THOMASTON — On Feb. 9, 1990, Larry Richardson, 29, was huddled in a fetal position in his Down East Correctional Facility bunk, crying for his mother. He was hearing voices. A convicted child molester, Richardson was shunned by the population at Maine State Prison and had been transferred to the Bucks Harbor facility for his own protection.

He could not have known that his life was about to get much, much worse.

DECF staff realized that Richardson was too much for them to handle and transferred him back to the prison in Thomaston on Feb. 10. It would be an inadvertent death sentence carried out less than a month later.

Richardson was found dead, hanging by a bedsheet from a cell door, on the morning of March 6, 1990. His cellmate, Roger L. Smith, 22, was convicted in Knox County Superior Court on Sept. 20 for Richardson’s murder and awaits sentencing.

Richardson died after a “kangaroo court” conducted by inmates in other cells, and three nights of torture by Smith, who is mildly mentally retarded. The testimony in the two-week trial has raised the veil from prison life and the fate of “skinners,” or child abusers behind prison walls.

The two weeks of testimony became a trial within a trial, of the jail within the jail, as the segregation unit is called. The guard staff was blasted for its inattention at best, complicity at worst. Segregation unit guards are supposed to make rounds every 15 minutes. The body finally was found at 12:05 a.m.

Former inmate Dale Rytky had been at the segregation unit for only a few weeks when Richardson’s kangaroo court started. “You could hear him yelling for help. You could hear him screaming in pain,” he said.

In a taped interview with the Maine State Police, Smith said, “The guards came by and they were laughing, making fun of him. What kind of guards are these? I’ve never seen guards do this before.”

“I don’t think Roger should take all the blame. The guards should too,” said inmate Michael McKeown.

The kangaroo court was common knowledge in the prison. Prison nurse Marcia Keith called the segregation unit at 11:55 that night to check on Richardson. “Everything is cool,” said an unidentified guard. When she was called to cell No. 12 about 15 minutes later, Richardson’s hands and feet were already cold, indicating death had occurred sometime earlier.

What did prison guards know? When did they know it? These and other questions will be the focus of an investigation ordered by the Attorney General’s Office into the hanging death. So far, no guard has been disciplined. No guard has been fired.

Smith was defended by Rockland attorney Joseph Steinberger. “The worst thing is that some guards completely ignored, while others apparently encouraged, the whole awful thing. There were statements from inmates that guards said `give him one for me’ during the beating.”

During the trial, Steinberger charged that an organized “coverup” was formed at the prison to hide the actions of guards. Two documents were reported missing after the trial started. One documented Richardson’s activity. One documented guards’ activity. “It is very hard to know what went on,” Steinberger said.

Prison officials said the two missing documents were insignificant compared to the thousands supplied during the investigation. “President Nixon could have said the same thing,” Steinberger said. “Those are key documents. It is hard to accept that they are missing. Who knows what was on them? Did Richardson ask to be transferred? I cannot imagine what could have been on the guards’ sheet about a problem in segregation,” the attorney said.

As a result of the trial’s revelations, morale at the Maine State Prison is “at an all-time low,” according to Martin Magnusson, warden since 1982. “This makes everybody look bad.” Ironically, all of this attention and criticism comes at a time when the prison “has never been run better … with less incidents.”

The prison, like all state agencies, is struggling with shortfalls in funding. Although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has identified $1 million in needed safety-related repairs, there are no funds for the project.

“We have a severe budget crisis and now this. The people here have the sense they have been treated unfairly in total, that Steinberger went over the line,” Magnusson said.

The blizzard of publicity included an assertion by a Portland newspaper that Richardson’s entire file had disappeared. “That is absolutely untrue reporting that is so different compared to what happened,” the warden said.

The information contained on the two missing documents is recorded in countless other documents, Magnusson said. “I don’t know where it went. There is no information missing. We have provided volumes of logs and officers’ statements. To say in an editorial that there is a coverup because the whole file is missing is grossly inaccurate.”

It is incomprehensible that the three-day kangaroo court and beating could have taken place under the noses of the staff, he said.

