Locked In with Ian Bick - Ex-American Soldier Reveals The Conviction That Forced Him To Survive Military Prison | Sam Fye

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

Samuel Fye opens up about his conviction as an American soldier, his time in military prison, and how he adjusted after release. #MilitaryPrison #TrueCrime #JusticeSystem #VeteranLife #CourtMartial #Conviction #PrisonSurvival #SecondChances Thank you to DRAFT KINGS for sponsoring today's episode: New players can get FIVE HUNDRED CASINO SPINS ON A FEATURED GAME! Just sign up with code IANBICK and wager a minimum of five dollars to receive FIVE HUNDRED CASINO SPINS ON A FEATURED GAME. Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://convictclothing.net/collections/convict-clothing-x-ian-bick Timestamps: 00:00:00 Growing Up in Rural Virginia 00:06:36 From Military to Teaching Career 00:14:00 Reflections on a Teaching Career and its Challenges 00:20:48 Understanding When to Walk Away 00:27:37 Transitioning to a Teaching Career 00:34:52 Legal Dispute and Allegations 00:42:23 Divorce Agreement and Communication Restrictions 00:49:02 Navigating the Military Justice System 00:56:24 Navigating Legal Challenges: Importance of Testifying 01:03:31 Journey to Fort Leavenworth 01:10:31 Experiences with Military Justice and False Accusations 01:17:25 Life and Routine in Military Prison 01:24:40 Life in Prison: Life Sentences and Privileges 01:31:01 Navigating Life in Prison: Roles and Time Off 01:38:00 Life after False Accusations and Fighting for Truth 01:45:25 Shedding Light on Male Abuse: A Personal Mission 01:51:35 Pizza and Farewells 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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You guys got snow last night? We got snow. We had a couple, a few inches, I think. There's snow here. We didn't get it at home. It's 64 degrees at home. Wait, what? Yeah.

In Virginia? Yeah, that's why we didn't bring coats or anything because we thought it was, if it's 64 in Virginia, it's probably 54 in Connecticut, but that wasn't true. Really? I thought Virginia was cold out that way. It is colder than a lot of other parts of Virginia, but it's warm today. Yeah, I mean, crazy times where down south is getting snow and all these different things. Yeah, definitely.

I would have figured it would be a lot of snow there. It does pretty good in the mountains, but nothing like the north. Interesting. Not at all. So did you grow up in Virginia? So I grew up in Virginia in the mountains, Virginia, and the Blue Ridge Mountains is very, very rural. The place where I went to college, James Madison University is getting a little bit bigger, but the area itself is pretty rural.

That's a great school, right? Yeah, James Madison, yeah, JMU. I had some friends that went there. Okay. Yeah, love JMU. Love it. Who'd you grow up with, like mom, dad, siblings? So we grew up just kind of a normal family.

It was mom and dad, and I've got two brothers, an older, and a younger brother, and an older sister. and grew up on a farm, back on a dirt road. There wasn't another house in any direction that you could see. And my dad always said, if he stood on the roof and could see another house, it was time to move. That's what he told me. Had an outhouse, very, very rural area. So grew up like hillbillies.

What do your parents do for work? So my dad worked at a factory, a good factory. and then he eventually became a plumber. He started doing plumbing in the evening, and then he kind of built a business and built it from literally an old van that he was driving around after work into this big contracting company

that he eventually sold for a decent amount of money, which, you know, that took 30-some years, but, you know, he did pretty well. And then my mom, we had a chicken farm, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but the long chicken houses are about 300 feet long. My friend used to have a chicken in the house. He had him and his dad built one.

Yeah. So we had 10,000 chickens. You had 10,000? Well, we had one of the smallest ones there. 10,000 is pretty small. And, yeah, so we collected the eggs. And yeah, when I tell people how we grew up, it sounds like I grew up in the 50s because it was, like I said,

we had three channels that you got on an antenna on the roof and something. You know, that's really cool. about your dad because you don't really hear the stories about how someone like worked for someone a factory worker and then you know switched you know later in life to owning their own business that's really inspiring and inspirational well yeah and the factory he worked that was a really good factory it's the murk factory that makes all the the the drug company and so for him to make that leap was a really big deal you know because he was pretty pretty stable at that that factory so the leave and i have benefits and things like that that was you know that was a big challenge for the family so

How would people describe you as a kid? So as a kid, I think they would say it was really funny. I was very outgoing and very, I was always an entertainer. And I think as I grew older, I learned to be kind of like that that was, I was kind of a peacemaker in a way because there was some fight in between mom and dad. But I was always the one trying to make everybody laugh. And that was just something I did in school too. I would try to make people laugh, so I wouldn't have to do any real work, you know, things like that.

But, yeah, I think people would describe me as being funny and entertaining. What did you want to do when you grew up? Did you have like that in mind as a kid? I didn't have anything specific. I remember once wanting to be a lawyer, but only because I thought they made a lot of money. Somebody told me once that lawyers made $80 an hour, which I thought, you know, in the 80s, that was like all the money in the world. And I'm like, I'm going to be a lawyer and have a Ferrari. And so, now, I've had so many lawyers in my life. I know they actually do make a lot of money. But, yeah, so I think if you're,

if you've gotten the game a while ago, they're all off, like, my lawyer gets $400 an hour. Yeah. So my lawyers, they took, we paid them like straight fees. And it was always $20,000. And it's always $20,000 like, it's just $20,000. Like, that's nothing. Like, you just have $20,000 laying around, you know, and like, ugh, it's tough. Yeah, it really is. Did you go to public schools or were you homeschool? Yes, yeah. And the schools, the place I grew up was called Page County, Virginia, and very, very, I don't,

not trying to be rude, but it's a really bad school system, like really bad. We didn't even have middle schools. The high school was really run down. It was really old elementary school. So I would say I had a really, um, in. inadequate public education to say the least. I didn't end up going to college when I was, you know, older, and it was really difficult for me because school just hadn't prepared me for anything.

What did you go to college for? So I went to college to be an English major, and because that was, I was terrible at everything in school except English. And I could just always, I just always knew how to write. Always. And I would know how a, sentence was supposed to be written even though I didn't know why. And I could just always do that the way that some people can just do math in their head. And I could do that. So I went and became

an English major and the English classes were relatively easy for me and everything else was super hard. Anything math related was a nightmare. Like had to get tutors and, you know, I'm like 23 years old in tears trying to figure out a math problem. So, but yeah, I was the English major. And then eventually I got a master's degree in education. So I was a teacher for 11 years. Yeah. I was so I was in the military, then out of the military, and I was a teacher for 11 years, and then came back in the military. So you were in the military before you went to college? I was. I went in the military like almost right out of high school, and I did three years, and then I got out, and then I came back and I went to college, and then I was the teacher for 11

years and then struggling with a teacher salary and then having two children and a wife, I had to go back into military just for financial reasons. Why the military the first time? Why did you join that? It was really a spur of the moment thing. I've always had like a lot of depression for as far back as I can remember. And I was super, super depressed after high school and was drinking a lot. lot and had nothing going on. And I decided one day that I was interested in the Army Reserves. I don't

know why. I just think I thought it would be something to get my life together a little bit. And then I thought, you know what? I'm going to go up. I'm going to go talk to the Marine recruiter. And I went to the office building and it was lunchtime. The Marine recruiter wasn't there. and I was walking out and this guy, hey, you want to join your army? I was like, yeah, I guess. I mean, I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but that's really how it would. And I took like, just give me the next thing leaving type of deal and had this job in transportation, which is a really low bottom of the barrel job.

And I was stationed all of two hours from my house. So I went to see the world And I was stationed two hours away For those whole three years? Yeah, so I did three years like that And was that counted as like one tour? One enlistment. One contract three years?

Okay. And then you were able to leave peacefully to college? Yeah, and so I just got done with my three years And while I was in, I actually got an associate's degree because I just decided I was going nowhere in this military job. And I'm like, well, let me at least get some schooling in. And I started taking classes after work.

And it just became interested in them. And so when I got out, I did well enough in these community college classes to be able to transfer to James Madison. And looking back, I think I was pretty fortunate. But, you know, the military background and having really inflated grades from a pretty easy program. I was able to get into James Madison. I did pretty well there. Now, did they pay for it, the military, James Madison? So back then, we had the GI Bill back then, but it was different.

Like now the GI Bill will pay for everything. They'll even give you living expenses, and that's really cool. Back then you got about 600 a month to just do with whatever you wanted, which was, when I say back then, I'm talking about the mid-90s. Yeah, it wasn't nothing, but still, it was, it wasn't, it wasn't nothing, but still, it it didn't do a whole ton for you. And, you know, I ended up taking a bunch of loans and things like that. Would you have been better off staying with the military just all the way through and never

even going off to college and going into teaching? Well, in retrospect, I'd have been better off never going into the military. I don't, I am very, very anti-military at this point in my life, you know, because of the things that happened and which, you know, we'll get into. and I don't think anybody should go into military for any reason, ever. And I'm 100% adamant about that. And if I had a young person asking me for advice,

that would always be my advice. I'd be like, if you absolutely are sure that you're going to go, then do A, B, and C, but don't do any other job other than the military. Because any job you could do, and I don't want to get off on too much of a tangent here, But any job that you started, if you started out at Walmart and worked 20 years at Walmart as opposed to 20 years in the military, you'd be better off.

You'd be making more money. You'd have better benefits. You'd just be in a better. And you wouldn't have all the sacrifices. Because at the end of the day, the military owns you. And you have to do whatever they say. Like there's no other job in the world where your boss will come to you and be like, I need you here at 3 o'clock tomorrow morning. And the only answer is, Roger, I'll be there.

