detaining youths. Not long after this second arrest, Panzram stole some cake, apples, and a revolver from a neighbor's home. In October 1903, Panzram's mother sent him to the Minnesota State Training School, purportedly a reform school; Panzram later claimed in his autobiography, however, that he was repeatedly beaten, tortured and raped by staff members, in a workshop the children dubbed "the paint shop" due to leaving the room "painted" with bruises and blood. Panzram hated the school so much that he decided to burn it down, and did so successfully and without detection on July 7, 1905. In January 1906, Panzram was paroled from Red Wing Training School, where he had been detained after stealing money from his mother's pocketbook. By his early teens Panzram exhibited alcoholism and had a lengthy criminal rap sheet, mostly for burglary and robbery offenses. At age 14, a couple of weeks after his parole and two weeks after attempting to kill a Lutheran cleric with a revolver, Panzram ran away from home to live on the streets. He often traveled via train cars, and later recalled having been gang raped by a group of homeless men on one of these occasions. Crimes Early crimes In the summer of 1906, Panzram was arrested for burglary in Butte, Montana, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment at Montana State Reform School in Miles City. He claimed that after a guard punished him, he assaulted and critically injured the man with a wooden board. As punishment, Panzram had to spend some time in solitary confinement. The following year, Panzram and a fellow named inmate James Benson escaped from Montana State Reform School and stole guns in Terry, Montana. In the coming weeks, Panzram and Benson left a trail of destruction along the U.S.-Canadian border as they repeatedly broke into stores and razed buildings, especially churches, to the ground with fire. In Fargo, North Dakota, the two men separated. Later in 1907, after getting drunk in a Helena, Montana, saloon, Panzram enlisted in the United States Army and was assigned to the 6th Infantry at Fort William Henry Harrison. Refusing to take orders from officers and being generally insubordinate, he was convicted of larceny for stealing $80 worth of supplies and served a prison sentence in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth between 1908 and 1910, with U.S. Secretary of War William Howard Taft officially approving