THE END OF THE OLD NAZI
The old Nazi soldier was sprawled on the unpainted
concrete floor with hands clasped to his left chest.
There was blood on the floor, bed, desk, even on the
door. He was dressed in the standard padded
orange pants and jumper, but the jumper was now
had a darker stain.
I stepped back and waved Arne in. He reached over
to check the body while I ran back toward the control
room pulling out my radio to call for an “incident
management response” team. “IMS, IMS, inmate
severely hurt House 5 cell B7, lot of blood, need
medical,” I shouted into the radio.
As I reached the control room with the radio in my
hand, CO McKinley realized I was calling the IMS in
his house. He looked at me questioningly, “You sure
about this?” he asked through the glass. I just
nodded yes.
He then picked up his radio, “That’s Trimble Yard!
IMS Trimble Yard, House 5, cell B7.”
I had forgotten to say what yard! My radio was on
channel 3, a complex radio channel which reached
more than just Trimble. I caught my breath and
clicked on my radio. “Yes, Trimble Yard, House 5,
B7, medical and criminal IMS called by complex CO3
MacGloughlin.
Arne was now at my side, “He’s dead.”
J ust then, the entrance door flew open and three
COs came rushing in with MACE ready to use. Arne
barked to get their attention then sent them down B
Run.
The old Nazi soldier was sprawled on the unpainted
concrete floor with hands clasped to his left chest.
There was blood on the floor, bed, desk, even on the
door. He was dressed in the standard padded
orange pants and jumper, but the jumper was now
had a darker stain.
I stepped back and waved Arne in. He reached over
to check the body while I ran back toward the control
room pulling out my radio to call for an “incident
management response” team. “IMS, IMS, inmate
severely hurt House 5 cell B7, lot of blood, need
medical,” I shouted into the radio.
As I reached the control room with the radio in my
hand, CO McKinley realized I was calling the IMS in
his house. He looked at me questioningly, “You sure
about this?” he asked through the glass. I just
nodded yes.
He then picked up his radio, “That’s Trimble Yard!
IMS Trimble Yard, House 5, cell B7.”
I had forgotten to say what yard! My radio was on
channel 3, a complex radio channel which reached
more than just Trimble. I caught my breath and
clicked on my radio. “Yes, Trimble Yard, House 5,
B7, medical and criminal IMS called by complex CO3
MacGloughlin.
Arne was now at my side, “He’s dead.”
J ust then, the entrance door flew open and three
COs came rushing in with MACE ready to use. Arne
barked to get their attention then sent them down B
Run.
We walked down B Run past closed
doors to rooms, which might or might
not hold prisoners.
I reached B7 first, shouted
“BORNHEIM,” heard nothing, opened
the door, and quickly wished I hadn't.
doors to rooms, which might or might
not hold prisoners.
I reached B7 first, shouted
“BORNHEIM,” heard nothing, opened
the door, and quickly wished I hadn't.
| Chapter One __________________ Learning to Love DOC My name is Felipe Andres Anderson Norton MacGloughlin Torreblanca – more on that later. This is the story of how I and my partner Arne cracked the last great World War II related crime in Arizona, fifty-four years after that war ended. I am a LEO (law-enforcement officer) a CO3 (Correctional Officer level 3) detective in the Criminal Investigations Unit at the Arizona State Prison Complex on Kolb Road, Tucson, Arizona. It still surprises me to say that. It’s not what I started out to be. In October 1980, I was just starting my junior year classes at the University of Arizona in education, when Talvin Industries, my employer for eight years, closed their Tucson plant. The economy was a little tight, but I found what I considered a temporary job in education with the Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) at the Arizona State Prison Complex on Wilmot Road, Tucson. The pay wasn’t what I was used to as a foreman at Talvin, but they did pay for two college classes per semester. It was easy work and I was on a minimum–security yard with no danger. Then, after six months, I was required to attend the six- week correctional officer’s training academy to keep the job. The economy was still bad, so–what the hell?–I did it. No sweat. Then, after a year, there was a reorganization of the education department at the complex, and the position I had held now required a degree. Guess who still lacked 24 hours of college credits? I was on the way out. “But look, you’re lucky,” said the lieutenant from the personnel office, “you’ve been to the academy, so we can transfer you as a CO.” Yes, “good luck”– from a soft desk job to walking the corridors and recreation yard among real, live inmates with just a can of MACE and a not-fully-reliable radio. There is a world of difference between having one or two inmates in your office, or twenty in a classroom, and walking alone in a yard with eighty or one hundred inmates mulling around. I got used to it. Inmates from minimum security up to level three are okay, rarely dangerous. Level four is more dangerous, but Wilmot Road only had two level four yards and I never permanently served on one. I did occasionally pull temporary duty at one of the level four yards (Rincon and Cimarron). At Rincon, I usually found CO2 Mason on duty when I was. He was loud and bad. I learned to follow in his shadow. They still talk about me at Rincon Yard. I became famous when early one morning I found blood splattered in front of the education building. Expecting the worst, I called an IMS (Incident Management System) alert on my radio. That was supposed to mean something serious and dangerous had happened. An armed Incident Response Team rushed over, the yard was “locked down” with all inmates, even kitchen workers, locked