Jack Henry Abbott, whose eloquent and evocative prison writings became the bestselling book "In the Belly of the Beast" -- which in turn was adapted twice for the stage -- hanged himself Sunday Feb. 11 in his cell at Wende Correctional Facility near Alden, N.Y. He was 58.
Book was first adapted for the Trinity Square Playhouse in Rhode Island and then for the Taper Forum, the latter work also based on transcripts from Abbott's manslaughter trial.
Son of a prostitute entered reform school at age 12 and remained in the penal system the rest of his life, with two brief exceptions. He stabbed two men to death, the first a fellow prisoner in 1966, the second a waiter in 1981, just weeks after Abbott was temporarily freed at the urgings of writers such as Norman Mailer and Jerzy Kosinski.
His book and the notoriety leading up to it made him the focus of New York "radical chic" literati. Mailer first championed him in 1977 after Abbott contacted the author offering to help advise him on Mailer's project "The Executioner's Song" about death row inmate Gary Gilmore.
Sentenced to 15 years to life, Abbott was due for a parole hearing next year.
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