Indexed by: Gerald E. Sherard (2001)
The first legislative act of Nebraska Territory concerning a penitentiary was approved January 22, 1856, naming a board of commissioners to locate a penitentiary within one mile of Tekemah, Burt County, Nebraska Territory. In 1861, Sarpy County was suggested. Nothing was accomplished, hence in 1859 and again in 1866 the Criminal Code provided that convicts be kept in county jails until a prison could be completed. The 9th session of the U. S. Congress, in April 1864, granted 50 sections of land for the purpose of a state prison (32,044 acres). Most of the land originally granted was sold and added to the penitentiary fund. In March 1870 a bill providing for the erection of a prison at or near Lincoln was approved by the Nebraska Legislature.
Persons housed in the temporary penitentiary constructed in 1869-1870 were required to work on public buildings and in stone quarries for the state. This temporary structure housed 37 convicts in 1870. The contract for the permanent prison was let June 13, 1870 and was constructed by the prisoners. It was completed in the fall of 1876 located then three miles south of Lincoln. The main building was 70 feet long, 66 feet wide, and 40 feet high. The quarries of Saltillo, located about twelve miles south of Lincoln furnished the material for the walls, a hard magnesium limestone. The original structure had a capacity for 320 prisoners. Before 1879 there were no separate cells. Prisoners were herded into one open room with cots. A request for appropriations to build cells at a cost of $24,000 was made to the Legislature in 1879 and approved. The double-locked cells were in rows of forty each and by means of a lever at one end, the keeper was able to lock the whole row of cells at once. A wall 4 feet thick at top, 8 feet thick at bottom, 24 feet high and surmounted at intervals by watch towers, enclosed nearly three acres at the rear of the main structure. By 1900 the complex included 26 buildings.
Within the enclosure of the original prison were workshops for the prisoners engaged in the production of buttons, brooms, trunks, barrels, chairs, machinery, and harness. Additional land was purchased for agricultural purposes, and in 1900 thirty acres of sugar beets was cultivated. In 1915 a new manufacturing industry was contracted with the Handcraft Furniture Co. and resulted in earnings of $21,493. Today the Cornhusker State Industries produces goods and services for tax-supported agencies, political subdivisions and charitable, fraternal or registered non-profit corporations.
A library was constructed in the 1880s, and during the biennium 1904-1906, a formal school was established with the chaplain as the teacher.
The state constitution of 1875 placed the penitentiary under the control of the Board of Public Lands and Buildings, in 1912 control passed to a Board of Commissioners of State Institutions (later Dept of Public Institutions). From 1920-1963, control of the prison was under the Board of Control. The Nebraska Penal and Correctional Complex including the penitentiary and reformatories was created in 1963 within the Dept of Public Institutions. The 1973 Legislature created the Dept of Correctional Services which is responsible for the system of correctional facilities in Nebraska.
The penitentiary was leased to W. H. B. Stout, contractor, and his successors, 1877-1895. The lessee was to pay all expenses in the maintenance of the prison including board and clothing of convicts and the salaries of the officers and guards. He received in return the labor of the convicts and a per diem amount per prisoner. The Legislature of 1895 appropriated $35,000 for the purchase of the penitentiary contract from the lessee, and a legislative act in 1897 gave supervision of the pen to the warden.
Aaron R. Noel was the first warden of the penitentiary appointed January 1870. Thomas Fielding served a short term as warden after Noel's retirement and was followed by Henry C. Campbell (1871-1873); William Woodhurst (1873-1875); L. F. Wyman (1875-1878); H. C. Dawson (1878-1880); and C. J. Nobes, (1880-1888). The current warden is Frank X. Hopkins.
The first woman in the prison was Kate McNamara of Douglas County, received December 28, 1871, for manslaughter. The women of the prison were given apartments on the 3rd floor of the middle wing.
Population of the prison in 1878 was 128 with 80 cells; 1880 was 196; in 1892, 316; in 1910 there were nearly 400; 1925, 654. The most common crimes for men in the late 1800s and early 1900s was burglary, larceny, forgery & livestock theft (mostly horse stealing). The most common crime for women in the late 1800s and early 1900s was vagrancy (term often used in the case of prostitution offenses). In recent years, the most common crimes are drug related.
