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By Root 334 0

with Gary’s stay at L.E.D., Duane said, involved a fight. “If you got into a fight at MacLaren’s, the supervisors would never step in. I remember watching twenty minutes of amazingly brutal combat between two rough Medford logger kids, with everybody cheering and the supervisor standing back, sucking on a cigarette, getting his jollies watching these two kids beating each other half to death. I think the supervisors handled it that way because they saw it as a pressure release. If they stifled these things the tension would build up and sides would be formed, and they might end up with a first-class riot or gang fight on their hands. All I know is, the fights that I was in and the fights I witnessed at MacLaren’s were savage. They were fights to the finish, because you knew there’d be nobody there to protect you. Nobody was going to jump in and say, ‘Okay, you guys, break it up.’ Consequently, you were ready to fight at the drop of a hat. You’re tough, you told yourself—you’re a killer.

“Anyway, there was this one guy named Skip, and he was in the same cottage as your brother. I can’t remember Skip’s last name, but he had murdered both of his parents—it was a notorious case in Oregon at the time. He was a twelve-year-old boy, and his parents were a couple of drunks who used to beat him regularly. One night they beat the hell out of him and then they passed out in bed. The only thing Skip loved in the world was his puppy dog. That night Skip killed his parents and his dog. The police found him lying alongside the puppy crying, and the court put him up at MacLaren’s. Skip was dangerous; he really should have been in the insane asylum.”

One day, according to Duane, Skip and Gary found themselves working together in the cottage’s food preparation area. “Whatever cottage Skip was in,” Duane said, “the number one rule was to keep him away from knives because he was psycho. If he got a knife, chances are he’s going to use it. This one morning Skip and Gary got into an argument and Skip got hold of a knife. Gary went straight up against Skip and got the knife away from him, and then Gary beat the shit out of him. Gary left Skip on the floor, crying. After that, Gary was seen as nobody to fuck with. He got to be regarded as one of the tougher guys at MacLaren’s, and his closest buddies were not very nice guys. I would not have dreamed of trying to start a fight with Gary or push him around. First off, we got along fine—it never would have happened anyway. But I guarantee you that I would not want to have gone down with him, because he was tough. If you messed with him, he would be looking for revenge.”

Duane told me another tale about Gary’s time in L.E.D.

“There was a kid at MacLaren’s named Fritz, and he was a real sociopath sadist. He’d been sent there when he was about eleven. He used to catch cats, bind their tails together with a rawhide thong, and then throw them over a clothesline tied together and watch them fight to get free. Of course, the cats would kill each other. That’s what he was up there for, animal cruelty. He was a monster, especially for his age. At MacLaren’s, Fritz used to like to sharpen pencils and get them to that point where they were just like a needle and then stick them into people.

“One night,” Duane continued, “I’m in the bridal suite, which was the nickname for unit number one in segregation, right alongside L.E.D. There were no toilet facilities or anything—you’d just sit on the floor and that’s all there was to do. I’m sitting in there late at night and I hear voices coming from the shower area. I recognize one of the voices immediately. It’s Fritz. He’s being held down and he’s begging for mercy. And then I heard the voices of the boys who were holding him down. It was Gary, with a couple of his friends. Do you know what they did to Fritz? They took pencils and shoved them up his ass. I could hear them talking about it as they were doing it. I never forgot this kid screaming, and hearing Gary say, ‘Don’t move, you’ll break the fucking pencil, you son of a bitch.’ And then I’d hear them laughing,