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Authors: Jeff Guinn
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everything. But his slacker ways were readily apparent, as were Charlie’s attempts to make it seem like he was trying to fit in when he really wasn’t. After Charlie had been at the school for a month, the caseworker noted, “This boy tries to give the impression that he is trying hard to adjust although he actually is not putting forth any effort in this respect.” Charlie also gave evidence of a desire to be dominant among fellow residents of his dormitory rather than being dominated as he was at Boys School: “I feel in time he will try to be a [big] wheel in the cottage.”
Counting his time at Gibault, Charlie had now been in some form of reform school for more than four straight years, and he’d learned the ropes. Though the National Training School wasn’t as onerous asBoys School, it still was highly regimented. Charlie much preferred as an alternative the minimum security Natural Bridge Honor Camp in nearby Virginia.The most promising students from the National Training School were given the privilege of transferring to Natural Bridge, and Charlie was in no way promising. But he already had considerable gifts as a manipulator, and he brought these to bear on Training School psychiatrists. A summer 1951 psychological report stated that Charlie had a terrible sense of inferiority. Though Charlie had in compensation developed the sneaky skills of “a fairly ‘slick’ institutionalized youth,” the report concluded that “one is left with the feeling that behind all this lies an extremely sensitive boy who has not yet given up in terms of securing some kind of love and affection from the world.” By fall, one psychiatrist determined that what Charlie needed to turn his life around was something to give him self-confidence—a transfer to Natural Bridge, for example. The psychiatrist recommended the move and, on October 24, Charlie got his wish.
Soon afterward, Aunt Glenna Thomas visited him at his new school and promised administrators that she and Uncle Bill would give Charlie a home and help him find work if the honor camp would release him. It was a curious offer; the Thomases had been glad to get rid of Charlie eight years earlier when Kathleen was released from prison, and he’d tried to steal a gun from Bill when he was their guest for Christmas 1947. But the boy’s grandmother lived near the Thomases in McMechen now, and Nancy surely lobbied them to help get Charlie out of reform school. Kathleen was still preoccupied with Lewis and not overtly involved in Glenna’s plea for Charlie’s release. Kathleen probably had no idea that Charlie’s transfer at the honor camp was due in part to his convincing Training School psychiatrists that his mother had ignored and never loved him. But Glenna would not have made the overture to honor camp administrators if her sister hadn’t supported it; Kathleen certainly hoped that nearly six years of confinement and tough rules had worked positive changes on her son.
A parole hearing for Charlie was scheduled for February 1952. All he had to do was follow Honor Camp rules and stay out of trouble until then; if he did, his release was practically assured.But this proved beyond him;in January Charlie was caught sodomizing another boy while holding a razor blade to his victim’s throat. Consenting homosexual intercourse was forbidden at the camp; forcible rape was considered an offense second only to murder. Charlie not only lost his chance for early release, he was immediately transferred to the Federal Reformatory in Petersburg, Virginia. Now seventeen, Charlie didn’t attempt to make a good impression at the new location. Between his arrival on January 18 and a reformatory reporting period in August he committed “eight serious disciplinary offenses, three involving homosexual acts.” Though Charlie remained small in stature, growing to only about five feet four (some adult prison measurements pegged him at five foot five), he now played the “insane
Counting his time at Gibault, Charlie had now been in some form of reform school for more than four straight years, and he’d learned the ropes. Though the National Training School wasn’t as onerous asBoys School, it still was highly regimented. Charlie much preferred as an alternative the minimum security Natural Bridge Honor Camp in nearby Virginia.The most promising students from the National Training School were given the privilege of transferring to Natural Bridge, and Charlie was in no way promising. But he already had considerable gifts as a manipulator, and he brought these to bear on Training School psychiatrists. A summer 1951 psychological report stated that Charlie had a terrible sense of inferiority. Though Charlie had in compensation developed the sneaky skills of “a fairly ‘slick’ institutionalized youth,” the report concluded that “one is left with the feeling that behind all this lies an extremely sensitive boy who has not yet given up in terms of securing some kind of love and affection from the world.” By fall, one psychiatrist determined that what Charlie needed to turn his life around was something to give him self-confidence—a transfer to Natural Bridge, for example. The psychiatrist recommended the move and, on October 24, Charlie got his wish.
Soon afterward, Aunt Glenna Thomas visited him at his new school and promised administrators that she and Uncle Bill would give Charlie a home and help him find work if the honor camp would release him. It was a curious offer; the Thomases had been glad to get rid of Charlie eight years earlier when Kathleen was released from prison, and he’d tried to steal a gun from Bill when he was their guest for Christmas 1947. But the boy’s grandmother lived near the Thomases in McMechen now, and Nancy surely lobbied them to help get Charlie out of reform school. Kathleen was still preoccupied with Lewis and not overtly involved in Glenna’s plea for Charlie’s release. Kathleen probably had no idea that Charlie’s transfer at the honor camp was due in part to his convincing Training School psychiatrists that his mother had ignored and never loved him. But Glenna would not have made the overture to honor camp administrators if her sister hadn’t supported it; Kathleen certainly hoped that nearly six years of confinement and tough rules had worked positive changes on her son.
A parole hearing for Charlie was scheduled for February 1952. All he had to do was follow Honor Camp rules and stay out of trouble until then; if he did, his release was practically assured.But this proved beyond him;in January Charlie was caught sodomizing another boy while holding a razor blade to his victim’s throat. Consenting homosexual intercourse was forbidden at the camp; forcible rape was considered an offense second only to murder. Charlie not only lost his chance for early release, he was immediately transferred to the Federal Reformatory in Petersburg, Virginia. Now seventeen, Charlie didn’t attempt to make a good impression at the new location. Between his arrival on January 18 and a reformatory reporting period in August he committed “eight serious disciplinary offenses, three involving homosexual acts.” Though Charlie remained small in stature, growing to only about five feet four (some adult prison measurements pegged him at five foot five), he now played the “insane
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