Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - My First day of 26 Years...

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

My First day of 26 Years...

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I've never seen blood like this. I mean, they always tend to hit each other in the head because your head bleeds a lot. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm going to be going over the first day in federal prison. So my first day in federal prison after, you know, after I went through processing and, you know, they fingerprinting. you and take your photo and you answer some questions, then they send you, well, then they sent me to, uh, it was basically like a, uh, a hub unit where you, you kind of get categorized. And I, uh, I went to this unit. I want to say it was A2.

So in the federal prison, I went to, I went to obviously the complex and I think I've already explained that in a different video, but I was in the medium. and there's three large buildings in the medium and they're gosh they're like four stories high and so the first place I was so you would have like a building B building C building well in a building there's you know unit you know A1 A2 A3 and A4 so I think I went to A2 so I go to A2 and as soon as I go in there you they give you a card like a bed card or a cell card and you go in there and you give the officer your card. So I walk in, I give my card, and I say, hey, I need to be assigned to, I just got here,

need to be assigned to sell. And he assigns me a cell. I go straight in. And there was a Mexican guy that was in there. And he, you know, real nice guy introduced himself and was like, okay, hey, you know, because he had been there longer. So he had the bottom bunk. It was a two-man cell.

He said, you know, you're in the, you're in the top, you're on the top bunk. So I go on the top bunk. I put my bed roll. You know, you have to go there. You have like a bed roll. And it's a pillow, which is horrible. You get like a pillow, a couple of sheets. I think, I think you get two blankets and like two sheets.

And then a pillow case and a really crap. or they don't give you a pillow at all because they just don't have any. So you get a crappy pillow. So I go in there. I walk in. I get introduced to this guy. Really nice guy. He was from Texas.

I think they called him a Texicana or something like that. They've got like a name for him. And he's, you know, he's part of like the, I think they're called Servagnos, which is a gang. It's kind of like a loose affiliated gang of different types of

of Mexicans and they also all the Mexicans kind of click up and so in prison most prisons you know all the blacks will kind of click up and they'll have what they call different cars but they all basically kind of click up together the blacks click up the whites click up the Hispanic clip up click up click up and and then they have with what's called different cars and so you may be a black guy and you'll but you'll be in let's say the Georgia car why because you're from Georgia So, you know, you want to be around your homeboys, and so you have something in common. So I go in the cell. The, the Mexican guy is really cool.

You know, he's clicked up with the, with kind of that prison game, the Sorvainos. And he asked me like, hey, you know, do you know, do you have anybody here? I said, I don't know. I got a cousin that's in prison here somewhere. And he goes, okay, okay, what's his name? And I told him his name. He said, okay, well, I'll try and help you find him. He goes, there's not a lot of white guys here.

He said, it should be easy to find him. I said, okay. And he said, you need to, you know, he said, go check the call-out sheet, see if he's on the call-out sheet. Because there's a sheet every day of people that come out on the call-out sheet, and they have to go to different, you have different things scheduled. So one day I may be on the call-out sheet to go see my counselor at 2 o'clock, or I may be on the call-out sheet to see, you know, medical or whatever. So I checked the call-out sheet, and he explained to me that every day you have to check the call-out sheet. to see if you have any appointments. So I go and I check the call-out sheet

and I don't have any appointments, but I know within the next few days I will have appointments with like my counselor, with medical, with education will want to see you. There's a whole bunch of things you're going to have to do. Hey, I wanted to let you guys know that I have a Patreon account. If you're interested in joining the Patreon account, it's got three tiers.

The top tier, you actually get a different con man painting every single month. If you're already joined and you're already supporting me, I really appreciate that. If you haven't joined yet and you're interested in joining, I'm going to leave the contact information for Patreon in the description. Thank you very much for watching the video. Back to the video. While I was looking at the callout sheet, I remember suddenly, like, they start, there's like a, you know, the PA system. Suddenly, they start screaming out, lockdown, lockdown, lockdown.

And everybody just immediately starts moving. Like, there's like a hundred, 150 guys in this one unit, maybe one, I think probably one, between one 20 and 150. So guys are rushing all over the place. And they're, you know, they're running back and forth. And what they're running around to do is to get things like heat up a soup so that they know they might be locked down for the next couple hours. And so they want to be able to put a soup in the microwave. and each unit had two or three microwaves. Or maybe they're just going to get hot water

because maybe you didn't get hot water in the sinks in the actual room. Whatever the thing they did was they would run around to other guys, other cells and ask for stuff or they would go to right away they'd go to, let's say the store man. Because in every unit, there's at least one or two guys that run what's called a store. So some guy will have, he keeps like 20 or 30 soups. He'll keep 20 or 30 soups. He'll have like seven or eight different candy bars.

