Camp J Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola
Bloody Angola: A Podcast by Jim Chapman19 Jan 2023

Camp J Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola

First it was the Red Hat, brutal.....Then upon the closure of the Red Hat Cell Block came its replacement, even more brutal was the notorious Camp J.Closed in 2018 forever, Camp J was feared by even the convicts of Death Row and the most infamous solitary cell block in America.Woody Overton and Jim Chapman of Bloody Angola Podcast share the story of Camp J and the details that made it so bad.#CampJ #WilbertRideau #PrisonPodcast #BloodyAngola #LouisianaStatePrison #SolitaryConfinementFULL TRANSCRIPTBLOODY ANGOLA: A Podcast by Woody Overton and Jim Chapman (Camp J)
Jim: Hey, everyone, and welcome to Bloody-
Woody: -Angola.
Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.
Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison.
Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman.
Woody: I'm Woody Overton.
Jim: And we're going to talk about Camp J today, Woody.
Woody: Yeah, y'all. Camp J was always controversial, and certainly we can't cover all of Camp J in one episode, but we're not going to make a series out of this. We're just going to bring you some as we go along. Everything from Jim's phenomenal research on stuff and some of the stuff we're going to play today to, in the future, having former inmates that were in Camp J and all that. But let me tell you real quick about Camp J. If you go back on the history part, you remember when they closed the Red Hat cell block, they had to come up with a new area to house the worst of the worst, and that was Camp J.
Jim: If you're sitting there and you're wondering, "What is the Red Hat cell block?", well, we covered that, and I believe it was Season 2's opener of Bloody Angola. One thing I'll make sure I do is link that in the description, because this may be your first episode with Bloody Angola.
Woody: The Red Hat Cell Block, y'all, was notorious and they ended up shutting it down. How bad does a fucking place have to be if you're going to shut it down, when it's housing people that nobody cares about? But to get locked up in these places like the Red Hat before they shut it down and the new and improved Camp J when they opened it up, you have to be a real, real problem. Now, it doesn't matter what your crime is that you commit on the street, when you get to Angola, you get classified and most convicts do their time in dormitories. But you get locked down on Camp J was an extended lockdown-
Jim: CCR, Closed Cell Restricted.
Woody: -cell block. To get locked up there, you didn't just get in a fistfight with another inmate. That's a regular working cell block or admin seg thing. You had to either attack a guard with weapons, not just a fistfight. Weapons could be feces or urine also. Or get caught smuggling drugs and/or escape or try to escape.
Jim: Rape.
Woody: Rape. Yeah, you could call it raping somebody. You had to do something so bad that they wanted to lock you away from the rest of the prison population.
Jim: Think about it as a prison inside a prison. One of the questions you may have had was, "Well, you're already in prison. What else can they do to you?" Well, they have to have a place they can send you that is even worse than the situation you're already in. You're already in jail. You're already being told when to shit, when to eat, all those sorts of things. So, what can they do to you outside of that in CCR units or lockdowns or whatever you want to call it? Camp J was the place that you went to when you broke the rules in prison.
Woody: The worst rules. They like killed somebody or whatever.
Jim: Shanked. Jugged them up.
Woody: Killed them good.
Jim: Killed them good. [chuckles]
Woody: When you get sent to Camp J, you have to do 90 days before you come up for a review to be released back in general population. Now, that's 90 days without a low court or a high court writeup. And that means no rule infractions. If you're back there on your first day, and most of them do, and you fuck up, you do something wrong, guess what happens? You know you got to finish your other 89 days, or you're going to automatically get rejected. These guys aren't model convicts by any means, and they get the other 89 days to fuck up, and you can't do them anymore. So, when your review comes up again, you automatically get them denied, and then you get a clean slate for the next 90 days. But they got convicts in Camp J that are housed there forever.
Jim: Forever.
Woody: I mean, like so many years. I guess we should tell them a little bit about it.
Jim: One thing I want to go into before we do that, just paint the picture.
Woody: Oh, yeah. Paint the picture of the cells and everything else.
Jim: Think of it like this, y'all. If you were like me and you were raised and your parents would do this to you, maybe you'd say a cuss word, you see how that helps us [crosstalk] saying-- Cusswords every now and then. So, maybe--
