Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Ivy League Lawyer | Wayne Boatwright

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Ivy League Lawyer | Wayne Boatwright

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Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine, and it's good for your eyes too, because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam, eye exams provided by independent optometrists. Yeah, waking up in the hospital was the most, the saddest thing ever for me, to realize I had committed this horrific crime. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm going to be doing an interview today with Wayne Boatwright. Wayne is an attorney who had, you know, basically had an alcohol problem.

He ended up getting a DUI and went to prison and has a very interesting story, a different type of story that I'm typically used to, or a different type of story that I'm typically used to kind of doving into. and let's check it out. So tell me about where you were, you know, yeah, where you were born, where you were raised, like. Sure, sure, Matt. You know, everybody's got their own story, right? And there's no doubt I have one. I look at myself as kind of like the American dream story.

I was raised by a single mother in California. We lived up and down the state as far north, there's been to Sino, as far south is Long Beach and everywhere in between as we moved. around a lot. I've lived in a trailer park, right? I've lived above a gas station in an apartment raised on government assistance. But I had a real focus and a natural intelligence that allowed me to go to college and ultimately go to Cornell Law School and become an Ivy League attorney. So I've had quite an adventure in life. And I look at my prison journey as another

facet of that adventure. I think the biggest surprise to me, though, and I've been home three years now since prison, is that I didn't realize the six years, three months I spent in prison would turn into a life sentence. And I think I found in a lot of ways that it has, even though I've been back three years. And what do I mean by that? For example, I've been on three years. I've worked 26 different jobs in three years I've been back from that's right house sitting cat sitting you know a host at a restaurant right now I'm working at a catering company now don't get me wrong it's a nice catering company I went I worked in an event where Bill Gates came right and the Google dolls were playing and all that and I dress up nice but you know I'm

a glorified Butler right I got an Ivy Law School degree and I'm going to glorify Butler because That's the best job I can find to do that. And I do a bunch of stuff in the techie slash nonprofit space. So I'm a web manager and a web developer for a number of different websites as well. So it's not all manual labor. But none of it is anywhere near the life that I lived before. I lived in prison. Okay.

Well, let's, so, I mean, when you, when you grew up and eventually, I mean, obviously, I mean, obviously you, you know, you go to college and everything. I'm just wondering, like, were you a good student in high school? Yeah, you know, it's interesting how life works, right? I think, and you can resonate with this. Money was a big issue to me. When you grow up in scarcity, as I did, it becomes very important to be able to take care of yourself in the best way you could think of doing it.

So I was a middling B student in high school, mainly because I was working all the time. As soon as I turned 16, I had a regular job working 20, 30 hours a week at a 7-Eleven. You know? My last year in high school, I went to the school about two periods a day and worked the rest of the day. I got a work study, it was called. It allowed to get out and work and their money. And that was important to me. But I was working on a machine shop, you know, doing it.

you know doing using a drill press and a lathe and stuff like that um i think what got me motivated to actually go back to school and get a a college degree and i started at l a valley college right the basic level took all the remedial courses again and and then uh realized it wasn't going to give me to where i wanted to go so was to cal state northridge that didn't help me as much as i wanted as my dreams were so i ended up getting my degree at at a place called BYU in Utah and got a degree in economics and a minor in international relations in Spanish. He was a really good student, I think. I was getting straight aides, right? And that's what led me to go to apply to law school and be able to, you know, to get a number of good offers

and selected Cornell, which was an amazing experience for me. I mean, I was a West Coast kid. I'm a fourth generation, California, Matt. I mean, my mother and grandmother were both born in San Francisco. My family's been here a long time. So trust me, going to an East Coast town in upstate New York was a real cultural change for me. But I've had a number of those. I lived in Argentina for two years. I lived in Korea for six years.

As an attorney, I had a global position at a publicly traded company called Accenture for a couple of years. And in the Bay Area, I've done a lot of work with startups, maybe, you know, a lot of the tech startups that you think about prior to my crime. And I think that suited me well for prison life, believe it or not. I looked at prison as going to a new country. It's like, I don't know anything. I don't know how people think. I don't know how they work.

But I'm going to be observant and be open to change and figure out how I can survive. And what I think is the, you know, I went to San Quentin, which is quite a famous person here in California. We have our death row for California in San Quentin. It's a lot of people who are called lifers. So they've got serious line of crime behind them, and that's why they're at San Quentin. So I felt like I was, you know, back in the Savannah in Africa, you know, where everything, you're either the, you're both hunting and you're the hunted. by just about everything in the world. And so that was a very different world for me.

I grew up in a non-violent, you know, grew up. I lived the upper-middle-class life. Right. Owned a house, had a good job, had a wife, had kids. And so prison was a whole different world to me. I didn't know anybody who'd ever gone to prison before. Well, let's go back to you. You started, you graduated college.

Oh, yeah. So for me, I wanted to see the world. was my real philosophy. It's always been, I've always been an adventuersome sort. Like I said, I went to Argentina for a couple years. I did that before college, because I was curious about the world. And, you know, when you grow up in the way I do, you know, the first time I got on a plane was when I was going to Argentina. I was 19 years old. Yeah, I've never been on an airplane before. So I really was having a new experience, but that meant a lot to me. So I was a business lawyer, not a, most people see lawyers on TV and they're criminal lawyers or litigators. That's not my thing. Yeah, it's super sexy.

Being a lawyer looks like it's very sexy and the truth is it's not. No, no. And that wasn't what interesting me. I wanted to, I think a philosophy had stuck with me is I wanted to make the world a better place. And I felt that being a corporate lawyer helping people do business around the world was a way to do that. And that's what got me interested in law school in the first place. And I got to tell you, again, when you come from a humble beginnings, as you like to say, you do anything you can to scratch by. When I was in law school, for example, I was a housefather at a sorority.

So Cornell's got a big Greek system. So I was an older male. I was married at the time. And so me and my wife were working as the live-in. house parents for 40 girls, right, who are there at college. But that's the way you pay the bills. And I wanted to do that because I wanted to go to law. So I wanted to learn how to gain a profession.

I didn't know that from my, I didn't know that from my family experience. This is theory in practice, right? But people who are successful tend to have a profession, therefore I'm gonna get a profession. Was how I got there. It wasn't like my family had that and I learned from them.

Oh yeah. I've done, having 26 jobs right now is nothing to me. I've done so many different things in my career, both as a lawyer and before becoming a lawyer, that it's easy for me to find work. But that's the kind of philosophy I come from. You know, my family actually came to America in 1600s. They were what are called French Huguenots, which were French Protestants. They were evicted from Catholic France.

And so they came over to America. So we got kind of that old WASP ethic, you know, the white Anglo-South. Saxon, Protestant ethic. Work hard. Don't be proud. Don't promote yourself, but, you know, be a good person, be a good citizen. It was always been part of my value system and something that was important to me. And that includes having to, you know, being able to take care of yourself. So I've always been able to take care of myself. And like I said, I was working for 16 on. But let's just say that when I was a lawyer, I was better able to take care of myself and my family than I can now, right?

So, all right, so you, you got married where you were still in college when you got married? Oh, my gosh. You know, I was naive as a young man. I got married at 21. I married an older woman. What's an older woman? She was only 24. Oh, yeah.

But she'd been working for a long time. She was my manager at the bank I worked at. So I was looking at a teller at the tomb. And I was in love, you know, as 21-year-olds are. Yeah, I got married at 21 and it was still going to college and starting that world all over again and trying to figure out where to go with me. Yeah, I, I was, you know, you hustled in a different way than I did, but trust me, I was hustling in my own way to make a few life. And I was doing pretty well. You know, when I was, I mentioned, you know, coming from a simple family.

