Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - MTV Exposes Nashville Crime Ring

Starting point is 00:00:00 The local rapper Haystack from Nashville. Jelly Row opened up for him a bunch of times when Jelly Row wasn't famous. I'm getting these artists for dirt cheap and washing my money that way. So my name shows up on MTV News, three men stabbed at Bubba Sparks's birthday party. So now the feds are like, oh, he's in Smyrna, Tennessee. I know I'm going to prison eventually. I got to make as much money as possible. Both of my parents were addicted to drugs, and my dad was actually selling drugs

Starting point is 00:00:25 and abusing alcohol to the fullest. And so my dad had been on this alcohol binger and taken, I think it was Quailudes, you know. And I think the story is true when you see it in the movie Wolf of Wall Street where they said, if you fight to go to sleep, it actually has the adverse effect on it. So he would have been up for days, ran out of drugs. My mother had me and we were staying at one of his friend's house at the time. But the story was she was over there also shooting drugs herself. And so my dad was trying to come over there and get drugs to.

Starting point is 00:00:58 and they was running him off. And so he done got into this rage where he was going to, he had got his shotgun, was running around my grandmother's house. He was, you know, saying he was going to basically come over there and kill everybody in the house, including himself.

Starting point is 00:01:13 And then my grandmother's brother hid the shotgun shells from him. And so now he's tearing up my grandmother's house trying to find these shotgun shells. But he changed his language from going over there. Now he's just going to pull the gun on himself, basically. So my grandmother's brother, which was his uncle, said, here, take your shells, and I hope you do a good job with it. And so it gives him his shells back because they're just over it because he's been raging, tearing up the house for days.

Starting point is 00:01:40 So give him his shotgun shells back. He basically takes the gun, puts it in his mouth, says he's going to do this. And then said he thinks about me and that, you know, he lost his father at 10. And he said, you know, I'm doing this same thing. I'll be doing the same thing to him that was done to me. So turns the gun, puts it on the back of his leg, shotgun on the back of his leg, literally blows the back of his leg off to get drugs. And so the story growing up was a shark bit him.

Starting point is 00:02:07 So he told all of us for years that he was bitten by a shark. And so he had a cool story to tell. And so that happened when I was two. And then, of course, my mom's not trying to hang around there anymore because my dad is literally crazy. Everybody knows he's crazy. But that's the effect that's having on him. So we jumped from house to house till I was about four. In September of 81, I was four years old.

Starting point is 00:02:31 My mother ends up getting pregnant by another man. And so she brings me back to my father's house and drops me off. Well, here's the problem. She pulls up in front of the house. I think I'm just going to see my dad. She pulls up in front of the house. She's like, going up there and knock on the door, I'll be back in a little while. So she doesn't check to see if anybody's at home.

Starting point is 00:02:48 There's no cars in a driveway. So I go up there. She pulls off. I knock on the door multiple. times, try to go in the house, it's locked, sit down on the porch for a minute. My mom's left. I'm sitting on the porch. I'm kind of confused on what to do. I'm only four. And so I remember there was a lady up the road that we used to go and see, and she kept a lot of kids up there. So I was like, I'll just, she was about three doors up. I'll like, I'll just walk up there and see if she's

Starting point is 00:03:13 home. So as I start heading up that way, someone pulls up and was one of my dad's friends and he's like, hey, man, what are you doing out here? I was like, I don't know. My mom dropped me off. She's like, where's your dad? I was like, I don't know that either. So this is before cell phones. So he's like, get in the car. Well, that's the, I say this is the first time that the Lord had his hand on my life before the thing happened with my father at two. This was another time where I knew the Lord had his hand on my life because that could have been anybody put me in that car. Yeah. And I didn't know enough at the time to not get in the car. No one had taught me that. You know, I'd been bounced from house to house. So getting a car with this man and he takes me to my dad. My dad was

Starting point is 00:03:52 actually cutting hair out of salon at the time. So he takes me there and my dad's like, where's your mom? I'm like, I don't know. She just dropped me off. And he was like, where'd she go? I was like, I don't know. She said she's coming back. Well, my mom never comes back. And so now I'm at my dad's house. The good news was my grandmother owned the home, but there was so much chaos going on and at home every day, she wouldn't stay there. So her routine was she would come home in the mornings. She would cook breakfast. She would clean herself up, do whatever. And then she would go clean houses all day. And she wouldn't come back to the house because the house at the time was all my dad's friends they were selling drugs

Starting point is 00:04:28 out of the house they were partying all day there would be we had this white brick wall that went all way around the house is like a two-foot foundation wall or retention wall and they would just sit out there all hours of the day starting to like nine in the morning drinking and getting high sure the neighbors love that oh we were i mean we were we were in the old east Nashville if you go to Nashville now that's kind of the gentrified area where all the people moving to but that was back in a day when it was like just redneck central. But we were mixed. It was just poverty.

Starting point is 00:04:57 So she dropped me off in September of 81. And then there was an incident that happened in October. So there was another altercation in front of the house. So my dad and him get into this big shootout in front of the house. And I'm on the toilet as a four-year-old. And one of his friends has to snatch me off the toilet and run upstairs with me until a bullet stopped flying. The reason I know this is because she's all over my Facebook even to this day. I always like, I'm glad I was there for you.

Starting point is 00:05:23 And it's sweet, but you know what I mean? Yeah. The story's been told multiple times. And so that happened when I was four. And I just remember turning five and very angry, very confused. I'm in this home with someone who's raging all the time. But I do tell people this. My dad never turned his anger toward his children ever.

Starting point is 00:05:42 He would get into it with his women. He'd get into it with his friends, but he never did that toward us. So that's one thing I like to clarify when I tell my story. So when I turned five years old, my mom actually sent me a birthday card. It had $20 in it. And she goes, I'll see you in two weeks. I'm like, cool. Well, my dad already knows, like, you can't trust this woman.

Starting point is 00:06:02 So he's like, hey, I wouldn't get too excited if she don't come in two weeks. But, you know, I'm like any five-year-old wait to see his mom. She's coming. So I'm literally an anticipation for my mom to come. And so the next year comes by, and it's my birthday again. And I looked at my dad and I said, it sure has been a long two weeks. weeks. From there, it just became a joke in our life. You know, it became a joke, you know. And so when I was six, my dad ended up bringing a woman home and marrying her and then end up having two little

Starting point is 00:06:31 brothers through her. Right. So my dad ends up having three sons. So they're in this addictive, tumultuous relationship as well. So I can remember this. I tell people the story. Remember the cartoon Tom and Jerry? Yeah. So I can remember nights where my dad would go out and be drunk all night and then we would be there at the house. And this probably happened for like three or four years nightly. My dad would come home. She would be like, where you been, what you've been doing, so-and-so. I just can remember being woke up and having my little brothers there that was small because they were like 17 months apart. But what would happen was I would, we had a, you come in our living room, we had a bedroom, then a bathroom and then another bedroom. So

Starting point is 00:07:15 just made like a big circle right into the living room. So I would wake up. So I would wake up to them screaming and he would be chasing her around the little circle and then eventually she'd be chasing him and so i don't know how the she'd have something in her hand chasing him back so this went on you know many many nights and i would remember like sometimes they would even take us to the next door neighbor's house just to get us out of the chaos so that was normal what we grew up thinking was normal as a child you know and so eventually um my dad was selling you know selling a bud out of the house. And so what happened was he got tricked. And when I was like eight years old, he had sold, sold some stuff out of the house. So the narcotics people call him on the telephone.

Starting point is 00:07:59 They're like, hey, man, we just got your boy up the road and you need to get out of that house because they're coming to you next. Okay. Wait. The narcotics people, what do you? Well, I don't think, I don't think he knew it was a narcotics people at the first. Someone called him on the telephone and said, hey, it was actually narcotics detectives, but he didn't know. He said, hey, I'm a friend of so-and-so's. He just got busted leaving your house. They're on the way to your house right now. So my dad gathers up all the drugs in the house and puts it in this old school orange cooler back in the day. They just sold a little bottle of drinks out of.

Starting point is 00:08:31 So he gets this cooler, gets everything in it, all his paraphernalia, everything. He runs out the back door, jumps the fence. They're in the alley waiting on him. The narcotics on the alley waiting on him. They draw it out on him. So they didn't have a warrant to come in that time. So they laughed at him when he got to the alley. It's kind of brilliant.

Starting point is 00:08:46 Yeah, it is. They told him, they said, you actually fail. for the oldest trick in the book. So my dad's fighting that case, and he ends up having to, like a year later, he ends up having to do like six months in jail. So in the process of him doing that six months in the jail,

Starting point is 00:09:03 I'm living there with my grandmother's house. I'm living there with his wife, my two little brothers. How old are you? I'm eight or nine at this time. Okay. So what's interesting is I knew she was up to no good, but I also knew I had to live with her.

Starting point is 00:09:19 So, like, even though my dad was, me and my dad was tight, I'm like, I'm not in a hurry to tell him what's going on. I'm going to let him get home first because I got to live here with her. So they end up, my little brothers end up going to visit. And so when they go to visit, my dad's cutting hair in the county jail. So that's back when you could hold cash in the county jail way back in the 80s. Well, he gives my little brother like a dollar. My little brother goes, that guy working on my mom's car gave me more than that. So he dry snitches him.

Starting point is 00:09:49 Drosin's his mom is straight out, right? And so my dad calls me on the phone. He's like, who's this and this and this? And I was like, oh, well, all I know is, you know, well, how long she, I said, he's worked on her car. She's went somewhere with him a few times. He was like, why do you tell me? I was like, I got to live here with her. So they fall out.

Starting point is 00:10:08 He gets, before he gets home, she ends up leaving with my two little brothers. And so now I'm in this home with just him. And then we had, you know, my grandmother's house was one of them homes where anytime somebody didn't have a place to stay. they stayed there. So we always had a house full of people living there. And so then it transitioned because he didn't have no one to fight with. So he would come home at night. And this happened for like four or five years. So the party would happen during the day. And then by seven o'clock, my dad would go take a bath or already knew it. That time, he's getting ready to go out. So he would do, he'd go take a bath. And then he would leave for the bar every night. And they had like different bars they

Starting point is 00:10:47 frequent and so he would leave for the bar and I'd just be in that home by myself at eight years old, you know, I was probably nine or ten by then. Sorry, that's probably ten. But I was old enough where he could just call me on the phone and make sure I was good, you know, and so he would leave every night. But what was interesting was I kind of got forced into the father old because he would leave and he would go get drunk all night and he'd come in like two o'clock in the morning and sometimes couldn't get his keys in the door. So I slept in the living room on the couch anyway, so I'd go and let him in the house. And so my dad was one of them. if it wasn't, he was either an angry drunk or he was a depressed drunk.

Starting point is 00:11:21 So he would be so drunk, he'd come in. He'd be like, nobody loves me. Wake up, come in here. So I'd basically go in the kitchen with him, helping find food. He would eat food. Eventually, I would find his keys and hide him from him because I didn't want my dad to go back out and kill somebody in that vehicle or himself. So he'd get done eating.

Starting point is 00:11:41 A lot of times he would go looking for his keys. I got to go somewhere. And I was like, help me find my keys. So I would run around the house and act like I'm. looking for these keys. And the whole time I got him hid. Right. And so he would eventually pass out.

Starting point is 00:11:52 I'd sit at the foot of the bed until he passed out. He would pass out. I'd go to bed. My grandmother would wait me up to go to school. I'd give her the keys. And that was kind of like an ongoing thing in my home. And so the next thing that happened was I was probably 10 years old. My dad does those six months and comes home.

Starting point is 00:12:10 When he comes home from doing those six months, like a month later, he's passed out in a car with a bunch of people. and they go to burglarizer pizza hut. So they go to rob a safe at a pizza hut. So my dad's passed out in the car, but he gets caught with him. So now he's facing this charge. And so he's fighting this in court now,

Starting point is 00:12:28 and he's on probation for this other thing. And so it was probably six months after that. I was outside one evening, and the rule back then, as you guys know, not like today, you come in when the street lights come on. Yeah. So I'm standing out in front of my house. I got a bunch of friends with me,

Starting point is 00:12:45 and we're just all hanging out. And I hear my dad come to the door. He's like, hey, you need to come on in. It's getting dark outside. So I told them by, I come in the house. I probably went in the house 30 minutes. I hear somebody knock on the door. Kind of a beat more of beating,

Starting point is 00:12:59 but it wasn't like beating it down. It's just kind of a hard knock. Law enforcement. So what I thought, yeah, yeah. So what I thought, though, was one of my friends got locked out of their house and couldn't get in. So they were coming back to stay. So I don't even think to look through the,

Starting point is 00:13:13 we had like a little, We had like a little four-pan, four-plane, four-pan glass window. It had a little curtain over it. So I didn't think to pull it back. So I just unlocked the door and open it and then shotgun. They laid me on the ground. And he had been selling out of the house again, so they put me on the ground. Is this a robbery or it's just the police?

Starting point is 00:13:31 It's the police. Okay. So the police are coming in. So they basically tell me to get on the ground. They cuff me. They set me on the couch. They ramsock our house. They find like four ounces of bud.

Starting point is 00:13:41 And so now he's fighting all three of these charges. Jesus. Yeah. I remember real quick, we used to, sometimes we'd hide my dad's keys. Sometimes we would go and take the starter crap off. Oh, wow. It was back, you know, like all the, you know, the spark plugs. But you could, there was just two little switches on the, you just pulled a little thing off and you could pull it up. If you just pop it at all, it doesn't start. It just goes. So my mom, because he would yell at her for stealing, for hiding his, his key, where are my key? She'd go, George, your keys right here.

Starting point is 00:14:17 Yeah. You shouldn't be driving. And he'd get up and I'm waving. And she goes, you shouldn't be driving. You would, please don't leave knowing. No, please don't leave. No, no. And he gets, he's out in the car.

Starting point is 00:14:30 He's got no idea. Next morning, he's like, did you get anybody to come and look at that car? Yeah, yeah, I did. They did. They came and they looked at it. It should be started now. Yeah. Oh, that's crazy.

Starting point is 00:14:44 That's crazy, yeah. But when they're in that state, they don't know. They have no idea. They don't know. Clueless. Yeah. And so after the burglary thing, December of, I was 10, so it would have been, now it was 12, so it would have been December of 89.

Starting point is 00:14:59 So the burglar thing happens. He gets out on bond for that. And then I'm laying there asleep and somebody taps me in the middle of night. It's like four in the morning. They're like, hey, get up. I was like, why are you waking me up? They're like, it's about your dad. Like, what about my dad?

Starting point is 00:15:16 And they're like, you need to wake up and hear this. So now I know it's something serious. So I raise up and they're like, your dad's been shot. I'm like, how? You know, they're like, so my dad had went into the projects to buy drugs. And it was a- Who is this? It's a family member.

Starting point is 00:15:31 Okay, just family member. I think it was maybe his sister. I told you it was always random people staying there. So it was a family member there with me, but they tell me he's been shot. So what happened was he went into the projects to buy drugs. and he gave the young guy's money and the dude pulled the pistol on him. So my dad starts backing up. Like, oh, man, it ain't got to be like that.

Starting point is 00:15:50 And the dude aims at his chest. And my dad says he just, when the gun fires, he said, I don't know what it was, but it drops. And so he gets shot in his stomach. And so he stays in a hospital for multiple weeks for that. And, you know, I just remember this because there were several Christmases where I would wake up and it would be nothing under the tree because my dad, he could do it just as, He could do the best he could do just to get a little bit of food in the house, you know?

Starting point is 00:16:15 He cut hair. He would do odds and ends things. But he was so addicted to everything that he never had anything extra. So I just remember Christmas being one of those things where I never looked forward to the holiday. So when he shot, I'm thinking, I'm glad my dad's okay. But he comes home like two days before Christmas. And I can just remember this vividly like, where here comes another Christmas where there's going to be nothing under the tree. Which I didn't have high expectations at that point anyway.

Starting point is 00:16:40 You know, so I'm 12 years old and I'm mad at the world. You know, I'm mad at, I'm mad at what I think, who God is at the time, what I'm being taught. I'm mad at him. I'm mad at my mom. I'm mad at my dad. I'm mad at everybody for having me in this environment. I'm really like, why, why me? You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:16:57 So the book I'm actually writing now is called God, why? It was all the questions I had growing up that I didn't get the answers to until later in life because I had to learn some things about life to realize what I went through was not my. my fault, you know. And so from 12 to 15, nothing really excited happened except for there was one incident, which was absolutely bizarre. So there was a female that used to come over there all the time. And, you know, if she's hanging out with those type of dudes, you can already tell what she was, right? Yeah. And so I just remember them trying to get her, trying to pay her to sleep with me. And I, something inside me just wouldn't do it, right? Even though I was like going through puberty and I was like,

Starting point is 00:17:40 this would be great. There was just this voice inside of me that would tell me, don't do it, don't do it. And so I was more nervous than I was excited. And so she would come on to me. She'd rub my leg, all that stuff. You know, I'm 12 years old going through puberty. So I don't do it. And then come to find out, like, a year later, she dies of HIV. So I was like, there's another time where it could have went real bad. And something inside of me was like, don't do it. You know, so then I started learning how to listen to my conscience and my voice inside. You know, by this time I had gotten saved, you know, what I knew to be saved. I didn't know what it really was.

Starting point is 00:18:19 I just went because everybody said, this is what you're supposed to do. But I do know that when asked the Lord into my heart at the time that the Holy Spirit was living inside of me because there was things that was happening in my life that I didn't understand, but there was always this voice speaking to me kind of pulling me away from the danger, you know, sort of speak, if that makes sense. No, I think it's always there. I just think people ignore it. Choose not to listen.

Starting point is 00:18:42 They just ignore it. Yeah. I believe now that I know who God really is and I know the nature of God, it's like anybody that has children, I tell him he's a loving father that always wants to speak to his children. But I think a lot of times we're too busy or we just choose to do it our own way and we don't want to listen. Yeah. You know? No, I can.

Starting point is 00:19:02 I believe that. Yeah. I think it's funny because, you know, people, people mock it so much until you really start to listen and you start, and things start going right. Yep. And you're like, test it out.

