Wonderland, Terminal Island Federal Prison & Charles Manson

Barbara Lee would have been 54 today. Happy Birthday Butterfly! RIP Honey.

The photo below is of Terminal Island Federal Prison. This is where Eddie Nash served a few years upon finally accepting a plea bargain in 2000 for his RICO involvement, which included orchestrating the Wonderland murders. Although a few of the culprits would serve jail or prison time here and there for their other crimes, this was the only hard time served in relation to the murders. Charles Manson also served time here, being paroled in 1958, the year Barbara was born. A Manson connection? Six Degrees of Good Time Charlie to Wonderland, who would have guessed it.

Prison facilities highlighted in yellow

The first prisoners, 610 men and 40 women, filed into the new 21-acre federal prison near the southern end of Terminal Island on June 1, 1938.

The Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institution consisted of three cell blocks built around a central quadrangle, and cost $2 million to build.

In 1942, the U.S. Navy took control of the prison for use as a receiving station, and then as a barracks for court-martialed prisoners.

After the Navy deactivated the facility in 1950, the state of California took it over for use as a medical and psychiatric institution.

The state ceded control to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in 1955, which converted the facility back into a low-to-medium security federal prison.
The prison has housed the famous and the infamous over the years.

Al Capone spent the last few months of his 10-year sentence for income tax evasion at Terminal Island in the late 1930s.

Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen, left, ended spending some time at the prison in 1967 as part of his own tax evasion sentence, his second. He was moved from Alcatraz at his request so he could be nearer his ailing mother at the time.

Charles Manson, above, did two stints in Terminal Island before his 1971 conviction in the infamous Tate-LaBianca murder case. In the mid-1950s, he was sent there after his conviction for stealing cars, but was paroled in 1958, the same year Barbara Richardson was born. He returned in 1966 and part of 1967 while serving out a sentence for attempting to cash a forged U.S. Treasury check.

Sources

Inside SoCal. http://www.insidesocal.com/history/2010/08/-the-terminal-island-federal.html

Wikipedia