Postcards, The West Virginia Penitentiary

Known in the Wasteland as Eastern Regional Penitentiary, the West Virginia Penitentiary was built in 1866 and decommissioned in 1995. 

Notable inmates (not including Mad Dog Malone) incarcerated at the penitentiary include Harry Powers and Elmer Bruner. 

Powers was a serial killer who used lonely-hearts advertisements to find his victims, stealing any valuables they had and earning the title West Virginia Bluebeard. He confessed to the murders of widows Asta Eicher and Dorothy Lemke, as well as Eicher’s three children (Greta, 14; Harry, 12; and Annabel, 9). 

Bruner, the last person legally executed in the state of West Virginia, met his fate in the electric chair for the 1957 murder of Ruby Miller during a burglary gone wrong. 

Currently, visitors can participate in tours, ghost hunts, and escape rooms within the stony walls. It has also been the stage for various films and television programs, including Shawshank State Prison in Hulu’s Castlerock. (The prison used in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) was located in Mansfield, Ohio.)

This postcard was never mailed so its exact age is unknown. A similar postcard by the same publisher, also set in Moundsville WV, with an identical layout on the back, was cancelled in 1908, so it’s safe to assume this card is from the same general time.