Locked In with Ian Bick - Maximum Security PRISON Sentence For Stealing Weapons From A Marine | DJ Pannell

Episode Date: August 20, 2023

Drug use and violence landed this Danbury native to maximum security prison. At just 16 years old, DJ Pannell robbed a U.S. Marine with a group of friends, stealing a machine gun and other weaponry. This was a major step in what would be years in the prison system, serving time at maximum and minimum security prisons. After leaving prison, DJ Pannell got clean, started a family, and built a successful life for himself and his family. Connect with Ian Bick:  https://www.ianbick.com/ 00:00 Intro 02:22 Childhood 06:26 Drug Usage and Acting out 14:14 Start of Crime  18:30 Robbing a Marine leads to arrest (reel) 26:15 Sentenced  38:48 Prison Experiences  51:26 Worse thing witnessed 1:00:14 Prison Hustle, CO Smuggled in contraband  1:05:27 Released to a Halfway house 1:09:48 Continued Problems with Authority  1:12:30 Dad’s passing led to getting sobriety and Changing his life 1:19:02 Message Subscribe to our membership program on YouTube to get early access to interviews, see behind the scenes photos, live chat with Ian & more: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRvVklIft6DMelVW18M0oBw/join Powered by Q29 Productions, LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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creating a conflict of interest. Outcomes vary. Investment management and advisory services provided by Wealthfront Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. Investing involves risk to principle regardless of the strategy used. Task performance does not guarantee future results. Welcome back to Lockton with Ian Bick. On today's episode, we have DJ Pinell coming from New Fairfield, Connecticut, right next to my hometown at Danbury to tell his crazy story about how he was a teenager.

And one night, him and his friends decided to rob a Marine to get his guns from them and sell them to other teenagers. In this crazy story, we hear about the night that he got arrested and charged, how he gets sentenced to a youthful offender's prison in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and how he was in a. and out of prison throughout his 20s. By the end of his story, we figure out how and if he was able to turn his life around and get on the right track. Thank you guys for tuning in to Lockton with Ian Bick. Thank you guys for week after week showing us continuous support. And if you could just do us one quick favor, hop on to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcast and leave us a review, it does help us tremendously. And if you guys are listening and watching this on YouTube, give us a like, leave us a review, drop a comment, share to your friends. It helps us.

All right, guys, that's all I got for you. Sit back, relax, and enjoy my interview with DJ Pennell. DJ, welcome to the show today, man. It's great to have you. You're from like my hometown area, Danbury, Connecticut. We were just talking about how you started watching the podcast, listening to it on YouTube and it inspired you to reach out to us to come on the show yourself and tell your story. Yep. Why are, why the interest in like hearing other people's stories just out of curiosity? I've just, I've been through the same thing and I like to hear what other people have gone through compared to what I've been through.

It's a, oh man, I'm thinking about it right now. It makes me, it makes me, it makes me, it makes me crazy because I used to be like a normal kid. and I started getting in trouble when I was really young. Can we take a break for a second? No, you're good, man. Well, you know, we'll ease right into it. It'll be good. Let's start at, you know, your childhood.

You don't have to tell the whole story, right, in one second segment. Let's just start, you know, in the beginning, where you're from and what your childhood's like, like the early days, early life of DJ Pinell. I grew up in New Fairfield, Connecticut, and went to New Fairfield High School. I just, I started doing drugs, and that's really what, really what got me going down the wrong path. What's New Fairfield High School like? Because I went to Danbury High School. Is it similar? Is it smaller? I mean, Danbury High School is a huge school. And I think New Fairfield's one of our rivals, right? In sports? Yeah, I actually didn't get to play you guys. I played football in freshman year. Oh, you're a football player. Well, I tried. I broke my wrist in the middle of the season, and that was kind of the end of

that. Were you on the freshman team or varsity or? Freshman in JV. So you were pretty good then that freshman year. Well, junior varsity coach saw me playing a couple, a couple games, freshman games, and he was like, yeah, we could probably use him. I got the nickname, uh, the kid. You were called the kid? The kid, yeah. Whenever we were down and it was just like we needed a, we needed something. Uh, the coach would say, throw the kid in there. And, and every now and then, I would make a big play. and what position did you play outside linebacker you know i think i only went to like two high school football games i was never really into that into the sports i was a theater nerd i did the musicals uh every year um but i was a part of like you know how we all have like um the the spirit teams or whatever that

route for the the our home team um we were the hatter suitors i think we were called and um i just would do the tailgates like all the burgers and the hot dogs and everything and that's why i went to the game, but I was never really into sports. Yeah, you were the guy who set everything up, right? Yeah, I was party coordinator. Yeah, which it was like how I got into the house parties and the club stuff down the road. Didn't you, weren't you guys called like the rowdy rebels or something? I forgot the name of it. Yeah, the rebels. The rebels, okay. And was it a good football team? We were not so great, no. We were not so great. There have been good rebel teams. My, my team was not so great. I think we, I think we won about half our games. Gotcha. And did you grow up

What siblings? What kind of family life? I grew up with two brothers. One of them passed. I'm sorry, man. The other is a couple years younger than me. And what about your parents? What did they do for work? My father and my family, we were talking about before, I have a local electrical contracting business. Supply warehouse. And my mother was a veterinary technician growing up. So a lot of animals. Really? Did you guys have like a family pet? Oh, we had many, many pets. Dogs, cats. Dogs, cats, everything. So how would you say like the childhood was in the younger years? Was it like you guys grew up middle class? Yeah, middle class.

I had a great family growing up. I have no complaints. My parents worked very hard to provide for me and my brother. Brothers. And that's what's crazy about like me getting into trouble. It's like I had no excuse. What were like your aspirations? What did you want to be as a kid?

I wanted to be like a rock star. A rock star? I haven't heard that one yet. young. Yeah, I wanted to be a rock star. I always thought that would be cool. Who did you like idolize that wanted to make you be a rock star? What did I idolize? When I was young, when I was really young, I liked seeing like the big, big hair metal bands, you know, like the, the, the Aral Smith, Guns and Roses, guys running around on stage going crazy and stuff like that, yeah. Playing like guitar hero, rock band, all that? I tried. Didn't really work out. I can't really play.

Even fake instruments don't work out for me. Did you have hobbies during that age, too? Big, big music fan, big sports fan. I'm a big, big Patriots fan. Big Patriots fan. How do you feel about Tom Brady leaving? That hurt. It hurt me right here.

But you got to get over it, you know? It's part of the game. Yeah. You get traded. He's got to move on. Absolutely. So high school, that's when you said the drug use starts for the first time? Yeah, I started getting in trouble, you know, hanging out with the wrong kids.

What kind of hit kids were you hanging out with? You know, the kids that were doing drugs, skipping school, you know, it's, it's the things like that that are like the signs that you got to look for now because that's, that's what started for me. I started not going to not going to class, you know, skipping to smoke in the in the bathroom, leaving school completely, you know, we were doing crazy stuff pretty young. Why do you want to hang out with those kids? like what propelled you to be attracted to them?

Because you came from like a good family, so you knew that those weren't the kids to associate with. Yeah. It wasn't even so much hanging out with those kids. It was like I was that kid a lot of the time. I was the bad influence, I would say, most of the time. You know, I was the kid that was like the one who was always getting in trouble. How would your friends describe you if they were here today at that time?

period. At that time? Yeah. Probably an asshole. You know, probably an asshole. Just because of the drug use or just because of everything? No, just because of my behavior in general, you know. I was not a nice person. I was always a troublemaker. You know, I would always just be rowdy and uncontrollable. You know, I'm a, I would like to think I'm a much calmer person today. I've changed a lot and, you know, compared to high school, especially high school, high school was like a really rough time as far as my behavior. Yeah.

