In the nation's most savage prison riot, at least 33 inmates are butchered
Nothing like it had ever happened before in an American prison. Inmates battered gaping holes through 6-in. reinforced concrete walls. They burned open inch-thick steel doors with acetylene torches. They destroyed toilets, sinks, desks, file cabinets, beds—almost every stick of furniture that could be found. Little remained in several buildings but smoldering ashes and blood and bits and pieces of what had been human beings. Some corpses were missing arms and legs; one lacked a head. Another had an iron bar through its skull from ear to ear. Still another corpse hung from a cell block ceiling, the word RAT carved on its chest.
This was the gruesome scene that met some 200 heavily armed police and National Guardsmen last week as they charged into the New Mexico State Penitentiary near Santa Fe after the most savage prison riot in U.S. history. Said Colonel Bill Fields, commanding officer of the National Guardsmen: "I was in World War II, and I've seen mutilated bodies. I don't remember anything as bad as this." The rampage lasted 36 hours and left at least 33 of the prison's 1,136 inmates dead. Two convicts were missing and probably dead, their bodies possibly consumed by the fires that gutted several buildings. Nine prisoners and one guard were seriously injured. It was the worst prison riot since 32 inmates and eleven employees died in the 1971 revolt at New York's Attica Correctional Facility.
The spark that ignited the New Mexico riot took place at about 2 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 2, when two guards discovered two inmates in Dormitory E-2 drinking hooch they had brewed from fermented fruit. The drunken prisoners overpowered the guards and stormed down the corridor to the control center, a cluster of rooms in the middle of the prison. The inmates shattered 1½-in.-thick windows with clubs and, once inside, flicked open many of the switches that control the locks in the prison's ten dormitories and cell blocks.
Hundreds of convicts poured out of their cells and stormed through the halls, yelling, "Get the guards!" Four teen guards and one medical technician were captured; three others on duty, helped by friendly prisoners, found hiding places. The rioting inmates then ran amuck through the 37-acre prison grounds. Some rushed to the workrooms for boards, pipes, acetylene torches, anything that could be used as a weapon. Others broke open cabinets in the pharmacy for drugs—tranquilizers, barbiturates, even insulin. A few found containers of glue, which they sniffed to get high.
But a small group of inmates—perhaps Bingaman than a dozen— went on a rampage of brutal torture and murder.
Most of their victims were in Cell Block 4, which housed suspected informers and others with reason to fear violence from fellow inmates. According to survivors, the "execution squad" doused some men with gasoline and set them on fire; others were hacked to death with homemade knives. Members of the squad killed one prisoner with a blowtorch, holding him before a window in full view of the lawen forcement officials and National Guards men who had gathered outside the 15-ft. prison fences.