NM PRISON RIOT Ep. 5 | “Surrender”

By the afternoon of Saturday, February 2, 1980, the worst of the carnage at Penitentiary New Mexico has ebbed. An unknown number of inmates are dead or wounded. Many more suffer drug overdoses. Prison officials organize a news conference for rioters, and the rioters continue to release hostages. On Sunday morning, hundreds of inmates stream out of the prison. And by Sunday afternoon, the final hostages have been released and the riot is done. SWAT teams enter the prison and receive their first taste of the destruction. Thanks to our sponsor, Quince! Use this link for Free Shipping and 365-day returns: Quince.com/infamousamerica Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to INFAMOUS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com or @blackbarrelmedia on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:06Speaker 02

  An interesting dichotomy played out in Penitentiary, New Mexico after the surge of the first few hours of the riot. As the forces started to settle, everyone saw who was who. Who were the hardcore killers? Who just wanted to get high? Who wanted to break things? Who feared for their safety and took steps to protect themselves? And who wanted no part of any of it? The killers could be anywhere, but they mostly focused on Cell Block 4. The fiends overdosed on drugs from the hospital unit's pharmacy. They would be carried out in increasingly high numbers from Saturday morning to Sunday morning. The breakers trashed the dormitories, cell blocks, and administrative offices.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  They lit fires in the gymnasium, records room, warden's office, Protestant chapel, psychological unit, and eventually a couple of the dormitories. Those who feared for their lives found ways out when possible. Eighty-four men in Dormitory E1 broke out of their unit through a window and escaped into the prison yard. It was safer to face the elements on the prairie in New Mexico in February than to remain in the prison buildings. In ones and twos, and then in groups of 20 or more, inmates found ways to sneak out or break out of the prison buildings. They huddled in the yard and waited for the uprising to burn itself out or for prison officials to retake the facility.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  And then there was the group in Dormitory E2, the second floor of Dormitory E, the point of origin, the place where the riot started at 1:40 a.m. on Saturday, February 2nd, 1980. Dormitory E2 became a gathering spot for those who just hung out.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  It would seem difficult to believe after the fact, but during much of the assaulting, killing, ransacking, and burning that engulfed the rest of the prison, a bunch of inmates in E2 drank coffee and watched TV and waited for the fiasco to end. It was a strange juxtaposition, like they were in the calm eye of a hurricane. They would have brought food from the kitchen, which would have been easier as time progressed and the population in the buildings thinned out. So while some parts of the prison became wild overnight between Saturday and Sunday, others stayed quiet. A cameraman from NBC Television spent about 40 minutes in the prison filming inmates in the visitors' room of the administration building.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  When he left unharmed at about 1 o'clock in the morning on Sunday, February 3rd, contact between rioters and prison officials stopped for the night. By that time, there had been conflicting and confusing communication between the two groups over two-way radios and in person for about 20 hours. Inmates had demanded meetings with prison officials, the governor, and the media. The rioters eventually wrote down a list of 11 demands and submitted it to prison officials. Officials agreed to work with the inmates on nearly all the items, many of which were predictable things like improvements to food, living conditions, visiting conditions, recreational facilities, educational facilities, and the overcrowding problem.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Other items were non-negotiable, at least temporarily. Inmates wanted the prisoners in Cell Block 3 reclassified. Cell Block 3 was the maximum-security segregation unit for the prisoners who were considered dangerous to the general population. Several of those inmates had just proved how dangerous they were by torturing and killing inmates in Cell Block 4. The demand to reclassify the inmates in Cell Block 3 so they would not be in the segregation unit was flatly denied. The demand to allow the news media into the prison was dependent on all the hostages being released, but then officials allowed the NBC cameraman to go inside for 40 minutes. At that point, eight guards were still in the prison.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Six were hostages, and two were hiding in the basement of Cell Block 5. While the cameraman was in the admin building, radio chatter picked up about inmates in the prison, quote, "going wild." Whatever that meant, it didn't sound good. When the cameraman safely exited the prison, contact between rioters and prison officials broke off until the next day. That left the officials to make their final decision of the night, whether or not to send SWAT teams to storm the prison and retake the facility at 4 a.m. A plan to storm the prison had been considered in the early daylight hours and then postponed until 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  At 3 o'clock, with negotiations progressing and hostages being released, the assault plan was postponed until 4 a.m. After dark, National Guard commanders said they would not allow their 50 troopers to participate in the 4 a.m. assault. Prison officials could still greenlight the plan using the three SWAT teams who were on hand, but they chose not to. There was still too much uncertainty with the remaining hostages. Officials resolved to settle in and wait for daylight. After dawn, the whole situation jumped back to life.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season, we're telling a six-episode story of the most violent prison riot in American history: the uprising at Penitentiary, New Mexico in February of 1980. This is episode five, Surrender.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  At 6:30 on Sunday morning, February 3rd, Felix Rodriguez, Deputy Secretary of Corrections for New Mexico, and Robert Montoya, one of the two deputy wardens of the prison, were back at the gatehouse in front of the prison preparing for renewed negotiations with the rioters. The leaders of the riot had finally designated regular, consistent negotiators, as opposed to the haphazard, free-for-all situation of the previous day. But before they could really get started, the exodus began. With sunrise at 7 a.m., there were about 800 inmates in the prison and about 350 outside in the yard. When the sun came up, those numbers quickly reversed themselves.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  As the Attorney General's report about the uprising put it, inmates were pouring out of the institution. They broke into E1, the first floor of Dormitory E, and crawled through the window that the inmates in E1 had smashed in order to escape the previous day. They bashed holes in walls in order to access rooms which had portals to the outside. They sneaked past rioters who guarded Cell Block 5, and they moved down through the cell block to the door which escapees had cut open the previous morning with a blowtorch. All the while, the escapees who used Cell Block 5 had no idea that Officers Valentin Martinez and Antonio Vehil were hiding in a crawl space next to the execution chamber

