On February 10, 2002, within the stark confines of a New York State prison cell, Jack Abbott, a figure synonymous with both literary acclaim and brutal violence, ended his own life. That same day, a grim discovery was made on a Brooklyn beach: the body of a man I had murdered, concealed within a nylon laundry bag, washed ashore. The convergence of these events compels me to examine my own crime, to grapple with the motivations that drove me, and to understand the complex legacy of Abbott, a prison writer who preceded me, especially in an era where the public’s fascination with notorious murderers, figures like John Lennon’s killer, Mark David Chapman, casts a long shadow.
Jack Abbott rose to prominence in the late 20th century as one of America’s most recognized prison writers. His notoriety was a blend of genuine literary talent, the endorsement of influential figures like Susan Sarandon, Christopher Walken, and Norman Mailer, and a morbid public intrigue with his violent nature. Writing offered Abbott a path to redemption, culminating in his parole in 1981 after eighteen years behind bars. Tragically, this second chance was short-lived. He killed again, shattering the fragile trust he had built and alienating even his most ardent supporters. He died as he lived – isolated and consumed by rage.
My own journey into incarceration began in 2002. Initially, Abbott was unknown to me. As I delved into his writings, I found myself identifying with aspects of his troubled persona and drawing inspiration from his raw, unflinching prose. However, I also felt a deep resentment towards Abbott. His post-parole violence reinforced a damaging skepticism towards prison writers and rehabilitation programs just as public sentiment began to shift away from the liberal ideals of reform. In a world where the horrific murder of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman had already solidified the image of the unpredictable and dangerous criminal, Abbott’s actions further fueled public fear and mistrust.
Jack Henry Abbott’s early life was a crucible of deprivation and instability. Born in Michigan in 1944 to an alcoholic Irish-American military father and a Chinese-American mother who worked as a prostitute, Abbott’s childhood was marked by abandonment and neglect. By the age of four, he and his half-sister were in foster care, and by twelve, he was confined to Utah’s State Industrial School for Boys. At nineteen, he was imprisoned in the State Penitentiary for robbery and forgery. His path was seemingly preordained: a life shaped by the state, a “state-raised convict,” as he described himself.
In 1966, two years into his sentence, Abbott’s violent tendencies erupted again. He stabbed two fellow inmates, resulting in the death of James L. Christensen and injuries to another. Abbott offered conflicting accounts of the incident. To Mailer, he claimed self-defense against sexual assault. Another version suggested Christensen had informed on Abbott. Perhaps the most revealing explanation came from Abbott himself: “Here in prison the most respected and honored men among us are those who have killed other men, particularly other prisoners. It is not merely fear but respect.” This chilling statement reveals the brutal hierarchy and distorted values within the prison walls, a world far removed from societal norms yet tragically reflective of a certain human darkness that also fuels the public’s grim fascination with figures like Chapman.
Abbott received an additional three-to-twenty-year sentence for the prison killing. His trajectory continued downward. In 1971, he escaped, robbed a bank in Denver, and was recaptured within a month. Confined to solitary confinement in various federal prisons, Abbott immersed himself in literature, devouring Marx, Sartre, Lenin, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. His foray into writing began with a pen pal relationship with Jerzy Kosinski, then president of PEN’s American Center. This connection soured when Abbott accused Kosinski of betraying communist ideals. In 1978, Abbott reached out to Norman Mailer, offering insights for Mailer’s book on Gary Gilmore, claiming shared prison time.
Mailer, intrigued, recognized a kindred spirit in Abbott’s raw, unfiltered voice. He saw parallels between Abbott and Gary Gilmore, both men forged in the fires of the prison system, both intellectually inclined, yet ultimately consumed by violence. Gilmore, after being paroled in 1976, committed two murders in Utah. His case became a national spectacle when he refused to appeal his death sentence, famously declaring, “Let’s do it,” before facing a firing squad in 1977. Mailer’s subsequent book, The Executioner’s Song, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980, fueled in part by Abbott’s letters. Mailer acknowledged Abbott’s contribution, stating, “Your letters have lit up corners of the book for me that I might otherwise not have comprehended or seen only in the gloom of my instinct unfortified by experience.”
Mailer then introduced Abbott’s writing to a wider audience through The New York Review of Books, prefacing excerpts from Abbott’s letters. He lauded Abbott’s prose as “as good as any convict’s prose I had read since Eldridge Cleaver.” While Abbott’s graphic descriptions of prison violence initially captivated Mailer, it was Abbott’s introspective reflections and self-taught existentialism that truly resonated.
