Bio & Incident Details
Age: 32
Tour: 12 years
Badge # Not available
Cause: Stabbed
Incident Date: 12/29/1856
Weapon: Edged weapon; Knife
Suspect: Died in prison
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Warden Tenney was stabbed and killed by a prisoner at the Charlestown State Prison.
The prisoner, a 20year old youth, who was serving time in prison for assaulting a jail guard, was unhappy about the amount of meat he had been receiving at meal time. The suspect had made the knife in the prison shop. As Warden Tenney was making his rounds of the prison at approximately 1530 hours the suspect ran up behind him and stabbed him in the neck. Warden Tenney was able to draw his revolver as he fell to the floor, but fired not shots. The guard on duty in the shop and two other prisoners restrained the suspect and placed him in irons.
Warden Tenney was taken to the prison hospital where he died from his wound.
The suspect later told an investigating Coroner that he got the idea to stab Warden Tenney in the neck after another prisoner had stabbed Deputy Warden Galen Walker in the neck two weeks earlier.
The suspect was convicted of Warden Tenney's murder and sentenced to death. While awaiting his execution he died in prison on January 12, 1858.
Warden Tenney had served in several correctional institutions over a 12-year period and was survived by his wife of three weeks.
Related Line of Duty Deaths
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Deputy Warden Galen C. Walker |
