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THE PLAIN DEALER, MONDAT, SEPTEMBER 3, 1773

Killer Raney in 'correctional' cage looks tough as a kid brother

From First Page neck, dark, straight. The headband gave him the look of the Indian blood that he says he has.

He wore faded blue prison pants, soft shoes, no socks. His upper body was bare. He is 5 feet 6, looked gaunter than his normal weight of 120 pounds, perhaps the result of the sever-

al weeks of near-starvation he says he received as punishment.

Tattoos decorate his upper body.

He said he felt good, the relief that comes when the pain has stopped. The pain came he said, from the horrible beating he said guards gave him in the prison hospital after he was dragged from the shooting scene.

Only slight traces re-

mained of the purplish swellings on his face that his sister reported after she visited him a few days after the shooting. The eye that his sister said was almost out of its socket looked normal. The split lip, which Raney said the prison doctor refused to stitch had healed.

Raney wanted to talk first about what happened to him in the aftermath of the shooting. He spoke in the accent of the hills of southern Appalachia:

"I was dragged through the hallways by my hair by a guard, a lieutenant, while he and other guards beat me and kicked me all the way. There were about 40 of them. By the time I got to the hospital all I had on my body was a pair of undershorts.

"The guards laid me on a table, still in handcuffs, and continued to beat me. I was knocked out eight or 10 times. Every time they would wake me back up and then beat me some more. About 10 guards were present, plus the medical staff, but they did not try to interfere or stop the guards from beating me.

*The only reason I am alive now is because the prison priest would not leave the room so the guards could kill me. The guards kept putting guns in my face and telling the priest to leave the room.

"I was beat for about two or three hours and after the first hour I didn i feel

much. I had cuts of the head, face and legs, plus both of my eyes were puffed up and blackened. My lips were cut all the way through and not one time was I given anything for pain or treated for the cuts

on my body. The doctor made a statement that I was an animal and he would not treat me.

The guards sprayed Mace in my face and also inside of my mouth. They kicked me in the groin until I

throwed up and then stuffed a rag or towel in my mouth, trying to choke me to death with the blood and what I was throwing up.

"After this beating at the prison hospital I was taken to a strip cell that had nothing in it, just a hole in the floor for a toilet. I was thrown in naked.

"For the first three to five days I hardly even knew where I was at. The first 10 days I never had any food to eat and all they would give me was a halfglass of water one time a day and sometimes the water had so much salt in it I could not drink it.

"When they did start to feed me the guards would urinate in my food, put soap powder in it, spray Mace in it or just whatever they wanted.

“Then they would put the food on a brown paper towel and lay it on the dirty floor of the cell. Only a few occasions did they feed me food that could be eaten and it was very small rations.

"I stayed in this cell and in these conditions for 23 days. I got out of it Aug. 17 (transferred to J-1). At no time was I given my mail or able to take a shower or brush my teeth.

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He briefly traced his life in crime.

The first arrest was at a precocious age 10, a "grand larceny" as Raney tells it. He said he was put in a foster home.

Then it was the Boys Industrial School at Lancaster, now called the Fairfield

Associated Press

Wayne Lester Raney

Home for Boys, the Ohio Reformatory and death row at Ohio Penitentiary. He was saved from the electric chair when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty.

Last January he was transferred to the prison here.

He had been convicted of first-degree murder in the 1970 slaying of his girl friend, whose body was found in a gravel pit. The prosecution contended that the girl would lure men from bars so Raney could rob them and that he killed her because she had witnessed the killing of one of the robbery victims.

"You knew I was convicted on circumstantial evidence, didn't you?" Raney asked. It seemed to be important to him.

How many people has he killed? The question drew an evasive reaction, a pause.

"I've been picked up for the killings of 12, but they've convicted me on only two, he said. A dozen?

"Well, there was one in

which eight people were killed," he said.

"It was a bombing, of an after-hours drinking place," he said. "They picked me up on it and questioned me, but they didn't have enough evidence and so they dropped the charges." Did he do it?

Raney stood up, threw out his chest, grinned. "I didn't do it. I'm an innocent

man.

Raney is heterosexual but admits to having taken part in homosexual activity in the prison. It is coming more common among convicts to admit it, because they believe the public is more willing to accept it, particulary when the prisoners have no other choice. Prisoners should be allowed conjugal visits, Raney said, to improve morale.

Raney commented on violence in the prison:

"There have been a lot of

stabbings and some murders in there that were covered up and never reported. In one big fight alone, seven prisoners were stabbed.

"Hell, I've stabbed three myself since I've been here."

Where did he get the gun

he used to shoot guard Arthur Sprouse in the prison?

He indicated that a number of guards have smuggled weapons and drugs to him and that the practice is widespread in the prison. But he refused to identify the guards.

"I don't want to put any man in the penitentiary." he explained.

He refused to say whether guard Ronald H. Pratt had supplied the gun to him. He said he would save his testimony for Pratt's trial.

"Stuff comes in sometimes through the visiting room," Raney said. He explained how prisoners, although they are searched on leaving the visiting room, get contraband back to their cells:

"When you know you're getting a visit, you tell a guard who will help you. When you are in the visiting room the guarú finds an excuse to go there. You pick up the goods from your visitor and go to the "john,' and the guard meets you in there, gets the stuff from you and you pick it up later from him in your cell." Raney laughed. "But

that's not the way I got the gun in. I paid $300 for it."

He said he had $5,000 saved up from his crimes, waiting for him on the "outside" to be used for escape whenever he was caught. He said he had $300 from the fund smuggled in to him.

He said the gun was a cheap blue-black .25-caliber automatic pistol.

A guard bought it out of the $300, Raney said.

The indictment against Pratt states that the gun was smuggled into the prison on May 15. This would indicate that Raney could have had it in his possession for more than two months. Routine searches failed to detect it.

Raney said that, yeah, he had the gun that long.

Why did he have it smuggled in?

"To escape," he said. Most prisoners believe that escape from the Lucasville prison is impossible.

"It probably is now." Raney commented. “It's too tight now. But there was a time when things were loos-

er.

""

Escape was not on Ra-

·

ney's mind on July 24, he said, when he produced the hidden gun, ordered guards to open his cell door, and took four of them hostage. He did not release other prisoners.

Raney held the guards at the point of his gun, tied together with belts, for about an hour. He was waiting for Sprouse to return to the cellblock. Then Raney raised the gun, pointed it at Sprouse and shot him in the head.

"

Guards who heard the shot swarmed into the fringes of the cellblock. J. E. Bishop, assistant superintendent for custody, took charge. He talked with Raney, trying to distract him while a guard armed with a rifle and telescopic sight crept into position on the elevated walkway. Guards on the other side of the cellblock made noise to distract prisoners.

Raney released one of the hostages to carry a message that he did not "want to see any guns at the door.”

He said he would release the hostages if if W. J. Whealon, the superintendent, came, and if "the re-

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