He'll have, you know, like five Snickers, five, you know, Kit Katz, five, whatever. He'll have bags of potato chips. He'll have extra sodas. And he keeps all that stuff in his locker. And so you can go to that guy and say, hey, man, can I get a soda? And he'll sell you a soda for, let's say, two stamps. Well, soda costs him, you know, 50 cents. He'll sell to you for two or three stamps.

Well, a stamp's worth at that point about 50 cents. So you give him two stamps or you give him three stamps and he would give you a soda. Or he would write down a list of things that you owed him. And then he would add it up for how much money you owed him. And then when it's your turn to go to commissary, and I can, you know, I think everybody knows what commissary is basically the where you buy stuff on the compound. You go there once a week. So he would give you a list of things to buy him. that's equivalent to what you owed him.

And that's how he kept his store restocked. And he basically had about a 50% markup on anything that he bought. So it's a good little gig for him, for the storeman. Of course, sometimes people run up a debt. They don't pay or they get shipped or moved. But either way, if you're making a 50% markup or sometimes double, some of these guys are charging like double. It depends on, you know, what the item is. So guys are running the store man.

They're screaming, lockdown, lockdown. I don't really know what lockdown is. In the Marshall's holdover when they told us to go to our rooms, they would just announce go to your rooms. So I, everybody's screaming, everybody's running around. The PA system is going off. The CO is yelling at guys to hurry up and get in their room. The CEO, basically, as soon as they scream lockdown, he walks to the very first cell and locks. and locks the door

and if you're not in your cell you get what's called a disciplinary shot they write you a shot and you get a disciplinary you know whatever shot on your record

or whatever you want to call it I don't know I don't know what it stands for but the point is is that he immediately walks to the first cell so if you're in the first cell you basically never have any time at all

now granted you get out before everybody else but you never have any time to do anything so he walks to the third first cell and guys were screaming wait wait and they're running to getting their cells and so but if you're the guy in the last cell you've got 15 minutes to heat stuff up so guys are running around getting stuff and and all of a sudden i'm just sitting there i don't know what's happening i just noticed

the guards running around locking doors they're screaming i'm starting to think hey i think i think i'm supposed to go to my cell my new celly comes walking over to me and he says he's hey man cox cox you got to go in the cell man you got to go in the cell come on we got to go in the cell come on we got to go in the cell and I went okay bro and I turned out I said why what's going on what's going on he said he said yeah man it's not a big deal man we're just getting locked down he said somebody got stabbed in the yard and I went and I remember thinking oh my God someone just got killed like they just somebody just got murdered in the yard because to me getting stabbed meant they killed you it's like to me they say yeah man they shot him I think you died I didn't realize that apparently people get

shot and stabbed all the time they just don't die So he said He goes, nah man, they just stabbed this guy up in the yard And I went, bro, I said, oh my God Somebody just got killed in the yard He goes, nah, bro They just stabbed them up a little bit And he kind of did his hand like this

Like like a bunch of little stabs Nah, they just stabbed them up a little bit He goes, he ain't going to die or nothing He said, they just stabbed them up You know, teach him a lesson And I thought Man, that's where you're at, bro. You're at a place where to teach you a lesson

The inmates stab each other now I went in and I just remember thinking oh my god like that's rough like you're in a fucking rough spot so I go I end up going into the cell and I remember thinking they just stabbed somebody we're going to be locked in for a long time days maybe literally by that that was whatever time it was I don't know one or two o'clock by four clock they unlock the doors and they serve chow everybody stands by the door the units get called in in a different order because they have an inspection every week to determine which units get called first if you have the best cleanest unit then that unit gets called first and so the first second

third fourth fifth you know all the way they have 12 units total three buildings 12 units So the guy says, you know, they announced chow, they open the doors. We walk out. We stand by the front door. And then a few minutes later, they open the door and we go straight to the chow hall. Like, I don't know anything. I'm just following people at this point. Like, nobody's told me anything.

So I walk straight to, you know, my cellie barely speaks English. So I walk straight to the chow hall. I stand in line. I go in. They give us food. The food was really not bad. Now, here's the thing. They have at this point, every facility cook their own food.

They had a list of what they were going to serve week to week. But they didn't have what they ultimately moved to what's called a national menu where every place is served the same meal throughout the country. So at this point, each prison was in charge of making their own meals. So they gave them a budget. They spent that money. Colgate Total is more than just your favorite toothpaste. It's dedicated to advancing oral health.

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they had Coca-Cola products. Like you could literally go get a fountain drink. You could walk up and get a Sprite or a Coca-Cola or a Diet Coke or whatever. Like they had all these fountain drinks. the food was good. It was like fried chicken or something. I was like, oh my God. Like, this is all right.

