This time he received a 19-year sentence in a federal prison. Six weeks later, Abbott was captured and returned to prison. In Denver, he held up a downtown bank and made off with thousands in cash. On March 13, 1971, Abbott escaped from prison and made his way to Colorado. In 1965, he stabbed and killed a fellow inmate. He received a five-year maximum sentence and was sent to the Utah State Penitentiary in Draper, Utah, some 20 miles south of Salt Lake City. He was quickly caught and later convicted of forgery. He stole some checks from a shoe store and cashed them. "I cannot imagine how I can be happy in American society," Abbott wrote years later, "after all this society has done, I am naturally resentful." Within months after his release, Abbott was in trouble again. In 1963, he was finally released from the school and returned to a society that was, at least to him, strange and hostile. "I served so long because I could not adjust to the institution and tried to escape over twenty times," he wrote, "I had been there for the juvenile 'crime' of 'failure to adjust to foster homes.'"
We tapped out our messages, but if they heard our taps, we were beaten, the entire row of cells, one child at a time." With the exception of a single 60-day period when he enjoyed a temporary parole, Abbott remained in the Utah School for Boys until he turned 18. "Locked in our cells, we could not see each other," he wrote in Belly of the Beast, "and if we were caught shouting cell to cell, we were beaten.
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