in their cells. The warden brought some people visiting from Administration in Phoenix to see his IM team in action. Everyone’s adrenaline was up. The IM team began searching the education building with “take no prisoners” looks on their faces. Then, oh, then! It turned out that a rabbit had gotten into the yard during the night and someone had killed it. About an hour before I called the IMS, a CO had come upon the “crime scene.” He carried the carcass off to the trash, and used his radio to report the incident and ask someone to send a porter to clean up the blood. By the time the warden and guests arrived, no one would admit having heard the report. Moreover, the radios were always unreliable. Later a few allowed that maybe they had heard that earlier report but they didn’t want to question “the teacher’s” judgment. After that, whenever I went on Rincon Yard I was “the teacher” or “the rabbit man.” So, how did I get from being the “rabbit man” of Rincon Yard at ASPC–Wilmot Road, who never worked higher than a level three yard, to being a detective in Criminal Investigations Unit at ASPC– Kolb Road? Aren’t those guys real tough, cop types? That’s been asked often either about me or of me. I think there is a saying about being kicked upstairs in a job to your level of incompetence. I guess that’s me. I began in education at Wilmot Road before the days of compulsory high school classes for all inmates under 40. We pretty much met the serious guys who wanted to get an education and set their lives straight–or so they convinced us. Working lower level yards, I didn’t come into contact with violent offenders. So I had a more positive (or rosy) outlook toward inmates than the traditional CO attitude that they are all liars, all bad, and not to be trusted. I was wrong sometimes. A big blotch on my record is the 14–month-long robbery and embezzlement scheme carried on by two of my trusted inmate clerks when I ran the store at Tate Yard, Wilmot Road. Yes, I did trust them too much, especially “PT” a rather intelligent black guy who I largely allowed to run the store. While I sat in my glassed– in office listening to NPR or chatting with whatever CO3 who was free at the moment and came in for a soda or snack, “PT” and “Streak” had a free hand. The deputy warden wanted to dismiss me, but I wasn’t just any CO2. I was a DOC hero. Nine months previous, while I was on my way to work at 6:00 one morning, I stopped at a Mexican market in south Tucson to buy a copy of “El Imparcial,” the major Spanish newspaper of the area, to read at work to improve my Spanish and to give to the Spanish speakers on Tate Yard. I often did this. There was a newspaper machine for “El Imparcial” right at the I–10 south Tucson exit, so the stop took just five minutes. Well, this particular morning there was a major drug deal going down there. Three or four cars sat around in front of the market but I paid them no attention. As I stepped out of my car in my CO uniform, I suddenly found pistols and several AK–47s pointed at me. Before I could faint about thirty highly armed highway patrol officers, Pima County sheriff’s officers, Tucson police officers, and DEA agents came out of the shadows and got the drop on the bad guys. One of the guys with an AK–47 tried to resist and he died quickly and permanently. If I hadn’t been to the toilet before leaving home, I would have embarrassed myself. Moreover, I would have fainted had there been time–but it was all over in 30 seconds. Then, no one told me to leave and my car was now blocked–in anyway So I hung around the crime scene with guys in five other kinds of uniforms. No one ever asked why I was there. Finally, there was a call for the senior representative of every organization represented to come have there picture taken. I was in a group photo in the Arizona Daily Star, identified as the DOC man in on the operation, and had a forty–second interview on the nightly TV news. Somehow, the story became that I was part of the plan all along, that I bravely drove in there alone to cause the bad guys to commit themselves. The DOC Administration loved it and now I was not just “the rabbit man” but also a DOC hero. So, when the IM store scandal came to light, the deputy warden was angry with me but not ready to come down hard on a DOC hero–DOC doesn’t have many–so he gave me recreation duty, where I could do little harm and the inmates would keep me busy. That was true. They kept me continually busy getting recreation equipment, or fixing it, or solving their dozens of needs with that old and incomplete equipment we had. That job got me into good physical condition and maybe I had found my niche. I could have stayed there until retirement. However, “DOC will be DOC.” That is, the DOC Administration acts in its own mysterious way. After a year as recreation CO, we got a new deputy warden who shifted the personnel around. I was put in charge of the Tate Yard crafts workshop, where, again, there wasn’t much to do, little to steal, and it was understood that the inmates knew much more about the equipment than I did. However, I was supposed to continually circulate in the shop to make certain no one was making a weapon, and to carefully search them when they left the shop for any possible contraband. Well, I’m just not a hard-ass, and my searching was minimal–after all these were guys on a minimum yard, all expecting to go home within nine months, why would they risk that by making weapons? Well, I don’t know why, but come one quarterly search at Tate Yard, the searchers found two shanks (homemade knives) in a dorm–on a minimum yard IMs are in unlocked dorms instead of cells–that had clearly been made in my shop. Then they found several more in the shop. The Tate deputy warden, Carlson, made a big thing of it: the first time