You know, I was just, I was not willing to do the things that you're supposed to do at that age. I wasn't interested in education. You know, I love learning now. I love learning now. It's one of my favorite things to do. But back then I was not interested in sitting down and learning for six hours out of the day.

I was not. Did your parents ever, you know, pull you to the side and try to talk to you, get you on the straight and narrow? Oh, absolutely. My parents tried thousands of times, put me in counseling, therapy. They tried, you know, summer groups. My parents tried everything. Everything you could do at that time.

And nothing worked. No, I was incorrigible. You know, I was intentionally not doing the things they wanted me to do. It seemed like. Who were you close? to your mother or your father during that time? My father, for sure. Yeah.

My father, yeah. Would you, like, go to work with him and help him out? Oh, yeah. We would go fishing. Fishing was a big thing in my family camping. You know, normal stuff, just normal, normal family stuff. So it must have been hard for them to see you start using drugs. Oh, absolutely.

Coming from that family. Oh, yeah. There was no troublemakers in my family. Everybody, you know, a lot of college, a lot of education, a lot of successful people, hard workers, you know, blue collar, white collar. Was the idea of college, like a lot of pressure for you at that time period? No, it wasn't even a thought. Wasn't even a thought.

Not for me. Yeah. It wasn't even a thought. So you're just going with the flow? I was just going with the flow. I had no, I had no, I had no direction. I had no aim. Do you think there was a lot of pressure put on you to be someone?

No. Not at all? No. Do you think things would have changed if there was, pressure? Probably not. It would have turned out the same one? I was all doing what I wanted to do. I wanted to hang on with the girls and get fucked up and do what I wanted to do, you know, all the time. So what's the first drug do you try at that time period? I started smoking pot. Yeah, weed,

weed was, uh, weed was the big thing. I was probably 12, 13 when I started smoking. What year is this? 1998, 1999. Okay. Born in 86. Okay. So probably about 10, 88. So you start smoking weed, how does that escalate further? We were just always try and do it. We were always trying to scheme in and get some bud, you know, even at a young age. We were always scheming. It escalated in high school. You know, we started, you know, partying, you know, harder and more stuff becomes available.

Cars come into the mix. So now you're traveling. Now you're going to parties that are farther away. You're meeting different people. So, you know, it turns into, you know, beer and alcohol that you're stealing from your friends, parents, liquor cabinet. And then it's, you know, you got friends that are older that you can actually just have them go to the liquor store and then it turns into pills. And, you know, it escalates. It escalates quickly in high school.

Isn't it crazy that all kids, like, do the same thing? I'm almost 10 years younger than you and we were doing the same stuff stealing from the parents. And no one teaches you that. It just, it like comes with being that age. Yeah, you go back to the 50s and kids were stealing out of the head of the Paris liquor cabinets. It's so wild. Yeah, that's just a natural progression.

So you start doing pills. Like, what kind of pills do you start doing? I mean, back then in high school, oxycotton was the big thing. You know, I know you're a little younger, but that was, uh, that was kind of like the the beginning of the opiate epidemic for this area, I would say. and how to make you feel when you took those? Was it like an escape or was it like how does it start to develop? It made me feel great.

I was one of the people that were, you know, instantly kind of hooked into it. A lot of people took them and didn't like them. I was hooked. I loved them immediately. Why do you think that was? It was just a bad case of my body loving opiates. You know, it was. Some people, like I said, some people really don't take to them.

And unfortunately, I did. And you're mixing that with alcohol, too, and other drugs? All the time. Is that safe to do? No, absolutely not. I do not recommend to ever mix opiates with anything. Did you have any near-death experiences or overdoses or anything at that age? I'm very lucky.

I have never overdosed. Okay. Did you have friends that were overdosing? Yeah, I've had many friends. Overdose and passed away. At that, during high school? At that age, yeah. Wow. Yeah. The first person that passed away was in high school.

And that wasn't like a wake-up call or anything to say, I need to stop doing it? Honestly, no, it didn't occur to me, you know, if I'm being honest with you. Yeah. No, it's totally want you to be honest. Yeah, yeah, no, it didn't. It didn't make me think it was going to happen to me at all. It was still, even though it was so close, it still fell far away. it wasn't like I have to worry about that which is crazy you know to think of now so you think if you were older and that happened you would that maybe would have been more of a wake-up call yeah with the wisdom I have as a 37-year-old compared to a you know 14-year-old kid it's no one has that

yeah yeah no it's I it's almost like I didn't even care back then you know not that the friend was gone but about the risk that came with it yeah do you ever sell drugs in high school or are you just a user? I was mostly just a user. You know, I would, I would sell things to, you know, help along between two friends. You know, like if one person needed something and I knew the person that had it, I would, you know, middleman. The connector. The middleman. Yeah. So when's like the first time then you start like committing like a crime? Is it in high school or is it when you get out of high school? Committing a crime? Like not that, not the drug use. So that that's in itself, but maybe like, I don't know, going a little bit farther out with your friend group?

I mean, I had a friend when I was young. Obviously, I'm not going to use anybody's names, but we were breaking into houses when we were like 12, 13 years old. Really? As a teenager. Oh, preteen. You know, you're 12. You're not even a teenager.

But there was one house we broke into and, you know, they were on vacation. We knew they were gone and, like, we started the car in the garage, left it running, couldn't figure out how to turn it off. You know, we just kind of freaked out. and left it running. You know, just, it was like exploring at that age. There was no nefarious intent behind it. We weren't in there to take anything.

Yeah. It was just like you're not supposed to be there. Going into houses that were under construction, that was like a big thing I used to do when I was a kid. I used to love going to construction, you know, construction sites and exploring. You're not supposed to be there. You know, after hours, construction workers are gone

and you're swinging off of, you know, swinging off of stuff and, you know, just causing trouble as a youngster. And this is all because of the friend group that you were around? Yeah, well, that's when I was really young, you know, doing that kind of stuff. But things escalated in high school. In high school, you know, I got kicked out of high school. You got kicked out. Yeah.

What year? It would have been my second freshman year. You got held back. I held back. Yeah, I never went so I didn't have any. they were near enough credits to make it to the next, you know, to make it to sophomore. So second freshman year I got in trouble and they kicked me out and that was it. They had it and enough.

What did you do that drew the line for them? I got into an argument with a teacher and he sent me to the principal's office who they were, you know, very familiar with me. And I was just sitting there and the school resource officer, made a comment to me, you know, just like a dumb comment, you know, like, so it wasn't even being nefarious or whatever. He was just being stupid like, oh, you know, what are you doing here? And I kind of told him to piss off and he made like another funny comment like, oh, don't make me use my gun. And then I said the, I was so stupid. I said something along the lines of, I would get to it before you would. And that's a no. You don't want to say that to a school resource officer.

So it escalated and it turned into a shoving match. And again, you're not supposed to shove a school police officer. He got up and touched you first? No, no, no, no. No, it was definitely me all my fault. No, absolutely me. It seems like he instigated it, though, a little bit. No, it was me.

It was definitely me. Yeah, it was definitely me. Yeah, but telling a 14-year-old kid, you don't want me to use my gun? I don't know. Yeah, the way I'm saying, it's not, you know, the full story. I was definitely, you know, the agitator in the situation. So you shoved him? Did you get, like, arrested?

No, I didn't get arrested. thankfully but they expelled you just for that definitely uh yeah it's definitely kicked out that seems a little harsh no that was a long line of a long line of suspensions and uh you know trouble what did your parents say to you when you get expelled they knew it was coming i mean all of these things were you know the signs were all there i was getting in trouble constantly no police were always showing up at the house even at a young age so so where what happens next you get expelled what do you end up doing? What do you get into? Now I just have free time all the time. And, you know, it's, that's not a good thing when you're, uh... Every kid's dream, though.

