Locked In with Ian Bick - I Was 19, Addicted to Pills, and Charged with Murder — This Is My Story | John Lendall

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

John Lendall’s life spiraled before it ever had a chance to begin. Growing up in Massachusetts with parents addicted to drugs, John dropped out of high school as a freshman and ended up in juvenile detention twice before turning 18. By 19, he was hooked on pills and chasing his next high — until one night, a robbery for drugs turned deadly. Charged with murder and facing 18–20 years, John took a plea deal and cooperated with authorities. He spent 12 years behind bars. In this interview, John shares what really happened that night, what prison taught him, and how he's trying to rebuild a life after a childhood of chaos and a past he can’t undo. #TrueCrime #PrisonStory #AddictionRecovery #JuvenileJustice #MurderCase #LockedInWithIanBick #CrimePodcast #FromPrisonToRedemption Connect with John Lendall: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/workingmandistillers/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kobythedistillerydog/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/john.lendall.2025 Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Get 50% off the Magic Mind offer here: https://www.magicmind.com/IANB50. #magicmind #mentalwealth #mentalperformance Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Use code LOCKEDIN for 20% OFF Wooooo Energy Buy Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00:00 John Lendle's Troubled Past and Prison Sentence 00:04:36 Childhood Exposure to Illegal Activities 00:09:50 Impact of Gang Presence on School Life 00:15:11 Life in Juvenile Detention 00:20:09 Unconventional Journey Home 00:25:22 Journey into Drug Addiction 00:31:09 Initiation into Armed Robbery 00:37:01 The Gunshot Incident and Its Aftermath 00:42:40 Arrest and Confession: A Turning Point 00:48:01 Legal Challenges and Sentencing 00:54:19 Struggles with Addiction and Recovery in Prison 00:59:02 Navigating Prison Life and Social Dynamics 01:04:15 Journey of Self-Forgiveness and Reflection 01:09:24 Evolution of Communication: Texting to Facetiming 01:14:29 Juggling Multiple Jobs: A Personal Journey 01:19:35 The Impact of Rescuing Dogs as Pets 01:24:18 Final Thoughts and Farewell 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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Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Bad advice? You talking to me? Kayak. Got that right. Girl opened the door, so she screams out, this blood cartel and scream. Nah, he forced her in the bathroom and shuts the door. We've come following him behind him. Hands up, whiz the shit.

I got the gun to the back of his kids, he's got his hands up. And then the kid starts backing up. Hey, y'all don't move. He just turns, starts wrestling with me. John Lendell never had a fair shot. Growing up in Massachusetts with drug-addicted parents, he dropped out his freshman year high school and was in and out of juvie before he turned 18. By 19, he was addicted to pills and desperate.

one robbery for drugs turned deadly. Charged with murder, John faced 20 years behind bars. In this interview, he opens up about the night everything went wrong, why he chose to cooperate, and how 12 years in prison changed his life forever. John, welcome to Locked in, man, straight from Rhode Island. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks so much for coming. And you know Bean Shearer, the first thing you asked me was,

how's that tattoo he'll it up? For those that follow me on social media, they know I got branded by Bean Shooter. Yeah, probably definitely one of the better success stories, but probably one of the funniest guys. If anyone doesn't follow him, definitely follow him because it's very entertaining. Yeah, he's so funny. My favorite story is a banana bread story. Did you hear that one when he walked in the dunk in twice,

and he stole it, and then he went to pay the second time, but they forgot to ring him up, so he got the banana bread? Yeah, he's got stories for days that guy, man. I'm glad to see he's doing good. I have a mutual friend that tried to go out to his sober house when he got out. My friend Mike was actually doing a second degree, a life sentence. He ended up getting compassionate release. So he's trying to know Mike well, and Mike tried to help him out,

but I guess his parole officer wouldn't let him go to the Soba house. So he was kind of bummed, but he's doing good now. He's actually living in Florida and stuff. Yeah, for as much as Bean Shooter likes to joke around, he does do a lot for the community and everything, him and Johnny Bart too. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of guys, and that little community, too, is really tight-knit. Definitely.

Especially guys that are really trying to do good for themselves. There's a lot of support there for sure. Well, John, I want to shout out what you brought me today. If you want to explain this to the audience, this is such a cool gift. Yeah, you're welcome. That is a Rescue Dog, Wheat Whiskey. Reproduce it. It's just actually a sourced whiskey.

We didn't actually distill it. We finish it in our barrels. But one of the most important things, my wife and I did, after I got out, was rescuing a dog. He's American bully. His name's Kobe. He's on a label. So a portion of the proceeds from that go back to the shelter that we, we rescued him from.

That's so cool. That's such a neat idea. Yeah, yeah. Good boy. I said pure breed American bully too. I couldn't believe somebody would dump him out of shelter. Yeah. You know, it was our gain, has lost.

Definitely. And while we're going to be enjoying our old fashions over here at the studio, you saw we got a whole bar we built and everything. So we'll put this on display over there. Yeah, the studio's decked out, man. I love it. Thank you, man. Get the ping pong table and everything.

Yeah, I suck a ping pong. Matt's a good one. But he likes to play people. So where'd you grow up, John? So I grew up in Massachusetts. I grew up north of Boston, Poverty Mass, and I actually bounced back and forth from Poverty to Lynn. My mother and father were never married.

They weren't even together when I was born. They were both drug addicts. So I spent most of my time my grandparents on my mother's side, so my grandparents lived in Poverty Mass, and then I ended up moving in my teens to, almost my teens, to Lynn. And I kind of just bounced back and forth. I was just NPP, buddy, a few weeks ago, seeing Bean Shooter and Johnny. That's when I got the tattoo. Oh, really?

Yeah, we're at. What studio? We were at that strip club. A cabaret? No. Golden Banana? Golden Banana, yeah, we were filming there during the day. We weren't attending as guests.

We were just filming their friends with the owner. So we were filming it. We did a whole interview. Tattoo at a strip club is not the most sanitary place. No, I didn't get the tag. We went to an actual shop. Oh, okay. Johnny's cousin.

All right. But, yeah, that one was, the interview was, done at the golden banana. Okay, cool. Was it just you growing up or did you have siblings? So that's why I ended up moving to Lynn to move in with my aunt. My aunt Karen actually took in foster kids. So my sister was born.

My sister was born when I was five years old and a different father. But my parents are still heavily involved in drugs. And we thought, they thought, it was a little bit too much for my grandparents to handle at the time. So I went to go live in my aunt Karen and Lynn, where I spent most of my life. growing up and I actually felt it was Lynn's a little bit more of a rough area and the foster kids too I felt like I kind of could relate more to them obviously kids in the neighborhood too so I felt I kind of just fit in more there so I went and I went and I'm going to school there and spending most of my time you know growing up there did your grandparents explain what was going on with

your parents why you had to live with your grandparents not until I got a little bit older I'd say probably not until I was like 9 10 10 years old it was pretty hard to hide too because even if I went for like on weekends my father um you know he he was heavily involved in drugs he was a very good mechanic but he was also a thief uh so my like my weekends with him would be like comprised of of you know he had a scam where you go to one home depot steal a bunch of stuff and then go to another one in another city and just return it um you could do it without receipts then um and he had scams sometimes where he'd even go into uh home depot home quarters or whatever have a receipt that was a return receipt and he just um he just take it off like light of fluid

go in and pull off whatever expensive um you know it was like a tv shelf or something like that and he pulled it off bring it right up on a roll and just return it and just get the cash and go um so it was like i was kind of exposed to that at like a young age so it was like hard for them to hide it kind of knew what was going on and he'd obviously just go buy drugs uh you know you'd be right in the car and just tell me to look away and be you know sniffing Coke or doing whatever he was doing. So I kind of knew what was going on. You know, it was hard to miss.

Even at a young age, you knew something wrong was happening. You know, and my aunt Karen was more forthcoming with me than my parents. My grandparents were, so she kind of told me, you know, everything that. So I remember she'd bring me to jail to visit my dad. And she was like, oh, he's in the army. And I'd be like, you know, what's up with all these bars, you know? And later on, she, you know, she'd tell me the truth, you know. Did you have more of a relationship with your dad than you did with your mom?

No, I was actually closer with my mother because I actually lived on her side of the family. I'd spend summers with my grandparents on my father's side as well too. Again, he was a mechanic. They owned a tone company. So I was kind of like a junkyard kid in the summers. But I was definitely closer on my mother's side to my mother too. Because she was still there, but like, you know, in and out. Whereas my father just wasn't in.

He just came in whenever he felt like he was, least trying to do good, you know. When you're doing these things with your dad, like the one he's, you know, stealing and doing behavior like that, do you know that it's wrong at the time? Or are you kind of learning after him? Or do you think it's not normal? So it's a good question. It's definitely not normal, but it was normal to me.

