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When I first learned that C. Murray Henderson was going to be assigned to the N5 unit at the David Wade Correctional Center in 1999, I made it clear to other inmates in the unit that no one was to bother him.

He was in N5 only few weeks before he was crippled with gout and had to be put in a wheel chair. Each day I pushed him to the prison infirmary, undressed, and bathe him.

I had never bathed another man in my life – and there I was bathing a former warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, more commonly known as Angola, who was once my bitter nemesis; the man I had filed so many lawsuits against I cannot recall the number. Suffice it to say, Sinclair v. Henderson became part of the legal lexicon in courts throughout Louisiana.

Life is indeed a bitch. And, yes, we all do die in the end. From there, who knows.

I listened to all of Henderson’s stories as he regaled other inmates about Angola. I knew they were bullshit, the embellished recollections of an old alcoholic who had long ago lost contact with reality.

I still treated him with the utmost respect. I called him “Mr. Henderson.” I wouldn’t have called the Governor at that time “Mister.” My wife, who met Henderson on several occasions, thought the world of the old man. She was always extremely kind and affectionate towards him.

Then in 2000 came the release of my prison memoir, “A Life in the Balance: The Billy Wayne Sinclair Story” (Arcade Publishing 2000), The book did not portray the infamous warden in a very good light.

He was devastated. I don’t know what he expected when he bought the book – perhaps a glowing account of his Angola administration.

It was not what he got. The former warden became bitter. He no longer spoke to me.

It really didn’t matter. I had seen too many people killed because of his incompetence and corruption.

The ex-warden would walk slowly down the tier, measuring each step in a futile attempt to walk a straight line.

He was 83 years of age at the time, with a thick mop of curly gray hair, and a right leg severely bowed by gout.

His full name was Charles Murray Henderson. He came to Louisiana in 1968 after establishing a nationally-acclaimed reputation as a “reform penologist” during his tenure as warden of the Iowa State Penitentiary. He was brought to Louisiana by former Gov. John McKeithen to “reform” Angola – the state’s only adult male penal facility at the time. It was the nation’s largest prison, and its most violent.

Henderson inherited this sprawling, insidiously corrupt prison that had a history of killing off more inmates than it ever rehabilitated while enriching the pockets of “good ole Southern boy” politicians. Prisons in the Deep South have always been, and mostly remain so, corrupt quasi-political complexes designed to bloody money political honchos.

During Big John’s eight-year tenure as Louisiana’s governor (1964-72), he rewarded prison inmates with more than 2,500 pardons (most at a price of $1500), “special” paroles (at a cost of $500), and a reform warden who became known to the public as C. Murray Henderson.

Angola proved to be unreceptive – actually hostile – to Henderson’s notions of penal reform. The prison became his professional quagmire. Its entrenched history of corruption, violence, and brutality was not impressed with his “progressive” penal “rehabilitation” approach. The prison all-white, “redneck” staff firmly believed it was better to beat and kill rather than heal and save.

In fact, the inmate-on-inmate violence so spiraled out of control during Henderson’s seven-year tenure as warden that Angola earned the richly deserved national reputation as “America’s bloodiest prison.” That reputation eventually led to federal court intervention in 1975 that declared the entire prison unconstitutional.

Henderson left Angola in the late fall of 1975 shortly after at federal court intervention. He went to Tennessee where he was named “commissioner” of that state’s notoriously brutal prison system. He would also leave there in the wake of scandal—a massive parole-selling scandal that sent Tennessee’s Gov. Ray Blanton to a federal prison.

Henderson returned to Louisiana several years later where he was placed in charge of the state’s hospital for the criminally insane – a St. Francisville facility that would also come under intense Federal court scrutiny during his charge. He then met, and married, a local journalist and freelance writer named Anne Butler.

Together, the couple wrote and published several books about Angola, its famous characters and events. Butler would later state a creative claim to all the “writing” in the books, crediting Henderson with being no more than a source of information in those literary endeavors.

The common thread that bound most who have written about the “history of Angola” is this: they were afflicted with “selective memories.”

These Angola historians were either motivated by self-interests or were supporting the official interests of those in charge of the prison at the time they wrote their accounts.

Angola historians like Henderson, Butler, Burk Foster, and a cadre of staffers (or ex-staffers) with the prison’s official publication, The Angolite, have all concocted various accounts or hand-me-down tales about the prison’s infamous history. I don’t place much stock in any of these accounts.

Mark T. Carleton’s 1971 book, “Politics and Punishment: The History of the Louisiana State Penitentiary,” is the only really accurate account of the prison’s bloody, corrupt history.

Henderson, in particular, was tortured by two insatiable human desires: a need for professional recognition of his penal accomplishments and a personal thirst for alcohol that begged 12-step intervention.

The two desires did not mix well.

A sense of self-created “greatness” became the former warden’s affliction, a need for embellished personal exploits that could be fueled by alcohol. The imagined exploits allowed him to cope with the curse of anonymity outside the world of prison. It was as though he was engaged in a perpetual struggle to force the world to recognize his greatness. Reality caved to perception of reality, leading him to foster professional misrepresentations about his tenures as a warden and his own personal life.