Yeah, you would think that. But my father, you know, first my father tried making me work. You know, if you're going to sit around all day, you're going to, you know, you're going to work, bringing me to his job. You know, that only lasted so long because I'm interfering at that point with, you know, what he's trying to do at work while he's just trying to find shit for me to do. So then it just ends up being me out on the streets, you know, running around with just freedom, hanging out with older people, doing things we're not supposed to do.

the really big event that kind of like snowballed everything as far as you know like the criminal justice system and and all that was a we had a friend who knew somebody who had a bunch of firearms in the house and one of them being a fully automatic firearm and we were so interested in these firearms. We wanted them bad. And I had somebody set up who was going to purchase them. So we went in to get them one night when these people were gone. And the owner of the firearms was a Marine, which is, you know, I'm looking back on it now. And even then it was crazy. You know, what if he was home and were breaking into his house to try and take his guns from him? a couple of kids in your house, you know what I mean?

Like, it's crazy. But, you know, we did that and we got caught. And, you know, we all went down. And that kind of started the whole process because now you're in the system, you know, like now you're really in the system. You're not just getting caught for pot by a local cop. You know, now you're going to county. Now you're getting an inmate number, you know, which you're familiar with.

You're familiar with that whole process. and you know now you're now you're in it how old were you when you guys decided to do this robbery I was I was 16 or 17 and I was with other people that were 15 16 and 17 there was like five of us and what was the intention did you guys want to use it to harm someone or are you guys doing the intention was to sell I had somebody that we were going to sell them to oh you were going to sell these guns yeah I already had somebody set up wow I already had a buyer it was going to be a lot of money Yeah, that was going to be significant, for us at the time, significant. So how does a group of like 16-year-olds break into a Marines house?

Like, wouldn't you have it locked up the guns and like anything? He's a Marine. Yeah, you would think so. And it was out in the open? No, I mean, they were, you know, in closets and normal locations you would keep your guns. Okay. They weren't in gun safes or anything. They were all basically, you know, easy to access.

But we just, you know, kick the doors in. You kick the doors? A group of you guys. guys just kicked it in. Yeah, we knew that they were gone for the evening and we just, we went in and took everything, took everything that was worth something of value. And how do you guys get caught them if he's not home? Oh boy, this is the really funny part. You know, now, now it's funny. It's not, it's not funny as they're, as they're raiding you and they're, you know, kicking your door in. But the house was actually a neighbor's house, the one of the people that we were doing it with.

There was five of us. It was a new. neighbor. It's one of those people. And what happened was, pardon me, what happened was there was a little trail in between the two houses, right? So that's the little trail we used to kind of slink over there. One of the people dropped an item that was taken on the trail. So that led the police to the neighbor's house. And that kid folded immediately. As soon as there were police there saying, you know, we think you have something to do with this gentleman's house being robbed. He just, like a ton of bricks, went down, pointed us all out, and just told them from beginning to end what went down.

They had the whole story front and back within 15 minutes of them being at the house. Wow. Yeah, it did not work out very well. So how long was this after the robbery? It was this like next day? that they went to his house yeah that they went to this was when they came home that evening oh and then he reported the guns are gone yeah they were they were out at dinner okay and then he came home at whatever time 10 11 o'clock notice his house was you know in complete disarray reported it your friend's not

the smartest to rob his own neighbor no you know it had to be looked at as the first suspect yeah i guess i mean i didn't know their relationship so i didn't know if if he would have looked at him but the fact that, and he's also the one that dropped it, the item. It was a disc man. Okay. If you even remember what those are. What the floppy discs? No, with a CD, a CD player. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I used to have one. Yeah. I love that thing. I listen to the maroon five CDs on it. And he dropped it right in the middle. So it was like, you know, obviously, we got to go talk to this kid. Yeah. And he didn't have any of the firearms. Actually, he had one. He had, there was a little revolver. And then they got that very quickly. And me and another person had the,

other two. We had them wrapped up in plastic, buried in the woods. Did they get the guns? Like you guys told, he said the locations, everything. Well, he told them that we had the other two. So me and my other friend, I'll call him MS, were at his house. I was living with him at the time. And we were playing, I want to say, like Madden, 2003 on PlayStation 2, I'm guessing. And we're sitting there and I have a blunt hanging out of my mouth. And all of a sudden I see a police officer at the window who's like right here. The window's right here, three, four feet away. And I just see him peering in and I'm just like, they're just hanging out of my mouth like a mechanic in an old horror movie. And then I just hear banging on the front door and that's just like, that's it. You know,

and they just, they come in, they come in hard and slam us on the ground. You know, they got the gun to the back of my head and they're screaming at us telling us, you know, we're going to jail, where are the guns, blah, blah, blah. Like I said, we had them wrapped up and we had them buried in the woods across from the house. One of them wasn't even assembled yet. It was still, you know, in pieces. The bolt was still unassembled and everything. We hadn't even had a chance to even, like, mess with them yet. We didn't get to play with anything yet. Yeah. And my friend at the time, MS, said he was going to kill himself. I guess he thought that was going to help him get away.

You know, maybe they'll take me to the hospital and I won't have to go to jail. And, you know, that was it. I'm sure the cops are taking this extremely seriously. Oh, yeah. It's a couple kids with armed guns. You guys could have been, like, shooting up a school or anything. Yeah, they had no idea. Yeah, they had no idea what we were trying to do with these things.

They were, they rated us like you would see on any YouTube video. Did this make it into the papers at all? Or was this not? Yeah, oh, yeah, absolutely. During that time. Oh, yeah. Your family was probably devastated by the same place. They were pissed.

What's your first conversation with them? My first conversation is from the county jail. And what do they say? Like, what the fuck, DJ? Yeah, they're pissed. They're pissed. I had a, at the time, I think it was a quarter million dollar bond. And they put the house up to get me out.

And they let me sit for a few days purposely. My father was like, you know, we're going to teach them a lesson. they got me out and my father told me you don't have to worry about the bondsmen you don't have to worry about the police you don't have to worry about court if you don't show up for court I'll fucking kill you you know because he's putting the house up to get me out yeah I'm curious what you're I know you you want to make the sale for money but you didn't really need money couldn't you have went to your parents like what's your motivation to do this it was still money yeah we would have got

you know about 10 grand for him so but couldn't you have just went to your parents or worked or done something oh if i asked my parents for that kind of money they would they wouldn't have done oh absolutely no so you understood the concept of money at that age like wanting to oh absolutely yeah oh absolutely i had jobs you know we worked and still this was the quick way but it's not like you were like a kid that was starving you didn't rock no yeah you did this just because you wanted yeah more money and the rush and it was fun to do and it was it was bad and it was you know now are you and all the guys you did this with at county together or they split you up um not in county we were split up but when i was finally sentenced uh one of my co-defendants who told on me and everybody uh they actually put him in the same block as me

and uh they put the snitch in the same block and uh at manson at m y i they put him and we were in G, we were in G, A, I was in one and he was in six. And he came walking down the unit. And I started screaming out into the unit, you know, excited to tell everybody what this dude, you know, did to me, how he threw me into the bus. And what did they do to him when you started screaming? They didn't do anything to him that day, but they did a lot of mean stuff to him. They would walk by him while he was on the phone and click his, click his calls off. This is MS, if anyone knows MS.

People that know me who they will know who I'm talking about. They would fuck his haircuts up, you know, intentionally. You know, whoops. That actually happens in prison? I mean, no one ever, like, did anything to hurt him or anything. It was never anything serious like that. Because it's a child jail, right? Yeah, but, you know, that's actually where I saw a lot of the more serious things

was at the youth facility, MII in Connecticut. You know, people say that, but NYU was where a lot of the, you know, the crazy shit happens. Cool on, yeah, we'll get into that. The county jail, where is that in Connecticut? Like, you got a rush in.

