Ben McCreadie, a murderer housed at the Joliet Correctional Center for more than 12 years, could not recall his exact age off the top of his head–it was either 35 or 36. “You kind of lose track of time in here,” he said.
A skinny man with a scraggly buzz cut and beard, McCreadie proudly marked the seasons by planting perennials in the prison gardens that flank the hospital and walkways — day lilies, petunias, irises and impatiens. “I was known as the flower guy,” he said. “I was good at what I did, and people say if I was to ever get out, that would be an option for me, to be a landscaper.”
McCreadie did walk out of Joliet Thursday, but not the way he might have hoped. He was among the last batch of prisoners shipped out of the 144-year-old prison, which closed its maximum-security gates for good Saturday.
“In a way, you’re saying goodbye to a piece of you,” he said. “You’ve done so much here. You have so many memories.” He laughed, hunching over as if nauseated. “I definitely don’t want to call it home.”
Yet for all the riots, lockdowns and escapes Joliet has seen, it also has taken its place in American prison history. From the filming of “The Blues Brothers” to the unlikely escape of bank robber George “Baby Face” Nelson out of the parking lot, Joliet is not merely a house of correction, but of stories.
Joliet started the nation’s first “honor farm” for model prisoners. Abe Lincoln slept in the warden’s quarters (now an administrative building) while campaigning for the presidency. In that same building, a warden’s wife was murdered in 1915, and some seven decades afterward, Anthony Geary (Luke) and Genie Francis (Laura) of “General Hospital” filmed scenes on an iron-and-oak stairway so ornate that Scarlet O’Hara would be envious.
“For a long time, we were it,” said Samantha Franklin, Joliet’s clinical services supervisor and its unofficial historian. “We were the prison, the big house, and that’s when `Joliet’ passed into the vernacular.”
Slammed as a dungeon
With its imposing turrets and impenetrable walls of desert-yellow limestone, Joliet was as hardscrabble and defiant as the cons it housed. Since nearby Stateville Correctional Center opened in 1925, it has faced a death sentence many times. Generations of zealous politicians have called for its closing; it has been slammed as a dungeon and a dank pit; and it has repeatedly been decried by its host city.
The City of Joliet Web site opens with an antique shot of zebra-striped convicts and the slogan, “If this is what comes to mind when you think of Joliet, think again.”
It was definitely not that way in the 1853, when Illinois Gov. Joel Matteson called in his inaugural address for a prison to be built just outside present-day Joliet. The state prison at Alton was becoming overcrowded and Matteson — a political enemy of Abe Lincoln– argued that Joliet was an ideal choice for a new facility, in part because of its plentiful supplies of limestone, which also would make a tunneling out escape harder. Matteson also hailed from Joliet, which no doubt colored his thinking on the subject.
Matteson continued lobbying for his hometown after he left office in 1857; by 1858, the state bought 72 acres along Collins Street for $100 an acre. Architect William Boyington of Chicago Water Tower fame designed a cluster of buildings replete with the same castellated features that made the Magnificent Mile landmark famous.
An alarming sight
But where the Water Tower is charming, Joliet is alarming, rising out of the prairie like a crude, gothic take on the Towers of London. Even the ditches surrounding the outer walls, carved to deter escapees, look like the remnants of some mean medieval moat.
“When I was growing up, I always wanted to live in a castle,” McCreadie said. “And here they go, throwing me in a dungeon.”
It was difficult to hear McCreadie, with his shy Downstate drawl, above the chaos that surrounded him. Convicts in cherry-red jumpsuits shoved office furniture into vans as if shoveling coal. Drills and hammers screeched and clanged in rattling cacophony. Workers repeatedly barged into the interview room to whisk away the last scraps of furniture, leaving only the chair McCreadie sat in and a flimsy desk.
For McCreadie, this final image aptly summarizes his Joliet stay. A musician who plays trumpet, trombone and harmonica, his prized possession was an Israeli-made pear wood recorder. But during a general crackdown, guards took his wind instrument in 1998. He turned to painting, but that was difficult too. “Our paint brushes, they’ve chopped the handles off and all we have are nubs.”
