UPI photo United Press International reporter Robert M. Gornall of Cumberland, poses for his mug shots while being processed at the West Virginia State Penitentiary at Moundsville where, in 1964, he spent three days and two nights, becoming the first reporter ever to be admitted.
UPI photo United Press International reporter Robert M. Gornall of Cumberland, writes his story from behind the bars of the West Virginia State Penitentiary at Moundsville where, in 1964, he spent three days and two nights, becoming the first reporter ever to be admitted.
UPI photo United Press International reporter Robert M. Gornall of Cumberland, receives a haircut from a convicted armed robber while in the West Virginia State Penitentiary at Moundsville where, in 1964, he spent three days and two nights, becoming the first reporter ever to be admitted
UPI photo United Press International reporter Robert M. Gornall of Cumberland, right, receives his prison clothes and instructions from Moundsville prison guard Lt. Paul Barlow while in the West Virginia State Penitentiary where, in 1964, he spent three days and two nights, becoming the first reporter ever to be admitted.
Bob Gornall did, and reported, time at Moundsville
And the mercy seat is waiting
And I think my head is burning
And in a way I’m yearning
To be done with all this measuring of the truth
— Nick Cave, “The Mercy Seat”
MIKE BURKE
Allegany Radio Corporation
The year was 1964, and for the first time in West Virginia history, a reporter was permitted to spend time behind the walls of the state penitentiary at Moundsville, which was built in 1866 and eventually closed in 1995. The reporter was assigned to a cell on Death Row and for three days lived the life of a convicted felon.
That reporter was Cumberland’s Robert M. Gornall, the West Virginia Statehouse reporter for United Press International (UPI) in Charleston, and the first words of his three-part series relating his experiences and impressions were, “I was a ‘fish’ at Moundsville prison, a new prisoner, or what the inmates of the West Virginia State Penitentiary call ‘fresh meat.’ ”
For three days and two nights, Gornall, who died Oct. 30, 2019, was a mock condemned man charged with murder in Kanawha County. He inherited the fatigues that had been worn by a man named Bragg, the next to last man to be executed in West Virginia. Gornall spent the first night in No. 2 Death Row, and the last night in the death house 25 yards from the electric chair.
Gornall’s plan was to live as a con; eat, sleep and dress as a con, “and nearly as possible capture the sensation of being close to death as administered legally by a man’s hand.”
Gornall would go through every procedure of the true inmates during his stay. He would experience the same conditions as well as the same idle time to cultivate his thoughts during his wait.
With the exception of being assigned a personal armed guard for the obvious security reasons, Gornall was granted a free hand by Warden Otto C. Boles and Public Institutions Commissioner Chauncey Browning Jr.
“I had moments of terror and serenity,” Gornall wrote, “but probably more often those of pity and helplessness. The experience was well worth an unshaven face and loss of the freedom people take for granted.”
Processing
Gornall’s first stop in Moundsville was the Control Center, the office of Deputy Warden Ira M. Coiner, who took the new inmate’s $5.38 and tagged it, registered his watch and typewriter and destroyed an open pack of cigarettes as a caution against narcotics.
Next stop: the barbershop.
“The haircut was not ‘bowl job’ or ‘shave,’ and the jovial armed robber wielding the razor down my neck made good conversation,” Gornall wrote. “He recently had a 99-year sentence reduced to 5-to-18 years.”
In the laundry room, where Gornall reported “60 inmates stopped and stared as I showed my blue, flowered shorts,” the reporter received the “blue ointment” treatment and shower and was fitted into the aforementioned Mr. Bragg’s former “grey, baggy set of coveralls.”
During the medical exam, Gornall received blood tests, X-rays and urine analysis, as well as examinations of the ears, nose and throat. The process was repeated at the Identification Bureau where mug shots, fingerprints and criminal, personal and social histories were taken.
No. 2 Death Row
“Two guards,” Gornall wrote, “one a veteran of over 20 years and witness to hangings and electrocutions, led me to No. 2 Death Row. To my right was a condemned man of four years, recently saved from the chair by a federal judge. The other death cell was vacant.”
Gornall’s cell was five by seven feet, with a toilet and sink in opposite corners, and a “rack” suspended from the wall by rusty chains.
“There was no stench,” Gornall wrote. “I had soap, a towel and toilet tissue. I brought an electric razor but inmates cannot use them. Besides, condemned men do not shave themselves for fear they’ll take their own lives. Prisoner barbers do the shaving.”
Gornall’s cell was located in South Hall, one of the three major cell blocks where roughly 400 of the 1,178 cons lived. To the left of his cell was a row of solitary confinement cells known as “the cage.” Further down were the red lock cells, or, as Gornall reported, “nut row.”
“I lay there for six hours after the door was slammed shut at 6 p.m.,” Gornall wrote. “Many of those hours were spent recounting some 200 rivets in the rear of my cell and listening to occasional coughs and laughter or a burst of obscenity from the three tiers above.
“All was quiet after midnight, and except for an occasional roach or waterbug, sleep was undisturbed until 6 a.m. This was the day I was to be moved to the Annex — the death house.”
Day 2
On the second day, Gornall heard whispers about the “thunderbolt.”
