Spared execution, Zacarias Moussaoui is expected to live out his life in a rogues' gallery in a modern, maximum-security federal prison designed to hold the worst of the worst. Moussaoui's likely destination is known as USP Florence ADMAX. Located 90 miles south of Denver, it houses terrorists, a madman bomber, a murderous abortion foe, an FBI mole, a New York mobster, street-gang drug killers and white supremacists.His new neighbors at the high-security prison known as "Supermax" will include shoe-bomber Richard Reid, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Al Qaeda terrorist Ramzi Yousef. Like them, Moussaoui will be a fading memory, doomed to "rot away," as a defense witness said in urging jurors to deprive the terrorist from his dream of martyrdom by execution.
Since opening in 1994, Florence ADMAX has become the state-of-the-art Alcatraz for the most violent and escape-prone prisoners. There are 399 inmates in the prison, which has a capacity of 490 and is run by a staff of 298, said Krista Rear, Florence ADMAX spokeswoman. Most prisoners lead lonely lives, confined in 7-by-12 foot cells for 23 hours a day. In their one-hour recreation period they remain isolated in chains. "Inmates at the ADMAX right now do not have any physical contact with each other whatsoever," Rear said.
Their cells are their lives. Each inmate has a concrete stool, desk, bed and television stand. Each gets educational and religious programming on a 12-inch TV.
| Can I pick the channels? Lifetime, Lifetime Movies, Oxygen, We, CSPAN and MTV. He'll be begging for a bedsheet and a shower rod. |
| "What? Pork chops again?" |
Two weeks ago, Lance Vanderstappen, 26, a member of the Soldiers of Aryan Culture serving 25 years, hanged himself in his cell using a bedsheet.
Rear said Moussaoui, like other prisoners, would be given a thorough psychological and physical exam upon arrival at Florence. He then would take up residence in a neighborhood of the notorious. They include 1993 World Trade Center bombers Mohamed Sadeek Odeh and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed; abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph, and FBI mole Robert Hanssen. There also are Anthony Casso, onetime underboss of the New York Luchese crime family; Luis Felipe, former head of New York's Latin Kings street gang; and Oklahoma City accomplice Terry Nichols. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was at Florence before going to Terre Haute, Ind., for execution in 2001.