August 25, 2021 • 47 mins
Sharon Wiggins killed a man in a bank robbery gone wrong when she was seventeen. Her state locked her up for life, no chance of parole. Then the Supreme Court stepped in, and Sharon started dreaming. This is the story of a woman with a dubious superlative: the longest-serving juvenile lifer in the world.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Is it a sin?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Is it a crime? Loving you dear like guy do.
If it's a crime, then I'm guilty, guilty of loving you.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Hi, everyone, Welcome to episode seventy seven zero of Criminal Broads,
a true crime podcast about wild women on the wrong
side of the law. I'm your host, Tory Telfer, author
of Lady Killers and Confident Women, and thank you all
so much for listening to last week's Mary Vincent episode
and joining me in cheering for Mary Vincent and also
(00:43):
our utter loathing for Larry Singleton. Guys, I was thinking
about it, and I was thinking, like, who are the
Criminal Broad's top five most loathsome individuals. I really feel
like we need to compile a list, a greatest aka
world first hits list the ones that come to mind.
But you know, I can only remember the past couple
(01:04):
episodes or so, I just can't hold it all in
my brain. Are Pam hup? Remember her? The one who
killed her friend Betsy and them was like the husband
did it? I really don't think we like Grace Fortescu
from the Massy Affair episode the mother from Hell. Larry Singleton,
of course, makes these ladies look like angels. They should
(01:27):
join the canon of Saints compared to how horrible he is.
But surely we've covered some other terrible people on this podcast, right,
I mean, I know we've covered a whole range of people.
Some we love, some were sympathetic too, some we feel
conflicted about. But who are the ones who we just
are like, no, cancel them now? Email me criminal Broads
at gmail dot com and tell me who you want
(01:48):
to nominate for this list, this list of infamy. All right, today,
we actually kind of don't have an antagonist in this
episode except for the state of pennsylvani Now, listeners from Pennsylvania,
before you scream at me, I am one of you.
I used to live in Philadelphia, Okay, so don't yell
at me. I've been there. But the state of Pennsylvania
(02:12):
has some issues when it comes to the criminal justice
system that are illuminated by this episode. We're going to
talk about the story of Sharon Wiggins, nicknamed Peache, who
has what I call in the episode a dubious superlative,
which you'll hear later, but the basic gist of her
story is that she served a very long, controversial sentence.
(02:35):
We're going to hear from her friend Ellen Melchiinado in
this episode, who can tell us about how Sharon was
as a person. And this is going to be one
of those stories that's about the woman at the heart
of it, and is also about the capital s system,
which is always, i'll be honest, depressing to learn about,
(02:55):
but important. There's an observation that you'll hear later in
this episode that's basically about this specific type of incarcerated
woman in Pennsylvania is just kept almost literally invisible. The
prisons are remote, you don't see them, there aren't very
many resources. This quote actually got cut from the episode,
but I did have this quote about how these women
(03:16):
often suffer from very low self esteem and this just
combines to make them invisible. And this is not just
happening in Pennsylvania. I can guarantee you this is happening
across the US, maybe across the world. And so I
would like to think that if criminal broads can occasionally shine,
it's humble flashlight with one battery dying on some of
(03:37):
these stories. It's just a reminder, you know, I don't
think it's healthy for us as a country to truly
forget about the people who are incarcerated, no matter what
they've done. This isn't saying that everyone who's in prison
needs to be released or anything like that, but it's
creepy to forget about people. I think it's creepy to
just completely not know what is happening to our fellow
(03:59):
hu humans or fellow citizens who are behind bars. So anyway,
this story is going to get into all that. But
let's go to Pennsylvania. All right, my old stomping grounds. Well,
we're actually going to be hanging out in Pittsburgh and elsewhere.
But accompany me there. We're going back to the sixties.
Let's go. Sharon Wiggins once said that a life sentence
(04:38):
was like being in a dark room with a blindfold on.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I guess, because we don't have a lot of time.
If I was going to equate it with something, I
guess it would be like the feeling of it is
sort of like being in a real dark room with
a blindfold on to the.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Room's darkening of life or onto, right, does he light
it through that life flow in that dark room? Oh?
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Not visual light.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
But I think what happens is that after a time,
your imagination or your mind creates light for you.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
That's Sharon talking to Howard's are the famous criminologist. In
nineteen ninety three, they were at Pennsylvania's State Correctional Institution
in Munsey, which had been Sharon's home for twenty four years.
A decade after that interview, Sharon was still locked up.
She did another interview. A journalist for Philly Daily News
(05:44):
asked her what she'd do if she ever got out.
I want to know what it feels like to wake
up by myself, she said. Here, you live on public view.
There's always a big piece of glass on your door.
I want to wake up by myself. I want to
know how it feels to the street. I want to
know how it feels to sit in the car and
hear the rain just beat down. I want to know
(06:07):
how it feels to sit with my sister and have
a cup of coffee. It was a humble list of goals,
but Sharon just wanted to get out to see what
life was like for most of the people in her country.
She'd been behind bars for the moon landing, for the
Beatles breakup, for Watergate, for the case of the Central
(06:27):
Park five, for the invention of the Apple computer, for
y two K for Britney Spears, for Aol instant messenger
for Facebook. The outside world for her might as well
have been another country, and so her wants were simple.
Her own bedroom, a cup of coffee with her sister.
She just wanted to get out of that dark room,
(06:49):
to take off that blindfold. Sharon Wiggins was born into
(07:10):
a tough world in the fifties and sixties. When she
was growing up a black kid from inner city Pittsburgh,
she didn't see a lot of reason to hope. She
didn't see a lot of reason to stay home. Her
mom was mentally ill and abusive, and the pressure of
being a mother to her three younger siblings often fell
on Sharon's shoulders. Sometimes she couldn't take this pressure, and
(07:32):
she'd run away. After all, she was still a kid herself.
She was smart though, she was put in an elementary
school for gifted children, and she was close to her grandparents,
who more or less raised her. Her grandma grew up
in a huge family in Birmingham, Alabama. Here's Sharon describing
a traumatic incident from her grandma's past, an incident that
(07:54):
always haunted Sharon.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Once they were on a portion.
Speaker 6 (07:59):
It was laden Night and the klu Klux Klan came
and got her brother, who was a teenager who was brown,
sixteen or seventeen at the time, and she said, they
came and got him, and nobody ever said anything. She
said that what she remember most is that nobody questioned
these people. You know, they came in, they had horses
(08:22):
and you know, the whole plan guard and they just
got down off their horse, went over to him and
took him and they never heard anything from him again.
And I asked her, I said, well, nobody asked about him,
and she said no, she said, nobody ever said a word.
As a teenager, it made me angry and it made me,
(08:44):
I think, because I didn't understand the fear that was
generated by the Klan, and I had never been exposed
to anything that blatant in my lifetime, that I was
angry with my family.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
To me, it was like they were cowards.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
I mean, nobody tried to.
Speaker 6 (09:03):
Fight or you know, not realizing that probably it would
have meant her whole family died, and that it was
about for them at that particular time, survival, and that
they had no choice because they had no one that
they could tell. Even today, I think about it a lot.
I get torn between being angry with the people who
(09:26):
committed the act and the individuals who never said anything
about it, the whole community that at some point knew
that you know, it was taken like that.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
At age twelve, Sharon started using drugs, sometimes selling them.
At fourteen, her grandma died. From then on, she was
more or less homeless for the next three and a
half years. Later, she would describe her teenage years as
being in survival mode. By the time she was seventeen,
she was hanging out with two handsome young men grown
(10:00):
up in the same area as she had. Their names
were Foster Tarvor and Samuel Barlow, ages seventeen and eighteen.
The three started hanging out in nineteen sixty eight. Rumor
had it that Samuel wanted to date Sharon, but she
told him that wasn't going to happen anyway. By that winter,
the teens were itching for excitement, and Foster had friends
(10:21):
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capital city, so that's where they went,
hoping to leave their troubles behind in Pittsburgh for a
few days, though Sharon could never really leave her troubles behind. Later,
she'd tell a friend that the reason she did what
she was about to do was to get money for
her mom and her little siblings to help them survive.
(10:43):
In Harrisburg, the teenagers partied like only teenagers can. They
slurped cough syrup and went to a high school football game.
