Clayton Anthony Fountain (September 12, 1955 – July 12, 2004) was an American federal prisoner, member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and convicted murderer. Clayton was born on September 12, 1955, at the U.S. Army Hospital in Fort Benning, Georgia. Clayton was the oldest of six children, having one brother and four sisters, and was named after his father, Clayton Raleigh Fountain. The family moved every 1½ to 2 years. While his father served combat tours in Korea and Vietnam and his mother was working, Clayton, as the oldest child in family, became a surrogate for both parents when he was very young. He recalled maternal responsibilities for cooking, ironing, serving, cleaning, and caring for his young siblings.
While serving in the Marines, he was convicted of murdering his staff sergeant in 1974, while stationed in the Philippines. He stole and disassembled a pistol from the ship’s armory, brought it ashore, and used it to rob a Filipino guard of his shotgun. He then used the shotgun to murder his staff sergeant. No words were exchanged as Fountain shot him once in the chest, and after a brief walk, he took 5 hostages. Fountain had been written up recently by Staff Sergeant Wrin for wearing PT gear on the mess deck in the mess hall.
Fountain was sentenced to life imprisonment, and was ultimately sent to the United States Penitentiary, Marion, Illinois which was at the time the highest-security prison in the United States. Fountain murdered three prisoners and one correctional officer with a shiv while serving time at Marion, and was labeled the “Most Dangerous Prisoner” in the federal system.
On October 22, 1983, Fountain stabbed Correction Officer Robert L. Hoffmann to death, hours after Fountain’s friend and fellow Aryan Brotherhood member, Thomas Silverstein stabbed another correction officer, Merle Clutts, to death at the same facility. The incidents resulted in a 23-year lockdown at Marion, and contributed to the creation of the federal supermax prison, United States Penitentiary, Florence ADX.
Fountain was moved to the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. He was housed in a specially constructed confinement unit, and was allowed contact only with authorized personnel. Fountain converted to Catholicism, and completed several educational courses on theology during the twenty years he spent in virtual isolation. By distance, he earned an associate degree in business and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and business from Ohio University, and earned a Catholic Catechetical Diploma and began a Master of Arts in Religious Studies from Catholic Distance University. He developed ties with an order of Trappist monks, and was accepted posthumously as a lay brother after his unexpected death from a heart attack in 2004. The book A Different Kind of Cell: The Story of a Murderer Who Became a Monk is based on his life and religious conversion. The foreword was written by Sister Helen Prejean.
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The Roman Catholic priest, Paul Jones, who befriended Clayton Fountain, the most violent murderer in the prison system’s history, has told the unlikely story of how the killer became a monk.
Father Jones and family brother in the Trappist order, wrote ‘A Different Kind of Cell: The Story of a Murderer Who Became a Monk’, a book which delves into his unlikely relationship with Fountain.
The killer of five men, who was condemned to live out his days in solitary confinement in a steel and concrete cell built especially for him, astonishingly made a remarkable religious conversion.
The gripping book tells how the author and others worked to redeem this vicious killer’s wasted life.
The book details how Fountain’s transfer into successively heightened security prisons only intensified his apparently untouchable incorrigibility – landing him at Federal Penitentiary at Marion.
His transformation began in experiencing love through correspondence with a woman who encouraged him to pursue a spiritual quest at a Trappist monastery. Soon Clayton began exchanging letters with Jones.
‘In time, the warden permitted a guard to hand a phone in to Clayton through his meal slot so that he might call me – a practice that eventually became weekly. During this time, he acquired his college degree with top honors,’ Jones said in the blog.
‘Finally, I was permitted to visit him on occasion, passing through nine guarded gates – to converse through the meal slot in his double steel door.’
Clayton was baptized in shackles at the prison on Sunday, April 19, 1992.
And later began work on a PhD, at the time of his death in 2004 he was well on the way with straight As.
During his moral turnaround Fountain had gained first a high school diploma, and later an AA degree in 1997, and a Bachelor of Specialized Studies in 2000.
‘Had the current federal law been in effect at the time, Clayton would long ago have been executed, sealing his life as the deadliest of murderers,’ Father Jones said.
‘Many in the federal system regretted not being able to execute this fate, for they were never convinced that what was happening to Clayton was anything more than “an amazing con job.” I too began as a skeptic, but as our relationship deepened, I became convinced that this ongoing conversion was authentic.
‘Clayton Fountain was in fact becoming a gentle, caring person.’
Father Jones hopes that through his book he can challenge the views of others about the death penalty.
‘If Clayton’s transformation was authentic, then is anyone beyond the mercy of God?’
Father Jones said the case is contained in Clayton’s own confession: “If I can be forgiven, then no one is beyond God’s forgiveness.”