Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How Criminals Outsmart Cops | This Works Every Time!

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

After spending most of his life caught in crime and the prison system, Tommy Traughber finally learned what it took to outsmart his old way of thinking, earn his freedom, and use his experience to help others change their lives.⁣ ⁣ Tommy's links - ⁣ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommy-traughber-993b82305/⁣ https://antirecidivism.org/news/team_member_department/hart/⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Shop my merch: https://www.etsy.com/shop/MatthewCoxCollection⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69⁣ ⁣ Chapters: ⁣ 00:00 - Childhood & Early Influences⁣ 04:14 - Car Thefts & Consequences⁣ 15:05 - Juvenile Detention⁣ 20:57 - Escalating Street Life⁣ 35:37 - Arrest, Trial & Prison⁣ 45:07 - Prison Politics & Reputation⁣ 1:02:23 - Major Incident & New Charges⁣ 1:10:28 - Court Battles & Added Time⁣ 1:16:18 - Contraband Operation Begins⁣ 1:30:12 - Search & Operation Fallout⁣ 1:44:38 - Legal Changes Open a Door⁣ 1:47:00 - The Parole Process⁣ 1:54:02 - Rehabilitation & Self-Reflection⁣ 2:00:17 - Faith, Therapy & Change⁣ 2:18:41 - Parole & Prison Work⁣ 2:24:00 - Remorse & Life After Prison⁣ 2:37:40 - Reentry, YouTube & New Life⁣ 2:47:06 - Returning to Help Others⁣ 2:51:16 - Choosing Freedom Over Reputation⁣ 3:00:18 - Choosing a Different Path Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I stayed a shot car for 20 years. She worked for the prison. Yeah. She became a workhorse. Anything I wanted I got. Some of the smaller flip falls, you could hoop them. When I was about four, somebody tried to kidnap my brother. Right, they pulled the swamp cooler out of the window, reached in.

The guy had tar on his hands, grabbed my brother by the ankle, was trying to pull him out of the bunk bed. We were on bunk beds. I was on the bottom. He was on top. And fortunately, he didn't get him. my brother held on screaming. My father and this guy Fredo, who was like my grandmother's friend,

was at the house and came running in and the dude let him go. But it took off running. This is a fucking horror movie. Right. So then I wake up, you know, and I'm scared. I'm quiet. I'm like hoping I'm not next.

I don't know what's going on. Because in, and I write about, there's an article online that I did when I was in prison. Because that was like the moment where things changed for me. Like life was normal. And then all of a sudden they weren't. You know, life changed drastically. Like, it's not all rainbows and butterflies and, you know.

There are monsters out there. Yeah, right. And, like, I was afraid. I didn't want to sleep in the room anymore. I didn't want to sleep near the window. I didn't want, we shut the window now. We didn't have the swamp cooler. And it's 108 degrees outside, right?

My dad thought it would be a good idea to scare us. Like, go to the window and scare us, right? And then tell us we're, you know, cissies are, you know, He used a more colorful language. Right. Right. And for me, every time I got scared, and my dad called me a cissy or, you know, the P word, right?

Yeah. I know we probably couldn't say it. It's you too, but it meant that like fear, anytime I felt fear, it was a weakness. Even at a young age, I might not have been able to connect the dots at that age, like what was going on. But I also remember that like anytime I displayed any kind of like violent behavior,

people thought I was not scared, you know? Yeah. So growing up, like, I became like the schoolyard daredevil. Before I became violent, I would jump off the highest rung of the jungle gym. I, at one time, rode a motorcycle off the school roof into a swimming pool, you know, because somebody told me I was a pussy if I didn't do it. Right. That was the only reason.

There was no, like, I was like, nah, man, I'm going to do that. You're a pussy. Let's go. You know, stupid shit, right? After that, I just started. Anytime there was an issue, I was the first one to fight. And, you know, like kids do. You know, he pushed first a couple of times and then eventually it became easier.

He just started punching. And so I grew up in that. But I would always go back to juvenile for fighting, for ditching school, whatever the case might be, right? I would get a, are you burglarizing? Not yet. Oh, not yet. So I started out with like just breaking car windows. That was like to extend my criminality for a long time because I'm an adrenaline junkie.

Like, I've never used drugs. Right. So as a kid, breaking a car window, you get a lot. excited and you run away and it was fun and we talked crap about it for a while or we we brag about it then I started stealing shit out of the cars and then people were like oh hey I'll buy that from you right I'm like oh really it's just a CD player who cares or a tape deck at that time was tape decks right right you know the pullouts they were like real popular back then so then after that I started doing burglaries this guy a friend of mine he's

a little bit older his name was J.C his dad would sell me for the items that I would deal and then I would sell the, you know, but he wouldn't like just take my cash. He'd want TVs and he wanted tools and you wanted things, you know? Right. I think he was a tweaker. Looking back on it, at the time, I didn't know what the hell of a tweaker was. But looking back on it, I think he was just a tweaker who got cheaper and got expensive tools and TVs and stuff for that, right?

So me and J.C. started breaking into houses. We ended up getting arrested ironically for breaking into a house, a friend of mine's house, And we didn't steal anything. We just broke in and watched TV and ate his food while they were on vacation. Drink his wine. But when I've had a few guys that have broken into places and like made themselves a meal and watched TV, it's like, what do you? I would be thinking I need to get out of here as soon as possible. Well, we knew they were gone for vacation.

They were my friend. They lived just a few houses up the road. And they were friends of the family. I knew they had left. I didn't like knock their door down or break their windows. I just knew how to get into their house. Right. Because I'd been in that way with them, many times.

times. So we went in there and like literally sat on their couch, watched movies, ate food, drank their wine, you know, thought we were drunk when we probably weren't, you know, but acted like we were. And when they came home, their house was trashed. So they called the cops, right, as people do, right? And one of the neighbors was like, well, we've seen Tommy and Todd and J.C. go in there. So we all got arrested. Right. For burglary. And that was like, now I'm a felony, you know. even at 12 or 13. I think it was almost 13.

That sent you to Juvenile Hall. And then right after that, I started stealing cars, right? Then I became like a, this guy, I stole my mom's car first. I know. She owned these car lots. So I took one of her cars, like did she use car lots? Right. I took one for a joy right.

This girl wanted, she goes, I only date people that drive. She was 14. She's older than me by a year, right? But she's like, I only date guys to drive. So I'm like, I drive. Right. Right. So I stole the keys.

my mom's car and I took it and I went picked her up you know and you know then I got arrested right in a stolen car right my mom called it in stolen that she's supposed to do right yeah yeah and what they pulled you over yeah actually I got um I got caught by my parents okay you know and but they had already called the cox so they arrested me took me back to you and all and I had a buddy who was 15 or 15 years old. I went to school on Davis Island, which is a, in downtown Tampa, a little island. And his dad had a corvette, a brand new court. His dad was like a fucking filthy rich lawyer to live on Davis Island. These houses are millions. And we went to school of Davis Island. His dad was gone for like a couple days. He was staying home by himself. He took the keys to the car, came to school. I mean, this is a small school. Like everybody knows.

and then was, I think it during lunch, took the car and was doing donuts in the parking lot down the street and the cops pull him over. Or they pull up and he stops and they pull up and they walk up to him. They're like, license and registration. He's like, I don't know license. I'm 15.

You knew he was fucked. Yeah. He knew he was fucked. But it's like, what are you doing? Yeah. You got to know this is going to catch up with you. It's because he's a maniac. Yeah.

The same thing, you're stealing your mom's fucking card. You got to know that's catching up with you. What are you going to do, drop it back off? That was the idea. I lived there. I was going to take off, right? I was going to come back and put it back. That was the idea.

But she heard it start. Right. And she didn't know I would, I had left. So I pushed, even push it down the road, but there was like a little bit of a muffler issue with the car at the time.

And so when I started it, she heard it start. And then she came out and it was gone. Right. And me and my friend Jason took off. We were running down, you know, and we coming through like town and all of a sudden,

And this car is like driving towards me like it's gonna hit on collision. I'm in a parking lot at the time. And I look, I swerve and I miss. We miss. I look in there. It's my dad and my mom. You know, I'm like, what the hell?

So I took off, got a high speed chase for my dad right down in the middle of town, you know? And my dad's a race car driver, right? So, right? It was like a losing battle to start with. And then I'm looking at the gas gauge and I'm like, I'm not going to make it very far. Because the idea we were actually on our way

to my mom's car lot to get money. that I knew she had stashed in like a folder's can, right? And just, I wasn't going to steal it. I was going to say enough to put gas in the car, right? Take this girl out. I was excited. And next to you know, that's my dad's chasing me. So we got caught.

I just pulled over. My friend Jason is like, man, pull over, pull over, right? We're in trouble. Just pull over. So I pulled over and I come here. My dad opened the car door and just punched me. Bang. And my dad's never hit me.

Right. At that time, like, I don't think he's there. really hit me, right? And he's grabbed me and punched me. Bang, hard. I was like, oh, shit. But then he backed up. And he stopped. And my friend Jason took off running. So my dad chased after him. And my mom caught him. So I took off. I'm like, duh, I'm out of her. So I hid underneath this trailer. There was a, a caper shell on the ground in front of somebody's house. And I hid underneath the capra shell, you know, and I laid there. And my parents were looking for me with Jason. Jason's like, come on, Tom.

I mean, it's over, just come out. I'm just laying there. Right? I'm like, I ain't coming down. My dad's going to kick my ass. You know, I've never been hit like that from my dad. I mean, he punched me like a man. And I'm not coming out.

And I just laid there. They left. And I still laid there. Scared. And this guy comes walking by. And I look out, and it's my friend Todd, the one I burglarized the house with. It happened to be his grandpa's house that I was underneath the trailer at his grandpa's house or a camper show, whatever.

I was like, what? So he took me in. I stayed the night there. But the next day, we got the bright idea that we were going to go solicit for money. For, like, we had a bucket that said YMCA on it. Right. So we just went house to house asking for money for donations for YMCA. We're going to get a caught.

Right. Somebody that worked at the YMCA gave us money in the form of a check. Right. Now, we couldn't say no. We're like, if we say no, they're going to know it's a scam, right? Right. He gives us money in the form of a check. So we went, like, separated the money.

and while we were doing it, the cop pulled up, and it was over. We were coming out of the store. He's like, come here, man. I'm like, what? Acted like I didn't do anything wrong. Right. And then he goes, aren't you Tommy Trapper? Yeah.

He goes, there's a warrant out for you. I'm like, okay, because my mom had already told the cops that I was the one of stole the vehicle. Yeah. So, so we did you know how long did you do? Not that long, like maybe like a month, but what happened was the judge, I gave my mom an ultimatum. Look, you do something about. bottom or we're going to do it. Right.

You're not going to like what we're going to do. So my mom asked to judge if she could send me to Oklahoma with her brother. She has a brother that's out there, a little small town Oklahoma, sent me out there. He said, yeah, on the contingency that he doesn't come back until he's like 18. And I think it was 18 or 16. I can't remember. But anyway, a long time. At 12, 13 years old, that looks like forever.

Right. So I went out there. I didn't last for four months. My uncle sent me back. Yeah, he's like, I can't handle this kid. But I wasn't really even committing any crime. I wasn't doing anything. I was going to school.

It was summer. So I finished the school year there and then went into summer and I was doing just fine. There was this kid Shane that he asked me to stop hanging out with. Because Shane got busted with some marijuana at school, right? And we're now in junior high school. And I'm like, okay, I'll stop hanging out with him. But like a couple days there, I've seen Shane on the street. Like he's like, hey, man, I hadn't heard from me a couple days.

What's going on? I'm like, oh, my uncle Mike told me not to hang out with you. He's like, oh, okay, that's cool. He goes, yeah, a lot of parents are doing that right now. I'm like, okay. And then my uncle Mike drives by. He just happened to be coming home from work. I was coming back from the bowling alley.

He's like, er, get in. And then he tried to smack me. You know, when he tried to smack me, I blocked it. And he's like, oh, you're a smart ass too. You know, I'm like, oh, I'm just used to it. My mom used to do it. That was my mom's thing. bang right back end or slap or whatever i got used to blocking them so i went to the house and he

came in the room and just took me to the ground and beat me broke my nose and holy shit like he he fucked me up you know so he felt like when he seen the blood going everywhere because i'm laying on my back and he's on top of me and he's probably 300 pounds you know and he's just pounding me he's like oh shit he stopped and he started crying and went got a nice rag a rag with ice in it some water clean me up. He's like, man, I'm so sorry, you know? And then like a week later, I was back in California. You bought a ticket and he's like, you're out of here, you know.

So I went back to my mom and I wasn't home a week. I was arrested as soon as the cops see me walking down the street because I wasn't supposed to be in California anymore. That's like they all knew. You know, I had already been building a reputation for myself. So they arrest you for it just for violating the court order. Not being back. I was back in the court order was I didn't come back to California until I was like 16

or 18. Okay. And so they send me back to you in the hall. And they were like, we're going to send you to group homes or camps or placements. My mom begged them to send me home. And so one more time, they send me home. And I, there's this guy Ralph that used to work for my mom. I worked behind my mom.

And he's like, man, I heard you like to steal cars. I'm like, no, you know, it was just one time. He's like, well, next thing you still won't let me know and buy it from you. I'm like, what? Who are these bucket? This is that shit. But this guy's 14-year-old kid. I was younger than that, right?

I was 13 and he has like, he's this guy. So from like a movie, he wears the flower shirts that are open with the big hairy chest and all the gold chains and the cowboy boots. Magnum P.I. Yeah, but he was like, he was Hispanic Mexican guy, right? Like from Mexico, you know, had a hard accent and had the, you know, silver tip boots and stuff like that. Right. He looked like something right out of a freaking like stereotype. Right.

Right. So he's like, hey, everyone. I thought he was just playing. So at first I was like, no, no, I'm good. But then one day I seen him back there because he had a mechanic shop. And I'm like, are you serious about that? And he goes, yeah, no. He goes, man, he goes, you should be getting paid for that.

I'm like, all right. So then I got the right idea I was going to steal cars, you know? So I was taking him cars. And at that age, and at that time, it was about $91, $300, $300 to a kid was a massive amount of money. A ton of money, you know. So he'd pay me like $150, $200, depending on the car. one time you paid me 50 bucks I got mad yeah I'm like he goes it's a piece of shit car it's in 71 LTD nobody wants them you know so I'm like all right all right whatever

what's he doing breaking them down and yeah he was like or I think he you because he had a mechanic shop so I think he built people for new parts and just put use parts on there and he just keep the cash or he would just vin them out back then you could vin the cars pretty easy you know and he would sell them like he'd take a car from the junkyard or that was scrap and you just swap them and sell it with a side of it. salvage title. Right. But he'd get a ton of money out of it, you know, because it still, oh, man, this car is brand new. Still, why has he got a salvage title? Oh, it had a little fender bender, you know, insurance company just, you know, scrapped it or whatever, right? But it's really

a car that had a blown engine or total, completely totaled or whatever. Um, you know, I didn't get into like the nuance of it. Yeah. I was too young, didn't care. He's paying me. I'm running around playing video games. Can I use drugs or nothing? Yeah. I'd just go play video games and buy fancy stuff and tobacco, like I dip tobacco or whatever, right? And then I got arrested again for stealing a car. Oh, actually, me and my friend, Jason Tuga stole a pickup truck from the YMCA, ironically, right? We broke into all the lockers and stole a bunch of cash and took a pickup truck and drove it to Tucson, Arizona, where his dad lived because he had been getting beat on by his stepdad. So we took it to, like, bad bad, like broke his arm, you know, like hurting him.

So we drove it from Santa Maria to Tucson, which is probably like 1,000 miles, 900 miles, right? We went the long way too. We went all the way to San Diego, then over, and we ended up getting arrested at a gas station. We pulled into a gas station that had just been burglarized, not knowing. We pulled in.

It was a closed gas station. We didn't even know it was closed because the lights were on. So we pulled in to get gas. And as soon as we pulled in, like three cop cars just rushed us. And, you know, did the whole felony stop on us, you know? We're like little kids. So we're like, all right. They put us in juvenile hall there in Tucson, flew us back to California. After that, there were judges done. He's like, you're going to this placement, this group home or whatever. But then I got to the first group home when I was probably like 13-ish. And it was in a place

called Los Angeles, it was called Monarch Manor. And I wasn't there that long. I remember it was around Christmas time and I stole the counselors car, Manistu Frank took off. Right. And I know. Right. I was like, you have the keys?

Yeah, they left the keys in the, and they put them in the visor. Right. You know, and I was like, well, and we knew they did because we already, like, all the counselors there for some reason, like trusted us. We're all delinquent, juvenile. Right.

Felons. But they would leave their cars. Like, there's this lady Molly. She had a big Bronco, beautiful Bronco. she just needed the keys in it. We were going to actually steal her car, but somebody told on us to her, you know,

saying, hey, they're going to steal your car. So that day, she didn't have the keys in it. But we ended up stealing the other guy. I don't even remember his name. I remember her name because she was pretty.

You know, she was only like 20. And she was beautiful right at the time we're young, you know. Then after that, uh, shit, where'd I go? They sent me to his,

um, camp lost in, in, uh, Santa Barbara. And I was like, There's gangsters, all gangsters, you know. And it's like, and I've been involved in like gang, not gang banging, but I've been around them.

Right. A lot, you know, growing up there in the neighborhood, but also juvenile hall, other places. And, uh, now this, but this is the first time, like, where I got the real taste of like, I'm white, you know, right? Right. Right. I'm not Mexican. And even though all my friends were mostly Mexican. I'm not, right?

That was the first time I really experienced that in, in a, uh, like a lockdown. setting, you know. Wasn't working for you. Didn't work out. Well, I went, yeah, the whites were cool right now. I mean, it was Santa Barbara County, bro. I mean, it's not that big a deal. But I realized I went to go hang out with a couple dudes I knew from the streets when I got there. Yeah. And they're like, hey, bro, this is Northwest tables. That's the gang right there. I'm like, what does that mean? Yeah, I was like, so was. Can't sit here. Yeah. And they're like, now you can't sit here. I'm like, where am I supposed to sit? You know? And they're like, and even some of the other guys, man, he's cool.

He's not from our area. He's not from our gang, right? Okay. So then I'll go hang out with the whites. I knew the whites too. I knew him from Juvenile Hall or from, you know, different places in town. So it wasn't that big a deal. He was just like, that's not who I gravitated towards at the time.

And then I end up running from camp, escaping from there a couple times, like, I think three times. They ended up sending me to another place, a lockdown facility, all the way down a Riverside. I don't know how familiar you are with California. That's a long way away from home for me. Right. Right. So, you know, it's about four-hour drive for my family. But they sent me there. I did really well there for a long time. Actually, it was cool. I was like, I'm going to work this program so I can go home. And the lady there, man, she had this counselor, man. And I don't know what was wrong with her, but she couldn't stand me. Especially towards the end, you know, the last six months. They're not the last six months. I'm not the last

months, but the last couple months out there, she was on me. And I was like, what am I doing wrong? You know? And then I went to court and the judge told me, you give me three more months there. I don't care. You're going home. He goes, this is the first time you've done good in your life, right? So I'm like, yeah, okay. I get back from court and I tell, I'm all excited. I'm like, I only have three more months. No matter what, only three more months here. And I tell her, her name was Lisa, right? Lisa Moschini. I say, man, Lisa, I only got three more months. She was over my dead body where you go home in May. I'm like, well, then shit on it. You know, I'm not doing nothing.

And that was it. I started fighting, you know, I ended up getting kicked out for brandishing a weapon. I made a knife out of her glasses, you know, like the arms of the glass. They have like pointy part. I stripped it out. And so let's get me some kids for having some. That's why I was just like, who gives you shit, you know? So then they send me back to juvenile hall and then to another group home where they actually just kicked me out because it closed the group home.

send me home. And then I went to Hawaii right after that, like right after that. Went to what? California Authority, Hawaii. I went to Hawaii at like 14-ish, 15-ish. And then I did all the way until I was about 17. I got out right after my 17th birthday, six days. And within four and a half months, I was in prison for murder, home of Asia murder.

