“Malcolm Bell’s powerful story of the Attica prison uprising . . . has the ring of truth” (Studs Terkel, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of “The Good War”).
The Attica Turkey Shoot tells a story that New York State did not want you to know. In 1971, following a prison riot at the Attica Correctional Facility, state police and prison guards slaughtered thirty-nine hostages and inmates, and tortured more than one thousand men after they had surrendered. State officials pretended they could not successfully prosecute the law officers who perpetrated this carnage, and then those same officials scurried for shelter when a prosecutor named Malcolm Bell exposed the cover-up.
Bell traveled a rocky road to a justice of sorts as he sought to prosecute without fear or favor—in spite of the deck officials had stacked to keep police from facing the same justice that had filled the Attica prison in the first place. His insider’s account illuminates the all-too-common contrast between the justice of the privileged and the justice of the rest.
Also included in this book is evidence from recently uncovered tapes that Gov. Nelson Rockefeller knew his order for troopers to attack could cost the lives of hundreds of inmates and all of those hostages. The Attica Turkey Shoot highlights the hypocrisy of a criminal justice system that decides who goes to prison and who enjoys impunity in a nation where no one is said to be above the law.
“My book simply couldn’t have been written, nor could Attica’s many victims received any sort of justice, without the bravery that Malcolm Bell showed . . . when he blew the whistle on the state’s efforts to protect law enforcement ugliness during the retaking of that prison on September 13, 1971.” —Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