And I, I knew, like, I knew whatever he was doing was wrong. I knew enough not to tell my mom, because I knew my mom wouldn't let me go see him if he kept doing that. So I knew it was something wrong, but I didn't. feel like it was like breaking the law law like you mean like it was never in the back of my mind it like you know he could get arrested and the cops could apprehend me and you know you know put me wherever until whoever came to appear it was just a it was just a normal so they got like a way out just like a way of life he just picked me up and this is this is what we were doing it became

kind of you know routine it wasn't every weekend but maybe you know every other weekend or you know a couple weekends up the month or whatever did you find yourself comparing yourself to your friends uh a little bit but that's That's why, like I told you too, like I kind of got along and Lynn Moore because those kids related. You know, those kids had parents that, you know, the dad would sell their Nintendo or their Sega or whatever it was. Well, they were, you know, they were in and out of their lives and whatever. So I could relate. That's why I kind of fit in more there, especially going to school too.

It was, at least there was always, you know, one in 10 kids that could relate me. Or even their parents knew my, like, you know, the dad knew my dad. because my dad, all the drugs are in Lynn, they weren't too much in pebety until, you know, late 90s, early 2000s when, you know, the opioids hit and things got a lot worse. What were you like in high school? So I didn't make it out my freshman year in high school. So I started getting into trouble more in middle school. I think after, you know, the bounce, bouncing back and forth, you know, parents in and out. middle school, you know, and started being exposed to kids, started smoking weed at a young age,

like 13, 14 years old. You know, we always, our big thing was kind of playing basketball. If we weren't, you know, if we weren't just hanging out, we were definitely on the basketball courts a lot. And that career kind of ended once I grew to only be about 5'7. So especially in inner city, I mean, there were kids Dunkin and middle school. And they'd actually give them a technical file for it. I got really good, but not good enough where it would, you know, take me to the next level. But yeah, I was exposed to smoking weed.

You know, it was always like a kind of like end of the week thing at first and kind of became like an everyday thing. And obviously ambitions go, school becomes less important. So I hang out with the wrong crowds. There was a lot of gang activity inland at the time. And yeah, I never really got, you know, too affiliated with them. But they're always like in the neighborhood and I'd see them before school. I'd be smoking weed. And, you know, like I said, school just became less and less important to me.

I just wanted to just kind of hang out and have fun. What kind of gangs were in the area? It was a lot of Spanish gangs, a lot of Cambodian gangs. So it was a lot of Crips. There was a lot of deuce boys. There were bloods, too, but bloods were more in Revere. Revere is like the closer to Boston. Mostly Cambodian Spanish.

But, like I said, the Cambodian coach, I always respected. always loved and I'll never forget even before it was my freshman year I was at the technical school and I was hanging out it was a bunch of Cambodian crip smoking weed and before going in and uh like I want to smoke with us I was like yeah sure so I go in and obviously we're late now so we go in to go sign in before we go to class because we miss home room and um the lady you know I was like an older white lady behind the counter she looks at the three Cambodian kids she goes oh you guys got detention and she looked at me she was you get to class I was like the only white kid there so she was like obviously you know it's not it was just like programmed in her

head like get the white kid out and you know punish these other Cambodian kids you know so it was it was definitely middle school kind of threw me for a loop and then my freshman year in high school ended up transferring back to puberty because they found out my grant my aunt stopped taking in foster kids she she took in foster kids for about 10 years and then started taking in girls because the boys were given, you know, was getting to be too much. She got two girls,

and the girls were 10 times worse than the boys, so she was like, I can't do this anymore. I was getting older. I was obviously getting into my freshman year in high school, so she said, you know, I'm just going to, you know, your mom's doing, my mother was doing pretty good at the time. She cleaned up.

She was working as a service writer or delivering parts or something like that for a dealership. She was back at my grandmother's house. This is after my grandfather I already passed, but with her working and doing good, she thought it was a good fit for me to go back. So I went back, lived in Peabody, and the school found out that I was living in Peabody. My address wasn't the same address anymore, so they said, you're not part of this district. They saw I was hanging out with these kids. They were like, you can't go to school here.

So I transferred back to the vocational school in Peabody. It lasted a couple months, and one of my friends got into a fight at the auto body shop. it was a senior he was a freaking huge kid he was obviously getting the better of my friend so I came up and um I jumped in and and uh

he I remember he like pushed me off and like I fell back and the kid was huge and then um it was in front of the body shop so there was a bunch of like steel poles and stuff like that all right so I grabbed one of the poles and hit the kid in the head with it

uh knocked him unconscious uh and we got into my friend's car and left um didn't really have any way go we ended up going back because the way that place was set up you do your vocational stuff at the vocation of which is by the middle school and the high school you go and do your academics so the high school is in Peabody High it's about you know two miles away so we just go back to the high school just act like

nothing happened and of course you know they find out and you know that the hall monitor is coming and pull me out of class and they go and bring me to the office I know what's going on so I pretty much threw my coat and backpack down and as he was going down the stairs, I went the other way, jumped off the stairs and took off. The police ended up catching me, like, an hour later, and because it was, like, all woods and stuff out there. There was, like, no way for me to go. And that was the first, like, DYS sentence where I did, like, a few months for assault and battery of a dangerous weapon. And then that was, like, my first exposure to being locked up, so to speak.

What happened to the kid? He ended up getting staples in his head. He had to get like, he had to get like six staples in his head. And he had, obviously, it was a serious contusion, um, uh, concussion, uh, even when at the sentence into like, you know, they had the, um, somebody testify saying that, um, you know, he had tired from the bend down to tie his shoe, stuff like that. Um, so, uh, it was, it was a pretty, you know, serious, serious injury.

After that happened, did you feel like you were following your parents, uh, footsteps? Uh, not in high school anymore. and going to J-UV? Not really. I mean, see, both my parents have been to prison, but I didn't feel like I always wanted to kind of be better than that. So, like, in my own mind, I was like, you know, I was just a kid, but, like, I was like a man in my own mind.

You know what I mean? Like, I make my own decisions. I'm not going to be like them, blah, blah, blah. And as we all know, it always kind of comes full circle. You know, as your adolescent kid, it's not a day. didn't even play a factor in my mind. Before that happened, what were your aspirations? I know you were interested in basketball,

but you didn't really see it going as a career. What did you want to be? Yeah, so I always told my dad I wanted to be a pilot, wanted to get into the military and pursue a career there. But once I got into the wrong crowds, it became more less like a professional career and more a reality of just being in the streets, selling drugs and stuff like that,

because it was immediate, obviously, with the act. Once school became, like, to me, like, not important, you know, my aspirations kind of just went into the gutter. So you're in Juvie now at freshman, when you should have been your freshman year at high school? Yep, yep. It would have been halfway through the semester, or the second quarter.

It was the summertime. And so it was the first time. I ended up doing, like, I think it was like four months. where they send you into Harvard Street in Dorchester and it's lockup for kids it sells you got flip-flops you got to keep your shoes out in the tear you know 30 rooms all bunked

some of them triple bunk it was like my first like exposure it wasn't my first time in DYS but it was like my first time getting like locked up what was going through your mind while you're there those few months were you thinking about your future at all well the thing is the kids always hanging out they all had stories about it and you all knew like oh you're going to harvard street uh you're going to

md u or you're going to wherever so oh you're going to spectrum or like i already had it kind of in my head um and a lot of the kids there they knew my friends from the street they already did time there and stuff like that so it was like you know it was just kind of just getting settled in and i'd see kids coming off the street that i knew as well so it was like it became like a normal thing you know it wasn't like oh i got to go i got to go fight the biggest dude on the block or whatever it wasn't nothing like that. It was just like, this is how, I've already heard it, right?

I've already heard people talking about it. So this is, this is just how things are. How'd your parents react? Oh, they're disappointed for sure. You know, my dad, not so much. He kind of, you kind of saw it coming too. But my mother, obviously my grandparents,

you know, my aunt Karen, too, they always wanted more for me. And they'd always give me the lectures while I was there. You know, so it was always like, you know, Even out of a young age, they'd start telling me the only path this leads to is either here forever or in jail. I mean, you're here forever or you're dead. So it was, you know, it was always disheartening. But then once I get back out, it was like you just resort to the same thing.

You'd see the same people who started hanging with the same crowd. It just became a norm. Before you got out, did you see a world where you were going to be on the straight and arrow? Everything was going to be good. You were never going back to a position like that ever again? Yeah, so like it's always like a reset, right? Or it's always like, ah, I'm not going to smoke cigarettes anymore. I'm not going to be smoking so much weed.

You know, I'm not going to be, you know, I'm just kind of just mind my own business and whatever. But once you get back into the thick of things and you see those everyday people, you know, the friends and they say, hey, let's go. You know, we're going, you know, somebody's buying his beer tonight. You know, I got some weed, whatever. And they're already smoking cigarettes again. And you just get back into the same cycle. instead of, you know, I wasn't mature enough to know that, like, I had to be removed from that whole atmosphere. When you go back to school when you got out?

