Jack Henry Abbott walked out of federal custody in June 1981 with a job offer, a book about to be published and almost no experience of life outside an institution. Since the age of 12 he had been free for about nine months in all. He had been convicted of passing bad checks, of bank robbery, of escape and of assaults behind bars, and in 1967 a Utah court had convicted him over the death of a fellow inmate. Six weeks after he reached New York, a man died outside a restaurant in Manhattan's East Village after a dispute with him. Abbott fled, spent weeks on the move through the United States and Mexico, and was arrested in a Louisiana oil town in September.
At his trial in January 1982 he admitted the killing and denied murder. A jury in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan acquitted him of second-degree murder and convicted him of manslaughter in the first degree on January 21, 1982, his 38th birthday. In April the court found him a persistent violent felony offender and sentenced him to 15 years to life. He was refused parole in 2001, and he died by suicide in a New York state prison in February 2002.
Abbott was born in Michigan on January 21, 1944. At 12 he was sent to Utah's State Industrial School for Boys. By his own later count and by the record read out in court, his life after the age of 12 passed almost entirely inside reform schools, jails and prisons. In 1963 he was imprisoned in Utah on a check forgery charge, under a five-year sentence. That conviction placed him in a Utah state prison as a young man, and he would remain in custody, apart from a few weeks, for the next 18 years.
The record that accumulated during those years was long. When the case came to trial in New York, the convictions on file included check fraud, bank robbery, assault on prison guards, the death of a fellow inmate and escape. Fourteen of his years in custody had been spent in isolation cells. He had been out of custody for roughly nine months in total since the age of 12, a figure repeated at every stage of the New York case.
In 1966, about two years into the forgery sentence, Abbott caused the death of a fellow inmate, James L. Christensen. He maintained that he had been defending himself. The case did not end in a homicide conviction. In 1967 he was convicted of an assault offense against a convict, a felony that New York prosecutors later cited as one of his two prior felony convictions. He was given an indeterminate sentence that ran alongside the term he was already serving, and he stayed in the Utah prison system for most of the following decade.
The death was not put before the Manhattan jury. During the New York trial the jurors had not been told that he had been convicted over the death of another prisoner, and the conviction reached the court record only at sentencing.
In 1971 Abbott escaped from the Utah state prison. He made his way to Denver, where he robbed a bank, and he was caught about a month later. A federal court gave him a 19-year term for the robbery. The escape and the robbery became the second prior felony that prosecutors later placed before the New York sentencing court, and the federal term was the sentence he was still serving when he was paroled in 1981. He had been due to reach the end of federal parole supervision on August 25, 1981.
He served the federal term in federal custody. In the late 1970s he began a long correspondence with a novelist who was then writing about a Utah murder case. Between 1977 and 1980 he wrote about 1,000 letters, which described prison life in detail. A selection appeared in The New York Review of Books in June 1980, while he was still awaiting a parole decision. Passages from the letters were collected and published by Random House as In the Belly of the Beast in July 1981, a few weeks after his release.
The novelist and others in New York argued to the Federal Parole Board that Abbott had a real gift as a writer and offered him work in the city. The novelist hired him as a "secretary on literary matters" at $150 a week. The board granted parole, and Abbott was released in June 1981. He arrived in New York on June 5 and was placed in a federally funded residence for parolees in lower Manhattan, where he was meant to adjust to ordinary life under supervision.
For several weeks he was a public figure in the city's literary world. His book appeared that July, and the letters that had won him supporters were now on sale under his name.
Before dawn on July 18, 1981, Richard Adan died in the East Village of Manhattan after a dispute with Abbott. It was about six weeks after Abbott's release, and he was still living under parole supervision.
Abbott left New York immediately. Over the next weeks he moved through several cities in the United States and Mexico with about $300. He reached a small town in Mexico, but he spoke no Spanish, and he made his way back across the border to Louisiana, where he eventually found work as a roustabout in Morgan City, Louisiana, an oil town west of New Orleans.
United States marshals had been trailing him for about two weeks when, on Wednesday, September 23, 1981, St. Mary Parish sheriff's deputies and the Morgan City Police Department, working with the marshals, arrested him in Morgan City, ending a manhunt of about two months. He went without resistance. He was booked in St. Mary Parish and held as an escaped federal prisoner, with no bond set, while New York sought him as the suspect in the July death.
The marshals moved him to New Orleans, where he was held overnight pending a hearing before a federal magistrate on his return to New York. He was back in New York by the fall and was held in a New York City jail while the case was prepared for trial.
Abbott was tried for second-degree murder in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, before a justice of that court, in January 1982. The trial ran for 13 days. The prosecution called 10 witnesses and the defense called five.
The People's case rested on eyewitness testimony and on the medical evidence. The central eyewitness, a former Marine, testified on Wednesday, January 13, and his evidence closed the prosecution case. The defense attacked his account, pointing among other things to his nearsightedness. A medical examiner also gave evidence for the People.
