CHICAGO (AP) – Illinois prison officials are moving quickly to empty the high-security Tamms prison – once home to hundreds of inmates called “the worst of the worst” – and other facilities slated to be closed early next month.

Department of Corrections spokeswoman Stacey Solano said Monday that 124 inmates have been moved from Tamms to segregation units at Pontiac Correctional Center since Thursday. As of Monday, 12 inmates remained in Tamms’ single-cell isolation area and 48 others still were housed in the prison’s minimum-security unit.

Former Dixon Correctional Center inmate John Spires was serving two mandatory life sentences in Tamms for taking a DCC psychologist hostage in a storage room in the facility’s X-House and raping her on May 11, 2006.