• 8:28Speaker 02

  in the basement, right up the hall from the door the inmates were using to escape. When inmates made it outside, they surrendered to state police officers and National Guard troopers who manned the perimeter fence. An exasperated rioter yelled over the radio, "What the hell is going on? Where's everybody sneaking out of this place from?"

• 8:52Speaker 02

  A little before 8:00 AM, right before a wave of medical cases inundated the triage tent near the front gate, one of the escapees surprised prison officials. A group of inmates surrendered to authorities 10 minutes before 8:00 AM. With them, dressed in an inmate's uniform, was Officer Victor Gallegos. Gallegos was 22 years old, and he had three years of corrections experience, but he had only been at Penitentiary in New Mexico for one week before the riot. He had been captured with Herman Gallegos, no relation, Elton Curry, and Juan Bustos in front of Dormitory F2 in the opening minutes of the uprising. Victor Gallegos was one of the two guards from F2

• 9:35Speaker 02

  who were taken to Dormitory E2 immediately after capture. It appears as though he ended up back in F2 at some point, where prisoners gave him an inmate's uniform and hid him under a bunk for several hours. Before dawn on Saturday morning, the morning of the riot, Herman Gallegos sneaked out of the prison while disguised as an inmate. Now, prisoners in F2 used the same trick to get Victor Gallegos out of the prison. Because Victor was young and mostly unknown to the rioters, they believed he was an inmate. He slipped in with a group who pushed its way outside a little before 8:00 AM. With the escape of Victor Gallegos, seven guards remained in the prison.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  Five were hostages, and two were hiding in the basement of Cell Block 5. 10 minutes after Victor Gallegos sneaked out with a group of inmates, the flood of overdose cases started. Some walked out under their own power. Some staggered out with the help of fellow inmates. Some had to be carried out. Most were suffering the effects of antidepressants, antipsychotics, or sedatives looted from the pharmacy in the hospital unit. They were mostly docile or completely passed out because the drugs made them extremely sleepy. But some of the ODs were erratic and violent. They had been sniffing paint fumes and glue fumes in the shoe repair shop in the basement of the kitchen,

• 11:00Speaker 02

  which jacked them up instead of making them drowsy. They had to be subdued and restrained before the medical team could look at them. Between the overdose cases and the rush of prisoners surrendering, the numbers flipped. A head count revealed that there were now roughly 800 inmates outside the prison, whether in hospitals, the women's annex, the medical tents, or the yard, and roughly 350 inside. Even with the unexpectedly high numbers of surrenders and overdoses, negotiations between the rioters and prison officials resumed. Rioters still had five hostages to use as leverage, though both sides quickly made key concessions.