The defense case turned on Abbott himself. He took the stand on Friday, January 15, and testified for nearly 90 minutes. He admitted the killing and called it "a tragic misunderstanding." He told the jury that the eyewitness had been "fundamentally" correct and that he now understood he had misread the other man's intentions. He broke down and wept several times during his evidence, and he said that he did not remember the argument that had preceded the death. Years of prison, he told the jury, had taught him to be ready to kill or be killed.
Outbursts from the public gallery came at the end of his direct testimony. The judge told the jury to disregard them and barred those responsible from the courtroom for the cross-examination. The defense moved for a mistrial, arguing that the outbursts had followed the testimony on which nearly all of the defense case depended, and the judge reserved decision on the motion.
Cross-examination began on Monday, January 18. The prosecution put about a dozen passages from his book into evidence and read them to the jury. The novelist who had sponsored his parole also gave evidence that day.
In summations the prosecution argued that the death was murder. The defense argued that Abbott had acted under "extreme emotional disturbance" and "did not intend to murder" the victim.
The jury of seven men and five women received the case at about 1:45 p.m. on Wednesday, January 20, after the judge's instructions. It deliberated for about five hours that day without a verdict and was sequestered overnight in a hotel. During deliberations the jurors asked to see diagrams showing where the main eyewitness had stood, and the question that divided them was intent.
On Thursday, January 21, 1982, Abbott's 38th birthday, the jury acquitted him of second-degree murder and convicted him of manslaughter in the first degree. Sentencing was first set for February 24.
Sentencing was delayed into the spring. In March Abbott refused to leave his cell for a hearing, and the court warned that it would order him brought in by force if he did not appear for sentence. He came to court on April 15, 1982, and remained impassive.
The prosecution placed his two prior felony convictions before the court: the 1971 bank robbery and the 1967 Utah assault conviction. On that record the judge found Abbott a persistent violent felony offender, which raised the maximum term he faced to 25 years to life, against a range of 12 to 25 years for the manslaughter count alone. The court imposed 15 years to life.
The New York term did not begin at once. Abbott first had to serve up to eight years on unrelated federal and Utah sentences, so that he faced up to 23 years in custody in all. He was 38.
Abbott spent the rest of his life in custody. He went before the New York parole board in 2001, and in August of that year he was refused release. He would not have been eligible to be considered again until June 2003.
On Sunday, February 10, 2002, he died by suicide in a New York state prison. He was 58. He left a note, and the state Department of Corrections declined to disclose what it said. State law required an autopsy because the death was unattended.
The death in the Utah prison is the point on which the legal record is thinnest. Abbott was convicted in 1967 of an assault offense against a fellow convict, not of murder or manslaughter, and the term he received is recorded as an indeterminate one. That conviction is the only judgment on the death. Accounts of the term itself differ: one gives a concurrent sentence of three to 20 years, another one to 20 years, another 14 years.
Accounts of his first commitment differ as well, placing his entry into a Utah reform school at nine, at 11 or at 12. The month of his 2001 parole refusal is given as June in one account and August in another; the hearing and the decision may account for the difference.
The death in Manhattan was settled by the jury. Abbott admitted causing it and denied murder, and the jury convicted him of manslaughter in the first degree while acquitting him of second-degree murder. His claim that he had misread the victim's intentions was the core of his defense, and the verdict reflects the jury's finding that intent to murder was not proved, not a finding that his account was true.
January 21, 1944: Jack Henry Abbott is born in Michigan.
About 1956: At 12 he is sent to Utah's State Industrial School for Boys.
1963: He is imprisoned in Utah on a check forgery charge.
1966: A fellow inmate dies in a Utah state prison after an attack by Abbott.
1967: A Utah court convicts him of an assault offense against a convict over the death of a fellow inmate.
1971: He escapes from a Utah state prison, robs a bank in Denver and is caught about a month later; a federal court gives him 19 years.
1977 to 1980: He writes about 1,000 letters to a novelist from prison.
June 1980: A selection of the letters appears in The New York Review of Books.
June 1981: The Federal Parole Board grants parole; he arrives in New York on June 5.
July 1981: In the Belly of the Beast, drawn from his letters, is published.
July 18, 1981: The victim dies in Manhattan; Abbott leaves New York.
September 23, 1981: He is arrested in Morgan City, Louisiana, and held as an escaped federal prisoner.
January 13, 1982: The prosecution rests in his trial for second-degree murder.
January 15, 1982: He testifies and admits the killing, calling it a tragic misunderstanding.
January 20, 1982: The jury begins deliberating.
January 21, 1982: He is acquitted of second-degree murder and convicted of manslaughter in the first degree.
April 15, 1982: He is found a persistent violent felony offender and sentenced to 15 years to life.
August 2001: He is refused parole.
February 10, 2002: He dies by suicide in a New York state prison.