This is episode two of our mini-series, Operation Night Cat. If you haven't caught up yet, go back and listen to episode one. This episode contains strong language that may not be suitable for some listeners. You're listening to Operation Night Cat. I'm Nate Hedgie. For weeks, our producer Jason Moon had been trying to get a hold of a pivotal source for this series. A 55-year-old former inmate at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men. Shawn Cochran. At the time, Shawn was out on parole. And he'd been a hard guy to reach, until Jason finally got a hold of him on the phone on a Sunday morning. In 2021, Shawn was one of more than a thousand inmates at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men. It's a massive compound on the outskirts of the state capitol that honestly looks more like an east coast factory than a prison. It's all red brick walls and tiny windows, built back in the 1870s. Shawn had been in and out of that prison for more than two decades, so he knew it well. And he told us there are a lot of issues. Food is absolutely disgusting. The place is an absolute fill. There have been rat infestations, mold problems, holes in the walls, the sewer backs up weekly, and it has long been understaffed. In the spring of 2025, more than a third of all positions in the prison remained unfilled. So corrections officers there work long hours to cover the gaps. Back in 2021, Shawn was serving time after getting busted for theft. And he noticed a real difference between the older corrections officers he'd known for years and the new guys, or the kids, as he calls them. For instance, in the morning at five o'clock in the morning, you go to breakfast, you come back in your room's torn apart. I mean, why? Shawn says the staff are all overworked and there aren't enough of them. But in his experience, the younger guys tend to be more aggressive. And he struggled especially with a corrections officer named Corporal Tom Kelly. He's an arrogant, cocksucker, he's a punk. Like if you're a known teller, okay, he'll scream at you and have an argument and blast it out right on the tear that you're a fucking rat. Tom Kelly. If that name sounds familiar, it's because he's the hunter we talked about in the last episode. There's blood everywhere. I absolutely smoked him. The guy at the center of a major poaching investigation that would become known as Operation Night Cat. It's like they're playing Grand Theft Auto behind their house, except with animals. While he seemed to be spending a lot of his nights illegally hunting game, Tom Kelly also worked as a corrections officer, a guard at the New Hampshire State Prison for men. He'll throw you food through the slot or he'll just leave it on the slot long enough so it falls out of your tray out of the cell and then just not give you any more food. I purposely go out of that away to try to make your life miserable. That's what Mr. Kelly is. America's prisons aren't a cushy experience, but the people held inside them still have rights. And they're supposed to expect that, even behind bars, rules about what is and isn't fair will be followed. Pachan says that's not how things actually go. To him, prison is literally and figuratively a brick wall. And they can do whatever they want and get away with it because nobody can see over that wall. From an HPR's document team and outside in, I'm Nate Hedgie, and this is Operation Night Cat, episode two, behind the brick wall. This is Operation Night Cat. I'm Nate Hedgie. Back when we were first reporting the story, my producer Lauren Chuljin and I drove out to this little cabin near a fishing pond. We were there to see New Hampshire fishing game officer Ron Arsonault. And at one point, during the interview, his cell phone literally chirped. It was a text message notification. Remember, it was Ron who kicked off Operation Night Cat. It all started with Tom Kelly's game camera and a deer heat shot. But eventually, Ron uncovered a group of hunters who seemed to be illegally killing dozens of animals, bobcats, foxes, coyotes, and more. A lot of the evidence for these alleged crimes were on Tom Kelly's phone. Text messages between him and his hunting buddies, like this one, which happened after Ron says Tom sent a picture of a dead coyote to the group chat. Tom's like, you know, shot this ugly thing last night. And Randy says, LOL. And then Woody says, why would you do such a thing? Tom Kelly says, I love killing shit, and they were barking by my house. I love killing shit. Yeah. And then he says, the seasons close you damn outlaw. Wait a minute. So his friends call him out for like illegal hunting? Yeah. And he just says, Oh, I love killing stuff. Yeah. So he knew what he was doing was wrong. Oh, yeah. 100%. Well, can I also just the verbiage there? Like, I love killing shit. Like, you both love to hunt, but is that how you talk about it? No, no, no, you have to have the respect for the animal that you're hunting, you know, and clearly he didn't. And how does that feel also knowing that they have a badge? Oh, it's just disgraceful. Because, you know, these guys are now in charge of humans, you know, and you're like, what else is going on? We're going to come back to the poaching case that triggered Operation Night Cat in the next episode. But first, we're going to spend some time trying to answer that other question. What else was going on with Tom Kelly? Ron wasn't authorized to share anything outside the scope of his initial investigation. So my colleagues and I went off on our own and tried to see behind the brick wall. Over the past year, our team has hounded the state for more information on Tom Kelly and the other former or current corrections officers who are