It's the only answer. There's no other answer you can give. And you can get an email saying, like, you're moving to Oklahoma tomorrow. Not tomorrow, but, you know, you're moving to Oklahoma. And, okay, we're moving to Oklahoma. And that's it. And I mean, there's a lot more to it than that as far as, like, why I think people shouldn't join the military. But so to answer your question,

Um, financially, if all things being equal, I probably, I would have been better off staying in. But in terms of like philosophically, and I wish I had never ever been in the military, ever. But it is integral to our equal ecosystem. Like it is a part of America having the military, people serving the country. It is. And again, I don't know how much of a tangent you want to get off one. The thing about our military is you do need a military. You don't need one that's, as monstrously big as ours is. Like, we could get away with it being half as big. If it was half as big, it would still be the biggest military in the world,

which is impossible to believe. And because we're just that big. And the amount of money that we spent, like, we spent, let's see, the newest budget is like $890 billion for one year for the military. We spend more in the military than anything. And, you know, if you cut that just by a little bit, you could fix every single problem in the country. and then you wouldn't need all the prisons and whatnot.

But it's just at the end of the day, though, the military doesn't care about it, soldiers. The military cares about the military. That's what it's designed to do. It's designed to destroy and kill things. It's not designed to take care of soldiers. And I think you'll see that as we talk more about my story that they're not interested in soldiers.

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21 plus physically present in Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia only, void in Connecticut and Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply, new customers only, non-withdrawable casino spins valid for featured game only, and expire in 168 hours. see terms at casino.draftkings.com slash promos. Ends 42725 at 11.59 p.m. Eastern Time. So you go to college, graduate, become a teacher, and how long were you doing the teaching for? So I was a teacher for 11 years and loved teaching. Absolutely loved it.

I remember one of the most heartbreaking things when they read the verdict, one of my very first thoughts, Even before I thought about going to prison was, oh, my God, I'm never going to be a teacher again. And because I was going to get out of the military and the second stint, I was already, I was done with my second stint. You know, because I'm not young. I'm way past retirement age. And I was going to go back into teaching. And I'm like, wow, I will never, never be able to teach again, never be able to substitute teach, never get to do anything again. You know, even if the whole thing gets turned over on appeal, I'm never going to be.

teacher again. And so I love teaching. Like absolutely loved it. And it just paid so little. Like when people talk about how little teachers make, you just can't overstate it. This make nothing. Absolutely nothing. And, you know, I had a wife and two children and twins. So, you know, we got two at one time. And it was just overwhelmed. So went back into the military for money. Did you get married before teaching or during teaching? What was that timeline? Very close to the same, same time. Like technically a little before, but it was pretty much the same time.

Okay. And what did your wife do for work? So she wanted to be a midwife. I met her at James Madison University, but she wanted to be a midwife. So we ended up coming up to Maine. We lived in Maine for six years and lived this like complete hippie lifestyle. And we lived in a cabin with no running water in the woods of Maine, and she went to this midwife school and had like flowing armpit hair. And like, she's going to love that I say that.

But we had a bucket that we used for a bathroom. And yeah, we were living like the hardcore hippie lifestyle. So we did that for a while. And I was teaching then. I was a head start teacher. That was before kids. before kids, yes. Wow, what a lifestyle.

And you were okay with all that? You wanted that lifestyle? Yeah, it was really, it was exciting and different. And I just wanted to do something different. And then she got sick of that lifestyle. I mean, we both did. I don't want to put it just on her. But she realized that like if she was going to do this midwife thing,

that she was going to be making a lot of sacrifices. And we kind of weren't cut out for all this like, hauling wood and dumping buckets and stuff like that dumping poop buckets and so she went back to school to become a social worker and at the university of Maine and we moved to a town an actual town and a house that you know had a dishwasher and things like that and lived like normal people so but so the cold i've felt the cold before i don't miss it i don't Don't miss it at all. It's freezing up here. So when you went to rejoin the military, there wasn't any age barriers because you've had to have been, what, in your late 30s by that point?

Yeah, so. Or maybe even later. This is kind of funny. I mean, I've got so many long stories, but I'll give you the shorter version of this. When I decided to go back, it was about 2010. And all the wars and stuff are still going on. And so as far as I could tell, they needed people from an outsider looking in, but from, in reality, they weren't. They were trying to cut people back.

And, you know, you don't see that necessarily on the outside. You just see like, well, this is what I see in the news, so you must need people. So that was a challenge. And I thought that I was going to go down there and tell them like, hey, I was in the military before. I've got a college degree now. I want to be an officer. And I just, I was going to tell them what I was going to do, you know. And they're like, no, you can't do that.

What do you mean? No, well, one, you're too old. And like, too old. I was like 35. I was like, how am I too old? How is 35 too old? It's like 35 in the Army is old. Like, it really is.

Like 30, you can retire at 38 if you come in at 18. So 35 is pretty old. And I was shocked. So I went from thinking I was going to tell them what I was going to do. I went from that to, I was to, I was to, I was Take whatever you got, man. I don't care. I'll be a private.

I'll do any job. And they were like, no, we don't need people right now. So to speed the story up, I ended up, I tried for a really long time to get back in, and it didn't work. And so out of frustration, I wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Army. And I said, I think your policies are, oops. I think your policies are stupid. I think you should let me back in. And this is the reason why.

I spent a lot of time writing it well. And I didn't just tell him he was stupid. I was like, you know, I think you should let me back yet. I'm a really good soldier. Several months passed, and we got a call. And it was from this recruiter who said he'd heard from the Pentagon. And they were like, yeah, he read your letter and he agrees. You should come back in.

And I was like, what? The Secretary of the Army read my letter? And, you know, this is the guy who talks to the president. And he read my letter and it's like, yeah, we should let this guy in. So that's how I got back in. And the underlying message here is always, you know, when life tries to show you something, you got to take it for what it is. Because if you didn't push to get in, you never would have.

We probably wouldn't have met right here. Well, we wouldn't be sitting here right now. That's crazy. I always think about that. You know, if you sometimes have you pushed things too much, you've landed into something that wasn't meant for you. It's a great point because we're kind of, we're always taught to like never give up, never give up, never give up.

And that's what I thought I was doing. I thought I was like, and in reality, it should have been like, dude, take the hint, go do something else with your life. You know, that's what I should have taken from that. Because at that point, I had a master's degree. There's all kinds of stuff I could have done. But I decided I wanted to be in the military and that was it. Yeah. I have that same mentality of never give up, but I've learned in my years, like, you know, going through everything I went through, taking that you could take anything to the level and get it, you know, without giving up.

but at what cost, you know? Yeah. Imagine you never gave up on a relationship and you just drove that person crazy, you know? It's just, it'll have a negative outcome. So now when something, when I get the sign that something's not for me, I just walk away from it. Yeah, yeah. And truthfully, the military, it was more like, I've always had like kind of obsessive thoughts. You know, there's some mental health issues that I struggle with.

And obsessive thinking is one of them. And that being really determined and really obsessed was maybe very, very good in the military. But you can take it too far. And sometimes you're ignoring things that are right there in front of your face like you just said. But I think that's what happened. It's like I got the idea in my head and I couldn't let it go. And it wasn't so much that I wasn't given up. I just was like obsessed.

And I decided I've got to be in the Army. If I'm not in the Army, then my life's a failure. And here we are today. What did they have you doing when you got back in the same thing? No. So when I went in, it was a terrible job. It's human resources. And it literally was this is what you take it or leave it.

This is what we have for you. It's they call it ask one in the Army. It's human resources. And it's super, super mindlessly boring. And you're sitting in an office all day in front of a laptop. just doing Excel spreadsheets basically, and I hated it. And because I hated it so much, it led me to go out and find, like, there was a way out, but I had to go and do the coolest thing that I could find, which when I say cool, like, the

hardest thing, the most challenging thing. So I had to go into special operations in order to get out. So you have to go and you have to try out, and it's really difficult. And if you make it, you're good, you're set. But, you know, it's a lot of work to make it. And that was my only way out. And so because I just liked that job so much and because of that obsessed of thinking, you know, like I was able to get up at 3 o'clock every morning and go run and study and all the stuff I needed to do to make it.

And so, you know, I was able to make it in the special operations at the age of 39 years old, which is, yeah, that's pretty impressive. And did you deploy anywhere? Yeah. So our job was really highly deployed. So I went to Jordan twice and I went to Syria. Syria's been all over the news lately and it was in about 2017. It was when we went. And that's where ISIS was.

And so that was a pretty intense deployment. But no, I loved it. As much as I dislike the military and the army. Army itself, I loved my job. Like, I thought it was the best job in the world. It was like a job that was made for me because we did a lot of quote-unquote cool guy stuff. We had cool guns and got to grow beards and stuff like that. But we also had to write a lot and do a lot of reports and things like that, a lot of

speaking, a lot of public speaking, things like that. So things that you don't think of when you start thinking about military jobs and absolutely loved that job. So I would throw. in the caveat that if I could do that job, I would do that job forever because I really liked it. But I just philosophically, I disagree with the military in our military system. But again, that's a digression. Did you still have that philosophy when you were there and nothing negative had happened yet to you, though?

Or are you only saying that because of what's happened? No, it's because of what happened. Yeah, I don't, I think I've always felt like we spent too much money on it. And that's not a super extreme thought, you know, for anyone to think that, you know, we spend more money on our military than Italy spends on everything. So our budget for the military is bigger than Italy's budget. You know, so that's just an example. And it's easy to say that we spend too much money. But when I found out that the military wasn't going to be that supportive of me, you know, that's when things change.

for me because I really thought like the military is because they teach you when you come in the military is going to take care of you the army always takes care of its soldiers and it's it isn't true it's just not and so that's becomes very true when you're in the system you just keep hearing story after story of guys who had bad trials and just a bad shake and now all of a sudden they're they're in prison so how many years were you with you the military into your second stint until what happened happened to you? So, oh my gosh, now you got me doing math, but it would have been about 12 years into my second stint. Oh, another 12 years, so that's 36, 9.

