Teenage murderers, sexual tension with warders and giving birth chained to the bed: Inside one of America's most notorious female prison
- Sir Trevor McDonald visited inmates at two high-security women's prisons
- He spoke with notorious double-murderer and escapee Sarah Pender
- Other inmates had killed their own children or shot victims in the face
- But the celebrated broadcaster could not help feeling sympathy for them
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Celebrated British journalist Sir Trevor McDonald says he 'can't forget' the harrowing tales of prisoners he met at two of America's most notorious prisons for women.
With unique access to The Rockville Correctional Facility and Indiana Women’s Prison, he spent two weeks interviewing gang bangers, baby killers and multiple murderers
He witnessed a world of seduction and manipulation as inmates prey on each other and those who guard them. The experience, he says, has upset him so deeply that he has vowed never to set foot inside a prison again.
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Harrowing: Sir Trevor McDonald inside Indiana's Rockville Correctional Facility, one of two women's prisons where he has spent two weeks hearing the harrowing stories of inmates that he says will never leave him
'I would never want to subject myself to that again,' he told the Daily Mirror, describing his experiences with the women prisoners as 'immensely profound' and not easily dismissed.
He went on: 'It was difficult not to be affected. I haven't been scarred by it or had nightmares. But I don't forget those people ... I can't forget those people.'
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ShareTrinidad-born Sir Trevor, who was knighted in 1999 for services to journalism, has had stellar career that saw him host ITV's flagship News At Ten for 13 years and win more awards than any other British broadcaster.
Concentrating on world politics, he reported from war zones from across the world and interviewed such prominent world figures as former president Bill Clinton, freedom fighter Nelson Mandela and Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein.
Newly arrivals line up at Rockville: America imprisons more women than any other country in the world
Nevertheless, he has found it difficult to come to terms with his time spent among Indiana's female inmates, just a fraction of those held in a country that imprisons more women than anywhere else in the world.
He told how he 'squirmed in horror' while interviewing 22-year-old Kyanah Ball, who is serving 30 years at Indiana Women's Prison for shooting a man in the face as she tried to steal his van three years ago.
'She glibly told me how the bullet went through his head and blinded him,' said Sir Trevor. 'What was astonishing was how she gave me all this info without any close questioning from me. She was happy to volunteer it.'
An aerial view of Rockville Recreational Facility: Among the prisoners held at the 1,200-inmate prison is Dawn Hopkins, 39, who told Sir Trevor the story of how she murdered her own baby son in a fit of rage
Sir Trevor also met inmates at Indiana Women's Prison, including double-murderer Sarah Pender who was for a time America's most wanted woman after she seduced a male warder and got him to help her escape
When he asked her how she felt when she learned that she had blinded her victim, she admitted: 'I didn’t have any feeling at all about it. I didn’t feel sorry about it. I didn’t regret it. I didn’t want to take it back. I didn’t want to fix anything. I didn’t feel bad at all.
'But, after the fact I felt bad because this is an innocent man. I don’t know him from anywhere, h doesn’t know me from anywhere… so when I thought about it, I thought, "I almost took an innocent man’s life".'
At the same prison, Sir Trevor spent hours with double murderer Sarah Pender, who was once America's most wanted woman and who was described by guards as a 'female Charles Manson'.
She was in 2000 sentenced to 110 years behind bars for murdering two people she lived with. They were shot by her boyfriend, but she helped him dispose of the bodies and the prosecution convinced a jury that she had manipulated him into the killing.
Her notoriety soared in 2008 when she seduced a prison guard and persuaded him to help her escape. Pender was then on the run for four months and became America’s most wanted female criminal.
Video: OWN TV
Compelling and attractive.. but manipulative: Sir Trevor with Pender, who now spends 23 hours a day locked up in solitary confinement in the Segregation Unit at Indiana Women's Prison
Pender, who has now spent five years in solitary confinement at the prison's Segregation Unit, broke down in tears as she told Sir Trevor that she thinks about her victims all the time.
'Despite the fact they were felons, drug dealers, it doesn’t matter, they were still people and they had families that loved them.,' she said.
Although he was warned about how attractive she was and how compelling she could be, Sir Trevor said that he doesn't believe that Pender is as bad as they say.
He even admitted a sliver of sympathy for the double-murderer.
Understanding: Despite being warned of her past and ability to manipulate, after the hours he spent with her Sir Trevor admitted he felt sympathy for Pender, who has been kept in solitary confinement for a record time
'She managed to get up the noses of the authorities. She did the unthinkable. You’re not supposed to suborn a male officer. You’re not supposed to be able to do that,' he said.
'The entire system is rigged so that you don’t do that, and she manages to do it. Because she managed to do it, the story is built up around her that she is extraordinarily manipulative.
'That borders with her original crime, two people were shot, her actual role in pulling the trigger was questionable or controversial, but she bought the gun. Why would you go and buy a gun?
'So what she did encapsulates a lot of what the prison fears most.
'She is now in this unit where she gets an hour a day out, which I think is very tough. And she’s been there for a record time.'
But a warder explained how Pender was able to manipulate others to get her way. Talking about the prison officer who helped her, Sergeant McPherson said: 'He was having problems at home and she preyed on that.
