00:00:04
SAM DOUGLAS: In the USA,
some of the world's most dangerous individuals
are locked behind bars.
00:00:13
A prison in Minnesota
housed one of the most depraved
murderers known by inmates
00:00:19
as the family killer. - Craig Bjork is probably
one of the most dangerous prisoners in the country.
00:00:27
He seems to have a trail
of dead bodies behind him. REPORTER: The murder case
has been in newspapers,
00:00:35
on radio, and television. There are few people who
haven't heard of the case.
00:00:39
Four strangled
bodies were found. SAM DOUGLAS: Bjork,
the serial killer, didn't hesitate in strangling
his own flesh and blood.
00:00:48
DAVE KAMPA: I mean, how anybody
can kill your own kids-- he should have been put
to death a long time ago.
00:00:53
- Murdering anybody,
of course, is inexcusable. Murdering your children--
well, you get a special spot
00:00:59
in hell for that. ANDY MANNIX: Newspaper
articles at the time really painted a picture
of sort of, like,
00:01:08
a Hannibal Lecter figure. You looked into his
eyes, and there was just, like, no
recognition of a person there.
00:01:14
SAM DOUGLAS: Even within
the prison system, Bjork's lust for killing
showed no sign of abating.
00:01:21
DAVE KAMPA: Craig Bjork
grabbed a 3-foot pipe, proceeded to hit Edwin
Curry in the head,
00:01:26
maybe up to eight times. He was basically
a sick individual, and he was proud
of it, I think.
00:01:33
ANDY MANNIX: The guard
testified later that he started
telling him, hey, it's a good thing
you caught me when
00:01:39
you did because I was going
to kill a bunch more people. LINA HAJI: This is not
just your typical inmate.
00:01:45
This is an absolutely depraved,
psychopathic, evil, remorseless human being. [theme music]
00:02:22
SAM DOUGLAS: Oak
Park Heights is Minnesota's only
maximum security prison and can house up
to 473 criminals.
00:02:32
ANDY MANNIX: This is
where they put the worst of the worst prisoners. I've toured it several times.
00:02:37
There's solitary
confinement units where you can't hear anything
except for your own breath.
00:02:43
DAVE KAMPA: At Oak Park
Heights, I was bit. I've had feces thrown on me. I've had urine thrown on me.
00:02:49
I was almost stabbed
by a federal inmate. My name is Dave Kampa. I spent 35 years
as a correctional officer
00:02:58
and a special investigator. Oak Park Heights prison,
when it was built in 1982, it was the supermax
of Minnesota.
00:03:06
It's basically four stories
underground built into a hill to make sure that nobody
can escape from it.
00:03:14
JAMIE MORGAN KANE: On most any
given day that I was in prison, there were some
kinds of assaults.
00:03:20
It could be
everything from just a good knock across the head to
being a full-fledged killing.
00:03:25
If we went a couple of days
and nobody had done anything, then you'd start
worrying, because you
00:03:29
start thinking somebody
is planning something. SAM DOUGLAS: One of its
most notorious inmates
00:03:35
was convicted serial
killer Craig Bjork. ANDY MANNIX: There
was this question of,
00:03:53
what do we do
with this prisoner who keeps killing people
after he's been incarcerated?
00:03:58
I don't think that most
prisons have the tools to deal with someone like Craig Bjork.
00:04:02
LINA HAJI: Bjork
displayed quite a few psychopathic traits. He displayed lack of empathy.
00:04:08
He displayed impulsivity. He displayed
criminal versatility, pathological lying.
00:04:16
- Yes, he would probably be
the most dangerous person that I have ever dealt with.
00:04:23
SAM DOUGLAS: His
cold-blooded murders stretch over four decades. - To call him evil
is an understatement.
00:04:33
He is the rawest form of evil. DAVE KAMPA: He almost
looks like a demon. He's a very evil man.
00:04:41
And how somebody could
kill somebody like that, majority of people
can't fathom that.
00:04:46
LINA HAJI: I believe,
without a doubt, that if Bjork was released from
prison, he would murder again.
00:04:52
He may murder again in prison. SAM DOUGLAS: Craig
Bjork was born in 1959. His name at birth
was Craig Jackson.
00:05:11
ANDY MANNIX: Craig Jackson
had a really rough childhood. He had an abusive,
racist father.
00:05:18
There are references
of his dad molesting him when he was seven years old. His dad would beat
him pretty brutally.
00:05:26
He talks about his dad wanted
him to learn to tell time, so he would ask him
what time it was.
00:05:32
And if he got it wrong,
he would punch him. LINA HAJI: Abuse can affect
the development of the brain.
00:05:38
By the age of four,
you are starting to remember
and learn and retain everything that your parents
or your caregivers
00:05:47
are demonstrating. So when your own
protector is the one who is engaging
in the abuse, that can
00:05:56
really scar a child for life. Because if you can't
trust your own parent, who now can you
trust in the world?