Like, this is not bad at all. I've been living in, I've been in Atlanta City Detention Center, which was the U.S. Marshall's Holdover, and the food was horrible. So, you know, I got there and I was like, wow, this is like, they're feeding us way better than we deserve. And so I got some food, sat down. You know, I ate. I remember I walked up to a table. And there was a, there were a couple black guys that were there.

And I go, do you guys mind if I sit? And the guy was, they looked up and they went, nah, man, there's no sign seating here. You can sit wherever you want, bro. I sat down. I ate. I came back. I came back to the unit. I heard from my celly later that the guy that got stabbed.

It was over something ridiculous, like a small debt that he owed or people. People get stabbed, would get stabbed over all kinds of things. They would get stabbed over, listen, I've, I saw a guy get hit with a lock with a, like stabbing. It's funny because stabbings are not nearly as bad as, well, as bloody as being hit with like a lock. I saw a guy, probably within a few weeks of that, I actually saw a guy get hit with a lock. and that somebody was there were two like Mexicans and one Mexican guy had a lock on a belt and he had it tied around his hand and then they leave it just about that much right so about four or five inches to the lock and what happens is he I was standing in line at the rec center waiting the rec yard whatever you call it and I was about to waiting for the gate to open I'm just standing they have two different gates so I was at the second gate or the first gate. So I'm at the first gate and I'm waiting to go into this bullpen area to go to the second,

have the second gate open, which actually lets you out of the yard. So I'm waiting there for them to call what they call a move. I'll explain that in a second. And this guy runs up and I'm literally standing right beside this Mexican guy. He's right here. His head is right here. And I'm just standing because you're all kind of crowded. So I'm standing there waiting and another Mexican guy runs up behind him with a lock and goes

thump and just hits him in the head. thump this was just as the door had opened so the guy kind of stumbles forward through the door through the gate and he and he stumbles hits the ground goes to stand up holding his head thump the guy hits him again thump hits him again he falls down waits a minute guy goes just get up again thump he must have hit him six times all in the head this guy was bleeding like I've never seen blood like this. I mean, this was, this was like just gushing blood. And I didn't realize it, but until, you know, later when I talked to some people about it,

they were like, oh, yeah, they always tend to hit each other in the head because your head bleeds a lot. And this guy bled so much that he had a white shirt on that when he was done looked like a dark, like burgundy, just completely drenched, like tie-died. But, I mean, there was 80% of it was covered down. his back, his front, I mean, he's holding his head, he's bent over, that guy, as bad as he was bleeding, actually tried to get out of the rec yard to go back to the unit, didn't want to tell anybody, didn't want to go to medical, because he knew if he went to medical, they're going to stitch him up, they're going to put him in the shoe, and they're going to ship him.

Even if he told on the other guy that hit him, he knew that he was still going to end up getting shipped and then the other guy gets shipped and then he goes somewhere else and they would be saying oh he's a snitch because i because he told on the guy that hit him with the lock well i found out later that that guy actually got hit with the lock specifically because the one mexican the one in front of me was messing with the other mexicans punk a punk in prison is like your boyfriend so you have like a male dominated a male and female kind of a you know homosexual relationship and the female the one person that plays the punk or the woman is called a punk so he the one guy was messing with the other guy's punk he told him several times don't fuck with my punk anymore he didn't he wouldn't heed the other

guy's warning and so eventually he got a a lock and a belt and ran up behind him and thump thumb thumb thumb thumb i don't know whatever happened yeah i know yeah it was like like a rough high school. You're playing, you don't mess with my, my girlfriend and, oh, fuck you, I'll do what I want to do. And the guy keeps messing with him. The girlfriend keeps saying he's messing with me, he's bothering me. And then what happened? They get into a fist fight. Only they didn't get into a fist fight. They took a lock and smashed the other dude. Hey, if you guys didn't know, I also do, I do paintings. And if you're interested in a painting, I'm going to leave my contact information in the description beneath the video. Back to the video. So the thing about, the thing

about being in that prison, one of the things, other than when my cousin showed up and I met my cousin, which is hilarious. This guy was nuts. So that, you know, the prison was what it, in all, in most prisons, except for, except for camps, you have what's called controlled movements. And so what happens is at the, at the beginning of each hour, so let's say it, let's say at quarter till or more like 10 till one, they call a move. They unlock all the doors in the prison and they say, you know, uh, uh, one o'clock move, one o'clock move. And so you have from 1250 to to one o'clock to leave the unit or leave wherever you are located and get to another place in the prison. So if you're on the rec yard and they call the one o'clock move, which is about

10 till 1 they open the they open the compound for 10 minutes and you have to race across the compound because the buildings are really spread out you have to kind of kind of walk fast like a like a like an old soccer like a soccer mom or something you know you do like the fast walking across the compound to try and get to let's say the library because you might have an appointment at the library or maybe you have to get to medical because you have a medical appointment or you have to meet your counselor or you have to go to school maybe you're trying to get your GED I don't know Or you go to Votech with a vocational, it's a vocational school that they have there. Or maybe you have to go to work.

