Inside Job – Stillwater Prison & the Day Before Yesterday (A Shannon O’Day Story)
Inside Job
(Stillwater State Prison) 1961-63
Part one of two
Dana Stanley, born September 27, 1942, met Edward Morrill born August 28, 1930, while working as a teacher’s aide in the 303 British ammo Dakota County school system…
Forward: Shannon O’Day was the cause Edward Morrill had been sentence to five-years in prison for his affair with a minor, Dana Stanley, during the fall of 1958, and it was now December, 1961. He had served a little over two years, with good behavior, he was to get out in another year 1963, September, and was going up for a board hearing and hopefully be placed on parole, thus, at this point and time he had a parole hearing come September of 1962, one year from this date, and he had told his roommate, he was going to kill the person who put him in this prison when he got out, and the person he told (kidding or not), was Otis Wilde Mather’s third cousin, and when his name came up, Shannon O’Day, Oscar Lewis Charleston, had written Otis, to visit him, saying it was urgent. And he did just that, and gave Otis the information of his roommate, inmate friend, and Otis, gave Oscar enough chewing tobacco to last him the year out. But now something needed to be done to stop this potential hazard in the making.
And Otis’ plan was two fold. Get him a new sentence, another five or ten years, or do him in. Whichever one was favorable, under whatever circumstances prevailed, in accordance to the time period; and the less people that knew, the better off, to include Shannon O’Day himself.
The Story
Chapter One
The Meeting
“Youall do me this here favor cousin Oscar Lewis and I’ll give Youall $200-dollars for you time. Ef-in that be okay with your conscious, and it dont go against your nerve,” said Otis Wilde Mather at the Stillwater State Prison, in Minnesota, during his visit with his third cousin, Oscar Lewis Charleston.
They both looked at one another, and Otis pulled out two-hundred dollars, “Ef-in I takes the money the guard here, I mean, the po-lice man, he a-goin’ to take it away anyhow, I wish I could buy a-whore, but there aint any here, we’all men here and we can do what women cant I reckon…so give da money to some poor sucker,” he said.
“Waht!” said Otis, “Youall sure you wants to do that?”
“How you mean, wants to do that? Jest finds someone who aint got a cent and give them two-hundred dollars worth of those cent’s, all right cousin?”
“We’ll,” said Otis, “ef-in that makes you feel a little better, how about that white girl, Dana Stanley, Morrill got her a baby, and she a-liven on her own in some shack on the levee in that there shanty town down by the Mississippi River, below the cliffs, in St. Paul?”
“Well, I’d like to see a color folk git da money, but poor white is fine I reckon. Waht do he do to her?” Asked Oscar.
“He done treated her like a whore and she waz only fifteen at dhe time, and turned sixteen, then he gits a heart to confess, and gits mad cause Shannon O’Day, he gits the Judge to put him away for five years. Oh I suppose she did her flatiron, but she as poor as a mouse with no cheese. So I’d say if anyone deserves that-there two-hundred dollars, its Dana.”