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Camp Fear
For seven days the kids endured beatings,
starvation, and torture. They thought it couldn’t get worse. They
were wrong.
Maxim, Nov 2001
By Kent Black
Sunday, July 1. 3:12 p.m. 112 degrees
The Arizona sun felt like the blast from an overheated oven. Except
the oven door wasn’t closing. And you were stuck to it.
Hassan Iverson, 15, had never been this hot or thirsty. He tried to
squeeze his index finger between his itching skin and the tight
metal shackles around his wrists and ankles but stopped when sweat
seeped down and stung his raw wounds. He drained the last few drops
out of his canteen. Iverson knew you needed a minimum of two gallons
of water per day in the desert; he and the other kids at the camp
were only getting about three quarts. For the past three hours, he
hadn’t had a drop.
Stay firm, he said to himself. Don’t give in to the
fuckers.
An hour earlier, all the nearly 50 members of the America’s Buffalo
Soldiers Re-Enactors Association (ABSRA) youth camp had stood at
attention in their two platoons, Alpha and Bravo, on the parade
deck. Colonel Charles Long, 56, stood between them. He was a tall,
tough-looking SOB with a shaved head, a thick mustache, and a
menacing frown. “OK, who wants to DOR?” he called out. A “drop on
request” would mean the campers could no longer be held against
their wills. “Who wants to be a quitter and a loser?”
Twenty hands shot up. Long was enraged. One by one, he berated them
until there were only six left, sitting and sweltering on the desert
dirt: Iverson, Conner, Hanner, Kent, Delaney, and Haynes.
Iverson glanced over at Tony Haynes, 14. The kid’s glasses were
askew, and his face was red and blotchy. There was dark stuff all
over his mouth and teeth, as if he’d been eating dirt. He’d been
talking crazy. Iverson wondered if he was faking it.
Suddenly, Haynes opened his eyes wide. “You see ’em?” he shouted.
“See the Indians? They’re coming to get us!” The colonel walked up,
swigging from a Pepsi. “Haynes, shut up!”
Haynes jumped to his feet and grabbed at the colonel’s bottle. “Give
me that!”
“What?” stammered the colonel. “Sit down. Now.”
“Run, they’re attacking!” Haynes screamed to his fellow DORs.
“Follow me. I’ll save us!”
In a flash Haynes was running wildly toward the parking lot.
The colonel and five older boys ran after him. Haynes moved like an
uncoordinated drunk. The colonel and the boys overtook and tackled
him. Haynes fought them for a moment, but his punches turned into
spasmodic twitching. Then the twitching took over his entire body.
His pursuers grabbed hold of his arms and legs and carried him back
to where Iverson was shackled. They dumped him faceup in the dirt.
He was convulsing uncontrollably now. Dirty foam was bubbling out of
his mouth, and his eyes were dilated.
Sgt. Major Grateful Jones, a female drill instructor, poured water
over Haynes, trying to revive him. He stopped convulsing. He stopped
moving altogether. His eyes stared blindly into the blazing sun.
Haynes doesn’t look like he’s faking, thought Iverson.
More like dying.
The use of “tough love” youth boot camps is not a new concept. From
Boys Town to Outward Bound, the purpose is to shock
kids into good behavior with some ass-whupping reality. “I refer to
these kids as Dennis the Menace,” says Charles Long II, ABSRA’s
founder and director. “The first two weeks (of camp) are the hardest
in their bloody lives, and we don’t apologize for that.”
There are now roughly 400 of these military-style camps operating in
the United States. Many parents say their children have come out of
the programs for the better, but some parents haven’t gotten their
kids back at all. Since 1980, 31 children have died in youth boot
camps, 10 in Arizona alone. These deaths were largely dismissed as
aberrations, freak accidents probably caused by the delinquents
themselves.
But all that changed this summer. In an incident that shocked the
nation, the Buffalo Soldiers camp tragically confirmed a growing
suspicion that the cure was worse than the disease. Maxim has
interviewed dozens of children, parents, and authorities to piece
together a chilling account of escalating abuse, neglect, and
torture. For 45 kids in the Arizona desert, it wasn’t a week of
tough love. It was seven days of hell.