What happened there? So earlier, I had been on God, I was trying to. to do good, first of all, but it just wasn't working. Like, life was, I had a job at Wendy's. I was like, okay, I'm going to go, because the parole is mandated you to have a job or go to school. Well, it's summertime. There's no school. And so I went to got a job at Wendy's like right away. But me and my mom always butted heads, period, like no matter what. So right after I got out, we just immediately like oil and water. It's not getting along. And, you know, she's threatening to send me back to youth authorities. She's threatened. I should have put you in foster care, you know,

things like that, right? And for a young kid with very immature at the time, even at 17 as immature, even for being a 17 year old, I thought to myself, well, shit, then there's no point. Everything I do is going to send me back. So I just screwed everything, you know, as I'm done. And then I end up robbing her stuff, you know, and she called the cops on me. But, you know, robbing her stuff. The bag of her safe. I broke into her safe and took her cash, right? I was going to take off from my girlfriend. My girlfriend said she was pregnant. And so, okay, we're going to split.

And we had this great idea where we were going to go to New Mexico with her grandma who lived on the Indian Reservation. And we were going to be like Bonnie and Clyde. Right. You were kids. And when I got the cash, I told her, okay, I got the cash. I went and bought a car. I was going to go.

She's like, no, I don't want to leave my sister. Like, damn. Yeah. So now I'm stuck. I can't put the money back because I've already bought a car. Right. Yeah. So then my mom comes on.

My mom was in jail. Right. At the time for hitting some chick with a beer mug, right? So my mom's not like a criminal at the time. She just got into a fight. Right. But she hit this chick with a beer mug and they put her in jail for it. Made her do weekends.

You can't do that. You can't, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Somebody should have told her not to be hitting us either. Yeah. Right.

But she goes to jail for, does weekends, you know, for this. It's not like she was, you know, out there committing crime. She don't car. like use car lot. She was, you know, normal, but not normal, you know what I mean. So when she was gone, that was like two days that I had. I would have to cut off my ankle bracelet. I was on a monitor at the time. I was going to have to do that, but I'm glad I didn't do it at the time because my parole officer was like, look, we're not going to send you back because your mom doesn't want to press charges. So we're going to move you to your dad's house.

All right. So I went to my dad's and, you know, at the time I was doing okay. I wasn't doing bad, But I got my brother, I have a, my dad had like eight or nine kids. Right. My mom only has three. And one of my brother is nine years older than me. So, and he was involved in like the drug scene there and all that stuff. And so I started working with his dude Jeff to move dope around town. He'd them borrow a BMW.

We drive around town. And I'd sell drugs for him, you know, which I was like, cool. I'd make it way more money than I was at Wendy's. Right. Right. Wendy's was four and a quarter, you know, and you're limited to 26 hours. week. So I'm like, this is awesome. And then

so I started doing that and selling, you know, like, you didn't shit like that. And then I started doing armed robberies. You know, start robbing the bonds in downtown. Who? The vons is like a grocery store in California. Okay. Right? Start robbing. How does that come about?

Well, because I needed money to buy it. Okay. Right. I wanted to buy a mass of my I thought I was going to become this high power dealer. You know, you know, everybody smokes Not everybody does black, not everybody does white, not everybody does, you know, but everybody smokes the green stuff. Right, right. From 12 to 80, right? I knew people that smoke, you know, smoke.

So I was like, okay, I'm going to sell that because that's the biggest commodity, but I need money. I knew a guy would sell it to me, but I needed money. So I'm like, how much this little nickel and diamond? Because I would sell this stuff for this dude, Jeff, and I get paid throughout a day like 50 bucks. You know, 100 bucks. But you got to drive his car. I got to drive his cool-ass car, convertible BMW. And at the time, you know, 50 bucks, 100 bucks, it was all right.

Your kid, yeah. Yeah, my kid, it was all right. And so I was like, all right, I'm going to do that. That didn't work. I was like, this ain't work. And I didn't really like Jeff. I just didn't like it. I didn't like his personality.

He didn't get along, but he had connections that. And at the time, I've been in Youth 30, so I understood. Keep your mouth shut. Yeah. Right. And we can go into you through through if you want it. Because it was a tremendous shit. shift in my criminality, my criminal thought process, you thought you turned me into a monster.

By the time I left there, it was, you know, I didn't mind killing people, I didn't mind stealing from people, robbing from people, you know, like, didn't care how I got it. I was going to do it, you know, so I decided, you know what, I'm going to start robbing bonds. And it was only by accident. I was in line with my grandma, and I seen the safe and it was open. The manager was at the safe and there was a ton of cash in there. I was like, oh, that's where I can get the money. But how am I going to get it? I thought, you know, I'm a burglar at the time. Like, I'm a breaking kind of thief. I'm not an armed robber. Right. So I was like, how am I going to get it? So I started talking to my friend Tim. It's like, just rob them. And then I had been in, you know, in youth authority, it was like, that's all anybody did. I talked about, like, all these kids.

They're in there for armed robberies, murders, all this stuff. And that's all they're talking about. Oh, it's easy. It's easy. So easy. What are they doing in prison? Well, as a kid, you don't think about that part. Yeah. It's kind of like when I was getting ready for parole in prison. And briefly, I'll talk about it. I was sitting there going to these groups and listening to all these guys, tell me how to get out of prison.

But these are all the guys that got denied. Yeah. Right? And they're telling me, I'm like their crash test dummy. I'm going in there telling them, I'm like, thinking to myself, I did everything they asked me to say. I mean, everything we talked about, I did. Right.

Why didn't I get granted? Right. And then I was like, wait a minute. I'm listening to the wrong people. Yeah. I need to start listening to the people that got granted, not the people that got denied or the people that's never been to prison. So I wouldn't actually start talking to a therapist. I said, hey, I want you to read these transcripts and tell me what I'm saying or what I'm doing wrong. And she's like, okay. Oh, man, I was doing a lot wrong. Right. So, but anyway, back to the, I started robbing the vons. At first I would rob just like, I just robbed the one, you know? And then it was like, okay, still not. enough money. What did you do? Is you going with a gun? Yeah, with a house with somebody else with you? Yeah, my first time no. My friend Tim was like,

just wrong with, dude, it's easy. He's even giving me a pistol, right? It's just going there. I'm like, right. So I remember I stole a Ford because I had this ignition for a Ford with a key. And if you just unplug them, you can plug them the old ones, right? The 70s versions. I'm back to the 90s. They were still very prevalent around the town. I would just take one and I parked it in the parking lot of the vans. I remember I sweating profusely, right? Pouring sweat. And I'm sitting there in every little noise I thought was the cops coming for me.

And I'm thinking, oh, they already know. How do they know? You're he's super paranoid. But I'm like, I just got to do it. I was pumping myself up. I think I sat out there. It might only been like 20 minutes, but it felt like hours. And then I just, I mean, as soon as I opened, this is how dumb I was. As soon as I opened the car door, I was parked halfway into the parking lot, which is a long ways. I ran into the freaking bonds.

Did you get a ski mask or anything? Yeah, I had a shirt. Right. That I had like tied around my head to wear the neck hole was around my eyes. And I went in there and I'm like, give me all your money, right? Everybody looked at first. At first, nobody moved. They just looked at me like I was stupid.

Or that's how I felt, right? Like, really? They thought it was like a joke maybe at first. Right. And then I'm like in the manager was right there. I was like, man, open the safe. He looked at the gun and he's like scared. And he's like, I don't have the code.

I'm like, you're the manager. How you not have the code? And then you opened it. Right. There was nothing in it. There was only like 800 bucks, right? I just seen a ton of cash in there. And I'm thinking to myself, how is there only 800 bucks, you know?

I mean, at the time, I just seen a little bundle of money. And it was because the Brink's truck had just left. You know, they had enough for the day. Yeah. And they were coming back with more. They didn't have. I was like, oh, man. Well, I didn't know that time.

But I learned later that there's times you can do it where you're more likely to get more money. Right. So I left and upset because now I can't buy the money. Yeah. So I'll say, what am I going to do? I'll just rob another one. Yeah. Because to make it up on volume.

Yeah. So I started at one in the town and I robbed the vans on the south in the town, then robbed the vons on the north end of town, and then robbed the vons on the west side of town all in one day. And what are you getting? a thousand Well, yeah, like, I didn't do it the same day. Yeah. I waited a couple weeks because I had to pump myself up for it.

And then like I came with this master plan. So I bought, I ended up getting probably total. I don't remember how much for each one. Because I would like literally drove from one to the next to the next and just kept throwing it in the trunk. Right. And when I got done, I had almost $12,000 rain. But that was enough to buy the weed.

Yeah. It was enough to buy the weed. So I was like, I don't want to go buy this weed. excited. But now I got to drive all the way to Humble County, which from where I live is a long wigs. So I enrolled tango. So I went up there and I talked to the guy that I knew that my brother introduced me to. He gave me a turkey bag with five pounds a week. I came home. I'm super excited. Hey, I'm going to break this down into little baggies. I'm going to make a fortune. I get robbed. You get robbed. Because my brother told on me. Right. So at the time, I didn't know. I'm pulling

into the to the apartment where my brother lives and I'm going to go count this weed. And then as soon as I opened the door, this guy put a gun to my head. I was like, get out of the car. Get out of the car. So I'm like, oh, I thought there was still in a car. Right. So I'm like, oh, shit. And I had a gun, but I was like, there's no way I'm going to get to this before he gets me. Right. So I stepped out, you know, and he jumps in. But one thing I was telling us, like, I meant to recognize the voice. I couldn't remember like where I heard this voice, but I was like, I know this voice. So I'm like, all right, but I just stepped down.

He took off. And when I ran to the alley, to the back of the alley, so the drive, it kind of goes in a corner, like in an L shape. And he turns this way and there's a whole other apartment complex there. I seen him and he stopped. I'm like, what? What he's doing? And he gets into Trump, takes the, right.

Gets in another car and takes off and leaves my car there. Right. So I'm like, oh, he knew. Yeah. Yeah, I knew right then he knew. I'm not dumb. I might be a stupid kid, but I wasn't like totally dumb. And the only person that knew you had the brother, just your brother?

Just my brother, right? And I put it together right away that only, and so I went, man, Jimmy, who'd you tell? You know? I didn't tell nobody. I'm like, you told somebody, bro. Because nobody, he goes, well, maybe do told somebody. You know, I'm like, oh, yeah, maybe. But why?

Why would he lose business, you know? I couldn't put it together. And I don't know how many days or weeks went by. It was a few. And I heard my brother say that dude's name. And his name is grumpy. His street name was grumpy. As soon as he said his name, it clicked.

That was the voice. Right. And I went, you're fucking lying to me. You know? So I told my brother, you lied to me, man. He's like, no, I didn't say nothing to grumpy. But you lied. So I decided I was going to go get my stuff back, you know?

And I ended up kicking. the door in to this house. Me and a friend of mine, Travis. That's his house, the grumpy's house. Two. Yes, but it wasn't his house. We thought it was his house. It was his mom's house.

Okay. Right. He didn't live with his mom, but he was there. So we knocked the door down, run in there, guns drawn, you know, and then I'm trying to get my stuff back. Hey, give my, I don't have it, you know, and then this lady comes running in the room and my co-defendant blows her away. Yeah.

not knowing she was there. Yeah, he just saw the movement. Yeah, and he got scared. Yeah, I mean, from his perspective, I don't, he didn't tell me that. He just said, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what else to do, you know. Right. And he was panicking afterwards because this guy ran.

So I turned around like, oh, shit, we're being shot at. Because I just heard a gunshot. And then, so I'm turning around to find out what's going on. And this guy runs off the front door. It's over. I'm like, let's get out of here. We didn't get nothing. Right.

Nothing. for sure the grumpy knows who you are he knows why i am and you your buddy just shot his mother so we take off and i'm like i don't know what to do i get back to him Travis's house i'm like i think i'm going to kill Travis right because i'm thinking like i'm not going to jail for this right so i'm gonna smoke him because he's the only one of knows i was involved i'll find grumpy i know he's a herroman out just go spot's right i'm gonna find this dude right so but then i start thinking about Travis's mom Travis' mom was like a mom to me. So Travis, my very first time going to juvenile hall for the burglary was Todd.

Travis was Todd's brother. So he's like family. We grew up in the same neighborhood. We grew up together. We were friends. Right. You know what I mean? So I'm like, if I kill Travis, I'm not to kill his mom.

And then I'm going to have to kill Todd. You know, I'm going to have to go through this. So, I mean, I'm thinking like, man, I can't do this. Right? That's too far, right? It's the chain of events. It's just too much. So I'm like, whatever.

I just told Travis, look, bro, if we get caught, you need to eat this. You know? Yeah. And he's like, I don't know what to do. He's never been in trouble for it. He'd been like doing burglaries and stuff, but nothing like this, you know. I've been a new story. He's never even been arrested.

So I'm like, oh, man. So you're still done. Even if he. Yeah, you don't. Do you realize that the time? I'm thinking it. If we get, being there means you committed a murder. Yeah.

Felony murder rule, right? I didn't even know what it was at the time. I know what it is now. Yeah. Right. You're thinking he did it. I may have kicked in a door, been with him, but he killed somebody. Yeah.

So I'm thinking I'm good. Yeah. Right. And then I get, you know, like two days later, I'm arrested. Right. Not because grumpy told on me, ironically. Travis told Todd and Todd told on us. Yeah.

How old are you? 17. Right. And it was an event for like four and a half months that I was out. It wasn't even. I was only out four and a month. So I get back. Now I get arrested.

They put me back in the authority. At the time, El Paso was called El Paso de Robles, but in Paso Robles, California, they had a youth authority. But that was the county where the crime was committed. So they held me there while I was going back and forth to court. And I thought my crime had told on me. I didn't know. I just got arrested.

And when they had the details, like when I was in the police department and they were running down details, I'm like, the only person knows any of that is Travis. Right. Right. because you're talking about before the crime, not just after, you know. So I was thinking, man, Travis told on me, right? So I called my dad in, say, can he call my dad? I was living at my dad's house.

My dad came down in the police department as soon as I got arrested. And he said, yeah, I'll bring your dad in. So I was talking to my dad. I just told him everything. Like, look, dad. This is what's going on. He goes, we're going to get a lawyer. All right.

My dad's an old biker dude, so he's like involved in the criminal lifestyle. Yeah. Or at that time, he was kind of out of it, but he had been for a lot of years. He's not, he's not a novice for this. Yeah. So he's like, look, dude, you know. So I'm like, all right. What we didn't know at the time was the detective was standing outside the door and the door is cracked. We're not already thinking, I'm copped everything already.

And they're riding everything down because I'm telling my dad, that's what happened. And so I'm like, oh, shit. Now I'm screwed. No matter what. Like, I didn't know it at the time. I didn't know until after I was arrested. and I got the paperwork that this guy was sitting there writing everything we were saying down, I thought I had some kind of anonymity, you know, like, because it's my dad, right?

Almost like a lawyer, you know, like some sort of privilege, you know? And you would think being in the system as much as I had, I would have known that. But I thought, like, parents were kind of like husband and wife. You can't force one to testify against the other, right? Now, they couldn't have forced my dad and they said that. We can't force you to testify. But because the detective heard what was said, right he can testify to it so because my dad refused they were talking about putting him in jail

he's like i ain't testifying of this you know so end up getting locked up uh after a couple years in a county jail i actually beat up my co-defendant in the band one day thinking he was the one and he was like no it's tratt it's todd you know i'm like how did he know well i told him right okay it makes sense you know so we went up getting life sentences both of us but did you plead to it? No, I went to trial. I went to a judge trial. I thought going to a judge trial would save me like, like the judge has to follow the letter of the law. At the time, because like what I had told my dad was, I told, I lied to my dad. I said, I would never even went inside the house. Right. I was just there, right? You know, my dad's like, okay. So that's what they presented

to the judge. So they didn't find me guilty of actually even going inside the house. They used my statement and see this easy done. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah. It's the guy who says I know about these two guys who are robbing banks. Yeah. How do you know? I was driving the getaway car.

Yeah. You were robbing the banks. Yeah. So they ended up finding me. He took a deal pretty early on my co-defendant. Once he tried this as adults. So we had to go through this whole juvenile process where you do like fitness hearings. And it's like a trial.

It's like a kind of like an evidentiary hearing almost. Have you ever been to one of those or you know what they are? Yeah. So evidentiary hearing. kind of like that, but it's whether or not they're going to try you as an adult. There was five criteria at the time in the 90s. This is 1995. There was five criteria. And if you met one of the five, they tried you as adult or they could try you as an adult. Now it's different. It's like if you meet one of the five and one of those five is, can he be rehabilitated? And the answer is yes,

then they can't try as an adult anymore. Okay. Right. So California's changed that law recently, But by then, I already done all my time. You know, so we went to, and it's not retroactive, which, whatever. But so I ended up going to the judge trial, got found guilty. Obviously, they sent me life without parole. So I was like, I'm never getting out of prison, you know, I go to prison. A lot of people don't even know that I was sentenced to life without, right? I just told them all.

I sent Sam as Travis, same as Travis, same as Travis, you know. How you tell your mom? Right. You know, mom, I just got life without parole because she didn't even come. Yeah, she went to court, but that day she was, she's like, she didn't do it, you know. My dad was there, but I didn't even know I got sentenced to life without. He's like, oh, I mean, it's, it's seven to life. Because back in the days when like Charlie Manson, all them got their L-wabs, it was only seven to life.

Right. So everybody's thinking like, I only got, I'm like, I'm not getting out of prison. Yeah. And then, uh, on appeal, I went back to court and they dismissed the L-WOP down to 26th to life. They said you should never got it. Right. It was just the way that it was, and the judge was like, we had a new judge this time, and he was like, that's no way, you're not even the shooter.

Right. And that doesn't even make any sense to me. But I had already received another life sentence in prison. So they were like, for what? A murder in 1999. How does that happen? Well, I went into prison, so I went in young. What years are you going?

In 97, I got to prison. Okay. Right. I got locked up in 95, spent two years in a county jail, and then got to the county jail, and then got the prison in 97 and I was in reception for about a month. Then they transferred me to High Desert. And if you've heard, you've been doing this a long time, you've heard High Desert. Yeah, I've heard. High Desert is terrible place through time, right? It's a violent prison. At the time, whites were at war with everybody. So we go, they're sending me over to D6 at the time.

And 7 and 8 had just been converted to like AdSig, like Administrative segregation or security housing unit. It's not a shoe. It's ad sec prior to the shoe. So it's just five and six block programming on the yard at the time. But the officer, he has me a handcuffs behind my back. And I'm got a roll behind my back too, like carrying it with my hands. It's in a pillowcase. And he's like, oh, before we go out to the yard, I just want you to know that you're at war with everybody out here. I'm like, what do you mean?

He's like, well, you're a wood, right? I'm like, yeah, I'm a wood. He's like, you're at war with everybody out here. I was like, what's that mean? It's like, everybody out here wants to get you. And I'm looking at this copy. he's this little skinny cop. I'm thinking they're going to walk me across the yard full of a bunch of guys, you know,

that want to get me with this dude. Right. You know? And I'm like, I don't know what to say. I'm just like, fuck, I'm screwed. So open the door and walk across the street and everybody's staring at it. Everybody stares at the new guy. Yeah.

You're still in a paper jumpsuit. You know, you're not in blues. You don't have your blues yet. You don't get those until you get to the yard after you get off orientation or right before you get off orientation. So I'm like, dude, I'm screwed, you know. And, uh, but nobody did anything, you know, but I was like, man, there's some big ass dudes out here. I was a little kid. I was 19 years old.

There's guys in their 30s, 40s. And we still had weights in prison at the time. So they're you big guys. I'm thinking to myself, man, I'm screwed. You know, but I get across the yard. I get to my cell. Coppilis asked my cell. I said, hey, man, are we at war?

He's like, oh, yeah, we're at war with the blacks. It wasn't with everybody, but it was with the blacks, right? I'm like, okay, cool. you know he's like all right so at that time high desert had uh they would give you your property right off the bus so i don't they changed it and then they bring it back change it bring it back but at the time i got all my transcripts and stuff from court so i sold him my celly my celly was this guy named rex sticky he was cool dude but he's from like a gang called nr and he's short like 5 4 5 5 5 5 but he was probably like 220 pounds you know right and he's just huge dude you know bigger than

And he just finished doing a shoot term for killing somebody in prison, you know? So I'm thinking to myself, man, that's put me in with the worst that they could. But he schooled me down. He seen my paperwork. I was concerned about that because the lady was an elderly woman, considered an elderly woman. And I thought that was going to be a problem coming in to prison for killing an older woman. And then California, that's bad. Right.

