Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Sentenced to 32 years in PRISON at 18 | Jesse Crossen

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

Sentenced to 32 years in PRISON at 18 | Jesse Crossen

They sentenced me to 138 years with 106 suspended, so 32 active years of incarceration. So then one night, it was a few nights after the robbery, they went to his girlfriend's house or her trailer, and she was pregnant, sitting at home, and they wouldn't leave, and they were threatening her, and they were threatening him, and they swung the lock in the sock. It hit the trash can lid, and he didn't have a tie to the sock like they're supposed to. He actually had it in the sock. So the locks went flying off, so he's holding an empty sock against the guy with a shield of a sword. And just bring him back in there, he's screaming.

you're going to go back to what you know in times of desperation and anxiety you're going to go right to what you know Hey this is Matt Cox and I'm here with Jesse Krazen and he runs a non-profit He did 19 years in state prison for a shooting

and he also he has a YouTube channel which he's just started which is doing great and TikTok and all the other stuff, so check out the video. I know it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad, but it's fine. It'll find, nobody expects, listen, nobody watching this thing expects me to be a professional.

At this point, they're past it. So, so, okay, so what, well, I don't want to say what happened, basically, what's just kind of, where were you born? So I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, which is where I live again now, raised here, went to school here, and then basically took off a year before college. And that summer found cocaine and just, it was like a light switch. Like, I went from being, you know, kind of coasting along and making bad decisions and not living my best life to just plummeting off the side of a cliff.

I within three months of finding a solid cocaine connect, I went from that kid taking a year off before college to driving down the road and shooting two people after an argument and them threatening me and committing a robbery to try to get more money for drugs and just completely losing myself. and then very quickly being arrested and finding myself in jail. Okay. What, I mean, how did that, I don't understand how, how did that evolve so, so quickly? Like, well, how did you even start doing, you know, Coke? Like, I mean, if you're just kind of hanging out, taking off, what, just driving across the country or just hanging out? No, I was in Virginia. I was working a job, you know, I had been smoking pot and selling pot, so I was kind of familiar with the scene, but I didn't, I had done Coke occasionally.

but then I got a job that summer working construction. And the guy who drove me to work because I'd lost my license was a co-fieler. And so he hit me with the free one. And then he hit me with this. And he said, hey, I got some more if you want. And it just became a habit where I was, I was getting some every weekend. And then I was getting some, you know, a couple times a week. And then all of a sudden I need to get a whole bunch so I can sell it because then I can support my habit.

And it just, it went fast. You know, I think some people are, some people kind of like slowly find their way into things. I just fell face first. Okay. How did the, how did that evolve into, uh, a robbery. I mean, what, what, what's, what happened around that? So I, uh, my buddies and I, we, you know, basically quit working and only were selling drugs or only kind of hanging around each other in this, this crappy hotel. And, uh, um, one of the guys said, hey, you know, I know

these terrible people and they only hire undocumented immigrants, so they don't pay them anything and then they keep all the cash and don't report it. So, you know, if we stole from them, it wouldn't really be stealing from anybody like valuable, like they're bad people. And we were so strong out at that point. And we had burned all our bridges. We couldn't find anybody to front anything else that we're willing to believe that we're like okay like fine we'll we'll do that like yeah that we're not bad people we're doing something that you know anybody would do so we went to this house and it was supposed to be a breaking and entering we were waiting and they laughed and we're like okay cool we can go in and we can try to find the money but when we went in the back my other

co-defendant went in the front and there was somebody there there there was a maid there and so he ended up sticking it got in the mage's face which turned into a robbery rather than breaking and entering and we never found any money i mean we ransacked the house and terrorized this person and terrorized of people that live there and just all in this insane like I guess my point is that people think of robberies as like oceans 11 these like carefully planned out thought out things but for us we were just feral animals like we didn't have any forethought we didn't get anything out of it all we did was just create this huge wake of harm right and how how did that turn into um you know shooting at so that was a few days after that um we had okay well we had found somebody else who was

foolish enough to front of drugs, despite having no good, you know, credit on the street. But there was, before that, you know, while I was strung out, I was paranoid. I thought everybody was out to get me and I wanted to get a gun. So one of my buddies had bought a gun from these two guys who had apparently stolen it from somebody else. So I had that gun and they started telling my buddy, oh, we need that gun back. Like, something happened. You need to fix this. And I was not going to give them back. I'm like, I'm not going to give the thing that makes me feel safe. So then one night, it was a few nights after the robbery, they went to his girlfriend's house or her trailer. And she was pregnant and sitting at home and they wouldn't leave. And

were threatening her and they were threatening him and they were on the phone saying oh you're going to bring us money or coke or the gun or else and me being all coke up out of my mind again and wanted to play hero got on the phone we started arguing back and forth and I ended up going to meet them and so we met in this parking lot and it's one of those flashes of sanity that comes every now and then where I was like I need to not be here like this is a terrible idea like something really bad is going to happen so I left and they chase me they're chasing me down the street and they're like pretending to swerve into me and as they're pulling up beside me on the road the passenger reaches behind him to grab

something. And in my mind, he was grabbing a gun. So I just pulled my out and just unloaded. And I'm just really lucky that they didn't die. So did they both get hit or either or one of the two of them got hit? They both got hit. Okay. And how did that track back to you? So they basically told the police who it was. They went, I drove back home or back to the place we were crashing because we gotten kicked out of the hotel. We didn't have any more money. So we were crashing there. And then the next morning, we got arrested. And we got arrested for both. Because when they were in the hospital. They'd both give it a description of, you know, the person who shot and this person and this phone number. So it came back to me really quickly. Did you go to trial

or? I pleaded guilty. Right. What'd you, then you pled guilty to what? An open plea or just the 32 years? Well, it was a total of 12 charges, which was basically robbery, uh, unlawful wounding, use of firearm, like just all the kind of like associated charges with the robbery in the shooting. And I took it as an open plea, basically, because there was no, like, there was no win there. Like, I had done this. I didn't want to put them through any more arm. And even my lawyer was like, yeah, it wouldn't do any good anyway. So like, let's just plead guilty. Let's just hope, you know, the court has some mercy.

And he had said, he was like, look, you know, your guidelines are bad. They're eight to 13 years. Like, you'll probably get 10 years. It's going to suck. But, like, you did some really bad shit. You're going to have to deal with it. In my mind, it was like, okay, that makes sense. So the day of sentencing, we went in the courtroom and Commonwealth put in a motion to modify the guidelines.

