He and his staff eventually negotiated an end to the standoff 13 participants, including two leaders of the riot, were transferred to the maximum-security wing, and the rest were returned to their cells. Responding to the crisis, the governor of West Virginia cut short a vacation in Florida and hastened to the prison.
One hostage, forced to watch the killing of a prisoner-Jeff Atkinson, a suspected informant who had been convicted of murdering a pregnant woman-reported that an inmate cut out Atkinson’s heart and said to a friend, “It’s amazing how this little thing will keep a fellow alive.” “You quit treating us like dogs,” one rioter screamed, “and this wouldn’t happen … We don’t want this any more than you do!” During the harrowing 52-hour standoff that ensued, things grew grisly: the rioters not only threatened violence against their hostages but also murdered three inmates thought to be either informants or the authors of especially repugnant crimes.
What motivated the rioters were living conditions and sanitary standards inside the prison, which were inhumane. They stripped the hostages to their underwear, dressed them up as inmates, blindfolded them, and placed them in separate rooms around the facility, to give themselves enough time to kill at least some of them in the event of a rescue attempt.
After ordering the stunned diners to “leave the fucking food alone,” the instigators ranged through the prison’s South Hall, freeing whole cellblocks and eventually capturing 16 staff members. On New Year’s Day in 1986, a group of 20 prisoners bearing shanks stormed the dining hall at the state penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virginia, where inmates had just been seated for dinner, and took hostage the correctional officers on duty.
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