Locked In with Ian Bick - Bank Robber Reveals His Perfect Heist, FBI Capture & Life with the Peckerwoods in Prison | Shawn Myers

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Former bank robber Shawn Myers takes us inside his criminal past, revealing how he meticulously planned and executed the perfect heist. Shaun shares his insights into the mindset and methods behind bank robberies, what went right—and ultimately, how the FBI closed in and caught him. But that’s just the beginning. Shaun also opens up about his time in federal prison, where he ran with the notorious Peckerwoods. This is a raw and unfiltered look into the life of a man who lived on the edge and survived to tell the tale. #BankRobbery #FBIInvestigation #PerfectHeist #FederalPrison #Peckerwoods #TrueCrimeStories #Heistsecrets #LifeInPrison #prisonstories Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Shawn Myers: Website: https://tr.ee/S_wwJv9x5O TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@shawn_e_myers?_t=8pVKor0oE2g&_r=1 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skydivershawn?mibextid=LQQJ4d (https://www.facebook.com/skydivershawn?mibextid=LQQJ4d) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-m-4a73967a?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app (https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-m-4a73967a?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/my_retribution?igsh=MWwwd3JxMncwcnlicA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr Email: [e-mail] Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 Growing Up in Seattle: A City of Mischief 00:08:10 Early Challenges and Influence in Youth 00:16:02 The Thrill of Crime and Seeking Attention 00:24:35 Bank Robbery Confessions and Close Calls 00:32:44 The Bank Heist Begins 00:40:53 The Bank Heist and Police Evasion 00:49:31 The Arrest and Eyewitness Misidentification 00:57:47 Facing Sentencing and Family Reactions 01:05:30 Arriving at the Prison: First Impressions 01:13:34 Prison Life and Survival Rules 01:22:12 Surviving in Solitary Confinement 01:30:24 Prison Intake: First Impressions and Rules 01:38:32 Life and Work in Prison: The Ticket Printing Operation 01:46:47 The Art of Tattooing in Prison 01:55:13 Life Lessons from an Incarcerated Mentor 02:04:51 Turning Points and the Prison Experience Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And late night happy hour, Sunday through Thursday from 9 p.m. until close. Visit STK Steakhouse.com. Sean, welcome to Lockton, man, all the way from Wisconsin. We don't get too many Wisconsin guests out here, so grateful to have you. Nice, man. Thanks. I appreciate it. Yeah, you were just giving me a brief overlay outside.

I mean, your story, it's going to speak for itself, and, you know, I'm so excited to dive into it. And, you know, I'm sure we'll come up with a catchy title and thumbnail for this, which will, the viewers will know this episode is one they don't want to miss. Did you grow up in Wisconsin? I didn't know. I actually grew up in Seattle, Washington. I'm the oldest of six kids, and I grew up on a small farm outside of Seattle until I was a kid, a teenager. I didn't move to Wisconsin until 2003.

Oh, six kids. Yeah, I'm the oldest of six. What was the age range? So it was me and then about every year and a half, except for the two youngest ones were born both in 1978. So they were, they're Irish twins, and so I was nine when my youngest sister was born. Wow. Were you guys close growing up? For a while, but as I got older, there was such an age gap that it's not really easy. How do I engage with a 10-year-old when I'm 17, 18 years old?

Right. So I'm close to my youngest brother now a lot closer than I've been in a long time. Yeah, you know what's interesting when you're in those teenage years, you feel like you can't connect to the kids, but then when you get older, then you can feel like you're back to connecting the kids. Like now I can relate to a kid more than I did when I was a teenager. Sure. What did your parents do for work? So my father worked in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for 40 years. And my mother retired from a corporate job in operations management.

My parents are divorced. They got divorced in 1974. I'll go right into the story. They got divorced in 1974. I was four years old, and I remember lots of fighting and arguments between my parents. And then in 76, my father remarried my stepmother. My mother was out of the picture for a few years. And, you know, it was kind of tough on me as a kid. And I think then my father, he would work swing shift and I would work. And so my stepmom would work during the day.

So I didn't really see him. So in my early childhood, there wasn't a lot of supervision for like me and my brother, who was a year and a half younger. I was in trouble all the time. Right. It was, and it was stupid shit. It was, you know, shooting the flowers out of the neighbor's yard with a BB gun or, you know, mischievous things like building fires and burning gunpowder and just being a mischievous kid until I was a teenager. And then that mischievous stuff turned into car theft, burglary. And you know what? It wasn't for the money. I wasn't selling the cars. It was joyriding. It was breaking into a house and drinking some beer. You know what I mean? It was for the excitement of it as a kid. So that's kind of where I grew up. When I was about 15, I moved to Seattle.

My mom's back in the picture now. I move over to Seattle, which good or bad for me, right? The element is a lot more opportunity to commit petty crimes, but I didn't really get caught for much. You know, bigger city, they didn't know me as well, so I didn't get caught for as much there. Do you feel like you're lashing out because of, of the divorce? Yeah, that and just pure lack of supervision, right? Young boys especially need

supervision and they need somebody to teach them boundaries and I wasn't getting any of that. And so it kind of created a really weird dynamic where I kind of did whatever I wanted. I wonder if you weren't the oldest, if it would have had a different effect because then you would have had someone to look up to. Not my story to tell, but my younger brother. got in a lot of trouble as well, but my youngest brother never got in trouble. Never. So interesting. Yeah, he never got in trouble.

And I think some of that was watching his two older brothers, always in trouble. And he just, I'm not going down that road. He had that enough distance to see the bad outcomes from some of the things that we did. Were you taking high school seriously at all? Oh, hell no. So I barely graduated high school. In fact, I should have graduated. in 1988.

But my actual graduation year is 1989 because I joined the National Guard to get out of the house when I was a kid. And that didn't last very long. But I joined the National Guard. I went to basic training between my junior and senior years. So I got work credit. They called it work credit, which put me just barely over enough credits to graduate.

The school was like, just get rid of this. I was fighting all the time. very athletic, strong. I'm short and stocky. And so a lot of things came out as wanting to fight. And, you know, I didn't take anything from anybody if they said something to me. All right, let's go fight. Right?

So they were just glad to get rid of me, I think. Did you have a close group of friends at all? Were you, like, involved with anyone? Yeah. There was about six or seven of us that were running around doing the same things, right? The cart theft and the joyriding. and the burglary and things like that. But I was kind of a loner kid in a way.

I wasn't really tight with that group or any group. I didn't have a lot of confidence when I was in high school. I didn't have anything that really gave me confidence while I was in high school. So I didn't do good in my studies, smart enough kid, but just didn't do good in my studies. I didn't go to school if I didn't have to. There were many days that I would drive into the parking lot and drive right back out and just not go.

and you know my parents weren't there to supervise me or tell me hey you got to you got to you're going to school and find ways for me to get engaged in school what about drugs and alcohol did that play a part in your childhood man I would drink a few beers and I would smoke some pot right and like every kid but I didn't do any hard drugs when I was young that's good well it didn't turn out so good I did some of those hard drugs later on, and we'll get into that a little bit now that played out. Yeah. So you do make it through high school. I make it through high school. In fact, after high school, I go to my advanced training for the National Guard and then come home, and I ended up getting arrested for a burglary as an adult.

While still in the National Guard? While still in the National Guard. I'd come home. I had my in between my drills. I had committed a burglary with a friend of mine. and they didn't take them long to pick us up. I drove my truck, which was back in the 80s, it was low rider trucks, right? So I just drove my bright red low rider truck right up to the building and we loaded stuff in it.

It wasn't really thinking too clearly. They had us within 24 hours and they sentenced me to 120 days in the county jail. Why the burglary? Again, it was just like petty shit. You know, and this was the first crime I ever committed that I thought I'm going to sell these. tools and I'm going to get money. That was the first time that it ever happened. Well, they had us within 24 hours.

So none of the money ever came and they got the tools back. But they gave me 120 days. Were you making money or decent money through the National Guard? No, I was actually very mechanically inclined. So I was working in a machine shop in Seattle. In fact, one of Seattle's premier machine shops, I got a job in to work when I wasn't in the National Guard. And it was a great job, but I couldn't, you know, those friends that I was hanging out with,

it was drinking on Fridays, go steal a Camaro, go get, have some more beers, you know, it was stuff like that that we did. Were you, would you say you were more influenced to do some of these things by who you were hanging out with? Yeah, absolutely. Because while I was, I wasn't really a popular kid and I think there was a lot of that where I wanted to be, right? I would look around it, you know, a very athletic kid in high school, but only 5, 5, and 140 pounds. So I'm not going to play football. I'm not barely going to be able to play baseball, compete against some of these kids.

So I wasn't popular in that way. And I wasn't popular for any other reason. I wasn't really a stoner or anything like that. And so I think I longed for being the center of attention, but I didn't have a lot of confidence to find it in constructive ways. So now that now you get sent to the county jail for 120 days, what was that first experience, actually, your first time locked up away from home and away from the group of individuals that you were associating with? Good question. So I was scared, man. I was at the time I was, I think 18, I was 18 when I got arrested, 19 when I had to go into the county jail. I got to self-report to the county jail. Actually, they sent me to a work release program. Well, I was dating this girl and I would go there in the morning. before work one day I showed up there and the apartment was empty with nothing but the phone

sitting in the middle of the floor she knew me and then so I left there and drove to eastern Washington like 200 miles away had my buddy forged a signature on the work release paper slip saying Sean was at work today right and I drove 200 miles confronted her drove 200 miles back walked into the work release like hey there's nothing wrong here's my slip the guy said turn around to put your hands on the wall. At 7 o'clock this morning, your girlfriend called us and told us you wouldn't be at work today. Wow, she threw you under the book. Why? Did something happen? No. It was just, I was in the county jail and she just wasn't going to be with somebody who was a criminal. And she loaded her shit up

and moved back to Eastern Washington. And she didn't know about that before you, you actually got busted, that you were involved in stuff? Yeah, not really, because we had been dating for a while. So she really, you know, I wasn't telling people about it. You know, hey, I'm going to a party with my friends. And it was just, it was so childish. It wasn't like selling drugs where we'd have money or committing crime where you're going to have money, something to show for. Because that's not why we did it. The second you got arrested, do you get kicked out of the National Guard?

No. Actually, that's another great question. So while I'm in the county jail, the National Guard charges me with AWOL for not going. And I got sentenced to an additional 20 days in the county jail for. AWOL and given a general discharge out of the National Guard. What is general discharge? That's between honorable and dishonorable. There's a general discharge in the middle that's, they call it sometimes I call it less than

honorable or mine formally says general discharge on it. So when you went AWOL and they charged you with that, they didn't have you serve it in like a military barracks at all? No, they had me serve it because it was the Washington State National Guard. so they had me serve that time in the county jail. And it was funny because I was serving my time. And I just remember this. I was serving my time in the county jail.

They take me down there and my sergeant in the National Guard said, get those cuffs off of him. And I'm just walking around the armory thinking all I have to do is walk across that parking lot and just keep going. All over 120 days. But I didn't do it. Yeah. I went back to the jail. And I thought about that.

for a long time. Like, what if I would have ran? You know. You might not be sitting here right now. Yeah, I might not be. Probably would have gone out by now, but you could be in a different country. Who knows what it would happen, right? Yeah.

Wow. What was I just going to ask you? Wow, I had such a great question. And then I draw, oh, what do you think, looking back on it now, if you stayed with the National Guard, what would that have been like? Do you ever think about that? Yeah, I do a lot. And I think I don't regret anything that I've done in my life.

It turned me into the human being I am today and I'm okay with that. But there's a part of me that wishes I would have explored full-time military service. I've had lots of friends that did that, lots of people I've known that did that. And they lived a great life and they retired at 38 or 39 or 40 years old. And they get their military retirement and they get – then they go out and they go to college and they get a job and they move on to do great things. I probably could have used the structure in my life. You know what I mean?

What about conversations with your parents when you got arrested this first time? My father was very much somebody who took a hard line on crime. And it was very embarrassing to him when I got arrested. That's one thing I've had to forgive myself for. because, you know, he worked in the shipyard with a bunch of guys, and they knew his story.

And I can only imagine what he had to go through after I was arrested. Yeah, what was the stigma around, you know, getting arrested, your kids getting arrested back then, especially from, you know, coming from like a farm-type country to. Yeah. It was like all the neighbors kind of knew that we'd been in and out of trouble. You know, the police cars show up at the house. It's not like in the city where cops pull up to your house.