In for the long haul
He has seen his life whittle away as well. McCreadie was convicted of murdering State Conservation Police Officer Dave Bowers in 1990, after getting caught in a love triangle with Bowers’ wife. “Where prison gets you is in the long haul,” he said. “The family relationships break down, you get older. You look at pictures over time and say, `Oh my God, what happened to me?'”
It could be worse — much worse. The first prisoners at Joliet lived in cells smaller than most Lincoln Park walk-in closets. Two men were shoehorned into a space measuring 4-by-8 feet, sharing one bucket for human waste and another for water. Their bunks contained scratchy straw mattresses and they were allowed to bathe once a week.
Though conditions have improved since, Joliet remains no picnic. Up until two weeks ago, the original 1858 prison building served as a “disciplinary segregation” unit for convicts with attitude problems.
In the sharpest daylight, only a dull film of sun filters into each cell, with its bare concrete walls, two beds and a stainless steel toilet.
On the main floor is a correctional credo etched sometime around the turn of the last century: “IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND!”
As for the future, Joliet will handle reception and classification, meaning that new prisoners to the Illinois system will be processed there.
Many of Joliet’s 500 employees will be transferred to Stateville and other prisons, though they are not happy about it.
“It’s like breaking up a family,” said a guard who asked not to be identified for security reasons.
McCreadie can sympathize. “Being so close together and doing so much time, they [other inmates] become family to you, part of your golden circle,” he said. “Some of them I know I’ll never see again.”
Others he didn’t want to see again, for good reasons. “In my time, I’ve sent five [cell mates] home and it breaks your heart when you see them come back in again; `You idiot, why did you blow your chance?’ If it was me, I’d never be coming back.”
This much is true: McCreadie is never coming back to Joliet. But he finds nothing to celebrate in his departure. He leaves behind his beloved gardens, one plot marked by a worn, half-broken wagon wheel that denoted his artist’s touch.
He takes with him only a few meager possessions — his Bible, some art books, court transcripts of his case, which he hopes to reopen — for the long journey to Menard.
“I’m dreading that bus ride,” he said. “That’s an eight-hour bus ride on a seat like this”–he knocked hard on his plastic chair–“and they’ve got the windows blocked so you can’t see anything. To me, it’s like an eight-hour elevator ride.”
Hesitation crept into his voice. “I hope I don’t get sick,” he said. “I haven’t been in a vehicle for over a decade.”
From murderers to movie stars
Joliet Correctional Center has a colorful and controversial history
1853: Using inmates from nearby Alton prison as labor, and limestone from a quarry on prison land, construction begins. William Boyington, who designed the Chicago Water Tower and the state Capitol in Springfield, designed the facility.
1858: Joliet opens on May 22, when 53 convicts are transferred from the overcrowded jail in Alton. Cells are 4-by-8 feet and house two inmates each.
1860: Alton closes.
1872: Inmate population rises to 1,239, making Joliet the largest prison in the U.S.
1896: Women’s prison opens.
1898: German meat packer and “Sausage King” Adolph Luetgert is convicted of incinerating his wife Louisa at his Chicago sausage factory and is sent to Joliet for life. His mental state deteriorates and he begins babbling that his dead wife is haunting him. He dies in 1900; his factory building burns down in 1902.
1913: Joliet opens experimental “honor farm” in Lockport where model prisoners grow crops and live without guards. Among its problems: outside thieves steal the farm horses.
1915: Singing star Odette Allen, wife of Warden Edmund Allen, is slain by convict houseboy “Chicken Joe” Campbell as she sleeps in the warden’s quarters.
1917: A January fire sweeps through three buildings and destroys the chair shop; life convicts fight the fire and save Joliet from further destruction.