Starting point is 00:19:16 You know what I'm saying? You know what's saying? Test prayer out. Like how is this what is happening right now? I mean, it's not like, it's not like it's not like it's dropping, you know, uh,

Starting point is 00:19:26 you know, $100 bills from from the sky. But suddenly when you start doing everything right and kind of pay attention, um, and listening, things just subtly, subtly start to kind of go your way a little here, a little there. And before you know it, lots of things are going your way.

Starting point is 00:19:45 And then if you look back, you kind of go, the only thing that really changed is me. Yeah, me doing a few. And my thoughts about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My intent. Yep.

Starting point is 00:19:55 And so then what happens after that is 1992. I'm 15. My dad has just, you know, being who he's been for so many years. And I could just remember praying one time and asking the Lord, I'm like, why can't you make my dad normal like everybody else? And so the only thing I thought normal was at the time was my next door neighbors, their father would go to work all day. He'd come home, he'd have dinner with the family. He might kick his foot up and have a beer or watch TV with the children. And then, you know, it was just a very peaceful life.

Starting point is 00:20:28 Well, all I ever known was chaos. So I would pray this prayer every single night. Only prayer I knew to pray. make my dad normal like the rest of the fathers that I know. So that's the only thing I knew to pray. Well, in 1992, I was 15 years old. My dad actually goes into the hospital. He wakes up holding his stomach and it's hurting so bad he can't move.

Starting point is 00:20:49 So he's just holding a pillow. So one of his friends takes him to the hospital and they end up admitting him. And so they tell me, your dad's been admitted. Come to find out he had pancreatitis, which basically he had basically tried to drink himself to death. He had drank so much alcohol that his pancreas had swole up so bad that they didn't know if he was going to live or not. So the next day, it's very interesting. I tell people this, it's interesting how many, and you can attest to this because of your background too. It's interesting how many friends you have when you're doing wrong, but then how many show up when things

Starting point is 00:21:23 actually go wrong for you. So my dad's in the hospital admitted in a hospital, so nobody shows up to party at the house the next day, right? So I come home from school. I'm trying to get a ride to the hospital to see my father, nobody's there. So I just remember walking. All of his friends. All of his friends. All of his friends. All the good friends.

Starting point is 00:21:40 They weren't friends no more. It was only one that took him to the hospital. It was only one that came and checked up on me consistently. So I ended up walking to the hospital, and this was probably the first time I'd ever experienced anything like this. So I walked to the hospital was like two miles away. So if people don't understand when you go through withdrawals from alcohol, they have to strap you down.

Starting point is 00:22:01 So they got my dad strapped down by his ankles and by. his hands and he's in a coma. He's actually went into a coma because he's suffering from withdrawal. So I show up at the hospital. You can die from withdrawals from alcohol. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So they're having to give him all kind of medication. I think what they actually did is put him into a coma so that his body would accept what they was putting in it to save his life. So as I'm walking in there, the nurse is like, honey, you don't want to see this. And I'm like, it's my father. I want to see it. So I walk in this hospital at 15 years old and my dad strapped down to this bed and I go up to him and I put my hand on him like, dad, dad. And he's doing this, but his eyes are closed.

Starting point is 00:22:44 But this is no exaggeration. I remember him opening his eyes while he was still in a coma, but he looks at me, but he's looking through me. He's not looking at me, but he's looking through me. And I'm looking around. I'm like, who is he looking at? And then he just starts this. and so it's probably the first time I ever experienced being around someone who had demons inside of them from all the things they had put in their body and went through but I didn't understand

Starting point is 00:23:09 it at the time but this went on for like my dad stayed in this coma for like 21 days holy shit I actually went to the hospital every single day did you did you ever see the movie um the good thief with uh Nick Nolte I don't remember fucking such a good man I mentioned it before like probably a year or a couple years ago. It's so good. And he is, he's addicted to age. Okay. He lives in, he live in Italy or something.

Starting point is 00:23:40 He lives in Italy. He's an American, lives in Italy. Addited age. He's a con man. And there's a big con that he has to do because he's broke. Absolutely. He's broke. He lives in this house that he's going to, I think he's going to lose the house.

Starting point is 00:23:55 I think it's, you know, he's just, he's an old man. in his, he's in his late 60s, probably, yeah, probably late 60s. And he looks like, you know,

Starting point is 00:24:03 Nick Nalty. Just, just shuffled, like, just beat to hell. Yeah, life's been hard. Hanging out with all these young kids.

Starting point is 00:24:10 And he, uh, so he has to get sober. And he, he gets the two kids that are kind of, one of them stays with him, kind of like a protege. And then this young girl who's working as like a escort or something.

Starting point is 00:24:25 And he hand, he, handcuffs himself to the bed and gives her the key and he tells her like, I'm going to beg you for this key for this key in a day or two. And of course, he's like, I'm going to go through withdrawals. I'm not going to know who you are. Like, he explains, like, this is going to be bad, but this is how I'm going to get sober. I got to get sober. So right, so that I can commit this scam, which is brilliant. Right, right. This is one of my favorite movies. this is probably this is in my top 20 for sure this is amazing movie i'll definitely check it out now

Starting point is 00:25:02 oh my god he's he's also got uh um there's a there is a there is a detective that's followed that's busted him multiple times they're kind of like friends and he's following him he stopped he's like hey he's such he's like he's he's you know Italian and they talk he's how are you doing he's like what i know you're i know you're putting something together he's like that's not you know Right. No. Yeah. But he says to him, I remember he tells him, it's called the good thief because he says, he has, you know the story of the good thief? And he's like, I don't know what he says. I don't know what he says. I don't know what the detective says yes, but he said, he says that, you know, there's two thieves on the cross beside Jesus.

Starting point is 00:25:43 And he said, one thief is mocking him. Yep. And the other one says, you know, you fool, you know, what are you doing? Yep. Remember me today. Yeah, he said, and he said, but he's like, you know, this is the son of God. Like, don't mock him. you doing and he says you know remember me um and uh and he says what are you trying to say he said i'm saying he is he is are you you're the good thief he says i'm not the good thief is but i'm trying it was low it's such a good powerful yeah i mean listen goose when he says it is such a good movie yeah and listen he begs this broad to get to give him that key i mean he is it's

Starting point is 00:26:22 probably one of his best performances ever. And yeah, it's a great movie, and he begs her, bro, he goes through hell trying to get sober. But then he gets sober, and he pulls off the con. And it's just this phenomenal, amazing movie. I love that the movie is actually based off of what you told me about the two people on the cross because I think that's powerful, because this is what I always tell people like, you got denominations and I choose not to. but you'll have some to say, if you don't get baptized in water, then you're not saved. Well, I always tell them, what about the thief on the cross? Jesus told him, he said, today you will be with me in paradise because he called on to the

Starting point is 00:27:06 savior, the son of man, right? Son of God. He called on to Jesus as a Savior and told him, this is a Savior, like you said, he wasn't mocking him, tells him, remember me to your father, right? He says, today you'll be with me in paradise. Right. So he didn't get baptized in water. But yet he was still saved.

Starting point is 00:27:23 So just little things like that, I find interesting. There's a TikTok that I love about. And it's a preacher or something. And he's talking about the Good Thief. Yeah. And I guess he's in front of a congregation or something. He's talking. And I've actually sent it to a bunch of people.

Starting point is 00:27:40 And it's the same thing. He's like, the guy, he's like, can you imagine what it must have been like for the Good Thief when he gets up in front of the pearly gates? He speaks to, you know, St. Peter. and he says, you know, or the head angel or whatever. And he's like, you know, he's like, what are you doing here? He's like, I don't know. And he's like, okay, well, are you baptized in the site? And he goes to the whole thing.

Starting point is 00:28:03 And he says, no, no. Are you this? Are you, do you understand the concept of, you know, whatever? He goes through all these different theological, yeah, discussions and things that you need to be saved and go come to heaven. And so he's like, no, no. He goes, what are you doing here? And he goes, the man in the middle cross said I could be. Amen.

Starting point is 00:28:27 And he goes, that's all you need. That's it. That's a great. It's a great. It's a great. I'll send it to you because I'll send it to you because I know it comes up all the time. It'll come up on my feet immediately because I probably watch that thing 50 times in the last year. You ever heard the joke about Lazarus?

Starting point is 00:28:44 This is great. So it's one of them comedians that tells a story. His name's Chris something. I don't know. He's super funny, though. But he says, can you imagine what it was like for Lazarus? He said, when Jesus raised him from the dead. Do you hear that? Is the wife? Yeah, go ahead. So he says, he says, so here's Lazarus. He's up in heaven. He said, day one, he's just now unpacking his stuff. It's like day two, he's starting to meet everybody. He's like, yeah, I'm getting to know everybody. He said, day three, he's on the court. He's playing ball. He's like having the time of his life. I made it. I made it. He says, day four.

Starting point is 00:29:16 Oh, yeah. Angel shows up, hey, man, I got to speak to you for a minute. Yeah. He said it comes over there and he's like, what's up? He was like, man, we normally don't do this, but we're going to send you back. And he says, can you imagine what Lazarus like? I don't want to go back. And then he says, when Lazarus has to go back, he said that as he's leaving, the angel says,

Starting point is 00:29:35 hey, we'll leave the light on for you. I just thought it was a great comedy skit that someone did about that. Well, there's one that, what is it? Oh, gosh, is it Saul? I forget where he takes his children from him. He gives him, he makes him, he gives him a disease. He kills off his flock. He does Job.

Starting point is 00:29:58 Joe, thank you. Job. And he's just destroyed everything. He goes, but he never kills his wife. He goes, she must have been a piece of work. If you're putting him through hell, like, they're like, oh, should we take his wife? No, no. No, she's already putting him through it.

Starting point is 00:30:11 Leave his wife. This is part of it. Yeah, that's good. So, anyway, you. Yeah, so sorry, go ahead. No, you're good. So back to 15. I go and visit my dad every day at the hospital.

Starting point is 00:30:23 And so eventually he comes out of the coma on December 22nd. They let him come home, I think, like the day before Christmas. Well, the doctor literally tells him, he goes, hey, man, look, he said, you almost drink yourself to death. He was like, I don't know how you're alive. It's a miracle you're alive. He was like, but I will tell you, because in the process of him being in a coma, he actually did die a couple of times. And they resuscitated him. so the Lord brought my dad back.

Starting point is 00:30:47 And so the doctor looked at him right in his face when he woke up and said, hey, you died a couple of times on the table. He was like, so you can't drink alcohol no more or you're not going to make it. And so my dad told me the dream he was in the whole time. He said, he said, everybody he loved was on one side of the plane. He said, and him and all of his friends on the other side of the plane, he said it didn't make sense to me at the time. He said, but when I woke up it made all the sense.

Starting point is 00:31:12 He said, everybody on this side of the plane was going, one direction, everyone on this side of the plane was going to other direction. So it was kind of one of them moments from my dad where he had questioned if God was even real, because I remember him having a conversation one time saying, there's no way you could be real. I wouldn't feel like I feel. I wouldn't be depressed. I wouldn't be doing all these things.

Starting point is 00:31:31 But what people don't realize is God gave us a free will from the beginning. And so it's not God's fault. If you choose to continue to sow death into your life when death comes, it's not his fault. You know, and so my dad got that realization in that moment. And so my dad comes home from the hospital. They tell him he can't drink alcohol no more. So he gets, he has a friend that takes him to a program called Narcotics Anonymous. So he starts going to these meetings and he's not drinking at the time.

Starting point is 00:32:01 And so this was, he probably went to the meeting the first time December 26th after Christmas. And all the way up until April, he's going to these meetings with a friend. his, well, there was an incident that happened right before April, and I'll get to why April's important. So he's going to these meetings. He's not drinking. He's still smoking a little bud at the time because he's thinking, no big deal. And then the friend that he had a friend that he used to, every time he'd get arrested with something, they would ask about this friend. You just give us him and we'll let you go. You give us him and we'll let you go. My dad never would tell on this guy. So this guy shows up and picks my dad up.

Starting point is 00:32:42 Well, also what I knew with this guy is this was also the guy my dad would shoot drugs with. So when the guy shows up, I'm angry. I'm mad. I'm like, what are you even doing with this guy? No, no, no, it's not like that. So he leaves with this guy all day, he comes back. Well, I look at him in his face because I had been around it enough to know what it looked like.

Starting point is 00:33:01 So when he comes back through that door, I look him right in his face. He was like, I ain't done nothing, I ain't done nothing. And I could tell he hadn't done nothing at the time. So the whole time he's with this guy, he's telling this guy about this program he's got and how he's changing his life. Well, the story goes, the guy actually went and copped a bunch of pills at the time. And back then it was called Deladas. And so they would shoot these up.

Starting point is 00:33:21 So he came back. He actually gave my dad one. The whole time my dad's telling him a story about Narcotics Anonymous, the dude's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you and gives him a pill. So my dad doesn't, my dad puts it in his shirt pocket, but doesn't do it at the time. So he comes home instead of throwing it away, I look him in his face. And I'm like, he's not how I know. that because I've been around it my whole life. So my dad runs to the bathroom. So I'm like,

Starting point is 00:33:47 I know what he's up to. And mind you, I'm on this thing that my dad is getting his life together. I'm believing this myself. Right. He's convincing everybody. He's convincing me. And so this is probably around March of that year of 93. He goes into the bathroom and I go stand right by the door because I know what's fixing to happen. So I stand right by the door. He's probably in there 15, 20 minutes. I know he's not using a bathroom. He comes, he pops that door open and I'm standing there. And I look him right in his face and I could see his eyes. I could tell he went in there. I could look at his arm and tell what he had just done. And I looked him straight in his face and I said, man, you make me sick. And he looked at me and he said, he said, he went from here to here. He said, I was high. He said, as soon as you said that, he said,

Starting point is 00:34:31 I was high no more. And he said, he looked back at me. He said, I know, son, I make me sick too. what's beautiful is a month later he goes into narcotics anonymous he goes on a retreat with him and he stands up and he gets honest finally and he tells him hey having drinks since December 1st but i did do this this and this it was like so i got to give these key tags back because i'm not i don't really have this much clean time and picks up a brand new clean chip den and so my dad's been clean off drugs and alcohol since april 7th of 1993 so that's the beautiful part of the story, but now my dad's trying to be a father, and I'm in my teenage years. So you can already see how this is going to go. It's kind of a friction thing now. My dad's trying to finally be a

Starting point is 00:35:17 father, but I've basically been running with whoever I want for years, doing whatever I want, you know, trying to be the dad in a situation. Now he's trying to be the dad. And so I find myself running with some people, and when I was 16, I got my car, and so I'm running with a group of guys, and I can just remember my dad telling me, like, that's not the crowd you should be running with. But I'm like, who are you to tell me? Like, I watched you do this my whole life. Now you want to tell me how to do this.

Starting point is 00:35:44 So I was already kind of shaped in the direction I was going. So when I was 16, we had an incident where I was running with these specific guys, and we went over to this girl's house to pick. She just told us to come by. So me and two other my friends go over there and her. we were 16, her brother was 19. So he comes to the door. It's like, get off my steps.

Starting point is 00:36:07 Y'all need to leave. Y'all ain't talking to my sister. We're like, she told us to come over here. So he kind of gets aggressive with us, comes out on the port, starts a fight with us. So we end up jumping on him, the three of us jump on him. And then the reason I'm telling the story, because it leads to something very chaotic past that. So we hurt him pretty bad. And then he goes to the hospital.

Starting point is 00:36:29 So about probably three weeks later, I'm working at Kroger's, and I'm like a courtesy clerk. So I'm going back and forth to people's cars, bringing their groceries. Well, some of his friends show up in the parking lot. And one of them walks up and they're like, hey, we're going to be across the street waiting on you when you get off work. And it was probably five or six of them. I'm like, okay. So by this time I'm in Bowdoin, you know what I mean? I'm like, I'm not scared.

Starting point is 00:36:56 So I go in there and I make a phone call. and I call my group of friends and like three of them show up. Well, here's the problem for them. There's only four of us, but one of the guys that we ran with, he was like, at 16, he was like 6-2-250. He was a junior Olympics boxer that mixed guy. So like I watched him go to the dam. We used to go to the dam on Saturdays.

Starting point is 00:37:20 They would always be fighting at the lake. And I watch him knock out grown men. So I knew I was good with him in my corner, right? So we end up, I end up getting off. work, they show up, we go across the street, six on four. We basically handle our business and we think it's done, right? So I'm not thinking nothing else about it. In between the next incident that happens, I'm actually at the mall one time and we're leaving the mall and I got the group of friends with me and the mall's closing. They're like, y'all got to go, you got to go.

Starting point is 00:37:54 So I had got this little, I don't know if you remember, they're like the hollow rope chains you could get. So they bought me one of them big old round ones. That's what I wanted for Christmas. I got one of them big fat ones. It was hollow, though. So it wasn't really a lot of gold at all, right? So I got this around my neck. I think I'm cool.

Starting point is 00:38:12 I'm leaving the mall. And the mall's closing. And as soon as I'm walking backwards out of the mall, dude puts a gun to my head. He's like, take that chain off. And I'm like, oh, so, you know, take the chain off, hand it to him. Well, when he does that, my friend runs inside because, you know, it's a lot of mall police and security. Hey, hey, my friend's being robbed. My friend's being robbed.

Starting point is 00:38:33 So the dude takes my necklace and takes off running across the empty parking lot because, again, the mall was closing. It was pretty empty. So they get on the radio and call it. He tries to go up this embankment and the police swarm him everywhere. And so basically, I get my chain back. They never brought me to court on it. And they end up giving this guy like nine years for armed robbery. Oh, shit.

Starting point is 00:38:55 Yeah. He was from California. So he had a rap sheet for this. What's interesting is my dad, again, you don't need to be hanging out with those guys. That's trouble. Like, those aren't the guys you should be hanging out with. Look what's happened to you already. You've been in two of these fights.

Starting point is 00:39:11 You get robbed. Well, I couldn't put it together. Like, this robbery had nothing to do with them was my argument. So fast forward probably a couple months later, it's summertime. Well, that was after Christmas. So going to the summer, I remember we're hanging out with. these females and one of my buddies gets a phone call. He's like, hey, the guy's name, I told you, the mixed guy that could fight. His name was Taj. They're like, hey, Taj has been shot.

Starting point is 00:39:35 I'm like, whoa, what happened? They're like, hey, he's at the hospital. We got to go. So we leave and we run to the hospital. And he got shot in his wrist here fighting, fighting with some guys. We'll come to find out the same guys that we had got into it with it previously. There were some friends of there. So he shows up at this house with some people that he knew and he thinks they're all cool and then they all get into a big altercation. Well, they know they can't whoop him. So one guy pulls out the gun and as he's swinging at the guy, the guy shoots him in the wrist.

