West Virginia Pen Called Horror Site

New York Times Service

MOUNDSVILLE, W. Va.

Fifteen

men have died violently in the last three years in West Virginia's old and dilapidated penitentiary here.

Six were slain, five killed themselves, three were poisoned and one burned to death In this time, there also were six deaths from nonviolent causes.

The deaths occurred in a context of shakedowns, robberies, homosexual rapes and assaults with a variety of weapons. The warden, Ira E. Coiner, said the number of violent incidents was unknown.

AIDGE has ruled that confinement in Moundsville, largely because of the violence, is cruel and unusual punishment and therefore unconstitutional. The state denies this and is appealing the ruling.

However, G. Thomas Gall, the county prosecuting attorney in whose jurisdiction the institution lies, has denounced it in court as a monster machine that turns out nothing but animals," and said that he would rather be dead than go there.

DIL

C. Robert Sarver, a former director of corrections, has called the penitentiary "an austere, frightening, trauma-producing monstrosity” and said that he had “visited some zoos that were much cleaner and saf-

er.

And --William O. Wallace, the deputy warden, told the court: "We can't guarantee the protection of anybody in there, not even in their cells.”

diately to become the sexual partner of an older inmate. Also, there is evidence that he required hospital treatment at least three times as a result of assaults..

He became tougher and more difficult to manage. Twice he was transferred to a medium-security facility that is supposedly less harsh than the institution here, and once he was paroled, but he was returned each time.

The record shows that by November 1968 Cremeans had been charged with five fights, three serious assaults, two robberies or attempted robberies, possessing thrée knives and being intoicated three times.

On Nov. 23, the prison's deputy warden, Wallace, ordered a guard to bring in inmate William R. Curran for investigation of a drunkenness report.

THE GUARD dispatched by Wallace got the wrong man Cremeans. This error is not explained. After it had been straightened out, and both men were in their cell block an argument developed.

State police said a friend of Cremeans, Paul E. Davis Jr., struck Curran, and that Cremeans then plunged a knife into his stomach.

A month before the slaying, prison officials said, Cremeans was "having trouble" with Malcolm C. Bragg, a murderer serv ́ing a life sentence who reportedly had been one of the first to force Cremeans into homosexual acts.

On May 26, 1969, while under indictment for murder in the Curran case, Cremeans and Davis argued with Bragg for reasons that are unknown. Bragg was under the influence of alcohol and barbitur-

SOME OFFICIALS say the violence at Moundsville is no more common than at a number of other prisons in the country, but this is impossible to verify because no na-ates. tional statistics are maintained.

The scattered information available suggests, however, that the institution here is among the country's most violent. Some states report more deaths, but with some exceptions they maintain many more inmates.

The population here one day recently was 627: California, which has a reputation for prison violence, confines 35 times as many people but reports only seven times as many slayings.

AN EXAMINATION .of some of the recent deaths at the prison provides a picture of aimless tragedy and of what prison can be like, not just in West Virginia but perhaps in many other states as well.

William E. Cremeans entered the West Virginia Penitentiary on Jan. 8, 1960, barely two months past his 18th birthday. Earlier, he had escaped from an institution for juveniles where he had been serving his third term as an automobile thief.

He and a fellow escapee committed burglary in a house and were caught almost immediately. Cremeans was legally an adult by the time he got to court and was sentenced to serve up to 10 years in the penitentiary for "entering without breaking."

Cremeans came from a respectable family and thought his parents had given him "most everything he wanted." He went to prison talking about "bettering himself." and an official said in a report at the time:

"This subject is a quiet-type boy. young, has a lot to learn, will be all right if he is not mixed with the wrong crowd."

HOWEVER, he was sent to the penitentiary. It is now believed by some officials that the youth was forced almost imme-

"BILL," Bragg was quoted as saying to Cremeans, "you wouldn't kill me in the shape that I am in," Cremeans was said to have replied: "yeah, I am going to kill you.'

He stabbed him at least 10 times.

Cremeans pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in both killings and received consecutive sentences of 5 to 18 years. Dav-. is was sentenced to the same term in the Curran case. He got one to five years for voluntary manslaughter in the Bragg slay.ing.

Maxum-security prisons are often critieized because they force men to spend long hours in their cells. But as the Curran and Bragg slayings suggest, the reverse policy also may involve difficulties.

THE MEN here generally spend nearly half their walking hours in the prison yard, Warden Coiner said.

Even the prison's severest critics are seemingly unanimous in holding that there has been relatively little outright, systematic brutality at least in the last 10 or 15 years by the guards.

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A number of observers contend that many of the guards — who are paid $435 a month, have an average educational level of the eighth grade and are often elderly men are simply and deeply afraid.

Gordon H. Faulkner, state director of corrections, disputes this point. But another official said:

"One of the worst problems with the guards is that so many of them are compromised by fear. They want to just work and collect their pay, and they turn their backs on things they ought not to turn their backs on."