Iron Bars a Cage

Along the cold corridors of Michigan's maximum-security prison at Marquette last week marched a manacled man: Harold Maurice Hummel Jr. (alias Billy the Kid, alias John Dillinger), 26, on his way to Marquette's sandstone city hall to be arraigned for the murder of a fellow prisoner. Hummel's boyish face was impassive: he had little to worry about, since he was already serving a life sentence for another murder, and Michigan law forbids capital punishment. Besides, Billy the Kid Hummel had made himself a prison hero by killing Marquette's most hated inmate.

Lethal Bite. Hummel's victim was Jim Hudson, 49, a bullnecked, 200-lb. Negro who had lived by violence and could only die by it. In 1932 Hudson began serving a life sentence for the holdup-murder of a White Cloud, Mich, country storekeeper. In 1936, with a blackjack made of blue denim wrapped around small stones, he attacked five guards at the Southern Michigan State Prison at Jackson. A year later he jumped three more officers in the Jackson yard. Suffering from syphilis, for which he adamantly refused treatment, he once infected a Jackson guard with the disease by biting him. On April 21, 1952 Hudson rose screaming in the Jackson mess hall and led a riotous mob of prisoners on a five-day orgy of destruction. Jackson, with a convict population of some 5,000 men, labeled Jim Hudson the "most dangerous and assaultive man in this institution." Transferred to Marquette, he was confined permanently to his cell.

Other convicts had good cause to hate Hudson. He stabbed one fellow inmate in the neck with a screwdriver. He threw pepper into the eyes of others. During the Jackson riot Hudson burned not only prison property but the personal belongings of other prisoners. And night after night, when lights were out. Jim Hudson spoke softly of his hatred for all men--including those who lay tossing on their cots in nearby cells. For these sins against prison society he was called horribly to account.

Trial by Fire. It was 5:30 p.m. on a mid-November day. Hudson sat quietly in his cell, eating off a tray. Other prisoners were lining up in the corridor outside, almost ready for the march to the mess hall. Suddenly, through the iron bars of Hudson's door came a soaking spray of lacquer thinner, followed by a lighted match. The cell exploded in flame, searing through 25 coats of paint on the wall, melting an overhead electric light--and sending Jim Hudson, afire, shrieking in agony, to rage at the bars that held him in. He lived long enough to whisper a name: "Will Hummel."

Why had Billy the Kid Hummel hurled the lacquer thinner and match? No one seemed to care; it was enough that Hudson was dead. He had created so much hatred that Prisoner Ralph Bowman feared for his own life at the hands of other convicts because he had used a fire extinguisher in trying to save Jim Hudson.

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