Mississippi State Penitentiary

all washed up.

Well, Commissioner Valentine, Belansky and Tillotson were sentenced to life in prison in the Mississippi Penitentiary for robbing the Wiggins Bank.

But just 22 days ago, on October 5th, at 8 o'clock Friday morning, four prisoners were loaded into the truck cage at the penitentiary to be taken to the prison farm.

One of those prisoners was Belansky.

I was all set up in Mississippi to do the interview.

He was in Parchman Prison at the time when we were trying to do our first interview.

And I had actually been inside Parchman Prison when I was in Mississippi.

I went there and I did a story on a ministry that goes into the prison and the wives of the members of the church, they cook a lot of food.

And so they did end up getting a lot of participants in the prison, you know, engaging because they wanted the food and then they ended up going to church.

Two years later, he ran for president.

I think he was at Parchman Prison down near Atlanta.

Convict number 9653.

I actually used to have a button with his face and his number on it.

Chapter 15.

Jimmy Lee Gray and the Steel Pole at Parchman.

Parchman, Mississippi.

September 2nd, 1983.

At 12.01 a.m. on September 2nd, 1983, on a hot, muggy night at Parchman, Warden Eddie Lucas said, Let's go, into his handheld radio.

Eight minutes later, Jimmy Lee Gray was brought into Mississippi's four-by-four-foot steel gas chamber in a red jumpsuit, and it took the guards two minutes to strap him in by the arms, legs, and chest.

At 1210, the door sealed.

Later, in an elevator at police headquarters, he said, "'If I take you to her, will you help me?' and led the officers to her." His own mother had asked the governor not to commute his sentence.

Uh, she, uh, every w- uh, she had 16 children, 12 of whom lived.

Uh, all the males in her family served time at Parchman Prison.

Uh, sh- she had to shoot her husband at one point where, during a violent altercation.

She didn't know how to read or write, but I'll tell ya, the most amazing thing happened.

The judge agreed.

I will never forget when Judge Coleman read him the sentencing order of the court, saying that he would be put to death on so-and-so date at Parchman Prison.

This mean, tough guy, who I say is a punk, his knees buckled, and he almost went to the floor.

I will never forget that.

So there was, uh, an extensive manhunt that happened.

Uh, on March 3rd, 1955, at age 26, Gerald's father was executed in the gas chamber at Mississippi State Penitentiary, uh, becoming the first person in the state's history executed in such a procedure.

Yikes.

So they told Gerald, like, "Oh, your dad died in a car accident." "Oh, that's too bad.

Yeah.

Vernon is sentenced to three years in the notorious Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

was bad.

We have to pause here because Parchman in 1937 wasn't just a prison with cells in a yard.

It was an incredibly brutal penal farm.

It operated essentially as a slave labor camp.

That sounds like hell on earth.