Missouri State Penitentiary Archives

Missouri State Penitentiary ghost and history tours to resume in June

May 20, 2020 By Alisa Nelson

On June 1, the Missouri State Penitentiary will begin offering its popular ghost and history tours again at the 184-year-old prison. In a press release today from the Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau, it says work is underway at the historic site to launch new protocols to ensure a safe environment for all during this COVID-19 era.

The Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City’s front entrance (2019 file photo courtesy of Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau)

The popular Jefferson City tourist attraction has thousands of visitors from around the world who want to view the prison that dates back to 1836. It was the oldest continually operating prison west of the Mississippi River until it was decommissioned in 2004.

The prison is known for paranormal activity and some of the individuals who served time there, including renowned bank robbers Pretty Boy Floyd and Adam Richetti, Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinator James Earl Ray, pro boxer Sonny Liston, President Ulysses S. Grant’s trusted ally General John McDonald and 1841 abolitionist George Thompson.

Due to limited tour capacity, guests are strongly encouraged to buy their tour tickets in advance at MissouriPenTours.com. It is also requesting individuals to bring their signed tour waiver with them to reduce contact during check-in.

The bureau says during the reopening phase, the MSP will boost disinfection procedures, abide by social distancing guidelines, and restrict tour capacities at the facility and the MSP museum. MSP’s health and safety measures include 6 feet social distancing markers placed in high-traffic areas, hand sanitizing stations positioned around the location, and staff and guests are highly encouraged to wear face coverings while in the buildings.

MSP tours in Jefferson City to resume, following May tornado (AUDIO)

September 10, 2019 By Brian Hauswirth

You’ll have the opportunity again soon to tour the old Missouri State Penitentiary (MSP) in Jefferson City, about four months after an EF-3 tornado struck the facility.

The Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City’s front entrance (2019 file photo courtesy of Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau)

Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau (JCCVB) spokeswoman Brittney Mormann says modified tours will be offered.

“We are actually going to start tours beginning October 1 and we’ll run those through November 30, which is typically our end of tour season,” Mormann says.

The modified tours will include access to housing units one and three and the old gas chamber, where 40 Missouri inmates were executed between 1937 and 1989.

It will also include the popular “ghost tours.”

Mormann tells Missourinet the CVB has lost $308,000 in revenue since the tours stopped, because of the tornado.

She says more than 33,000 people toured MSP in 2018, with some coming from different states and countries. Mormann says that resulted in a $2.5 million economic impact on Jefferson City.

MSP was one of about 240 Jefferson City area structures struck by the tornado. Mormann encourages residents to take a fall tour, noting the tornado will be mentioned.

“Our tour guides are going to do the best of their ability to tell you about the history as well as that new layer of history with the (May) tornado coming through on the property,” says Mormann.

MSP, which was known as the “Bloodiest 47 Acres in the United States”, housed high-profile inmates like James Earl Ray and boxer Sonny Liston.

You can find more tour information at missouripentours.com. Net profit from tour ticket and merchandise sales goes back into the preservation of MSP, which opened in 1836.

Click here to listen to Brian Hauswirth’s full interview with Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau spokeswoman Brittney Mormann, which was recorded on September 9, 2019:

‘Sex and the City’ star’s family history of murder, abuse and incarceration in Missouri

July 23, 2014 By Mike Lear

One award-winning actress’ look at her family history has offered Missourians a look at their state’s history.

Television star Cynthia Nixon is featured on the TLC program “Who Do You Think You Are?”

Cynthia Nixon, best known as one of the stars of Sex and the City, has been featured on the TLC show Who Do You Think You Are. She asked the show to look into her father’s family history. The search quickly focused on Martha Curnutt, Nixon’s great-great-great grandmother whose married name became Casto.

Nixon wondered what became of Martha’s husband, Noah Casto. Ancestry.com research manager and family historian Jennifer Utley says the answer was surprising.

“We found that she had actually killed her own husband with an axe,” says Utley.

Nixon found an 1843 newspaper entry that suggested Martha had been abused by her husband.

As Nixon reads, the article says the husband, “had been in the habit of treating his wife in a manner too brutal and too shocking to think of. On the morning of the day mentioned he told his wife to get up and get breakfast for himself and her two children, and then to commence saying her prayers, for she should die, he swore, before sunset.”

The account continues, “She got up and made a fire and returned to the room where her unnatural husband slept. He was lying on his back in a sound sleep. She took the axe with which she had been chopping wood and with one blow sunk it deep into his head, just through the eyes.”