Everybody knows, like in your case, right? They just show up in the morning with 200 police cars and, right? It was a little more discreet, but they also published it. And back then, people read the newspaper. They didn't have social media, right? So they would just read the newspaper. Oh, Sean Myers of this address was arrested for burglary, right? It really strained the relationship with my parents.

Do you think that that time in county made you a better criminal or a worse criminal? Well, it got me on to bank robbery. And why is that? So I met a guy. He's not with us anymore. He was killed in a police shootout later. His name was Sean Sawyer. Two Shons.

Two Shons. And we're completely opposite. He was about six, four, real skinny, and I'm short and stocky guy. He was in there for bank robbery. And he told me about it. I looked at the federal sentencing guideline book. I knew how much time I would get if I got caught and I went out and did it. All from that time and county jail. That's how that happened.

So if you never met this guy, I would probably never have robbed a bank. You know this is like every script and every movie like where they watch the guy. And I got it gets even better because I told somebody who went and dead it. Wow. So you said you pulled the federal sentencing guidelines. How did you know that that was going to be a federal crime at that point? Because Sean Sawyer was getting charged by the feds and the Kitsap County Jail had a contact. with the feds to hold federal prisoners. Back then, they didn't have a lot of these MDCs everywhere. So the federal prison system has changed drastically since the early 90s until now.

And they didn't have MDCs everywhere. And so they didn't have an MDC in Seattle to send me to. So they contracted with county jail. So Sean Sawyer was there contracted. And they wore a different color uniform. They wore tan like the feds and the rest of us were wearing orange. Right. and there said federal inmate on the back, and they would, they were housing units with everybody else.

You know, housing units held about 40 people each. And man, they just mix people together. Yeah, it's a quintessential or the story that you hear about somebody goes to jail and hears how to do a crime and gets out and does it. It's exactly what happened. What was it for you about the bank robbery that had you hooked to it, like the idea of it when you were talking to this guy? The excitement of it. Right. So nothing I've ever done in life's been solely about the money. It's always been the experience. And whether that's work or hobbies that I've had or this crime thing, right? And so it was a thrill. But at the same time, I watched inmates who had been to prison or going to prison. And when you're in jail, those people can be idols to people who don't have a lot of confidence or who weren't the center of attention because they are right ooh that guy that guy he's

been right that's what you hear all the time and so for me it was again going back to my high school years not being the center of attention but kind of wanting that and and as we got to be friends I would I would say that we were friends I aspired to have that people looking at me in the same way some looking up to me whether it's in a positive way or negative way what exactly were his tips like did it give you a list of dues and don'ts and you were writing it down what was no it was he told me about it and i thought that can't be that hard so in fact i would read the newspaper and back then the west coast was like this epicenter of bank robbery this was uh in seattle there was uh scott spurlock who robbed banks in the 90s to up to 94 and he was killed by uh the feds he

had to shoot out them and he did it with guns and masks but 95 percent of bank robbers in the 90s were just passing notes. And so he was able to come into it and he told me the story about how he did it. And I thought, that can't be that hard. And you would read the newspaper, loan white mail enters the bank, here's the description, took an unknown amount of cash from the bank. It would just be a short blur. But you would see...

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Explore Ellies Eden at A-Z-U-R-E-S-R-E-Sandor.com. Two or three every day. Now, can you break down the audience that there is technically two ways to rob a bank? One is through the method you would choose, or one is, as you were explaining with the shootout. Yeah, yeah. So particularly people who are inexperienced or addicts, they're just trying to get some money for something.

So most bank robberies are somebody walks into the bank with a note. In my case, I wrote on a withdrawal slip and I'll go through the whole process. In fact, let me tell it, man. I got up in the morning and I walked to the bank. I literally took a withdrawal slip and I used my knuckles because I was smart enough to know about fingerprints. and I dropped the withdrawal slip out. I had my own pen. I wrote all cash faster you die.

I never touched that piece of paper with my fingerprints. I would pinch it between my fingers. I stood in line with everybody else and walked up to the counter, set the note down and said, and just stood there and looked at the teller. And that's how I did it. That's how most of them happen. However, there are a group of people who rob banks like they did.

If you, what is it, there's a documentary, 106 minutes or something with that shootout in Los Angeles in the 90s. The friend of mine that Sean Sawyer was killed, he got out of prison for bank robbery, got back into drugs, went back into a bank and robbed it. And when the cops came, he had a shoot out with him and they killed and shot him up. And so that's the difference, right? We have the people who are just passing notes for money. So when you got out of that county jail, do you hit one the next day? Are you putting planning into it? What's that process?

Man, this is really crazy. So I got out of jail and it was literally a like a Monday or Tuesday. I got out of the county jail and I went back to my mom's house in West Seattle. I got up the next morning at 9 o'clock, put on black shoes, black jeans, black t-shirt, black jacket, and walked six blocks to the bank. Walked in, took the withdrawal slip, all cash faster, you die. Walked, stood in line, took about 10 minutes of standing in line on a Monday or Tuesday morning. And I'll never forget her name, Linda Morincovic, was the teller.

I looked directly at her name, and that's never, that imprint has never left my mind. And she saw that note, and, man, I feel so bad. she looked terrified but there's no turning back at this point and so she stacked money on the counter and i had to tell her to stop she was so panicked and i couldn't i'd cut the inside of my jacket out and i was just shoving it in until no more would fit i didn't comprehend how many ones and fives you could get from a bank she just kept putting him up there and um and so i i ran out of the bank while i was very fit like running two miles in less than 12 minutes, 100 pushups, no problem, right?

So, and military from the military, right, the obstacle course. So instead of running down the streets on the sidewalks, I hopped through people's yards because they didn't have ring cameras and cell phones in 1990, right? And so I hopped through yards until I got home, six blocks away. Changed my clothes, got on my truck, and drove away. Wow. Why that bank did you pick? And are you looking at the security, if they have guards,

I was staking it out. It wasn't the first bank I walked into that morning. So I actually walked into another bank and I got a little nervous. You think I would have been nervous from robbing a bank anyway, but I got, this was one time in my life. I actually got nervous. And I walked in and I stood there for a long time and I thought something ain't right. I'm going to leave. And I left and just walked the next block over.

And I walked in and I looked at it and it just looked perfect. everyone was facing forward just kind of minding their own business very unaware and so yeah it was it was crazy now with the notes i'm assuming the surrounding people don't really know there's a robbery going on unless like the tellers look a co-teller next to her is maybe alarmed by it yep and and i think um looking back on it now the way that the tellers stood there with their faces dead pants staring at me and didn't turn their head, didn't say anything, just throwing money on the counter. That would give it away.

But on every, I robbed multiple banks, on every bank robbery, as I reached the door, I heard somebody yell, he just robbed me. Wow. And are you picking, how do you know which teller to go to?

I'm taking whatever teller the line says. You don't care if it's a boy or a girl. Don't care. Really? Yeah. What if he wants to play the hero? That would have been a game time decision, right? I probably would have ran, though.

I mean, lift if I'd another day, right? And back then and even today, bank tellers and bank employees are instructed. If you're robbed, you comply 100%, whatever they ask for. No diapaks, no alarms, you don't give them die packs or alarms. And that was one thing Sean Sawyer told me. He said, you can tell when they have a die pack in him. It feels like a brick. bend them all. So I would bend the packs of money because you can tell a die packs were a hard

plastic thing. But yeah, I would take whatever teller they gave to me. It didn't matter to me. That first haul, how much did you get? I want to say about $2,500. It all told in the banks when we get to the end is less than $30,000 on five bank robberies. That's what I've heard from most of the bank robbers I talked to. Yeah. And why is it hard to get an actual significant amount? In experience. Had I known then that there was a second drawer with more money, I would have gotten more money. What I did get more money each bank robbery I got because I learned, okay, this first bank robbery is all ones and fives. I want 20s, 50s and hundreds.

So the next bank robbery, so we'll just keep going with this. I robbed the first bank about three days later. I said, after that first one, though, I said, I'm going to do this again because it was the adrenaline rush for me. And so, um, so that day though, I took that money and I had that money and I, I went to a friend's house and I got to take a shower dude. I helped me out here and I, I, he didn't even, he didn't know I robbed a bank. I went in the bathroom and I took that money out and I threw it on the floor and I'm standing here. It looked like a lot of money. It's ones and fives and I was 19 years old.

What do I know, right? Man, the pile of money on the floor and I said, oh, I'm going to do this again. That's literally I said. that to myself. And then so three days later, I walked into another bank. One block, that bank that I went into the first morning, I went back to it, felt good, and I robbed it. Did the exact same thing, except this time I was so much more aware of my surroundings and sounds and noises that I can even envision today what the buzz sounded like in the bank and the bank tar say, next please, and the the sound of the pen writing on the note as I wrote all cash faster you die on the notes and I can now I'm

starting to be much more aware when I when I'm doing things like this so um the second bank a block down from the first one ran home and this time my sister was home and she knew she as soon as I cracked the door she was standing there and she looked at me and said what have you been doing nothing and I ran upstairs to my room and I threw the money on the bed and I took shower and I got in my truck and I left. Well when I left this bank I drove up and it's on a main intersection in West Seattle and there were cop cars lined up and I just drove right on past and away from West Seattle but now I knew I couldn't stay in West Seattle. Yeah, why did you decide to rob those so close to your home anyways?

Comfort. I think it was the same reason why if you watch crime, shows they always can pinpoint by the crimes where somebody's home is it's because you don't want to venture too far now this system do you think it could work in today's world with technology and security no no not at all everybody's got a ring camera everybody's got a phone um i i don't think it's there's much more CCTV out there and the feds could probably pull all of the people's data that were even in that vicinity at the time they can pull the phones they knew who was there they they can have everything and they have it so much faster than they could have ever had information. What was the press like after the second robbery so close next to each other?

The only, well, I got my nickname from the second bank. So they called me the patient bandit. The patient bandit? Because I walked into the bank, wrote my note, stood in line, walked up to the teller, all cash faster you die, went to leave the bank. when I opened the door there was an old lady standing there and I held the door open for her as she walked into the bank that I just robbed

and you had the money in you I had the money in my pockets and she said oh you're such a sweet young man I held that door open as soon as she went in boom I was gone and they weren't yelling or anything that you robbed the lady had just yelled he robbed me but she was deaf and I was fast I wasn't really overly concerned about it

did you ever have to like show that you had a gun like keep like your fingers in your pockets. No. And I'm really glad that I didn't because in the federal sentencing guidelines, that would have been an additional five years. It's an additional crime to have a firearm in possession during a bank robbery. And that's what we were talking about in the lobby, about how I would meet guys, and I'm sure you did in the feds,

where you would have one guy here for armed robbery and one guy for doing what you did. And the guy for armed robbery has minimum, you know, 10, 15 years. And then this other guy has the best. mandatory five. And this guy probably has all the money hidden and the guy that armed it got out with no money at a longer sentence. That's right, because they have that gun. And at the time, you remember in 19, I think it was 84, 87, the Sentencing Guidelines Act, I think it was 1987, created those guidelines. So it's literally a matrix that tells a judge how much time

to sentence you. Now, are you guys studying or are you specifically studying other? bank robberies? Like there was Boston's notorious for the bank robberies and all of that. You're not paying attention to anything. No. And had I had the Scott Spurlock story happened prior to me robbing banks and then somebody tells me about bank robbery in the county jail, I may have been more inclined to go that route because look, the Scott Spurlock story was big news.

He was all over the media. He was on the Seattle News every time he'd rob a bank for three or four days. They called him Hollywood. Yeah, look him up. Hollywood, man. He had disguises. He went in here, him and his crime partners. They had masks on.

They went in with guns. They knew what they were doing. They scoped out banks for a time before they did it. Yeah. Do you wish you wore a mask during your robbers? No. And you know why? Because here was my theory.

They didn't have facial recognition at the time. so that wasn't a deal. I knew they were going to get a picture of me. What I didn't know was that they would get a picture of me that was as clear. I got a little scar right here. Yeah, that picture showed up. So all that grainy stuff they show on TV ain't real.

They get real good pictures. But I knew that without information to match me, Sean Myers, to that photo, that photo is useless. But your family, did they see the photos at all? They never put the photos. All it was was a shirt, short blurb in the newspaper. Lone white mail enters the West Seattle branch of C-First Bank on this day and left with an undisclosed amount of cash.

Wow. Not even in the local paper blown up the face. Have you seen this man? Nope. Wow. Do you think that would have stopped your spray right there? Oh, I would have been busted. My mother and her partner live in West Seattle. They would have seen that and said, and my mom would have told on me. She would have turned you in? Oh, yeah. She would have. And she should have, right? So now what about tracing the bills? Are they traced back then at all?

