William Wharton attacks Dean Stanton

William Wharton, a nineteen-year-old condemned for a murder spree that left four dead, arrived at Cold Mountain Penitentiary's E Block on a hot October day in 1932. He had been brought from Indianola General Hospital, where tests for supposed epileptic seizures had found nothing wrong. The guards—Harry Terwilliger, Dean Stanton, and Percy Wetmore—had been lulled by his performance: at the hospital he stood slack-jawed and vacant-eyed at a window, let them dress him without resistance, and during the hour-long drive sat motionless with his head down, drooling onto the floor. They thought he was still doped from the tests. They were wrong.

The Ambush at the Door

When the stagecoach stopped at E Block, the three guards fell into the standard formation: Harry on Wharton's left, Dean on his right, Percy behind with his hickory baton drawn. Dean stepped forward to unlock the door. The instant he turned the key and pulled the handle, Wharton came alive. He voiced a screaming, gibbering cry—a kind of Rebel yell—that froze Harry and left Percy useless. Wharton lifted his arms, dropped the chain between his wrists over Dean's head, and began to choke him with it. Dean lurched forward into the block, Wharton shoving him along, arms cocked at the elbows, yanking the chain as tight as he could and whipsawing it back and forth.

The Struggle and the Failure to Act

Harry landed on Wharton's back, wrapping one hand in his greasy blond hair and slamming his other fist into the side of Wharton's face, but Wharton—now revealed as a coiled nest of steel springs—whirled and flung Harry off. Harry hit the duty desk and went sprawling. "Whoooee, boys!" Wharton laughed. "Ain't this a party, now? Is it, or what?" He went back to choking Dean, knowing what they all knew: they could only fry him once. Harry screamed at Percy to hit him, but Percy only stood there, baton in hand, eyes wide as soup-plates, too scared and confused to act. This was not a terrified little Frenchman or a black giant who hardly seemed to be in his own body; this was a whirling devil.

The Intervention

Paul Edgecombe, hearing the scream, came out of Wharton's cell dropping his clipboard and pulling his .38. He saw the face of an animal—not intelligent, but filled with cunning, meanness, and joy. Wharton saw the gun and turned Dean toward it, so that Edgecombe would almost certainly have to hit one to hit the other. From over Dean's shoulder, one blazing blue eye dared him to shoot. Then Brutus Howell appeared in the open doorway. He had finished moving the last of the infirmary equipment and had come to see who wanted coffee. Without a moment's hesitation, he shoved Percy aside into the wall with tooth-rattling force, pulled his own baton, and brought it crashing down on the back of Wharton's head with all the force in his massive right arm. There was a dull, hollow sound. The chain loosened. Wharton went down like a sack of meal. Dean crawled away, hacking harshly, one hand to his throat, his eyes bulging.

Aftermath and Significance

Wharton lay sprawled on his side, breathing slow and regular, a peaceful little smile on his face, a tiny red rill of blood seeping from his hair. He did not wake for almost three hours. When he did, he showed no ill effects from the blow. He came to the way he moved—fast—and stood at the bars, grinning, telling Edgecombe, "Next time it'll be you. And I won't miss." The attack exposed the fundamental danger of Percy Wetmore's presence on E Block: a man who froze when decisive action was needed, whose cruelty was matched only by his cowardice. It also demonstrated Wharton's nature—a man who "just doesn't care," as Curtis Anderson had warned, and whose slyness was beyond the experience of even seasoned guards. The incident set the pattern for Wharton's entire stay on the Mile: a cycle of provocation, restraint, and simmering violence that would end only with his death.