Starting point is 00:40:05 Well, we pick him up from the hospital. He gets discharged the same day. They're like, hey, we need to go back over there and pick up so-and-so. So there was a female over there that got stranded there. This is before Uber left or nothing. We got to go pick her up. So I'm not thinking that people are still over there. We think we're just going to pick her up from a house.

Starting point is 00:40:22 So I got this two-door, two-door burrata. It's a silver barretta. It's a car, two-door. I got his big self in the back and me and a friend of mine over here. So I let him, I pull the seat up. We're in the alley. I pulled the seat up. I let him out.

Starting point is 00:40:35 As soon as he steps out that car, dude pulls a rifle. He's like, hey, get back in the car or I'm going to kill you this time. That's what he tells my friend. I'm like, bro, just get in a car. We can get it later. Just get in the car. So I lift my seat back up. as he's as he's getting in the taking his time to get in the car the guy starts shooting so so my

Starting point is 00:40:54 buddy dives into the back and I punch the gas and we take off well as I'm taking off down the alley two bullet holes come into the car what's interesting is I'm driving like this and you can see the scar there so the bullet comes through and it just burns my arm fortunately it's the dash a piece of it breaks off the dash and hits my friend and lip so he's like I've been shot I've been shot so we don't know, he's bleeding over there. And so we get about, you know, half a mile down the road, we get out of this alley. We all get out of the car and evaluate ourselves to see if we've truly been shot. So all it was was, I got grazed. He got hit by the part of the, the dash that got hit with the bullet, and nobody was shot. But it was interesting because

Starting point is 00:41:38 now it's like, there's another situation where six inches further, I get shot right here in a rib cage where my heart is, right? And so there's another opportunity. where it could have ended my life and it was just me being hardheaded and not listening to my dad because I had already said I want to do what I want to do, right? And so that happens. My dad takes my car away from me and I'm still hanging out with these people for a little while. Well, then I come to this realization like everything that is happening with these people that hadn't turned out good. So end up not really going back over there. I get my car back. I'm not going back over into that specific neighborhood where we all run together, hanging out with a different

Starting point is 00:42:16 group of friends. And so I'm getting ready to graduate high school. I'm 17 and I'm probably a month away from high school. And my friend gets into it with this guy before school over a girl. And I'm like, y'all can fight it out one-on-one. So it's just three of us back there. It's me, my friend, and the guy that's trying to fight with him. So they get into a fight. And my friend had something going on with his shoulder where every time he would, it always happened to him. Every time he had played basketball or every time he had throw a punch, his shoulder would come out of place. So him and this guy get into a fight, I could see his shoulder come out of place. The guy gets on top of him. I'm telling the guy, he's done, he's done. The guy's on top of him

Starting point is 00:43:00 trying to beat on him, like get off of him, basically. He won't get off of him. So I hit the guy off of him and then they bring me into the office and they're going to expel me from school. Now, mind you, like, I've worked hard to try to get through high school because I was the first one of my family to ever care. And so I begged them to not put me out of school. And so eventually my dad comes up there. A lot of things happen. And I'm actually afforded the opportunity to graduate and walk. And so I walk. And at this point, I'm like, I got to do something different because I know that what I've been doing has only led to bad things. And so I'm going to find a new group of friends. So I end up hanging out with this other group of people. And we're all living in this little apartment

Starting point is 00:43:44 above his aunt's house. You know, I want out of them. I want out. I want freedom. You know, I'm graduated. I think I'm grown already. And so we're living above his aunt's house. And so come to find out, they're actually selling bud out of that house. And I didn't know it at the time. And so I start seeing all these people running in and out. I'm like, man, what's going on? You know, what's going on? I done moved in. And he's like, oh, man, it's just a little this. I was like, man, like, I doesn't seem too much and been around too much. I don't want no part of this. So we end up leaving that house. and going back to my father's house and staying with him, at that point, I'm like, what's the escape?

Starting point is 00:44:20 How do I get out of all this? So I joined the military. So I go into the Air National Guard. Well, I've always been a big guy. So I had to, like, run and train for like six months just to pass. I had passed the ASVAB. I did all the things I had to do. But back then, they did what's called a neck and waist test. If you couldn't get your weight below a certain thing, they would measure your waist around your belly button and then measure your neck and you had to get to a certain place in order for them to accept you right and so I was working two jobs I was training running doing all this every day and I finally get accepted to go in so end up going into the air force and go to basic training in April of 1996 well I wish I would have went active duty I tell people if I have

Starting point is 00:45:06 any regrets in this life it was that I didn't go active duty but what I didn't realize at the time is I'd already adopted this orphan mentality. And so my friends that I thought were my friends, the people I thought that loved me, that was the only people that really showed me real love my whole life. Right. So truly, I can't leave them behind, you know, because you go active duty, you're leaving everybody behind. So I joined the guard. I end up going into basic training, get through that.

Starting point is 00:45:32 I stayed in Lackland Air Force Base for my school, end up being a cop in the Air Guard. And so I come back from training. They actually give us some orders. We're actually doing some full-time stuff here and there. And then I end up getting a job at the sheriff's department. So I go through the whole training academy for the sheriff's department. And so I'm only having to report once a month to the National Guard because I'm not active duty. So we had to report once a month.

Starting point is 00:45:59 And you get paid on a government scale, but then you got to do two weeks out of every summer. So I go get a job with the sheriff's department. And a guy I went to high school with got me on because his dad was a cop. So go to the Sheriff's Department, go through the whole training academy, and this is probably 98. And I was probably there about seven, eight months. Well, the problem was, it was a problem for me then, but looking back, it was my own problem. But I had, it was too many people I knew from high school locked up. And I was on the other side of the fence, right?

Starting point is 00:46:28 So I'm the one with the keys. And so, long story short, I was, SIS come in. They investigate me, basically got, they made me do a polygraph test and got, got, caught feeding inmates outside food. And so. So you're bringing in food. Yeah. Like what kind of food? Like McDonald's, different stuff. So what I would do is I'd order my own food and I would order extra. So I would eat my food. I would take the look like what looked like trash, but it would be more food and I would throw it on top of the trash can. Yeah. And my buddies would know when I put that trash out, come get the trash. Right. So some girl told on me, one of the officers told on me.

Starting point is 00:47:04 So of course, I'm denying it the whole time. Right. And so they're investigating, You're under investigation. You know, the problem was my lieutenant at the sheriff's department was also part of my guard unit, right? So this is now mixing and it shouldn't mix, right? Because when you're in a guard, it shouldn't mix with your everyday life, but you still are kind of owned by the military. So I'm under investigation. I'm getting flack from my higher ups in the guard. They're like, hey, what's going on with this?

Starting point is 00:47:34 I don't know. It's all nonsense. Well, can you take a polygraph? I'm like, sure. So I didn't know no better. That was dumb. So I take this polygraph test and the SIS giving a polygraph test. They don't tell me how it was doing.

Starting point is 00:47:52 Actually, I thought I was doing really good, to be honest. But here's what stump me up. They're just using very general language. Yeah. Well, they went, the very last question I asked him, they said, on this day at this time, did you feed, and they called out the inmates' full name, food from McDonald's? And I was like, I felt it. I felt it inside me. I felt something jump inside me. And I was like, no. And there was like, okay, this concludes the test. Well, I end up getting a letter in the

Starting point is 00:48:23 mail. You've been terminated from the sheriff's department. So now this is causing a lot of flack here at the guard unit. And then I was probably there about five years in the guard unit. And they were fixing to leave to, they're going to call us up to Afghanistan. So when you're in a guard, if they call you up, you go and backfill either for another active unit at their location, you'll go there, or you'll go and just kind of be a part of the people that are going. So they're going to call us to Afghanistan, and I'm like, I'm not going. Because what had happened was I had end up going to these summer trainings that I'd have

Starting point is 00:49:01 to do, and we'd go out for two weeks. Well, I remember them taking us to the worst one I had. We was training for a big inspection. You had to pass this inspection in order for your guard unit to stay afloat. And because we're cops and normal duty, you protect the flight line, you protect the front gate. But in wartime, you actually are infantry. So they take us out to the desert. They take us to Indian Springs, Nevada.

Starting point is 00:49:26 It's 45 miles outside of Vegas. I'm young. I can see all the lights in Vegas, but I don't get to go, right? So I'm out here. I'm out here in foxholes. We're doing simulated war training. We're running around with all this gear on, shooting at each other with blanks and basically sleeping in foxholes.

Starting point is 00:49:44 And so when I came back from that trip, I just remember telling myself, I'm like, I'm never going back across seas if they take us, because I didn't like the sand. You know, still to this day, I'll go to the ocean and I'll get in the water, but I'm over it. Just take me back to the pool because sand gets in every crevice of your body. and it was so fine and it was like moon dust there and it was so nasty.

Starting point is 00:50:06 I was broke out everywhere when I come back. I'm like, I don't want no part of this. So now I got this thing happening with the sheriff's department. I've done been through this. And then also I'm starting to go out on the weekends and hang out with people. So I feel like this guard unit's taking up my time and I shouldn't have to do it. And so now I'm getting into conflict with them. But the whole time where I look back, the Lord was actually giving me a way out of the environments I was in.

Starting point is 00:50:37 And now I'm fighting against it, if that makes sense. Like I'm provided a way out and now I'm fighting completely against it. So I end up going out with this girl one night and it was the first time I'd ever. Because I grew up around drugs. I had no desire for drugs. Even though I grew up around it, I'd never done them. I would go party and hang out with people, but I wouldn't do the drugs. Well, have you dropped out of the guard yet?

Starting point is 00:51:01 Well, I'm still in the guard to this point, but there's a lot of friction going on. Right. So this is right around the same time. So I go to this club one night. I'm hanging out with this girl and this guy comes up. He's like, hey, do you want to try X-City? I'm like, what is that? Like, oh, you're going to love it, blah, blah, blah.

Starting point is 00:51:18 So she's like, I would love to try it. You're going to try it with me. So I try it with her. And, man, I tell people the light switch went off. It was, I felt invincible. I felt powerful. I felt everybody everybody tells you they love you.

Starting point is 00:51:32 Again, I'm coming up from no one showing me love growing up. No one knowing what love looks like. Now everybody's telling me they love me. So now I'm all these new friends. So then I'm like, I really like that. But I'm working a real job and it's expensive. I think at that time you're paying like $25 a pill for it. So I'm like, how do I keep enjoying this?

Starting point is 00:51:53 So I start going out on the weekends. This is what starts causing a conflict with, the National Guard because I'm supposed to be reporting once a month, but yet I want to go out here and party now because I found something I enjoy doing. So I would literally go out, you had a report on Saturday and Sunday. So I would go out on Friday and stay up all night and still report on Saturday because I was young. Back then, you know, your body could keep up with it.

Starting point is 00:52:17 So I would go out all night on Friday on Saturday. I'd report to the Guard. And then by Saturday night, I was back out doing the same thing. And then it was popping me with random drug tests. But what people didn't realize back then is when they pop you for drug tests, as you know, they got to test specific things. Right. So they're testing me for like marijuana. They're testing me for other things.

Starting point is 00:52:38 They're not testing me for equity or the name MDMA. They're not testing me for that. So I'm passing these drug tests. So I'm thinking now I'm like I'm getting to the place where they're not smarter than me. So I start taking this every weekend and then I realize it's expensive. I'm like, how do I do this and be able to take it? So I start finding the person that was selling it to me. I run into him.

Starting point is 00:53:02 I'm like, hey, how much if I buy this many? He was like, I can do it for this. So I would start going and finding all my friends and be like, hey, how many people want them? So that's how it started for me. How many people want them? I'd get their money. I'd go back.

Starting point is 00:53:13 I'd pay for all of them. He'd give me a discount. I'd be able to take mine for free. So this probably goes on for about three or four months. At this time, I'm realizing that there's money in this. And so, but I'm not that bold yet to just take off and do it myself. So we end up going to Panama City to with a bunch of guys. It's a vacation.

Starting point is 00:53:35 And we're down there. I think I was 19 at the time. And I meet this girl. And we're all taking, we're all taking the ex-grity together. And she's like, oh, this is really good. She was like, it's full circle. She's like, hey, you should come to Tampa. She was like, my brother can get these.

Starting point is 00:53:54 She was like, he gets good ones. And I'm like, oh, yes, I take her number down. We hang out. I go back to Tennessee. I tell my buddies, I'm like, hey, let's put our money together. We can go down here and get our own. Then we can be the guys providing for all the people, right? So we did.

Starting point is 00:54:10 We went back to Tampa, flew to Tampa, ended up buying like 300 at the time, 300 peels. This was right before 9-11. What are the pills going for? I think I got them for $10. And I knew I could sell them for $20, $25 at the time. So he got me some for $10. So I end up buying like $300.

Starting point is 00:54:28 I think we'd put enough money together to buy $300. So before 9-11, you could come back through the airport. It was before scanners. All they had was just metal detectors. So we had planned it out. What I'd learned in that was a lot of the people that were working TSA at that time was just like retired old people. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:54:46 It's not like it is today. So I put, so what we do is we take these peels and we put them in our, I wear job, you know, really big jobs. jogging pants, really big sweatshirt, come back on a Sunday afternoon when I know the type of group that's going to be there. So I put them all in our tube socks. So we wear these big old long socks and we just stuff them down in there and our pants are so baggy you can't see. So as long as you go through this metal detector, you have no metal on you, nothing's going to go off. But what's crazy is as soon as I come up to escalator at the Tampa airport, the police dogs are walking. And so I'm like,

Starting point is 00:55:21 I can't make a scene and I can't turn around like I'm going back down because then I'm going to look. It looks super obvious. It looks super obvious. And you don't know, but you also don't know if they detect. Exactly. And so I think I had heard before like dogs either are trained for for explosives or they're trained for drugs. Right. And then with the drugs, they're normally trained for specific ones, right?

Starting point is 00:55:45 But I was. Keep mind, this is X's, it's pharmaceutical. These are like pharmaceutical drugs. Like that means that anybody carrying any kind of drug pretty much, it would, do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. These are not, these are synthetic. Right. Yeah, they're man-made.

Starting point is 00:56:01 I can't imagine that the synthetics have a smell. Yeah. Are any different between the smell of that synthetic than Tylenol or your heart medication. Yeah, because a lot of times you don't know if you're getting something real or not when you buy it from somebody because it looks just like it. So I would have thought. but then why you got... 80% chance. I'm good.

Starting point is 00:56:21 Why you got 300 in your socks, you know? Yeah. So I come up off this top of this escalator and I kid you not, man. I turn and I walk to where I'm supposed to go to. And this cop and this doll walk right beside me for about 20 yards. And all my friends are just, you know, deer-eyed looking at me. And I'm like just walking straight ahead. And I actually just, you know, start a quick conversation with the guy like, hey, man, how's your day?

Starting point is 00:56:47 you know, because at this point I'm so nervous, but I don't want to be so obvious that I'm not even speaking because he's right beside me. So I make small talk. They dog obviously doesn't detect it. And they kind of turn left and go somewhere else. And so I get through there, fly home, sell those so fast. I'm like, we got to do this again. So then we gather up some more money. And so I think we went back down probably like a month later because at the time I had a child on the way.

Starting point is 00:57:17 So this was the summertime, and we went down there and got those firsts. So then my child's fixing to be born in 2000. So this would have been around September of 2000. She's born September 15th to 2000. So I know I need to go back down here, but I also know that there's a conflict here because I got to see when she's coming. And so I end up coming up with like, we end up coming up with like 17 grand and we fly back to see the same guy again. So we go back. I got an entourage of people with me.

Starting point is 00:57:47 I mean, we're just coming to Ebor City to party, hang out. But mainly we was coming down here to get that. So we get down here and we party one night and the next day. It's a Saturday. I'm supposed to go meet with the guy. So since I knew the chick, his sister, I was the only one they trusted. So I show up. Me and my buddy show up.

Starting point is 00:58:08 They're like, hey, you get in with me. We're going to go do this transaction. They can stay here. We'll bring you back here. So again, not. And not knowing what I know now, I'm thinking, oh, I'm fine. So I get in a car, he got 17 grand on me, ride out. Well, little did I know, we got to go to the Everglades.

Starting point is 00:58:28 And at this time, I don't even know where any of this stuff is. I'm a little more familiar with it now because I've been living here for two years. But at the time, I have no idea where I'm going. So put me in the car. We ride together. And I trusted this guy because I knew a sister. And so we're riding. And we go to some, I mean, we go to some trailer way out in the middle of nowhere.

Starting point is 00:58:46 in the middle of nowhere. Who knows where I was? My friends didn't know. Don't have no cell reception. This is back when cell phones first came out anyway. So there's no cell reception. So I get there and we go and we talk to some people in this shady house. He's like, hey, we're going to have to go get them. The guy's going to meet us, but he's coming up from somewhere. I don't know. I don't know where I'm at. So now I got to trust this guy with 17 grand and they're going to leave me at this house with who knows what. So I give him the money. He drives off with with another person. They're gone like three hours. My friends, I have no idea what they're thinking. They can't get a hold of me. They're probably thinking something's happened to me, right?

Starting point is 00:59:29 So I'm sitting around trying to talk to these people I barely even know. And it's a run-down raggedy trailer somewhere in Florida, south of Tampa. So they're gone for like two or three hours. They come back. Ends up being a dry run. They get my money back. which was, you know, the best thing that could have happened in the situation is I got my money back. I thought they was going to rob me, but they didn't. So they get my money back. They're like, hey, the guy didn't have what he said he had, so we decided not to do it. So they gave my 17 grand back.

Starting point is 00:59:57 I came back to my friends. They dropped me back off. Everybody was upset. So we flew back home. Well, I said, I'm not doing that no more because too many times in that scenario, I felt something bad was going to happen. Right. And I escaped it. So I'm like, I'm not going back down there.

Starting point is 01:00:12 So now we're like, what do we do? Now we're here and we got all this money, but yet we don't have a plug. We're not going to go back to the old way because we done figured out that we can do it without, you know, paying high price for it. So we end up hooking up with some bodybuilders that we, I knew one of the guys from way back in a day and I didn't know he was plugged. And so that's how Nashville was back in the club scene. Like everybody knew somebody, right? So I just kind of put the word out there what I was looking for. And they're like, oh, so-and-so's got it.

