A California prison inmate confessed in a letter that he beat two child molesters to death with a cane while behind bars just hours after his urgent warning to a counselor that he might become violent was ignored, a newspaper chain reported Thursday.
Jonathan Watson, 41, confessed in the letter to the Bay Area News Group in Northern California that he clubbed both men in the head on Jan. 16 at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran.
Prisoner David Bobb, 48, died that day. Graham De Luis-Conti, 62, died three days later at a hospital. Both were serving life sentences for aggravated sexual assault of a child under 14.
“We can't comment on an active investigation," Dana Simas, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, wrote in an email.
Watson is serving a life sentence for a 2009 murder conviction.
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Days before the attack, he said his security classification was changed and he was transferred from a single-person cell to a lower-security dormitory pod at the Central Valley facility. Watson called the switch a “careless" mistake and said he had protested the decision.
Watson wrote that six days after he arrived at the prison, a child molester moved into the pod. Watson believed the man began taunting other inmates by watching children's television programming. Watson said in the letter he couldn't sleep that night “having not done what every instinct told me I should’ve done right then and there."
Two hours before the attacks the next day, Watson told a prison counselor that he urgently needed to be transferred back to higher-level security “before I really (expletive) one of these dudes up,” but the counselor “scoffed and dismissed" him.
Watson said he returned to his housing pod.
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“I was mulling it all over when along came Molester #1 and he put his TV right on PBS Kids again,” he wrote, according to the newspaper chain. “But this time, someone else said something to the effect of ‘Is this guy really going to watch this right in front of us?’ and I recall saying, ‘I got this.’ And I picked up the cane and went to work on him.”
Watson said he then left the housing pod to find a guard and turn himself in, but on the way, he saw “a known child trafficker, and I figured I’d just do everybody a favor,” Watson wrote. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”
Watson said he then told a guard, who didn't believe him “until he looked around the corner and saw the mess I’d left in the dorm area,” Watson wrote.
Watson is in segregated housing while he is under investigation for the killings. He hasn't been charged yet.
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“Being a lifer, I’m in a unique position where I sometimes have access to these people and I have so little to lose,” Watson wrote. “And trust me, we get it, these people are every parents’ worst nightmare."
ConfusedEgg39 on February 21st, 2020 at 21:24 UTC »
Prisoner: I'm going to kill these two child molesters.
Prison staff: Yeah right
Prisoner kills 2 child molesters
Prison staff : (surprised pikachu face)
Kahzootoh on February 21st, 2020 at 15:27 UTC »
The weird thing is that child abusers are usually on a Sensitive Needs Yard, along with all the other people who’d be killed if placed on a yard where the larger gangs have a presence. You don’t get put there without having crimes or documentation that clearly show you’ll be in danger on the normal yard or go through a debrief process (where you inform on everyone, nothing held back from law enforcement). If there is a riot, guards may or may not be killed: guys on the Sensitive Needs Yard will almost certainly be killed.
Simply being on a Sensitive Needs Yard is highly suspicious to most inmates, to the point where being there -even if the reason why is unclear- is enough to get you killed out of suspicion that you’re either a snitch, homosexual, or a child abuser. Realistically, an inmate is going to do something to increase their points (which keep them at a higher security yard) than risk spending time at an SNY; it’s better to get into a fight with a guard than to be on an SNY.
Politics is usually not present on an SNY, with less racial segregation, less checking of paperwork, and limited gang presence (at least the mainline gangs; in an ironic twist, there are increasing numbers of SNY gangs). People who are guilty of child molestation generally know to not talk about it, and the thing that gives them away is a lack of any other reason to be on the SNY; if you don’t have tattoos and look like a guy who left their gang or wear women’s clothing, you’re going to be under suspicion.
As for what is actually going on, it could be any number of things. It’s possible someone in the CDC had it out for this inmate and transferred him to an SNY. It’s possible he turned snitch and had second thoughts. It’s also possible it was a genuine mixup.
Mountains_beyond on February 21st, 2020 at 14:55 UTC »
This employee dropped the ball. As satisfying as it might seem to hear about child molesters being taken out, prison justice is not always so cut and dry.