Archie Connett in His Own Words: Part III -- Parole

Archie Connett was released from prison on July 1, 1968 after serving 15 years for murdering his three children and attempting to murder his estranged wife. He was released from parole two years later and was a free man. After prison he founded Ex-Offenders Resources, Inc., to influence the ex-offender community to contribute to society. He co-authored at least two books, including "Paroled but Not Free: Ex-offenders Look at What They Need to Make It Outside," which was published in 1973. In the epilogue of this book, Connett describes what happened on December 23, 1952 and his life after that.

Book Archie Connett co-authored in 1973

This is Archie Connett in his own words and is a continuation of these  posts, which you may find here and here.

"I became the right-hand man of the therapist, something of an auxiliary therapist, and the lead man in the psychological testing section. I learned to administer, score, profile, and interpret psychological tests, including projective techniques. As lead man, I located and selected the men who worked in the section and trained and supervised them. Incarcerated military officers, teachers, businessmen, doctors, lawyers (even a judge) wound up in the section.

I had staff library privileges and I read and wrote four papers which I presented to therapy groups, AA groups, etc. People began to come to me for help. I was asked by the staff to take a therapy group. At one time, I had three groups.

Suddenly, there were not enough hours in the day to do all the exciting things to be done -- all the reading, writing, working with individuals and groups. I was on a new frontier -- learning and doing things that gave meaning and significance to my existences; but I never did an easy day of time in prison.

Copley News Service article that ran in several newspapers across the country when Archie was released from prison in 1968

In my fifteen years in prison, I refused to think of myself as a convict, an inmate, a number. I accepted responsibility for what I had done; but I fought tooth and toenail to maintain my identity as a person. Not all custodial personnel nor even treatment personnel were happy with this, and I never hit it off with certain higher staff people who were easily threatened by a competent person traveling with the benefit of portfolio.

With these exceptions, I got on quite well with most people in prison. I got on with most staff people because I lived within the rules, with inmates, even regulars, because it was known that I never "ran to the man" and that I would help where I could.

For fifteen years, I was between a rock and a hard spot from which there seemed no way out. I had been tried and found guilty by jury through due process of law of three counts of murder second and one count of assault with intent to commit murder and sentenced to consecutive terms. I was given the maximum sentence the judge could legally hand down. However, after I had served eighteen months and was to appear for a parole hearing before the California Adult Authority, the judge wrote saying that if ever a man in the state of California had committed first degree murder, I was the man; that if ever a man deserved to go to the gas chamber, I was the man; that I should never be released from prison.

Each year the judge and the office of the district attorney held to the above view and reaffirmed it in a letter to the Adult Authority before my parole hearing.

That I did not do a day of easy time in those years in prison may also be indicated by a few excerpts from a letter to the district attorney:

I feel the full impact, the enormity of my offense. It was bizarre, horrible. I think no one feels this more intensely than I; and I cannot tell you the remorse, the sorrow, I feel for having taken from my children their chance to live, for having failed them, my wife, myself, and others. I miss my family.

I loved my children dearly, and they loved me. But in a moment of emotional upheaval, of madness, I destroyed them. I must live with this and memories of tenderness with them as long as I live. I would do anything to undo what I did, to make up for what I did. But there is no way to undo what I did, to make up for what I did. I can only give now to others what I have to give, do my best with what I have from here on.

I have done my best to find a way to go on living, loving, and creating. I am going to continue to do my best. But the offender -- no matter how hard he tries to, no matter how worthy he becomes -- can only join with and feel he is a part of society to the extent other people are willing to identify with and accept him on a one-to-one basis.

The district attorney did not answer my letter. Instead, he again wrote the Adult Authoirty saying his view of my situation remained unchanged.

In my letter to the Adult Authority, I said:

I understand the feelings of the district attorney and the judge, why they have done what they have; but isn't what they have done and are doing, if not extra-legal, clearly beyond the intended spirit and responsibility of their office?

Next June, I shall have been in prison thirteen years -- three times my minimum parole possibility.

In the jury's verdict and the consecutive terms of the judge's sentence, in the reports you have on my conduct and rehabilitation, in the indication you have that I identify with our society's values and still feel I have a contribution to make, and in the knowledge that I am in the least parole risk category and have served three times my minimum parole possibility -- in these have you not full rational, moral, and legal basis for releasing me?

What sense does it make, what good purpose can it serve, to go on punishing me for what I did thirteen years ago in a terribly distrubed, irrational state of mind? What benefit can possibly accrue to those who insist that it be done, to those who do it, to me, to anyone?

