Famous prison deaths, from the mafia to the Manson Family

Diane McCloud was freed from jail earlier this week, but only so she could die. McCloud, 48, was in Nassau County jail for shoplifting more than $3,500 worth of goods from Target.

“She’s terminal,” said her lawyer. “It’s just so she can die easier and pain-free.” McCloud’s case was unusual, usually dying prisoners end up dying in prison. Many large correctional facilities have nursing homes, and some, like Louisiana State Penitentiary, in Angola, the largest maximum security prison in the United States, even offer hospice care—the program was recently highlighted in a documentary shown on the Oprah Winfrey Network. According to a 2005 New York Times article, the number of lifers has almost doubled in the last decade. In 2005, some 132,000 prisoners were serving life sentences, according to the article; for murder, burglary, drugs and other crimes. Many prisoners will die without anyone noticing. But not all. Here are a few of the nation’s most famous prison deaths..

Susan Atkins, member of the Manson Family – Manson and his followers murdered nine people in California during the summer of 1969. Atkins, known within the family as Sadie Mae Glutz, later said that she believed Manson to be Jesus. She bore a son by one of the group’s members that Manson named Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. Atkins was convicted for her participation in eight of the killings, including the murder of Sharon Tate, the wife of famous French-Polish film director, Roman Polanski. Tate was eight months pregnant at the time. Atkins received the death sentence but it was commuted to life in prison. She became a born-again Christian, taught prison classes and received a commendation for assisting officials in a suicide attempt.  Yet she was denied parole 18 times, becoming the longest-incarcerated female inmate in the California penal system.

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In April 2008, it was revealed Atkins had terminal brain cancer. One leg had already been amputated and she was given less than six months to live. Her lawyer said she could barely speak and that she couldn’t sit up in bed without assistance. He requested a “compassionate release”, something that many in the prison reform community, who regarded keeping Atkins in prison as akin to torture, supported. But the victim’s family members reacted strongly. “She will be set free when judged by God,” said Debra Tate, a relative of Sharon. “It’s important that she die in incarceration.” And she did, on September 24, 2009, at a nursing center in the Central California Women’s Facility, in Chowchilla, California.

Jeffrey Dahmer, serial killer and cannibal – Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. The twisted details, which involved dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism, made him one of the most famous, and ill-liked American serial killers. Dahmer was found guilty on 15 counts of murder and sentenced to 15 life terms, a total of 957 years in prison. He served his time at Columbia Correctional Institution, in Portage, Wisconsin. In July of 1994 an inmate attempted to slash Dahmer’s throat with a razor blade while he was returning to his cell from church service in the prison chapel. Dahmer escaped the incident with superficial injuries, but in an attack later the same year he was not as lucky. While doing janitorial work Dahmer was attacked by a prisoner who beat him to death with a 20 inch steel bar he’d taken from the prison weight room. “God told me to do it,” the man told a guard. “You will hear about it on the 6 o’clock news…Jeffrey Dahmer is dead.” In 1996, Dahmer’s possessions were purchased by a Milwaukee civic group, destroyed and buried in an undisclosed Illinois landfill.

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John Gotti, mob boss – Gotti had two famous nicknames: the Dapper Don, for his penchant for expensive suits, and the Teflon Don, because he gained acquittals on three separate high-profile trials during the 1980s. But in 1992, after his underboss, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano testified against him, Gotti was convicted of five murders as well as racketeering, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling, extortion, tax evasion and loan sharking. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole and transferred to the United States Penitentiary, in Marion, Illinois. He spent most of his time in solitary confinement, allowed out of his cell for just one hour each day. In 1998, Gotti was diagnosed with throat cancer and sent to a prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri. The tumor was removed but returned two years later. On June 10, 2002, at the age of 61, he died in the Springfield prison hospital. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn ruled that Gotti would not be permitted a Christian burial. His funeral was held in a non-church facility, the procession included helicopters, a stream of black limousines and nearly two dozen cars containing cigar, royal flush and martini glass shaped floral arrangements. “Some might say he was notorious, law enforcement might say he was infamous,” said his lawyer, Bruce Cutler. “I say he was a sincere man, a remarkable man, an extraordinary man.”