Читать книгу Murder on the Inside - Catherine Fogarty - Страница 12

Wednesday, April 14, 1971

Within minutes of the guards being attacked, word of the riot spread throughout the cellblocks. With the dome now under the control of the inmates, the prison belonged to them. Knight and his team rushed to the nearby tiers to free the rest of the prisoners still locked in their cells. Knight knew he needed additional manpower fast if he was going to control the takeover. Smashing a wall safe behind the keeper’s desk in the dome, he grabbed all the keys and passed them out. He started running from wing to wing, shouting orders like a general. “Brothers!” he yelled with authority. “Our time has come to shake off the shackles. We’ve taken control of the dome and we’ve got six hostages. You will all be released from your cells.” Prisoners still behind bars began yelling for their freedom. Raging inmates looked for anything they could use to pry open the cell doors. Someone from Knight’s group opened the plumbing supply room. Now armed with four-foot pipe wrenches and lengths of steel pipe, inmates pounded and pulled at the locking mechanisms above the cells until they opened. Soon the inmates were in control of the main cellblock and began smashing everything in sight.

It didn’t take long for the emancipated prisoners of Kingston Penitentiary to turn their wrath towards the most hated symbol of their oppression: the repugnant brass bell in the centre of the dome. Using chairs, pipes and anything else they could find, they smashed away at the gong until a final blow from a fire extinguisher shattered it into pieces.

Other rioters had more practical needs on their minds and wanted to break into another area of the prison. The entrance to the well-stocked kitchen was directly between B and C blocks. A group of inmates rushed at the heavy oak door, but before they reached the entrance — boom! A blast from a shotgun rang out from inside the kitchen, shattering the small window in the door. The charging inmates dropped to the floor as glass shattered on top of them.

Crawling on his hands and knees, Billy Knight moved away from the damaged kitchen door towards the radio room. He immediately called the warden. “If there are any more shots fired, we’ll start cutting off some fingers,” he yelled.⁵⁹ Jarvis could hear someone else yelling in the background. “Tell him we’ll drop a finger out the window for every shot,” said Manny Lester. “We’ve got to be firm.”

Inmates standing along the railings above the dome floor began throwing debris and calling out threatening insults. The guard who’d fired the shot through the kitchen door had just put his kidnapped comrades in grave danger.

Inmate Barrie MacKenzie was sitting in his cell on range 3-B listening to the outbreak below him when someone opened his range with a key. As soon as he was freed from his cell, he let others out, including his friend Brian Beaucage. Soon a group of guys regarded as solid cons were standing on the range wondering what their next move was. They didn’t know who or what had instigated the riot, but they weren’t going to let anyone fuck them over.

As pandemonium continued to spread throughout the cellblocks, another gang of inmates quickly designated themselves guardians of the six hostages. As inmate Roger Caron later reflected, “They knew the value of healthy pawns, knew that without them the authorities were certain to machine-gun their way inside the main cellblock, a dreadful outcome that would have left a lot of people dead.”

Holding the guards in cellblock 1-F, the inmates knew their hostages were too exposed and the angry mob could turn on them at any time. The screws had to be moved. They herded the guards into a service corridor — a dark, narrow duct behind G and H blocks. They shut the door and wired it shut from the inside. “No one will get you; we’ll protect you,” Vallier would remember them saying. The guards could see out the door and saw prisoners running and smashing everything in sight. It seemed as though the inmates were trying to protect them, but how long would they remain safe?

One of the members of the inmate police force, as they came to be called, was Wayne Ford. Inmate #2778 was serving a life sentence for the murder of his mother, a crime he committed on May 16, 1963, when he was sixteen. After a heated argument one day, he bludgeoned his mother, Minnie Ford, to death with a baseball bat and left her sprawled on the kitchen floor while he returned to his grade ten afternoon class at Earl Haig Secondary School in Toronto. The following Victoria Day holiday weekend, he convinced two of his best friends to help him dispose of her corpse in Lake Couchiching, where the family had a cottage.⁶⁰ The sudden disappearance and search for Mrs. Ford, the wealthy widow of a respected Toronto businessman, was front-page news and the story captivated the city. Wayne told police his mother met a man and had moved to Fort Myers, Florida, where the family owned property, but investigators could find no trace of the woman from Willowdale. She had simply vanished.

With his mother gone, the handsome Wayne Ford had no one to answer to. He turned the family home into a brothel and went on a crime spree, robbing banks and selling guns. It was only a matter of time before Ford’s arrogance and recklessness became his undoing.