“It is awful to think of what Martha endured,” says Nixon. “I certainly wouldn’t call [the murder] a happy ending, by any stretch of the imagination, but certainly I think a better ending than if Noah had killed Martha and maybe killed her children, too.”

Casto is found guilty of first-degree manslaughter and is sentenced to five years in the historic Missouri State Penitentiary. The prison, then only seven years old, has no dedicated facilities for women. Casto spends part of her time working in the homes of businessmen who leased the prison, and part of her time isolated in a prison cell.

While at the prison she becomes pregnant and with the help of an inmate, delivers a daughter, Sarah. Who fathered the child is not known.

The letter urging Governor John Edwards to pardon Martha Casto includes 55 signatures, including those of a future congressman and governor and a former governor. (courtesy; Missouri State Archives)

Utley says many prominent Missourians then petitioned then-governor John Edwards to pardon her, for her sake and the sake of the infant.

“She was there for a week with that baby with no medical aid, she was not able to build a fire, she didn’t have any kind of clothing or any kind of blankets to wrap the infant in,” says Utley.

That petition included the signatures of prominent people in Missouri political history, including a future governor and congressman, Willard Preble Hall, and a former governor, Lilburn Boggs.

The petition was successful and in December, 1844, Casto was pardoned after serving less than two years of her sentence. She returned to using her maiden name, Curnutt.

Nixon is able to hold that pardon and the petition at the Missouri State Archives in Jefferson City.

Martha Curnutt’s grave in Leasburg, Missouri. (courtesy; Findagrave.com)

Nixon went on to visit Curnutt’s grave in Leasburg, Missouri. She says Curnutt must have been a strong woman to overcome abuse, and the way women were treated in the 1800s.

“I admire how she must have wanted to give up so many times, and how she kept going and how she didn’t accept things,” says Nixon of her great-great-great grandmother. “I’m sure we’ll make many jokes about it in the years to come, about the axe murderess in our family, but I think we will remain in awe of her.”

TV star discovers ancestor with connection to historic Missouri prison (VIDEO)

July 22, 2014 By Mike Lear

A show airing Wednesday night on TLC follows a television star whose search of her family history appears to have turned up one of the Missouri State Penitentiary’s many dark stories.

TV star Cynthia Nixon walks along the inside of A-Hall, the oldest of the buildings still standing at Missouri State Penitentiary. (screenshot from TLC show preview)

Cynthia Nixon is perhaps best known for her role as Miranda Hobbes on the show Sex and the City. She is featured on the season premier of TLC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” Wednesday night, in which she traces her father’s family history.

“She connects to a courageous woman who suffered terribly, but never gave up,” says the TLC preview video for the episode.

State Archivist John Dougan participated in that research, using Missouri’s State Archives.

“We provided a number of documents,” says Dougan.

That search took her to MSP where her great-great-great grandmother was to have served time in the 1840s, but there was a problem.

“The prison at that time was not built for women inmates,” says Dougan.

Dougan can’t say exactly what was discovered so it won’t spoil the show, and it’s not easy to guess why anyone might have been sent to prison in the 1840s. By today’s standards, some people who were convicted then, wouldn’t be.

“It’s a very interesting story and really it ties to whether or not did she belong in the prison,” says Dougan.

While Dougan can’t confirm who Nixon’s ancestor was, one name in the show’s video preview is Martha Casto. Some of her story is known.

According to one source, Casto was sentenced to five years for murder in August, 1843. Because the prison had no facilities for women, she was assigned to work as a domestic servant in the homes of businessmen leasing the prison.

This screenshot from the TLC preview for “Who Do You Think You Are?” shows part of a document mentioning Martha Casto, a figure in MSP’s history.

While there, Casto became pregnant and was mistreated by the wife of one of the lessees. She ran away but was soon captured by prison officials and placed in solitary confinement. Eventually she gave birth in the prison with the help of a male convict and both mother and child remained imprisoned until she was pardoned in December, 1844, partly out of concern for the child’s health in an unheated prison cell during winter.

Whether Casto and her child are related to Nixon or not, hers is just one of the stories of what women faced at the state prison, particularly in its early decades of operation.

Not all family backgrounds might be as dramatic as Nixon’s, but Dougan says the state archives offer a great deal of information that can help turn them up.

“I think that the “Who Do You Think You Are?” television show, what it really shows is the kind of records, the diversity of records, that you can find researching at the Missouri State Archives or other local archives or on our website at Missouri Digital Heritage dot com,” says Dougan. “It shows the same kind of things that everyone can find on their family whether it’s census records, marriage records or any other kind of record that they might have, or prison records.”