And then they started talking wildly about doing something bigger,
more serious, more dangerous than slurping cough syrup and going
to a high school football game. There was a bank
in Harrisburg, the Dauphin Deposit Trust Company. Banks meant money,
(11:08):
and lots of it, piles of it, maybe even in
bars of gold, the kind of money that could absolutely
transform your life. The teenagers kased out the bank, watching
it closely. Before long they were gathering gym bags for
the money and silver pistols to make sure everyone in
that bank did what they said. The date of the
(11:30):
robbery was December second. Sharon and Foster walked into the
bank at nine forty a m. They looked sharp, Foster
in a knit vest, Sharon in a belted coat. Both
wore their hair short, with Sharon's only a little longer
than Foster's. Samuel stood in the doorway, acting as the lookout.
(11:51):
As luck would have it, bad luck for the teenagers.
An off duty cop was headed to the bank that day.
He was going deer hunting later, but first the bank.
He noticed the nervous looking young man as soon as
he walked in the door, and suddenly that young man
was poking a gun into his back, ordering him to
step inside. The off duty cop didn't obey. Instead, he
(12:14):
knocked the gun out of Samuel's hand and sprinted away
back to his car, where he had his deer hunting rifle.
Inside the bank, the robbery was in full swing. Sharon
had her pistol out and she was guarding the customers
who were shaking and lined up along one wall. Foster
had the gym bags and he was scooping cash into
them as fast as he could. Then someone knew entered
(12:37):
the bank, George Morlock, aged sixty four, retired and hard
of hearing. Sharon told him to line up with the
other customers. George didn't listen. There are different accounts of
what exactly happened next. Some believed that George just didn't
hear Sharon, that he stepped towards her, hoping she'd repeat
(12:58):
what she said. Others think that George was trying to
be a hero and that he stepped towards Sharon and said,
do you know what you're doing. Sharon has said that
George lunged for her and her gun, or at least
she felt like he was lunging for her and her gun.
In those tents panicked seconds, it's easy to imagine that
whatever George was doing, Sharon interpreted it as an attack.
(13:22):
She fired the silver pistol twice. Foster came bounding over
and opened fire too. The teenagers sprinted away with their
pistols and their gym bags and over seventy thousand dollars
in cash. As George Morlock bled out, he did die
at the hospital before long. As the three teenagers peeled
(13:46):
away in their getaway car with Samuel behind the wheel,
the off duty cop was back with his hunting rifle.
He saw them drive off. He flagged down a passing policeman,
and the two of them gave chase, firing at the
teens as they drove through the city. Samuel ducked to
avoid a blast of gunfire and smashed into a parked car.
Just like that, the chase was over. These were not
(14:09):
hardened criminals, professional robbers John Dillinger and his gang. These
were kids who had no idea what they were doing.
The teenagers were quickly arrested with their gym bags full
of cash. Their lives would change because of that money,
but not in the way they had hoped. Years later,
Sharon looked back at that day with agonizing regret. Once
(14:33):
she said that if she could change one thing about
that day, she would change this. Instead of going to
Harrisburg with her friends, she would have gone to school.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
He was the summer of nineteen ninety six and I
was an intern at Eastern State Penitentiary while in graduate school.
And at the time there was an exhibit of portraits
of women serving life without Pearl in Pennsylvania by Mary DeWitt,
and the exhibit included their addresses to contact them. So
(15:25):
shortly after my internship was over, I wrote Sharon Wiggins.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
That's Ellen Melchiondo. She's the co founder of the Women
Lifer's Resume Project of Pennsylvania. She's an official visitor for
the Pennsylvania Prison Society, and she's Sharon's good friend. When
she first came across Sharon's story, she was struck by
one thing. Sharon's age.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Of all the twelve women that were there, she was
the only one whose crime happened when she was seventeen,
and I remember well seventeen boy, I'm lucky, I'm alive.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Aaron, Foster, and Samuel all pled guilty to murder in
June of nineteen sixty nine. Sharon and Foster, the two
who'd fired their guns, said that they'd been high on
narcotics at the time and could hardly remember the robbery
or anything else about the day. Since they had pled guilty,
they skipped a jury trial altogether. Instead, a panel of
three judges gathered to decide what their sentence would be. Now,
(16:24):
the district attorney, who would have been prosecuting them in
a jury trial didn't ask for the death penalty. That
was simply not on the table, So everyone was shocked
when the three judges deliberated for less than an hour
and came back with a chilling declaration. These three teenagers
were going to have to die for what they'd done.
(16:45):
The teens were put on death row. People were outraged
at the sentence, though an activists started working against it
right away. Local pastors protested the NAACP themselves went straight
to the governor Pennsylvania to plead for the lives of
Sharon Foster and Samuel. It worked. In February of nineteen
(17:06):
seventy one, the teenager's sentences were reduced to life in
prison without the possibility of parole. These sentences weren't just life,
they were life plus if you will. Their sentences declared
that if they were ever released, which they wouldn't be
without the possibility of parole, they would need to serve
an additional twelve point five to twenty three years for
(17:26):
aggravated robbery, violating the Uniform Firearms Act, and conspiring to
commit an unlawful act. Foster and Sharon were seventeen at
the time of the murder. They were juveniles. No one
denied that, but when it came to murder, Pennsylvania didn't
care how old you were. The state had mandatory life
(17:49):
sentencing for homicide offenders. Forget age, background, any other mitigating factors.
In Pennsylvania, if you killed anyone, you were getting locked
up for life, whether you're front lobe was done developing
or not. Activists had started to call this law death
by incarceration or the other death penalty, And so just
(18:11):
like that, Sharon was locked up for life. Let's take
(18:38):
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(20:08):
she was first locked up, Sharon would be held up
as a model inmate, an example of someone who had
totally rehabilitated themselves. But it took a while for her
to get there. She struggled at first, who wouldn't and
she actually escaped from prison twice, once she turned herself
in a few months later. The second time, she made
it all the way to Indiana, but eventually someone recognized
(20:31):
her and called the police. Escape is a strong word
for what Sharon did, though, because back in the seventies
and early eighties, her prison didn't have a secure perimeter
the men's prison did. There were a lot of ways
in which the two prisons were different, and Sharon found
that infuriating. But there was really nothing preventing the women
(20:51):
at Muncy from leaving, and so sometimes they just did.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Women were always walking away. They weren't escaping because there
was nothing to escape from.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
They just walked away. And she did that.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Twice when she wasn't walking off the prison grounds. Though,
Sharon was discovering her voice. She took college classes, and
she got involved in several major lawsuits concerning the civil
rights of prisoners. In nineteen seventy four, she testified in
a suit brought against Pennsylvania's prisons by the Imprisoned Citizens
(21:25):
Union and the American Civil Liberties Union. When Sharon took
the stand, she testified about the brutal conditions at Munseie,
like the fact that their rooms were often so cold
they had to stay in bed all day. Seven years later,
she and some of her fellow inmates sued the state
for unconstitutional sex discrimination, saying that the educational and vocational
(21:47):
programs at Munsey were far worse than the programs offered
to male prisoners in the state. While men were offered
the opportunity to learn a plethora of real world skills,
women had to choose between type being, book keeping and cosmetology.
It's just things in nineteen eighty three, most women don't
care to do, Sharon told a journalist. On one hand,
(22:10):
were treated like children not to be taken seriously. On
the other hand, were treated like criminals. Her lawsuit mentioned
several other problems with Munsey, including the fact that mental
health treatment there was frankly a joke. Female inmates were
offered pills and nothing else, and the pill prescription process
was laughable. All you have to do is write a
(22:30):
request and say I can't sleep, Sharon said, Nobody asks
you why or what the problem is. She concluded her
statements to the press with this, nobody's asking anybody to
feel sorry for us, but at least give us a chance.
Since no one seemed all that eager to give Sharon
a chance, she decided to go out and make one
(22:52):
for herself. Despite the initially limited resources at Munsey, she
ended up with a resume three pages longo pages longer
than my resume for the record. She also got herself
so many certificates that she once jokingly told a journalist
she had about ten thousand of them, and this fact
was repeated with a straight face by other journalists. She
(23:13):
graduated with her associates from Penn State, and then she
worked for Penn State to help get more female inmates
to enroll in the program. She tutored inmates in math
to help them get their GEDs. She ran a ton
of groups, a group for parole violators that helped them
get back on track, a group for alcoholics for drug users,
a group about relationships on work release. She went into
(23:37):
the community to pick strawberries from a strawberry farm and
help with clean up after a hurricane. What didn't she do?
