Legacy of The Fox: Gary Trapnell

Dear Jennifer Savage:

My name is Eddie Griffin, author of “Breaking Men’s Minds”. I knew your father Garrett Trapnell. In fact, I knew him from prison, during the time he was writing “The Fox Is Crazy Too”. He was the man in the cell next door to me inside Marion Federal Prison.

Trap, as we called him, gave me the opportunity to read his manuscript. I declined, because I was not into a man’s glorification of his crime life. But it only goes to show that an outlaw is worth more dead, than alive.

While in prison, he laughed all the time. There was always a smile upon his face. Life was just a joke to him, and he kept me in stitches.

Gary was a con artist. He pulled some of the most daring and idiotic stunts in criminal history, some of which captured national headlines. His book, “The Fox Is Crazy Too”, whould have been a story about these exciting exploits. But the one that got me the most was his airliner hijacking in New York.

It was a time of mass exodus and air piracy, as leftist revolutionaries were fleeing the United States from the persecution by J. Edgar Hoover COINTELPRO, and seeking asylum in socialist countries like Cuba. Aircraft hijackings were very common at the time. And, those radicals who were not in exile or in prison were underground fugitives, hiding from the FBI.

I believe we were all incensed at Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and J. Edgar Hoover for hounding UCLA professor Angela Davis, author of "Soledad Brothers" at the time. She became, to us, our Sun Goddess when they put her picture on the FBI Most Wanted poster, and plastered it in every Post Office in the country. To see, the woman with the black halo Afro, a man could only fall in love with the Mother of the Revolution. So did Gary.

Garrett Trapnell, of all people, a white boy, hijacked an airliner, demanded $300,000 and the release of Angela Davis. He was shot in the arm, captured, and sent to prison.

[This should not have been the last chapter of his book, because half of the story of Gary Trapnell was never told.]

I remember asking him what he had planned to do with $300,000 and this vivacious Amazon Queen of our cause.

"Go to a paradise isle and live happily ever after," he replied, before busting out with a big laugh.

After he wrote the book, and got it published, he attempted a daring escape from Marion Federal Prison.

Here is what I personally witnessed:

While sitting on the prison yard with Charles Beasley, he looked up in the air and nudged me.

"We better get out of here," he said. "Looks like there is going to be some shooting."

Sure enough, unfolding before my eyes, just above the horizon beyond the guard tower and the razor wire fence perimeter, came a helicopter like a dive bomber. The craft was listing erratically back and forth, headed straight for the tower.

My first thought: I got to see this. It was the most exciting thing of the day. That was what I told Beasley.

Then I saw Gary and another inmate strike out running toward the fence, wearing yellow windbreakers blowing in the wind. Gary had a hitch in his giddy-up.

In the meantime, the helicopter banked left, avoiding the tower, almost flipping.

According to latter news accounts: A woman, whom Trapnell had befriended through correspondence, hijacked a rental helicopter and took the pilot hostage, forcing him to fly to the prison in Marion, where she had planned to pluck the two inmates off the yard.

But the plan, however, never worked out like that. Instead, the pilot struggled with the woman over the gun, while fighting to keep from losing control of the aircraft. While steering with one hand, he wrest control of the gun.

Like a woman in total oblivious delirium, she casually announces, “Oh, that’s okay. I got another one in my purse.”

With that said, the pilot blows her brains out the back window.

The helicopter came short of the fence by only a few feet. The pilot got out and charged toward the tower wildly waving his arm. When the guard took notice, his first impulse was to grab his gun and take aim. The pilot made a beeline u-turn.

By then, the alarm sounded and we were herded back into the cell blocks.

The last we saw of Gary and his buddy, they were sprawled on the ground, surrounded by guards.

But this was not the end of Gary Trapnell. A few months later, a 17-year old high school honor student hijacked an airliner and had it flown to Marion. She was the daughter of the deceased woman, and she demanded the release of Trapnell.

After her capture, the court took mercy on the young lady. But Gary was confined to dungeon, and put on No Human Contact status, meaning that he would never see the light of day again.

Since 1909, there have been four successive Boogey Men in the federal prison system, the first being Robert Stroud, otherwise known as the Birdman of Alcatraz, who spent over 50 years in solitary confinement, until his death on November 21, 1963.

The second Boogey Man was Hiller “Red” Hayes, an experiential drug subject who was released from prison in the late 1950s and suffered a white-out, where he went on a kidnapping rampage in 1960. Because he kidnapped a cop and took a squad car, he was designated never to see the light of day again. He died in solitary confinement in August 1977, around the same time Gary Trapnell was taking his place.

I remember reading where Gary died in solitary confinement of emphysema. That would mean the new Boogey Man would be Thomas Silverstein, who killed three men during his incarceration, one of whom was a prison guard at Marion.

-End
Eddie Griffin
http://eddiegriffinbasg.blogspot.com/

Thief on the Left: Thief on the Right

Part 1 – Ship on a Frozen Sea

By Eddie Griffin

Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Luke 23:38 And a superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Mark 15:27 And with him they crucify two thieves; the one on his right hand, and the other on his left. 28 And the scripture was fulfilled, which saith, “And he was numbered with the transgressors.”

Luke 23:39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, “If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.” 40 But the other answering rebuked him, saying, “Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.” 42 And he said unto Jesus, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” 43 And Jesus said unto him, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”

THIEF ON THE LEFT

Since I was the loudest and angriest inmate among the prisoners, and since so much of my prison writings attracted outside attention, they decided to put me somewhere where I could not be seen nor heard. They put me in a refrigerated strip cell, in nothing but my civvies, and the temperature was sub-freezing.

The prison guards had taken everything I had, all of my books, letters, and writing materials. They held me incommunicado and spread the rumor among other prisoners on the compound that I was dead. And, indeed, I was.

Leftist revolutionary thief and bank robber confined inside a prison within a prison, the end of the line of the end of the line. Here they do not quibble about the legality of a man’s dead. Being frozen to death was just another means of getting their message across, that they did not give a damn about my body or my soul.

For good measures, they threw a little red bible into the cell. It was the only reading material I had left of a 140-book library. They laughed at me when I demanded my law books. The warden was most happy to remind me that I was not in a position to demand anything.

The northern gushing through the narrow slit windows brought snowflakes. It was one of the coldest winters in southern Illinois history, and I was wholly exposed.

They had taken the mattress, but left the plastic mattress cover. With it, I wrapped my body, and the heat from my pores kept me somewhat warm. The clear plastic turned yellow over time, and slowly it turned oily black.

They gave me running water for only 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening, along with three meals per day. But the constant cold killed my appetite. Whatever the guard slid into my tray slot, returned with him to the dumpster. I barely cast a glance his way, day in, day out. I just sat there, frozen to the icy steel bunk, staring into space and reading the little red bible. I had to keep blinking my eyes to prevent ice crystals from glazing over my pupils.

Then I saw a mirage: A ship frozen at sea. It was like the Titanic in paradise.