Woody: [crosstalk] -get the soap.
Jim: Yeah, get the soap. That's one version. But a lot of parents would say, "Go in the corner, put your nose in the corner, and stand there till I tell you to come out."
Woody: My dad would just beat my ass-
[laughter]
Woody: -with a leather belt from Mexico which said "Mexico" and had dove imprints on there, it used to leave them on me. But I promise you, I deserved every one of them.
Jim: Every one of them. [laughs] But you put your nose in the corner and you'd have to sit there till your parents-- and 10 minutes seem like 10 hours. That's your parents' version of Camp J. That's their way of putting you solitary, by yourself, where all you have to do is focus on your nose in the corner. Well, that's what Camp J is, but obviously on a much higher level.
Woody: They're locked up 23 out of 24 hours a day. Most of the time, I would submit to you, they're locked up longer. They didn't get that hour out. Back in the day, they only gave them like one phone call a month. But if you got your hour out, it was for a shower and just sweep out your cell real quick because they weren't letting trustees in your cell. These are bad motherfuckers. And you get out. Now, I remember being a boy and going to Angola on a school tour, and they took us to Camp J. Outside the front of the camp, they had the exercise yards. Now it's not open yards, these were fenced in, wired-in yards, probably--
Jim: Dog pens, basically.
Woody: -were basically, yeah. I was going to say like 15 yards around. I remember going up and there was this convict, and he was shackled, but he only had one arm. He was shackled with his one arm and shackled to his feet and he's running that circle. But guess what? They called him Wingding. We've got an episode of Wingding. Wingding was trying to escape and they shot him at the gate and blew his arm off and they killed the other guy during the escape. We'll tell that story--[crosstalk]
Jim: Yes.
Woody: But Wingding was running around in circles and it's a bunch of impressionable kids and he's like, "Fuck you, you motherfuckers. Y'all coming in here and stare at us like fishing a bowl? You fucking motherfuckers, I'll kill all of you." What're they going to do to him?
Jim: Yeah.
Woody: He's already--[crosstalk]
Jim: He's already in Camp J.
Woody: [crosstalk] -like 15 fucking years. He ain't getting out. He was going to speak his mind. But when Camp J opened, it was a brand-new facility and top notch. But guess what? They didn't put a lot of money in Camp J. It would become known as the worst cell blocks in the United States of America, and probably in the world.
Jim: You've heard of us talk about this before, but budgets are always an issue with prisons no matter where you are in the country. Angola is no exception to that because obviously, us as free people, the last thing you want to do is have to pay for prisoners. Now, it's a necessary evil. It's just like insurance. You've got to have it just because if we didn't pay for these prisons, you'd have everybody roaming free, and that would obviously be a problem. But Camp J, when it opened, it was brand new. Well, as budgetary things came through every year, they would cut the budget for Angola. So, what do they start looking at? "Well, we got to cut staff. We've got to cut we don't need to fix that air conditioner that broke," although Camp J didn't even have that. Whatever it may be, they cut where they had to, and Camp J got cut a lot more [crosstalk] parts.
Woody: Camp J got [crosstalk] cut more than anything else.
Jim: Sure.
Woody: Because nobody gave a shit.
Jim: Nobody gave-- yeah. It's CCR, right?
Woody: Now, think about it, y'all. If you had 6000 inmates or 5800, however many it was, you've got that certain percentage. Now, it's all rapists and murderers and armed robbers and just the worst of the worst, but most of them are doing their time, not letting their time do them but you have a real, real big factor on Camp J. I mean, that certain percentage of that population that's in Angola, they're in there for not obeying the laws, for murder and rape and everything else but a certain percentage, when they get there, they're going to continue to act out. It's the only thing they know. I'm going to tell you right now, a huge percentage of them have severe mental issues. I'm telling you like cray, cray motherfuckers. But you know what? The state, especially back in the day, they only have one doctor come in from Baton Rouge, whatever, these guys didn't get the treatment, especially the mental stuff that they needed.
So, the cells are so small, y'all. It's a single-man cell. It has a shitter, a little metal iron desk, and basically about it. I think it's like five steps down, five steps back. You probably can reach your arms out and touch both walls.
Jim: It's a closet.
Woody: You don't have any direct visual contact with anyone else. It's just the place t