After the temporary prison was constructed in 1870, ten prisoners escaped on April 14, 1871. The first convict revolt in the permanent prison occurred on January 11, 1875. The instigator of the trouble was inmate #153, William McWaters, who was serving a term of 21 years for murder, succeeded in enlisting thirteen other inmates to mutiny. Just before afternoon rounds of the deputy warden, C. J. Nobes, they surprised and overpowered the workshop guard. They held captive in the main building, the warden, William Woodhurst; Julius Grosjean, a guard; and one other guard. The next morning, Co. I, 23rd U.S. Infantry arrived from Omaha under the command of Major Randall, to guard the walls of the prison. The prisoners finally agreed to surrender to Mrs. Mary A. Woodhurst, wife of the warden, whom they trusted. Mrs. Woodhurst and Kate McNamara, a nearly blind female convict, had negotiated through the night with the convicts.
The second revolt occurred on May 26th of the same year when William McWaters again incited a mutiny along with John Geary, another convict. A guard on duty, Hugh Blaney, quickly ended the revolt by firing a fatal gun shot into convict McWaters when the prisoner attempted to throw a stone at him. This thwarted the plan for eight prisoners to escape.
By 1912 there had been 107 escapes since 1869. Fifty-four were returned to the prison and three were killed. The first escapee was James Hogan, from Douglas County, serving time for manslaughter. He escaped on April 17, 1871, and was never recaptured.
The only other major revolt prior to 1915 occurred on March 14, 1912, referred to as the bloody "Shorty Gray" outbreak in which the warden, James Delahunty was killed. Convicts blew the lock off one door and escaped including Charles Taylor (alias Shorty Gray et al) who was the leader of a gang of bank robbers sentenced from Aurora, Hamilton County to 28 years for a bank robbery at Giltner; John Dowd, #5873, serving 20 years for burglary with explosives; and Charles Morley, #5569, sentenced from Omaha to 15 years for highway robbery. In the escape the warden along with the deputy warden, Henry Wagner, and usher E. G. Heilman were killed, and a cell house keeper, Thomas J. Doody was wounded. After the escape the convicts killed a farmer, Roy Blunt, who was forced to drive them to Omaha. The criminals were encountered near Gretna by a posse of men from Omaha, Lincoln, and surrounding areas. Shorty Gray was shot and killed by the sheriff, R. W. Hyers. After seeing Gray succumb, Dowd shot himself and died, and Morley surrendered [State Journal, 3/19/1912, p.1:5-7]. The bodies of the two deceased convicts were turned over to the medical college for dissection demonstrations [State Journal, 3/24/1912, p.6A:5]
Nebraska's most famous prisoner was Charles R. Starkweather, Prisoner Number 20396, born November 24, 1938. He was only 19 years old, a puny youth (5 feet 5 and 140 pounds), but for eight days in late March and early February, 1958, he murdered eleven people, young and old, rich and poor, men and women. Along with his 14-year-old girl friend, Caril Ann Fugate, he left a bloody 525-mile trail of indiscriminate killing that carved across Wyoming and Nebraska. Doors were bolted, shades were drawn, people who could stayed indoors, and some that had to be out took to carrying pistols. [Newsweek, 2/10/1958, Vol. 51, pp. 42 & 43]
Besides his small stature, bow-legged, his eyes were bad, his IQ was 86, and he barely got through the ninth grade. His fellow school kids used to call him "Bantam Red Head" He belonged to no hoodlum gangs, was not a sex maniac, and had no court record. He was thrown out of grade school for continuous fighting; in junior high school he got a reputation among his classmates for knife fighting. He wore cowboy boots and leather jackets, wore his hair long, and grew sideburns. "We used to go out shooting all the time," said his older brother. "I used to get worried sometimes because he'd have an automatic rifle, and he couldn't stop shooting. He'd kill a rabbit, but he'd keep on firing till the gun was empty." He had no money, few friends, and no regular job. [Newsweek, 2/10/1958, Vol. 51, pp. 42 & 43; Newsweek 10/10/1960, Vol. 56, pp. 71 & 72]