So you reenlisted four times? Yeah, a handful of times. Wow. So you were getting into your late 40s now at this point, or mid 40s? Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I was. Still doing special warfare? Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Good for you. So I got into Special Operations at 39. So that was the thing. You have to go and try out. So you go to Fort Bragg and you just thing called selection. And you're trying out and you're competing with, sorry, I keep hitting your microphone.

Oh, everyone does it totally fine. So you have to go and try out. And it's a lot of physical and mental challenges that you do for like 10, I think it's 10 days. I can't remember. You don't sleep much. And they do feed you a ton, but you don't sleep much. And so I'm there competing. against like 25-year-olds and this is straight up competition and I felt like they were blowing me out of the water and everything but I guess I did okay because I made it through and a lot of people didn't just only like 40 percent 40 percent make it through so so yeah that was pretty cool yeah I was pretty excited and then once you get into that world of special operations it's everything's just different they treat you different it's it's like it's a different type of army

So you don't have to worry about your hair as much and your uniform is not that important and things like that. So it's pretty cool. Now, were you getting ready to leave? I know you mentioned that earlier. You were coming to the end of your enlistment. I was. Yeah. So I actually, I've got really, really terrible hearing.

And they were going to let me retire early because of my hearing. And so I was getting out and I was going to become a teacher. And I actually had already gotten a job teaching. I was going to be a preschool specialized teacher. And I was supposed to start in September. And then the trial came up and it wouldn't go away and it wouldn't go away. And the investigation, which that's its own story. The investigation went on forever.

And I finally told the people, I made up some story about my health that I couldn't take the job because of my health. And then obviously didn't want to let them know what was going on. and ended up not taking that position. But I was supposed to start in September of 21. Yeah, September 21. I had a job waiting for me. Bonjour, compadre. It's the Priceline negotiator.

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special ed teacher. So tell us what happens. What got you into trouble, why you couldn't take the job, why you left the military? Oh, okay. So you went the whole story. Yeah. Okay. So I got out of a 17-year marriage and I got into another marriage with a woman who, when we met, she was quirky and different.

And I noticed things about her that were like just not quite right, but I just thought she's unique. And she struggles with some things and she's got some temper issues and things like that. But hey, we all do and we were super in love and it's really passionate love, which is just really, really unhealthy, obsessive type of love. and it went from that to very abusive. Like, she was physically abusive toward me, but I was a lot bigger than her. So I know it's weird to say, but like the hidden didn't bother me that much.

But, I mean, she would just, as hard as she could, like, punch me in the chest. And I'd be, why, why are you doing that? First of all, it didn't hurt. You know, but I would be like, if I punched you as hard and your chest as hard as I could, like, you just punched me. Like, you'd go to the hospital and I'd go to jail. Like, you can't do that. Even if it doesn't hurt me, you can't do that.

But the verbal abuse, the emotional abuse, and the sexual abuse was, like, the worst. And this is stuff that I think a lot of guys are going through in our country and very few talk about it. But just anecdotally, like, talking to guys when I was in prison, it was something that a lot of them had suffered through. And it's, I don't think it's super uncommon. It's much more common that women are abused than men. Like, that's for sure, 100% true. But men are abused in this country. And so, we were only married for 11 months.

Like, that's how bad things were. And we shouldn't have been married 11 months. Well, we should have never got married. But the first time that she's like, I mean, beat me up good. Like I had a black eye and a busted lip. And we had only been married like six weeks. And yeah, it was terrible. So I'm in the Army.

And like I said, a lot of things happened within this relationship. But long story short, at some point, it just got to be too much. So we got married in June, and then the following May, finally, I came to my senses, and I was like, I got to get out of here. I got to get my kids out of here because my sons were staying with us. And she's not the mom of my sons, thankfully. But they would be at the house sometimes, and they would see her acting the way that she would act. And it was very, very bad for them to be in that situation, obviously. And this is where it was very selfish of me to continue with that relationship and keep them there.

Instead of thinking about like, oh, but I can't leave her, you know, because I love her so much and whatnot. But at the same time, I've got my kids in that situation, right? It's funny. It just became too much. And I'm like, I got to get the boys out of here. I've got to get them out of here. And literally, literally one morning. threw them in the car, I took them to school, I'm just in my uniform, I've got nothing with me,

and I just left. And I called their mom and said, hey, you know, you got to pick them up this afternoon, and, like, and they're not coming back. And I said, you know, I'll explain the rest to you later. And she starts texting me, second wife starts texting me. Her name is Samantha. Samantha starts texting me. And, um, said, you know, long, angry tax and finally I just respond like I didn't want to tell you this over text but I'm not coming home and that's how I left her and she came very silent um so fast forward a little bit I had bought a house for us and she was living in the house I don't want the house you know no desire to have this house at all um it was too far away from work it was too expensive she loved a house I'm like babe

keep the house you can you can have it like I don't I don't need it um I can't pay for it you know you need to take over the loan you know pay for it and um because I've got to rent an apartment I've got child support you and I were only married 11 months there's not going to be any alimony especially after all the abuse and whatnot you know but you can have the house I don't want I'm not going to fight you for it you know but you have to take over the loan and she kept stalling on that and stalling on that and eventually just told me like well, I can't take over the line. I said, all right, well, that's fine.

Just make, as long as you make the payments, it makes my credit look good. Keep making a payment. Everything would be fine, right? So this is getting to be about November and I left in May. And then she, around November, she stopped making the payments. Just stopped. And didn't give me a real reason why.

But I would get calls from the bank. And I would tell the bank, I'm like, foreclose. on her, please, foreclose on her and put her out. I don't care what you do to my credit. Like, throw her out. It's still on my credit report now. But it's like, throw her out. I don't care. So eventually I do have to go get a lawyer, though, like, because this is getting, things are getting bad. And we got a lawyer and I never intended to take her to court. I just went, the lawyer wrote a letter, a sternly worded letter. It was like, you know, you need to make, you need to start making the payments or we're going to have to, you know, take you to court, you know, and we need to hear from you in five days. We gave her like two months to respond.

He said, we need to hear from you in five days. We gave her two months. She never responded. Finally, we were like, all right, well, we got to, we have to sue, you know. And when I say sue, it sounds a little more dramatic than it was. This was just a division of property, like, because we were still married at the time. Like we were waiting on our divorce. And all it was was like a distribution of marital property.

That's it. Wasn't anything that significant. So on a Friday in of 2020, July of 2020 on a Friday toward the end of the end of the month, January 2020, we sued her and they got the paperwork and all that. And on Monday, she responded by telling the army that I had raped. three years prior and had sexually assaulted her another time and that I was like super abusive and all of this different stuff. And I was kind of like, well, I sort of expected you to do that.

So, because it's just, it's a toll that people can use and in the military. It's, um, that was, that was her response. And so... Did she write a letter or did she write a letter? She had to contact somebody. She had to contact somebody and then once you contact the military, like they kind of took over. Okay. And so the problem with this was when I finally did go and talk to a lawyer, he thought this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

You sued her on a Friday and she accuses you a rape on Monday. and literally the next business day, like, this is silly. Nobody's even going to look at this. And so he went into this, don't even worry about it, mood. You know what I'm saying? And he didn't try very hard. And, I mean, I wish he had just been, like, fighting, like, every tooth and nail. And he didn't.

He's like, you got to, you don't even need to worry about this. These fools told me, even after I was found guilty that I was. I wasn't going to prison. They told me, you know, they didn't say you might not be going to, that you are not going to prison is what they told me. Like, word for word, like, you don't need to worry about that. Like, I didn't have anything prepared, like nothing. Nothing was ready.

Like, I had a grocery list for that day at court. I had a grocery list. We were supposed to stop and get yogurt on the way home. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's how much I thought I was not going to prison, you know? and some jumping ahead a little bit. But what the Army did a two-year investigation. And when the Army does an investigation,

it's different from the civilian world in that they're not attempting to get to the truth. That's not what they want. They want to get a conviction for the Army. So by investigation, they never talked to me. They never interviewed me, nothing. It's all one-sided. So basically they have investigators that are working for the prosecution, and the prosecution is the army.

So these are like actual military police officers who are doing an investigation to support the prosecution. So that would be like think about if the police officers were only doing an investigation to support the prosecutors. And to an extent they do. but they also want to try to get to the truth, you would hope. And that's not what the military does. Military isn't interested in getting to the truth. The military is interested in getting to a conviction. But they told you you were under investigation.

Yes. So they did it have some type of initial meeting with you? Yeah. So what they do is they, I'm going to try not to get too much jargon going here, but they flag you. And flag just means you're like you're frozen. You can't do anything. You can't get promoted. You can't deploy anywhere.

You can't go to any schools. So it's not supposed to be a punishment, but it is a punishment. You can't get any awards. Were you paid still for those two years? Yeah. Yeah. And that was kind of funny. What happened was I actually lost my security clearance.

And because at the time, my directors were very supportive of me. and they didn't believe for a second that anything had happened. So I had lost my security clearance and couldn't come to work. But because they thought that I was getting a raw deal, they weren't mad about the fact that I couldn't come to work. So they just left me alone. So I went like eight months without working and just collecting a paycheck. And the Army pays pretty well, like better than you would think.

And so I was able to get a second job. I was a substitute teacher. So I was substitute teaching while getting my full Army pay. And it was, I mean, good life is a little bit strong, but it was a pretty good life because I had these lawyers, really good lawyers telling me like nothing's going to come with this. And I had every reason to believe them. And I'm getting paid and I'm teaching, which is what I wanted to do. So I was, I wasn't unhappy. You know?

What would it happen if you just resigned when those allegations came? Oh, you can't. Yeah, they can get you. There were guys in the facility who had retired and got in facilities, my euphemism for prison. So it's called the facility. There were guys at the facility who had retired, and they brought them out of retirement in order to try them and put them in. Now, over these two years, are you talking to your ex-wife at all?

second X-Way? No, no, no. So way before any of this happened, I told her we weren't to speak anymore. And this is before she made any allegations or anything. There was a disagreement over some tax returns or something. And I told her, I'm like, I cannot speak to you anymore. We're not speaking. I'm cutting you off entirely because what was happening to me was I'd cut off all communication to her except for my work email. But then I thought, because I thought, we are still married. I do still own the house. If she needs something, I should, she should be able to contact me.

