Jack Henry Abbott

Jack Henry Abbott
Abbott in handcuffs
Born	Jack Henry Abbott (1944-01-21)January 21, 1944 Oscoda, Michigan, U.S.
Died	February 10, 2002(2002-02-10) (aged 58) Wende Correctional Facility, Alden, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Author
Period	1981–1987
Subject	Prison life
Criminal status	Deceased
Criminal charge	Manslaughter
Penalty	3 to 23 years imprisonment (1967) Life imprisonment (1982)
Details
Victims	2

Jack Henry Abbott (January 21, 1944 – February 10, 2002) was an American murderer and author. With a long history of criminal convictions, Abbott's writing concerning his life and experiences was lauded by author Norman Mailer. Due partly to lobbying by Mailer and others on Abbott's behalf, Abbott was released from prison in 1981 where he was serving sentences for forgery, manslaughter, and bank robbery. Abbott's memoir In the Belly of the Beast was published with positive reviews soon after his release. Six weeks after being paroled from prison, Abbott stabbed and killed a waiter outside a New York City cafe. Abbott was convicted and sent back to prison, where he killed himself in 2002.

Abbott described his life as being a "state-raised convict", spending much of his life since age 12 in confinement in state facilities, including solitary confinement. He wrote that because of confinement with other violent offenders from whom he could not escape, he developed a subjective perspective that every encounter was potentially threatening.

Early life

Abbott was born on January 21, 1944, at Camp Skeel in Oscoda, Michigan, to Rufus Henry Abbott and Mattie Jung. Rufus was of Irish descent and served in the Army Air Corps at the time of his son's birth, while Mattie was of mixed Chinese and European descent and made a living as a prostitute around military bases. The couple married after Abbott's birth, but Rufus abandoned the family shortly after the end of World War II, divorcing Mattie in 1948. Both sides of Abbott's family rejected Abbott and his older sister Frances for being mixed race.

Abbott and his sister were raised by their mother in her hometown of Salt Lake City until 1950, when both were taken into foster care. For five years, the siblings lived with the family of Albert Barlow, a Mormon man with five wives and 45 children. Abbott became fond of his foster family, referring to Barlow as "Uncle Albert" and being baptized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. During the same time, Abbott still received regular visits by his biological mother. At age nine, Abbott was first tried by a juvenile court for vandalism.

In 1955, the Abbott siblings were taken out of Barlow's home when the latter was imprisoned for bigamy. Abbott subsequently ran away from any other assigned foster family before being sent to Utah State Industrial School, a reform school in Ogden, Utah. Barring a sixty-day parole, Abbott remained inside the grounds of the facility between the ages of 12 and 18. According to Abbott, his mistreatment by the school guards left him maladjusted for life. The year of his release, Abbott had also learned that his mother died by suicide, with state authorities refusing to let Abbott attend her funeral.

When Abbott reunited with his sister Frances, he learned that she had married a former neighborhood friend, Ben Amador, the same year he was confined to the reform school. Abbott rejected Amador for being Mexican-American and, by his own account, also struggled with "incestuous urges". Although the relationship between Abbott and Amador mellowed over the years, Abbott ordered Amador to never physically touch Frances in his presence.

Prison and release

In 1965, aged 21, Abbott was serving a sentence for forgery at Utah State Prison when he stabbed two fellow inmates. Prison officer Lester Clayton testified that Abbott had snuck up on the men from behind, specifically targeting one, James L. Christensen, who died at the prison infirmary ten days after the attack. Abbott later claimed that Christensen had previously made sexual advances on him and that he acted in self-defence, believing Christensen was planning to rape him. In later correspondences with Mailer, Abbott framed the killing as the result of a prison fight. He was given a sentence of three to 23 years for manslaughter, and in 1971 his sentence was increased by 19 years after he escaped and committed a bank robbery in Colorado. In prison, he was rebellious and spent much time in solitary confinement.

In 1977, Abbott read that author Norman Mailer was writing about convicted killer Gary Gilmore. Abbott wrote to Mailer, alleging that Gilmore was largely embellishing his experiences, and offered to write about his time in prison in order to provide a more factual depiction of life in prison. Mailer agreed and helped to publish In the Belly of the Beast, a book concerning life in the prison system consisting of Abbott's letters to Mailer.

Mailer endorsed Abbott's attempts to gain parole. Abbott was released to parole in June 1981, despite the misgivings of prison officials, one of whom questioned Abbott's mental state and whether he was rehabilitated, saying, "I thought ... that Mr. Abbott was a dangerous individual ... I didn't see a changed man. His attitude, his demeanor indicated psychosis." After leaving prison, Abbott went to a halfway house in New York City and met some of Mailer's literary friends.

Manslaughter and return to prison

At about 5 a.m. on July 18, 1981, six weeks after being paroled from prison, Abbott and two women, Véronique de St. André and Susan Roxas, went to a small cafe named the Binibon, located at 79 Second Avenue in Manhattan. Richard Adan, the owner's 22-year-old playwright/actor son-in-law, was there working as a waiter. Abbott got up from his table and asked Adan to direct him to the bathroom. Adan explained that the bathroom could be accessed only through the kitchen, and because the restaurant did not have accident insurance for customers, only employees could use the bathroom. Abbott argued with him. Adan led him outside to a dumpster, on 5th St, outside the restaurant, to urinate, and Abbott stabbed Adan to death. The next day, unaware of Abbott's crime, the New York Times published Anatole Broyard's review of In the Belly of the Beast.

