HISTORY
The site was once a Civil War training ground known as Camp Mordecai Bartley. By the 1880s it became known as the Mansfield Reformatory. The building served as a prision until 1990 and was used by Hollywood for films such as The Shawshank Redemption and Air Force One.
The premises was witness to stabbings, suicides, and acts of murder. The superintendent of the tailor shop had his throat slit by an inmate who mistakenly grabbed him while lying in wait for another inmate. The suicides involve a hanging in "the hole" (solitary confinement), an inmate who drank silage alcohol, and a convict who set himself ablaze with lighter fluid and paint thinner.
In 1925, an ex-inmate killed a guard at the west entrance while attempting to help a buddy escape. While trying to flee in his car, another inmate who was witness to the murder, jumped on the running board an unsuccessfully attempted to stop him. He was, however, able to obtain the license number. The assailant was later apprehended and within a couple months had been sent to the electric chair.
The warden and his wife lived in special quarters set aside for them within the reformatory. The death of the warden's wife in the early 1950s is fraught with rumors of a cover up. She was allegedly killed when a .32 automatic fell from her closet, accidentally discharged, and the bullet pierced her left lung. Old timers claim that she and the warden had been fighting. One rumor states that he had been having relations with their house boy, who was interestingly paroled right after the incident. The warden's business dealings were also a hot bed of alleged corruption. He succumbed to a heart attack of the administrative wing of the reformatory.
No matter what their crime, some sent to Mansfield have never left. They rest unclaimed in a cheerless graveyard just outside the fence. 215 numbered markers laid out row on row. Most were victims of disease, influenza, tuberculosis, but some died of less natural causes; From the violence, that is all to common inside any prison and was far from unknown in this one. And the worst of it occurred well away from the main cell block with their rows of cages stacked tier on tier, and inmates, one or two to a cell.
There were too many eyes, too many witnesses here, no the worst of it was reserved for a far lonelier place, deep beneath the prison ground. A place called local control, or solitary, by some, known by everyone else as the hole. Near total isolation can crack all but the toughest of cons, but none was so alone that there wasn’t room for death. At least one inmate managed to hang himself, another set himself on fire, once two men left too long in a single tomb like cell, only one walked out, leaving his cellmate’s body behind, stuffed beneath a bunk. Could there be other similar surprises? Or words left over from the days before the prison closed? Even when they’re empty, some swear something walks these halls. It isn’t enough for contemporary visitors not to wonder off alone while sight seeing, what‘s become one of Mansfield’s more popular tourist attractions.
But the bloodiest single incident in the old prison’s history occurred outside it’s walls. In July 1948, when the Reformatory’s farm boss, his wife and daughter were kidnapped and shot to death by two parolees bent on revenge. A six state manhunt for the so called mad-dog killers ended in a shootout that left Robert Daniels of Columbus in custody and his partner, James West dead. "I’ll get the Chair" Daniels told police as he signed the confession. And on January 3rd, 1949, he did. A year later in 1950 disaster struck again. This time, here in the living quarters of the Warden himself. The Warden’s wife, removing a jewelry box from a closet shelf dislodged a pistol from it’s hiding place. When it hit the floor, the gun went off inflicting a fatal wound. And within the decade, even more bad luck. The Warden, hard at work in his office, suffered a heart attack and died.
All this was nearly 40 years ago and more, how then to explain the voices shaken tour guides swear they hear today? Man and woman talking, to faint to understand, to persistent to ignore and chilling to listeners who think they’re alone, only to find themselves apparently eavesdropping on the warden and his wife locked forever in an endless conversation from beyond the grave.
The Reformatory is located at the intersection of St. Rt. 545 and St. Rt. 30 in Mansfield, Ohio. Mansfield is located halfway between Columbus and Cleveland on I-71. Coming from I-71, go west on St. Rt. 30, as you enter Mansfield, go north on St. Rt. 545. The reformatory is located on your left (going north).