Yeah, I went to Bridgeport. Yeah, I went to Bridgeport. Yeah, so I went from the New Fairfield Police Department to Bridgeport County. Who picks you up, like, state troopers, or who transports you? Oh, that time, I've been arrested so many times. I get them confused. That time it would be, you know, the local cops will book you in.

And then, yeah, the local cop will bring you to county. No, when you're drop you off. When you're at the local police department, because I remember when I got arrested at Danbury Police, you don't get stripped out or anything, right? No, not like, not like, not like a county. Yeah. I mean, it was just pat down, pat your shit down, get you into like boxers, flip your stuff out.

Not like, not like county. They take mug shots. I guess. Yeah, you get your picture, you do your prints on the, now it's a, now it's an electrical machine. I used to, I used to still have to do it on the ink blots when I was younger. When I was there, it was ink blots too back. Really? Yeah, in 2016, even the feds, it was ink, it was ink on the pad, it wasn't electronic. I'm very lucky. I've never actually gotten in any trouble with the feds. I was almost in trouble for that, but the feds didn't take the case. Yeah, this could have been a federal case. Absolutely, yeah, but I was lucky. It was all state,

it was state the whole way. Okay. So you go to county, you get bailed out. Are you getting into more trouble after you get bailed out? This time, I think I was actually kind of behaving on bond for this case. I didn't get in any more trouble on bond for this one. But you got sentenced to jail time. Yeah, I got sentenced to my first offer was like 17 years. Just for the- It came back.

Yeah. It was the first, you know, the first offer is always, you know, it's always way up there. They always know you're not going to take it. Yeah. It's always just to get a conversation. started. And I guess that's always kind of like to kind of to know what level you're playing at. The first number is always kind of, that's the impression I've always got. You know, it's kind of how serious do they want to take it? Yeah, absolutely. It's always like, yeah, I always kind of figure

you're going to get around maybe 30% of what their first offer is. Maybe,ish. They offered me 17 years, my first offer. And we absolutely told them to, you know, sit on it. I'm not taking 17 years. That's crazy. And do you have a paid lawyer or a public defender? At this point I did. I had a paid lawyer. Shout out Jeff Jowdy. Dan Baird. You had Jeff Jowdy. He was my lawyer too. So you know. Yeah, I had Jeff Jowdy was the man. Wow, that's so crazy that we had the same. He just did my state cases, but. Jeff Jowdy was the man. Yeah. Jeff Jowdy walked into the courtroom and told them what was going down on numerous occasions. Yeah, he's good. I mean, I remember when I first met him, he's like, all right, these are your cases. You could combine these two.

Here's the money. That's it. And then he took care of everything. Jowdy hooked me up, man. He was great. And I was an uncooperative kid. I wouldn't even talk to my lawyer. Like, I was under the impression that, you know, you don't tell, you don't talk to anybody. So he was pretty, he was a fairly new lawyer at that time, though. I guess. I mean, I don't know when he started practicing. Because he's not that old, yeah.

This was, I'm going to say, like, 2003. So it stretched out a few years? Oh, yeah, this case went on for like two and a half years, maybe. Yeah. So what do you end up getting? What's the final deal? My final deal, I took four years to serve with five years probation and seven suspended. Wow.

So I had to go in and do four. And when he came down and told me, this is the one, you got to take this. Because there was like five or six other offers in between that. And I was like, is this the one? Is this the one I got to lay it down? You know, is the one I'm taking? And he was like, yeah, I think this is it. Is there any thought of trial at all?

No. No, absolutely not. They would have smoked me and given me 30 years and I'd still be there. What were the actual charges, by the way? I had the three counts of possession of the firearms, one of them being automatic. He got all three of those charges dropped. This is how Jowdy was the man, because there was an error in some type of the fingerprinting process. So at that point, they had no evidence to, like, directly connect us to the firearms.

Me specifically. I don't know about the other guys. So I didn't have to actually take those charges and keep them on my record, which was a blessing. Burglary, second, larceny, second. And then all the other stuff they tack on, criminal trespassing. So these are all felonies? Criminal mischief. Most of them were, yeah. Okay.

So you take this plea deal, and then when you get sentenced to it, do they take you right away, right then and there? Yep, it's, they just handcuff you. It's right then and there. Okay. That's a big difference between state and third. federal because federal you get to self-surrender. You have a sentencing day, yeah. Yeah, you have a sentencing day, this and that, then you self-surrender.

Yeah. So this, they hauled you right away. Yeah, I mean, the guards are standing behind you, the whole. Is your family there, like crying? My, who was there? You know what? I don't even think I've had so many sentencing dates that I get them all confused. Yeah, I think my mother was there.

My father was at work. I wouldn't expect him to be there for something like that. You know, he's got a good work. He doesn't come to that? He would have if I wanted him to, but it's not something I really want you to be there for anyway. Yeah, but you're like, what are you, 19 at this point? 20? Yeah, about that, 18, 19.

How to make you feel that all your friends are probably in college and there you are going to jail? Because I felt that same way. Yeah, that didn't really start to bother me until I was sitting in jail, prison, you know, once I'm sentenced and I'm, I'm concurrently living life while they're concurrently living a better life at the same time. You know, for us, and I know you understand this, it feels like time kind of freezes because nothing changes for you, really, you know, but everything continues to, you know, change outside. Yeah. So you come home, you know, 90 days later and things are very different.

Yeah. So. Did you have girlfriends or anything during that time period? When I went in for that one, I had. had a girl friend, but I kept telling her, listen, I'm going away. Excuse me. So, you know, best not get too attached. And she just didn't believe me because she kept seeing me go to these court dates where I

kept telling her, listen, today might be today. Today might be the day. And it didn't happen for, you know. Years. Yeah, basically, while I was talking to her, maybe eight to ten months. So she was just like, man, listen, you're not going. And then one day it did happen. And it was like, you know, okay.

That's the craziest thing about the state systems. It's like, you know, someone gets arrested. It goes on for years. And there's so much misinformation. Yeah, but there's so much misinformation that goes out there too. Like the news will publish like how much time they're facing. It's not actually that because they just stack up all the years. Yeah.

And they always, you know, people don't understand the difference between consecutive and concurrent. And the news isn't even explaining that either to people. They're just saying so-and-so got arrested on these charges facing. 100 years in prison. That's what they did to me. And then they'll end up getting two years. Yeah. I'll run into people that still think, aren't you still in prison? Yeah. And once you got another 38 years to go? Yeah. And I'm like, because it said I was facing 120 years or whatever. And there's no clarification. There's no follow up. Yeah. Especially federal. I mean, the federal numbers are just Oh, it's out of control. Yeah. The whole thing needs to be just like redone. I agree.

I agree that there are some people that are incarcerated for things that it still gets me aggravated to see the numbers that people get for some crimes and then I compare it to what I had to do you know you see people that get arrested for things with kids that get you know minimal minimal time two years or something I'm seeing a lot of the local cases in Connecticut like Bethel Danbury New Fairfield some of these guys three to five years yeah it's insane that's what I got yeah these kids are it's sex with a minor you didn't hurt anybody Yeah, I don't understand. Like, there's so many cases coming out of Bethel lately, Bethel, Connecticut.

I've been reading in the news because I'm always reading the news times. Worst newspaper ever, by the way, but they refused to do like a follow-up article like on me just to like say the good we're doing this and that. But that's the media for you. I read something the other day like a guy from Bethel or whatever, you know, three to five years. It's fucking crazy for a sexual assault with a minor and stuff. I don't understand. I don't understand how they justify, you know, the sentencing for a lot of crimes. Yeah.

If there's no violence, if there's no, if there's no violence or clear-cut victim, I mean, I don't even think jail or prison should be an option for a lot of things. You know, if you're a money guy, if you get in trouble for some type of money thing, you know, unless it's a lot of money, I don't think you should be taking up a bed. I think it depends on the situation. Definitely restitution, some type of plan. Yeah, I don't know, but there's just a lot of things that there's literally hundreds of thousands of people that are sitting in county jails and state facilities and federal lockups and, you know, you name it. It just shouldn't be there.