Any prison, that's bad. But California, especially with the politics that they ran. So I'm like, look, dude, here's what happened. I just kind of explained to him. And he's like, are you some kind of like coward or something, dude, killing him? you know, robbing old people are like, that's not how it was supposed to go down. It was supposed to be, you know, because you're going to have to prove that. I'm like, well, I can get transcripts, more transcripts.

He's like, no, no, no, out here on the yard. And what was that mean? He's like, we're at war. I said, well, make me a knife. I'll go out there. I mean, like, yeah, let's go, you know. So he did. He showed me how to make knives out of plastic cups and stuff like that's going down.

He's seen my transcripts, the police report for my dad. I was talking to my dad. And if you just read the police report, it's almost as if I'm talking to the officer. Right. You know what I mean? But it says in there that my dad was in the room and that the officer was listening. But if you just read the transcript and you don't read the heading, like a lot of people don't read the heading, right? They think it looks like I snitched.

Right. Right. So I was. You told the cop what you did. Yeah. So I was concerned with that coming into level four prison, you know? And back then, there was not really any PC yards, like protect custody yards. there were, but it was only for like high power gang dropouts or like the Charlie

Mansons of the world, you were their cases, you know, Sirhan, Sirhan, they had to be some sort of high level notoriety case. It wasn't like, I can't program here, so send me over there. They were just left. Sirhan, Sirhan in California? Yeah, he still is. Oh, I did. Yeah. You know, he's a Don.

Sirhan is. Colby. I know he is, let's say. he's something to do with a bombing no oh I've heard the name before he stabbed shot oh shot I'm sorry

is it Robert Kennedy he shot Robert Kennedy yeah during a presidential campaign after John Kennedy got yeah he just won I think the the Democratic nomination so he was probably going to be the next president was it was this the guy that like got

brainwashed? That's like, yeah, they're playing or something. Yeah, the Manchurian candidate kind of based on

where he says he saw a woman in a polka dotted dress. Yeah. Super interesting, really. Yeah. Yeah. So I never met him,

but he, you know, PC archers for people like that. Yeah. You couldn't just go to the cops and say, hey, I can't program here.

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't even an option. I watched people. I have $400 to, to Benny. They got a stab back. Dude, they said learn how to suck dick.

Right. They, They tell them, you better learn how sex and something. You know, I've seen cops tell the guys, a child doctor walked up to the cops and said, hey, I'm sure I can't be here. He's looking at him. He's like, are you bleeding? No, I'll come back when you're bleeding.

You know, and that's just the way it was at the time. There was no place for them to go unless they had already been assaulted. And then they would just stick them in the hole for a little while and then put them on another yard. You know? Start of the process all over. Yeah. It was right on the cusp too, though, because right after that they opened up, not opened it up, but it was open already, but they converted Mill Creek in California. That's a prison out there to almost

primarily PC, right, for those types of people that couldn't program like this, you know, snitches or whatever. After that, uh, so you got the knife. Yeah, so he shows me how to make the knife. Uh, and they end up right after that, like two weeks, I think at two, two or three weeks, I'm trying to remember I went to committee. And when you go and your orientation, they tell you like, okay, this is how many points you got, this is what level you are. These are the programs you're going to need to take, whether school, education or whatever, basically your classification, right? Okay, cool.

I went, but because I wasn't 180 design, because I hadn't had a true term yet, they actually moved me off a D facility and put me on B facility, which I was only there for like a week, and we're at war with the blacks there, too. The whole prison was at war with the blacks. Whites and blacks were at war, north and the south were at war. The only people that weren't at war were like the Asians and like the Asians. I think they were the only ones that weren't at war with somebody because the Pisces and the Southerners program together. So I was like, all right.

I sent me over there, moved me in with another dude named Opie, who was also another NLR guy. NLR was at that time, it kind of exploded in population. Like they were just recruiting real heavy. And they moved in with this guy. He says, yeah, we're at war. I'm like, I need a knife. He didn't want me to have a knife because this is like early DC. And he goes home January 1st.

So he's like, man, I'm like, dude, I'm not going out here. Right. You know, like that. So I end up getting a knife from another guy. I told him, hey, I want a knife. And he's like, all right. Yeah, he's a cool youngster, you know. So I took a knife.

He's like, how are you going to get it out to the yard? I'm like, well, I just take it. And they're going to insert you, strip you out before you go to yard. So I had to hoop it. You know, if you don't know what that means. You know what that means. Yeah, a lot of people don't. I get surprised nobody knows what hooping needs.

How long is this knife? I think it's probably like six inches, right? Okay. Right. Counting the handle. Right. Okay. So the handle is probably like, it's probably three blade free handle, you know?

And I was scared to death, but I also was like super focused, if that makes sense. I was like, okay, doors are going to open. And this guy next to me, there was a black guy that was in the cell next to me. I was just sell 224. He was in 224. I'm here's four block on on b yard and he's yelling and I was playing some music while my celly was in shower and I was working out and he's like man turn your fucking music down I'm sleeping my mouth fuck you you know why are yelling at me you could just ask right and he's like you're a bitch and when we come out I'm gonna fucking rape you and you know he's just talking shit he's a black guy that's not why he was talking shit but we're at war so it's like you know that conflict was already there so but it's like the next day or or day after they end up moving him out to the gym. And he was one of the blacks.

It was like, so at the time, overcrowding was huge. Every cell was full. And so they started filling up the gyms with bunks. And there was these lower level guys living in the gym. Like, we're level four. These are level threes or level twos or whatever. But they ended up moving that dude in his gym. I didn't know that's where he went at the time.

But I just thought he got moved to another building. So when we came out, the only blacks that were on the yard, were the blacks from the gym, you know? And so we were supposed to get like segregated yard. Mm-hmm. But everybody knew the blacks were coming out from the gym. So I took the knife with me. We're going to get off. That was already a done deal. Everybody knew it.

So I went out there, took a hooped knife, went out there, got through the cops, which I didn't think, because I didn't know they were metal detective, right? So I walked through, I got a metal knife. Right. So I'm being stripped out by one officer, and then I see the officer at the end of the line. he's wanding you. And I'm like, I'm fucking screwed. When we get caught.

And this thing's already, it's already hanging out, you know? So I'm like, you know, I'm trying to stick it back up there, you know. But what I do is I just took a left.

So when you come out of the building, you go line up against the wall and they strip you out. And then you walk down the line and there's a officer, there's a line of officer stripping everybody out. So you walk down that line and you get wanded by the officer. Well, I just took a left and went between two cops that. were busy searching other people and just walked out to the yard and they just didn't even say anything

to me mostly because i was 19 i looked like a little kid right i had no tattoos you know i had blonde hair my hair was real blonde at the time right they probably didn't have it they're like oh he's nobody they probably weren't worried about me too much but then now i got to get this knife out of me you know like oh shit i got to get this knife out so i go and this guy rus helps me out he's like i'm like how do i get this out man it won't come out right it was this all horrible fucking story. Right. It won't come out.

I'm squeezing. I'm squeezing. I'm like, I kneel down. I'm like, hey, throw a block for me from the tower. Right. So you can't see me. I kneel down in our area and I'm trying to like push it out. It's not coming out.

I'm like, fuck, I'm screwed. I just reached down there and pulled it out. Right. Stuck my fingers up in there, grabbed it and pulled it out. Right. I was like, okay. Yeah. You got to do what you got to do, you know, right?

I'm thinking to myself, man, this is a terrible way to start my term. Yeah. Right. But whatever. After that, we kind of walked a couple laps and then I seen that black dude. And I'm like, oh, that's that mother, you know? And I tell Russ, I want to get that dude. I'm going to get that dude.

And all the other guys are pumping me up because we're already going to war with these dudes. So we walked a couple laps. We went to talk to the guys that had the yarder student and grumpy. Hey, man. And he goes, come on, Yoster. Hand your business. So I went the next lap And I just ran right into a pile of blacks

And just started stabbing him And then at the same time all the other whites rushed over Is this the same guy That was on the van Oh okay He wasn't one that was talking shit That's the guy you stabbed him Yeah I ended up running over stabbing him

I only stab him like maybe two or three times And then he disappeared Well he disappeared He didn't die Oh okay This is 97 still Oh he didn't die He just a few times

And he somehow disappeared Right like there's a bunch of gas grenades going off. All of a sudden, these cops appeared on the roofs of the building. Like, they were waiting for this to go down with guns, you know. And then they started shooting the live rounds and started killing people, you know. So my very first day on a prison yard, there was this 100-some-odd man riot with the whites and the black. Seven whites were shot with the mini-14. One of them was killed. Some of them out, like one guy had his thigh blown out, you know, like they had to replace this whole thigh. It was just a rough day.

But it was just, it was bad. We laid on the ground for hours. I'm hearing handcuffs for hours. Which one? What prison was? High Desert. Okay. I was on B yard.

That was day after Christmas in 1997, right? So December 26th. And after that, they actually put me and my cellie back in the cell. And we were fine. He went home. And then I ended up moving in with this guy, Russ, right, that had helped me on the yard, throw block and stuff. When I say help me, I didn't mean like, I know. Yeah.

actual reaction was like, wait a minute. No, not like that. Yeah, he just threw block for me and kind of encouraged me, gave me like guidance, you know, because he'd been down for a minute. We interviewed the guy that was from Corkran. He was a guard who was talking about how the guards were shooting the inmates. Yeah, I remember that. I missed that part of Corker Coo.

I've been to Corker Coo. I've done a lot of time in Corkman Shoe, but that part of it was over by the time I got there. There was still other dirty shit they were doing, you know, but not like they weren't hurting people anymore. They were under so much scrutiny at that point. Any little tiny, like even with a block gun and a non-lethal, they had to do so much paperwork and the FBI was going through everything and making all the video and, you know, so all that,

that was over by the time I got there. But High Desert was still killing people left and right. Like the officers there, I don't remember how many people got shot up their lots. I got shot in their arm in another incident with the Mexicans, you know, and just it was rough. You know? They locked you down. They locked me down.

And then we came out again and me and Russ stabs this do Mike, Biker Mike from Sack. I don't remember what his last name was. We just stabbed him. We actually got away with it or we thought we did, right? We got back to the cell. Biker Mike sounds like a white guy. He's a white guy. This is a whole totally different incident.

Oh. So the blacks got locked down. We got locked down. And then we were only programming with the whites. So the wife said, hey, this dude's got to go. Right. Well, he's creating conflict. Right.

Right. Whatever his situation was. I don't even remember why at the time, just that he had violated some tenant of the woodpile, right? So he's got to go. I think he was taking open consumables for blacks. I think that was like the thing, right? We weren't allowed to do that. Right.

No open consumables. No rolled cigarettes. No, nothing. You know, it has to be like closed. And so I think it has something to do with that. If I remember correctly, I just know Russ came back in the cell and he's like, hey, bro, you want to go with me? I got to get this to Mike, man. and I'm like, yeah, I'll go with you.

You know, he goes, will you take the knife? I'm like, yeah, fuck it, right? Russ don't have life, but they're asking him to whack this dude, you know? Right. So he's trying to get out of whacking this dude. Yeah. He was asking you already have a license. Yeah, I got a license.

At the time, it's Elwap, too. Like, I'm not even going home. Like, there's no chance of me going home. So we come back from Chow that day. Because even though we're on lockdown, they would walk us to Chowenbach, just to just let us all walk. I'm like, because Chauho is so dis, disconnected. They didn't want to keep bringing the trays to the building, you know.

Plus a lot of stuff gets smuggled out of the kitchen that way, right? So they stopped doing it and started walking us to a chow. So we stabbed them in the rotunda and got away with it. Like the way the building, like you had to walk through a retunda to get to a big day room. So we stabbed them in there and we actually got a, I say we got away with it. We didn't get away with it. We just didn't go to the hole for two weeks. Right. Right. At the time, we thought we got away with it. We went back to ourselves. We were like, okay, I'm covered in blood. He's covered in blood. So we started like slicing up our clothes and flushing it down the toilet, you know, so they couldn't come back. We didn't know if we were going to live or die.

Right. He ended up living. And I don't think it told on us, but a couple weeks later, all of a sudden, the officers showed up at our door and I was like, you're going to the hole. So we went back to the hole. When I got to the hole, I thought I was in trouble for, because I ran into that group of blacks, like people afterwards like, oh, you should have waited. You didn't go through the proper channels, you know? I'm like, what are you talking about? You know, this is a war up, right? Yeah, right. But then I got to the hole and there, the guy back there in the hole was like,

nah, man, this kid's, just downers and all you guys. You know, he came out of the first time on the yard. He's out there poking people. So, and he found out later that he was involved in like, like, A, B and stuff. So I was like, he was having my back. I was like, all right. So that was like the beginning of the recruiting process, you know? It's like, all right.

Yeah. I mean, I made an impression on a guy in prison that everybody's trying to make an impression on, you know, at a young age. So I thought that was kind of cool at the time, you know, so I keep saying, you know, but anyway. So I get to, they end up moving us. We didn't stay in the whole very long. They can do these things called captain's hearings, right, a 114D hearing. We went to the hole for what they call an investigation into our involvement in the melee, not in the stabbing the mic. So once we got there, we went to a captain's hearing.

You go to captain's hearing within 10 days or, excuse me, within four days, four or five, working days and then you go to a committee. So I went to the captain's hearing and they said, we're going to send you to Seyard. We're not going to leave you back here in Adseg. They didn't have room. Everybody was, there was wars throughout the prison and Ad Seg was getting full. So they were like, okay, these guys can go, you know, they were even transferring us to the prisons to Adseg. They didn't have any room or they were converting whole buildings into Adseks on different yards. So they sent me and Russ to Seahard and where we were still at work the blacks. It was just everywhere at the time.

We got there. Everything was cool. We were on lockdown. I liked lockdown. It was like, I don't have to worry about nothing. Right. You know? And so after about like, I want to see like nine months over there,

we finally came off lockdown. And the war was squashed with the blacks. But while we were on lockdown, a war with the northerners had come up. Like an incident, two white dudes, my neighbors. had come out of the cell for work, and they accidentally opened some Northerners doors, and they attacked the whites. So for no reason.

Like, we had no, at the time, I mean, maybe somebody can enlighten me on the comments, right? But at the time, I couldn't figure out why. I still don't know why. But they attacked these two guys. They were supposed to open my door, but they opened the wrong door, because we all worked at the kitchen at 4 o'clock in the morning.

And so, like, we know we're at war, like the whites and the Southerners were, work one day. The Northerners and blacks would work another day and then we'd switch off. This day, it was supposed to be the whites. So they let, but they let the, they opened the wrong door. That was, high desert was like that, though. They did out purpose to see, like, who was getting along and who wasn't. They were just like, mysteriously, the doors would open up, you know, so you'd come out and fight or stab or whatever. Well, then the two Northerners, like, they wouldn't answer any of our questions. They were just like, hey, we just did what we had to do. So once we squash you with the blacks,

we're like, we're going to go back to war with the North. We're just going to go to war with the Northerners. All right. Well, the Southerners were at war. So when we came off lockdown, we asked the Southerners, hey, what are you guys going to do? We want to go with you. Or if you're not going to go, we're going to go.

And I say, yeah, we're not going to go. We're going to go to canteen and shit. So the whites were like, fuck it, we're not. When we should just attack the Northerners, right? So I end up going, I didn't go to. the hole that time because they just couldn't take everybody. So they just put us back in ourselves. But they transferred me to a different yard. They sent me down to sea lower because sea lower didn't have northerners. So anybody that they could identify as being part of the issue,

they moved them to a yard that didn't have anything to do with northerners. So then I was down there. That was probably like, I want to say the early part, mid part of like 99. And we've been on locked down forever. Right after that, we got into the war with southerners over drugs. So my dude was supposed to bring in drugs for the northerners. You didn't, or for the, excuse me, for the Southerners, or for the Pisces, I think it was for the Pisces, but anyway, one of these Pisces hit him in the head with a rock and a white dude, so we all went after the Mexicans. And the next thing, you know, the Southerners and the Pisces are attacking us.

We were on lockdown for a little while. Towards the end of 99, I came out, I want to say it was about November 99. We came off a lockdown. There was 32 wives 32 Mexicans, and they actually rushed us again, but I ended catching homicide on a guy named Carl Cogor. We was a white Mexican. You ran with the Mexicans, but he's a white guy. And me and another dude named Tommy went to the hole for his homicide.

How did that happen? He just attacked us. We had knives. We were ready. Me and Tommy and a couple of other guys had brought weapons out. And we were like trying to beg the shot caller to let us stab these dudes. And they're like, no, because the whites on the up yard had already retaliated on our behalf. And I'm like, yeah, but these dudes are going to stab us.

And they're like, no, no, no, they're not. They already said it was peace. I go, bro, when we walked out here in the yard, this yard was spotless. There wasn't trash. There was it in toilet paper. There wasn't plastic. See, look around. There's solopane and toilet paper just floating across the yard.

Like people had unwrapped their weapons. Right. And they didn't like keep the material in their pocket that they wrapped it with. They just threw it on the ground. Well, now it was the wind was blowing and it's floating across the, you see it at toilet paper and cellophane. Those are what you wrap your. your weapons with before you poop them. So I'm like, look, dude, this is going to happen.

Oh, no, we gave them our word. We have to do this. So I was like, I mean, this dude named Eddie Lovett, this is the one I was talking to. And I said, Eddie, if they rush us, I'm whacking you. I'm not going to sit over here and be a victim. Right. And he goes, if they rush us, young. He goes, if they rush us, he goes, I'll let you whack me.

I'm like, all right. This moment, you know, I was pissed. But by then I started getting a big head. You know, I started getting into the prison life, right? So then sure enough, like towards the end of the, what would have been, Yard recall, they came rushing us. And afterwards, I remember we were laying on the ground. I looked at Eddie and I said, I'll be back.

So you're laying on the ground. Afterwards, after. So when they rushes, this guy came, got out, I didn't know who he was at the time. It was just like a melee, no people. There was gas grenades going off. And I just grabbed a hold of the first Mexican. that I could grab a hold of and I just started stabbing him. We fell to the ground and then Tommy, this other dude came over, another Tommy came over,

see me on the ground with him. Actually, he was on top of me and I was trying to stab him from below. And then Tommy, I don't know how he got him off of me, but he got him off of me. And then he was stabbing him and we were stabbing him together. And then after they started shooting the main 14, we all scattered. Right. And we lay down. I just so happened to lay real close to Eddie, you know, not on purpose.

Yeah. I ended up. And I looked at him and said, I'll be back. I knew I was going to all. Yeah. You know, I didn't know the guy was dead. Because he didn't die until, like, later that night. But he was over there, but I knew what was going home.

So we go, like, what did he say? He was just, like, he was stunned. He didn't even say a whole lot. He was just like, you had into your business, you're having your business, you know? And I'm like, well, I'll be back. Right. And he's like, all right, you know. He didn't really have much to say.

So he puts his in handcuffs and they put us all on a yard together. Like all the whites on one yard, all the same. some there's on another yard like um the 180 yards have these concrete yards connected to them they're like shoe yards and so they put us all on those so on either side of the building excuse me on one side on c section side or a section side depending on which building you're in there's a little concrete area that's that's walled in there's a shower out there there's a toilet out there and then there's a space for recreation like handball or whatever right but that's usually where they put like at the time like c status C status was a

like a disciplinary thing or if they were using the building as an ad seg that's where you got recreation at was on this little concrete we called it a concrete yard so he put us on that concrete yard and eddie wouldn't talk to me right you know but he sent his cellie over his dude name i called him john dillinger right he was a bank robber her name was john lern he's cool as hell but he come over he goes yonstra man you got let they go i'll let it go i'll let it go but then i remember the cops came and said you and you poor me met though both times like come here. And they took us straight to the hole, you know.

And then the rest, some followed, some didn't, you know. But we didn't tell. We were attacked. Right. And I'm sitting here thinking that I didn't know that you died until I didn't find out you died until I got to the hole. Say, by the way, you know, here, you're in that's sake for murder. I'm like, who died?