So there is a bundle of bills or there were at the time. They put diapacks and they were just starting to use tracers in the 90s. In fact, that's how they caught Scott Spurlock is a tracer following the van with the money in it. What they used a lot of was dipax back then that would if you left the bank, it was at a perimeter. you know, when it wasn't getting a signal, it would blow up, and pink or blue or yellow dye would explode everywhere and smoke would come out. So there were guys I was in jail with who had die packs explode on them while they were running. Really? Yeah. Now, what about the third robbery?

What happens in between the second and third? Now that you're moving into different, you decide to go out of your city. Yeah. So now I'm getting to that third one on that second one I said to myself, I'm going to do this as much as I can until they catch me. Right? I'm going to keep and it was totally the adrenaline for me, right? I'm an adrenaline junkie.

And this is, you want to get your heart rate fired up, run into a bank and rob it once, right? So I knew I couldn't do that anymore. So this third bank robbery is pretty interesting. I went to the Northgate Mall, which was on the north end of Seattle, kind of far out from where I lived. And I drove out or I rode the bus out there and it was attached to the mall.

And I walked into that bank the same ways I did it. But I was more nervous because I didn't, I knew I had to, I couldn't run all the way back to West Seattle. I didn't have that comfort. But I was gutsy, man. I just went in just like I did before. And this bank I got the most money out of, which was about, I want to say, nine to 12,000. It was kind of a peak high for me. So I go in, but the teller stopped for a minute.

And I literally said, if you don't give me the money, I'm going to jump over this counter and fucking take it myself. Instantly, that terrified look, and she started piling money on the counter. And again, I shoved it until I couldn't shove no more. I was like all, like, hundreds and 50s and 20s, and I'm shoving it in as fast as I can't. I told her, stop. That's too much money.

I can't do this. so I left the bank and I ran straight across to imagine a mall parking lot right with cars so I ran zigzag through the parking lot and I ran out and I went into a small supermarket and I bought a soda with this bulging jacket full of bills right and it's really puffy because they're not stacked they're just shoved in there and so I buy a soda and I asked the the person working checkout I said hey can you call me a cab? Oh yeah, no problem. Called a cab. And I went outside and I stood there for a minute and I thought, oh shit. That's probably a bad idea because now they can, hey, did somebody call a cab from here? So I ran out of the store, took off down the street. Well, it was kind of an alley type street. Imagine cities, right? Alley type street. And a police car turned straight toward me. And I no joke said, because there's not much room on either side. I said, if they turned their lights on. I'm going right over the top of this car. I'm just going to keep running.

And as I keep jogging like I'm jogging, it was a female police officer. She kind of pulled over and let me right by. Just by time she got to the end of the alley, she flipped on her sirens. But then I thought, she can't have a description that quick. It's not possible. So I just kept jogging. I went to a bus station. Bus pulled up, jumped on the city bus, rode the city bus until I could get to a bigger bus station and then went home with this big puffy thing full of money bills in my and terrified i sat on that bus sweating like a crack addict just sweat pouring off me and i had to sit there for 30 minutes so i could get back toward west seattle to go home you know why didn't you want to bring a bag or anything um i viewed it like i don't want something in my hand

Right. If I'm going to have to run and jump over fences and run, I want my hands free. Did money ever fall out? No, I didn't lose any money. It was stuffed in that jacket inside my coat, you know. It was October in Seattle, so it was wet and rainy. So I kind of fit in with the coat, you know. Did you have a certain branch or a chain you would rob, or was it all a variety?

Yeah. It was Seafest Bank at the time. They don't have them anymore. Now, I use the names of the new banks if people ask me out so they know where it was, you know, but Seafest Bank, I robbed three of those. Were you allowed to bank thereafter or no? You know what? So when we get to like when I got out, getting out of jail, I was terrified to go to a bank, period. And we talk about, you know, I was on paper for three years too.

And I was like, I got to have a bank account. I even asked my parole officer, this gal I said, do I just go to the bank? You just go to the bank and get a bank account like everybody else. It felt so weird walking into a bank again. It was the weirdest feeling. So now do you come at a fourth one or are you caught after the third? Oh, no, no. I'm not done yet.

Okay. Let's hear about the fourth. So the next day, so I went back to West Seattle because that made me feel hebie-jee-g-be right now. And now I'm not living at my mom's. I went and stayed in hotels. So I'm staying in a hotel by the C-Tac airport, but I felt really comfortable. I parked my truck in front of my mom's. I'm going to do the same thing.

I'm going to run through the yards. And I walked into a Seafirst Bank branch, and there was a man sitting there with a newspaper, just like a chair like I'm sitting in now. And I walked up to the counter. I wrote my note, and he didn't move. And he sat there. Now I'm in the bank five or six minutes,

and the line is extraordinarily long this time. And I'm standing there, and I keep looking at this guy, like, and he's not moving. He's not flipping pages. He's just sitting there. And I thought, you're shit, me. That cannot be like law enforcement. I was only one or two more people and I said, oh, I forgot my ID.

And I left. Come to find out that was an FBI agent. They'd put them on that street to a couple FBI agents looking for me, seeing if I'd come back to there. So I left, left that area, went into another bank. It's kind of the same West Seattle, but farther up the street. robbed the bank and talk about terrified. It was the first time that I ever really got scared robbing a bank

because a guy did try to follow me and I heard him yelling, hey, you, stop! And then I thought to myself really quickly, man, I can run two miles in just over 11 minutes. That fool ain't going to catch me. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, through the yards. And then my neighbors, my mom's neighbor yelled at me because I came from her front yard, jumped over her fence.

She's in the yard doing yard work. And I'm like, oh, hey, how you doing? Boom, back over the fence. And she's yelling at me through the fence. Don't jump over my fence. She was an older lady, right? Don't jump over my fence. And so I went in then through the basement door and back up

and ended up getting in my truck and driving away. And each time I robbed one on West Ham I would drive close enough, I could look up the street and see the cop cars. Don't you think that you are causing or bringing a little bit more heat to you by robbing the same branch, the same type of same chain? Because that FBI agent wasn't going to be maybe at a different one. Yeah, he was in it. It was another C-first bank and he was in it, right, sitting there. And I didn't find out about that until I got arrested.

But, yeah, I think more heat came because I robbed him on the same street. I robbed three banks that are literally one corner, second corner, third corner. three banks I robbed right there in a row. What was going through your mind after pulling off three? Do you feel like you're untouchable, invincible now? Yeah, in fact, I kept saying it to myself, I'm going to do this every day until I get caught. And it was, man, I don't remember the day,

but something happened and I didn't get to rob that, that there was a day between that third bank and that fourth bank I just told you about. and yeah, I was feeling like they're not going to catch me, right? I could probably do 50 or 60 of these. And then I even thought, once I burn up Seattle, I'm just going to go to Portland. Like, I can just get in my car and drive around. I can go burn up, you know, until I get caught.

How are you living? What were you spending the money on? Strippers. Cocaine, no. I still hadn't done any hard drugs, but I was drinking a little bit more than I were before. And I was spending it as strip joints. You know, I'd go to a strip joint. I'd go out with my buddies, the guys I told you about before, and we'd go drinking.

I would pay for everything at a strip club. And if I didn't have any money, I know where I'm going to get more. Did your friends know that you were the rape robber? Nobody knew. So no one knew. No one knew. And I knew better than to tell anybody, which I screwed up later on. Imagine if you're on drugs during this time period.

You wouldn't have made it past the first one. No, I wouldn't have. Wow. No. So you're following all the rules. You know what you have to do to keep pulling off these heists. What happens next after that? Yeah, so I'm staying at the, out by the airport in hotels,

and I'm moving hotels every one or two days. That way they don't see me too many times. You know, one person at the counter doesn't see me, and then it does come up on the news. That person's staying in this room, right? And so I'm staying there, and it was a Saturday morning. It was on October 20th, 1990. And I could see a bank across the street.

from the hotel that I was staying in. So I waited, got up, all black again like normal, walked into the bank, robbed it, ran back over to the hotel room, sat in the hotel room with the money on the bed, watching the cops show up to the bank. And then they start fanning out and looking. Of course, now they know there's a pattern. They know what the guy kind of looks like.

And so now they're just, hey, this guy's run. He's, if we gave him a minute, he's a mile away. right and so how far can I go in that period of time right and and there's no way it takes them five or ten minutes to all get to the bank and coordinate what they're going to do if you're not carrying a tracer or have a die pack explode or somebody followed you it's pretty tough for them to catch you back then because again no one had cell phones no one had ring cameras right there wasn't as much CCTV back then how are you making sure you weren't being tailed if you were at all So I wasn't really.

My theory was that if I jumped things like ran through people's neighborhoods and through patches of woods, that that alone would keep 95% of anybody from even trying to attempt to follow me. Right. So we know obviously how this ends. You didn't get away with it. What was the fatal mistake that got you caught? Yeah. So a couple of days, well, this is kind of how the FBI got my name was.

there was a guy that I was also in county jail with Sean Sawyer with. And he called me up, right? I'd given him my number and he called my mom's house. And so I ended up getting connected with him. And we went and got drunk. And we were sitting at a bar who wasn't, and I was a baby face. How they served me beer, I don't know. But I sat there and drank.

And then we literally had to drive like a half a mile to his house, but I was going like five miles an hour. I was just, I was so drunk. And then we got to talking and I said, yeah, man, I robbed a bunch of banks. No, you didn't yet. I said, but you can't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody. The next day he was arrested for breaking a coin machine at a car wash.

And you know the story from here, right? He says, hey, if you don't give me my parole violation, I'll tell you who's robbing those banks. And so I robbed that. that last bank on October 20th, that it all went down on like maybe October 15th, 16th, 17th, somewhere. I'd said, hey, I robbed a bank, right? And so he told that's, and then they, of course, got my booking photo. And then they got the bank photos.

And they're like, oh, yeah. Wow. So what happens next once they put the pieces together? So this is the, I'd say the saddest part of my story. the day I robbed that last bank, same day my sister died, she was 19 years old. So I was 20 at the time,

and I got a page, I had a pager, and my mom page me, and I went to the hospital 12 hours after I robbed that bank and went to the hospital and she passed away that night. Well, the next,

then my father, who was out of town, hunting in eastern Washington, he, we called my grandparent, parents house and I said, Dad, you got to come home. She passed away while he was driving. And then so I was in the hospital. I had to tell him, hey, man, Kim didn't make it. And so I went home with him and I stayed there for a couple of days until her funeral. Then I was arrested

at her funeral in the cemetery for bank robbery by the FBI. So they were staking out the whole cemetery? Yeah, man. In fact, you know, what a great way to be able to wear suits and no one No, right? But when, you know, you told your story, I listened to you on Matthew Cox podcast, right? And you tell about how they came at 6th in the morning. Dude, I couldn't believe how many FBI agents were there. It was unreal. Two of them after the service was over. And I have to credit the FBI. They knew who I was on the, before the 20th. They waited until after that funeral. They gave me that. Do you think they did it for that? I think they did it intentionally. I think they knew. look, this guy's not going to rob another bank. We know where he's at right now.

Let's let him have this. And then as soon as the service was over, I turned to walk back. I was riding with my father. I turned to walk back. Two guys came up beside me, grabbed my arms and said, Sean Myers, you're under arrest. And, man, they put my wrist behind my back all the way to my upper neck. And I thought my shoulders were going to rip out.

And all of a sudden I saw, and I'm a pretty aware of person, but from every tree there were county sheriffs and police city police and FBI agents and all these and I look and there's all these black cars all over the place and I'm like y'all fuck this is bad this is bad and they so they scoop me up at the funeral my my my mom's brother-in-law came up and said hey what are you guys doing and they said step back Sean's under arrest and my uncle said what the fuck for and they said bank robbery and i turned and looked at him and his face was like and that was it was in my mind it was so dead silent at that minute they put me in an SUV had two cops one on each side of me and one guy driving and off they went as soon as we got away from

the funeral they transferred me to an fbi car with one FBI agent and one in the front and took me to the Seattle FBI office. Do you remember the look on your dad's face when this was happening? I didn't see my mother or my father. I literally, everybody started, you know, how they do and turned to walk away, and cops were on me. And I was probably, and when they were escorting me from where I was standing to the car, they weren't letting me have any time.