00:06:02
PAUL LOPEZ: Jackson's
father was described as an extreme racist
and brought his son
00:06:09
up in the same belief system. ANDY MANNIX: His dad
would scream the N-word on a regular basis,
would talk about how
00:06:16
he thought Black people
were destroying America. A big part of, I think,
Craig Jackson's childhood
00:06:23
was being around that kind
of just vitriol racism and absorbing a lot
of it himself.
00:06:29
LINA HAJI: Modeled
behavior is probably the best indicator of how
a child is going to learn.
00:06:35
So if he's watching his
father engage in racist and misogynistic
behaviors, he's going
00:06:42
to normalize that
kind of rhetoric, and he's going
to internalize it. SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson's
mom eventually left
00:06:50
her abusive husband
and took her young son to live in cities
across the state, but ultimately, they ended up
circling back to their hometown
00:07:00
of Des Moines. ANDY MANNIX: Craig Jackson
was mostly raised by his mom. He talked a lot about his
mom being promiscuous.
00:07:13
He talked about
hearing her having sex with every Tom,
Dick, and Harry, as he put it, with only
a towel in between them.
00:07:22
LINA HAJI: Jackson has already
been set up for failure in terms of how
to properly understand
00:07:29
sexual relationships,
interpersonal relationships, friendships, parental
relationships.
00:07:35
Before the time he's even
6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years old, this child has a very, very
skewed perception of what
00:07:44
relationships actually entail. SAM DOUGLAS: As a child,
Craig Jackson began to echo his father's
violent tendencies.
00:07:57
ANDY MANNIX: One
time, he tied two cats' tails together and let
them just rip each other apart.
00:08:04
He would stamp out flowers. He would fight other kids. I think in eighth grade
he got into a fight that
00:08:09
got him kicked out of school. He pushed a teacher and was
just rather violent. LINA HAJI: It's understandable
that he had a lot of anger.
00:08:18
The problem is that
anger was not addressed. There doesn't seem to have
been any treatment or
00:08:24
adaptive outlets,
and so the anger is only going to build upon itself. Jackson is really a ticking
time bomb before the time
00:08:33
he's even an adult. SAM DOUGLAS: Still
a child, Jackson began experimenting with drugs.
00:08:43
PAUL LOPEZ: He
wouldn't even get out of bed,
reportedly, at age 14 until he had smoked marijuana.
00:08:50
This was on a daily basis. Of course, marijuana, as some
say, is a gateway drug.
00:08:55
He graduated to amphetamines
and a very strong narcotic, PCP. ANDY MANNIX: At one
point, he was
00:09:03
popping about 50
amphetamine pills a day, drinking up to a quart
of whiskey a day,
00:09:07
so he became someone who
was just a massive drug addict by his late teens. LINA HAJI:
So the substance abuse
00:09:15
was really a maladaptive coping
skill that was setting him up for disaster in the long run.
00:09:25
SAM DOUGLAS: In 1977,
at the age of 18, Craig Jackson started a
relationship with a young woman
00:09:32
called Terry Rice. Almost immediately, Jackson
became physically violent towards her.
00:09:40
PAUL LOPEZ: He'd
beat her to the point where she would suffer
significant injuries
00:09:44
and would have to seek
help from local hospitals and even at one point
went to a woman's shelter.
00:09:50
LINA HAJI: It's
a very cowardly act to engage in domestic abuse. So it makes you wonder, if you
can do this to the people
00:09:58
that you supposedly
love and are closest to, what can you do
to full strangers? What are you capable
of doing to anyone?
00:10:08
SAM DOUGLAS: Terry
became pregnant and in 1978 gave birth
to their son, Joey. The violence subsides.
00:10:18
ANDY MANNIX: It
does seem like there was a moment there where things
were fairly good between them.
00:10:24
After the first child was
born, Craig was apparently a very happy father. He would go around showing
everybody his young son
00:10:31
and say, I should
charge you money to see this beautiful child. SAM DOUGLAS: Craig
and Terry married in 1979
00:10:40
and moved to Minneapolis. ANDY MANNIX: So Minneapolis, in
the early '80s in particular,
00:10:47
was considered this
really safe, mid-sized to major American city. The murder rate was very low.
00:10:56
We were still five
or so years away from having the emergence
of the kind of gang activity
00:11:03
that we were seeing in places
like Chicago and New York City, and people just
generally thought
00:11:07
that Minneapolis was
a city that didn't have those kinds of problems. SAM DOUGLAS: A year
later, the couple
00:11:15
had a second child, Jason. ANDY MANNIX: After
the second child was born, the abuse became more intense.
00:11:21
You know, he had a one
and three-year-old, and being around them, he said,
just made him really angry.