And every morning I'd come in and turn that computer on and I'd almost be shaken. Because like not very much in this world scared me, scares me, but that woman, she terrified me. Like, when she would be going at me about this and that, like, I'd be shaken. and sweating, and, like, she just scared me to death. And so I would turn on my computer every morning, and I would just be a nervous wreck waiting for the email to pull up to see if she had emailed me. And every morning, me, okay, thank God she did. And so I finally blocked her on that, too, and so we can't speak anymore.

And in the divorce decree, or it's not a decree, but the divorce agreement, you know, I put it, in there that she couldn't contact me, that she or none of her family could contact me or my family. That was one of the things that I wanted written down. And this was with her, you know, with all this allegations that she had made that I'd been abusive and this and this. I'd like to point out that like I left her and I was always the one running from her. And I'd ceased all communication with her and I had put in the agreement that she couldn't talk to me. know. But abusers don't like to let go of people and they don't like to let go of control. And the army gave her a way to control me in a way that very few people have. And so she just took that.

She's like, you're not going to leave me. You know, and if you try, this is what's going to happen. So that's basically, basically what happened. So what happens at the end of the two-year investigation? So after the two-year investigation, so the investigation started in January of 2020. And then in the summer of 2021, they told me they're like, well, we're actually going to go to trial with us. I'm like, well, what? Really? And so we had to have this thing called Article 32 here, which is like an arraignment.

It's the military's version of an arraignment. I go through this Article 32 here, and they tell me there's no probable cause. And I know enough to know about law. I've watched enough shows. I know what probable cause means. I mean, there's no probable cause. It's cool. Like they give me a memo saying there's no probable cause.

And I'm like, that's great. There's no probable cause. I thought it meant I was free. And then it says at the bottom of the memo, it says, however, your chain of command is still going to pursue the issue is basically what it said. And so they have the ability in the military to the general, who is the commander, the commander can decide to pursue any case he wants, whether it's probable cause or not. It doesn't matter. And the bad thing about that is because he makes that decision with advice from the top lawyer in the military, which is a guy, the JAG guy and Judge Abacate General.

So they'll make that decision behind closed doors and you'll never get to know because it's attorney-client privilege. You'll never get to know why they made that decision. So why they decided to go forward with the case when there was no probable cause, like we don't know. It's just speculation and we'll never get to know. And so we went through the Article 32 or amen. I thought it was good, but I wasn't. And then they said, well, your trial will be in December.

I still wasn't worried about it. Because I had this lawyer telling me that's nothing to worry about. And now is this a regular lawyer for the military or is this a lawyer in that civilian world? So he was civilian because they'll give you a military lawyer. Like in the movies and he's all dressed up in the military gear. Yeah, they give you a military lawyer, but he's basically a public defender. And they might be good, they might be bad. They're extremely overworked.

They're very, very new right out of the law. school. But I mean, they're fully, you know, they're fully barred lawyers. They just happen to work into military, right? And like, the guy that I had was from New Jersey and he was barred in New Jersey. And so he ended up being the co-counsel and I hired, the guy I hired as a civilian, but these guys will specialize in military law, even though the civilians. So like mine, for example, was he had done 35 years in the military and he had been a judge at one point. point in the Army. So he knew stuff. He knew stuff. He knew it backwards and forwards. He definitely could have won the case, but he was so passive about it because he thought, he thought we had it won.

And he took that innocent until proven guilty, like very seriously. And that's not really a thing in the military, the innocent until proven guilty. But he thought, well, you're innocent. We don't need to fight this that hard. And he didn't want to push her on the stand because he didn't want, we don't want to look like we're attacking her, we don't want to make it look, you know, like we're insensitive or anything like that. That was his whole philosophy. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items, then review your list and carefully choose each one. Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes. So you can feel confident it's what.

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Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Valifu 527. While supplies last, selection varies by location. See associate or Lowe's.com for details. It was very, very wrong. No, when you were Iran, did they, like, arrest you officially, like put you in handcuffs, drag you out,

or is it very, like, formal because it's the military, here's the paper, here's your hearing? So you do get, quote-unquote arrested. It's very informal. But there are guys who go to pretrial confinement. That's not uncommon. And then some of them get this kind of like house arrest type of thing where they have to be confined to the barracks and whatnot. And they didn't do any of that with me.

Like I had no restrictions at all. And were you done working at that point now? Yeah, because I didn't have a security clearance. And with the job that I was in, you can't even go into the buildings without a security clearance. And so that was kind of like my ace in the hole. Be like, hey, I'd love to come to work, but I can't. Sorry. And the way they saw it was like, well, it's not his fault that he can't come to work.

So they weren't mad about it. And so they left me alone. And then the other thing, I mentioned this to you when we've spoken in emails. So all along while this abuse and stuff was going on. because I didn't really think, I didn't think anybody would believe me. That was number one. But the second thing was,

I really, really love Samantha, like tremendously. And even when she was doing these horrible things, I thought she didn't understand what it was she was doing. And I thought she's got

some kind of mental disorder and she just doesn't get it. She doesn't know how mad she gets and she doesn't realize what she's saying and what she's doing. So I started recording her. And I've got, almost 30 hours of recordings of her like just saying and doing the most horrible things and you can hear

or hitting me you can hear all of this stuff and and i really thought these recordings were going to save me and i thought we were going to be able to play them in court and that i was going to be home free so i never got to play them in court but all of my um um um the people who were over me the administrators and whatnot, all of my supervisors had heard them. So they knew what the situation was. So they definitely were sympathetic to what I was going through. And I mean, they saw me, I had come in with this horrible black eye and I lied and said it was like my son, I kicked, I said me and my son were wrestling and I tickled him. He was eight years old. And at the time, and I said, we were wrestling and I tickled him and he kicked me in the eye. And I thought,

that's a really good story. When you come up, you learned a lie really well when you're in those situations. And I was like, I was proud of myself. That's a good story. But so they knew what was going on. And so they were sympathetic to the situation and I didn't have to work. Now, are there plea deals in the military or is it just straight to trial? And were you offered one?

I was not. The vast majority of everyone got plea deals, which I did find out. later that that's normal in the civilian world too, which I didn't know that. The vast majority guys there had plea deals. And I was never offered one and nobody knows why. Lawyer never said why to this day, I don't know why. I wouldn't have taken one. But why I wasn't offered one, we don't know if that's significant or not. What did your parents think of this? Well, so the whole situation was really embarrassing to me. So I didn't tell them for the longest time.

One, because I thought the whole thing was going to boil over. The only reason I ever told my dad was because I actually needed some money from him. And but I kept when I did finally tell them, I'm like, but it's nothing. There's nothing to it. She made these accusations. There's nothing to it. And I don't know exactly what he thought about it. But this is terrible, but my poor mom didn't know anything was happening until I was already in prison.

Because what in the military, which is different from the civilian world, and I noticed from you were talking in your story about how some things that happened to you in between the guilty verdict and sentence. And I know that was a big part of your story. With us, it's immediate. Like we got the guilty verdict you get the guilty verdict in the morning and you get sentenced in the afternoon like you don't go home and That's like how it is in some states Yeah, yeah, I don't yeah, I guess So for me the guilty verdict came in on let's say it was a Thursday and They didn't come to

They didn't come they did put the sentence in off to the next day day. I had a night. That was it, though. It was just one night and went, you know, go straight to prison. And so nobody knew. Nobody knew I was going. My kids didn't know, like, nothing. Like, I didn't know I was going. And my girlfriend at the time, who was with me, was like, I don't even know how to get home. Like, she didn't know how to get home from the court at Fort Bragg. And I was like, yeah, No, it's not, you know, you just, and I'm trying to give her direct, I'm like, I'm getting ready to go to prison. I'm trying to give her directions to get home. You know what I'm saying? You got to get on, you know, you got to go down Williams and then take a right. You know what I'm saying? And all the while, like I'm in handcuffs because as soon as that guilty burg is read, like they cuff you up and shackle, shackle your feet and everything. And yeah, everything changes at that point. So what were your actual charges? So I had two accusations of sexual assault. I was found guilty on one and not guilty on another.

And then domestic violence. And then drunk and disorderly for no apparent reason. And I got no punishment for the drunken disorderly. And then the sexual assault and the domestic violence ran concurrently. Who was at the trial? Is it a judge or is it like a general? or who runs the trial and for the jury, is it civilians or is it other military members?

Yeah, so if you've ever seen a few good men, it's actually pretty similar to that. So your judge is a lieutenant colonel, but he's in a robe. He's not in his uniform. And then your jury, which, you know, your jury's supposed to be your peers. But for us, it's weird because they're higher rankin than us,

like by a lot. So you could easily make the argument that like, well, this guy's not my peer. He's a major in the Army and I'm a sergeant. And so that's different. The other thing is different is they don't need 12. They can have eight. Eight's the lowest they can go. The big difference is they don't need to be unanimous.

This need to be two-thirds, have to say, guilty. And so that's a huge. point of contention that may, that may actually make it to the Supreme Court, not for me, but for everybody, because we're the last people in the federal system who don't have to have unanimous verdicts. And so, so a lot of it's similar, a lot of it's different, but in terms of how the trial runs itself, it's pretty much the same. long was your trial? So it was six days long and then just to make it just all that much more confusing, there was a 41 day break in between because the prosecution hadn't turned over

several gigabytes of information and kind of found out like four days into the trial, like, oh, by the way, there's this like three gigabytes of information that we didn't turn over, like, sorry, and ended up having a break of 41 days. And this was a big problem because leading up to that break, if it was, if you want to put in the football game terms, like we were up 35 to 10, you know what I'm saying? Like, we were killing it, just absolutely killing it, which is another problem because My lawyer again was like, nothing to worry about. You got nothing to worry about.