She got her license in cosmetology in upholstery. She was
a licensed mechanic. She studied construction electronics, computer programming, catering, photography,
and architecture, and for all of it, for each one
(23:58):
of these diverse and useful real world skills. She was
behind bars. As she studied and worked. She was applying
for commutation again and again and again each time twelve
times in total, her application was denied. Her friend Ellen
cites two reasons for this. The first her escape record.
(24:19):
The escapes or the walking aways, or whatever you want
to call them, left a stain on Sharon's record that
was almost worse than the murder itself. Ellen mentions John
Fetterman in this clip, by the way, he's the current
Lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Women were always walking away. They weren't escaping because there
was nothing.
Speaker 5 (24:38):
To escape from. They just walked away. And you know
she did that and twice.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
And I think, up until you know, when John Fetterman
got into office, those walkaways.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
Would sink your commutation application.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
But I think with a lot of advocacy, you know,
and bringing up equity and sexism and gender biases and
all that, since all the men's prisons had secure perimeters,
the idea that they would walk away would not enter
in their decision process anymore. And it doesn't so there's
(25:19):
you know, one woman is already out.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
She had a walk away.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
One woman is getting out on commutation this December.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
She left and was gone for six years.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
So yeah, so the whole walk away thing is not
an issue anymore.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
I don't know what made it.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
That Sharon Wiggins couldn't get commuted. I don't think it
was because she had a death sentence. I think it
was the escapes. They would looked at the escapes very,
very punitively.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
The second reason that Sharon's applications kept getting denied was
that in the seventies and eighties and nineties, the commutation
application had no room for shades of gray.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
At the time, the commutation application.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Was really really weak, and it was poorly designed.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And like I have seen numerous old applications, you know
before like Fetterman got in the office, They've changed it.
It's much easier now.
Speaker 5 (26:25):
And.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
It's just a better it's just a better process all around.
And you know, people didn't really know how deep to
go into their trauma. They in the old application. They
didn't have the opportunity to really explain what the first
sixteen years of their life was or seventeen or whatever.
(26:48):
In her case, so when I read her old application.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
I was like, damn, you know this is not the
person I know.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
The word commutation is an interesting one its history, expecting
it to have something to do with the word mercy,
but commutation doesn't have any link to the word mercy
Etymologically speaking, in the year fifteen hundred, it meant a
passage from one state to another. It comes from the
(27:16):
verb commute, which means to transform or to make less severe,
to put in place of another. When Sharon applied for commutation,
she was not begging for mercy. She was asking for
a passage from one state to another, from the state
of being incarcerated to the state of parole. She was
arguing in these applications that what she'd done was terrible,
(27:40):
but that she had served her time for it. It
was exactly what she'd told that journalist years earlier. Nobody's
asking anybody to feel sorry for us, but at least
give us a chance. In nineteen ninety seven, Sharon Wiggins
(28:09):
caught the eye of the artist Mary de Witt. Mary
had been given a regional National Endowment for the Arts
grant and was using it to create portraits and audio
stories of women who were in prison for life. What
Mary was finding was that in Pennsylvania these women were
almost completely invisible. Only the governor could give out a pardon,
(28:30):
and for political reasons, Pennsylvania's governors had been giving out
less and less pardons, and so these female inmates with
life sentences were locked up in very remote locations to
die of incarceration. Mary's project was called Life Sentences, and
a journalist covering it noted that the women Mary painted
(28:50):
would have been highly eligible for parole almost anywhere else
in the country. So Mary painted Sharon and recorded her
as she told her life story, talking about her teen years,
how she made mistake after mistake until she found herself
in that bank holding that silver pistol. Mary's exhibit was
(29:10):
what inspired Ellen to write to Sharon, and Sharon wrote back.
The two became penpals until one day Sharon's letters stopped.
Ellen later found out that Sharon had had a heart attack,
and then almost fifteen years later, in twenty eleven, Sharon
wrote to Ellen again. She said that she had been
organizing her papers when she'd found those earlier letters, and
(29:33):
decided to resurrect their correspondence now that it was twenty eleven,
and not. Nineteen ninety seven, Ellen had something different in
her life. She had the Internet.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
I researched her and I could find articles about her,
and I just contacted anybody and everybody that crossed her path.
And then she sent me a copy of her commutation application,
and then.
Speaker 5 (29:59):
There was more contact there.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So I just immersed myself in the world of Sharon
Wiggins supporters over the decades.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Before long, Ellen went to meet Sharon at Muncie. For
some reason, she was expecting a very tall person because
she'd read so much about her. In Ellen's mind, Sharon
loomed larger than life.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
When she was coming down the steps. That's how the
prisoners come down to the visiting room. They come down steps,
so they're kind of like above people sitting in the
visiting room, like they're entering a stage. So for me,
it was like, oh my god, here comes miss America.
You know, she's coming on stage down the steps.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
She was as tall as me.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I'm five to one, and I was like, oh my god,
Sharon Wiggins is so short. I had no idea, and
I said that to her. I said, oh my gosh,
I thought you'd be like five ten, you know, because
like you're like Sharon Wiggins, and she's like, yeah, I know.
Speaker 5 (30:55):
They say that a lot about me. She had a
lot of swaggers.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
The two women quickly. Ellen brought her ten year old
son to prison, and he and Sharon ate microwaved popcorn
and talked about math problems. Ellen was helping Sharon with
her thirteenth commutation application, an application that would hopefully convey
the real evolved Sharon on paper, with her traumatic background
and her transformation in prison and all the shades of
(31:21):
gray that made up who she was. Ellen was also
amused to find that Sharon was basically the queen of prison.
Then everyone loved her, everyone deferred to her. She was
in charge.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
When I met her, she was in her early sixties,
not at the height of her vigor and youth and everything.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
But you know, she always had girlfriends.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
She was loved and she loved and she was just
really confident, just confident.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
She wasn't ditsy or stupid or lighty.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
She spoke really like.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
And thoughtfully, so you.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Knew when you were talking with her you wanted to
be your best.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
She deserved your best.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
It wasn't like talking to somebody who was in prison
or who was involved in a bank robbery. She was
just like a really caring, well spoken person.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
She would have walked with her hand in her pocket, you.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Know, just checking things out.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
Because you know, Mounsey was her territory.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yes, Sharon had swagger, but her health was poor, exacerbated
by years of smoking and the stress of being incarcerated
and the poor nutrition of prison. She had a stent
in her heart, a tube of placed there to keep
one of her heart's passageways open. She had gone through
several serious depressions over the years since life behind bars
(32:50):
seemed hopeless, since twelve out of twelve commutation applications had
been denied. Since no matter how many certificates she got,
she was still in that dark room with the blindfold on.
But then in twenty twelve, something happened in the highest
courts of the United States that caused her to hope.
(33:28):
It was a Supreme Court case, two of them, actually,
Miller versus Alabama and Jackson versus Hobbes. In these cases,
the Supreme Court declared that mandatory life sentences for juveniles
were unconstitutional, that the Eighth Amendments Prohibition against Cruel and
Unusual Punishment applied Here, the majority opinion declared that adolescence
(33:50):
is marked by transient rashness, proclivity for risk, and inability
to assess consequences, and that this should come into play
when teenagers commit crimes. In other words, locking kids up
without seeing their youth as a mitigating factor was cruel
and unusual. This was huge. This was huge, a decision
(34:12):
from the United States Supreme Court saying that the sentence
Sharon Wiggins had been given four decades earlier was simply
not right. That she had been a child and should
not have been sentenced like an adult. But it wasn't
that simple. Pennsylvania wasn't about to let all its precious
juvenile lifers go without a fight. States across the country
(34:35):
started arguing about whether or not this decision applied retroactively.
In other words, was it applicable to people who were
already incarcerated, did it just apply to juvenile cases going forward?
Fourteen states ruled that it did apply retroactively, Seven states
said that it didn't, and one of those seven states was,
(34:56):
of course, Pennsylvania. As the courts wrangled over this issue,
Sharon allowed herself to hope in a way that she
hadn't for decades. She kept busy helping her fellow juvenile
lifers file the paperwork they needed to get their cases
re sentenced. But when she wasn't doing that, she was
working on her own paperwork, and she was dreaming.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
We were talking about clothes and shoes and work and
where you're gonna live all that. My dad offered her
a job and his factory, I mean, so we were
really hoping that she would come home.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Journalists asked her what in the world she'd do with
all her freedom, and she smiled as she told them
her daydreams. Waking up alone coffee with her sister Rain
on the windshield of a car walking down a street.