allegedly poaching. We filed public records requests, reviewed audio testimonies, and talked to current and former state officials. We even sued the New Hampshire Department of Corrections for documents. And through all of this, we got access to some of Tom Kelly and his coworkers other text messages, texts that reveal a pattern of disturbing and potentially illegal behavior happening at the prison. There are three sets of exchanges that I want to take you through. The first shows the use of violent and aggressive language. Like in one exchange I viewed, Tom Kelly and another CEO texted about an inmate who tried to escape. Tom wrote, quote, please shoot him. And then the other guy wrote back, I want to feel his skull cave in with my fists. There are other examples too. And Lauren and I were surprised to see these violent exchanges laid out so bluntly. They're the sort of thing that could hurt the public reputation of the prison and the people who work there. Never mind that if the prison's HR specialist saw these texts, these guys could be in trouble. But it might also be good to put them into context. Claudia Kass worked at New Hampshire State Prison for Men from 2006 to 2022. And she worked with a lot of the guys in the story, including Tom Kelly, though she didn't know him very well. Claudia says the prison is a pressure cooker. It's been way understaffed for years and officers work huge amounts of overtime. I averaged 100 hours a week working there. Claudia was actually fired in connection with the staffing crisis. Back in 2022, she told the warden she would be locking down the prison overnight. There just wasn't enough staff to keep officers safe, she said. Two days later, she was suspended and then later fired. She's suing the Department of Corrections for wrongful termination. But that staffing crisis hasn't gotten any better in the years since. Instead of spending time with her families, guards are often working overtime with inmates. And the state prison holds everyone from low level offenders to people convicted of murder and rape. It can be a rough crowd. You know, I'll be doing rounds, you know, and they'll be like, oh, you know, you have smelly crotch or they'll be calling the guys the N word, they'll be, some threaten your family. Yeah, I've seen, I've seen it all. The point of all this is that it's not an easy job. Tempers flare. Tom Kelly wouldn't talk to us for this podcast. So we reached out to Claudia because we wanted to know what is it like to work inside the pressure cooker? And as a corrections officer for almost two decades, what did she see in these texts from Tom? Lauren read the messages we found back to her. And Kelly says, please shoot him. And Massy says, I want to feel his skull cave in with my fists. Yeah, you would use? Well, no, I wouldn't do that. That said, there's some people that, you know, society wouldn't be worse off without. So I don't know who this particular person is, but there's some that it's really difficult to hide your disdain for the person. Because, you know, we deal with really bad people. Claudia, in this environment with these inmates, words are just words. They didn't shoot him. They didn't punch him and didn't cave his head in. But would we talk like, yeah, it would be a tragedy, you know? Yeah. This brings us to our second big set of texts we viewed. Because in these next exchanges, it wasn't just words. I'm going to bring Lauren into the studio to help me read these texts. I am reading for Tom Kelly. Lauren is reading for a coworker that we're not going to name. All right. It's February 25, 2019. At 848pm, Tom texts. It's Kelly from work. What's up, bro? You guys mashed happen? Tom. Fuck yes. How bad he look. You guys send his ass in an ambulance? Tom. He refused medical. You will see his face tomorrow, lol. Now, from these texts, it appears Tom Kelly is bragging about assaulting an inmate. This inmate, Devin Tappin, he actually tried suing Tom over this incident. In court documents, Devin alleged that Tom Kelly and a crew of guards threw him to the floor, held his hands behind his back, and then punched, kicked, and tasered him. That lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year because he didn't file suit within the statute of limitations. All right. Back to the texts. The next morning, Tom Kelly texted that same coworker again to ask how Tappin was looking. The guy said Tappin's face was fucked and that he wouldn't even eat. And in that exchange, Tom Kelly said something important. He said, quote, LMAO, my fist is killing me. We told Claudia about all of this as well. And this time, her reaction was different. We've seen information that suggests that Kelly punched Tappin in the face because he texted another CEO to say, let me know tomorrow when you go in how bad he looks. Whoa. There's very few reasons that we can punch anybody. You have to be in a struggle that you feel is basically life or death before we're close fist punching people. Of course, violence is often part of American prison life. The New Hampshire Department of Corrections has an entire handbook dedicated to use of force, which lays out when they consider it justified and when they don't. So for us to punch them, in my experience, is only if they're attacking you. Here's where things take another twist. A couple of weeks after bragging about beating an inmate, Tom Kelly texts someone else, Randy Inman. If that name sounds familiar, it's because he's another member of the group being investigated in the poaching ring, the guy who apparently came screaming home from work when the cops got a search warrant for his house. Randy also worked at the prison as a supervisor. Now back to the texts. I'll read again for