It should be homeworking, you know, contributing to, you know, the taxes that are, instead of costing money, instead of costing $50,000 a year for, I think that's how much it costs for an inmate in state of Connecticut. It's about $50,000 a year just to sit your ass. on that bunk and take up space. So instead of costing money, if you're there for, you know, shoplifting or, you know, whatever stupid things that you didn't really hurt anybody, you'd be outworking, you're contributing to taxpayer money instead of sucking it up. Yeah, before I got sentenced, I was working at Whole Foods and got, I was giving my whole paycheck to restitution.

Yeah. And, you know, we thought that would look good with the court, this and that. And I still got three years. Yeah, I don't care. So you stop. It's not about the money. They don't care. Like the feds will tell the victims, investors, whatever you want to call them and say,

hey, you know, we're going to recover your money. But once trials over, they get a conviction, they don't give a fuck about anyone. Yeah, that's it. You're just another case file. Exactly. There's no follow up. There's no updates over time, you know? That's just the truth about the system.

So they bring you to prison for this four-year sentence. Where do you go? Is it an adult facility? The first place I went was Bridgeport County, and I went to the YO block, Youthful Offender Block, which is just it's set up the same as the adults. It's just kids that are under the age of, it changes all the time. I think at this point it was either, I think it was 21. So if you're 21 or under, you could be in this block.

And it was scary. It was all plexiglass. And I was in a cell by myself, and that was my first time being locked up, other than just being in, like, the town lockup. You know, you're just sitting in the cell downstairs. It's no big deal, you know. Yeah. And I don't care at anybody says, man, that shit, and that shit is scary. I don't know anybody in there.

I don't know how anything works. There's no orientation. What are you wearing? Are you in, like, a jumpsuit? No, at this point it was, they were just like scrubs. They were just tan scrubs with like the elastic waistband, the little pocket right here. You had an ID that you would clip to like the V right here. You always had to have your ID shown.

So the classic prison look that that one could expect. The classic prison look. Yeah. The classic prison look. And what are some of the other charges of the guys, the youths that were around you? There was a lot of drugs. I was only in that unit for a couple of months, not even a couple of months. not even a couple of months.

I was only in that unit for a couple of weeks because I was sentenced. And then I went up to NYU. And I started my real time. That's a real prison with adults. MII. Manson, MII Manson Youth Institute. So you're a young white kid that goes into prison.

What are they saying to you? How are they treating you? Do they think you're someone that's not there for what you're actually there for? No, I never really had any. issues like nobody ever checked my paperwork nobody ever came up to me and was like you know other than just casually asking what are you in for nobody was ever like you know i need to see what you're here for um i never saw anybody walk in and attack the first biggest toughest guy that's like uh the

biggest misconception uh i was here i've never seen anybody do that i've never seen anybody just walk into the room and, you know, scout someone out and, you know, set it off on them. So now when you say that and you hear people because you watch the content and you hear people that say that, do you think they're not telling the truth? Or do you think it's just never seen it? I've just never seen it. I mean, that's just always the thing that you always hear said. I mean, we got a ton of comments from people that have been to prison that watch the clips

and they're like, no way I've been to prison before this doesn't happen. I've never seen it personally. I can only give my personal experience. And I've seen people walk in and get into altercations pretty quickly, but I've never seen anyone walk in with the intent of just knocking the blackball for the tallest dude in the unit. So no one fucked with you, which was... No, I mean, nobody ever really tried to intimidate me to just intimidate me. Anytime I was ever involved in any type of altercation, it was because it would have been an altercation

regardless. Do you think it was a way you presented yourself though? Because I feel like me and you were the same age, but we presented ourselves in two entirely different ways, which would lead to more problems for me and less problems for you. How so? I think that like I wasn't like a confrontational type person. I feel like if someone called you something or anything like that, you're going to stand up for yourself, whereas I wasn't really that type of kid. Well, I didn't want to fuck my parole up just like anybody else. But, um, I never had I never had the issue really any any fights that were that took place were because of because of an issue like there was a reason for the altercation now you mentioned there's a lot of

bad shit you saw at this prison oh my i was nuts and what are you yeah what are you seeing at these place these youthful offender places yeah my i feel like it was because everybody there was young so there's a lot of immaturity and there's a lot of like people there that want to prove themselves there's a lot of kids there with 60 70 years sentences that are for all 60 or 70 years oh there's kids there with life life you know quadruple life really kids kids 13 14 years old were they justified home I mean I don't know I mean I don't know I don't know their cases but I just know that there's uh at one point i was the tier man for uh it was a unit so it was a had like one unit at this time was like it always they always switched the blocks around but at this point

it was seg and like high security and and one of them was a a very young block so anyone in that block was like 16 and under and had all crazy charges that whole wing was kids that were just gone. These kids are never coming home. They're all murderers and rapists and broken people, people that are never going to see the light of day ever again. And I used to have to work in there,

mopping up and down the tier, and they'd be asking me to slide things to other cells, and they used to tell me, listen, you can't help them trade anything. You can't, not even once. It's not like they're cool and they let you. In that unit, you can't do that, period. If you get caught, you know,

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earning the credentials you need may be faster than you think. Try our experience calculator to see if you could be eligible for course credit and start your comeback today. at Purdue global.edu. Fired, they'll, you know, raid your cell, whatever, and that's it. So these guys would literally be 13 years old, 12 years old. Kids, they look like they're literal children, like babies.

And they'd be telling me that they're going to, you know, find me when I get out and burn my house down and murder my whole family if I don't grab a soup from 3-cell and bring it over here for them. Wow. Crazy. Yeah, insane. Now, at this facility, Are you guys locked down all day?

How does it work? 23 and 1. So that one, you're locked in your cell 23 hours a day. Yeah, 23 and 1, just like the big boys. The hour, where do you go? So it's set up like every unit from above, if you were looking at it from like a map. It kind of looks like an X. And there's like the entrance way.

And then there's A, B, and C wing. So you would come out of your cells into either if you're just having like a mini-wreck. they would just allow you into your little section only. You know, you'd have the big metal tables with the little circle stools, a couple of phones. Or if you were having a bigger wreck, like they always decided how they wanted to do it, then they would open all of the units

and you could go into the other units to use their phones, sit on their tables, just so you had more space. You weren't mixing with the other units. You were just in their blocks while they were still locked in their cells. And do you get a TV in your cell? If you buy one. So 23 hours a day lockdown for four years, pretty much?

Well, I was only there for until I turned, you know, 21 or whatever the age was. Yeah, and then I went, they call it going up the way, going upstate. I just, I can't imagine that's any way to live. Like, if you're on a short sentence like that and you didn't go to that, is that really necessary? A 23 hour a day lockdown? Like, what does that achieve? I mean, they didn't have at that time. They didn't have another facility for people of that age.

If you were that age, you went to that facility. And then if you were like a lower level, he went to a lower level unit. Like you went to, it was ABC, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J. There was no K cottage. They were called cottages. Like A, B, A and B were like the bad ones. A and B were like intake. So when you first came in and they got to kind of watch you for a month.

Make sure you're not crazy. Make sure you don't have problems with anybody. And then there's like the wing I was telling you about. Then there's high security. Then there's SEG. Then there's the gang unit. those are all in A and B. Then like C, D, and E would just kind of be regular units for just regular inmates that are just kind of level three, four or whatever.

And then you'd have the kitchen unit. And then you would have the, what's the drug program called, Tier 4, right? Does that something? I wasn't in state. Oh, yeah. Tier 4 was the drug program. I think it was like a six month. You would do it and it would look good for your parole.