Starting point is 01:00:42 I'm like, oh, cool, I know him. So I go up to him and he's like, yeah, I can get you some. So we end up getting a plug in Nashville, and we buy from him with cash a couple of times. And I think we're getting it for like seven, eight bucks at that time. And we buy a few thousand, where do we get our money up to for that? And then eventually they start trusting us. And so eventually the dude's like, look, I don't need you to pay me for him up front. I'm going to get you a lot more.

Starting point is 01:01:07 So what was going on, I didn't know it at the time, but how they was getting it here. is because they was in the bodybuilding circuit, they would fly to these shows out of the country. So they would go to, like, Germany. So they were getting these peels from Holland. But the smart thing they was doing is they were packing all the peels in vacuum cleaner hoses. And they put the vacuum cleaners back in the box, the original box, tape it back up, like they're shipping a vacuum cleaner to the U.S. And so they're shipping these vacuum cleaners over here. And that's how we're getting the peels.

Starting point is 01:01:39 Well, we get plugged with this guy. And so what our normal routine was, we'd go out to eat with him on Thursday night. He'd give us two or three thousand pills. And we would, no, actually, we'd give him his money from the week before, go to dinner on Thursday night, pay him all his money from the week before. He wouldn't have the pills with him then. We'd go pick the pills up the next day. He was smart enough not to keep him together, right?

Starting point is 01:02:03 So he would pay him his cash. The next day we'd meet the guy under him, and he would give us an envelope with two or three thousand pills. So we probably ran like that for probably like a year. And so 9-11 happens. A bunch of stuff happens. So this is going into 2001. So I'm putting together. I don't know if you all remember the local rapper Haystack from Nashville.

Starting point is 01:02:26 Kind of, he made a little way down here of Florida, Panama City. He's a white rapper, big old guy. Anyway, so we got Haystack. I got another little white rap group. and then I got a bunch of little local artists, right? Haystack. So I'm putting together this car show. Haystack calls me all the time.

Starting point is 01:02:47 Text me all the time. Does he really? All the time. You know I'm then. That's funny. Yeah. It was so funny as he was texting me for a while. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:02:55 Like on Instagram. I don't know who he is. I just knew he had an Instagram. This guy's texting me. He was like, yeah, he's a white rapper. And so one day I'm laying in bed and somebody, he texts me like 1 o'clock in the morning or something. No, no, it wasn't. probably 11 because I don't think we'd quite gone to bed.

Starting point is 01:03:10 But I was, we usually go to bed at like eight. But either way, I was texting on my phone. So Jess kind of rolls over and sees that I'm texting him. No, we hadn't gone to bed yet. Anyway, we're about to go to bed. We're laying. I knew we were laying in bed. And he's texting me.

Starting point is 01:03:26 And she goes, who's texting? I go, I don't know, some guy. I was like a rapper. And I said, he said, he used to. I go, I think he said, I think he knows jelly roll. And she goes He actually Zellarrow opened up for him

Starting point is 01:03:41 a bunch of times when Jellarroll wasn't famous Right and she says to me what's his name and I said Haystack and she goes She sits up

Starting point is 01:03:49 Are you fucking serious Car full of white boys Are you serious? She goes nuts And I'm like What do you know She's he's not texting you And I go

Starting point is 01:03:58 Yeah he is I said I show him She's like Oh my God Oh my God I was just listening to him The other day

Starting point is 01:04:04 I listen to him all the time I And she would, listen, I was like, this is impressive to you. This, she's impressed by this. Right. Some, an older white rapper who, you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:04:17 I'm like, and she's like, you don't understand. I've been listening to Jelly Roll since I was in, in high school. I was, before he was, nobody even knew him. They didn't even play him on the radio. And I, and she's going on and on. She's like, I know. And I'm just like, I've never seen her so fucking animated in my life. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:04:33 How excited she was. Yep. That's interesting. It's funny that you just say that. because I'm like, well, let me, let me back up. Let me back up because it's interesting, you know them because now the story would make more sense. So we start doing, we're taking our money and we start doing these little skating rink

Starting point is 01:04:48 circuits. So we would buy out the skating rink on a certain night and we would throw a concert and people could skate, but it was mainly for adults, right? No kids. So we would have haystack and different people come and we'd pay them. We'd pay them to come and we would make money off the door. Couldn't do nothing in a skating rink as far as concessions. So we just make all the money off the door.

Starting point is 01:05:08 But we could also sell our peels inside of there, right? So we would just have those. So it was one way to get rid of our product, but also a way to make money off the door. So we're doing this for a while. So then this leads up to one of the guys that was in the previous story when we got shot at. His name was Alex Gilliam. That's his real name. He goes by Alex King now.

Starting point is 01:05:32 But he was in a rap group called Crazy White Boys. And they were under Haystacks. They was with Haystack's label, label called, it's Sunny Paradise. It's called Street Flavor Records. That's who Haystack was signed to forever in Nashville. Okay. So they had been bought, and they signed with Street Flavor. So I hooked back up with these guys, and I went to high school with all of them.

Starting point is 01:05:57 So they know I got the pills. We're all running. I'm doing these concerts. I'm putting them on as well. They've already got a little buzz because of Haystack. And so I'm getting these artists for dirt cheap and washing my money that way. And so we lead up to June. So Haystack's a part of a money laundering, a money laundering operation.

Starting point is 01:06:18 Oh, I don't know. Yeah. You probably didn't even know it. So there's a deeper story that goes into Haystack that'll show you who he really is. And I got a real story I'm going to. Okay. So this leads up to June 2001. Well, let me back up.

Starting point is 01:06:34 I forgot. So I had a 50-50 partner in this, and then we had a bunch of guys that we distributed to under us. So one of the guys that was probably third in what we would call our crew, third in our crew, it was me and my 50-50 partner, and then he was kind of like next in line. He gets busted one day, and he's going home on his motorcycle, and he gets busted in Hendersonville, Tennessee. So the Drug Task Force gets him with like 1,100 peals or something, because we had just got

Starting point is 01:07:03 our pills and he would he was like one of our main guys we'd give him a bunch because he had he'd sell his for i'd give it to him for a discount and he would sell it for what he wanted and so he gets busted and he comes two days later and he's like look he was like um they know y'all by first name y'all need to chill out you know that's not good yeah y'all need to chill out and so we're like okay do they really what all do they ask you right well they knew your name names and they knew this. I'm like, but we were very flashy.

Starting point is 01:07:37 That was a problem. You know, we were buying, you know, vehicles and riding around on rims with TVs in there. We're pulling up, we're pulling up at the club.

Starting point is 01:07:44 It's at everything. Everything but a neon light. Absolutely. We were so, we were so flamboyant. Of course. And we, and everybody was doing it.

Starting point is 01:07:53 So we thought, they don't know us, you know, everybody in the circus. Clearly do. Yeah. So they know who we are. And I never remember,

Starting point is 01:08:01 I never forget, we go and this was like May of that year. So he gets busted in May. The car show is going to be the end of June. Right in the middle of that we say, okay, we're, we tell our, we tell our plug what happened, because he's going to find out anyway, hey, one of our guys got popped. What are they saying? We tell him he was like, I was like, I think we're just going to chill for a minute.

Starting point is 01:08:20 You know, he was like, that's cool. Just let me know when y'all want to, if y'all want to start back up. So we go and watch the movie blow. We go and watch the movie. Okay. You would think. That's probably not a good idea. No, but you would think.

Starting point is 01:08:33 think that would have like opened our eyes to be like, it could go bad. It's going to. Yeah. It's not if. It's going to. Yeah. So we leave that movie and we're both like looking at each other, me and my 50-50 partner. I'm just like, the same.

Starting point is 01:08:48 I mean, like, I'm at this place. I'm a little scared at this place because I'm like, maybe I just need to quit. But then when you're in that life, people don't realize when you're in that lifestyle and you've got all these things that you've accumulated, not just the money, but the status, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. the way that you can, you know, basically you're famous in your city. You can walk in anywhere and do whatever you want, right? Now, I wasn't famous like people who are moving, you know, keys, but I was still famous in the scene because, you know, we had good product. And so we decide we're going to take a break.

Starting point is 01:09:20 That lasts about three weeks. We call our plug back. He puts us back on. So we're running hard. And by this time, we're probably up to, you know, picking up four or five thousand pills a week to move. We had a big network. so we can move a lot.

Starting point is 01:09:34 And with people like that, they're like, more you can move, the more I'll bring you, you know. To them, it was just money. And so leading up to this car show,

Starting point is 01:09:43 one guy gets popped back in May. The car show is going to be the end of June. I know that because my birthday is on July 1st, and so it happens like the day before my birthday. So we're going to do this car show on June 30th of 2001. On June 29th, it's a Friday. We had met Thursday night on the 28th with our people,

Starting point is 01:10:01 paid them. we go the next day, pick up the envelope at a Hayes Nissan. The dude worked at a car lot, so we pick it up. We actually go to the gun range that day, and I never carried a gun, but my buddy had guns, and so we just take the gun to the gun range and just do it for fun. I never carried a gun because I really never needed to. I was always someone that could talk, and I always knew myself, like, I don't want to have this on me that if I get, I had anger issues, I had a temper.

Starting point is 01:10:31 is like, I don't want to use this. And then that changes in the back of my mind. It was always like, this amount of thing can get you this much time, but this can get you a lot more time. So I knew enough to know, like, I don't want that pistol on me, right? So I never would carry it with me. Well, we go to the gun range that day. This is Friday. Go to breakfast.

Starting point is 01:10:49 Go the gun range. Go pick up those. Later on that day, I'm back at my house. My 50-50 partners got his amount. I got my amount. We're actually still, even though this is our main thing, We both have plugs on the side that we didn't really mix that we could get, you know, weed from. So I had my house, he at his house, and that was kind of our side hustle that we didn't split.

Starting point is 01:11:11 We just do our own thing. So he goes to a ball field because his daughter's playing softball. And I get a call from one of the females because we had a big crew of guys and we knew all their females. Everybody was close. If anything ever happens, you know, let everybody know. So that particular day was Friday afternoon, probably about 5 o'clock, he goes to the ballpark. And they waited for him to go to the ballpark because now you're in around children, they can up the charge. So they let him get to that ballpark and they end up drawing down on him as soon as he gets in the park.

Starting point is 01:11:46 The DEA and Drug Task Force come get him. They go to like three other places, get like three other guys that have them. And so a total, there's probably like three or four thousand peals out there. that's been confiscated. Now, I'm at my house, and I'm thinking, they're coming here next. Yeah, they're coming here next. There's no way around it, right? Right.

Starting point is 01:12:08 Well, I'm sitting there paranoid. They don't come. And they hit all them simultaneously. So I'm like, why are they not coming to my house? So I got like 200 pounds down in my downstairs. I call a guy up the road. I'm like, hey, I need to bring this to your house. So I take that up to his house, drop it off.

Starting point is 01:12:25 I drop everything I got in my house off. And I'm just waiting. I'm waiting. Saturday goes by, Sunday goes by, Monday goes by. I'm just waiting. Surely they're going to come. Nobody comes. So then my 50-50 partner comes over my house about two weeks later. And I'm working on this room downstairs that the house I had, just doing like making a room, like making a garage into a bedroom. And so I got a hammer in my hand and I'm just, me and my cousin are working on some remodeling. He comes over there. He's like, I've got to talk to you. Little do I know he's wired. up. He shows up. He's like, hey, man, you know, they know everything. You need to come in here and talk to him. I'm like, how do they know everything, bro? You know? He's like, man, I told him, man, they got me in the school zone. They got me with this. They got me. And they did have him. They had him. They had him. Like, when I tell you, they knew exactly what they was doing. They set him all the way up where there's no way out of it. They could have given 20 years if they wanted to, even for the amount being low just because of all the enhancements. So I look at him. I'm like, I was like a you problem. I said, leave me out of it, bro. Like, who's going to? take care of your family when you're gone. And you don't want to understand. They want to talk to you. They don't want to talk to me. I ain't done nothing. Right. And so in my mind, I don't understand the feds.

Starting point is 01:13:37 State didn't catch me with nothing. I'm good. Right. I don't got nothing in my house. Well, I looked at him. I said, are you wearing a wire on me, bro? He was like, come on, man. And I had a hammer in my hand. I wasn't going to hit him with it. I've known the guy since we played baseball as a child. Right. I just said, I looked at the hammer. I looked at him and said, please get out of my house. before I get real angry.

Starting point is 01:13:59 So he leaves. Was that an enhancement? Well, later, when they picked me up, they tried. They brought the conversation back up and I'll get there. But I had the hammer in my hand. And I just looked at the hammer. I looked at him. I said, please leave my house.

Starting point is 01:14:12 And he left. And so then I get a call like two or three weeks later from a DEA agent that's on the case. He's like, hey, man, you need to come in and talk to us. He said, you're going to talk to us eventually, whether you talk to us now or you're going to talk to us later. But either way, I think you'll be well. to come in here because they don't have the two guys above us yet, right? Right. They just got all my guys. So they need me in that conspiracy, right? Well, I think they do. So I call a state lawyer. Little do I know. I don't know anything about the feds.

Starting point is 01:14:43 Call a state lawyer. Hey, man, I need you to go down to this building with me. We need to talk to these people because they're calling my phone and I want to get ahead of this. He was like, okay, we'll go down there. So I take him down there. Oh, what a dick. Yeah. He's a state attorney. So he's going to be like, Yeah, give me 15 grand. If it goes federal, I can't help you. I think I only gave him like five grand for that meeting. But I mean, he's not, you're, he's never dealt with the feds. He doesn't, he's not, can't go to trial.

Starting point is 01:15:09 He can't do shit. He screwed me to be honest. Yeah, because they did, listen, this is, this happens all the time. The state guys, state attorneys will go in knowing you were just hit by a task force, run by the DEA, but you were arrested by the locals, but he already knows it's going federal. And they'll say, okay, listen, man, I can, I can, uh, Like, give me 15 grand and I'll handle everything for you. If it goes state, I mean, if it goes federal, I can't do anything.

Starting point is 01:15:35 But I, but you, I mean, like, do you think it's going to go federal? They'll be like, I mean, you're not moving like keys, are you? They're like, no, bro, I'm not moving. I'm maybe half a key a fucking month. Like, oh, okay, yeah, it'd have to be multiple keys for it to go for you to touch it. So you're good. Knowing that's not how it works. Nope.

Starting point is 01:15:52 You give him 15 grand, 10 or 15, you think I'm good. He's going to take it. If we have to go to trial, he'll. cover me. He knows they're going to pick that the feds are going to pick this up any time now. And you're going to say, hey, I need you to handle the case. And I'm going to be able to say, I told you I don't do federal. You signed the document. You said it wasn't going to go federal. You said you weren't big enough. These guys are talking about 30 keys. I can't handle that. He's then going to say, well, I need my money back. And I'm going to say, no, that was a fee.

Starting point is 01:16:23 I can't give you your money back. It's a retainer. It's a retainer. It's gone. I've already used. it up. Yep. And you're in prison fucked. Yep. You just gave the only, you only had 25. You gave 15 to me. No federal lawyer is going to touch it for 10 for 10. Yeah. You're done. You're done. Absolutely. So that happens all the time. So whenever somebody says that they grabbed a state attorney, I think, oh my God. Oh, you already know where it's going. Yeah. So I go to the federal building with this guy and I sit down. A 5,000 for a day. Yeah, that's it. So I go sit down with this guy and, You know, I'm sitting here with these people and it's the DEA, it's the drug task force, it's the FBI. They go around the table.

Starting point is 01:17:01 They're all throwing out their, you know, their badges, right? Right. And so they start talking about, you know, they're going to turn this case over to the feds. Everybody's going to eventually get indicted. And I'm like, I'm good. I ain't, they ain't caught me with nothing, right? So I look over and the lawyer whispers, he goes, hey, what did they catch you? with. I said nothing.

Starting point is 01:17:26 They ain't ever come to your house. No. And what are we doing here? I said, I don't know. What do we do? I said, I'm here because they keep wanting to question me. I said, what do you think? He was like, I don't think they can do anything and they didn't caught you with nothing. Yeah, you all know what the feds were. Nobody has to be caught with anything. Right. Exactly. There was enough people that were already working with them that I was done.

Starting point is 01:17:47 You put three guys on the stand that say that you were involved in the conspiracy and that You were moving 10 keys a month and now, and it's been happening for 18 months. And guess what? You just got 180 keys. They add all that up. You're like, well, how many keys did they get? And then they all did proffers before I ever walk into that meeting. So they've been, their amounts have been capped off.

Starting point is 01:18:12 Yeah. My amount's still wide open because I'm never talked to them. So they get capped off on the amounts because of their proffer. Well, anyway, I'm walking out of that room. they're like, the dude looks me in my face, the D agent, he goes, I'm coming to get that Cadillac, and I'm coming to get that. He was like, because you was in that that day that y'all picked this up. So I leave, as soon as I leave there, I can call a friend of mine on the phone.

Starting point is 01:18:37 I said, hey, he worked at a car lot. I said, how much you give me for this Cadillac? He said, oh, let me look at the books. He said, I give you $11,000. I said, come get me. I'm in it. He can't pick me up, brought me $11,000 check, drop me back off at the house. I'm like, y'all ain't getting that.

Starting point is 01:18:50 So I think I got, I think I'm good. because I don't understand the feds, right? So I think there's no way they can get me. So I continue on on my little journey. They're all basically now they're hit. The plug won't mess with them. I can still get it, but they're a little nervous. So they're not giving me much.

Starting point is 01:19:08 So I'm doing a little bit there. So then I'm just really messing with the on this side of thing. So we do this, we had this car show. That kind of flop because of that. But I still got an end with a stack and the local, guys. So what happened was I ran into some guys that through all that stuff that we were doing and the car shows and all that. I ran into some real estate guys who had some money that they wanted to get into this type of business, not the illegal, but they want to get into the music business.

Starting point is 01:19:37 So they start this little local rap, little local artist thing called Dirty Bird Records. So I'm, I'm close with these guys. One guy's got money from real estate. He finds out I went to high school. He's, he's like mesmerized by haystack and all them, right? You know, he's a, he's an older white man that's got some money. Kind of like you said your wife was, he's mesmerized by this. But I'm known all these guys for years, so I'm not really mesmerized by it. Well, he finds out I know him. He was like, hey, man, we need to sit down.