00:11:27
LINA HAJI: While
he may have been in this pseudo-honeymoon
phase, that quickly dissipates
00:11:32
when he realizes that
two children and a wife requires a lot of work and
a lot of selflessness, which
00:11:39
he's incapable of providing. Abuse was really all he knew. It was all he had
learned as a child.
00:11:46
That being said,
he's now an adult, and he is responsible
for his actions. SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson's
wife, Terry, was always
00:11:55
the main victim of his abuse. ANDY MANNIX: This made things
a lot harder because she
00:12:01
felt like she couldn't leave
Craig Jackson because he had, you know, access
to their kids, so by leaving,
00:12:08
she would be putting
their lives in danger as well. She did leave him
several times,
00:12:12
but she always came back. SAM DOUGLAS: In 1981,
Terry suddenly disappeared. ANDY MANNIX: Craig Jackson
takes the family to Las Vegas
00:12:25
to see his father,
and when he returns, he's got Joey and Jason, but
Terry isn't with him anymore.
00:12:33
PAUL LOPEZ: When people
would ask Jackson about the whereabouts
of Terry, he would usually
00:12:38
provide the same
response, saying that they were having
relationship difficulties,
00:12:43
that she had gone
back to Des Moines to be with family to give
them some time apart.
00:12:51
SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson
did not appear to miss his wife
and mother of his children,
00:12:56
as he quickly found
himself a new girlfriend. LINA HAJI: Jackson is
now in his early 20s, and
00:13:02
he's developed a pattern now. It's almost akin to hunting. He's so predatory
in nature that what
00:13:09
he does is he goes out
to the world, goes to bars, and he essentially
finds his next victim.
00:13:15
And that's where he met his
next girlfriend, Ramona. PAUL LOPEZ: Ramona Yurkew
was a 19-year-old girl who
00:13:28
graduated high school in 1980. She was very well
liked in high school. She was a member
of the school cheer squad.
00:13:37
She participated
in several plays. She was even
on the student government. And at that time, she was
working at a local pizzeria.
00:13:49
SAM DOUGLAS: Ramona's
affection towards Craig was repaid with violence. ANDY MANNIX: The relationship
was very violent, very abusive.
00:13:59
I think he was ramping
up actually from Terry. He beat her several times,
sending her to the hospital.
00:14:07
He was really angry. He was angry at the kids. He was angry at Ramona, and he
was really ramping up his drug
00:14:13
use around this time too. LINA HAJI: It's only making
the psychopathic traits worse.
00:14:22
It's going to make
him more impulsive. It's going to further his
ability to manipulate,
00:14:27
because there's really
nothing holding him back. ANDY MANNIX: Ramona did
not leave Craig Jackson
00:14:37
despite people telling her to. I think in large
part because she fell in love with
these kids who
00:14:43
were very young at the time. LINA HAJI: Ramona seems to be
an empathic, caring, loving,
00:14:52
well-rounded person,
and he's aware that Ramona is attached to his two sons.
00:14:57
And so he's using
his sons as bait in order to keep Ramona stuck
in this abusive relationship.
00:15:08
SAM DOUGLAS: On the afternoon
of March 6, 1982, Jackson dropped off his
kids at a babysitter
00:15:15
and headed to downtown
Minneapolis. He visited several bars,
getting both drunk and high.
00:15:23
ANDY MANNIX: Hennepin
Avenue is sort of the heart of downtown
Minneapolis's bar
00:15:28
and restaurant district. In the '80s it was sort of
known as kind of a seedy place.
00:15:36
There was some nightclubs. There were places
where you would have, you know, people
who were, like,
00:15:41
considered day drinkers who'd
spend full days at these bars. He meets a woman named
Gwendolyn Johnson.
00:15:48
Gwendolyn is a young woman. She's about 20 years old. She's got two kids.
00:15:54
One thing that's
significant about Gwendolyn is that she's a Black woman.
00:15:57
Craig was sort
of a pretty unapologetic racist at this time. He talked about his hatred
for Black people frequently.
00:16:06
He brought Gwendolyn
Johnson back to this house. They had sex consensually,
and during the act,
00:16:14
he choked her to death. PAUL LOPEZ: Strangulation
is a very personal way to murder somebody.
00:16:24
It requires close,
upfront contact. There's no distance involved. And typically speaking,
it takes time for people
00:16:31
to die through strangulation. ANDY MANNIX: He hid
Gwendolyn's body underneath his child's bed.
00:16:40
He takes some of her
belongings and puts them in the basement
of his apartment. He burns her ID.
00:16:47
So there's some
acknowledgment there, I think, that he knew what he
was doing and that he
00:16:52
was trying to cover it up. LINA HAJI: He doesn't
view her as a human. He views her
as a prop, as a tool.
