Jail Tour Smacks of a House of Horrors

Halfway through L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca’s macabre “Jail Tour of Murder Sites” the other day, I wondered if he had considered selling tickets to the general public. Baca could probably get $10 a pop and use the cash to plug the holes in his budget.

Five inmates have been killed in seven months, and reporters were allowed to see the very locations where victims were shanked, strangled and bashed to death. The highlight was the module where one inmate wandered down from another floor and killed a chap he was supposed to be separated from.

Inmates were also available to talk about how they get tanked on jailhouse sangria called “pruno,” which they brew with fruit and other items picked off of their meal trays. To hear the stories, you’d have to guess the inmate vintners rank right up there with Mondavi in annual production.

And who would choose to miss seeing the location where, just the other day, two inmates managed to get their hands on a 16-pound sledgehammer and a TEC-9 semiautomatic pistol that were used in separate escape attempts?

Baca, a politician, allowed the media in for a reason. He wanted us to see what a daunting task he has and win our support for more money from the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, as well as a half-cent sales tax bump he’s backing.

But at times I wasn’t sure whether the strategy was working or backfiring.

Call me a skeptic, but when you show me a sledgehammer, bolt cutters, a car jack and an automatic pistol that were hoisted up to a jail window from an outside parking lot by inmates, my instinct is not to write a bigger check to Wile E. Coyote.

With a little more time, inmates might have been able to hoist a pool table, a keg of beer and maybe a few Hooters’ girls.

And let’s not forget that Baca has admitted some of his own policies were violated in at least one of the killings. If an inmate can wander through the jail at will and kill someone despite a court-ordered separation order, is it because of budget shortages or because someone’s asleep at the wheel?

A little of both. As L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich put it, the sheriff has plenty of room to tidy up his operation, and supervisors can do a better job of supporting him.

Maybe I can offer an assist, too. Having taken Baca’s murder tour, I think I can help ease the jail overcrowding problem by telling you something about the experience.

Whatever kind of miscreant you might be, believe me when I say you do not ever want to end up getting tossed into this can.

Do not drink and drive, and do not steal so much as a doughnut.

You’ll be OK if you end up in the newer, well-lighted, dorm-like Twin Towers. But the Men’s Central Jail, where most of the mayhem takes place, is a spooky, archaic block of steel and concrete. I’ve seen worse jails, but I’ve also seen better kennels.

There is no air in the place to speak of. Then again, there’s no room to breathe, so it almost doesn’t matter.

Inmates are packed four to a cell and, with all the howling and cage-rattling we were treated to -- along with an array of gang tattoos and signage -- it’s a minor miracle someone doesn’t get shanked in this dungeon every night of the week.

With an overall jail population of more than 17,000, it’s possible that your one little slip-up -- a drink too many after a bad day at the office -- could put you a bunk away from a cold-blooded killer.

But back to the lapses. The case of Steven Prendergast, 32, was the most disturbing of the five jail homicides, and I got the willies standing in the stuffy cell that became his coffin.

As Baca’s report on him states, Prendergast had spent time at Patton State Hospital because he was “criminally insane.” He later ended up in the Twin Towers psychiatric ward, which houses an astounding 2,000 mentally ill inmates with everything from mild agitation to raving madness.

Prendergast apparently refused his medication in the psych ward, seemed OK and got transferred to Men’s Central.

But he wasn’t OK. On Dec. 7, he was talking to himself in the tiny cell and two of his cellmates didn’t appreciate it. When Prendergast refused to stop, they killed him.

“That is where his head was smashed repeatedly against the wall,” a sheriff’s homicide captain said on the tour.

It was probably a mental health worker who made the determination to move him out of psych, Sheriff’s Cmdr. Marc Klugman told me.

Why are 2,000 mentally ill people locked up in the first place? I asked.

Klugman looked me in the eye. “Failure of government,” he said.

He took me to the psychiatric ward, where a deputy told me about one inmate who popped his eyeballs out of his head and another who “peeled off his face.” He also sees attempted hangings and inmates trying to hurl themselves over the second-floor railing.

The closing of Cuckoo’s Nest mental hospitals more than 30 years ago was a good thing. But we never did the promised follow-up, which was full-service community mental health clinics.

There’s a lot we didn’t do because, right about then, Californians decided we wanted everything on the cheap. And we haven’t looked back. The vehicle license fees helped pay for public safety, and we threw a governor out of office to get a lousy refund. Now Baca is letting inmates out early to make ends meet.

I’m telling you, 10 bucks a pop for the murder tour and Baca’s problems are solved. For another sawbuck, they’ll send you home with a souvenir shank and a stiff shot of pruno.

Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at [email protected] and read previous columns at latimes.com/lopez.