Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has a new home, for now: He was transferred Wednesday to Wende Correctional Facility in the Alden, New York, a tiny town in the far west of the state, about 20 miles east of Buffalo, according to New York correctional records.
Weinstein was convicted on February 24 of raping an aspiring actress and sexually assaulting a production assistant and sentenced on March 11 to 23 years in prison. While awaiting transfer into state custody, however, the former producer spent most of his time at Bellevue Hospital after twice complaining about “chest pains,” once hours after his conviction and the second time hours after his sentencing.
According to prison records, he’ll first be eligible for release on November 9, 2039, with a parole hearing in September that year.
Wende is unlikely to be Weinstein’s final stop, however. The facility is considered an “intake facility” by the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. It’s just the initial stop in his journey through the state prison system. At Wende, he’ll be fingerprinted and photographed, get a shave and a haircut, and be given information about preventing suicide and sexual abuse in prison.
After all that’s completed, he’ll be taken to a reception/classification center, which the New York Post reported would be the Elmira Correctional Facility, known as “The Hill,” 120 miles away near the Pennsylvania state line. At Elmira, Weinstein will undergo more screening and eventually be assigned to a permanent facility.
It’s not clear how long his stays at either location will be — or how long he’ll be in the New York prison system at all. California prosecutors have already begun the process to extradite him there, where he faces four more charges of rape and sexual assault.
Weinstein’s attorneys have requested he be housed at either Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, about 60 miles from New York City, or Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, about 250 miles away in upstate New York, the Daily Mail reported.
Wende also houses other “celebrity” offenders, including Mark David Chapman, who shot former Beatle John Lennon to death on December 8, 1980. He was sentenced to 20 years to life and has been denied parole 10 times since he became eligible in 2000.
Other well known inmates at Wende:
- Maksim Gelman, who stabbed four people to death and wounded five others in a 28-hour spree February 11 to 12, 2011, in New York City. He’s serving a 200 year sentence.
- David Sweat and another prisoner dug a tunnel out of the Clinton Correctional Facility in on June 6, 2015, and evaded escape during a state-wide manhunt for 22 days. The other prisoner, Richard Matt, was shot and killed two days before Sweat was captured. They were not together at the time.
- David Gilbert is a former member of the Weather Underground who participated in the 1981 Brink’s robbery and murders.
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[Featured image: Wende Correctional Facility/Google Street View]
