Chilling tales of world’s most brutal death row prison – including the inmate who unwittingly built his OWN gas chamber
One prisoner's death was so traumatic that executions were paused for 25 years
INFESTED with rats, leaking ceilings and prisoners kept alone for 23 hours in ‘sardine can’ cells – welcome to life in the world’s most notorious death row priosn.
San Quentin, north of San Francisco, has housed some of American’s most notorious criminals and is the state’s only death row for male inmates – the largest in the US.
But that’s set to change as Governor Gavin Newsom is turning California‘s oldest prison into a rehabilitation centre.
He announced last year he will be taking the death chamber away and moving the 533 criminals on death row to standard prisons across California.
These prisoners will still spend the rest of their lives in jail – and could still be killed if a future governor reinstates the death penalty.
The conditions of San Quentin – which staged its first execution in 1893 – have been described as shocking by inmates and their family. It’s famed for its green execution chamber, which emits a red light when a person is being executed, visible from the nearby highway.
Meanwhile family members are forced to walk by the entrance to the prison’s execution chamber every time they visit.
Here we take a look a look at the gruesome history of San Quentin – including the times executions went badly wrong.
Bird poo and rat-infested cells
Thanks to San Quentin’s green room of death – and infamous inmates like cult leader Charles Manson – the prison is widely known as one of the USA’s most violent and restrictive jails.
Prisoners are reportedly kept alone for 23 hours a day in a 4ft (1.2m) by 9ft (2.7m) cell, which inmates have said feels like a “sardine can”.
When Ramon Rogers arrived at San Quentin in 1996, he claimed there was rain leaking through the ceiling and mice and rats scurrying everywhere, as well as flocks of bird which “defecated all over the place”.
“It was a gross environment,” he told the BBC.
Keith Doolin, a former long-distance truck driver convicted of murder, has spent the last 28 years in San Quentin.
His mother Donna Larsen, who drives a nine-hour round trip once a month to visit her son, said she was stunned by how unclean the prison was the first time she visited.
“It had a stench to it,” she told the . “Sometimes Keith’s clothing smells mouldy when we visit.
“To know that your loved one is living in that made me sick.”
Since 1996 San Quentin has executed inmates using lethal injection – but it previously, along with nearby Folsom Prison, opted for hanging.
Sometimes Keith’s clothing smells mouldy when we visit. To know that your loved one is living in that made me sick
Donna Larsen
Professional burglar Dallas Egan chose to be hanged after he robbed $100,000 from a jewellery store and shot a witness dead in 1932.
“I can think of nothing better than the drop through the gallows,” he apparently told the judge. “I’m a criminal at heart, and I want to be hanged.”
His wish was granted, and on the morning of his execution, he was given a hearty breakfast and allowed to smoke a cigar, as well as swig a few shots of whiskey.
As prison officials handcuffed him and led him to the gallows, he is said to have danced the entire way there.
Hangman killed himself
One prison guard – a hangman at San Quentin for five years – suffered greatly from having to kill so many people.
Amos Lunt became Chief Deputy Warden for San Quentin in 1894 and oversaw the executions of around 24 men in his first two years alone.
When he was replaced by Frank Arbogast in 1899, Lunt apparently warned him: “They are after me. There are several under the bed now… it’s only a matter of time until they get me.”
He started working as a regular guard instead, but began hallucinating – seeing things and hearing strange voices.
A year later he was committed to the California State Asylum in Napa – where he eventually killed himself.
35 minutes to die
From 1938 gas was the prison’s weapon of choice – but when it was tested first on a live animal, it didn’t go to plan.
Prior to the first prisoner, a pig was put in the chamber. Shockingly it took more than 35 minutes to succumb to the gas – despite manufacturers boasting it would kill in 15 seconds.
But that didn’t stop it being how they killed inmates for almost six decades.
Prisoner ‘built own gas chamber’
Serving time for burglary, Alfred Wells was a prisoner on San Quentin’s regular prison block in the 1930s when he was ordered to help construct the execution chamber.
He was terrified of it, telling another inmate while installing it: “That’s the closest I ever want to come to the gas chamber.”
When Wells was eventually released from prison on parole, he began dating his half-sister – much to the disgust of his family.
It sparked a family feud so fierce that Wells ended up killing his half-brother and two other women, and was sent back to San Quentin – this time to death row – when he was convicted.