Starting point is 01:20:04 We need to buy crazy white boys out from under street flavor. I'm like, I can get you a meeting. So we set the meeting up. He ends up buying the dudes I went to high school with that's up under haystack, buying them out from under the label. So now we own them, and we're now going. and running around with them and doing little like, you know, we're going to Atlanta, we're going to a few different places.

Starting point is 01:20:29 We're finding people that we could like have them open up for. We're passing out CDs. We're trying to promote them. And 9-11 hits, all that stuff happens. Well, they actually went to a meeting. They sit down with a record company called Epic Records, Dave Myers. They sit down with him. And he offered them $300,000 on a five record deal, which was no money back.

Starting point is 01:20:52 in. But the real estate guy only bought him for 75, so he could have flipped his money, right? So anyway, he decides not to do the deal. 9-11 hits. Long story short, everybody's like, we ain't spending no money, we ain't buying no new artist. So now they're just kind of out here trying to fend for themselves. So this goes on into the story. So I keep running. All my guys are talking to the feds, and I keep going. And so what happened was I end up going to, we end up going to a, this was March of 2002. Mind you, they told me they was going to indict me, but I, you know, six months has passed, I'm thinking I'm clear, I'm free and clear, because I don't know anything.

Starting point is 01:21:33 So I go to this, we all go to Athens, Georgia, and we go to Bubba Spark's birthday party. So we actually take A-Stack, his personal manager, crazy white boys, the white rap group, and we all go down there, and we actually are opening up for all the artists that are going to be at Bubba's Sparks' birthday party. So we're in this club called Athens Music Factory. And it's supposed to hold maybe 800. There was probably double that in there. It was crazy.

Starting point is 01:22:03 Haystack's personal manager was a white guy. And he had a black girlfriend. I had a black girlfriend at the time. So we're in this club, which is 95% black, 5% white. Not many white people in the whole place. And of course, you can imagine what's going to happen. They're going to be groping and grabbing. And so with my gal at the time, I'm like, just keep walking.

Starting point is 01:22:24 There's nothing we can do. Just keep walking. So we're trying to get to a VIP area. But as we're trying to get there, they're like grabbing on the women and all that. And I just tell my girl, just keep walking, keep walking. Well, Eric, his name was Eric McInelly. He was Haystack's personal manager at the time. He just keeps getting in confrontations with all these guys.

Starting point is 01:22:41 And I'm like, man, there's nothing we can do, bro. Like, keep walking. So this goes on. This club goes on for several hours. and they end up, fire marshals end up coming in, shutting it down. So we get kicked out, everybody gets kicked out of this club. So now we're palling out on what Athens downtown looks like their second avenue, right? Be like our Ebor City here.

Starting point is 01:23:03 So we're out there and Eric had, I had lost sight of where they went. And so I'm actually talking to a couple of guys from the venue. And then Eric comes walking up the road. He's like, hey, hey, y'all come on down here with me. Y'all come on down and show y'all something, show y'all something. he had this, at the time he had this Lexus. It was an LX 430. It was probably an $80,000 vehicle.

Starting point is 01:23:24 And it was nice. But what happened when we got down to the parking lot, the people he had been into it with all night, they had his car blocked. So they had all these big caprices on rims and they wouldn't let him out of the parking lot. So we go down there and he's, so now, Haystack, this is Haystack's personal manager. I got me, one other dude from Crazy White Barcloth. boys and Eric McAnally were all three down there in this parking lot. But there's 40 people down here besides us three. So I'm like, this ain't going to end well for any of us. There's nothing we can do in this situation. So I'm not, I hadn't been drinking. I had been taking

Starting point is 01:24:04 but I hadn't been drinking. Eric's blind running drunk. Eric's running his mouth cussing. So I found the dude in the crowd who I knew was probably like running things. And I said, look, man, if it's okay with you, is what I said. I said, I'm going to take him. I said, he's had too much to drink. I will apologize to you for him because I know y'all feel disrespected. I said, if you'll let us go, we're not from here. We're going to get in our cars and we're going to leave.

Starting point is 01:24:33 And the guy's like, because you came to me man to man, he said, I'm going to let y'all make it. And he raises up his shirt and shows me his pistol. He's like, I'm going to let y'all make it. So I'm like, we don't want no trouble. So I grab Eric and I'm backing him up. up and I turn to, you know, with a drunk person, I turn and put my hands on Eric. I'm like, we're leaving. And Eric tries to get past me and basically does like a swim move past me, swim move past me. As soon as he does that, they feel like all bets are off. So they start swinging.

Starting point is 01:25:05 So they literally, they just start beating on Eric. Eric's so drunk. He can't fight back. They start beating on Eric. Eric's getting stabbed, all kind of stuff. I'm fighting these guys. I'm just trying to, at this point, I'm just trying to get up out of this situation the best I can. So I'm fighting, fighting, fighting. I remember rolling up under a car coming out the other side, just trying to get out of the environment. And the only other guy that's with me, there's other haystacking them's up the road, but they don't want to come down there because they're like, we didn't come here for that. This is my problem with haystack. This is personal manager who was his best friend. He wouldn't even get out of the car. And he's bigger than all of us. And I'm like,

Starting point is 01:25:41 I told him when I got back up there, I said, well, that's your, that's your boy. That's your 50-50. Like, I mean, it's supposed to be your best friend. I said, he's down there getting stomped on and you wouldn't go down there. So none of them would come down there. So it was so crazy at the end, Matt. This went on for like 15 minutes. I ended up getting stabbed in the shoulder with a beer bottle. But it was so bad I'm going up the road trying to get back to the cars that people

Starting point is 01:26:04 were just coming out of the crowd that had nothing to do with the fight because I was white and I was into it with a bunch of black people at the time. They're coming out of the crowd swinging at me. And so I'm just ducking people and trying to throw people. people over me and get up out of here and I'm just shoving people and just getting back to my vehicle. So I get up there and I'm like, come on. We got to go get Eric. He's down here getting beat on. They're like, no, man, we didn't come here for this. We came here for rap. We didn't do this. And I'm like, I told Haystack to his face, say, man, you weak, bro. Like,

Starting point is 01:26:31 you weak. That's your boy. Like, I would never let him like that, right? I did everything I could for him. So anyway, go to the hospital, get stitched up. Eric ends up having to stay in hospital for days. So this makes MTV News because it's on Bubba Sparks' birthday. So MTV News is airing at the next day, three men stabbed at Bubba Sparks' birthday party. So my name is thrown up there. And I had moved out of Nashville, but I was living in a city about 20 miles away, just trying to stay out of the wave when all that stuff went down.

Starting point is 01:27:05 So they didn't, what I didn't know is the feds had indicted me, and they had an indictment if they didn't know where I was. So my name shows up on MTV News. So now the feds are like, oh, he's in Smyrna, Tennessee. Because that's where I had to give him an address. He's in Smyrna, Tennessee. So I still got this tube hanging out of my arm. And I go back home.

Starting point is 01:27:23 And about three days later, I'm with the chick. And we're fixing to, fortunately for me, we had been running back and forth from there to Bowling Green because she had a bunch of friends up there. This particular day, we weren't taking nothing up there. was just going to collect money. So we was in, she had this Mercury Cougar. So we were in that. We literally probably got five minutes from the house.

Starting point is 01:27:46 And as we're driving down the road, cops come past us, do a U-turn, hit the lights. I'm like, we ain't got nothing in here. We're good, right? So they, I'm just thinking traffic stop. So, of course, they pull over, come up as they're walking up. I see them pull their, pull their weapons. They draw down. It's two or three of them draw down.

Starting point is 01:28:04 Like, get out the car, get out of car. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, it's a traffic stop? We ain't done nothing. I get out the car. So they handcuffed me, set me on the ground. And they're like, we got some people want to talk to you. For what?

Starting point is 01:28:18 They're like, you'll know. So I sit on the back of the, I sit on the ground on the back of the car on the ground, Indian style with handcuffs for like 20 minutes. And then there was this big loop that came down that brought you, you had to come off this big loop from the highway that brought you down to the side row we was on. Sure enough, I've been sitting there. and I'm just looking to see who's coming. And the white avalanche, then a black avalanche right behind it, and they come up at the same time, and they pull up together, and I'm like, same good.

Starting point is 01:28:49 Sure enough, the same guys I had sit at that table with and told them I was leaving, both of them walk up, flip out their paper, United States of America versus William Arthur Smotherman. I'm like, you know what this is? I'm like, uh, not really. They're like, this is what we told you was going to do. So you belong to us now. So they take me on my way back.

Starting point is 01:29:11 They're asking me all these questions, right? Well, there was another altercation to happen between me and one of the guys used to run for me. We were cool. He was, he had left his girl behind at the club one night, right? And we all called ourselves a family, so I'm not leaving people there. She was like, Greg left me. You know, can I get her right home?

Starting point is 01:29:31 So I don't take her home by myself. I bring another guy with me as a way to say, ain't nothing happening here. Right. So I bring my buddy with me. We take her home one night, and Greg had ran off to who knows where, because we were all really close.

Starting point is 01:29:45 So we drop her off. We're at the house. Greg calls. He was like, where's Brooke? I was like, I brought her to your house. He's like,

Starting point is 01:29:53 I'm on my way over there. I was like, okay. So we waited on him to get there so he could see it was nothing funny. Yeah. Because it was me and another guy purposely. So he comes in and he's like, oh, and you're trying to play Captain Save a whole blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Starting point is 01:30:05 I was like, bro, you left her. What are you talking about? I'm not going to leave her behind. Like, it'd be no different than if my baby mama was here, you wouldn't have left her behind, right? And so he just starts. Probably would have. Yeah, so he just starts running his mouth. And I told you I had anger issues anyway, and I was just mad at the world.

Starting point is 01:30:21 So he just started running his mouth. So I just got up in his face. Like, what do you want to do? He takes a swing at me. So I end up whooping him in his living room. Well, they get me in the back of the car and they start telling me, what about, let's tell me about the hammer situation. I'm like, I had a hammer because I had a hammer because I,

Starting point is 01:30:35 I was working in my garage. That was one incident. And then your boy, Greg, couldn't wait to come down here and tell us how you jumped on him in his own house. I said, I jumped on him. I was like, I didn't jump on him. They were trying to use that as leverage to say that I was doing something, right? Right.

Starting point is 01:30:52 Or I was intimidating their witnesses. I'm like, no, these are two separate incidents. And here's what happened behind all of them. So anyway, they take me down there. And this is a funny part of the story. They go, they start telling me this story about there's a, there's a, there's a, Memphis, Tennessee, there's like a hotel there that the ducks ride the elevator. I can't remember the name of it. But anyway, they're telling me the story and I'm like, what does this story have to do with anything? They're like, if this story is boring you, he said, it's about as boring as your conversation right now. So shut up because I wouldn't talk, right? So that as I'm taking, they're taking me back to the county jail. They're trying to ask me all these questions. I'm still trying to play dumb. Anyway, I get booked. Go to federal holding for like a week. I get out on Bonn a week later on my own recognizance. So I get out.

Starting point is 01:31:37 They're mad. They're hot. You know, they can't hold me. So go back to the little area where I was living. And now I'm like, I know I'm going to prison eventually. I got to make as much money as possible. So at the time, I'm messing with these guys that had. You're digging the whole deeper.

Starting point is 01:31:56 Oh, yeah, deeper. So at the time, the real estate guys, I actually, the guy who was serving, he had the plug for the, for the at the time. Wouldn't mess with me directly because they're like, you can't pay it back if something happens. They've already indicted you. You're going to prison. So I brought the real estate guys in. So they come in and they got money.

Starting point is 01:32:18 So now they're dropping off. One of the brothers had a house in Smyrna where it was like a big old school barn. And so they would bring the tractor trailer load full of weight. It'd be two or three thousand pounds over there. We would unload it all, count it for a day. We'd be up 24 hours counting at all. So this is why I'm out on bond. So we'd count it all.

Starting point is 01:32:38 And then they would let me take as many as I want. And I'd go to Bowling Green with the girl I was dating and we'd get rid of it there. So in the process of me doing this, all is going well. We shed a bunch of friends from high school. And you can make a lot of money for it up there for what we was paying for in Nashville. It was three or $400 more expensive up there. So we was making a great amount. And so we was going up here.

Starting point is 01:32:59 I rented a little apartment up there. And so I've probably been doing this three or four months up here. and then one of the guys that we had messed with for why he's like, hey, my cousin wants to come down from Indiana and he wants to buy 50 pounds. We only been doing 10 pounds at a time with this guy. But I don't think it's weird because I've been dealing with this dude for like four or five months and he's always brought my money back every time, right? So I'm like, I'm not thinking nothing of it.

Starting point is 01:33:21 Plus they're going to pay cash for it. So we set this deal up. They're going to come down and get it. So this particular day I bring enough up there to serve them as well. And he's like, meet me at Crackerboro. Well, I used to have my little brother drive it up there because I'm out on bond and I don't want to drive it at the time. So he would drive it up in his little S-10. So he brought it up there.

Starting point is 01:33:43 He took it in the house. I was like, we're going to go meet this guy for breakfast. I say, you stay here with this until we come back. So my brother just locked himself in the apartment. We go to breakfast. So when we're sitting there, I'm not putting it together at the time what they're trying to do. Now, this whole thing is being played out later in front. Like in my mind's replaying it later, but they're setting me up the whole time.

Starting point is 01:34:02 So we go to breakfast and we're just chopping it up talking. My brother calls me on the phone. He's like, man, I don't know if it's maintenance or somebody. He says, somebody keeps wiggling the doorknob. I was like, well, tell them you got a gun, they can't come in. I'm still not thinking somebody's trying to rob us, right? So he says, okay, they left. And so the dude gets a phone call and he talks for a minute.

Starting point is 01:34:23 He gets the phone. He's like, man, it was like they had a flat tire coming down, man. He said, they're going to have to try to do it again next week. What they was really trying to do is steal it out of their apartment while we was at breakfast. and it didn't work out. So now they got to get bolder with it, right? So he was like, we'll try it again in a week or two. So two weeks later, they set the deal up again,

Starting point is 01:34:42 and this time it's raining, and I'm driving it up myself. And so I drive it up from Nashville to Bowling Green, and I got like 65 pounds in the trunk. So I get to the apartments, and I'm always, at this point, I'm scanning, I'm always paying attention because I'm out on bond. I'm running crazy, you know, so I'm scanning the parking lot. I don't see anything suspicious. I do see a white suburban.

Starting point is 01:35:02 But as I'm looking across the parking lot, it don't look like anybody's in it. Because, you know, when you look over at a parking lot and you see if people sitting in the car, I didn't see anybody sitting in the car, right? So it was a white suburban. So I'm like, maybe I said, I don't think nothing's going on. So as soon as I popped the trunk and I grabbed the box that it was in, it was 65 pounds, I grabbed the box. I hear the engine across the parking lot rev on that white suburban.

Starting point is 01:35:27 And I was like, and then I see it moving forward real fast. And then I see lights come on. Police lights come on. I'm like, oh, my God. So I grab it and I just run into the apartment and I lock the door. And within the girls like, what's wrong with you? You look spooked. I said, I don't know what I just saw, but it's not good.

Starting point is 01:35:45 Within 10 seconds, boom, boom, doors kicked in. It's two black dudes with DEA uniforms on. Right. They bought at the gun and knife show. They're drawn down on me. Get on the ground. Get on the ground. I'm like, all right, all right.

Starting point is 01:35:59 So I get on the ground. The girl thinks that it's the police. Yeah. And she's cussing and going. I was like, please hush your mouth. Just cooperate, right? She's like, they ain't going to treat me this way and they ain't going to do this. So they handcuffs from the back, they lay us on the floor, put a pillow over our heads.

Starting point is 01:36:15 I'm like, I'm praying. I'm like, please don't let me die here, Lord. This ain't. I got a daughter that I promised I wouldn't, you know, that I don't know. It was a lot of things going through my head. So anyway, they don't do anything. They ramshacked the house. The whole time she thinks that it's the police and it's not.

Starting point is 01:36:34 So finally, I hear silence for like 10 minutes. So I get myself up to my knees and I go over to the door and I take my head and I move the, after my handcuffs are behind my back. So I take my head and move the blinds. So I moved the blinds. I look outside. They slashed all four tires on the car. So I told her, I said, we just got set up.

Starting point is 01:36:51 She's like, I know what's going to, you already out? I said, no, no, no. I said, it's quiet, right? She's like, yeah, I said, they left. We got Rob. She's like, no, I said, your boy set us up. There's no way. There's no way else. I'm telling you, he set us up. So they leave. We call one of our other buddies over there. He comes over there with a hacksaw. He's going to cut the handcuffs off. Well, as he starts cutting, he starts laughing. I'm like, bro, what's funny? There's nothing funny. Come to find out, they were the little metal handcuffs that had the little clip on them that if you pull it back, the things undo. You can't feel that when it's behind your back. Right. You know what I'm saying? So he laughs and takes them off. He was like, y'all could have took them off yourself. the whole time was like, we didn't know.

Starting point is 01:37:29 Yeah. You know, so anyway, now I have to go back and report this to the people that I'm dealing with and convince them that I got robbed, you know, because they're already thinking it's something else. So anyway, as I'm leaving, I get my tires fixed. As I'm fixing to leave, the guy actually calls me on the phone. This guy that robbed me, calls me on the phone and goes, hey, man, those are really good. He's like, you got some more over there.

Starting point is 01:37:52 We're going to come back over and get him. I was like, you come back over here, bro. You're going to die. He just taught me, right? So I go back to Nashville and I got to convince these people to keep working with me because now I owe money. They're going to keep working. The thing about that is they're going to keep working with you because you owe money. Right.

Starting point is 01:38:07 They're not just going to let you out. They're going to let you work it off. Work it off. Yeah. So now I'm working it off. And so I end up seeing the guy that robbed me like two months later. I'm in this club one night. And I'm standing there, but I know the bouncer.

Starting point is 01:38:19 The bouncer and me are really cool. And I said, hey, man, he's with a friend of his. I'm like, do you know that dude over here? He was like, you're talking about, I said, they call him Nico. He was like, oh, that's Jeffrey's friend. I'm like, that's a dude that robbed me. He's like, he's not even from here. I said, man, do rob me.