On December 1, 1957, Charles Starkweather of Lincoln, had killed Robert Colver, a gas-station attendant which was an unsolved crime. His motive was a need for money. Fifty days later, Charles had gone to the home of his girl friend's mother, Mrs. Velda Bartlett, 36, at Lincoln, Caril's step-father, Marion, and Caril's half-sister, 3-year-old Betty Jean. Caril's mother told Charles to stop seeing Caril, and Charles got so mad he killed Velda, Marion, and Betty Jean. Starkweather and his girl friend fled in a 1949 hot-rod Ford without a radiator grille. Starkweather was armed with an arsenal that included a .410-gauge shotgun, a .22 caliber rifle, and a .32 revolver. Hardly had the people of Lincoln felt the shock of the triple murder, when police found August Meyer, a 70-year-old bachelor farmer on whose fields outside Lincoln, Starkweather and his elder brother had often hunted. Half a mile away, beside an abandoned schoolhouse, police found bodies of Carol King, 16, and Robert Jensen, 17. [Newsweek, 2/10/1958, Vol. 51, pp. 42 & 43]
Next came the report of another triple murder in the heart of one of Lincoln's finest residential sections. The 48-year-old president of Capital Steel Works, C. Lauer Ward, his wife, Clara, and their maid Lillian Fencel, 60, had been found dead. Governor Victor Anderson called out the National Guard. Police orders were to "shoot on sight." Driving the Ward automobile and headed for the state of Washington, near Douglas, Wyoming, Starkweather came across Merle Collison, 37, a shoe salesman who had pulled his car to the side of the road to get some sleep. Starkweather walked up to Collison and shot him nine times with the rifle. Joe Sprinkle, an oil-company worker, saw the two stopped cars and thought they were in trouble. When he stopped, Starkweather threw up his rifle and said "I'll kill you." Sprinkle immediately responded by physically attacking Starkweather. While they were fighting, Deputy Sheriff Bill Romer happened to come along. Starkweather immediately ran for his car, his girl friend jumped out, and Starkweather fled away at 110 mph. Romer radioed ahead to set up roadblocks. Sheriff Earl Heflin caught up with Starkweather a few miles away whereupn Starkweather surrendered without resistance. One of Heflin's bullets had nicked Starkweather's ear. Starkweather thought he was bleeding to death, and he was crying. [Newsweek, 2/10/1958, Vol. 51, pp. 42 & 43]
During prison interviews, Charles said he imagined himself rejected by society. "I built up a hatred as hard as iron. Life was worthless. I love guns. They give me a feeling of power that nothing else can match." He said he had no intention of becoming a mass killer. Nevertheless, he spent hours re-enacting in his imagination killings he had seen in movies and on television. Psychologists reported Charles Starkweather legally and mentally sane, but paranoiac. The time had came when Starkweather's inner ego demands could no longer be contained in a world of fantasy. Charles Starkweather wrote to his father: "Dad, I am not sorry for what I did, cause for the first time me and Caril had more fun . . ." [Newsweek 10/10/1960, Vol. 56, pp. 71 & 72]
Starkweather was executed on June 25, 1959. Caril Fugate was sentenced to life in the Nebraska Women's Reformatory but was paroled in the late 1990s.
The Nebraska Legislature of 1913 appropriated funds to build a reformatory for certain classes of prisoners, but it was not until an act passed in 1919 authorizing the Women's Reformatory at York that any construction occurred. This opened May 8, 1920, with 36 inmates. The Men's reformatory was opened October 1, 1921 and had 254 inmates by 1928. Today, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services oversees the operation of the state penitentiary at Lincoln (488 capacity 1990, designed for 488 inmates), the Lincoln Correctional Center (LCC, July 1979, 468 capacity and 696 inmates in 1989), the Community Corrections Center in Lincoln; the Omaha Correctional Center (Apr 1984, 240 capacity with 299 inmates in 1989); the Community Corrections Center in Omaha (1971); the Hastings Correctional Center (June 1987, 152 capacity with 137 in 1994); Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York (May 1920, 99 capacity; 260 capacity in 2001); Nebraska Correctional Youth facility in Omaha (NCYF).
