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Thread: Patrick Charles McKenna - Nevada

  1. #11
    johninvegas
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    After the riot with McKenna, most of us were sent to the county jail downtown. They put us on the 4th floor were again I was TWO cells down from McKenna. most of the inmates were waiting for the train to take them to their respected joints.

    I was waiting to be sentence for burglary (my sentence would have been 5 years) And with that I paid $3000 restitution and no Felony on my record. And that was the end that. And I know one thing is that I never ever want to McKenna ever again.

    McKenna is a rat that will kill you in a heart beat.

  2. #12
    Senior Member Member Dillydust's Avatar
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    You seem to know everyone on Nevadas death row eh.

  3. #13
    haditeman
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    I worked in the jail annex where pat, Eugene and Felix took over the place. I also ran into an inmate who claimed he was in jail during the takeover, just curious if it was you I ran into. Would have been at the CCDC. Would love to talk to you more about the incident.

    Again I worked the fourth deck prior to the new facility opening up in 84. My father was a lieutenant at the jail during the annex takeover. I am sure we know several of the officers if you remember any of them. The fourth deck housed the worst and most violent inmates at the time. It was scary for the officers let alone the inmates.

  4. #14
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Jailhouse HiJack: The story of the 'Most Dangerous Man in Nevada'

    By Tom Hawley
    News3LV

    LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — He's been called the "Most Dangerous Man in Nevada", and has been on death row for almost four decades.

    Patrick Charles McKenna was sentenced to die for killing his cellmate in the city Jail in 1979. He was also behind a desperate bid freedom that stunned Las Vegas later that year.

    Southern Nevada has never seen anything like it before or since. Three armed prisoners holding police at bay for two days using jail guards as hostages. Patrick McKenna was the brains of the outfit.

    "We knew he was an intellectually bright person. Challenged morality-wise, clearly," states historian and former KSNV News Director Bob Stoldal, who back in 1979 was News Director at KLAS.

    "He was a sociopath," adds former Clark County Sheriff Jerry Keller, who was on the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's Hostage Negotiation Team 40 years ago. "Clearly defined by psychologists as a sociopath. He took no culpability, accountability for himself. He blamed everything that happened on everybody else's doings."

    McKenna already had a long rap sheet starting with kidnap, rape, and assault in 1964 at age 17 followed by his first prison escape two years later. Recaptured, he served time and was released, onto be jailed again for a different set of crimes. While awaiting trial in 1979, a charge of murder was added when he killed his cellmate. Then in August of that same year, he and two other inmates made their move.

    "They had gained access to the gun locker and each had obtained a weapon. A nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson officer's weapon," says Keller. "And had taken three corrections officers hostage. And were actually holding the other 106 inmates hostage as well."

    The location might come as a surprise. The property on the northwest corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Stewart that is now home to the Zappos campus served as Las Vegas City Hall from 1979 until 2012. Four decades ago, the north side of the complex was also the city jail, where the three inmates were holding siege and looking for outside help.

    "The first call I received was from Pat McKenna himself," recalls Stoldal. "I picked up the phone. It was a Saturday morning. I was strictly behind the scenes, but I had been an anchor in town, so McKenna knew me by name."

    "Pat McKenna and I had a conversation. And then not too long after that was a call from Metro saying go ahead and come on down, so I did."

    Stoldal became the go-between, delivering food and water to the inmates and taking messages back and forth, all with Metro's blessing. One officer wanted to make sure the newsman played it cool.

    "He put his hands on me and said 'Listen, you're not John Wayne. These are bad guys’. I remember thinking to myself, 'Well, if I don't think I'm John Wayne, I'm not going back up there'."

    "It's overcoming that nervousness and doing the role that we asked him to do that made him such an integral part of the resolution of this situation," describes Keller. "We had a SWAT team on both sides of the door. Where Bob was standing, there were SWAT team members. Three or four guys on each side of the door should anything happen. Bob was well protected should anything start to happen. But at the moment it started to happen, he was always under threat."

    Since McKenna had specifically requested him, Stoldal also sometimes worked the telephones along with members of the Hostage Negotiation Team. 44 hours into the crisis, Stoldal was on the phone with McKenna when events started happening fast.

    "But while we were talking, that's when the one...two...three...four...five...six shots," says Stoldal. We could all hear, and we looked at each other."

    The two other inmates were 29-year-old Felix Lorenzo who faced a 150-year prison term for robberies and kidnappings, along with 40-year-old Eugene Shaw who was looking at up to 60 years for robbery and use of a deadly weapon. Tensions had been running high between the two of them as well as with McKenna. Keller thinks the catalyst for the shooting was the compressor on a water cooler in the room next door.

    "Started rattling against the wall and they thought we were trying to burrow through," theorizes the former sheriff. "And as a result, the conflict between Lorenzo and Shaw boiled over and they got involved in a gunfight. McKenna ran to the back of the room, put on a corrections officer’s uniform and put a mattress over himself."

    When the smoke had cleared, Lorenzo and Shaw were both dead and McKenna was back in custody. One of the hostage corrections officers took a bullet to the hand during the shootout but was otherwise OK. All three were traumatized by the event, however.