She said she wanted to work as an advocate for
people with life sentences, people just like her. As far
(35:52):
as her potential release went, she had two irons in
the fire, so to speak. She was waiting on a
hearing before the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons about her thirteenth
commutation application, and she was applying for resentencing based on
that Supreme Court ruling. She hoped, she hoped, but none
(36:12):
of her dreams would come to pass.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
I visited her on Friday, and her close friend Nancy
visited her, I think the day she died, and when
she left the visit, she went back to her cell
and that's when she collapsed from the heart attack and
the aneurysm I and everything just exploded in her body.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
I think one of the women in prison.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Had a friend on the outside call me, and it
was exactly I remember it. It was nine o'clock, the
finale of The Walking Dead was going to be on.
Sharon watched The Walking Dead too. I'm in bed with
my ten year old son. We're getting really excited about
this finale and that's when I got the phone call
(36:58):
and I was like, so sorry, Michael, I can't watch
the show with you, and he was like, I'm not
going to watch it either. I made some quick phone
calls to verify this because I didn't know if this
person was telling me the truth or not.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
And the next day I.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Went back to Muncie and that's when it was real
that did it happen that she had died.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Sharon died on March twenty fourth of twenty thirteen, at
the age of sixty two, the year after that monumental
Supreme Court decision. Three years later, the Supreme Court would
declare decisively that yes, the decision they made in Miller
versus Alabama did apply retroactively. In other words, people like
(37:40):
Sharon Wiggins, who were sentenced so long ago had sentences
that were unconstitutional and they should be released.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
She died in twenty thirteen before the retroactivity issue was solved.
Had Pennsylvania not challenged it on retroactivity.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
It is more likely that she would have gotten out.
So I blame yeah, this system killed her.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Ellen started a fundraiser online for Sharon's funeral, and Sharon's
younger sister left a comment there. Peachey, she wrote, using
Sharon's nickname. I was seven and you were seventeen when
you were taken away from me. I waited patiently and
so long for you to return home to me. This
(38:29):
doesn't seem fair. I wanted to take long walks with
you and have coffee and long conversations, go shopping, and
have barbecues in the backyard with you, to kiss you
and hug you tight, and show you around this free
world outside those prison walls. I love you, sister, and
we'll miss you as always. I'll be with you when
God says it's my turn. Now go sister, to your
(38:52):
new home and rest in peace. You are free at last.
(39:14):
Today Foster Tarvor and Samuel Barlow are free, both released
after serving decades of their life without parole sentences. Ellen
has donated a collection of papers about Sharon to Penn
State University, the place where Sharon got her associate's degree.
Now researchers and students at Penn State can study Sharon's
(39:34):
life and legacy not as someone who walked free, but
as someone who earned a dubious superlative the longest serving
juvenile lifer in Pennsylvania and possibly in the world, age
seventeen to age sixty two spent behind bars. Ellen continues
(39:55):
to work with female inmates at Muncie. She advocates for
them within the prison, but after seeing what happened to Sharon,
her goal is really to get them out of prison
as fast as possible.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
As an official visit with the prison society, I still
will look into how I can advocate for better treatment,
medical care, or whatever issues are happening inside. So because
Sharon Wiggins probably should have had better health care maybe,
and because the state did what they did, you know,
I just got to get these ladies out of prison.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
At the beginning of twenty twenty, there were still one
thy four hundred and sixty five people in America serving
juvenile life without parole sentences. That number has declined significantly,
though it's gone down forty four percent since the original
Supreme Court decision. Many of those who have been released
are no longer juveniles, of course. They are forty fifty sixty,
(40:51):
emerging into a completely new world from the one they
left behind as kids. A year before Sharon died, she
told a journalist that it had taken her a long
time to realize what exactly it meant that she had
killed George Morlock. At first, she had been obsessed with
questions like what will my mom think? What will God think? Eventually, though,
(41:15):
she realized something that horrified her. What she had done
could never be undone. Prior to that, everything I had
ever did I could apologize for, she said, But this
was something that happened that was so final. She wrote
in one of her commutation applications, the kind of sorrow
(41:37):
I feel on a daily basis eats at me like
a cancer. For George Morlock, it was a tragic way
to die. You walk into a bank hoping to get
a little cash to do what, grab a sandwich, buy
a new pair of shoes. And there's a teenage girl
in there, nervous and clutching at a pistol, and you
(41:58):
can't hear very well, and so you walk towards her
when she's screaming at you to step back, and she
shakes so much that for a long time she can't
tell if she really pulled the trigger, if the gun
just somehow went off. It's a tragic way to die,
but Sharon's death was tragic too, to have your heart
give out when freedom is so close, after forty five
(42:21):
years of hardly daring to let yourself dream of freedom.
Sharon told one journalist about her simple dreams, the coffee,
the rain, the walk down the sidewalk. But there was
one dream she didn't tell that journalist. It was a
dream she got teased about in prison.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
She would be touring the country talking to legislators and policymakers.
She could have been a teacher at a university, criminal justice, whatever.
But you know what she really wanted was she wanted
to live in a log cabin. If she'd gotten out.
She fantasized about living in a log cabin.
Speaker 5 (43:01):
She used to be teased.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
Because she actually had a subscription to log Cabin magazine.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Think of Sharon in her cell at Muncie getting a
new issue of log Cabin Magazine. She opens it up.
She sees warm wooden beams, crackling fireplaces. She dreams of it,
of stumbling out of the dark room, taking off the blindfold,
(43:30):
and finding herself in the woods with a rocking chair
and a warm fire and the trees all around. Nothing
to do but sit there and breathe the free air.
(44:03):
The end, everybody, that's the sad story of Sharon Wiggins,
who made mistakes and was beloved by many, which is
a very human way to be. I think, all right,
As you may know if you've been listening to the
episodes in order, this is the second to last episode
of Criminal Broads, I am going on a I don't
(44:27):
want to say I'm a completely abandoning this show forever,
but I also don't want to get your hopes up
and call it a break. But I am taking time
away from the podcast to focus on my writing, my
writing not for audio, for print, for online, which is
my true job, guys. And also, you know, to focus
some more time on my babe. So I'll say more
of this in the next episode. But if you want
(44:49):
to stay in touch and like see what I'm writing
and hear what I'm up to, there are a couple ways.
You can always check out my website Toritelfer dot com
and I have a newsletter that I literally never send out,
but I use it as a if there's something to
tell you, I'll tell you with it. I'll put the
link in the show notes. But the link is tiny
letter dot com slash Tory dot gov. So that's t
(45:10):
O RI I d o t g ov. Tory dot
gov was my old blog username. Don't try to find it.
I've hidden it. When I used to work in publishing,
I would blog let's just yeah, all my lunch breaks.
Definitely always on my lunch breaks, never during office hours.
Oh it was so fun. I would blog insane things
(45:31):
like I remember doing this post that was an exercise
routine inspired by paranoia, so it was like is that
man looking at you? Weird sprint? Oh, relatable? Oh to
be twenty three and at a nine to five again, just kidding.
It was a great job, but I'm glad to be
done with it. Here I go talking about myself again.
(45:51):
All right, Thank you again to Ellen for coming on
the show, and to Mary Deuitt for letting me use
some of the audio from her project Lifecimes of Sharon
talking about her grandmother's memory of the KKK. Always chilling
to remember, how well, obviously and unfortunately the KKK is
still around. I don't want to pretend it's a thing
of the past, but it's always chilling to remember how
(46:15):
not that far away we are from the Jim Crow era,
from Sharon's grandma sitting on the front porch and Alabama
and having the KKK just come up and take her
brother away, and no one says anything about it, like
that didn't happen that long ago, even though we might
like to believe that it happened in a totally different time
and place. So anyway, thank you to both those ladies
(46:38):
for help making this episode happen, and thank you to
all of you for listening, for commenting, Instagram dot com,
slash criminal Brods, for photos of Sharon Wiggins, and for
just being my favorites. I love you all, and I'll
be back here next week. Unless something changes, and things might,
we are going to return to the most horrible conflict
(47:00):
this world has ever known, and from its horror and
blood and fire, we are going to pluck a story
of incredible bravery. See you here next week. Bye bye.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I'm wrong loving Udy like guid
If it's a crime, then I'm guilty. Guilty loving
Is it a sin?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Is it a crime? Loving you dear like guy do.