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The Personal Diary of Old Wooden Ears

The Personal Diary of Old Wooden Ears

Woody Overton and Jim Chapman open up season 3 of Bloody Angola: A Podcast by Woody Overton and Jim Chapman give you a ton of insight into Louisiana State penitentiary at Angola by reading you the actual diary of the founder of the "Angolite" magazine and editor Old Wooden Ears" from the 1930's!#Louisianastatepenitentiary #AngolaPrison #Podcast #Applepodcast #spotifyTranscript of episode2023 Jim: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another edition of Bloody-Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: A Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: And I'm Woody Overton.Jim: First of all, Woody Overton, it's Season 3.Woody: Yes, love, right? [chuckles]Woody: I can't believe that. Thank you everyone for liking us and sharing us and helping us grow. It's been amazing. Chase Team members and now all our higher levels of Patreon.Jim: Warden.Woody: Warden and C.E.R.T. Team. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. But yeah, Season 3, it's amazing. We've sold out two live shows now. Y'all's Response has been phenomenal. We appreciate you. You're about to start getting Bloody Angola three days a week.Jim: And as is our tradition, Woody Overton, we always start with a classic story from Angola.Woody: This is a classic story. Not only about the person it's about, but we are going to bring it to you from what should be a story in its own.Jim: Yes.Woody: The Angolite.Jim: The start of the Angolite, which for those of you that are not familiar, that's a magazine that is released by the prison for inmates to read.Woody: Not only inmates. I had a subscription to it back in 1992 or 1993 and they used to mail it to my house.Jim: All we're doing is telling people how old we are. Woody: [chuckles] Okay, sure. Yeah.Jim: [crosstalk] -Pony Express back then. [laughs]Woody: Yeah, right. That was definitely snail mail. It always fascinates the shit out of me what the criminal mind does. This is after I worked in the prison system too. But it's a phenomenal award-winning magazine.Jim: It really is. The guy who started that magazine is who we're going to really be talking about today. The interesting deal with this gentleman is that he was the original editor and the guy who started the Angolite. But not only did he do that, he also, in addition, kept probably one of the best diaries of Angola. As a matter of fact, I'm going to go ahead and say the best diary of Angola you would ever come across. And he had a nickname. I'm going to tell you about that nickname first. They called him Old Wooden Ears.Woody: Wooden Ears.Jim: The reason they called this gentleman that is he was beat by a correctional officer at some point during his early years in Angola and actually went deaf in one ear. So, he was known by the prisoners as Old Wooden Ears. We're going to tell you about the diaries of William Sadler, and we're going to name this episode Old Wooden Ears.Woody: Wooden Ears.Jim: The interesting thing with this episode is that we're going to actually read you the diary because we can't do this justice without actually reading you the entry. We're just going to take these back and forth. Trust me, this is interesting, y'all. This is the real diary.Woody: Think about it. You don't have a whole lot to do in prison. At least this guy was keeping himself busy by keeping a diary.Jim: And didn't hold back.Woody: Right. He told the truth according to him.Jim: Mm-hmm. That's right. We're going to start with January 1st, 1936. This was New Year's Day on Angola, and it was celebrated by all hands out in the field with the exception of Camp E, most of whom are assigned to the refinery. Sugarcane cutting going on full blast with no Sundays or holidays off until grinding ends, which will be about the middle of the month. Red Hats out in the cane shed.Woody: Red Hats.Jim: If you listen to our Red Hats episode, you'll find out a little bit more about them. But he'salready mentioning the Red Hat.Woody: Yeah. On January 3rd, 1936, he writes, "There was hail on the Gola this day. The refinery has been making 100% white sugar and shipping it to the brokers in Chicago under the Pelican Refinery, Baton Rouge label, so consumers wouldn't get onto the fact that it was made by convict labor. The last month, some of those dudes loading freight cars at Camp B siphoned off sugar out of several sacks and filled holes with striped convict clothes. When the sacks hit Chicago in the retail market and a howl went up, this was heard way down here. The result? About 16 men caught the bat, anywhere from 30 to 45 lashes each. But those who were beaten weren't the guilty ones, strange to say. It seems their clothing had been stolen and shoved into the sacks. And since the dudes bore their laundry numbers, it made them automatically guilty. The actual perpetrators of the switch got off scot-free, which is often the case on this Angola."Jim: How about that?Woody: Right. Y'all, go back and listen to some of our other episodes. The bat was basically a big leather strap. That's what they're referring to. Now, that's pretty smart. Let me tell youthis real quick. When I was in basic training in the army, they had a guy on a cot across from me that snored every night, and I wouldn't get any sleep