Tuesday, October 01, 2013

가장 오래된 Kingston Penitentiary 역사속으로 사라진다.

죄수들을 가두어 교화 시키는 감옥에도 여러 종류가 있다.  경범죄나 잡범들을 가두어 두는 감옥소, 살인범, 강간범등 악질적인 죄수들을 격리수용하는, 담장의 높이가 10미터가 넘는 으시으시한 철옹성의 감옥이 있다.

캐나다에도 여러곳에 감옥이 있지만, Kingston,Ontario에 있는 킹스턴 감옥은 죄질이 아주 나쁜 범법자들만 수용하는 곳으로 정평이 나있고, 또한 감옥의 역사도 무척 길다.
킹스턴 감옥은 온타리오 호수의 물이 흘러나가 대서양으로 흘러드는 St.Lawrence River초입의 호수가옆에 자리하고 있다.  밖에서 보아도 Watch Tower가 철조망에 둘러 쌓인채 기분이 으시시 해진다.

킹스턴 감옥은 악명높은 범죄자들을 수용하는 그명성에 걸맞게 많은 관광객들의 관광 코스가되기도 한다.  물론 감옥소 안을 구경하는것은 아니고 밖에서 관광 가이드의 설명을 듣고, 눈으로 높이 둘러싼 담장안이 세상과 격리된 범죄자들만의 세상이 그곳에서 펼쳐지고 있음을 알게 되는 것이다.

몇년전 한번은 감옥의 정문이 개방되여 일반 관광객들이 들어가는 기회가 주어져 나도 그대열에 섰었던 일이 있다.  한감옥빌딩앞에 사람들이 줄을 서서 기다리는 그속에 나도 무심코 서서 차례가 되면 건물안 감옥을 구경할수 있을 것이란 기대감에서 였다.  드디어 내차례가 되여 담당자앞에 섰는데, 듣기에 생소한 질문을 하기에 재차 물었더니, 죄수들에게 점심을 나누어 주고 있는데, 네가 죄수냐?라고 묻기에 깜짝 놀라, 구경온 일반인이라 했더니, 퉁명스럽게 해당 안된다는 몸짖을 하면서 어이없어 했었던 기억이 난다.  킹스턴 감옥은 어느때가 되면 정문을 개방 하여 일반인들에게 내부를 보여주는 행사(?)가 있어온 것임을 그때부터 알게 됐었다.

킹스턴 감옥은 1835년도 부터 죄수들을 격리수용하기 시작했었단다.  당시에 수용된 죄수들은 서로 대화도 할수 없었고, 또한 서로 응시하는 눈짖도  허용되지 않았기에 무척 조용했었다고 한다.  그런데 이감옥소가  이번 9월30일을 마지막으로 178년동안의 영욕을  뒤로 하고 영원히 문을 닫는다고 한다.

폐쇠의 근본적인 이유는 연방정부의 예산 절감정책에 따른 조치라고 한다.  악명높은 죄수들을 감시하는 비용이 무척 많이 들어가는 모양이다.  현재 이곳 감옥에는 악명높은, 지금도 상당수의 사람들 기억속에 남아 있는, 중범죄자들이 감옥생활을 하고 있는데, 그들중에는 십대여학생 수십명을 강간하고, 또 살해한 Paul Bernardo, 캐나다에서 가장큰 군보급창 역활을 했던, Trenton공군기지 8th Wing단장의 직무를 수행하면서, 부하 여군을 강간하고 살해한 죄로 종신형을 선고받은 Russell Williams, 그리고 강간범, 강도범,살해범등 악명높은 죄수들이 수용되여 있었다.  범죄자들이 줄어들어 폐쇠 한다면 더 기쁜 소식이 될수 있을텐데..... 다른곳 어디엔가  많은 비용을 들여 새로 지은곳으로 옮기는것 같다.

감옥의 폐쇠를 앞두고 Toronto Star가 역사적 현장을 취재 한 내용중 한가지를 간추려 본다.

1923년도 있었던 강도범 Norman Ryan은 아침에 운동을 하기위해 같이 모인 죄수들과 모의 하여 탈옥을 하기위해 불을 지르고, 연기가 자욱한 속에서 동료죄수들과는 반대로 혼자 높은 담을 넘어 탈출을 하고 만다.

