The Missouri State Penitentiary which was open from 1836 until 2004 is now open for tours! Although I've been through the Panama Canal and St. Petersburg, Russia in the past year, THIS was one of the most interesting tours I've ever been on. The building above housed Pretty Boy Floyd.
Our tour guide was a former warden who had hours of stories and history.
But, just being there was fascinating. The state really hasn't done anything to maintain the facility which gives it an especially creepy, haunted feeling.
Time Magazine in the 1970's called this the bloodiest 49 acres in the United States because of the violence. When they tried to integrate the prison in the 1960's, two black prisoners were stabbed to death in this hall. They put off integration until the 1970's. At that time they told the prisoners that every cell was going to be thoroughly examined for weapons. If the prisoners wanted amnesty, they needed to drop the knives in a barrel on a particular day. They collected 11 barrels of knives on that day.
This was the "command center" or "bubble" which has bullet proof glass. To get in there, a person had to go through 4 check points/ locked doors from where we are gathered.
As the warden said, this chapel was not designed by anyone with prison experience. It had so many blind spots, dozens of men were murdered in the chapel.
Dave is entering the cell where Sonny Liston was. It was while in this prison that he learned to box and his skill at boxing earned him probation.
I was surprised how much of the work, the inmates did including painting their own cells---as this wall shows, they did have some choice on color.
The size of some of these prison blocks was deliberately humbling. The theory when this one was built in the 1860's was to make a prisoner feel small. The original doors to the cells was the size of the one fourth from the left---even I had to bend over to enter and exit the cell.
Here's Dave beside the door.
This cell block also had a dungeon with evidence that there were shackles at one time. One man wrote a book about his experience down here for 18 years! We went down, they shut off the lights to show us how dark it was. They turned on the lights, we headed out and the lights went off again. We used our cameras to help us get out until the guide came down with a flashlight. Jefferson City had a power outage while we were in the dungeon. The above photo was trying to light the way for my friend Sharon to get out. Click here for Part Two.