Day One: Monday, June 25, 12:18 p.m., 110 degrees
An hour west of Phoenix on Interstate 10 is an exit for Buckeye, a
small town south of the freeway. The road past Buckeye climbs into
beige hills so dusty you could move them with a sneeze, and runs
unchallenged to the Mexican border. The air is tense with heat, and
its smell is thick with the chemical tang of baking creosote trees.
The beauty of this land, as an old Western saying goes, is leaving
it far behind.
When the bus stopped a half-mile off the two-lane state road, 45
campers exchanged pained looks. The campsite consisted of a parking
lot, a cinder block bathroom, and three ramadas—open structures with
flat roofs—under which sat a half-dozen concrete picnic tables. The
ramadas were grouped around a flat 30-square-foot cement slab. There
was nothing here: no trees, no cabins, no shade, no showers. Some
goddamn camp.
“Get your asses off the fucking bus!”
The kids herded by the screaming drill instructors were as young as
seven, some as old as 18. There were African-Americans, Hispanics,
and Anglos; nine were female. Most of the kids had been enrolled by
parents, who paid $4,149 for the five-week camp. A couple were sent
by courts, but most were guilty of little more than smoking pot,
staying out late, or just being teenage pains in the ass.
Justin Boe, 16, was typical: slight, fair-haired, and quick-witted.
A couple of months earlier, he had tried to stab his stepfather,
R.J. Corriere, with a broken shovel handle. The Buffalo Soldiers had
performed an “extraction” on him: They showed up in the middle of
the night, Ninja-style, tackled Justin in his bed, and dragged him
into the night. The service cost an extra $25. Corriere had
volunteered as an “intern” drill instructor to “keep an eye” on his
stepson.
Two of Boe’s friends, David Mandraes, 17, and street-wise Nick
Conner, 18, stuck together; they were planning to go into the army
in a buddy program and hoped to get ready for real boot camp. “I
figured the worst that could happen was I’d get in pretty good
shape,” Mandraes said later. The Hurff brothers, Justin, 12, and
Michael, nine, nervously checked out their surroundings. Small for
their ages, they looked up to Colonel Long as a father figure.
Perhaps the most unusual camper was Hassan Iverson, an
African-American honor student and star athlete from Connecticut
whose mother thought the camp, named after the storied Buffalo
Soldiers—the black cavalry from the Southwest who heroically fought
the Apaches—would curb some of his wilder ways.
Blinking in the bright sun as they lined up in a fire line
formation, smallest to tallest, the campers baked in their uniforms:
black sweatpants and long-sleeved black sweatshirts.
There were eight drill instructors running the camp. Most of the
kids liked Sgt. Major Grateful Jones, a tall black woman, but there
were three sergeants who scared the shit out of everyone. Sergeant
Ray Anderson was nearly 6’3” and 220 pounds. At least one of the
kids called him “the sadist.” His henchmen, Sirvorge Jones and
Matthew Fontenot, were both muscular and over six feet. The worst
thing about them was that they were only 16 and 17, respectively.
When a showroom-clean black 2001 Ford Expedition pulled into the
campsite, all activity ground to a halt. Climbing out of his truck,
Colonel Long looked cool and spotless; he probably came straight
from his “headquarters,” the Days Inn room he kept nearby during
camp sessions. Like the sergeants, he wore combat boots and a
Buffalo Soldiers T-shirt. The difference, thought kids like Justin
Boe, was that while the sergeants only played at being soldiers, the
colonel was the real deal.
Charles Long II, however, was not a real colonel. Service records
reveal Long never rose above the rank of lance corporal during a
stint in the Marines. In 1989 he was arrested for breaking down an
ex-girlfriend’s door with a sledgehammer and two years later
received probation for punching her. After drifting through such
jobs as stunt man and radio station DJ, he finally found his true
calling in 1994: youth camp operator. The FBI investigated him in
2000 for alleged abuse at a youth boot camp in Whiteriver, Arizona,
but charges were never filed and Long closed it down. He was in
business again within weeks.