Find out who Nixon’s ancestor is and what the connection to Missouri State Penitentiary is when the new season of “Who Do You Think You Are?” premiers Wednesday night on TLC.

Click here to see the preview for Wednesday’s episode featuring Cynthia Nixon

The Friends of the Missouri State Archives is sponsoring a watch party for the episode’s premier, from 7 until 9 p.m. at the Canterbury Hill Winery and Restaurant in Holts Summit.

Gov. Nixon vetoes bill to allow sale of alcohol in State Capitol, historic penitentiary

July 10, 2014 By Mike Lear

Governor Jay Nixon (D) has vetoed a bill that would allow alcohol to be sold at events in the State Capitol and the historic Missouri State Penitentiary.

Governor Jay Nixon says events in the State Capitol should not include the selling of alcohol. (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Supporters said the bill would allow the Missouri Capitol Commission to include alcohol sales at celebrations of the laying of the cornerstone of the capitol and the state’s Bicentennial, and would help generate revenue for the restoration and maintenance of the Capitol. Other events held at the retired State Penitentiary would further the effort to draw tourism to the prison and Jefferson City.

Nixon says he disapproves of the bill because he wants children and families to continue to be comfortable visiting the Capitol.

“They do not come to see the sale of liquor by the drink,” writes Nixon. “Moreover, they introduction of alcohol sales in the Capitol is particularly troubling because the bill does not restrict sales in the presence of minors, nor does it limit sales to certain hours of operation.”

Nixon continues, “The additional revenues for Capitol restoration and maintenance that proponents assert would result from House Bill No. 1359 becoming law are outweighed by the message it sends to children and families. We should not sell alcohol in the Capitol.”

The bill cleared both the House and the Senate with enough votes to overturn a veto, if such an attempt is made in September’s veto session and if enough lawmakers vote the same way.

Movie filmed at historic MO prison released (VIDEO)

July 7, 2014 By Mike Lear

A movie shot largely at the historic Missouri State Penitentiary and other locations in Jefferson City has been released on video on demand. The film’s writer and director Andrew P. Jones recently joined Missourinet for a video interview about the release (below).

The Haunting of Cell Block 11 was filmed in late 2012 and first screened in Jefferson City in July 2013. The film is about a team of ghost hunters who star in a struggling reality TV show

“The ratings aren’t very good because they go in the haunted places and they just can’t get anything. They’re not really getting any real paranormal activity or evidence,” says Jones.

Looking for better results, the crew goes to an abandoned prison where they encounter an evil spirit that attacks humans.

“It turns out to be a little more than they bargained for and there’s real activity there, and then it’s a fight for their lives,” says Jones.

Jones still speaks highly of his time in Jefferson City and says he appreciated the reception and cooperation he and his crew received. He says he’s working on other scripts and hopes to shoot in the region again. One possibility is a sequel to Haunting, but whether that will move forward depends on how the first film is received.

“It’s now in the public’s hands,” says Jones.

The movie is available to rent or buy digitally through several providers including Medicom (though some glitches have been reported with the early rollout), Google Play, YouTube, Playstation 3 and XBOX 360 Live. For a complete list of providers, visit the film’s website.

Building that housed death row back on historic prison tour route

July 4, 2014 By Mike Lear

When history tours at the Missouri State Penitentiary resumed in April, they used a slightly different route than they have in the previous few years. Work that continued to repair roofs and remediate mold at the most historic buildings on the site meant that guests couldn’t be allowed in one building, and had access to parts of others.

The turrets at the center of Housing Unit 3 were intended to intimidate inmates being housed there. (courtesy; Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau)

This week some of those limits were removed, as the repair and remediation work nears completion. Guests can now get into half of Housing Unit 3, a cell block finished in 1918 that once housed Missouri’s death row. The rest of that building is expected to be available some time next month.

The agreement between the state and Jefferson City that led to work on the prison was announced in November, 2013

Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Diane Gillespie says the popular paranormal tours resumed this week. She says those use all of the buildings the history tours use.

“We will use Housing Unit 1 and 4 and a part of Housing Unit 3 along with the gas chamber,” says Gillespie. “We have had very great success with people wanting to come and book for the ghost tours.”

Gillespie says guests have been understanding and supportive about the ongoing work, and the impact it has had on tours.

