Bronson, a former circus strongman and bareknuckle fighter, was arrested at the age of 22 for a robbery gone sour that netted him the grand total of 26 pounds and 18 cents. This blunder of a caper got him 7 years in prison back in 1974. This hardly seems interesting enough to make a movie about, but today at age 56 Bronson is still in prison serving a discretionary life sentence. Some of the reasons he has found himself staying 'at Her Majesty's leisure' for so long will follow shortly.
The case of Peterson/Bronson reminded me of an American called Carl Panzram (28 June 1891 – 5 September 1930) whom I read about in Colin Wilson's 'A Criminal History of Mankind' (mentioned briefly in a previous entry here).
The two of them have an apparent capacity for extreme violence and a determination of defiance to 'the system'. For Bronson this mainly means railing against the prison- and legal system but for Panzram it was the world at large. Panzram was in and out of prison starting at a very young age, often getting caught for burglary and theft. Both men had many violent altercations with fellow inmates and guards causing their sentences to be extended and exposing themselves to brutal beat-downs by prison guards. Bronson even succeeded in taking hostages several times, amongst them inmates but also guards and even a deputy governor. While he might have exploited those situations he made large, and rather odd, demands. Such as an inflatable doll, a cup of tea and a helicopter during a 1994 hostage situation. Another time he demanded Uzis with 50.000 rounds of ammo and a flight to Cuba but also a pickle and cheese and sandwich. He has been called the "most violent prisoner in Britain". His time served is now 34 years, 30 of which he has spent in solitary confinement. During this time he has been moved around to many prisons as well as asylums, the total of which exceeds 120 locations, virtually all the prisons in England. While Bronson is clearly violent and unwavering in his routine Panzram took matters even further. Bronson’s violence does not include murder and rape whereas Panzram killed over 20 people, children amongst them. He sodomized and robbed countless more and was without remorse. Panzram was arrested numerous times but managed to escape from prisons on several occasions and would immediately resume his destructive, killing and thieving travels around the country.
These men seem to be continually taunting society; they refuse to submit to laws, so we, that is, society have to deal with them. The regular course of action is to separate them from the rest of us by throwing them in jail, hoping (usually in vain) that their isolation makes them better men and if not that then at least give everyone else a reprieve of the threats they pose to the status-quo. However, the logic of caging a wild animal amongst other wild animals and then expecting them to come out tame afterwards is admittedly beyond me. Here too Bronson and Panzram are similar, their incarcerations did nothing at all to curb their violence and in fact have done quite the opposite, and both have expressed their strong aversions to their guards. By both words and deeds alike. Since 1974 Bronson has been released twice and spent a little over 100 days out of prison. After his first release he was out for nearly 60 days until he was incarcerated again for robbing a jeweller. After his return to prison he resumed his former routine of fights and hostage takings.
In the case of Bronson having him locked away in some small cell has not at all meant he has disappeared from public view. He has managed to keep us thinking about him, or people like him. He has done this by staging rooftop protests, hostage takings, numerous fights, the books he has written and most recently the movie based on his life. He remains a controversial character, while some organize protests for his release others are outraged at the spotlight he manages to find himself in.
We find a similar constellation of traits and events with another American in the person of Jack Henry Abbott (Jan 21, 1944 – Feb 10, 2002). His initial offence was forgery, but while in prison he murdered a fellow inmate which ensured a lengthy stay. And as we will later see with Panzram as well, he too was in detention centers and reform schools in his early teens.
Abbott escaped in 1971 but was apprehended again after a bank robbery and was convicted to serve 19 more years on top of his previous sentence. In prison Abbott spent time in solitary confinement and it is during that time he became well read and eventually wrote a book of his own entitled; In The Belly of The Beast. Abbott had learned of the author Norman Mailer’s involvement with the murderer Gary Gilmore, it was then that he started writing Mailer. Mailer was impressed with him and thought that Abbott could be a professional writer and later he helped to convince the prison authorities to parole Abbott.
After Abbott’s release in 1981 the book was published and became a best-seller. Then, a mere 6 weeks after his parole, he killed a waiter in New York. An argument had started between the two men when the waiter had told Abbott he could not use the staff toilet. Abbott asked the waiter to step outside with him, when they got there Abbott pulled out a knife and stabbed the waiter to death.
