The stinger
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The stinger was the improvised heating device prisoners at FCI Loretto used to cook. John Kiriakou describes it in detail because it is the answer to a question he says he never asked at the time: how the food he was eating was being produced.

Construction

The device was a piece of metal, Kiriakou specifies something like the faceplate from a wall plug, attached to two live wires. The faceplate went into a bucket of water and the wires went directly into a wall outlet. The current boiled the water quickly.

Food to be cooked went into a plastic bag, which then went into the boiling water. Pasta could be cooked directly in the water, with no bag needed.

Kiriakou's assessment of the method is blunt: as cooking methods go, it is incredibly dangerous. He adds that cooking this way happened every single day, and that 99 times out of 100 correctional officers would simply ignore it.

What it produced

The stinger is what lay behind the meals Kiriakou describes among the Italians, pasta with three cheeses, shredded chicken, fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, basil, a great deal of garlic and a delicate white wine sauce, with dinner always served at eight.

He attributes the cooking to his closest friend inside, Mark Lanzalotti, saying Lanzalotti made fine dining, restaurant-quality Italian food with a garbage bucket full of water and a live electrical wire, and calling it mind-blowing how clever people can be when they really want something. Elsewhere he says what Lanzalotti could do with that equipment was miraculous, and credits him with the 35 pounds Kiriakou gained in prison.

The death of an officer

Kiriakou recounts one occasion on which an officer did not ignore the practice. The officer made a scene and screamed at a prisoner for cooking, demanding to know how many times he had to say there was to be no cooking.

The prisoner pulled the stinger out of the water by the wire, still attached to the wall socket, and tossed it to the officer, who caught it without thinking. He was electrocuted, and Kiriakou says he died in hospital three days later.

See also

- FCI Loretto
- Mark Lanzalotti
- The Italians at Loretto
- Correctional officers at FCI Loretto