So with that modification, instead of eight to 13 years, it became 10 to 16 years. And then when he read out the sentence, the judge read out, like, you know, five years with five suspended and 20 years with five suspended, and he went through it. And I did the math in my head, but nobody else did. Because at the end, my lawyer was like, Your Honor, like, what's the total? What did you sentence him to? I don't know. I just told you. So they actually had to go back to the court reporter and get them to read back and do the math. And they sentenced me to 138 years with 106 suspended. So 32 active years of incarceration. Okay. Wow. I mean, I was going to say, I'm, that's, yeah, 26. So, I mean, I know that's a bad day when that hits you. It just, you know, so how did you, what did you, what was your, what was your thoughts at that time? Did you really say, oh, I got to fix this or this is, was it supposed to happen? Did you talk to the lawyer? It was really two things. I mean, one was, yeah, being angry or not. thinking this was fair and not thinking this was right and you know kind of feeling sorry for myself and the other was my whole life i felt like that there was something wrong with me or that i was broken or i was irredeemable or something and it felt like a validation like this deepest fear that i'm essentially worthless and this judge just confirmed that but it was just kind of like these two sides battling back and forth as i like got back in the van and i'm all shackled up and i'm

going back to the jail now while i was sitting in the cell i was sitting there and there was so part of me and it was just like i don't know if it was this young uh kind of smart ass kid part of me or but I was like, I'm not going to take this. Like, I'm not going to let them define me. Like, you can't break me. Like, I can't let this be who I am. Like, I'm not going to let this stand. And I didn't know what that meant.

Like, I didn't know if I went on appeal or I didn't know if I would do something radical. But, like, in my mind, I wasn't going to let that define me. I wasn't going to let that be because I was crushed. I mean, that was my whole life. And I had just spent the 10 months before there sitting in the jail waiting to get this terrible news, waiting to, like, kind of, like, own up to the things I'd done that. I mean, I just was in about as low a place as I could be. How old were you?

I just turned 18 when I was arrested. Whoa, I thought I figured for some reason by now you were at least in your early 20s. Okay, so what are your parents saying? I mean, so my parents had gotten divorced when I was seven, but they had very different backgrounds.

My mom was a real estate attorney who had, you know, just kind of like towed the line and always tried to fix things. My dad had been like a wild, radical criminal gangster or whatever who had gotten clean when I was too and kind of really turned his life around but still raising those stories of like

oh yeah I remember the time we did this and the time we got away with this and the time we smuggled that and so I remember him seeing me in the jail through the glass and just crying because he was like this is my fault like I did this like I'm the reason this happened because I told you all those fucking stories

and like basically he never did serious time like he ended up getting caught he sold five pounds of weed to a federal agent he got caught with like 2,000 pounds in the barn ended up fucking skipping bail and like getting away and never do so he always kind of skated away on things. So in his mind, he went back to his, like, religious upbringing. He was like, no, these are the sins of the father being visited on the son. And it just crushed it. I mean,

it was to the point that he didn't know how to, he didn't know how to deal with it. And my mom just wanted to fix things. I mean, that's what she'd always try to do was figure out a way to fix things to really crush both men. My dad ended up actually leaving the country in 2004. He moved down to Costa Rica before he died. And I think part of that was him just, like, not being able to deal, just having to get away and try to start something new. And so obviously when he died, you're still in prison. Um, okay, so, guy, you, you, you, you appealed, obviously with the, you know, you went in, you appealed. Yeah. So we appealed. We did a habeas to do everything. The, you know, the appellate court

determined that the sentencing guidelines are, are not, um, mandatory. They're basically discretionary. So the judge consented to me to whatever he wants within the statute. And back then, robbery had these charges carried up to life. It was like five to life for everything or 20 life for other things. And so it wasn't expected that somebody would get that, but the court basically ruled as long as that's what the statute said, he. could have given you all these life sentences, and there's nothing you can do. The habeas was the same thing, talking about an ineffective assistant, saying that my lawyer didn't raise the correct objections or didn't argue this the right way, but basically the court

was like, yeah, the judge can do whatever he wants. There's actually, uh, on the, and this thankfully has changed in Virginia. But of the departure from the guidelines, the judge just had to give a reason, and one of the things they jokingly said was, it didn't matter what that reason was. It could literally be like, I don't like him, and that was a valid reason. He just had to list his reasons on that form. Law enforcement often questions him. Not because he's suspected of a crime, but because they find him fascinating. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. When you go to prison, I'm assuming you went to a pen.

We went to, yeah, so Virginia has a level system. It used to be one through six, and now it's one through five with asks, which is just our long or walk down. So I went to a level four to start. They didn't send me to the five, but they sent me to level four. And yeah, it was, it was an interesting experience as an 18 year old 150 pound kit. Whoa. So what, what's, what was that like the first day? Well, the first day was really boring and kind of surprising. And because I thought, I had seen the movies and I thought it was just going to be chaos, like, you know, people screaming. And I came in and it was people, you know, on the phones and people taking showers and people playing guards and just living their lives. And I was, it kind of made me rethink. Maybe this isn't as bad as I thought, or maybe this isn't what I thought. It was about the

third day in. The way they'd do breakfast is they would do a breakfast call where you had to wade your hand out the door. They would open all the doors. You'd walk out into the pod and then they would lock the doors and you'd sit there for five minutes or 20 minutes or an hour or however long it took to call breakfast. We came out there and everybody, you know, a couple people would run to tables, the rest of us would just sit on the floor and it was really quiet except for these two guys who were talking and then they got louder and louder and then they got louder and louder and then all of a sudden one of a reach to his pants and pulls out this giant knife and the other reaches of pants and pulls out this lock in a sock and the guy with the knife like reaches over and grabs all of

this big trash can lids like the rounded ones he's got a shield and a sword and the other guy's got a lock in a sock and I was like what the and in my mind I was I'm just going to watch somebody die like I'm going to watch one of these guys kill the other one right now right and what ended up happening was almost more comical the guy swung the lock in the sock it hit the trash can lid and he didn't have a tie to the sock like they're supposed to he actually had it in the sock so the locks went flying off so he's holding an empty sock against the guy with a shield of a sword and it was just like oh this is not going to go well thankfully right then they called chow they kind of tried to stay and like do something everybody else just rushed to get the hell out of the way and when we came back they were in their opposite cells they had like squashed it or paid or i don't know what they've done but i just remember in that moment being like this is the last place i want to be because it will go from entirely calm and normal to this in a heartbeat yeah yeah and over and it's so funny because i mean i i know you know this but you know once you've been out a while or i guess you know you know you

you look back and you realize like these two guys were going to kill each other because one guy had borrowed a magazine and not returned it and that was disrespectful and even though he said he lost it and he was sorry doesn't matter and or he owed this guy you know two bags of potato chips and a six pack of soda and he hadn't gotten it and it's been over a month and you're like are you fucking serious like that that's what this is about about and and yeah the guys are ready you know i guess there's no way to sue each other in there um so you can't really call the you know the police they're not going to work out for you so it it is it is just insanity you know when at the moment though feels like you're still in the world it does seem like the biggest thing in the world in the moment that guy's disrespected me i'm not going to put up with that if i put up with that then other people are going to fucking talk shit fuck that i got to go do something i what are you doing you know and unfortunately you know we do a lot of work with juveniles here in the in the community and we've had i mean we had a shooting every day for like 45 days and that's not normal for the

city that i've in and it's been almost all personal stuff it hadn't even been the gang stuff that went on for a little while it's been oh somebody sent something to this guy's girlfriend or somebody did this and then it's been the reprisal so and so killed this guy so now they went back and it's just just never-ending cycle that in the beginning was just social emotional learning like literally learning how to regulate your emotions or walk away or realize what's really important I think to the future and that lack of skill in that moment has led to you know 45 shootings and 45 bays and it's just insane wow um that's just it is yeah listen i'm i'm i'm glad but i was i was raised like you know middle class you know like i look at the

