John Frederick Thanos

It was April. The fifth, to be exact. At the Eastern Correctional Institute, a medium-security prison in Westover, Maryland, the system failed and an inmate was out-processed eighteen months earlier than he should have been.

Now of course, these things happen. I can’t say how often; usually we read about a prisoner sentenced to eighteen months, yet still inside after twenty years. Prisoners released too early, however, as in the case of John Frederick Thanos, can bring trouble to the outside. In short order, the world would know that lesson all too well. John Patrick O’Donnell, clerk for the prison records, for whatever reason he had, asked his boss, Chief of Classification for the Maryland Department of Corrections, Warren R. Sparrow, about releasing prisoner John Thanos. And just like that, two men became, through sheer carelessness, responsible for turning a monster loose on the State of Maryland. He got a handgun.

You know where this is going.

It turned out that the man had some violent tendencies, so before I go any further, it has to be asked why a rapist served time at a medium-security prison at all. Rapists are treated far too lightly in Western culture, particularly in the United States. Youve heard the stories — convicted rapists sentenced to two years. Or six months, causing public outcry, and on an occasion or two, putting judges off the bench. On rare occasions, even being disbarred. Recently a judge and several politicians — Republicans — advised women to “keep their legs closed” and other vile things. The question must be answered, why this is so? Why the hell is it possible to send a rapist to light time at a prison not having maximum security? Why is America a rape culture?

And John Thanos was born to evil. It isn’t clear, decades later, what his psychological evaluation consisted of. His mother and sister would later maintain that he was so disturbed that he was incompetent to stand trial. That was immediately cast out as a defense because he was pronounced otherwise, although not without serious mental illnesses, one being borderline personality disorder. And people with that kind of learned behavior and mindset are very often highly dangerous. He had been severely abused by his father, who started out parenting by cutting the heads off animals or breaking their necks for fun in front of the little boy.

He was psychologically abused and sexually abused. His world must have been Hell on Earth. He was in trouble almost from the beginning. And the abuse, cited by his attorneys during trial, seemed to trigger him. He called them names and threw other verbal abuse at them. He was then treated as a “hostile defendant”, a term one does not hear every day. In fact, he was hostile to reporters who asked him questions from the other side of a chain-link fence as he was led from a transport vehicle to the back entrance of the courthouse. He said shocking, weird and crazy things, taunted reporters, and videotape, if I could find it, would truly disturb anyone who sees it for the first time. Thanos even taunted the judge and at one point even stated that he wanted to repeat the crimes. And those crimes…still haunt me.

Somewhere in Baltimore County, on dates I can’t pin down, he shot three people: Billy Winebrenner, Gregory Allen Taylor, and Melody Pistorio, who was only 14. Two killings took place together. Melody was working at or visiting a convenience store. Her parents later sued the DOC for prematurely releasing Thanos. Warren Sparrow got demoted.


By 1992, John Frederick Thanos was convicted and sentenced to Death by Lethal Injection. The first inmate in Maryland to be executed by that method; and the first prisoner executed since the death penalty had been reinstated. But that wasn’t exactly the whole story.


At the sentencing hearing, he rejected all efforts by his family to have his life spared. He said, “I’ve been convicted and I accept it.” And he had this to say when he had the opportunity to make a statement. “I don’t believe I could satisfy my thirst yet in this matter unless I was to be able to dig these brats’ bones up out of their graves right now and beat them into powder and urinate on them and then stir it into a murky yellowish elixir and serve it up to those loved ones,” he said, indicating the families of the victims. Those words will never die. The records all contain them, from sources such as The Washington Post clean across the Atlantic Ocean. Two years would pass. And John Frederick Thanos was put to death. I had mixed feelings about capital punishment before that case. But I thought, regarding a man who graduated from rape to shooting kids in the head — he literally walked up to them, icy cool, and raised the pistol and pulled the trigger — that the death warrant issued from the bench was fully justified. But for me, it never ended there. I never forgot him. And as it happened, later in the same month that Thanos was released from ECI, the prison gained a new inmate — my father.


If you know my story, you know this has to be awful for me. For a long time, I’ve thought ECI was a max prison. I would have thought he would be sent to Jessup, but no. If you don’t know my story, look at my archive. Then you’ll know. Because I remember John Frederick Thanos. And I know, under different circumstances….


There, but for the grace of God, was I.