You try only to keep yourself together because others, other prisoners are with you. You don’t comfort one another; you humor one another. You can’t stand the sight of each other and yet you are doomed to stand and face one another every moment of every day for years without end… And the manifestation of the slightest flaw is world-shattering in its enormity… Because there is something helpless and weak and innocent—something like an infant—deep inside us all that really suffers in ways we would never permit an insect to suffer.
This raw vulnerability, juxtaposed with Abbott’s violent history, created a compelling, albeit unsettling, persona. A Random House editor, captivated by the Review article, offered Abbott a book deal, leading to the publication of In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison in 1981. Bob Silvers, editor of The New York Review of Books, further championed Abbott, commissioning him to review a book of interviews with death-row inmates. In his review, Abbott reflected on his own time on death row after the Christensen killing, unknowingly foreshadowing a tragic irony:
I know of no man who has walked away from death row, and life imprisonment, and then been convicted of crime again, much less of murder. When you are defending your life with arguments and pleas you are engaged in a special struggle not given to many in any society. You come away from it more reserved, more considerate: you learn how precious, how fragile, life in society can be.
Life’s fragility would soon be tragically underscored by Abbott’s own actions. Mailer, Silvers, and Abbott’s editor wrote letters of support for his parole hearing. Released in June 1981, coinciding with the publication of In the Belly of the Beast, Abbott stepped into a world vastly different from the brutal confines he knew. Mailer, in his introduction to Abbott’s book, proclaimed, “I love Jack Abbott for surviving and for having learned to write as well as he did,” an almost prophetic, and ultimately heartbreaking, declaration.
At thirty-seven, Abbott, institutionalized for over half his life, struggled to adapt to the freedoms of New York City. He found himself in Manhattan, a “artificial monster,” after years in maximum security and solitary confinement. He resided in a halfway house, worked as a researcher, appeared on Good Morning America with Mailer, gave an interview to Rolling Stone, and frequented literary circles. Yet, at his own book party, he remained withdrawn, a “shy and taciturn” figure, according to Silvers, a stark contrast to the fiery persona in his writing. One can imagine the internal turmoil, the craving for an escape from the overwhelming anxiety of newfound freedom, perhaps mirroring the allure of drugs he experienced in prison.
Terrence Des Pres, in his New York Times review, astutely noted, “His prose is most penetrating, most knife-like, when anger is its occasion. How, I wonder, shall this talent serve Abbott now that he is free?” This question was chillingly answered just six weeks later. In a drunken altercation outside a diner, Abbott fatally stabbed Richard Adan, a twenty-two-year-old night manager. If Gilmore’s crimes reignited the debate on capital punishment, Abbott’s act, as Jerome Loving argues, “helped bring back the public wrath against prisoners.” In the public consciousness, fueled by cases like Chapman’s murder of Lennon, Abbott became another symbol of the irredeemable criminal, a betrayal of the hopes for rehabilitation.
After Adan’s murder, Abbott fled. He was apprehended in Louisiana, attempting to find work on an oil rig. Mailer, along with Walken and Sarandon, attended Abbott’s trial. He was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to fifteen years to life, adding to his existing parole violation. Abbott’s supporters faced intense media backlash. Despite this, Silvers continued to send books and correspond with Abbott. Mailer, in a 60 Minutes interview, remained steadfast, stating, “whether Jack is the original seed of evil…whether Jack is a victim of his environment…there is no question that whatever Jack is, he was made much, much worse by all those years in prison.”
My own origins are rooted in New York City, born in 1977. My father, like Abbott’s, was an Irish military veteran and a bartender, also plagued by alcoholism. My mother, already a mother of three from a previous marriage, struggled with motherhood. My parents’ tumultuous relationship led to my placement in a foundling home as an infant. When I was one, my father left. My mother navigated the precarious housing system, eventually securing a place in a project in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.
She became an entrepreneur, obtaining vending permits and operating hot dog wagons, catering to fishermen. She met George, another Irish longshoreman and weekend fishing boat captain, who became a fixture in our lives. My childhood was a mix of early morning fishing trips, the smell of marijuana, and freezers full of hot dogs. I’d steal small amounts of cash to buy candy, facing my mother’s harsh punishments when caught.
Seeking a better path, my mother enrolled me in the Malcolm Gordon School for Boys, a boarding school overlooking the Hudson River. Despite financial aid, I was a troubled student. Summer camps offered temporary respite, but reports described me as “argumentative and aggressive,” with “emotional and learning problems.” Boarding school and summer camp became my constant state, a life away from home, a pattern that continues even now, incarcerated in Sing Sing, another imposing structure overlooking the Hudson. Looking back at those reports from my cell, I recognize a shift: my aggression has subsided. Prison, ironically, has fostered a degree of introspection and quietude.
