23 Facts About Thomas Silverstein

Thomas Silverstein maintained that the dehumanizing conditions inside the prison system contributed to the three murders he committed.

Thomas Silverstein was the longest-held prisoner in solitary confinement within the Bureau of Prisons at the time of his death.

Thomas Silverstein was born in Long Beach, California, to Virginia Conway.

Thomas Silverstein was timid, awkward, shy, and frequently bullied as a child in the middle-class neighborhood where the family lived, in part because his peers mistakenly believed he was Jewish.

Virginia Thomas Silverstein demanded that her son fight back, telling the boy that if he ever came home again crying because he had been beaten up by a bully, she would be waiting to give him another beating.

In 1971, at age nineteen, Thomas Silverstein was sent to San Quentin Prison in California for armed robbery.

In 1977, Thomas Silverstein was sentenced to fifteen years for armed robbery, to be served at United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

In 1980, Thomas Silverstein was convicted of the murder of inmate Danny Atwell, who reportedly refused to serve as a mule for heroin being moved through the prison.

Thomas Silverstein was sentenced to life and transferred to the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, which was then a high-security facility.

At Marion, Thomas Silverstein was housed in the "Control Unit", a virtual solitary confinement regime reserved for extreme "management problems" in the prison.

Thomas Silverstein spent his time in solitary confinement with a constant ceiling light, ensuring uninterrupted camera surveillance.

Thomas Silverstein was allowed only two phone calls per month and received his meals through a slot.

In 1981, Thomas Silverstein was accused of the murder of Robert Chappelle, a member of the DC Blacks prison gang who was serving a life sentence for the 1964 murder of Connecticut police officer Henry Jennings.

Thomas Silverstein avoided a possible death sentence since capital punishment on the federal level had not been reinstated yet.

On October 22,1983, Thomas Silverstein killed correction officer Merle Clutts at USP Marion.

Thomas Silverstein stopped outside the cell of another inmate, Randy Gometz.

Gometz passed a homemade prison knife to Thomas Silverstein and unlocked Thomas Silverstein's handcuffs with a homemade key.

Thomas Silverstein later claimed that he murdered Clutts in retaliation for Clutts' deliberately harassing him.

Bureau of Prisons officials were reportedly afraid that Thomas Silverstein would begin killing correctional officers held hostage by the Cubans.

Thomas Silverstein was moved back to Leavenworth, where he stayed for the next 18 years.

In 2005, when USP Leavenworth was downgraded to a medium-security facility, Thomas Silverstein was moved to ADX Florence, a supermax facility in Colorado.

Thomas Silverstein claimed that the "no human contact" status is essentially a form of torture reserved for those who kill correctional officers.

Thomas Silverstein died on May 11,2019, aged 67, at St Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, Colorado, after spending 36 years in solitary confinement.