Editors’ note: this story ran as a sidebar to the cover story “Tools of Torture,” on February 4, 2005
I recently located two museum curators who specialize in electrical equipment (one wishes to remain anonymous) and read them descriptions of the devices provided by Andrew Wilson and Melvin Jones, two men who claimed to have been shocked in February 1982. The curators concluded separately that each man was describing a violet ray machine. It’s a device that plugs into a wall outlet and is sold today as a “violet wand” to those who engage in BDSM–bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism.
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At a 1985 hearing, Leonard Hinton described being taken to the basement at Area Two two years earlier. He said his hands were handcuffed above his head, his pants and shorts were pulled down, his ankles were handcuffed to a pole so his legs were spread, and then “the officer with the mustache and with the glasses with the black hair, he came in with a rod, and one was carrying a box, a black box. . . . There was a cord to the long rod. . . . The handle on it was black and they plugged the wire into the box. . . . Then they put something in my mouth . . . it was cloth . . . and they tied it so I couldn’t holler. . . . Then they took the rod, long part, and they placed it under my genitals. . . . [It was] a pain out of this world. I couldn’t describe it. . . . They said, ‘Are you ready to talk yet?’ The other said, ‘I don’t think he’s ready to talk yet.’ He hit me with it again. . . . Then . . . he touched it in the crack of my rectum. . . . Then he took that [cloth] out of my mouth. I said, ‘I am ready to talk. Tell me what you want me to say, sir. Please stop.’”
