NM PRISON RIOT Ep. 3 | “From Bad To Worse”
00:12February 2, 1980, 140 AM.A riot begins in Dormitory E2 in the South Wing of Penitentiary, New Mexico, outside Santa Fe.In less than five minutes, seven of the nine guards in South Wing are captured.157 a.m.inmates have opened nearly all the units in South Wing.More than 500 inmates are free.Those who participate in the riot swarm the administration wing in the middle of the prisonand confront the two guards in the control center.
00:43202 a.m., inmates smash the protective glass of the control center with a fire extinguisherand gain access to the room, forcing the two guards to flee outside.21.m. inmates use the electronic panel in the control center to open the gate to North Wing,the home of the maximum security cell blocks.2.30 a.m., inmates ransacked the hospital unit and the psychological unit in North Wing.They opened the cells in Cell House 6, a medium security unit.They open the cells in Cell Block 3, a maximum security unit, which houses the worst of the worst.They captured three of the five guards in North Wing and locked them in a room in the basement of Cell Block 3.
01:26The two remaining guards stay hidden in the basement of Cell Block 5.2.30 a.m. outside at the front gate of the prison,three prison officials begin negotiations with inmates via two-way radio.First responders from city, county, and state law enforcement rush to the prison, surround the installation, and wait for orders from prison officials and the governor of New Mexico.3 a.m. 23-year-old Archie Martinez is believed to be the first murder victim of the riot, killed in the basement of Cell Block 3.Rioters quickly killed two more inmates in Cell Block 3.3.15 a.m. inmates discover an acetylene torch in the plumbing shop below.the prison's kitchen. They cut through the gates in South Wing and gain access to
02:13D, where they capture Officer Mike Hernandez. Eight of the nine guards in South Wing at thetime of the riot have now been captured. Officer Herman Gallegos remains hidden inDormitory F2, protected by sympathetic inmates. Inmates gorged themselves onprescription drugs from the hospital unit. They huffed paint fumes in the kitchenbasement. They burned their evaluations in the psychological unit. They burned five,files in the records room and the warden's office. They burned everything in the gymnasium.Inmates who had used the blowtorch to cut into Dormitory D used it to break into Cell Block 5,the maximum security unit for violent offenders, which had been closed for about two months
02:57while undergoing renovations. Its inmates had been redistributed throughout the prison, a fatal flawin management which led directly to the riot. Inmates from Cell Block 5 who had been living indormitory E2 during the renovations led the uprising. Now they, along with inmates fromCell Block 3 and other followers, broke into their former home and grabbed the tools which wereleft behind by the construction workers every night. Another hotly debated topic after the factwas the report that two corrections officers submitted a memo which raised the glaring securityproblem of allowing workers to leave dangerous tools in the prison, even if the tools werelocked up. Whatever the reality of the memo was, inmates used the cutting torch from the plumbing
03:44shop in the kitchen basement to break into cell block five. There, they found two more blow torches,as well as hacksaws and other tools. The rioters took the three blow torches to Cell Block 4,where the most vulnerable prisoners were trapped in their cells. Some of the prisoners in CellBlock 4 were informants, or were accused of being informants, or were rumored to be informed.To the rioters, there was no distinction, and they began the slow process of cutting through the gates of Cell Block 4 and shouting, kill the snitches, while the prisoners inside could do nothing but scream for help.From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America.I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling a six-episode story of the most violent prison riot in American history, the uprising at Penitentiary, New Mexico, in February of 1980.This is episode three.
04:54From bad to worse.Between 4.30 and 5 o'clock in the morning, the fires in the gymnasium, the psychological unit,and the administration offices grew worse.They had spread unchecked for an hour or two, and the inmates had requested fire hosesto put out the flames.The Santa Fe City Fire Department had arrived to add its resources to the local volunteer firecompany, but the rioters would not allow any firefighters into the prison complex.Firefighters ran a hose through the fence.
