A Thanksgiving Mutiny At Folsom Prison
True Crime Historian
Richard O Jones
4.4 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2024
⏱️ 129 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 424 is not your typical heartwarming holiday story, but takes place on Thanksgiving day, 1927, when a pack of Folsom prisoners enact a long-laid plan to make a big break from the big house. Needless to say, it doesn't end particularly well for any of them when two guards and ten prisoners meet their deaths as a result.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Popular.com |
| 0:03.0 | November 24th, 1927, Thanksgiving Day. |
| 0:14.8 | Turnkey Walter Neal was in the main cell room when the trouble started. |
| 0:20.3 | As soon as the shooting began, I slammed the door |
| 0:23.1 | shut. They shot me twice. The second shot hit me near the knee and knocked my leg from under me, |
| 0:29.7 | and I went down. I crawled 20 feet to get around a corner and got out. It was hell inside those walls when the seven armed convicts |
| 0:40.0 | rushed at us, screaming and cursing and starting an uproar among the other prisoners, unquote. |
| 0:47.3 | A moving picture, ankles preferred, was being shown in the auditorium of the cell house |
| 0:53.8 | when the mutiny started. |
| 0:56.6 | Hundreds of the prisoners were in the auditorium. |
| 1:00.2 | When the seven convicts rushed the guard at the entry to the cell block, |
| 1:04.6 | the audience watching the picture was stampeded into the corridors of the building. |
| 1:09.7 | William Massick, a 79-year-old guard, an instructor in the prison |
| 1:14.4 | school, was trampled and badly hurt in the rush. Quote, absolute quiet prevailed in the auditorium. |
| 1:22.5 | The prisoners were closely following the picture. Suddenly, the uproar started. The prisoners leaped to their feet. A mob rushed in my direction. |
| 1:34.3 | I was struck on the head two or three times from behind, then I was in the middle of the mob, being pushed toward a door. |
| 1:42.3 | I heard someone shout to get a doctor and I was pushed through |
| 1:46.0 | the door with the crowd. Massick collapsed from the loss of blood after making his escape |
| 1:52.6 | through a side entry to the cell block. Masick was made prisoner when the handful of convicts |
| 2:00.5 | started the break in the old cellhouse. |
| 2:02.6 | He was beaten about the head, stripped of his clothes, and liberated after being held prisoner for several hours. |
| 2:10.6 | After treatment in the prison hospital, he was taken before Warden Smith and a host of counselors who were gathered at the prison's home throughout the night. |
... |
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