i actually at one point i don't know if you well you probably don't know anything about tampa but In Tampa, there's an area of Tampa called Ybor City and um, uh, height, well, there's high park and there's Tampa Heights. And I, I owned a ton of properties in Ybor City and Tampa Heights. And, you know, so it was a, an area where, you know, um, it was being fixed up. You know, the city was coming in and renovating houses and tearing them down and building new houses and there were development companies coming in. And so, you know, I came in. I bought a bunch of houses on this one street. And I ended up living on the street, Amelia. And I used to go out in the morning, like on Saturday. I would go out in the morning and I would sit on the front

stoop and drink coffee. And one of my tenants would come out. And then we had a buddy that they would come over and we'd kind of just sit there and drink coffee and talk about whatever. We were going to do that day, just what we had done that week because we were all basically real estate. And I had a next door neighbor that this woman who had, she probably had three or four kids probably took care of another couple kids and every once in a while one of her kids would like you know they'd like escape or something like they'd get and they'd walk out the front door and you've got a two-year-old walking around in a vacant lot in a horrible neighborhood and and then I would just sit there and watch this little kid in this vacant neighbor in this vacant lot

playing for 10 minutes and then suddenly the mother would come running out screaming and look over at me, and I just point and I go, you know, he's over there in the bacon, you know, in the lot. And then she'd run over there, grab the kid, drag him back in the house, put, you know, slap it. We're talking about like a two-year-old. Bow, pow, pow, and just bring him back in there. He's screaming. Or I can remember another time I was sitting there, same kid, mom's on the phone, kids actually digging in a garbage can that had been knocked over. It's funny because a buddy of mine had bought the duplex they lived in,

and we were just waiting for their lease to expire, so we'd get rid of them. And I started worrying to the mother, hey, hey, hey, and finally she looked over and she was, what? And I said, your kid's eating garbage, because the little boy or girl had a, the little toddler had like a chicken bone in his mouth that had been in the garbage. And she walks over and just bow, just smash this. this kid in the head a couple times, dragged him off about 10 feet,

dropped them in the yard, and just let him play. And he just laid there and cried and cried. And I all I could think of was, you're just, you're raising monsters. Like, those kids are going to be monsters when they grow up.

Like, that kid doesn't know what he did wrong. And, I mean, these are the kids that grow up, and then they grab a gun and they start shooting people because, you know,

nobody raised them. I'm before they like, you know, um, well, there was tons of stories. like that just living in that neighborhood slowly buying up the properties and moving people out and you must see it every single you know you all i don't know how often you're in those

neighborhoods but there's a violence interruption unit that we work with that i really like that um essentially all formally incarcerated people or former gang members who go in to stop violence to like interrupt whatever's going on and thankfully they've kind of like created some order in some of the areas. There are a resource people can call on rather than the police to show up and settle disputes and do things. But yeah, there are sometimes that it's just a family that didn't interested or parents that don't care. It's just a lack of investment and a lack of, you know, those basic skills. Like a lot of people don't know how to be parents and they never had parents show them how to be parents. And it's one of the biggest things we can invest in is like investing

in families, investing in parenting classes, investing in resources so people can show up for their kids so their kids don't end up in juvie or don't end up getting kicked out of school. It all lived up in trouble. Well, listen, half the people I met in federal prison had horrible childhoods. And I mean, like handcuffed to like a radiator, burned with a, I always mentioned this one. Kid had, this guy had a, on his hand, he had, you could see where it was an iron. It was a tip of an iron. His mother had lost her, had lost a piece of jewelry.

This kid's like three or four years old, maybe five years old. had lost a piece of jewelry, couldn't find it, thought he'd taken it, took an iron, and burned him with it. A couple days later, found it behind a dresser because it had slipped behind the dresser. And I was like, because I asked him, I was like, what was that? He's like, ah, I was like four or five and my mom, this and my, or just, I've known, I've, I've known guys that were just abandoned. Came home one day, mom never came home. I've known guys that they would, Like my mom would disappear for four or five days at a time and you know you would either go to the neighbors and ask for food or eat whatever is in the house and she'd always show back up and then you know it was just like wow like just um um but yeah um oh so that's so you were locked up so what you know 19 years yeah i think the the biggest thing is the same thing you're talking about with families who are have resources or have skills, I was really lucky to have family and friends who had resources.

When I was sitting in the jail before I even pleaded guilty or went to sentencing, I was enrolled with college classes. I was taking classes from Ohio University. So at this kind of tipping point where I think a lot of people thought like my life was over, I definitely thought my life was over, I had positive things to look at and work towards. And then when I got that sentence, being able to go back and go back and read these people that sent me books, be able to go back and write letters because people wanted to have a conversation, gave me something to do it with my gave me something to do with myself. And then when I actually got to prison,

you know, I started throwing myself into exercise and throwing myself into studying and reading and just like figured, okay, I'm going to like use this as a monster. I'm going to be the most educated person I can ever be. And thankfully I had somebody, I don't know, this was maybe two or three years in. He just pulled me aside. He was like, look, man, I love all this reading you're doing. I love that you're doing that. One day you're going to wake up and realize that life is about people.

If you just read your way away, if you just try to be an island, you're not going to be happy. And he was right. And that was where I really learned, like, I had to develop friendships and community. and find people to work out with rather than being the guy on the corner of the pile or I had to find people to do book club with or I had to find things to do

that allowed me to connect with other people and one of the big things I ended up doing was tutoring people because I had graduated from high school and I had had a lot of resources and I was able to help people in those stories and like the change I got to seeing people

when I tutored or when I mentored people that was what I wanted to do that was where I felt the most like alive and the most meaningful and the happiest. How long did how long before that took place? probably about four years the first guy that I tutored was a guy named Big Baby he was like 6 foot 6

like 270 pounds he was just this giant guy looked like John Coffey from the Green Mile everybody's afraid of him because he had grown up in one of those homes like Danville is like one of the really not great cities in Virginia and then you have really bad neighborhoods even the people in those neighborhoods would talk about how bad he had it because he had come from this family where he just had it worse than anybody else

so he was violent like he solved everything with violence because he was big and it was effective, and that's what he'd been taught. But he also was like a big little kid. I remember he told me one night, he was looking at the TV guy in the newspaper. He was like, yo, the wish of pos is coming on. I was like, yeah, and? Man, he got this big grin. He's like, you got to watch it with me.

I was like, okay, well, what's the words of us? And he loved it because at his core, he was just a big little kid. So he'd come to me and he was like, look, he was a heavyweight boxing champ, which is the reason that everybody was probably afraid of him. But he came to me and he was like, hey, I really want to get my GD. I've been trying for three years. I can't even pass it pre-tabe. but the, you know, pre-test, will you help me?

