Willie Bosket
Willie Bosket | |
---|---|
Born | Incarcerated at Wende Correctional Facility | December 9, 1962
Conviction(s) | Murder, arson |
Criminal penalty | 82 years to life[1] |
William James Bosket Jr. (born December 9, 1962) is an American convicted
Early life
Bosket was born in Harlem. His father, Willie Sr. (Butch), killed Dave Hurwitz and William Locke at a Milwaukee pawn shop on July 20, 1962, shortly after his son was conceived.[3] He was sentenced to life in prison for the crime and later earned a degree in computer science and psychology while incarcerated.[4] Butch was released from prison and went on to get a job as a computer programmer for an aerospace company but was charged with a crime. He shot his girlfriend and committed suicide to avoid being caught.[4]
Bosket had a traumatic childhood. When his grandfather was released from prison, he raped Willie many times.[5] When he was 9 years old, his grandfather had him perform anal sex to "teach him about girls".[6] His mother, Laura, had different live-in boyfriends who beat her and, as a boy, Bosket often jumped in to defend her, in one incident hitting a man with a pipe and slashing him with a knife and in another threatening "I'm going to burn that motherfucker up". He also suffered a head injury when he ran out into the street, and was hit by a car. This was all before he was ten years old.[6]
When he was nine years old, his mother, heeding advice, petitioned he be placed in a center, stating he was "a person in need of supervision". He was placed at The Children's Center in Manhattan, but escaped and quickly ended up at
His mother had told him "Don't be bullied... Hit back. To get respect, you've got to be the toughest." In the different centers, he developed a reputation for violence, upon which he prided himself. He told juvenile authorities that one day he would be a killer, just like his father.[7][6]
Subway murders and fallout
On March 19, 1978, Bosket, then fifteen years old, shot and killed Noel Perez on a train operating on the
Bosket was tried for the murders in New York City's family court. As the trial was underway, Bosket surprised his own lawyer by pleading guilty to both murders. He was sentenced to a maximum of five years in the Goshen Youth Facility. Although prosecutors tried to get a longer sentence, five years was the most they could get under the law, at the time.[9]
Significance
The short length of Bosket's sentence caused a public outcry.
Subsequent crimes
A year after he began serving his sentence for the two murders, Bosket escaped from the youth facility. He was caught after two hours, tried as an adult for the escape and sentenced to four years in state prison. He was returned to the Division of Youth in 1979, and was released in 1983. After 100 days he was arrested when a man living in his apartment complex claimed Bosket had robbed and assaulted him. Then while awaiting trial on that crime, Bosket assaulted several court officers. He was found guilty of attempted assault for the dispute in the apartment and sentenced to seven years in prison.
At this point, his escape from the youth facility nearly came back to haunt him. He was 16 years old at the time, meaning he was now considered an adult for criminal purposes. In New York, escaping from a correctional facility is a felony, even if the facility is a youth facility. If he had been convicted of assaulting the court officers, it would have been his third felony conviction. Under New York's habitual offender law, he was facing an automatic sentence of 25 years to life. However, he was acquitted.
Convinced that he would die in prison, Bosket took out his rage on correction officers, getting into numerous altercations. Arrested for one of those incidents, he was convicted of assault and arson, and sentenced to 25 years to life. In 1989, he was sentenced to an additional 25-years-to-life sentence for stabbing corrections officer Earl Porter at the maximum-security Shawangunk Correctional Facility.[11][7] After the 1988 assault, Bosket was transferred to Woodbourne Correctional Facility, where in April 1989 he drew a third 25-years-to-life sentence for assaulting a correction officer with a chain. All three sentences are consecutive. His earliest possible release date is September 16, 2062, when he will be 99 years old–all but assuring that he will die in prison.
Since his conviction for the 1989 assault, Bosket (
Bosket once declared "war" on a prison system that he claimed made him a "monster," and was cited for almost 250 disciplinary violations from 1985 to 1994. However, he has not had a disciplinary violation since 1994. According to a 2008 report in The New York Times, due to his numerous incidents of violence during the 1980s and 1990s, he was initially not slated to move into the general population until 2046, when he will be 84 years old. Department spokesman Erik Kriss told the Times, "This guy was violent or threatening violence every day. Granted, it has been a while, but there are consequences for being violent in prison. We have zero tolerance for that."[12]
He has since been transferred to Five Points, a maximum-security prison. Although he is still in solitary confinement, he is evaluated periodically, and due to his clean disciplinary record in recent years may join the general population sooner than 2046.[7] In December 2022, Bosket is listed as being incarcerated in the Wende Correctional Facility.
In 1995, New York Times reporter
References
- ^ a b "84A6391". NYS Dept of Corrections and Supervision. Retrieved 22 December 2022.
- ^ Bronx Leads City in Convictions Under Tough Juvenile Offender Act, The New York Times, March 24, 1981
- ^ "Bosket v. State". Casetext.
- ^ a b c "All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence". C-SPAN. Retrieved February 23, 2019.
- ^ Judge, Phoebe. "Willie Bosket". This is Criminal.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-307-28033-6.
- ^ a b c Paul Post (March 19, 2018). "Greenfield man, and former prison guard, recalls painful memory of nearly being killed by one of state's most violent felons". The Record.
- ^ Dodge City, The Deadliest Precinct in Town, New York Magazine, August 28, 1978
- ^ a b Hager, Eli (2014-12-29). "The Willie Bosket Case". The Marshall Project. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
- ^ Taylor-Greene, Helen (April 14, 2009). Encyclopedia of Race and Crime. SAGE Publications.
- ^ Jailed 'Monster' Gets More Prison Time for Stabbing a Guard, The New York Times, April 20, 1989
- ^ a b John Eligon (September 23, 2008). "Two Decades in Solitary". The New York Times.
- ^ Bosket profile at Crime Library