Like Bronson and Panzram he was not particularly fond of the guards, he wrote: “The pigs in the state and federal prisons… they treat me so violently, I cannot possibly imagine a time I could have anything but the deepest, aching, searing hatred for them. I can’t begin to tell you what they do to me. If I were weaker by a hair they would destroy me.” He wrote a new book in 1987 My Return. Expressing no remorse for his actions in it, instead he attributed his crimes to the government and the prison system. He also wanted an apology from society for being mistreated. In 2001 he came up for parole which was denied for his lack of remorse. His return then became a departure instead as he took his life by hanging himself in his cell in 2002. A 1988 movie Ghosts... of the Civil Dead is partly based on his life.
“This world is nothing. An illusion. Death is the release.”-In the Belly of the Beast
The case of Gary Gilmore (Dec 4, 1940 - Jan 17, 1977) presents itself with striking similarities to Abbott and Panzram. He however is the only one not to write a book about himself, in his case it was Norman Mailer that decided to write on the life and death of Gilmore. Mailer's novel "The Executioner's Song" won the Pulitzer Prize and later Tommy Lee Jones would star as Gilmore in the movie version. A second book was written by Gilmore's brother and this too was made into a movie;Shot in the Heart adopting the title of the book. Gilmore spent a lot of time in reform school in his early teens. He had been caught and sentenced several times for car theft and was a repeat offender. A few years later he was arrested for armed robbery, once released he was caught for the same offence again. Despite Gilmore’s impressive IQ of 133 he was not a criminal mastermind, he managed to get caught for robbery a third time. In 1976 he was conditionally paroled but quickly reverted to his old routines. A mere 3 months after his release he killed two people in two robberies. The two victims were killed just 1 day apart, neither had resisted Gilmore but he chose to murder them regardless. In trying to get rid of the murder weapon he shot himself in the hand which would lead to his final arrest. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. The death penalty came in two flavors in Utah, either by hanging or firing squad. The judge allowed him to decide which it would be and he chose for the firing squad. But the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) had different plans, they managed to get several stays of execution for Gilmore. Eventhough Gilmore did not wish them to do so.
"They always want to get in on the act. I don't think they have ever really done anything effective in their lives. I would like them all — including that group of reverends and rabbis from Salt Lake City — to butt out. This is my life and this is my death. It's been sanctioned by the courts that I die and I accept that."
After the first stay of execution he tried to hang himself while on death row and later made a second failed attempt. He was finally killed by the firing squad on January 17th, 1977. His last words were:"Let's do it."
Like the men described above, the bizarre and horrifying life and deeds of Panzram found their way into print and onto the big screen as well.
Panzram like Bronson and Abbott wrote a book while in prison, it is built on the letters he wrote to his guard Henry Lesser. (Why Panzram would write letters to a prison guard, since he hated them with a passion is described further down.) His book was published posthumously and unlike the others he did not achieve a measure of fame during his life. We come across another familiar name in that of Norman Mailer who said on the book Panzram: A Journal of Murder:"I enjoyed the real hell out of it. Panzram is one of those people who doesn't exist in your mind until you come across him in life or as here, in a book, and then he never leaves it." And conforming to the pattern of the previous criminals; James Woods plays Panzram in the 1996 movie Killer: A Journal of Murder there is also a documentary film that is yet to be released called simply Panzram.
Colin Wilson calls men like those described here ‘Right Men’. Men so convinced of their ‘right’ that when provoked, disrespected or otherwise wronged they will go to great lengths to exert what is in their eyes a just punishment without much, if any, concern for repercussions. These are not mere fits of blind rage, as Abbott’s stabbing of the waiter for instance indicates and which is also demonstrated by the contents of his second book. Of these four men Gilmore might be the exception in terms of being a 'Right Man'. The others I do consider to be legitimately typified as such.
Of himself Panzram said: “I have been a human animal ever since I was born I was a thief and a liar. The older I got the meaner I got.” As a child he was regularly beaten by his older brothers and after he had stolen from a neighbours’ house they beat him unconscious. When he was 8 he made his debut in court for being drunk. He was later send off to a juvenile reform institution for the theft at his neighbors. There he also received Christian training which he soon came to hate as well as more harsh treatment and beatings which were commonplace at the time.