My first car was in 1972 Ford LTD, you know, an eight-cyl with a bunk bench seat because you wanted to go to drive-ins back then. That's how old I am, I mean, I'm 60. People don't get this stuff. I used to go to drive-ins, you know, and you wanted a girl to be able to sit next to. You don't want bucket seats. You want a bench seat so that can happen. Yeah, I had a stable life by a single mother, but a humble one.

And that prepared me for moving on, and that included getting married, which I felt was the right thing to do at the time. Well, all right, so you graduate college, you went on to law school. Did you go right into law school or? Yeah, yeah, I went straight into law school. You know, I figured that's what I wanted to do. And law school was a great experience. The biggest difference for me is a West Coaster who went to public high school. I went to L.A. Unified Public High School.

I mean, I had English teachers who were too lazy to teach. They'd ask us to play board games like Monopoly during the class when I went to public high school. You get back east and you go to a place like Cornell, you've got a lot of these kids who went to private boarding school and small little lots colleges. They were so much more prepared for the college experience. how to articulate an argument, how to, how to express themselves clearly in written form and oral form than I was, that I had a lot of catching up to do when I got to, when I got to law school. I think I was the first time I realized I wasn't the smartest guy in the room. Right. And I think you can appreciate that, right?

A lot of people, you can just kind of run rings around. And that's why I learned out, no, no, you can't do that here. So law school was a real eye-opening for me. like the first time I ever got a C in college, right? In college, I was high school, I was an average student, but the time I got to college, I was studying hard. And, you know, law school was a different experience. Yeah, I did much better in college than I did.

And I was pretty much straight A's in college, as opposed to high school, which I just skated by with C's and B's. Yeah, yeah. It didn't matter, right? Yeah. I didn't think I was going to go to college. so um but once you so once you got out of college you went to you went to law school like when you graduated law school like how did you go about finding a job and oh yeah so law

school's um it's a very unique environment when you're going to um and i need law school to be honest right so you're everybody's looking to hire you when you come out of there so So I had originally planned on going to the D.C., because I liked a lot of international stuff. In fact, my focus in law had a lot to do with international relations, things like that. So that was my plan. I ultimately went to L.A. to work because my family was having a lot of problems, and I needed to go back to help them. I think that's a constant theme in my life. I got kind of like survivor syndrome after I got out of my family environment.

but I kept having to go back to that environment, mainly to help my family who were getting to different troubles. I was working in L.A. and, you know, I had that L.A. law lifestyle. You know, I had a new car. I had a good life. But it wasn't satisfying. I wanted the international stuff. I think the most interesting thing for me was two years into my law career. I decided to pack up with my wife and move to Seoul, Korea.

Korea only had 5,000 attorneys in the whole country, and they've got like, you know, 45 million people. So there's not a lot of lawyers out there, but I felt like it would be a good, a good opportunity for me to do what I really wanted to do, which is to work in the world and be part of this international community and world. So, yeah, two years after being a lawyer, I packed up and moved to Korea, never been to Asia. You know, I hadn't done anything like that. I said, what the hell? I want to see what this is like. brought my wife alone.

Did you work for a company? Were you transferred with a company, or did you just go? Oh, no. I got a job from the dominant law firm in Korea. Okay. These guys make a billion dollars a year in legal fees right now. It's a big company now. Yeah, I went over there.

It was what's called a foreign legal consultant. And I loved it. And I loved trying to cross those boundaries and those barriers. culture of education, of nation, of ethnicity that you get to do. I found that same thing when I was in Argentina of just how different that country is to America. Korea was also very different than the American standard. And so I got a chance to go there and experience that as well as work with all these international companies. I mean, I met George Shoros when I was in Korea. I met

Michael Bloomberg when I was in Korea because their companies were coming into that market. And I was a foreign-vis consultant that worked with their companies as they were entering that market. It was amazing. Dude, I partied with Stevie Wonder and his crew after a concert one night because I was a white guy in Korea. They didn't know anybody. So they asked me to come sit with them. And, you know, we got to have a really good time. I even, shoot, I was in a cast beer commercial in Korea.

It's just one of their top beers, kind of like their coars, you know, where they brought you to do stuff. So, yeah, you get to do a lot of crazy stuff when you're overseas as an expat, and I love it. He's a good life. So your, but your wife is there, did you have kids by that point? That's to sound crazy, but fortunately, we didn't. She had endometriosis, so she couldn't have told them we found out us we were going through the number of studies. You know, it's funny. When you work at a hard job in Korea, you work six days a week in a suit.

You work Saturdays, right? You work at night, late. I was working really hard when I was in Korea. My wife couldn't really find a job, so she was working as an aerobics instructor in Korea. And I think I worked too hard for her. So she fell in love with somebody else. And we ended up getting a divorce when I was in Korea. Now, my second wife, so I just, my second wife says I didn't work hard enough.

So I figured I haven't gotten the balance yet between how much you work and how much you don't, right? But, but yeah, you know, Korea was hard for her because she had a, she didn't have a big community be part of like I did. You know, I had worked. I had all the other stuff that I was doing. And she was in a more isolated experience there than I was. But hey, I mean, that was her choice and I'm lucky in a way because I ended up remarried and now I've got two kids One just started college. In fact, he's going to my alma mater. He's a shoot, he started school today. Today is his first day as an undergrad at Cornell University. So trust me, I'm a lucky man my lucky man with my kids and and that divorce wasn't the end of me but you know I found that I had to give up a lot divorce both my

divorces and then my crime are probably the those three events where you you find you you lose a part of yourself with my first divorce I lost my faith and I lost my religion for example my second divorce came four months into my prison sentence And so I lost my family. I lost my social network. I lost my profession with that. And by committing my crime, you know, you mentioned I had a DUI, but it's a lot worse than that, right? I killed someone as a drunk driver.

I took a light. Well, I mean, I hate to interrupt, but I mean, did you have an alcohol problem? Was this, this was an alcohol problem and not an isolated event where you had a few too many drinks? this was something that was that you had been struggling with and am i right no yes no no yes yes but not consciously right i'm on the functional alcohol right right um like i drink too much at parties or i just a full bottle of wine at dinner um not realizing that it may be vulnerable to that day right or to that event that that comes with that Yeah, alcohol was something I never really got into.

I first started drinking at 33. So it wasn't like it was something I had grown up with in my family or knew a lot about. But I got steadily worse. To be honest, as a, I called myself, so I was a lawyer, but a lot of ways I was a businessman. So I, one of the big things I did after I was on my own as an independent lawyer, was I did a big project of 723 unit condominium development in Las Vegas. And I brokered this deal, and I was asked to become the general counsel of their team as we built this big Vegas, big project in Vegas.

Trust me, all those things you hear about Vegas pales compared to what really happens when you're going there every week and you become a local. Yeah, the Vaca Red Bull became my drink of choice. And, you know, a bump every once in a while became the other way that you kept things in balance in Vegas. And so that became a habit that made me vulnerable to my crime, right? Didn't destroy my life before my crime. I was still married. I had kids.

I was working and having money. But yeah, alcohol became a worse and worst problem for me as time went on. But it wasn't a conscious recognition that it was really bad. I just thought that that, you know, I'm still partying. So what? I'm having fun like everybody else. There was never anybody, nobody ever tried to cartel your drinking. There was no rehab stents, no.

Yeah, none of that. No? None of that, you know. And I was, again, I told you I was an old school was, you know, you carry your own water. Right. You don't look for help, right? Even if you know you have a problem at some level, you know, it's your job to deal with it, not, not anybody else's. What happened to me was where I fell off the cliff wasn't just my crime.