The State Industrial School for boys was established at Kearney, Nebraska, in February 1879. The original name was the Nebraska State Reformatory School for Juvenile Offenders. In 1887 the name was changed to the State Industrial School for Juvenile Offenders. Both boys and girls were housed there until the Girls Industrial School for Juvenile Delinquents was established at Geneva and opened March 14, 1892. Juvenile facilities in Nebraska are now the responsibility of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services and not the Department of Correctional Services. All records pertaining to juvenile offenses and incarceration are confidential by law and records must be solicited through the office of Parole and Community-Based Juvenile Services of Health and Human Services.
The State Archives of the Nebraska State Historical Society holds the collection of both the Department of Correctional Services and the Board of Paroles and Pardons. These records include inmate registers, 1870-1921, for the penitentiary and reformatory, and separate registers for the reformatories, 1920-1948. They also have applications for parole & pardons, 1879-1972 and inmate files for prisoners #1447 (1888) thru #10991 (1931).
In Appendix I is given ranges of inmate numbers for the three major prisoner categories covered by the microfilm rolls. The men's penitentiary is covered by inmate numbers 1 (year 1870) through 40778 (March, 1990). The women's penitentiary is covered by inmate numbers 1 (August, 1920) through 23034 (October, 1989). The men's reformatory is covered by inmate numbers R100 (May, 1920) through R28509 (October, 1972).
Certain restrictions may apply to the inmate files and permission may be required from the Board of Paroles and prison officials to view the files.
Prison photos were begun in September of 1880, contracted to photographer Wheat of Lincoln who kept the negatives. The Historical Society Photograph Department holds prison photos and glass negatives from #1366 (1888) through #14,699 (1942). The society has a photo index which lists inmates through #10,114, and this photo index is reflected in the information below. Photos for inmate #10,115 through #14,699 are indicated as available below but their availability and information has not been verified with the society's photo files. Copies of these glass negatives can be obtained through the Reference Department of the Historical Society.
This index lists inmates through #40,813 and designates photos through #14,629 (1941).
Inmate registers list: prison no., name, when convicted, when received, crime, sentence, county sent from, age, height, complexion, color of eyes, color of hair, occupation, where born, names of parents and residence, marital status, name of wife or husband and where living, whether convict reads or writes, a sample of his or her signature, physical description, and remarks.
Information recorded on the index cards on microfilm for RG034 include: name, alias names, date of birth, prison number, county, offense, term of sentence (usually years and months), date sentenced and discharged. Prison numbers beginning with "R" are reformatory inmates. When the prisoner was transferred from the reformatory to the penitentiary he was assigned a new prison number.
The following information was extracted for this index from inmate index cards and registers:
name (first/last/middle),
date of birth (year/month/day) with approximate date noted by ca.(circa);
prison number,
county (with state abbreviations if out of state),
crime,
term of sentence (range of years unless otherwise noted, i.e. 1-3 denotes 1 to 3 yrs),
photo on file (marked w/ x),
aliases,
remarks, and
inmate record on file (marked w/ x).
GLOSSARY
Cannabis: hemp narcotic
Carnal: lustful or sexual
Debauching: seducing
Foetecide: prejudicial or injurious behavior
Fornication: unlawful sexual intercourse
Highway robbery: robbery on a public road or highway
Incorrigible: incapable of being corrected or reformed
Larceny: unlawful taking and carrying away of good
Maining: cockfighting
Peyote (mescal): a spineless cactus who's dried tops are chewed for their narcotic effect
Sedition: disorderly and revolting language or conduct
Sodomy: unnatural sexual relations between males, males & females; or between human beings and animals
Tort: injury
Uttering: putting into circulation a forged or counterfeit document or currency
Vagrancy: term used for prostitution in early 1900s records
ABBREVIATIONSAKA: alias
Bxxx: Boys Training School inmate number
Ca: circa, about
Cc: concurrent
CCW: carrying a concealed weapon
CSP: concealed stolen property
FA: firearm
GBH: treat bodily harm
GBI: great bodily injury
GL: grand larceny
MV: motor vehicle
NMI: no middle initial
OMUFP: Obtaining money under false pretenses
OPBFP: Obtaining property by false pretenses
PV: parole violator (violation)
R: reformatory
RN: real name
Rxxx: Reformatory inmate number
SK: "safe keeping", relating to incorrigibles and inmates transferred from Boys Training School to prison.