And so like depending on who you are, what you did, what your level. was what you were trying to do. If you were on medication, that would kind of determine what unit you went to at that facility until you turned old enough and then they would put you on the ice cream truck and ship you up the way. You're not the first person that said the ice cream truck. Yeah, well, it looks like a big ice cream truck. Wow. So how helpful are the staff? Are they trying to help? Because you guys are kids. This is a defining period in your time. It's a prison. It's a jail. I've heard a lot of stories about how it is today, that they get snacks. They all get TVs in the cell automatically you don't have to buy one like the state just has one in the cell um and that it's like a lot

more like that they're treated more like children it was for all intents and purposes of prison i saw no difference between that and you know uh going up to osborne no so do you think it helped shape you into the person you're in now you are now um like do you think you needed to go to prison to become this person? That's something I think about a lot because I don't know if I really needed to go away for that long for the things I did.

Some prison was warranted. I should have went away. I should have been taken away from society for a little while. I was a little dangerous. I wouldn't say it was dangerous to society. Like, you didn't have to... None of my neighbors were ever worried

about me doing something as far as I know. You know, I don't think anybody was ever really like worried about me being around necessarily. But, you know, I had to go away and pay for, you know, my troubles that I caused. But was it like worth it? Did it make me who I am today? Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. If I didn't go through the things that I went through, you know, then I would probably still be doing

illegal things. I used to get in trouble. I would break the law every day, especially when I was involved with opiates. I was a walking felony. I was committing felonies when you saw me. I had either just committed a felony. I was in the process of committing a felony or I was on my way to commit a felony 24 hours a day. If I was sleeping, it was only to take a break from committing more felonies. So having to go in and out of jail, eventually it beat it out of me. There wasn't one sentence that I would say taught me, taught me a lesson. It was all of them together.

Just beat it out of me. I do not want to go back. Is there stuff that you think about to this day that maybe keeps you up at night from those experiences in jail and prison? No, I wouldn't say so. You kind of try to compartmentalize it. and leave it in the past? I mean, I kind of have to just look at it as,

as that was the environment I was in. I fortunately never had to do anything crazy to, like, protect myself. I never had to, I never had to staff anybody. I never had to do anything like that. But I did see some bad things happen to people, and I'm lucky that nothing bad happened to me because there were a couple of times where we did things that,

you know really negative consequences could have could have came out of in prison yeah but just the way you know the way things worked out be it luck or you know intervention from third parties uh nothing bad ever happened what was the worst thing you saw happen to someone in prison oh god um just off the off the top of my head i got a couple uh when i was at the m y i the manson youth institution the way the unit is set up, as you're walking into the back of the unit, it gets a little thinner at the back, like the end of the hallway kind of tightens up. So if you pop the cells at the back of the unit and you have the doors open completely, there's a blind spot behind those two doors where there's probably about the size of, I'm going to say maybe three or four telephone booths

back there where the cameras really can't see anything. And they took this kid and they kicked him in the face with the, I don't know if you ever seen the work boots. With the steel tower? No, there's no steel in them. They're just black work boots, but the rubber soles on the bottom are thick, and they're heavy. And if you start, you get to stomping on somebody with one of these, it's going to hurt. And they peeled, like, the skin from, like, his temple all the way across his forehead to

his other temple, just kind of peeled down. Like, one of them just kind of stepped on his face, and it just kind of ripped the skin down off of his face and they just kind of left him sitting there and nobody said or did anything for maybe maybe about 10 minutes and this kid just kind of sat there unconscious just kind of like moving what do you do to deserve this i have no idea it just happened i have no idea when you he was in my block and i i had no idea when you heard about this or saw this happen are you thinking like this could very well have been you yeah um absolutely um obviously i obviously Absolutely. There was another time at Sybulski, which is a minimum security in Enfield.

There was a bunch of guys playing cards at a table down at the end of the hallway. And there was one guy I called him Mr. Larson. This is not his real name. But if you know the name Mr. Larson, can you think of what that's from? Does that bring up any memories in your head from a movie or something? Mr. Larson? No. What is it? Happy Gilmore. I never watched it. No, there's a character from Happy Gilmore.

His name is Mr. Larson. And he's like six foot five. He's just a giant, just a giant. And he threatens one of the guys in the movie. And then they have to hit the ball off of his foot. And he threatens one of them, he says to him, you know, I'll be waiting for you in the parking lot. People that know the movie, you'll know who I'm talking about.

This guy looked just like this guy. He was just a giant freak. He was, you know, 6-4, 6-6, 6-6, 200, you know, whatever pounds. His hands were like baseball mitts. they were all playing cards at a table and uh my understanding of what happened was somebody farted at the table right a fart everybody farts right but as you know in jail and prisons there's like there's an extra etiquette that comes with it you have to you know excuse me you have to have your manners especially in a facility you know you can't just be farting walking by people people will get

fucking stabbed over something like that. So one of these guys, I'm going to call him the little guy, um, farted and the big guy got mad and these guys got to, you know, yammering at each other. The little guy started walking away, uh, aggressively. Like, like, like the walk when you're going to go grab something. You know, I'm going to go grab my gun from my trunk, walk. And he came walking back with a cup of bleach. And the tall guy, Mr. Larson, saw it. And this little guy threw the cup of bleach at him. Thank God for Mr. Larson, he saw it, so he picked up his chair. You know, the plastic chairs that they have in all the facilities, they're just big plastic injection molded chairs, picked it up and blocked it. These guys proceeded to fight for, I'm going to say, in all actuality,

in real lifetime, these guys probably fought for five minutes because the COs hit the button. They all came running in. None of them wanted to jump in and intervene because there was blood smeared all over the walls. They were both completely covered in blood. There was blood all over the floors. Mr. Larson had the little guy in a headlock, and he was just taking those baseball mitt hands, and he was just mashing this dude's face into just pieces.

At the end of it, he wasn't even conscious. He was holding up this limp body, just hitting him. And then the COs finally convinced him to stop, and he just dropped him, and then just went to his knees and let them do their thing. But that guy beat him so bad over a fart and over the disrespect that comes with a fart. And that always, that always really, like, that's the one I think of first. That's crazy.

Yeah. There was another one where, I don't know how the bunk beds that you guys have in the feds are. Are they just all metal? For the most part, some, like in the holdover. detention centers are all metal with a metal bottom but like we had springs and like the camp one those were nice they're comfortable when you have springs it's metal frame with the the springs never saw springs yeah but um this one guy i know i don't know if he got pushed or if he got punched but he got somehow forced backwards and the knot on the back of your head where your spine meets your

head hit the bunk right here and i think that dude died. I think that that guy accidentally killed that guy because there was a puddle of blood underneath it that I think in like total volume was actually more than the other fight. Because the other fight it was all spread around, you know, because they were dragging each other on the walls and everything. This guy just hit the back of his head and just opened up something serious and just laid there and it just leaked. And it was, I've never seen a color of blood like that. at. I witnessed somebody get shot in the face, and I did not see this color of blood come from that. So I think this guy died, and we never got to find out what happened to him. You know,

they just, they call a code, they get them out of there, they get out the guy who did it. You never know what happens. This is so much, like, traumatic shit to see at that age of 20, 21, 22 years old. Yeah, it was crazy. I mean, I wasn't even really seeing stuff like that. I'd see some fights. I saw guys get his finger bitten off. Yeah, this was at a minimum security too. That one was at, um, that was at Seibulski as well. That's scary. That was at Seibulski as well. I saw another guy. Did you guys have Kobe adapters? I don't know what a, what's a Kobe adapter? A Kobe adapter is you would order it on the commissary and it was the, uh, the electric block that you would use to like keep your disc man plugged in or your radio plugged in. It was just a box that would plug

into the wall and it had a switch for the voltage and you could adjust the voltage to power your disc man to power your radio. No, we didn't have that, no. And it was just a, like a power brick, but it was heavy. It was about the size of a softball, and it had the two prongs. Well, I watched a guy whip one of those at somebody and the prongs stuck in the side of his head over, you know, some kind of debt, something stupid, I'm sure. People do crazy shit in the present. People do crazy shit, yeah. People get crazy over, over stupid things. And I found myself getting caught up with it, because if you did something to me today here, if you stole something worth literally 75 cents from me,

I wouldn't give a fuck. Ian stole my, you know, my, I don't know, my air freshener. It wouldn't bother me for a minute. But even a hundred bucks. Yeah, even a hundred bucks in the real world. I mean, $100, I feel like I might be a little. But you're not losing your freedom. I'm not going to...