00:16:59
He picked her up. He got what he wanted from her,
which was sexual gratification,
00:17:04
and then he had no
need for her anymore. SAM DOUGLAS: The next day,
March 7th, he picked up
00:17:14
his sons from the babysitter. ANDY MANNIX:
The babysitter notices he's got some scratches,
some kind of defensive wounds
00:17:20
on his face. She's a little bit concerned,
but all the same, he takes the kids back
and is just hanging out
00:17:27
with them in the apartment
where there was a body hidden under a bed. SAM DOUGLAS: Later that day,
Jackson put his sons to bed.
00:17:37
After finishing her
shift at the pizzeria, Ramona went over to his house. ANDY MANNIX: They're
smoking weed together,
00:17:45
and she's getting
ready to leave. And he decides that he's
going to choke her to death.
00:17:51
He wraps his hands
around Ramona's throat and chokes her until she dies. LINA HAJI: Once he's killed the
first victim, it's easy for him
00:18:03
to continue going on. Why stop? He's probably filled
with adrenaline. He's probably realized
I can do this.
00:18:10
He's probably getting some
kind of gratification from it. And so it's just like
any other addiction--
00:18:16
he just continues to do
it because it feels good and it serves him. SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson
then walked into the room
00:18:24
where his two sons, age one
and three, were sleeping. - He decides that God wants
him to choke them to death
00:18:35
and send them to heaven. Joey is sleeping on the bed
with Gwendolyn Johnson's body
00:18:41
underneath it. He chokes them both to death. He describes it later as saying
there was no big incident.
00:18:49
It was very peaceful,
and he was just sending everyone to heaven. LINA HAJI: Murdering
his children
00:18:55
and his girlfriend is
the ultimate control. I mean, when you dictate
when and how somebody dies,
00:19:00
there is no other
level of control. Those were the easiest,
most vulnerable targets.
00:19:05
They were closest
to him, and they were just a means to an end. SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson spent
the rest of the night
00:19:15
at home getting high
with four dead bodies lying just meters away. - Ramona Yurkew was
missing for several days,
00:19:23
and her family,
knowing that she was in a very abusive
relationship with Jackson,
00:19:30
became concerned about her. They contacted the local
police department. The police department went
to Jackson's residence.
00:19:39
However, they found that
Jackson was not home. ANDY MANNIX: Minneapolis
Police showed up
00:19:48
here looking
for Ramona Yurkew, and they found four dead bodies. It was a really
grisly murder scene
00:19:55
that I don't think
anyone expected when they walked in the door. SAM DOUGLAS: Ramona's father
was interviewed at the time,
00:20:04
telling reporters how he
learned what had happened. - It was a doorbell, and a man
in the suit, plainclothes suit,
00:20:12
identified himself
as a chaplain. INTERVIEWER: Mm-hmm. - Police chaplain
from Minneapolis.
00:20:19
I said, she's dead, isn't she? He said yes. And I said, the kids too? And he said yes.
00:20:28
PAUL LOPEZ: Nothing's
more impactful than the death of children. The first thing is
complete shock and sadness.
00:20:35
It's very painful, and those
are visions in your brain that will be imprinted
indefinitely.
00:20:42
I would immediately
suspect the father. On a homicide scene where
there's two dead children,
00:20:48
a dead girlfriend, and a fourth
body, and the missing component is the father? Absolutely, he would
be the primary suspect.
00:20:59
MAN: Well, what
it boils down to is she gave her life
for those babies. It's as simple as that.
00:21:04
She stayed there knowing
she was in danger, but she wanted
to protect those babies.
00:21:09
ANDY MANNIX: This was really
described in the newspapers as like the murder
of the century.
00:21:14
It was sort
of a house of horrors, you know, walking into there. The newspapers described this
as a vile and extremely
00:21:22
grim scene. SAM DOUGLAS: A murder
investigation was immediately launched. It was quickly determined
that all four victims had
00:21:33
been manually strangled and the
main suspect was Craig Jackson. He had fled the state
and was on the run.
00:21:45
For a month, he
went undetected. Then on the morning
of April 8th, he called the police from a
restaurant in Wichita, Kansas.
00:21:53
[telephone rings] PAUL LOPEZ: Jackson
contacted the lead detective and stated that he
wanted to surrender.
00:22:02
When law enforcement
arrived, Jackson was just in the back of the
restaurant using a phone booth.
00:22:10
Jackson provided
no resistance and even made a comment
similar to, I'm not going
00:22:15
to give you guys any trouble. SAM DOUGLAS: Jackson was
brought back to Minnesota
00:22:25
and charged with the homicides
of Gwendolyn Johnson, Ramona Yurkew, and his
sons, Joey and Jason.
00:22:33
Whilst Jackson was in custody,
another body was found. ANDY MANNIX: About a month
after Craig Jackson turns
00:22:45
himself in in Wichita,
Kansas, there is a father and son in rural
Iowa foraging for mushrooms,
00:22:52
and they find what
is at this point basically skeletal remains
of what turns out to be
00:22:58
Terry, Craig Jackson's wife. PAUL LOPEZ: Terry
had been found dead, and it was believed she
was dead up to 18 months.
