Ever recall a news item, or documentary type item you can't find any trace of?

[Five_Inch_Heels]

There's an item over on story ideas that sent me down a memory hole.

I very distinctly remember watching something many years ago, 80s or 90s. May have been 60 Minutes, 20/20, Primetime or just some similar show. Might have been a standalone documentary on problem prisoners.

Detailed a prisoner in some facility somewhere that had been deemed so dangerous that he had no direct human contact. (No, not THAT movie). He was held in a basement area in a single, specially designed cell. Yes, literally UNDER the jail. No one person ever approached, it was always two or more.

It wasn't a fictional story of any kind, but all fact.

And no, it isn't my imagination. I know I watched it.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

That sounds like a Stranger Things prequel.

 

[crookedletter]

Sometimes either my mind conjures memories that are vivid to the point where I won't accept the possibility that they're conjurations, or I find myself suddenly in a parallel universe where I'm the only one who remembers something that 100% happened... just not here.

In my mind both scenarios have equal validity.

 

[Gamine67]

Maybe?

“Thomas Silverstein was featured in a 60 Minutes segment titled “Supermax: A Clean Version of Hell”, which aired on June 21, 2009.

In this report, correspondent Scott Pelley explored ADX Florence—the so-called “Supermax” prison in Colorado—and included a reference to Range 13, where Thomas (Tommy) Silverstein was held under particularly extreme isolation conditions “

 

[iwatchus]

I am certain I read a story in the early fall of 1976. I think it was in the NYTimes, but it could have been the Globe -- those were the two papers I had easy access to then. It immensely relevant to something about a family member. A decade ago I tried to find the article -- I was thinking about writing a biography of one of my relatives. They had an interesting enough life to make a valid biography that could actually be sold. I could not find the article, but the indexing for stuff pre-digital is much worse.

Of course, it was an expose about something in the American intelligence community, so maybe they disappeared it.

 

[Gamine67]

Silverstein entered federal prison in 1977, still too late.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Maybe?

“Thomas Silverstein was featured in a 60 Minutes segment titled “Supermax: A Clean Version of Hell”, which aired on June 21, 2009.

In this report, correspondent Scott Pelley explored ADX Florence—the so-called “Supermax” prison in Colorado—and included a reference to Range 13, where Thomas (Tommy) Silverstein was held under particularly extreme isolation conditions “

No. Similar, but not what I recall.

Or maybe I guess, but not as I recall it.

 

[Nynah]

Maybe?

“Thomas Silverstein was featured in a 60 Minutes segment titled “Supermax: A Clean Version of Hell”, which aired on June 21, 2009.

In this report, correspondent Scott Pelley explored ADX Florence—the so-called “Supermax” prison in Colorado—and included a reference to Range 13, where Thomas (Tommy) Silverstein was held under particularly extreme isolation conditions “

Silverstein and one other inmate's actions in 1983 are the reason that solitary confinement exists as it does in the United States.

The other inmate's name was Clayton Fountain and his story seems to fit the bill. I can't dig up any 1980s or '90s era documentary about it though.

 

[HordHolm]

And in the UK, we have a prisoner called Robert Maudsley who fits this as well. He resides in His Majesty's Prison Wakefield, a prison which is already nicknamed the Monster Mansion, and Maudsley is a special case even there. He is Britain's longest serving prisoner in solitary confinement after committing four murders, three of which have been in prison. He is reputed to have eaten part of the brain of one prison victim with a spoon. He's been in prison since 1976, after first being confined in a hospital after initially being found unfit to stand trial.

He is held in a special unit built especially for him, and must be accompanied by at least four prison officers whenever he leaves his cell.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

One of this is probably the case, but you know how TV is .... they make things fit the program. Even the better news ones did that. I remember they clearly used the term 'literally under the prison'.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Silverstein and one other inmate's actions in 1983 are the reason that solitary confinement exists as it does in the United States.

The other inmate's name was Clayton Fountain and his story seems to fit the bill. I can't dig up any 1980s or '90s era documentary about it though.

That may be the one.

"Fountain was moved to the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. He was housed in a specially constructed confinement unit, and was allowed contact only with authorized personnel. Fountain converted to Catholicism, and completed several educational courses on theology during the twenty years he spent in virtual isolation. He remotely earned an associate degree in business and a bachelor's degree in philosophy and business from Ohio University, and earned a Catholic Catechetical Diploma and began a Master of Arts in Religious Studies from Catholic Distance University. He developed ties with an order of Trappist monks, and was accepted posthumously as a lay brother after his death from a heart attack in 2004. The book A Different Kind of Cell: The Story of a Murderer Who Became a Monk is based on his life and religious conversion.[8][5] The foreword was written by Sister Helen Prejean."​

The after story may have been the impetus for whatever I saw.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

And no, it isn't my imagination. I know I watched it.

Maybe it used to have happened and now it didn't happen? You know, the Mandela effect.