In the fall of 1966, the badly decomposed body of Mrs. Ford floated to the surface of Lake Couchiching. Wayne Ford was charged with capital murder. For the police, he wasn’t hard to find since he was already serving time in Kingston Penitentiary for escaping from Burwash Reformatory.

Labelled a dangerous, non-treatable psychopath by the judge at his trial, Ford was sentenced to life behind bars and was returned to serve out his time at Kingston Penitentiary. He was twenty-one years old.

For the cold, unrepentant murderer, life behind bars was easy. At six foot three and 285 pounds, Ford had earned a healthy respect amongst the inmate population at Kingston. He lifted weights, held various jobs in the prison workshops and kept to himself. “I’d been a criminal most of my life,” said Ford in an interview with the Toronto Star in 2013. “You don’t walk into the prison and say, ‘hey everybody, you fuck with me and I’ll kill you.’ But you spread the word. You let it be known.” Ford was considered a monster, an unredeemable psychopath, and no one was going to challenge him.⁶¹

Ford was locked in his cell on the fourth tier when the riot began. He watched as other inmates ran past him, destroying everything in their wake while yelling and screaming. He wanted out. Then someone smashed open his cell and he ran down to the dome floor. Ford grabbed a three-foot length of two-inch pipe and began running towards 1-F. He knew some guards had been taken hostage and he hoped they weren’t already dead. Any chance of getting out of the riot alive would be gone if the guards were killed. They were their only insurance against an all-out attack.

Running down the cellblock, under the overhang so nothing would land on his head from the ranges above, Ford found the guards huddled in the service corridor behind G and H ranges. A few other inmates Ford recognized were protecting them. The guards looked at him in terror, their faces lined with anxiety. He lowered the pipe in his hand. “I’m not here to hurt you,” he told them. Ford told the guards to follow him to a safer location. “Don’t look at anybody, don’t run. Just walk normally,” he said.

The hostages were quickly moved through the throngs of hostile inmates. At first Ford tried to lock all six guards in the plumbing area on the ground floor, but he decided it wasn’t safe. They were too visible and too vulnerable. As they made their way up the winding metal stairs, inmates began shouting at them. When they finally got to the fourth floor of B-block, someone in the angry mob below suggested that a few of the screws should take a plunge off the fourth-tier balcony. The crowd cheered.

Ford had to act fast. He pushed three guards into one cell and three into another. One of the other inmates had found a chain and padlock. With all of the locking mechanisms destroyed, it was the only way they could secure the two cell doors. Once the guards were locked up, Wayne Ford turned to them and said, “Now take off your clothes.”

Soon after the riot began, Billy Knight summoned the prison population to the dome. Standing on range three overlooking the dome floor and brandishing a short iron club, he was relishing his moment of glory. “We’ve got hostages, men,” he shouted. “We’re not going to release them until our demands are met, and that, my brothers, will take days of hard talk.”

The inmates pounded the metal railings with their crude weapons. Knight was now king of the limestone castle and he wanted to assure his comrades that past injustices would be rectified.

“Have courage, my brothers, and remember when people have nothing to lose but themselves, only a coward would deny them the right to rebel.” Surrounded by a captive audience, Knight outlined his reasons for the riot. “By sunrise we’ll have direct communication with the outside world,” he told the prisoners. “Either we get penal reform or else we turn this shithouse into a parking lot!”

“Let one of the screws do a nosedive off the balcony and the pigs will get the message,” yelled an angry voice from the dome floor.

“Brothers! Brothers!” replied Knight. “Let’s not give the pigs the satisfaction of finding a reason to label us as animals to the world. We need the public’s support and we won’t get it by creating a bloodbath.”

Knight continued to stress the need for non-violence, but some of the men in the excited crowd were not happy. Billy Knight had instigated a riot that was putting all of their lives in jeopardy. One of those individuals was Brian Beaucage, a 23-year-old convict from London, Ontario, who was serving an eight-year prison sentence for manslaughter. He had recently been returned to Kingston Pen after attacking a prison instructor with a sledgehammer at Collins Bay penitentiary. A well-known motorcycle gang member, Beaucage was short on talk and fast with his fists. An early intake report stated: “Beaucage is an intelligent person who resorts to assaultive, aggressive behaviour without much remorse and provocation. He is considered to be a very manipulative and potentially dangerous person.” Brian Beaucage did not like Billy Knight.