If it's a crime, then I'm guilty, guilty of loving you.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Hi, everyone, Welcome to episode seventy seven zero of Criminal Broads,
a true crime podcast about wild women on the wrong
side of the law. I'm your host, Tory Telfer, author
of Lady Killers and Confident Women, and thank you all
so much for listening to last week's Mary Vincent episode
and joining me in cheering for Mary Vincent and also
(00:43):
our utter loathing for Larry Singleton. Guys, I was thinking
about it, and I was thinking, like, who are the
Criminal Broad's top five most loathsome individuals. I really feel
like we need to compile a list, a greatest aka
world first hits list the ones that come to mind.
But you know, I can only remember the past couple
(01:04):
episodes or so, I just can't hold it all in
my brain. Are Pam hup? Remember her? The one who
killed her friend Betsy and them was like the husband
did it? I really don't think we like Grace Fortescu
from the Massy Affair episode the mother from Hell. Larry Singleton,
of course, makes these ladies look like angels. They should
(01:27):
join the canon of Saints compared to how horrible he is.
But surely we've covered some other terrible people on this podcast, right,
I mean, I know we've covered a whole range of people.
Some we love, some were sympathetic too, some we feel
conflicted about. But who are the ones who we just
are like, no, cancel them now? Email me criminal Broads
at gmail dot com and tell me who you want
(01:48):
to nominate for this list, this list of infamy. All right, today,
we actually kind of don't have an antagonist in this
episode except for the state of pennsylvani Now, listeners from Pennsylvania,
before you scream at me, I am one of you.
I used to live in Philadelphia, Okay, so don't yell
at me. I've been there. But the state of Pennsylvania
(02:12):
has some issues when it comes to the criminal justice
system that are illuminated by this episode. We're going to
talk about the story of Sharon Wiggins, nicknamed Peache, who
has what I call in the episode a dubious superlative,
which you'll hear later, but the basic gist of her
story is that she served a very long, controversial sentence.
(02:35):
We're going to hear from her friend Ellen Melchiinado in
this episode, who can tell us about how Sharon was
as a person. And this is going to be one
of those stories that's about the woman at the heart
of it, and is also about the capital s system,
which is always, i'll be honest, depressing to learn about,
(02:55):
but important. There's an observation that you'll hear later in
this episode that's basically about this specific type of incarcerated
woman in Pennsylvania is just kept almost literally invisible. The
prisons are remote, you don't see them, there aren't very
many resources. This quote actually got cut from the episode,
but I did have this quote about how these women
(03:16):
often suffer from very low self esteem and this just
combines to make them invisible. And this is not just
happening in Pennsylvania. I can guarantee you this is happening
across the US, maybe across the world. And so I
would like to think that if criminal broads can occasionally shine,
it's humble flashlight with one battery dying on some of
(03:37):
these stories. It's just a reminder, you know, I don't
think it's healthy for us as a country to truly
forget about the people who are incarcerated, no matter what
they've done. This isn't saying that everyone who's in prison
needs to be released or anything like that, but it's
creepy to forget about people. I think it's creepy to
just completely not know what is happening to our fellow
(03:59):
hu humans or fellow citizens who are behind bars. So anyway,
this story is going to get into all that. But
let's go to Pennsylvania. All right, my old stomping grounds. Well,
we're actually going to be hanging out in Pittsburgh and elsewhere.
But accompany me there. We're going back to the sixties.
Let's go. Sharon Wiggins once said that a life sentence
(04:38):
was like being in a dark room with a blindfold on.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I guess, because we don't have a lot of time.
If I was going to equate it with something, I
guess it would be like the feeling of it is
sort of like being in a real dark room with
a blindfold on to the.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Room's darkening of life or onto, right, does he light
it through that life flow in that dark room? Oh?
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Not visual light.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
But I think what happens is that after a time,
your imagination or your mind creates light for you.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
That's Sharon talking to Howard's are the famous criminologist. In
nineteen ninety three, they were at Pennsylvania's State Correctional Institution
in Munsey, which had been Sharon's home for twenty four years.
A decade after that interview, Sharon was still locked up.
She did another interview. A journalist for Philly Daily News
(05:44):
asked her what she'd do if she ever got out.
I want to know what it feels like to wake
up by myself, she said. Here, you live on public view.
There's always a big piece of glass on your door.
I want to wake up by myself. I want to
know how it feels to the street. I want to
know how it feels to sit in the car and
hear the rain just beat down. I want to know
(06:07):
how it feels to sit with my sister and have
a cup of coffee. It was a humble list of goals,
but Sharon just wanted to get out to see what
life was like for most of the people in her country.
She'd been behind bars for the moon landing, for the
Beatles breakup, for Watergate, for the case of the Central
(06:27):
Park five, for the invention of the Apple computer, for
y two K for Britney Spears, for Aol instant messenger
for Facebook. The outside world for her might as well
have been another country, and so her wants were simple.
Her own bedroom, a cup of coffee with her sister.
She just wanted to get out of that dark room,
(06:49):
to take off that blindfold. Sharon Wiggins was born into
(07:10):
a tough world in the fifties and sixties. When she
was growing up a black kid from inner city Pittsburgh,
she didn't see a lot of reason to hope. She
didn't see a lot of reason to stay home. Her
mom was mentally ill and abusive, and the pressure of
being a mother to her three younger siblings often fell
on Sharon's shoulders. Sometimes she couldn't take this pressure, and
(07:32):
she'd run away. After all, she was still a kid herself.
She was smart though, she was put in an elementary
school for gifted children, and she was close to her grandparents,
who more or less raised her. Her grandma grew up
in a huge family in Birmingham, Alabama. Here's Sharon describing
a traumatic incident from her grandma's past, an incident that
(07:54):
always haunted Sharon.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Once they were on a portion.
Speaker 6 (07:59):
It was laden Night and the klu Klux Klan came
and got her brother, who was a teenager who was brown,
sixteen or seventeen at the time, and she said, they
came and got him, and nobody ever said anything. She
said that what she remember most is that nobody questioned
these people. You know, they came in, they had horses
(08:22):
and you know, the whole plan guard and they just
got down off their horse, went over to him and
took him and they never heard anything from him again.
And I asked her, I said, well, nobody asked about him,
and she said no, she said, nobody ever said a word.
As a teenager, it made me angry and it made me,
(08:44):
I think, because I didn't understand the fear that was
generated by the Klan, and I had never been exposed
to anything that blatant in my lifetime, that I was
angry with my family.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
To me, it was like they were cowards.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
I mean, nobody tried to.
Speaker 6 (09:03):
Fight or you know, not realizing that probably it would
have meant her whole family died, and that it was
about for them at that particular time, survival, and that
they had no choice because they had no one that
they could tell. Even today, I think about it a lot.
I get torn between being angry with the people who
(09:26):
committed the act and the individuals who never said anything
about it, the whole community that at some point knew
that you know, it was taken like that.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
At age twelve, Sharon started using drugs, sometimes selling them.
At fourteen, her grandma died. From then on, she was
more or less homeless for the next three and a
half years. Later, she would describe her teenage years as
being in survival mode. By the time she was seventeen,
she was hanging out with two handsome young men grown
(10:00):
up in the same area as she had. Their names
were Foster Tarvor and Samuel Barlow, ages seventeen and eighteen.
The three started hanging out in nineteen sixty eight. Rumor
had it that Samuel wanted to date Sharon, but she
told him that wasn't going to happen anyway. By that winter,
the teens were itching for excitement, and Foster had friends
(10:21):
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capital city, so that's where they went,
hoping to leave their troubles behind in Pittsburgh for a
few days, though Sharon could never really leave her troubles behind. Later,
she'd tell a friend that the reason she did what
she was about to do was to get money for
her mom and her little siblings to help them survive.
(10:43):
In Harrisburg, the teenagers partied like only teenagers can. They
slurped cough syrup and went to a high school football game.
And then they started talking wildly about doing something bigger,
more serious, more dangerous than slurping cough syrup and going
to a high school football game. There was a bank
in Harrisburg, the Dauphin Deposit Trust Company. Banks meant money,
(11:08):
and lots of it, piles of it, maybe even in
bars of gold, the kind of money that could absolutely
transform your life. The teenagers kased out the bank, watching
it closely. Before long they were gathering gym bags for
the money and silver pistols to make sure everyone in
that bank did what they said. The date of the
(11:30):
robbery was December second. Sharon and Foster walked into the
bank at nine forty a m. They looked sharp, Foster
in a knit vest, Sharon in a belted coat. Both
wore their hair short, with Sharon's only a little longer
than Foster's. Samuel stood in the doorway, acting as the lookout.