“The feedback that we have gotten is that they are just delighted that the state and the city have stepped up to help preserve the buildings and that we continue to be able to offer tours to our visitors,” says Gillespie, “and our guides have done a great job in being able to continue to tell the full story of MSP even if they can’t get full access to all the buildings.”

Gillespie says the patience of tour guests and guides will be rewarded.

“That’s what we keep telling everybody. Yes, we have to be flexible during this season, but once this season is over with we’ve got full access to moving forward for the next fifteen years,” says Gillespie. “That’s very instrumental in us being able to move forward with bookings and offering MSP to convention groups, events and film groups that want to schedule further out than we’ve been able to in the past.”

MSP closed in 2004 and several years later opened to public tours. Since 2011 those have been offered by the Visitors Bureau through a lease agreement with the state, which still owns the prison property. The prison was 168 years old when it closed and had been the oldest operating prison west of the Mississippi.

Tours resume today and work continues at historic state prison

April 21, 2014 By Mike Lear

Tours of Missouri’s 178-year-old state penitentiary resume today as work continues to save its oldest buildings.

Crews are seen working on the roof of A-Hall, which dates back to 1868 and is the oldest building still standing at the Missouri State Penitentiary. (Photo courtesy, Missouri Office of Administration)

Crews are seen working on the roof of A-Hall or Housing Unit 4, which dates back to 1868 and is the oldest building still standing at the Missouri State Penitentiary. (Photo courtesy, Missouri Office of Administration)

The state and the City of Jefferson are splitting up to $2-million of the cost of mold remediation and roof repair in four buildings at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Buildings dating as far back as 1868 had been going without major maintenance since the prison was decommissioned in 2004.

Mark Schreiber spent 42 years working for the Department of Corrections, much of it inside “the Walls,” where he developed a passion for its history. He has advocated for years to see those buildings saved and credits the state for setting this in motion.

“It’s very pleasing to see the progress that’s been made,” says Schreiber. “It’s the difference between night and day already, and to see that we’re moving forward and getting something done with the roofs, seeing that they’re doing something with the condition of the interiors of the buildings and how they’re sealing them and preserving them, it’s just really great.”

Crews are putting roofs on and remediating mold in three cell blocks that once held inmates like Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd, James Earl Ray and Sonny Liston, and the gas chamber where 39 men and 1 woman were executed between 1938 and 1989.

Tours of the prison were suspended in September due to concerns about mold in some of those buildings. Director of the Jefferson City Convention and Visitors’ Bureau Diane Gillespie says she’s excited to see those tours resume, though for the first couple of months of the tour season the route will be “modified.”

Three of the four buildings that are being worked on are seen in this wide shot: Housing Unit 3 or McClung Hall at left, the four-story Housing Unit 4 or A-Hall to the right and Housing Unit 1 behind A-Hall. (Photo courtesy, Missouri Office of Administration)

“We will not have access to all four of the buildings,” explains Gillespie. “Currently Housing Unit 3 is going to need some additional work so that is going to take a little bit longer, but we will have access to Housing Unit 1 and Housing Unit 4 along with the gas chamber.”

She tells Missourinet the full tours and a full offering will open up after July 1.

“We’re filling up actually for August, September and October for the ghost tours,” Gillespie tells Missourinet. “At that time we’ll have full access to all four of the buildings, and actually we’ll be able to have maybe a little bit more access to some of the buildings than what we’ve had in the past.”

Schreiber, always the historian, notes there is a significant difference between the people working on those buildings now and those that would have worked on them during much of the prison’s use.

“Instead of the contractors that we have now it would have been inmates … offenders, which would have been called convicts back then,” says Schreiber. “We know that from even back in the 1920s when the roof burned off of A-Hall … we’ve got photographs that show the inmates putting the roof back on.”

See our earlier story on the agreement regarding use of the historic prison

Remains in Washington State could be those of 1986 Missouri prison escapee

January 24, 2014 By Mike Lear

He escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1986, and authorities think they’ve finally found him … buried in a yard in a town in southern Washington State.

Dennis Lilly

Dennis “Slick” Lilly escaped MSP by posing as a guard. Authorities in Washington are conducting DNA testing on remains found underneath a woodshed in the town of Gold Bar to see if they are his.

The Everett, Washington Herald reports Lilly is now believed to have been living in Gold Bar with his wife, Mary. They were using the names Dave and Amanda Murray. She tells authorities he died in 2012 from pancreatic cancer and says she buried him in the yard.

