchen crew arrived to retrieve the food cart from the seg unit.
As usual, most of the residents of solitary take naps after eating a meal, myself included.
I have no idea how long I had been asleep
when I was awakened by the sound of a heavy duty scuffle – lots of thuds, grunts, and groans. “Okay! Okay! I give up!”
Then I heard Ralph’s familiar voice I jumped up and went to my door to see
what was goiing on. My view was limited by the outline of a huge guard standing in the doorway of Ralph’s cell with his back to me. Ralph was getting an ass-whooping but by who? I couldn’t really see but deduced it most probably was Bouchard considering the day’s events. From what I could see, mostly just bits and pieces of uniforms 378
and flesh as arms and legs flailed through the air. There were two guards inside Ralph’s cell, and the guard who stood outside the doorway on “warden watch”. I could see both black and white skin in those uniforms so I knew there were at least two guards beating on Ralph. Ralph once made it half way out of his cell door in an effort to flee his assailants, but was dragged back into his cell by his feet. His face was bloodied and the expression on his face is one I will never forget. They guy was absolutely horrified.
Ralph repeatedly shouted “You win – I give up!” and “please stop!” but they didn’t.
Myself and another prisoner banged on the door and
shouted for them to stop. The goliath in front of Ralph’s cell realized we were watching. “Get away from your door” he commanded to me and the other prisoner, but neither of us budged an inch. So he decided to block our view of things.
He went into the office and came out with some tape and a few sheet of legal size paper. He walked over to my cell first and taped the paper over my cell door window, and I assume he did the same to the other c e lls . But the audio continued uninterrupted and I felt so badly for Ralph. From the sound of things, I figured they were 379
using the phone books again. It went on for about fifteen minutes which is an eternity when you’re the one on the receiving end of such a beating.
It was near the end of the melee when I heard
Ralph’s desperate plea “Please Williams – stop already! I’m sorry!”. Sorry for what? I wondered Did one of Ralph’s slurs finally get to Williams? Moments later the scufflling abruptly ended and all I could hear was Ralph moaning, whimpering, and coughing in his cell. The guards were talking and joking amongst themselves how they finally “taught the asshole a lesson.” The only voice I could recognize among the group was Williams. After I heard Ralph’s cell door close, one of the guards said to another. “You’d better get that mess cleaned up before meds get here or we’ll all be writing reports”. I bent down to holler out my door slot “Hey Ralph, are you okay?” When he didn’t answer I tried twice more before realizing that he probably was not in the mood for a conversation right now, so I sat down on my bunk and just wondered how such brutality could be so common in America. The scene that just transpired with Ralph is played out dozens of times every day throughout jails and prisons across the nation. In the 38 months of my detention I must have seen at least fifty such beatings and was on the receiving end of two of my own, one of which was for reporting a guard for the way he treated my mother on 380
her only visit to see me, along with the fact that he had been selling drugs, cigars, and alcohol to the prisoners. The other beating was because I peeed on the floor of a bus because after three hours of telling guards I had to go and being ignored, I simply couldn’t hold it any longer. One of the beatings was very excessive and I was sore and bruised for days for days. When I said I wanted to see a doctor because I suspected one of my ribs might be cracked, they ignored me and just extended my time on the bus – long enough for the bruises to fade away.
That night after dinner, a few of us I the cell block tried calling out to Ralph again but he simply wouldn’t answer. “Let him sleep” one inmate shouted out. I fell asleep early that evening, but awoke at about 1:00am to take a leak. I looked out my cell door window to see if I could see the clock on the office wall. Instead I saw a guard with a mop and a bottle of clorox bleach standing outside Ralph’s door. How unusual. I thought. Usually they make the prisoners do all the grunt work like mopping. I stayed at the door for about ten minutes, which was just long enough to see him squeeze out the mop a few times, and then watched as he removed all the bedding from Ralph’s cell. I concluded that Ralph was either being transferred and was taken to 381
R&D or was taken over to the medical unit because I could neither see nor hear him in his cell. But my cell was positioned about 45 degrees from Ralph’s and did not provide me with the ability to actually look inside his cell. I could only see about the first three feet of his cell when the door was all the way open. I went back to bed in search of a nice dream. Around 5:00am, I awoke to a lot of commotion outside. I went to my door and saw at least a dozen guards, medical staff, and white shirts (I presumed to be administrative people). Ralph’s cell door was open, and I could see the repeated flashes of a camera strobe bouncing off the walls. By now most other prisoners were also standing at their doors, some even so jaded as to demand their breakfast. “What’s going on?” prisoners began shouting to one another.
About an hour or so later, Ralph was removed from his cell in a body bag, and the deputy warden announced that Ralph had committed suicide. He did not elaborate further but guards would later say that Ralph hung himself. I didn’t believe it for a minute and was personally outraged at the ruse they chose to cover-up the beating that really caused his death, probably from internal bleeding, punctured lungs or a brain hemorrhage. I saw the guard remove all of Ralph’s sheets and
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blanket around 1:00am. With what could Ralph hang himself? This wasn’t suicide. It was murder. And I was not the only one who knew it. For the next few days I was stunned and could not believe I lived in America.
The U.S. Department of Justice admits that 29% of prison deaths are suicides but how many of these suicides are really murders? Based on my own investigation while in custody for 38 months and having interviewed almost 100 witnesses from segregation units, my guesstimate is that half of all prison suicides are real. Some person unknown attempted to “suicide” me and when the camera video was requested I was told the camera for that area was “broken.”
Approximately 1,000 federal prisoners die in
custody every year. At any given time there are about 200,000 people kept in solitary confinement in America. The United Nations calls prolonged solitary confinement “torture”.
After
myself pending 9 months in Solitary, I agree.
These links below are just a sampling of the torture and abuse prisoners are subjected to, and they have no way to call the police or
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file charges against the attackers. Warning, these videos are graphic and disturbing.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8451.htm http://prisonbooks.info/2013/12/11/wake-prosecutor-plays-graphic-video-of-fatal-beating-duringjail-guards-trial/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqZUSvC3vY0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=datvPqLiqnQ http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/11/prison-video-showsinmate-beating-as-guards-look-on/1#.Uvb6UIXwiv8 http://www.clickorlando.com/news/marion-corrections-officer-charged-with-beating-inmate//1637132/23423718/-/g7domsz/-/index.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=a4eMIjabsNs http://www.geocities.com/prisonmurder/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=O5eOknaXgYU http://sfbayview.com/2013/video-released-of-georgia-guards-beating-prisoners-with-hammer/ http://www.prisonplanet.com/video-captures-jasper-texas-police-officers-beating-woman.html http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bca5dae693 http://globalgrind.com/2012/03/15/tioga-jail-beating-shows-prison-officials-beating-inmatedavid-coffey-details/ http://www.wncn.com/story/23226072/us-judge-hears-claims-that-nc-inmates-beaten http://www.geocities.com/prison_bloodbath http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Sheriff-releases-video-of-prisoner-beating-4348351.php
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