Tom Kelly. Lauren is reading for Randy. March 11, 2019, 7.45 p.m. Tom writes, my hand is still fucked up. So I need to tell Mindy so I can get it looked at. You still on board saying you stepped on my hand? Now Mindy, by the way, is an HR specialist at the prison. Randy texts back, yes, because I did. Tom, exactly. Thank you. Then a little later, Tom writes, I told Mindy and she says she would contact you at some point today. I said, you stepped on my hand. After this exchange, Randy filed what's called an employee accident slash injury report. In it, he writes that he was doing a cell extraction of Devin Tappin. That's when guards forcibly remove an inmate from their cell. During this extraction, Randy says Devin charged at him, quote, swinging his arms at me. He writes that he struggled to handcuff Devin. And then, quote, it was during this time that I unknowingly stepped on Corporal Kelly, Thomas' hand. I instantly felt his hand move underneath my boot. And I quickly moved my foot. End quote. Randy sent a photo of this form to Tom. FYI, I'm putting this in Mindy's box on her door. Then Tom responds, awesome. Thank you so much. Randy writes back, just don't forget who loves you. We don't know exactly what happened here. But one interpretation of this exchange is that Tom Kelly bragged about hurting his hand, mashing an inmate. And then he asked one of his hunting buddies to help him cover it up, to falsify a witness report, maybe so he could get treatment covered. If that's true, it would be a crime. And at minimum, it is grounds for more investigation. Regardless of how you might feel about America's prisons, the people held there have constitutional rights. The Eighth Amendment bars cruel and unusual punishment. And after all, it's called the New Hampshire Department of Corrections, not the Department of Punishment. Dignity and honesty are actually two of the values written into their mission statement. The department says its overall goal is to quote, promote successful reentry into society. Some people could write that off as unrealistic or naive. But if we choose not to take it seriously, if we just assume that prison is a pressure cooker and that this is just the way things are, we might not know if the very people charged to uphold the law are guilty of breaking it. And that brings us to the third set of texts we found. The missing male. It's not ethical. It's not fucking ethical. That's after a break. Dignity and honesty are the values written into their mission statement. Wait, wait, wait. Don't skip this. Don't skip this. Don't skip this. This is not an ad. This is me, Nate, and I'm here to tell you that it is yet again time to open up the outside inbox to listener questions. We have been getting the most random submissions lately. Like, can bobcats get hairballs? Or why does warm dirt smell so good? But we need more questions. So please, send us the weirdest, wackiest questions about science and the natural world that you can think of. It is super easy. You can call our hotline at 1-844-GO-AUTER. Or even better, send us a voice memo to outsideinradio at nhpr.org. Okay, back to the show. I'm Nate Hedgie, and you're listening to a special series of outside in called Operation Night Cat. Is it all right if I record this call like last time? Yeah, that's fine. No problem. Okay, cool. That again is producer Jason Moon talking with Sean Cochran, the guy who railed against Tom Kelly earlier in the episode. Sean, he's been in and out of New Hampshire state prison for almost two decades. And in his younger years, he also spent time in the state's juvenile jail, a place called the Youth Development Center, or YDC. Now, if you live in New Hampshire, you might know that the YDC is at the center of a huge government scandal here. Sean is one of more than 1000 people who've come forward with allegations of sexual and physical abuse. They say they went through there. Almost a dozen former staffers have faced criminal charges. I have a law firm that's part of my YDC case. They wanted me to write a narrative about the YDC. Sean had to write down details of what he says staff did to him when he was a kid. Very, very personal details. And then send them in the mail to his lawyer. He did this when he was incarcerated in the men's prison. And I wrote two narratives. The first one was 23 pages, never made it to his office, spilled to this day, wrote a second one, never made it to his office, spilled to this day. Wait, so you're saying you wrote those YDC narratives in the prison and they never made it out? That is correct. You probably know that opening or stealing someone's mail is a federal crime. The post office has a whole branch of investigators who deal with this kind of thing. But mail in prison works a little differently. Sometimes people send drugs to inmates, concealed in envelopes that are meant to look like they're coming from their lawyers or someone else official. So prison staff are allowed to comb through that incoming mail to make sure it's legit. But outgoing letters sent to a lawyer or to the courts, they cannot be opened or interfered with. Just to spell it out, what do you think happened to those narratives? That's my question. I mean, all that personal fucking written stuff about sexual abuse and what went on and what happened to me, those are substantial things that I wrote in there. Where are they? Who's reading them? We don't know exactly what happened to those narratives, but we do know what happened to some of Sean's other mail. In 2021, Sean was trying to file legal complaints about how he was being treated at the men's prison. This happens a lot and you can imagine that some guards see it as a huge headache. Some officers go so far as