page_title: Montana State Prison
section_title: Jerry Myles
hierarchical_section_title: Montana State Prison / 1959 Riot / Leaders of the riot / Jerry Myles
caption_attribution_description: English: A view of one of the cells in Siberia East at the Old Montana Prison
context_page_description: The Montana State Prison is a men's correctional facility of the Montana Department of Corrections in unincorporated Powell County, Montana, about 3.5 miles west of Deer Lodge. The current facility was constructed between 1974 and 1979 in response to the continued degeneration of the original facility located in downtown Deer Lodge.
  The "Old Prison" served as the Montana Territorial Prison from its creation in 1871 until Montana achieved statehood in 1889, then continued as the primary penal institution for the State of Montana until 1979. Throughout the prison's history, the institution was plagued with constant overcrowding, insufficient funds, and antiquated facilities. The administration of Warden Frank Conley from 1890 to 1921 proved the exception to this rule, as Warden Conley instituted extensive inmate labor projects that kept many inmates at work constructing the prison buildings and walls as well as providing various state and community services like road building, logging, and ranching.
context_section_description: The primary leader of the riot, Jerry Myles was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on 15 January 1915 under the name Donald Groat.  His mother was an unmarried transient who quickly put her son up for adoption.  By the time he was sixteen, he was in reform school, and for the rest of his life he would spend more time inside correctional facilities than outside them.  Described as having an "emotionally unstable, psychopathic personality" by psychiatrist Romney Ritchey at Alcatraz, Jerry Myles nonetheless had a genius intellect, scoring 125 and 147 on intelligence tests in Atlanta and Montana, respectively.  Using suicide attempts, petty disturbances, and sexual deviancy, he strove to become the center of attention.  He was an institutionalized career prisoner, often committing small acts of burglary to get sentenced to more prison time whenever he found himself free, and, once incarcerated, struggled to be noticed.
  On 4 December 1944, he organized a mutiny at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia on the grounds of poor medical care, no church services, and having to wait in line in the mess hall with "the German intake and the Negro intake".  After the mutiny, the administration at USP Atlanta declared Jerry Myles to be incorrigible and a danger to the security of their prison.  They determined that their facilities were insufficient to fully monitor Myles' activities, so on 8 May 1945 they transferred him to the federal penitentiary at Alcatraz.
  Jerry Myles would spend about seven years at Alcatraz between 1945 and 1952, after which he was transferred to Leavenworth.  While Jerry was at The Rock, the legendary "Battle of Alcatraz" occurred on 2 May 1946, and Myles, while he did not take part in the escape attempt, learned much from the methods of Bernard Coy, who initiated the riot.  The disturbance Myles would later start in Montana shared many elements with the Battle of Alcatraz.  Myles was released from Leavenworth on 3 March 1952, after which he finished his sentence at the Georgia State Penitentiary and was released in May 1958.  During his long prison tenure, Myles had learned of a prison in Montana where the convicts ran the industries, and Myles was interested in what he viewed was a place where he could have power.
  After his release, Myles bought a bus ticket to Butte, about 40 miles (64 km) from Deer Lodge, where he was arrested for burglary.  He was sentenced to five years at the Montana State Prison and arrived in Deer Lodge in June 1958.  Since the prison at that time was not in the habit of running background checks on incoming prisoners, his previous penal experience went unnoticed, and he was assigned to a cell in the general population.  Myles quickly rose to the position of con-boss of the garment shop, due to his experience in similar places in other penitentiaries around the country and the notoriety of his experience in USP Atlanta, Leavenworth, and, of course, Alcatraz.  He used the position to his advantage, decorating his apartment-like cell in the garment shop with niceties and manipulating young inmates into providing him with sexual favors for work in the factory.  When Warden Powell abolished the con-boss system in October 1958, Myles was stripped of his favor in the prison community and started acting out, which earned him time in segregation.  He had a short, heated interview with Deputy Warden Rothe in which Myles took an intense dislike to Rothe and threatened his life.  Rothe sentenced Myles to isolation, or the hole, for an indefinite amount of time followed by a longer stint in segregation.
  Walter Jones, the prison's newly graduated sociologist, recognized the danger Myles represented and suggested further segregation in Siberia in the base of the northern towers of Cellblock 1.  The area known as Siberia was separated from the rest of the prison yard by a razor-wire topped chain-link fence and was used to keep known troublemakers apart from the rest of the population.  The cells were cramped, cold, and isolated.  Rothe rejected this treatment of Myles, claiming that he wanted to gain i
caption: A cell in Siberia
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