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• 13:12Speaker 02

  The rioters were going to get the press conference they had been demanding for more than 24 hours. It was initially set for 8:15 AM, but the flood of surrendering inmates and overdose cases pushed the conference back. As part of the deal, rioters were required to send out the highest ranking hostage, Shift Commander Captain Greg Royble, in exchange for the press conference. Captain Royble was one of the first two guards assaulted in the opening seconds of the riot at 1:40 AM on February 2. He had been a hostage for 31 hours. Like nearly all the hostages, he had been beaten. He had a fractured skull when rioters handed him over to prison officials,

• 13:54Speaker 02

  and he was immediately placed on a helicopter to St. Vincent Hospital in Santa Fe. For the next two hours, officials, law enforcement, and medical teams dealt with surrendering or overdosing inmates. Then it was time for the show. There are conflicts about the time, but sometime between 10:00 AM and 12:00 PM, officials allowed a TV cameraman and five reporters into the yard. The reporters spoke with the three designated representatives of the inmates, and then three more inmates joined the group. One of the three new arrivals was Michael Colby, who would later be accused of being part of the death squads who tortured and murdered inmates in Cell Block 4. At the time of the news conference,

• 14:38Speaker 02

  no one outside knew the full extent of what had happened in Cell Block 4, but several officials were sure Colby had been involved in the killing. The six inmates aired a variety of grievances about the prison, and they received a variety of assurances from prison officials. And the event ended with prison officials emphasizing the need to release the remaining hostages immediately, which, as with everything in this story, was easier said than done.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Before either side could move forward with plans to release hostages, old rivalries flared up in the yard. The prison population was divided into four groups. It was 53% Hispanic, 37% white, 9% black, and 1% Native American. As in every prison, members of each ethnic group stuck together for survival, and none of them liked any of the others. Animosity between Hispanic inmates and black inmates carried over into the yard, where they were all mixed together with no cells or gates or guards to separate them. On Sunday, just before noon, the trouble started, but it was tied to problems from the previous day.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  During the grisly events in Cell Block 4 early Saturday morning, a group of black inmates banded together to rescue men who could have been killed in the unit. They made it out of the cell block and went straight across the hall to Cell Block 5 to try to escape through the door that had been opened by a previous group of escapees. Their path was blocked by an armed rioter. They couldn't get past him, so they went all the way to the far end of the complex. They dodged a rioter who was trying to block the entrance to Dormitory E1, and they escaped out of the broken window that had been used by the men of E1 earlier in the morning. They made it out, and for the rest of Saturday, the situation in the yard was calm.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  But by noon on Sunday, with more than 800 inmates in the yard, the old ethnic hatred inside the prison flared up outside the prison. A large group of Hispanic inmates started chasing a much smaller group of black inmates and shouting death threats. The black inmates were trapped against the fence in a corner of the complex next to Guard Tower Number 4. On the other side of the fence was a group of 20 National Guardsmen and law enforcement officers. A deputy sheriff ordered the lawmen to lock and load their weapons. The deputy shouted to the Hispanic inmates and told them they had five minutes to back off. Superintendent of Correctional Security Manuel Corneja