Like, this is all, this is all good. You got nothing to worry about. And come back after 41 days, just everything was different. Like, we were even in a different courthouse. That's how crazy it was. And it's just like, man, what happened? And I don't think the jury remembered what had happened the 41 days prior because they were, they're all higher-ranking people.

They got way more important things to do than, deal with me. I was kind of in the middle in terms of rank. I wasn't at the bottom. I certainly wasn't at the top. I was right in the middle. And they weren't concerned about a mid-level soldier at all. Now, what was the evidence against you? Was it just text messages? Was it he said she said?

Yeah, it's just testimony. So no physical evidence. No physical evidence, which, so for the longest time, I thought that was this really big deal. And then I would meet people and they would say, the same thing. And then somebody had pointed out in one of the legal things that I was reading was that it's not correct to say that there's no evidence. If the person's testifying, that's evidence. Like, if there was no evidence, the trial would be over. So there was tons of

evidence, but it was all testimony. And the problem, one of the many, many problems was, I know I keep saying the problem was there was many problems. One of the biggest problems was my lawyer convinced me ultimately is my decision, but he convinced me not to testify. And I didn't testify, and that was a huge mistake. You definitely, I think in a case like this, you got to testify. You got to. You got to explain the whole story. Yeah, and I know. I remember you saying that you did. I testified, yeah. I think that made a big difference with mine. It does. It does. I wouldn't, well, again, we wouldn't be sitting here if I had testified. There's no question because she was so erratic and unstable on the stand.

And I think if I could have just got up there and just talk to people and, I mean, I feel like I'm fairly articulate and I speak pretty, I can explain things pretty well. And I think it would have changed everything. But there's a lot of different things I could have done. I could have got my, my sons could have testified. He convinced me not to do that. And he's telling me like, we don't need your kids.

you don't want your kids up there testify. And of course, there's a father you're going to be like, no, I don't want them to have to go through that. No, absolutely not. And they would have been great. They would have been fantastic on the stand. They're also really well-spoken. They would have been fantastic.

So many different things we could have done. And, man, I spent most of my sentence, like staring at the bottom of that top bunk, thinking about like what I could have done differently. If I had said this, if I had done this, if we had done this, if we had called this person, if we had just done this. And man, I drove myself crazy thinking about that stuff. And I'm sure everybody does that.

I'm like 100% certain. How did you feel when the verdict came in? Yeah. Just stunned. Just absolutely stunned because. And I don't know. So people have mentioned to me, I don't know if I'm clear enough about the fact that that the thing that I was found guilty of like never happened. Like never.

And it wasn't a misunderstanding. It was an entire story that she had made up. And the first she had, she made up two stories. The first story was so ridiculous that it didn't fly. The second story was also someone. what ridiculous. I mean, I'll go ahead and tell you, unless you don't want me to. Yeah, yeah, sure. So the first charge was that I had picked her up and thrown her on a table and digitally penetrated

her or fingered her while she was on the table and that she screamed loudly for more than two minutes and for some reason in her story, my sons and her son were sleeping 10 feet away from the table. And there was no reason for that part to be in the story because we did actually have a trip where we went to a place where she said this happened and my sons had slept downstairs. So why she put them in the same room, I have no idea, just don't know. And also the idea that like I mean she wasn't she wasn't huge but she wasn't small I mean I wasn't going to be just picking her up and slinging her places it just wasn't going to happen and the jury didn't buy that one they're like no there's no way you scream for two minutes and the children didn't

wake up and all it just didn't all right the second story this is embarrassing but has to be said she says that I held her down and I gave her an anima and then held the door closed so that she couldn't go and use the bathroom and she had to use the bathroom on herself. And that was a story. Now, my theory on that is, I think the jury heard that and was like, that's such a specific story

that it sounds like something probably happened because it's so specific. But it just was a story. And so none of these things ever happened, which was the other reason why I thought the truth is going to come out, you know, they're going to see. And there were other things that happened in the trial, too, where we were able to show, like we showed a picture of her hand, and her hand was like black.

And they asked her, they said, is that your hand? And she said, yes. And she could have said no. Is that your hand? Yes. Is that, did you get that bruise from punching, they have certain fine in the head? And she said, yeah. and just like that's okay

and she we weren't able to play the recordings but she was she could listen to the recordings and he could say is that you saying blah blah blah blah blah blah she didn't realize she could have said no but she said yes she goes yeah that's me she said did you say X X and X yeah I said that

and so it really didn't feel like there was any chance of losing and I wasn't thinking about prison at all. When he said guilty, it was a shock, but I still was thinking that it was, because the lawyer told me he's like, you'll probably do like 30 days in county, you know, and I was still thinking that was probably what was going to happen. And I was like, and I think I was mad about 30 days. I was like, 30 days.

Are you kidding me? Like, I was just furious about that. And yeah, and then he did three years. And I said, three years. Wow. So then they threw me in a van that night at Fort Bragg. It's nighttime. It's like seven, eight at night.

I was like, so where are we going, guys? You're going to Fort Leavenworth. Now I know I'm going to prison, but where are we going like right now? You're going right now. And they drove nonstop through the night until we got to Fort Leavenworth at 6 o'clock the next day. Which is actually kind of a blessing. I know it's a shitty situation, but going directly to prison is very scarce in today's world. The only reason I did was because of COVID.

Because a lot of the other guys got stuck in county jails, but the county wasn't taking anybody because of COVID. So they had to drive me. Do you think that the judge is the one, the colonel, is the one that gave you the sentence, right? Yes. Do you think that a part of him felt that it wasn't correct? because that's a low sentence for a rape case. Very low sentence. I mean, that's the same amount of time I got in prison, you know?

Yeah, it's a very low sentence. And was there an option for a court, I mean, a judge trial, a bench trial? Yeah. They have those? They had that, and I wish I had taken that because we wouldn't, I believe we wouldn't be talking right now if I'd go on with the judge. Were there females on the jury? There was, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I don't remember the exact makeup, but I do remember. specifically there was a female captain it's a tough situation because you always want to believe the accuser like if they're genuinely telling the truth yeah it is and and i understand that and i so i i have lots of caveats and one of my caveats is like i'm i'm one of the most liberal people you'll ever meet like i'm i'm completely woke and all of that's like big time and

And so I am not one of those like, I know women are treated terrible in this country in general. They suffer a ton of abuse, like just ridiculous amounts that they have to deal with. It's really bad in the military, 100%. And that type of stuff is true. But her case was so outlandish in the way she testified. And I don't, I don't think the judge believed her for a second. And the judge didn't like her a whole lot because she wasn't very respectful. And the jury, I just, I just don't know about the jury.

I don't know. I'm not sure what they're thinking was. I think their thought process was like, I don't really know, but I think something happened. Let's just call it guilty and go with that. Now, there are a couple different things about the military. You're not, you're technically in a sense. until proven guilty, but that's not really, really how it plays out. Just for example, and this seems like such a little thing, but it's not.

So as soon as somebody makes an accusation, they become, they're called the victim. They're not called the accuser. They're called the victim. So they're referred to an all official paperwork as the victim. And again, that seems like, well, it's just semantics, right? That's a little thing, but it's not. It's huge. It's huge.

If you're sitting there and you're talking about the victim. The victim said this and the victim suffered this and the victim this and this and this. It's like, how is she the victim? She's just making accusations at this point. And that's stuff that like the jury hears and the jury picks up on and it starts to kind of drill into their head that this person is the victim. And there's a whole lot of things going on in the military that a lot of people don't know about cases that like the military. that like the military looks at cases that civilians would never, ever look at. 90% of the cases the military looks at to investigate and takes the trial, 90% have been looked at

by civilians ahead of time and just declined, which is what happened with me. So it didn't, when she made her accusations, it didn't go to the army immediately. initially it went to the sheriff of the county that we lived in. And I did speak to the sheriff, which probably in retrospect was a bad idea because you should never talk to the police. But it's time I didn't. I wasn't as wise as as wise to that stuff as I am now. But I did speak to the sheriff and there was nothing. They didn't do anything with it.

They're like, this is nothing. Go on with your life. Have a nice life. And then the military picked it up. turns out that happens in 90% of the army cases 90% they go to the civilians first the civilians say there's nothing here we can't prosecute this because there's no evidence there's there's nothing and then the army picks it up at that point and the army somehow makes it work you know and then all of this and i if i'm telling you stuff you already know i apologize but

in around 2012 or so they started this um big crack down on sexual assaults in the military and you'll hear this all over the news that there's this sexual assault epidemic and there just there isn't there isn't one and um i don't want to say it's made up but the numbers are fudged basically and what they've done is they've taken surveys of people who have come out and said mostly women who've come out and said this happened to me once it was a year ago this happened to me in the barracks and they're counting in that as a sexual assault and which would be the same as me saying like I was robbed in my my home I never reported it and now you're going to count my neighborhood as being a dangerous neighborhood because there's robberies there but that's we don't do that you have to you have to investigate you have to take people to trial you have to like actually let the thing play out you're like innocent until proven guilty but they're actually counting these like stories as sexual assault So the military started looking really, really bad.

And they needed the way they decided they would start looking really good is that they sort of throwing people in prison. So this facility that I was in, the Army has two facilities. They've got the disciplinary barracks, which is like for people who are 10 years and one day up to life, there's like people on death row at that prison. That's the disciplinary barracks. And then there's the joint regional correctional facility. which is where I was, and that's for 10 years and under. So it can be any number of things.