Starting point is 01:38:36 I said, I know when somebody robbed me and they put a gun in my face, that dude robbed me. He was like, oh, man, I'm going to talk to Jeffrey's like, but don't do nothing in here. I'm like, all right, bet. So I'm standing by the front door. I'm like, as soon as this dude walks out to his front door, we got problems. Well, they walk back toward the bathrooms and never come back. So I go looking for him. They didn't went out the back door.

Starting point is 01:38:58 So he slipped me that time. So then a couple more months go by and everybody knows what happens to me. And so I'm going to sleep one night. And I lived like from a different little bar and club that used to go to. I live like maybe a half a mile. One of my other buddy calls me. He goes, hey, man, the dude that robbed you's in here. It's like one in the morning.

Starting point is 01:39:17 I was like, on my way. I didn't even have clothes to get in. I just put on some joggers and I went down there. But I knew the dude at the door. I'm like, hey, Brian, I need to come in. I got to holler at somebody real quick. He's like, man, make it quick. They're going to get me in trouble.

Starting point is 01:39:29 So I get in there. And the way the dance floor was in the middle, he had to go all the way around. So I'm going in. I got me and a buddy of mine and another dude I'd never met, but I knew of him. He was pretty crazy too, but I didn't really know him, but I knew of him.

Starting point is 01:39:41 So we're going around. So we get about from here to your door from him and dude sees us. And so he makes a scene, he takes a beer bottle and bust it, starts hollering. Because he's not going to give us time to get to him, right? So he's making a scene. So security grab us real quick and like, no, no, you ain't doing that in here. You ain't doing that here. So they put us out.

Starting point is 01:39:59 They don't put him out. They put us out. I get outside. They're like, who y'all beefing with? And I said, I said, it's Vernon, Nico. They're like, oh, well, that's his Lexus right there. I was like, oh, that's the Lexus he bought with the money he stole from me. So I'm telling these guys what's up.

Starting point is 01:40:16 The one guy got mad because he got thrown out of the club and he was just, when you call somebody, when you say somebody simple, he was simple. He said, watch it. He goes to his truck and grabs a ball ping hammer, and he goes around that Lexus, and he hits it 70, 80 times of that ball ping hammer. What people don't realize is insurance can't fix that. Right. That car is total. So do won't come out of the club, but the other guy beat his vehicle up so bad that he ends up, they end up having an insurance.

Starting point is 01:40:43 I don't know if he had insurance or not, but that car could never be fixed again. So anyway, fast forward the story. Now it's time for me to go to prison. I get sentenced. Well, they sentenced them. So my 50-50 partner gets 24 months and they send in the boot camp. Everybody below that got like 18 months. So they're trying to give me 54 months.

Starting point is 01:41:05 So I'm like, with my lawyer, I'm like, we're 50-50 partners. He cooperated. You didn't cooperate. I didn't know that at the time. So my lawyer gets up in sentence and starts arguing. And the prosecutor never gets like, this is not apples to apples. this is not orange-to-ange. This is completely different.

Starting point is 01:41:23 He's saying some stupid lingo. And so the judge departs down from 54. I end up getting like 49 months. Right. So I get 49 months. They let me self-surrender. So I end up going to Lexington, Kentucky, the first one. At this time, Lexington was a federal medical center.

Starting point is 01:41:37 So they had high, medium low. So there was lifers there all the way down to low security. The only reason they didn't send me to a camp is because I had this little state thing pending. I forgot to tell the part where before they indicted me and came and got me, they had raided a house that I lived in. That's one of the reasons I moved to Smyrna because I had a bunch of these little rappers living with me and they were selling something out out the house. Well, come to find out, they raided my house and they supposedly found white, but the white they found was fake. There was bacon soda. So eventually they have to throw that out.

Starting point is 01:42:10 But at the time I'm getting sentenced, I still got that on there, so they can't send me straight to a camp. They got to send me behind the fence. So I go to Lexington, Kentucky, and I stayed there like 10 months, and then, of course, I came from there. My points, that charge got dropped. My points are dropping the whole time. I left from there. Went to Montgomery down there at Maxwell Air Force Base. So that was a camp.

Starting point is 01:42:33 Went there, did the RDAP program, so I got out in like 27 months. So I come home, and this is how I know that was going to be different. Because you know this well as I do. Like, I tell people all the time, if you don't change your environment, you don't change the people you're hanging out with, you're just going to do the same thing. I didn't have a plan to do nothing different. I went in there and worked on working out. That was the only thing I cared about in there. I didn't, I didn't read, I didn't do anything. I mean, I might have read some books, but nothing to change my life, right? Right. So I come home, getting a halfway house. I'm running

Starting point is 01:43:06 with all these dudes from, that were locked up with me, you know, that I looked up to back in the day because they went down before me. So they're getting at the back end of their sentences when I go in. so we get real close. And so we come home and from there, I got a plug still on, mind you. Well, I'm on supervised release. Oh, yeah. Okay. So I'm on supervised release.

Starting point is 01:43:30 I get sent home. My dad picks me up. He's bringing me back to the halfway house. And he's telling me all along, son, you got to do this different. You got to do this different. I hear you, dad. I hear you dad. My dad told me right then, he said, I will not do this with you again because he was

Starting point is 01:43:45 the one bringing my daughter to see me. He was the one burning the interstate up. It's like, I'm not doing this with you again. I was like, okay. So anyway. Yeah, he's got his own fucking demons. Absolutely, yeah. He don't want to keep doing this with me.

Starting point is 01:43:56 Yeah. So he'd cleaned his life up and started a plumbing company and all this at this time. Right. But still, he doesn't seen what this leads to, right? So I come home and I'm in the halfway house. Well, at this time, they put you, instead, they went putting you on ankle monitors this time. They was doing like the, when they finally sent you home, And so the ankle monitor, they was doing the little calls where they call you on the telephone.

Starting point is 01:44:20 Yeah. Verify your voice. Well, we figured out real fast, just forward the phone call. So I was out. Same guy that I'm going to finish the story about the guy that robbed me. So I'm out one night. I'm still in a halfway house, but I'm forwarding the phone to my cell phone. So when they call, we already knew like what time around the time they're going to call.

Starting point is 01:44:42 So they would call me, I run to the bathroom and get in one of them stalls and act like I was asleep. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. When you're not resting well, everything else feels harder. Your focus, your mood, even your recovery. Ghostbed is here to help you fix that. They've spent decades perfecting how to build a bed that's comfortable, durable, and designed to actually help you rest. Every ghost bed mattress features premier materials, proven cooling technology, and their exclusive pro-core layer, a targeted support system that reinforces the of the mattress where the body is heaviest. It helps keep your spine aligned and your back supported. So you can wake up ready for anything 2026 throws at you. Each mattress comes with a 101 night sleep

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Starting point is 01:46:12 See site for details. Hello. Right. Oh, is this Mr. Smotherman? Yes, him. Okay, we just check on you. Yeah, I'm home, you know. So I'm coming out of the bathroom after one of them calls one night.

Starting point is 01:46:22 And I'm walking out of the bathroom. I got removed from all the dudes I was with. And all of a sudden, I feel someone hit me with a bottle. Like on the back of my head, I get smacked in the back of the head with a beer bottle. So I'm like, they hit me like that. And then I feel somebody jump on my back. So I just kind of grabbed them and threw them off of me. And then someone, I feel somebody swing at me from this side.

Starting point is 01:46:43 So then somebody grabs me And the person that grabbed me was Was bigger than me Because you could tell when somebody grabs you Like he grabbed me up in like a full Nelson And he drags me down this hallway into this kitchen He's like relax relax, relax It's security relax

Starting point is 01:46:58 And I'm like, I'm cool, I'm cool He was like, what happened? I said, I asked him, I said, what happened? He's like, I don't know. He was like these four black guys They was trying to jump on you. He's like, I don't know how they got in here He said because they weren't dressed to be

Starting point is 01:47:13 in this club. They all had on, like, tank tops. And I was like, I ain't got no beef or nobody. I ain't even lived in Nashville in a couple of years. He was, I'm just telling you. So I go back to my group of guys and I'm talking. And they're like, what happened? And I told him, and another guy that's with it, he goes, it was about a Lexus. I'm like, what do you mean a Lexus? He was like, dude said you totaled his Lexus. I'm like, oh, it's the same dude that robbed me. Right. So this has come full circle. I'm out of prison now. And he's in the club trying to jump me because another dude that was close to him told him I was home. So that story kind of falls dead from there because with him, I never really saw him after that.

Starting point is 01:47:54 They end up getting him and a bunch of people end up getting indicted later and does a bunch of state time. But anyway, I'm out. And so I'm running with this new crew of people and I'm on supervised release. And I had a, when I was in prison first time, I got a CDL license and I got a personal training license. So I was really set up to do something different. So my first mistake when I came home was I was working for my daughter's grandfather. He had an excavating company. And I was driving a dump truck and running a skidstere for him.

Starting point is 01:48:25 So it was really a good setup. And I left there because I wanted to go work for this other guy who was doing like a home construction. But it was really just because I want to hang out and be able to escape the halfway house as much as possible. Right. So really that was my first mistake. So had it made there and I left. And so get through the halfway house and I meet this, I make this blonde-headed chick.

Starting point is 01:48:50 There's always a woman coming into the story, right? So I meet this blonde-headed check, blonde-headed chick. She's 5-11. I ain't had a, I ain't been touched by a woman in three years, right? And my buddy's trying to press up on her. So I was like, there's a million more women. I'm not going to press up on somebody he's trying to press up on. So we go into the gym and walking from the halfway house.

Starting point is 01:49:10 And every time we had passed by, she worked next door to the halfway house. every time I passed by, she would speak to me, right? And so finally he was like, and I think she's more into you than she is me. He was like, do whatever. Well, I start messing with her. Well, the problem is she was actually convicted felon herself had been in that same halfway house. So you already know what the probation officer feels about that. Like, unless y'all get married, y'all can't be hanging out with each other.

Starting point is 01:49:32 So my dumb self decides, we just get married at the courthouse, not tell nobody so we can be together. So stupid, bro. So I married this chick. Don't tell nobody I'm marrying her, right, so we can hang out. And so now she's got an appetite for the things that I used to do, right? Right. She's got an appetite, you know, for money because, you know, she went down on a big case back in the day with a dude that had a lot of money. So everybody's telling me like she's no good, she's no good.

Starting point is 01:50:01 But I didn't see anything but her looks at the time, right? So I get involved with her. And so the motivation to get back on my feet was there. And at the time, the dude that I used to. to get the from. He's, we're cool, but he won't give me more than like 10 pounds at a time. And you can make a little money off that. So one of the dudes I was running with is like, hey, man, I got a better idea.

Starting point is 01:50:24 He was like, how about we, so in Nashville, you could look up on Zillow and also had a real tracks account from this girl. Let me log in. You could look up like the dudes that had a big name for, that were selling drugs there. You could look up like all the properties they own, right? Right. So we just started looking up these properties of all the dudes we knew that had money. And so we would just start scoping these properties out.

Starting point is 01:50:45 So we would start looking at them. And that was like our full-time job. We just rot around and see who was living in them. Anytime we saw like a group of Mexicans living in that home, we knew that they were rented to the Mexicans. We knew it had to be either money or drugs there. So that's literally how we got back started. Like we sit on these houses for two or three months. And then I'd send my little brother up to the door with a picture of a dog.

Starting point is 01:51:08 He'd go up there with a picture of a dog and knock on the door. And if somebody came, hey, have you seen my dog? He got loose in the neighborhood. Oh, we're sorry. We hadn't seen him. But if they didn't come to the door, we'd sit on it for a little bit longer and watch see if you need traffic coming out. So I think the first one we hit, we kicked in the door, got like 12 grand, split it three ways.

Starting point is 01:51:28 The next one we did, we got like 70 grand. And so from there it was like. They just handed it over to you? No, no, no. There was enough there. That was a thing. Oh, they weren't there. We never did the part where we were smart enough to not say, I didn't want to die.

Starting point is 01:51:41 Right. So I didn't know enough stories where you run in on somebody. They're shooting back. Yeah. I didn't carry a gun. So I'm like, and I'm on federal release. So you wait until it's completely empty. And then you kick in the door.

Starting point is 01:51:52 That's it. And then just go through the house real quick. Yeah. And so the first one we did, my little brother was, I always called him a magnet because he could go find stuff quick. So the first one we did, kick in the door, go through there. My brother finds a little briefcase safe within about two minutes. So I'm like, let's go.

Starting point is 01:52:08 He was like, no, no, I can't leave all. So he piles up all these guns. All this, my brother comes out of the house. I kid you know, he's got a bag of guns. He's got a bag of change. I'm like, how are you going to get this across this field where the car's parked? Somebody's supposed to be picking us up. He was like, I'll make it.

Starting point is 01:52:23 So he's way down. We're trying to go across this field. So we bunker down in this little ravine, and the guy's going to flash his lights twice for us to come out. So a car comes and they don't flash their lights, but he just sees headlights. My brother jumps up and runs in the middle of the road. Like, hey, what are y'all doing? I'm like, that ain't him, bro. So my brother drops the guns and takes off running.

Starting point is 01:52:45 I'm like, you did all that just to leave the guns behind, but I didn't leave the briefcase behind. You know what I mean? So we end up splitting that up. It was like 12 grand. So then another time I knew a girl, and she didn't even mean to do this, she was dating a dude, and she was like, oh, have you been to see so-and-so? I'm like, no, she was like, this house is over on so-and-so.

Starting point is 01:53:04 She's like, he's the only house over there with a detached garage. I'm like, okay. So she basically told us where he lived at. even though she can give us an address. So I started riding through there and found the house and then ran into her again. And she was like, oh, you need to come meet up with us. We're going here on Saturday night. So I called my people.

Starting point is 01:53:21 I'm like, oh, they ain't going to be home on Saturday night. And so sure enough, we waited on them to leave. And that particular time, we ran in and got like $70,000. And so from there, we had one more. I had two more, but one of them was kind of a dry run. And it was like that Tampa situation, I said, I'm done. So one more, we had a little guy. And my friend said, him.

Starting point is 01:53:40 up. We were supposed to meet him out, and there was a big group of people going out. And so he kept saying, when y'all coming, when y'all coming, we'll be there later, we'll be there later. So the whole time he's at the club, we don't went up in his apartment and got him. We drove up to, we drove up to the club with all his drugs and his money in our trunk and went hung out with him after we robbed him the whole night. Horrible. The whole night. So now we got an alibi when finally his girl gets home and calls and says somebody broke into

Starting point is 01:54:10 the house, can't be us. We're with him. Right. So he don't know who got him. And so we end up staying there all night with him and playing it off like, man, that's messed up. Somebody got you. Somebody got you.

Starting point is 01:54:21 So we did that. And then I had this one other incident. I had this bookie. And so with this bookie, I knew there was going to be like 120 grand there because that had like multiple sources telling me. So we went up to the door. Same thing. It was during the day because he worked like 20 miles away at a detail shop.

Starting point is 01:54:40 So he left the money there in a safe with his wife. Well, there's no cars in the driveway, so I'm thinking nobody's there. So sent my brother up to knock. He knocks. Nobody comes. So we pick him back up in the car. We wait about 20 minutes and we go back to the house. So we go back to the house, we kick in the door.

Starting point is 01:54:57 As soon as we kick in the door, we see the safe wide open. We didn't know there was another vehicle there. We didn't see them leave, but obviously somebody was there because when we kicked in that door, we had just seen the garage door was left up. It wasn't up the first time we come through there. So when we kicked in that door, that safe was wide open. So obviously they had just took the money and left because somebody knocked. They weren't supposed to knock.

Starting point is 01:55:19 So we ransacked this house. I'm up in the attic. And if you ever walk across those floorboards, you've got to be careful because I'm pulling up the – a lot of people like to hide their money under their insulation. So I'm pulling up the insulation. and I take a misstep and I literally fall through the ceiling. Luckily, my leg gets caught on the Joyce, so I'm still up here. You're supposed to walk on the Joyce.

Starting point is 01:55:40 Yeah, I did. And I slipped. So I fall through the ceiling and luckily I didn't fall all the way down. And so from there, I was like, this is stupid. I'm not doing this no more. There's a dry run. You put a lot of effort into stuff like that. You put a lot of time into it.

Starting point is 01:55:55 It felt like it wasn't worth it. So anyway, we got a little enough money back up now. So now I just go back to my old plug. What happened with him, he got in trouble right before this. He actually got into this big fight in a strip club one night and a big stabbing happened. And I was cool with all these guys. One group of guys was my friends and then the guys they got into it with my friends. But I was never in the middle of any of that.

Starting point is 01:56:20 So they got into this big altercation. One of my friends gets stabbed and dies by another one of my friends, which is messed up. So he gets put on an ankle monitor. so he can't go pick up his loads no more, right? Right. So now he's like, hey, you can just go pick the whole load up. So now I'm back in this full force. Now I go get a little house out in Franklin, Tennessee, if you know where that's at.

Starting point is 01:56:42 And so I'm out in the country. Nobody knows where I'm at. And so the dude's just bringing like, you know, two or three thousand pounds at a time, dropping it off. And we're taking it back to this house. And so it was always. They always had a number. The Mexicans would call and say, it's supposed to be this amount.

Starting point is 01:57:02 And I'd be like, all right. Well, they would tell me up front what the amount was supposed to be. So I'd take 10 off of it and be like, it was only this amount. They'd be like, oh, it's supposed to be this amount. I was like, no, it was only this amount. I'm the one here and counting it, right? Right. I'm in here for 24 hours.

Starting point is 01:57:14 Like, I'm getting 10 of them for myself. Right. So I was always, but they never, they had sips so many. They didn't care. Right. You know, they would argue with you for many. It'd be like, okay, whatever the county is, you said it is. So we lasted probably about seven, eight months.