You know, they have a unicorn there with unicorn is where you, it's a factory in the prison that hires the prisoners to work there and make things. I want to say they made, they made the partition walls for like cubicles in offices. So Unicorn made those walls. what else yeah so you might you gotta get to work and they'd call one o'clock move two o'clock move three o'clock move and then a four o'clock move you'd have to go back to the unit and then they count you like they would count all of us at i want to say they count you throughout the night but they count you at like 10 o'clock in the morning after you wake up at like they

count you at like six they count you at like 10 they count at again at 12 and then at 4 o'clock, and then again at 10 o'clock. So anyway, I would say by the second or third day, I'd had a couple of white guys approach me, and they wanted to see my paperwork. And I actually had my pre-sentence report. I actually had the report that was done on me by the probation officer in my case, which works for the U.S. Attorney's Office. So the U.S. attorney and the probation officer actually prepared a document. I think I talked about a PSI, too. It's like a recommendation. It basically goes over all your charges and where you fall in the federal sentencing guideline. So what happens is in that document, if you cooperated,

it typically says you cooperate and you got a sentence reduction. But I didn't get a sentence reduction. So, but I did cooperate. But I didn't get any benefit from it. So, guys are saying, white guys are coming up to me going, yo, bro, you know, like, you're going to have, in the next week or two, you're going to have to figure out how to show your PSI or your pre-S. Some people call it a PSI. Some people call it a PSR. Your pre-sentence report. It's pre-sentence investigation report.

So we need to see your PSI. And I was like, yeah, okay, okay. And I, within probably a few days, my lawyer actually mailed it in. And I remember I got it. and this one white guy in the unit said we were talking and he said yeah bro he said you know these guys are asking about your PS PSI and I was like okay I said well I've got it I said I got it in and he goes oh can I see it I said sure so I open it up and he looks through it and as he's looking through it he goes yeah bro it looks like you uh damn man they really busted you in the head didn't

they they they get 26 years man that's crazy I said I know and he looked it over and he said yeah bro, it says you're good. I said, well, what do you understand what you're looking for? And he goes, oh, to see if you cooperated. He said, you know, like, if you fucking snitched on anybody. And I go, why would it say in my PSI? He goes, well, usually because it'll tell you got a reduction. And I said, no, I didn't get a reduction. Yeah, I know. He said, if you paid asked me, did you, hey, man, what's up? Did you get a sentence reduction? I was like, no. Because I didn't. And I remember the guy was like, yeah, bro, it looks good. It looks good. And I said, you want to know if I cooperated and he goes yeah and i said yeah bro i said i fucking cooperated on everybody i said

it just didn't do it just didn't it just didn't it just didn't get anything for it and he looked at me and he was like yo man i i i wouldn't tell anybody i wouldn't tell anybody that and i went why and he said yeah man these guys are going to have a problem with that i said okay i said and what he said well you know you're going to need people to back you up and i was like back me up for what? You know, like, you know, if you get into any shit, I go, what kind of shit would I get into? Like, what's going to happen to me? What am I going to do? Like, I'm not, it, I wasn't aware, I had been in a, in a U.S. Marshall's holdover, which was tame. And it sucked because it was boring, but it was tame because there was no real gang politics. So I

didn't really know what I was getting into. Anyway, he, the guy, so the guy that I talked to basically immediately went around telling everybody that I cooperated. For guys that, for guys that go to prison and want to only be around guys that mind their own business and don't talk shit and don't cooperate with the authorities and don't run their mouth and are respectful, these guys talk like a bunch of old women. They're always talking about each other. That's why they get in trouble.

They talk shit about each other. They say stuff behind each other's back and then they get in trouble. And they get beat up and they get hit with, hit with locks or stabbed up. So anyway, yeah, that's, so right away, the white guys at Coleman Medium immediately don't like me. Like immediately they disliked me. And yeah, anyway, so yeah, I had it. There was some real, there were some issues there. And I will let you know what those issues are.

on the next video and I appreciate you guys watching. So next video, I'm going to tell you what happened and I meet my cousin in prison. In prison, his name was Reese Townsend and he was awesome. And I will let you know all about it in the next video. So check it out. Do me a favor and subscribe if you like the video. If you want to get notified for videos like this, hit the bell and leave a comment in the comment section. And stay tuned.

See you.