In seventh grade, news arrived of my father’s death at forty-nine, initially attributed to a heart attack, later revealed as suicide by shotgun. Around that time, my mother and I moved into George’s rent-stabilized apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. George, fascinated by the neighborhood’s criminal past, would recount tales of the Westies, the notorious Irish mob. These stories, filled with casual violence, seeped into my young consciousness. My father’s suicide was a silent, unspoken tragedy, overshadowed by the glamorous allure of gangster narratives.
At thirteen, expulsion from another boarding school followed a knife attack on an exchange student. Public high school was a brief, failed experiment. I roamed the city, indulging in drugs and petty crime. Therapy, ADHD diagnoses, and antidepressants were prescribed, but I gravitated towards the streets, selling drugs and falling into a life of petty crime. Forged IDs allowed me to work as a theater usher, further distancing me from school and home. In 1992, a brawl outside a bar called Irish Eyes led to my arrest for assault and a sentence to Spofford, a juvenile jail in the Bronx. The judge’s warning – “you’ll be back” – proved prophetic.
At seventeen, back in Hell’s Kitchen, I was arrested for illegal firearm possession. A year on Rikers Island exposed me to a brutal reality. As a white inmate, I was a minority. On my first day, I was assaulted, my sneakers stolen, my face smashed against the bars. Violence became a survival mechanism. The more I projected a willingness to engage in brutality, the more I was left alone. It was a perverse logic of prison life.
In Rikers, I reconnected with Alex, a childhood friend from the Brooklyn projects. He was awaiting trial for a drug-related murder. Acquitted due to lack of witnesses in 1996, we crossed paths again three years later, both driving flashy cars, symbols of our illicit success. Alex dealt liquid PCP-laced cigarettes; I sold heroin and cocaine. We believed we were living the high life, a delusion that would soon shatter.
Alex began extorting one of my dealers. The Russian dealer, consistently short on payments, revealed the reason. Action was required. Abbott’s words on the psychology of violence echoed in my mind: “It is hard to bring yourself to these acts, but you take a deep breath, look intelligently at what you must do, and you do it even though you are scared stiff and sick to your stomach.”
On a cold December night in 2001, I lured Alex into a rental car, an AR-15 concealed in the trunk. To allay his suspicion, I brought along a female drug runner. On a deserted street in Williamsburg, as Alex was distracted on his phone, I retrieved the rifle, aimed through the driver’s side window, and shot him dead. I drove off, Alex’s body beside me. The girl fled at the next red light. On a quiet block, I moved Alex’s body to the trunk.
I enlisted the help of an older heroin addict to dispose of the body. He wrapped and taped Alex in a laundry bag. I drove to Sheepshead Bay pier, high on heroin, contemplating my next moves. No body, no crime scene, I reasoned. A contact at a body shop repaired the bullet holes in the rental car. “I was never here,” I told him. He simply nodded.
A month later, I was arrested on a gun charge, back on Rikers. Rearrests followed. An indictment came for heroin sales to an undercover officer. In February 2002, a Daily News article reported the discovery of a black male’s body in a laundry bag on a Brooklyn beach. That summer, a second indictment – for second-degree murder – followed. The girl with the neck tattoo had become an informant.
My mother, now a successful real estate broker, hired a lawyer. She knew my guilt. “Keep your mouth shut,” she advised, equating silence with maturity. She understood the gravity of the situation, the potential for a life sentence. I thought of Alex’s mother, who had also hired a lawyer to defend her son years earlier, now facing the agonizing reality of seeking justice for his murder.
The courtroom became a stage. When the prosecutor presented a graphic photo of Alex’s body to the jury, his mother wailed. I hid, feigning innocence, staging outbursts of indignation, committing perjury. The performance almost worked; the first jury deadlocked. The second jury convicted. Twenty-five years to life for murder, plus three more for drug dealing.
In 2004, I was transferred to Clinton Correctional Facility, Dannemora, upstate New York. With a ninth-grade education, I obtained my GED, but idleness and heroin use filled the void. I fell in with the prison’s white inmate clique, participating in the petty power dynamics of prison life. Clinton’s yard was notorious for violence. Stabbings were commonplace. I witnessed my first shortly after arriving. Despite my Rikers survival lessons, I recoiled from the escalating violence, the constant threat of shanks and death.