But I was not released until two years later, until after the judge's death (the district attorney died of a heart attack three or four years after my trial) and some friends obtained a letter from the incumbent district attorney saying he would not oppose my release and that he thought the Adult Authority was in better position than he to determine it. After having been shot down, denied, thirteen times by the parole board -- in my fifteenth year in prison I was submitted en banc, that is, to the full board for parole consideration. After another six weeks, I received word I was to be paroled with a five-year tail.

Archie Connett in 1973

On June 30, 1968, after more than five thousand days and nights in prison, I was released on parole.

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NOTE: Part I (The Crime) may be found here and Part II (Trial and Prison) here.

NOTE: To read the front page story that was published in the Oakland Tribune the day after the murders on December 24, 1952, click here and here.

Archie Connett in His Own Words: Part II -- The Trial and Prison

Archie Connett was released from prison on July 1, 1968 after serving 15 years for murdering his three children and attempting to murder his estranged wife. He was released from parole two years later and was a free man. After prison he founded Ex-Offenders Resources, Inc., to influence the ex-offender community to contribute to society. He co-authored at least two books, including "Paroled but Not Free: Ex-offenders Look at What They Need to Make It Outside," which was published in 1973. In the epilogue of this book, Connett describes what happened on December 23, 1952 and his life after that.

This is Archie Connett in his own words and is a continuation of this earlier post.

"After five months, I went to trial. There, after a month-long trial, the jury found me guilty of three counts of murder in the second degree and one count of assault with intent to commit murder.

Archie Connett was convicted of second degree murder and attempted murder and declared sane. Article published on June 3, 1953 in the Oakland Tribune

The judge sentenced me to San Quentin Prison for the maximum sentence he could hand down: three 5-to-life sentences and one 1-to-14-year sentence to run consecutively. This meant 16 years to life. Later these sentences were aggregated by state law to 10-to-life, which meant I became eligible for parole in 3 years and 4 months.

In my first two years at San Quentin, I just put one foot in front of the other. The betting on the Big Yard was that I would commit suicide in the first year. Nights -- after a hard workout in the gym on the top floor of an old building down in the alley -- when I came out on the fire escape and looked five floors down to the pavement, it would have been very easy to have stepped off.

It was not until I was transferred to the California Medical Facility at Vacaville that I began to find myself. There I had five years of individual and group therapy. Therapy that was much like that at Synanon -- hard-driving, uncovering. For months I had diarrhea and difficulty sleeping. But I learned some things.

I learned that quite early my mother communicated to me an unstated proposal that had far-reaching effects on my life: "If you love me, you will do everything I want you to do because everything I want you to do is right and good and perfect; and if you do, I will love you above everyone."

She kept the promise -- as long as she lived. Even after my offense she treated me as though I were a god. In her eyes, I had been perfect: I accommodated to toilet and eating and language training earlier than children usually do. I measured up to her moral and social expectations. I became the all-American boy -- a scholar, an athlete, a school and campus leader. I became a naval officer, a teacher and coach, a devoted husband and father. For thirty-nine years I lived entirely within the law. I fulfilled her expectations and she kept the promise.

Archie Connett's mother, Lefa Marie (Amsberry) Connett/Zeller with her brothers and sisters. She is in the front row, far left.

With no father (my father was beaten to death with a hammer when I was six months old) to rescue me in my most vulnerable years, my obsession (to be loved by everyone as my mother loved me) and my compulsion (to qualify for that love by being perfect) took root.

To feel impelled to measure up to and to please others -- to be always "right and good and perfect" -- in order to feel right about yourself is a terrifying and precarious existence, and when you fail -- catastrophic.

My wife and children were my little world -- the principal people between me and the terrifying threat of isolation, failure and self-doubt. Confronted with this threat, having no real identity, ridden with anxiety, dependent on those close to me for constant assurance of love and affection that would stave off anxiety and give me at least some feeling of self and security, it was imperative that I maintain my little world. I could not let it go, accept an altered version of it, or create another. I had to have it. I wanted, desired it so much that I struggled to obtain it until I drove myself beyond the edge of sanity.

Archie Connett is upper right; his wife, Wynona (Gottlieb) Connett, lower right; his two oldest children Michael and Theresa are to the left

In therapy I learned what had happened to me and why, and what I must do about it. I learned I could not undo or make up for what I had done and that no matter what I had done, no matter what happened to me, I still had the potential to go on living, loving, and creating, and that it was up to me to do so.

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NOTE:  Part one may be found here.

NOTE: To read the front page story that was published in the Oakland Tribune the day after the murders on December 24, 1952, click here and here.