Trial Diary: Connolly's jailhouse digs

September 17, 2008 11:16 AM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Dick Lehr, Globe Correspondent

MIAMI – There's been a full moon over Miami this week, but the only view John Connolly has had these past few years is of his own fallen star. Home for the former FBI agent is the windowless "strict security" unit of a sprawling prison out by the airport. It's where he's been held since his indictment on state murder charges three years ago, and where he spends about 23 hours a day in a cell the size of a walk-in closet.

Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center

Connolly sleeps on a concrete bed with its 5-inch mattress, washes up at the combo sink/toilet, and sits for hours at a time at a tiny desk where he keeps a photo of his sons. Meals on plastic trays arrive through a slot in the gray steel door, and every 30 minutes a guard swings by, day and night, to check on him and other inmates in the special unit.

Officially, John Connolly’s address is cell K-8113 in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. Fifteen miles away is Miami Beach, where cruise ships dot the horizon and vacationers from around the world cavort along the sandy beach by day and in the bars at night. It's a scene Connolly himself would once have relished, he the longtime popular Boston FBI agent who moved about his hometown with flair and fun.

Connolly's now kept in protective custody, and away from the general inmate population, because he is a former FBI agent. "Cops and crooks, they don't mix," says one of the correctional officers who’s been assigned to him. "If they learned he's ex-FBI, that's a potential problem."

Most inmates held at the Miami-Dade County facility are, like Connolly, on or awaiting trial. Inmates in his unit include several accused rapists, a death row killer who's appealing his conviction, and a local police officer charged with sex crimes. The inmates rarely see one another, but many chat away their days by yelling to one another up and down the cellblock.

Not Connolly. He doesn't join the chorus line. "John is quiet," says one of his guards who, like others I talked to, didn't want their names to be used. "He talks only to us."

It's talk spiced with jailhouse banter. "I joke with him, 'You're a made man, a made man!" and John says, "No, no, no, that's not me."

Guards consider Connolly a model inmate. "He's never any trouble." Indeed, it's his good behavior that has apparently won him a cell with a prime location. The guard's desk on the lower level is located right outside his cell door, a proximity that guarantees some companionship when a guard is sitting there while not doing rounds.

"You gotta be a good inmate to be in that cell," the guard explains. "If he was a pain in the butt we’d move him to another cell far away from our desk."

Connolly's days begin around 6 a.m., when the lights come on throughout the unit. Guards conduct a head count in the unit, which has 50 cells on two levels, and then a breakfast -- eggs, grits, and maybe oatmeal -- is served. Connolly’s on a low-sodium diet, which means that for lunch, instead of the bologna sandwich served to every inmate throughout the entire Miami-Dade County prison system, Connolly gets tuna fish.

The guards say Connolly spends a lot of his time reading legal documents and writing. He's always writing," one says. "He's always working on his case. He's like the only one who wants to get out. Everyone else is on the phone or watching TV."

Inmates have TV's in their cells, and John tends to watch some in the afternoons and evenings. The four telephones on his level are wheeled by guards to an individual cell and then guards slip the mouthpiece through the slot in the steel door. Inmates work out calling times on their own, and Connolly’s tends to be in the early evening.

"He uses it for about an hour," the guard says. "He's got a lot of attorney friends."

Inmates are taken out of their cell one by one to take a shower and spend some time in the yard. Yard is actually a misnomer -- it's an empty and windowless "concrete patio" where for a few minutes inmates stretch their legs and walk about. Surprisingly, Connolly has only recently begun to utilize his patio time. "Before he wouldn't want to go out," the guard says. "He'd want to stay in his cell and keep writing."

With the start of his murder trial this week, the monotony of slow time has broken a bit for Connolly. He gets up earlier to shower and shave, and then he's transported to the courthouse about nine miles away. He arrives secured in leg shackles and a belly chain, but before entering the courtroom trades his prison jumpsuit for a suit and tie.

His guards may not know the nitty-gritty about the epic saga of FBI corruption that has played itself out over several decades in Boston, in which Connolly had a marque role, but they are certainly aware of his ties to Whitey Bulger and the $2 million reward for his capture. "I ask him, 'Where's Whitey?'" jokes one guard. But Connolly apparently doesn't find any humor in the question Bostonians have been asking for years.

"He doesn't say anything," the guard says. "He just goes, "Ohhhhhh."

Dick Lehr is the co-author of the national bestseller “Black Mass: The True Story of the Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob.’’ He wrote for the Boston Globe from 1986 to 2003.