And so I was like, okay, I'll help you get your GED if you teach me out of box, which is one because I want to learn how to box. And two, because one of the things that I found is a lot of people don't trust things that are free. Like, if you give something for free and somebody's never had anybody just show up for them, they don't trust or do some ulterior motive. So I found that I can ask for something. It doesn't cost them money or it doesn't cost them what they don't have,

but allows them to, like, see some value in themselves or teach something of value to another person because that always feels good. So we made a deal, and every day I would do GED stuff, for an hour or two hours and we do boxing every night for an hour or two hours. It was this great routine where we kept going through it. It took months and he kept not being able to do it and he kept struggling and struggling and struggling. And then one day he got it. Like we were working on algebra and he just clicked. I didn't have to correct him. I didn't have to tell him. Like he just got it. And the next day we came back and he completely lost it. Like he couldn't remember

anything. He got mad for a second. But what he did was in that moment he didn't choose to say, oh, F this. Like my can't get it by now. He was like, no, I had it yesterday. I had it yesterday. I can figure it out. It took a day or two days, but he kind of got it back. And then he worked and worked and probably six months later, he went and took his GED and he came back crying, like tears just streaming down his face and picked me up and swung me around the pod. It was like, man, I did it. And then finally his family, who hadn't seen him once since he'd been locked up, put all the money together to borrow a car, to put gas in the car to come down and see him because it was such a big deal he'd got this GED because most of his family never had. And that was like, when I

saw that transformation, that was like, that's what I want to do. That's what I want to be. happened with him did he he went home so he i was at buckingham i transferred to another prison by the time he got out and one of the guys we had both known showed up and gave me a spin number so i had one conversation with him where he was talking about he got out and he was because he was so big he was a great personal trainer like i don't i don't know if he knew anything about exercise but everybody trusted him he was doing that he was cutting hair and he was doing community groups he was trying to mentor younger people he was awesome then i tried to call him again we talked briefly and then i don't know what happened i remember he got locked up briefly because he was driving with his

brother's ID because he didn't have a license and they figured out who he was. No, actually, his brother got a ticket because of him driving with it and then got so mad, he told the cop, no, that wouldn't me. That was my brother, so we got arrested for using a fake ID. He ended up having, like, three kids with three different women. It just, like, brought him to drama. And I don't know where he's. I've, like, I've done pleas on social media. Like, please find Patrick Wagstaff. I want to know where he's at. I want to buy him a cup of coffee. I want to give him a hug. Like, I miss this, dude. But yeah, I don't know where he's at. I hope he's doing good. I know he was doing good when he hit the street and he had his mind in the right place,

and I hope he can just keep it there. yeah a lot of times is you know you go back to the same environment and the same people and they just drag you down yeah a lot of these guys have to get have to be you know picked up and moved completely and just just you know discard all the people that they knew prior to going to prison like that's seemed to be a strategy that at least gives you a semi fighting chant what's we have that issue with the juveniles where they do really well in lockup they do really well with the structure and people caring and going to school and then they go out and it's like a percent recidivism rate because they go to the same family in the same neighborhood, but they have this independent living program. They just started where they take him and put them in a different area with a job and an apprenticeship. They're in a different space and they cut the recidivism rate by more than half. It's that significant. And it really is. A lot of times people just need to be in different places and have a different chance. That's why we're so interested in trying to figure out how to do a mentorship program to connect people with

different areas of life. Because if you go back to that same neighborhood, you're going to do what everybody in that neighborhood is doing. But if we can connect you with college students, We can catch you with business owner. If we can connect you with people who are doing something in the community, like maybe we can give you just enough of an end that he'll walk through that door rather than walking back through the other one. This is funny. This is when I was on the run.

I used to go to Home Depot. I was renovating houses and stuff just to have something to do. So I bought a bunch of houses. We were renovating and I would go into Home Depot and get stuff. And there was this guy, this kid that really honestly is probably 19 or 20, maybe 20, early 20s. And they called them, you know, New Orleans. And they kept, this was after Katrina, maybe a year after Katrina.

And I saw, and so at some point he came over to help me. And I said, well, you're from New Orleans? And he said, yeah. He said, I was. And I was like, oh, I was like, oh, okay. I was like, yeah, I was there just before Katrina. I gone on vacation. And I made a couple months before that.

And he was like, I said, well, you've been back since then? Or do you, why, why are you here? And he said, oh, well, Katrina, he said, Katrina hit. And he said, they just put, they started putting everybody on planes and flying them all over. And he said, I flew here and Home Depot gave me a, uh, a apartment and a car. And yeah, he said, and a full-time job, he said, I've been working here. He said, I work like 60 hours a week. And I've been here ever since for about a year.

I said, oh, wow. I said, that's, yeah, that's great. he said yeah he said if they saved my life and i was like i said oh i said getting out of just getting out of new orleans he said no no he said no he said no that wasn't it he said i was selling drugs on the street my family was selling drugs he said my mother's been out of prison for drugs my dad my cousins got i got lost like four cousins getting shot said everybody knows getting shot and selling drugs he said and they just he said katrina hit plucked me up put me here he said bro i work 60 hours a week he said because i want to he said that

That saved my life. And I was like, wow, I said, what happened with your family? He said, be honest with you? He said, he goes, I don't really care. You even tried to find him? He goes, no. He said, I, he said, I can't be around him. He said, I'm good here.

I got the rest of my life. He said, I'm good. And I was just like, wow. Like, like, it was, it was amazing. And it was also amazing that he knew it. Like, he'd figured it out, you know? and I don't know that everybody does but he definitely did.

I just always was so in shock by that. But then I hadn't been to prison yet. Then you go to prison and you start realizing you talk to these guys and you see him get out, come back, get out, come back, and you start going, man, that's just a revolving door, bro. You keep going back to the same place thinking you're going to change and, you know, I was doing real good for six months or for a year and a half

and then my cousin or my buddy, he just needed to help. All I had to do was driving the car. It was no big deal. oh my god me a break my my buddy my friend man that's that's your buddy that ain't your friend i don't you know i have a buddy that got out and he's like um i i had a friend of mine that helped me with you know i got out and he said look then i i can help you out and i can give you whatever um and then and i and i was like so your buddy that you're saying is a good friend of yours put you in a position

to go back to prison like that's not your buddy he wasn't helping you out he was helping him out if he was really your buddy he just said look I can't help you I don't have any money I can't help you I'm sorry I can try and give you a ride I can you know make a few phone calls

try and help you get a job or you know I could give you some cash like that all I can do is give you a couple hundred bucks but instead hey I can help get you involved in a crime that will send you back to prison because I'm your friend and he genuinely thinks he's his friend

like he genuinely thinks like wow thank you you're fucked up I mean that's unfortunately the mindset I mean a lot of the guys who come through reentry talk about that say hey I hit the street and everybody wanted to give me a gun or give me drugs nobody wanted to give me a job yeah it's rough um

so you were tutoring people to do illegal work I did I worked in a lot library for five years. So I did tutoring. I worked in the law library for five years. I managed to get one guy home. Like all the cases I saw, basically my job, 99% of the time was to tell people they were shit out of luck, which was not fun, especially for the guys that had gotten really rough sentences or really tough situations or, you know, really hadn't gotten a fair

shot, but it was still to, you know, go through it and I'd be able to do it. But this guy had gotten, he'd been arrested for possession of a concealed weapon by a, as a convicted felon, because he had a knife set. He was like a chef. He was going home from work, and he had a knife set on his belt and so the cop said that he had covered it up with a trench coat well that was not actually true like he hadn't covered up with a trench coat but you couldn't prove that but they had never challenged in court like the statute in virginia is it has to be a dirk dagger or like weapon and this is a flay knife and like a pairing knife which is not a dirt dagger like it specifically if you go through the case law is not covered by that like it is exempt from this statute but his lawyer did not care

did not look at his case never did it so when he finally went back and looked the case law he appealed and he was like hey this this literally isn't a crime I'm in prison right now for something that isn't a crime that nobody cared enough to do, and we managed to get them out, which was really cool to see. Yeah, that doesn't happen a lot. No, it does not. At best, you're lucky to be able to shave a few years off here and there at best. And even that's remarkable.