It was like a six-month process because my mom had fallen and broken her hip. She was still living in L.A. with my special needs brother. And I had to make multiple trips down there. So over a four-month period, I was driving from San Francisco to L.A. to get her and my brother out of the to get her hospice stabilized so that she would you know hopefully get better um but also to get her and my brother into uh an assistant living facility and i had to do that on my own so i was driving down there a lot and i thought i thought alcohol was a good way to help um self medicate through that process right as i was

going down there again and again to deal with that in fact um the the night of my crime was the day that I had checked them in to an assistant living facility. And I was cleaning out their apartment that day after they had left so they'd have their precious things that they wanted to keep. And I thought drinking Red Bull Vodka was a good idea. And when I said drinking, I'm talking like a bottle of vodka, right? We're not talking, by then I was drinking heavily. And then after I cleaned out their place, I thought it was a smart idea to try to drive home drunk.

kept drinking when I was driving, to be honest, and had an accident on the, my accident happened on the five three where, my crime happened on the five three where. I had a head-on collision with another car and killed someone, about two hours into my drive back to San Francisco. So, yeah, alcohol was a problem, right, but not when I fully appreciated. And it really made it worse was trying to deal with. these family issues on my own. You're not realizing I needed help to deal with those issues.

So did you, I mean, did you pass out? Did you just wake up in the hospital and they told you? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I fractured my pelvis, broke my neck. I shattered my foot. I've got a plate and eight screws in my foot. Yeah, I was pretty heavily injured as well.

You know, they had medevac us through hospital. But I killed someone. Yeah. Yeah, I was hurt. No, you know, I, again, the old wasphing, I don't think I had cried since I was, you know, 18 years old. But when I found out I killed someone, I was devastated. You know, I take it a light. And that's, there's no coming back from that in a lot of ways.

Well, I have a question. Like, how did you, I mean, okay, you wake up in the hospital and does someone, does an officer tell you? Yeah. you know are you are you wake up in your handcuffed to the bed or do they just say hey you know like were you arrested immediately uh they met a vacu to hospital i met the doctors at the or excuse me i met some highway patrolman at the hospital uh more than 24 hours after my accident was uh you know i was you know a concussion i was not unconscious for a while um no you know no they didn't handcuff me to the bed but i wasn't a hospital

hospital for over 90 days. I had a fractured pelvis. I wasn't going anywhere. You know, my foot was had to be reconstructed. I wasn't, I wasn't going anywhere. So no, they didn't handcuff me to bed. Um, uh, and you're on a lot of morphine. So that kind of helps you, uh, get a balance as you get a feedback process. Now, this was down in Fresno too. I mean, I'm from San Francisco, it's the middle of nowhere. I was in a place called Kings County when I woke up in the hospital. You know, it's interesting. I've done a bunch of talks and interviews and AA meetings, stuff like that.

You're the first guy to really ask me about my whole life. Most people have just started with, you know, my crime. So I appreciate that, man. That's a, that means something to me. Yeah, waking up in the hospital was the most, the saddest thing ever for me to realize I had committed this horrific crime and terminated somebody else's future and destroyed ultimately two families, right? Not just the victim's family, but my family as well. I was going to ask you, did your wife come down? Did you know, how did that play out?

Like, I mean, when you were still married. Yeah. At this point, you have, you have, what, two children? Two kids. Two kids. You're in the hospital. You wake up. Do they tell you right away?

This is, listen, the other person died, or he didn't make it, or he's still in surgery. Oh, yeah, they tell me all the details. She was alive when they were met her back in her, and she died in the hospital. Okay. Are you concerned at that, I'm sorry, it's just that, you know, like at that time, I get, you know, I understand, you know, you took a life and that's, you know, and absolutely, I get it like that's like, you know, what have I done? Oh my, you know, I'm, you're upset, but you, there's still self preservation. I mean, you have to start thinking like, am I going to be charged? I mean, look, this is horrible, but I still have two kids and a wife. Like, and it's horrible. And, and I know something has to be done, but I need to know what that's going to be. Like, I'm not ready to be, you know, as horrible as you may have felt. There's still survival instinct and mitigating, you know, what happened because I do have

two children that I have to take care of it. And look, you know, you could say, like I know I would say, hey, look, what I did is horrible. I really made a mistake. I'm a horrible person for what happened. I feel horrible about it. but I still have a responsibility. So at what point did you start thinking to yourself, like, what's going to happen to me? Like, am I going to be charged?

You know, does that make sense? Like, yeah, yeah, I knew I was going to be charged. I mean, that's a crime. That's an issue. I didn't know what the penalty would be. Right. For that. No, I'd never had a drunk driving.

you know, ticket or arrest or convention is a first offense, right? So, yeah, I wasn't sure how they'd treat me. I didn't expect what I got. I ended up getting what's called the midterm in the end of that process. So I got seven years, eight months for my crime. And I was surprised by that. I'll be honest with me. You're surprised that you felt it was harsh or?

Yeah, I thought if I'm not the low term, I don't know who is. To be honest. Yeah, here's what bothers me about the seven years is like, to me, if you had, you'd had a DUI, you had, you knew you had an issue. You'd been to A.A. You'd been struggling for years to get your addiction, your alcoholism under control. Like, then it's like, okay, you knew you shouldn't be driving, but you hadn't had any real close calls or, you know, I drink a little bit, but it's not a major issue. It's not like people are showing up saying, oh, he's, he knows he has a major, major problem. You just felt like you just, I was, I had a shitty day.

And the way I dealt with it was I, I just drank a little bit. And I didn't think I was too intoxicated. And I clearly was. But so to me, that is the low end. The guy that's been arrested, done had several DUIs, knows he's got a problem. Like, that's the guy in the mid to high end. Well, and now you're talking something about the criminal justice system. think a lot of a lot of normal people don't understand you know their idea the criminal

justice system is watching it on TV right CIS or whatever you're convicted guy is a bad guy the system is set up to maximize your time in prison not to attain justice in a lot of ways and I'm lucky I know guys who've been in prison 40 years don't you know I'm not complaining about getting a sentence of seven years eight months but it's just, I was told that the only people who got the low sentence in the county that I committed my crime in were police officers. So a police officer would get the low end. But anybody else got the mid or the high end. That was just the way it works.

But is that fair? No, but, you know. Probably not to most people, but that's the way the system works in that county. If I committed my crime in San Francisco, it might have been a different thing. Remember, I'm some rich hot-shot lawyer driving through town from San Francisco who did this. I'm not a local who got there and did it. So, you know, my process was probably different than yours. You know, I know that you went through a plea bargain process and you ultimately accepted a plea bargain.

I think a lot of people don't know that almost all criminal cases are settled by plea bargain. Right. Like 95%, for example. Don't go to trial. Don't go to court. You don't go before a jury. I didn't go before a jury. I didn't want to.

I was happy to work out an arrangement and save the state, the expense and process is going to court. So, you know, I, being a lawyer, I was smart enough to hire two lawyers, one to deal with the civil side. I wanted to deal with the criminal side. and, you know, was given bond, was out on bond, right? So I actually, the time between I committed my crime and the time I went to prison was over a year, about a year, three months. I was in the hospital for three months, and then I was in a wheelchair for six months, and then a walker, and, you know, but I was trying to drag out that process,

so I was healthy enough to go to prison. I didn't want to go to a prison in a wheelchair. Yeah. You know. So I took that process out and was able to do that from home, right, after my 90 days. Yeah, I'm sure you've seen the level of care that you get in prison as far as medical is concerned. Like you do not want to get sick in prison. No.

I mean, these guys, yeah. I've seen so many guys die. That's just so many guys dying for. Oh, yeah. And it's not just, yeah, there's a lot of death from cancer or illness, there's some death from violence. Shoot, my prison in San Quentin, there were 29 dies who died from COVID. The prison only has 3,500 people. Right.

You know, so, so yeah, I didn't want to have to deal with that. And I was able to work through that process long enough to get healthy enough to go to prison where it wasn't obvious. You know, another thing about prison, I said it was like the Savannah. You don't want to be an injured person going to prison because that just makes you a target. You're just a victim to go after. And I don't care if you're injured emotionally or because you have a drug addiction or because you've got a physical problem. Any of those means that they'll try to cull you out of the herd and take you down in one way or another. Unfortunately, I know a lot of guys who couldn't get over their addiction and they just stayed addicted to prison, right?