They were hot foot in it. They literally were half carrying me. They were running with me. Get me in the car, get me out. out of there. Looking back on it, would you have robbed at another bank again or was your sister's death enough to stop in? No, man, I would have kept robbing banks. Those are two independent events, mutually exclusive. I easily would have went to robbing banks. In fact, I probably would have done it. We buried her on the 25th of October and I probably would have done it 26th. Now, if that guy,

if you never told that guy, do you think you would have been caught anytime soon? No, I think I would have got away with it a little bit more. I think living in hotels, I was really mobile. I just had one bag of clothes. I think I probably would have got away with it until they put me on TV or a picture in the newspaper. Once that picture happened, I would have been busted. You know, that adrenaline rushes, that does more than any drug can do for you. Like I remember like when I was at the prison camp literally escaping to not to escape permanently. To go get food, right? Yeah.

But that feeling that I experienced, I'm sure, is what you experienced. It is. And it almost like debilitates you, but it keeps you going at the same time. It's just no other feeling like it's just, it's crazy, which is why I can understand like when you're shot or anything like that, that adrenaline rush. You don't really feel anything in that moment. You know, I, after each bank robbery and even today telling the story, my heart races, I would imagine like people who crave cocaine or methamphetamines, right? I can feel how my heartbeat and how my breath was and how it felt in the back.

Like I can feel it right now. A little bit of dry throat, that adrenaline is running through me. And it's, it was, I don't think most people understand. unless you felt that type of adrenaline, like how powerful that is. Now, at the FBI office, do they start questioning you right away? And are you open or are you lawyering up? I cop to it. Okay.

I still am a baby-faced 20-year-old kid. I look like I was 16, right? They haul me in there and the FBI agent, and first I'm trying to be a smart ass, and he says, they sit me down and they said, hey, okay, we want to question you. They take your shoe laces. Of course, I'm wearing a suit, so they take my belt. They take my shoelaces away and they handcuffed me to this chair. It's a small conference room table.

And they pop me down in there and takes them about an hour and they come back. Well, it's the end of the day. So they're trying to get me to the county jail so that they can go home, right? And so I'm sitting there and they said, look, we don't have a lot of time. We got you. You want a cop to it. And I said, no, that's not me. They act like they were going to pack me up.

I said, okay, okay. He slid a picture across the table to me. and it was of the second or third bank robbery and there's a picture of only like maybe this much in my face like a four by six section and that scar is visible this is in 1990 those cameras and banks are better than they show on TV and that in that scar was so visible I'm like yeah you guys got me and they knew that I had done three they actually originally picked me up for three and I was stupid I said hey you're going to ask him about the other two? I didn't know. You know what I mean? I thought you guys and oh, well there's one more in between here and one more there because not one of the descriptions of me are even remotely close.

Male 5-7 to 5-9 long brown hair, brown leather jacket, plaid shirt and blue jeans. I wore black all five times. But eyewitness testimony isn't all that great. When somebody's scared, they're not, you met me, I'm 5-5 on a green. good day. Yeah. Right. All of them had me taller, bigger than I was, right?

The camera footage thing's so interesting. I wonder if they do that on purpose because like when I see like when they, the police published stuff now of robberies, it looks so like your iPhone quality is better than these cameras. And I wonder if they just do that on purpose to show that, you know, that they think that they don't know this person. It is, I think so. There's got to be more to it because there's other cases where somebody was arrested and the

seam of the jeans had a specific pattern and so they had a picture of that section and they matched it to jeans from somebody's closet. Yeah. So they're better than they think. Now, do you know how much time you're facing when you're sitting down with them the first time or does that come after? Oh, yeah. I knew that I was going to get somewhere around seven or eight years of time. Okay. That they'd sentenced me to. Yeah, I knew in my head.

So what happens after you confess to the whole thing? Do they assign you an attorney? Okay, so I confess right there to the FBI. They took me to the county jail in Everett, Washington, which is this Nahomish County Jail, which is bigger than the county jail I'd been at in Kitsap County. And they take me there, and they have different wings. And so since I'd never been to prison, they put me in a wing with a bunch of people who were awaiting trial who hadn't been to prison. So I come in there. Now I've got the tan on and not the orange on, right?

and and so people are looking now I got that attention remember I told you that attention they people are like you rob banks oh tell me about that but when I first got there I actually had strep throat so I was sick and I didn't know it well after a couple days I couldn't it was so crowded that you would have to lay on floors for like three or four months before you could get a cell that's how overcrowded the jail was and I laid there a couple of days I didn't even get up to eat the infection was so bad and finally the the cop said look you're going to medical tonight we got to get you in there so they came down and took me had really bad strap throat um they so they got that cleaned up but it took three or four months and it wasn't anything like the kitsap county jail because there were more fights it was more in the city um you know it's it's not like a LA County jail obviously or not like Rikers but but there was a lot more fights and things like that going on. And so now I was a little more scared because this isn't like the Kinsap County Jail.

There's people are saying you better get ready to fight. Yeah, was there gang activity at all in those counties in the county jails? Yeah. And so Seattle had a lot of crips and bloods, obviously, at the time. They kept them separate, just like most county jails do. They keep them separate. The gangs were primarily Latino gangs and black gangs. were the gangs. There were a few motorcycle clubs in the area and occasionally you'd see somebody,

but the way they segregated us, if you'd been to prison before and you're awaiting trial or you're on a probation hold or something, they had a whole separate wing for you. And the concept was to keep experienced people away from any experienced people in the hopes that this storytelling doesn't lead to more crimes. Were you asking around while you're in the county what to expect because you're a young white kid in this county jail saying, hey, what do I expect in the feds? How do I move? Lots of people would tell me like, look, dude, you're going to have to fight, right? It's going to be, it's not going to be like you think. And most of these people had been to state prison, not federal prison, and there is a difference for those of us who've been to feds

and state prison. And I think at the time there was a lot, federal prison up until the 90s, didn't have as many gang members, didn't have as many lower type crimes, a lot of financial crimes, RICO cases, lots of people I was in prison with were serving RICO cases. So there was a lot of that, but not a lot of theft and drug sales unless you were like a big time drug kingpin or something, right? You really had to do something like in your case, right? It was kind of a low amount for the feds, Right. Yeah, the dollar amount was ridiculous, especially for a trial, too. Right, exactly, right.

They spent more prosecuting me, chasing me, and the trial. Than the whole now. Yeah, yeah. So, and this one they tried to keep you separated, but I would ask, I would ask people, and I heard enough stories. I knew I was going to have to fight. Now, you weren't thinking that you would go to a low security prison because your thing wasn't violent at all.

What was your thought process? You know what? There was none on where I would end up. I knew I was going to go to prison and I'd heard and, of course, seen on TV all the different levels of prison from camps to maximum security prisons. There was a lot of that. And so I kind of knew what it was like, but I never really gave thought to, am I going to a camp?

Am I going to a medium? Right. So how long does the legal process take to play out for you? I was arrested on October 20th and I was sentenced on February 12th, I believe. Which is very quick for the feds. I raised my hand. I pled guilty. I said, I'm guilty.

I met with an attorney. They assigned me an attorney right away. I met with an attorney. We talked about the case. I said, hey, I know what I'm in for. What I didn't count on was what's called the expressed threat of death. That or you die that I wrote. They did get one of my notes.

because she threw so much money up there, I just forgot about my notes. I was taking. But because I used that, it was two more points. So if you've seen the sentencing guidelines matrix, the top line is your criminal history. Well, because I'd had the burglary charge and stuff, I classified as level three, middle of the board. But I had 26 points because robbery is 18 points, 20 points, or two more points for financial institution. number of crimes took me to like 27 and then they gave you one point off if you pled guilty. Yeah, for accepting responsibility.

Accepting responsibility. So I had 26 points on the downscale, which was 78 to 97 months. And then your age didn't help when it comes to designation and everything because you're really young. I was, yeah. Because there's two systems. You have the sentencing points and then your points on where they classify you. Where they're going to classify you, which happens from your PSI, right? Yeah.

So, so yeah, it was, I was. But I wasn't scared. I don't get nervous or scared of things. Was your family supportive during that time? Neither one of my parents would talk to me. I didn't talk to either one of them. My mom probably for a year. My mom's partner wrote me a couple letters,

and I wrote back and forth with her for a while, and I was super thankful that she was willing to do that because I had nobody to write me letters. You know, my brother and sisters would occasionally. And my next youngest brother, he came to visit me in the county jail and stuff. He was pretty active in staying in contact with me. Did you speak at your sentencing? I did.

At your sentencing, of course, you have to allocute, right? So I stood up and said, I did this and, hey, I apologize. And ironically, the judge, because it was so controlled by the sentence, Guidelines Act, she was pissed off and she said, I would not sentence you to this if I didn't have to. She went on a whole tirade for like 15 minutes about how the Senate had taken away a judge's power to judge. And she said, you are too young. You are 20 years old, right?

I had just turned 21 while I was in jail. and she was very adamant that she did not believe in the sentencing guidelines, but the book is the book. The prosecution would have appealed it. I would have been brought back in for sentencing, and they would have sentenced me within 78 to 97 months. Looking at the evidence, do you think you could have wanted a jury trial? Because they didn't have much, did they?

Did they have fingerprints? Man, they had those photos. Do you think the photos that wouldn't have been any reasonable doubt? They couldn't have found someone that looked kind of like you at the county. I don't know. Maybe. Right. That's just one piece to the puzzle, you know?

They didn't catch you at. Maybe that's what they were waiting for, aside from the funeral. They wanted to see if you'd rob again because there's nothing better. Nothing better than catching somebody in the act. Yeah. Right. Because from an outsider's perspective, they didn't have much. They just had the photo.

I never really put any thought into that. Yeah. I wonder what that outcome would have been. So how much, what was your final sentence? 78 months. 78 months. Yeah, she sentenced me to the bottom end of the guideline. So 78 months plus three years probation. The total that I got out of the banks, again, I think it's $29,000 out of five banks. Order restitution, obviously, and of course the three years of paper. Have you paid back the restitution?

I paid back everything but a few hundred bucks of it. And when you get off, when you're on probation, you send it to the court who disperses the money. When you get off probation and my probation officer said, Well, you've got to call the banks and ask to set up a payment plan. The only bank that I owed that few hundred bucks left to was Washington Mutual. And they said, we've got our insurance money. We don't want shit from you. It would be too much work for them to try and figure out how to do that. Wait, you didn't have to pay the financial litigation unit or anything?

They didn't have that. Oh, they didn't have that back then. Wow. No, I had to pay restitution every month, based on my income, every month while I was in jail. and I'm a hard worker, so, you know, I wanted to get a job and I did that. So once you get sentenced, they bring you back to county until they pick you up to take you to your actual spot. Yeah. So now I've got a cell and it's cold, right?

So it's the wintertime. And, of course, you're just a cinder block wall away from the outside laying on a concrete, you know, slab with a two-inch thick plastic-en-en-cased mattress, right? and and it took them two weeks to come get me. It was all it took from my sentencing. And so they come knocking at 2 o'clock in the morning. And of course, I'm bundled up in blankets and I'm shivering cold, right? And they come and get me and I'm, oh, I'm happy because the dayroom area is warmer than your cells. I'm getting out of wherever we're going.

It's going to be warm. So they, right there, they chain you up and they march you downstairs. And then you sit in these holding cells in the county jail for probably, couple of hours and this bus pulls up, right, and they march you out and puts you on a bus. Of course, they black box everybody. And, you know, for those of you that don't know, a black box is basically a plastic box that goes over your cuffs and it takes away your ability to flex your elbows out. So you have to sit like this.

Well, so they put me on the bus and take us to the what's called Boeing Field or I think they might call it King County Regional Airport or something now. and Conair shows up, and there's all these buses in circles, and Conair shows up, and they back that plane up, and that ramp comes down. Now, this is the old one. I don't know what they have now. It was white with two thin blue stripes and no tail number on it. And they back up, and people start getting off the bus, and they take people off the buses to go on the plane.

They don't tell you where you're going. There's none of that information. So now I'm like, I wonder where I'm going. I'm getting ready to go get on the plane. No plane ride for me. So they load all the people and the cops around this thing. It's like guarding the president because I don't know who's on that plane. And you know it probably came from El Reno, right?

And you've experienced El Reno, but it came from probably El Reno. And all these buses are dropping people off and picking people up. And then off they go and that plane pulls away and you're down the highway. Yeah, it's quite a scene. It's literally exactly like on Conair. Like that movie, yeah. It is exactly. They hit it on the head with that.

Except for the actual plane itself. That was a little bit. Yes. That wasn't quite right. Yeah. Because on the federal con area, you're there with the worst of the worst and they're not in separate cages or anything. Yeah. So if they want to bring that plane down, they'll find a way to bring it down.