So school, PODD wouldn't take me back. I was expelled, especially if there's a weapon involved or anything like that. The only other choice at the time would be some kind of, you know, private school or something like that, which those are, they can be expensive. We can afford it. So my next step was go to work. and I actually I had jobs as a teenager too one of my first jobs was working with my dad he was mechanic so I'd leave school

and just walk to the mechanic shop and work for five bucks an hour I didn't like working with my dad because he's not the best you know teacher or you know he gets frustrated really quick so I started working at the body shop next door so I did that you know for about two years

and so when I got out at DYS it was just it was no question like I had to go back to work. My uncle was doing like drain cleaning at the time. So it was like the only opening. They're always hiring because it's like really shitty work. But I got the job. Started working.

And I'm sorry. The drain cleaning didn't come until the second DYS stint. I did. The first time I got out, I was still kind of just lost. I didn't go back to work and I was kind of just like in no man's land. You know, kind of just doing my own thing. and I got, I actually ended up getting caught with a rifle. A few months after I got out and I was almost 17 at the time.

They almost picked it up. I was like an adult case. So then it became more real. I got out from that. That was about an eight-month D.Y. I was a little over 17 and that's when I got the job training cleaning. Why a rifle? So that's another funny story.

I was at a party. It was a summertime. I was at a party at a friend's house in the Highlands. and I needed a ride home because at this time I was back living with my grandmother. The potty was on Lynn. So this girl was going to give me a ride. She gives me a ride and she's been to the house before.

So she knows it's like this place. It's like, you know, off the highway, you still got miles ago. You're going through the woods. Like it's, it's a ways. She goes, I'm going to get lost. And she's been drinking. She goes, I got to drop you off right in. This is like the exit on the highway.

I was like, oh, this is still like three miles. Like, I got to walk, she goes, I don't care. I get out. So I, like, you know, again, it's like, spilled my orange soda all over and fucking got out. And so now I'm on the highway. And there's this main street that goes down to my grandmother's house. It's a, it's a probably about a two-mile street. And there's, like, another mile to get to my grandma's house.

So I made it, you know, in my own mind, I was like, oh, it's an opportunity in every crisis. So I'll just break into every car on the way in because I was part of the hustle when I was like, kids with stealing stereos and stuff like that. This is the early 2000s when like jail audios and the, you know, the Alpine Face Place and TVs and the headrest and everything were kind of becoming more and more frequent. So I was like, I'll just break in every car on the way and make some money on the walk. Screw it.

So there was like a maintenance van and one of like the cul-de-sacs off the highway. So I broke in that van. The reason why is because, oh, maybe this tool, there's like a tool bag in there or something my dad can get some tools to stop breaking, break into these cars into which I did. There was a screwdriver, a flashlight, everything I needed. So I hit about three cars,

and I started stashing all the stereo and everything. The speakers in the faceplates and everything, just in the woods, and I'll just come back and get it later, because I did have a car. And then I got to, I was like, this is, this is enough. So I'm just going to go home.

There was one more house by a dumpster, probably about three quarters of a mile for my grandmother's house. And there's something told me like just hit one more So I hit one more Again to the car The center console was a big box of bullets So I was like I gotta go in the trunk

I go in the trunk and there was an old 30-yard 6 Rifle with a scope on it Bolt action and so I grabbed that threw up by the dumpster It was like a doctor's office right there threw up behind the dumpster Went and got my car and and you know Went and picked up everything on the way back And then my room looked like

Freaking Radio Shack at the time And then obviously my mother wasn't too happy with that, but I was like, just leave it. It'll be gone soon. But I had this rifle stashed in the ceiling in my bedroom. And obviously, you know, your kid, you tell your friends, whatever, blah, blah, blah. I had some friends that went out, got into a fight with a kid and beat him within a half of inch of his life right in front of his mother. So they all got picked up. One of the kids was a gang affiliation.

And so, you know, they have the gang units always question them. They're always looking for guns. So that kid threw my name out there. Next thing I know, it was task force, you know, gang unit, detectives and everything, raiding my grandmother's house in puberty. And they found this bolt action 30 out six right before the D.C. sniper thing happened. And so, yeah, they were looking to make an example out of it. Luckily, they just allowed me to pretty much age out.

I got out right before my 18th birthday. And that's when I started doing drains and stuff like that. I did good. It took me longer to kind of fall back into things. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount.

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Were you going to do anything malicious with the gun, or it was just... It was cool to have. I mean, we shot it. It's a rifle. It's like, you can't fucking rob a store. You mean, you're not going to sarr it off because it's not going to work.

properly and it was just I don't know it was it was it was a gun so I was just gonna sell it and I'm but one of my friends talked me out of it because like you sell that thing and someone catches a body with it like it's coming back to you um so I was gonna I was gonna sit on it for a while and try to find you know maybe a fucking hunter or something like that would buy it um but that didn't last too long it was like I think it was like two months after I had it ended up getting called with it so tell us about what happens after you get out from that when you're 18. Yeah, so that was kind of like a turn and point for me where I was like, I got to get my

shit together, you know, I'm 18 years old now, no high school education. I ended up getting my GED. Like, I actually ended up getting my GED before I was actually eligible to graduate high school. And I just, I just needed to, you know, just get on the straight and narrow. I'm kind of removed from everything. I was, you know, living at my grandmother's house. My uncle Mark wanted to help me out.

He was, like I said, I grew up my grandparents. He still lived in the house when I was a kid, so he was only 10 years older. I mean, he was like a brother. He was the one that got me to drink and then job. So I was just working, saving money. I ended up buying a car. I ended up, you know, buying a motorcycle, and they got my own apartment. I ended up getting my own apartment in the Highlands and Lynn,

was just definitely a bad move because it kind of put me smack dab in the middle to what I was doing before. And then I had, disposable income because you know at the time this was 2003 I was making 15 16 bucks an hour doing drains and it's a lot of hours too so I had like kind of more money than I know to do with like legally so then you get to get money ponder up you want to make more so I started you know selling weed again oxy cotton at the time was huge um saying Vicodin and perks the perk there and stuff like that so um I picked a few of those packs up from friends started someone knows

kind of, you know, it was very, very lucrative. And then obviously you get curious. You know, you got your friends popping vikes and like, hey, pop a couple vikes with us, whatever. And it became a weekend thing. And it becomes an everyday thing. And kind of just went kind of head on into like full addiction. First time with Vicodins. Wasn't too big on smoking weeds.

It made me paranoid even though I smoked weed all the way up to, you know, 13 to, you know, 18. and then next thing you know the viking is like you know once you get into that thrall of addiction you're like shit I'm taking fucking 30 vikes a day and like the oxy cotton it's a lot more powerful

you can get away with you know getting the same feeling with doing a lot less and a lot easier in your stomach so as you know I was you know picking up packs of those you know picking up like 50-60 at a time and then you know reselling

them but then the habit will get more and more too so need more next thing I know I was you know I was in full-scale just addiction with it while you're working for this drain cleaning company too why did you feel the urge to use it was just there it was like everyone was doing it everyone like you want to a party with the girls are doing it like it was like the norm and everybody started the same way everyone was always like Vicodins perks and then oxy cotton. And then I went obviously to heroin.

And then, I mean, even I hear stories in the streets now. It's like, heroin's not even on the streets. It's all fat and all. But it all stemmed from that. It was like all that those deoxycottons kind of just infiltrated, you know, cities and suburbs all over the country. Do you think it interested you a little bit because of your parents? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I mean, I used to get, even at that point, when I had my apartment, you know, my dad was, like, proud of me. but when I say I didn't hide anything from him I'd hide stuff for my mother you know my mother's you know she she flushed 10 pounds of toilet 10 pounds of weed down the toilet one time was just a big hit but my dad I didn't have to hide anything from he was still in the full thralls of addiction too now so I'd go by going to hang out with my dad hit him off we get high together and again it was like one of those things it was just it was just normal do you think he wanted more for you at that point in your life? He definitely did, but I think he felt like, you know, it was kind of a lost cause.

And he kind of felt like it was inevitable. And he felt some guilt towards, you know, exposing me to all that stuff at a young age. It just became normal. Do you blame your parents for your addiction? No, not at all. Because I definitely had the opportunity and the opportunities to do better. I knew it was wrong. I knew, you know, I could obviously see where it would lead to. but I kind of, in some sadistic way, I kind of wanted it to. You know, like I wanted that lifestyle. Like I said, I fit in more.

I could relate to it more. How long does this go on for? So this only, again, this is, I worked for that drain clean company for about, you know, I'd say about 18 months. So, you know, I was 18 years old, own apartment, you know, motorcycle, all that. But the addiction was starting to catch up too. So there was, I was dating this girl all the time and she introduced me to her girlfriend's boyfriend, who was an oxy cotton dealer at the time.

