On the morning of September 22, 1991, a violent and orchestrated uprising shattered the routine of Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. In the chaos that ensued, Ernest Mazurkiewicz, a 32-year-old male inmate, became one of five men murdered in a targeted attack. He was housed in the protective custody wing of the maximum-security unit, a section reserved for inmates who were believed to be in danger from the general population, often because they were informants or had been threatened.
The riot began around 10 a.m. when a group of inmates breached a fence in an exercise yard and gained access to the maximum-security building through a door that had been left unsecured. Once inside, they overpowered guards, took five of them hostage, and seized control of the unit. The rioters, armed with crude, homemade weapons like sharpened broomsticks and mop handles, then turned their attention to the protective custody cells. Their goal was clear: to exact revenge on the inmates housed there. For four hours, a tactical unit amassed outside while the inmates inside carried out their brutal plan. Officers could hear and see inmates being beaten, prompting the decision to storm the building with tear gas to rescue the hostages and regain control.
When authorities finally entered, they discovered a scene of carnage. The cellblock was severely damaged by fire and water. Five inmates, including Ernest Mazurkiewicz, were dead, and eight others were injured. The investigation later revealed the victims had been beaten and some had been hanged by their fellow prisoners. The attack was not random; it was a calculated assault on a vulnerable population within the prison walls. An investigation by the National Institute of Corrections concluded that while the riot was a response to general conditions in the maximum-security unit, the murders were either a secondary plan or a "crime of opportunity." A subsequent court ruling found the state negligent in its operation of the prison, noting that officials had ignored warnings of a pending riot from inmates weeks earlier.
The primary instigators of the massacre were identified as Douglas "Doug" Duane Turner and William Jay Gollehon, two of the state's most notorious killers. Turner was a serial killer already serving a life sentence for murdering three members of a Glendive family in 1987 when he was just 16. Together, he and Gollehon had also beaten another inmate to death with baseball bats the year before the riot. The 1991 riot was the culmination of their escalating violence within the prison system. Mazurkiewicz was the final of nine people Turner was proven to have killed.
In the aftermath, numerous inmates were charged for their roles in the uprising. Turner and Gollehon were convicted of five counts of deliberate homicide for the deaths during the riot and received additional life sentences. Turner, who had previously been sentenced to death for the 1990 prison murder, was on death row when he took his own life in his cell on July 8, 2003, before the state could carry out his execution. Thirteen other prisoners were also convicted of a range of crimes connected to the riot, including homicide, kidnapping, and burglary.
At the time of his death, Ernest Mazurkiewicz was serving a 50-year sentence for deliberate homicide under the felony murder rule and a concurrent 40-year sentence for robbery. His family later filed a civil suit against the state of Montana. In 1997, the state agreed to pay his family a $70,000 settlement for the negligence that contributed to his death. The riot of 1991 remains one of the darkest days in the history of the Montana State Prison, a brutal explosion of violence that ended the lives of five men who were under the state's protection.