Beaucage was a loner, but he had befriended a young kid in Kingston Pen by the name of Robbie Robideau. Only seventeen when he was sent to Kingston, Robideau was a product of the system. From the age of seven he had been a ward of the state, and the state had not treated him well. From group homes he ended up in training schools, and from training schools he ended up in the reformatory. As he made his way up the prison ladder, Robideau learned how to survive. “If you didn’t fight, you were dead. They tried to knock the aggression out of me with shock treatments, but it didn’t work. It just made me worse.” Now he was prisoner #6897 in Kingston Penitentiary.

Just before the riot, he had been released from solitary confinement, where he had spent thirty days for striking a guard. “In the hole, you were locked in your cell for twenty-three and a half hours a day,” Robideau would recall years later. “We got bread and water and a full meal every twenty-one days. They took away your mattress every morning and gave it back to you at night. The only thing they left you was a bible.”

As the riot unfolded, Robideau felt a sense of freedom he hadn’t experienced in a long time. As other inmates smashed up their cells and anything else they could get hold of, Robideau and his friend Brian Beaucage had a different sport in mind. They were heading towards 1-D, the protective custody unit, where they knew they would find some easy prey.

After his impassioned speech to the inmate population, Billy Knight left the dome area and ran towards the gymnasium to free the rest of the inmates who had been left behind. The gym was a large, rectangular, high-ceilinged building. On the north side was a stage where inmates had put on shows and concerts in years past. There was a doorway to the yard at the southwest corner of the gym and an elevated gun cage in the southeast corner.

When he entered the gym, Billy could see the confused inmates lined up against the south gym wall. It was deathly quiet. There were sixty-four men in total and three remaining guards. The guards stood defensively in front of the gun cage, located across from the entrance to the gym. Ken Garrett was the guard locked in the gun cage. Garrett, whom the other guards called Ponderosa Pete after he bought a hobby farm, was a well-respected senior officer. He had started his career at KP in 1961, and as a former Second World War vet he knew how to handle a gun. He had his rifle pointed directly at the inmates. If they attacked, his plan was to take out as many as he could before he ran out of ammunition. Hidden below in the gun cage, out of sight but within his reach, was a Smith & Wesson thirty-eight revolver. Garrett knew, if he started shooting, he might not reach the thirty-eight in time. In a decision that would later result in a reprimand from his superiors, he passed the thirty-eight revolver through the gun cage to guard Bill Babcock. Now there was a loaded gun within reach of over sixty desperate inmates. Years later, Ken Garrett reluctantly retold the story to his son, Spencer, who had also become a corrections officer at Kingston Pen. “I wanted the guards in the gym to have a fighting chance,” he explained. “They were sitting ducks and I didn’t care if they fired me.”

When Knight walked back into the gymnasium, he didn’t expect one of the officers to be armed. Babcock, also known as “Killer Bill,” pointed the revolver he had just been handed towards Knight. Witnesses later recounted the exchange between the riot leader and the armed guard:

“Let’s talk,” said Knight to Babcock.

“Anything I’ve got to say to you will come from the mouth of this gun,” replied Babcock.

“We’ve got full control of the dome and six hostages. I want you to release my brothers. Let them join me in my peaceful protest.”

Shaking his pistol at Knight, Babcock wasn’t backing down. “We have the artillery, so why should we move?”

Knight then suggested that if the gymnasium was emptied, it could be used as a rendezvous point between himself and the administration to negotiate a peaceful resolution.

Throughout his twenty-two years of service, Babcock had never imagined or trained for this moment, but he still wasn’t prepared to give in. “Go away, just go away,” he told Knight.

Knight didn’t respond. Babcock then watched as Knight suddenly turned and left the gym, locking the last barrier behind him. The inmates left stranded in the gym weren’t sure what would happen next.

As soon as Knight retreated from the gymnasium, Ken Garrett grabbed the phone located in the gun cage and called the emergency operator stationed inside the front gates to tell him there was a riot going on in the main cellblock. As administrative protocol dictated, the operator in turn called the assistant deputy warden, Doug Chinnery, at his home across town to advise him of the situation. A mild-mannered man who would later play a significant role in the crisis, Chinnery was at first skeptical about what he was hearing.

“They’ve taken over the dome,” stated the emergency operator.

“Aw, c’mon,” Chinnery laughed, thinking it was a joke.

He soon realized it wasn’t.

