Religion
Jailhouse Flock
Using ex-cons, ex-junkies, leather-clad bikers, and magicians, Cedar Hill’s Bill Glass Ministries draws prison inmates into the fold.
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Next to the pulpit stands Cindy McMullen, the winner of Texas’ 1995 Mrs. Harley-Davidson crown, in snug red Wranglers, white spike heels, and a sequined top, singing “Amazing Grace” as latecomers file into the pews. The Christian Motorcycle Association, known as God’s Riders, reverently remove their leather caps as they enter the chapel. Jack Murphy plays the fiddle, then Glass gets the audience fired up (“Let’s introduce these men to their new head coach!”). Finally, Johnny Ray Watson, a six-foot-nine former basketball player with a rich baritone, sings a few gospel songs, closing the service by saying, to a chorus of amens, “Today we’re going to make the devil’s kingdom mad!”
After Spiritual Enrichment, the ministry’s motivational speakers and volunteers fan out across the countryside in yellow school buses to the five area prisons. At the Connally unit, Harvey Glass gets things rolling by skydiving into the yard, followed by the roar of ten Harleys. Wearing chaps, bandannas, dark sunglasses, and black leather jackets that say “Riding for the Son,” the bikers weave in and out of the assembled crowd as the Doobie Brothers’ “Jesus Is Just Alright” blares over the public-address system, and the inmates look alternately elated and bewildered by the frenetic activity that has replaced the monotony of prison life.
Throughout the afternoon and the next day, the prisoners hear speakers’ personal testimonies, such as the jaw-dropping story of Harold Thompson, a compulsive gambler who started robbing banks in 1949 to support his craps habit. (“When they named that dice game ‘crap,’ they sure named it right,” he likes to say.) Thompson tells of living the high life robbing banks in the Midwest and landing himself on the FBI’s Most Wanted list before being caught and sentenced to Alcatraz for 105 years. After Alcatraz closed, he wound up serving time in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was “saved” by a prison chaplain. Thompson in turn saved 350 fellow inmates—a feat that got the attention of President Nixon, who granted him an unconditional pardon in 1974.
The inmates are mesmerized by Thompson’s story, but Jack Murphy is the real star of the show. When Murphy walks into the yard, they crowd around him, yelling “Murph!” and asking him to sign their Bibles, ministry pamphlets, or any old scrap of paper they can find. “How you doing, brother?” Murphy asks one inmate, slapping him on the back as the man breaks into a huge smile. “How you feeling?” he asks another, who looks surprised that anyone bothered to ask.
Most of them are familiar with Murphy, a professional violinist and champion surfer, because he pulled off one of the biggest jewel robberies in American history. After serving time for the Star of India theft, he and an accomplice brutally murdered two women in Florida in 1967, and the following year he attempted to rob a Miami Beach socialite. In 1974, while Murphy was serving time for those crimes, Bill Glass visited him in prison and turned his life around, he says; he was released in 1986—although he is on parole until November 11, 2244. Asked why he continues to cross the country spreading the gospel when he has to return to Florida every week for his parole meeting, he replies, “If you were a scientist with the cure for cancer, would you sit at home twiddling your thumbs?”
Addressing the assembled inmates, Murphy says, “I put in a lot of time for the devil. Anything that leads a man to the joint is counterfeit. It isn’t God’s plan.” The crowd is cheering. There are more testimonies of being saved: from Sandi Fatow, a former Jimi Hendrix groupie who tells a wrenching story of heroin addiction and boyfriends lost to the electric chair; from Tom “Hammer” Hughes, a potbellied biker who “lived in the bottom of a longneck for ten years” after fighting in Vietnam; and from former pro-wrestling star Tully Blanchard, decked out in his old black velvet World Wrestling Federation robe, who tells of losing his career to cocaine addiction. And there are performances: from Tanya Crevier, who spins ten basketballs on her body simultaneously; Bunny Martin, the “yo-yo champion of the world”; and country singers Johnny Ray Watson and Clifton Jansky, who sings his prison hit “They May Know Your Number, But Jesus Knows Your Name.”
Inside Connally, Mike McInerney is at work speaking with inmates one-on-one. He walks down one of the prison’s long, concrete corridors, past the riot gear and tear gas canisters, to the area known as lock down. Inmates in lock down have been known to fling razor-sharp homemade spears and even feces, but McInerney ignores the sign instructing all personnel to wear protective goggles and walks up to cell 12A.
“Good morning,” McInerney says cheerfully through the small wire grill on the cell’s metal door. “What’s your name?”
A bare-chested man with the name of his gang, Barrio Azteca, tattooed across his stomach peers warily at McInerney. “Who wants to know?”
McInerney introduces himself, explaining that he was a New Orleans drug dealer for ten years before he was saved and that he’s come to Connally at his own expense to introduce the inmates to Jesus. “Have you ever read this before?” he asks, pulling a worn red-leather-bound Bible out of his back pocket.
“No, man,” the inmate says, laughing at McInerney’s earnestness. “The only book I read is Playboy.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something. God isn’t like a SWAT team. He’s not going to kick down the door and force his way in. You’ve got to invite him.”
“What has God done for me, man? Nothing.”
“Have you ever seen someone who’s sick take medicine?” McInerney asks. “At first they don’t look any better, but the medicine is working. That’s what it’s like when you pray.”
They talk in this vein for close to an hour, and then the inmate—who has slowly grown more receptive to his visitor—tells McInerney that he’d like to pray. They bow their heads and touch fingertips through the grate. “Repeat after me,” McInerney says, “Lord Jesus, I need you . . .”
On average, the ministry has a 20 percent success rate, meaning that roughly 20 percent of any given prison population will make a “commitment to Christ” by the end of a Weekend of Champions. Are these meaningful spiritual transformations or only temporary jailhouse conversions? “It’s debatable if their commitments are real,” says Bill Glass, “but that’s true of people in any church.” (The ministry doesn’t keep track of how many “saved” inmates stay out of trouble.) The seriousness of an inmate’s commitment, Glass says, becomes clear in the months following the ministry’s visit; if the inmate corresponds with one of the ministry’s volunteers, regularly reads the Bible, and stays nonviolent, there’s a good chance that he has been saved.
At the close of this Weekend of Champions, an extraordinary thing happens: The assembled inmates, many of whom are involved in deep gang rivalries or bitter racial feuds, spontaneously begin to hug one another. Some stand in clusters, laughing, while others sit on the concrete floor and talk. A few stand to the side of the crowd, praying with ministry volunteers. And some walk out of the yard arm-in-arm.
Pamela Colloff has written for Details and OnPatrol magazines. 
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