Just a two-hour drive from Denver, 376 of the United States’ most notorious criminals are held at the country’s only federal supermax prison, the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility—otherwise known as the ADX. As of mid-July, Colorado gained yet another infamous resident, when Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, was relocated here after being sentenced to life plus 30 years on international drug trafficking charges earlier in the month.
The 37-acre compound, located on the outskirts of the old mining town of Florence in Fremont County, was opened in November 1994 and houses many of the country’s most high-profile inmates, including those convicted of federal high crimes and deemed too violent to live among a general prison population. Prisoners at the ADX—we’re talking serial killers, terrorists, mobsters, cult leaders, and drug kingpins—live in near-continuous solitary confinement, spending 23 or more hours a day isolated in soundproof, one-man cells that are only 7-by-12 feet, with a small, four-inch slit for a window. Due to these conditions, the ADX has been at the center of contentious debate around solitary confinement’s effect on mental health. As Robert Hood, a former warden of the ADX, told the New York Times in 2015, “This place is not designed for humanity.”
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With a propensity for violence and access to near-unlimited resources, El Chapo was an obvious candidate for the ADX. He’s twice escaped from maximum-security prisons in Mexico—his jailbreak from El Altiplano in the summer of 2015, in which he drove a motorcycle through a mile-long underground tunnel, is the stuff of movies. As was his recapture by Mexico’s marines in January 2016, which was preceded by a massive six-month manhunt, a deadly gunfight, and El Chapo slipping out of an escape hatch hidden behind a closet mirror.
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No one has ever escaped the ADX (although there has been one homicide within its walls), which is why it’s been called “The Alcatraz of the Rockies.” Most prisoners get out only in death, via transfer to another facility or, in very few cases, if they live long enough to see their release date.
Here, we take a look at some of the most notorious (and dangerous) men detained alongside El Chapo in America’s toughest prison.
Terry L. Nichols
Oklahoma City bomber/domestic terrorist, serving 161 consecutive life sentences
Oklahoma City bomber/domestic terrorist, serving 161 consecutive life sentences
Terry L. Nichols met Timothy J. McVeigh while the pair were serving in the U.S. Army in the late ’80s. They both became vehement anti-government conspiracy theorists, studied bomb making together at gun shows and, in 1995, they conspired to destroy the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Their bombs ultimately killed 168 people, including 19 young children and babies. Nichols received 161 life sentences for his role in the bombing. McVeigh, who was ostensibly the mastermind behind the Oklahoma City bombing, was executed by lethal injection at USP Terre Haute in 2001.
Robert P. Hanssen
Double agent/spy, serving 15 consecutive life sentences
Double agent/spy, serving 15 consecutive life sentences
Robert P. Hanssen was an FBI agent for 25 years (1976–2001). During that time, he sold thousands of classified documents to Soviet and Russian intelligence, pocketing at least $1.4 million by the time he was caught in 2001. Hanssen pled guilty to 14 counts of espionage and one of conspiracy to commit espionage, and was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms.
Ramzi Yousef & Mohammed Salameh
Two of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers; serving life sentences
Two of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers; serving life sentences
On February 26, 1993, a 1,300-pound nitrate-hydrogen gas bomb was detonated in the parking garage of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in downtown New York City, killing six people and injuring thousands. In all, seven people were known to be responsible for the attack, though only six were caught (Abdul Rahman Yasin is still at large). Two of the conspirators are currently imprisoned at the ADX: Ramzi Yousef (serving two life sentences plus 240 years) and Mohammed Salameh (serving 240 years), while at least three others (Omar Abdel-Rahman, who died in 2017; Mahmud Abouhalima, who was transferred to FCI Terre Haute in Indiana; and Eyad Ismoil, who was transferred to USP Lee in Virginia) passed through USP Florence at some point during their detention.
Richard Lee McNair
Master escapist, serving life but could be transferred to state prison
Master escapist, serving life but could be transferred to state prison
This Oklahoma man was convicted of murder, attempted murder, and burglary, for which he received two life sentences, but that’s not what would put him in supermax. It was McNair’s three successful escapes that would land him in semi-permanent solitary confinement. The first was in 1988, where he used lip balm as a lubricant to shimmy off his handcuffs while he was being held for questioning in a North Dakota county jail. An elaborate chase ensued, and he was caught, but that hardly deterred McNair. He escaped the North Dakota State Penitentiary again in 1992 and 2006, when he mailed himself out of prison and lived successfully on the outside until he was captured in 2007. The authorities then figured it was time to level up (literally).