anyway, I've been on a light sleeper. So, before the lights went out, you had to line your shoes underneath the bunk, I stole one of his boots. When the lights went out, he started snoring, I reared back and I threw that boot, I hit him in his head as hard as I could. He jumped up and he was like, "You motherfuckers. I'm going to get you. I got your boot. When I turn on the lights in the morning, I'm going to find out who it is." But guess what? It was his. These prisoners were smart like that. They stole somebody else's clothes and other inmates' clothes and numbers and plugged the holes. They were hoping to get the uprising, which they got. But unfortunately, for the victims that they stole from, well, they got the bat.Jim: They got the bat. 30 to 45 lashes, y'all. You're starting to see the brutality with Angola and why they called it Bloody Angola. Another thing that I found interesting about that entry was the fact that they would switch the labels. The reason they would do that, back in the 30s, people weren't down with convict labor like that.Woody: They still do it. When I worked at DCI, they had the crawfish plant, and they ran 24 hours a day. They brought in two 18-wheeler loads of crawfish a day and they boiled them. The inmates had to peel 16 pounds of tail meat and they got to weigh it in their 12-hour shift. If they didn't peel the 16 pounds, they went to the hole. But guess what? They packaged it under Louisiana Crawfish Company and sold it. That's the shit you buy in the grocery store when you buy Louisiana Crawfish-- It used to be when you buy Louisiana Crawfish tails.Jim: There it goes. The next time you buy, you think about that.Woody: [crosstalk] -crawfish season, they made them cut onions and they sold the cut-uponions like the Holy Trinity. But they damn sure didn't say it was done by prisoners.Jim: That's right. We continue on. And you're seeing that brutality take place. "January 5th, 1936. Narrowly missed the bat myself this day. Captain JH Row-" that's a good cager name, "-of Camp A missed credit for a carload of cane which had been sent to the mill. There's always been more confusion out in the yard when the cane cars are brought in by railroad crews at night. In this case, the weight ticket evidently became lost, not by fault, but close shave nevertheless."Woody: Wow, close shave-- [crosstalk] Jim: Yeah. And he narrowly missed that bat.Woody: I can't imagine there were a lot of lights and shit on the trains, they were rolling. I think about sugarcane, y'all, that's what he's talking about. Look, there's a certain time you got to cut it and get it out and get it to the mill to get it pressed. I know they were working sun up to sun down.Jim: Oh, yeah. And sugarcane was a huge commodity. Woody: Still is.Jim: It still is, yes.Woody: All right, y'all. So, the next one, his journal entry is on January 9th, 1936. He says, "It was cold and pouring down rain today. No slickers, no boots, no gloves. All camps that work in the fields, negro women cutting cane from on headland, white men from Camp G working toward them. John Henry on the turn row. Dinner served out in the open. Rain so hard, the whippoorwill peas bounce off your plate faster than you can spoon down. Menutoday, chicken, chopped grits, stove pipe gravy, soybean bread, and coffee made from horse beans for breakfast."Jim: I'm hungry already. [laughs] Woody: Right? I can't imagine. Jim: Out in the rain, y'all.Woody: Hey, it's raining so hard, you try to eat your shit before it gets any soggier, but the fat drops are hitting your plate so hard that your peas are bouncing off the plate? That's crazy. Hey, they didn't give a shit. They were getting that sugar cut.Jim: That's right. "14th January, 1936. The whistle blew today for the end of the 1935-36 grinding season. Tonnage figures showed one of the biggest years in Angola history, but no sugar on the table. They found over nine tons which had been hidden in various places around the refinery for use during the coming year by the refinery crew. The hideouts were tipped off by the Black Cat, who as a convict had helped plan it. Two weeks ago, he was paroled to the state for work in the refinery, so his first duty was to put the finger on the hidden sugar."Woody: Wow. Gave it up. Jim: Gave it up.Woody: You know that went on, man. Sugar is a commodity. Even the free people that worked in the mill, I guarantee the inmates kept some too make that homemade brew. All right, y'all, so we're going to January 20, 1936, again from Wooden Ears' diary. He says, "Camps all at work in the field hoeing stubbles. Rainy and wet today. Wet clothes worn into the camp dormitories, which are heated only by a wood-burning stove made out of a di

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Hell or Jail? 2022 Christmas Special Episode

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The Wolf Dogs of Angola | Bloody Angola Podcast

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Exonerated: The Tragic Archie Williams Story Part 2 The Conclusion

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Gal Boy | Bloody Angola Thanksgiving Special

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Bloody Angola Podcast LIVE is Coming!

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Exonerated: The Tragic Story of Archie Williams

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