'She made him feel like she was going to save him; she’d be his everything ... he fell in love with her. I’ve seen a lot, been here over 20 years, Sarah’s one of the best manipulators I’ve seen.'
'The gayest place on Earth': The Segregation Block at Indiana Women's Prison, where another inmate admitted to Sir Trevor that the loneliness had led her to strike up lesbian relationships with fellow prisoners
An inmate is handcuffed before being allowed to leave her cell: Sir Trevor learned from one inmate, Brooke, that pregnant prisoners have to be shackled to the bed whilst they are giving birth to their babies
Sexual tension between inmates and warders is not the only problem unique to women's prisons.
Sir Trevor also visited the Wee Ones nursery at Indiana Women's Prison, where mothers and their babies are imprisoned together.
He learned from one inmate, Brooke, that pregnant prisoners have to be shackled to the bed whilst they are in labour. 'It's very embarrassing,' said Brooke, as she showed him around the cell she shares with her child.
And he also learned that when mothers take their babies to other parts of the prison have to be escorted by guards for fear of attacks from other inmates.
Speaking later, Sir Trevor added: 'To think, although I never saw it, that there’s a degree of restraint even while people have just given birth, it blows the mind when you think what the norms of life outside are.
'That is one of the things that brings home very harshly, very sharply, what life in prison is like.
'Something as intensely personal and family oriented as giving birth, and you’re being punished in this prison.'
Locked up: Armed Robber Desiree Hancock looks out of her cell door window at Indiana Women's Prison
During his visits, Sir Trevor also learned about the relationships the inmates strike up with each other. Armed robber Desiree Hancock told him that she wasn’t a lesbian before she went to prison, but she is now.
Hancock, who is in the Segregation Unit, where inmates have to be shackled when they leave their cells for a shower, said: 'Loneliness is what started it. One thing led to another.
CHILLING TALE OF A BABY KILLER
At The Rockville Correctional Facility, Sir Trevor met Dawn Hopkins who is serving time for the battery and manslaughter of her three-month-old baby.
Hopkins, 39, who has served over 14 years and is set to be released in two, had already been forced to give up two children that she had abused before she went on to kill her son, Noah.
Hopkins told Sir Trevor about a scan she had when she was six weeks pregnant. 'I promised at that moment to keep him safe forever and I didn’t,' she said
And that makes me feel like a monster. And it makes me feel like I don’t even deserve to be alive some days.'
On day she killed her son she had been to see her psychologist. She then went home to sew a Christmas stocking for her baby.
'I sat working on the little felt pieces for his stocking for his first Christmas. It was just him and I that day and, I don’t know, he was fussy because he had a cold and, I don’t know, I lost my temper,' she said.
Hopkins describes performing CPR on her son whilst on the phone to the paramedics. She says they were rushed to hospital.
'I told them what happened,' she said. 'At that point all I wanted to do was save his life and it didn’t matter what happened to me.'
Hopkins’ son died of shaken baby syndrome. Trevor asked her if she has been classed as a baby killer by the other inmates.
'I was that,' she replied. 'I am that, but I’m a lot more than that as well, but that’s who I am.'
'And it may seem fake on the outside, but emotions and feelings are real. I’ve had a dozen relationships and two great loves. And I would say that I damaged both of them by being a cheater and a liar.
'It’s like being a kid in a candy store. This is the gayest place on earth.'
Among the most difficult of the stories heard by Sir Trevor is that of Cindy White, who has spent more time in prison than any other woman in the state of Indiana.
Thirty-eight years ago, when she was just a teenager, she became the youngest offender in the jail after killing six people that she lived with when she set the house on fire.
She has never driven a car, gone on a date, had a bank account or any children. She told Trevor she had been abused and started the fire as a cry for help.
'I knew that people were there, what I was thinking was, if I set a fire, then everybody can get out and I can run. That was my intention. The fire got out of hand,' she said.
As she has not had a family of her own, White and the other inmates explain that she has created her own family in jail. 'Here, you see what you get,' she said.
'We’ve all been in the same boat; hurt; disappointed. Reach out to someone that’s walked in your shoes and it makes it easier.'
White said she has been refused parole several times and she now believes that she will spend the rest of her life in jail.
'I figure, if they haven’t let me go in 37 years that I have tried to go, they’re never going to let me go,' she said. 'So I have to make do with what with I have and make the best of it.
'I try to find someone worse off than me that needs a kind word, a hug.' White will never be released.
Nowhere to run: Linda Darby, left, who killed her husband, spent 35 years as a fugitive after escaping from prison in 1972, remarrying and raising a family before the law finally caught up with her
And then there is the case of Linda Derby. Originally convicted of killing her second husband, she escaped from prison in 1972 and started a new life in secret, staying on the run for three decades.
She told Sir Trevor she spent the whole 30 years looking over her shoulder. 'I just kept asking God, please let me raise my children,' she said.
The truth finally caught up with her when she was sat in her kitchen one day smoking a cigarette. The local policeman, who she had known for 30 years, came to her house with an old picture of her.
She remembered how shocked the officer was shocked with she admitted that it was her. 'I said, "Joe, what’s the sense in me lying? I could sit here and lie all day to you, but fingerprints don’t lie",' she said.'
- Women Behind Bars airs tomorrow at 9pm on ITV1
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