Hero inmate put in solitary then exiled, for preventing bloodbath in prison visitor area.

The following is a letter from inmate Steve Schoff to Maine Department of Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson, with copies sent to the media and Governor John Baldacci. Schoff, in for manslaughter, foiled the October 24, 2006 escape attempt by murderer Gary Watling, and Watling's wife by tipping off authorities.

Instead of being rewarded for preventing a likely bloodbath in the prison's visitors' waiting area , and for saving the lives of guards, visitors and inmates, prison warden Jeffrey Merrill and or Deputy Warden James O'Farrel had Schoff's identity leaked to the general prison population, stripped him of his belongings & papers, thrust him into solitary confinement in the Maine Supermax, forbade him use of the telephone, then shipped him out of state to a southern US state prison.

Schoff should have gone to a special federal prison that specifically houses those who would face retribution in the state prison system, which constantly moves inmates between states, making the unmasking of a tipster's identity far more likely. Warden Merrill and Commissioner Magnusson have declined to protect Schoff's life by moving him into the federal protective prison system, and recently publicly attributed the thwarting of the Watling prisonbreak attempt to "the grace of God", a characterization that Schoff is too humble to claim as accurate. Read his letter:

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