They'll find a way to bring it down. Convict ingenuity, right? So they put you on the bus and then where do they take you to? They took me to Federal Correctional Institution and Sheridan, Oregon. And because they don't tell. tell you, they didn't tell us anything. Even when we got on the bus, there was no, hey, you're going to FCI Sheridan. There's none of that. So FCI Sheridan at the time had been open for a couple years. It's a medium security. A couple high profile inmates there, but mostly people who

either didn't classify into maximum or low. You're going to go to medium, and they do that on a point system. Very similar to your crime system, how they do it in the sentencing guidelines book. they take all of your criminal history and they work through a matrix and they come up with where you're at in terms of points and because of mine I was safely in the medium so they send me to this FCI Sheridan and of course the bus pulls up outside the gate

and it looks like a college campus it's got these housing units and these nice paths with trees and I'm thinking that might not be so bad so of course black box in your chains you know and you we go into the same place where the shoe is at at FCI Sheridan.

And, of course, they have all the intake questions. Fill out this clipboard. And they ask you about your gang affiliation and your crimes and where your family and you have to fill out all this stuff. Took all day sitting there. And there was only like six of us. They're in no hurry, right? They got to go to Chow.

Just keep you locked in that box until they come back. And so about four, right after the four o'clock stand-up count, because those of us and the feds know about that, right? So right after the four clock stand up count, they come get us and they take us, walk down this. You got your little bed roll. You don't have any personal property because you came from county and they don't let shake anything, but your paperwork. I've heard lots of your folks say, paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, paper, paperwork. So I got my paperwork.

That's my keys to the yard, right? So I got my paperwork and my bundle and they take us to a housing unit and they put me in 2B. and it's kind of a bi-level triangle shape, maybe 120 cells in their, let's see, 120 individual cells. And the center of the triangle is kind of open. They've got a TV, and they've got TV rooms in the corners. Well, they take you up the first set of stairs,

and that's where the CO's office is at. And they tell you to get a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a bar of soap. So the toothpaste was one of those little tiny tubes, right? The Bob Barkers. Yeah, exactly. And a toothbrush that had been sawed in half, right? So you can't make a shank out of it.

It's like a little thumb. Yep, it's like a little thumb. It's about how big it is. So, but I'll never remember, never forget, I opened that drawer and the soap was dial soap. And to this day, you know how you get those memories when you smell something? if I smell a bar of dial soap or I walk through the store, I take myself right back to that day in the spring of 1991 when I opened that drawer up and dial soap smell hit me in the face.

It reminds me of that every time I smell that soap. Yeah, for me it's the Irish spring soap because that was such a popular one, the green bar. I've never seen that until I got to prison. Right. So who did they put you in a cell with that first time? Yeah, so, man, one of the, I always look for back on my life and I think about people who were guiding me in the right direction. Well, they put me in a cell with a guy named Gary, Doc, Dash.

Doc is probably one of the smartest human beings I've ever met in my life. He was just, and a very interesting individual from the Pacific Northwest. And he's got his own story to tell, but he's an interesting guy. and they put me in his cell with Doc. And Doc's about 45 and I'm 21. And he works as a clerk in the food service. He's a clerk does all the food ordering, but he was also super intelligent

and was doing paperwork for people, helping people court cases. And he's actually helped many people get out of jail. And he had a 35-year sentence for making methamphetamines. and so he'd already served a bunch of his time at this point. So Gary was and is, I went to see him in fact a couple of months ago. He's got Parkinson's, but I went and spent a day with him because he's been out a couple years. But man, was he an interesting guy?

Talk about the stories and the shit he's seen and who he's been involved with because he always was one of the guys trying to put himself in the right spot to do something. What was his reaction to you entering the cell? Because it's always those first awkward moments when you're going in, you're sized in the person up. So he actually wasn't home. He was still up in food service. And so after Chow, it was when he came back. So I wouldn't go in there.

I was going to say, I'm going to wait until he shows up. And he came up with his books marching. And he's kind of a tall guy about 6'4, 6'5 maybe. And he had long hair, but it was great. And the big mustache that came down. I mean, he fit the convict look, right? And as soon as he stopped and he said, you're my new bunky, eh? And I said, I said, yep, come on in.

So I take my bed roll and I go in there and throw on the top bunk. And he spent the next two hours just learning about me. Really a great guy, open, funny. You're going to get along fine here. Here's what you don't do. What were the things he told you not to do? Man, he said, this is what he told me. He said, don't gamble, don't do drugs and don't mess with the queers.

That's what he said. He said, you will be fine at a medium security if you don't do those things. So that's just been around forever. That's it, right? But, you know, we all do that anyway. It doesn't matter, right? And so, yeah, that was the first person they put me in Sulton. We got along great.

He helped me get a job in food service while I was waiting to get into Unicor, federal prison industries. He got me a job up there in the bakery, and he liked it because I worked at night and he worked during the day. so I would go up there at night and work in the bakery and make the donuts and the cinnamon rolls and stuff. And, you know, the deal with getting some food out of the kitchen, he helped me out with, hey, he knows that guy. That's who you go to when they shake you down before you head back to the unit. And I'd smuggle food back and make some cheesecakes and, you know, bring when we'd have donut day,

I'd bring a stack of donuts back and sell donuts for a dollar a piece. That's always the best when you and your cellmate are on separate schedules. It's the greatest. Because then you get free time to your stuff. and you're not on each other's asses. And food service, when there's a lockdown, you can still go out. You still get to go out. And so, but he also told me about, you know, I've heard you how you pee in prison, right?

You just don't stand up and let it splash all over. So, hey, those of us who've done some time, we sit down and pee. And it might seem weird as a man saying that, but hey, it's silly's got a point. Was that weird to you when he told you that? Oh, yeah. It was because you didn't have to do that in the county because it was a communal toilet, And it wasn't in your cell. What was the age difference between you two?

About 23 or 24 years. That probably did you better in the long run, having an old had to kind of show you the ropes. Because imagine if you went in there with someone your age who was more hot-headed or involved in stuff, that would have been a whole different scenario for you. Well, being a young guy and I would hang out with other young guys outside of the cell, right? Out on the yard, we'd lift weights or whatever we were doing, right? and I'd play softball and stuff but man I was like he told me he said man

don't argue with the cops it's not going to get you anywhere I did it anyway I ended up not they would tell us we had to have our bed made by you know eight o'clock in the morning well I worked all night well so one day I told a cop you know what fuck you I'm gonna sleep I'm gonna sleep here I'm gonna sleep in the shoe

that was the first time I went to the shoe lost 15 days a good time and had to spend seven days in the shoe oh man what was a shoe like in that facility It was not too bad. It was more like some county jails where it's a solid door. I called the bean trap. You got the bean trap and you got the little glass that you can look out of.

And there's two people in a cell. And so they put me in a cell with this other young guy. And of course, now we're doing shit like you're not supposed to, you know, keeping people awake and drawing on the walls and shit like that, right? Wow. Yeah. So how long were you at that facility for? I was there less than a year.

Why did you stay there only less than a year? So, man, I had this guy hung out with Devin. And, man, Devin was this other guy about my size, real small, young guy. He was maybe two years older than me. But this guy had more girlfriends than anybody I'd ever met. And he wasn't a particularly handsome guy, but he just had girlfriends coming to visit him. And he tells me, hey, man, I got this girl coming to visit. borrow your shoes.

So by this time, the prison had started to get overcrowded. It's now fall or winter of 1991, and the prison's getting a little overcrowded. And so they put bunks out in that common area. And he was staying there, so he takes the shoes and lays out his clothes and he goes to the shower. A couple minutes later, he comes to my cell and he says, those shoes got stolen. And my heart sank because I know what's going to have to happen. And so, Devin, and I, we started asking around everybody that would tell us.

Finally, this guy came by and he said, I know who did it. Here's who did it. Mondo and Peanut. I said, all right. So I found Mondo. He's in the TV room while I looked in there and he's sitting there with all his buddies. These guys are both crips. They're sitting in there with their buddies all surrounding these two and I said they're guilty.

So we tried to get in that night. We went in there and we both got some shanks and I, man, you're going to get into a knife. fight we used to tape national geographics this is not a i mean it's funny but it's not funny right tape national geographics to your chest and back around your kidneys so they can't you can't stab through one so we went in there and and he wouldn't get up and come out of the what he called tv room right it's not much bigger than this space you can fit about eight or ten guys and has a tv mounted in the corner and he and he wouldn't come out okay so went back to my cell and doc told me said you want to get that guy put some water in that in that bowl we had these plastic bowls it had

a screw on lid put some water in there throw a teddy bear full of honey in it handful of salt put it in the microwave and wait till it boils and so it's okay so um went to bed that night me and devon made a plan we're going to their cell in the morning so six o'clock which as soon as the guard starts turning the first lock the guys in the open area in the day room area they just jump out of their racks because they have to stay on their rack until that time he cracks that first lock devon went to the microwave put the bowl of stuff in the microwave my door was cracked i stepped out on the tier and i left my door open so the cop couldn't see me going that direction down i went by time i got there that water was boiling i took it and devon opened the door and i threw it in on them and um we went into that room

and I hit that guy with two padlocks that were in the bottom of a couple socks, and I'd tied it up in a knot, and I used other socks and tied it to my wrist so he couldn't take it away from me. And we beat those guys so bad that one of them almost died. And he had, I want to say he's 170 stitches in his head. And, man, it's making my heart race thinking about it now, because that every person came out of their cells. And, you know, that guy was big.

He was a big guy, and he pushed Devin and I out the cell. And he couldn't see because I hit him in the face with those locks, and it split his face open pretty bad. And he got on top of Devin, and I kept hitting him, inadvertently hit Devin in the top of the head once he had to get a bunch of stitches, too. And Peanut came, his cellie, who was about my size, and I chased him off and came back and hit the guy some more. And at one point, I remember I turned around and every CO and FCI Sharon was standing there.

And they were just surrounding me waiting for me to stop, which was amazing to me because a couple more wax. A guy could have been dead. And so I put my hands behind my back. They handcuffed me and took me back to the shoe. Something that stuck out there, too, that I want to touch on is that you said you knew what you had to do when those shoes got stolen. In those situations, you know, this is a perfect example of prison forces you to do things that you don't want to do.

You didn't have a choice in that way. Like there was no, you can't go to the guard and say, hey, he stole my shoes. Well, you can, right? You could, but that would change your whole. That would have changed the trajectory. And I think that was a very somber moment in my life. And you can tell by the tone of which I talk about it, right? because there's nothing like sitting in a shoe

and they put us in there single-celled so I couldn't be with anyone else wondering if the person I just assaulted will die and if that person dies I might not ever get out of prison but I say this when we talk about prison because prison has a very unique dynamic where there's rules written by the BOP

there are rules that inmates give you and then we each have our conscience my conscience, I knew that I could take somebody's life. I knew that I was going to assault this guy at a minimum. And I would be okay with it because the outcome had I not, would have... Think you know where to go for Happy Hour? Think again. Vinnie Hana's 369 Happy Hour offers $6 pan-fried Gioza Dump Lanes, $9 specialty sushi rolls,

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No. I would not take it back today. because I would still be at a medium prison and be everybody's bitch. Because I had a guy come up to me once and not long before this happened. And I could tell he was rolling up on me like he was going to try and I was selling some heroin. I had a little bit of hustle there. And he came up to see if I had any left. And he had his gloves on and his jacket. it in June, right?

And I said, I ain't got any left knee turn on walked away. So imagine what that would have been like, like, what do you do for hustle? People are going to pay you, right? How long were you in the shoe for after that incident? Yeah, so, you know, in the BOP, they got to write you your shot pretty soon. So I got it received a shot 101 for serious bodily injury. So it's the second worst shot you can get. The only thing worse than that is murdering another inmate.

they put me in the shoe and we were in there for about in fact doc was my you can ask for an inmate advisor right and i i said hey Gary dash and he just would come up there just talk to me said you're fucked you're going to the penitentiary and he gave me some advice about the penitentiary saying like look it's not like this you are going to see things that you haven't seen before the United States penitentiaries. And at the time in the federal system, mind you, there were very few penitentiaries. There was Marion and Terre Haute. Terre Haute at the time was where they did the death sentences and they held a lot of people over for death sentence.

Marion was very maximum security. At the time was the supermax. So not a lot of transfers, but you had Lewisburg, Atlanta, Leavenworth, and USP Lompoc. And so I knew I was going to Louisville. Louisburg, Atlanta, 11worth or Longpock. That's where I was going to go. And this was in late 1991. Now, did they pass off your case for additional charges?