It's easy to get what you need and believe it or not. But that's an example of what I mean is not just that can kill you. They're going to take advantage of you. I want to make sure I could minimize that risk. So you're you were at home for sick. What, nine months? Year, over a year, yeah. Okay.

So what, um, so I mean, how did your, how'd your wife and kids, like how do they, what were they going through? I mean, kids are pretty resilient. You know, they may or may not really know what's, understand what's happening. And, but, you know, your wife clearly knows what's happening. She knows there's going to be some issues. Oh, yeah. Um, you know, it's interesting.

The kids are a little young at the time. Um, uh, uh, five and seven for ten so they knew daddy was injured and so i just had to make sure that they knew i would be okay that that i was recovering um we did sit down with them about the crime as i once i knew that the sentencing would be a significant time and i'd be going away to explain to them you know that that it wasn't just an accident that happened that i committed a crime and and then commit a crime, society judges you. And that judgment usually includes taking you away from society, away from family, putting me in prison. They didn't know what those terms really meant.

Right. We had the discussion. And that was, that was important to me to be a father that that help kids understand that as a citizen, you have a responsibility to society. It's not just society protects you through rights. You have responsibility. And I had violated those. And so I had to pay for it. That was the way I explained it to them. You know, wife, she had a hard time with it. I had not just committed a crime and taken the life, I had shamed her by being a criminal. And that was hard for her to take. You know, you know, you asked how I felt when I found out I committed a crime and I said I broke down and I was crying and stuff. But I'll be honest with you, when my wife came to visit me in the visiting room four months into my prison sentence and told me we were going to get a divorce, that hit me harder than taking a life in a lot of ways, because I didn't see it coming.

I thought we were going to get through the prison time and had that kind of safe, solid marriage. But we didn't. and I didn't realize it and I almost got myself shot that day because I was you know you have to have the duck it it's called to move around in prison and I was in an area that I wasn't allowed to be in because I was just despondent crying and just fond of and you know I I was lucky that they were more understanding than I appreciated them being at its own When I was out of bounds, that day.

Yeah, that was hard for me. I smile about it now because I kind of take the philosophy like the ancient Greek plays that they would do. You know, life is equal parts tragedy and comedy. And what you don't realize is that a tragedy, if you live long enough, becomes a comedy later on, right? You can laugh at it or you can smile about it, how silly you were. or how ridiculous the things were you did at the time. I do it all the time. Right?

You got to, oh my God, how did I do that, you know? Well, like, I, even when I tell my story, I constantly kind of have these moments where I think, what the fuck were you thinking? Like, you had so many opportunities, like I'm getting to these opportunities where you, I could have done the right thing. Like, there were so many, many betters,

choices you made that one like what were you the arrogance and i i always related to you know in my case i always relate it to um uh just a pride like my pride has gotten me in every major screw up i've ever made has been specifically related to my pride so but i don't know you know if yours you know what what your you know catalyst you're what your issues you know are but mine has always been just just arrogance pride just you know i don't know but that's the heart of it that is the heart of it you're absolutely right uh you know you think your god's gift to the world in some ways right um yeah i i i went through that that same process um but you know i so when i say I lost my family with my crime.

I didn't lose it at the crime. I lost it four months later. Right. When I was getting divorced. But, you know, I'm also an honorable man. You know, my divorce, you know, we, so I was successful. And I know you know what it's like to have the court impose financial obligations on you because of your crimes. In my case, I have a small criminal penalty and a big.

civil suit that was going on. I settled with my victim's family. The settlement was $1.55 million for the life I took. A million of that was insurance, and then the rest I had to cover. And so that was taken care of before I went to prison. But the rest of my assets, I just were for my kids upkeep. I mean, I wasn't going to be able to pay alimony or child support from prison so so uh i found out six months in that you know after our we went through the process of my prison sentence that i would be coming out just like everybody else from prison with 233 gate money plus whatever else i could save uh all the rest of my assets were basically uh my settlement and i was happy to do it for my kids my kids didn't do anything wrong why should they

have to pay for that penalty. But you know my family didn't meet me at the gate when I got out and I was divorced. Even I got to tell you, I had a good friend of mine who met me. I told I lived overseas for quite a while. He had lived in Korea as well and he had become good friends there. He met me at the gate. And, you know, you go have a nice breakfast and you buy some new clothes and stuff like that. And he asked me, what's the first thing you want to do now that you're home? I said, there's only one thing we have to do. We have to go to a Korean sauna. And he looked at me in surprise, but he knew what I meant.

And you probably don't. But a Korean sauna, you have, first of all, you get naked, unisect, right? The men are one side women on the other. You get naked, you shower off. Then you go through three different pools from cold to medium to hot in different levels you go to. but the reason I wanted to go there wasn't to get a shower or a massage they then do what's called a body scrub and they put on these really these mittens that are really coarse and they scrub you from head to toe take like all those extra layers of skin off the first thing I wanted to do when I got out of prison was to take off as much a

fucking prison as I could take off those attitude layers of skin head to toe um so yeah I did that out the first day I got out did you have to go to a halfway house or oh my gosh now you went to the federal system right yeah so i went to the state system and you know i think a lot of people will realize that there's one federal system that's nationwide and then there's 50 different state systems which are called prison you know you go to prison but there's also jails which is the local prison in the city or the county that you belong to right so there's really three different types of prison that you can go to in in you know in america yeah i was in a state system unlike your federal system which has a halfway house to kind of transition you before you get out in state prison you

stay in until your sentence is served and then you get out um now i had to return to the county of the county i didn't my crime in so that's san francisco so i had an obligation to report to my parole office i had two years of parole when I got out of prison. And there's a lot of petitions of parole that you have that are stricter than the loss that you have to meet when you get out of a state prison sentence. So I had two years of parole, government custody in a way, right, or government oversight. And the parole officer said, well, where are you going to stay?

And I told him I was still looking into it. And he told me that if I didn't have a place, If I went, if I didn't find a place within two weeks, I would have to go into a halfway house. Now, halfway house is different than you went to because in California, to get in a halfway house. You have to be an addict, basically. So the halfway house I would have gone to would have been six months of 36 hours a week classes and training. You're like in prison. You have to be back by 8 o'clock.

You can't leave the facilities without a permission slip. you can't look for a job, you can't do anything. And that was, that was a bed that I could stay in. Now, I was lucky because I knew what to expect when I got out. Not when I went in, I had no clue, but when I got out, I had been the managing editor of the San Quentin News newspaper. And we have a circulation of 35,000 throughout the state system. It's a big newspaper, and we write a lot of articles.

So I talked to a lot of people what to expect. They told me the dumbest, worst thing I could do would be go to one of those half-way, our state halfway house, which is different than your federal one, because it's usually tied to some sort of addiction or other things they want you to be treated for. And I was told, whatever you do, avoid that because you're still in prison. You have like four roommates, some of who are active addicts who are going to want to steal from you, pretend. But you can't protect yourself because you'll be in violation of your parole. you know if you try to do anything to protect yourself from somebody attacking you so you just got to take it because you don't want to do that so I um I hustle to find a place I was very lucky that I was an active church member before I went to prison I've been a a deacon and a Sunday school teacher and and my church was able to help

me find what's called an in-law unit which you may not be familiar with but in San Francisco you have a little this was attached to a woman's garage so a little single you know bathroom and a and a little like living room that's it like no kitchen and that stuff mother-in-law's you know like a you know they're like a you know they're like a mother-in-lawing yeah and so this this woman who I now consider she should be I'm not Catholic but she should be a saint and what she did for me she deserves as far as I'm concerned because when I got out I with $450 in my pocket because I'd saved up some money from my job and the gate money um she let me stay in her in law unit rent free uh i stayed there for five months until i could you know earn enough money to get my own apart so so you say i was lucky that way

so uh let's do can we go back to prison when you went to prison like what's what's the first like what is your first day in prison like i mean how are you like you walk through the gates the doors closed like i'm sure in your mind you know is this like like in the federal system they have like they have well they have supermaxes but then you have penitentiaries you have mediums you have lows and you have a camp they have what leveled like right a one two three four something like that in yeah California has levels but you know you always start out in jail right they don't go to you don't go to prison So I spent about two months in jail.