Lilly had been in the Missouri prison for robbery, burglary, car theft and aggravated assault on a police officer.

The Herald reports the couple had become respected business owners in Washington State, with Lilly even posing as Santa Claus with children in the area.

Agreement announced between Jefferson City, State on use of historic prison

November 6, 2013 By Mike Lear

Governor Jay Nixon has announced an agreement between the State and Jefferson City that aims to reopen the historic Missouri State Penitentiary to tours by spring, and a potential long-term agreement between the city and state for use of the prison site.

Governor Jay Nixon (at podium) announces an agreement on the use of the Missouri State Penitentiary, joined by (from left to right) Office of Administration Commissioner Doug Nelson, Jefferson City Mayor Eric Struemph and State Senator Mike Kehoe.

Tours of the decommissioned prison were halted in September when excessive levels of mold were recorded. The agreement would cover renovations of four buildings deemed historic, Housing Units 1, 3, 4 and the Gas Chamber, to stop further mold development plus remediation of the mold that’s there, up to a cost of $2-millon split evenly between the City and the State.

Nixon anticipates a quick turnaround on the work.

“The goal is to begin tours once again in the spring,” Nixon said.

The State’s share comes from funds already budgeted for facilities maintenance and repair. The City would spend money out of a capital improvement half-cent sales tax passed several years ago intended for projects including development in and around the prison.

The Jefferson City Council must still vote to approve the expenditure. That vote will happen at a special meeting tomorrow night at 5:30 at City Hall.

Nixon says this use of state money is justified to bolster Missouri tourism.

“The Missouri State Penitentiary is an iconic Jefferson City landmark that attracts thousands of visitors each year. While they’re here these visitors eat in our restaurants, shop in our stores and explore the other outstanding attractions in the area creating jobs and generating economic activity throughout the region.”

He also defended having Jefferson City expend money on a state-owned property.

The agreement could allow the city to continue tours at (left to right) Housing Units 1, 3, 4 and (not pictured) the Gas Chamber for the next 25 years. (Photos courtesy: Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau)

“I think that with the economic benefit that the City will see and the clear marketing strategy that the City and the (Jefferson City Convention and) Visitor’s Bureau have already laid out, that this is one in which we wanted to be helpful with them … we just think this is the best way for us to be responsible stewards of the dollars but to work with the Capital City here.”

The Council will also vote on, and the Governor also announced, a 15-year use agreement governing the management of the site that could be extended twice for 5 years each.

That agreement would allow the City to continue tours of the historic prison, to establish a museum, gift shop and coffee bar in the 145-year-old Housing Unit 4, to hold social gatherings and events at the site and to allow film or video requests. The agreement states that “public tours shall emphasize and focus on the historic nature of MSP.”

Under the agreement the City will cover expenses with the proceeds from tours and other events at MSP and use the remaining income to make repairs and improvements to the site, as approved by the state’s Division of Facilities Management, Design & Construction.

See a copy of the proposed agreement between Jefferson City and the State of Missouri

Office of Administration Commissioner Doug Nelson explained that roof repair, window repair and then remediation of the site will begin quickly. He tells Missourinet, “We are in the process right now of finalizing our testing and we should have those results hopefully even this week, and then the plan is to go out to bid and move forward with the construction phase … once the buildings are encapsulated and the weather stays out of them, the final phase will be remediation and then we’ll be good to go.”

Visitor’s Bureau Director Diane Gillespie was visibly relieved by the announcement. She took in January her position at the Bureau, which has been conducting tours of the site since 2009.

She says, “It’s the first step. We still have a lot of process to go through … but we’re all talking. We’re all sitting down working together.”

She doesn’t know when the Bureau will begin booking more tours for 2014. She says, “The next step is to sit down and try to put a timeline together as to will we be ready to go in March, which is normally when our tour season starts. March is always kind of an iffy month for us because of the weather so if it’s April, then we’ll take April.”

Nixon credited Senator Mike Kehoe (R-Jefferson City) with persistence and hard work in bringing State and city officials together on the issue. Nixon said of Kehoe, “When a lot of folks point fingers in public service and find excuses to not get things done, Senator Kehoe is a fine example of somebody who likes to get things done.”

Representative Jay Barnes (R-Jefferson City) couldn’t be at the hearing while the committee on Medicaid that he chairs was meeting. He tells Missourinet, “I think it’s a great step forward for the City of Jefferson and the State of Missouri. I’m hopeful that we can get things fixed.” He called the pending agreement, “Good for the entire state.”