Houston Chronicle: Death row inmates made 2,800 calls

The Houston Chronicle is continuing to examine the number of cellphones smuggled into prisoners, including those on death row. The investigation began after strip club killer Richard Lee Tabler threatened a state senator on a cell phone smuggled in to him by his mother. Tabler and Timothy Doan Payne, a 2004 East Newton High School graduate, were convicted in connection with four killings of people connected to the Teazers Strip Club in Killeen, Texas.

The Chronicle article notes 2,800 calls have been made by 10 death-row inmates:

Cell phones are just about the hottest commodity inside prisons," said the prisons' inspector general, John Moriarty, whose office has opened 743 cases involving cell phones found in Texas prisons.

Moriarty said he knew of no hits ordered from prison using smuggled cell phones, though there have been drug deals made. Mostly, he believes, inmates use the phones to call home.

But just how do smugglers get phones past a penitentiary's security?

Some visitors have been caught hiding cell phones in the heels of their shoes. Some get them through security, only to get caught later dropping them in trash bins during visitation, Moriarty said.

Last year, an inmate was discovered to have both a cell phone and charger in his rectum. Moriarty said it's not clear how many people have smuggled cell phones into prisons in their body cavity; metal detectors won't typically sound the alarm.

Until this week, when a lockdown was declared amid revelations that 10 death row inmates made nearly 2,800 calls in the past month from a cell phone, not everyone entering Texas prisons, not even all visitors, were scanned for contraband.