My time inside maximum security was brief. I was 19 or 20 years old, hoping to go places in the world, and I signed up for prison. I was a college freshman or sophomore, and the jail was in Walpole, the lockup where Aaron Hernandez will spend the next few weeks before he moves on to MCI-Shirley for the remainder of his days.
The visits I made to Walpole, then yet to be rebranded as Cedar Junction, were part of my entry-level sociology class at Boston University. Over the course of three or four Sunday nights, a handful of us from Soc 101 visited there to participate in “lifer meetings,’’ a form of prison/social outreach in which we, all bright-eyed undergraduates, sat and chatted with prisoners, all of whom were sentenced to life behind bars.
It all seems so odd now, and was in fact strange then, naive college kids and criminals mixed together to make small talk about sports, school work, relationships, life sentences, and life in general. As a high school kid, I flirted briefly with the idea of one day being a social worker, perhaps a Catholic priest, and signing up for lifer meetings fit with my then sense of, I don’t know, altruism or giving back or compassion . . . the things that, for most of us, flake off our consciousness as we grow into our lives, careers, biases, paychecks, and billpaying. More than 40 years later, I remember merely fragments of those “lifer’’ conversations.
What I recall far more vividly is the process of handing over personal belongings, including such things as wallet, ring, watch, pocket change, and belt, cramming them all in a large envelope and handing them to a guard before I was cleared through the gate with the rest of my classmates.
And then, of course, walking through the gate, and above all hearing its mechanical snap, the heavy “ca-chunk’’ as its lock engaged. There was such a finality and starkness to that “ca-chunk,’’ even though I knew (prayed!) I would hear it unlock only 60-90 minutes later, allowing me to recollect my goods and dash back to the serenity and freedom of the ’burbs. I wasted not a second leaving the parking lot.
Those few hours inside, entertaining what it must be like not to be allowed outside, reframed my thinking that the suburbs were dull, boring, with “nothing for a college kid to do.’’ No one yelled at us or threatened us or, at least in my case, made us feel anything but appreciated during our visits. We were there as the lifers’ brief, tiny connection to life beyond bars, a diversion from the norm, however normal is, or could be, defined in there. But for me it was hollow, forced, and above all frightening. Dull and boring suburbia soon never felt so good, so free.
Hernandez on Wednesday, sentenced to life without parole for the murder of Odin Lloyd, was told he’ll never know freedom again. Whatever once bored him, or seemed mundane or annoying, will become cravings beyond all his imagination and reach. Forever.
A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Correction last week told me that student-inmate “lifer’’ programs don’t exist in the state’s prison system today. The one I described, he said, though structured differently, sounded more like outreach initiatives offered at times over the years at the larger MCI-Norfolk.
Prison gift shops, known as “prisoner avocation’’ stores, also were part of the corrections landscape when I visited in the early ’70s. Inmates would craft such items as furniture, leather goods, and jewelry, and offer them for sale to customers who visited on-site stores. Those shops have been closed, the spokesperson estimated, for some 20 years.
Walpole, where Albert DeSalvo, the convicted Boston Strangler, was housed for years, was said to offer women’s necklaces. Though that might sound like a cruel joke, eBay currently offers photos of DeSalvo, one in which he is sitting at a worktable, appearing to make jewelry, another with him posing with a necklace propped to his own throat. The latter online offer is entitled, “1972 Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo Shows Off Homemade Choker.’’
If such avocation shops were open today, no telling what the brazen Hernandez might put up for sale. We live in such a collectors culture these days, the possibilities are endless. A press box steward at the old Buffalo Auditorium, employed full time as a New York State prison guard, told me years ago that some of New York’s most notorious prisoners often received checks in the mail from total strangers. Typically made out in amounts of only $2 or $3, they came from collectors, whose hope was to profit from the inmates’ signatures on the back of those cashed checks.
Mark David Chapman (John Lennon’s killer) and David Berkowitz (a.k.a. the Son of Sam serial killer) regularly cashed those checks, according to the guard. So there’s that, perhaps, for Aaron Hernandez, whose voided contract with the Patriots was to pay him $40 million. The conversations in the lifer meetings I went to in the early ’70s were often strained, awkward, and it took a couple visits for me to ask what crime my assigned inmate had committed. When I finally summoned the courage, I was surprised how evenly he discussed how he had murdered his wife. A crime of passion. He came home from work, found his wife in bed with another man. It was a kitchen knife and 32 stabbings (his count, his work) that ended her life and landed him behind bars.
Had it not been for his father-in-law’s testimony, he assured me, he would have walked. Often, I learned in that moment, the prudent thing is to nod acknowledgment and change the subject. It was winter. We probably moved on to the Celtics or Bruins.
Aaron Hernandez, convicted murderer, in a few weeks will be an inmate at the Souza-Baranowski facility in Shirley. In the near future, he will visit the free world only to stand trial for two more alleged murders. It’s possible the public will never hear his voice again. And with whomever he talks otherwise, his words will be uttered in a stark, locked world where the language is hopelessness.
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeKPD.