Located nine miles north of Atmore, Alabama, is the legendarily violent prison known by many lags as the "Slaughterhouse".
The William C. Holman Correctional Facility also bears the nicknames like "House of Pain" and "Slaughter Pen of the South", which refers to the amount of stabbings and death that are seen within its walls. "You can't get much lower than this," an inmate once told documentary producer Hilary Heath in her film LOCKUP Inside: Holman Correctional Facility.
The facility is infamous within the prison community for its barbaric inmates and poor living conditions. The fact that it has a deeply southern locale only adds to its mystique, with many lags serving lengthy sentences for horrific murder and rape-related crimes.
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In March 2016 the prison went into lockdown hours after a riot broke out (FACEBOOK)The Daily Star reported In March 2016 the prison went into lockdown hours after a riot broke out, as inmates set a fire, seized control of a dormitory and stabbed two corrections officials, authorities said.
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About 100 inmates were involved in the disturbance, described in the media at the time as an "uprising". Filmmaker Heath spoke to NBC in 2006 about the documentary and the "stifling heat" her team had observed when they visited in June that year.
"It was late June, and southern Alabama's 100-degree temperatures had begun to set in," she said. "The hottest place by far was the kitchen where inmate workers sweat it out for hours each day. The kitchen felt like a sauna."
The prison is infamous for violence and poor living conditions (doc.state.al)Heath added: "While the low-paid jobs at Holman are highly coveted, I spoke to one kitchen worker who told us he couldn't wait to transfer out."
Although in present day Holman's population is more sparse, when Heath visited in 2006 the facility held 1000 men - double what it was built to house. Since the prison opened in 1969, it quickly gained a reputation for being the most violent in Alabama, not just for the lags but the people who worked there.
This situation was exacerbated by the years of overcrowding - in 1974 an employee was stabbed to death by a knife-wielding inmate. In 1985 a large riot occurred and 22 men, including wardens and other staff members, were taken hostage.
An inmate recording the 2016 'uprising' inside the prison (FACEBOOK)Heath interviewed a man called Steven Parker, who was serving life without parole for murdering his stepmother and almost killing his father. While behind bars, Parker's sentence increased because of his deadly attack on another inmate.
"According to his account, he slit the inmate's jugular vein after a deal over a tattoo went awry," they explained. Steven had reportedly been hoping to add another swastika to his already budding collection.
In 2016 inmates seized control of a dormitory and stabbed two corrections officials (FACEBOOK)The prison also houses Albama's execution chamber, where the state-ordered deaths of prisoners are carried out by lethal injection. In January 2024, the Alabama Department of Corrections conducted the first ever execution via nitrogen hypoxia.
The death of Kenneth Smith, who survived the state's previous attempt to put him to death by lethal injection in 2022, was controversial with critics likening the new method of execution to human experimentation. In his final statement, Smith said: "Tonight Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards... I'm leaving with love, peace and light."
The lethal injection chamber at Holman (Dave Martin/AP/REX/Shutterstock)Smith's 'spiritual adviser' over the course of his imprisonment, the Rev Jeff Hood, was also present for the execution. The churchman said prison officials in the room "were visibly surprised at how bad this thing went". "What we saw was minutes of someone struggling for their life," Hood said.
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According to reports, Smith remained conscious for several minutes before convulsing wildly with his eyes rolling back into his head for at least a further two minutes. By 2020, Holman facility had become so overcrowded and violent that the state had to step in and relocate around 600 prisoners to other prisons.
A 1979 photo shows the electric chair at Holman prison (Bettmann Archive)This came after a US Justice Department probe found Holman's staff of authorised correctional officers was less than a fifth of what it should have been.
Even the thinning out of its inmates hasn't seemed to dull the violence among the death-rowers at Holman, quite aside from it being the place where "novel, untested" methods of killing people are pioneered.
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