“I soon learned it was not a coming storm,” Gornall wrote, “but a grisly chair responsible for nine deaths since 1951.
“This was to be the day 94 men before me had walked that last, lonely mile. Although the walk to the Annex was hours away, I could not relieve my mind of that horrible white oak chair, situated over what was once the gallows pit.”
Gornall was taken to the yard for exercise by one of his bodyguards, Lt. Paul Barlow. He was also taken to the “main line” for breakfast and “rubbing elbows with murderers and rapists and attracting stares from men known as ‘Country Slim,’ ‘Poor John,’ ‘Hose Nose,’ ‘Poochie’ and ‘Grapevine.’ ”
Barlow pointed out a man sentenced to 125 years, who had been overheard telling another inmate, “If I hadn’t had a good lawyer, they might have given me life.”
Even though he was in prison garb, Gornall had been recognized as an outsider (perhaps his issued identification number of 2¼ was a clue) and he said the resentment showed. Despite Barlow’s presence, he was stopped several times by other guards — known as yard screws — and shaken down for concealed weapons.
“The morning hours passed slowly,” Gornall wrote, “and because some men turned their backs to me and gave an occasional cat call, I really didn’t dig the yard. The signal for lunch was a welcome sign.”
Gornall ate with the convicts and personally found the meals to be plentiful and wholesome. He had no complaints, but the prisoners did.
“It’s not that the food is bad,” said one, “it’s just eating it over and over, year after year.”
Gornall received a tour of the factories and the corridors of the other cellblocks. He found the overall state of the prison to be surprisingly clean and orderly.
Last Long Walk
Gornall packed his belongings and his typewriter for the walk to the death house, and since the prisoners had learned he was a reporter they seemed confused by Gornall being readied for the death house.
The Annex housed the electric chair, a chapel, bandroom, educational classrooms and a library.
“Once inside, the atmosphere changed,” Gornall wrote. “The whole setting was gloomy, almost frightening.”
Gornall was put into one of four cells in the large room. Behind three doors facing his cell were the execution chamber, the witness room and another room housing a large generator, transformer and “those three buttons.”
Gornall’s new cell was nearly three times the size of his previous one and came with “the comforts of home” — a bed, typewriter stand, another small table, a jug of coffee, sink and toilet.
Gornall said he tried to put himself in the shoes of the 94 men who had been there before and were hanged or electrocuted, but wasn’t fooling himself into believing he could pull it off since he was walking out the next day.
“There was no noise except for the continuous hum of a transformer,” Gornall wrote. “… That was noise enough.”
‘I’m still not sorry’
During his final day in Moundsville, Gornall talked to four men who had been saved from execution after they had been sentenced to die for murder.
They filed into his cell one-by-one, “sat on the cement and gazed through the bars.” None of them knew why they had been called and Gornall said none of them seemed to care. They talked freely.
“Since everybody was kidding me about going to the gallows,” one graying convict told Gornall, “I told the warden I wanted his pet groundhog for my last meal. I ate it all and it was good.”
A 46-year-old miner, convicted, condemned and commuted after killing a man with a shotgun, said, “I can’t say I’m sorry.
“They just had to commute it, I kept telling myself. I didn’t even have a jury trial. And I’m still not sorry … he was just a bully.”
Gornall reported the miner seemed neither bitter nor hateful, but rather frank and accustomed to his community behind the walls.
A balding son of a Baptist minister, who beat a man to death with a club, told Gornall he slept through his execution time and, upon awakening, “thought I had gone and done come back.”
He said he smoked three cigarettes on what was to have been his last night, wrote a nasty letter to his parents and went to sleep.
“My mind became so clear,” he said, “I could hear static. And my vision was twice as good as normal. When I woke up at 9:30, a half hour after they was to swing me, I thought it was already over and I was reincarnated.”
All four men told Gornall they were not afraid of dying and eluded questions about God or religion.
One said, “I never asked God to help me because He didn’t get me in here.” Another one said he had no fear of God, for he had no spiritual beliefs — only in “what I can feel and touch.”
A third said, “I didn’t want to be a coward. I didn’t like all of those ministers coming crying around my cell and I finally told the warden to keep them away.”
All of the men mentioned their families.
“I know his parents missed him, but they didn’t suffer as much as mine,” said a man who killed a friend during a heated argument. Another man, who had been in stir for 10 years said he merely wanted to “get out and take care of my mother.”
As for how it felt to know exactly when his end would come (before the commuting of his sentence, that is), one man, who had been in for 10 years, said, “I dreamed of dying every night for 15 months. I saw the coffin, heaven and hell. If I thought I had to stay another 10 years I’d rather be dead.
“I worried a long time about dying until I had lived death a million times. Finally, I just resigned myself to the fact it was coming.”
One of the men told Gornall he had been sent to the gallows for writing a song. The man, saved from the rope when the governor ruled he had only the mind of a 10-year-old, said he wrote a ballad describing how he had killed his victim and it was used as evidence against him.
“They sung it to the jury, too,” he said.
Mike Burke writes for Allegany Radio and Pikewood Digital. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s County Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984. He was the sports editor of the Times-News for nearly 30 years. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @MikeBurkeMDT