Eastern State Redemption

After 48 years in prison, the East Germantown Cowboy tells his story.

by Andy Greenberg

Editor's note: This story was originally researched in July 2006.

YOUTH DEFERRED: Barnes as a young man. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

When Bill Barnes was first tried for armed robbery in 1955, the 19-year-old pled guilty. He was hoping for forgiveness. Instead, he got a conviction and a stay in Eastern State Penitentiary. That two-year sentence was the first chapter in a career of crime, one that would send him to every institution in and around Philadelphia during 48 long years of incarceration.

Back inside the looming walls of Eastern State last year, the then-70-year-old Barnes was again pleading guilty. But as the tall and lanky ex-con spoke before a group of tourists visiting the defunct penitentiary, he hoped for the redemption of an entire lifetime.

"I spent more than half my life in prison. I re-offended over and over and over," he told the crowd matter-of-factly. "I was an armed robber, a burglar, and at times I assaulted people. I'm not proud of it, but it is what it is. I wasted my life."

Like a caterpillar in its chrysalis, decades in a cell had transformed Barnes from societal menace to cultural resource. Now one of the few living former inmates of Eastern State, which closed in 1970, he was hired to speak at the prison-turned-museum's commemoration of the 1961 riot last year. (This year's commemoration will take place Aug. 11 and 12, though it is unclear whether Barnes will take part.)

And it wasn't just Barnes' scandalous history that brought him to the attention of the museum staff. When he speaks, he sketches his past with a sharp memory, a lens that doesn't color or distort the truth, neither to satisfy his audience's appetite for sensationalism nor to hide his own regret.

Later, in a coffee shop across the street from Eastern State's grim entryway, he starts from the beginning. "I'm a career criminal. Even as a juvenile, I stole and robbed," he says. "I've been in and out with the law since I was about 12."

At 17, Barnes stole a car and spent two years at the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill, which he describes as indistinguishable from an adult penitentiary. When he was released in 1955, he was ready for adult crimes: Within two months he was facing a judge for robbing an empty diner with an unloaded gun. After a brief introduction to Eastern State, he was sent to Graterford Prison in Montgomery County for a year and a half.

After his release, Barnes didn't waste time with pretenses of reform. In 1957, he held up a financial company and was caught within hours: Coming out of a bar, two police officers were waiting for him. He pulled his gun. They tackled him. Back to prison he went, this time with a new nickname, courtesy of the Daily News: the East Germantown Cowboy.

As for his reasons, Barnes hasn't spent his years of solitude inventing excuses. "A lot of guys blame their parents, blame society. For me, it was just a lack of morals, a lack of conscience," he says evenly, as if describing someone else. "I didn't like to work, and I liked to steal. I wanted nice clothes and a nice car. I knew that women liked money, so I acquired it. I got caught. I went to prison."

Saddled with an eight-and-a-half-year sentence, Barnes had no intention of serving out his time. Working as a janitor at Moyamensing County Prison at 10th and Reed, he made his first escape attempt, breaking through a building's ceiling to crawl through an air vent, onto the roof and over the prison walls. Though he was caught just days later, Barnes wasn't deterred. It would be the first of 12 attempts, a streak that made the East Germantown Cowboy a legend across the state's penal system.

In 1961, his past caught up with him once more. Following that year's riot, in which Barnes says he took no part, he was rounded up with all of the prisoners whose records included assaults of cops or guards. The warden made an example of the group, tossing them naked into unheated cells with open windows in the middle of winter.

"They stripped me and put me in there, without a blanket or a mattress. They gave us a sandwich a day, a cup of water a day, no toilet tissue, and every two inmates were handcuffed together," Barnes remembers. "It was eight or nine days. I lost count."

On the streets again in 1966, the Cowboy finally lived up to his name. After robbing a beauty parlor while half-drunk on 7-Up and VO, he was cornered by police. In a moment that shames him more than all of his other shameful acts combined, he pulled his gun and shot a rookie police officer named Walter Barclay twice. The first shot hit 21-year-old Barclay in the leg, spinning him so that the second took him in the back of the shoulder. Barclay was partially paralyzed. Barnes would spend 38 of the next 39 years in prison.

As the years stretched into decades, Barnes grew accustomed to the rhythm of prison life. He remembers the nine years he spent at Eastern State Penitentiary as some of his most tolerable, passing the endless time with games of handball, Benzedrine and Dexedrine pills (smuggled in by guards or packed into softballs thrown over the Penitentiary's walls) and wine made from fermented canned fruit and sugar. "When you took the lid off the milk can and there were maggots on top, then you knew it was done. You just scooped them off and got your cup down there," says Barnes. "You can make a life out of anything."

With a new 30-year sentence for two armed robberies in 1981, Barnes redoubled his efforts to escape. He tried dressing as a guard, sawing through bars, making ropes from bedsheets. Every attempt resulted in years of solitary confinement.

Sitting in the hole in 1993, Barnes says, he had what he calls "a defining moment." He decided to escape the hard way: by following the rules. "I said to myself, this just ain't working. No more escape attempts. Let me try to get my life together, and maybe I won't die in the hole. Maybe I can get out in 15 years."

Barnes says he got lucky: It took him only 12.

Since his parole in 2005, Barnes has been living in a halfway house, working as a janitor at a North Philadelphia supermarket. He has a bank account, a car and a cell phone. He also has a mission: to tell anyone who will listen about the mistakes he made and the price he paid for them. He lectures occasionally at an urban studies class at Temple University, and speaks regularly at Eastern State.

"I don't kid myself that society is going to forgive me for anything," he says. "I'm just trying to give a little back."

Though his remaining family members fear recidivism, Barnes says he won't even jaywalk now. He hopes to eclipse his previous record for time spent between prison sentences: 15 months. In fact, he's planning to stay out for good. But the East Germantown Cowboy says he's still paying the price for his crimes.

"What's the hardest part now?" he asks himself. "At 71, I have nothing. No history to my life. At my age I should be living on a pension, sitting on a porch with my wife of 40 or 50 years."

"Instead," he says, pointing to Eastern States' walls across the street, "All I have is that."

(editorial@citypaper.net)

Addendum: Late July 2006, Bill Barnes was driving to York, Pa., in violation of his pre-release agreement, when he suffered a heart attack. Barnes survived and was sent back Camp Hill, where he spent most of the next 11 months. Barnes was again released last month, has regained his old job and is living in a halfway house. He plans to continue speaking at Temple and Eastern State Penitentiary.