By David Conley, PhD
Kevin Giles is masterful in re-creating what must be America’s most unsung prison riot.
Through meticulous research and a pivotal local-knowledge advantage, Giles brings the 1959 Montana riot alive in splendid detail.
Even more striking is his profile of the antagonist, former Alcatraz jailbird Jerry Myles. As a deft manipulator of “the system” as well as of fellow inmates, Myles is superbly depicted as both a predator and a victim of a life gone wrong.
Although it’s difficult to have sympathy for such a man, Giles employs an engaging story-telling formula that allows the reader to interpret the psychopath as a toxic byproduct of a society that put him behind bars.
Indeed, Giles locates three “jails” for Jerry Myles. First there is the “jail” of freedom, with which the convict could not cope. In effect, he escaped into a second jail in the form of the Montana State Prison.
There, he found a jail within a jail – the unwritten rules of prison life in which convicts exploit one another in a melting pot of sex and violence. Sadly, it is this “jail” at which Myles excels. Here he becomes a leader. If his self-aggrandizing goal was to lead prisoners into violence and chaos in highlighting poor conditions, he succeeded.
The author’s commitment to symbolic factual detail, together with his excavation of official records and revival of faded memories, bolster a convincing narrative that takes the reader on an ultimately explosive journey.
Giles has in-built advantages. He not only grew up in Deer Lodge, home of Montana State Prison, his father was a guard at the time of the riot. As a veteran journalist, his research and writing skills shine in every chapter.
Given its innate drama and strong character in the form of Jerry Myles, it would not be surprising if Jerry’s Riot were picked up for a tele-movie or film. The book’s keen insights into criminal behaviors might also give it a second life as a companion text for college courses in criminology, sociology or psychology.
(David Conley, an Oklahoma native, is a professor of journalism at the University of Queensland in Australia. He has worked for nearly a dozen newspapers in the United States and Australia and has authored several articles and books.)
True Crime as Memoir and Jerry’s Riot
Murder often cuts deep in a small community, searing the hearts of men, women, and children alike. Sometimes those children, scarred by events they couldn’t fathom at the time, grow up to explore the crimes that ended their days of innocence.
Some of the most fascinating and well-reviewed books in the true crime genre have been part crime tale and part childhood memoir. The most famous book to successfully blend reminiscence with research is the definitive Lizzie Borden book, Victoria Lincoln’s A Private Disgrace. The author grew up in Fall River, had strong memories of the strange old woman who lived alone on The Hill, and explained Miss Borden’s crimes as no other has before or since.
Other examples include James Ellroy’s My Dark Places, about the murder of his own mother when he was ten years old; Ron Franscell’s forthcoming book Fall: The Rape and Murder of Innocence in a Small Town, which explores the awful crime that destroyed the lives of the two little girls who lived next door to him in Casper, Wyoming; and Green Fields: Crime and Punishment Haunt a Home Town, a work-in-progress from author Bob Cowser that will explore the kidnapping and murder of a girl who was in the author’s first-grade class.
Jerry’s Riot: The True Story of Montana’s 1959 Prison Disturbance is another in this echelon, and I just finished reading this impressive piece of scholarship. The author, Kevin S. Giles, was the son of a prison guard who worked at one of the toughest prisons in the United States at a terrible, pre-reform era of widespread prison disturbances in America. Between 1952 and 1955, there were 47 riots in U.S. prisons.
The author’s father barely escaped becoming a hostage in a bloody standoff triggered by an arrogant and ambitious new warden who disturbed the delicate balance of power in a place filled with shanks and stingers, cons and psychos, and two particularly disturbed men – a burglar who’d been incarcerated for all of his adult life and his murderous teenage boyfriend.
The sheer depth of Giles’ research is impressive. The way the story is structured is also glue on the reader’s hands. There is a slow, detailed, agonizing buildup to the fatal events, and Giles never tips his cards before he starts playing trump.
But what really held me fast to the book was the enormous quality of the prose. (Giles has several years of newspaper writing and editing experience.) I read several paragraphs two or three times in appreciation of it. When a writer spends a full decade not only conducting hundreds of interviews but reflecting on what he’s writing, when the narrative offers genuine insight into the events, when the story is more than just a story to the author, it quite plainly shows. Take this excerpt about the moment that a prison guard realized that things were about to go horribly wrong:
For a few moments only silence came to his ears, and in prison, silence deafens. Here, a dictionary of sounds lay open in Clyde Sollars’ mind, as it did for every guard, ready for quick reference. In this prison of a thousand eyes, danger usually came first to the ears. Sounds that fill the prison alarm new guards. As months pass those sounds become a pattern of routine. The prison at its safest was a numbing routine and a guard was soon to learn that he should listen close when the routine changes.
From somewhere in the maze of rooms came an urgency of shoes on tile. They weren’t squeaks of new shoes but the warnings of a struggle. Sollars felt curious and then afraid. He crept into the lobby. Here in this gloomy room, where convicted men had tromped a trail in the linoleum, he saw no carpenters, nor did he see anyone else. Where was Jones, the turnkey guard? And why were both barred doors to the yard standing open?