to call these complaints rat notes. And Sean was known for writing a lot of them. Lauren's back to help me read another text thread. I'll be Tom Kelly and you're going to be one of his buddies. Correction's officer, Chris Massey. Got it. Chris, by the way, not a part of the poaching ring, but he's someone that Tom went to law enforcement academy with. And we should note that Chris also did not respond to our requests for comment for the story. Okay, so this conversation happens almost midnight, February 15, 2021. Chris writes, Holy fuck, dude, this legal mail and rat notes are out of fucking hand. Tom, dude, it's bad. I took a ton home with me that probably contained your name. Chris texts back from who? LOL, Cochran? Tom. Yep. Thanks for saving my ass. Haha. After that, Thompson's a photo of six envelopes fanned out. It's mail that he seems to have taken directly from the prison. That mail, it belonged to Sean Cochran, the guy whose YDC narratives went missing and who is actively filing complaints against Tom Kelly's work buddy, Chris Massey. After Tom sent that photo of the envelopes, Chris Massey texted back. Chris writes, Yeah, dude, you're the true hero here tonight. Haha. Think we're going to have to search some cells tomorrow. Tom. Yep. Let's do it. Chris writes back me and you. And Sean told us that around this time, Tom Kelly did tear his room up. They ripped our whole tear apart because they knew that I was filing complaints against them. Public records back him up. They show Tom and some other guards search to sell two days after this text exchange between Tom and Chris. When he was interviewing Sean, producer Jason Moon told him about the texts we had discovered. He read them out for beat them. We've bleeped out some of the names. Chris. Tom, I just read all of them. Chris and Loll. Tom, you need to be careful what you say in front of the nurses because he's trying to call them as witnesses and he says he's filing criminal charges against you. Tom. Also, he filed charges against for slamming his head into a wall, I guess. Loll. Chris. Yeah, I'll talk to this warning. Literally, all I've done to this contest call him a junkie. Tom. Yeah, he wrote the name down. Chris, I'll talk to her and we really got to intercept this cunt's shit bad. Gotta have the boys tear that room up. So what do you make of these messages? Are you surprised? Yeah, I'm really surprised. You have them outrally admitting that they stole my fucking legal man. That's a lawsuit. That's a slam dunk lawsuit. They can lose their job for that. Sean says he tried to talk to one of the older CEOs, a guy he respects and knows personally, but all the ways Tom Kelly was treating him. I said, why are you allowing us to go on a unit? And he said, I'm in blue. And I said, okay, I get that. I get that. I said, but at the end of the day, it's not ethical. I said, you are allowing these men to treat us this way, knowing that they're treating us this way. And you're not doing anything about it. Back when we interviewed conservation officer Ron Arsenault, he showed us around this wooden cabin in the woods. Pretty cool, huh? It is pretty cool. So they all do like. The place had major summer camp vibes. This is where fishing game will sometimes teach hunters ed, the kind of thing you need to do to get your license. And this is where I come like after kids fishing day. Yeah, I'll hide my truck and I'll hide in here and I'll watch over limits. This is my secret hiding place. At this point, all we knew about Tom Kelly was what Ron had told us about Operation Night Cat, that he had been caught baiting deer and killing bobcats at night. Back during that initial investigation, Ron was already thinking about how he was going to use Tom Kelly's text messages. I like to think of it from the very beginning. How would I prosecute this? Because that you have a really solid foundation thinking like that, because then you're like, Oh, what do I need to prove? What do I have? What do I need for evidence? But this is also when Ron found all of these other text messages, stuff that was way outside his areas of expertise, not to mention totally outside his jurisdiction as a conservation officer. So at that point, I was like, Oh, that's not good. Ron could have chosen to stay in his lane to keep focused on the charges he knew he could personally make stick. But he didn't. Instead, he reported what he found up the chain of command. And from there, it went to the New Hampshire Attorney General. It went to federal investigators. And it went to Tom Kelly's bosses at the Department of Corrections. We, we have a duty. We need to hold people accountable. One group of alleged poachers, two sets of potential crimes. And, you know, just because you weren't bad doesn't mean you should get away with stuff. So did they? That's next time on the final episode of Operation I Can. It's the embarrassment. It's the embarrassment to say how in the world did this happen? You know, we're taught, you know, report all this stuff, you know, report it and we'll do something, report it. Oh, shit. Operation Night Cat is a special three-part series from NHPR's document team and outside in. This episode was reported and written by me, Nate Hedgie, with help from Lauren Chuljin and Jason Moon. Jason produced and mixed this episode. He also wrote the music. It was edited by Taylor Quimby and Katie Culinary with help from Rebecca LaVoy, Jackie Harris, Dan Barrick, Justine Paradis, Felix Poon and Marina Hanky. Special thanks to Rick White and Bill Chapman. Fact-checking by Donahue Suleiman. Taylor Quimby is the executive producer of Outside In. Rebecca LaVoy is director of On Demand at NHPR. 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