(11:51):
As luck would have it, bad luck for the teenagers.
An off duty cop was headed to the bank that day.
He was going deer hunting later, but first the bank.
He noticed the nervous looking young man as soon as
he walked in the door, and suddenly that young man
was poking a gun into his back, ordering him to
step inside. The off duty cop didn't obey. Instead, he
(12:14):
knocked the gun out of Samuel's hand and sprinted away
back to his car, where he had his deer hunting rifle.
Inside the bank, the robbery was in full swing. Sharon
had her pistol out and she was guarding the customers
who were shaking and lined up along one wall. Foster
had the gym bags and he was scooping cash into
them as fast as he could. Then someone knew entered
(12:37):
the bank, George Morlock, aged sixty four, retired and hard
of hearing. Sharon told him to line up with the
other customers. George didn't listen. There are different accounts of
what exactly happened next. Some believed that George just didn't
hear Sharon, that he stepped towards her, hoping she'd repeat
(12:58):
what she said. Others think that George was trying to
be a hero and that he stepped towards Sharon and said,
do you know what you're doing. Sharon has said that
George lunged for her and her gun, or at least
she felt like he was lunging for her and her gun.
In those tents panicked seconds, it's easy to imagine that
whatever George was doing, Sharon interpreted it as an attack.
(13:22):
She fired the silver pistol twice. Foster came bounding over
and opened fire too. The teenagers sprinted away with their
pistols and their gym bags and over seventy thousand dollars
in cash. As George Morlock bled out, he did die
at the hospital before long. As the three teenagers peeled
(13:46):
away in their getaway car with Samuel behind the wheel,
the off duty cop was back with his hunting rifle.
He saw them drive off. He flagged down a passing policeman,
and the two of them gave chase, firing at the
teens as they drove through the city. Samuel ducked to
avoid a blast of gunfire and smashed into a parked car.
Just like that, the chase was over. These were not
(14:09):
hardened criminals, professional robbers John Dillinger and his gang. These
were kids who had no idea what they were doing.
The teenagers were quickly arrested with their gym bags full
of cash. Their lives would change because of that money,
but not in the way they had hoped. Years later,
Sharon looked back at that day with agonizing regret. Once
(14:33):
she said that if she could change one thing about
that day, she would change this. Instead of going to
Harrisburg with her friends, she would have gone to school.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
He was the summer of nineteen ninety six and I
was an intern at Eastern State Penitentiary while in graduate school.
And at the time there was an exhibit of portraits
of women serving life without Pearl in Pennsylvania by Mary DeWitt,
and the exhibit included their addresses to contact them. So
(15:25):
shortly after my internship was over, I wrote Sharon Wiggins.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
That's Ellen Melchiondo. She's the co founder of the Women
Lifer's Resume Project of Pennsylvania. She's an official visitor for
the Pennsylvania Prison Society, and she's Sharon's good friend. When
she first came across Sharon's story, she was struck by
one thing. Sharon's age.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Of all the twelve women that were there, she was
the only one whose crime happened when she was seventeen,
and I remember well seventeen boy, I'm lucky, I'm alive.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Aaron, Foster, and Samuel all pled guilty to murder in
June of nineteen sixty nine. Sharon and Foster, the two
who'd fired their guns, said that they'd been high on
narcotics at the time and could hardly remember the robbery
or anything else about the day. Since they had pled guilty,
they skipped a jury trial altogether. Instead, a panel of
three judges gathered to decide what their sentence would be. Now,
(16:24):
the district attorney, who would have been prosecuting them in
a jury trial didn't ask for the death penalty. That
was simply not on the table, So everyone was shocked
when the three judges deliberated for less than an hour
and came back with a chilling declaration. These three teenagers
were going to have to die for what they'd done.
(16:45):
The teens were put on death row. People were outraged
at the sentence, though an activists started working against it
right away. Local pastors protested the NAACP themselves went straight
to the governor Pennsylvania to plead for the lives of
Sharon Foster and Samuel. It worked. In February of nineteen
(17:06):
seventy one, the teenager's sentences were reduced to life in
prison without the possibility of parole. These sentences weren't just life,
they were life plus if you will. Their sentences declared
that if they were ever released, which they wouldn't be
without the possibility of parole, they would need to serve
an additional twelve point five to twenty three years for
(17:26):
aggravated robbery, violating the Uniform Firearms Act, and conspiring to
commit an unlawful act. Foster and Sharon were seventeen at
the time of the murder. They were juveniles. No one
denied that, but when it came to murder, Pennsylvania didn't
care how old you were. The state had mandatory life
(17:49):
sentencing for homicide offenders. Forget age, background, any other mitigating factors.
In Pennsylvania, if you killed anyone, you were getting locked
up for life, whether you're front lobe was done developing
or not. Activists had started to call this law death
by incarceration or the other death penalty, And so just
(18:11):
like that, Sharon was locked up for life. Let's take
(18:38):
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(20:08):
she was first locked up, Sharon would be held up
as a model inmate, an example of someone who had
totally rehabilitated themselves. But it took a while for her
to get there. She struggled at first, who wouldn't and
she actually escaped from prison twice, once she turned herself
in a few months later. The second time, she made
it all the way to Indiana, but eventually someone recognized
(20:31):
her and called the police. Escape is a strong word
for what Sharon did, though, because back in the seventies
and early eighties, her prison didn't have a secure perimeter
the men's prison did. There were a lot of ways
in which the two prisons were different, and Sharon found
that infuriating. But there was really nothing preventing the women
(20:51):
at Muncy from leaving, and so sometimes they just did.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Women were always walking away. They weren't escaping because there
was nothing to escape from.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
They just walked away. And she did that.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Twice when she wasn't walking off the prison grounds. Though,
Sharon was discovering her voice. She took college classes, and
she got involved in several major lawsuits concerning the civil
rights of prisoners. In nineteen seventy four, she testified in
a suit brought against Pennsylvania's prisons by the Imprisoned Citizens
(21:25):
Union and the American Civil Liberties Union. When Sharon took
the stand, she testified about the brutal conditions at Munseie,
like the fact that their rooms were often so cold
they had to stay in bed all day. Seven years later,
she and some of her fellow inmates sued the state
for unconstitutional sex discrimination, saying that the educational and vocational
(21:47):
programs at Munsey were far worse than the programs offered
to male prisoners in the state. While men were offered
the opportunity to learn a plethora of real world skills,
women had to choose between type being, book keeping and cosmetology.
It's just things in nineteen eighty three, most women don't
care to do, Sharon told a journalist. On one hand,
(22:10):
were treated like children not to be taken seriously. On
the other hand, were treated like criminals. Her lawsuit mentioned
several other problems with Munsey, including the fact that mental
health treatment there was frankly a joke. Female inmates were
offered pills and nothing else, and the pill prescription process
was laughable. All you have to do is write a
(22:30):
request and say I can't sleep, Sharon said, Nobody asks
you why or what the problem is. She concluded her
statements to the press with this, nobody's asking anybody to
feel sorry for us, but at least give us a chance.
Since no one seemed all that eager to give Sharon
a chance, she decided to go out and make one
(22:52):
for herself. Despite the initially limited resources at Munsey, she
ended up with a resume three pages longo pages longer
than my resume for the record. She also got herself
so many certificates that she once jokingly told a journalist
she had about ten thousand of them, and this fact
was repeated with a straight face by other journalists. She
(23:13):
graduated with her associates from Penn State, and then she
worked for Penn State to help get more female inmates
to enroll in the program. She tutored inmates in math
to help them get their GEDs. She ran a ton
of groups, a group for parole violators that helped them
get back on track, a group for alcoholics for drug users,
a group about relationships on work release. She went into
(23:37):
the community to pick strawberries from a strawberry farm and
help with clean up after a hurricane. What didn't she do?
She got her license in cosmetology in upholstery. She was
a licensed mechanic. She studied construction electronics, computer programming, catering, photography,
and architecture, and for all of it, for each one
(23:58):
of these diverse and useful real world skills. She was
behind bars. As she studied and worked. She was applying
for commutation again and again and again each time twelve
times in total, her application was denied. Her friend Ellen
cites two reasons for this. The first her escape record.