Right. You know? And then I seen the thing that said for the death of inmate, cold growth. Right. So I'm like, okay, whatever. is what it is, you know, I mean, I'm like in prison. I'm already doing life. Right.

And I'm thinking at the time that this is going to give me status. You know, people are going to stop. They weren't fucking with me anyway, but nobody's going to ever fuck. Well, you're only good as your last hit, right, in prison, period. So, especially level 4, 180 yard. If you're in the game, you're only as good as your last hit. Right. If people, if that memory starts to fade, you've got to do something else.

Right. You know, people start, oh, man, that was a long time ago. As soon as somebody says, that was a long time ago, it's time for you putting work. So we end up in at Sague for the death of Cold Grove. We go to, so it's kind of like a trial, a hearing. You have a lieutenant's hearing like RVR 115 hearing, right? I didn't postpone my. I was thinking, who gives you shit, right?

Tommy postponed his for the outcome of the DA referral. So anytime you get like a felony imprisonment, sent a thing to the DA referral, Tommy does, he does he postpones his. I don't. And I go there and I get found not guilty of the murder. All right. I get found guilty of participation in a melee. That's only a 90-day shoe.

So I sat in the hall for 50 days, 60 days. They sent me back to the yard. You're right back to the same yard. I just left. And I'm right into the same building with Eddie Love it. Right. And he just looked at me. He's like, really, Yoster?

I'm like, hey, I said, we got a talk. So we came off lockdown without the Southerners. And me and this other guy, Josh, sliced him up. It were outrageous. I couldn't get to a weapon fast. enough because I literally got to the yard and two days later I was out on you know and I could make one out of plastic but I didn't think it was going to be good enough I wanted something that really was going to make a statement you know and I was pissed you know because

I was thinking man you're going to put us in a trick bag over drugs right you know because I knew Eddie Eddie was a dope fiend but he happened to have the yard right he was one of the mouthpieces for the yard so he said dope fiend I'm thinking about being putting a trick bag over drugs you know these these are going to attack us because you want to get one You want to get visits, things like that, right? So me and Josh went out there with razors and just started slicing them up first time we went out there, you know, him and another dude named Teardrop, another guy that had the yard with him. They were kind of like, they were both homeboys. They were from Sacramento, a gang called a Sacramaniacs.

So, yeah. These names. Yeah, so we sliced them dudes up. We went to the hole for that. And I ended up getting found not guilty for the battery with the weapon. I got found guilty with just battery. they said that he didn't need stitches in one report and in another report it said

refused medical treatment, refused the stitches. So I used the one that said, it was superficial. He didn't need stitches. Right. And I remember the AW's his name was Malfi. He's like, man, this fucking idiot's right.

And he brought me back two weeks later, dropped the battery with the weapon and sent me back out to the same yard. Yeah. So I end up stabbing another Mexican guy because we're still at war. we end up going back to Adseg and then send me to a different facility at that point, you know. What was the facility?

The D facility, same prison. Oh, I was in the same prison for eight years, you know, and the first eight years, it was just rock and roll. But that yard, D, I was programming. There was no wars. This is the first time I got programmed since, like, really got some programs since I came in a prison. So it, but at some point you get the life taken off. So, yeah, at the time, I was still going, I wasn't going to court yet for the, because it hadn't picked it up on Tommy.

Tommy's still sitting in that saying waiting for them to pick that up. All right. Because he hasn't had his 115 heard. You can postpone your 115. So I went to court probably like in, I want to say 2001, I started going to court for the murder that happened in 99. And when I went to court for that, I just pled guilty as soon as I walked in. Right. I went like, look, I don't want to keep coming back to court.

What do I need to do? The lawyer's like, you can just plead guilty. He goes, I don't advise it, though. I'm like, yeah, that's your job. Right. My job is like, I'm doing life without who gets this shit. I don't want to have to keep coming back and forth to court. You know, it's a pain in the ass. Disrupts my program.

There's nothing going on. So he was like, all right. So he talked to the judge and the DA. They brought me back to court two more times and then they gave me an additional point of life. I shouldn't have done that. Tommy beat his. You know, I'm not guilty. In court, you know, I could probably have done the same thing.

Because it was a May Day. We were the ones that got attacked. Right. Right. But I didn't think about that. That's the time. Who gives this shit? Yeah, I'm doing life already. So I end up in 2003 being involved with another homicide, with another white guy.

Well, I'm talking about the home invasion. So I'm going back to that. So in 2003, I get a homicide on another guy in prison. And while I'm going to court for that, I'm in AdSaid going to court for that. I go back to court. They call me back to court randomly. Like, I knew how to appeal in. but I hadn't really heard much about it.

Like I had a questionnaire for my lawyer and then I had got some papers from saying that the briefs had been filed. But I had got the brief too, but I didn't really read it that much. And I didn't know much about the law at the time. Right. So what I did was I just kind of threw it in my box. I used it as weights. You know, I would make copies of all my 115s and stuff as many as I can when I was an ad saying and I'd use them as bundles for weights, you know. Right.

I really give you shit. And one day, I probably going to court. Like, I know. I'm going to, what do you mean? They're like, no, you're going back to your county. I'm like, why don't they take me all the way back to county jail? I didn't know what it was about. And I got there and I said, oh, they're, they have worded something wrong in the thing.

It was it. It was just like a stupid procedure. I guess the appeals court ruled that it needed to be, there was a right that needed to be waived, but I didn't wave. And I'm like, and it was some stupid right. And it wasn't even to an appeal. It's due something else. And then another thing about restitution. That was it.

But then the judge is like, I'm not giving this kid Elwap anymore. Right. It just doesn't make any sense to me. So the DA fought it for a long time. She was pissed. And then came back in one day, like a year later, I'd been going back and forth to court. A year later, she comes in and she says, uh, I'm trying to remember their exact wording. She says, uh, your honor, we rescind her, whatever, our appeal, however she said it.

And we're going to go ahead and agree with, you can do whatever you want. And he asked her why? What changed? Or we just found out he has two additional life sentences. Right. He's never getting out anyway, right? And the family's okay with that. So it was over, you know?

What did he give you of 26 to life? Same as I got my code defendant got. Right. So he's like, I don't know not going to give him more time than his corner ofena got. That's his whole big thing. Yeah. I couldn't. The guy that did the murder got less time than the guy that, you know, just happened to go to trial.

Right. You know, so I went back. But it didn't change how I ran my program in prison. And at that point, I'm already going to trial for a whole other. I didn't even go to trial. I just went to court a lot because after Tommy beat his, I was like, man, I could beat this one. You know, I didn't beat it. So I didn't go to trial either, though.

Towards the end, it was like a parent that I wasn't going to beat it. It was like I had like 75 people telling on me, you know. This is supposed to be a gangster yard, you know, but there's people telling on you, you know. Are you, I mean, how many years is it? That time? Yeah, seven. But you do, but you do have the potential to get paroled at now 25, right? Not anymore.

So once I picked up the second life term and now I'm, well, I had an LWOP. There was no potential to be paroled. Right. But once that came knocked off. Yeah. Yeah, but I had already committed another life sentence. I already got another life sentence. But that didn't have parole?

No, 46 to life. No. Right. So I'm thinking I'm never getting. And at the time, remember California, nobody was. going home. Governor Gray Davis had got on TV. If you're convicted of a murder in California, you're not getting parole, period. And there was guys on the yard with seven of the lives that have been down 40 years. So I'm thinking, man, I ain't never getting out of this mother, you know.

It's not happening. So at the end of it, I end up getting, if I don't get the internship down to Corkman Shoe. You know, there's a lot of stuff that happened in between, but I went down to Corcoran. I got down there. At the time that I committed the second homicide that I was found guilty on, or the third one, excuse me, the second one in prison. The one so I was involved in that, I'd already been a shot call for the yard. I'd been recruited to be part of, you know, prison gangs, things like that. So I got down to Corcoran and it was just like home. That's where everybody was at. You know, validated gang members go to the shoe. They don't ever get out. Like, I don't remember if you remember, like California indeterminate policy.

back in the days, but if you were a validated gang member, you never got out. There was only three ways out of the shoe. It was parole, die, or debrief. And if you weren't going to debrief and you had life, you were never getting out. Guys have been back there for 30, 40 years, you know? So I'm thinking that's going to be my fate, you know, at this point. However, they changed validation process. So one of the guys that was part of our organization,

was fighting the validation for me because I didn't know anything about legal law. I didn't know I didn't go to the law library unless it was the past kite or do something that nature. Well, this guy ended up six or two and appealing my validation and winning based on it. It was only based on confidential information. It wasn't based on any kind of like evidence other than just people telling on me. Right. And so I ended up getting kicked out of shoe on what they called.

They just, they made a deal. I would get kicked back out of the shoe once. my shoe was up for the murder, for it on inactive status, right? I'm not, I'm an inactive gang member is what they were saying, right? Okay. So I got kicked off to Kern Valley, you know, but with directives, you know, there's, you're going to go out there and this is what you're going to do.

You're going to handle your business, but you're going to stop all the wars because we're not getting any money. Right. You can't make any money on lockdown. So you're going to start making money. You're going to do whatever you can and start making money, even if that meant extortion, even if that meant like, you know, we start instituting. a policy where like every building had to come up with a certain amount of cash, every quarter

that we would send, then send to the, to the ad sake, or to the shoe, specifically to shoe. We had like different organizations where different peel boxes or different people that we worked with. Fern Valley shut down, I was working on before I shut down, there was this lady. So I was in the SAP program there. I got into the SAP program because there was this lady in there that I knew I can, you know, I can pull her. Right.

Right. She wasn't pretty. You know, I hate to say that too, man. I didn't like such a dick, but she was ugly as hell. Right.

But she liked me. Right. Right. I was, you know, I'm fat now. I'm getting a gang of weight since I got out of prison,

but I had long hair. I was in a really good shape. And she was just staring at me all the time. And I was like, dang, I could get that. Right. And I wasn't thinking about having sex with her

as much as I said, I could get her to bring me whatever I want. Right. You know, and so I joined the staff program. the substance abuse program, I don't use drugs. Right.

So I go into the SAP program. They're talking all this 12 stem. I don't know what the hell they're talking about. But all I want to do is talk to Tracy. So eventually, she comes to me and she says, hey, man, I'm having this issue with this black dude. He keeps trying to touch my ass, right? And at the time, I'm thinking, well, why don't you tell on her? Yeah.

Right. You're a staff. Yeah, you're not a cop. Oh, she's a staff, right? But she's not a cop. She works for the prison. Yeah. But she's not a CEO.

She's a counselor, a substance abuse counselor. So I'm like, why aren't you just, why are you telling me? You know, of all people, she was, well, can you get him to stop? I'm like, no, I can't, right? She was, yeah, but I'm white. Right? I know you have the key. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I go, okay.

She goes, I know you have the keys for the whites here. I'm like, okay, even if that were true, which I'm not admitted to anything, he's black. I can't do anything about it. But I'm white. I'm like, you are white. I said, let me tell you this. I'm going to tell you this how it works. If you were doing something for us, then you would follow under the umbrella of protection.

Then I can do something for you. But you're not doing anything for us. You're nice. You look out for us. You give us pens and paper and things that, you know, extras. Right. But they're not illegal. Yeah.

Right. They're not stuff that I can go out on the yard to make money on. Right? So I can't help you. And I'm like, I'm sorry. I said, I can go talk to the guy and see if I can get him to stop just like, because I knew the guy. Yeah. But I'm not, it's not, there's no force behind it.

There's no way for me to do it. And she's like, what if I start doing something for you guys? I'm like, like, what? I said, it has to be significant. She goes, let me think about it. So she came back a couple days later and she had me a bunch of books of stamps. I'm like, what's these for? And she's all, well, I'm doing something for you guys.

I said, I can get these sent to the mail. I don't need stamps. I got a thousand of them. She's like, well, that's still doing something for you guys. She said, no. She got to do something different. It has to be something we can't get. Right.

She goes, like what? And like cigarettes, for example. We were no longer giving cigarettes in prison. I said, you bring me one pouch of bugler. And I can get this dude to stop. One, that's it. All right. So next day she brought me a pouch of bugler.

You know, so I went straight to the blacks. This guy that I knew. Not the guy that was doing it. Yeah. But one of his guys, I say, hey, shady. He's got to stop. He's like, man, I can't tell her brother not to fuck with her. You know, I can't.

I go, bro, it's got to stop. So what I did was I lied. I said, look, man. Her old man is one of our big homies. He's telling me that if I don't get this to stop, we got to whack all you guys back here. I'm just trying to keep the peace, brother. I mean, we do a lot of. business together, right? I said, you know we have a ton of knives back here. I don't want it to go there.

But her old man is telling us, I got to get it to stop or it's over. And she's like, let me talk to him. So he went and talked to him and told him to leave her alone. But he did it right away. I said, it's going to be an issue. So once they found out he was still trying to do it, because he was like writing her notes and then she'd bring me the notes. So I gave him to him. I'm like, look, dude, it's got to stop. Right. And then he's like, okay. So they beat him up. You know, not back there in the SAP program. There's no gun coverage back there.

Yeah. Like, getting staff back there is over for you. There's not even any COs back there. There's some in the work change, but in the actual billion, there's none. One of the staff would have to hit their alarm, one of the substance abuse counselors would have to do their arm and then wait for the staff to get there. Yeah. It takes forever.

You know, so they were like, they were worried about it. So they were like, okay. Before, when he went out to yard later that day, they beat him up and then told him He can't go back there. And he's not even allowed to go back there anymore. If he does, they're just going to keep jumping on him. So he stopped going back, which was great. But then she was super grateful.

She's like, oh, my God. I asked her one day. I said, why didn't you just call the cops on her? Write him up. And she's all, I didn't want to be a snitch. Like, you're not a snitch. You're not in prison. Right.

You know, what are you talking about? She goes, oh, you know, but I think she got off on it. Yeah, right? Like I did something for her. I did, you know, power, right? She came to me for a reason. Somebody obviously told her I was the guy that had the yard. So then after that, she became a workhorse.

I mean, she was just like anything I wanted. I got. I mean, I'm talking like anything. And I think the- She's bringing in drugs? Is this just- Well, she wouldn't bring in drugs right away? What we did was we were opening the chargers on the phones

and packing it full of dough and then putting it back together. We didn't need the chargers. We had these adapters. Yeah. Right? That we used for our CD players that charged their phones. Ask her to bring in his. He needs a charger.

Well, she just realized that. We just say, phones. I'm going to pack some phones together. I'm going to deliver them to you. Right. And then you're going to bring him in. She's like, all right. She's no idea.

No idea of the drugs you're in there. You know, unfortunately, right? She has no. I mean, I feel bad about it now, like thinking back how, and I say that. And I legitimately, I think back about how much potentially it could have destroyed her life. Right. You know what I mean? Like her kids, her, she had kids.

She was single mom, you know, those things. Right. I didn't even think about it, but I didn't give a fuck. But now I look back on it and I think to myself, man, I'm about to be a father myself, right in about five weeks. And I think about like, man, for somebody to do something to me, unbeknownst to me that puts me in jeopardy of losing my family, you know, I'd be pissed, you know. But at the time I didn't think about it, I didn't even care.

It never even crossed my mind. My only concern was I kept my word to her, you know? That was like my only concern. then I would keep my word toward that. Keep her protected. I wouldn't do anything to put her in jeopardy other than bring shit in, right? And it worked for a long time. And then, I mean, cell phone.

I don't remember how familiar. Remember the MyTouch, T-Mobile, MyTouch, when it first came out. It was like one first time the iPhone came out. You know, this is how long have it locked out. Yeah, it's how long ago. I'm there. I didn't see an iPhone until I got out of prison. When did you get out?

2019. Oh, okay. And I went in. Way into it. Yeah, I went in in 2006. So they didn't come out. You know, 2007 or eight? Yeah.

So in like 2007 or eight is when I got the Mite Touch. It looked like an iPhone. I actually thought it was an iPhone, but it wasn't. It was like a Mite Touch thing, right? Man, I was stoked. I didn't even know how to turn it on, but I was stoked, right? Lost that motherfucker the next day. Got rated, you know?

Because his dude from Hazard, or not from Hazard. His name was hazard. Forget his real name. I wish I knew his real name. He had PCed up. He went to the cops and told him that I was having an affair with the lady in the program or in the SAC program. But you weren't. I was.

Okay. Yeah. I was. I mean, she was bringing me shit. Yeah. Well, I didn't know that. Yeah. We ended up, you know, yeah.

That's why I said she's ugly as hell. Right. Right. But I'm like, I've been in prison at the time with nothing, you know. I don't know how many years. I think it had been like. 15 years already. So I'm like anything, you know, any storm, any port in a storm, right?

It was a real world too and a prison eight and a half or something. Yeah, right. A real war, you two, my head. Look. I mean, I hate to say, I liked her, though. She was cool people. Don't get me wrong. We had long conversations.

We talked. I got to know her. We talked on a cell phone all the time. I got to know her really well, you know? And I was like, man, if she was pretty or she'd be cool. Right. You have to be attracted to the woman. Yeah, you have to be, right?

But at the time, I didn't have to be. I was like, man, if I can give a fuck, you know? So, you know, I mean, it turns. So he tells us we're having this affair, and she's bringing me all this shit. And I ended up borrowing my friend's phone that I'm someone, a guy I had brought one in for. And I called her. I said, look, don't bring that shit. This is Sunday.

So don't bring that shit on Monday. And the program's about the end. There's no more SAP program. They only got one more week left, and they're shutting the program down because he lost funding. So she's not going to be working there anyway. So I'm like, don't bring that shit on Monday. And I mean, the last month that we were in the SEP program, dude, we were backpacks full of shit. Whatever she can fit in her lunchbox, pack to the gills, because they didn't search her.

You know, we were bringing back, you know. So we knew. And we were charging this Indian guy. He was from, oh, man, I can't remember he's from right now. I remember the name of it. I remember in a minute. Anyway, down by India. It's a big-ass tribe, Morango tribe, right?

He was from his big ass tribe. He got like $30, $40,000 a month from me. his tribe and he was paying us to bring him stuff just whatever i mean knickknacks too like jacks remember jacks like the game with the ball and the little thing yeah he wanted a pack of jacks i don't know why but he's like can you bring me some jacks you give me give us a list and then he give us the money to buy the stuff but also five thousand dollar traveling fee and then the other half of the box would be mine whatever i could put in there and i don't only did i get it for free but he would pay for all the stuff that I wanted too.

Right. You know, because he's doing a license as he getting $30,000 a month. Yeah, I don't know if people realize that if you're an Indian with certain, if you're an Indian and you're a part of certain tribes, you actually get paid. Like I actually did a mortgage for an Indian that was making $80,000 or $90,000 a year. And this was 30 years ago. But like if you're, you know, the seminal casino right here. Yeah, yeah.

If you're with the similar casino, these guys are making tons of money. They're making, what, 20, 30,000? There are places up north where they have casinos, and they're making, and they're making $30, $40, $50,000 a month. I mean, it's insane. Yeah, that's for this guy. He used to take his checks from the casino because they'd give him to them after they were cashed onto his books, by the way, and he would paste him onto his wall and

then cover him in floor wax. So they were, like, waxed into his wall. And he would just have rows of them. And he would just keep black, right? He would keep it in a store. spoon right there on his desk. He didn't give shit if he got caught. You know, they would just write him up.

He didn't really care. They never took him to the hole. And because they knew it wasn't for sales. And back then, if they could say that it was for sales, they would take you to the hole. But if it's just personal use, they just write you up for possession. He'd just leave it there. Yeah, he didn't care. You know, I don't care what shit.

What are they going to do to me? You know? He got like a life sentence? He had a life sentence. Yeah. And his name was boogie. Man, he was cool, though. But he would give him.

And then right from here, the last list he gave me, I could I told him it's the last run, bro, so get whatever you need. Right. Now get it and get as much of it as you can. Yeah. Get as much of it as you can, right? And he said, all right. So he gives me this list and on the list is a penis pump.

I'm like, what do you need a fucking penis pump for, bro? He's like, just get it for me. Right. I'm like, no. No, I'm not getting caught bringing out across the yard. It's not a good luck. No, I'm fucking screwed, right? And he's like, man, I'm paying you.