Starting point is 01:57:28 I've probably been out, probably been out 18 months from prison released. And one particular night, it was October of 2006. I, we had a, we were putting together a Halloween party. I was helping a friend of mine. He was a Samoan buddy of mine, and he was a good dude. And he, he wanted me to help him, like, put the money up for party and he was going to split the money with me because he could he was one of people bring a lot of

Starting point is 01:57:58 people he knew a lot of people he'd get a lot of people to show up so we're over there that day and mind you it been like four to six weeks since the last time we got a load in and so our lifestyle we'd been running back and forth from Atlanta doing all these things partying so when you have that much access to money you have a lifestyle to keep up with it right so when you go four to six weeks without anything like it really adds up you would think somebody be saving their money we're we're going through it, right? So four to six weeks go by, all my people are calling me. So what in that? I didn't have money. I had money, but it was more about me letting other people down. They're like, oh, man, we need some more. We need some more. We got to feed our families. And so I felt

Starting point is 01:58:36 responsible for those people, right? So this particular night, my guy calls me that's on the income monitor. He's like, hey, load's coming in. He said, stay by your phone. So it's already like 11.30 at night. We never did nothing that late, ever. We never did it past a certain time of the day. You always did it in the middle of traffic on purpose. You know, so long story short, we say hang around, hang around. About 1 o'clock comes. He's like the loads 45 minutes away. So about 2 o'clock, sure enough, they call and say, it's going to be at this location.

Starting point is 01:59:06 So I said my brother over there, I'm up the road. I had a rangerover at the time. And so I'm up the road in the rangerover, and my brother goes down there. He's got a white mercury sable. So the deal is go down there, pick up the van that's full of what's in it. drive it back to the house, we'll unload it, go back and get your car and swap back out. Yeah. So he pulls up.

Starting point is 01:59:28 I'm sitting up the road for like 30 minutes. I'm like, it don't take 30 minutes to swap a van out. So I'm hitting him on a two-way radio because we had the next tails two ways. So I'm hitting him. I'm like, hey, bro, what's going on? Give me a minute. Give me a minute. I'm like, what's going on?

Starting point is 01:59:42 So sure enough, 30 minutes go by. He's not answering his phone. I'm freaking out. He comes driving up the road at 2 o'clock in the morning in the white mercury sable. he had unloaded all the from the green van into the white mercury sable. It was a thousand ninety-one bricks of marijuana. They looked like the little VCR tapes. The Mexican brought it up from Atlanta,

Starting point is 02:00:05 said that he couldn't wait for him to swap the vehicle out because he had to be back at work the next morning because he was going to work at five. So he had to get back to Atlanta. He was already going to be late. So I told him he should have boarded the mission. So anyway, he comes past me, the whole car squatting like this, gets on the bypass.

Starting point is 02:00:21 I let him get about four or five miles down the road, and I take off behind him. And so as I get close to him, he hits me on the two ways. Like, bro, go home. I just saw the helicopters. I'm like, I don't see no helicopter. Bro, I'm like, get off the phones with that mess. I was like, you're crazy. He was like, I'm telling you, bro, trying to save you, go home.

Starting point is 02:00:41 I saw the helicopters. I'm like, bro, I'm responsible for this. So sure enough, we go, there's a bypass in Nashville called Barley Parkway, takes you to like the main interstates. So we take that. And he gets probably about four or five miles ahead of me. I know which direction he's going. So I get off the interstate.

Starting point is 02:01:03 He's already gone. I come up. I take a, I get off the interstate to the right. I take a left on this road called Franklin Road. It laid you all the way into downtown Franklin. So when I take that left, I saw two cars fly up behind me.

Starting point is 02:01:16 They were like little maximus, and I'm like, it ain't good. So I cut my hat. hazard lights on, act like something's wrong with the vehicle. So I slow down to about 30 miles an hour. My brother is probably two or three miles ahead at the red light, but the red light's supposed to be flashing. It's not supposed to be red. It's 2 o'clock in the morning. It's supposed to be flashing light. That light never was that color at that time of night. It was always flashing. So it was a flat road. So I could see him for like a mile and a half out, but I'm going super slow. These cars ain't

Starting point is 02:01:47 trying to go around me. I know something's up. So, as I'm approaching, probably like a mile away, that lights red the whole time. It takes me a light's four minutes to get up to that light. Right. A light never changes. As soon as I get up behind him at that light, that light changes. I told him, I said, you go left, I'm going straight. He hits the left.

Starting point is 02:02:08 I go straight. They come out of everywhere, swarming on us. So I take him on a little, not really a chase. I just, I take off up the road on them. They hit the lights. I take the little two-way radio and I sling it. it into the woods. A little brother takes him on a chase.

Starting point is 02:02:25 And a white mercury stable, you're not getting away from them. You got a thousand bricks of brick in there just waded down. You're not getting away from them. So he takes them on a long enough chase just to get his barons for a minute and they end up pulling us both over.

Starting point is 02:02:40 Well, they take us back to Davidson County, which is Nashville. Well, that much Davidson County, you might get a $100,000 bond. that big of a deal there because in Nashville, it's a big hub for drugs. So they see lots of drugs. So they take us to take us back to Nashville because that's where he picked it up at. That's where he picked it up at.

Starting point is 02:03:02 I never had it in my vehicle at all, right? So they're saying it's constructive possession on me. The insurers, we know it sure's. So they don't got no phone. Oh, they got my brother's word if he decides. So they take us back to interrogation. I tell them, my brother called me, said he was drunk. Driving home from a club, I was following him home.

Starting point is 02:03:22 That's all I know. Me and I had a, I had the chick. The other problem of the story is I had that chick with me that I was married to, right? So knowing, she doesn't been to the feds before herself, she's out on federal probation like me. So we're both hit, basically. So they take us back. And on the way back, she's like, hey, your brother was driving drunk. He was following him home.

Starting point is 02:03:43 That's all we're saying. Fed. Go to interrogation. My brother's got his head down. It's just a cubicle like this. You can hear them on the other side. The guys interrogate my brother. My brother says, my brother's got his head down.

Starting point is 02:03:56 He's not talking. He's like 21 at the time. And they go, I heard the do slap the table. Boom, boom. Don't you hear me? I'm trying to talk to you. My brother raises up. Boom, boom.

Starting point is 02:04:08 Don't you see I'm trying to take a nap and puts his head back down. They go, oh, okay, we got y'all. So they're living now. So they handcuff us all. They take us back to Williamson County. The problem of Williamson County is, they were giving people a $20,000 bonds for just driving on a revoked license. It was one of the fourth, at that time, it was the fourth richest per capita nation, I mean, counties in the nation. They did not like anything going on there.

Starting point is 02:04:36 That was like the place where you do not mess up there, right? So they drive us back there, put us in a hold and sell. My brother's laughing. I'm like, bro, we're hit. He's like, oh, there ain't no big deal. I said, it's a big deal for me, not for you. So he thinks it's a big joke. So anyway, go to court the next day, no bond.

Starting point is 02:04:56 Week later, Halloween night, go back in the courtroom, they give me a quarter million dollar bond. They won't give him no bond because he had got caught with a pistol like six months before that, so he was on a probation violation. So now I'm on a federal charge. Well, now it's a state charge. Now I'm on a state charge, a new state charge, with a federal violation pending possibly,

Starting point is 02:05:18 because again, I'm not caught with nothing. You're right. But my brother's not talking, so they really don't have a lot on me, but they got enough to hold me. And so this is where my life changes completely, right? So I'm in this county jail and I'm just broken. I'm just like, I've made a mess of my life. I'm like, God, if you're real, show me something.

Starting point is 02:05:39 Like, you know. And so they do a church call, and I go to a Tuesday night, this Halloween night, 2006. I go to church call. And a voluntary chaplain's in there. He's given his testimony of his life. It's been 40 years since he had been in the life he was in. But he's telling a story, like, it's been 40 years now.

Starting point is 02:06:04 At the time he's telling the story, it's been like 20 years since he had been in the life. Well, he tells this testimony about how he played baseball growing up and he had a scholarship. And they were, this is real part of the important part of the story. That's why I'm telling it. So he's telling this testimony, well, they swung, they would play these baseball games and they would go down to this little creek because they lived in a little city called Chapel Hill, Tennessee, and there's a little country town. So the particular day, they had a double-header baseball game.

Starting point is 02:06:31 They went and swung off this vine that they would do into this creek, and he hits the water wrong, gets a lungs full of water, starts sinking. One of his teammates jumps him and brings him out, right? Saves his life. Well, he's telling a story 20 years past. from that time. And he goes into college, gets in a bunch of, gets hooked on drugs in college, had a baseball scholarship, gets hooked on drugs.

Starting point is 02:06:57 He's 36 years old at the time that this next incident happens. He, 36, he goes to buy some drugs. They rob him. It's December, and it's cold in Tennessee in December. So they rob him of his jacket, his clothes, everything. So he's walking down this little two-lane highway. at like 2 o'clock in the morning with nothing but underwear on

Starting point is 02:07:20 and everybody's like, he's crazy, nobody's pulling over. Right. So this goes on for like 20, 30 minutes. He probably walks like a half a mile and finally a car pulls over. Well, here's how I know God is real. This is why I tell people all the time.

Starting point is 02:07:33 Car pulls over. Rosa went down. Calls him by his first and last name. Says David G. Get in this car. David gets in the car. Guess who it was? The same guy that pulled him

Starting point is 02:07:46 of that water, his teammate to put him out of that water 20 years before that. Holy shit. What's the chances of that guy being there at that particular time? God puts him in the car, takes him, takes him home, feeds him, takes him church next day. The man gives his life to the Lord then. Now, as he's telling his story, it's been 20 more years. He was a pastor now, voluntary chaplain, had a church, had two beautiful daughters. and there was something in that moment where I just thought to myself,

Starting point is 02:08:18 I said, man, if God did that for him, he'd do it for me. And I had this moment in time where it was like that. And I remember looking at him and I said, I don't know what it is about you. I said, but I want whatever you got. And I said those words. And church service ends. He tells the guards, can he have five minutes with me? They're like, sure.

Starting point is 02:08:40 Praise over me. He's like, you didn't know it, but I was in the courtroom today when you. you went. He was like, it didn't go well for you. I was like, no. He was like, I just want to pray for you. So praise for me. I really dedicate my life back to the Lord at that moment. Knowing I'm facing a lot of time, right? I got a lot of things hanging on my head. So go back to the cell. I know something's changed. I don't know what. I just know something's different. Go back to the cell and three days later, they go visitation. It's not a visitation day. I'm thinking that's a lawyer. I'm facing a lot of time. So they escort me down this hallway.

Starting point is 02:09:13 I get down there and they open the door and it's him again. He was like, do you remember me? I'm like, man, I haven't stopped thinking about you. Not for any weird reason. You made an impact in my life that no one ever told me that I was valuable. And so sure enough, I go in there and he tells me, he says, he said, I was praying. He said, and the Lord told me to come back and speak to you. He said, you have a calling on your life.

Starting point is 02:09:37 I was like, what does that mean? It was like, well, it starts with me just pouring into you. So this man came for five and a half months, three days a week on his own time, and he just poured the Bible into me for five and a half months. So I'm sitting in this county jail knowing I'm facing prison time again. I don't know what to do. And this guy goes, you know you can get a bond reduction hearing because you've been here for like six months now. So sure enough, I go back and I apply for a bond reduction hearing.

Starting point is 02:10:08 Mind you, I'm on a hold for the Fed. Right. So I go to this bond hearing. Sure enough, they dropped my bond from $250 to $75,000. I don't have $75,000. I don't even have $7,500 at the time, but I had a couple of cars at the house because I had to pay the part of the story I didn't tell

Starting point is 02:10:27 is during the time I'm sitting there. My brother's not talking, but I know I got to get this girl off my case because it takes two people for a conspiracy, right? My brother's not going to tell on me. I know that already, but she will. So I'm like, how do I get her off my case? So my lawyer, I had a state lawyer at the time.

Starting point is 02:10:47 I paid him 10 grand. He was like, Ernie wants 13.5, he'd get his charges dismissed. These both used to be prosecutors in that county. I'm like, you can guarantee that. He said, yeah, gave him 13.5. So they went back in the courtroom, argued she was only a passenger in a vehicle. She had no recollection of what was going on. They dismissed her charges completely.

Starting point is 02:11:09 Me and my brother stays. I mean, I had to get her off the case. I already knew what was going to happen if I can get her off the case. I'm hit. Yeah, that's not the point. The point is that's corruption. Oh, yeah, for sure. Right.

Starting point is 02:11:19 Okay. So they knew what they could do all along. They just wanted some more money. So I give them the money. He gets her off the case. So now I don't have to deal with her at all. So now it's just me and my brother on this case. So I get a bond reduction hearing, get out.

Starting point is 02:11:35 Well, I need $7,500 to get out. Well, the guy, David, that had been speaking into my life and mentoring me is like, I know the bondsman here. He was like, let me call her and see what I can do it for. So he calls on the phone. He was like, she says she'll do it for half. So instead of $7,500, I only need $3,750. So I call home, move some money around, sell a couple of things, got my $37.50.

Starting point is 02:12:02 They come buy me out. Well, I know the feds are going to grab me. I know that. But now I'm at this place with my faith, and I like to tell this story. the Bible says we've all been given a measure of faith. But there's going to come a day where you've got to activate your faith. You were saying it earlier how there's certain things we do. And as we continue to progress on those things,

Starting point is 02:12:21 our faith gets greater and greater because now we see things happening on our behalf, right? Well, I think a lot of times people never activate their faith. And so I hadn't gotten to this place where I learned how to activate my faith. I heard these words from the Lord. He said, I'm not a God that I tease my children. So I get a bond reduction. I get the money to get out. So I get this bond.

Starting point is 02:12:43 So now in my heart I got this faith that there's no way they're going to, that I'm not going to get out. So the feds come get me. Take me back downtown. They put me in front of the magistrate with my probation officer. My dad shows up. The pastor shows up and they're speaking on my behalf. And long story short, my probation officer goes, I'm willing to put him on an ankle mom.

Starting point is 02:13:07 and see where this case goes since he didn't call on nothing. Boom, give me a bond. Feds give me a bond. Put him on an ankle monitor. Send me back to my dad's house. You ain't going back to that house he was at. Going back to your dad's house. Go back to my dad's house.

Starting point is 02:13:22 I'm out for like two months. I'm working from my dad's company. Two months later, my lawyer calls me, he goes, bad news. Like, what's up? He was like, fed's picked the case up. What do you mean the feds picked the case up? Fed's picked the case up. So the case was out of Atlanta because that's where the

Starting point is 02:13:37 He had come from that night. It came from Atlanta. So Atlanta had a federal indictment of like 16 people. I just happened to be on the back end of it. The only thing that really helped me was I never met any of those people before. My brother met one of them the night he picked it up, but I never met anybody. They didn't know my face. I dealt with the dude local in Nashville, but he had been on house arrest for so long he wasn't on the indictment. They just, they might have him on a phone conversation, but they didn't really know who he was. Right. So I have to go self-surrender, self-surrender. They take me to Atlanta.

Starting point is 02:14:09 I go through all this. I get to Atlanta, go for a bond hearing. The federal judge gives me a bond. The prosecutor is like, there's no way he gets a bond. He's, I'm taking it upstairs. So he takes a date, send me back cross street to ACDC. He goes above the judge? Goes above the judge and appeals it.

Starting point is 02:14:26 So they send me back across street to ACDC. I sit there for another four and a half weeks. I was in ACDC. microwaves and ice machines. I know the weirdest stuff that we get excited about, right? I was in there for about eight months. Yeah, I was there for three months. I thought it was actually probably one of the better county jails I've been in.

Starting point is 02:14:44 Yeah, I was in prior to that, I was in Union City. Horrible. Oh, horrible fucking place. I only had to go through Atlanta. I only had to go through the PIN for one night. When I first got there, they sent me in the PIN overnight, booked us in. There was six people in a room with four men bunks, had a little rollout on the ground. And all night, I'm like, I got to get out of here. Cannot stay here. Like all night. I'm

Starting point is 02:15:12 waiting every time they call a name from the time I got there about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. And every time they started calling names, I'm like, surely they're going to call my name. So I probably laid there all night, couldn't sleep. It's probably 4 o'clock in the morning. They finally called my name. I'm like, down here. I'm beating on the door down here. So they come get me, take me to ACDC. I'm like, this is nice compared to a county jail where I had been. I'm like, this is real nice. So I go to ACDC, go up for a bond hearing. Judge gives me a bond. My prosecutor appeals it, takes it upstairs. I go back across the street, stay there for like another three or four weeks, go to back for another bond hearing in front of a pellet judge.

Starting point is 02:15:52 Here's exactly what he said. Pellate judge looks at the situation, looks straight at the prosecutor. why are we here? Prosecutor's like, because I don't think it's right that he's got a bond. Look at his criminal history. Look at this, this. And she literally looked at, it was actually a female, she looked at the prosecutor, she goes, did the judge downstairs give him a bond?

Starting point is 02:16:13 Yes, Your Honor, she did. He did. So why are you up here? We don't go against our own people. If she gave him a bond, I'm giving him a bond. Dress him out. Sure enough. See him back across street, dressed me out, gave me a bond, but I'm back on an ankle monitor.

Starting point is 02:16:27 So I stayed out from that point. But that had changed my life at that point. So I stayed out on that ankle monitor for like two years and some change while they're, the other people are going through the process. Yeah, because none of them know me. Right. And so I'm not saying I'm taking it to trial, but I'm also not pleading guilty to nothing because you don't have nothing. So my brother, they got him on diesel therapy.

Starting point is 02:16:51 Every time we send him money, he got moved from, he went to 17 different county jails. in a three-year period. 17. But the whole time, I ain't got nothing to say to y'all at all. So finally, there was off from my brother 36 months,

Starting point is 02:17:07 and my lawyer came was like, they said they'll give you the same amount. First time offender for him. He's already been fucking in this city. He's walking out of jail. He's going straight to a halfway. Absolutely. That's exactly what's fixing to happen.

Starting point is 02:17:19 So they come to me and they're like, they're like, you can take this to try. trial, we give you the same amount of time as your brother. And now here's the thing I had in my back pocket. I knew. None of them guys knew me, but there was still another guy on the street who had been running for a long time.

Starting point is 02:17:38 And he's the one that was on the anchor monitor. And he's the one that I was picking up from. So also know what superseding indictments, if they get him, I'm done. He's not going to bat for me, right? So I said, I can fight this. But who's to say, if I say I'm going to trial, they're not going to come pick him up later? Right.