05:31but the inmates didn't properly use the hose, and the water was not effective.The fires continued to burn and spread, and the water from the fire hose only added to another problem.The hallways started to fill with water from broken pipes.The first four hours of the riot were an unhinged rampage.Rioters trashed everything that could be trashed,and the floors of nearly every room and corridor became clogged and covered with debris of every description,mattresses, bedding, clothing, personal items, papers, kitchen utensils, food,broken glass, broken furniture, and dangerous paraphernalia from the hospital,
06:12and then water slowly spread through the halls and turned them into rivers of junk and sludge.Between 5 and 5.30 a.m., with the faintest hint of light beginning to appear in the eastern sky,warden Jerry Griffin, Deputy Secretary of Corrections Felix Rodriguez,and officers from the state policemet at Griffin's house on the prison groundsto discuss the inmates' demandsand the negotiating strategy.The earliest hours of interaction
06:40between prison officials and rioters were messy.As many as eight rioters had radios from the guards,and they all talked over each otherand demanded different things.But no matter what the inmates asked for,the official's first prioritywas to secure the release of the guards.Ironically, the first captured guard
06:59who made it out of the prison, did so with the help of the prisoners. Fueled by anger, the opportunityfor power, prescription drugs, and toxic paint fumes, the rioters had assaulted, in moreways than one, the guards and other inmates. To the best of anyone's knowledge, the killing startedat around 3 a.m. in cell block 3. Three inmates were murdered in quick succession. No one knows how manywere killed between 3 a.m. and 5.30 a.m., but the number kept rising. During the 36 hoursof the takeover, there would be three times more injuries than murders, and the leaders of theriot started making allowances for the severely injured a little before 530 a.m. Inmate RayVallejos had been hit in the head and the wrist with a meat cleaver. Leaders of the riot
07:55allowed Vallejos to leave to get medical attention. A group of inmates carried Vallejo's out.out of the main entrance of the prison on a stretcher.As they crossed the yard to the gatehouse and guard tower number one,a guard dressed as a prisoner, slipped in behind them.Of the 16 guards in the prison on February 2nd,11 had been captured in the first 90 minutes of the riot.Two had escaped the control center and run outside.Two were hiding in the basement of Cell Block 5,
08:24and Herman Gaiegos had been hiding in dormitory F2.After the riot began in the second floor of Dormitory E, rioters had rushed next door and captured three of the four guards who were about to secure the second floor of Dormitory F.Gaegos was one of the four.During the chaos in the corridor, Gaigos had been able to sneak into Dormitory F2, where he was then protected by sympathetic inmates.As rioters ransacked the prison, many of the short-time or low-risk inmates in the dormitories barricated themselves.themselves in their units. If they had short sentences, the last thing they wanted to do wasadd more time for participating in a riot. Inmates in dormitories E1 and F2 stayed out ofthe uprising, but there was no guarantee of long-term safety, especially for Gaigos. After nearly
09:16four hours in F2, Gaigos took off his guard uniform and changed into a prisoner's uniform.Thanks to a lot of luck, he made it out of F2, up the corridor to theto the admin wing in the middle of the prison, and then threw the rioters to the main entrance.He followed the inmates outside who were carrying Ray Vallejos on a stretcher.But when the inmates set down the injured man and then started to return to the prison,Gaegos kept walking toward the main gate, which was open in order to retrieve the woundedinmate.Associate Warden Adelado Martinez thought Gaigos was an inmate and initially told him to go back.
09:55And Martinez recognized Gallegos as a guard, but still told him to wait because of the confusionof negotiating with the rioters for the release of hostages.Martinez didn't know if Gallegos had been allowed to leave through the negotiating processor if he was essentially escaping on his own.If he was escaping and the rioters noticed, they might hurt the other guards in reprisal.For a few anxious moments, which must have felt like hours to Gallegos, he remained trapped.He was suspended in limbo outside of the prison buildings but inside of the prison fence.Behind him, rioters noticed something was wrong.
10:32They shouted for him to come back and they started moving out of the front entranceto grab him.Finally, Deputy Correction Secretary Felix Rodriguez yelled the obvious, let Gallegos out.Gallegos ran through the gate and the state police officers slammed it behind him.Right after Officer Herman Gallegos made it out of the prison complex, National Guardcommanders and state police commanders set up an emergency operation center and a forward command postoutside the prison. The state police took charge of perimeter security and they surrounded the complexwith officers. By that time, an hour and a half before sunrise, Ranglers had delivered horses
11:17to the prison and officers on horseback patrolled the grounds. Officer Gallegos debriefed withstate police commanders. His story was likely terrifying as he gave a firsthand account ofsurviving the initial minutes of the riot and then hiding in dormitory F2 for four hours.And it was probably horrifying as he explained the devastation he saw as he moved throughthe prison toward his escape. At 6 a.m., the northern New Mexico SWAT team assembled in thestaging area outside the prison, as prison officials continued to try to negotiate the peacefulrelease of hostages and plan an operation to retake the prison by force if necessary.By that time, word had spread fast through Santa Fe and beyond.