“There were more than 90 people up there in the three-day period. I find it extremely difficult to believe the security, caseworkers, psychologists, religious volunteers … all of those people could have known that this person was being tortured up there, going through what he was going through and not take action,” he said.

Magnusson was quick to defend the actions of guard Stephen Wood. Wood testified that he was warned about an altercation in cell No. 12 on the night of Richardson’s death, but made no “special effort” to control the situation.

“Steve Wood is an excellent guard. I have seen these (segregation) guards jump into fights, potential assaults, and take care of it. They have gone into fire situations and dealt with it. I have seen Wood give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to an inmate in the same cell (No. 12) with the inmate throwing up all over him. I have a difficult time believing that staff knew that Richardson was being tortured, knew what he was going through and not take action. I don’t believe that they knew,” he said.

The third shift has two guards working 35 to 40 feet around a corner from cell No. 12. There is no way any prison guard would walk past a hanging inmate, Magnusson said. “I don’t believe that happened under any circumstances, absolutely not,” he said.

“The sad thing is that Richardson also wanted this to happen. The evidence is quite clear that Smith was very much involved in assaulting him and probably helping him kill himself,” the warden said.

The prison has seen many changes since Richardson’s death. Double celling was eliminated in May 1990. The change was being contemplated even before a Maine Civil Liberties Union suit.

“One of the nightmares was that we had 45 inmates in 31 cells in segregation. There wasn’t any room here or in the system. What we have really done is to transfer the problem to another facility (Maine Correctional Center at South Windham). I know some people view it as a cop-out, but double celling was nothing that anybody in the department wanted to do. It was a five-year nightmare for the staff up there. It was an absolute nightmare,” Magnusson said. “We were just trying to keep our heads above water.”

In late 1990, Magnusson spoke at various spots in support of the November $20 million bond referendum. Voters killed the 1989 referendum of $35 million, then the 1990 referendum for $20 million. Magnusson used the Richardson case as an illustration of the dangers of double celling.

“One of the ironies of this case is that while I was out pushing for the 1990 bond issue, I talked about this case. I told the public that double celling was still occurring. The basic attitude was `I don’t care if you put four in a cell.’ That came back to me numerous times. They saw that the guys had TVs in there,” he said.

The guard staff at Maine State Prison has never been better trained, officials claim. Training has increased from one week to five weeks before a guard sets foot on the cell block. No changes are contemplated for training as a result of Richardson’s death because guards are taught to treat each inmate equally, regardless of their crime, Magnusson said.

About 90 sex offenders are in the prison population today. When the “Supermax” prison opens in Warren in December, about 100 “predators” will be removed from Thomaston, easing the situation, Magnusson said. Supermax is designed to remove the 100 most hardened criminals from Thomaston.

“I probably know more about what goes on in this prison than anyone,” said 17-year veteran guard Robert Moore. He said it was ironic that the prison was being criticized when the problems at Maine State Prison are a fraction of the problems in other states, and a fraction of the problem in the 1970s.

Moore said that something would have to be done about the flood of sex offenders coming to Maine State Prison.

“For every 10 new inmates, it seems that seven are child molesters,” he said. Inmates hate child molesters “for the same reason you and I do,” Moore said.

Officer Wood “is one of the best officers here. He would never knowingly have let that happen. He has probably found more people hanging than anyone else and talked more people out of it,” Moore said. Although after a few years, guards “get hardened” to prison noise, there was no “criminal intent” in Richardson’s death, he said.

“If there were 20 less inmates (in segregation), it wouldn’t have happened. There were a lot of mistakes made. You get nonchalant. You get lazy,” Moore said.

Guards routinely are splattered with food, urine and feces by inmates. Prison guards are “embarrassed” at the publicity from the trial, Moore said.

Maine residents should keep the Richardson incident in perspective, prison officials said. Every month, prisons in other states experience far worse problems. “Guards and inmates from other states say this is the most comfortable, safest prison they have been in,” Magnusson said.

Despite the storm of protest about the Richardson case, Magnusson believes he will keep his job. “The charges of a coverup are not true. I was not involved in any coverup. I am very comfortable that after a full investigation, there won’t be any problem,” he said.