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Why are these people here? What is the story behind each of them? In the summer of , Wilson photographed every headstone and made a map of the cemetery. His study showed that at least 30 to 40 veterans are buried there.
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Wilson researched the story of one grave and learned that its occupant had returned from the war in Vietnam, worked in a factory, become addicted to drugs, and ended up killing an elderly woman in Texas. It makes you wonder what other things are resulting in people ending up there that we are maybe missing today. Several dozen graves show evidence of being visited. A heart-shaped tinsel wreath is firmly tied with twine to a concrete cross bearing only a prison number and date of death. Dead carnations lie at the foot of some stones, their dried stems blending in with fallen pine needles.
About 50 volunteers of various religious backgrounds laid a single long-stemmed carnation at each grave, standing over it long enough to say a prayer or remembrance. A typical funeral Thursday starts before 7 a. Each decedent—there are usually two or three—gets a section of the modest church auditorium, a windowless, brown-paneled room with wooden pews. Someone from the church brews coffee in the foyer. Family members arrive at , gathering in their corner of the auditorium, and the first group goes up the street to the cemetery around 9 a.
Many of the men look like they could have been in church last Sunday. Conversely, he says, the family at one recent service arrived with a mix of animosity and obligation. The year-old deceased offender had been serving a sentence for sexual assault, and his case included abuse of young family members. When families do come to the cemetery, Collier meets them for a brief service at a small covered pavilion.
Then the body is moved down the hill to the grave, and the next group is summoned from the church.
The Love Story That Upended the Texas Prison System
Jim Willett, who served as warden at the Walls Unit from to and now directs the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, estimates he went to 75 percent of the funerals at Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery during his tenure. He remembers a few families bringing their own clergy or someone to sing. One funeral for a young inmate drew his mother, grandmother and sister from Arkansas.
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The mother brought a portable stereo and asked if she could play a song during the service. Sometimes families come simply for closure. Another funeral Brazzil led was for a sex offender whose entire family attended the service. After Brazzil had spoken, the inmate crew lowered the casket into the ground. During his years as chaplain, Brazzil realized how starved the inmates were for physical touch, and how their families longed to touch them.
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During family visits, inmates and their relatives were usually separated by a glass wall. On the day of their execution, death row inmates would say goodbye to their families at the Polunsky Unit, where they had been confined. That afternoon they would reunite at the execution chamber, but once again the relatives would be separated from the inmate by a glass wall. And then the inmate is executed. Having watched that dynamic unfold, Brazzil worked out an arrangement with the warden and a local church.
The woman who watched 300 executions in Texas
Immediately after an execution, prison staff would place the body on a gurney and let the family visit it at the church. It was the first time in years that family members had been able to touch their relative. Next to him, a lanky black man in a faded T-shirt and loose jeans stands squinting into the distance, eager for his first glimpse of the bus that will deliver him back to his family in Forth Worth.
For those without destinations, one option is to stay in Huntsville and try to scrape together part-time work — working in the stockroom at Walmart, bussing tables at IHOP—or volunteer with some of the town's faith-based ministries. An ex-offender himself, Kleiber got involved with RJM shortly after his release on a coke charge 12 years ago, handing out clothes and Bibles at the Greyhound station.
Today, RJM networks with more than 90, churches and ministries across the United States to aid ex-offenders and their families. On the wall behind his desk, a statue of the Virgin Mary smiles sweetly down at us with her arms outstretched. If you're heading south from Huntsville on I, the Sam Houston statue towers into view beyond the trees, glowing white against a sharp blue sky.
Paula slows the car and I inhale, awed by his size.
The monument to the hero of the Texas Revolution and the founder of Huntsville stands 67 feet high; "A Tribute To Courage" is carved into the base. Paula rolls down the windows, and I crane my neck up to meet his stern, unblinking eyes. The road we're on dips and curves alongside miles of lush woods, countless shades of green layered against thick white clouds.
Trees huddle close together and block my sight. Beyond them, I know, are gas stations and fast-food restaurants and prisons; beyond that, there's the swampy Trinity River, where death-row escapee Martin Gurule was found drowned in As I squint out my window, I imagine Gurule fleeing into cool, safe darkness, his body stiff with the masking tape and cardboard he swaddled himself in in order to scale two barbed wire fences.
