Pubdate: Fri, 30 Jun 2000
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2000 The Province
Contact:  200 Granville Street, Ste. #1, Vancouver, BC V6C 3N3 Canada
Fax: (604) 605-2323
Website: http://www.vancouverprovince.com/
Author: Damian Inwood

WEST VAN MAN UNHAPPY INMATE IN NEW YORK JAIL

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - West Vancouver's Allen Richardson is now Christopher 
Perlstein, New York state inmate #71C0244.

He sits in a graffiti-etched cell in green prison pyjamas at Downstate 
Correctional Facility, a maximum security processing prison at Fishkill on 
the Hudson River about an hour's drive from New York City.

"He's not very happy," said his wife, Amalia Richardson, who spoke to her 
husband by phone early yesterday, his first night in jail.

"He's in a cell on his own. They don't want any trouble or anything to 
happen to him."

Richardson, 50, a U.S. citizen, was sent back to prison Wednesday, almost 
30 years after escaping and fleeing to Canada.

He'd served three months of a four-year sentence for selling $20 of LSD to 
an undercover cop while a student at Rochester Institute of Technology.

He was sent to Attica and transferred to a work camp before a deadly riot 
broke out killing 43 people in 1971.

When a guard told him he was being  returned to Attica, he escaped and 
crossed the border to hide out in Toronto.

Richardson, whose real name is Perlstein, changed his identity and made a 
new life in West Vancouver, working at UBC's Triumf laboratory.

For Amalia, 52, it has been one of the hardest weeks of her life.

Her mother, in England, suffered the latest in a series of strokes and 
Amalia may have to fly back at a moment's notice.

But she's caught in an emotional tug of war, as U.S. prison authorities 
have cleared her to visit her husband in jail today.

"I really feel I want to see Allen," said Amalia. "I hate to say it but my 
priority is more with him than my mother."

She said her husband didn't say much in the monitored phone call.

"His cell is full of graffiti and the guards just laugh because that's what 
the prisoners do," she said. "I don't think he's badly treated. He said 
it's maximum security and not very nice."

Richardson's clothes were taken away and will be mailed to his New York 
lawyer, Michael Kennedy.

"They wouldn't send them back to Canada," added Amalia."I go from being 
really upset to really angry. This shouldn't be happening."

Prison spokeswoman Linda Foglia said Richardson will stay at the Fishkill 
prison for two weeks or less until it's decided where he'll serve the rest 
of his sentence.

Meanwhile, his lawyers are working to get him an early parole hearing and 
say he'll likely end up in a medium security jail.

On Wednesday, Judge John Connell upheld Richardson's original sentence, 
saying he could not find fault in the original judge's decision.

Connell also said that, while Richardson would have got probation in a 
similar case today, reducing his sentence could send the wrong message to 
other prisoners considering escape.
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