Of his time there he has said: “I first began to think that I was being unjustly imposed upon. Then I began to hate those who abused me. Then I began to think that I would have my revenge just as soon and as often as I could injure someone else. Anyone at all would do.”
In 1905 he managed to set fire to the institution by constructing a mechanism that worked with a delay, allowing him to be in bed as the fire started. Later that year he was released from the institution after having learned what it was the wardens wanted him to say to appear reformed in their eyes. He writes: “I was reformed all right. I had been taught by Christians how to be a hypocrite and I had learned more about stealing, lying, hating, burning and killing.”
Now 14 years old he returned home to work on his mother’s farm. He went back to school but after a failed attempt to shoot his teacher as retaliation for beatings he had received from him he was kicked out. Not long after this Carl ran away from home by boarding a freight train. During one such train ride he was raped by four hobos, this experience taught him a new way to humiliate people. Soon he was caught again for burglary and was sent to another reform institution. A year later he escaped from there together with another inmate, Jimmie Benson, travelling together for a while, robbing and burning churches as they went. The two split up after some time and Panzram travelled alone again. He had changed his name and at 16 he enlisted in the army in 1907 and it took him only 3 to 4 months to get court martialed. Previously already being penalized for minor offences, he now had broken into the quartermaster’s office stealing clothes and money but was arrested by the military police when he tried to make a run for it. He was dishonourably discharged, sentenced to 3 years hard labor and forfeiture of all pay. The Secretary of War who was required to approve the sentence was none other than future-president (from 1909-1913) William H. Taft. Years later in 1920 Panzram would break into a home and come away with loot as well as a .45 Colt, this home and gun belonged to Taft.
Panzram developed a new routine, he would go to bars and find sailors and get them to come with him onto a stolen boat he was now using with the promise of employing them as crew. Soon he would get them drunk and shoot them with Taft’s gun, afterwards weighing them down and throwing them overboard elsewhere. On one such occasion, when he had two crewmembers/victims-to-be aboard they were surprised by a heavy gale whilst sailing. The ship smashed to pieces but Panzram managed to swim ashore and survive, as did the two crewmembers who probably never realised how lucky they were.
Panzram's account from his letters spans many more years and tells of many sordid affairs and brutal murders but I will not detail them all here. Other than the above he beat, robbed, raped and murdered hobos, cops, guards and children from America to Africa to Europe and back to America again. He set fire to many churches and broke out of prison several times through arson as well. Illustrating some of the prison treatment; at one time Panzram threw his chamberpot in a guard's face after which he was beaten unconscious and chained to hang from his cell door for 30 days. His incarcerations fueled his hatred for humanity thinking up grand schemes to kill people; poisoning water supply with arsenic, sinking a British navy ship to cause war between England and America to name some. To end the story on Panzram I will clarify why he started to write the guard, Henry Lesser, I will quote from A Criminal History of Mankind:
When a loosened bar was discovered in his cell, Panzram received yet another brutal beating -perhaps the hundredth of his life. In the basement of the jail he was subjected to a torture that in medieval times was known as the strappado. His hands were tied behind his back; then a rope was passed over a beam and he was heaved up by the wrists so that his shoulder sockets bore the full weight of his body. Twelve hours later, when the doctor checked his heart, Panzram shrieked and blasphemed, cursing his mother for bringing him into the world and declaring that he would kill every human being. He was allowed to lie on the floor of his cell all day, but when he cursed a guard, four guards knocked him unconscious with a blackjack and again suspended him from a beam. Lesser was so shocked by this treatment that he sent Panzram a dollar by a ‘trusty’. At first, Panzram thought it was a joke. When he realised that it was a gesture of sympathy, his eyes filled with tears. He told Lesser that if he could get him paper and a pencil, he would write him his life story.