Like, you ain't paying me enough. You know, I said, look, bro, I'm going to run down to you. I understand. So the Native Americans used to program with the whites for a lot of years. For my first 10 or so years in prison, they were living with us. They programmed with us. And he'd been down that long. So he knew.

I said, look, bro, you know what time it is. If I got caught walking across the yard with all this stuff, the penis pump is the only thing I get whacked over. You know, why don't he a penis pump with a cellie? So he's like, all right, well, just put something else in there instead. extra this or whatever. So we did do that for him. But that Monday I was telling her, don't bring nothing.

And they arrested her in the parking lot. They arrested her, but she had nothing. She had nothing. But they searched her vehicle. They searched her house. You know, and when they got to her house, there was packages of stuff there, you know,

but no drugs. Right. Right. Thank God, no drugs. She was, at that time, she didn't care about the drugs. She was starting to bring them in. In the beginning, we were packing them in the things,

you know. And but at that time, she didn't give shit. because she's trying to make as much money as she can before she gets laid off. And so I was like, man, I mean, of course I convinced her, you know, yeah, babe, you know, this is a good way for you to make, you can make enough money live off for a couple years, you know, things like that, right? It didn't work out that way. But she got caught and she didn't get caught with the drugs.

Thank God when I called her and I told her, I said, look, I don't know what you're going to do with the stuff, but get rid of the drugs, hide them somewhere, you know, don't leave them in your house. Because I knew they had raided other people's houses. So I was like people like ladies that brought stuff in from visiting. Right. I knew they raided their houses too. But all this is based on one guy's word. Like, so what?

She didn't get, she, they raided the house, but. So you have something. They got my phone. Okay. So when he left, they raided my house and they got my phone. And in that phone was her phone number. Right. You know, and our text message conversations and stuff.

I didn't know how text messages worked. Yeah. Back then. That they're there forever. Yeah. Right. I would delete them and think they're gone. They're not gone.

Yeah, right. So I was ignorant to that. They're gone if your girlfriend checks your phone. Yeah. They look our car and call. Yeah, for T-Mobile, it is contact T-Mobile and said, hey, man. It printed out of this guy all the things. Yeah.

And then there was pictures, too, of the stuff on the phone. You know, like, so when the stuff got delivered, she would send me a picture so that I can, you know, confirm to other people that, hey, your stuff has been delivered. It would be brought in this week at this time. I never gave him a day in time, but it would be, hey, I'll get your stuff this week, you know? Those were on the phone. So, and they're coming from her phone number. So they ended up raiding her house. They didn't find any drugs.

And gosh, so she didn't actually get arrested. She got arrested, but let go. And they told her, you're welcome to go back to the prison. Like, we can't bust you for anything. What, you had 20 cell phones at your house? Right. Can't bust you for anything. You can go back, but she never.

never did. And she took disability, you know, she filed like, disability, Lee said that she was under mental distress, that she didn't like getting rated. It triggered her anxiety or whatever. She never came back. But this she put in to visit me, you know, and they denied her. They denied her quick, you know. I was like, I was probably the, because California, you got to fill out this paperwork and they send it in. Yeah. And they pull it from the mail. You never even see it. Yeah. And usually it's the same thing that that. Yeah. So it usually takes a month or and you hear something back, you know, denied or approved. And I got the paper that she was denied in a week.

You know, right. Like, I mean, it was fast. I was just like, they didn't even look at it. They'd just seen her name. It was like, hell no. Oh, your boo was gone. That's upset. Yeah.

But then I was like, shit, I've got to find another one. You know, because she's doing me no good now. Yeah. Right. And that's fucked up. But, I mean, like, that's how I was thinking. You're not doing, you're nothing for me anymore, but a freaking rock. Right.

You know, you're dragging me down. So I moved on, quick, you know. And then they end up transferring me, though. So they sent me to Salinas Valley, and Salinas Valley turned into a whole other game. What's it called? Selina Valley stayed frisly and his fault. Okay. So Salina Valley turned in.

I mean, that was probably the biggest corrupt prison at the time. I mean, as far as like, if you wanted anything, you can get at Slings Valley. Anything. You know, Kern Valley was bad, but Sleana's Valley made it look like a cakewalk as far as drugs, phones. I mean, if it was a new phone that came out, I had it in my cell in 10 days. It would be on the screen and says, it's out tomorrow. I'd be in my cell in 10 days. You know, for somebody on the yard, not just sell them. I didn't really care for it. The phones were cool, but they were great for communication. Yeah, I got to learn stuff and play on the internet and go on Facebook and all this stuff.

But those were all traps, you know. Right. You get caught on Facebook. You get your house rated, you know, and you get written up, you know, all this thing. I didn't care about the write-ups. had, you know, so many points that, like, I couldn't go to any lower thing anyway. So I think when I paroled, I had 44 write-ups already and, like, 111 points when I paroled. And in California, like, anything 59 and up, or up over 59 is level four. And that's the highest level you can go anyway. And you only lose, for a long time, you only only do like six or eight a year. So, and I was over 200,

well, over 200, 300, or somewhere like that. And then they changed and they're going to go, we're going to take 12 off. I didn't, I was clean nine years, no write-ups. I still paroled 100-level points. This was a total year. You know, so I was well over. I don't even remember. I never even counted.

I never even paid any attention to it until the day that I paroled. The guy at the desk was like, you're pulling with 111 points. I'm like, yeah. And he said, that's a lot of fucking points. When do you get, I mean, you still have like life loss. Oh, so get to the pro. We can get to the pro board. Sleynes Valley, we'll get to that later.

But so years later, we can, we can do something. Yeah. Sleynes was, so I got to Sleinas in 2010. And I was, you know, at the highest peak of my, my gang membership, like, all that stuff. And as soon as I got there, literally as soon as I got there, a guy came to my door, handing me a cell phone, drugs, a roll call, like for the yard, who was all on the yard, and said, hey, the yard. yard's yours. I'm like, no, no, no, man, just go ahead. He's like, no, it's like, no, it's yours. His name was Cowboys, he's from San Diego. He goes, look, Tommy, I already know who you are. I know what you're about. He goes, I don't want the yard. It's yours. I'm like, all right. I'm not going to argue with him anymore. But he came to my door and he's like, look, like later on,

he goes, I already know how you operate. So I'm going to take the next mission. I'm gone. So whoever needs to get stabbed, I'll do it. And then I'll leave. I'm like, you don't have to leave, bro, you're good. And he goes, no, he goes, look, man. He goes, I know how you operate. You sit here, you wait for somebody to fuck up. You don't come, you show up on a yard. He's lay back, and you wait for the dude that has the yard to fuck up, and then you have them stabbed. So then you take power. It's like a power move. Right. And he goes, I'm not doing that. Right. So here, you get out. I'd rather leave. Yeah. I'd rather leave on my feet than on my back, right. So he's like, all right, I'm not cool. All right, that's a gangster. Yeah.

the NPCD up, like literally like a week later. And I found out why is he owed a ton of money. Okay. You know, and that's why he was like, here, go ahead and take the yard. And that was the big thing with prison politics in California are for the whites is a lot of times the whites that are the shock callers are dope fiends. And so like when a white guy brings in drugs, for example, brings, say, 25 grams of something, right? I get a third, right, just for being the shot caller, right? That third buys you protection, meaning that you can sell your dope on yard freely to

whoever you wish, and if you don't get paid, I'll make sure you get paid. Meaning I'll go to the Southerner, I'll go to the other races, and make sure that they either take care of that due so he gets stabbed or they pay it. If you don't pay me the third, you don't get the protection, and you're also not allowed to sell your dope. you know if it's for personal use then it's for personal use it's not for personal use plus canteen plus a little extra money plus a re-up you know it's for personal use so selene's valley was like one of those places where tons of people bringing in drugs but shock callers got into

the habit of using so my job was to take the third sell two thirds of it and send that money and then the third of the dope was mine to do it as i wish right so you I didn't use, but for other people they did. So the shot collars would often use that dope and then develop a bad habit, you know, heroin or, you know, get dope sick. Yeah. So they would start using. And now that third became like half. And then that half became three quarters.

And eventually they weren't sending anything. Right. You know, and then the guys in the back are like, hey, that dude's got to go. The guys in the shoe that were on the shelf or whatever, they're like, these dudes got to go. you know, we, why are, what happened? Nobody's bringing anything in anymore. Well, you know, it is. It's just not getting past.

This is not going past the shot collar. Whoever happened to be the keyholder at time. So what I used to do is I get to a facility. So a yard of facility, same thing, right? I get to the yard and I lay back, like, okay, you're the shot caller. Cool. Let's see how you work. Because if I didn't have to do the work, I was cool with that.

You know, less trouble for me, less bullshit from the cops. less he I didn't want to always have to do it. So if one guy was there and he was doing a good job, I left them there. You know, he just had to report to me like everything he sent, you know, so that I can report that, hey, this got sent to this person at this time. Because we didn't always work for the same people. You know, like there would be like one guy, I'd work for two or three different people.

He might be working for a couple different dudes from another, from the same game, but just different people. Right. You know, so I just knew, hey, at this time, he said he sent X amount. to this person. So make sure you clear. Because then they would divvy it up or try to. They didn't.

You know how they were. You know, you might not. But they were, there was in fighting always with the organizations, right? From the outside looking in, you think they're all united. But they, once you get in, you realize you have to build coalitions within your organization. Right. You know, if you don't, you're just being used constantly. You know, and so, you know, we were building.

And then once, like, when I got kicked out, To the main line, my coalition is who I dealt with. And then I would send them the money. And then they would disperse it as they saw fit. Some people got some, some didn't. You know, just the way they decided to do it, you know. But it protected me because now I have a whole blanket of protection of guys that are getting paid. Right.

So in this situation, I would just wait for somebody to fuck up and then have them removed. And then step in. Step in and say, all right, you couldn't do it. So I'm doing it. you know and i wasn't always like i always put like somebody else in place in front of me i would always go okay you're a good dude i know you don't use i need you to run day-to-day operations let me deal with the higher-ups you deal with the day-to-day you know you're the one's going to collect the money you're the one that's going to divvy up the drugs to each building you're

because i started getting cell phones and giving them to every building i say okay rent that out for 50 bucks for 12 hours you know and then give me the money and then you can you guys can keep two days to yourself. Just pick two days, but not on the weekend. Because the weekend was when everybody wanted to use this. Yeah. So on the weekends, but pick two days and your whole building, all the whites and your ability gets you use the phone.

But not on the weekends. Those were right. So every 12 hours, you move her from one cell to the next. And usually it's the same four or five guys using the phone. They might pay for 12 hours today and 12 hours tomorrow and 12 hours the next day. And they would pay 50 bucks, you know, their girlfriends would pay. I was going to say these people, their families are. being male brand. Yeah. And a lot of times it was blacks, right? And they would have five or six

different girls that they would be talking to that they met on like plenty of fish or some freaking dating website, you know? And they would, these girls would be sending money like, money, money. I'm like, damn, all right. I don't really care. As long as I'm getting it, you know, you're paying. I don't really care. And at the time, green dots were prevalent in prison, right? So everything was paid in green dots. And I remember it was got to a point where I had a whole list of green dots, I couldn't load. It's going to load so many a day. I was just sitting there, like, waiting for that 12 hour mark or that 24 hour mark to where I could go, okay, otherwise people would take your green dot, give it to you, and then go give it to somebody else, too.

You know, so you had to try to get this shit. Like, right. You know, I remember I had a list of, like credit card numbers. They look like credit card numbers, but what they were were green dot numbers because I had the call, type in the number, type in the passcode, you know, do all this stuff, and then type in the other number in here, I'm doing it on a flip phone. you know, I didn't care. At the time, smartphones were like, they were there. They were nice, but they're inconvenient.

They're hard to hide. You know, you can't hoop them, you know. Some of the smaller flip phones, you could, you know. You know. But, you know, sometimes you had to. Right. Sometimes you get in those situations where, or they didn't fit in the toilet. Like the smartphones didn't fit in the toilet.

Yeah. So just flip phones, you could put them in plastic. and wrap them in rubber gloves or whatever, and then flush them down the toilet with a string. We used to cut the folders jars. So the fat part of the folders, we'd cut it out. And so you had a circle. And then you cut that circle.

And the plastic is very hard to bend. But we'd bend it and then shove it down into the toilet with a string tied to it. And then it had the string to the phone. You flush it. And then when that thing opened up, you could still use the rest of it. Yeah. So it would be hanging down.

into the pipe, but you could still use the restroom. Not sit down and use the restroom, obviously, right? Right. Not taking shit, but you can still piss in it. And then when the cops came in and they flex your toilet, it didn't back up. Yeah. Right?

It wasn't like it was clogged, you know. And you just reached down, grab the ring and just pull it back. Pull the ring out and then pull everything out. So we did that. That was a cool little spot for a while. Kobe, he's just like. Oh. But you've been there.

So you've, you never had to do it. Yeah. And I never messed with bones. Like, there was, there would always be like a guy or two that would have a phone and then say, you know, if you need to use a phone, absolutely not. Yeah. I got a number problem. Yeah, I remember when I were, I listened to a lot of your story. Your story was about getting out.

Yeah. You're from the day you walked into prison, you're like, how the hell am I going to make my time shorter and not longer? And how, yeah. So I went through Saline the Valley. Well, somewhere like 2012, 2012, 2013, the law started change in California, right, on how juveniles were affected by parole process. Like if you went to prison as a juvenile, I was 17 when I initially caught my case. So they were like, we're going to start giving them special consideration at their parole board.

Right. So I was like, oh, shit, I'm like, get out. Oh, okay. I thought this, the Supreme Court of the United States did. Remember, this is all. They did. A few years ago where they started saying, right, like five, six years ago. Miller versus Alabama came out, but they were saying it like,

you couldn't give kids Elwap without going through this whole process. But by then I didn't have that while. I was down to 26th alive. So none of those Miller versus Alabama, it did eventually like, you know, Roper versus Simmons was another case that came. I started getting into the law when I was in the old, right? Yeah. And especially on juvenile law.

And he was the case out of Missouri where he had thrown some lady over a bridge, right, and killed her, but he was like 17. And they gave him death penalty. Right. So that was the case that threw out the death penalty for juveniles for anybody under 18. Well, then laws Miller, Miller versus Alabama, Elwop for anybody under 18. So then California on its own, as a result of them, they quoted Miller versus Alabama in a lot of these laws.

Yeah. And they said, if you were under 18 when you went to prison for a life sentence, you would get special consideration at the board. They would have to take the, what they called the hallmarks of youth into consideration when they were thinking about granting you parole. You know, your immaturity at the time, impulsivity, lack of foresight, because brain development or something. on and so forth. But when they wrote the first law, it was called SB 260. They said, if you had received an additional term while you were in prison for a violent crime, you were out. So I was like, damn, what do what do I do? Right. Then SB 261 comes out, right? Now it changes it from under 18 to under 21. I was under 21 or no, it's 22, under 22, so 21 and under.

And they said, if you come to prison, you get the hallmarks of youth all the way up to 21. I was like, all right. But it still had that caveat that if you had an in-house, anything with violence, with a weapon, you don't qualify. So, okay. Damn. I still don't qualify. Yeah. Right.

Then they did AB 1308, right? Which said, now the hallmarks of youth goes all the way up to 25. So if you're under 26, you have to get all the space. special consideration, well, they left out the part about the catching the time. It wasn't in the law. And I don't know if that was on purpose. I mean, these people are smart, right? They know what they're doing, right?

So they pass this law. And then somebody sues, and I can't remember what his name is at the moment, but he sued saying that it should apply to him even though he had a Thompson term. A Thompson term in California is like, any crime you committed while you're in prison, it was added to the back of your initial sentence. Okay. Right? So I had two Thompson terms that were added to the back of my sentence.

So once you finished one, you start the other. Dead by then. I'd be dead. 76 to life is what my total sentence would have been, right? So, and I've been down at the time like 24, 22, 22. So I'm thinking, man, I'm screwed. But then AB 13.08 comes out. And this dude sues and wins.

He wins in the Supreme Court. And they said, you can't make them do Thompson terms. If you parole them on their juvenile term, you can't make them do the rest of their time. Right. You know, like any other additional cases, consecutive sentences, that they, because the law does not include that. And because it's the newer of the three laws, it's the one that supersedes her. Right. So they brought me a thing in the mail.

So you're going to board in three months. I'm like, three months. I'm like, fuck, I ain't ready. You know? I wasn't ready. I had no parole plans. I had nothing, you know. I wasn't even thinking about going to board.

I didn't even went to a group yet. You know, so the parole date comes, the parole board comes. I talked to a lawyer. He comes to see me. They give you a lawyer. Yeah, it's kind of like a public defender, right, but for parole. He comes to see me and he's like, look, dude, you're not getting parole. Yeah.

I'm like, I know. I said, I just wanted to postpone, but I didn't know how to do it, right? Because there's any way I could postpone or stipulate. And he goes, yeah, you can stipulate. So we signed some papers, fill out some papers. He took the Pro board. Pro board said, no. You ain't stipulating.

Or you come in here and talk to us and then we'll let you stipulate. I'm like. That's weird, right? Yeah, I'm like, what to five? They're like, no, no. No, you're going to come here and talk to us. Yeah. You're going to come in here and talk to us or you're going to go.

Either you're going to come in here and talk to us or we're going to let you stipulate. But if you refuse, we're going to have the board without you. and then you're stipulated, we don't have to grant you your stipulation. Right. So I'm thinking, and my lawyer is like, dude, go. I'm like, why? Dude, I'm going to get denied. He goes, you're going to get denied anyway.

Right? I go, okay. But I'm like, three years is nothing. Right? I'm thinking three years, I could do that. You know, I've done that asleep. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. When you're not resting well, everything else feels harder.

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Some exclusions apply. See site for details. You know, so he's like, yeah, but they're probably going to give you like a 10, 10-year denial. So California is 3, 5, 7, 10, or 15. Right. Those are the denials. You also think that maybe they'll say to you, look, you know, we're denying it now. But if you do this and this and this and come back in three years.

Well, I think about that at the time. All I'm thinking about is like, I got all these violent 115s, right? So RVRs. So on top of the two homicides, I got seven other stabbings I've been written up for. So I'm thinking not found guilty on in court, but written up for it. I found guilty on in RVR. And that's not counting batteries. That's not counting mailes.

You know, I've been told on. I don't know how many thousands of times for like having people stabbed or ordering people to be hit in some way, fashion or another. So I'm thinking I'm not walking into the pro board because there's no distance between me and that behavior. I'm in the behavior at the moment. Not like have you been good for the last eight years. Yeah, I just haven't been written up for a couple years because at that point it was like, why even write them up? Yeah, I mean, as long as I wasn't hurting anybody personally, like Duke came in my door, some random cop came in my door one day. It's like Stanford count.

They just did like a big shift change where all the cops, so all the normal cops that were in a building got sent somewhere else and then we got new cops permanent, right? They did their every year they do their little bid or whatever, right? We end up with this one cop. It comes to my door and tells me Stanford count. I'm sitting there in myself. I'm sitting up.

I'm writing. Like, what do you mean Stanford count? We do a standing count every day, right? At 4 o'clock, 430. I'm like, I can stand enough. I just went back to writing. Just knock on, bang on my door. standing for count. I'm not standing for count. Dude, get the fuck out of here. He's like,

I'm gonna write you up. I just laughed. I'm gonna go fucking write me up. I ain't standing for count. I'm gonna hit your cell. I said, you ain't getting in my cell. Get the fuck out of here. So it goes down to the office and he's fucking complaining. I could hear him complaining. This motherfucker I'm gonna hit in the other comps like, now you're not, you're not going in his cell. No. Yeah. And then my door opens. They want to talk to you in the office. So the cop that he worked with was cool and I knew him for years at the prison he knew who I was he knew who I was affiliated with you knew everything about me so he's like look man dude wants you to stand for count I said how about this man why don't you just write me up he was well I'm planning on it I said do

me a favor just write me up and just don't put a date on it and then every day just come in and put today's date he goes or we're going to take a canteen I'm like I'll put canteen on somebody else's books right I'll put packages in somebody else's name There's nothing to do to me. You want you to put me out of C status? That means I don't have to go out to yard. Right. Cool.