The limited regional interest in Henderson’s “books” quickly faded. Time slowly chewed him up and spat out the ugly remains. When the grandeur of being a “book” author did not materialize, he was left with a troubled marriage, a sense of failure, and an unlimited supply of booze. It was an inevitable recipe for human tragedy.

That tragedy occurred in 1998 when Henderson lost control of his personal life – just as he lost control of Angola in the 1970s. While in a drunken state, he shot Anne Butler five times with a .38 caliber pistol following a domestic dispute. He then sat and watched the life blood flow from her serious wounds. Although his wife ultimately recovered from those wounds, a series of painful operations and physical therapy wiped out her personal savings.

Henderson later claimed he had wanted to kill himself but not even booze could give him the courage to do that.

Who would be around to explain “why” he lost control?

Failed greatness demands explanation.

So the former warden decided to live – to face the scandal and embarrassment of being tried, convicted, and sentenced to fifty years in prison.

That’s how Henderson ended up at the David Wade Correctional Center—named after a man he despised—and assigned to N5 where he was embraced by most of its inmates.

He arrived at the Wade prison facility, just another inmate.

Obviously disoriented, the former warden was humble, polite, and eager to please his new “inmate friends.” He regaled them with embellished stories about the inmates he had saved or secured their release through pardon or parole.

The Angola he remembered, and spoke so fondly about with both inmates and guards alike, was not the same prison I knew. Henderson recalled it as a place of love, respect, and honor among keeper and kept; a place of good food, clean living conditions, and a safe environment in which all the inmates’ personal needs were met.

The ex-warden became known as “Mr. Henderson” to both Wade inmates and guards. He was accorded official deference with a litany of special favors and privileges. He had his own valet, a black inmate who shined his shoes, cleaned his cell, and carried his meals to his cell. Henderson would buy the valet large “canteen orders” in exchange for the special services.

Gradually the old warden’s social standing began to erode – his quick temper (the psychological spark that probably triggered the shooting of his wife), sense of class arrogance, and constant “complaining” gnawed away at his popularity.

But it was his perverse penchant for the Jerry Springer show – a program he watched religiously – and his prurient interest in hardcore pornography that did not sit well with his fellow inmates who had placed him on a higher intellectual pedestal.

“Why that ole sonuvabitch ain’t nothin’ but another ‘dirty ole man’,” they soon exclaimed.

The release of my memoir, “A Life In the Balance,” co-authored with my wife Jodie in 2000 offered a markedly different view of Angola than the one Henderson had presented to the N5 unit. It did not play well with him. While the former warden never said a word to me about the book, he made it clear to others that he was “furious” about the way he was portrayed in it.

To say the least, “Balance” did not enhance Henderson’s social standing in N5.

Most of the unit’s inmates had no frame of reference about the prison’s troubled past or Henderson’s role in it. So, quite naturally the historical perspective provided by “Balance” did not reflect well on the ex-warden’s role in that history.

Warden Kelly Ward was not pleased with “Balance” either – not only because it cast the Wade facility in a bad light but also because it treated Henderson “unfairly.” Henderson had given Ward his start in the prison business by hiring him at Angola, along with a half-dozen or more college elites who considered themselves “penal experts,” as a quasi-social worker/classification officer.

Shortly after “Balance” was released, Ward summoned me to the prison’s “security office” where he made it clear that he did not like the way Henderson had been portrayed in the book.

Ward’s anger was not surprising. He still felt an allegiance to the man who had introduced him to the corrections field.

“You got your ‘facts’ wrong, Sinclair,” the warden charged, sitting behind the desk in the security office. “There was nothing in the public record that Warden Henderson was ‘drunk’ when he shot his wife.”

I was not intimidated by Ward. He was just another tin-can warden. I met only one warden with balls during my 40-year stay in the Louisiana prison system—and it was not Kelly Ward.

“Jodie and I got our ‘facts’ right, Warden,” I replied. “Jodie got that information from Henderson’s daughter.”

Ward dismissed me.

The warden retaliated by banning the book in N5, calling it a “security threat.”

On the heels of “Balance,” Henderson’s conviction and sentence were upheld on appeal. The former warden became more sullen, withdrawn. Then came publication of yet another book. This one entitled “Weep for the Living” written by Ann Butler. It recounts her life with Henderson, including fresh and graphic details about the crime.

“Weep for the Living” shredded whatever remnants that were left of Henderson’s good name. He was truly crushed.

I would speak to the ex-warden but only when necessary. My wife had a special affection for the elderly gentleman she had met. I did not share her sentiments. I could not forget the wasted blood, the official corruption, and brutality under his Angola administration.

In 2003 the former warden sought, and was denied, clemency from the outgoing pardon board under the administration of former Gov. Mike Foster. He never recovered from that devastating denial. He accepted death in prison – and it came in 2004 in hospice in a prison infirmary at the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, another facility named after a corrections director he hated.

He was 84 years of age.

It was in those last few months of his life that he came to realize he would never be free. He died a beaten, and bitter, old man—a warden who died in a prison.