Word: lifer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Another Alumnus. Angola Prison remains Oster's favorite folk source, and Robert Pete Williams, 42, his favorite singer. A lifer for shooting and killing a man, Williams has, in Oster's view, the "tremendous drive and anguish" that characterized the fabled Lead Belly, another Angola alumnus. Williams recently improvised his own prisoner's blues...
...idea occurs to a lifer named Arnie (Jack Palance), whose brother (also portrayed by Actor Palance) happens to be his dead-ringer. To his brother and his ever-loving wife (Barbara Lang), Arnie communicates his plan: let his brother jump the wall of the prison's industrial area, which is lightly guarded during the night, and hide in a stack of crates. Next night Arnie will hide in the crates while his brother sleeps in the cell; during the night Arnie will dig a man-sized hole in the ground near the prison wall, cover it with boards...
...school teaches everything from elementary reading and high-school math to such vocational subjects as typing and radio repair. Some students are practically illiterate; one lifer is a high-school graduate who wants a "refresher"; at least three have IQs of around 140. Some are so eager that they come to class after working at regular prison jobs from midnight to 8 a.m. No matter who they are, Gragert refuses to coddle them. He has set his standards so high that a diploma from the school will be recognized as the equivalent of one from any accredited Kansas high school...
...bank robber (he is a major suspect in the $1,219,000 Brinks' robbery), under sentence of 45-52 years, 3) Joseph ("Red") Flaherty, 32, a handsome, fast-talking rapist and thief (35 to 47 years), and 4) Fritz Swenson, 31, a hulking, taciturn cop-killer and a lifer...
Gauguin used to wail, in later years-much as a lifer's wife might wail: "I had no idea he was going to Sing Sing!" Mette Gad was a Danish civil servant's daughter, a handsome, white-skinned Juno (Gauguin favored husky women) who met her fate on a jaunt to Paris in 1873. Paul Gauguin was a strapping fellow with a bull neck, a great beak of a nose, and hooded, blue-green eyes. His stockbroker's black business suit sat strangely on him because he looked like a pirate chief and walked with the rolling...