It wasn't ever clearly spelled out in the show, and I don't think anyone has agreed with me, but I am 99.999% certain that Mr. Strawberry was the warden's dog. Mr. C had the dog leg in his car and spoke about other dog legs being found. Imagine that Mr. C surreptitiously broke into the warden's yard and kidnapped his dog, killed it, and had a piece of it in his car. The warden wouldn't have known this was his specific dog's leg. But then when Mr. C mentioned his dog's name to him, it would scare the crap out of him! How the heck would this prisoner know his dog's name?? How the heck would this prisoner have kidnapped the dog?? The warden would be scared crapless to know that this guy had the capacity to do that; add that to what Mr. C did to the prison lights, etc., and the warden would probably want to do whatever possible to get the guy dead, even if it meant skirting the law and having Ray kill him.

And doesn't "Mr. Strawberry" really sound like a dog's name??

That actually makes a lot of sense!

Thanks 🙂

I have also played with the idea that Mr. Strawberry was the warden's dog. Part of that is the phrasing of "your late Mr. Strawberry" - but, then who is Joe McClusky?

My mind goes in the direction of thinking that perhaps there was inmate whose death Murphy was responsible for in some way, or something like that. Something that would have real teeth as blackmail ("that information you are thinking about right now"), but, also, it seems we will never know for sure. It is a mystery left for us to fill in with our own imaginations, which I think is pretty awesome.