I ask Paula whether she's ever afraid here, and I feel surprised when she shakes her head no. As we drive, I think back to when Paula moved to Huntsville nearly a year ago: her white knuckles gripping the steering wheel, the rearview mirror framing her face, now tan past the point of sunburn. Eventually she wants to be a psychologist in a maximum-security prison—"I like the mystery," she explains, simply, when asked why—and I wonder where her curiosity comes from, what drew her here from our Midwest suburb. Tourists, of course, come here to look, and to that end they often end up at the Texas Prison Museum, another squat, redbrick building just off I Paula parks the car and we walk inside, where Jim Willett, director and former warden of the Walls, greets us.
For a man who has presided over 89 executions, he's shorter and gentler than I'd expected, with clear blue eyes and a balding head ringed with white hair.
The Love Story That Upended the Texas Prison System – Texas Monthly
Willett was warden during the death chamber's busiest three years to , and he's happier now to be working for the museum. Last year, he says, the museum had more than 30, visitors, from Texans who wanted to learn more about their own culture to Europeans curious about the death penalty. Ex-inmates sometimes drop in after being released, wanting one last look at what they're about to leave behind.
Willett guides me through some of his favorite exhibits: the pistol that Bonnie Parker had in her lap when she was killed; a scale model of a Walls cell, where visitors can pose for pictures; and, near the front, a few pieces of furniture crafted by inmates, available to the public for special order until the s. The gift shop also sells the sorts of souvenirs you can find at any attraction worth seeing in America: TDCJ patches, "Death Row" baseball caps, and T-shirts. Another design features "Ole Sparky"—the museum's pet name for the retired electric chair that sent men to their deaths in Texas—and the phrase "Riding the Thunderbolt.
A handwritten note boasts that the shirt was used as a prop in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Willett's eyes brighten as we approach the exhibit for the Texas Prison Rodeo. Running from to , the "Wildest Show Behind Bars" was one of the most popular sporting events in the state for many years, drawing crowds of thousands to Huntsville every weekend in October. When not performing in the rodeo, inmates could spend their time sitting in booths, selling crafts and prizes for a small profit.
As the rodeo and the museum demonstrate, Huntsville has never been ashamed of its prisons; they're actually something of an asset. At Mr. Hamburger, you can choose from the Professor, Warden, or Killer burger. Mock escapes are often staged at prisons on the edge of town, and the Chamber of Commerce even used "Escape to Huntsville" as its tourism slogan before scrapping it in the 90s.
I've even seen it in the death chamber. I ask Willett what he thinks of Huntsville's sense of humor. I see his point after encountering some of the museum's more gruesome exhibits: tubing and straps from lethal injections; contraband like shanks, monkey knots, and arm blades; a three-foot-long leather switch once used to punish inmates.
In the middle of the museum, Ole Sparky looms in a replica death chamber. Nearby is a photo of Captain Joe Byrd, who started pulling the switch in A group of tourists form a circle around Ole Sparky, murmuring to one another and snapping photos. Willett and I watch in silence until I have to turn away. I wrinkle my nose, and he chuckles: "The people here—it's just not part of their lives. He pauses, and when he speaks again his soft voice is even softer. Bo, a corrections officer at Eastham Unit, on the edge of town, is the type of man who makes me skittish, an amalgam of every Texas-prison-guard stereotype rattling around my head: I am immediately nervous when I spot him getting out of his truck, tall and solid in cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat.
He cups my hands in his sun-spotted ones, fixing me with a searching, blue-eyed stare. We take a table near the back of the Starbucks, and Bo asks whether he can sit facing the door: "Just makin' sure there's no threat," he explains, settling slowly into his chair. There are also a few services that allow you how to order inmate commissary online. These trusted providers are approved and share revenue with the prisons from the sales to the inmates. Prison commissary also sometimes referred to as inmate canteen is a store for inmates housed within a correctional facility.
For instance, supplies such as supplementary food, female hygiene products, books, writing utensils and a plethora of other things are examples of things that can be purchased as part of an inmate commissary packages for goods.