Now, I was an educated man. I knew this was going to happen. So I asked around of how to deal with this. And I was sophisticated enough to find a woman who, a former warden of a California state prison, who was running a nonprofit, I made a substantial donation to a nonprofit and had her guide me through the process. So a process that takes most people six months to a year, took me less than two months to get to the prison of my choice. And it's a level two prison called San Quentin.

I chose that because it was closest to my home. That was all that I cared about. Remember, I was still married at the time. I wanted my kids to be able to visit me. in prison. I didn't want them to drive halfway across the state. There are level ones in San Quentin prisons, but I went to a level two. My crime was considered a violent crime because I killed someone. Right. And so the minimum standard is usually level two when you commit a violent crime. But I was lucky to go through that process quickly and go to go to that.

County was a hellhole. You know, you have you got guys who are in prison for who can't get bail and are in prison for years I was one guy who had murdered you know on a murder case he'd been there for six years in a county jail we had triple-tiered bunks and we had mats on the floor for other guys because it was so full a lot of people who come in and you know they're they're still high when they get there but three days later they're in a whole world of hurt as they're waiting there and going through that process so yeah jail was was a difficult time um but uh you know the hardcore stuff was going to prison so in california you go to what's called classification

after you finish your jail term and you go to prison so that's where they put everybody together level one through level four so i was in classification for six weeks uh pretty much and while i was there, you know, the guy next to me had a broken jaw from a fight. I saw guys get hit with what are called block guns. Block guns shoot out like a beanbag, but it's got like a shotgun propellant behind us. It's knocked your ass down. It doesn't kill you, but it knocks you down. I saw guys get stabbed. In my block, which is called an X block because there's four different wings to it, one guy got killed, you know, during the time I was there. We were on lockdown the whole time. You know, it was very rare that I got out of myself, where I had one cellie, and we were in there while I was in classification.

It was not a fun time. And I, again, because I had spent enough time in different environments, I was able to kind of navigate those waters, I think, better than a lot of guys in my situation. But something you didn't have, California is very, it's a very racist system. You know, I think you had mentioned one of the times that one of your cellies was like a Mexican or Latin or something like that. I never had that in prison. My prison were bunkies, right, in the same pair of bunks or my cellies who were in the same cellies, had to be white under kind of an unwritten law. So when I first got to prison, it was in January. It's a place called Wasco, and it was Super Bowl weekend.

to let us out to watch a Super Bowl. And I didn't realize that I was, I almost sat, I saw an empty bench, and so I was going to go sit there in the bench, but it was the black section of the open area. And I'm a white man, so I was gently told that I wasn't allowed to sit there and that I should go sit with the white guys. But, you know, I did a couple dumb things like that, but I learned my lesson pretty quick to abide by the rules in prison and to make myself useful. Not as an ATM machine. You know, a lot of guys who have money in prison, they act like an ATM machine. They get a lot of money and they're giving out gifts to everybody.

That's the way they stay sick. That wasn't a game for me. But I made myself useful. Help people write letters or, you know, talk about what their court documents or stuff like that. Yeah, I did the same thing. It was the same. Then I ended up getting, teaching GED, taught the real estate class for 10 years. there you go you become an important person um and you how when did you start uh becoming the

editor or the was it the editor assistant yeah like how managing editor um so i had a different um california is about five percent african-american uh but the prison population is about 40 percent african american um so the prison has a much more african-american vibe in California than you would think given the population in the state. And I figured these guys need to be the editor-in-chief. You don't need a white guy doing that. So my job was to make sure all the articles were edited, and they were on a range of the themes and stuff like that,

the managing editor. So I managed the newspaper. That was kind of my service philosophy. You know, when I got to prison, I kind of went through a three-step process. You know, the first thing I wanted to do was self-realization. I need to understand how I could commit my crime. Who was I that I could do that? And why did I do that?

And then after self-realization, you need to get into self-expression. And self-expression is your ability to communicate with your community. Now, some guys do it with art. You know, some guys do with music. Mine was writing. I like to do a lot of writing. to do that. And then the next day has become service, you know, because you want to help others on that journey of self-realization, self-expression. And my concept of service, as well as tutoring,

guys in math and other stuff, was to be the managing editor of the San Quentin News. Because San Quentin, San Quentin's a unique prison. I think it's just like the Silicon Valley prison system. They have tons of COVID has changed everything. But before COVID, but before We had about 180 different organizations or nonprofits that had active meetings and events inside San Quentin. You know, most prisons just seem to have A-A or N-A, and that's it, right? Maybe Al-Anon, you know, that's it. Our prison had a ton of different offerings for people to try to learn about, you know,

why they committed their crime and what they could do to make sure they didn't do it again. And so a lot of our articles are about what can be done in prison. prepare yourself for when you get out prepare yourself for re-enter think of like non-violent communication right so so you can be able to express yourself without having to get violent with people understanding your emotions you know a lot of times people think they're angry and they're not they're just frustrated right we'll help them understand that how do you become a better citizen how do you become a better father how do you become a better husband how do you deal with your your addiction how do you get ready for getting a job you know there's a

of nonprofit organizations like that in St. Portland. And I took a bunch of those classes, too. So I got to figure out what the fuck was going on with me. I mean, I was so dumb that I was drinking and driving, and I killed someone. I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't happen to him as my first goal. Right? So I did a lot of time of that work of introspection.

You know, who am I? What am I? The way I characterize it is I, you know, everything is narrative. That's how we understand things. And so the narrative that I created for myself was, you build this psychic delusion house that you live in as a person. And that psychic delusion house is made up of all your beliefs and your philosophies and the way you look at the world. And I had burned down my psychic delusion house with my crime. I wasn't this great, smart, good citizen lawyer.

I was a murderer, right? I'd taken a life. And so I spent a lot of my time in prison rebuilding my psychics. to delusion house as an adult instead of the one I built up over my life that existed before that had led to me thinking I could drink and drive or not caring that I was putting others at risk. It's probably a better way of characterizing. I didn't want to have to be in that process again. Now, a lot of people like to dance to the 12 step, you know, so they think that AA is the only solution. I'm not an AA guy per se. I think AA keeps you focused on your addiction.

And I think NA keeps you focused on your addiction. My goal wasn't to guard against my addiction. I wanted to change who I was so my addiction no longer have power over me. So like after I got out, I worked in a high-end restaurant with a celebrity chef. Chris Costigno, he's one top chef, top chef master, a very famous guy. I knew a lot of guys in the restaurant industry who were good friends and say, hey, you've got to get a job. They had two bars. I didn't have a problem. I don't have a problem with drinking.

I've been out three years. I'm not worried about it because I can go to a bar and not worry about drinking. I'm afraid a lot of guys in AA still worry about their addiction. That wasn't my thing. I kind of rebuilt my psychic delusion house in a different way. I didn't follow the design that AA gives you. to rebuild your habits, your police, so that you can survive. So once you, okay, well, once you got out, you got, I mean, what's, what's with all the different jobs?

