Life’s paradoxes.
In 1968, C. Murray Henderson became warden at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, more commonly known as “Angola” or “the Alcatraz of the South.” The Tennessee native was hailed as a “reformer” who would bring Angola into the 20th century. He failed miserably at the task.
Henderson was tagged to be Angola’s warden by former Gov. John “Big John“ McKeithen.
An 18,000-acre prison plantation, Angola at the time was the largest prison in the nation, and like most other southern prisons was steeped in political corruption. McKeithen was the only governor in Louisiana history to campaign for votes inside the prison.
In 1964, Big John walked up and down the prison’s Big Yard passing out campaign buttons, telling the inmates, “tell your mommas and daddies to vote for Big John.”
During Big John’s two tenures in office (1964-1972), he rewarded the inmates with more than 2,500 pardons (most at a price of $1500) and “special paroles” (most at a price of $500). Big John never met a dollar he didn’t like.
Angola was not receptive to Henderson’s notions about “prison penology.” The prison was ruled by an entrenched all-white security force—most of who were either in the KKK or affiliated with the group. Security, and most inmate discipline, at the prison was maintained by “convict guards”—shotgun toting inmates, most of whom were lifers convicted of murder or rape, who enjoyed any opportunity to brutalize and kill inmates.
The hatred between convicts and convict guards made Lake Michigan look like a Petri dish.
A combination of Henderson’s professional incompetence, personal corruption, and alcoholism managed to transform Angola from a human sewage pit into “the bloodiest prison in America.”
A 1975 federal court ruling that declared the entire prison unconstitutionally “cruel and unusual” ultimately forced the 55-year-old warden to resign and return to Tennessee where he was tagged by Gov. Ray Blanton to be the “commissioner” of that state’s notoriously brutal prison system.
That gig lasted only several years before Blanton was convicted in a “parole-selling” scheme that landed him in a federal prison and Henderson without a job. Henderson did earn the penal distinction of letting James Earl Ray escape from the Tennessee Brushy Mountain Prison in June 1977 under his watch.
Henderson returned to Louisiana where he was placed in charge of the state’s hospital for the criminally insane – a St. Francisville facility that also came under intense Federal court scrutiny. He then met, and married, a local journalist and freelance writer named Ann 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 only being a source of information in those literary endeavors.
C. Murray Henderson was tortured by two insatiable human appetites: a need for professional recognition of his penal accomplishments and an abiding personal need for alcohol that begged 12-step intervention. These needs did not mix well.
The limited regional interest in Henderson’s “books” quickly faded. Time slowly chewed him up and spat out the ugly human remains. When the grandeur of being a great “book” author did not materialize, he was left with a troubled marriage, a sense of failure, and an unlimited supply of booze. It was a recipe for a human tragedy.
In 1998, that human tragedy exploded when Henderson, in a drunken state, shot Ann Butler five times with a .38 caliber pistol following a domestic dispute.
He then sat and watched the blood flow from her serious wounds. Although she survived the murder attempt, a series of painful operations and physical therapy wiped out her personal savings.
Henderson was convicted and sent to the Wade Correctional Center with a 50-year sentence. He was placed in the same unit where I was housed. He arrived at the prison facility just like any other 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 whose releases he had secured through pardons or paroles.
The Angola he remembered, and spoke so fondly about with both inmates and guards, was not the same prison I knew. He 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 Wade inmates and guards. He was accorded official deference with a litany of special favors and privileges. He had his own valet, an 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.
He had been in the unit only several weeks before he became crippled with gout and had to be put in a wheel chair. He could only be bathed in the prison infirmary. No one wanted that task, not even the valet. I volunteered to do it. Each day I pushed his wheel chair to the infirmary, undressed him in a large bath area, and bathed him.
I had never bathed another man in my life – and there I was bathing a former warden of Angola who had once been my bitter enemy; the man I had filed so many lawsuits against I couldn’t remember the number.
Life is indeed filled with paradoxes.
And there we were—two paradoxes. One of Louisiana’s most “rehabilitated inmates” bathing one of the state’s most “disgraced wardens.”
I listened to his Angola stories as I lathered his shriveled body with soap knowing they were lies—embellished recollections of an old alcoholic who had long ago lost contact with reality.
Still, I treated him with the utmost respect. I called him “Mr. Henderson.” I didn’t even call the Warden “Mister.” My wife, who had met Henderson on several occasions, thought the world of the old man. She was always extremely kind and affectionate toward him.
Gradually the old warden’s social standing began to erode – his quick temper, a sense of class arrogance, and constant “complaining” gnawed away at his popularity among fellow inmates.
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 those inmates who had placed him on a higher intellectual plain.
“Why that ole sonuvabitch ain’t nothin’ but another ‘dirty ole man’,” some exclaimed.
Then came the release of my memoir, “A Life In the Balance.” The book offered a markedly different view of Angola than the one Henderson had presented. 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.
Henderson conveyed his anger about “Balance” to Warden Kelly Ward who was not pleased with memoir either because it cast the state prison system in a bad light.
Ward’s anger was not surprising. He felt an allegiance to Henderson who had introduced him to the corrections field as a classification officer at Angola in the early 1970s.
So I was not surprised when Ward summoned me to the prison’s “security office” where he made it clear that he was not pleased with the way Henderson had been portrayed in the memoir.
“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 a pseudo-intellectual who had wormed his way through the corrections system to become a warden of his own prison.
“Jodie and I got our ‘facts’ right, Warden,” I replied. “Jodie got that information from Henderson’s own daughter. You want to fact-check that?”
We stared at each other across a chasm that could never be breached. Ward casually dismissed me with a wave of the hand toward the office door.
On the heels of “Balance,” Henderson’s conviction and sentence were upheld on appeal. He became more sullen, withdrawn.
Then he faced the publication of yet another book. This one titled “Weep for the Living” written by Ann Butler. It recounted her life with Henderson, including fresh and graphic details about how he tried to kill her. “Weep for the Living” shredded whatever remnants that were left of Henderson’s good name. He was truly crushed.
I still spoke to the ex-warden but only when necessary. My wife had a kindly sentiments for him. I did not share those sentiments. I could not forget the wasted blood, the official corruption, and brutality under his watch at Angola.
In 2003 the former warden sought, and was denied, clemency from the outgoing pardon board under the administration of former Gov. Mike Foster. He could not recover from that devastating denial. He accepted a prison death – and it came in 2004 in a prison infirmary at the Hunt Correctional Center near Baton Rouge. He was 84 years of age.
He died a beaten, and bitter, old man.
Two years after Henderson’s death I walked out of prison a free man. I survived the likes of him for 40 years.
Life’s paradoxes.