In 2006, contraband possession led to my transfer to Upstate Correctional Facility, a modern solitary confinement prison. Starvation rations and dehumanizing treatment were the norm. Abbott’s words about solitary confinement resonated deeply: “I must fight…the monotony that will bury me alive if I am not careful. I must do that, and do it without losing my mind. So I read, read anything and everything.”
It was in solitary that I first encountered Abbott’s writing. A cellmate, imprisoned for killing a child, suggested books. A package arrived, filled with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Orwell, and Abbott’s In the Belly of the Beast. “If I were an animal housed in a zoo in quarters of these dimensions,” Abbott wrote, “the humane society would have the zookeeper arrested for cruelty.” His belligerent tone, his “war” metaphors, his use of terms like “convict” and “comrade,” were both off-putting and strangely compelling. He painted guards as “pigs,” stating, “The only time they appear human is when you have a knife at their throats.” In the Belly of the Beast could be a dangerous influence, yet Abbott’s declaration that “the most dangerous prisoners are readers and writers” resonated deeply, fueling my own nascent literary aspirations.
After six months of solitary, I was transferred to Attica, the state’s most infamous prison. I encountered a former Hell’s Kitchen associate and lent him In the Belly of the Beast. He loved it. Weeks later, I was celled with the ex-boyfriend of Alex’s sister, seeking revenge. A brutal fight ensued. Fear overwhelmed me, and I called for guards, violating the convict code. My Kitchen buddy stopped speaking to me, keeping Abbott’s book. I didn’t want it back.
Years later, revisiting Abbott for this essay, I connected with his moments of vulnerability. “I’m tenuous, shy, introspective, and suspicious of everyone,” he wrote. “A loud noise or false movement registers like a four-alarm fire in me.”
In 2008, at Green Haven prison, I encountered another friend of Alex’s, seemingly reformed, enrolled in a pre-college program. However, prison politics intervened. Others taunted him, inciting him to seek revenge. “Whiteboy killed ya man, and you ain’t gonna do nothin’?” Abbott’s words about manipulation echoed: “You learn to smile him into position. To disarm him with friendliness.”
In Green Haven’s yard, it happened. Alex’s friend greeted me with a handshake and a half-hug, then stabbed me six times with an ice pick. He walked away unscathed. “The law has never punished anyone for hurting me,” Abbott wrote, a sentiment that resonated in that moment.
Days in an outside hospital followed. The ice pick had narrowly missed my heart. Part of me felt I deserved it, part of me respected the act of retribution. I hadn’t informed, maintaining a twisted code of honor. But by not preemptively attacking Alex’s friend, I was perceived as weak. “In prison society you’re expected to put a knife in him,” Abbott wrote.
Abbott’s depictions of prison violence were dramatic, often exaggerated. His claims of dozens of shanked bodies and daily prisoner deaths lacked factual basis. Yet, his suffering was undeniable. In 1999, Abbott sued Attica for harassment, claiming guards deliberately cut power to his cell. The lawsuit was dismissed, and Abbott was brutally attacked, his face fractured. He believed it was retaliation for the lawsuit. He was moved to a maximum-security facility.
Denied parole in June 2001, Abbott was found dead the following February. His lawyer suspected foul play and commissioned an independent autopsy, which confirmed suicide. When asked why he pursued this for Abbott, the lawyer cited a “moral obligation,” refusing to accept the official prison account.
After my stabbing, I returned to Attica. Despite past experiences, Attica became a turning point. In 2010, I joined Doran Larson’s creative writing workshop. Larson, a Hamilton College English professor, aimed to equip us with writing skills and encourage publication. Some students were already publishing in literary journals; others contributed to Fourth City, Larson’s book of essays about the incarcerated population.
In 2013, at thirty-six, The Atlantic published my first essay, about my criminal past, easy access to illegal firearms, and gun control. Success bred arrogance. I urged classmates to be more explicit about their crimes, believing editors craved sensationalism. My crime, killing a drug dealer, was considered “good” within prison hierarchy, unlike “bad” crimes like domestic murder, which carried shame.
“The model we emulate,” Abbott wrote, “is a fanatically defiant and alienated individual who cannot imagine what forgiveness is, or mercy or tolerance, because he has no experience of such values.” I recognize now how I rationalized and romanticized my crime, a tendency that still surfaces in my writing. My classmates, despite my arrogance, were instrumental in my development as a writer. Larson believed Abbott had set back prison writing by twenty years, a view echoed in Jack and Norman. “After Abbott, prison writers were largely seen as merely gifted con artists,” Loving wrote. “The liberal press and literary organizations were urged to give up their efforts at prison reform.”
