The New Mexico Prison Riot Was The "Bloodiest Prison Riot" in American History
America’s bloodiest prison riot started on February 1, 1980 at the New Mexico State Penitentiary and ended 36 hours later with 34 casualties. Prison guards were brutally sodomized, pedophiles and convicted rapist were brutally disfigured, and the prison’s “snitches” population were tortured and dismembered while still alive.
W.G. Stone, a former inmate and a possible pseudonym, went on record and described the horrific scene in a tell-all book The Hate Factory. One death he described as:
“Tying the rope under his arms and around his chest, they strung him up on the basketball hoop for all to see. There he would hang for the rest of the riot. During the hours of madness that were to follow, inmates would come in and hack at his dangling corpse with knives, beat it with pipes, mutilating it so totally that it was beyond recognition, a raw, bloody mass of flesh, by the time the uprising was over.” The Hate Factory
W.G. Stone was serving a 10-50 year armed robbery conviction.
Terrible Decisions
Although no-one has officially claimed responsibility for the riot, we do know that terrible decisions were made weeks prior. Decisions that gave the more violent inmates opportunities to riot and gave the “tinderblock”, as the governor called it, the spark that it needed to ignite.
The peak population of the New Mexico State Penitentiary reached 1,272 inmates. There were only 34 guards working in the prison. Not only was the prison overpopulated, but it was severely understaffed.
The inmate population was mostly made up of the Black Muslims, the Chicanos, the Mexican Mafia, Nazi Skinheads, and a few biker gangs.
Divided by hate and racial tension, each clique was more focused on killing the other instead of escaping the confines.
To address the overpopulation, authorities made the fatal decision to move Cellblock 5’s inmates, mostly extremely violent Aryan Brotherhood members, to a minimum security dormitory E-2, while work crews repaired Cellblock 5.
Not thinking of the consequences, the maintenance crew left their blow torches at the job site, which the rioters used to incinerate fellow inmates.
Heads Will Roll
Governor Bruce King called in over 240 police officers, medics, S.W.A.T. teams, and even the New Mexico National Guard to control the situation.
The prison inmates took over the entire prison and began holding the 12 prison guards hostage, telling Governor King that if their negotiations broke down, then “12 heads would roll”.
During the night of February 1, 1980, there were only 3 guards on duty: Lieutenant Anaya, Captain Roybal, and Officer Schmitt.
All 3 guards were severely beaten, stripped naked, sodomized by multiple inmates, and dragged through the prison as the riot continued.
The Takeover
It is believed that the Aryan Brotherhood inmates planned and started the riot.
Around 11:45pm the inmates were drinking “hooch,” a prison beer", when one of the Aryan Brotherhood members said, “Unless somethin’s done soon, the Man’s gonna have all the white bros locked down in cellblock 3. Over half the brotherhood’s there already.”
At 1:09am, both guards, Anaya and Roybal, walked through the open dormitory to check heads as required by staff every few hours.
The inmates who were faking sleep grabbed Anaya, Roybal, and Schmitt, stripped them naked, sodomized them in “trains”, and donned the guard uniforms.
"Using their cocks like weapons, they paid back The Man with the worst humiliation they knew. They did it in "trains," four or five inmates lining up in front of each of the three, coming quickly, as if their semen were bullets. They worked up to such a frenzy that eventually their cocks wouldn't do. They had to take a two- foot billyclub, grease it down (only because they tried it dry and couldn't get it in), and shove it as high as they could up one guard's anus." The Hate Factory
The rioters were making their way to the control room. The control room would allow the inmates to fully take the entire prison hostage.
Shatterproof My Ass
Ironically, 2 weeks before the riot, the prison’s control room was outfitted with brand new shatterproof glass. Two guards were inside the control room, and both were refusing to open the door.
The new shatterproof glass withstood the officer batons, pipes, and even mop buckets hurled at great speed at the glass, but could not withstand a prison fire extinguisher that one of the bigger inmates hurled at the glass.
The inmates captured the control room and now had complete control over the prison.
Snitches Get Ditches
The rioters could have easily escaped after capturing the control room of the prison, since they now had access to all of the prison doors.
However, they decided instead to wreak as much havoc as possible inside the prison walls, nearly burning the entire building to the ground.
Forming a 14-inmate "execution squad", the more depraved inmates made thier way to Cellblock 4, which was known to them as the "snitch unit."
This "Protection" block of the prison housed not only snitches, but also pedophiles and child rapist and child murderers.
Out of the 34 deceased inmates, the majority were housed in Cellblock 4 of the New Mexico Prison.
The execution squad handcuffed one victim, a snitch named Archie Martinez, "spread-eagle to the bars" and publically executed him.
"His screams could be heard not only on the north side, but also far into the main corridor that ran through the penitentiary."
Archie then received the following treatment.
"Taking a straight razor, they slit the skin over both eyelids and gouged out his eyeballs, so they hung down on his cheeks."
Holding Archie's eyeballs, the squad woke their victim up with smelling salts so they can continue their sadistic torture.
They then sliced off his penis while still holding his eyeballs.
More fortunate victims were killed quickly, others were cremated while still alive in their own cells after the execution squad torched their mattresses.
Another inmate was killed when a metal rode was "hammered through his head."