“I want both platoons in formation in 10 seconds!” he bellowed.
Everyone ran for the cement slab near the ramadas that they’d
christened the parade deck.
The colonel explained how the camp would work. Everyone would sleep
outdoors under the desert sky. They’d wake at 5 a.m., exercise, then
have breakfast consisting of one banana or one apple. Then they
would form work details and work until noon lunch, at which they
would receive one carrot. There would be more exercise and work
until dark. They would receive a bowl of beans and be in bed at
nine.
“If you want to change, the Buffalo Soldiers will help you change
for the better,” the colonel said, pausing for effect. “But if you
resist you will suffer severe consequences.”
Day Two: Tuesday, June 26, 5:45 p.m., 104 degrees
When Nick Conner approached the colonel early in the evening of the
second day, the other kids looked on in dread. The day had already
been a grueling one. They’d been kicked out of their sleeping bags
before sunrise and sent directly into PT—a physical training regimen
of jumping jacks, push-ups, and long runs. Then came the long work
details. Hauling trash. Digging paths. Moving large rocks. All
accompanied by a nonstop chorus of taunts and threats from the drill
instructors.
All the campers bitched; it was a grim routine. But it still it
seemed like a completely survivable one. That is, right up until the
moment Nick Conner walked up to the colonel, his face the very
picture of determination.
Conner had decided to quit the camp. Hell, this whole thing had been
his own damn idea, and it wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting. No
way was this going to prepare him for the army. He also didn’t like
being ordered around by teenagers who didn’t know their asses from
their elbows. He was 18 and could leave anytime he chose. He told
the colonel as much.
He turned to get his bag. Then he heard the colonel’s voice behind
him. “Get back here, boy.”
Conner turned to face him. The colonel pulled a nine-inch bowie
knife from his belt and stuck the point against Conner’s chest. “If
you try to leave,” he said calmly, “I’m gonna gut you.”
Day Three: Wednesday, June 27, 8:30 a.m., 106 degrees
Justin Boe was more than happy to get bathroom detail. Sure, it
smelled like shit, but it was out of the sun and away from those
asshole sergeants, Anderson, Jones, and Fontenot.
“Goddamn it, Mandraes, when I tell you to hold a push-up position,
you fucking well better hold it!”
Boe climbed on the toilet to get a look out the little wire window
to see what was happening to his friend in the parking lot. During
formation a little earlier, the drill instructors pulled a bunch of
kids out of line for “special punishment.”
Now Fontenot was standing over Mandraes in the parking lot screaming
at him to hold position. Mandraes finally dropped. Then the hulking
17-year-old sergeant pulled back his right foot, aimed square for
Mandraes’ shoulder, and kicked as hard as he could. Boe could hear
something snap 50 yards away. The kick shattered Mandraes’
collarbone.
It was just a warmup for the afternoon’s festivities. After lunch
the three sergeants started the mud treatments. The campers were
ordered to sit on the parade deck, their heads between their knees.
“Hey, Boe, you stupid crackhead!” Anderson shouted. “Get your
fucking cherry ass over here!”
Boe and Allen Kent, 15, were ordered into the “dead cockroach”
position: on their backs with arms and legs in the air.
“You stupid, filthy little shit, open your mouth,” Anderson screamed
at Boe. Anderson tilted a gallon jug filled with dirt and water into
Boe’s mouth until he started choking. “Don’t you dare spit it out,
or you’ll be shitting mud until you’re 50!”
Jones and Fontenot gave the same treatment to Kent. Then they
stomped on the boys’ chests.
By four almost every camper had been called over for the mud
treatment. They were sitting on the parade deck, the mud on their
faces and necks baked and cracking under the fierce sun. Most of the
younger kids were crying. Everyone was spitting up rocks and
pebbles.
Anderson scanned the platoons. “Think that was punishment, ladies?