(24:19):
The escapes or the walking aways, or whatever you want
to call them, left a stain on Sharon's record that
was almost worse than the murder itself. Ellen mentions John
Fetterman in this clip, by the way, he's the current
Lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Women were always walking away. They weren't escaping because there
was nothing.
Speaker 5 (24:38):
To escape from. They just walked away. And you know
she did that and twice.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
And I think, up until you know, when John Fetterman
got into office, those walkaways.
Speaker 5 (24:53):
Would sink your commutation application.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
But I think with a lot of advocacy, you know,
and bringing up equity and sexism and gender biases and
all that, since all the men's prisons had secure perimeters,
the idea that they would walk away would not enter
in their decision process anymore. And it doesn't so there's
(25:19):
you know, one woman is already out.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
She had a walk away.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
One woman is getting out on commutation this December.
Speaker 5 (25:27):
She left and was gone for six years.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
So yeah, so the whole walk away thing is not
an issue anymore.
Speaker 5 (25:36):
I don't know what made it.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
That Sharon Wiggins couldn't get commuted. I don't think it
was because she had a death sentence. I think it
was the escapes. They would looked at the escapes very,
very punitively.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
The second reason that Sharon's applications kept getting denied was
that in the seventies and eighties and nineties, the commutation
application had no room for shades of gray.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
At the time, the commutation application.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Was really really weak, and it was poorly designed.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And like I have seen numerous old applications, you know
before like Fetterman got in the office, They've changed it.
It's much easier now.
Speaker 5 (26:25):
And.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
It's just a better it's just a better process all around.
And you know, people didn't really know how deep to
go into their trauma. They in the old application. They
didn't have the opportunity to really explain what the first
sixteen years of their life was or seventeen or whatever.
(26:48):
In her case, so when I read her old application.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
I was like, damn, you know this is not the
person I know.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
The word commutation is an interesting one its history, expecting
it to have something to do with the word mercy,
but commutation doesn't have any link to the word mercy
Etymologically speaking, in the year fifteen hundred, it meant a
passage from one state to another. It comes from the
(27:16):
verb commute, which means to transform or to make less severe,
to put in place of another. When Sharon applied for commutation,
she was not begging for mercy. She was asking for
a passage from one state to another, from the state
of being incarcerated to the state of parole. She was
arguing in these applications that what she'd done was terrible,
(27:40):
but that she had served her time for it. It
was exactly what she'd told that journalist years earlier. Nobody's
asking anybody to feel sorry for us, but at least
give us a chance. In nineteen ninety seven, Sharon Wiggins
(28:09):
caught the eye of the artist Mary de Witt. Mary
had been given a regional National Endowment for the Arts
grant and was using it to create portraits and audio
stories of women who were in prison for life. What
Mary was finding was that in Pennsylvania these women were
almost completely invisible. Only the governor could give out a pardon,
(28:30):
and for political reasons, Pennsylvania's governors had been giving out
less and less pardons, and so these female inmates with
life sentences were locked up in very remote locations to
die of incarceration. Mary's project was called Life Sentences, and
a journalist covering it noted that the women Mary painted
(28:50):
would have been highly eligible for parole almost anywhere else
in the country. So Mary painted Sharon and recorded her
as she told her life story, talking about her teen years,
how she made mistake after mistake until she found herself
in that bank holding that silver pistol. Mary's exhibit was
(29:10):
what inspired Ellen to write to Sharon, and Sharon wrote back.
The two became penpals until one day Sharon's letters stopped.
Ellen later found out that Sharon had had a heart attack,
and then almost fifteen years later, in twenty eleven, Sharon
wrote to Ellen again. She said that she had been
organizing her papers when she'd found those earlier letters, and
(29:33):
decided to resurrect their correspondence now that it was twenty eleven,
and not. Nineteen ninety seven, Ellen had something different in
her life. She had the Internet.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
I researched her and I could find articles about her,
and I just contacted anybody and everybody that crossed her path.
And then she sent me a copy of her commutation application,
and then.
Speaker 5 (29:59):
There was more contact there.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So I just immersed myself in the world of Sharon
Wiggins supporters over the decades.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Before long, Ellen went to meet Sharon at Muncie. For
some reason, she was expecting a very tall person because
she'd read so much about her. In Ellen's mind, Sharon
loomed larger than life.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
When she was coming down the steps. That's how the
prisoners come down to the visiting room. They come down steps,
so they're kind of like above people sitting in the
visiting room, like they're entering a stage. So for me,
it was like, oh my god, here comes miss America.
You know, she's coming on stage down the steps.
Speaker 5 (30:40):
She was as tall as me.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I'm five to one, and I was like, oh my god,
Sharon Wiggins is so short. I had no idea, and
I said that to her. I said, oh my gosh,
I thought you'd be like five ten, you know, because
like you're like Sharon Wiggins, and she's like, yeah, I know.
Speaker 5 (30:55):
They say that a lot about me. She had a
lot of swaggers.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
The two women quickly. Ellen brought her ten year old
son to prison, and he and Sharon ate microwaved popcorn
and talked about math problems. Ellen was helping Sharon with
her thirteenth commutation application, an application that would hopefully convey
the real evolved Sharon on paper, with her traumatic background
and her transformation in prison and all the shades of
(31:21):
gray that made up who she was. Ellen was also
amused to find that Sharon was basically the queen of prison.
Then everyone loved her, everyone deferred to her. She was
in charge.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
When I met her, she was in her early sixties,
not at the height of her vigor and youth and everything.
Speaker 5 (31:42):
But you know, she always had girlfriends.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
She was loved and she loved and she was just
really confident, just confident.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
She wasn't ditsy or stupid or lighty.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
She spoke really like.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
And thoughtfully, so you.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Knew when you were talking with her you wanted to
be your best.
Speaker 5 (32:09):
She deserved your best.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
It wasn't like talking to somebody who was in prison
or who was involved in a bank robbery. She was
just like a really caring, well spoken person.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
She would have walked with her hand in her pocket, you.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Know, just checking things out.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
Because you know, Mounsey was her territory.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yes, Sharon had swagger, but her health was poor, exacerbated
by years of smoking and the stress of being incarcerated
and the poor nutrition of prison. She had a stent
in her heart, a tube of placed there to keep
one of her heart's passageways open. She had gone through
several serious depressions over the years since life behind bars
(32:50):
seemed hopeless, since twelve out of twelve commutation applications had
been denied. Since no matter how many certificates she got,
she was still in that dark room with the blindfold on.
But then in twenty twelve, something happened in the highest
courts of the United States that caused her to hope.
(33:28):
It was a Supreme Court case, two of them, actually,
Miller versus Alabama and Jackson versus Hobbes. In these cases,
the Supreme Court declared that mandatory life sentences for juveniles
were unconstitutional, that the Eighth Amendments Prohibition against Cruel and
Unusual Punishment applied Here, the majority opinion declared that adolescence
(33:50):
is marked by transient rashness, proclivity for risk, and inability
to assess consequences, and that this should come into play
when teenagers commit crimes. In other words, locking kids up
without seeing their youth as a mitigating factor was cruel
and unusual. This was huge. This was huge, a decision
(34:12):
from the United States Supreme Court saying that the sentence
Sharon Wiggins had been given four decades earlier was simply
not right. That she had been a child and should
not have been sentenced like an adult. But it wasn't
that simple. Pennsylvania wasn't about to let all its precious
juvenile lifers go without a fight. States across the country
(34:35):
started arguing about whether or not this decision applied retroactively.
In other words, was it applicable to people who were
already incarcerated, did it just apply to juvenile cases going forward?
Fourteen states ruled that it did apply retroactively, Seven states
said that it didn't, and one of those seven states was,
(34:56):
of course, Pennsylvania. As the courts wrangled over this issue,
Sharon allowed herself to hope in a way that she
hadn't for decades. She kept busy helping her fellow juvenile
lifers file the paperwork they needed to get their cases
re sentenced. But when she wasn't doing that, she was
working on her own paperwork, and she was dreaming.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
We were talking about clothes and shoes and work and
where you're gonna live all that. My dad offered her
a job and his factory, I mean, so we were
really hoping that she would come home.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Journalists asked her what in the world she'd do with
all her freedom, and she smiled as she told them
her daydreams. Waking up alone coffee with her sister Rain
on the windshield of a car walking down a street.
