CORCORAN — An internal review at the state prison known as the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility cleared a staffer who was allegedly warned of impending violence an hour before one inmate beat two others to death with a cane, targeting both victims because they were convicted of sex crimes against children.
Jonathan Watson, 42, wrote a letter to this news organization confessing to using another inmate’s cane to murder David Bobb, 48, and Graham De Luis-Conti, 62, just one week after being transferred to the prison in Corcoran last January. In his letter, Watson said he requested a transfer to a counselor and warned that violence would follow if his “urgent” request wasn’t heeded.
An hour later, Watson beat one of the victims to death, he said in his letter. Watson was walking to another part of the prison, trying to find a guard to turn himself in, when he encountered the second man and fatally assaulted him as well, Watson wrote.
An internal review found “insufficient evidence” to sustain an allegation that the counselor had acted improperly by failing to take action after Watson’s warning. A report by the state Inspector General, released Thursday, backs up this conclusion, giving the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation a “satisfactory” assessment of its handling of the investigation.
In the February letter, Watson said he had recently been given a lower-level security classification, from Level III to Level II, prompting his transfer from a single-person cell to dorm-style living at the Corcoran prison. Watson was displeased by the transfer, which he called a “careless” mistake by CDCR, adding he left “quite a paper trail” of grievances protesting it.
He said a week into his stay one of the men — whom he referred to as “Molester #1 — began watching PBS Kids. Watson wrote that evening, “I could not sleep having not done what every instinct told me I should’ve done right then and there, so I packed all of my things because I knew one way or another the situation would be resolved the following day.”
The next day, shortly before the attacks, Watson told a prison counselor that he needed to be transferred back to Level III “before I really (expletive) one of these dudes up,” but that the counselor “scoffed and dismissed me,” his letter said. Approximately an hour later, he carried out both attacks, according to the inspector general report. Watson’s letter said it was more like two hours later.
After the attacks, prison staff were unaware of what happened until Watson approached a corrections officer and confessed, he wrote. He was transferred to a segregated housing unit, or SHU, in the same prison. His only outdoor time is inside a fenced in area that he likened to a dog kennel.
“It sort of felt like the end of everything for me,” he wrote. “But everyone’s support has sort of lifted my spirits.”