I think, I mean, I don't know what the equivalent is in Virginia, but in the federal system every year, $3,500, they're called, it's called the 2255. it's essentially saying that, yeah, your, you know, your lawyer was ineffective. So for, there's one person for every 3,500, 2255s that are filed, one person sees relief. Like the, it's outrageous. Yeah, but everybody keeps filing them. Everybody has a dream. I mean, but that's how, that's how pardons were.

So up until the governor that ended up letting me out, so we, I mean, pardons, it was literally like four people or six people at the end of a term. Remember, it was less than a quarter of 1% of the population. And there were thousands of pardons put in, but it was just, it wasn't going to happen. It didn't. Right. And then I, in 2019, I had been a part of starting this peer sport mental health program. I had done my, finish my college degree. I'd become a journeyman electrician. I'd worked in the law library. I'd worked minions. Like, I had done everything. And I'd completed my, more than the high point of the guidelines. Guidelines for 16 years at the high end, I had done 17 years at that point. So I was like, hey, I'm going to put in a petition for clemency. And I didn't think it was going to work because it was one of those times where, yeah, less than a quarter of the, you know, 1% of the population does it. But for me, it was about like standing up and saying, hey, I think I've done what I could do. I've taken a really bad situation that I created. I've done the best with it and I'm asking for mercy. So I filled it out. I did it all basically myself, sent it home, had it sent in. And then a few weeks later got an email from a

reporter. It was like, hey, I'd love to interview your first story, and I was really suspicious because it just seemed hokey. Like, why would they do that? I ended up doing this interview that kind of got me in front of the community, and I got to talk about what was going on and what happened since Pearl was abolished in Virginia and talked about everything that, essentially everything that was going on, and that developed this kind of community relationship. I started getting letters, started having people call their delegates and their senators about me. I started building the swelling support, but it still seemed really unlikely. But that same year, the governor had this huge blackface scandal.

We're back in the 80s. He had worn blackface to a party, and they were, like, calling for his resignation, and they said, you know, you're a racist, you need to step down. And his response, I actually really admire. His initial response was bad. But his response was like, all right, let's look at inequity in the system. Let's let's look at racism in the system. I want to address this. So he ended up pardoning more people than every Virginia governor combined.

Like every governor in history combined, he pardned 1,200 people all the way down to simple pardons. And he actually released 100 people. And on August 16th to 2021, I was one of those 100 people. and he had taken my position and he granted it and literally I walked into the office at 2 o'clock in the afternoon they told me over the phone that I was going home an hour a half later I walked out the front gate

wow packed your stuff yep did you know did you call your you got to call your family did you get to somebody drop you off the bus station somebody picking you up so they had to for whatever reason with this

they had to have family on the way or they wouldn't be able to release me so they actually weren't able to get a hold of my mom that morning or probation parole had to like approve my home plan And so they were calling, and she wasn't answering. And finally she answered. And they were like, look, if you hadn't answered, like, we wouldn't have able to do this. And then when I was there, they were telling me, oh, well, you've got to hurry up and you

got to go to all this done because we don't get it done in time. We won't be able to release you. And I'm like, what are you telling me that for? Like, what are the emotional? But it just worked out perfectly. So my mom was waiting in the front room when I got there. And then that same reporter who had turned into something much more at that point, was waiting.

We ended up waiting for her at the end of the driveway. And then all of a sudden, like I said, with an hour and a half to notice, I'm out here in the world. and I don't know if you remember this when you get out like the colors are so bright things are so different because after all those years of the white walls or the gray walls

it's just like trees and colors and I don't even know how to describe it it felt like I was in some kind of like what do you call those the movie theaters that are rounded where just everything seems bigger or more three and more colorful something max

anyway so yeah I'm just thinking when I walked out it you know what's so funny too about walking out is it seems like the air is actually different. Even though literally all that separated me was so,

there was air, the same air was inside the prison, but you walked out, it seemed a little bit brighter. Everything seemed a little bit more, you know, and I remember being able to see, like you could just look and it just went on and on,

and there was no fence. There was no blocking. It was all the way to the tree line, and there was no fence between me and the tree line. There was no fence, and it was just like, yeah, definitely, definitely, definitely a great feeling.

So, I mean, so did you have any idea that it was coming or did you just kind of, like you said, you just thought, Matt? I thought it was a long shot. They had done an interview sometime earlier in the year, which was like they basically, it's not even about specific things. They just basically want to know if you're going to lie about something. So I had to do an interview with a former state police investigator or whatever to investigate all the claims in my case. And he asked me all the details and all the specifics. And then they had told my mom like, hey, you know, he should have a decision by the end of the year. so we were expecting like December or you know maybe the earliest like Halloween so yeah I mean I thought okay maybe I could get something happened and they'd actually released two guys that I knew before that the governor had released these two guys and so I was kind of hopeful but I still just it seems so far fash and I don't want to get my hopes up but yeah that day I literally had no idea I couldn't have imagined I'd wake up that morning and go home that afternoon

and this was in the middle of the COVID yeah so yeah I mean that was the other thing we hadn't had visits a year and a half I hadn't seen my mom in a year and a half I'd never met that reporter that I met at the end of the driveway I hadn't been in the world like I hadn't been connected to people and all of a sudden I was out and it was just like a light switch um so who was the reporter her name's Courtney Stewart

she and I started but six months before I got out or seven months before I got out she had this personal crisis in her life and I had uh you know I was just kind of there for her and she we connected and we started talking and talking and it turned into a romantic relationship um and

She used to joke about that, because before that happened, she was like, how do people have relationships in prison? Like, you can't have sex. Like, how do you know? And I was like, oh, you know. And I remember about a month after we started talking every day, she was like, oh, you're right. You do know.

Like, damn it. But it just turned into this amazing opportunity. And she's still somebody I really care about. We broke up in November. But, yeah, she was one of the most amazing people in my life and still is. It's one of the people I'm really grateful for. I talked to another guy that met. his wife in prison and i think they've been married for i don't know what it was 10 or 15

years now like they were together for a few for several years before he eventually got out uh yeah i met my i met my wife in the halfway house okay uh another inmate i mean she was a you know in the halfway house you know with me you know she wasn't running the halfway out um yeah that's that's yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry I'm sorry that didn't work out. And she's a reporter like that's her full-time job? Yeah, so she's done, did print, which is really her passion. She's done TV, and now she does the drive-time radio show and runs her podcast.