I got a pull up bar on my light right now. You know, not worry about it. Right. What are you going to do? Yeah, I'll like sense. I'm going to die in here, bro. What are you going to do? You're writing up for a nice and I said, do it, bro.

I said, I work with you guys. My light's on. I'm up. I'm not like, normally I'm writing at that time. That's when I usually wrote all my letters during count time. So I'm like, I'm up all the time. If I was laying under the blankets or something, like that, I can understand.

All right. But after that, that dude was cool as hell. His name was Robinson. He was cool as hell after that. But he just needed like a little bit like, I don't give a fuck what you do. You're not going to do anything to me. There's nothing you can do to me. So that attitude, though, I get told on for that attitude.

You know, those cops have books that they write in. You know, everybody thinks that cops are cool. Yeah. Until they put in their logbook to this dude's a dick. You know, and that goes to the pro board. You know, people see that stuff. So I'm thinking, I want to go to the pro board yet.

I want to try to put some distance. I need to start taking groups. They want me to know this thing called insight. I have no idea what insight is, right? You know, I read it in the dictionary, but the dictionary version of it's totally different than what they want you to present a board.

So I was like, no, I don't want to go in there. The lawyer's like, look, dude, they're probably going to give you like a seven or a 10 if you don't go in there. Right now,

they're saying they'll stipulate to the three. Because you might even go back in a year and a half. you know, I'm like, all right. So I went in there. It wasn't as contentious as I thought it was going to be, you know. It was just like, hey, why did you do this stuff? You know, they didn't even care about the crime as much as they cared about the stuff in prison.

They really hammered me on the prison stuff. And I wouldn't talk about it. I'm like, oh, man, you know, oh, you know, I did what I had to do. I was young when I came to prison. I was scared. I was a kid, you know, all these things. I was using all these excuses for bad behavior. right and I was telling them that and they were like all right and then the last thing they asked me was like

so let's talk about your gang involvement I'm like what gang involvement what you talking about I'm not a gang member they're like you're not a gang member like nine I see you can ask anybody on the yard I'm not a gang member I'm just a white dude and I'm like all right come back in three years I was like see I'm not a gangman I thought I got away with it right you know I thought I convinced that I'm not going to argue with you they're not going to argue right me right they just looked at me funny. Like, really, this is the hill you're going to die on, right? And I didn't really consider the fact that I had probably thousands of confidential telling on me saying I was a gang member. Right. Right. They're not all wrong. You're not all lying, right? Maybe some of them lied.

Yeah. But not all of them, right? But the course of how many years. Right. So I didn't think about it at the time. Then later on, I went into another parole hearing three years later and got denied for three years, right? But I did way better. I went in there. I'd taken all these groups. I understood insight to some degree, but I still refused to take responsibility for a lot of stuff I did in prison. You know, I was still like, nah, man, it, you know, it wasn't like that. It was, you know, I was arguing points that didn't need to be argued. Right. Right. I'm like, it doesn't matter if I did it, right, or not. Just because what I would do is I focus on one thing that they said that I didn't do and I would argue with them about that one thing.

And then they would deny me. So I got a three year to now, another three year to now. So I was like, all right, cool. Whatever. I went back in 18 months. You know, this time it took me back early because I wrote a big essay about my gang involved, man. But not like, I was still deflecting. And I was still talking about like the in-house stuff like in a vague way.

I wasn't, there was no insight into it. It was just, I just mentioned it and took, I took responsibility, but not accountability. Right. It makes sense, right? So I went in there, that time I got a five-year denial. So now it's going up. And I'm like, fuck, what am I doing wrong? You know, I'm listening to all these dudes in prison who got to parole board, like some of them five or six times.

And so they know what I should say. They know how to get denied. Yeah. But at the time, I wasn't really thinking it that way. I was thinking I was listening to all these dudes who on the yard seemed super reformed. So reformed, we used to think they were lanes. We're like, this fucking dude's a lame. You know, look at him.

He's over there fucking reading a book on fucking anger management. Right. So, you know, we fucking talk to shit about these dudes, you know. I looked at it different, right, at the time. But then when I started doing the work, I understood why the work was necessary. Right? I think we were having a conversation before we got on here, but about being rehabilitated.

I'm never going to be 100% rehabilitated. I'm not, right? There's always going to be a stray thought or, man, I can get over doing this. Man, I could hurry up and make a quick dollar doing this. You know, but it's always that like you build in like tools to like catch you. So, you know, you have what we call emotional relapse,

then a mental relapse and then it physical relapse, right? So somewhere before, you actually do it. I don't even talk about drugs, but just back into the lifestyle, you know, you're built in, you know,

stops. We call, I call them stops. So that, like, if I'm thinking something, I go, okay,

give yourself time, right, to calm down, because a lot of times me wanting to fight somebody because they, and most of my fights were out of fear,

right? Like, I was afraid somebody to think I was weak, so I'm going to have to beat their ass. Just show them that. I'm not weak,

right? I wasn't afraid of getting hurt. I just didn't want to be afraid of my image is going to be reputation. I was the hardest thing to get rid of. Hardest thing in the world to let go of is your reputation. So I had developed this whole reputation in prison for 25 plus years. And here I was coming back from the parole board, devastated that I got a fire a denial thinking, what am I going to do? You know? And I think God,

sometimes, I don't talk about God that often. I do believe, but I think God has ways of doing things. I came back from the denial. I was distraught. I was sitting there listening to all these dudes. And I'm digging to myself, what the fuck am I supposed to do? So I took the whole transcripts once I got them to the psych. Well, as a white dude, you're not supposed to go see the psych. Right.

But I had a little, I still had status. So I went over to them. I said, look, I'm going to go see the psych. Yeah. I want to see. Yeah, the mental health. She was actually just a social worker, but the mental health department, right? We all called everybody in there was called a psych, even though they weren't, right?

So I went over there and I handed my transcripts and I said, can you look at these for me and see where I'm failing? Because I'm reading them from my perspective and I think they sound great. I'm saying everything I'm supposed to be saying. And it's something I teach now. I work inside prison now. One of the things I teach the guys is stop looking for the right answer and look for the honest one. Right. Right answers give you more time because you're searching for what you think they want to hear.

Right. Instead of just being honest. Right. So I anyway, she comes at me a couple days later and she's like, dude, she had like all the different color highlighters and had like a little legend that she had built. And I started flipping through my transcripts and they're all different colors. I'm like, what the hell? She goes, this is where you minimize. This is where you deflected.

This is where, you know, you refuse to even talk about, you know. This is you had no insight you had, you know. And so I was like, well, hearing it from somebody that was not a convict in any way, shape, or form kind of gave me. a different perspective, you know. Probably thinks in the same manner that the parole board thinks. Yeah. And I think that's where I was failing was I kept trying to see it from my perspective and try to present them my story.

And like they'd ask me a question instead of answering the question, I'd answer the question I wanted them to ask me. Right. You know, and that's part of the controlling part of, you know, my personality, right? Is I'm only going to give you what I want to give you. So when I say God, so I was talking to her, there was this big war that was going on.

between all the whites, the Mexicans, and the Bulldogs been going on, still going on. And we were, at the time, the Bulldogs had been moved off of our yard. So there was none. So we were all of a sudden they say, hey, we're bringing the Bulldogs back. So we're going to have to move a bunch of you guys. And they started developing these programs called non-designated program facilities in California. Like you have program facilities and the, you have designated ones, which all the gang members, everybody go to. and then all the non-designated ones where they're sending like people who want a program, right?

So they snatched up 20 of us because they needed. They shapsed more of us, but 20 of us went to a non-designated facility or 50-50 yard, they call it now, you know, depending on who you talk to. And they stuck us in this building, like all on the bottom tier. It was four block. I remember it was a section, all the bottom tier for cell 101, all the way to like 115. There's 20 of us, but some of us were single cells. Some of us are northerners, whites. there was no blacks because Pleasant Valley, that prison at the time was in Pleasant Valley

was no blacks because there's a thing called Valley Fever and the blacks out there are very susceptible of valley fever. It kills them. But the whites and the Mexicans aren't as susceptible to it. And even if they do get it, it's not as deadly. So there's no blacks in this prison unless they've already had Valley Fever. And so you might be on a yard with one black dude, which is weird because normally you go to a prison yard in California. It's 300 black. or 400 blacks, 200 Mexicans, 50 whites. And that was when there was a lot of whites. Real, now it's like 10 whites.

And you think, oh, man, we got a whole crew, you know? So that's, it's bad now. But so they moved us to this yard and left us there for three weeks. And then it let us have ourselves because we had 72 hours to get off to leave the yard, according to our people. And I remember when I got there, the guys asked me and they said, so what are you going to do, OG? Now I'm OG. I'm old. I'm in prison.

I'm old now. These guys are young. I said, I'm staying. So what do you mean you stand? So I'm staying. They laughed. They're like, no, you're not. They said, what are you going to do?

We'll go with you. I'm like, no, man, I'm not going nowhere. I said, look, dude, I'm going to the pro board in a couple years. I'm going home. You guys can have this fucking life. I got a fucking real shot at going on. I'm done. Because I just looked at as an opportunity for me to flip the script, you know.

Because the parole board wanted something different for me. They didn't want me. I was still, as far as I was, as they were concerned, as long as I was on any facility and I was, I still had status and I wasn't like technically dropped out, I was always going to have status. People were going to follow the rules because I was there. I was an enforcer. I had all these people telling on me.

All this stuff happened. Even when I was over there and not doing anything, I was still getting told on. You know, I was getting told on so much that I paroled to. days after I parole, my pro officer comes over and hands me a confidential. 10.30. That's what we call it 1030s, right? I'm like, what's this? He goes, you got told on. I'm like, I'm on the streets. Who told on me out here? He goes, oh, it's from in prison. They didn't know you paroled yet. I was just laughing. I'm like, really? He goes, I didn't have to give it to you, but I thought it was funny. Right? He goes, you know, he'll never get it.

He goes, you'll get told on even when you're off parole. It's just because people don't know that you're out. They don't know, you know, and you have a reputation. You're always going to get told on. And when people debrief or drop out of gangs and they debrief, they tell on every crime that they were involved in or that they witnessed. And so even though it might have happened 20 years ago, your name came up. Your name came up so you get a confidential, you know.

So it's not that like, they're not big deals, but they're a big deal at the parole board. Yeah. And the parole board wants you to answer for them. They want you to have an answer for it. right and I just finally went in there and said I understand why I'm getting told on it's not because I'm doing this stuff it's because my reputation you know people still see me as the person that I developed over a period of 30 years that's a very very you know big reputation that I I mean I developed over so many years I've only been not developing it for a handful of years right you know and not everybody believes that change is possible they think I'm over here hiding they think I'm over here like just trying to do that good for to go home. Right. You know, so I get it, you know, and that was the time that let me go.

Yeah. That's all you said. No, I mean, there was a lot more. Yeah. There was a lot more, but it was, I took response. I took not just responsibility, but accountability for like my gang involvement. Right. They asked me why I was involved in the gangs.

I said, look, I came into prison young, right? But it wasn't, the, the gang gave me a safe harbor. Yeah. But it also, the power corrupts. And it becomes very, like, toxic things. intoxicated, man. And I started noticing, like, the praise that I was getting for putting in work was stuff that I wished I had got my whole life. Right. You know, if people would have praised me for the good I'd done, I probably wouldn't have came to prison, you know, but people expect you to do good.

It's the, it's the, uh, it's the, uh, the, the, uh, the red, uh, red's parole hearing at the end of a shawl. Yeah. Yeah. Finally just comes in and says, I don't care if you let me go or not. Yeah. Yeah. And they let him go. Yeah. But he also takes, like, responsibility for, like I wish I could go back and change everything. I wish I could shake that fucking kid. Tell him what he was doing. And, you know, so you could tell him for the first time he really, like, it hit him. Yeah.

What he had done and how he'd gotten himself in there and just kind of just trashed. And that was what I did, right? I built a timeline. And I put every moment that led me to come to prison. And then another timeline after I came to prison that led me to the gang. Then I built another timeline that said, all the times this happened what I could have done different what I should have done different now when I was really young I really had no choices right you're dictated by your family right like when you're four

you don't have the mental maturity to go okay yeah you know your dad's being a dick right yeah I'm talking wrong I love my dad death but when he when he passed it's been one of the most devastating things in my whole life but you know uh I understand it now I didn't understand it then but looking back now that's the whole insight right the connected dots how did you become the person that thinks it's reasonable to kill somebody you know or that when somebody does die that it because like californian prison system i don't know by any other prison i don't know how you felt or how it wasn't for for you in the feds but i remember watching people get stabbed and i'm like man i only got 30 burpees left before i'm done so let me get these 30 done before they put the yard down you know because

I'm not going to be able to finish him otherwise. Or damn, I'm supposed to go to canteen tomorrow, but we're going to be on lockdown now for three weeks. Colby's heard of me, and this wasn't a stabbing. I might have seen stabbing. I've never seen by die from a stabbing or for me. But Colby's heard the story where, you know,

after being in the medium for three years, you just, you see so much stuff. You see so many fights and so many, and you're just like, it's it. I'm just over, not that I'm a part of it, but it's just like, this is just so stupid. And just, you know, you're desensitized.

Yeah. And so I was the low, I'd been there a few months. And this guy, he'd been complaining of heart pains. People have probably heard this, I'm sure. Heart pains. He went to medical and they said, come back tomorrow. And he came back the next day. He said, no, no, come back on Monday.

Come back on Monday. And he's like, I really, this is killing me. Man, is it big, maybe probably 30 years old, big fat black guy. And he's like, it's really killing me. And he hurt. Something's wrong. And they're like, bro, come back on Monday. And so he was, I was at my locker.

We had like the three foot lockers, right? You know, you use the top of it for everything. And I'm sitting there doing something. And I can, we had, at the low, you had the five foot wall. So I could just see over the five foot wall. And I see him coming. He's coming down the hallway. And then, he falls right in front of my cell.

You know, there's no door. So it's a cube. He's a big fat guy. And the way his body hit the ground and rocked. So he kind of slid a little bit, and then his body, like, rocked back and forth. Like, no muscle tension at all. Yeah. He's done.

You, I knew right then. He, I think he was dead before even hit the ground. He was dead. Yeah. And he, boom, boom, boom. And people are, sorry, people heard, they're yelling at his name. They're all, look, oh, what's a? And my first thought was, because I was from the medium, this doesn't really happen at low as much.

But I thought, you know, it didn't matter. If somebody died, they're locking you down for maybe a day or two. Well, it's not always. Sometimes they weren't. open it right back up. But I remember thinking, fuck, they're going to lock us down. And I grab my coffee and I step over his body and I walk down the hallway to go get coffee because I know they're going to lock us down. I'm going to be stuck in my fucking cell and I got nothing. And so then I keep the coffee up and come back. And of course, by this time, medical's running in. They put him on the fucking thing. It takes like four of them to lift him up. He's so big. And they're acting like they're doing his, you know, he's dead. Yeah. They never die in the prison. It's always on the, way to the to the yeah yeah yeah you know they they load him up and they was really kind of shocking how fast they got there but you know within a minute or two he's gone and i was thinking like i just i talked to this guy for i've been a month a couple once you know but i've been i've talked to him

several times he's a nice guy i stepped over him to go get some coffee you fucking could speak about it just because like i want to go get some hot coffee before a lock is down this guy means nothing to me yeah this guy is a stick of furniture you know it's like they're removing the plight one of the plastic chairs in the big room. Yeah. You go, you know, but he hit the round and, and,

but you know, you do, he becomes completely desensitized to it and it's, and it's, and looking back, I think, he just stepped over that, dude.

Yeah, like it was nothing. Yeah, like it was nothing. Yeah. That's kind of how it is like, you see people getting attacked. I remember like one of the last things, one of the last brutal stabbings I seen, man,

I was just thinking to myself. I looked over and I went, damn, I was supposed to take a test tomorrow, you know, for my building maintenance program. And I'm like, I'm going to miss that fucking test. And I know that Mr. Honol, his name is Mr. Honol's going on vacation for like a couple months. I'm not going to get my certificate, you know, for a long time. Yeah. You know, I want to get to the next level. I didn't give a shit.

This guy's still being stabbed, right? Yeah, he still goes through your head while he's still being attacked. Yeah, I'm not even watching it. Yeah, I'm not even looking. I'm just, I went back to do my burpees thinking, damn. man, I'm not going to be able to get this fucking test done. Yeah. And he's going to be gone.

He's going to be on vacation and just my luck, you know. If you're not a psychopath before you go into prison. Yeah. And I don't think that qualifies. I don't, I really don't think that qualifies, right? And I don't think it's a level of violence either. I don't think violence qualifies as you a psychopath either. I think it has a lot to do.

Like, do you care for people? Like more than you care for yourself, yes. Or as much as you care for yourself. Let's say that, right? And I mean, not more. But I think that like if you could do that you kind of lose the whole psychopath thing. You know what I mean? Like narcissism.

Like have you ever looked up narcissism in the DSM 5? Right. There's nine criteria and like everybody has three. Yeah. Everybody's on the scale. Yeah. At some point you're on. You may be at number four.

Yeah. You know, let's say it goes to 90. You know, you might be a night. But you're on the scale. Nobody's a zero. Yeah. And I think that's the same thing with like sociopathy, right? Like people.

Of course. There's some people that, but, you know, and it doesn't, I don't think it has to do. It doesn't necessarily have to do with violence in general anyway. There's plenty of CEOs that are psychopaths, you know, and they're high functioning, and they're perfectly fine, and they've got families and they're concerned about, you know, but. And that's one point. Right. But same thing with being a surgeon and having, like, cut into someone.

Like, a normal person cannot do that. Yeah, they can't physically make themselves cut into another human being. And do without our body. Yeah, exactly. They just can't do it. And they just go, right. But I got to get this guy's thing out. Like what we've got a drywall?

Yeah, I've got a fucking tea time here at a four. We got a, yeah. So they granted me parole in 2023. I remember I went to court. So, oh, here, let's go back one thing real quick. I don't like doing this. In September 28th of 2023, I was going to court. I had been going to court since 2019 on a new law in California on the felony murder.

I was trying to get that initial case drop. Right. So they said that if you, I don't know, I want to go through the whole thing, but anyway, they said if you weren't the shooter and you can prove that you didn't have like, uh, knowledge of it. Well, yeah, like you weren't involved in that part of it. Yeah. You can get the case dropped, right? There's more than that. But anyway, so I went back to court from 2019 to 2003. I was going back and forth to court. And I kept getting denied in the superior court and winning in the appeals court. So every time I got denied in the superior court, I go to the appeals court and they say, nope, you got to have this hearing now. Go back. No, you have this hearing. So we went through a whole, like a whole new trial almost, like an evidentiary hearing, but it was like witnesses came up, detectives, everybody came up from 1995, came back and we're testifying.

And eventually I got denied again by this judge. And the judge is like, hey, man, I'm going to deny you, but I'm actually going to recommend it should be paroled at the parole board. I'm like, really? Because I got denied on September 28th. I went to parole October 5th, a week later. Went to the parole board again. You better get that letter in the mail.

Well, he asked what I was thinking, right? But I didn't even ask him. Yeah, right? I'm like, I'm pissed off that he's denying me, right? Because he's denying me based not on his reading of the law as much as on how he feels about the law. Right. He don't like it. He don't like the fact that they change the law now asking prosecutors to come up with evidence

to approve an element of the crime that wasn't necessary 30 years ago. Right. And he said he didn't think it was fair. So he's like basically tells me, let the legislative judges let you out. Since the legislature made the law, let the legislative judges let you out. I'm not letting you out, right? But he did say you're one of the most rehabilitated dudes ever met. Right.

This is years into my rehabilitation. You lost this, right? But he's like, he's like, dude, all the reports I give from you from the county jail, because he'd been asking about me, he's like, you're in there helping people with their relapse prevention plans. You're in there doing this stuff. You know, you're not like, you're, we put you in the worst dorm in the county jail. And it was like two weeks later, it's the best dorm.

Right. You know, people are programming, cleaning, not bitching. Because people bitching the kind of jail about everything. Yeah, right? Like, oh, man, you didn't give me enough freaking peas on my tray or whatever. Even some of the stupidest shit, right? I'm like, what are you guys bitching about? You guys are all in here for committing crimes.

