Convicted of armed robbery in 1925 he was transferred to the Missouri State Penitentiary. In his first few months he heard of other convicts being found beaten, even strangled and knifed, by cellmates in who’s business they tried to interfere. Screams at night were common and rehabilitation sparse. He eventually walked out of prison in 1929, and headed to Kansas City. In 1934, he would be imp… Read more >

Recently decommissioned in October of 2004 by Governor Bob Holden, the City of Jefferson has great future plans for the prison with a large scale redevelopment plan. The first building of the Missouri State Penitentiary was built in 1835 and opened the next year, when state legislators thought the new industry would help the struggling small town. It is the oldest state penitentiary west of  Read more >

A City within a City: The Missouri State Penitentiary, 1836-2004, is an exhibit presented by the Missouri State Museum. It features artifacts and images from the penitentiary as well as a reproduction prison cell (with original bunks, sink, toilet, and door/window bars). The exhibit will be housed in the Rozier Gallery of the Union Hotel at Jefferson Landing State Historic Site through November… Read more >

At age 13 he fled rural Arkansas to live with his mother in St. Louis. He was soon convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to two concurrent five-year sentences in the Missouri State Penitentiary. It was in this prison that Liston learned to box in a formal boxing program under the direction of the prison chaplain. He was paroled in 1952, but after a fight with a police officer he was back in … Read more >

In November 1961, Ray was placed in solitary confinement having attempted an escape again. But, he knew he would escape one day. Each day the prison’s bakery would bake enough bread to feed the convicts in the prison and those at Church Farm and Renz Farm. The bread was stacked in a large box, loaded onto a truck and hauled to the farms. The bread box would pass through the heavily guarded truc… Read more >