• 17:16Speaker 02

  stepped in front of the lawmen and tried to defuse the situation. The deputy sheriff told Corneja to get out of the way or he would be shot like everyone else if the order was given. Corneja stepped aside, but the Hispanic inmates didn't move. As the five-minute deadline approached, the deputy told the lawmen to take aim. When they leveled their rifles at targets, the Hispanic prisoners finally backed off. The officers cut a gap in a fence to allow the black inmates to move into a different part of the yard, where they essentially had their own small compound. But on top of everything else, the Penitentiary of New Mexico uprising was seconds away from having its own Attica-style mass shooting event.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Several things happened one right after another, or at the same time, during the chaotic hour between 11:00 a.m. and noon. Right before the dust-up between Hispanic inmates and black inmates, Officer Ronnie Martinez escaped the prison. He was one of the first four guards captured, and he was the final one from South Wing to make it outside. Martinez was the youngest and one of the least experienced guards on duty that night. He was just 18 years old, and he had been with the prison for four months. He had been guarding the door to Dormitory E2 while Captain Roible, Lieutenant Anaya, and Officer Schmidt walked through the unit and secured it at 1:40 a.m. on Saturday, February 2.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  The investigation into the riot was never able to determine exactly what happened in those opening moments, but it was a safe deduction that Martinez did not fully close and lock the door behind the officers when they entered the unit, as was protocol. He likely held the door open just a tiny bit, which allowed inmates in the nearest beds to rush the door, slam into it, knock it open, and capture Martinez. With the door open, all four guards captured, and keys taken from Martinez, the rioters in Dormitory E2 had raced out of the unit and started the uprising. Martinez, like all the captured guards from South Wing, was beaten.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  He was also stabbed, but he was eventually protected by sympathetic inmates. At 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, after 34 hours as a hostage, the sympathetic inmates helped Martinez escape, probably through the broken window in Dormitory E1. That left five guards in the prison, three hostages, and the two who were hiding in the basement of Cell Block 5.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Everyone could feel the uprising winding down, but it wasn't done yet. It had been 34 hours since the start of the takeover in Dormitory E2, and while most of the violence had subsided, the fires had grown worse. Inmates had started fires throughout the Admin Wing and North Wing nearly as soon as they entered those areas in the early morning hours of Saturday, February 2. Some inmates with radios had repeatedly asked for help from firefighters, but every time firefighters entered the complex, other inmates fought them off. By noon on Sunday, the gymnasium in the Admin Wing was engulfed, and flames burst through the roof. The records room, the warden's office, and the Protestant chapel in the Admin Wing were also on fire.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  The psychological unit, where evaluations of inmates were kept, was on fire, and now Dormitories B and C in South Wing were on fire. By that time, the vast majority of the inmates were outside of the prison buildings. The ones inside were the dead, the severely injured, the hardcore rioters, and those who were trapped in their cells or dormitories. There were still inmates stuck inside Dormitory C1, which was on fire. After the TV news conference, prison officials gave an acetylene torch to the inmates in the yard to help the guys in C1 escape. The prisoners with the torch would have cut through the lock on an exterior door

• 21:28Speaker 02

  or through the bars over the windows to allow the men inside to bust out. As inmates in the yard worked to open C1, leaders of the riot released another hostage. Officer Edward Ortega was released a little before noon. He was another one of the longtime veterans on the ship. He was in his 50s, like Captain Roible and Lieutenant Anaya, and he had been a guard for 23 years. He was one of the three guards, along with Larry Mendoza and Ramon Gutierrez, who were captured in the basement of Cell Block 3. The three men had hoped they would be safe in the North Wing of the prison, but when rioters captured the control center, they gained access to North Wing. Mendoza, Ortega, and Gutierrez

• 22:12Speaker 02

  had hid in a locked room in the basement of Cell Block 3, but they were discovered within an hour of the beginning of the uprising. Rioters stripped them naked and locked them back in the room. On Saturday evening, rioters moved the three guards across the hall to the dayroom of Cell House 6, where the three men would later be shown the gory sight of a decapitated head. If there was a positive side, it was that the three guards from Cell Block 3 were not harmed. They were the only three hostages who made it out without injury.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  After Ortega's release, Mendoza and Gutierrez were the final two hostages. Officers Valentin Martinez and Antonio Vehil stayed hidden in the basement of Cell Block 5. An infirmary technician, Ross Mays, remained safe with seven patients in the hospital unit.