Right. If you wanted to eat as much as you wanted, just stayed out. Yeah. Right. So the guys, and I was like, I don't want to hear you guys bitching. You know, why are you guys bitching? They see, you know, they stop. But I also had, you know, tattoos that indicated, you know, who I was affiliated with.

And so they see them there on my back. You know, you can't see them now. But, and I had them covered up about a week before I got out. I had all my back covered up for, I just didn't want anybody out here to, like, judge me. You know, like, I found my shirt off for some reason. They judge me anyway. But, you know, I didn't want it to be like, oh, I know what that tattoo means and it becomes an issue.

Because I did go over to that, I don't want to say, S&Y or it's not, but a 50, 50 yard or whatever. And stay, it put me in a situation with my former associates that, like, we're no longer on good terms. You know, I'm not in the hat. Like, I'm not like, they're not actively seeking me out. Right. Things like that, right. But if I ever went back to prison, I'd be in trouble. Right.

Out here, if they see me out here, it's not a big deal. You know, I didn't go debrief and tell on them and do all that. crazy shit that people do. I can do that. I just got put on a yard and I was like, well, shit, I'm staying. Yeah. You know, I go to the parole board in a couple years. I'm staying. I'm not doing this. And it was doing that is actually that Dana gave me the opportunity to really do a lot of the work that the parole board had been asking me to do, you know, because over there, you're still in it, even if you're not. On this side of the yard, I was like, these dudes don't I didn't care what I do.

You know, like none of the MS. I didn't give shit who I was. You know, just, I just did my own program. I met a couple of dudes that I knew from the mainline from years and years before. I'm like, oh, man, that's where you guys were at. I didn't know. So, and we hung out and they were working for the same thing.

They were trying to get out. So when I paroled, when I got granted parole, that's one of the things he said, you finally took responsibility and accountability for all your prison stuff. You know, because you were honest with this. We're going to let you go. Right.

And I'm like, shit, I should have been honest years ago. You know, I was thinking of myself and I got out of on March 13th of 2024. You know, now ironically enough, I work in prison, you know. So I go back in now and I spend four days a week with 300 different guys and I worked teaching them the things that I learned that got me out. Right. but not so much about how do you manipulate it. Even though you can see guys, that's all they want. Yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean? They're going to try to fake it. But it doesn't work. These parole board members, I try to explain that to them, dude. They see thousands of you guys a day. Yeah. You know, throughout their careers, they've seen thousands of you guys. You don't think that they're not able to spot a manipulator.

And they're like, you don't get wrong. They don't always get it right. There's guys now that there's one guy, man. He got paroled since I've been out. since I've been working in there, he had got granted parole. And as soon as he comes back from parole board, he's like, man, I love gang banging. I'm like, you're a fucking idiot. He's like, what?

I'm like, bro, you're not out yet. Yeah. And he got his, he had his date rescinded. They took it from him. Not for that, but they were going to transfer him to one of those yards that people aren't allowed to stay on. And he refused to transfer. I said, so you'd rather do a life sentence?

You talk about how your old lady's sick and dying. Yeah. You know. And so you're going to miss out on all that. Because he doesn't want, because he wants to save face. You want to save face, right? And I told him, I said, dude, the prison that you're in, it's a really low level prison.

I work in a low level prison. Yeah. I'm like, dude, you're already not gang banging. Yeah. You're just saying you are. You know what I'm? Because you don't have any write-ups. You haven't done anything.

And if this is what you want from life, then you're home. Then why you even try to go? Right. Oh man, he don't like me much anymore, but he comes to the group still, but he just, you can tell he's like, so blood hurt about losing his date. But I'm like, you lost your date. You gave it back. You know, they gave it to you and said, yeah, you can go home.

And you're like, no, I don't want it. And you gave it back to him. I said, it might not have been something you did at the parole board, but you act like these people around here aren't telling on you. Right. You know, I said, if you've got 2,000 dudes on the yard and only 10% of them are snitching, that's still 200 people that are telling

that's a lot of motherfuckers you know, you know where ARDAP is? Uh-uh. It's the residential drug abuse program in a federal prison. And you go, it's a nine-month program,

but shit, some people will be, they'll be in their year and a half. They just keep recycling them. Yeah. They just, there's fuck-ups. But I would see guys go to the program,

come back, and like they bring them back. So they put them in a special unit. They go to the program. Then they'd come back. after nine months they graduate and they come back and they would walk in and guys be like oh they call them like a super dapper like oh you're a super dapper like you're you're all better now right yeah and these guys shit man I was fucking I fucking I fooled them people I was thinking that shit I you know the thing is the art app program has it really lowers the recidivism right like people go in that program they don't come back um that's you know and but they're the guys that come in and I'm thinking to myself like Because a couple of these guys made a crack about you being a super dapper now, which means like you're a good guy, like, oh, you're a good citizen now.

Yeah. You had to jump in and throw that in there. And you don't know which one of these guys is going to get on the computer because you don't have to write a note in federal prison. You get on the computer with your regular email system. And you can send a member right there to staff. You can send a note right there to staff. You can write the doctor, the head of the fucking RDAP program. So-and-so just came in here and said he was fake.

and these guys will do it. They'll all do it. Yeah. So you walked in there because a couple of guys were joking around. And these are your buddies. They're not, you know, and maybe they're haters. Yeah. But you're just saying stupid shit.

And you're going to come right back here. With that attitude, you're going to come right back here. You know, it's about changing your attitude. To stay out of prison, you have to change your attitude. It's not just because if your attitude changes, your outlook changes, then your behavior changes. All the time. You know, we say there's three elements of remorse, right? Like, remorse isn't like, I feel bad.

Three elements is like, change your heart, change your mind, change your direction. And that's what you're talking about. You're talking about perspectives, right? Change your perspective in life. Change your attitude about life, right? Like I tell people all the time talking some lady this morning. And she goes, man, you really deserve to be out. And I'm going, no, I don't.

I don't deserve a day of freedom. But I earn it every day. I wake up every morning knowing that I've been gifted with freedom. It's not a freaking right. You know, I don't deserve it. I mean, I'm responsible for too many people's lives being destroyed. I don't deserve. By the law, I probably should have never got out, right? Just because they changed some random law. But morally, them people aren't coming back. Their families aren't getting their family members back. I mean, not even the ones that I was involved in. Just just say the ones that maybe I ordered or stuff like that, you know, I was like, man, I don't deserve none of this. But that also makes me super grateful to have it at the same time. So what I do every morning, I wake up and I'm like, all right, another day, an opportunity to earn what I have, you know. And it's not, sometimes that just means kicking back.

It's taking care of myself. That being grateful is what will keep you out. Yeah, to keep me out. So that dude is not grateful for anything he has what a dude I was talking about. I had a question for you, though, when you were in prison, before you went to prison and you're committing all your crimes, right? How often did you look over your shoulder? Almost never. I hate this question because everybody would always, like I wasn't, I wasn't in a gang or violent.

And despite me being here to. day talking to you, even though I may seem a little arrogant, you have no fucking idea how arrogant I was on the street. I mean, but prior to prison, I was such, I was so overwhelmingly confident and arrogant and narcissistic. And I, like, people always say, like, when I was on the run, I was on the run for three years. Yeah, bro, like, I got the FBI, the Secret Service, the marshals. I've got, I'm, they're looking for me nonstop. And people will always say, you know, oh, you must have been looking over your shoulder the whole time and I wasn't I'd pull over I got a driver's license I'll get a ticket yeah I got the car's in the name of the of the ID it's an ID issued by that state yeah you know what I'm

saying I've got passport like I was never looking I never felt like that I I um you know it was so I mean I because I know I want to say what I know people I want to make it sound not so I'm gonna make it sound like that, but I don't want to lie either. So I didn't feel that way. Yeah. Because I would say like, I don't either now, right? When I was living that life, I wasn't either as a kid, I never thought I was going to get caught for anything. Right. Right. It just never occurred to me that possibility. I am so good at committing crimes, even though I was locked up all the time. Right. You know, in my brain, I was like so good at this shit. Yeah, that's how I got. Every time I did get away from something, I became just, you get more and more emboldened and you start laying, I'm just that good.

Well, and that's what, so we talked about the robbery on the vans, right? The first one, I was profusely sweating. It was, oh, my God, you know, everybody, oh, me, they're going to see me. And then by the end, I was just like, boom, boom, boom. Yeah, it's a job. So confident. Yeah, it's a job. Oh, boom, boom, let's get it done.

I mean, I was the same was stealing cars. When I was stealing, like, the first couple cars I stole that weren't, like, family members. It was, like, took me, like, 10 minutes to get the ignition, you know. But that felt like 10 hours in somebody else's car waiting for them to come out of their house, you know. then by the end it was take like 20 seconds, you know, and it was just like, huh, cho choo-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-all. You know, there were times people left their car keys running in the front driveway,

and I just go there, boom, take-all, you know. Now you even think about it, you know, afterwards. Just look in the river mirror a couple of times. I got around the corner, I'm good, you know, once I get, like, but in prison there was this thing. I used to say that to people, I used to be at the top of the woodpile, right? You know, and there's always people trying to pull me back down, right? trying to take my spot.

Right. So I had to constantly be ahead of everybody, constantly thinking about what today, like, so at the end of every day, I would sit in my bed and I'd think about barbox locked, nobody's coming out anymore. And I'd sit there and I'd go, okay, where was everybody stationed out on the yard? Like Northerners, for example, they always had like people stationed at the yard. All right, who's talking to who, you know, like all day, all night.

Like I would, not all night, but for like an hour, I'd review every interaction that I had, every little thing that I know. this, that was different, out of place. And then what did that mean? And then what did I need to do tomorrow? I see, that's a lot of anxiety. It's not really, it didn't create anxiety. It's like a chess game.

Oh, okay. Right? Like, for me, I'm not an anxious person in general. So it wasn't that. It was like, okay, it's like, for me, it was like building concrete, right? Like, okay, today I need to level the land. I need to pack the dirt. You know, I need to put up the string lines.

And then I would think, okay, tomorrow, I got, to tomorrow I got to go in. You know what? I got to build the forms. I want to make sure I get the rebar in. But I noticed that the dirt on the corner over here was a little soft, so I got to go. You know, it's just saying, it's just like planning for the next day. Right.

Planning for the next game. Or if you're like, you know, you want to use a sports analogy, just planning for the next game. Watching film, you know, so the next game. That's just what it felt like. It's like every day I just sit in there and go, okay, all right. Now I need to go talk to this dude. I need to talk to this dude tomorrow. I need to make sure I get this taken care of.

This dude is out of place for some reason. That sounds like setting up a scam. Yeah. I would, I would, I would like write everything out. Don't forget this. Got to do this. Got to get this before I get this. Got to do this.

But I could do this at the same time. Yeah. By the time that comes in, I'll have already gotten this. Like that skill, and it is a skill. If it is developed for good is awesome. Yeah. Right. Because that's what I do today.

Right. Like tomorrow I got to go into class, for example, or Monday. I have to go into class. already have the whole curriculum planned out for the day, you know? Right. And I've thought about it. And I'm like, okay, this is what I need to talk about. This is how I want to present this.

This is how I probably get the most effect, you know, things like that. So like that being, and then reviewing the day, like, who in the group, like, understood what I was talking about, who didn't, right? Who was getting it? Who was fucking off? You know, things like that. I review it afterwards so that I know, like, who I need to focus on. Because I don't focus on the guys that are fucking off. I don't.

Are you going to fuck off? It's your, my tie is by you. Yeah. You know what I mean? I got something you don't call freedom. Yeah. You know, and you want it, but you're fucking off. So the guys that are interested, that the guy that are taking it in,

other guys that I focus on, you know, and the other guys that were fuck, because I was that guy that fucked off in class. Right. I didn't care about getting freedom. I went to class because the Pro Board said I had to, not because I wanted to. It's just at the, in the beginning, I didn't go for that. I went, Pro Board said I got to take classes. Okay, I'm going to take these classes.

anger management i ain't got an anger problem i wasn't mad i was calculated right i wasn't angry you know just got to be stabbed you got i'm not mad at him over it he just has to be stabbed because this he violated the rules you know you put everybody else in jeopardy you know that's how i felt about it at the time like people get killed shouldn't have done what you did you know sometimes it was unjust right people didn't do something or they got hated on or whatever but then i'd always say you joined the gang you know it was dangerous when you took it you know I always say that if you get, if you get stabbed in prison, you brought it on yourselves. Yeah.

Almost always, you know, you know, you ran up a debt. You talk bad about somebody. Yeah. You gambled or you, you know what I'm saying? Like, you did something. And typically, they give you lots of chances. It's not like, hey, he was disrespectful. I'm going to go stab that guy.

Oh, no, no, no. There was lots of chances for you to check out, you know, or get off the yard and check in or do this or get somebody to send you money or do this or work it off somehow. There's a lot. There was a guy, man, asked me one time, he goes, there was this guy on the guard's name was LJ. And they were like, man, why do you give LJ so many chances? I said, because I can't stand him. And they're like, yeah, you think, I said, no, but by time I get him, by time I

I have this dude removed, if he survives this and he gets back there to the hole, he's not going to have any leg to stand on. He's going to talk to them. They're going to be like, dude, you should have been gone a long time ago. If it were me, you know. Right. And they would always say it doesn't pay to be Tommy's friend, you know, because my friends, if they fucked up or gone quick, because you're next to me.

Right. I have to be able to trust you, you know, with everything. So, you know, you build a coalition. I have to be able to trust you. I can't trust you. You're gone. I mean, gone. I might not have you stabbed, but you're going on the next mission.

You're out. You know? And then I always believed in the philosophy. Every time you send two enemies to the whole, you send one friend. Yeah. So, like, for example, this guy's a dope head and people knew I didn't like the dope fiends in prison right so I would always say okay you owe $10,000 are you owe $2,000 you owe $500 the 500 guy you need to stab to do me right no you're like no man though 2,000 guy you stabbed the 500 in and one of them's leaving that day right one's getting stabbed and one's going to the hole but every time I did that those guys would get mad at me it's because they didn't want to leave they didn't want to stop getting out of so they get back to the hole and the guys in the hole,

they would talk shit about me. But I didn't really care. My reputation, you know, I say I live beyond reproach. I followed the tenets of the little power to a T. I didn't break the rules. I didn't use drugs. I was never in debt. I never owed anybody nothing, you know.

So I wasn't worried about any of that stuff. But if you allow too many people to say bad things about you, then it becomes true, even if it's not. So every time I send it. two or three guys to the whole that I knew we were going to talk shit, I'd send somebody that's going to talk me up. You know, it was just another way of,

you know, staying in power, you know. You had to in that environment, you know. And if you didn't, and that was one of the things I was talking about earlier. Most Dofine shot callers got taken out quick. Within a year, they would wreck themselves. I stayed a shot caller for 20 years, you know. That's a long-ass time.

And I did get stabbed, but not because of that, which was ironic because I got stabbed because of my co-defendant on the first murder. His name's Tommy. We're the same age. We came into prison at the same time. Our numbers are only like 100 or two apart. So mine was K-709-05.

His was like K-7-1 something, right? So they were right next to each other. So I got a phone call came in from another prison to the prison I happened to be at. Well, Tommy Miller was there too, but he just happened to be on another facility. and the guy goes, hey, is there a guy there named Tommy?

Yeah? Is he about this age? Yeah? Is he one of the ones that stabbed Colgrove? Yeah? Well, he needs to be stabbed. So they stabbed me.

Two guys came home and start standing it. I mean 18 times. So I get back to the hole. You know, after I refuse me. Most of the wounds are superficial. You can see some of the scars

on my head and stuff where they stab me in the face and, you know, in my chest and my back and stuff. And I get to the hole and, um, the guys were like, why did they stab you?

I'm like, fuck, I have no idea. You know? And the guy, one of the guys that stabbed me, P-Ced up that same day. Like, when they got to the back, he just immediately told the cops, hey, man, I can't. I don't want to be anywhere near these guys.

I think I fucked up. The other guy lost his eye when we were fighting. I put my thumb in his eye. And it was in his eye. So he wasn't back there for about three weeks. He was in medical getting his eye tended to. So when he showed up, he said that they ordered him to hit me

because this dude did it. Just other member of my organization having me wagged. And it didn't make any sense to all the other guys from the organization. Like, why did, he's a good dude. Right. And then one of the guys that ordered it

from the yard that got the phone call was ordered to report to the back. So next time something needs to be done, you need to come back here and answer for this, for having me stabbed. So he comes back there. He said, well, do call this You know?

So when they wrote me a kite, I said, so-and-so said to stab the dude that stabbed Cold Grove. I'm like, which one? Right. And they're like, what do you mean, which one? And so my co-defendant's name's Tommy 2.

Are he serious? Yeah, Tommy Miller. And Tommy Miller was in the back. He was already in AdSec 2. So, and he was the one to have the beef with that dude. You know, they had like a falling out when they were in a shoe together.

So it was just, a stupid mistake, but it could have cost me my life, you know. But I'm grateful it didn't. It actually taught me a lesson that day. And there's a lot of stuff that happened in prison. A lot of things took place that I'm not proud of them. I'm glad I went through them. I'm not going to lie.

Like I'm not happy for the victims in the case, right? And I'm not, you know, but I'm also not. I think that life has a way of working out if you let it, right? if you allow you're up and yourself and in my case man i'm out i'm doing well i got a really good life uh i'm grateful for the every moment you know i don't like being out here in florida i never thought i'd come to florida i sat in prison thinking man it'd be nice to go to the everglades you know i want to try to wrestle an alligator or something you know but you know but it's not you know not that I'm over here doing that, but here I am, you know.

And it is as humid as they say that it is. It's stuck in horror. Yeah, it's terrible. So I have a YouTube channel, Cell Block 64. I've started to put out content. I'm trying to, you know, work, you know, do interviews with guys coming out of prison, specifically California. I do have opportunities coming up.

I also have more content coming out. I've interviewed a few people. I work with DOCTV Unleashed. He does most of my editing. You know, I'm not good at that part. yet I'm trying. But I don't want to just talk about prison. I want to evolve, right?

So right now that's just what I have. Right. You know, but I want to evolve into like other genres too, you know. So, you know, if you can subscribe, hit the notification, all, all the things. Like, watch the videos, you know, help me out here. You know, I'm struggling. But I'm actually doing well, actually. I think for somebody who hasn't been on there very long, you know,

500 subscribers. I had 300 subscribers before I even put in a freaking a video, right? Yeah. So, I mean, that's not too bad. But, you know, I'm also open to questions. I think that for me, I like, is one of the things that I'm willing to answer questions, you know, not saying you're not, but a lot of people don't.

A lot of people on YouTube, you know, you're asking questions and they'll never get to the answer. Like, I want to, I'm curious about this, you know, and or they'll tell a story and then you just never get the full version of it. You know, I don't mind going back. I'm just trying to do something with my life that's not backbreaking. You know, I'm almost 50. You know, I don't sound that old, but I know I don't have 25 years of putting in concrete.

Yeah. You know what I mean, I don't, you know, so this is what I'm trying to do, you know? And I got out when I was 50. Yeah. I got out at 46. I'm 48. I'm going on 49, but I mean, that's close enough, man. Yeah.

You know, it's there. Things hurt. Yeah. I told my wife, she goes, I started doing epitites, right? And she's like, why are you doing that? I said, because I want to be able to breathe and tie my shoe at the same time. Yeah. You know, I mean, as simple as that, you know?

I gained 40 pounds when I got out of prison and not good pounds, you know. When I first got out, I was doing really well. I was lifting weights. I was shooting steroids. I got super big. And I was doing really well. But then as soon as I stopped the steroids and I stopped working out, it all went to my belly.

you can try and get rid of that shit now. I'm just so fucking good out here. Right? I mean, you know, you go to dinner with someone. They're like, oh, what do you? You know, my wife, I'm like, what do you want? I'm like, I have promised you anything on this fucking menu is amazing. Like, I'll take any.

I mean, I've never, I have yet, I have never gone to dinner and not had something that wasn't. Even if I ordered the wrong shit, it's amazing. Yeah. I went to Cracker Barrel last night. I never been to a Cracker Barrel, right? So we went. And it was, I was like, man, this shit is awesome. And my partner, a friend of mine that was there, he's like, really?

