Born and raised in Miami, Florida, I was sentenced to death in 1988, for my part in a botched attempt to assist a friend in escaping from a prison transport van in West Palm Beach, during which my accomplice, Frank Valdes, shot and killed a guard. When Valdes was subsequently murdered in his death row cell by eight Florida State Prison guards I was transferred to Virginia’s death row, where I remain. I have self-published an award-winning autobiography, A Checkered Past, and a novel, Quietus, and several of my short stories have been published in various literary journals. I maintain a blog, www.deathrowdiary.blogspot.com, and my column appears at www.deathrowspeaks.info.
William Van Poyck
Articles by William Van Poyck
Tuesday August 6
Death by Dominoes
The maximum-security prison was a depraved place, a hermetic kingdom of the damned, haunted by its own terrible spirit. It was a hulking brute of a building, stout as a crusader fortress, whose puke-green paint miserably failed to soften its cruel edges. Constructed less of steel and stone than with ossified layers of malevolent history and vile memories, it was a marginalized slice off the bottom of society’s loaf where half-made men spent their wounded lives chained to the past. I called it home.
Wednesday June 25
The Man From Far Away
While clearing out his closet on the day he was to leave his home forever, my father, momentarily alert, unyieldingly stoic, and eighty-eight years at it, offers me an ancient brown leather satchel. “Do you want it?” My smooth fingers trace the cracked, brittle edges, hesitating while my memories catch up. In the kitchen I
Thursday June 16
My Turn
On a quiet day almost twenty years ago I watched two fellow prisoners at Florida State Prison enter Dana DeWitt’s cell and stab him so viciously that his blood painted the walls and ceiling like a Jackson Pollack abstract. While it was neither the first nor last murder I would witness, I nevertheless marked it