Ted John Kaczynski
Domestic terrorist, aka the “Unabomber,” serving eight life sentences
Domestic terrorist, aka the “Unabomber,” serving eight life sentences
Serial Killer Denver Colorado
Ted Kaczynski grew up in a Chicago suburb and was by all means a brilliant and prophetic student when he was admitted to Harvard and took part in a three-year ethically questionable psychological study that some speculate may have attributed to his later extremist beliefs and behavior. He went on to earn a doctorate in mathematics and, soon after, in 1971, he began his hermetic life in a secluded cabin in Montana. It is here he would pen his famous manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” and begin a 17-year effort to sabotage what he called the industrial-technological system. In all, he mailed 16 homemade bombs that ultimately killed three people before he was found in 1996. Kaczynski was charged with three counts of homicide, 10 federal violations related to bombs, and was sentenced to eight lifetimes in prison.
Michael Swango
Serial killer, serving three consecutive life terms
Serial killer, serving three consecutive life terms
Michael Swango (born Joseph Michael Swango) was a doctor who spent most of the 1980s and ’90s using his medical license to poison patients (and, sometimes, colleagues). Despite thoroughly creeping out plenty of people by the time he earned his degree from Southern Illinois University School of Medicine (including being caught “faking” checkups during OB-GYN rotations), Swango secured an internship at what was then known as the Ohio State University Medical Center in 1983. This is where his prolific career as a serial killer would purportedly begin. It is believed that Swango murdered more than 60 people—often by poisoning them with arsenic or intentionally overdosing them with something they were prescribed—though he could only be charged with four homicides. Swango was sentenced to life in prison in 2000.
Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev
Terrorist, aka the Boston bomber, sentenced to death
Terrorist, aka the Boston bomber, sentenced to death
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, two brothers of Chechen decent, were raised in Kyrgyzstan before immigrating to Cambridge in the 1990s. The two brothers were radicalized at least in part by the extremist rhetoric of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born al-Qaida recruiter who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan (19 and 26 years old at the time) built two pressure-cooker bombs that they planted at the 2013 Boston Marathon; the explosion killed three people and injured more than 250 others. The brothers at first evaded capture and, three days later, killed Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier while trying to steal his gun; Tamerlan was shot and killed by police in a chaotic and violent chase less than 24 hours later. During his 2015 trial, Dzhokhar was found guilty of 30 charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction, and was sentenced to death by lethal injection, despite pleas by the parents of the youngest victim that he spend his life in prison.
Larry Hoover
Chicago gang leader, serving six life sentences
Chicago gang leader, serving six life sentences
A transplant from Mississippi to Chicago, Larry Hoover got involved in gangs at just 13 years old. He was a member of Supreme Gangsters, which later merged with a rival gang to become the Black Gangster Disciple Nation. Hoover, aka “King Larry,” commissioned the killing of a drug dealer named William Young, who he suspected was stealing drugs and money from the Gangster Disciples in 1973, and was sentenced to 150 to 200 years. However, a federal investigation is said to have uncovered decades of Hoover’s gang leadership in prison, which included overseeing its lucrative business and more than 30,000 gang members throughout 35 states; in 1995, Hoover was convicted of drug conspiracy and extortion, and moved to the ADX. In a bizarre twist, musician and fellow Chicagoan Kanye West asked President Donald Trump to pardon Hoover late last year.
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim
Al-Qaida cofounder, serving a life sentence
Al-Qaida cofounder, serving a life sentence
In 1988, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim attended what must have been a very chill meeting with Osama bin Laden and a roundtable of others to discuss starting a terrorist organization that became known as al-Qaida. The Sudanese terrorist’s suspected crimes are innumerable, but he was arrested in Germany in 1998 for his role in the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that same year. He was sentenced to 32 years but, after stabbing a prison guard in a botched escape attempt, was resentenced to life without parole in 2010.
Richard C. Reid
Shoe Bomber, serving three consecutive life sentences
Shoe Bomber, serving three consecutive life sentences
Current Serial Killers
Also an al-Qaida member, British-born Richard Reid is who you can thank every time you have to take off your shoes in airport security. In late 2001, Reid packed his shoes with explosives and boarded an American Airlines flight heading from Paris to Miami; thankfully, the homemade bombs did not go off. He was tackled by passengers and arrested after an emergency landing at Logan International Airport in Boston. He was charged with eight counts of terrorism, and received three life sentences, plus 110 years sans parole.