And so she said, he's got more than what you need. You can always keep your supply or whatever. So we made that connection and we started selling, I started selling, you know, for, not for him, I pick up from him and whoever else I could. at the time, it was when they started switching from regular time release oxy cotton to the, they weren't sniffable. Like if you broke the time release on it, it would just gel up. So there was a big demand on the street. You know, connected with him, kind of undercut the prices from, you know, $80 a pill to $65 a pill, you know, picking up to $100, 200, at a time.

And it gets more and more and more to the point where there was. At the time, there were a network of kids that were going down south and pretty much robbing pharmacies and curries and even salesmen that just had pills in their trunk, robbing them and then bringing it all up north and selling it. Those guys ended up getting busted. And once that happened, everything kind of dried up on the street. So I was selling drugs with this kid and everything dries up and everyone's kind of just scrambling trying to find places to buy. and through one of his mutual friends they found these kids in Revere that were selling out of a hotel and he said he's going to set up a deal with him you want to just just me to be there you know for it I wouldn't be in the room but I'd be you know in one of the rooms you know down the hall so he did that

he sets up the deal and then he um the deal fell through I guess they were telling him one price but that price was for if he bought all of them he wasn't going to buy all of them so they kind of you know, boosts the price on him. He wasn't happy about it. So he came back and pretty much said, you know, he's like, I'm just going to rob these kids. So that was it. And what happens?

So at first, I didn't, I didn't want any part of it. I wasn't a stick up kid. I never did any kind of armed robberies. And I broke into houses and stuff like that. Broke in the cars, blah, blah, blah. And sold drugs. But I never, I was, I was 19. You know, this is a, these were all the kids, too.

and um so i'm like i was like like did you even see i asked was did you even see any of the what they had you see what they had you see what the stash was you see you know if they have money he was like oh no he's like yeah my friend told me you got at least 10 grand cash he's like i know the pills are in there so at at this point too we're all kind of just like

getting strung out so it's like it was one of those things like all right fuck it let's do it and then um then at the time you know he had a gun I didn't have a gun. I'd get a gun from a friend. And then I recruited my cousin, who was like a brother to me. He's the one, he was my aunt Karen's son.

And I told him, I was like, we got to have at least three people going in because there's definitely going to be at least four kids in there that we know of. And there was a girl there too. And so I get him. Ended up getting a gun, no bullets. So I was like, I was like, we can't do this. I was like, they got a gun. and they go off, we're fucked.

And then he goes, no, he's like, they don't have a gun. I didn't see anything. I know for a fact, there's no, none of them have guns. So, and then I, so I was like, fuck it, we'll do it. He gets some methadone to kind of take the out from us. This is my co-defendant now. We set it up.

We set up, so we had a kid going to buy drugs off, and we knew who he was. He was going to give us the heads up as he was going in the door. we were a few doors down so we could just see through the people when they're going in and we just forced us so I was in right after him

so at this point Mike Hauda Vendz Loden he only had like a, it was only a 22 but he had long rifle bullets and regular bullets so he only had four regular bullets and there was only one left and there was a long rifle bullet

and I was like that you can't put that in that gun it's not going to it's not going to shoot he was like no no he's like I've shot him off before so that's the first bullet like at the top of the clip so I'm like I was like dude that's not gonna shoot I was like yeah I was like just just take the four bullets like four is better than this thing fucking jamming and um he was like no he's like I shot him off trust me so he does that make the call kids going in we're masked up so there's three of us um only one functioning gun So, he's the first one out as he sees this kid, the door open to get let in.

He forces himself in, the girl opened the door. So she screams out, this blood cartel and scream, and he forced her in the bathroom and shuts the door. And we've come following him behind him, you know, hands up, whiz the shit. And again, we weren't stick up kids, so I wasn't like yelling like the fucking DEA or anything like that. We probably didn't sound too convincing. So I got the gun to the back of this kid's head, he's got his hands up.

My coat offense is behind me, you know, gun out. And then my cousin Mike went around to the bed, where they did have some money laid out on the bed, and he starts grabbing that. And then the kid, I had the gun to the back of his head to who starts backing up. And I yell, don't move. And then he just turns and starts wrestling with me. So we pretty much grapple now.

I ended up throwing him in the corner where there was like a lamp and the lamp falls and breaks. And then I could hear my cousin say, oh, don't shoot, don't shoot. Because he was, my co-defendant was pulling the trigger to the gun and it wasn't shooting, just like I said. So he racks the gun. I look at my cousin and I was like, you got the money?

He's like, yeah. And the kid finally, like, after a rust and he kind of just like lays down the ground. His frenzy yelling at him like, Yo, don't fucking fight these dudes. Like, they got guns, what's wrong with you? And I was like, you get the, and my cousin's just panicking. He's like, I got it, let's go.

So I run out the door. And a mask, it was a handkerchief falls off. And then I'm like two doors down and I heard a pop. And I guess that kid got back up and like stood up and like made eye contact with my codifying. He just let off on him. And the bullet fired and hit him in the abdomen. And then we all ran out.

Didn't even go back to our room. Went right to the staircase out. I had a Durango at the time, which wasn't too smart, and took off. And then after we left, we realized that the room had our fingerprints in it, had, you know, drugs that we had. He had, he left, like, a code of front left his ID in there. It was bought under a fake name. I'm talking about our room, not the room where the crime happened. So we had to find somebody to go back and retrieve all the stuff.

We drive around for hours. We finally find somebody and we send this kid in to go give him the room number. And by this time, the place is chronic with cops. So the kid goes in, never comes back out. And then we kind of just knew, like, it's kind of a matter of time before they, you know, before they come knocking. What happened to your co-defend that got shot in the abdomen? Oh, he didn't get shot. He shot.

Oh, he's the one that, okay, because he said he got back up and then. The kid that I was wrestling with got back up. And as soon as he made eye contact with my co-defendant. Your co-defendant shot him. He shot him. Okay, gotcha. Yep. So what was that conversation in the car when he came back outside and you guys know a gunshot went off?

Yeah. Are you guys, is there a contention? Yeah, so I was like, what the fuck happened? He was like, I just shot at him. I didn't shoot him. And then my cousin was like, you guys, like dude he's like you definitely shot up my kid dropped so but even when we send the kid back in to get the stuff from our room we still didn't know there was a anybody died um so it wasn't

until the next day um i think i had the day off i had lent um my friend who lived in maldon a um a bretling watch he was taking a girl out had this nice nice bretlin watch um and he was like I can I borrow that watch him going to date? Like, yeah, whatever. So I give him that. And I was like, and he was like, hey, you hear this. And when I was giving him the watchback,

he was like, here, this shit happened to the hotel? Because he lived in Mald and Reveille's right next door. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I heard about it. And he was like, that's pretty crazy because he was involved with selling drugs too. So anybody, you know, they knew it was broadcasts. It was like attempted robbery, blah, blah. I was like, oh, it was me.

And he was like, what the fuck? And he was like, you know, he's like, you know the kid died. right and I was like what he was like a kid that got shot he's he's dead I was like what the fuck and um and then the next day they ended up the cops ended up uh apprehended my co-defendant and then um then the next two of us got arrested you know days later like right in one or after another how much did you guys end up running away with money was oh it was nothing um it was like it was like $2,800 no drugs um

So again, too, like, we weren't stick-up kids, and none of us did, like, I do diligence on what exactly was there, where things were. Like, you're doing that stuff. You've got to, you know, you got to be prepared for it because things can just, things can just go wrong at the drop of the hat. Why do you think you win against your own morals and values? You said you're not a stick-up kid. Why do it to begin with them?

Just how it's strung out. You know, once you're trying to, you don't think the same, especially once that feeling hits of you just aren't empty and you're not getting that high anymore like those morals and shit kind of fucking go out the door uh it's just about getting the next score so you can sustain and you know maybe make some money did you think about fleeing at all we did yeah um but it was i was a kid i was 19 years old like where the fuck was i going to go you know um it got to the point you know especially well i just went back to work like it was the end of the day you know We didn't have money. We couldn't go anywhere.

I just went back to work. And then next thing you know, I'm on the road and my mother's calling me. And she's like, John, I got about, you know, a dozen state troopers here and three detectives, one homicide detective. So she's like, you got to, you know, you got to talk to them. And I was like, yeah, you know, put them on the phone. And then they're like, oh, we just want to talk to you. We don't even know if I had the right guy or whatever. Just come meet us at the station. And I was like, yeah, sure.

I didn't show up. And then I was in my van. It was a fucking decalbed, fucking drain van. It was kind of hard to miss. So they ended up getting me. And they brought me in for questioning. The Dexio got caught in Peabody. It was bringing in the Peabody Police Station.

And these two detectives were a question to me, asking me, you know, where were you on? I think it was a Wednesday night, I know, it was a Friday night. I was like, oh, you know, I worked that day and, you know, hung out with some friends, whatever. You didn't go to, you didn't go to a Revere at all. I was like, oh, I might have went and saw, you know, went to a hotel room and see a friend, whatever, but I didn't stay and whatever. So you didn't, you know who we're talking about all this. I was like, yeah.