1917: A June riot and fire sweeps Joliet, killing one. Prisoners rebel after Warden A.L. Bowden cuts off love letters from a women’s group known as the Oriental Esoteric League. “This institution is going to be a penitentiary, not a dumping ground for maudlin sentiment,” Bowden insists.
1924: Kidnap-killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb are processed at Joliet before being transferred to Stateville Correctional Center the following year. Leopold’s first impression of Joliet is of a “medieval castle on the Rhine.”
1925: Stateville opens three miles to the north. Calls begin for Joliet’s closing.
1931: Fires and rioting kill a prisoner and spark parole reform efforts.
1932: En route to Joliet to serve time for bank robbery, George “Baby Face” Nelson, 22, who had been slipped a revolver during his sentencing hearing in Wheaton, overpowers his guards and escapes.
1932: A crowd of 5,000 gathers near the cemetery at Joliet’s women prison, spooked by reports of a singing ghost. It turns out to be a melodious prisoner, making his nightly rounds to shut off quarry pumps.
1933: Richard Loeb becomes Joliet prison school headmaster. Faculty includes Edward “the Society Bandit” Dillon (English), lawyer/kidnapper Joseph Pursifull (Latin) and a Chicago forger Mark Oettinger (math).
1935: Convicts begin a live radio broadcast, “The Big House Revue.” Lifer Hale O’Reily, recently promoted to the warden’s chauffeur, sings “10,000 Years From Now.”
1935: Joseph E. Ragen named warden at Stateville and Joliet; later recognized by his contemporaries as the nation’s best prison administrator.
1940: First year without any attempted escapes.
1943: State announces plans to abandon and demolish Joliet and move all of its prisoners to Stateville. World War II spikes those plans.
1951: Reuben LeFlore, the last of 13 solitary confinement prisoners who broke out in 1917, is arrested in Memphis. The others were caught within 48 hours of escaping.
1965: After hoarding rations, 24-year-old rapist/robber Charles Thomas scampers up the water tower catwalk and stages a “sit up,” which lasts more than a week. He spends most of his days waving to guards and prisoners.
1966: Roughly 900 prisoners go on a hunger strike. Their gripe: beans served at too many meals. Immediately after the strike ends, beans are served.
1971: African-American prisoners get a letter smuggled out with detailed accusations of prison guard brutality, including beatings and mace sprayings.
1972: A four-man Congressional subcommittee of prison reform urges closing Joliet. “It has a medieval air about it,” says Ill. Rep. Thomas Railsback. “It is dark and it is damp.”
1975: Members of Black P. Stone Nation gang seize control of a cell block and take hostages for five hours. One inmate is killed; seven guards and a medical technician are injured.
1977: Federal reports cite Joliet as unsound and overcrowded, fueling the call to close the prison.
1980: “The Blues Brothers,” starring Dan Aykroyd (Elwood) and John Belushi (“Joliet” Jake) opens; several scenes were shot at Joliet, others at Stateville.
1981: After a week in Joliet, James Pangburn, 21, hangs himself. Autopsy reveals he had swallowed two notes, reading “Deciples [sic] had keys to doors” (referring to the street gang) and “police killed me” (referring to guards).
1984: Female mud wrestlers in spike heels entertain prisoners for the first time.
1984: Robert Casillas, a gang leader who later lands a bit part in the movie “Natural Born Killers,” walks away from a work crew and escapes. Within a day, Casillas turns himself in. He escapes Cook County Jail in 1995.
1990: Six inmates cut small holes in three Joliet cells and a hallway window and escape from the prison grounds. All are recaptured.
1993: Oliver Stone films “Natural Born Killers.”
1995: Former Congressmen Mel Reynolds is admitted to Joliet, but within 48 hours is whisked to a minimum security prison in Downstate Vienna. Reynolds is considered a security risk at Joliet due to his anti-gang stances.
1999: City of Joliet, eager to shed its prison town image, passes on a chance to land an $80 million correctional facility for women.
2001: In November, Gov. Ryan announces that Joliet will close in 2002, saying it will save the state $4 million.
— Lou Carlozo