00:23:09
Jackson denied killing her. SAM DOUGLAS: Police thought
otherwise and charged Jackson
00:23:16
with his wife's murder. After being deemed mentally
competent to stand trial,
00:23:24
on October 18, 1982,
the proceedings began for the first four homicides. - He pleads not guilty
by reason of insanity.
00:23:35
The murders of Craig Jackson
was a national news story. I think people were horrified.
00:23:40
There was a lot of interest
in seeing him held accountable, so the fact that his defense
was arguing this insanity plea,
00:23:47
I think a lot of people
didn't want him to be able to get away with that. LINA HAJI: Jackson
flippantly saying
00:23:54
that he was sending
everyone to heaven as if it was a mercy killing,
to me, is just a load of bull.
00:24:00
I don't buy any of it. It's a way for him
to control his image, control the narrative,
manipulate other people,
00:24:08
have the world believe
that he isn't the person that who he thinks he is. SAM DOUGLAS: On November 4th,
the jury reached a guilty
00:24:17
verdict on all counts. - Jackson received
three life sentences plus 20 years
for second degree murder
00:24:27
for the murder
of Gwendolyn Johnson. ANDY MANNIX: And the judge
renders his opinion
00:24:33
by saying, this is one of the
most heinous and evil acts that I've ever encountered
in the criminal justice system,
00:24:40
and this sentence is
to make sure that you never walk free again. PAUL LOPEZ: Even though
Jackson was behind bars,
00:24:49
the path of death and
destruction would not be over. SAM DOUGLAS: Despite
being charged
00:24:58
with the murder of his
wife, Terry Rice, it never went to court. Quadruple murderer
Craig Jackson
00:25:10
was sent to Oak Park
Heights penitentiary, Minnesota's newest
prison at the time.
00:25:16
But this was only
half the story. As violent as he was
outside prison, once inside,
00:25:25
he became one of the world's
most dangerous prisoners. DAVE KAMPA: Back when
I started in '82,
00:25:31
Oak Park Heights was
built as the supermax. It was built pretty elaborate. Most of the units were
52-man housing units.
00:25:39
Each inmate got to have
their own private room. They brought
in the worst of the worst
00:25:45
around the United States. We also were housing
federal inmates, and they brought them to us
because they couldn't handle
00:25:50
them in their facilities. It was a Wild, Wild West. JAMIE MORGAN KANE: My name
is Jamie Morgan Kane,
00:26:04
and I served 34 and 1/2
years in California prisons. In the '80s it was a lot
harder than it has become.
00:26:13
You were restricted
on things you could have. Movements were a lot tougher. It was more punishment
than rehabilitation.
00:26:22
You could be assaulted,
could be stabbed, and brutality was
something that came in droves from both staff
and inmates at any given time.
00:26:35
DAVE KAMPA: Every
day you go to work, you didn't know
if you were going to have your shirt
tore off or not,
00:26:41
or come home with a black eye. JAMIE MORGAN KANE:
Death was cheap. I mean, I watched
a person be killed
00:26:47
over a single pack of tobacco. ANDY MANNIX: Craig
Jackson is first incarcerated at Oak
Park Heights prison,
00:26:58
and he is a problem
from the beginning. There's a lot
of drugs in prison, so he's continuing to do drugs.
00:27:05
He's fighting a lot. He's making a lot of problems. And when he gets caught,
he basically says,
00:27:11
what are you going to do? I'm already facing
multiple life sentences. DAVE KAMPA: His room
was always clean.
00:27:17
His appearance
was always clean. Once in a great while,
he had an issue, and whether it was
threatening staff
00:27:22
or whether it was
threatening another inmate, he would go
to segregation for that.
00:27:27
75 days later,
he'd come back out, and you wouldn't hear
a peep out of them
00:27:30
again for quite some time. PAUL LOPEZ: If you
were a child killer, you would have to be
separated from the main lines,
00:27:37
because the guys
would try to get you. And they would try
to slash you up. They would try to stab you.
00:27:40
They'd try to cripple you. They didn't necessarily
want to kill them. They wanted them to suffer.
00:27:46
It was basically
an open contract. And everybody in the prison
knew if you had a chance
00:27:50
and you didn't take it on doing
something to one of them, then you could become a target,
because they'd assume you had
00:27:56
some kind of like to the guy. You didn't want to be
a friend of a child killer.
00:28:01
ANDY MANNIX: Because he
had killed two young kids, his reputation
in prison was notorious.
00:28:09
Some of them called
him the family killer. SAM DOUGLAS: In 1991,
after nine years in prison,
00:28:20
Craig Jackson, now 32,
decided that it was time to change his identity. DAVE KAMPA: The state start
paying for name changes,
00:28:30
and once the inmates
got hold of, hey, we can get
our name changed, and this DLC is
going to pay for it,
00:28:36
everybody started
changing their names. Craig Jackson
became Craig Bjork. ANDY MANNIX: He said that
the reason he changed his name
00:28:45
is because he just
didn't even want to be associated with that
version of himself anymore.