You're like, so is that who you went to meet? I was like, yeah, I didn't stay, you know, whatever. And then I was like I was like I know what's going on So I was like you guys questioning me on the incident that happened And I was like I was like I want a lawyer I was like I can't you know talk about this anymore So they stopped questioning and they booked me in PUDD on murder charges Again a 19 year old kid getting booked on murder charges

It was kind of like a sobering event And I found out later on that was actually a kind of a tactic to get me to turn. Like the booking, there was never a booking. It wasn't like a, I was never arrested there formally. But they made it so it was like a scare tactic. So they bring me to, and again, all the stuff I told them that was all just recorded. There was no tapes, there was no camera, there was no, no, I was just in a room and they were

just writing shit down. So they bring me to Revere police station. and they bring me back up in their question to me again, which is they're not supposed to do. This goes on for hours and hours and hours. So between puberty and revere, I was interrogated for like a little over nine and a half hours. No bathroom, no nothing.

And then right as I was like, listen, I was like, you guys got to, you know, bring me back to the cell. I was like, I got to use the bathroom. You know, let me use the bathroom. I was like, just, you know, book me and put me in. So now they have to form. family booking and revere at police station.

So they do it, do the fingerprinting. And then my uncle's, my uncle's, Mark and Jimmy actually went to the police station because they heard I got arrested. My uncle Mark was the guy I worked with. So obviously the boss of the company wasn't too happy. And they were just concerned. They were like, hey, what's going on?

When they, they're like, can we see him? They're like, no, you just got arrested, blah, blah, blah. It's a murder one. So then one of the officers come back up. And he's like, you know, your uncle, Mark and Jimmy, here and that telling you to make the right decision tell them what happened tell us what happened so I was like which I found out later on too was also a tactic but my uncle's never never said

that they just wanted to know if they could see me um so right that I turned turn turncoat and let them know everything that happened and then it was a confession um you know at the time I thought was the worst thing I ever did but going back now it was probably the best thing I did just because I know if I didn't, you know, if I did somehow beat the case or anything like that, I was going right back to where I was. I mean, also, there's several other co-defendants. So what are the chances in your mind that they're not doing the same thing? Yeah, yeah.

And obviously, that's telling that to you, too. And, you know, my cousin Mike was just, he just got apprehended earlier that day. So we're all pretty much caught. there was a fourth co-defendant that got charged as an accessory because he just helped he was kind of the one setting it up and he had already turned um as soon as they grabbed him he kind of told him everything that's how they got my first co-defendant to know where he was and stuff like that the gun was gone um all the guns were gone um soon I have to worry about that um but then going forward for me it was like you know it was going to be hard to go to trial with a you know with a confession I toyed with recantin and stuff like that, but they say it's still, even if you can't, it's still admissible. It's not like, you know,

then we went to go for, you know, illegal interrogation, but they never logged the, the puberty interrogation. It was never like a thing. So the timeline was different. So the timeline, I guess it's over eight hours. I think it's, Commonwealth versus Rosario is one of the cases,

whereas they say, you know, after eight hours, interrogation you got to you know we got a bathroom breaks you have food stuff like that if they don't adhere to that anything after any confession after is inadmissible but they never logged the police the peoprity interrogation so it was it was just shy of like it was like seven hours and you know 40-something minutes so we couldn't go that route either well what happened if you didn't confess I think well it was a good chance we could have beat the case I mean my my co-defendant ended up not not getting convicted of murder you got

just convicted a home invasion, even though it was a hotel room, it's still a threshold where dwelling is, so it's still considered armed home invasion. And he went to trial? Mm-hmm. Oh, and he only got, he didn't get murder. Nope. But he wasn't the one that pulled the trigger. He was the one to pull the trigger.

And he only got a home invasion? Yeah. Well, he beat the murder. So the jury found him because there was three of us in there. So logically, you think, you know, anybody with a, that's, that's rationally big, you know, these guys could be saying whatever the hell they want. We really, even because even what happened was when the kid got shot,

the shell casing that he racked out, that popped out, that was the one jamming the gun. They found it in the floor. They didn't call an ambulance right away. They were selling drugs. They didn't want cops there. So they threw a shell case and they tried to flush it down the toilet,

but it's dead weight. It's not going to flush. So the cops found evidence in the toilet. So these kids were obviously trying to cover up evidence. You know, we were obviously robbing him. There was no credibility in the case from anybody. Yeah, because it's not like they were innocent party in there. They were doing illegal activity too.

Exactly. So how much time does he end up getting after trial for home invasion? He ended up doing a little under 15 years. And what did you get for your plea deal? I got charged with 18 to 20. And my court of friend got 12 to 14, my cousin Mike. And I think I sent you the original sentence admit that I got. So it was 18 to 20 years.

and then um uh for when they found out about the there was a few police officers involved in the case revere police officers that actually you know booked me and made the arrest they were in uh a parking lot one night and um

it got involved with some kind of altercation where you know shots rang out like they were drinking beer in like a parking lot like off duty and still had guns on them and I guess some one of the gangbangers in the neighborhood recognized one of the cops and just started letting off on them and the cops fight it back. I can't remember if anybody ever got hit, whatever, but they were involved in it and it was like a shady thing at the time and was like, why are these cops just drinking in a pocket lot and getting into altercations with the neighborhood? So that cop was involved. So we had the, you know, the previous motion for the illegal interrogations.

There was obviously some kind of nefarious stuff going on. So my lawyer was going to, you know, file, pretty much saying that the plea wasn't legitimate because all the stuff was happening. You know, these cops weren't, you know, the arresting officers weren't like, you know, they weren't doing the right thing, so to speak. So at that point, they came back and said, we'll reduce it down to 12 to 14 and pretty much everyone gets the same time. and luckily it went through. And kind of what played my favor too was I was the only one at sentence and that took the stand

and then offered my condolences to the victim's mom. You know, the kid was only 22 years old and I pretty much took the stand and said, you know, sorry's not bringing him back, sorry's definitely not enough, but I'm definitely, you know, less of a man due to the fact that my actions played a direct role into you losing your son.

You know, my family was there, she was there. She actually, like, hugged my grandmother and my aunt. Even, like, the judge was crying. You know, forgiveness is, like, a really powerful thing. But, you know, obviously, me kind of laying all my cards on the table, not trying to get away with anything, and then, you know, offering my, not just my condolences, but saying, you know, it's my actions that directly led to this.

And I got to live with that now. So that was, like a... was a big thing and obviously it helped later on but it was even if I didn't get the reduction I was still this reduction wasn't even talked about at the time give me a break me a break break me off a piece of that kick cat have a break have a kick cat this episode is brought to you by redfin you're listening to a podcast which means you're probably multitasking maybe even scrolling home listings on redfin saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing.

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off my condolences to her. Did you know how much time you were going to have to serve out of that going into it? Yeah, well, 18 and 20 years. I mean, in Massachusetts, you can, once you're eligible for good time, you can get, you know, pretty much every month you can get to 10 to 12 days good time. They cap it at that.

So it's not much, but it takes time to get into that position. too. You know, you got that length of a sentence. You go right to maximum security. If you go to maximum security, it's like a, it's a, it's a portal. It's hard to get out of that vortex. What was your experience like there when you first got there? So, I mean, I had already known people. I mean, we're already waiting trial for three years. So, you know, especially in Massachusetts, it's all, it's all segregated to where you're from. Like, you know, you got, you know, you get the Lynn table, you got the Boston table, you got the

Salt Boston table, you got Charleston table, you got, so it wasn't, I already had, we knew people, so it wasn't like a, but I knew it wasn't going to be like a thing where it was like you have to prove yourself or whatever, um, and as long as you stay out of the drugs and the gangs, you'll be all right. Um, but when I first went up, I wasn't clean yet. And then, um, so it was, you know, It was definitely something you would adjust to, but it was a lot better than doing county time. It was a lot easier. It set up for doing time, not, you know, the county jail system was ridiculous. Were there a lot of young people in this maximum security person, or were you guys the youngest?

There were still a few young kids. I mean, you've got to think that everybody goes there. So there was, you know, there was no kids that have been there for, you know, they came in as kids, but they're older now. and they know it's like they kind of show you the ropes on doing like real time. So it's there's definitely some little bit of mentorship there. But again, if you're involved with the drugs, it's, it's, you're going to get in trouble. You're going to get, you know, you're going to get in some kind of, you know, altercation. Are you going to have some kind of tension with the cops all the time?