You've got to think about it. Blow my top over... You know, it's going to be nothing more than a verbal. What the fuck? Can I have my money back, please? But in there, it's like somebody steals a soup from you. You can't let everyone find out that somebody just stole the soup from you because now you're fish. Now you're the target.

Now everyone has you as weak or whatever. So it's like you have to... You have to give things value and importance in this. there that don't have really much importance. Like a stamp in there, you know, a stamp is 47 cents or whatever it is, but in there it's money. And if somebody steals your stamps, you know, you got to handle it. You got to do something about it. Yeah. It's crazy. Now, were your parents supporting you financially in prison or were you hustling in prison? In the beginning, they were sending me, they were sending me money and stuff for that sentence. They

sent me a bunch of money. As I got older and I got in more trouble and went back for other things, they stopped, they stopped sending me as much. You know, they get tired of it when you're 25, you know, 30 years old, you're still getting in trouble. But for that sentence, yeah, I had a fair amount of cash on the books and it was nice. I was living, I was living the present baller lifestyle, as they say, going 50 deep every week. You know, I always had money for, we were smoking weed. I was hustling too, though. We had a, we had a smuggling operation that was second, to none. A smuggling operation? Yeah. It involved another CO, so we could get whatever we wanted in. How would that work? And what were you getting? Uh, drugs mostly. Drugs, Game Boy Advance games.

We had the Game Boy Advance at the time. So the little cartridges. Because they're smuggling in Game Boyes into prison. No, just the cartridges. Oh, just the cartridges. Oh, just the car. Because you could get the Game Boy Advance on commissary. Really? Yeah. You don't. No, we didn't have that. The feds have tablets now. Yeah, I heard about that. They didn't have but when I was there. Me neither. So you guys were getting this stuff just smuggled in. Were you selling it?

Oh, yeah. So how much money were you making? It depends because we would smuggle in different things. And how did you get the CEO on board? So my friend, I'm going to call him BroChamp. That's a good one. My buddy Brochamp. He knew this guy from the street.

So they had a relationship on the outside previous to this. So he approached me one day because I was the tier man in this dorm too. You know, you just mop and stuff. So while everyone's on count and they're up on their bunks, I'm mopping the bathroom, I'm cleaning out the shower stalls, I'm moving around. I can get to places at times that people normally can't get to. So that's important. So I also had access to different closets, locked closets, you know,

so I could, again, get to things that, you know, most people can't get to. So we had an operation where whatever we could bring up to the parking lot and hide in a certain spot, this officer, I'll call him Officer D. Let's call him Officer D. I'm trying to think of something funny to rhyme with his name, but I couldn't think of anything. He would go out and he would pick it up in the parking lot, bring it in, and then when he was working our block, which was for that rotation, I think of they worked for, six-month rotations, he was on my block, so I would see him five days a week. So then he would bring the items into a little closet where there were rolls of toilet paper stacked up. He would put it on the third roll from the left, four up. He would stuff whatever we had inside that roll. And then I would go in there during my little tier man job, and he would tell me, you know, third from the left, four up,

whatever, as we're like talking as I'm cleaning his little garbage bag, and I would just go into the closet, grab it, put it in my pocket, and just going about my day. Wow. And this was worth it enough for him to risk his job to do this? Oh, well, he would do it, I forgot to mention, he would do it all for an eight ball of crack cocaine. That's it. So this is just a cracked out guard. Yeah, whatever we could fit in that pack of cigarettes or two, he would bring it in for an eight ball of crack cocaine. That's, the man risked his job, freedom, everything. That's his job, yep. Oh, now I remember. He was a prostitute guy. He used to get a prostitute and crack. every weekend. That was like his little freak. You guys would hire him a prostitute on the...

Oh, I had nothing to do with that. I don't know what, what, where the prostitute came in. I just know that he liked to get crack and a prostitute and get funky on the weekend. So we provided the hard. BroChamp would take care of that. I would have somebody that would be coming to visit me. I would have them go pick up someone else to visit my other friend and then they would curry all this stuff together and leave it in the spot. And then we would have our little visit. And then the next day, I would see Officer D. And we would give him the little nod. He would give me the little nod. And I would go grab the stuff. This is literally like a TV show. It was so easy. It was so easy. And it really sucked when he moved off the block because then it was

really hard to do because he wasn't working the unit. So the only way he could really, come into the unit and see me was if he was a rover. And how is it going to look if a rover walks into a block and walks into an inmate's fucking cube and hands him something? What's a rover? Oh, just an officer that roams around? Just, yeah, he roves around. He's just constantly walking through the hallways, you know, moving paperwork back and forth, just the, you know, the gopher. Anyone that needs anything, that officer is roaming the hallways. Yeah. So they're there to help out, I guess. So how much time do you do on the four-year sentence? Do you do the whole four years or you get out early? Well, I was on track to get out early. I was actually released to a

halfway house in Waterbury, Connecticut. That's where I was too. I was at the one and it was named after a tree. Elm Street. Elm, maybe. Cedar. I don't know. But I was actually in Segg. and in state facilities, you cannot be released onto parole or a halfway house if you have an active Class A ticket for 120 days. Class A ticket is like fighting, drugs, spitting out of CEO. Class A is like the highest level ticket. And you had a Class A ticket. I was literally in the ticket block. So you go to SEG, the shoe, add SEG, whatever.

We called it the SHU or the WHO. Yeah, segregated housing unit, whatever, the whole. You go to the hole for however long, and then you have to go to the ticket block after the hole until your ticket clears. Then once your ticket clears, you can shoot back out to general population or whatever. So I had a Class A ticket. I was actually in, I had two, I went to Seg twice on that sentence. One was for fighting, one was for a dirty urine.

I think that one was for a dirty urine. So I was literally in the ticket block. I had 80-something, maybe. 90 days left on my 120 days till my ticket cleared, the halfway house called me. And the unit manager calls me out of myself, says, hey, go down to the AP room. You got a phone call. I'm like, phone call. I ain't got a phone call. I get down there and they're like, hey, this is so-and-so halfway house. We're going to come get you. We're going to release you. You're going to come stay here, get a job and all that. And I'm like, I'm in the ticket block. What are you talking about?

You're going to come get me? You're going to come or not? And I'm like, fuck, yeah, I want to go. So they came and picked me up. I gave all my shit away. They came and picked me up. I was at this halfway house for like 25 days. I started talking to them about parole. I'm like, listen, I got parole coming up in a couple of months. I'd like to get parole and move to my house.

So this guy starts making phone calls, right? The guy who runs the halfway house. I guess those phone calls triggered the fact that somebody was not supposed to have let me out because I have an active Class A ticket. I should still be in the ticket block. not a fucking halfway house. You know, I'm supposed to not be released for another three months at a minimum. So, uh, they called me back in.