If you want small-town big crime, it's a great podcast. They're getting ready to come out with the second season, so. And you started your, so what made you think to start a podcast? So we had actually, during that six months that we were together while I was still inside, she said, you know, we need a common activity. If we don't have something in common, there's no connection. Like, there's nothing to do. So we reported a podcast.

It was really just us talking on the phone about different issues, doing a little bit of research and kind of diving into it. And then that didn't do well. Like, it didn't get out. But the people who heard it, especially one of her friends is a big marketal person, was like, hey, Jesse, you need to do something with this. Like, people need to hear this. People need to hear this story.

So I had always said that when I got out, I was going to go to the top of this mountain, which is really close to me. I was going to get up there and I was going to eat Chinese food. And I was going to laugh and cry and scream. and like hopefully put all the prison stuff down all the trauma all the everything and just leave it there and so the day that i did that she was like jesse whatever you do make sure you record that like make a video of it so i went up there i spent some time trying to process and then made this video and by the time i got home i remember calling katy and being like hey uh like how many views is

normal is this normal and she was like no no and it blew up and it got more and more views and all of a sudden people were asking questions and all of a sudden i had followers and i had these interactions and it was so meaningful because it gave me a place to vent and a place to, like, share my experience, but in a way to kind of process it in a healthy way, it also allowed me to connect with people. That victims of crime who said, hey, the person who hurt me has never, you know, been accountable. Like, you give me hope that they will, right? That people who are in law enforcement would say, hey, I'm tired of doing my job the way I'm

doing it because I just see people cycling in, like, how can we do this better? I've had people who have family members locked up. I've just made these incredible connections with people based around having a platform, and it's been awesome. Like, I'm grateful for those connections, I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk about it. And then it turned into, you know, being able to go on TV and talk as an expert witness on the news and go speak at South by Southwest and all these just crazy opportunities that just came out of telling stories because people want to hear stories. And, you know, a lot of times

we have those walls up, not just keep people in, but to keep people out. Um, yeah, the, uh, what do you talk about on your, um, on the podcast, on your podcast, on your podcast. So, sometimes I'll do interviews when I get a chance. Like a lot of the people, we've done this kind of like, I don't even know what you call it, the prison talk connection. So we came up with this crazy idea, a bunch of us who had met on TikTok to meet at a farm in Pennsylvania, which sounds like the beginning of a horror movie. But we found a place and we had a sponsor to do it. And so everybody came and met and it was just amazing. So it was like, you know, you're talking about knowing your wife from the halfway house. Somebody who

knows that experience of incarceration, but then also was able to talk about what life is like after and the struggles and the experience of kind of putting your life on film. And so we made these great connections. I've done interviews with them. I've done interviews with like the treasurer on my board was in juvenile for years and years, got out, was just barely hanging on getting a job until somebody, the first person in his life said, hey, why don't you go to college? And four years later graduated with a finance degree and got a quarter million dollar a year job working for a Fortune 50 company. So I've really tried to highlight the stories of kind of the struggle, but then also the people's success stories and like how they've

gotten there. We really want to expand the nonprofit and start doing more storytelling around that. So we're working with a local organization. They have a mentorship program. So people get out and they can work with a business mentor, a professional or academic mentor. We want to show what happens in that six months that they work with them. Like somebody going from this vague idea of I want to go to college to actually enrolled or actually doing well or the big idea of wanting to have a business

to actually owning and operating on a daily basis and really show what's possible when people get the support they need. So where are you living now? So I'm back in Charlottesville, Virginia. So my ex and I, we bought a house last year and then because of the breakup, we both wanted to move into a town. So the house turned into a rental.

and now we're both living in town on opposite sides. And I just doing a lot of traveling. It's spent 10 days in Austin. I just spent five days in D.C. So I live here, but some days it just feels like a home base. It feels like I'm just constantly on the road, which is great, but it's also kind of exhausting in just a different way. What are you doing for work?

So we have the nonprofit. I do a lot of consulting, which is like I consult for the OBSIA project that I want to present on. Do a lot of public speaking. Just a lot of little side projects, kind of like you said before, everything put together, you know, into a pile ends up paying the bills. Yeah. So what is the, you said, what is the one project you went and talked to? Oh, upsea is a council of higher education.

They worked on innovation and higher education, and they were looking at the expanded second chance fellow, which is going to make higher education accessible to people incarcerated. So we did a research project earlier this year, and I consulted with them on that about the best methods, best practices, trying to figure out how to make sure that universities could get their programs inside, how to do with COVID regulations, how to deal with regulations around not having internet, have to deal with concerns around sending staff in, like what that looks like. And so we presented our findings at the Upsia conference this past

week. And then I stayed around and made some connections and tried to find people in that academic space that are interested in prison education, see what kind of programs we can put together, what kind of forms we can make possible. Because prison education is the only true and tested method of rehabilitation. Like, there's a five to one return on investment. It's been validated by every study, we don't have a lot of evidence around other things that work. So investing in education is really giving people tools they need to succeed. Yeah, it's, it's, I was going to say, listen, in federal, I don't know what it's like in state prison, but in federal prison, it's, it's almost impossible to get, you have to really make an effort because just, they're just not

interested in helping you. So, you know, and there's only, there's only so many courses you can take. So there's only, so it limits you on the amount of the types of degrees you could get. And even then it's it's it's an it's such an uphill battle i think it people just get extremely frustrated but yeah so i mean it you know and what's so funny is it's funny because there is such a connection between having an education and incarceration you know like you can you can easily see that you know how many college graduates go to uh end up in prison as opposed to drop you know high school dropouts you know it's just it's such a massive there's such a massive disparity of course I had a college education and still went to prison but you can't you can't use me as

an example my degree is in fine arts so it doesn't even yeah it didn't count oh um well okay so what do you so what you're you're hoping that the YouTube thing keeps going sure you know I'd love to be able to keep telling stories and doing long for content we've just we've been so busy with everything going on I haven't had time to do you know better production value stuff but yeah we want to keep doing that again second chancellor foundation that we started we want to continue doing reentry programs we want to continue doing mentorship programs of the community and we want to do storytelling around again individuals their struggles and successes as well as the groups and organizations to make that possible because oftentimes even in our city

you'll have two groups that are doing great work they don't know about each other and just need to be connected because one does this service the other one does this and if they work together they're going to have this better wraparound service it's going to be a lot more successful for the juveniles of the adults getting out of incarceration so we're trying to really highlight that and the groups are, again, just really making changes, as well as kind of highlight the ones that aren't making changes and are not really doing stuff. Why don't you

guys have state run or state halfway houses? If I mean having a halfway house, I don't know what I would have done. Well, so what they'll do is they have private contract in halfway houses, which they don't always have vets for. You get there if you're lucky. A lot of guys go out and they're just listed

as homeless. They get a week or two week voucher for a hotel, and then that's it. They're basically out on their own. And I don't know why they don't invest in it because all the evidence shows that halfway houses are more successful. They make people the transition easier. But it's the same issue we have. Like when I was out or the day before I got out or the day I got out, I was at a level two facility. And I was never allowed to go to a level one because I had violent charges. And it's like, I'm too dangerous to go to a level one facility, but the next day you'll just let me out into the world with no supervision whatsoever. It doesn't make any sense.

