Was there ever a prisoner that others were terrified of while in prison?

When inmate Carl Panzram crushed a prison foreman's skull with an iron bar in broad daylight, dozens of hardened criminals just watched. No one dared to intervene—they were too terrified of him.

Panzram was a towering 6-foot-2, powerfully built, and entirely devoid of empathy. He was openly misanthropic and unapologetic about his history, famously bragging in his autobiography about committing 21 murders, thousands of burglaries, and over 1,000 instances of sodomy.

In most maximum-security prisons, a complex social hierarchy keeps violence somewhat contained. Panzram ignored it entirely. Upon arriving at the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth in 1928, he bluntly informed the warden and the guards that he would kill anyone—inmate or staff—who got in his way. This was not an empty boast to establish dominance; it was a promise. Other prisoners quickly learned to give him a wide berth, recognizing that he lacked the basic self-preservation instincts that normally kept inmates in line. He fought viciously, took whatever he wanted, and responded to minor slights with lethal aggression.

The murder of the laundry foreman occurred in 1929. Panzram had been assigned to work in the prison laundry, overseen by a civilian foreman named Robert Warnke. After Warnke filed several minor disciplinary reports against him, Panzram retaliated with the fatal iron bar attack. It confirmed to everyone at Leavenworth that no one was safe.

The murder of a staff member secured Panzram a death sentence, a ruling that brought a collective sense of relief to the inmates and guards at Leavenworth. True to form, Panzram refused all attempts by human rights groups to appeal his sentence, demanding that the state follow through with his execution. When his time came to hang in September 1930, the executioner paused to ask if he had any final words. Panzram spat back, "Yes, hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could kill ten men while you're fooling around!"

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The Last Judicial Hanging in The United States

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Holocaust victim

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