In 1942, Wells was killed in the very gas chamber he’d helped build less than a decade before.
Executions 'no longer biggest killer' at death row prison
Prisoner on prisoner attacks were commonplace in the 70s and 80s – but still happen today.
Child murderer Edward Schaefer was fatally stabbed in the neck and chest with a home-made weapon described as a ” in 2010.
Schaefer, 44, of Novato was repeatedly gored in a prison yard by an unnamed inmate and died the same day.
He had arrived at San Quentin just months before, three days after receiving a life sentence for the murder of nine-year-old Melody Osheroff.
At least one suspected murder weapon was recovered – made from bed parts and larger than a typical prison shank.
State prisons department spokeswoman Terry Thornton said: “They’re meant to do a great deal of damage.”
After the 2016 moratorium on executions, the biggest danger to death row inmates now is suicide.
East Block – home to 500 convicts – is a towering five storeys high.
Each individual 6×9 foot cell is covered in tight heavy mesh – making seeing outside almost impossible.
Aggressive or predatory inmates are forced to exercise alone in 32 individual yards while others go to two group yards four times a week.
On days with no exercise inmates will spend 24 hours a day alone in the cell.
East block prisoner and killer Raymond Lewis, 41, said: “To me, this is worse than death.
“If I had the courage or the heart, I would have ended it long ago. I hope people understand, this is not a way to live.”
William Bonin, known as the Freeway Killer, became the first person to die from lethal injection in 1996.
The serial killer, who raped, tortured, and murdered at least 21 young men and boys between May 1979 and June 1980, enjoyed pizza and ice cream for his final meal, while watching the game show Jeopardy.
In 2006 the prison was criticised for inhumanely injecting inmates.
One district judge accused the prison for allowing lags to writhe in pain as they died due to a lack of staff training and the poorly lit gas chamber used for injections.
In 2008, San Quentin opened a new $853,000 death chamber at the prison – but it will never be used.
Executions stopped for 25 years
The lead-up to one inmate Aaron Mitchell’s execution was so fraught that California paused killings for 25 years afterwards.
Mitchell was convicted of killing a police officer in central California in the 1960s and sent to San Quentin to be executed in April 1967.
However, the day before he was due to be killed, he attempted to cut his wrists with a piece of metal he’d smuggled into his cell, while yelling, “I am the second coming of Jesus” and “I am the son of God.”
Prison guards and doctors rushed in to save him and calm him down, but hours later Mitchell stripped off his clothes, re-opened his wounds and continued chanting about Jesus.
Covid contagion at San Quentin
In 2021 the prison was accused of letting Covid-19 run rampant throughout the cramped and overpacked prison.
One inmate Kerry Rudd told : “It’s like a horror movie when you’re watching like a monster inch its way towards you and you haven’t no way out, you have nowhere to run. Us being locked in here, it’s like we’re watching this virus get steadily closer to us and there’s nothing we can do.”
Another prisoner John Mattox was transferred to San Quentin while showing signs of Covid.
Two days after Mattox arrived he was tested, but only found out he was positive five days later and placed in a filthy isolation cell.
He recalled that the cell was “filthy and an officer took water with bleach and doused the walls and mattress and left without giving me a towel to wipe up”.
Despite psychiatrists saying he was having a mental breakdown and shouldn’t be executed, Mitchell was still taken to be executed in the gas chamber the next day, with his last words being: “I am Jesus Christ.”
Afterwards the state questioned whether his defence at trial should have shown he was mentally ill. It paused executions afterwards, trying to find a better solution for the future.
There were no further executions in California until 1992, when Robert Alton Harris was gassed to death for the 1978 murders of two teenage boys in San Diego.
Longest-serving inmate
San Quentin’s longest-serving inmate is Douglas Stankenwitz, who has been incarcerated for 46 years.
Stankenwitz, along with three others, carjacked 21-year-old Theresa Graybeal and then shot her at point-blank range, leaving her for dead – while she was simply out buying dog food.
One of the other assailants was given just five years for the crime, another was given 12, while the third – a minor – was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony.
But it was Stankenwitz who was handed the death sentence – despite claiming he wasn’t the one who actually killed Theresa.
By 2012, new information on the case seemed to back this up, and an appeals court cut down his sentence to life without parole.
He’s still housed at San Quentin, and has said he has only felt grass under his feet five times throughout his sentence. He’s still holding out hope for parole one day.