There's 85% are there for sexual type cases. So it really exists just for that crime. And then every once in a while, you'll meet a guy who, like, stole something. Or what about, like, AWOL or something? Yeah, yeah, occasionally, but very rarely, very rarely. But like I was saying to you earlier, like my story wasn't. super uncommon but it wasn't the norm uh the norm was i met this girl we were at a party i was drunk she was drunk we hooked up the next day she said it was non-consensual and what we call regret

sex which happens like all the time and not saying that shouldn't be investigated it absolutely should be because you don't know what happened but when you got guys doing five-year sentences for that for stuff that just happens you know that's just That's part of life. That's part of college life. That's part of the military barracks life. It is. It's just not saying that it should or shouldn't happen,

but people are doing like five years or more for that. That's just ridiculous. But like going back to what you said, me only getting three years was really low. And I think it's because the judge didn't believe her. I really do. Now share with us your experience of military prison being in that facility. So, okay, so it's really funny when we first got there, I was in a van and I'm handcuffed.

And we go around the side of the building and I see this whole pile of guys in their brown uniforms. And I got in my head that they were waiting for me. Like this group of guys were waiting for me and they were going to haze me as I walked in. Like I really thought that's what was going to happen. And they weren't. They were like taking the trash out and they were like hanging out and laugh. for a few minutes after they had taken the trash out. So then they get me to the shoe, the special housing unit.

I'm sure everybody's watching this knows what the shoe is. They get me there and they're leading me up to my cell. Like I finally got an end process and whatnot. And they're leading me up to myself. And this guy starts yelling at me like, hey, hey, where are you from? Where are you from? I was like, I'm coming from Fort Bragg. Oh, yeah, man.

I thought so. you look like you from Fort Bragg, man, how you doing? It's like, point is everybody was really nice from the start. First of all, all the guys that are there, the vast majority are there for some BS. And so they all sympathize with each other on that level. The other thing is the whole facility is run by soldiers. So all your guards are other soldiers. So they're guards and you're an inmate.

but it's still the fact that they're like, say, an E2, which is a private. So they're a private and you're a sergeant. It's still true. It's kind of hard to switch that off. And that's a bit of a challenge. But they tend to be like super respectful and super nice to you. Not all of them, but they tend to be. And so I don't want to make it sound like it had a ball there because I certainly didn't.

I was not happy there at all. But overall, it was not miserable. It was one of the easier times of my life. Like there was very few responsibilities and definitely like all of your needs were taken care of. Like, I mean, I didn't have to get socks. I could order socks if I needed them. Like they just supplied you with everything. Do you pay for that?

No, you got $35 a month. That they gave you? The military gives you 35 to spend on commissary. Yeah. And are there snacks? Are there... So if you want to buy the snacks and stuff, that's your own money. But your H&C, like your soap and shampoo and shirts and stuff like that, that's your 35 a month.

Interesting. Yeah. Now are the inmates against people with like sex offender type charges or no because a lot of them? Interesting. But, I mean, there's still the... This sounds dumb because... We always wondered, like, why are you, not we, but some of us wondered, like, it's kind of stupid for you guys to separate each other. But there were different levels.

So, like, if you had hooked up into barracks, like, that was one thing. But if you had gotten caught with child porn, that was another thing. And so there was still the whole, like, chomo thing going on. There was a minimum security house, which was Oscar. house and they tended to be the older guys and they they had a lot of privileges that we didn't have so they were kind of looked down upon and called chomos and things like that even though that might not even been why they were there what about the guards how did they treat individuals with sex offender charges um so they were good because they didn't believe it they they and that's the thing if you

talk to anybody in the military and i don't know how often you come in contact with people in the military, but, you know, you can talk to them. They're all going to tell you, you're not going to meet somebody in the military who doesn't know somebody who got caught up in this type of stuff or they were accused of something at some point, just because it's such an easy thing to do to make accusations against somebody. It's like, and so this is stuff. Like, we could do this interview for six, seven hours. I'm telling you, there's so much to it. So, along with trying to get these convictions. What they've done is they've incentivized the accusations. And the way they've incentivized these accusations is if you are, if you're actually in the military, which my wife was not,

of course, but if you're actually in the military, you get to leave your unit. So you can go to any unit anywhere as long as they have your job. So you can come in tomorrow and say, Sergeant Johnson touched me inappropriately last night, and they will immediately move you to a different unit, to a different base if you want to go to a different base. Now, the thought process behind that is good. The thought process behind that is we don't want you having to work with somebody who abused you. You don't want to have to see your abuser every single day. That wouldn't be right.

That would be too emotionally stressful for you, right? But you can see where that gets taken advantage of. If somebody's telling you like, dude, all you got to do is go in and say that this and this and this happened and you can get out of this crappy unit. And so that happens a lot. They get money for it. So my wife was paid the entire time that I was in, she was paid $1,400 a month, which just happened to be enough to make the house payment. So she got the house but didn't know any way to pay for it. and she was able to make $1,400 a month and get her full benefits while I was in, too.

And then does that stop once you get out? Once I'm out. See, I'm not actually out of the Army yet. I'm still in the Army now. So she's still continuing to go? Yeah, absolutely. And even to this day, you're still technically in the Army? I'm still in the Army.

I got my ID in my pocket. But they don't dishonorably discharge you right away after conviction? Not yet because it's still under appeal. Oh, so once the appeals over, then they do that. And the appeal goes on forever. Wow. So now back to military prison, how are the cells? Are they actually bars?

Are they locked doors? Are they cubicles? What does that look like? They're locked doors. They're very small. I would imagine they look like the same cells. They look everywhere. They were doors with windows on them.

Very heavy doors. The toilet sink is exactly like what you have in the other room. Two bunks bolted to the wall. and then a foot locker bolted to the wall and then a desk that served as like the steps to the top bunk. And that was bolts to the wall and that was it.

The good side, good for a lot of reasons is that the prison was actually on the empty side, which means they're not sending as many people there as they used to, which is very good news. It means stuff's kind of getting under control a little bit.

And because we weren't crowded you you ended up getting your own cell fairly quickly I think I had to wait like eight or nine months but by the time I left like guys were getting their own cells within like two or three months and that was pretty cool because it was tight in there with two people it was really tight how many hours a day are you in your cell like what's a typical routine day yeah so lockdown was from 11 at night until five in the morning and then you could be yeah you were free to be out of them after that in in the common area in the um the housing unit um you could be in the common area um which is what most people did

and then of course you had your job that you went to um at least several days a week and i um i started out with a really crappy job and ended up with one of the really good jobs at the end I was one of the recreation guys who I was supposed to be maintaining the rec equipment. But basically, I just got to work out all the time. But you can't tell to look at me now, but I used to work out constantly. There's nothing else to do. So, yeah, you had your jobs. We had the textile shop where I learned how to use the sewing machine.

It's just like, that's fantastic. But, yeah, I'm great with the sewing machine right now. and people work in the kitchen, of course, and laundry, of course. I think all of that stuff is pretty typical of any facility. Did you have count time? Did they count you guys? Yes. Technically four a day, but only two that you're awake for.

So it's just like the federal prison system. It all goes into that, probably same database. Yeah. Count was 11 and 4. Yeah. Yeah. And somehow they, oh, my God. The count always took forever.

The count did take forever. Jeez. Yeah. Yeah, I miss that. But there's other stuff about it that, like, you're not going to want to hear about, like, the food. Yeah, tell us about the food there. I'm sure everyone's curious. Food was, because it was, so the kitchen was run by military people.

It was run by an army unit. So it wasn't a bunch of civilians. It was an army unit that was cooking. And then they had the inmates who helped with the cooking. And what they did was they had a decent amount of money for food anyway. Then they opened up this kitchen job. They opened it up to guys who had been cooks before in the military, like had been military cooks.

So they actually knew what they were doing. And they got kind of competitive with each other. And like they wanted to make the best food because it was a big deal for us to get good food. But it was an even bigger deal. Like if you had made that good food and we knew you had. made it, like, you'd find that dude on, you know, at rec time. Like, man, man, did you make the hot dogs today? That was you.

Oh, my God, dude, it was so good. Like, that was a really, you know, huge thing of pride for these guys, right? So they started trying to outdo each other. And, like, I'm telling you, like, I'm almost embarrassed to say it. But on Thanksgiving, we would have, like, steak and lobster tail. Lobster tails. I'm not kidding. I am not kidding.

You gotta go, man. I know, right? I mean, we had steak, not a best cut of steak, but we did have steak. We had cornish hen, but there was no lobster tails, I'll tell you that. I don't know where they got these lobster tails from. I have no idea. They were frozen. Well, most lobster tails are frozen.

Yeah, but, and then guys, man, the best collard greens I've ever eaten. I'm from the south. The best collards I ever ate were in prison. But again, you know, the guy who made him, everybody knew he had made him. and like he was he was the hero. You guys probably had some good grits then. Yes, cheese grits. Yeah, the first time I ever had grits was in prison.

Yeah, the cheese grits were the best. The cheese grits were my favorite. And again, like I said, it was a real, it would really, you know, brighten the guy's day when you found them and like, man, that stuff was off the hook, man, that was so good. So they really started going out of the way to, like, make the food good. And I don't, honestly, I don't remember anybody completely. about the food, especially the guys who had come from county.

The guys that come from county were in heaven. Yes. Now, those dudes just by the way, when you're in county, they had to keep them isolated. They weren't allowed to be with the general population. So that's a big thing with military. We're never allowed to blend with other prisoners for whatever reason. I don't understand why that is. Now, were there fights at all in there?

very, very few. The fights that you would see would be just normal stuff, like basketball games and stuff. But not like prison politics. No, wasn't anything like that. No gangs or anything like that. Now, up at the disciplinary barracks, like absolutely, because those guys were in there forever. But for us, everybody was doing pretty short sentences and nobody wanted to go to the shoe. and everybody wanted their privileges and whatnot.

And, you know, I guess all prisons are probably this way. I don't really know, but they give you your good time ahead of time. Yep, and you lose it. You can only lose it. Yeah. So the only fights I ever saw were like just on the basketball court and stuff like that. And never anybody like too bad. But the shoe, though, I have a funny story.