00:28:50
He didn't want to be the person
who was known by some inmates as the family killer.
00:28:54
So he changed his name
to Craig Bjork for, I guess, sort of a fresh start. LINA HAJI: I don't
particularly buy that.
00:29:02
I think that it was another
attention-seeking ploy. He's displayed
narcissistic traits and
00:29:07
a huge ego his entire life,
so it was all, you know, what we call
impression management,
00:29:13
trying to control
the narrative, trying to control
the way he's viewed. People who actually
change don't have
00:29:19
to announce it to the world. They just do it. DAVE KAMPA: We're
currently at the Minnesota
00:29:27
Correctional Facility
in Stillwater in Bayport, Minnesota. The prison was built,
I think, in 1914.
00:29:35
Stillwater prison,
I think, currently housed 1,700 offenders. SAM DOUGLAS: Stillwater
prison lies a couple of miles
00:29:43
away from Oak Park Heights. - Kind of an overflow
of Oak Park Heights. They got, like, seven
housing facilities inside.
00:29:51
The average bed space is,
like, 250 per cell block. At Stillwater, prisoners
vary from child molesters
00:30:01
to killers to arsonists
to burglars. We had cop killers in there. We had people who
killed their wives
00:30:09
and put them
in a garbage disposal. SAM DOUGLAS: In the 1990s,
after being promoted
00:30:16
to investigator for the
department of corrections, Dave was assigned to Stillwater.
00:30:22
DAVE KAMPA: When I
first came in there, the first thing I
noticed, how loud it was.
00:30:28
It doesn't have
air conditioning. It stunk. You know, that many inmates
and some of them don't bathe--
00:30:34
the people who didn't
like their hygiene usually got their asses kicked. ANDY MANNIX: So in the
mid-'90s, Craig Bjork is
00:30:41
moved to Stillwater
prison, and he really doesn't want to be there. He doesn't like
his cell location.
00:30:46
He doesn't like the facility. And he says, you know, I
really want to be moved
00:30:50
back to Oak Park Heights. SAM DOUGLAS: After over
a decade behind bars, Craig Bjork, now
aged 37, was placed
00:31:01
within general population
at Stillwater prison. DAVE KAMPA:
In 1996, Craig Bjork
00:31:09
sent a letter to the warden
here at MCF Stillwater, claiming that if he
didn't get moved over back
00:31:14
to Oak Park Heights,
he was going to start killing staff and inmates. ANDY MANNIX: He's
basically saying,
00:31:20
I'm going to go
on a murder spree if I don't get what I want. He's evaluated
by a prison psychiatrist,
00:31:28
and the psychiatrist comes
back and says, he's serious. And they keep him
in general population,
00:31:34
and I think it's a fair
question of whether or not they really took
those threats as
00:31:39
seriously as they should have. LINA HAJI: You're
in prison now for having killed multiple people.
00:31:46
You don't get to pick
and choose what happens now. He's not understanding that,
or he refuses to understand it.
00:31:57
SAM DOUGLAS: During
the time that Craig Bjork was in MCF Stillwater,
he was assigned
00:32:02
to work in the kitchen. He was in charge of cleaning
the recycling containers and also taking out the garbage
and stuff like that.
00:32:10
JAMIE MORGAN KANE:
Generally, the rule of thumb is if you are able-bodied,
you have to work.
00:32:15
In the butcher shops
we used to have, most of the free staff
butchers would not hire you unless you are either
a killer or somebody who
00:32:24
was an extremely violent
person assaulting with knives and sharp implements. And there were guys who were
burglars that went for jobs,
00:32:32
and the guy goes, you
ever killed anybody? No. Well, I only hire killers. Because the idea
was that you didn't
00:32:38
have a problem with blood
and all the other stuff. SAM DOUGLAS: Despite
his threats of violence,
00:32:45
Bjork was still allowed to keep
his job in the kitchen, where in 1997 he worked
alongside convicted
00:32:53
sex offender Edwin Curry. - Edwin Curry had at least six
months left on his sentence
00:33:00
before he was going
to be released. ANDY MANNIX: It was
Thanksgiving Day. Edwin Curry and Craig
Bjork were both working
00:33:08
in the kitchen that day. Craig Bjork has this 3 foot
of pipe that he's been hiding,
00:33:13
and he goes up
behind Edwin Curry. DAVE KAMPA: He hit Edwin
Curry about eight times
00:33:21
on the top of the head,
back of the neck, and then he finally
broke his windpipe.
00:33:26
And that's what caused
Mr. Curry's death. ANDY MANNIX: This wasn't,
like, a shank where he slit
00:33:31
his throat and it was quick. This was a slow
beating of a man, you know, pummeling his
head, crushing his windpipe.
