Jack Henry Abbott (January 21, 1944–February 10, 2002) was an American criminal and author. He was released from prison in
1981 after gaining praise for his writing and being lauded by a number of high-profile literary critics, but almost immediately
he committed a murder and was locked up for the rest of his life.
He was born on a U.S. Army base in Michigan to
an American soldier and a Chinese prostitute (source: The Stories of Law & Order) . Many believe this background and lack of
a family structure was the beginning of his problems - dating all the way back to his birth. According to his book,
In the Belly of the Beast, he claims to have been in and out of foster
care from the moment of his birth until the age of nine, at which point he started "serving long stints in juvenile detention
quarters." As a child, Abbott was in trouble with teachers and later with the law, and by the age of sixteen he was sent to a
reform school.
The Australian film Ghosts... of the Civil Dead is based on his life.
Prison and release
In 1965, aged twenty-one, Jack Abbott was serving a sentence for forgery in a Utah prison when he stabbed a fellow inmate to death. He was given a sentence of three to twenty years for
this offense, and in 1971 his sentence was increased by a further nineteen years after he escaped
and committed a bank robbery in Colorado. Behind bars he was troublesome and often refused to
obey guards' orders. He spent a great deal of time in solitary confinement.
In 1977 he read that author Norman Mailer was writing
about convicted killer Gary Gilmore. Abbott wrote to Mailer and offered to write about his
time behind bars and the conditions he was experiencing. Mailer agreed and helped to publish In the Belly of the Beast, a
book on life in the prison system consisting of Abbott's letters to Mailer.
Mailer supported Abbott's attempts to gain parole. Abbott was released on parole in June 1981. He went to New York
City and was the toast of the literary scene for a short while.
Murder and return to prison
On the morning of July 18, just six weeks after getting out of prison, Jack Abbott went to a
small cafe called the Binibon in Manhattan. He clashed with 22-year-old Richard Adan,
son-in-law of the restaurant's owner, after Adan told him that the restroom was for staff only. The short-tempered Abbott stabbed
Adan in the chest, killing him. The very next day, unaware of Abbott's crime, the New
York Times ran a positive review of In the Belly of the Beast.
After some time on the run, Abbott was arrested in Morgan City, Louisiana, while he was working in an oilfield. He was charged
with the murder of Richard Adan. At his trial in January 1982, he gained the support of such
celebrities as Susan Sarandon, whose son Jack Henry Robbins is named after Abbott, and
Jerzy Kosinski. Abbot was convicted of manslaughter
and given fifteen years to life.
Apart from the advance fee of $12,500, Abbott did not receive any profits from In the Belly of the Beast, as Richard
Adan's widow successfully sued him for $7.5 million in damages, which meant she received all the money from the book's sales.
There was a tragic irony to the murder, which was not lost on the community of aspiring writers and actors in New York: while
Abbott was an accomplished writer, Adan was both an actor and a playwright, whose talent was just beginning to be recognized;
shortly before his murder his first play had been accepted for production by the La Mama theatre company.
Norman Mailer was criticized for his role in getting Jack Abbott released and was
accused of being so blinded by Abbott's evident writing talent that he did not take into account Abbott's propensity for
violence. In a 1992 interview in The Buffalo News,
Mailer said that his involvement with Abbott was "another episode in my life in which I can find nothing to cheer about or
nothing to take pride in."
Final years
In 1987 Abbott published another book titled My Return, which was not a success. It
contained a great deal of self-pity, but no remorse for his crimes. In fact, Abbott blamed his crimes on the prison system and
the government and said he wanted an apology from society for the way he had been treated.
He appeared before the parole board in 2001, but his application was turned down because of his
failure to express remorse and his lengthy criminal record and disciplinary problems in prison.
On February 10, 2002, Jack Abbott hanged himself in his
prison cell using a makeshift noose constructed from his bedsheets and shoelaces. He left a
suicide note, the contents of which have not been made public.
Today, his first book "In The Belly of the Beast" is frequently used as a college textbook and is at the center of much debate
about whether or not career prison sentencing (rather than reform) creates more crime and career criminals.
External links
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References
Fuchs, Christian [1996] (2002). Bad Blood. Creation Books.
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