So I wasn't too heavily, especially with the maximum security, there wasn't as many drugs as they were in medium. security. So it was easy to kind of get away from that. Were you scared? Oh, of course. Yeah, especially going, you know, going to maximum security prison. It's like and then there's Susan Barronowski correctional center and Walpole. Those were the two, you know, big ones at the time. And you hear stories growing up of, you know, horror shows of those places. So you already have it fixed in your head, you know, what the, what the fuck's going to happen. And then, you know, seeing it first thing and being a part of it and, and, and, and,

trying to get acclimated to it is something you can't prepare for. You have to just do it. Once you got to prison, were you thinking a lot about going to trial? Like, if you had gone to trial? Yeah, yeah. But obviously getting the confession thrown out was the main thing. We could fight it as much as you want. But especially they weren't severed.

We weren't severed until we took the plea. so we'd all go to trial together and having that confession on there it makes it look bad for everybody so it wasn't like a it would have been hard really hard to beat and go to trial and try to discredit

what the confession was what was a charge you actually pled to it was manslaughter that manslaughter then onto assault and a dwelling in massed armed robbery did you feel bad that you got your cousin roped up in that?

Absolutely Yeah. I mean, I didn't hold a gun to his head. I mean, he was involved with the same stuff I was. But still, yeah, I still carry the guilt. And now he's, he ended up doing a little more time because he got in trouble. He never got clean. He got thrown right into that.

He was all involved with the drugs. Do the whole bid. It was a rough bid for him. He did some D.D.U. And D.D.U is a disparated attention unit. That's where they send you. It's like the hole within the hole. Like you get assault charges, you hit a cop, stab somebody, whatever.

They send you to DDAU. You don't just go to segregation. So he does some DDAU time. And even to this day, it's still a struggle. I try to help him out as much as possible. He's in a sober house right now trying to stay clean. From what I hear, he's doing pretty good. How long did it take for you to get clean once you went to prison?

Once I went to maximum security prison, it was involved with the race riot that was because of drugs. It wasn't my direct play into it. But after that, after that, and I still, I was in the hole. Luckily, I mean, at the time I had, I still had a bag of dope that I snuck in there with me. And I did the last bag, and I definitely did way too much, got nauseous, threw up everywhere, threw up all over the toilet, and then I passed out. Like, I just, I just, I just, knotted off on the toilet and I woke up I don't know maybe like 45 minutes an hour later and it was like just the crust was like stuck to my face

and I was you know I look in the stupid prison mirror it's like a piece of metal and you just see I saw my face and I was like I can't fucking do this and then um from that point on I never touched anything tell us about the race riot uh so it was a couple um uh Latin kings from Worcester that were bringing stuff in and uh another Worcester got got a bag for him

and um he said He was like, this is bullshit. The bag smells like shit. Obviously, he was in somebody's ass. But he was sniffing it wasn't getting high. And, of course, it's like the every junkie story. Like, you know, the coast of Puerto Rican dude, he was like, yeah, dude, he was like, it's dope. He was like, it's dope, whatever.

Who's to say how many times they stomped on and whatever? So they were going back and forth for days. And the guy that got the bag of dope was like, dude, I'm not paying you. But I think it was only like a finger adult or something like that. He was like, I'll tell you what. He's like, I'm not giving you a green dot, which is like, you know, sending him money out. he was like but I'll sell it and I'll get canteen I'll give you the canteen for it so the porter egun is like okay

I'll do that and days go by and obviously he's not giving them it and so there's this tension there and all of a sudden they're on a handball court and this is building up for like two weeks so as you know they're talking to their friends you know the white guys are talking to their friends and and it just built up so on the handball court out of nowhere the end of the Spanish kid ended up just cracking them. And then all hell broke loose.

And I was actually in the wait room at the time. And Shirley Max, at that point, the weight room was separate from the gym. But then when we saw what was happening in the gym, it was go time for us too. I was actually fortunate because we were way outnumbered in the wait room, but they only allowed a certain amount of people in there. And I was actually fortunate enough where some of the Latin Kings and the Bloods were fighting as well. So the bloods actually got involved and started fighting some of the Puerto Rican kids that were in the weight room as well. So I ended up a couple of nicks and scratches, but it was like a pig pile pretty much.

And one dude, my friend Mike, ended up cracking his head on one of the weight plates. He busted his head open. He ended up having to get staples on his head too. But then you're stuck in segments. This is like a part of like some kind of riot. You're stuck in the hole. You're like, what am I getting? And they're like, get comfortable because it's an investigation.

You're going to be, you could be getting shipped out. It could be whatever. Luckily, due diligence, obviously they go through camera footage and all that. And I ended up doing, I think, 45 days in the hole. And then I ended up going over to the other side of the prison. Did time seem to go by fast in prison when you first got there or slow? It went by slow, especially when you got that much time. and you're not acclimated.

I'd say that the time didn't really start going faster until I got into medium security. And how many years in your sentence was that? So I did, it was almost half. So I did six years at Shirley Max. I ended up doing a little over six. I'm sorry, a little under six at medium. When you have a sentence that's that long,

are you counting down on day one? Or is it not even a thought? No. It's funny because I had people, like, oh, I want me to send you a count, I was like, I don't fucking want none of that stuff. Don't even get me a fucking watch. Yeah, I feel like that.

I mean, that's a lot of years to count down. It is, yeah. But I will say, one of the best things that, once I sold it up, I started getting involved with a lot of the programs there, even the programs that didn't offer any good time or anything like that. Change my life. And I had so much stuff to do. I was involved with so many things, even just going to the church just to go,

just to get off the fucking block. It helped a lot. And then other people see it too. You know, obviously we got to, you know, you give a confession. You're labeled as a rat, pretty much. And so going through those, going through that in those environments is,

you know, it sucks. Because you're like, you know, you like the bottom of the barrel. And at the point where I did sober up, I wasn't trying to hide it or anything like that, but people knew I was like, I was just mind of my own business. You know, I exercised, I did all the programs, did whatever.

You know, other than, like, one, you know, scrimmers thing I had with the guy from I knew from the street, the people just pretty much just left me alone. Yeah, so people didn't give you a hard time because you confessed and technically on paper ratted? Yeah, in the beginning. But again, once they saw, it was like to what point after that? It was like, like I said, I got into one, one fight I could,

I knew from the street because he was like, oh, you're a fucking rat, whatever. And I was like, you know, I got to fight you now. Like, just, you know, I can't fucking shrug that off because you just, I'm just not going to be a bitch or a punk. So we ended up fighting in the stale well. And then obviously I lost some friends over to like friends like I made there that weren't affiliated with me on the street at all. They kind of knew what was going on to. And I said to it, I said to him to it, it's no hard feelings. It's politics at this point.

So it is what it is. So what happens when someone calls you a rat and then fights you but loses the fight? I mean, they still got the up hand. You're still a rat. They just lost a fight. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like losing to a girl. You mean like if you win on a girl like, okay, you speed up a girl.

But if you lose, you lost to a fucking girl. It's still like, you know, he's still seen as like a solid guy. You know, whatever. I'm sure people busted his balls and stuff too. What do you think about the whole ratting thing? just the code and are you supposed to be loyal to people that put you in a situation like that? So I do see that, right? So in my situation, too, it wasn't like, it wasn't my childhood friend.

Like, it was somebody I was selling drugs with. So I came to a standpoint where I had a lot of time to sit on this, whereas, like, the people that came into my life, like, when did I meet him? You know, when did I meet him? And why did I meet them? So, like, you know, this guy I met through selling drugs was already a, you know, bad thing and you know we weren't like childhood friends and then you know because of the stuff that we were doing it led to a 22 year old kid getting shot and killed and you know for me I always you know kids said of myself a man blah blah blah but I was a 19 year old kid and even even then too like even

it became less of an issue for me because I was still just a kid like people see like he's a kid it's a body it's not like wasn't like we're breaking in the house and I was like oh he's the one that fucking did it you know it was like I was looking at fucking life sentence without parole so and at that at that age I mean that's it's the rest of your fucking life you know I bet you most people would do what you do

or did do regardless of what they say yeah it's easy to say you're not going to do that until you're put in that position and then once you're there too and when he's like oh you got a body out they're going to rat on them out they're going to rat on and it happens all the time I'd say maybe 1 in fucking 40 people

that catch bodies that they're actually solid but they're only solid because like they were either brothers or they were childhood friends or they were they came from that cloth

of like the early 70s 80s where it was like you don't fucking open your mouth did you ever run into your code of offense at all in prison or did they keep you guys separate? They kept us separate whatever there's no

even now he's not gonna be coming after me or anything like that we kind of just went on separate ways. He turned himself around too, and I got some kites from him saying, you know, it is what it is. You know, people will be in the same position.

There's no telling what anybody would do until you're in that position. But even for cooperating against them, you guys all got similar amounts of time. It's not like someone got 50 years and you're out. Everyone's out by now, right? Yeah.

I'm actually, that's one of those things. I'm actually kind of glad. Like, I'm sad for the kid, but I'm glad none of us, you know, threw our lives away either. Or got their lives thrown away. I mean, basically in your scenario, I look at it as you're the one

that just took responsibility for everyone. You all got pretty much equal sentences. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. It's not like someone snitched and got away with it and the other person was there. Doing a life sentence. Yeah.