00:33:39
This was a very
violent killing. SAM DOUGLAS: After the murder,
an officer walked in to find
00:33:53
Craig Bjork in the kitchen. - He immediately
saw Bjork attempting to clean up a red liquid
by washing it away with a hose,
00:34:04
and the correctional officer
questioned what was happening. Bjork stated that
he was cleaning up
00:34:09
the mess from some beet cans. At that point, Bjork said he
had to go and left the area.
00:34:17
SAM DOUGLAS:
The officer suddenly realized that the huge pool
of red liquid was blood.
00:34:23
- The corrections
officer realizes that these are drag
marks in the blood and follows them
to the garbage closet
00:34:31
and finds Edwin Curry's
body wrapped in plastic wrap in the garbage cart. Immediately, you
know, calls this in.
00:34:39
The guards go looking
for Craig Bjork, and they find him in the
cafeteria eating a candy bar
00:34:44
and drinking a glass of milk. LINA HAJI: It was premeditated. It was calculated.
00:34:50
He planned it. He did it. And then he went back to eating
a candy bar and drinking milk.
00:34:56
That is how Bjork views murder. It's just another
event in his life. SAM DOUGLAS:
Special investigator
00:35:06
Dave Kampa was immediately
called in to the prison. DAVE KAMPA: I received
a call from home
00:35:12
and said that there was
a homicide at the prison. About 30 minutes
later, I arrived, and
00:35:18
I found a whole bunch
of police, people here, ambulances here,
other investigators
00:35:23
that came to assist. I've never seen that
much blood in my life. It was covered every
square inch of that room.
00:35:31
Curry's body was
in a fetal position when the staff, Sergeant
Schwartz, found him.
00:35:36
ANDY MANNIX: Edwin Curry
was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wasn't mad at Edwin Curry.
00:35:41
He was mad at the prison
officials for ignoring him. He just wanted to make good
on the threat that he had sent,
00:35:48
saying that if they
didn't move him, he was going to kill somebody. DAVE KAMPA: He was saying
he was going to do this,
00:35:54
and I think that by doing
it on Thanksgiving, when the administration and all
these people are at home,
00:36:00
they would all have to come in. And that way, he could say
to them, I told you so.
00:36:05
ANDY MANNIX: The guard
testified later that he started
telling him, hey, it's a good thing
you caught me when
00:36:11
you did because I was going
to kill a bunch more people. PAUL LOPEZ: This
murder was pointless.
00:36:16
There was no self-defense. There wasn't even an argument
that had occurred. There was no lead-up.
00:36:22
It was a senseless
taking of a life for a sociopathic narcissist
who just wanted to make
00:36:28
a point to the prison system. ANDY MANNIX: When the guards
searched his cell, they found a journal with
an entry for that day,
00:36:38
and he had written them
a little note that said, "You should have moved me, punks."
00:36:45
SAM DOUGLAS: After
the murder of Edwin Curry, Bjork was immediately
transferred back to Oak Park Heights.
00:36:53
DAVE KAMPA: He got
what he wanted. He wanted to go
to Oak Park Heights. And what he had
to do, he did it just
00:37:00
to show the administration
that you didn't listen to me, and you need to start listening
to people from now on.
00:37:06
SAM DOUGLAS: On March
8, 1999, Bjork was convicted of first
and second degree murder
00:37:12
in the killing of Edwin Curry. ANDY MANNIX: The judge
renders another life sentence
00:37:18
for Craig Bjork to run
consecutively with the three he's already serving. So by this stage, Craig
Bjork is convicted
00:37:25
of killing five
people, four of those, he's now serving life
sentences for, plus another 20
00:37:32
years for the fifth one. SAM DOUGLAS: In January
2013, over a decade since the murder
of Edwin Curry,
00:37:47
Bjork was transferred
to Oregon State Penitentiary. ANDY MANNIX: Notably,
this is against his will.
00:37:59
He described it
as he was kidnapped. He was kidnapped and brought
to this prison in Oregon.
00:38:04
PAUL LOPEZ: This was done
through a interstate exchange agreement between prisons,
which allows prisons
00:38:11
to essentially transfer
or swap inmates that maybe have insecurity issues or
they have high-profile crimes.
00:38:17
SAM DOUGLAS: Bjork, aged 53,
was placed into a shared cell with 45-year-old Joe Akins.
00:38:25
ANDY MANNIX: Joe Akins is
also a convicted murderer. He was convicted
in 2008 of a crime
00:38:31
he committed in 1994,
which entailed raping and murdering a woman. He was serving
a 22-year sentence.
00:38:39
- Craig Bjork had
stated that he was sober and he was no
longer doing drugs while in prison,
and additionally,
00:38:46
had almost no
disciplinary history, essentially described
himself as a model inmate.
