Many times due to the unspoken “prison justice” code, some of history’s most prominent criminals have suffered violence behind bars and even lost their lives at the hands of other inmates.
When Larry Nassar was reportedly stabbed by a fellow prisoner inmate in a federal Florida prison on Sunday, the violence was purportedly directed towards child murders, rapists, and child molesters as it frequently does.
According to reports, the disgraced former sports physician who was found guilty of sexually abusing multiple female gymnasts, including Olympic medalists, is recovering well.
However, other criminals – from notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to a low-level robbery convict who was sawed in half during a prison riot – have not gotten off so lucky.
Here are five instances of high-profile criminals who faced violence while imprisoned for their crimes.
Jeffrey Dahmer
Dahmer, who was already one of the most infamous and horrifying serial killers, gained notoriety last year after actor Evan Peters’ portrayal of the “Milwaukee Cannibal” in a Netflix series.
Between 1978 and 1991, Dahmer killed, severed, and occasionally ate 17 young men. After being found guilty, he was sentenced to 15 sentences of life in prison at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.
Dahmer was unlikely to pass away naturally due to his renown and horrifying crimes.
The fact that Dahmer was a gay guy who raped him and that his crimes had received widespread national media notice undoubtedly caught the attention of other inmates.
On November 28, 1994, a newspaper article outlining Dahmer’s misdeeds was thrust in his face by fellow prisoner Christopher Scarver.
In an interview with the New York Post, Scarver said, “I asked him if he did those things because I was fiercely disgusted. He was startled. He was, indeed. He didn’t take long to begin looking for the door. I turned him away.”
Then, after beating him to death with a metal rod, he left Dahmer lying on the gym floor while he made his way back to his cell.
Another prisoner attempted to slice Dahmer’s throat in front of security personnel before Scarver fatally bludgeoned him, but he was not seriously harmed.
James “Whitey” Bulger
North of Boston, notorious mafia boss James “Whitey” Bulger oversaw the Winter Hill gang before going on the run and eluding capture for 16 years.
He ranked behind Osama bin Laden as the second most sought fugitive by the FBI by 1999.
He was finally apprehended in Santa Monica, California, in June 2011, and was found guilty of 31 charges of racketeering and participated in 11 homicides.
Bulger reportedly had been sought out by the FBI in 1975 to work as an informant despite his criminal behaviour.
The Department of Justice stated in a report released in December that his jail assassination was prepared “as soon as” he entered a federal prison in West Virginia as an 89-year-old man using a wheelchair.
Prior to being moved to a federal prison in West Virginia, he was first incarcerated in the same Florida federal jail as Nassar.
According to the DOJ investigation, which said that Bulger lasted less than 12 hours after he was transported, his anticipated transfer was widely reported by the news and a subject of conversation among prison staff within earshot of other inmates.
Inmates broke into Bulger’s cell and beat him to death in the early hours of October 30, 2018, taking seven minutes.
It took over two hours for his body to be discovered. According to the investigation reports, after a prison guard shift change, patrolling guards discovered Bulger’s body at 8:21 a.m. with no pulse and obvious injuries to his head and face.
Albert DeSalvo “The Boston Strangler”
13 women were murdered by “The Boston Strangler” between 1962 and 1964, but the killer’s full name wasn’t revealed to the public until 1965.
Albert DeSalvo admitted to being “The Boston Strangler,” or “The Phantom Fiend,” as the criminal was known in the middle of the 1960s, during a different criminal investigation concerning sex assaults and break-ins.
The case was still pending, though, and DeSalvo, who had already been found guilty of the other offences and was being imprisoned in a prison in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, was not yet subject to prosecution.
According to letters found by Boston writer Casey Sherman, DeSalvo apparently intended to retract his confession and “tell the truth” while he was inside.
This raised some questions, and as a result, his body was twice exhumed by detectives (first in 2001 and again in 2013). Prosecutors then claimed that DNA evidence connected DeSalvo to the rape and murder of Mary Sullivan, 19, who was “The Strangler’s” final victim, and that DeSalvo was responsible for this.
DeSalvo was fatally murdered in his jail cell bed towards the end of November 1973, not long after he had finished writing the letters.
Donald Harvey “Angel Of Death”
Donald Harvey, a former nurse, confessed of killing 37 individuals while working in Cincinnati and London, Kentucky, in the 1970s and 1980s.
In a book, his attorney asserted that Harvey had admitted to 57 murders.
When he murdered the terminally ill patients, Harvey thought he was acting as the “angel” of his victims.
An inmate in a Toldeo, Ohio, prison beat Harvey to death in 2017 while serving a life sentence in an effort to provide closure for his victims, he reportedly told a Toledo newspaper in a letter.
Nicholas Anthony Rodriguez
In Alameda County, California, Nicholas Rodriguez was incarcerated for eight years after being convicted of robbery.
Although he committed a crime far below the level of the serial killers on this list, he nevertheless suffered possibly the worst fate of them.
According to an autopsy report that The Associated Press was able to get, Rodriguez’s body was sawed in half during a 2015 prison riot in California State Prison, Solano, and had most of his chest organs as well as his stomach organs removed.
According to the complaint, his body was folded and placed inside a trash can inside a shower cubicle.
The body of the 24-year-old man was located after 15 hours.
Rodriguez’s cellmate, Jesus Perez, who was at the time serving a life sentence for a murder in Los Angeles County, pled guilty to the heinous crime four years later.
