Nov 26th - Prison

Kelsey, Andy, Doug, Anthony & I took a two hour tour of the old Missouri State Penitentiary this morning. It was quite interesting. The prison opened it 1836, the same year that the Alamo was overrun by Santa Anna, and 97 years before Alcatraz became a Federal prison. It closed in 2004. During its heyday it housed as many as 5,300 offenders at one time. The prison was known as "the bloodiest 47 acres in America." In the late 30's Missouri executions started being done using cyanide gas, rather than by hanging. The tour included the gas chamber but I didn't tank any photos of it.

It was interesting to learn that, in the past, justice was handed out without waiting for criminals to die of old age. In Sept 1953 a couple kidnapped and murdered a 6 year old boy. The kidnappers were a drug addicted, alcoholic couple. They buried the boy in the woman's back yard. They were caught, tried, convicted and were executed on December 18, 1953. Had they committed a similar crime in the 90's they would probably still be alive today while lawyers sucked up tax dollars with appeals. On Feb 12, 2010 Leroy Nash, who was sentenced to death in 1983, died of old age while still on death row at the age of 95. In 1975 the average length of time between sentencing and execution was 4 years, today it is over 14 years.

This is looking down the length of one of the cell blocks. The folding chairs were used by those of us in the tour, during a short lecture. We were pretty much "turned loose" to explore this cell block after the lecture.

 This is looking down the length of the cell block from the top tier of cells. The wood roof once burned off this section, years ago, and over 700 prisoners were evacuated from the cells (each cell has a special key) during the fire. The truss you see is a timber truss.

 This is looking across from one side of the cell block to the other. You see the top two, of four, tiers of cells.

 This is also looking across and shows the bottom three, of four, tiers.

After the tour Kathy joined us for lunch at an oriental restaurant.

Good afternoon to all and may God bless you and yours.