다음날 공교롭게도 Toronto Star는 신참내기 기자인 Ernest Hemingway를 기차를 태워 킹스턴으로 취재를 보내는데, 그로서는 첫번째 기자로서의 임무를 수행하는 순간이었다.
그는 2,600자의 기사 송고에서 "감옥에서 쓰고 다니는 모자를 깊이 눌러쓰고 있었지만 얼굴에 진하게 큰 반점이 있는 그는 쉽게 알아볼수 있는 인상"이라고 그를 묘사했었다고 한다.

탈출에 성공한 Ryan은 Toronto Bank에서 현금탈취를 한후 미국으로 도망하여 그곳에서 거주 했었다.  약 일년을 도망자 신세로 Minneapolis에 거주하면서 우체국에서 우편물을 확인하던중 다시 검거되여 캐나다로 이첩되여 다시 킹스턴 감옥에서 종신형을 복역하면서, 이번에는 마음을 바꾸어 모범수로 수감생활을해  신문에도 보도되곤 했었다.  당시의 캐나다 수상 Bennett가 감옥으로 그를 방문하여 그와같이 의젖하게 외출을 하게됨을 틈타 다시 도망친것이다.  이사건이 터진후 수상은 1934년 정치인들과의 meeting에서 "이친구를 보면서 많은 감명을 받았었다"라고 기술하기까지 했었다.


1936년 5월 23일, 그는 변장을 하고 이중생활을 하면서 도망다니다 Sarnia에서 경찰과의 총격전에서  그는 사살되고 경찰관도 목숨을 잃었다고 한다.
이때의 Toronto Star기사의 헤드라인은 " Ryan, 어리석고 냉혈한인 그는 결국 두려움에 떨다가 죽음을 맞았다"라고.

죄값을 치르면서도 반성을 하지 못하고 계속해서 나쁜쪽으로만 머리를 돌리다 결국 생을 마감한 어리석은 죄수들의 기록을 보면서, 순간의 욕망을 다스리지 못해 구만리같은 삶을 3평자리 방에서 보내고 있는 자들을 생각해 본다.  Paul Bernardo 그는 잘나가는 회계사 였었고, Russell Williams 대령은 사관학교 동기생들 중에서 선두주자 였었다.



178년전의 일을 우리가 마치 어제 일어난 사건처럼 읽고 느낄수 있는것은 기록을 잘 남겨 놓았기 때문이다.  일개 죄인들에 대한 기록까지도 꼼꼼히 남겨 놓아 후손들에게 전수 시키는데,  지금 조국대한민국에서는 "한국사" 교과서 검증을 놓고 이념논쟁으로 역사를 마치 한 개인의 손익을 계산한 주장데로 끌고 가려는 어리석은 자들을 보면서 혈압이 오르는 기분이다.


Kingston Penitentiary’s storied history full of notorious inmates, riots, escapes

The maximum security institution closes its doors for good Monday, ending its 178-year run as home to Canada’s worst criminals.

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Inmates getting ready for a Sunday baseball game in the exercise yard in August 1954 used cigarette lighters to set buildings on fire, beginning a riot that lasted only two hours but caused extensive damage to the penitentiary.
/ TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
Inmates getting ready for a Sunday baseball game in the exercise yard in August 1954 used cigarette lighters to set buildings on fire, beginning a riot that lasted only two hours but caused extensive damage to the penitentiary.