I didn't expect that. I got to tell you. I, um, so think about the startup community that everybody knows about it's heard about, right? And I'm working in that area with a bunch of different companies, uh, doing a lot of different work. as an attorney but also more as a businessman helping them figure out their businesses so i went to prison with uh after living in the bay area for at that time 15 years i had a lot of friends you know i had a big network business-wise and social wise but my network is that kind of educated elite atheist uh business worker right that kind of high mindset they don't know how to forgive somebody for committing a sin or wrong so when I got out nobody wanted to talk to me not maliciously they didn't know how to interact with me right I was

something beyond their comprehension and I would say that that's still true of that I'll give an example even the ones who could interact with me looked at me as kind of a disabled person right they didn't want me to be a lawyer or again. I got a friend of mine, Angel, has me house it for her and cats it, you know, pays me to house it and cats it for her. So she trusts me in her house is my point, right? Absolutely trust me. But she doesn't invite me to her birthday party. Right. I'm a disabled person or like a mentally disabled is the way that my old network still sees me. So when I got out, I had to figure out how to make money to get my own place because the most important thing for me

is not to be a burden to my family or to society, right? So I got out and I started hustling. I've done a couple jobs as a lawyer. I help to, I mediated a divorce between a couple and, you know, made some money that way. I worked on the First Death Act, which, as part of the federal system, you know, is a big legal change in the federal system trying to reduce prison populations and get people out past during the state. the trump years um so i worked on developing a manual for the first step back i've worked with an

organization called prison professors to develop like four different um remote learning classes that you get people like a manual and they can go through the lessons and correspond and send back in their answers i help them do that and it's kind of an author of an editor and a contributor so yeah i've done a bunch of stuff like that but i got to tell you even those jobs only pay like 30 to 50 bucks an hour. I think the best one I got was 50 bucks an hour. Most of them are like 30 bucks an hour. So you still have a law degree.

You're still a member of the California. Oh my God, hilarious. You're going to love this. No, I'm not. If you commit a felony, right. They disbar you. Now, they charge you for the privilege of disbarring you.

But they don't disbar you when you're in prison. They wait until you get out. And then you're supposed to have a six-year time of like cooling off before you can apply for the bar again. So not only am I disbarred, I can't be a lawyer, but I got a $6,000 debt on top of that for the privilege of being disbarred. And remember, I got out with no money. I can't pay $6,000 back. I don't have it. So, yeah, no, I'm disbarred.

I can't practice law as a lawyer. You know, I can provide consulting services to a level. can you can you go to another state and be a lawyer and you're still I take the bar in that state and only if they allow former felons to get it usually you have to get an exemption to their standards you'd have to go to court to get permission to become a lawyer and that's it I have 60 years old I'm not going to waste my time on on that stuff but you know I'm I've seen you've learned this as well there are so many restrictions yeah on felons to get jobs to get a light you can't get an insurance license you can't get a real estate license in san francisco unless you get an exception an exemption excuse me to the standard because the standard says no you can't get one of your parents a phone yeah um so it's it's a really challenging process once you come back and for me that's meant that i've done a lot of stuff um you know whatever i can get uh to be honest yeah i understand

I do it's people ask me like what do I do for a living I mean I I don't really you know I always joke I'm like well I don't really have a job but you know and they're like well how are you know paying your how do you pay your bills I'm like well you know I paint I do YouTube I get paid to do you know I get paid to do you know like it it is no one thing pays my bills it's a little here it's a little there it's a little and in the at the end of the month it's enough to pay all my bills Like it's not like I'm not there haven't been really any months where I've been like I don't have it like I'm in lucky I have it but I I don't ever have it to the point where it's like I can get my credit cards paid off I could pay off my car like I it always just seems to be I'm like oh I'm doing really well oh I'm doing really well it just keeps happening it's like uh every time I get ahead suddenly my nine hundred and fifty dollar car insurances do it's like what what that came out of nowhere you know so it's uh yeah it's it's an issue i just and and the um you know i have in the federal system when you get out you know you typically go to a halfway house then you have five i have every crime is different i have five years of supervised release which is that you know it's not parole it's it's like probation you have a probationary period because of my crime I have a five-year. Most of them are two to three years. Mine's five. So I have a five-year term of a supervised release. And I have all these restrictions. So I'm not allowed to do this.

You can't work in development. You can't work in real estate. You can't work in finance. You can't work in construction. You can't work. It's like, I mean, by the time you're done, it's like, so McDonald's. They're like, yes, but not, but not at the as a cash register or as a cashier like you have to work in the back you know with the fries it's like she's you know I feel like I can do more than that but uh so I started doing stuff you know I'm I'm selling my books and I sell paintings and I do YouTube and I do talks and so yeah I hear so I hear you you know I get it I get it and what's even worse is that I got a guy I got I have like a probation officer who's watching me oh yeah so suddenly I went to work for a financing

company that'd be an issue. She would very quickly come in and say, what are you doing? You can't do that? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, trust me, that first two years I got out of, you know, you're peeing a cup, right? I mean, they're not just talking to you. They're inspecting where you live. They come into your home. You know, and I'm a proud man. So, for example, in the state system, you can't travel more than 50 miles from your county of residence without permission i'm too proud to ask permission i hate asking i won't i won't do it i didn't do it i said i fine i'll just stay in fucking san francisco until the two years ago um then i'll travel without having to ask permission because i just couldn't do it i travel almost every month wow and i have to

ask almost every month i have to fill out a form send it in then i don't hear from her for three days then I have to send another to, hey, I'm supposed to be leaving. I need permission. Then, oh, I'm sorry, I missed this. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. And I've been denied before. Imagine being asking to go to Atlanta and being told no. What do you mean?

Yeah, I couldn't do it. Yeah, I couldn't do it. Like, this is for work. Well, the answer's no. And for me, it was a double bond because my, I mentioned my kids were young when I went to prison. They were teenagers by the time I got out. So I've been in prison half their lives. But I worked to make sure my kids did well, even though I was in prison.

So, for example, my son, you know, we had to take my kid. My son had been going to a private school. We had to take him out and put him in public school. My kids were living in bunk beds because in half the house, because of their half was being rented out to Airbnb to help pay the bills, right, by the time I'd go into prison. So, you know, it makes stuff life difficult. But I looked at my poor son, and he had a mother, a grandmother, a sister, and even a cat was female, right?

And then his class was 23 girls and four boys. So when I was in prison, I wrote to the two private schools that were boys' schools in San Francisco. One of them were conscious in. And I worked it out so my son can get an interview. So he spent a couple of years at a private school, cathedral. school for boys in San Francisco and then he got accepted at a boarding school so both my kids when I got out my kids were living in Connecticut at school they come home for the summer but I didn't get to see them a lot when I got out and I couldn't go to their school because I was on you know I wasn't

a lot of travel so I didn't even get to see him there this past year was the first time like I got to go to my kids school and see my son play baseball as a senior in high school. I saw my son play baseball as a senior school on the varsity baseball team, to watch my daughter play golf as a sophomore, to go to my son's graduation, to meet their friends. First time ever was this past fall. And that meant a lot to me. It meant a lot in May to go to his graduation and be able to celebrate him graduating nice but I hadn't been able to do that prior to them so what are you doing I'm sorry you're going to say something yeah it's like you don't I'm guessing you don't have kids because I haven't heard you mention them but I have one son he doesn't talk to me well

you've just hit upon it my son so before I went to prison that that year before I went to prison when I was able to move around I like took him to every Giants game I could right the baseball games so we could have some fun and spend some time together and we bonded over baseball in fact we still bond over baseball this past summer we went to like six Giants games our favorite time together but my daughter when I went to prison I was still her daddy that she loved more than anybody but by the time I got out I was was a criminal that had killed somebody. And so she's been much more distant than my son has.