Like, why isn't there a step down to a work center and then a step down to a halfway house and the step down to, you know, work release or whatever makes sense in each individual case, we're taking people for major institutions and putting them straight on the street with nothing in between and then wondering why they don't succeed. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Look, look, people don't even realize, like, you walk out of the halfway house. I had four or five hundred bucks to my name when I got out. And only because while I was incarcerated, I had gotten a book deal, and I'd optioned someone, been a part of an option for someone's life right that I'd written a story about so had you know had it not been for that a little bit of money i had i would have had

nothing so and and i knew i wanted as much halfway house because i knew i was going to need to work and save money because if you give someone five hundred dollars and let them and just let them walk out the door like where am i going right like i i've been locked up for 13 years it's not like i've got friends that are like yeah bro i got you a room i'm going to like those guys are gone. I don't have any friends left. Those people are gone. Maybe somebody would let me sleep on their couch for a month or so, but that would have been, you know, agony. My mother lived in a retirement home. My father had died while I was in prison. Like, there's nobody. My brother has four daughters that lived at home at the time. There's no place for me. I like eight animals

and four daughters in like a three bedroom. That's not happening. And he lives in the middle of nowhere. So, you know, I mean, and Ian, keep in mind, too, the 500 bucks, I have no clothes. I had, like, two pair of sweatpants and three shirts and a pair of tennis shoes with holes in the bottoms. You know how you walk with the, when you walk, and then you start putting the, you start putting the, the, the, the, the magazines in there, you know, it's amazing. Like, but yeah, if it weren't for the halfway house, I don't know what I would have done. So I, that, that just is such a recipe for disaster. to not have any support. I just got really lucky because we'd get in COVID checks.

We got stimulus checks in prison, and I just got in the third one not long before I got out. So I didn't think I was getting out, but I was just trying to look for the long run. I bought some extra meals and treated myself a little bit, but I had that money sitting in my account because I wanted to make sure I was going to be okay, whatever happened. I was trying to imagine rashing that over the next 10 years.

Instead, I got out with a big chunk of money, and it was like, hey, I have enough to buy the clothes I need and the basic things I need to get started. And I had family help and a place to land. but you know a lot of people don't and a lot of people don't succeed well yeah i could definitely see why someone would just go out and and and you know immediately go right because that's what's all you know you're going to go back to what you know in times of desperation and anxiety you're going to go right to what you know and that's all those guys know um well what what is the name what's the name

of the organization that you're running second chance or foundation what is it second chanceer foundation Second Chancer Foundation. Do you have a link? Yeah, second hyphen Chancer.org or it should be a link on the link tree on any of my socials for second underscore chanceer. Okay, well, I'll put the link. We'll put the link in the, like as soon as we get off, just send me the link. Sure. And send me the link to, oh, well, I guess if you have a link to your YouTube's on the link tree too, right?

Yeah. Yeah, okay. So then your YouTube's, what's the name of the YouTube channel? Second Chancellor. oh okay um all right you got anything else you want to cover uh it's just a long day i'm just getting back so i got a whole bunch of meetings i gotta go talk to my program manager and hopefully can get some of those stuff done this week and i appreciate you making the time yeah no i i appreciate it uh you coming on listen i'm i'm always looking for content But your content is a little bit more upbeat than mine typical. I typically more true crime, you know, not really blood and guts. Like I really don't want to hear about, you know, prison riots and, you know, that sort of thing.

But, you know, like a lot of the prison channels, you know, where they talk about, you know, like gangs is, most of my stuff is like, you know, somebody running a Ponzi scheme or a scam or maybe. You know, I don't know, you know, car chases, a drug busts and stuff like that. But, you know, yours is a little bit more upbeat. But my guys will put up with it. Let's see. You know, because, so what happens is sometimes I'll have a better conversation with someone beforehand. And then it's always like, you know, it's like you'll have a 10-minute conversation. like fuck that we should have put that on you know i should have held that and then so sometimes

if colby my editor thinks it's good then he'll clip it and just stick it in the back makes us because that's got a program we're running here it's not i think it's what the pros do not professional it's it's whatever goes so it's not like oh you know i'm gonna a perfect intro and but your your channel um you've got like 36 000 well how long have even knowing it since got out? Basically, yeah. I don't think I stood on YouTube until I don't know, maybe a couple months later,

but I started on TikTok like two weeks out and then just kind of spread it from there. But a lot of, like 20,000 of those was in the last month or month and a half or something. I had two shorts go to like $2 million or $3 million or something and just went through the roof because other than that, I hadn't made it but like 10 or 12 or 13 or something.

You know who else did really great with shorts was Ian Bick? yeah um have you been on his program i did oh okay yeah he builds this whole model around that saying he wasn't even worried about it but then when facebook and meta or when an instagram demonetized like it's screwed this whole plan up because he was worried about making money on the short rather than the long

form so no it's it i don't it seems like um youtube seems like a more stable platform yeah absolutely um but you know uh who knows so uh yeah i was supposed to go on his show And I got COVID. And I mean, literally like the day before I came home from Orlando, I went to Podfest, came home just before bed. Like, you know, later, well, not, you know, whatever, later that night, like, whatever, six, seven o'clock. I was like, I'm really starting to feel achy. Like, God, I hope I didn't come down with anything. Ask my wife now with my girlfriend at 5.

I was like, are you feel messed up? She was like, no, I feel fine. I was like, okay. Well, I'm probably fine. Listen, two o'clock in the morning I woke up and probably around three or so. I was supposed to go to the airport at like seven or eight in the morning. I texted him at like, I don't know when it was. Three or four or something like that.

I said, listen, I got COVID. I'm all messed up. I'm done. And then the next day my girlfriend came down with it. Now, we had it for over a week. So, and this is the second time I've had it and the third time she's at it. Again, look, you know, when I went this up, I, everybody started texting me when we got back, it was like, oh, I tested positive, I tested positive, but everybody in the

circle, I'm the only funny from tested negative, so. Yeah, like, well, I've just had it so many times. It didn't matter anymore. Have you had it before? Yeah. The first time I had it was horrible. This time was, it was still a really bad flu, but it wasn't anything like the first time. Well, I was still locked up for the first time, so I wonder if it was like psychosomatic, because we were still worried about it. We had a bunch of guys die, so it was like, we thought it was such a big deal that when we actually got sick, I wonder if we just made ourselves feel worse.

The second time, it was just kind of like sniffles or kind of body aches, but nothing really bad. Right. Boy, that must have that, that just a horrible place to be sick. Every time I got sick in prison, I thought, man, this is the worst place to get sick. Nobody's giving you any sympathy. Nobody's looking out for you. No, you know, it's like maybe somebody brings you, maybe a, warms up one of your

soups bring to you, maybe. But it's, it's not. it's just not a it's just not kind of environment to be hoping for some some sympathy in any way what did you do your time at Coleman at the medium you know I did a year in the I did a year you know in the Marshall's holdover you know obviously I hate the year so to plead guilty get you know get sentenced whatever so shoot it took them three months just to get me you know across the, they caught me in Nashville. They get me all the way to Atlanta.

It took like three months. So I ended up, you know, I played guilty, got sentenced. And then, so that was a year in the U.S. Marshall's holdover. And then three years at the medium. And then roughly nine years at the low. Okay. So it was just shy of, I did just shy of 13 years.