I spent 29 days in isolation in the shoe. This is how insurious the prison was at time. I wrote a series of jokes about the guards. And I wrote it up and typed it up and put it out in our unit for people to read in our housing unit. And everybody read it and they thought it was hilarious. Even the guards thought it was funny, except for one. One got a hold of and didn't think it was funny. I spent 29 days.

Over the hat. In the shoe for 29 days. How they know it was you? Oh, I told him it was me. Oh. They saw, well, they had a camera. And it looks like you're sitting down a piece of paper. I am sitting down a piece of paper.

I'm like, there's nothing wrong. These are jokes. I'm allowed to write these. And it wasn't anything in the regulations that said I couldn't, you couldn't do that. And they were just like, they decided it was harassment is what they call. It was staff harassment. That's what it was. Now, was there contraband at all in their cell phones, shanks?

anything like that? There was, there was, there was this mysterious cell phone that was floating around that they kept telling us, like, we know there's a cell phone and we're going to find it. Like so, you might as well turn it in now, but yeah, there were cell phones. Guys were making hooch. Man, the dudes that were making hooch, boy, they would go, they would go away to the shoe and like, you'd forget they existed. Like, they kept those guys down there for a long time.

But they were like actually stealing the yeast and stuff out. out of the kitchen. No, I'm guessing most of these individuals in here, including yourself, have never had run-ins with law enforcement, had never been arrested. Like, it goes zero to 100 because you need a clean record for the most part to get into the military. Exactly. You're certainly not a felon.

And that was the other thing that, you know, I mentioned to you when I was emailing you that, like, I don't want to come off a sound of judgmental toward anybody, but I feel like my story's a little bit different in that like I had no preparation for prison. I had no idea I was going to prison. I had no idea that anything was coming down the pipes, nothing. Like I would guess that a lot of people who were in prison kind of knew they were going to end up in prison at some point in their life, you know, or like they were doing things. Bless you. They were, they were doing things that they knew might get them in prison someday, you know, things like that. And, I mean, I went from a gated community.

Like, you had a punch in a code to get into my house. I lived on a golf course. I was a Sunday school teacher at the time. You look like one. Yeah. Didn't drink. I still don't drink. I mean, I am in recovery, but I had been sober for over two years by the time I got to prison.

Like, I didn't do anything. Like, you know, for me to be a wait past 9 o'clock at night was, That was unusual. So, you know, I was the guy always wearing cat t-shirts and stuff. Like, prison was not anywhere on my radar. And so, and eventually we got to wear, like, we kind of joke about that in prison. Like, you know, hashtag white people prison. Hey, honey, guess what?

I joined the gang today. Now, speaking of clothing, I was the clothing in there. What would you guys have to wear every day? We had these brown uniforms. The same ones that you saw the people wearing when you came in? Yeah. These dark brown uniforms, they pressed them for us in the laundry, which I don't know if that's normal or not,

but they were pressed and they look like guys actually got, because it's still the military, like the way you look is kind of an important thing for guys. That's kind of drilled into you early on that like your appearance is super important. It's a military thing. Yeah, we had them nice. nicely pressed with lines on them and everything.

Could you grow your hair out and stuff or no? No, no. So you had to shave in there too? Yeah. But you could have a beard or not? No beard. Nope. Moustache? No.

No, you could have a, so there's a military regulation for mustache. It actually looks just like Adolf Hitler. Exactly. It has to be trimmed down this way, right? And I'm guessing you had to make the bed a certain way, too. Didn't have to make your bed. Oh, wow. I'm shocked.

So they make you, they had four. You're forcing your beard leg but not how you made your bed. Yeah, I know, right? In federal prison, you have to make it five days a week. So they don't, they really don't do a whole lot to you.

When you get there, they just kind of leave you alone. And they would tell us, they were like, your punishment is to be here. Your punishment isn't the stuff that's going to happen to you here. Your punishment is that you had to come here.

And me personally, if you'd given me the choice, I would rather have been in like a more discipline barracks for less time, if that had been an option, like, you can go and, like, have to get up and run every morning and stuff like we used to do in the military, but that's just not an option. Like a boot camp? Yeah, that would make more sense, but... Are there females mixed with you guys, too, or is it all male? It's all males.

So they have a female side? There's a female prison someplace. It can't be that big, though. How many years? Supposedly there's, like, one Army female in prison. Wow. So how many years do you do on a three-year-sized? sentence, like with good time? So I did, I got a lot of time off my sentence.

I was able to do that. So if it's three years, it's two and a half before you even walk in the door. So I'm not going to be able to tell you the exact days because I don't remember. But then I got another like four months off of that. And that was just by doing different programs and stuff. And I managed to get myself into different leadership rules and whatnot. And it's like, because I was, I was a lot older than, I wasn't the oldest person there, but I was in the, I was one of the 10 oldest people there. You know, so people refer to me as like Mr. Fye and things like that.

And so I was in a lot of positions where, like, I facilitated different things and was like, a, What am I trying to say, like an advisor sort of, and you were able to get time off your sentence that way. So like a program, like I was in an Alcoholics Anonymous program and I was one of the leaders for that. And I would get two days off a month for that. You know, and when I first heard about this, it was like two days off a month. That's nothing. But it did add up. You max out at five days off a month.

So, which again doesn't sound like a whole lot until he starts. doing the math and you're like, well, that's 60 days a year. That's two months a year. That's a lot. So, yeah, that's the time. So what do you do about two years inside? I did two years in a month. So it was 25 months.

What year did you out? 2004. So I went in in January, January 20th of 22. And I got out March 9th of 24. So almost a year ago. Yeah. Now, restriction-wise, tell us about that, like with probation. Is it like the federal system?

Do you have to register? It's a sex offender. How does that all work? Yeah, so it's a little, I know I'm sitting here talking about, like, how great life was, and it really wasn't that difficult. But as soon as you get out, it's, you're dealing with all the crap that anybody has to deal with. Like, you've got a felony on your record. But the worst thing is being on the registry.

and you end up having you have to register on the sex offender registry which that varies by state as far as like which states are strict in which the states are not i have no idea of connecticut strict or not they tend to be stricter in the south than they are in other parts of the country um but you're on that registry which means anybody can look you up at any time um for life yep it affects where you live um it affects the jobs you can have Um, because I don't think that like a lot of places will deal with a felon, but, but they're not going to deal with people on the registry. This don't want to deal with it. And which is why I say that like if everything got overturned in my appeal, then I'm off the registry and I don't have that felony on my record.

But it's still going to show up on Google. So I'll never be able to, I'll never be able to teach because that will always be there on Google for people. to find and whatnot. And so, yeah, so that's, that's the crappy part. Getting out is the crappy part. I was majorly, majorly, majorly, majorly depressed when I got out. And to the point where I low-key wanted to go back because I'm like, man, life was so easy inside.

And, like, you know, Friday night movies was like the most exciting day of the week. like look hey man look they're showing batman this week man i can't wait and everybody would be so excited about it and then you get out and you're like everything sucks and it's like i got to find a job and i can't couldn't find a job anywhere and i got really lucky to get the job but i did get and got no place to live i have to come home and stay with my day because they've got no money saved up i've got no car i've got nothing it's just crappy so yeah i just i wanted to go back like go back and at least I have my own little cell and I'm taking care. I felt like I was taking care of myself.

Obviously, I wasn't. But you feel like you're taking care of yourself when you're in prison. I guess, you know, staying alive is taking care of yourself. But yeah, yep, have to do with all that, have to do with all the parole. I just got done with parole in January. How strict was the parole with your charges? So it wasn't, but it varies based on who you get assigned. And I just happened to get assigned a guy who was really laid back.

And he could have made my life really hard and he just didn't. And but we were talking a little bit before the show started about having to take the, I had to take lie detector tests. I had to take two of them. And apparently this was a really big deal. I didn't carry either way. It didn't make any difference to me. But apparently it was a big deal, and I passed the lie detector test.

And after that, they really left me alone. And they were kind of, oh, you were telling the truth. I'm like, yeah, really? What kind of questions do they ask you? So the first test was all about the charges and did it actually happen? And you said no? No, yeah, I said no. And you passed?

And I passed. So why can't that be used towards? They're not admissible in court. Now, if I had known I was going to pass and if I known the thing was going to be that serious, we could have gotten one done on our own and, you know, and submitted that in the trial, and just let people decide if it's important or not. But, yeah, they still made me take it even though it didn't matter. But I will say, after I passed it, they treated me very.

differently. Like they had a little meeting with my, I had a state, a state assigned counselor who actually came to really like. And she and I met every other week. And I came to kind of enjoy meeting with her. And she sat with the parole officer and they talked about the whole thing. And man, they left me alone after that. How are your kids dealing with us? They are interesting because they, they know Samantha because they were in the house with her. And so first of all, they were super confused. They were like, Dad, why are you in trouble? Sam's the one who did this, this, this, and this.

And I would have to explain to them like, she did do that, but she's not in the Army, so the Army can't do anything to her. And it wouldn't matter she could murder somebody. The Army can't do anything to her. So I explained that to them. They wrote the best letters for my parole board. They wrote the best letters. I was so proud of them.

But I told them, you know, you're always supposed to, like, not blame the victims and whatnot. And I told them, I said, you guys write whatever you want. I said, I don't care. You write whatever you want. And they were like, yeah, she did all this stuff. And she was this. And she threw this at them. And I was like, so they were very confused.

And they still, like, in terms of, I mean, I don't know how much of it sunk in, like, hey, dad went to prison, but they don't think for a second that. And I haven't ever had anybody in my life for a second, even question. And that's been really great. A lot of that is because they knew Samantha. And I think if they hadn't known her, maybe they might have questioned me a little bit, but they knew her and they knew how she was and they knew some of the things that were going on. So I've never had anybody questions. So I remind myself that all the time.