It's been much more of a challenge to get back into her life and to find ways that she values it. She didn't talk to me for a while after I got back or didn't have any desire to see me, even though my son was open to it. But, you know, you can find ways to deal with that. I actually wrote a letter to Neil deGrasse Tyson, who's very, very, very important. famous celebrity, right? He runs a museum and he's on TV shows all the time. He does Star Talk as a podcast and, you know, and he wrote back and one of my letters that I wrote to him, he published in his book. But the best thing was when the book came out for publishing, he said, hey, Wayne,

we kept in touch because I'd ask him for help on how to deal with my kids and how to keep them involved in the science and stuff like that. And so he started up for correspondence. And he put my letter and his book and he says, hey, I'm doing a book show at Davy Symphony Hall, which has 1,500 people, you know, for a book signing, why don't you bring your kids? And so my daughter, my son was away at school. I brought my daughter. And he invited her up on stage and she got to talk with him for four minutes. So I was able to do something that showed that it isn't just mom that has value. Dad has given something to your life. Whether it's getting my son into a different school or having my daughter meet a celebrity,

in the green room before the show and then actually being invited on stage to talk with him during the show. So I've done stuff like that to try to add value. And, of course, they know a lot of the work I do in the nonprofit sector to try to help reform the criminal justice system. So these guys, first of all, if they are ready when they get out, to give them an opportunity, but also to help them rehabilitate when they're in prison so they can have an opportunity. I'm on the board of a non-profit that teaches fatherhood values to guys inside. It's called man-to-man. And they'll be in three prisons before the end of this next fiscal year,

so then almost a year in the future. Because these guys don't know how to be fathered. You know, they don't know. Non-violent communication. They get frustrated or angry and they lash out. Let's teach them how to communicate non-violently, both with the mother and with their children. Let's help them develop a connection with their children so they don't become ostracized because I know exactly what we mean

My son there was 18 months. He wouldn't visit me in prison because when he transferred from to that boys school He had a really hard time and I caused that hard time because the other kids knew their parents knew and they told their kids that I was in prison And you know he didn't know how to process that yeah yeah those are real challenges for the kids so i i hear you um i hear you uh those good those good christian values that upper that upper middle class america has always seems to be selective you know they never never seem to jump from the you know to be a good person do the right thing they never seem to jump to the forgiveness portion of the of christianity it's it's always used to elevate them in such a way above everyone else.

And if you make a mistake, then discard them. Oh, my gosh. And that includes the nonprofit world, unfortunately. You know, I got one website I worked for for about nine months, and they brought me in as a web manager, so help them with their content and post their content. And then they asked me to become a web developer to help them redesign their website.

I'm getting paid 30 bucks an hour to do that work. So I said, okay, well, I got to learn some. new skills to do this web development oh no do that on your own time you know it's like wait a second no no i've all if you want me to learn how to do it i want to get paid and and then you want to do that and then you know they brought in summer interns they said okay well we don't need you to work 18 hours just work five hours and then they said well we don't need you at all actually so you know thank you for your service and they just termed they didn't give me two weeks notice they just said hey you know we're done with you because they still look at you as like they're doing a favor for you

by how are you they don't look at you as a regular employee that deserves common courtesy of giving two weeks notice when you terminate a contract yeah um yeah i've seen that and that that's frustrating um but that's the way the world really is not all this virtue signaling you see on tv about how everybody's helping everybody he's kumbai yon. moments it's a lot more challenging you know it always amazed me when I was locked up was that like the black guys who have who have you know four kids from you know three different you know baby mamas and you know and have just been if never paid child support have just been nothing but abusive and been locked up for domestic violence and all these other things

in that community, those women will grab their kids, drag them down to visitation, will send them money and put money on their books. And it's like, like my buddies that I made millions of dollars for don't want to talk to you. I can't, you want me to come and see you in the prison? Are you serious? Like, they don't want to take your phone call. God forbid if you asked them to actually send you a hundred bucks. Like that's, don't even ask that.

It's like, I made you on the. last deal we did you made a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and then when you get out of prison they don't want to help you at all yeah it it was it blows my mind i knew guys that were guys who were getting out of prison going to the halfway house and guys are dropping off money for them and it's like but i had nobody to help me nobody yeah i had written a book i had written a book and i'd gotten a um an advance on the book and i'd and i'd and i'd and i'd opt the film or the life rights to one of my one of my subjects that I wrote a story on and they happened as soon as I got to halfway house they just happened to re-option it so I got I happened to

get a check like in the perfect it was a perfect moment I got a check and I was able to go buy a shitty car and pay for 300 bucks worth of clothes at Walmart and then I had a buddy who hired me to work at his gym like it was just just what and i had a friend who was a saint who said as soon as you get out of the halfway house you can come live in my spare room like i lived in her spare room with her husband and her two kids and i slept in the spare room and i was so i was thankful i had nowhere to go nowhere to go and you and they are a saint because they're that rare because they're that rare yeah because everybody else was saying no no I'm sorry just can't I I can't be bothered right is the way it is right they're busy with their own life and where they

don't yeah I I think the heart the thing I'm most proud of is how well my kids have turned out more than what I've done but they're they're smart they're educated they're happy they got good life they don't use what happened to me as an excuse yeah as a crutch Yeah, yeah. And that's important for me. The best way, the closest thing I've been able to do to get into my daughter's life is I cat sit for her. So she's got a cat called Milky Way. She likes the space stuff. So the cat's called Milky Way. And so she's away at school now. And so I'm cat sitting, her cat. You know, so that's one way I've been able to add value her. And I'm able to stay in touch with her because she uses a platform called Snapchat. all the time. And so I send her a Snapchat of her cat every day. And that's shown. The real issue for her is she, this isn't conscious. This is just the defense mechanism she's developed because she was so hurt by my disappearance that she thinks she can't trust men now because I abandoned her in her mind. Her young child's mind, right? I abandon her. And so I do everything I can to

both promise to do something and then make sure I actually do it so that she can learn she can see by example that she can trust me she may not feel she can trust me yet but I think if I stack up enough of these these actions where I show her she can trust me she'll come to the realization that she can trust me but that's a slow process and it hasn't been easy and it's not over. She just told me that I have to ask her permission to interact with her school now. Even though I've been to her school, which is her brother and her went to the same school, a number of times. But that was because it was both of their school. But now I need her permission. And believe it or not, I'm happy to give her that because I wanted to take ownership

of her life. But I'm not happy she asked me to. I thought we were beyond that. but I might not be able to go to parents weekend because she's not sure if she wants to do that. So it's not over, but that's my main, I can't help my victim any more than I have. Right. Or her family, any more than I have. They, they don't want to talk to me, and that's fine. And I did go through a process called Victim Offender Education and a victim panel. because one of the sons of my victim had written a note to me on Facebook.

And by law, I can't communicate with them. But I did go through the process of offering to communicate with them and had a violence counselor interact as an intermediary. And they said, no, we don't really want to interact at all. And, of course, the civil settlement was the best I could do, even, from my victim's family. But my family is a different story. right when i interact with them uh as much as i can i want to be a true father uh to my kids as best i can and i do that um i do that today i do it every day and i'll cat sit or anything else i

have to do um to to show my daughter that she can trust me so what's what's the uh the game plan from here on out you know just in work and and just life in general is there a goal or just continuing to work with the non-profits or no it's funny you say that it um you know you've heard the term conscious and unconscious and you know subconscious right there's stuff that happens if we don't recognize this happening our conscious mind can't see it can't think about it um I can say that I was kind of in a stuck in a pattern of what am I going to do. But my ex-wife just got remarried in July, so, you know, just a month ago. And I think that's helped me get unstuck.

And not, I'm happy she got remarried. I want her to be happy. I'm not happy she divorced me. Right. I would have preferred a love story that transcended my crime to be an example for our kids. But she didn't, so we don't have that. But I want her to be happy. And I'm glad she's found somebody that she wants to spend the rest of her life with.

For me, that life is savoring my freedom. Um, and part of that could be solitude. I don't know about you, but when I was in, I lived in a dorm with 200 other men. You know, I had to listen to rap music for six years for having six. Um, and guys who thought they were rap stars, they had to sin. I felt like I was, you know, Simon Cowell that I wanted to come out on American Idol and tell them to shut up that they, they really needed them to profession. But, you know, so I appreciate solitude. I got a great apartment, uh, in San Francisco. Francisco. I work hard. But I got my passport. And I think my dream right now is I want to come.