No. They didn't refer it out at all. They didn't. And to this day, I can't figure out why. Because Mondo spent several days in the hospital, required extensive medical care. And he got out six months later and then was killed in a shooting. In Seattle, ironically, he was also from Seattle. Seattle, but the only thing I can think about is here they had these two guys, two big guys,

they had these two very small guys. How do you present that in court? But they didn't even come with a, hey, we're going to charge you, plead guilty, and get five more years. Nothing. It's so weird how they pick and choose. Like I think the most unfair thing is the cell phone thing because you have millions of people getting caught with cell phones, literally in prison, but there's these random states. They must not have any of the other crime going on.

where they choose to prosecute, and these individuals get another two, three, four years, which is so unfair. You know, it's the same way with knives or shanks. I've seen guys at the penitentiary or at the FCI get caught with one. And if it's a Monday, they're charging people. If it's a Tuesday, they're not. I don't know how do they decide those things.

It's crazy. Yeah. The only thing they're consistent about is that hearing with DHO and then staying in the shift. That's the only thing that consisted about. Yeah. So they end up sending you to Lompoc. Yeah.

So they went through our hearing, right, found me guilty, took all my good time for that year. Because at the time, that's all they could do is take that periods worth of good time. They took that. And then they left us there to serve our time in that shoe. And actually, the cops, the COs, they put Devin and I. in the same cell and they gave us a big cell on the end that had a shower in it and everything. And when they took us to the property room, you know, you can go in there and you can get your books and your legal paperwork. They let us get anything we want. So I took my walkman. I took my art stuff because I'm an artist too and I took my art stuff.

And we had I was, I had this whole mural on one big wall and I knew we were getting close to getting transferred because the CEO came down. and said, hey, you're going to have to get that off there by next week. Because I just saw, oh, by next week, we're out of here. Yeah. So they gave us a can of paint. We painted over. But they even said to us, they said, you know, I respect what you did. A lot of the COs would come by and say, I really respect what you did there.

Now, did it really fall on you personally for the shoes? Because you gave it to your friend. It should have technically fell on him, right? Yeah, and that's why we both did it. Okay. Right. You roll with your dog. right.

Yeah, but you could have been a dick technically and just beat up your friend and that would have been equal, right? Get me my shoes. I could have been, yeah. But again, it goes back to your conscience, right? He wasn't the real enemy. I wasn't going to let that guy go by himself. And he wasn't going to do that. He wasn't the real perpetrator.

He wasn't the perpetrator. Yeah, someone stole it from him. Yeah. That's wild. So now they send you, is it by bus or are you back on Conair? No, we know Conair for this guy. So they load us up and we're in Sheridan. And of course, they don't tell you we're going.

So we go back to Portland. There's Conair. I'm thinking, oh, I got to be getting. I'm going to El Reno, right? You really wanted to go to Reno. I really wanted to go to El Reno. I didn't get to go. So they let us sit there and Conair lands.

It's the same thing again, right? And then they leave Devin and I both on the bus. And I'm thinking, how are they going to send us both to the same penitentiary? They can't do that. We assaulted somebody together, right? And so they load us on the bus. And, of course, now we start driving south on Interstate 5. I said, we're going to Lompoc, baby, because it's the – you're going south on

Interstate 5. You definitely aren't going to Leavenworth because you would have went east on 90. And so, of course, we're blackboxed. That spent that full day driving all the way down to Dublin, where at the time they had – It was kind of like an MDC. They would kind of use it for that where they would have federal inmates in there that were in transit. And they had a females prison. And this was very much like a cell in the unit in the NFCI Sheridan, right?

You got doors, you got a cellmate. And I roll in there and it's people, all people are getting transferred. This guy I'm in a cell with, man, he was real quiet. All he did was read. He didn't give shit what I did as long as I slept on the top bunk. right and so we were only there for about two weeks and as uneventful you're going to come out of your cell and you're going to eat you're going to hang out all day just like the county jail and you're going to go back in your cell four o'clock stand up count come back out of your cell have dinner go back into your cell at nine o'clock get out of yourself at six time moves so slowly in those facilities i used to read i could read a 300 page book in a day i read so much there's nothing else to do and you don't have your property with you yeah you're you You don't have your property, so you maybe get to play spades or hearts or, you know, dominoes or something, right? But it's county jail like, right?

You don't really have much. And, of course, your property with all my commissary and shit was on some bus in a box somewhere. And you still have no idea where you're going yet? Well, I'm pretty confident we're going to Lompoc. Okay. Because now we're in California. And that's not too far from where we're at. So one day about 2 o'clock in the morning, bang, bang, bang, Myers, roll your shit up.

So you roll up all your stuff and you got to put your extra clothes and your blankets in a bin by the door. And they march you down and, of course, right back in Black Box. Well, now we ride back in that bus and Devin and I are on the bus together. I'm thinking they're still not sending both of us to the same penitentiary. And so they do. There's only a couple hour ride and we show up at U.S. Lompoc and they pulled up to the medium security first and some guys got off and I said there's no way they're letting us in there and they pull around to the penitentiary and Ian that's the day I knew that it was serious shit because if you've seen a picture of what USP Lompoc looks like it is gray three rows of wire gun towers all the doors and windows are rusted been painted over a bunch it's near Santa Barbara so it's it's it's just outside of Vandenberg Air Force Base a little bit.

And it's in a gorgeous countryside, but that prison ain't like anything I've ever seen. And so they get us off the bus and walk us down into what's where the hole is, H unit. You go underneath and that's where your intake and outtake is at. And man, we go down there and you don't have anything. You get your paperwork, right, maybe, and some guys have. it and mine was in my property bag and they take us downstairs and again it's fill out this form everything about you right and they took a lot of guys they're saying you you you and you come with us and they take them upstairs to the hole and they do that with people who maybe have

extensive prison history who have gang affiliations because now they're trying to sort out what housing unit they're going to put you in pretty soon there was only three of us left in in that holding cell. And so they take us out and give us a bed roll. Of course, they give you that they look like the scrubs, but they're tan, right? You don't get your good clothes yet. Good clothes. Put that in parentheses.

You don't get those yet. And so they give us our bed rolls and we're walking down the main line and envision this looks like most prisons. It's got a main corridor that's probably 30 feet wide. And off of it are branches that are housing units. and each housing unit is three stories high, and it's very much looked like any prison, significant prison story you've seen, Alcatraz style with the bars and the beanhole,

and it's loud, and there's people leaning over the rail looking, and we go rolling up in there, and they take us, and here's the CO, and the CO puts me in a cell, and it's this fucking kooky guy. He's a little bit weird and I'm thinking, oh, man, he's like a, I wonder if he's a serial killer because he kind of gave off that vibe, you know. Well, come to find out, he's just a hippie that's overdosed a little, few, too many times on LSD, and his mind didn't come back, so he kind of wanders in his thought a little bit. And he didn't care what I did, but he lived minimalists.

He had hardly no property. At the time, there were still some federal inmates that had green. clothing and so he always wore this green clothing and he stood out from everybody else and and so yeah there was my that first interaction go rolling in there um man it it was terrifying were the guards telling you what you could expect or anything at all or anyone kind of giving you insight when we were in intake the officer there handed us the the paper the little booklet it lists all the rules and expectations and shots and he threw his copy in the garbage and he said I advise you to put that there none of that matters where you're going and I was like oh shit

what was your who was the first guy they put you in a cell with yeah it was that guy was telling you about what the the old hippie guy right they put me in a cell with him and it was just before I think it was just before four o'clock count if I remember and he would just he just he his mind was all over the place because he'd done LSD for years. And he was in there for bank robbery from Seattle. Did you guys know each other at all or not? No, we didn't. But he knew a lot of the same places.

And so we kind of hit it off. I kind of liked the guy. I felt, okay, okay, I'm not in the cell with, you know, they didn't have any child molesters and cells there. And he wasn't getting affiliated at all. Not gang affiliated in any way at all. But he was a white guy, too. But he was a white guy.

Yeah, you don't sell up with people of a different. different race. So, you know, you see it a lot in movies and we've all experienced it who've been to jail. It's very segregated. Segregated by race, segregated by group, click, gang, whatever that might be. So in, if they would have tried, I would have said, look, man, I'm not respecting, not disrespecting you at all. That's yourself, but I'm not coming in there. And you knew that going I knew that going into it. I am not going to sell up with somebody outside of my race. Now, were you eventually approached within those first couple days by any gang?

Well, let's back up. So my first day there, we get out of the cells after 4 o'clock count, we go to Chow. And then after Chow, you could go outside. And so, but they also had an inside gym and like a band room and stuff. And I went upstairs. just exploring and me and Devin they put us both in the same housing unit not only the same prison so we you know my cellie said hey here's where all this stuff is so we were just kind of walking around together exploring where things are and and and I watched one inmate hit another one with a 10 pound

dumbbell and killed him and this is back when they had weights on they had weight so yeah so your time they didn't have any weights on the prison yard oh we had them uh at four dicks they had a locked weight pit where you could get access to go in but that's like one of the last of the mohegans yeah yeah i don't think they're in any pens or mediums and so even at fci i shared and in fact i started lifting there um they had a whole section with you know it wasn't great equipment but it was a lot of equipment barbells dumbbells curls and weights and and benches that you could lift on and they called it the weight pile but they had a small set workout section upstairs that was more like for people who wanted to do aerobic stuff

and yeah we were upstairs next to the bandroom and watched a human being lose his life that was the first time in my life I had ever saw a human being die and it was a defining moment for me of what this place is going to be like for the next few years now was that so common that they didn't even bother locking it down or did they lock the prison down? Oh, no, they locked it down.

Okay. So, and I don't think he died right away because it was not like we got locked down right away. So, so did I have anybody approach me? So absolutely, what actually happened was as soon as we got back to the cell and that night, because I don't think they locked us down right away, because he didn't die. He was, I think he got up and walked with the medical staff down the stairs. but a guy came to the cell knocked on my cell so let's go get your buddy went and took us into a cell and handed each one of us a knife yeah handed a guy's name was crow and he fit the bill man he was tattooed all the way up his neck had tear drops down here and he was kind of i don't know i'm not going to say he was a shock collar but he kind of led the white guys in the woods they called everybody woods becker woods was what they called us and we called ourselves right right And he said, I don't know how this is going to, because the two guys we assaulted are crips.

I don't know how this is going to play out, but we need to go have a conversation with somebody. Took us all the way to the third floor, cell E14, I'll never forget it. Knocked on the outside, gentleman opens it up. One of the biggest black guys I ever seen. He says, yep, come on, Ann. We went in and sat down. We didn't even say anything. He said, I know why you're here.

I know what you did. If you don't do anything stupid is nothing's going to happen. to you because of it. And how'd they find out? Oh, dude, that word spreads. Even back then. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Because let's say a person was in Sheridan and they left the week before me to go down there. They'd say, oh, man, I got, you wouldn't believe who was in the hole with me, this story. We weren't there four hours and I was sitting in a shock caller's room. And he's telling me, you've got no problem with Crips, man. Is that because they knew that their people were in the wrong? Yes, very much so. That's the one thing you got to give shot callers credit. They, when their people are in the wrong, they own it.

Yeah, and this guy's name was Lala, who I became kind of friends with later on. But, and it's because I was a kid, you know, in prison. So, so, yeah, yeah, Crowe approaches and we had knives and we had so much time to get our own knife, and we had to give that one back. And, and again, everything segregated, right? So you ever seen the movie Shot Collar? Yeah, I saw it for the second time a couple weeks ago. Yeah, okay, so you know how they say you're going to put in work?

Yeah. And there's some other influencers that talk about putting in work. They're not shitting you. A white kid shows up. But the difference between me and somebody they didn't know, they knew that I would get violent. So they're not going to try to punk you off the yard if you're a white guy who's willing to get violent.

They're going to save you for later when they need you. But, you know, you're going to have hustle and you're going to do things. So sometimes that's moving a knife. sometimes that's holding drugs. Sometimes that's putting in work and stabbing somebody. And so that's very much a reality that's seen when he first gets on the yard and he meets those shot callers and they tell him he's got a keyster that package. Ian, that's one of the most truthful things I've ever seen in a movie. Now, did you technically have to still put in work even though you already did on the previous yard?

Yeah, I did have to put in work. But the approach was different. So I had several hustles in prison, and one of those was I used to make the betting tickets for the Aryan Brotherhood. Even though you were a Peckarwood? Yeah, as a white guy. So for the Aryan Brotherhood, the Brand, right? Aren't they separate, though? The Pecklewood, or are they the same?