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• 24:31Speaker 02

  Outside of the prison walls, in what would turn out to be the final two hours of the uprising, everyone took steps to reach the end as calmly as possible. Though with the riot being a catastrophic example of Murphy's Law, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, there would be miscues right up until the very end. And those outside were about to see the most graphic display of violence they had yet witnessed. They had heard horror stories of the torture and killing in Cell Block 4, and many of the officials outside would see the aftermath firsthand, but they received a preview at 12:34 p.m. For whatever reason, inmates decided to carry the body of 36-year-old Pauline Paul into the yard.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  He was the prisoner from Cell Block 4 who had been decapitated with a shovel 30 hours earlier during the worst of the violence. He was in prison for aggravated assault and armed robbery. And according to later reports, he was believed to have learning disabilities and was assessed as having the mental age of a 12-year-old. While the body was moved to the makeshift morgue on prison grounds, prison officials tried to secure the release of the final two hostages, which would effectively end the uprising. Officials had already assured inmate representatives during the press conference that some inmates could be transferred out of state. Ironically and selfishly, by the end of the uprising,

• 25:57Speaker 02

  the worst offenders were concerned about their safety more than anything else. At the front of the prison, officials thought they finally had everything worked out, and then there was one last hiccup.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Inmate representatives agreed to release the last two hostages, Officers Mendoza and Gutierrez, and brought them down to the main entrance in the Administration Wing. Rioters escorted the officers out into the yard while inmate representatives made final arrangements with prison officials. At that moment, an unauthorized National Guard helicopter flew over the prison yard. It carried state police officers who were monitoring the ongoing tension between black inmates and Hispanic inmates. The standoff an hour earlier was done, and the two groups had been separated, so no one in the yard knew why the flyby was necessary. But the sudden appearance of the chopper agitated and angered the inmates. They feared a double-cross,

• 26:57Speaker 02

  and they dragged the two hostages back into the Admin Wing. Commanders on the ground made urgent radio calls to the helicopter and told it to leave. When it flew away, prison officials had to do damage control. They reassured inmate representatives once again that some rioters would be transferred out of the state, and there would be no retaliation by the guards, and so on. Finally, at 1:26 p.m., inmates released Officers Larry Mendoza and Ramon Gutierrez. Although they were uninjured, they had been hostages for 35 hours. Almost immediately after the release of the officers, another 50 inmates fled the prison buildings and surrendered to law enforcement in the yard.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  By that time, it would have been clear to anyone paying attention that the uprising was done, and inmates scampered out of the prison at the last minute. After the final exodus, officials estimated there were 75 to 125 inmates still alive in the prison, who were a mix of hardcore rioters, inmates stuck in their cells, and inmates who were waiting it out in other areas of the facility. Infirmary technician Ross Mays in the second floor of the hospital, and Officers Valentin Martinez and Antonio Vehil in the basement of Cell Block 5 could breathe a little easier. In the category of "small miracles", rioters never tried to break into the locked area where Mays protected his seven patients.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Rioters had trashed other parts of the hospital as they scavenged for prescription drugs, but they did not go after the doctor or his patients. And the officers in the basement of Cell Block 5 survived 35 hours trapped in a crawl space next to the execution chamber. They were never discovered by rioters, and their location was never given away by the slip of a tongue during all the confusing radio chatter. They would have to wait a little longer before it was safe to come out, but the worst was over.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Friends and family members of the inmates were being held at a checkpoint about a quarter of a mile away from the prison, where the long prison driveway met State Highway 14. On Sunday morning, after waves of inmates fled the prison, the governor's press secretary compiled lists of those who were identified. She hurried each updated list out to friends and family members of inmates, until yet another problem arose. It wasn't dangerous, but it was certainly important to those who were waiting for news of loved ones. The press secretary was compiling the lists and making photocopies at the governor's house on the prison grounds, and the power went out at the governor's house. All further identification was indefinitely delayed.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  But it would have been clear in the early afternoon that something was happening down at the prison. After the flurry of activity related to surrendering inmates and transporting guards to the hospital, law enforcement assembled to retake the prison. There had been a standing order to go in as soon as all the hostages were out, but the go time had been delayed by the dust-up between black and Hispanic inmates and then the ill-advised helicopter flyover. When the last two hostages were finally released at about 1:30 in the afternoon, state police chief Martin Vehil gave the order to go. Governor Bruce King had signed off on the plan, and he had given green light authority to chief Vehil.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  At 1:30 PM, it was time. The New Mexico State Police had two SWAT teams, the northern and the southern. Both were assembled at the prison with shotguns, helmets, flak vests, and gas masks. There were 22 men combined in the teams, and they added the 15-man Santa Fe City Police SWAT team for a total of 37 officers who would enter and secure the prison. National Guard troopers moved inside the fence and stationed themselves in the yard on crowd control duty. They would supervise the hundreds of inmates who had already surrendered, as well as detain any new inmates sent out by the SWAT teams.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  The two primary objectives were to rescue corrections officers Valentin Martinez and Antonio Vehil, who were still hiding in the crawl space in the basement of Cell Block 5, and to rescue infirmary technician Ross Mays, who remained safe in the hospital unit. Along the way, the SWAT teams would release inmates who remained trapped in distress, release and detain inmates who were stuck in their cells, and arrest rioters who were still inside the prison. Lastly, commanders ordered the officers to make an effort to preserve evidence. The entire prison was one gigantic crime scene. But the interest in preserving evidence for prosecutions of crimes committed during the uprising immediately took a backseat to the curiosity of bureaucrats to see the

