View source for Carl Panzram

Shortly after he left Minnesota, Carl Panzram rode a freight train heading west out of Montana. He came upon four men who were camping in a lumber car. They said they could buy him nice clothes and give him a warm place to sleep. "But first they wanted me to do a little something for them," Panzram wrote years later. He was gang-raped by all four men. "I cried, begged and pleaded for mercy, pity and sympathy, but nothing I could say or do could sway them from their purpose!"

He escaped with his life but the incident may have destroyed whatever feelings of compassion he had left. A short time later, Panzram got locked up in [[Butte, Montana]], for burglary and received a sentence of one year in the [[Montana State Reform School]] at [[Miles City]].

In the spring of 1906 Carl Panzram, age 14, arrived at the reform institution. He had the body of a man and weighed nearly 180 pounds. In a few weeks, he developed a reputation as a born criminal and the prison staff paid special attention to the defiant teenager. One guard made it his business to make life miserable for Panzram. "He kept on nagging at me until finally I decided to murder him," he later wrote. He found a heavy wood plank outside one of the workshops and, one night when the guard turned his back, Panzram bludgeoned the man over the top of his head.

"For this I got several beatings and was locked up and watched closer than before," he said years later. He had enough with prison life and decided to break out, even if it meant his own death.

In 1907, Panzram and another inmate, [[Jimmie Benson]], escaped from the Montana State Reform School. They managed to steal several handguns in a nearby town and headed toward the town of [[Terry, Montana]]. "I stayed with him for about a month, hoboing our way east, stealing and burning everything we could," Panzram wrote. "I taught him how to set fire to a church after we robbed it. We got very busy on that, robbing and burning a church regular every chance we got." Throughout his life, everywhere he went, Panzram burglarized and burned churches, one of his favorite crimes.