A few months back, I re- ceived an email from a stranger, thanking me for an article that I’d written nearly 20 years ago. The article, “Marked for Death,” had appeared in Westword on May 25, 2000. It reported how USP Florence, a high-secu- rity penitentiary located 100 miles south- west of Denver, had become the most violent prison in the entire federal system — rocked by a series of inmate-on-inmate assaults and murders, ruled by gangs, and under investigation by the Justice Depart- ment for staff corruption. It was the worst place in the world to be if you were a snitch, or just suspected of being one; three of the most horrific killings had oc- curred in the Special Housing Unit, where inmates seeking protective custody were housed, supposedly for their own safety. My correspondent had read the article shortly after it was published. He was sit- ting in a cell in USP Florence at the time, he explained, and working frantically to keep other prisoners from discovering his own secret life as a snitch — which in- cluded serving up some of the most noto- rious bank robbers in the Southwest to the FBI, informing on the leaders of a white- supremacist gang to prison authorities, and cozying up to a meth cook who was suspected of killing five people, including two who were expected to testify against him. In his spare time, he was trying to fig- ure out how to get out of Florence alive. Did I want to know, he asked, how he pulled it off? The message surged on, veering in tone from confession to boast. “I walked a tightrope unlike anything you could imag- ine,” he wrote. “Though I was once an outlaw and deserved my prison time, I was never really THAT guy. Now I’ve come to a decision to try and tell my story…A story of one man’s journey to find himself.” The story was “too surreal to be left untold,” he insisted, complete with “near death expe- riences, lost loves and second chances… and so much more. With a happy ending.” That was my introduction to Wayne Byerly — the sultan of snitches, the crown prince of confidential informants, King Rat. A former Phoenix bank robber who, after decades of being enmeshed in what sociologists like to call a criminal lifestyle, committed the ultimate transgression. And was actually proud of it. That’s no small point. Despite what- ever cop-show drivel you may have heard about the convict code, Stop Snitchin’, omerta, and so on, criminals rat on other criminals all the time. They do it to shave time off their own sen- >> p 10 9 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES JAN. 31ST–FEB. 6TH, 2019 JAY VOLLMAR
