Corrections Employee Bernard Fancher

Bernard Fancher

Corrections Employee Fancher, an assistant athletic director at the State Prison of Southern Michigan, was stabbed to death by a prisoner described as having a long grudge against him.

According to witnesses, Fancher was sitting at his desk when a prisoner approached him swinging a baseball bat. Fancher and another employee ran from the office, but Fancher fell over a wheelbarrow. The prisoner immediately fell upon Fancher and stabbed him 13 times.

The prisoner, 25, who was serving a life sentence for a 1953 murder in Detroit, was declared insane and sent to the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Earlier in the year, Fancher fired the prisoner from his cleanup job at the gymnasium for being loud and abusive.