Utt: Uttering (see glossary)
Wxxx: Women;s State Reformatory inmate numberComplete information regarding archival collections of the Department of Correctional Services or Board of Paroles and Pardons can be obtained by contacting:
The Nebraska State Historical Society
Reference Department
1500 R Street, PO Box 82554
Lincoln, NE 68501-2554
Phone: (402) 471-3270
Fax: (402) 471-3100
Internet Web site: http://www.nebraskahistory.org
REFERENCESHistory of the State of Nebraska , A. T. Andreas, 1882, http://www.ukans.edu/carrie/kancoll/andreas_ne/lancaster
Annual Reports, Nebraska State Penitentiary, 1879+ , http://www.corrections.state.ne.us
Nebraska State Journal , Lincoln
Nebraska Blue Book , Nebraska Legislative Reference Bureau et seq,
Legislator's Guide to Nebraska State Agencies ,
Legislative Fiscal Office, 96th Legislature, 1999-2000
RG034, Nebraska Board of Pardons and Paroles Collection,
Nebraska State Historical Society, Library/Archives Division, Lincoln, Nebraska
RG086, Nebraska Department of Correctional Services
Collection, Nebraska State Historical Society, Library/Archives
Division, Lincoln, NE
Newsweek , February 10, 1958, Vol. 51, pp. 42 & 43
Newsweek , October 10, 1960, Vol. 56, pp. 71 & 72
APPENDIX I
MEN'S PENITENTIARY:
Prisoner Number Date 1 1870 1276 1887 2000 1891 3200 1897 4000 1902 5000 1908 6000 1912 7000 1916 8000 1920 9000 1925 10000 1928 11000 1931 12000 1934 13000 1937 14000 1939 15000 1943 16000 1947 17000 10/1949 18000 4/1952 19000 9/1954 20000 6/1957 21000 10/1959 22000 8/1961 23000 5/1963 24000 10/1964 25000 3/1966 26000 1/1968 27000 12/1969 28000 10/1971 29000 12/1974 30000 8/1975 31000 1/1977 32000 10/1978 33000 7/1980 34000 12/1981 35000 4/1983 36000 11/1984 37000 4/1986 38000 6/1987 39000 7/1988 40000 7/1989 40813 4/1990MEN'S REFORMATORY:
Prisoner Number Date R1 5/1920 R200 5/1922 R300 6/1922 R400 8/1923 R500 3/1924 R600 9/1924 R800 9/1925 R1000 9/1926 R1500 1/1929 R2000 11/1930 R3000 11/1934 R4000 6/1939 R4500 8/1942 R5000 12/1946 R6000 9/1951 R7000 7/1956 R8000 9/1960 R8500 6/1962 R8728 3/1963 R22813 3/1963 R23000 4/1963 R24000 10/1964 R25000 3/1966 R26000 1/1968 R27000 11/1969 R28000 9/1971 R28509 10/1972WOMEN'S PENITENTIARY:
Prisoner Number Date 1 8/1920 100 2/1924 200 11/1926 300 11/1928 400 1/1931 500 6/1932 600 2/1935 700 3/1937 800 7/1939 900 1/1943 1000 3/1945 1100 3/1948 1200 6/1951 1300 9/1955 1400 4/1958 1500 5/1961 1600 11/1963 1700 7/1966 1800 2/1970 1900 10/1972 2000 9/1975 2100 1/1977 2200 8/1978 2300 9/1980 2400 9/1982 2500 3/1984 2600 3/1986 2700 7/1986 2800 5/1988 2900 4/1989 3034 10/1989