12:03Friends and family members of guards and inmates began to show up at the prison,desperate for updates about their loved ones.Reporters started to arrive en masse.Veteran Santa Fe radio reporter Ernie Mills was the first to hear about the riot at around 3 a.m.And he had been with his old friend's state police chief Martin Vahill since about that time.And because of Mills' close connection to the chief andother officials, he would not end up functioning as a reporter. He would be part of the plan toquell the uprising and rescue the hostages. Throughout the early morning hours, the leaders of the riot
12:44had allowed some of the captured guards to communicate with prison officials over the radio.Captain Greg Roybal, one of the first four guards captured, did most of the talking. He wasthe shift commander, the highest ranking officer in the prison. He verified the identities ofsome of the guards who had been captured, though he didn't know the status of all the guards.He reinforced the idea that prison officials should not allow law enforcement to storm the prison.In that event, all the guards would be killed. And he tried to affirm that all the guards whowere still in the prison were alive, though that became a source of extreme confusion.With all the conflicting accounts, from the three guards who had made it out of the prison,
13:26radio communications, and the inmates themselves, it was impossible.to know exactly what had happened.And the situation became more confused when inmates with radios made threats of graphicviolence if they were attacked by the police.A little after 6 o'clock in the morning, rioters threatened to cut off the heads of inmatesand throw the heads outside if the police took action against the rioters.But as the rioters continued to demand meetings with the governor, the warden, and the media,they kept making the concession that the prison officials wanted.
13:59A flurry of activity excited everyone at 7 a.m.Officer Elton Curry, who was 49 years old and had been a guard for three years, had been captured outside dormitory F2 in the first five minutes of the riot.Like all the captured guards in South Wing, Curry had been beaten.He had also been stabbed, and some of the rioters feared he might die.They placed him on a mattress and dragged him from South Wing through the prison to the main entrance,and outside into the yard where he could be collected and transported to a hospital for immediatemedical attention. If that process had happened earlier, it would have been another major blackeye for prison officials. The prison had its own ambulance, which was on standby at the main gatehouse.
14:46But the keys to the ambulance were in the control center. When inmates had smashed into thecontrol center a little after 2 o'clock in the morning, the two officers inside, who rightfully feared fortheir lives, fled the control center, and ran outside to the gatehouse. But in their rush toescape, they left all the keys to prison resources behind. Prison employees tried to hotwire theambulance, but they ended up burning out the engine. In this spectacular list of things that wentwrong at the prison on February 2, 1980, the problem with the prison's ambulance would not rankvery high. But it was also perfectly emblematic of the overall situation. Everything thatcould go wrong, did go wrong.
15:30Mercifully for Officer Curry and the injured who would follow,fire department and hospital ambulances were on scene and ready to go.St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe was rapidly reorganizing its staff and facilitiesto handle what was expected to be a tidal wave of casualties.Inmate Ray Vallejo and Officer Elton Curry were the first two, but more would follow.Officer Elton Curry was the first guard released by the rioters.that left 12 guards in the prison.Ten were hostages, and two were hiding in the basement of Cell Block 5.
16:10At nearly the same moment as rioters were dragging Curry out of the front entrance on a mattress,inmates in dormitory E1 broke out of a window at the back of their unit.E1 had been its own saga during the first six hours of the uprising.E1 was the ground floor unit of dormitory E.The riot had started directly above it in E2.The inmates in E1 heard the insanity above them as it unfolded, and they scrambled to keep themselves safe.Dormitory E1 was similar to Cell Block 4.Cell Block 4 was a maximum security protective custody unit for inmates whose lives would be in grave danger if they were exposed to the general population.
16:53E1 was a medium security protective custody unit for inmates who were at greater risk of danger than other inmates in the dormitories,but not so much risk that they needed to be transferred to cell block four.In the riot, risk assessment by prison officials meant nothing.The inmates in E1 feared for their lives, and they wanted no part of the uprising.They reacted fast when they heard the violence spread out of E2 above them.They grabbed bunk beds and mattresses and used them to barricade the gate to the unit.In the first minute of the riot, when the leaders in E2 ran downstairs,they tried to coax the men of E1 out of the unit, but the men refused.
17:36As the uprising progressed, rioters went back to E1 and burned mattresses in the corridorto try to smoke out the men in E1.When that didn't work, rioters threw tear gas canisters taken from the control centerat the barricade with the hope that the fumes would force the men out of the unit.The inmates in E1 used materials in the unit to fan the fumes back into the corridor.At that point, the rioters seemed to give up on E1.They were ransacking all the facilities in the administration wing, and they would soon open the gate to North Wing.With those developments, E1 lost its importance, thankfully for the men inside.