They were like, uh, you know, a, a, DJ, can you, uh, come into the office? I walk into the office. There's like a dozen COs. And they're like, hey, do me a favor. Put your hands behind your back. You haven't done anything wrong. You're not in trouble. And I'm like, well, if I haven't done anything wrong and I'm not in trouble,

I'm not putting my fucking hands behind my back. You know what I mean? That's a sucker move right there. So then they all kind of tense up. all right you know I'm not fighting a dozen COs so um they said they were remanding me to custody is what they called it that's their fancy terminology we're remanding you to custody without prejudice is how they said it because you didn't do anything wrong there was a paperwork error somebody fucked up and uh we were not supposed to release you so they sent me back to um they sent me to

hartford county or new haven county i've been in it for two and a half years at this point and I'm sitting in fucking county jail like yeah they never should have moved you because you would have been at your other spot I lost all my property yeah I had like 30 CDs you know harder it is to get like a real street CD in jail and unedited I wouldn't experience that that's so crazy you could order CDs from the commissary but they were always uh censored yeah so I had a CD book with like 25 30 unedited uncensored CDs that you know I paid good money for Lost all of them, lost my TV, lost all my clothes. I had all custom, you know, all my clothes were fitted to me.

Like, it took literally years to build up all this stuff, all the little contraband items I had, like, just so much stuff. And now I'm sitting in county with basically like a fresh bid. And they didn't let me out for like another, like another 10 months or so. So you did about three years on that sentence? I did like three and a half. Now you get out, you just go back into getting in trouble. I completed the parole.

I did about three and a half off of the four. Years? Yeah. No trouble. Not enough to... Okay, go back. What about drug? Drug use.

Didn't do any drugs while I was on parole. Were you working? Mm-hmm. It was the model parolee. So you were trying to get your life together. I was trying to get off parole. Okay. You knew the system how to work.

Yeah, I was trying to get off a parole. Once I was on probation and I had a little more wiggle room, you have a little more wiggle room but the hammer's a lot bigger because I had seven suspended so it was just I just kept getting in trouble you know and then what kind of trouble are talking I would uh at one point I got a couple of assaults um no and then I would have to go back I ended up altogether doing like another you know maybe two years two and a half years So you lost your whole 20s basically to end and out of prison or probation. Even more so because besides the, I'm going to say about five and a half years incarcerated,

I had to spend another maybe two years and other facilities to get my mental health in order. Okay. So, yeah, my 20s basically. Were your parents supportive throughout the way on your journey through the system? They were pretty supportive. Do they ever like say we're done and walk away, like cut you off? Not not completely. Like, you know, they wouldn't send me money after a certain point, which is completely

understandable. You know, I'm grown at a certain point. You shouldn't be enabling. You know, I get that. You know, they were supportive to a point. Yeah. You know, they would pick up the phone if I called. Yeah.

But they weren't exactly coming to bond me out anymore. That wasn't happening. How do you look at those years now? Because it seems like a big chunk of your life, man. A waste. I look at, you know, where I could have been and where I'm at now. And, you know, right now I have a beautiful girlfriend and an amazing son. And it's like the things I could have already had to, like, be able to give them.

Would have been so nice to have. Could have already had a house. Could have already went to school. could have already, you know, could be working on my, my dream car right now. I should be, I should be saving up for, you know, my Porsche right now. You know, I'm not, I'm not saving up for my Porsche right now. But, uh, what year did you finally, you know, say, I'm going to change my life. I'm going to focus on getting things on track, put this behind me. Probably coming up on about four and a half years now. And what was the mitigating factor? What set you to do that? My father,

passed away about that time and that was probably like the straw that broke the camel's back because just that was just like the last miserable event where it was just like I'm done giving in to like the the misery does that make sense like the final piece that could break you in a way yeah like when my my father passed away he had he had he had cancer and it got him and it got him real quick. He didn't find out about it until about a month before he died. So it was very fast. He went from not feeling well to passing away in about a month.

And I was just like, you know what? I need to do something with myself. I need to fix. I need to fix this. You know, for my family, because if I get in more trouble, if I pass away from something, if I fuck around and kill somebody driving under the influence or something like that, you know, that's it for me. I'm not getting any more chances. The judicial system is not giving me any more chances, that's for sure. If I go in with a jaywalking ticket,

you know, it's a problem. They want to give me probation for a jaywalking ticket. You know, it's crazy. So about four and a half years ago, yeah. It's crazy how, like, things that happen to us on that level are, are what takes us to having to open up and see. And not everyone realizes it too. Some people still continue and it doesn't end well. But it's very lucky that you were able to see that for what it was in that moment and change. What were some of the steps you made after that when that happened to really get things on track

and have the life you have now? I really started to focus on staying clean and surrounding myself with the right people. I had to get away from some of the bad people. And once you eliminate shitty people in your life, everything gets easier. You know, like I had no positive influences. I had no one I could look to and, like, ask for advice that would give me, like, real honest advice.

Any advice I would probably get from any of the people I had around me at that time would have been self-serving in some form or another. You know, it would be them trying to get something out of me or, you know, let's go get in trouble. Let's go, let's go rob somebody. Let's go, you know, just do things that are not good. The people I used to hang out with a lot of the time were not good people. So you surround yourself with positive people, guilty by association. You know, if you surround yourself with winners, you're going to be a winner. You surround yourself

with losers, you're going to be a loser. And, you know, once you change that mentality, the good things start coming in your life. You found your girlfriend. You have a son now. You have all these things. It's incredible how fast really good things started happening for me. And you've been clean from drugs? For about four and a half years. That's awesome. I don't have an actual date. It's like March. March, my father passed away a couple of weeks after his birthday. So it's like March, 2019. Yeah. I'm not good at math.

It's about four and a half years, four years. Now, if you could go back in time and, you know, back to your teenage years and just, you know, be that older figure to your teenage self and I have a conversation with him, what would you say?

Oh, I would tell my older self to not touch the opiates. That would be the one thing for sure. Opiates have caused more pain. in my life, then I can even begin to tell people. Opiates for sure. I would tell myself to leave the pills, leave the pills alone. And that would have saved you all the trouble? No, it would have saved me a lot of trouble. It would have saved me the most impactful trouble. But also maybe you needed that

trouble to have the life you have now. I guess, yeah, in a way. In a way, you're right, because I would not be where I'm at with the people I'm at right now if those things did not happen. the way that it happened. What's your next plans? What do you, what do you, what do you, what do you, what's like the five year plan? Where do you go next? Five year plan is to make sure that my son is, you know, healthy and raised right. Um, really just expand on, on continuing the positivity. Um, I'd like my own, like my own home soon enough. Maybe a little, little, little, longer than a five-year plan. That might be a 10-15-year plan. But I'd like to own a house soon enough. That's on the list. Continuing to work on yourself. Maybe, you know, keep finding your piece and whatnot.

Yes, definitely continue to find my piece. Like when we were talking before, gaming has been a big relief for me. I never really had anything to put my energy into before. Now, after a long day at work, you know if I find some time to like veg out I throw the headphones on and it's just like I don't think about cause in trouble like I used to yeah I used to just like seek out trouble like I look back at some of the some of the stuff we used to do and it just shocks me because there's no way I would do that shit today it's amazing how much your mindset's changed man like I'm sitting here listen to talk to you for the last hour and a half and you're not the same person that you started out with. I mean, none of us are. But just to witness that and see that, it's so interesting.

My final question for you, man, is what's your message? The people that are watching this that are tuning in, that are taking the time out of their day to hear your story. And it's an inspiring story. What do you want the message to be that they get from this episode? man the message i would want to give to people would be i mean it's a corny message but don't do drugs you know don't do drugs drugs are bad um there's a lot of dangerous shit out there right now i the fentanyl was not really a huge thing back then uh it's a big thing today and unfortunately people are dying left and right that aren't even opiate users this fentanyl stuff is in they're putting it in everything so my message would be you know just stay away from all of that

shit because it's it's it's just death it's death now you get involved with that stuff you just die absolutely i've lost dozens of friends it's not it's not going to stop anytime soon DJ thank you so much for coming on the show man it's been absolute pleasure talking to you and you know excited to stay in touch and and see how you grow with your beautiful family and and reach the goals you want to and you know keep working on yourself thank you awesome man have a good one appreciate it in