By Kevin S. Giles

Who were the culprits?

Jerry Myles was a petty burglar but far more dangerous than his prison record implied. Myles was intelligent, conniving and capable of inspiring fellow inmates to join his

Jerry’s Riot tells the story of the 1959 takeover of Montana State Prison by career criminal Jerry Myles and his 19-year-old boyfriend, Lee Smart.

disturbances. Myles spent most of his adult life in several state and federal prisons. He came to Montana State Prison in the summer of 1958, soon after serving a long sentence at Alcatraz Island. Myles heard through the prison grapevine that inmates ran the old prison at Deer Lodge. Within months, he would lead a riot there.

Myles had a teenage accomplice, Lee Smart, who dreamed of escaping prison and hitting the open road. He was an impulsive murderer, having come to prison after killing and robbing a traveling salesman. Although years apart in age, Myles and Smart were both psychopaths and much the same person. The third ringleader, George Alton, went along with the riot until he discovered Myles’ brags of an escape were false. Alton was Smart’s cellmate.

Alton, considered the more sensible of the three inmates who took over the prison on April 16, 1959, died of cancer at 74 as a free man. When the riot occurred, Alton was serving a second sentence for burglary. Alton didn’t trust Myles but complied because he thought the takeover was a plan to escape, which it wasn’t. Hostage Walter Jones Jr. credited Alton with stopping Myles and Smart from murdering their 26 hostages, who they packed into cells out of view of guards in the wall towers. Alton quit the riot and retired to a cell several hours before a National Guard assault on the prison. He was paroled in 1966.

Western Montana native Kevin S. Giles wrote the popular prison nonfiction work Jerry’s Riot, the coming-of-age novel Summer of the Black Chevy, and a biography of Montana congresswoman Jeannette Rankin, One Woman Against War, which is an expanded version of his earlier work, “Flight of the Dove.” His new novel, Headline: FIRE! is the third in the Red Maguire series. Masks, Mayhem and Murder is the second. The first is “Mystery of the Purple Roses.” More information is available at https://kevinsgiles.com.