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Billy Sunday Burke was now locked away in Marion Federal Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois,

which was, at the time, the most secure prison in the country.

When Alcatraz closed in the late 60s, the inmates housed there removed a Marion.

The prison contained the country's most dangerous criminals and murderers.

The children prayed, the preacher preached, time and mercy is out of your reach.

That's what my life really changed.

That's where I think, looking back on it, that I had to become Billy Burke because it was just too

awful for Billy Burke to go away. He was such a great man in my mind that I had this romantic

view of it all.

As the Burke family tried to adjust to the fact that their patriarch would spend his remaining

days on death row, waiting out his eventual death by electric chair, the reality slowly began to

set in with Stony. His father, his friend, his hero, was gone.

From imperative entertainment, this is In the Red Clay.

It soon became clear that Billy Burke would never return home again.

The family would visit Burke when they could in prison.

And I asked Stony to tell me about the first time he ever went to visit his father on death row.

No, we'll forget it. It's hard to do. I can, you know, alto,

Reesefield, they're the tennis state prisoners there are. But this federal prison is the whole

new ballgame. Everything was so high tech. They was not only two doors go through. They were six

doors go through. You were so trapped if you get in there and try to some shit.

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