I just say 13 years because, you know, wants to hear 12 years and 10 months. Or many months. Yeah. Like when I, when you get sentenced, you know, I got 26 years and four months. I just say 26 years. Four months. It sounds like I'm whining.

And how much time did you get? You got like, would, was it lie for 30? I got 32. Well, sentenced to 32. And then after 19, the governor granted me a conditional pardon. So got to walk out for an hour and a half notice. Cheers. No supervision, no halfway house.

Three years of supervision, Virginia didn't have halfway houses or no, no state run. Like, they contract the private halfway houses, but only as a last resort. They don't try to send people there. If you ask for it, they won't send you there unless you don't have anywhere else to go. And then they, a lot of times, we'll even give people for that. Like, for people that are considered high risk or sex offenders, people like that, they won't put them in there. So they basically just kind of like let you out. They're like, all right, see you later.

See you soon. I'm sure that's great for recidivism. Oh, it's crazy Virginia. Well, they play with their statistics. so they say they're the lowest or second lowest in the country but if you look at the statistics they are relatively low compared to some places

but yeah it's not great but they also I mean we have one of the highest I can't remember how they measured it like sentence for crime rates like you get more time in Virginia for the same crime as almost anywhere so hey I appreciate you guys to watch the video do me a favor hit the subscribe button

in the bell so you get notified of videos just like this leave me a comment in the comment section also when I was if blocked up I wrote a whole bunch of true crime stories check out the trailers Using forgeries and bogus identities, Matthew B. Cox, one of the most ingenious conmen in history, built America's biggest banks out of millions. Despite numerous encounters with bank security, state, and federal authorities, Cox narrowly, and quite luckily, avoided capture for years.

Eventually, he topped the U.S. Secret Service's most wanted list and led the U.S. Marshals, FBI, and Secret Service, on a three-year chase, while jet-setting around the world with his attractive female accomplices. Cox has been declared one of the most prolific mortgage fraud con artists of all time by CNBC's American Greed. Bloomberg Business Week called him the mortgage industry's worst nightmare, while Dateline NBC described Cox as a gifted forger and silver-tonged liar. Playboy magazine proclaimed his scam was real estate fraud, and he was the best. Shark in the housing pool is Cox's exhilarating first-person account of his Stranger Than Fiction Story. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Bent is the story of John

J. Boziak's phenomenal life of crime. Inked from head to toe, with an addiction to strippers and fast Cadillacs, Boziak was not your typical computer geek. He was, however, one of the most cunning scammers, counterfeiters, identity thieves, and escape artists alive, and a major thorn in the side of the U.S. Secret Service as they fought a war on cybercrime. With a savant-like ability to circumvent banking security and stay one step ahead of law enforcement, Boziac made millions of dollars in the international cyber underworld, with the help of the Chinese and the Russian Then, leaving nothing but a John Doe warrant and a cleaned-out bank account in his wake, he vanished. Boziak's stranger-than-fiction tale of ingenious scams and impossible escapes,

of brazen run-ins with the law and secret desires to straighten out and settle down, makes his story a true crime con game that will keep you guessing. Bent. How a Homeless Teen became one of the cybercrime industry's most prolific counterfeiters. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Buried by the U.S. government and ignored by the national media, this is the story they don't want you to know. When Frank Amadeo met with President George W. Bush at the White House to discuss NATO operations in Afghanistan, no one knew that he'd already embezzled nearly $200 million from the federal government,

money he intended to use to bankroll his plan to take over the world. From Amadeo's global headquarters in the shadow of Florida's Disney World, with a nearly inexhaustible supply of the Internal Revenue Services funds. Amadeo acquired multiple businesses, amassing a mega conglomerate. Driven by his delusions of world conquest, he negotiated the purchase of a squadron of American fighter jets and the controlling interest in a former Soviet ICBM factory. He began working to build the largest private militia on the planet,

over one million Africans strong. Simultaneously, Amadeo, hired an international black ops force to orchestrate a coup in the Congo while plotting to take over several small Eastern European countries. The most disturbing part of it all is, had the U.S. government not thwarted his plans, he might have just pulled it off. It's insanity. The bizarre, true story of a bipolar megalomaniac's insane plan for total world domination.

Available now on Amazon and audible. Pierre Rossini in the 1990s. was a 20-something-year-old Los Angeles-based drug trafficker of ecstasy and ice. He and his associates drove luxury European supercars, lived in Beverly Hills penthouses, and dated Playboy models while dodging federal indictments. Then, two FBI officers with the organized crime drug enforcement task force entered the picture.

Dirty agents, willing to fix cases and identify informants. Suddenly, two of Racini's associates, confidential informants working with federal law enforcement, were murdered. Everyone pointed to Racini. As his co-defendants prepared for trial, U.S. Attorney Robert Mueller sat down to debrief Racine at Leavenworth Penitentiary, and another story emerged. A tale of FBI corruption and complicity in murder. You see, Pierre Racini knew something that no one else knew. The truth. And Robert Mueller and the federal government have been covering it up to this very day.

Devil Exposed. A twisted tale of drug trafficking, corruption, and murder in the city of angels. Available on Amazon and Audible. Bailout is a psychological true crime thriller that pits a narcissistic conman against an egotistical, pathological liar. Marcus Schrenker, the money manager who attempted to fake his own death during the 2008. financial crisis, is about to be released from prison, and he's ready to talk. He's ready to tell you the story no one's heard. Shrinker sits down with true crime writer, Matthew B. Cox, a fellow inmate serving time for bank

fraud. Shrinker lays out the details, the disgruntled clients who persecuted him for unanticipated market losses, the affair that ruined his marriage, and the treachery of his scorned wife, the woman who framed him for securities fraud, leaving him no choice but to be. to make a bogus distress call and plunge from his multi-million dollar private aircraft in the dead of night. The $11.1 million in life insurance. The missing $1.5 million in gold. The fact is, Shrinker wants you to think he's innocent. The problem is, Cox knows Shrinker's a pathological liar and his stories of fabrication. As Cox subtly coaxes, cajoles, and yes, Kahn's Shrinker

into revealing his deceptions, his stranger-than-fiction life of lies slowly on Robbins. This is the story Shrinker didn't want you to know. Bailout, the life and lies of Marcus Shrinker, available now on Barnes & Noble, Etsy, and Audible. Matthew B. Cox is a conman incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a variety of bank fraud-related scams. Despite not having a drug problem, Cox inexplicably ends up in the prison's residential drug abuse program known as Ardap. A drug program in name only. Ardap is an invasive behavior modification therapy, specifically designed to correct the

cognitive thinking errors associated with criminal behavior. The program is a non-fiction dark comedy, which chronicles Cox's side-splitting journey. This first-person account is a fascinating glimpse at the survivor-like atmosphere inside of the government-sponsored rehabilitation unit. While navigating the treachery of his backstabbing peers, Cox simultaneously manipulates prison policies and the bumbling staff every step of the way. The program, how a conman survived the Federal Bureau of Prisons cult of Ardap, available now on Amazon and Audible.

If you saw anything you like, links to all the books are in the description box.