The Most Dangerous Player in the Country

     It’s called death row; it’s the place where Nevada’s worst of the worst spend 22 hours or more each day in solitary cells, waiting for the call that means they will be executed by lethal injection. 
     In reality the 80 or so death row inmates at Ely State Prison in White Pine County, Nevada are more likely to die of disease or suicide than be executed. Lengthy appeals, the lack of a suitable execution chamber, debates over the drugs used and defense attorneys who make appeals all factor into why Nevada has not executed an inmate in almost a decade. 
     Despite a reputation for being tough on crime, Nevada has executed only 12 inmates in 28 years. And 11 of the 12 executions since capital punishment was reinstated by the state in 1977 have been “volunteers,” or inmates who have voluntarily given up their appeals. 
     One of those death row prisoners, a chessplayer, has been called the "Most Dangerous Man in Nevada" and he has been on death row for almost four decades. 

He rapes. He robs. He kills. 

    He is defined by psychologists as a sociopath, meaning he is a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience. 
     It started with kidnap, rape and assault in 1964 at the age of 17, followed by a prison escape two years later. He eventually served his time and was released only to find himself back in jail a short time later on new charges. 
     That was in 1979 and Patrick Charles McKenna was a prisoner in the Las Vegas, Nevada city jail when he strangled his cellmate, Jack J. Nobles, after an argument over a chess game that McKenna lost. As a result, a murder charge was added to his list of crimes and in 1980 he was convicted and sentenced to death. 
     In 1979 while in jail and awaiting trial, McKenna was the brains behind a desperate bid freedom that stunned Las Vegas when he and two other armed prisoners held police at bay for two days using jail guards as hostages. 
     McKenna was described as morally challenged by former Clark County Sheriff Jerry Keller, who was on the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's Hostage Negotiation Team at the time.  He stated McKenna took no culpability or accountability for himself. He blamed everything that happened on everybody else. 
     In August 1979, McKenna and two other inmates somehow gained access to the gun locker and each had obtained a nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson officer's weapon. They then took three corrections officers hostage and were actually holding 106 inmates hostage as well. 
     The two other inmates were 29-year-old Felix Lorenzo who was facing a 150-year prison term for robberies and kidnappings and 40-year-old Eugene Shaw who was looking at up to 60 years for robbery and use of a deadly weapon.
     Tensions had been running high between the two of them as well as with McKenna. Then forty-four hours into the crisis a member of the Hostage Negotiation Team was on the phone with McKenna when events started happening fast. While they were talking shots started being fired. 
     The tension between Lorenzo and Shaw had boiled over and they got involved in a gunfight. McKenna ran to the back of the room, put on a corrections officer’s uniform and hid under a mattress. When the smoke had cleared, Lorenzo and Shaw were both dead and McKenna was back in custody. One of the hostage corrections officers took a bullet to the hand during the shootout but was otherwise OK. 
     Fourteen years and several escape attempts later, after the Supreme Court had granted him a new penalty hearing, McKenna was returned to Las Vegas to face a new jury. The Clark County Sheriff wasn’t taking any chances. McKenna, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, was considered an escape threat and was clothed in mitts and a hood. The jury didn’t change his sentence. 
     In a 1990 interview McKenna told a reporter he got a "raw deal." Referring to the escape attempt as a “jailhouse thing” he stated he was “just trying to get out of there.” 
     As for murdering his chess opponent McKenna stated, “Any other time, any other case on the face of it, we're talking Second Degree. (Note: Second degree murder is one which is intentional, but lacks premeditation.) And I make no bones about it. I admit to that. But because of all that, so I ended up with this thing. And I end up with the death penalty. They got me on ice for a while." 
     McKenna is still on Death Row at age 72 and authorities say he is just as dangerous today as he was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago. They also add that he is no less a threat to the community and probably no less a threat to some of the inmates in the Nevada State Prison.

You can watch a one hour 15 minute Youtube documentary on McKenna HERE.