That was playtime! Haynes, Bush, Nava—now!”
Reluctantly, the three boys shuffled over to the waiting sergeants,
who threw each of them to the ground.
“I want to go home!” Haynes yelled, on the verge of tears.
Sirvorge Jones peeled the lug sole away from his boot. It was
something he’d been working on for a couple of days. The elasticity
of the sole together with the lugs made it the nastiest paddle he’d
ever seen. He looked at Haynes and laughed.
“Haynes, prepare for the ass-whippin’ of your life.”
The other kids exchanged glances. Tony Haynes did not belong here.
He was pudgy, wore glasses and a hearing aid in one ear, and was on
several medications. At 14 he still collected Beanie Babies. One of
the reasons he was at camp was that he’d been caught shoplifting an
action figure.
“He was kicking and crying and screaming,” recalls Boe. “They
dragged him over to the picnic table and forced him to bend over it.
Then they yanked down his pants. They beat your ass until you’re
screaming and crying like a little girl. If you try faking the
scream, then they’ll only do it worse.”
“Form platoons!” a sergeant shouted. “On the double!”
It was nearly sunset. All the campers ran to the parade deck as the
colonel drove up for inspection. Justin Boe was thinking he’d tell
his stepfather, R.J., about the beatings when he showed up for his
shift. Just then Sirvorge Jones stepped up behind him and whispered
in his ear, “Tell anybody what happened today and you’ll get it
back 10 times worse.”
Day Five: Friday, June 29, 5:35 p.m., 107 degrees
Boe, Conner, and Mandraes thought they were hallucinating. A
half-hour earlier, a couple of the drill instructors had set up an
immense boom box in one of the ramadas.
Now they had Bob Marley playing, and all these kids who’d just
gotten the shit beat out of ’em a few days before were dancing
around acting like it was picnic time. There were Haynes, Delaney,
Charlie, Flash—all dancing to the Wailers song “One Love.” Now,
that was some heavily ironic shit.
One love, one heart. Let’s get together and feel all right…
A few minutes later, an unmarked car pulled into the parking lot. A
man and a woman got out and started looking around. The colonel went
down and met them. They talked for a while, and then he started
showing them around the camp. The adults stood watching the kids
dance awhile.
Justin guessed they were from Child Protective Services. He’d heard
that a camper had stolen a drill instructor’s cell phone that
morning, called his sister and begged her to call authorities and
tell them about the abuse. He knew the colonel was bullshitting the
suits, telling them the campers danced every freakin’ day. He wanted
to rush up to the CPS people and tell the truth. But what if no one
believed him?
As soon as the agents left, the music was shut off. The platoons
were forced to stand at attention for the next hour.
After their nightly bowl of beans and an hour of PT, the colonel sat
the campers in a circle and gave them another lecture, this time
about loyalty. There would be no weekend break, as was promised in
the camp literature. Instead they’d continue with PT and work
details. However, if they worked really hard, he’d show a videotape
of Glory Saturday night.
If the colonel expected a round of cheers, he was mistaken. The
exhausted boys and girls stared sullenly. “We’d been torn down,”
says David Mandraes, “but we hadn’t been built back up. The next DI
that touched me I was going after with a shovel. And I promise you,
half that camp would’ve followed me.”
Day Seven: Sunday, July 1, 5:25 a.m., 87 degrees
Iverson was still shackled when the drill instructors woke him on
Sunday morning for PT. “Sunday, man,” he reflected weeks later,
“that was the day everything just went to shit.”
The past few days had been especially brutal for the suburban
Connecticut kid. On Wednesday night, after the first “day of
punishment,” Iverson had tried to escape, making it out to the
highway to hitch a ride. Too bad the only car that stopped was a
state trooper, who took him straight back to the colonel.
Iverson never wanted to hurt anyone as bad as these drill
instructors. On Friday they’d made him stand at attention for hours
and thrown water on him. The water wasn’t to cool him off. It was to
attract bees, which would land on him by the dozen to suck off the
moisture. He spent the whole day wondering if he was allergic. Later
the colonel and one of the drill instructors looped a noose around
his neck while they lectured him. These fuckers are just plain
evil, he thought.