I go, bro, don't get all boozy. You did a bunch of time, too, right? This is way better than what we were eating in there, you know? And I feel that sentiment, too. But there are places I won't go back to. Like, the food, it wasn't that they wasn't great. It's just, I really just didn't like that style of food or whatever, right? But, like, I was going to this restaurant, like, at least once a week over there in Monterey.

And it was a seafood restaurant. And I'll tell you what, I didn't know that seafood could taste that good. I'd stopped eating it in prison. You know, when I was in prison, I was working out a lot. I would buy tons of mackerel, tons of sardines, and I would just eat them out of the bag. I wouldn't even bother putting them in anything. Yeah, it's just for protein. Yeah.

And I would just like, sometimes I'd drink water with it to like a pill, you know. And then the little fish patties they gave you, they were garbage, right? I got out of prison. and I didn't think I wanted to eat seafood anymore because prison had just ruined it. I went to this one restaurant and I seen this fish go by and I was like, man, that fucking looks good. Let me get that. So I ate it and man, it tastes it so good. I was like, I started going back every week.

Every time I got paid, I'd go to that restaurant, you know? It was expensive too, though. That was one of the things I didn't realize when I first got out of prison how expensive everything was. I mean, we live in California too, so I don't know what it is like out here, but $7. for diesel and I drive a diesel you know I'm like god that's it's expensive it ruins it you know the whole experience I can't even buy a house the house I live in is probably 300 300 that you think about 400 000 400 000 in california is probably worth millions one 1.8 it's 2400 square feet 4 bedroom close to oh yeah three bath two car garage a brand new community

community. Yeah. And you're talking at least 800. And it only depends on where in California. So like if you were in the Bay Area, you're talking two and a half million dollars. If you're in L.A., it's like a million and a half. San Diego, a million and a half. Fresno, a million. Right. You know, some places in the Central Valley, Madera, a place like that, like 800,000. Right. Just depends on where you live. But, yeah, California's fucking expensive, man. I was looking to buy a house when I was still in Monterey. I could. couldn't even think, I couldn't even think about buying a house. Right. You know, it's just, I was in a two-bedroom apartment that was like 650 square feet. I was paying $2.50 a month, you know, in rent. I was like, there, there's absolutely no way I'm going to be able to buy a house over here. But I got lucky. We now own 20 acres, but just by a happenstance, you know, like we've moved off of that property, probably 15 rollaways of junk. You know, you know,

You know, so when we got the property, it's full of junk. There's seven houses on the property and a church. The only thing that wasn't falling apart was the church, right? So we sold the church and it paid off 90% of the property. And then the other houses, we started remodeling them, you know, but we also, we rent two out and we live in one. And then we're in the process of remodeling some of the other ones, you know? But it's like you're taking all this junk. Right.

Some of them I'm recycling because metal is recycled. I don't give a fuck if I drive it down the hill and get $100. It was $100 bucks I didn't have yesterday. You know, then it's free. It's just junk they left on the property. They left us tractors. They left us all kinds of shit. You know, there you have it.

You know, a crane, a bus that still runs like a tour bus. You know, a crane that still works. You know, I'm like, fuck. But they were like some militia. I was going to say, it sounds like... We have a cemetery. dude like literally we have a cemetery with people in it school yeah i think that's cool well the thing is i don't have to pay taxes yeah because it's a cemetery i just have to file for i haven't filed

for it yet but but trust me that's getting filed you know and then they just put a new person in there like recently right legally you've got to permit for it and everything we all permits to shit for everybody that's in there but what it happened was the church was connected to like some Yeah. They got busted with all kinds of machine guns and shit. So some people went to jail. The rest of them moved to Idaho. You know, and then they sold the property. But it was on the market for nine years. Nobody would buy it. Because there was all the junk. Yeah. A lot of junk. And a lot of people like have bad juju. You know, with the property, they're like, bro, there's cars buried out there. There's probably other people that aren't in the cemetery. Some of those bodies probably have more than one person in it. Right. They're telling us this stuff. After we, You bought the place. People are, because we're not from that community. Right. You know?

And the people from the community are like, dude, you bought that property? There's a reason why I was on the market for nine years, you know. You get what I live in prison for 30 years. Yeah. I don't give a shit about none of that. You know, I'm so far away from everybody else that, you know, the old saying you can't throw a rock and hit your neighbor, I can't shoot and hit my neighbor. Right. I don't shoot, by the way.

I don't have guns and I don't shoot. But I'm just saying, if I did. I couldn't have used a slingshot and hit my neighbor put it that way. And I love it that way. But it's an hour. It's inconvenient. It's like an hour to Walmart to even get groceries. Right.

You know, so it's inconvenient. Anytime we go down the hill, it's like we have a list or down there all day. You know, because we live in the, you know, where the Sequoia National Park is at. No, but I've heard of it. Yeah, we live right next to it, like three miles from the entrance. So it's like beautiful. when we get a lot of tourists you know so we're thinking about like we do my mom in that community my mom owns like air bambes so we make tons of money off of that not me my mom does but you know it's just

it's a nice area i love it up there at first i loved it then i hated it but now i love it again right i went to that thing where it was so inconvenient to get anything done that i started like fuck we shouldn't have moved up here then i was like fuck i'm glad we moved up here because every time go to town, I don't want to be there. I'm like, I can't fucking stand it down here. How did you get the job at the prison? I got recruited. I had to fill out paperwork and application, right? But I actually got recruited. One of the guys that I worked with in prison, the organization I work for is in every prison in California and even into USP and Victorville. And what happened, they just started there recently. But what happened was the guy that I worked with in prison that was my life coach, that's my title. God, I got out and I was doing really well. I started my own handing my service. I was doing really well. And he's like, bro, you should go back in and talk to the guys.

I'm like, nope. He goes, come on, man. I'm not going back in the prison, bro. I said, I have a map of California on my wall. And every prison that's on there, I have a mark around it so I can drive around it. So I have to see it. And then I said, when I do get inconvenienced by having to drive by one, I like put on my blinders.

I don't want to see the motherfuckers, right? But he kept getting at me and saying, hey, man, you should go in. You should. You should talk to these guys. They need you. And then I started thinking about it. Like, had they not got out, had this organization ever had come into existence, I wouldn't have got out, right?

Not only because of the work I did with the guy, my life coach, but also their advocacy was like, they're the ones that wrote SB 260. SB 261, 1308, all the laws that affected me when I were at a parole board, these are the ones that got it passed. They're the ones that, so I was like, I kind of owed them a debt of gratitude, you know, and they were looking for people with my history to go back into the prison. Because it's easy for some guy who got to prison and never got in trouble to get out, right, especially in our environment now.

But how is he going to connect to the guys in prison that have been getting into trouble, but are now trying to get their lives together. Yeah. You know, you get a guy who had a reputation for being a jerk, right, for being, you know, involved in everything, comes back into the prison. How the fuck did you get out? You know, I got out because I did the work, right?

There's no shortcuts, you know. I use that, I use an analogy. I said, the door of the freedom is square for a reason. And I say, why? And I say, you got to be a square. You got to be a square to get out, right? And if you're not, if you cut a corner, it's no longer square. Yeah.

Right. I like, I draw it on the board. Right. If you cut that corner, is it square? And I said, no. You know, you ain't getting out. You know, there's no shortcuts. There might be like, I mean, there might be for some people.

I understand that your situation is different. But for prison, California prison, that doesn't work. Right. You know what I mean? Look at, there's people, you know, we can use big names, people that are out now. But they should, if they testified in court in the feds, they've testified in court up and down California throughout the country. They were being placed in hotels while they were doing it, you know, but they still weren't

getting out until recently, right? And why? It wasn't because, because they didn't do the work. They were still, even though they were telling on everybody, right? Let's be honest, that's what they were doing. I don't care, I don't care that that's how they got out. I mean, cool. Good for you.

I'm glad that, you know, whatever. Next two of us. Yeah, right? I'm just saying, like, I don't really care about that part of it. But that doesn't work for everybody. Yeah. You know, not everybody has that opportunity. Maybe not everybody was so deeply entrenched in that lifestyle

that they have the valuable information that they needed to get out. So how else you're going to get out? It's an avenue. And it's the only one you have. So let's go. You know, so I started looking at like that nice thing. Like, I mean, at one point I would probably even, I mean, we talked about this, I think, worthwhile.

Like, I respected that about you. Like, you were cool with that. You're clean. About, you know, how you got out, right? How you got your time reduced, right? Like, cooperated. Yeah. Yeah.

You're the dance around it. I'm just saying, you're not going to hurt my feelings. No, I was thinking to myself when I first watched it, I was like, it's not that you were unapologetic. It was that you prioritized you. Yeah. Over everybody else. Nobody else cared about me.

No. And I thought to myself, I said, that's bold for one, right? But it also shows a tremendous amount of awareness. Like, hey, you know what? I have this opportunity. And you were right. The people you were cooperating against weren't great people. No.

Right? Like we were talking about Herc, right? I remember that interview. I was laughing. Yeah, yeah, right? And he got all upset. He got so much more upset than that interview shows. Yeah.

You talked about that with that other guy. You were talking about it with you there, right? And I was laughing because I can, I see that in him. But here's the thing. Every single person that he's ever interviewed has the potential, if not already, cooperated in some way, shape, or form. Yeah. Trust and believe that.

Right. And I didn't watch all his interviews, but I did watch some of them. And I guarantee you some of those dudes are cooperating in some. some shape, right? So for him to take this high horse, you stupid motherfucker, everybody cooperated against you. Yeah. And you sat in prison, yeah, I'm down. I did all this time for somebody else when I didn't have to. We've had multiple guys on the channel who was who cooperated, who, who didn't there. Yeah, good lawyer, bro. I got two years. And you're like, no. You got two years for a Yeah, a gun possession?

Like you're a, you're a felon who's been to prison five times, and you got two years for a felon in possession of a gun? Yeah. Like the mandatory minimum, the feds is three years. Yeah. And there's no way you're getting three years. You're getting, you know, you're an armed career criminal, and you've been already arrested in gone to prison like four times for drugs and violence.

You should be, it's a 30-year sentence. Yeah. Maybe 15, maybe 20. Yeah. But you got two? It's like, but, you know, I don't, I don't, it's not my place. Yeah, absolutely. You should call people.

I'm not calling you. So that's like one of the things. That's why I named my YouTube channel Cell Block 64, right? So most people don't know what it is. They think it's like a prison or a block, but it's actually just an industrial cleaner. Okay. It's an ammonia based cleaner that they give, that's made by the prison industry authority in California. Right.

And we use it to clean ourselves. Yeah. in prison and give us, that's what they give us to clean ourselves or clean the day rooms or showers or whatever. So I should say keeping it clean. This is just, let's just tell the truth. And I'm not going to do like, you know, like you said, I'm not going to just call people out on their shit.

But I may make some addendums, you know, to videos like, look, you know, might not happen exactly like he said it in or whatever. Or I might confront them at the time. Like, hey, could it have happened differently, you know, were you there? Right. You know, because I get a lot of that, like people weren't there and they tell these fancy stories. I'm like, I know you weren't there because I was there. Right. I was there and you weren't on the yard. But I actually, I respected the

fact that when you said it, there was no apology in it. It was like, look, dude, I did this and I'm not sorry. Even to him, you know, to hurt, you know. And I like what you said in that one video. There's absolutely no way he had read my shit or seen any of my videos. Oh, yeah. Before he put me on here. And then turn around and claim that I don't work with people, who cooperated or, you know, stuff like that, right? And I was laughing. I was like, that's funny as hell, you know, because it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter.

I think if I would have had my time to do over again, I'd have done it a long time ago, right? Like I went to that 50-50 yard thing. So what made that yard really bad was it was a PC yard before it became a, so what they did in California, they decided to take different facilities, mainline facilities and PC facilities, and they say, okay,

we're going to now call this a program facility, non-designated yard, meaning, and this is a GP yard, so all these dudes are gangsters. Yeah. And we're going to take dudes and put them over there.

Yeah, that's the bad. Boom, right? And then we're going to take dudes from here and put them over there. And boom, it erupts, right? Well, I was one of the ones

that went from one of these to that one. Yeah. And when I got over there and I noticed that nobody gave a shit about me, my reputation or anything, I'm like, I should have, did this 25 fucking years ago.

I'd have been out. Yeah, I'm not on a YouTube channel. Yeah. Nobody, nobody ever says anything ever. Yeah, I don't, you know. Yeah. Who gives us all far? And I was, it's always the, I think, oh, when I was interviewed by Ian, I said to

Ian, I said, you know, I had to weigh the respect of my fellow scumbagg, you know, inmates, you know what I'm saying, against 12 years of freedom. Yeah. It was not, there was no. choice at all like 12 years yeah yeah there's i'll take the 12 years like that because i'm trying to impress a bunch of guys that don't give a fuck about me they're not going to take care of you and they're not care about me yeah yeah yeah yeah no i was in i was i was i thought about that too i said man i wish i would have done this i wish i'd have done that different if i could have got less time by doing this

i would have done that i think about it now because the people that suffered i mean besides myself are the people that cared for me the old time i was in prison right yeah it wasn't so what i was loyal to some gang. I was loyal to some people, right, that have absolutely no loyalty to me whatsoever, right? I mean, we're loyal to each other at the time. No, we're not. First opportunity they got to take over my fucking trafficking business, it was gone. If I wouldn't do what I said and I was constantly working at chess game, it would have been gone. And I remember when I decided to step back. So before I went to that yard, I actually went to the brothers and said, I'm done. I'm going to go home. They changed the laws. Dude, I got an opportunity to go home. It was a scary.

moment, you know, I'm thinking, man, I just ain't going to work out so well, right? But the guy was like, man, he was dying of cancer, right? I'll use his name. His name is Robert Christian, right? His name is Blinky. He died of cancer. But he was one of the originators of the organization, right? And you notice I've been staying away from the name on purpose.

But anyway, he said, uh, if I had the opportunity to go on and take him, I'm dying of cancer, you know, he just spent 42 years and all horrible, brother, dying, a die of cancer in prison. Yeah, yeah, liver cancer. He had hepatitis C that turned into liver cancer eventually, right? So he tells me, he's like, man, he gave me a couple weeks to think about it. He said, Tommy, I want you to think about it for a couple weeks. And he goes, because I want you to understand what that means.

He goes, no more cell phones, period. No more drugs, sales, nothing. No more getting involved in the politics. If you don't mean, that means you don't get to know what's going on at all. You know, there's no consulting you. There's none of that, right? All that money you made is gone. You know, I'm like, all right.

There was no, think about it for two weeks or give me some time, right? I was like, right. And there was days where I was like, yeah, I mean, I'm back in, you know, before I made the decision, before you actually asked me. He said, I'll come back and I'll ask you in a couple weeks. I'll talk. I'm like, all right. I go through days where I'm like, yeah, I'm out. No, I'm in.

No, I'm out. Because I get to think and overthinking it. Like, you know, I wasn't worried about being physically hurt. I was just more worried about like my reputation that I built and I'm just going to let it all go for what right? And then it was like then the day that that was the day that I'd be in and I'd be like oh I built this reputation I'm just going to let it go for what?

Then the days I was out, I was like, why don't I even build this reputation? Like this is stupid. It was for nothing, right? I spent all these years trying to be this fucking dude now it's for nothing. You're dying prison. I'm going to die in prison.

And then I went out there one day, I'm here, I was doing pull-os. Comes over and goes, so what's your decision? Somehow, bro. He's like, he shook my hand. He's like, well, good look, man. I said, fuck, I'm dead. I did. I thought I was dead.

I was like, the way he said it was like, I thought, oh. Wait for three guys are rushing right behind. Yep. I was looking around. I was like, but it took about probably like six months before I realized he was serious. he was serious. You know, like he was going to allow me to walk away. And I was happy about that.

So when I transferred to the lower level, actually. So California started doing this thing where no matter how many points you had, if you've been clean for a couple years, you do a behavior override and send you down to a lower level. So they sent me down to this level three. And then I remember I walked out onto the yard and everybody there was just dophines. All the whites were dophines. I walked over the wice tables, I introduced myself.

And I was like, damn, that are all dope fiends. All they were talking about was getting high. Hey, you get high, brother? No, I'm good. What you mean? You don't get high on nothing? No, you drink. No.

You drink? Nope. I said, bro, I'm here to go home. You know, and this is not the 50-50 yard. This is a normal yard. But I'm like, dude, I'm here to go home. And then they put me in a building maintenance class. And so I stopped going to the whites tables.

I stopped even going over there. I would go to work at building maintenance. I come out. I would do burpees on the volleyball court. There was a volleyball court that had a curb. And I would do burpees in the dirt side of the curb because you're not allowed to do them on the track. Because people are walking and running right over, right? So I do my burpees there and then I go home.

Never even go see the white stables. And they got nervous about that. They were like, okay, we know who you are. Why aren't you fucking with us? I'm like, bro, you guys are all dope fiends, right? All you're talking about is getting high. You're three weeks to the pad and you're trying to get high. I said, I don't get that.

You know, you got all these opportunities. This is your fifth term. You're three weeks from finishing it up and you're already trying to come back. Right? I'm just trying to get one shot. So I'm going to take, I said, there's opportunities. And so they left me alone. But they told on me all the time.

That was the fucked up part. Like, anytime somebody dropped out, they told on me. Anytime somebody got hit, I got told off for it. And that's what the Pro Board kept trying to explain to me that I wasn't getting. No long, no matter how long I was out, as long as I was on a yard where there was active white members, I was going to be seen as an active white member. And people were going to think that I had control of the yard because you had control over so long. Okay.

So it's not that they, it's not that like they're haters. it's just that they think you're involved. And if something went on, well, he must be involved. You must be involved. So for, yeah, here's a good example, for example, right? So they're not making shit up. No, they think that I'm calling shots from behind the scenes.

So this dude, Davy Jones has the yard. He's his white guy right that I was friends with. He's this big guy. His name is David Jones. He has the yard. So you order some guy here, right? They don't tell on David Jones. It's how on me.

Because they think that I told David Jones to have it done. Yeah, you're working through him. I'm working through him because remember in the beginning, I was telling you that's what I used to do. I would show up on a yard. And if the guy was running it accordingly, I'd let him keep running it. But I would dictate from behind because it gave me a lot of like security, but also like I wasn't out on front street. Yes, it's the Tony Soprano model. Yeah.

He lets his uncle, the figurehead, he's calling things, the shots behind the scenes. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Because he knows at some point the FBI is coming there. I'm good him. Yeah. I mean, but people knew that about, but I built that reputation.

So people knew that about me. So when I showed up on the yard, they meet, even David Jones, had the yard when I showed up. And he said, well, you want me? I said, I'm out, dog. He goes, what? And he knew me. So he's like, what do you mean? You're out.

Are you okay? I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just out, bro. He goes, bro, are you in any kind of trouble? I'm like, no, I'm not in trouble. I'm just out. I'm just trying to go home. You know, he's like, all right.

He goes, well, you know I'm going to get at Grumpy, right? Grumpy was another guy at another yard to let him know you're here. I'm like, that's fine. He knows I'm here already. I've seen him. Okay, but we're going to, you know, he wanted to do a double check. And then he came back, he goes, man, you're right, you're out. I'm like, yeah, I'm out.

You know, I told you I was out. So he started telling everybody I was out, but nobody believed him. I was telling people I was out, but nobody believed him, you know. And I understand why. You know, if I were in, if I was at the low end of the totem pole, too, I probably wouldn't believe it either. Why would you give up all that power? Why would you give up all that money?

Why did you? And for drug addicts, why would you give up all the dope? Right. You know, instead, you're over here going to school. Right? They look at him, you're going to school. You're learning stuff, you know? Because I left with college degrees and everything, right?

So they're like, you're learning things? Why? I sit in the day room because we still, I still had to follow some of the rules of prison. Like I still had to go to yard. I still had to go to the day room. It was our tier day room. I had to go. Yeah. Right. So I would find the table that's all just by myself right next to the cop shop, right next to the staff office. Right. There's nobody wanted to hang out there. Right. And I would do my college work in the day room. I'd sit there and study and do my homework and stuff because nobody would come over and sit down with me. Because they don't want to talk about dope, but the cops are right there. So I would just do it. They leave me alone. I just like, I just want to go home. They didn't believe me. But now that I'm out. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me a favor, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also, please share the video to anybody that you think might be interested.

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