My goal is to become what's called a digital nomad. So, you know, I'm looking at like doing, like trading apartments with somebody who's who, right now I'm talking to Paris, London, Paris, Covington, and Rome, right? Where people want to spend a month in San Francisco and I could spend. them on their place so i'm hoping to be able to do that is that a is there a website or something is that like a web there's yeah yeah home exchange it's right and it's not going to affect you because you're working basically remotely anyway a lot of the stuff i do yeah a lot of stuff i do so i'm looking at doing that as a way of kind of doing what i want to do um uh yeah it's um you know you mentioned that you've written books, I admire you. The main thing I've gotten to is writing articles, some of them long, you know, 10,000 words, and a lot of them short. I post them on a platform called Medium, and Medium allows me to, you know, I've got over 70 pieces on there

about kind of my journey, you know, and my recovery to become a better person than I was that allowed me to commit my crime at the time, and to make sure I wouldn't do something like that again is an important story for me and I share it that way that's kind of my creative writing way you know that's been a a good mechanism for me I make a little money on that as well because it's behind a paywall right so you're paid for people to read your stuff but so I'll continue to do stuff like that but no I haven't found my home yet you know in the nonprofit world I'm a white, straight male. Nobody wants to hire a white straight male anymore.

I'm not complaining about it. I'm just being honest, right? If I claimed I was transitioning, I'd get a job. How's that? Yeah, might be worth it. But I'm not going to do that, play that game. I am what I am. If they feel any more diversity, I get it.

I'm not going to tell them otherwise. How often do you write now, Oh, all the time. I'm writing a piece right now. The reason I knew how many jobs I worked before is I'm writing a piece called 26 jobs. And I'm writing about the challenges of, you know, finding work once you get out of prison and how that's systemic. It's not just me, not just you. I think your average earnings decreased by like 40% if you've been convicted by a felony over your lifetime. It's systemic. And so it's helping people to know about that as far as the message. i just wrote one on compassionate release in the federal system um because people don't understand just how twisted and broken the system is how uh let's call it institutional racism because a lot of the poor people are black and so they're the ones that are impacted the most but it's institutional and that the system is set up to make it impossible for you to say goodbye to your family um if you have a terminal illness it's it's hard

Yeah, I published that last month. Yeah, I write stuff all the time. Have you thought about, well, I was going to say, I know a guy, Walt Pavlo. I don't know if you know who Walt is. Anyway, he writes for Forbes magazine. And he was incarcerated. I think he did like two or three years. He was involved in MCI.

And I think he did, he did a few years. And he got out and he, he, of course, does prison consulting. And he does that he taught at MBA, not taught, but he does speeches at NBA programs. And now he, one of the things he does is he writes for Forbes. I don't, you know, so for Forbes.com. He's written a couple articles on me. It's, you know, so I don't know if that might be another avenue for you. But.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm doing, I've been writing for a number of publications. So there's one thing you do in the gig economy out here. It's called Upwork. So Upwork, they post these jobs online and you can bid on. Yeah, I've used it. Have you? Yeah.

I've written reviews. One of my jobs was to write a bunch of reviews for dog vitamins. Okay? I've used Upwork to write stuff. So, you know, there's stuff out there that, you know, you can make a little money on. Yeah, I hire, I've hired an editor one time for one of my books I wrote. You know, all the books I wrote were on other inmates. Gosh, you know, true, they were all nonfiction.

And, uh, wow, I've stayed away from that. My best friend in prison, he called me this morning, is a guy who pretended to be a rockafone. for 20 years and got away with he got married at a child as a Rockefeller you know his wife his wife was a partner at a firm called Bain consulting which is one of the premier consulting firms in the world you know she's making over a million a year of fame I think I saw a document know oh yeah he's been on TV they've been books about him they've written books about him he's been movies about him all kinds of shit um guys hilarious uh he's he's he's He's actually German.

Yeah. Came over here as a child, grew up in Wisconsin, went to California, and then adopted this Rockefeller persona permanently when he went back east to like Massachusetts. Isn't there a body associated with that crime, with him? Oh my God. No, he was his first, the way they found him was he was getting a divorce from his wife and he kidnapped his daughter. Yeah, I'm telling you.

Yeah. Yeah. So. Like there's somebody involved in this whole thing disappeared. my best friend well what had happened was they found out that 20 years before this yeah that there was a couple that he had been living in their pool house right they disappeared and then he disappeared and showed up back east as a Rockefeller so they just did you know they ended up convicting him of those murders right um uh and so he's in prison as a lifer it's called and a lifer is kind of a weird term um California has three times as many life life or prisoners than Texas, okay? So it's a big issue. So these are guys who are sentenced to a set sentence and then they are, they have an indeterminate life sentence, it's called. So they could be sentenced to 20 years to life, which means they have to serve 20 years. But after that, if they

can be found suitable by the parole board, they're able to get out and be on parole. But almost nobody gets found suitable. I need one guy who, who have been in for 20 years for a murder. was found suitable by the parole board. The governor at that time revoked his parole, so he didn't give it to him. He ended up spending 38 years in prison, even though he had already been found suitable at 20 years. So guys spent a lot of time in prison. And so any time those guys want to stay in touch, I help them out as much as again. I call it the life or discount.

If they don't call me any time, if they need a subscription to a magazine, if they need some money on their books to get something they want to buy, I'll do it for them because I knew I was going to get out of prison. right they don't they literally could be there until they die um and and that's what's interesting i don't think that's justice what's interesting about murders is that it's the lowest recidivism rate you know like i mean these guys you get out there's almost there's almost no chance they're ever going to do anything again that's right you know so if you're if the if your goal is keeping society safe you know letting them out isn't the option you know

I'm sorry, isn't the issue. Like there's almost no chance at all they'll ever do anything again. So, well, we want to keep society safe, but you're really not. Like, that's a bad argument. Oh, not only do not keep them safe. In California, it costs $130,000 a year to keep somebody incarcerated. Right. So you're calling- By the way, the federal system is like 35 to 40,000.

It's a lot cheaper in the federal system. In California, it's $130,000. So not only are you keeping them out of society. which costs them something, let's say, or maybe, you know, it doesn't really keep society and safer. It's costing you $130,000 a year to do it. Right. I mean, it's insane.

That's a California issue, right? Every state's different. That's how much it is in California. We've got over 100,000 guys in person to California. It's a big number. Okay, so, I mean, do you have anything else you want to talk about, discuss? I think the main thing is just that, you know, give people some hope that, you know, whatever trauma they experienced, whatever went through that had them develop these defense mechanisms and habits that got them into prison, that they can dismantle those habits and defense mechanisms if they want to. It's not easy.

It takes time and it takes work. but they don't have to stay a violent criminal. They don't have to stay an addict. They don't have to say, you know, someone who adopts other people's personas and becomes a fraud in different ways. They can get out of that if they want to. I'm not saying it's easy, but you can do it. And that there's a clear path to doing that if they're willing to try.

The main thing is read the San Quentin News. You know, we got it online. I'm still the web manager. for those guys so we get over 10,000 hits a month you know people read the newspaper to give people some idea of some of the programs and some of the stories of these guys who successfully learn something in their prison sentence and then when they get out you know become what are called returning citizens nobody from the San Quake news has ever gone back to prison by the way after they got out zero recidivism for the guys who worked on newspapers so so they're good

role models to a community that needs them um So I guess that's the main thing. Sanquingnews.com. It's called all one word, easy to find. And if anybody wants to hear more about these things, that's where I go. Hey, I appreciate you guys checking this out. And if you like the video, do me a favor. Hit the like button and hit the bell so you get notified of, you know,

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