Late Sunday morning, David Mandraes’ mom, an EMT, showed up. She
checked her son’s collarbone—sure enough, it was badly broken. But
more upsetting to her was her son’s and Nick Conner’s tales of abuse
and beatings.
“Please, you gotta get me out of here,” Nick Conner pleaded,
breaking down in tears. “If you don’t, I’m not sure I’ll make it out
alive.”
By R.J. Corriere’s account, this is when he finally started asking
some of the campers what had been going on. (One source says it
happened after he was told by Colonel Long he was “no longer
needed.”) R.J. located his stepson near the parade deck; he got into
his face, but only pretended to chew him out. Quietly he said,
“Justin, what the hell is going on here?”
“They’re just stomping the shit out of us.”
“Don’t bullshit me, boy. How hard did they stomp you?”
Justin lifted up his sweatshirt to reveal a bruise from his rib cage
to his collarbone in the shape of a size-12 shoe.
“Justin, grab your gear. We’re getting the fuck out of here.” A few
minutes later, R.J. hustled Justin into his truck and sped off. He
didn’t ease off the gas until he reached the interstate.
The colonel’s camp was falling to pieces. Frustrated, he called
formation and asked who wanted to DOR. He was shocked at the show of
hands.
Sunday, 3:24 p.m., 112 degrees
“Haynes, if you’re sick, you can go home,” the colonel yelled,
leaning over the unconscious kid. “But if you’re faking, then you’re
staying here. And there will be consequences.”
Anthony Haynes was no longer responding to orders. Muddy spittle ran
from his mouth, and his eyes were fixed. Sgt. Major Jones knelt down
and felt his head. My god, she thought. He was hot, way too
hot. The colonel finally decided to act.
“Sergeant Major, let’s take him to the motel and cool him down.
We’ll put him in the back of your truck,” he said. “You boys, get
back to your work details!”
Several of the kids helped Sgt. Major Jones and Colonel Long place
Haynes in the back of Jones’ truck. Russell Abatte, a 300-pound
15-year-old camper, cradled Haynes’ head against his big legs to
cushion the ride.
The colonel drove his Expedition, and Jones followed in her green
pickup truck. They arrived at the Days Inn and were careful not to
drive by the motel’s office; the colonel didn’t want management
knowing he was using his room for the once-a-week campers’ showers.
Carefully, they unloaded Haynes and carried him into the
second-floor room. They managed to lower Haynes down gently into the
tub. He was still unconscious.
“This’ll fix him up,” said the colonel, turning on the shower. “Now
let’s give the young man some privacy.”
The boys waited outside the colonel’s room. They were nervous and
scared and feeling conspicuous in their filthy black sweats. What
the hell was taking so long?
Suddenly, the door opened and Long and Jones exited the room
carrying a wet and unconscious Anthony Haynes. Both adults seemed to
be in a state of panic. Haynes looked worse than ever. “Fuck,
he’s turning blue!” shouted one of the boys.
Jones and the colonel put Haynes back in the truck. Someone said the
paramedics had been called, but it didn’t make sense. Why were they
leaving the motel if paramedics were coming? The kids were further
shocked when the cars headed toward camp. Why weren’t they going to
the hospital?
It was nearly dark when they arrived at the camp. Most of the boys
were sitting on the parade deck when Sgt. Major Jones backed her
truck up to the ramadas.
“They carried him out of the truck,” recalled Iverson. “He looked
blue, like he wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse. “The worst
thing was when they unloaded him…[they] lost their grip, and his
head smacked the cement so hard and loud.” To the boys it sounded
like a gunshot. The scene quickly devolved into chaos. Some kids
were crying, others were shocked into silence.
Long and Jones worked frantically, giving CPR to Haynes, blowing
into his lungs, rubbing his arms and legs and chest to get him
breathing. “He’s not breathing! I can’t get a pulse!”