When the Kingston Penitentiary first opened its doors in 1835, inmates were not allowed to speak, nod or even glance at each other.
It must have been quiet, then, within the prison’s ominous limestone confines. It is difficult to imagine that early silence, given the chaotic episodes that would follow.
A new hush falls over the 178-year-old institution this week as the pen ends its storied run as home to Canada’s most notorious criminals.
The federal government is shutting down the maximum-security facility as a cost-saving measure. Paul Bernardo, Russell Williams and the lesser-known among the still-living killers, rapists and burglars will serve their sentences elsewhere.
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No longer a prison, the lakeside compound will sit idle for awhile as the government sorts out what to do with it. A tourist attraction à la Alcatraz — the decommissioned prison in San Francisco Bay — seems a good bet, given the high demand for tickets to a series of sold-out penitentiary tours set to run in October as a fundraiser for the United Way.
Those who enter the pen will wander the site of daring escapes, brutal beatings and savage riots.
“If walls could talk,” historian J. A. Edmison wrote in 1954, “we would indeed have a story of drama, of tragedy, of cruelty, of every vicissitude of human emotion. We would have a story of people who have been forever crushed in that penal environment and others who have found themselves in it.”
Empty of prisoners, yes, but the pen’s stories remain embedded in its foundation — those that have come to light, and many more that never will. As the prison closes, the Toronto Star delved into newspaper archives to bring you some of the most riveting tales of escape and revolt.
Great Escapes
Norman “Red” Ryan
One morning in September 1923, a few scheming prisoners lit a fire in the exercise yard to create a diversion. As smoke billowed across the grounds, they leaned a makeshift ladder against the wall and began to climb over.
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Red Ryan, a 28-year-old burglar, stood watch with a pitchfork as four accomplices made it to the other side. When a guard attempted to thwart the escape, Ryan impaled him and took off.
The following day, a novice Toronto Daily Star reporter, his first day on the job, was sent by train to Kingston. His name was Ernest Hemingway. In his 2,600-word report, Hemingway described Ryan as a “thick, freckle-faced man whose prison cap could not hide his flaming head.”
After the escape, Ryan robbed a Toronto bank and then made off to the United States, where was dubbed the “Jesse James of Canada.” After nearly a year on the lam, he was caught while picking up his mail at a post office in Minneapolis and sent back to Kingston to face 30 lashes and life in prison.
Changing gears, Ryan became a model prisoner — “Famous Bandit Proves Tender Nurse in Prison,” read one headline — and escaped Kingston again, this time by convincing Prime Minister R.B. Bennett to visit him in prison, then charming his way out.
“I was greatly impressed,” the politician later wrote of their 1934 meeting.
Freed the following year on Canada’s ticket-of-leave system, a precursor to parole, Ryan became the poster boy for prison reform.Hehosted a radio show, wrote a series of crime-doesn’t-pay articles for the Star and counted among his friends and acquaintances an archbishop, a senator and a top officer of the Salvation Army.
Meanwhile, however, Ryan was robbing banks in disguise.
On May 23, 1936, his double life caught up with him. Ryan, an accomplice and a police officer were killed in a gunfight during a holdup at a liquor store in Sarnia. The headline that ran with a Star story was unforgiving: “Ryan, Stupid, Callous, Goes to his Death Bungler and Coward.”
Tyrone “Ty” Conn
Just after lunch on May 6, 1999, a bank robber stuffed a dummy in his prison cell bed and went off to work at the pen’s canvas repair shop. On his calendar, Ty Conn had written “fishing trip 99.”
When the other canvas workers returned to their cells later that day, the 32-year-old hid under a pile of Canada Post mailbags and waited. Sometime in the evening, he assembled his tools: a ladder with a homemade extension, a steel hook and a 12-metre strip of canvas he would use as a rope.
It was after 11 p.m. when Conn broke through a locked screen door in the canvas shop’s loading bay and made a dash through the exercise yard to the wall. He had waited until the southeast tower guard went off duty, choosing a route guards in the other three towers couldn’t see. Conn sprinkled cayenne pepper along his path to mask his scent from the dogs. He went unnoticed on the security cameras and climbed easily over the 10-metre wall.
He made it to his mother’s apartment in Belleville, 75 kilometres away, before anyone even realized he was missing. It was 7:30 a.m. by the time a corrections employee noticed a rope hanging over the wall and sounded the alarm. It was the first successful escape in four decades.
Conn, who had robbed his first bank at age 16, was serving 37 years for a string of armed burglaries and property offences, as well as two previous escapes from other prisons. He was on Kingston’s list of prisoners most likely to make a run for it. “I’m beginning to think he has one motive in life, and that’s to escape from prison,” John Oddie, assistant warden at the time, said after the breakout.
The escape was instantly romanticized. The story dominated radio and television broadcasts and was splashed all over the front pages of newspapers for weeks. Many people felt bad for Conn, who had a terrible upbringing.
“Come on, be honest,” an editorial in the Kingston Whig-Standard began. “Part of you is cheering for Tyrone Conn.”
The convict was on the run for nearly two weeks before police tracked him down in the basement apartment of a home on Alberta Ave. in Toronto. He was on a cellphone speaking with a CBC producer when a gunshot rang out from the apartment and the line went dead. Whether by accident or on purpose, the escape artist killed himself.
Riots
Oct. 17, 1932
The first major riot in the prison’s history lasted six days, and came the year afterTim Buck, general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada, landed at the penitentiary on a conviction of “communist agitation.”
Naturally, early reports suggested Buck was to blame for the riots, and questioned whether a “communist uprising” was taking place. Turned out the problem was the cigarettes.
“Standing above every other grievance,” Arthur C. Carty wrote for the newspaper on Oct. 22, “is the question of cigarette papers, and the endless round of troubles growing out of forbidden uses of tobacco.”
Other concerns raised by inmates included favouritism or “small fry” treatment, a feeling of “dishonesty in high places” and the brutality of certain prison guards, Carty noted in his report.
Several shots were fired into the communist leader’s cell during the disturbance, but the government denied there was an assassination attempt against Buck.
The riot ended without casualties and led to calls for prison reform. Two decades would pass before the next major disturbance.
Aug. 15, 1954
Inmates were getting ready for a Sunday baseball game in the exercise yard when a group of them charged at the prison guards and used cigarette lighters to set buildings on fire, according to a front-page report in the Star.
“Penitentiary is smouldering ruin,” read the headline. “Blame hundred hard psychopaths.”
It lasted only two hours, but caused extensive damage and panic. One guard, held hostage in the blacksmith shop, managed to escape by dressing in prisoner’s garb and mingling with the inmates. With flames visible from the downtown market square, worried wives of prison guards gathered in the street outside the penitentiary. In an attempt to calm things down, warden Walter Johnstone mounted the wall and stood facing the street, a cloud of dark smoke hanging in the air around him.
“Don’t worry,” he shouted above the roar of the flames, “your husbands are safe!”
The army and RCMP were called in to help quell the uprising, which involved 900 inmates. There were no casualties, but the estimated cost of damages at the time was $2 million.
April 14, 1971
For four days, inmates held six guards hostage and went to work destroying most of the cellblocks. The army was called in to help restore control. It was the most brutal, by far, of the three riots.
On the final night, 14 prisoners considered “undesirables” — mostly sex offenders — were tied to chairs in the centre of the dome, a circular hall linking the prison’s four main wings. The area had been turned into something like a “Roman circus,” a coroner who interviewed victims told the Star. The “undesirables” were covered in bed sheets and beaten with metal bars while hundreds watched over the rails from each of the prison’s four levels.
As mock charges were read for each man, some spectators shouted, “Kill him! Kill him! Castrate him!”
When the inmates surrendered the next morning, police were warned there could be up to 15 bodies, and extra coroners were called in from Toronto. In the end, only two prisoners died and all six guards escaped unharmed. A prisoner named Barrie MacKenzie was credited with risking his life for the release of the guards.
Inmates were granted no concessions, but an inquiry into the cause of the violent uprising ultimately led to them having some concerns remedied. It was, and will now remain, the penitentiary’s last riot.
With files from Toronto Star archives and The Canadian Press

