Asbestos defendant dies in prison

By Hasso Hering
Albany Democrat-Herald
Jo R.R. McCulloch, the Albany building owner prosecuted for ignoring asbestos rules while removing floor tiles, died in a federal prison Tuesday.

Albany resident Cynthia Hilliard, whom he had planned to marry when he was released, got the news in a telephone call from one of the wardens of the federal prison in Taft, Calif.

McCulloch, 64, a diabetic, had hopes of being released Nov. 15 after serving most of his one-year sentence.

According to Hilliard, McCulloch died in solitary confinement in a 10-by-14-foot concrete cell inside a "special housing unit," a disciplinary section known as "Shu."

The prison is run by a private company called Global Expertise in Outsourcing or GEO, whose Web site says it has 43 contracts to run prisons in the United States and abroad. A spokesperson at the prison Tuesday confirmed that McCulloch had died but would give no other information.

Hilliard said she had spoken to McCulloch by telephone last week, and he told her he was in the "Shu" and "very frightened." In another phone call, she said, he told her he was in the prison infirmary and "hurt all over."

She understood he was put in solitary for 30 days because someone claimed he had written a threatening letter and used somebody else's phone card.

On a visit earlier, she had taken him sunglasses to shield his eyes from the terrible glare when he was outside - he had glaucoma - but he was not allowed to have them.

"They almost put him in solitary for that," she said.

Because his feet were extremely sensitive because of his diabetes, he asked for special shoes, but his request went unheeded, according to her.

Last year McCulloch pleaded guilty to a violation of the federal Clean Air Act over the asbestos matter. He expected to receive probation, but instead Judge James Redden sentenced him to what he said was the lowest sentence allowed by federal guidelines: one year and a day. On Jan. 5 McCulloch reported to the prison in Taft, in Kern County, near Bakersfield.

His troubles began in 1998 when he had started remodeling a one-story building he owned at 860 Burkhart St. S.E., which had housed a Veterans Thrift Center and 1st Stop Video.

His flooring contractor was removing and discarding floor tile that had not been tested for asbestos. An inspector from the Department of Environmental Quality told McCulloch to stop, but after a series of back-and-forth orders by officials and refusals on his part, at one time he ordered her out of the building.

"I am a hard-headed Irishman and I get upset when you start threatening me," McCulloch told the Democrat-Herald in 2000. "She threatened me and I didn't take kindly to that ... I resented the hell out of it."

McCulloch also ran into trouble with Albany building inspectors. In August 2003, he was fined in Municipal Court over building code violations and material left in the parking lot outside the Burkhart Street building. He also was ordered to reimburse the city for nearly $16,000, an amount city officials calculated their enforcement actions had cost.

McCulloch was a native of Arkansas. He moved with his family to Corvallis, where his father was a doctor. The son graduated from Corvallis High School in 1957. In 1966 he received a degree in zoology from Oregon State University.

He went into the business of selling heavy machinery in the Portland area and did very well. In later years he moved into real estate investments.

McCulloch had been married twice and had three grown children, a daughter and two sons, in the Portland area.

Funeral arrangements had not been made Tuesday. Hilliard said an autopsy would be done today to determine the cause of death.

Hilliard said the building where Jo's troubles started is now owned by her.