00:38:52
That's the speculation
as to why he received and was allowed a cellmate. DAVE KAMPA: The prison
system there
00:38:58
was pretty stupid to put
another inmate in the same cell with him, and I
said, well, that was
00:39:03
probably one of the dumbest
mistakes they've ever made. SAM DOUGLAS:
On August 17, 2013,
00:39:11
Bjork confronted Akins,
accusing him of hiding weapons and drugs in their cell. - Bjork took issue
with that because he
00:39:20
felt that if it was found,
they would both be blamed. Now, later that
same night, Bjork
00:39:26
stated he was attacked
by Akins in his sleep. At that point, he
defended himself.
00:39:35
ANDY MANNIX: He holds
Akins down on the bed. He grabs this apparatus that
was made of shoelaces and belts
00:39:42
to keep the pillow on the bed,
and he grabs this apparatus and wraps it around
Akins's neck.
00:39:48
And he chokes him
to death in what he described as self-defense. JAMIE MORGAN KANE: In prison,
there is no self-defense.
00:40:03
It's called mutual combat. There is either
defense or non-defense. In some cases, it's
sometimes better to make
00:40:11
your defense become offensive. You're taking the person off
there, being the aggressor,
00:40:16
and making them have
to now defend themselves, and it just changes
the parameters.
00:40:24
- When his cell
opened, he just left, went out to the chow
hall for breakfast like all the other inmates.
00:40:32
SAM DOUGLAS: After
breakfast, Bjork went up to an officer
in the yard and admitted what he had done.
00:40:43
PRISON GUARD: He was just
very calm and matter of fact, and that's kind of why
he had to convince me,
00:40:48
because it was just
a normal conversation, a normal tone of voice. Hey, I can't get
back to my cell.
00:40:55
My cell is dead. He didn't appear to be in any
kind of distress about it. He was perfectly fine with it.
00:41:03
SAM DOUGLAS: Bjork was
charged with his sixth murder, and because he was now
in an Oregon prison,
00:41:10
found himself facing
the death penalty. ANDY MANNIX: I
reached out to him, seeing if he wanted
to talk for the article,
00:41:22
and he said the death
penalty is vengeance. And isn't that more evil than
anything that I've ever done?
00:41:28
For the government
to say, we're going to kill you in revenge
for what you've done.
00:41:34
PAUL LOPEZ: However, by chance,
while he was awaiting trial, the governor at the time
abolished the death penalty
00:41:42
in the state
of Oregon, and just like that, Bjork's no longer
facing the death penalty.
00:41:51
SAM DOUGLAS: On December 23,
2019, Bjork, now aged 60, pleaded no contest
to the charges against him.
00:42:01
ANDY MANNIX: In other
words, he's saying, I don't really have
an adequate defense to this,
00:42:05
so he was sentenced to yet
another life sentence. So Craig Bjork is now convicted
of killing six individuals,
00:42:12
and he's facing at least
five life sentences. Is this more of a punishment? Only on paper, I think.
00:42:20
It's not really-- practically,
it doesn't really change the situation that much.
00:42:24
JAMIE MORGAN KANE:
In my experience, more than 70% of inmates have no
desire to rehabilitate,
00:42:30
and this could be
for a number of reasons. Some of them feel that
if they rehabilitate,
00:42:35
they'll lose their street cred. But part of it is also they
don't see a reason to put
00:42:42
the effort in to rehabilitate. A person has to want to do it. ANDY MANNIX: The prosecutor
said that this
00:42:48
was a grave injustice. He says that Craig
Bjork is someone who is the worst
of the worst, and
00:42:54
that's what the death
penalty should be for. This is somebody who's
been convicted of killing
00:42:58
men, women, and child-- plural. He should be the poster
child for the death penalty.
00:43:09
SAM DOUGLAS: In 2021,
Bjork was transferred to ADMAX USP Florence
in Colorado, the most secure
00:43:17
prison in the United States. ANDY MANNIX: What do
you do with prisoners like Craig Bjork?
00:43:22
I think it poses a real
problem for prisons and for lawmakers and for society. There's really not
a lot of reason
00:43:30
to think about rehabilitating
him because he's never going to get out. PAUL LOPEZ: At minimum, I would
say he needs to be completely
00:43:37
and absolutely segregated
from any human contact-- inmates completely
and only officers when
00:43:43
it is absolutely necessary. DAVE KAMPA: I think that you
give him an opportunity again
00:43:52
to kill somebody, he will. I think he enjoys it. - I think it would be naive to
say there's no way this guy is
00:43:59
going to kill anybody again. I think he's proven that he
is capable of it, though.
00:44:05
LINA HAJI: This is not a person
who will stop murdering. I mean, as evidenced by the
fact that not only did he
00:44:13
murder multiple times
in the community, he murdered in prison. PAUL LOPEZ: Nobody is
safe from this monster.
00:44:20
If you can kill
your own children, you are capable
of the rawest evil and violence on the planet,
and you are irredeemable.
00:44:34
[theme music]