On April 14, 1971, Warden Arthur Jarvis was working late in his office to catch up on a backlog of work. As usual, he had informed the north gate officer that he would be in his office for a few hours in case he was needed. It was a chilly spring evening. The Warden’s House, situated directly across from the penitentiary, was an impressive limestone structure built entirely by convict labour. In 1873, John Creighton became the first warden to live in the house.⁶² In the late nineteenth century the residence became known as Cedarhedge, after the extensive and well-manicured hedges that once lined the driveway. Now, in the early spring, flower gardens waiting to bloom filled the front lawn overlooking the penitentiary.

Jarvis could see the main gate of the penitentiary from his window, although he had chosen to have his desk face into the room. In the time he had occupied the front room of the Warden’s House, he had done little to change its decor. A framed picture of John Diefenbaker’s Bill of Rights hung on one panelled wall, and an autumn landscape painting hung on the opposite one. Brown manila files littered his desk, which was devoid of any personal mementoes or photos. On the warden’s bookshelf sat a piece of whimsical sculpture, a small man looking up at a bird on his hand. The inscription read, “Go ahead, everybody else does.”⁶³

At eleven o’clock, Jarvis received a call from the gate officer, telling him the inmates had taken over the central dome area of the prison. A second call from Assistant Deputy Warden Chinnery confirmed the initial report. In his twenty years with the Correctional Service, Jarvis had dealt with numerous situations — it came with the job. But he had never been faced with a full-scale prison rebellion. He had warned his superiors that something serious was going to happen, but no one had responded to his letters. Kingston Penitentiary was a ticking time bomb, and it had just exploded!

There was no specific riot plan for staff to follow, but Warden Jarvis immediately ordered all off-duty guards back to the prison. The penitentiary armoury located within the north gate was unlocked, and as the guards returned to the prison, they were armed with rifles and posted around the perimeter of the main cellblock. Jarvis then notified the duty officer of the Canadian Forces Base at nearby Barriefield and requested the army be put on standby.⁶⁴ The base commander advised Jarvis that 45 troops would be ready to move on twenty minutes’ notice and 120 more with one hour’s notice.⁶⁵ More infantry from Petawawa could be sent in by helicopter if necessary.

Jarvis had to notify his superiors. He contacted the Regional Director of Penitentiary Services, John Maloney, and the Commissioner of Penitentiaries in Ottawa, Paul Faguy.

John Maloney wasted no time getting to the prison. He arrived just after eleven thirty and proceeded to the keeper’s hall, where he received a preliminary report from Jarvis. The administration knew little about what was happening inside the prison, but staff still had control of the keeper’s hall, the hospital, the dissociation cells and the kitchen.

Maloney was a tall, distinguished man with a long career in corrections. Joining the Penitentiary Service in 1957, he had worked his way up from a guard’s position. Maloney had served as a warden at British Columbia Penitentiary and Matsqui Institution in Abbotsford, BC. He had extensive experience in dealing with inmate populations, but Kingston Penitentiary would prove to be an event he would never forget.

Shortly after midnight, Warden Jarvis received a phone call from guard Ken Garrett in the gymnasium. Garrett told the warden an inmate wanted to talk to him. Jarvis wasn’t sure what to do. Who was the prisoner and what did he want? Was it a trap?

Jarvis walked over to the gym, not knowing what he would encounter when he got there. When he entered the gun cage where Garrett was stationed, he could see all of the inmates lined up against the gymnasium wall. They were quiet and under control. But soon his attention was diverted to the exit gate, where he heard a key turning the lock. Another prisoner walked into the gym alone. Jarvis recognized Billy Knight, the prison barber.

Turning towards the other prisoners, Knight gestured to them with a peace sign. Ignoring guard Bill Babcock, who had a revolver pointed directly at him, Knight approached the barred gun cage to speak to the warden. He assured the warden that a peaceful demonstration was intended, and they didn’t want to see anyone get hurt. But, he added, the presence of additional armed officers surrounding the building was agitating the inmate population.

“What exactly do you want from us?” asked Jarvis.

“For a start, we want positive results in our desire for decent living conditions,” said Knight.

Knight then requested the guards be removed from the gun cage and the gymnasium so the remaining inmates could return to their cells.

Making a decision that would later be called into question, Warden Jarvis agreed to Knight’s request. He was in a no-win situation. He knew the prison had been taken over by hundreds of hostile inmates, and six of his officers had been kidnapped. They could be in serious danger. He hoped if he complied with Knight’s request, the insurrection would end quickly and without bloodshed.

Jarvis and the three guards left the gymnasium. The inmates in the gym followed Knight back to the dome, adding sixty-four more discontented prisoners to the growing rebellion.