And in Killer: A Journal of Murder the book consisting of Panzram's letters, which was later to be made into the movie as already mentioned above, he says:
"If any man was a habitual criminal, I am one. In my life time I have
broken every law that was ever made by both God and man. If either had made any more, I should very cheerfully have broken them also. The mere fact that I have done these things is quite sufficient for the average person. Very few people even consider it worthwhile to wonder why I am what I am and do what I do. All that they think is necessary to do is to catch me, try me, convict me and send me to prison for a few years, make life miserable for me while in prison and turn me loose again ... If someone had a young tiger cub in a cage and then mistreated it until it got savage and bloodthirsty and then turned it loose to prey on the rest of the world... there would be a hell of a roar...But if some people do the same thing to other people, then the world is surprised, shocked and offended because they get robbed, raped and killed. They done it to me and then don’t like it when I give them the same dose they gave me."
-From Killer, a Journal of Murder, edited by Thomas E. Gaddis and
James O. Long, Macmillan, 1970.
Eventually Panzram was sent to Leavenworth prison, there he killed another man for which he received the death penalty. And here as well we find the remarkable occurence of notable, or at least, respectable people championing a convicted killer. And in Panzram's case one that was still promising to kill even more people, he was still looking to settle the debt that he felt society owed him. Henry Lesser had found support for Panzram through showing his letters. Without fail here we find another famous author, this time it was H.L. Mencken. Carl Panzram however did not want a reprieve and, like Gary Gilmore would later, he protested saying:
"I would not reform if the front gate was opened right now and I was given a million dollars when I stepped out. I have no desire to do good or become good." And in a letter to Henry Lesser he showed a wry self-knowledge: "I could not reform if I wanted to. It has taken me all my life so far, thirty-eight years of it, to reach my present state of mind. In that time I have acquired some habits. It took me a lifetime to form these habits, and I believe it would take more than another lifetime to break myself of these same habits even if I wanted to..." "... what gets me is how in the heck any man of your intelligence and-A Criminal History of Mankind, Colin Wilson (italics mine)
ability, knowing as much about me as you do, can still be friendly towards a thing like me when I even despise and detest my own self."
Carl Panzram was executed September 5th, 1930. As he walked onto the scaffolding to be hung he spat the executioner in the face and spoke his final words, shown below.
It has not been my intention here to blame the behavior of these men on the prison system, faulty though as it may be. To me it seems these men have made conscious choices to do as they have done. All of them were given breaks at various points in their 'careers', given chances at a normal life. Yet none of them managed to make the change. They all were intelligent enough to know better, Panzram for instance would read books by philosophers like Hegel and Kant in prison. And for Gilmore his IQ of 133 seems to not have afforded him with the capacity to envision a normal way of life for himself. Not even Abbott, despite his newfound freedom and literary success could keep himself out of trouble.
The final analysis on their motives I will leave to the reader, those that have managed to read this far anyways. And there are far more in-depth writings available for study about them, some of which I've mentioned here. My own fascination with the subject crosses disciplines as it were, these are clearly abnormal stories that alone makes on curious. Their shared traits, personally and outside influences further pique ones interest. Most notably perhaps would be that these men found support, willingly or not, through their writings which drew the attention not just of civil rights groups but that of famous writers as well. Nor are these cases the only ones of their kind; the novel by Truman Capote "In Cold Blood" and its various screen adaptations might be better known and follows the same pattern. There surely are more examples but the ones discussed here virtually came as a packaged deal and my verbosity has its limits.
The conclusion if there is one to be made.
The histories of these men and those like them seem to attest that the public at large loves to hate a 'good' criminal and see them brought to justice. Yet with the same fervor it loves to see the exact same criminal set free when he manages to get under their skin. There is some type of weird paradox at work here. Rather sensibly society wishes to avoid murderers, rapists and robbers but our fascination with them causes us to pull them up close for a good view. They can achieve fame from behind bars, get married (Bronson, but divorced), write books and gain a following of enthusiasts, civil rights groups even their own guards. Perhaps it is that when they are locked up we forget for a moment the deeds that got them there and are reminded of their humanity and we wish to see them freed. But once they are free, they themselves seem to be reminded that they do not fit in with society and their regression to their old habits seems but a matter of time.
Obviously I do not have the answers to the situation of 'Crime and Punishment' and there are varying opinions as to its causes and solutions. In closing, rather ironically it is Charles Bronson alone of these four men that does not have a Death Wish.
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