Starting point is 02:17:54 I said, or they offer me, they said that you can take this same 36-month sentence. And I said, the only way I do that is if I get, if the, y'all talk to probation and I want 36 and 36 ran concurrent. And I'll sign today. And so sure enough, they gave me 36 probation violation, 36 on this end. Well, when come to sentencing come out, the prosecutors asking for like six years or something, right? With enhancements. Dickhead. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:18:27 Your Honor, we have an agreement. They were like, well, we disagree with. Yeah. Yeah. And so what's funny is the judge is like, the judge is in the courtroom and she tells the prosecutor, she's like, I get the final say. So what they want to do was give me six years and then do like three years probation, the three year probation violation, six new years, but then also three year supervised release. And so I had my lawyer go back and I said, I'll do 36. and 36 concurrent, and you can give me as much probation as you want to back in, because I'm not going to mess it up again.

Starting point is 02:19:00 So sure enough, when it all came down to it, the prosecutor still didn't agree with it, but the judge said, I'll do this instead. She said, I'm going to give you three years on the new charge. She said, I'm going to give you three years with a probation violation and run concurrent. She said, but I'm going to give you eight years on supervised release. She was like, so if you're really not going to do nothing, you'll survive it. But I was cool with that. Right. So I said, do I get the time I served in the county jail? She was like, yeah. So I got sentenced and I already had six months built into county jail. So it equal like seven something months. So literally got sentenced, went home, let me self-surrender again. Like two months later, self-surrendered again.

Starting point is 02:19:43 But man, in prison, man, to be honest, like it was my first opportunity to like, like I had men in there that mentored me and like really showed me what life is supposed to be like past all the, all the things I had been living, you know what I mean? And so I started, went into two Bible colleges and they got an opportunity in prison to preach. And so that's what I did from prison. And then when I came home from prison 2011, I had my CDL license. So I went to a company called Ready Ice. And this is how this set up.

Starting point is 02:20:15 I had a made a friendship with a guy in there. And his stepfather was like the head of all the safety of Reddy Ice. And he was like, so I go home. I turned in like 30 different resumes and nobody would hire me, right? And so finally, his mom calls me on the phone. She's like, we just want to see how this job search is going. We was worried about you. I was like, well, nobody hired me. She's like, well, go to Reddy Ice. She's like, my husband's going to call him. So I go to Reddy Ice, got a CDL license. When I put his name down on an application, the manager looked at it, he said, you know him? I was like, yep, it was like,

Starting point is 02:20:48 oh, you're good. Hired me on the spot. I stayed there for a year. And, and, you know, and, you're And a year later, they promoted me from driver, and I end up becoming the route supervisor there. From there, I stayed the route supervisor for four more years there. And from there, got promoted to plant manager. I ended up being a plant manager for like five more years. So I gave them 12 years out of prison. Did 12 years there. And then the Lord called me out of there and told me I got too comfortable.

Starting point is 02:21:17 And he told me my identity became what I was doing. instead of in who I was, right? So it was very interesting. He told me I got comfortable, and I wasn't, he didn't want my identity to be a plant manager, right? It wasn't a bad thing. He was really calling me out to something greater, right? So it tells me to leave. It was a rough time in my life. I went through a bad marriage at that time, and so I had walking away from what everybody telling me I'm crazy, you're walking away from my career. My boss was in Anniston, Alabama. I was in Nashville, Tennessee. I ran the location. I talked to my boss on the phone. They never came up there and bothered me. I was good at my job. So I knew the job like the back of my hand. Nobody leaves an

Starting point is 02:22:06 environment like that, right? Everybody's telling me, you're crazy, you're crazy. This is a career. You're walking away from a career. But I just knew that there was something more inside of me that was telling me to go. And so I gave them a four-month notice because they were a seasonal business. and I decided I was going to leave in June of 2022. So I was going to leave. So I gave him until November. So I hired and trained my replacement, left in November, went and started my own business. And me and my cousin, first cousin, did low voltage wiring for a while.

Starting point is 02:22:41 That was his trade. So we started a little business, got a little S-Corp and did that for like six months. That slowed down. The Lord told me to humble myself and go work. from my little brother who was running my dad's plumbing company. And so that was a hard thing for me. The same one that was driving the stuff up to bowling room. And the same one that, you know, I raised,

Starting point is 02:23:01 the Lord told me to humble myself and go work for him. And so that was a challenge for me, but it was needed. You know, I learned a lot about humility in that time. So I left and he made me a 1099 employee, and I went and drove their dump truck because it's a plumbing, excavation, construction. They tear houses down and all that now. I went and drove that dump truck.

Starting point is 02:23:21 for them for like two years. Worked for my little brother. I have a funny story about working for him. You know, I was working for him and we was picking up asphalt one day. And super crazy. So I pick up the asphalt and I forgot to. Now, imagine I'm going through a, I'm going through a divorce. My head's all over the place. My brain is scrambled right now. My life's done been changed three times in the last two years altered completely. I'd gotten real comfortable where I was. at. And so I went to pick up this asphalt and I didn't lock the pins on the back of the trailer. I mean, when the door shuts down like this, it's heavy, but I didn't lock the pins. And so I take off. When you drive off, it all dumps out. Well, it just starts coming out slow. Oh, okay. I thought

Starting point is 02:24:07 the door's really heavy. Fucking load. No, I dropped it down, but the door's so heavy that it just spits out. Yeah. But it's hot asphalt. So it's going to get everywhere. So I get, so I come out of the asphalt plant and I'm half a mile from the interstate. I jump on the interstate. my brother ends up driving beside me, and I'm thinking he's just waving at me. Like, what's the chance of us being on interstate at the same time? It was a coincidence. He was like, pull over, pull over, pull over. He's screaming.

Starting point is 02:24:34 I'm like, he was like, you didn't lock the bat. So I was like, man, so I pull over. And man, I pulled over, and he pulled up behind me. And he cussed me up and down like a dog. I mean, cussed me like a dog. And I just felt that thing inside of me say, How are you going to act? Are you going to act the way he's acting?

Starting point is 02:24:56 Or are you going to take responsibility and do something about it? And so sure enough, talk to me like a dog. And I knew what I was supposed to do in that moment. I said, my bad man, I messed up. And I just got a shovel and I got out there. And I started scooping it up and throwing it into the back of the truck. And we did that together for as far as we could and locked it back and went on. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 02:25:18 And so I did that for two years. And then the Lord called me to move from Nashville to come here. And so to come here, the reason to come here, one of the guys that mentored me when I was in prison, he had to planted a church here in Wesley Chapel back in five years ago. It'd be five years in September. So it's called City of God Church. It's that we meet at Benito Middle School. Cross Creek.

Starting point is 02:25:48 Yeah, I don't know. You know where the Bridges Church. Where's it at? It's close to 54. It's all 54. And then we went there for a while. And then we went to, I want to say city church. I don't know.

Starting point is 02:26:08 City church is a big church out there. Yeah. We've only gone there maybe for like the last couple months. only because the bridges is the preacher you know he I like churches where they they they tell you almost like a story right like like hey here's you know and and and you learn something from the story it's entertaining it's understandable this is how you relate yeah this is how you behave this is how but at the bridges they listen here's the thing the problem is that he you know his whole whole thing is like, I teach you directly from the Bible. And that's great. But I don't need to know the origins of every word. Right. Like he wants to break down the Greek and Hebrew of everything. Yes. And I don't need to know that, bro. Right, right. I don't need to know where the origins of this. How does this relate to my life? Right. When I walk out of there, I want to be able to relate this, this sermon to my

Starting point is 02:27:07 life and how can I use it and not know that this word, the origins of this word is from here and it means this and it means this and it means and like I understand you're very smart you're very smart guy you've you've really looked into it but when I walk out of there I don't want to be halfway through through the sermon and be thinking I wonder if we should put our order into first watch yeah you know like where are we going to eat what am I going to get like I don't want to be drifting off thinking about the rest of my day I want to know that you're teaching me something that I can you know use in my life yeah and and instead now I know where the origins of this word came from. And I understand that this city was close to this city.

Starting point is 02:27:51 And they walked there. And so it was a long journey. And so, okay, I don't care that it's a long journey. I've got a Toyota. Like, what are we doing here? But the other, the other one is better, much better. Newark, yeah. Yeah, Newark is much better because, and here's the thing.

Starting point is 02:28:06 Everybody's just kind of like, you know, I don't know, I shouldn't say this. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. But, I mean, they're just, it's just. regular people, they're just regular people that are there, you know. Some people are in blue jeans. Some people are dressed up. Absolutely. Some people, it's just regular people that are just, you know, and so it's, and this is the other part about where that bothers me. This, you know what I'm say? No, I'm just, I'm just thinking of someone from this church. Oh, if there's watching. Yeah. Yeah. Straighten up. Okay. I'm just telling you. Um,

Starting point is 02:28:40 So one, it seems like every few months they're patting themselves on the back. That bothers me. Right. The other thing that bothers me is they keep talking about how they have this outreach program and this outreach program. We have an outreach program for prisons and the jails and this and that. Okay, well, we wrote two emails to you about trying to work with you, not even work with you. Like, I understand you probably have 15 people that are a part. part of this whole thing. And if you need help, we're willing to help. Keep mind, we don't, we

Starting point is 02:29:15 donate. Like, I mean, it's not like I'm showing up for nothing. Right, right. We're sending money. Right, right. So, and if you need help, like, I think that's great going into prisons, the whole thing. I'm willing to do that. I think I'd be a great example of that. I do that anyway. Yeah. But we sent a couple emails, bro. Nobody got back. We didn't send it to the wrong email. Right. Nobody got back to it. So it made my first thought was, I'm not that important. No, my first thought is, do you actually have a reach-out program? Got you. Because two former federal inmates, my wife and I, reached out to you, sent emails.

Starting point is 02:29:52 You didn't respond. Give me a go-fuck yourself. We're not interested. Tell me that. Right. Tell me, I got your email, but you're not the kind of person I want representing this church. I get it. I understand.

Starting point is 02:30:03 I'm not for everybody. Right. But don't not respond. It makes me think, is this just a part of a great? drift like your pitch it every single time but is the pitch simply to say to make yourself look good right is for your for your followers yeah I'm just yeah I won't everybody know I'm a good but we also have we reach out to the local prisons do you yeah you know and they're big thing is that we need help not just with donations we need physical bodies I'm I'm here that bow bro yeah it irritates me

Starting point is 02:30:35 and it's funny because it bothers my wife that it irritates me yeah um so anyway then when went to the other one, we like the other place. Like Newark. I forget the other one that Jess and I went to for like three years. The problem is when we moved, it's an hour and 45 minute drive to get to the other church. And it's like, okay, do we spend three and a half hours driving back and forth at church plus an hour at church? Like, do we spend the entire day going to the church that we like or do we find one locally? And so I was like, let's let's let's find a local church.

Starting point is 02:31:10 But the other church, and I can't even remember the name of it. See, I'd call her right now. She'd know exactly. That church, like every single preacher at that church, was amazing. Every one of them were great. Yeah. You walked out, you felt great for the rest of the day. But these guys got to work on, they got to work on some stuff, man.

Starting point is 02:31:33 It's definitely characteristics, personalities. And it's Wesley Chapel. Yeah. They've got money. Yeah, they do. This is not. People are dropping money. It's not bro.

Starting point is 02:31:41 We're not broke. So you know where the mosque is on 54? I mean on Morris Bridge. Down by the Shell Station in front of Publix? Yes, I do. I know. So there's a lot of like mosques. Well, there's a big church right there and then there's a mosque right on the corner of Morris Bridge and Cross Creek.

Starting point is 02:31:58 Okay. Yeah. There's a public's right there. So if you turn, if you're coming off Morris Bridge, you make a right on Cross Creek. But Nito Middle School is up on the left. It's like right. It's like right dead smack between. Bruce B. Downs and it's on Cross Creek, but it's right in the middle of Bruce B. Downs and Morris Bridge. So it's a middle school. So we have to set that middle school up for service every Sunday and tear it back down for school. But during the summer, we only got to tear down half of it. So we got a main auditorium and then we got a kids, you know, kids area or whatever. Right. So, but we also have, you mentioned the prison. We also have a, I have an end to that already. So if you're,

Starting point is 02:32:40 you're really interested, I can get you connected. So what? I just flew out to, I just flew out to Utah. Yeah. On my own dime, flew out to Utah to talk to a bunch of inmates. Amen. And K. Flew back. Yeah. And, you know. So we have Zephyr Hills up here. Zephyr's a horrible looking prison. But you know, it's crazy. You know, it's crazy, bro. It's this is the only time I've been somewhere where they have lifers mixed in with people under five years. Oh, okay. The whole prison is literally. Is it a prison or the county jail? No, it's actually a prison. It looks horrible. It does. But it's, I mean, we go there. We have the fourth Sunday of the month. And then we also do a reentry program. Like, we haven't done it in like eight weeks because we were traveling for Africa.

Starting point is 02:33:26 But we'll do like a 10 week reentry program. But that's the point where we're less like, look, man, we're going to tell you the truth. Like, here's what you expect when you get out. Here's what you don't want to do. Here's what you're going to have to do. You know, so that whole reentry. program I felt like was way more impactful than us coming on a Sunday night and teaching anything, you know what I mean? Because we're sitting there and they're able to ask questions, they're able to like want to know what this experience was like and, you know, we're just the raw and the real, you know, that's what I believe in more than anything, the raw and the real, you know. I believe we should have environments where people can ask questions if they want to know something, you know what I mean? I'm with you. I don't want an environment where it's all about the stage and a spotlight.

Starting point is 02:34:08 And there was a time of my life, a reason I bringed it up, the time of my life where I thought being called to ministry had to be behind a pulpit or be on a stage. And the Lord had to deliver me from that, right? And I think a lot of people get into performance mode, especially people that are called into the ministry like that. I think a lot of people get into performance mode. If I'm not up here, I'm not important. Well, the Lord had to deliver me from that, right? And so I'm thankful now that this is ministry right here, me and you talking, right? I can meet somebody in Walmart and they're telling me they have something going on in their life and I sit and talk to them.

Starting point is 02:34:46 That's ministry to me, right? It doesn't have to be behind some pulpit with all the lights on me on Sunday, you know. But not everybody has that. Not everybody's free from that. But I thank God I am now, you know, but I wasn't for a long time. I used to think that I had to do certain things in order for me to, be noticed, you know what I mean? But now I'm far from that place. Like, I guess what I'm saying is, I think a lot of us, our identity gets wrapped up in what we're doing for God, instead of just

Starting point is 02:35:18 merely being a son and a daughter. Our only call in this world as a Christian is to love the Lord as our father and see ourselves as sons and daughters. I think too many times, too many people get caught up in the performance side of it. If I'm not doing this, this and this, you see it. all the time. I'm not doing these things. I'm not happy. You know what I mean? And that's a trap, in my opinion, you know, so I'm excited for the opportunities that I get inside the prison. I feel like, personally for me, I feel like that's my greatest testimony as being able to be real with the people inside from where we came from, you know, but they could close that door tomorrow and I'm still okay, you know. Africa, love that, you know, love going there and

Starting point is 02:36:01 and loving on the people. And, you know, we, we were able to do some, this is my, this is my third year in a row. My pastor's fourth year in a row going. And, you know, we fed 750 families for a month over there, helped a local hospital with supplies and food, helped a orphanage school over there with desk and chairs and paid their rent and aftercare facility with food. So all those things are great things. but my identity is not wrapped in, wrapped up in that. You know what I'm saying? I'm not allowing myself as a Christian to be wrapped up in that, you know, and not even my calling to be wrapped up in that.

Starting point is 02:36:41 I'm grateful that the Lord trusts me to do those things, but I'm not, my life's not going to fall apart if I don't do it, if that makes sense. Right. And so that's what Africa was about. We just got back from there. And so what the Lord told me to do from there is I had this thing last year where me and my wife was just kept hearing,

Starting point is 02:37:00 when we pray, just hearing the Lord say orphanage, orphanage. So, you know, I felt like I was an orphaned growing up. My wife is what's considered a spiritual mother. You know, she's wanting people to go to Chewys and have lunch. And by the time them little girls that's waiting on us leave, they're crying because my wife's speaking into their life and she's echoing things. They've heard their whole life. That's just the type of gift on our life, you know.

Starting point is 02:37:25 So I say that when we keep hearing an orphanage last year, ask the Lord, what's that look like, and I'm like, I'm over here. Like, I can't run an orphanage in a third world country from here. And the Lord's like, you know how to scale a business, so we'll do it that way. So when we went to Africa last year, we put a couple of children in a pastor's home over there and just send money every month to them. And then so when I come back this year, the Lord's like, I want to take this a step further. So now he had me create.

Starting point is 02:37:53 And it's small level. I don't have a, I don't have a foundation on paper or none of that yet. And I just have a dream in my heart of what the Lord told me, but it's going to be called Abba's House Foundation. And it's literally I got four overseers now. I got one in Pakistan that's got an orphanage. I got three in Africa. One of them's a community school for kids left behind. One is an orphan school, which is basically kids left behind.

Starting point is 02:38:17 And the other one is the pastor's home where he's got kids there raising them. So I got four overseers and four different places where I can send money to now. And I was doing it. Me and my wife was doing it on our own, but that's what the Lord was saying. He wants us to find more people to partner up with us. So since I've been home from Africa on Friday, I've been talking to people that I know that have businesses and close friends. So I already got three people already obligated.

Starting point is 02:38:42 I don't say obligated. Three people willing to partner in with the foundation. So literally the Lord used this language. I like this. I want to share this with your viewers too. He said, tell your partners that they get a chance of making heaven's history. We think about history on the earth.

Starting point is 02:39:03 We don't think about heaven's history. But everything we do here, the Lord said, everything we do here for other people is being recorded in heaven. And one day when we get there, we're going to see the history of heaven. And how did we impact the history of heaven? And so that's what the language the Lord gave me over the weekend. And so that all being said, I don't want it to get so big where it becomes some entity. I want the money to come through my hands and out to the overseers.

Starting point is 02:39:31 And then what comes back has got to be pictures and receipts of everything that the money spent on. And we're going to give out reports from there. So that's really what's on my heart right now for where the Lord's taking me and my wife, per se. 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, if you want to contact Arthur on social media so that you can reach out. to him, talk to him, or donate, which would be great. We're going to leave all of his social media

Starting point is 02:40:01 links in the description box. Go in the description box. Click on that. You'll be able to contact him. Really do appreciate you guys watching. Thank you very much for checking out the video. If you know anybody that would be interested in the video, please share the video, hit the like button, subscribe, hit the bell. Thank you. See you.

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