I'm like, I would like to have my name cleared and all that. And I hope I win the appeal and all that stuff. But really, that's just so I can get a better job. Because all the people that mean anything to me know the truth. And so I'm okay with that. Like, what do I care if, like, this person who I've never met before can look me up? I don't care. It's nothing to me.

The people that I love and care for all know the truth. you know, but it would definitely make a difference in terms of jobs, you know. I mean, I've got a master's degree and I'm, and a full military career behind me, and I'm lucky that I'm making $23 an hour. You know, I'm very, very lucky to be in that position. Have you thought about what you would do if you lose the appeal? Because I know, like, I was in your position when I was appealing, you have all the hope in the world.

Yeah. That keeps you going through, like, those really tough times, you know? But have you given a thought of what your reaction will be if you lose? So I think I've had the one advantage of it being drug out so long as that I have been able to think about that. If it had been quicker, I don't think I would have. But it has gotten to the point where I have kind of moved on with my life. So I don't think my life is going to look like super different. To be honest with you, if I won the appeal, my life would look super different because, again, this could go on.

We could talk about this forever. But what happens is if you win you peel, you go back in the military. You put your uniform back on. I have to shave, get my hair cut, and I have to go back in. And the good thing is they'll be paying you. And they'll give you, hopefully, they give you back pay and all that stuff. So my life would change dramatically if I did win. And it really wouldn't change that much if I don't.

So. But as far as, you know, as far as what I'm going to be doing in a year or so, like, I'll probably be driving trucks like I am now. What about restrictions? Like, can you go into restaurants? Can you go to the movie theater? Like, how does all that work? No, there's no restrictions on that stuff.

Okay. No, you've got free movement. The only thing really is where you live is the restriction. Now, where we are, it's so rural, it's not a big deal. Because you're not going to, it's easy to find a place that doesn't have a school close to it or something like that. Now, if you're trying to find a place around here, like in, you're. Danbury or something, it would be much more difficult because you'd have to be a, well, I don't know what the restrictions are in Connecticut, but most places it's a thousand feet. You'd have to be

a thousand feet away from schools, daycares, things like that. And, you know, you can see we're in a bigger area like Danbury or whatever. Like, for example, I've heard that it's almost impossible to live in like New York City, for example. Like, it's just not possible. And, um, And so there are guys who get stuck in prison there because they can't find a place to live. So they just, they have to stay in prison. But where we live, it's a little easier. What about dating? Were you worried about that?

Yes. Getting out? Yeah. Yeah. I just assumed I wasn't going to. I think it's easier to be a murderer than a sex offender, a charge-wise. It is. It is.

And so I met a wonderful, wonderful person. And I had assumed we, I would. So what happened was I was very tired of never talking to humans, you know, other than my dad, you know, bless them. But I was just tired of not talking to the humans who were more my age. And so I went online and was dating. I was chatting with people. And then I started hitting it off with this woman. And I tried to tell her early on.

I'm like, no, no, no, no, just be careful. There's stuff. You know, I got history. And she's like, what is it? I'm like, all right, well, let me just tell you. And so I told her about that I have two ex-wives and the one was very abusive and all this stuff. I told her all about that. And then, but I kept telling her, like, just so you know, there's actually.

more to the story. I just really don't want to go into it right now. At this point, we had been talking for like a couple days, you know, so I just didn't feel like this was something I needed to tell her then. But we were getting really close, really quick. So it had been like less than a week, and we went to, on a trip together to Richmond, which is about two hours away from where we live. And we were in the car, and I kept hinting, I kept telling her, I'm like, I don't want you to get too attached because there's stuff from my past. And she kept saying it's funny to me now. Like she goes, I don't judge people in the past.

And I was like, okay, we'll see. We'll see. And then she finally said, she said, of all things, she goes, was this as long as you're not like, you know, a sex offender or something. And I was like, of all the things you would have said, that would be the thing you would say. I feel like that's a pretty common response. So I had to, yeah, I guess so, but I had to. I mean, I get that a lot.

And she's like, you're not, are you? I'm like, oh, my God. I think the top two for women are, you know, sex offender or killed someone, you know, is what they'll say when they ask about your felony. Yeah. Yeah, and it's, it's hard. It's just weird how we categorize everybody. You know, we categorize everyone and we subcategorize them too, you know. Like, oh, you're an ex-con, but okay, but wait, wait, wait, wait.

What, what? Oh, you just stole a car that, then you're good. You know, like, you just shot somebody, but they didn't die. And then, okay, no big deal. But, and so we had this really awkward ride home. There was still like 50 miles left to go. It was like a really long 50 miles. But she's here with you today. She's here with me today.

And like, one of the most wonderful women I've ever known, probably tied with my mother for that. and it's just, you know, incredible. And I feel like when you get to know me, you don't have to talk to me too long before you know that like, all right, yeah, that's never happened. That's what I think. It doesn't hurt that I do have the evidence about all the abuse and whatnot. Like that doesn't hurt in terms of what other people think.

It didn't help me in the trial. but that's something I you know I mentioned to you earlier on that's something I'm if I have any kind of mission going forward it's it's that I want there to be more light shown on the abuse that men are suffering that it's not a male-female thing about people getting abused is that people are getting abused and that's that's what I want to be out there for people so you know that's usually that's something when I talk to people and unfortunately it's it's so common that it happens to women that that's a point that we can kind of bond over um so that's sort of helped me but but yeah i think in general i don't

i don't tend to tell people that i was in prison like i've never mentioned it at work for example obviously the people who need to know no but i never mentioned it never once how do you feel about them finding out about this interview? I don't know yet, honestly. I really don't. There were some people, like, there are some people in my life who know exactly what this interview is. There are some people in my life

who think that I'm talking about PTSD for veterans. And so we're just going to have to see what happens. So, yeah. Yeah, we'll see. I think, like, I'll talk to people and then, you know, they say, I got to get it cleared with my boss or something. And their boss will be like, I don't think it's a good idea because it shines, you know, negative on the company. But yet I'm sure they're using them for credits for hiring a felon in that. So I don't like bosses that do that because I think that's wrong because you did agree to hire to that person.

If the person was honest with you about it, you know. Right. They're not naming your company. and you're not doing anything like that. And a lot of people do name the company they work for, but the ones that don't because they don't feel comfortable, which is totally fair. I don't think it's fair for their boss

to basically give them that ultimatum, hey, you're not going to have a job here if you do that interview when you're sharing a part of your story and it's in your past. It's not who you are now. Yeah, and then, I mean, all the respect in the world to the people that are open and honest about it because I'm open about it when I need to be.

I give you a lot of credit, man. You're the first person that's had your charges that sat in that chair. Oh, really? To talk about that, you know? Yeah. And, you know, it takes a lot to do that, and I give you a lot of credit. Yeah, well, and I don't think we, and that's a problem. When you hear sex offender, you think it's a guy in a trench coat at the school, you know?

That's what people think. or somebody driving around in a van looking at kids through binoculars and whatnot. And it's like that's not what's happening. A lot of people are just getting caught up and stuff. And there's this huge percentage of people who are falsely accused. I've read some article somewhere that said it will get to a point in our life where every single person will have either been accused or will know somebody who's been accused. like that will happen within like say the next 20 years and you know whether or not that's true or not

the point is it's it's becoming so widespread that like we do need to talk about it and like everybody that's on that registry is not necessarily because they were you know caught at a kindergarten doing something horrible you know and and i have met a lot of individuals in your shoes that have reached out just to talk or say that watching the show has helped them. I've had parents and siblings because they take offense to the, and I get their perspective to some of the ex-inmates that come on here and talk about, you know, beating up chomos and smashing chomos and this and that. And, you know, as a parent, like, you're going to feel some type of way because you still care and love for your child no matter what they did.

But I just tell them, hey, that's that person's opinion. I don't, you know, go on here saying, I smash chobos or I'm against, I give people. a safe place to talk about their situation. Yeah, that's part of it. That's just part of it. Yeah, but I get their perspective too, but also that's the reality of it. And there are different levels to it too, whether there's a child involved or there's just, there's so many different, you know, aspects to it.

Yeah. But Sam, thank you so much for coming on the show today, man. Well, thank you very much for having me. It's a great trip. We've had a great time and should wore a coat. But other than that, the whole trip's imperfect. I can't believe you did bring a coat. I can't believe we didn't bring a coat.

I cannot believe it. Well, safe travels back and, you know, maybe find a coat on the way home. Yeah. Enjoy the rest of your time of the area. Absolutely. You know, great job today. So one real quick question. So the word on the street is that Connecticut now has the best pizza that it's better than New York.

That's the word on the street. Yeah. So. I go to Stanziados in Danbury. Stangiotos. Yeah. That's my personal favorite. Okay.

Because we found one place that was somebody's name. Pepe's? Maybe. Sally's. No, it was like Bob Johnson. It was a person last name. No, no, no, no. But it was a coal-fired place and it had over 5,000 reviews.

No, no, go to Stanziados. Stangiotto. Tell them I send you. Yeah, go to Stanziados, tell them I sent you. Stangiotos. Yeah. Okay. And Danbury.

Are you guys staying in Denver? Yeah, so go to Stanziados and Danbury. It's like 10 minutes from here. That's where we always go. It's really good. Hey, if you say, I'm glad I asked them. Yeah, that's what I go to. It's like personal wood-fired type pizzas, a lot of different flavors.

They got some great appetizers, too, great salads. And for dessert, great desserts and then donuts as well. Now, barbecue, if you guys like barbecue, there's a great spot behind us, too, who do Brown barbecue. I saw the name of that. I don't think we'll come from the south up to Connecticut to eat barbecue. But if you want some, that's a famous place. Those are our two recommendations we recommend everyone.

Stanziato's and Hoodoo Brown. Well, we're going to San Giotrish. I've been looking forward to this pizza. Awesome. Well, I hope you enjoy them in. And thank you again for coming. All right. Well, thank you very much.