And, you know, like I said, if I had any intentions of going back to that way of life, then I'd feel like more of a piece of shit. Like, if I went back to try to get back into, you know, running the streets, trying to sell drugs again, trying to get whatever, then, you know, you know, you're already, you know, you already, like the worst thing, right? Like, the worst possible outcome of doing crime and you failed at it.

So you can't do this anymore because that's, it could always lead to that. What was the emotional toll all those years of knowing that someone died because of your actions? Oh, it's tough, man. But again, having the forgiveness from the victim's mother was, was, Just the first step, but I had to forgive myself too. And doing a lot of self-reflection. I mean, it did over a year in segregation just from getting into trouble. I got into writing.

I got into, you know, drawing, I read anything I could get my hands on. And again, part of those programs I got into, it was actually a prison book club that was, and it sounds kind of gay, but it was probably one of the best things I ever got involved. then. There's two guys like volunteers. There's no good time, but they come in and they bring in either, you know, classic literature or something up to date. No recreational reads. It's more like real life stuff. And, and then you have like an assignment of read so many chapters and then the next week you come and discuss it. So I've always, at that point, I read so many books, but I'd never talked about them. Like I'd never vocalized what I was getting out of it or what I was

retaining, talking about characters and stuff. like that. And then having other people talk about them to share their point of view of how they interpreted this certain story, it was eye-opening just because like it made me realize that like it's not just me in this world. It's not my perspective. There's so many other perspectives that that are that are viewed when an occurrence happens. How much time did you end up serving? I was just under 12 years. It was 11 years in eight months and so many days. And was that standard to get paroled out that early on that sentence? Well, I earned some good time and stuff, too.

If I started sooner, I could have got out probably around a little after 11 years. But, yeah, I ended up doing about that time. Like I said, it's tough. Going to the maximum security, it's like a vortex, you're going to get into trouble, even if you're not involved with shit. You're getting into a conflict with a cop, get caught with a stinger, you're going to do whatever. What year did you get out of prison? It was 2015.

you went in at 2004. 2004. So a lot changed between 2004 or 2015. Absolutely. And I was, I went to a pre-release first. It wasn't actually pre-release. I wasn't part of the pre-release program. It was a TTP program. It was, I think the governor started,

called the transitional treatment programs for parolees. So you had to be on parole to do it. So that was in Pondville in Norfolk, Mass. So I did, I had to do 90 days there before they actually let me out on parole. But it was great. I just, you know, I just work out. I walked the yard, listen to my headphones, whatever, again, didn't really talk to anybody. I was really focused on just reintegrating and finding a job and whatever.

When I finally got a day pass, you know, when I filled all the applications, I still have some time with my family. I was doing yard work in my grandmother's house. I was cleaning up the yard. I fucking cleaned the back of a fridge. I mean, I was cooking for it because, you know, I was part of the culinary program. It was reward. It was very rewarding to actually, you know, having that support for so many years. being able to kind of just give back in some kind of way.

Do you think that you were prepared enough for release by the criminal justice system? Yeah, absolutely was. Like you weren't thrown out there to the wolves? No, no. And I had family help. If you don't have family support, then, you know, it takes a lot. You know, it takes, you have to really have your nose to the grindstone. Or obviously, I had a place to stay.

I had, you know, transportation to go look for jobs and stuff like that. So it's just those two things. are integral and, you know, getting back into society. And this does, you know, I know so many guys that just don't have that. And, you know, they got to take public transportation. You know, they got to, having the,

having that jacket on your back of being an ex-convict too is tough to carry. You know, I found just being transparent about it. Always helped. And if it didn't work out, then I just move forward. What was the hardest adjustment? Oh, my God. So I'll never forget I was going.

It's the first time I went to a mall. So this is before kind of Amazon crushed all the fucking malls. So my sister was like, you know, I had money saved up over time. It was like a little over $1,000. I was like, I want to go get some clothes. And then, so we go to the mall and we go and I grab, you know, some sneakers and stuff like that. And then we're going to grab some clothes into the store. But I had the bag of sneakers in my hand.

I was going, going to the, and she was walking into the clothes. And I was like, I stopped. And she was like, what are you doing? I was like, can I even take this bag in there? And she was like, yeah, it's a fucking mall. I was like, I didn't know. So many years, like, especially in medium security, if you got a laundry bag and you leave your block

and you go to the next block, you know, you gotta, you gotta fucking skirt the cops, and so it was like, I didn't know I could do that. Same thing we're going to the grocery store. Like, you know, I got the corn in a husk, whatever, and the barrels right next door. She's like, she's like, help me out. I was like, oh, I can just chuck it right here?

She was like, yeah. I was like, I don't know, I don't think I'm going to steal it or something like that. It was stuff like that. And obviously just the day to day, like, I can walk out the front door, sleeping in my own bed. I can call whoever I want. And I mean, everyone was texting then.

And now people are fucking FaceTiming. And I was like, you see the teenage kids, they don't even talk. They're just FaceTime and they don't even looking at. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile, the message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world. Stop. With Mint, you can get perfect.

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years. They're just different, you know, coming out. Life feels weird, so I can't imagine doing 12 years or more. Yeah, my mother, the first time my mother picked me up, because it was usually my sister for my day pass. It was my first time my mother picked me up, she went into a gas station, and I found this, just black box and the son of console. I'm looking at it. I'm like, trying to open it. And I'm like, oh, trying to open. I'm trying to figure this fucking thing out. I'm looking for a button or a switch or something to flip the stream because I'm thinking that's a phone. And my mother's like, what are you doing? I was like, how do I open the screen on this phone? She was like, that's one of my pack charges for the phone.

That's not, that's just a charge. It's not even a phone. I was like, oh, shit. I was like, I don't fucking know. That's funny. Did your community openly receive you when you came back? Or by that point, so much time had passed, it didn't even matter? So much time went by.

But I'll never forget, my sister got a lot of the brunt of, you know, of my stuff. You know, she was just getting into middle school. So it was obviously big news. And, you know, people always, she was always like, oh, it's her brother. Her brother got charged with killing a guy. killed somebody. So she kind of had to deal with that. By the time I got out, it was the smoke kind of cleared.

How many people do you think didn't even understand the full story and just went off of the papers? Like, did they not know that you weren't the one that pulled the trigger? You weren't even there when that went off? It didn't matter. It didn't matter. It was more so in county than, you know, any other place. In county, it's like, you fucking rat it.

That's it. Get off the fucking block. And I was never going to leave. I was always fighting. And so I even came to the point where my grandmother came to go come visit me. And I was like I had to refuse a visit because I look like the elephant man. Yeah. And that was one particular one with this.

There's a Puerto Rican kid. He obviously knew my co-defendant. We ended up fighting on the tear. And then he got charged with hitting a cop because he went to go hit me and I ducked. And he hit the blast of the cop. And but at that point, that was just the fight they were caught for. I was fighting two kids in the cell like three days before that. So I was already busted up.

And then I get into, they finally throw me and Segg and my cellmate, they're holding his mail. And it was a guy I knew, his uncle, and he's fucking flipping out. They're holding his mail because he thought he was trying to get drugs in the mail. So he's banging the door. Next thing you know, he's fighting the move team. And then they look at me like, you're going to cuff up and go out. I was like, nope, I'm with him.

Because you can't, you know what you can't do it. You can't fucking be a bitch. And then um so the move team comes in they fucking spray the whole place with that orange foam fucking spray and That shit got into my wounds and it just blew my face up and then um and they threw you in the chair at the time They had the chair put the they restrained you in your hands behind your back and you just in this chair I can't see a fucking thing they bring me to um they bring me the uh they bring me the uh medical and then uh and they all hear like oh you fought the cops so whatever And like, the nurses are for them, right? So the nurse, there's like one nurse that has this tag on and she's training.

She looks at me and she was like, you're all right? You're gonna kill yourself? No? Okay. And just leaves. I'm fucking, my head's like out here. And even the girl that was like she was training, she looked, looked at me like, oh my God. She was like, you're like, what the fuck?