When Abbott wrote In the Belly of the Beast, the US prison population was around 500,000. The average sentence for murder was six years. Today, it’s seventeen years, with a prison population six times larger than in 1972. While Abbott’s claim about murderers not recidivating after release is statistically supported, it’s likely due to aging out of crime, not a newfound appreciation for life’s fragility. A 2011 study showed minimal recidivism among released murderers in California. However, overall recidivism rates for violent offenses remain significant. Abbott’s re-offense remains an exception, amplifying the public’s fear and distrust, emotions tragically echoed in the aftermath of Lennon’s murder.
Prison reform movements have shifted public opinion away from punitive policies. Ironically, I, a beneficiary of prison education, can now advocate for Pell Grants for prison college programs, programs Abbott mocked. I can appreciate Abbott’s pain and raw literary power. But I cannot echo Mailer’s sentiment that prison worsened me. Prison may have saved my life. Despite a difficult childhood, I had more opportunities than Abbott. I chose “the life,” drugs, and murder. In prison, I choose writing, a commitment to rewriting and self-reflection.
“I want consolation more than anything in this world,” Abbott wrote. He sought validation, and Mailer provided it. Connection to a famous author gave Abbott a sense of importance. My own pursuit of recognition through writing mirrors this. My AA sponsor, an investment banker, recognized my craving for prestige, a potential addiction substitution. Despite five years of sobriety, I relapsed, abusing muscle relaxers. My writing reform faltered without sobriety.
Mailer’s 1979 letter to Abbott addressed his drug use, noting how Abbott integrated drugs into his intellectual system to cope with prison monotony. At Abbott’s trial, Mailer pleaded with the press, “Adan has already been destroyed, at least let Abbott become a writer.” He argued, “a democracy involves taking risks.” I envied Mailer’s advocacy, yet questioned his implicit point that freedom was necessary for Abbott’s writing. Shouldn’t literature transcend such obstacles?
An editor suggested I was overly competitive with Abbott, reminding me I hadn’t faced the challenges of release and that readers might question if I would be different. Trust and risk were involved with Abbott, and they are with me. My prison history is less sensational than Abbott’s. I don’t perceive myself as a societal threat. I’ve gained journalistic credibility without a famous champion. Yet, I strive to see writing as my purpose, not just a ticket to freedom.
Abbott’s second book, My Return, published in 1987, claimed Adan had a knife, a self-serving narrative. Mailer declined to write the afterword. Abbott was back in Clinton Dannemora, serving his manslaughter sentence.
Imagining a hypothetical encounter with Abbott in adjacent cells, I’d advise against his self-justifying narrative, suggesting a story of remorse instead. He likely would have rejected my advice. Prison life is often defined by such unyielding stances.
Remorse is a rare topic of conversation in prison. My mother, before Parkinson’s limited her travel, would visit me in Clinton and Attica for family reunions. She’d mention Alex’s mother’s loss, contrasting it with her own ability to see me. We discussed the trials, her fear of facing Alex’s family, and her tearful apology to Alex’s mother in the courtroom hallway.
My mother steered me toward remorse, grappling with her own shame. “Murder was permanent… I wanted you to know what you did,” she told me recently. “Today, you are the man I wanted you to be. You are more than I ever expected.”
Alex, too, had potential. It’s wrong to diminish his life, to rationalize my crime by demonizing him. I had to fully confront the murder before finding acceptance as a writer. Journalism has fostered empathy, and essay writing has facilitated remorse. Unlike the immediate, heart-felt letters of Gilmore and Abbott, narrative writing is a process of rewriting, of understanding motivations, of self-therapy on the page. Editors have sharpened my writing and my self-awareness.
I remain in Sing Sing, but mentally, I am no longer a criminal. I write, publish, earn, and pay taxes. I walk a precarious line, seeking respect from both the outside world and my incarcerated peers. Prison has become harder as I’ve changed. A younger inmate from my neighborhood, romanticizing my past, recently called me a “civilian,” an insult implying I’ve become weak, unreliable. He senses my softening. He’s right. I feel trapped, a different kind of punishment.
“Always I burned, truly burned, with the need to leave prison,” Abbott wrote, “to be free; to get away from this thing that was destroying my life irrevocably.” After almost eighteen years, anxiety and depression are constant companions. My work provides purpose, yet I often feel irrelevant. Inspiration comes from peers who see me as a role model. I envision creating a writing workshop in Sing Sing, bringing outside editors and writers into this world.
I contemplate the pain I’ve caused. I pledge never to repeat it. Alex’s family, especially his sister, will forever hate me. I recall his sister’s words at my sentencing: “Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished.” These words resonate, a constant reminder of the gravity of my actions and the long path to any semblance of redemption.