Other notorious inmates
Roger “Mad Dog” Caron
During his 24 years behind bars, Caron is said to have made more escapes than any other convict in Canada. The bank-robbing author’s 1978 prison memoir, Go-Boy! Memories of a Life Behind Bars, was published the year he was paroled. He wrote three more books and was later rearrested on further robbery charges. In 2005, he was acquitted on five counts, including one accusation that he burgled a Loblaws, which Caron considered a slight to his reputation. He died April 11, 2012.
Clifford Olson
The British Columbia serial killer pleaded guilty in 1982 to first-degree murder in the slayings of 11 children and teens. He was later transferred from a Vancouver correctional centre to Kingston, where he spent years in isolation. Olson died of cancer two years ago in a Quebec prison. He was 71.
Wayne Boden
Known as the “vampire rapist,” Boden sexually assaulted and murdered four women in Montreal and Calgary between 1969 and 1971, leaving bite marks on his victims’ breasts. The serial killer died of acute skin cancer at Kingston in 2004.
Michael Briere
Briere is serving a life sentence for the 2003 murder of Toronto’s Holly Jones, a 10-year-old girl he abducted, strangled, sexually assaulted and dismembered. The killer was taken to Kingston after pleading guilty to the crime in 2004.
Paul Bernardo
From the late 1980s to the early 90s, Bernardo raped more than a dozen young women, most of them in Scarborough. In 1995, the schoolgirl killer and serial rapist was convicted in the kidnapping, rape and murder of Kristen French, 15, and Leslie Mahaffy, 14. His wife, Karla Homolka, served a 12-year term for manslaughter. Bernardo was sentenced to life and locked up in a Kingston pen cell the size of a walk-in closet.
Russell Williams
The former commander of CFB Trenton, an air force colonel, pleaded guilty in 2010 to the sexual slayings of Marie-France Comeau, 37, and Jessica Lloyd, 27, as well as a series of other sexual assaults and fetish burglaries. He and Bernardo were both held in a segregated section at Kingston, away from the other inmates.
Source: Toronto Star archives, Toronto Star library with files from The Canadian Press

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