She said she wanted to work as an advocate for
people with life sentences, people just like her. As far
(35:52):
as her potential release went, she had two irons in
the fire, so to speak. She was waiting on a
hearing before the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons about her thirteenth
commutation application, and she was applying for resentencing based on
that Supreme Court ruling. She hoped, she hoped, but none
(36:12):
of her dreams would come to pass.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
I visited her on Friday, and her close friend Nancy
visited her, I think the day she died, and when
she left the visit, she went back to her cell
and that's when she collapsed from the heart attack and
the aneurysm I and everything just exploded in her body.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
I think one of the women in prison.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Had a friend on the outside call me, and it
was exactly I remember it. It was nine o'clock, the
finale of The Walking Dead was going to be on.
Sharon watched The Walking Dead too. I'm in bed with
my ten year old son. We're getting really excited about
this finale and that's when I got the phone call
(36:58):
and I was like, so sorry, Michael, I can't watch
the show with you, and he was like, I'm not
going to watch it either. I made some quick phone
calls to verify this because I didn't know if this
person was telling me the truth or not.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
And the next day I.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Went back to Muncie and that's when it was real
that did it happen that she had died.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Sharon died on March twenty fourth of twenty thirteen, at
the age of sixty two, the year after that monumental
Supreme Court decision. Three years later, the Supreme Court would
declare decisively that yes, the decision they made in Miller
versus Alabama did apply retroactively. In other words, people like
(37:40):
Sharon Wiggins, who were sentenced so long ago had sentences
that were unconstitutional and they should be released.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
She died in twenty thirteen before the retroactivity issue was solved.
Had Pennsylvania not challenged it on retroactivity.
Speaker 5 (38:00):
It is more likely that she would have gotten out.
So I blame yeah, this system killed her.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Ellen started a fundraiser online for Sharon's funeral, and Sharon's
younger sister left a comment there. Peachey, she wrote, using
Sharon's nickname. I was seven and you were seventeen when
you were taken away from me. I waited patiently and
so long for you to return home to me. This
(38:29):
doesn't seem fair. I wanted to take long walks with
you and have coffee and long conversations, go shopping, and
have barbecues in the backyard with you, to kiss you
and hug you tight, and show you around this free
world outside those prison walls. I love you, sister, and
we'll miss you as always. I'll be with you when
God says it's my turn. Now go sister, to your
(38:52):
new home and rest in peace. You are free at last.
(39:14):
Today Foster Tarvor and Samuel Barlow are free, both released
after serving decades of their life without parole sentences. Ellen
has donated a collection of papers about Sharon to Penn
State University, the place where Sharon got her associate's degree.
Now researchers and students at Penn State can study Sharon's
(39:34):
life and legacy not as someone who walked free, but
as someone who earned a dubious superlative the longest serving
juvenile lifer in Pennsylvania and possibly in the world, age
seventeen to age sixty two spent behind bars. Ellen continues
(39:55):
to work with female inmates at Muncie. She advocates for
them within the prison, but after seeing what happened to Sharon,
her goal is really to get them out of prison
as fast as possible.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
As an official visit with the prison society, I still
will look into how I can advocate for better treatment,
medical care, or whatever issues are happening inside. So because
Sharon Wiggins probably should have had better health care maybe,
and because the state did what they did, you know,
I just got to get these ladies out of prison.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
At the beginning of twenty twenty, there were still one
thy four hundred and sixty five people in America serving
juvenile life without parole sentences. That number has declined significantly,
though it's gone down forty four percent since the original
Supreme Court decision. Many of those who have been released
are no longer juveniles, of course. They are forty fifty sixty,
(40:51):
emerging into a completely new world from the one they
left behind as kids. A year before Sharon died, she
told a journalist that it had taken her a long
time to realize what exactly it meant that she had
killed George Morlock. At first, she had been obsessed with
questions like what will my mom think? What will God think? Eventually, though,
(41:15):
she realized something that horrified her. What she had done
could never be undone. Prior to that, everything I had
ever did I could apologize for, she said, But this
was something that happened that was so final. She wrote
in one of her commutation applications, the kind of sorrow
(41:37):
I feel on a daily basis eats at me like
a cancer. For George Morlock, it was a tragic way
to die. You walk into a bank hoping to get
a little cash to do what, grab a sandwich, buy
a new pair of shoes. And there's a teenage girl
in there, nervous and clutching at a pistol, and you
(41:58):
can't hear very well, and so you walk towards her
when she's screaming at you to step back, and she
shakes so much that for a long time she can't
tell if she really pulled the trigger, if the gun
just somehow went off. It's a tragic way to die,
but Sharon's death was tragic too, to have your heart
give out when freedom is so close, after forty five
(42:21):
years of hardly daring to let yourself dream of freedom.
Sharon told one journalist about her simple dreams, the coffee,
the rain, the walk down the sidewalk. But there was
one dream she didn't tell that journalist. It was a
dream she got teased about in prison.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
She would be touring the country talking to legislators and policymakers.
She could have been a teacher at a university, criminal justice, whatever.
But you know what she really wanted was she wanted
to live in a log cabin. If she'd gotten out.
She fantasized about living in a log cabin.
Speaker 5 (43:01):
She used to be teased.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
Because she actually had a subscription to log Cabin magazine.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Think of Sharon in her cell at Muncie getting a
new issue of log Cabin Magazine. She opens it up.
She sees warm wooden beams, crackling fireplaces. She dreams of it,
of stumbling out of the dark room, taking off the blindfold,
(43:30):
and finding herself in the woods with a rocking chair
and a warm fire and the trees all around. Nothing
to do but sit there and breathe the free air.
(44:03):
The end, everybody, that's the sad story of Sharon Wiggins,
who made mistakes and was beloved by many, which is
a very human way to be. I think, all right,
As you may know if you've been listening to the
episodes in order, this is the second to last episode
of Criminal Broads, I am going on a I don't
(44:27):
want to say I'm a completely abandoning this show forever,
but I also don't want to get your hopes up
and call it a break. But I am taking time
away from the podcast to focus on my writing, my
writing not for audio, for print, for online, which is
my true job, guys. And also, you know, to focus
some more time on my babe. So I'll say more
of this in the next episode. But if you want
(44:49):
to stay in touch and like see what I'm writing
and hear what I'm up to, there are a couple ways.
You can always check out my website Toritelfer dot com
and I have a newsletter that I literally never send out,
but I use it as a if there's something to
tell you, I'll tell you with it. I'll put the
link in the show notes. But the link is tiny
letter dot com slash Tory dot gov. So that's t
(45:10):
O RI I d o t g ov. Tory dot
gov was my old blog username. Don't try to find it.
I've hidden it. When I used to work in publishing,
I would blog let's just yeah, all my lunch breaks.
Definitely always on my lunch breaks, never during office hours.
Oh it was so fun. I would blog insane things
(45:31):
like I remember doing this post that was an exercise
routine inspired by paranoia, so it was like is that
man looking at you? Weird sprint? Oh, relatable? Oh to
be twenty three and at a nine to five again, just kidding.
It was a great job, but I'm glad to be
done with it. Here I go talking about myself again.
(45:51):
All right, Thank you again to Ellen for coming on
the show, and to Mary Deuitt for letting me use
some of the audio from her project Lifecimes of Sharon
talking about her grandmother's memory of the KKK. Always chilling
to remember, how well, obviously and unfortunately the KKK is
still around. I don't want to pretend it's a thing
of the past, but it's always chilling to remember how
(46:15):
not that far away we are from the Jim Crow era,
from Sharon's grandma sitting on the front porch and Alabama
and having the KKK just come up and take her
brother away, and no one says anything about it, like
that didn't happen that long ago, even though we might
like to believe that it happened in a totally different time
and place. So anyway, thank you to both those ladies
(46:38):
for help making this episode happen, and thank you to
all of you for listening, for commenting, Instagram dot com,
slash criminal Brods, for photos of Sharon Wiggins, and for
just being my favorites. I love you all, and I'll
be back here next week. Unless something changes, and things might,
we are going to return to the most horrible conflict
(47:00):
this world has ever known, and from its horror and
blood and fire, we are going to pluck a story
of incredible bravery. See you here next week. Bye bye.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I'm wrong loving Udy like guid
If it's a crime, then I'm guilty. Guilty loving
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