And luckily the next shift that came on at the next nurse was like an hour later. The next nurse cleaned me up and he gave me wet towel and fucking clean my face up and then, you know, put hydrogen, peroxide of my wound and stuff like that but yeah so my grandmother came that weekend and I was like I can't I can't take this visit was it hard to find work when you got out um so I was a big fitness guy I worked out you know most of my incarceration when I was in shirley max they didn't have any free weights there was all universal weights and I got all these you know muscle and fitness magazines and I got all these routines and I was doing all these calisthenics and stuff and then when I got to medium I was like the best thing I could do is you know I was like they got a

weight room there. I can just go lift weights or whatever. And so, you know, I did that for so many years. I was part of one I wanted to do when I got out was be some kind of coach, work at a gym or whatever. So I did that, but you don't make that much money being a coach unless you're like the head coach. Even then you're not making that much unless the gym's doing really good. So I was fortunate enough to find a CrossFit gym when I first got out explained to him a situation. I was obviously in really good shape at the time, but I didn't have any experience really coaching. I had to learn. I was willing to learn to do like some kind of, you know, internship for a month or two or whatever. They were, I was lucky enough for them to take me on it, which I did, but I worked a second job. I was going in and

out of Boston, working out of Vietnamese restaurant. I was working on a line cook and out of the place. So I had like three jobs when I first got out. When did you meet your wife? So I, I, part of coaching, I got into training in MMA too. That helped me a great deal. So I had this, I'll give them a shout out, defensive edge in Wakefield. I had a friend that I actually did time with, Will, who was out and became a pro-MMA fighter and he was training out of that gym. By the time I got involved, he ended up going down to New Mexico and training at Jackson and Winklejohn. That's where John Jones trains and all those guys.

So I went there. I explained to him my history and I just wanted to get into training and stuff like that. Rick that owned the gym, explained to me, he goes, hey, you know, one of my head coaches is actually a corrections officer, so I just wanted me sure it was not going to be. And I was like, I actually knew who he was. And he wasn't a bad CEO. And, you know, I wasn't, I didn't have any chip in my shoulder or anything like that. Anyway.

And I was like, yeah, that's fine. So I started training there as I'm, you know, coaching either in the morning or at night. I started going to the local promotions. The guys I was trained with, they had a fight. that I go, you know, buy tickets to kind of support them and go to the shows. So I went to one of the MMA shows was actually Combat Zone in New Hampshire, named Combat Zone after the famous place in Boston. Combat Zone was just Chinatown.

It was a lot of nefarious stuff happening in the 80s and 70s. So it was in Manchester, New Hampshire. I went to another shows. She was a photographer. And like I said, at this point, we had a lot of the same people. So I was messaging her on Facebook and stuff like that. And then I got to fortunately meet her. And I met her that night.

And I gave her my number. And I offered to carry a camera bag. She was like, fucking don't touch my camera bag. I don't want anybody grabbing this thing. So I was like, okay, you know. We hit it off, started talking. I explained to her my history. She was just more intrigued than anything.

She's older. But she'd been doing that for about, I mean, at the time, like 10 years. She was one of the premier photographers and all the MMA promotions up and down the East Coast. And yeah, we never looked back by, you know, four or five months later. I was already moving in. And then we got married, I think, even maybe a little over a year after that. Do you think it's better to just be upfront with people about your past relationships,

future boss is anything in that category? Absolutely. Yeah, especially when it comes to work. You leave it on them, all right? You just kind of be forthcoming. You don't want that coming back to bite you in the ass and having to explain yourself later on. relationships and job stuff. Actually went back into, when I first started dating my wife again, when I moved out there,

I couldn't work at the old job, so to find another one. I knew I had the drain cleaning and plumbing experience behind me. So I started plumbing again because I knew you'd make the most money. I went to school for plumbing. I crewed my hours, and that was it. And I knew I just had to do that. But when you go to apply for your plumber's license, you can't have any felonies on your record,

so you can't be like a master plumber. You can't be a journeyman, but you can't be a master plumber with a felony on your record. Is life what you expected it to be when you're sitting in prison all those years thinking about getting out? No, no. I'm kind of, I can be kind of cynical, too.

Like, I always think something's going to go wrong. Like, something's going to happen. You know, I always, you know, like, someone's going to come from my past and whatever, and it never did. You know, so Unfortunate in that aspect But yeah, leading up to it

I was like, oh, something's gonna happen You know, something There's no way I'm ever gonna escape I'm gonna end up back at this, but I still have dreams being back in prison So, but once Once I got out and I got acclimated They became, you know, the cynicism

The chatter, like left And I mean like once I started doing the right things And training a lot That helps a great deal too Again, it just eliminates that inner chatter on your head that, you know, that, that, the bad shoulder. You know what somebody whispering the cynical things in your air, you know, or just your own inner voice telling you like, you know, you can't do this or you're not, you know, things aren't, you're not going to be successful, you know, things are really hard and whatever. So that all kind of just goes away. How do you find peace and happiness?

Obviously, the day-to-day stuff, I've got so many things to do. it's it's you know it's hard to be stagnant you know and like I said I still I still train the works where I have my business now the MMA gym's right across the street and the day-to-day operations for getting business going they keep you busy when you know we have the dog you know if you don't have a dog then you know I definitely suggest you get one because you could be having the worst day and they come you know they just wagging the tail they just want your pet them they want you to take you for take them for a walk whatever that's They'll love you no matter what.

Yeah, exactly. And especially when you rescue them, too, because I had dogs my whole life, but I never rescued one. Rescue one's a game changer. And then it's just, I guess for me, people say, like, I want to start a business to get rich. I was like, well, it's not going to happen right away. You've got to be prepared to, like, give it your all.

When you start a business, it's your kid, pretty much. You make it your kid. You got to put, if you don't put your all into it, you're not going to get it all back. Do you feel like your prison sentence was just? I do, yeah, looking back on it. Even when I first got arrested, I was like, ah, it's like, you know, 10 years kind of seems right. Like, I feel like, you know, 10 years would be kind of just for this.

But there's that joint venture theory in Massachusetts that says, you know, there's a murder involved, then everyone's just as guilty. So, but I felt like, yeah, 10, no, 12, well, under 12 years, it's definitely just for what I participated in. Do you find there's days where you blame yourself for what happened? Of course, yeah. I always have days like that. We kind of, like, especially the guilt of get my cousin involved, the kid passing away,

just my poor decisions, not even just that, everything I did. You know, I mean, I started, I really reflected on, you know, when I was selling drugs, I, it's, when I, I'd seen kids out, I'd sell drugs, too, that weren't, like, in the full thralls of things, they're just kind of trying it out. Then I'd be in prison, and that kid walks in the fucking door, and I see he's fucking strung out. the guys I grew up with that were like everyday people we played basketball with

the touch football or whatever and I'd be in county jail and they come in and they're strung out and they've fucking got scars in their necks and stuff like that I was like holy shit you know what I mean like it's like why didn't we

why don't we try to prevent this from happening like but when you're in the thick of things you're not ever going to think it's going to get that bad do you feel like you're the same person that committed that crime no absolutely not again I was a 19 year old kid And I considered myself a man And I was working

I had my own apartment And whatever I started When I was in Shirley Medium I did the It was a Project Youth program With kids from

It wasn't like Skid straight But kids from come From different high school With them all of the state And we just tell our story And then take questions after And they were high school kids Mostly seniors

And then I'd ask At the end like I'd hold you Whatever they'd be You know 18 17 And I'd say Fuck Like I was just a fucking

kid like because they were kids you know what like but that's the thing you're not mature yet and obviously now I'm it's fortunate enough that that's this new law is saying that they can't um they can convict uh somebody of of first degree murder if they were under the age of 17 or 18 because the brain's just not fully developed yet and that's that's 100% true do you think that people should be held to their past decisions for the rest of their life when they make a mistake like that at 19 Or as a kid? No, definitely not. Because you're not the same person after that.

I mean, if you get worse, I mean, if you keep repeating it, if you keep doing the same thing and keep, you know, just thinking that, like, you know, you can just get away with things. You're still out there, you know, terrorizing people. You know, somebody, you know, you just committing crimes. And, I mean, then you could be held accountable. But, you know, I feel like people, people do change if they want to, you know. What do you think is the biggest life lesson you want people to take away from your story?

I'd say, you know, forgiveness is a big thing. No matter who it is, if they wronged you in some kind of way, if you hold that against them the whole time, then it's pretty much like carrying luggage around. You've got this heavy fucking weight. You're just carrying it around because you've got this grudge against this person for whatever reason. Until you let it go, it's always going to be weighing you down.

Yeah, too many people have grudges. Yeah. My dad likes to hold grudges. I tell them all the time. It's not worth the energy. It's not. Even inner family stuff, too. I mean, it's had, you know, auntsies don't talk to each other because they brought fucking sweet potatoes instead of mashed potatoes or whatever.

It's like. Life's too short. Yeah, exactly. You got to enjoy the people you care about and you love and, and be with them. Yeah. And just be, just don't be an asshole, you know. Just be, just don't be an asshole. Be a good person.

You got to have a purpose. You got to have some kind of purpose in life, no matter what it is. And finding that when I first got out, I started volunteering at a literacy center. That was very rewarding. I went back into prison as a volunteer. That was great. So having something extracurricular outside of your daily life to give you that extra sense of purpose of giving back of somehow. I love that.

Well, John, thanks so much for coming on the show today, man. I appreciate you driving out here, and I got to come to Rhode Island soon. Check out what you guys got going on. Yeah, definitely, man. You're always welcome. Yeah, and I'm looking forward to. trying this. All right. All right. Cool. Thanks again for having me. Yeah, of course, man. And safe travels back. Yeah, I will.