Fleeing to Louisiana, after some time in hiding, Abbott was recognized by a business owner, and he was detained until the police arrived to arrest him in Morgan City, Louisiana. Abbott was working as a roughneck in an oilfield. He was charged with Adan's murder and represented by a well-known defense attorney, Ivan Fisher. At his trial in January 1982, Abbott gained the endorsement of such celebrities as writer Jerzy Kosinski. He was convicted of manslaughter but acquitted of murder, and sentenced to 15 years to life.

Apart from the advance fee of $12,500, Abbott did not receive any revenue from In the Belly of the Beast. Adan's widow successfully sued Abbott for $7.5 million in damages, which meant she would receive all the money from the book's sales.

Mailer was criticized for his role in getting Abbott released and was accused of being so impressed by Abbott's evident writing talent that he did not consider his violent nature. In a 1992 interview in The Buffalo News, Mailer said that his involvement with Abbott was "another episode in my life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or nothing to take pride in". Kosinski admitted that their advocacy of Abbott was, in essence, "a fraud."

Later years and death

Abbott's second book, My Return (1987), was not as popular as In the Belly of the Beast.

In 2001, Abbott appeared before the parole board. His application was denied because of his failure to express remorse, his lengthy criminal record, and his disciplinary problems in prison.

On February 10, 2002, Jack Abbott hanged himself in his prison cell using a makeshift noose made from his bedsheets and shoelaces. He left a suicide note, the contents of which have not been made public.

Views

Abbott claimed that his incarceration from the ages of 12 to 18 was the result of "not adjusting well to foster homes", and his indeterminate sentence of up to five years for "issuing a check for insufficient funds" when he was 18 was another example of a system that criminalizes and harshly punishes those it deems unfit for society.

In both his books, Abbott argues that society must reckon with its treatment of prisoners and that the prison system is fundamentally flawed, in that it treats prisoners like sub-human creatures. In In the Belly of the Beast he describes the helplessness that he says prisoners feel while at the mercy of a prison system that is seemingly never held accountable for its actions. He also hints at the subtle yet devastating effect prisons have on the whole of society. Abbott says:

We have no legal rights as prisoners, only as citizens. The only 'rights' we have are those left to their 'discretion'. So we assert our rights the only way we can. It is a compromise, and in the end, I greatly fear we as prisoners will lose—- but the loss will be society's loss. We are only a few steps removed from society. After us, come you.

Psychologist Robert D. Hare described Abbott as displaying the lack of conscience and empathy typical of psychopaths. When asked in a segment for the television news series A Current Affair if he felt remorse for stabbing Adan, Abbott replied: "Remorse implies you did something wrong... If I'm the one who stabbed him, it was an accident." Abbott also repeatedly insulted Adan's wife in court, claimed his victim had "no future as an actor" and, despite his claims that he was "railroaded," he also asserted that "There was no pain, it was a clean wound".

In popular culture

• In 1983, the Trinity Rep Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island produced an adaptation of In the Belly of the Beast. It was directed by Adrian Hall and featured Richard Jenkins as Abbott.
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' song "Jack's Shadow" from the album Your Funeral... My Trial (1986) was inspired by Abbott.
• The Australian film Ghosts... of the Civil Dead (1988) was inspired by Abbott's life.
• Portions of In the Belly of the Beast were used in the movie Shambondama Elegy (1999), also known as Tokyo Elegy, by Ian Kerkhof.
• In 2004, a New York theater company produced In the Belly of the Beast Revisited, a play based on Abbott's first book.
• In 2009, the play Binibon by Elliott Sharp and Jack Womack was presented in New York at The Kitchen, based on the 1981 killing of Richard Adan at the Binibon cafe.
• The Law & Order season 13 episode "Genius" is based on Abbott's case.
• In Psycho II, the character of Mary Samuels (Meg Tilly) can be seen reading In the Belly of the Beast. The book is later seen abandoned in the dust outside the Bates Motel.
• In the 1987 movie Stakeout, the character of Richard Montgomery (Aidan Quinn) has the book In the Belly of the Beast in his prison cell.

See also

• Jack Unterweger, an Austrian murderer who became a celebrated author of an autobiography discussing prison life while in prison and was then released and became a serial killer; after being convicted of another nine murders, he killed himself by hanging with shoelaces and a cord from the trousers of a tracksuit
• Jean Genet, ex-convict and novelist, whose works address prison life (among other topics)
• Seth Morgan, ex-convict and novelist, whose book addresses prison life and San Francisco's criminal counterculture

Further reading

• Fuchs, Christian [1996] (2002). Bad Blood. Creation Books.

External links

• Comment from Ivan Fisher, attorney for Abbott, following conviction
• New York Times article about Abbott from 1981, written before his return to prison.