That very second, as Sollars comprehended a guard’s greatest fear, a squat and sweating convict rumbled into the lobby from Deputy Warden Ted Rothe’s office. His big fist clutched a thin ugly knife, red with blood.
You can read (or watch) Shawshank Redemption forty times and learn less of real prison life in the era than in a chapter of this book. What struck me most was the sheer foreseeability of the fatal riot; the prison itself was a disaster waiting to happen. As a 'criminal city,' Montana State Prison was 'backwater Bastille,' rotting and old -- half the prisoners used buckets for toilets. Some of the guards were illiterate and recruited from bus depots; some were corrupt; some were elderly; none had any formal training. And they were outnumbered more than 30 to 1.
Giles also paints a stunning portrait of the ringleader, Jerry Myles, who had several mothers and names until he drifted 'into the arms of crime.' In Leavenworth and Alcatraz, he learned more about prison administration than the men who guarded him. He became a 'professional convict,' a 'penitentiary homsexual,' a 'bull in heat.' In 1955, he was briefly paroled. He selected Montana State as his next home based on rumors of poor conditions there. Jerry Myles deliberately committed a burglary in Montana and waited for police to arrive, hurriedly pleaded guilty so he could gain admittance to one of the worst prisons in the country, then cooly planned his mayhem, including a list of the prison officials he planned to execute:
Myles would relish each tragic and dangerous moment. Those moments would be building blocks, and after he had constructed a monument to himself that stood high and public and sated his deepest desires for glory, and after the streets of Deer Lodge filled with onlookers and all the papers wrote about what he had done and hostages' wives cried and he could feel anguish of his captive guards in the heavy cool air of the cell house, he would commit murder before his monument toppled. Two dozen hostages waited to die....
Giles wrote an article about one of the interviews he conducted for the book which is a taste of the book itself. Jerry’s Riot is available from the publisher or it can be purchased on Amazon.
Congratulations go out to the author for this achievement; one hopes this book acts as sunlight to drive away some of the demons that once cursed the people of Deer Lodge, Montana, still haunted by this long-ago prison disaster.
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Did you know?/Real-life prison history
Before he came to Montana State Prison for burglary, Jerry Myles was considered a dangerous federal prisoner who spent several years at Alcatraz Island. Here's an actual report written about his conduct in 1948.
Special Progress Report
U.S. Penitentiary
Alcatraz Island, California
Richard Arthur Myles
Age 33
August 1948
Subject is serving a sentence of 10 years, 1 month, 5 days and 20 months for Transporting a Stolen Automobile in interstate Commerce; Transporting Stolen Securities in interstate Commerce and Conspiracy to Mutiny, imposed Dec. 14, 1942, Jan. 19, 1943 and April 27, 1945. He is eligible for conditional release on May 20, 1954.
He was received in transfer from [United States Penitentiary] Atlanta on May 8, 1945. Reports indicated that he was one of the leaders in the mutiny in the Special Treatment Unit in December, 1944, at which time prisoners armed with razors, knives and other dangerous weapons took control of the building and held four officers as hostages on threat of death. He has forfeited all statutory good time, 1211 days on the sentence of 10 years, 1 month and 5 days. The sentence of 20 months begins on January 18, 1953.
He has received six reports for misconduct. Reports include: Taking extra rolls at breakfast, insolence and refusing to work; Leaving cell before signal; Disobeying orders, Not having collar buttoned, insolence to an officer; Contraband, part of razor blade found in his cell and last report, dated 4-21-48, being in an intoxicated condition in the laundry from drinking home brew.
He has worked in the Tailor Shop, Laundry Brush Shop, Cellhouse orderly and since July 15, 1948 he has worked occasionally as a painter in the cellhouse. The Officer in charge of the painting detail states that he is a fair worker, but likes to pick his work if possible; Friendly with fellow workers; clean in personal habits; inclined to be a complainer; likes to talk, however has not been heard to agitate on the job; complains that paint fumes affect his health and that the Doctor advised him to keep away from paint.
The Cellhouse Officer states that subject’s cell is kept in fair condition; is rather untidy; likes to “play around” and his bed is not made according to the sample bed.
Medical Report: Constant caller at sick-line for multiplicity of minor complaints. Has a skin rash which appears now and then. Hard work seems good for this condition and subject requests that he be assigned to difficult work calling for physical exertion. Has an anxiety neurosis, remissions and exacerbations. Self centered and emotionally unstable.
Chaplain reports: Reads quite extensively in detective and realistic fiction. No study courses but lead musical playing in chapel for over a year. Has some musical ability and is intellectually capable. Tends to be a non-conformist. Cooperates well if diplomatically made to feel some authority. Has sematic complaints which are no doubt products of an inferior attitude of mind.
He appeared before the Classification Committee on August 20, 1948 and requested assignment to difficult tasks requiring physical exertion which helped eradicate a skin rash.
Recommendations: Continue present program. This man has made some improvement in his adjustment but is rather unstable. No transfer indicated.
