Tucker State Prison Torture Murders

In the 1960s, Arkansas’s Tucker State Prison Farm became infamous for brutal torture, where inmates were beaten, had needles pushed under their fingernails, and suffered crushed genitals and electric shocks from a torture device called the Tucker telephone.

Investigations later suggested that guards and trusties may have murdered inmates and quietly buried the bodies around the prison grounds. Witness accounts and physical evidence pointed to as many as 200 dead prisoners whose deaths were never officially recorded as homicides. The scandal exposed Tucker as a violent, profit-driven farm camp rather than a legitimate correctional institution.

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