18:17But while they were safe, they were also trapped and cut off from information from the outside world.They didn't have a telephone, and they didn't have two-way radios from captured guards.probably taunted them by shouting vile updates through the barricade, and maybe sympatheticinmates whispered reports through the gate. But as dawn finally arrived at 7 a.m., they would have beenable to see, through the limited visibility of their windows, state police officers encircling theprison. Even if they didn't know the full extent of the situation inside or outside the prison,they decided it was safer outside. An inmate from another unit was able to smuggle a thirdthree-foot-long wrench into E-1. At 7 a.m., the same time most of the attention was on the release
19:05of Officer Curry at the front gate, the inmates of E-1 smashed out a window with the wrench andmangled the iron bars over the window to the extent that they could squeeze through.84 men wiggled through the window and dropped into the exercise yard. They ran the short distanceto guard tower number two at the south end of the complex. At that spot, they were asfar away from the bedlam in the administration wing and the violence in North Wing as they couldget. They would spend a long 24 hours outside in the cold of early February, but they gambledthat it was better to be outside than inside. And over the course of the daylight hours of Saturday,February 2nd, they wouldn't be the only ones. Five minutes later, rioters with radios started
19:52telling prison officials that another guard needed help. By that time, a little after 7 o'clock in the morning,were probably giving updates on two guards whose conditions were worsening.Assistant shift commander, Lieutenant Jose Anaya, who was one of the first four guards capturedin Domitore E2 at the beginning of the riot, had been suffering badly for six hours.But the final guard captured Officer Mike Hernandez became the more immediate case.There was never a minute to rest or breathe during the 36 hours of the uprising.Less than 15 minutes after Officer Curry was carried out of the prison,and inmates broke out of Dormitory E1,
20:38the fire in the Protestant chapel near the gymnasiumroared into an inferno.The fire in the warden's office was growing worse by the minute,but when firefighters entered the prison yard to help,rioters pelted them with debris and forced them back.At 7.30 a.m., the first 50 soldiers of the National Guard arrived.National Guard commanders, maintenance staff, and medical teamswere already at the prison, but now troops were
21:05on the ground as well. The chaos outside the prison near the command center at the front gatewas starting to rival the chaos inside the prison. With the National Guard, members of everycity, county, and state law enforcement agency, representatives of city, county, and state government,fire departments, emergency medical personnel, reporters, and friends and family of inmates andguards, it was a complete mess. Like most unprecedented multi-agency situations, everyone had a differentidea of who was in charge. And the same situation was mirrored inside the prison. With at leasteight inmates communicating and making demands over the radios, negotiations between rioters andprison officials were confusing and frustrating. But in the earliest hours of chatter, one inmate's
21:54voice pushed its way to the top. He gave himself the code name Chopper One to hide his identity,and he made repeated demands to speak to the governor and the media. His demands were alwaysfollowed by threats to kill hostages and inmates if prison officials couldn't or wouldn't deliver.Chopper One and others reiterated that Lieutenant Jose Anaya was in bad shape.Anaya was 56 years old and he had a heart condition.One of the inmates, probably the one who became known as Doc during the uprising,relayed a message saying he thought Anaya had a concussion and a broken rib.By that time, everyone knew that the guards who had been captured in South Wing at the beginning
22:39of the riot had suffered a variety of injuries and traumas. The guards in North Wing, though terrified,were not injured. In fact, some inmates had gone out of their way to protect the guards in NorthWing. Anaya's time as a hostage continued, but the rioters agreed to release Officer Mike Hernandez.Hernandez had been the final guard captured. He had been at the farthest end of South Wing,near Dormitory D and the Education Unit when the riot started. He and everyone else inD had been protected in the early hours by a locked gate in the corridor which stood betweenthem and the rioters. But when the rioters found a blowtorch in the kitchen basement, they used itto cut through the gate and then into Dormitory D where they captured Hernandez. He had been
23:27beaten like the other guards in South Wing, but at 8.20 a.m. after five hours as a hostage,he limped out of the prison wearing an inmate's uniform. Ten minutes later, state police officerswho guarded the extreme northern end of the prison's perimeter received a surprise.Roughly 20 inmates burst out of a door in Cell Block 5 and hurried into the exercise yard.Nearly all were refugees from Cell Block 4, the protective custody unit for vulnerable inmates,which had been a horror show for the past hour and a half.The escapees had stolen one of the three blow torches from the riotersand used it to cut through a metal door in Cell Block 5.
24:08Cell Block 5 had been empty of inmates for more than two months as it underwent renovations,and the tools which had been left overnight by the workers were now being used to deadly purpose in Cell Block 4.Like everyone who made it out of the prison, the escapees were immediately interviewed by law enforcement and prison officials.Prison psychologist Dr. Mark Orner had been on site for two hours, and he debriefed everyone who had been inside.Orner had been the first to officially document the possibility of a hostage takeover three weeks earlier with his memo of January 11th.Now he helped gather the pieces and arranged them into a picture of what was happening in the prison,who was leading the riot, how many were injured, how many were dead, where were the hostages, what were their conditions, and so on.After Orner spoke to the inmates from Cell Block 4, the picture turned exceptionally grim.