• 31:59Speaker 02

  destruction. The 22-man combined state police SWAT team moved into the prison through the front door of the administration wing. They immediately encountered two inmates with knives, who were apparently oblivious to the arsenal of lawmen who had assembled right outside. The SWAT team disarmed the inmates without incident and sent them outside to National Guardsmen. After moving just a few feet into the admin wing, the SWAT team received its first big taste of the destruction that lay ahead. They pushed through ankle-deep water, and then had to climb through a hole in the wall of the visitors' area in order to continue deeper into the prison. They climbed into an office, and then crawled through another hole in a wall to reach the

• 32:43Speaker 02

  hallway that gave them access to the control center. Inmates had been forced to smash holes in the walls to move through parts of the prison after fire and water damage, jammed gates, and shorted out electronic panels which were needed to open doors. At the control center, the SWAT team would see the first of many scenes which would be seared into the memories of everyone who entered. And part of the "everyone" were the civilians who followed the SWAT team into the building when they should have stayed outside. Preservation of the crime scene was essentially out the window, and safety would be an even greater concern as SWAT team members now had more people to worry about. Meanwhile, the Santa Fe City SWAT team was running into a whole series of problems as

• 33:28Speaker 02

  it tried to get into the buildings, problems which nearly led to a devastating calamity just a few minutes into the assault. Next time on Infamous America, two SWAT teams move into the prison. They find wholesale destruction, grisly scenes of murder, and rioters who are unhappy to learn their party is over. Then the most urgent matter becomes what to do with 1,100 inmates until the prison is usable again. There are murder indictments for some of the death squad members, but little justice.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  And then the cycle starts all over again at Penitentiary New Mexico. That's next week on Infamous America. To binge all the episodes of a new season and to listen to every episode of the podcast with no commercials, subscribe in Apple Podcasts, or sign up through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. This series was researched and written by me, Chris Wimmer. Original music by Rob Valier. Thanks for listening.

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• 36:06Speaker 06

  Para los grandes, para los chicos, para los bajos y los altos, los pacifistas, los valientes, para los optimistas y los pesimistas, los que valoran lo de adentro. Para los que están lejos, los que no vende lejos, y los que no vende cerca. Para los introvertidos y los extrovertidos, para los que piensan y los que hacen. Para los que nos mostraron el camino. Coca-Cola. Para todos. Compra una Coca-Cola en una tienda cerca de usted.