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.

 

[RetroFan]

This sounds like The Mandela Effect, where people swear they remember certain things, and years later there is no trace of the event or it turned out differently from how they remembered things.

Some well known examples are The Berenstain Bears rather than The Berenstein Bears children's book series; whether or not the Monopoly Man wears a monacle; Fonzie from Happy Days wearing a black leather jacket when in fact it was brown throughout the entire run of the show; and Dolly's orthodontic braces (or lack thereof) in the movie Moonraker.

 

[AwkwardMD]

The most visceral thing I've ever seen was on-the-ground footage from a cameraman on 9-11. He was looking down the street when one of the towers came down, and there was a dust cloud in the distance that was making its way toward him. After maybe one full second, the cameraman started backing up. People ran past screaming. Finally, the cameraman seemed to realize they danger they were in and started to turn, except at that exact moment they were running past an alley.

That alley emitted a debris cloud that was freakishly timed. In the split second the camera was panning, the cloud came rushing right at it like a jump scare, and then the footage cuts out.

I can't say I've ever gone looking for this footage, but in all the conversations I've had with people about "Where were you when" I've mentioned that footage and nobody else has any idea what I'm talking about.

 

[MrPixel]

I've been wracking my brain trying to recall particularly damning coverage about one of the pioneers of commercialization of the Internet shortly after the WWW "went live", so to speak, but it escapes me. I tried multiple times in the following years searching for it, and it was nowhere to be found. It was the type of story that could have been easily quashed by concerned parties, and had it received more exposure things might be different.

But that was about 20 years ago. If I could remember the "who" it might jog a recollection, but I'm getting crickets.

 

[Milo9012]

Agree about the Mandela Effect.

 

[HordHolm]

The following certainly happened - I read several newspaper reports detailing the aftermath. But I only ever saw the footage once...

Suburban London around 2002. Night. A burglar broke into someone's house while the homeowner was at home. The homeowner called the cops and chased the burglar out into the street and waited outside for the cops to arrive. He was standing in the street when a cop car raced up, and ran into him, knocking him down and breaking his leg. The homeowner was left lying by the side of the street.

The cops were convinced he was the burglar (who had escaped into the night) and that he was carrying a knife. One of the cops was definite in this conviction, while two or three other cops didn't seem to have any strong opinion, and stood around letting convinced cop get on with a 'street interrogation'. Convinced cop threatened to take the handbrake off on his car and let it roll back onto the homeowner's broken leg if he kept 'pretending he was the one who called the cops' and didn't 'show us where the knife is'. Then, the following exchange took place:

Homeowner: My leg's broken! Call me an ambulance!
Convinced Cop: You're an ambulance. You're a very naughty ambulance!

All of this was caught on a neighbour's CCTV (with sound). Oops (for the Metropolitan Police)!

I saw it on a lunchtime BBC local news report, with copious repeats of the CCTV footage. And then it was never shown on any subsequent news report. Friends in the legal profession have tried to convince me that the BBC withheld it to avoid prejudice in any future court case (the cop a) lost his job and, b) got about two years in prison). But I believe they refused to show it again to avoid everyone getting royally pissed off with the cops.