on his watch that weapons had been found on Tate Yard! He wanted me fired from DOC with no pension, and he talked of charging me with criminal negligence, etc, etc. In fact, he might do the worst thing to me that can be done to a Tucson based CO: get me transferred to Winslow Complex up on that cold, windy, dry, dusty, isolated, God–forsaken Colorado River Plateau. I would have quit DOC before going to Winslow! But by now I was a little more of a hero. You see, several months before, we had a minor hostage incident on Cimarron Yard. Several Mexican IMs, lifers with little to loose, took four medical staff and three COs hostage and demanded a laundry list of “quality of life” improvements on Cimarron Yard. As these are days of enlightenment at DOC, the warden decided to negotiate instead of using “direct action.” The official DOC hostage negotiator, a Dr. Tilden, a psychiatrist from Phoenix, rushed down at midnight, with the hope that the incident would be over in time for the morning news. She and her interpreter both were coming down with the flu, but as professionals, they forged ahead. The negotiations were going well when the interpreter came down with diarrhea and had to be replaced. The incident commander, Deputy Warden Howell from Admin, put out an emergency call for a Spanish speaker to come in to interpret. Although more than a third of the COs on the yard had Mexican surnames, no one came forward to interpret. This hesitation was partly because they didn’t want to get involved in an affair that might turn out bad, and partly because many were from families which had discouraged their learning Spanish because in Arizona a Spanish surnamed person who speaks both Spanish and English is considered lower class than one who only speaks English. Some of the hostage–takers could have interpreted, but DOC needed its own interpreter involved. When no one volunteered, DW Howell cursed mightily and looked out the control room window to see a bus unloading seven COs, including yours truly, who had come over as re–enforcements. Before we were through the two gates of the sally port, he was shouting at us, asking who spoke Spanish. I was the one innocent enough to answer yes. He looked questioningly at me, “A gringo like your Speaks Spanish?” I felt offended. “Señor! Me llamo Felipe Andrés Anderson Norton MacGloughlin Torreblanca. Nací en Empalme, Sonora, MEJICO!” I proclaimed. I don’t know whether he understood any of that, but he rushed me to a golf cart, and soon we were with the negotiators in the yard library, where the bad guys were hold up. Negotiations had continued with no official interpreter present, and all I did was help to confirm what they had agreed. Officially, DOC conceded nothing, but unofficially, two of the most abusive COs on the yard were to be transferred off complex and the hostage takers would all get major discipline tickets but would stay on the yard. My part in resolving the incident was about as minimal as possible, but the photos in the Arizona Daily Star and on TV news the next day showed me right there beside Dr Tilden and DW Howell as the team that had resolved peacefully and quickly a potentially disastrous situation. In addition, they mentioned my part as a hero in the drug bust. I also got a letter of thanks from Director Harlan, the big boss in Phoenix. So, by the time of the contraband weapons incident, I was a double hero at DOC, and Tate’s DW Carlson couldn’t discipline me as he wanted. Nevertheless, he could raise a big stink about getting me off Tate Yard. That’s where the “being kicked upstairs in a job to your level of incompetence” comes in. I don’t know what went on in Wilmot Road Administration or what deals they cut with the Administration at ASPC-Kolb Road, but I advanced from CO2 to CO3 and went to the Criminal Investigations Unit at Kolb Road. What I wanted to do was go back to recreation officer on a low–level yard, but according to the warden’s secretary, no DW at Wilmot Road would have me. |
Hopefully Chapter One has caught your interest enough for you to want more. Please email me at for the following twenty-one chapters. I will send it as an email attachment to the email address you give me or to the one your message comes from. Any comments, corrections or suggestions for improvement would be appreciated. |
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Andy and Arne expect a peaceful 1999 Christmas
season at Arizona State Prison Complex–Kolb Road,
Tucson. Arne’s only case is a minor sweat lodge
stabbing. Andy’s concern is the chaplain’s gentle
suggestions that he should “do the right thing” with
Bríghid. And there is YK2.
Suddenly they are investigating the murder of a WWII
Nazi Waffen-SS agent, who escaped from an Arizona
POW camp in 1944, but made the mistake of returning
and had been imprisoned since 1976.
Soon the old Nazi’s son is also dead. Investigating both
deaths, they come to suspect vengeful German veterans
groups, corrupt Swiss bankers, a sinister mining
corporation, the Chilean army, the heirs, a resentful
grandmother, a former Mexican mafia hit man, and even
the butler!
season at Arizona State Prison Complex–Kolb Road,
Tucson. Arne’s only case is a minor sweat lodge
stabbing. Andy’s concern is the chaplain’s gentle
suggestions that he should “do the right thing” with
Bríghid. And there is YK2.
Suddenly they are investigating the murder of a WWII
Nazi Waffen-SS agent, who escaped from an Arizona
POW camp in 1944, but made the mistake of returning
and had been imprisoned since 1976.
Soon the old Nazi’s son is also dead. Investigating both
deaths, they come to suspect vengeful German veterans
groups, corrupt Swiss bankers, a sinister mining
corporation, the Chilean army, the heirs, a resentful
grandmother, a former Mexican mafia hit man, and even
the butler!