Hard Time In Hell Among Texas Most Dangerous Prisoners

After three decades on the frontlines of the massive Texas prison system, former warden David Stacks has enough hair-raising stories to fill an encyclopedia of evil.
Stacks, now director of the Texas Prison Museum, sat down with me in Huntsville for the True Crime Reporter® Podcast to share blood-soaked stories from inside cell blocks housing the state's most dangerous killers, gang members, and career criminals.
He was thrust into the midst of some of the most harrowing and complex scenarios imaginable in the correctional system. From the infamous maximum security Retrieve Unit that once housed serial killer Kenneth McDuff to the notorious Eastham Unit, where Bonnie and Clyde staged a sensational escape, Stacks' stories provide a window into a world few can imagine and fewer still have witnessed.
The Diagnostic Unit: He Dissolved Her Body In A Bathtub
Stacks recalls the slick owner of three funeral homes in East Texas who was busted flying marijuana into the states from Mexico.
When the funeral director turned drug smuggler discovered that his wife had snitched on him, Stacks says, “he knew exactly what he needed to do to get rid of her. He put her in a tub after killing her. Used some chemicals that he knew would dissolve the body and pulled the plug, and down the drain she went.”
He got arrested for murder after bragging about the murder in a drunken stupor at a bar.
The Ramsey Unit: A Tale of a Cunning Escape
The Ramsey Unit's story is marked by an astonishing escape that Stacks vividly remembers. A repeat offender, unable to face a new 75-year sentence, devised a daring escape by hiding beneath a prison bus.
The two-time loser mounted long pieces of lumber on the chassis where he could lay down. Lax guards did not check underneath with mirrors and away he went.
“To me, that was pretty clever, but it was all because people didn't do their job,” said Stacks.
The incident highlights both inmates' creativity and the challenges prison staff faced.
The Retrieve Unit: A Bunch Of Guys That Were Very Evil
The Retrieve unit, now known as the Scott Unit, opened on the grounds of the former Retrieve Plantation of 1839.
Retrieve held former death row inmates whose sentences had been commuted to life after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972.
Notorious serial killer Kenneth Allen McDuff, the subject of my five-part streaming television documentary titled “Freed To Kill,” was among them, but a pussy cat in comparison.
Stacks referred to the real tough inmates as tush hogs, “very seldom did fistfights happen on Retrieve. Most times, it was a stabbing and a killing.” The veteran warden recalled a bloody, deadly murder executed with homemade prison shanks, “It was a gang hit. It was the Pistoleros that hit a Nuestra Familia guy and stabbed him multiple times.”
In a revealing moment, Stacks recounted how three members of the violent Aryan Brotherhood prison gang had escaped on his watch.
At the nearby home of the grandmother of one of the escapees, they stole her car to make a getaway, only to run out of gas.
“One of my night shift supervisors and some of his staff had counted dummy bodies all night long. They had made good dummy heads, stuffed the bed with pillows and various sheets and things that had gathered, and the officers counted a nonliving, nonbreathing body for five counts. It was the most embarrassing escape that I was ever associated with,” said Stacks.
In remembering the story, Stacks revealed the dangerous nature of the inmates confined to the Retrieve Unit. When the prison siren wailed an alert about the escape, Stack was in the prison barbershop.
He had just recognized the inmate who was polishing his shoes, “I remembered he had a full tattoo of a tiger on his back with a tattooed tail that stretched over his shoulder and wound around his stomach. I'm thinking I know you, where do I know you from? He replied well, you probably know me from the Warden Cousin incident.” Stacks suddenly realized that this was the inmate who had cut a warden’s throat years earlier.
The Ramsey Unit: Heading Off A Gang Hit
Stacks recalls meeting a high-profile gang member who arrived at the back gate of the Ramsey Unit under heavy security.
The head of the Texas Syndicate, a Texas-based street and prison gang consisting of predominantly Mexican-American members, arrived for a medical appointment.
The gang leader made an unusual request for the officers to lock up his brother, who was incarcerated there. Stacks recalls the head of the Texas stating, “I've been given to hit to kill him. And I can't do that to my mom.” “So we locked the guy up temporarily until we got that gang member off the unit, said Stacks. That way, he could go back to his gang members and say I was going to kill him, but I couldn't get to him. And you know, there's no doubt in my mind, he'd have done it. That's kind of the way some of this gang stuff works.”
The Eastham Unit: The Legacy of Violence
Stacks' five-year tenure as the Warden at the Eastham Unit, known for housing Clyde Barrow of "Bonnie and Clyde," fame was marked by encounters with hardened inmates.
Known as the “Ham” for its tough reputation, Eastham, now named the Wainwright Unit was one of the prisons where the hardened, incorrigible type inmates were sent.
“When you go to Eastham, you're going to be there a long time. When I left in 2006, there was an inmate there who had done 27 years. I went out here two years ago, he was still there. He’s probably done 42 years in prison for sexual assault of various people. And he's one that, although I think he's changed his life. He's not one that I think we need to release, said Stacks.
The Incorrigible Troublemakers
Stacks says 95% of inmates worked well in the structured environment, went to work, followed instructions, and caused few problems. “But that other 5% cause you 95% of your problems. And I think there are some school teachers out there that can probably relate to that, and that most of their kids probably are good kids. But you may have just a few in here that cause a lot of disruption.”
He says the 95% function well because, by the time they reach the state prison system, because they are drug-free, “When they're out in the world. A lot of them have a lot of chemical problems, whether it be alcohol, whether it be drugs, whatever it may be. And I think anybody in law enforcement or community treatment would tell you that when some people get on chemicals, they're not the same people they are when they're not.. So when these guys come to us from the county jails, and they're pretty well cleaned up, they have gotten all of that stuff out of them.”
Unfortunately, Stacks says without the structured prison environment, many return to using drugs when they get out of prison and often return.
The Texas Prison Museum - A Popular Attraction Worldwide
Now retired, Stacks is the Director of the Texas Prison Museum. The nonprofit museum is located in Huntsville, Texas, on Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston.
Visitors arrive from around the world to see many unusual exhibits about the history of the prison system, including an electric chair named “Old Sparky” that was used to execute 361 men between 1924 and 1964, when it was declared cruel and unusual punishment.
The museum educates the public about the good, bad, and ugly of the Texas prison system's history.
Stacks says ex-offenders have brought their children to teach them a lesson about their life’s mistakes. “I had a guy come in here, an ex-death row inmate that came by just to stop and say hi and thank you for what you did for me. And that's a good feeling.”
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