Dwight York
Pedophile and cult leader, serving a life sentence
Pedophile and cult leader, serving a life sentence
Dwight York, aka Malachi Z. York, founded the Nuwaubian Nation in the late 1960s; originally, it was a seemingly benign black Muslim group, but over time, it shifted into a black nationalist cult with wildly inconsistent ideas, including the belief in UFOs, hatred of white people, and worshipping Egypt. (A compound styled as an ode to Ancient Egypt was even built in Georgia by some followers of the group now known as the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors.) York’s motivations and influence are winding and convoluted but, in short, he was a conman and cult leader who used his power to systematically abuse children. In the early 2000s, he was convicted of racketeering and child molestation (14 children testified against him), and was subsequently sentenced to 135 years in prison.
Eric R. Rudolph
Olympic Park bomber, serving two life sentences
Olympic Park bomber, serving two life sentences
Born and raised in the southeast, Eric Rudolph spent time as a teenager at a compound in Missouri for members of the Church of Israel, a Christian denomination born of the Latter Day Saint movement. His time there influenced his radicalization: Rudolph, a high-school dropout and U.S. Army veteran, would go on to commit a series of bombings that were meant to be political attacks on “global socialism” and the “homosexual agenda” among other things (his words, not ours). In 1996, Rudolph became infamous when he bombed Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta during the Summer Olympic Games, killing one spectator and injuring more than 100 others. Despite calling the police to forewarn of the bombing, law enforcement didn’t know who was responsible, and Rudolph went on to commit three more bombings in 1997: at abortion clinics outside of Atlanta and in Alabama, and a lesbian bar in Atlanta. Rudolph was one of the FBI’s most-wanted criminals until he was apprehended in North Carolina while dumpster diving in 2003. He was sentenced to two life terms.
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John Gilbert Graham blew up United Airline Flight 629 over Longmont on Nov. 1, 1955, killing his mother and 44 other people. He was apparently trying to claim life insurance money for his mother’s death – a policy he took out at the airport before the plane left that day. He was convicted of his mother’s death and was executed by the state in 1957. No photos of Graham were available.
Gravano lived in Colorado while in the witness protection program after he ratted out John Gotti and the Gambino crime family. But after an ecstasy-trafficking arrest in Arizona in 2000, Gravano has been serving his prison sentence at the ADX supermax prison outside of Denver.
On Nov. 27, 2015, Robert Dear shot and killed three people and wounded nine others at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. A police officer was among those killed, and five officers were wounded before Dear eventually surrendered after an hourslong standoff. He has been found incompetent to stand trial and is currently at a state mental hospital.
Serial Killer Brown Colorado
On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris murder 12 students and a teacher at Jefferson County’s columbine High School before they killed themselves in one of the most high-profile school shootings in U.S. history. Out of respect for their victims, we are not showing either killer’s photo.
Corbett Jr. murdered heir to the Coors Beer fortune, Adolph Coors III, in February 1960, nine years after he was convicted of shooting a different man in the head. After nearly 8 months on the run, Corbett was arrested for Coors’ murder in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Corbett committed suicide in August 2009.
The Denver man is serving 30 years in prison after he killed his wife in April 2014. The murder made headlines because Kirk claimed that he murdered his wife because he was high on marijuana edibles. He was eventually convicted of second-degree murder as part of a plea deal.
On July 20, 2012, James Holmes entered a midnight screening of “The Dark Night Rises” and opened fire on moviegoers after setting off tear gas canisters. Twelve people died in the shooting and about 70 others were injured. At the time, it was the second-highest casualty mass shooting in the U.S. He is serving 12 life sentences plus 3,318 years in prison. Holmes’ photo is not being shown out of respect for the victims.
Seeley awaits trial in his case after his June 2016 arrest for running through Denver’s 16th Street Mall, swinging and hitting several people with a pipe.
The infamous serial killer is accused of killing three young women in a four-month span in Colorado in 1975. But he escaped from custody in 1977 during a preliminary hearing in Aspen. He then escaped again from Glenwood Springs and caught a plane to Chicago. He admitted to the three murders in Colorado the night before he was executed.
Serial Killer Denver Co News
Coneys earned the name “Denver Spiderman” because he waited five weeks in a Denver man’s attic before the man eventually discovered him. Upon being found in September 1941, Coneys beat the 73-year-old man to death, then managed to return to the trapdoor cubby hole he had been living in for another 9 months before police were able to discover him. He died in prison in May 1967.