The Missouri State Penitentiary and Warden Donald Wyrick dredge up for me intense feelings of hatred. Those feelings burn a lot of energy that I would rather divert to more worthy issues. It is time to devote some ink for a proper epitaph of MSP.
The prison was built in 1884 for much the same reasons as prisons are built today: to provide economic stability to the city through free labor. Prisoners built houses for the elite back in the day, then graduated to license plates and furniture. Back then, superintendent of prison industries Lester Park was brazen enough to put his shoe company inside MSP.
A little more inconspicuous today, inmates work as telemarketers and laborers in a number of industries, basically replacing the slave labor of yesteryear.
I always said MSP, its most common euphemism, stood for “misery, suffering and pain.” It has been called “The Walls” for its seemingly impenetrable, towering block quarry fortification. Time magazine called it “the bloodiest 47 acres in history.” By the turn of the 20th Century, it had the dubious distinction of being the largest prison in the world. It was also home to the longest gas chamber executions.
It’s hard for me to think about MSP without thinking about Warden Donald Wyrick, aka “DW,” who was its contemptible head for too many years. He unleashed a reign of terror. Unlike most wardens, he actively participated in the psychological and physical abuse of inmates. The prison’s walls and floors, especially in “the hole,” are painted with the DNA of its captives. It was a torture chamber and fiendish drug laboratory to experiment on unwilling or unsuspecting victims.
Wyrick once recalled a particular incident in the prison yard: “The tower officers saw what was happening, and two or three guys came down with shotguns, shot a couple of ’em all to hell. One of ’em, I took care of him myself, knocked his teeth out. He picked ’em up and put ’em in his pocket.”
Believe me, this was just the tip of the iceberg. This man was pure evil.
The prison has a long history, rife with ugliness and horror, right up to point where the prison was decommissioned in order to build a shiny, new cage at the cost of $128,000, a far cry from the $25,000 and used stones from a local quarry that built its predecessor. When prisoners were relocated to the Jefferson City (so-called) Correction Center a few miles down the road, it must have been quite a sight to see the nearly 1,500 residents being transported in shackles, reminiscent of chain gangs.
Although there have been the notable and notorious people who claimed the address, like boxing champ Sonny Liston, Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd and the kidnappers and murderers of millionaire baby heir, Bobby Greenlease, most inmates have been your average poor men who made bad decisions. Its first resident was sent up the river for stealing a $39 watch. However, the dehumanizing work-over you got in the “Pen” prepared for your return – for some, again and again, as they were rendered incapable of functioning in a civil society.
During the 1970s, Wyrick banned me from MSP, because of my frequent exposés of conditions and my advocacy for prison reform. The ban was finally lifted in the ‘80s by Roy Black, the Department of Corrections’ first African-American director, at the insistence of state Rep. Charles Troupe.
Hedy Harden, another prison reform activist, recently revised a poem that she first wrote years ago. Filled with vivid images of prison life, it reminds us that the mantra of MSP remained alive and well until its close: “Leave hope behind, all ye who enter here.”
There are plans to redevelop the prison site. I think it is sacred burial ground for the stolen lives that were taken for almost 200 years. The unclaimed human bones found on its site attest only to the physical deaths. To Wyrick and others at MSP who made their life’s work snuffing out hope and humanity, I hope you burn in hell.