The Killers Club
A bloody fraternity of the state’s most monstrous killer cons are plotting their releases from prison as part of a Department of Correction-sanctioned club whose aim is to shorten its members’ lengthy sentences.
Groomed by two men who murdered their own wives and children, dozens of lifers recognized by the state as the nonprofit Lifers’ Group Inc. convene twice a month at MCI-Norfolk and - according to minutes of their meetings obtained by the Herald - have focused in the last year on:
• Lobbying outside support for abolishing life without parole.
• Starting a Toastmasters club.
• Discussing the biographies of the Parole Board’s seven members.
• Charity work, including a Walk for Hunger in their exercise yard to benefit Project Bread.
There’s more.
Massachusetts Department of Correction Commissioner Harold W. Clarke released the following statement: “The MCI-Norfolk Lifers Group Inc. has existed since the early 1970s. It is one of many inmate support groups permitted by the Department of Correction. The group has a governing body led by a chairman and it meets twice monthly.”
That’s informative.
Time may not be on the lifers’ sides, but occasionally they see light at the end of their tunnel. By a 5-1 vote, Edgar Bowser III, who serves on Lifers’ Group Inc.’s board of directors, was granted parole in December from his sentence for murdering Shrewsbury police officer James Lonchiadis in 1975. Bowser will be released later this year.
On Jan. 17, 2007, Bowser gave his behind-bars brethren a report on “the physical layout of the Parole Board hearing, where everyone sits and how restraints are used,” according to minutes from that meeting, attended by 72 members.
Lifers found encouraging that former cop Mark Conrad, nominated to the Parole Board by Gov. Deval Patrick, was confirmed by a 5-3 vote of the Governor’s Council, declaring in minutes from their June 19 meeting, “The vote shows that the loud cry to stop making the board a criminal justice only board is being heard.”
More on the club here.
Muffy Healey was right - in the 2006 campaign she said that if Deval Patrick were elected governor, the murderers would be running wild again in Massachusetts.
And so it comes to pass - for the first time in years, I’m getting dimes dropped about the Lifers’ Group Inc. at MCI-Norfolk, a club of stone-cold killers. The lifers are very excited about their prospects for getting back out onto the street now that the Parole Board is filling up with the Friends of Ben LaGuer.
More on DOC commissioner Harold Clarke:
The state’s new prison chief wants to reverse what he sees as the failed “busting rocks” philosophy of the past two decades and make inmate rehabilitation and re-entry a cornerstone of his tenure.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Herald, Department of Correction Commissioner Harold W. Clarke, 56, said the punishment-only approach ushered in during the William F. Weld years - when the former two-term governor famously declared that state prison should be a rock-breaking tour of hell - has made society less safe and failed to provide exiting inmates with the basic skills needed to lead lawful or productive lives.
OK. How about for the lifers? Sounds like they have too much time on their hands. Rockpile.
Topics: crime, punishment
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:27 am on Thursday, March 13, 2008
2 Responses to “The Killers Club”
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March 13th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Hey, I’m all for killers having a social life. As long as they have it in prison. For life.
March 13th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Liberalism kills.