They're all white. You're going to take direction from the white guys. So I had one of them come to me, a guy that I, who was my last sell in prison, his name Sox. He came to me and he said, I was working in the, after a few months, I was working in federal industries and I had experience in high school doing AutoCats. So I was designing these molds for the wire factory.

And he said, hey, we need somebody to make those tickets and you're the guy on the computer now. But they paid me a hundred bucks or ten cartons a week to make them. It's a pretty good deal. So I got paid. I got paid from, hell yeah, because back then, See, most people couldn't have cigarettes, right? But we had cigarettes.

Camel cigarettes in the federal system was money. A pack was a dollar. And it was probably a less dangerous job than other jobs you could have been given. Oh, yeah, very much so. And because there's not many people that they'll give access to a computer. There's maybe three or four inmates in the whole prison. Well, I was one of them with access to a computer. So I would do a drawing.

And maybe in the bottom corner, you'd have to zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, and then there's my information, and I would take the ticket. They'd give me the line and it was handwritten. I'd take the ticket. I'd go do one ticket and I would print it and I would take it back out to the cable factory and I would, hey, verify this. They'd verify it and go back in. I would print all the copies and I had to paper slice them up into individual tickets and I had to make bundles and then I had to distribute them out to other people that were in the factory. their job was to get them out to the housing units. So for about two and a half or three years,

I printed tickets for the... Wow. So are Aryan Nation and Peckarwood's the same thing? Is it all... How is that structured? Peckermood's just white guys. And then Aryan Nation is... Aryan Nation is the outside guys,

the Aryan Brotherhood. That's the prison gang that leads up all the... If you go to a federal penitentiary, you're going to end up... answer to the brand, to the AB. So you're underneath the brand? Well, every white guy is underneath the brand. And do you have to get branded or verified?

Or how does that work? Yeah, your paperwork, dude. So remember I talked about the paperwork? Well, I rolled up the very first day and that was one of the things Crow wanted when he came and got us, let's see your paperwork. And for us, at that time, it's just your PSI. And have my PSI, the whole thing tells where I was raised, how I was raised, my family history.

You've seen a PSI at everything. Handed in my PSI, that night he came back, handed the paperwork back, you're good to go. And do they get you tatted or actually physically? So unless you join a prison gang, the Aryan Brotherhood, the dirty white boys, which was a big prison gang, if you're, there were a few Nazi lowriders, you don't, in fact, I've got a tattoo of a three leaf clover. I wouldn't have done that while I was in jail. Okay. And the three leaf clover? That's the brand.

That's the Aryan Brotherhood. and the tattoos on the dirty white boys are their state they're from with prison bars. And so that's that's their tattoo style. So I never joined a gang. I didn't do that. But again, back to your conscience, what's going to keep me alive? You have to, yeah. You got to, you know, it's like it's your way of paying for protection.

Yeah. Right? You're going to put in work. And if shit jumps off, guess what? You're going to work. And if you don't go to work, we'll come get you in the job. done. Now what about your friend? Was he joining the same group? Yeah, he put in work too. We all put in work, but he didn't have a way to put in work like I did, right? He carried a lot. He carried a lot of

stuff to be able to put in work. What was something that they asked you to do that you didn't want to do? Like that, that was an absolute no for you and you had to find a way out of it? Nothing. You did everything they asked. I wasn't, if they would have asked me to stab somebody I would have done. it. And you just got lucky and didn't have to get asked. Yeah, because it was, shit never jumped off where it needed to be done to that level. And I, I want to credit a few things. Part of that, too, is, you know, you all got people you hang out with. And one of the people that I hung out with in prison at USP Lompoc was a guy named Otis Buck Garrett. And Buck Garrett was the chapter president for the Hells Angels Nomad chapter at a Sacramento, California area, very high up in

the Hells Angels. And so, and I was a tattoo artist. And we didn't talk about that other hustle I had with tattooing, right? So they're not going to risk their tattoo artists. They're not going to risk their person printing the gaming tickets. And Buck was kind of like a mentor to me, right? So they're not going to risk, you know, Buck's kind of probably looking out for me a little bit in that way.

right now we know in today's world how powerful shot callers are with technology but in the 90s how much power did they have the same um Barry mills who led the Aryan brotherhood um was able to and still probably does communicate and in fact in the mid 90s in 95 or 96 um there's always been an issue between the Aryan Brotherhood and the D.C. blacks, a prison gang. And it jumped off again when the order was came to take out several D.C. blacks by Aryan Brotherhood. In fact, which that, those activities combined with some other illicit activities, they received a RICO case. And so the Aryan Brotherhood, all the leaders of that are now in ADX, Florence. And, and they received a RICO case that carried over all the way into the early 2000s. In fact, a guy that I

used to hang out with when you talk about not putting in work, a guy that I was pretty close to, they told him, hey, you got to take care of something, and he told him no, so they stabbed him. They say that these shot callers, even they could be put in the darkest hole and they can still run a facility. It's the same with there have been, um, mafia that have ran from prisons. Carmine Persico. I was in USP Lompoc with Carmine Persico. And so he was part of the Gambino family in New York.

And when I left USP Lompoc in 96, he was still alive and running shit from there. What do you think it is about these individuals that people follow them even when they're locked? Like if you think about it from the outside perspective, okay, this guy's in the hole now. We don't need to take orders from him. But yet people are still following these individuals. It's alliances. In like, very similar to the movie Shotcaller, the alliances that he built up over that time period

allowed him to take out the shot caller in that final scene of the movie and have the keys to the art if he wanted them. Now, we know that's not how it had, you know, he kind of, he was snitching and trying to get out of that situation and seeing himself as seeing that as a turning point. But for, for a lot of them.

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because we believe when you earn more, you can expect more. To find a branch near you, visit poppy.com slash locations. Member FDIC. They just retain the power, and it's through those alliances that they do it. Now, tell us about the tattoo hustle you had, because you were showing me pictures, and I was like, holy shit, back then. And you said you were one of the first people to do color ink on that yard, too. Yeah, absolutely.

So I showed up at USP Lompoc in 1991, and I've always been an artist. and one of my tattoos, my very first tattoo I got one, I was in Sheridan. It's nothing more than the skull was the top hat. And the guy that did it said, oh, I can see it in your face. You're going to want more. Well, he and I'm covered in tattoos, right? And so I can draw, and I can draw just about anything I can see and I can make up stuff. And so I was drawing for another tattoo artist because people could tell me what do you want.

And then one day I said, hey, let me try that tattooing. So I've got a little skull with a candle on my ankle. I did it. I walked out of the cell the next morning. Said, what do you think of this? And the guy said, holy shit, that's better than I did after a year. So with hustle, I had my hundred packs a week. I asked the same guys that were paying me, hey, I need a tattoo machine. He said, no shit, all right.

So I tattooed some on my legs, convinced some people to let me practice on them. And so that's a great hustle. In fact, there was a CEO, Carlos Vega. He's on TikTok now because he spent time in prison. but he was letting me tattoo so he'd come around and say oh let me see what you got going you know what I mean

and I'd have somebody on the tear if somebody cop came in from the outside but man he'd come by and look and I'd just practice well it was all black and gray everyone's doing black and gray but I see things in color my mind is very vivid that way like with the smells right it's very vivid

and so I would I wanted to do some in color so I was going to the hobby shop a lot and the same guys had another CO under their thumb and so we placed an order for some water-based pigments and I took them back to my cell when I got them and I set them on the I turned the iron upside down and evaporated most of the water out so that it would thicken it up like a tattoo pigment and then in the cable factory on that computer I made labels that said that these are water-based ink for water color, this and that, right?

And I put a few watercolor pictures in my cell, and the cops, they'd shake down my cell and they would find that tattoo machine and they wouldn't take those colored pigments because I'd leave a little bottle of black tucked in there and they'd take it, right? And I'd get another one. And so a good buddy of mine, he came to me and he said, I'll be your guinea pig on some of the color stuff and I did a dragon on him that came out the most vibrant oranges and greens and

and pretty soon I started tattooing on them. So I tattooed the only tattoos that I was never asked to do were gang-affiliated tattoos. I wasn't allowed to do them because they had their own tattoo artist who was a part of the brand. But I tattooed on a yakuza. I tattooed some frogs and lily pads on his belly.

A couple of weeks later, I received these beautiful books that he had somebody in his family sent me. Couldn't speak English. but I tattooed in color these frogs and the laypads on his stomach. And so I would tattoo in color. People would then want to be my celly. And I'd say, okay, here's what it's going to cost you.

We'll tattoo once a week. And this is what you're going to pay me. So we would be in our own cell. We could ask for the door to be locked in. Boom, we could just crank out work when Vega was there, right? Man, I would just bust out tattoos. And I could earn three or four hundred bucks a month and not even try. Yeah, were you guys able to have the guard switch?

you out when you were ready for a new client in the cell? Yeah. So if I would tattoo on somebody for two or three weeks or a month, I could say, hey, that cell opened up, they want me to be their selling. Well, if I'm going to tattoo on Billy or Randy, and they say, hey, I need you to move out for a couple weeks so I can get my tattoo or done. They're all about it. Yeah, because cells are pretty much controlled by the head orderly, right?

At least now it is. No, they're controlled by the CO in the penitentiary. Oh, so I know, like now in like the camps and lows, you know. You go to the head orderly, you pay them off. That's always done at the chair. Okay. Yeah, but at the at the. It's just the CEO and he can swap it right then and there.

Yeah, he can just go right in and he just, because it was all paper, they didn't have computers in their office. Yeah. Now when you say a tattoo gun, was it a real one from the street or a built one in the prison? It was a built one. Yeah, man. And then pretty soon I got good at building my own. I worked in the cable factory. These guys would, you know, hey, I'll do a small tattoo on you.

I'll pay you some, some camel, some money for, the parts and all build it. And when you're a good tattoo artist, people want to work. They want to get some ink. And because of that, man, they'll jump through hoops for you. Were you allowed to tattoo non-white guys? Nope, absolutely not. Remember, I told you about La La La Living Next Door.

Well, eventually I got a single cell. The top tier of all the units at USP Lompoc because of capacity constraints were single-celled. And so he was in E-14. I was in E-13. And on the other side of him was another tattoo artist. I showed you a picture of Jason Walker. And we were both tattoo artists. And I wouldn't tattoo on him, but I taught his people out of tattoo.

Did he know that you weren't allowed to? He said, he asked me to do it. And I said, you know, I can't do that, man. He said, I respect that. Will you teach us how to do it? I said, you fucking right. And you're allowed to teach. I can teach.

I can't hold the machine on your skin. That's so silly. Teach you how to do it. It is because I grew up my mother, one of my favorite people on this earth, gave me all the culture and with people and foods and traveling that she could. And I didn't grow up that way. But again, it's segregated. Do you think that'll ever change?

No. I don't think so because the prison authorities don't want it to change. imagine when I was at USP Lompoc if all 1,800 people were united they need the diverse division they need that that to happen in there and and you know what the shot callers needed to happen too but notice how it reflects solely on the charges that the people are there for because at a camp everyone's in unison yeah but there's not that same outcome there's not an uprising if everyone's unison you know right

And that relates specifically to those charges. To the willingness to commit acts of violence or to take it to the next level. I saw people when I was in Sheridan who didn't stand up for themselves. You get bulldozed. Yeah, big time, right? Did you ever make it back to a medium or you were in the pen the whole time? I was in the pen the whole time. So, you know, that was, it was a crazy experience when I told you that I was scared going into there.

Wasn't the most scared I've ever been in my life, but Ian, I've watched three people die, physically watched them die, and two prison riots. And one of those prison riots was when the Crips and Bloods kicked us shit off in 1995. I was on the yard when it happened and they started hitting each other with weights. And the smoke grenades come and the lessen lethal bullets come out. I was only 23, 24 years old by time I'd seen that. And so, but my point system was never going to get low enough because they do it on a point system, and they might still today. But my points after I assaulted that guy took me so far into the maximum security

that I didn't have enough time to work my way out of it. Yeah, because your sentence was relatively short for a penitentiary. Yeah. You should have never ended up there. granted you did that thing, but otherwise you never would have been there. I was one of the 10 youngest people at USP Lawnpocket in 1991. I gave you credit, man. I wouldn't have survived that.

You know what? And I looked like baby. But, man, I had a history when you come from the medium and you do that, right? So I spent the rest of my time, but I assaulted somebody else and I spent the last nine months in solitary confinement. You went home from solitary? Yeah, man. I assaulted somebody for a bad tattoo that they did on me, and I was –

I'd been getting high a little bit because I learned to do drugs in prison. So – Don't they have rules, though, with the white gangs about no drugs? Oh, fuck, no. I thought you can't – No, they make their money on drugs, man. Yeah, to selling to other races, but not to their – No, really?