25:11Bruce King, who was one year into his second term in office, first went to state policeheadquarters in Santa Fe. There, just before 9 a.m., and 8 minutes after the group ofinmates escaped through Cell Block 5, he spoke with the leaders of the riot via radio for thefirst time. King promised the rioters they would have access to the media and that he wouldnot authorize an assault on the prison. At that time, there were 75 combined members of statepolice and city of Santa Fe police departments on hand, as well as 50 National Guard Troopersand the Northern New Mexico SWAT team, with the Southern New Mexico SWAT team on standby.No one wanted a repeat of the headline-making Attica tragedy, where law enforcement and
25:56National Guardsmen fired indiscriminately into crowds of inmates and hostages during the effortto retake the prison in 1971. Thirty-nine of the 43 people who died at Attica were killed bylaw enforcement, including all of the hostages who died during the uprising.As bad as Attica was in its final minutes in terms of fatalities, prison officials in Santa Fewere quickly learning that the uprising at penitentiary New Mexico was different.They were hearing reports of gruesome torture and systematic slaughter, in addition to multiplefires which were threatening the facility and a spiraling overdose problem from the hordesof prescription drugs which had been taken from the hospital unit.
26:39When Governor King arrived at the command post outside the main gate of the prison,15 minutes after his first radio communication with the rioters,he and the other prison officials had to deal with new demands from the inmatesand shocking reports of violence.Inmates requested gas masks to help with the fumes from the tear gas canistersthey had used during the early stages of the riot,and smoke from the fires in the gymnasium,the Protestant chapel, the psychological unit, the records room, and the warden's office.
27:15Inmate negotiator Chopper One, among others, notified prison officials about the worsening overdose cases and demanded medical supplies and stretchers.Inmates also demanded all guards be removed from the guard towers.Prison officials said absolutely not to the removal of guards in the towers.Guards would stay in the towers and state police officers and National Guard troopers would remain around the perimeter fence.But officials did provide stretchers and gasprivile.masks. Officials banked on the idea that the items would incentivize the rioters to send outinmates and hopefully injured guards. After that round of negotiation and while other officialskept the chatter going, Governor King turned his attention to the list that had just been given to him.
28:04After Dr. Orner talked to the inmates from Cell Block 4 who had just escaped through Cell Block 5,he compiled a list of murder victims. There were 14 names on the list, and theinformation seemed reliable. That meant there were nearly four times more deaths in nine hours ofthe New Mexico riot than there were in all five days of the Attica uprising until the assault by lawenforcement. The number dwarfed the number of deaths in any individual prison riot. In fact,it dwarfed the number of deaths in all major prison riots in American history combined. And at thattime, about 10 o'clock in the morning on Saturday, February 2, 1980, the number of peoplepresumed dead was less than half of its eventual total.
28:49And the news was somehow worse because Dr. Orner was making a second list as a companion to the first.Based on reports from escaped prisoners, Orner was compiling a list of rioters who were part ofwhat would be known as death squads or execution squads.While there were certainly murders which occurred during the general mayhem of the uprising,most murders were targeted acts of revenge.Orner started to believe that there were 10 to 20 rioters who were stalking the prison,looking to settle the score for old grudges. Most of those grudges were with the inmates inthe protective custody unit of Cell Block 4, the unit for men who were, rightly or wrongly,
29:31branded snitches. The men who would be listed as executioners used a blowtorch to break intoCell Block 4 at around 7 a.m. by 8.20 a.m., when some of the inmates from Cell Block 4escaped through Cell Block 5, the report was that 11 prisoners in Cell Block 4 were already dead.The details would be too graphic for newspapers and TV broadcasts. The details could only be inferredby eyewitness accounts of SWAT team members and investigators who went in after it was all over.Next time on Infamous America, it's the somewhat sanitized story of the unparalleled violencein Cell Block 4. Nothing like it has ever happened in U.S. history.history, and yet it was done before prison officials outside even knew it had started, and there
30:34were still 24 hours of the uprising to go.That's next week on Infamous America.To binge all the episodes of a new season and to listen to every episode of the podcast withno commercials, subscribe in Apple Podcasts, or sign up through the link in the show notes or onour website, blackbarrelmedia.com.This series was researched and written by me, Chris Wimmer, original music by Rob Ville.Thanks for listening.
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