    "There was no doubt in our minds that they were going to kill us," former guard David Murray told News 3 a year later. "They made that very clear that we weren't leaving there alive. And we were handcuffed crossways between bars so that if SWAT would come through, they'd get us first. I was thinking the whole time, 'When are they going to do it?' From minute to minute, 'When are they going to shoot us?' After getting over it and taking my medical treatment, you know no matter what happens, I'm just happy that I'm alive."

    McKenna was convicted in 1980 of murdering his cellmate in 1980 and sentenced to death. Two years later an appeal with a change of venue to Minden ended with the same result.

    Fourteen years and several escape attempts later, after the U.S. Supreme Court had granted him a new penalty hearing, McKenna was returned to Las Vegas to face a new jury. By now Keller was sheriff of Clark County, and took no chances.

    "Mitts. A hood. Absolutely," Keller describes the precautions. "He is a threat for escape at all times. He was a member of the Aryan--may still be--the Aryan Brotherhood, and we always perceived a threat."

    McKenna had his day in court and seemed to enjoy the proceedings. At one point he described his view of a good man.

    "If a guy's stand up if he's not an informer if he lives by the code," McKenna told the judge and jury. "That's how you judge another person."

    In the end, the result was the same as before.

    "We the jury in the above-entitled case set the sentence and penalty to be imposed on the defendant Patrick Charles McKenna at death," read the clerk. "Dated this 19th day of September 1996."

    "He's hurt people. He rapes, he robs. He kills," prosecutor Dan Seaton told reporters after the penalty hearing. "He's done all of those things in this city more than once. I don't know how much more you can damage a city."

    But in a 1990 interview behind bars at the Maximum-Security Prison in Ely, McKenna told News 3 he got a raw deal.

    "The only reason I have the death penalty is because of who I am and because and it was Las Vegas. And I was just involved in that jailhouse thing. Trying to get out of there. Escaped and got caught in that sucker. That's why—because of the avalanche of publicity that hit me. Then comes that murder trial. Any other time, any other case on the face of it, we're talking Second Degree. And I make no bones about it. I admit to that. But because of all that, so I ended up with this thing. And I end up with the death penalty. They got me on ice for a while."

    Today McKenna is still on Death Row at age 72. Is he still dangerous at this point in his life?

    "He is who he is. And he is that psychopath," says Stoldal.

    "Just as dangerous today as he was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago," observes Keller. "He is no less a threat to the community, and probably no less a threat to some of the inmates in the Nevada State Prison."

    Does McKenna hold an important place in the history of events in Southern Nevada? Stoldal pauses a moment before answering.

    "Covering [Mob enforcer Anthony] Spilotro and all of those things. Those are the moments. The MGM [1980 fire] tragedy, the Hilton [1981 fire] Tragedy. Those are the things. But Bozo McKenna. No, I don't put him in that category. He's way down at the bottom."

    Patrick McKenna is the second longest-serving person on Nevada's death row. There have been no executions in the state since 2006, and 11 of the 12 executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977 have been voluntary.

    https://news3lv.com/news/local/jailh...-dangerous-man
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  5. #15
    Senior Member Frequent Poster joe_con's Avatar
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    This guy died of cancer at UMC.

  6. #16
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    McKenna isn’t on their list of deceased inmates

    https://doc.nv.gov/About/Press_Release/News/
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  7. #17
    Senior Member Frequent Poster joe_con's Avatar
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    He will be, Nevada is slow to update that list

  8. #18
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bobsicles View Post
    McKenna isn’t on their list of deceased inmates

    https://doc.nv.gov/About/Press_Release/News/
    Type his name into the search bar. He comes up inactive-death

    https://ofdsearch.doc.nv.gov
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  9. #19
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    April 29, 2021

    ‘Most infamous killer’ on Nevada’s death row dies

    LAS VEGAS — A man convicted of murder and sexual assault and who was incarcerated on death row in Nevada for most of his adult life has died after a series of heart attacks. He was 74, prison officials said.

    The Clark County coroner's office said Patrick Charles McKenna died of natural causes, KVVU-TV reported.

    McKenna was an inmate at High Desert State Prison and was awaiting capital punishment longer than almost anyone else in the state, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. The Nevada Department of Corrections confirmed McKenna died at Spring Valley Hospital on April 19.

    "He's probably the most infamous killer on Nevada's death row," Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson said. "And in my opinion, he didn't get what he deserved."
    McKenna, long considered Nevada's most dangerous prisoner, was sentenced to death in 1980 for first-degree murder, kidnapping, sexual assault and robbery with a deadly weapon, authorities said.

    He strangled his cellmate, 20-year-old Jack Nobles, at the Clark County jail in 1979 and had been convicted of multiple crimes, prison officials said. The initial murder conviction in the killing of Nobles was reversed twice and his penalty reversed three times before jurors agreed McKenna should be executed by the state, The Review-Journal reported.

    His brother Ken McKenna, a retired lawyer who represented his older sibling after the first reversal in the early 1980s, said their mother sent Patrick McKenna to a youth camp where he claims his brother encountered "vicious and vindictive" authority figures.

    Retired Nevada Supreme Court Justice Michael Cherry, a former public defender, represented McKenna on the rape charges and during his first trial for the Nobles killing. Cherry had asked the jury to spare his life, but he said Wednesday that his client stopped him from presenting mitigating evidence that could have saved him from the death penalty.
    "I tried my best for him," Cherry said. "I knew his background was partially responsible."

    https://www.nevadaappeal.com/news/20...eath-row-dies/
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

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