They don't have that. No. They allow you guys to – Yeah, and math. So the very first time I ever did – methamphetamines was at USP longpox and I shot it and blew the top of my head off. Remember we talked about the adrenaline. And so, man, it took me on a whole other pathway.

But I was, you know, it was kind of high and tweaking and I wasn't happy with something. And that turned into assaulting somebody and then an investigation and more time in the hole. And they can, you can spend nine months in the hole. they don't have to start asking at the time they didn't have to start asking regional until you've done nine months in segregation and even then they can get approved for more they get approved for more yeah and so i got released my last celly with socks and and my release day i was the most scared through this whole criminal activity the day i got out because i knew i could survive in prison in fact i'll tell you a story remember i told you about odes just Buck Garrett, right? And he was kind of a mentor to me. One day we were walking around the track. We did that every day at lunch.

Him and I would just walk. We'd eat lunch and we'd walk. We'd eat lunch and we'd walk. And he asked me one day, he just stopped in his tracks like all of a sudden, and he looked at me and he said, what are you going to do when you get out? He said, I'm going to get a gun on a bag.

What the fuck you think I'm going to do? I'm going to fill full money. He hit me on the back of the head hard. And I looked at him like, and he said, if I ever see you again, I'm going to kill you myself. This is a guy who had four life sentences because somebody in Witness Protection Program died and their family members and friends died and 300 years. So he had four life sentences in 300 years.

Obviously deadly human being. And he said, I will do it myself. I was terrified. So the next day we go back out to the track. He didn't say much to me that day. He was kind of quiet. He stops in the same spot, and he said, what are you going to do when you get out? I said, I'm going to get an old lady a stack of bills I can't pay in a job.

What do you think I'm going to do? He said, there you go. And from then on, that guy saved my life, Ian. Wow. Because in that moment, that was the turning point, which I said, I'm not coming back here. And every day he would point at these. See those two? They've been in and out of prison.

I knew them when they were in their 20s. There they are shooting heroin behind the work bench at work. You see that person spent their whole life in jail. Their kids are grown up and every day he would tell me those stories. He used to tell me if I wanted to find a wife, I'd find her in the produce section or I'd find her at a laundromat. But he saved my life. And you see people casually coming in on their second 20 piece. And you know what it caused me to do?

I became super reflective while I was in prison and I would watch people coming back and I would ask them, why'd you come back? Like what let you just got out, what led you to come back. And so that was the turning point of my life. Now, I got out of prison on August 16th, 1996. I was in segregation. My brother drove down from Seattle to pick me up in California. And the cop handed me the street close said, I'm going to see you again in three months. I said, man, you are never going to see me again.

And they walked me outside and Ian, it smelled different. As soon as I walked through that. chain link fence it's i say that you hear people say dogs can smell fear human beings can smell it too if you've lived it long enough and when you when you step outside that prison we've all had that moment where the weight was lifted off our shoulders i felt it when i've left jobs when i've left bad situations but in that moment it's i turned my face to the sun i hugged my brother and i took a deep breath it smells different out here and and we drove straight back to Seattle had to go to the probation office and that probation officer saved my life she was a pain in my ass but the PTSD that I

suffer from today from seeing people get murdered seeing myself hurt somebody it wasn't until I've been out of prison for 26 years, 28 years. It wasn't until a year ago that I started sleeping decent at night. My wife will tell you I woke up in horror, screaming. And so that probation officer got me into counseling. It was ordered. And sure, they would have to tell her if I said anything really dumb, right? But she got me into counseling.

She kept me on a straight and narrow path. She saved my life. And you never went back. I never went back. So my life's been a heck of a journey, right? And I got strung out after I got out of prison. I did good until I was off paper. I started doing meth and I spent three years strung out.

I've been cleaned since October 1st, 2001. Congratulations. Yeah, man. But you never got jammed up on another crime even while strung out. You know what? I got arrested twice, taken in. to sit there for investigation and let back out two times. And both times it was something peripheral, I would say,

that somebody else is doing and I was there, right? And it's the, okay, nothing here and let me go. And on September 30th, 2001, I was with my brother, and he said, can you do me a favor? Stop getting high. It's not going to cost you a dime. Last day I ever got high. Why do you think you listened to him in that moment?

I think I was ready to. You know, I've told this story. If you've watched my social media and stuff, I was shooting a lot of dope. Ian, I weigh 180 pounds. Today I weighed 125 pounds. That's the lightest I'd weighed since I was in eighth or ninth grade. And I did a shot that came straight from the cook

and I thought I was going to die. In fact, I can still picture the needle pulling it out of my arm because I didn't even put all the drugs in and I was already feeling it. And I thought I was going to die. And then I remember thinking in that moment, no, I'm not going to die.

In fact, I know I can go all the way to here without dying. My next shot almost killed me. So I was ready to stop, I think. And I think I was getting more mature at that point. You know, I was 30. And I'd spent all of my 20s in prisoner high. I was just ready. What did you end up getting into for work?

Yeah, so I tattooed for a while. When I first got out, I went to work. There was a tattoo shop in the University District in Seattle called Atomic Garden Tattoo. And it was owned by this really eclectic Asian gal, this Japanese gal. And downstairs, she owned a record store that was like a second time around. You could buy used records and tapes and stuff. And upstairs she had a tattoo shop. and I worked there for a while.

And I did a couple of odd type of jobs. I worked in manufacturing. And my brother said one time, hey, come to work with me doing cabinets and countertops. So I did. I went to work and in it only took me. I was probably 28 when I started that. It only took me about two years to become a supervisor.

And I loved leadership. And I think my experience lent me to looking at new people, young people from a different lens. and I became a leader. And I started my own cabinet and countertop company, which I ended up losing when I was kind of high. And but I stayed in leadership for a long time. And it was, it carried me through.

And I ended up moving from Washington to Wisconsin. And that was partly, you know, I grew up in a bad childhood. And I needed to get away. I needed to find my own space and my own people and ended up moving to Wisconsin and stayed in that industry until 2007. I was a general manager of a manufacturing facility. You know, I was probably making 75 grand a year, right, a small company. Really happy, but the market crashed.

And you couldn't find a job in construction in 2008. So I sold a boat, a truck, Harley Davidson, and two ATVs, and I went to college. and I got a degree in operations and supply chain management. And I graduated with honors because, you know, like when you were in high school, you buckled down because you wanted a certain career, right? And the same thing, I'm like, I got to turn this into something. And I was super motivated. After I got out of prison, I got clean.

Prior to me going to prison, I was not a confident person. Again, I wasn't the center of attention. I didn't have a lot of confidence. prison gave me confidence, man, if I can survive that bullshit, this is going to be easy. So I was motivated. I was motivated to work. And so I went to college. I had an internship and a job lined up before I even graduated.

I graduated in 2011 with that degree in business. And nine years later, I was promoted to an executive president. position for a billion-dollar organization. And never once judged by your past? They couldn't find it. Because PACER, which holds all the electronic, didn't start until 1998. I was convicted in 1996. So unless they did a special nationwide FBI search, they would have never found it.

After a certain point in time, they don't ask anymore. My most recent jobs. If they did ask, I lied. because I didn't have the job to begin with and they can't take nothing away from you. So I would lie. And I figured if they caught me, I'd say, well, you know what?

I gained experience and I got to show you my good side. Wow. Yeah. So, you know, the prison thing, and I talked about turning points and one of the things that I tell young people now is pay attention to those who want to help you. you, Gary Dash, Buck Garrett, my brother. And sometimes in those moments, you don't see it,

right? You don't see that those people are helping you. And mine were at my darkest moments. Here I was. I was at the point I could have easily gotten out of prison, got the gun, got in the bank, and been back in prison. And that would have been a third strike for me. Now, do you think that these individuals that hired you, if they heard this story, like if they sat and listen to this full two-hour story, right? Would they still hire you after? Do you think? No, I don't think they would have, and that's why I'm so easy to lie about it. So let's come full circle.

I retired in February of this year from an executive position at a billion dollar company to dedicate the rest of my life to helping other people not go back. if I can help one person all of my abuse as a child my time in prison my drug addiction will be worth it I should have to help one person but I'm going to help thousands I think it's uh incredible about the whole corporate job thing because that's me and you had similar paths and that and I want people to you know understand that that is possible it is totally possible it's not just a one-off type then and I think Ian the thing that I think is the most important is that this This is the time in history at which things are changing because of people like you.

You're giving people like me a platform to say, I went from ex-con to executive, and so can you. And it's also telling people who live in society who maybe don't understand us to say, hold on a second. Look at Ian's past and look at his present. Look at Sean and what he accomplished. we are on the forefront of being able to be the beginning of how society in America looks at crime and punishment, at restorative justice and rehabilitation, because it will not happen through our politicians. No. If it's going to happen, it's going to be because of people like you and I,

and then other people who hear our story and are willing to give a person a chance. That's why reentry should be the focus. It should be the focus. And then what? Education. So if we focus on reentry and we get into the schools, and I've sat with some of the groups locally in the Wisconsin area, and they say education, how do we educate people? If we help them in primary and secondary education, will prevent crime. The United States has a recidivism rate of about 70%.

most of the 1.7 million people that are in prison today have been in prison before. So if we simply stopped recidivism, we would go from the top 10 nations of incarceration to somewhere like Europe, Western Europe, that's in the bottom 10. And so my objective today is to get this message out there, to celebrate the fact that some of us have gone to prison and are very successful. to give those people the idea that it is possible and encouragement. And then so I also participate locally with some of the national chapters of nonprofits and some local nonprofits with us.

And then I'm starting a public speaking career where I'm going to share my story and my successes and individual mentorship or group mentorship. for people who don't want to go back to prison. Well, if you ever need some assistance, I'm happy to volunteer my time for the cause. You and I are going to have some conversations, and you've had some other folks on here that have really, really given me encouragement. You had the psychologist on here, and I think we need to focus a little bit on the PTSD that's caused from folks who go to prison.

I have severe PTSD, and it's made it hard for me to hold a job. I've never had a job for more than five years. And there's several triggers for me that happen that make it different. And I end up leaving mostly of my own accord. Okay, I'm done with this. I'm out of here. But, you know, we need to address those issues and listen to people like that psychologist. I forget his name.

He came on here. I know here's over a lot. And he talked about the eye movement, PTSD. Love those stories. Yeah. a channel like there's there's a prison content community and I don't think any other platform has the you know those types of stories because they're not entertaining but and it's part of it like we have victims we have prosecutors, we have psychologists clinical therapists social

workers are they the sexiest interviews no but it can it's all a piece to the puzzle you know but look at your success and that shows you that people want to hear it I agree 100% like I might not have the highest amount of views in the prison genre, but I'm getting the advertisers. It's more of a structured business. And that's what I want to listen to. I like listening to a psychologist talk about it. Me too. I can't sit here and your story is awesome, but I can't listen to 10 years and a row.

Right. You know, it makes it different, you know. Right. I love having an addiction story here or a prison story here or a full circle. Like I put your story in the category of it's a full entertainment story where you have a crazy crime, a crazy prison experience, and a crazy after prison, you know, but not every story's like that. And that's totally okay. And I think, you know, there's, you know, we've been sitting here talking for a couple hours. And I haven't even touched on the things I've seen in prison or the

things that I did to be successful, right? And so, hey, I appreciate you. This means a lot to me as an individual. It means a lot to my wife who's sitting out there. She, I'm going to give credit to my wife she's she's trying the social media thing and she's she's gone viral on a couple videos and she's super happy but she's why i'm sharing my story she's been telling me for 10 years you have got to share your story dude share your story and so when i retired i shared it and you asked me if they would hire me i have had my last executive position because i shared my story wow what do you think she thinks of this right now we're about to find out but do you think she's super proud of me no she's She didn't learn anything new.

I have been very open with her. She's got two daughters, which are my kids. I love them. And I wanted to be open with her about my past. And I did that on our third date. And she is the most supportive. And her family, they're my family. They're the most supportive people.

You know, some of her aunts and uncles, you know, they're like, I'm so glad Sean's telling you story, right? That's overwhelming. I'm going to say 95% are positive. 5% are not so positive. But you know what? You need those people, though. You need those people, right?

Yeah, you need those. They can't all be positive. That's right. Well, Sean, thank you so much, man. Amazing episode and looking forward to doing some stuff with you. You know, I have this whole rolodex of individuals with success stories. I mean, we can put our heads together and see what we can come up with. Absolutely.

I love it, man. Safe travels back to Wisconsin and enjoy the city. Thank you.