Everyone was yelling at once, all at the top of their lungs. Amid
the confusion, Iverson retains a clear picture of Tony Haynes: “That
little kid just kept on getting bluer.”
Fifteen minutes later, paramedics arrived by chopper and airlifted
Haynes to a nearby hospital. Efforts to revive him failed. The
14-year-old kid with the crooked grin was pronounced dead.
Monday, July 2, 12:10 p.m., 106 degrees
Doreen Hurff was in her car when her cell phone rang.
Mrs. Doreen Hurff? This is Detective Lopez of the Maricopa County
Sheriff’s Department,” the woman briskly stated. “Are you the mother
of Justin and Michael Hurff?”
“Yes…” Doreen felt fear twisting in the pit of her stomach.
“There’s been a death at the Buffalo Soldiers camp in Buckeye. Can
you come to the Child Health Center?”
Despite her pleas, the detective wouldn’t tell her if one of her
sons had been killed. Hurff finally threw down the cell and sped to
the CHC. All over Phoenix, the scene was repeated. At the center
there were tearful, even hysterical reunions.
For Melanie Hudson, Tony’s mom, there was no reunion.
Some of the parents found their children in shock, and many found
evidence of physical abuse. Two weeks after the camp ended, Linda
Flynn rushed her son, Russell Abatte, to the emergency room. A blood
clot from a camp beating had traveled up his leg and was threatening
his heart. An x-ray revealed that his lungs were filled with pebbles
and dirt.
A month and a half after Tony Haynes collapsed, the final autopsy
report revealed that he died from “complications” related to his
severe dehydration and his “near drowning” in the Days Inn bathtub.
The death was ruled accidental. At press time no criminal charges
have been filed.
There are, however, a number of civil suits pending. R.J. Corriere,
who organized one group of parents to sue and appeared on the Montel
Williams show portraying himself as a hero on that fateful Sunday,
has been named in a lawsuit filed in August by Melanie Hudson,
Haynes’ mother.
Says Gettis Haynes Jr., Tony’s father: “I’m having a hard time
accepting all this. I don’t believe that my child should have died
like this. You take this child out and degrade him, scream, holler,
threaten…Aren’t you adding to the problem instead of helping it?”
The case has caused a nationwide outcry against the camps. Within a
few weeks of Haynes’ death, Arizona governor Jane Hull moved to
enact laws to regulate all youth camps. To date several have been
pressured into closing up shop.
One of those that hasn’t is Charles Long II’s America’s Buffalo
Soldiers Re-Enactors Association. He told Maxim: “Nobody’s
put a gun to my head and told me I can’t keep working. This is
America. The program is scheduled to start again on September 8.”
Parents who showed up for Long’s orientation on August 25 were
greeted by a number of protesters, including the parents of former
campers, who’d neither forgiven nor forgotten.
“The colonel profits off single mothers like me who don’t have
resources and don’t have anyone to turn to,” says Doreen Hurff.
“There were so many red flags, and I couldn’t see them. The boys
have a trust fund that I was going to use to keep them in the
program until they were 18. Colonel Long was due to make about
$45,000 on my boys. It was just a big con.”
A month after Tony Haynes’ death, some parents gathered the Hurffs,
Boe, Mandraes, and Brandon Hanner together for a visit to the
campsite. Their families thought the trip might help them face what
happened. At the camp the boys stopped at a small, white wooden
cross draped with a red bandanna. “Haynes” was written on the
crossbar. The boys walked silently in single file past the cross and
surrounded a large, rocky hole.
“This is the fire pit we had to dig the first night,” said Justin
Boe. “I can’t tell you how many hours we were all up here digging in
the heat. Bad memory.”
Michael Hurff picked up a couple of rocks. He stepped forward and
threw a rock with all his might into the hole. Justin Boe grabbed a
branch and swung it at the hole, over and over. Within a few
seconds, all the boys were beating the hole with rocks and sticks,
striking back at the only enemy they could find.
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