MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - A Living Hell (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

In 1995, an 18 year old named Reggie was serving a life sentence inside one of the most violent prisons in the USA. Reggie tried to keep his head down to avoid trouble, but at some point he offended an inmate they called “The Devil”… and when you upset The Devil, you’re doomed. But Reggie wasn’t going to just roll over and die. Instead, he made a plan to save himself... What happened next shocked the world.For 100s more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @MrBallenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 1995, a teenager named Reggie was serving a life sentence inside one of the most dangerous prisons in the United States. From the time he got there, Reggie tried to keep his head down in order to avoid trouble. But at some point, he upset a man that was known as the devil. And when you upset the devil, you're doomed. But Reggie wasn't prepared to just roll over and die, and so he devised a plan to save himself. What happened next was so shocking that it made international headlines. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week,

once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please invite the five-star review button to your barbecue, where you only serve enormous portions of food on flimsy paper plates. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Boland podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Hello, I am Alice Levine, and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal. and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast, British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round-the-world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show.

The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also, tiny little detail, almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Hello, I'm Emily and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous,

the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers?

OK, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil.

George is trapped in a lie of his own making with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Okay, let's get into today's story. Reggie Cole was just a child when his family moved from Louisiana to an area of Los Angeles, California called South Central. When the Coles arrived in 1985, South Central, which had a population of half a million people, was seeing a huge uptick in gang violence and drug dealing. But by the time Reggie, the youngest of the five Cole children, had turned 10 years old, the family had managed to move from an apartment on 98th Street in one of the most dangerous areas of South Central to 71st Street, one of the few somewhat safe

neighborhoods in the area. They lived in a small tan bungalow that had a neat front yard that was bordered by rose bushes and shaded by palm and eucalyptus trees. Reggie's mother was a deeply religious woman. She made sure all of her children attended the local missionary Baptist church every Sunday. She was also strict and told her two daughters and three sons that they had to be inside the house every night before the streetlights came on. Reggie's stepfather, who had raised the Cole kids as if they were his own, worked in an aluminum factory. He was from a small town in Louisiana, and in their new south-central neighborhood, he became known for his soul food. On Sundays,

the Cole children always looked forward to a big meal of red beans, rice, black-eyed peas, and collards. But for one of the Cole children, the middle son named Kenny, home was not on 71st Street. For him, home was the old neighborhood where the family had lived on 98th Street, where Kenny was part of a violent gang called Nine Deuce Hoover Crips. And when Kenny was 15, and Reggie was 10, Kenny was killed in that old neighborhood in a drive-by shooting. His killer was never caught. Reggie was devastated. Always small and skinny, he had idolized his older brother, and Kenny had always protected Reggie from neighborhood bullies. For a while after the murder of his brother, Reggie continued to do well in school. He got good marks in junior high

and joined his other brother as an usher in church on Sundays, and he kept up with school social events, playing basketball, and attending his junior high prom. But by the time Reggie was two years into high school, all that had changed. Reggie, who had inherited his deceased brother's friends and gang affiliations from the old neighborhood, was gradually sinking deeper and deeper into gang life. Because of his goofy attitude, Reggie became known to his brother's friends as Gumby. Although he still lived at home with his mom, Reggie had moved out of her house and into a shed in her backyard. His family called him Reggie, but now he preferred his street name, Gumby. And he'd started dressing down, which meant wearing the

oversized jogging suits and sports apparel and expensive sneakers that marked him as a gang member. Then, in his senior year, he dropped out of high school, and at the same time, his mom and stepfather separated. Once he was out of school, Reggie spent all of his time on the streets, or in his shed, where the walls were covered with gang graffiti and where he now grew two marijuana plants right outside the shed door. The gulf between Reggie's life and that of his siblings and mother also continued to grow. One of Reggie's older sisters was a bus driver and a choir director at the Missionary Baptist Church. His other sister had just enrolled in college, and Reggie's older brother was a hospital equipment operator. Reggie's brother-in-law had offered him work in his plumbing business, but Reggie wasn't interested. He always drifted back to his gang in the old neighborhood. So it was a huge disappointment

to his mom, but not exactly unexpected, when Reggie, at the age of 16, had his first arrest after failing to stop for a police officer, and his second arrest later that same year for getting caught carrying a weapon. A year after that, in 1993, when Reggie was 17, the homicide rate in South Central had skyrocketed to the point where seven people were being killed there every week. And Reggie was at ground zero for all of that street violence, selling crack at motels along the Figueroa corridor. Running 30 miles north and south through the city, Figueroa is one of the longest streets in Los Angeles, and today it has the highest arrest rate in the city

for prostitution. Finally, in 1995, when Reggie was 19, his gang affiliations and his criminal behavior caught up with him. On August 1st of that year, Reggie was 19, his gang affiliations and his criminal behavior caught up with him. On August 1st of that year, Reggie was found guilty of fatally shooting a man who was standing outside of a known prostitution house on Figueroa Street. Reggie was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Immediately after the sentence was read, Reggie was placed in a holding cell at a County Supermax facility in South Central until a prison transport bus could take him to his new home three and a half hours away in Imperial County. That new home was Calipatria State Prison, one of the most violent maximum security prisons in the

California correctional system. A few days later, on the day Reggie was set to leave for Calipatria, he was thin and lanky, standing at almost six feet tall but weighing just 140 pounds. He was also still wearing the orange jumpsuit he'd been wearing in county jail, only now as he climbed onto the prison transport bus in leg and ankle chains, the orange suit marked him as a brand new prisoner or fresh fish in the eyes of the level four offenders he would be spending the rest of his life with in Calipatria. As the bus headed east from the county jail in Los Angeles and crossed from the heart of the city into the desert, Reggie began to realize just how bad his situation really was. He was not just traveling to a new jail, he was leaving behind everyone and everything he had ever known. About three hours later, while looking out the window of the bus, Reggie got his

first glimpse of Calipatria Prison off in the distance. Its sprawling 325-acre complex of fences, towers, exercise pens, and two-story cell blocks sat in the middle of more than 1,200 acres of sandy, desolate no-man's land. As Reggie sat there staring, he suddenly realized he was soaked with sweat, despite the fact that the bus was running its air conditioning on full blast. But Reggie had no idea how comfortable that bus ride was relative to where he was going. In Calipatria Prison, when inmates were sent outside to the asphalt-covered exercise yard, there was almost no shade, and temperatures routinely reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And in the height of summer, temperatures could reach as high as 118 degrees Fahrenheit. And winters in Calipatria were actually just as bad as the summers,

but for the opposite reason. During those months, temperatures would plunge well below freezing at night. As the bus rambled down the road, getting closer and closer to Calipatria, Reggie started to smell the cow manure from the cattle feedlots they were passing by. Reggie bent his head down toward his shackled hands to try to cover his nose, not realizing that there was absolutely no getting away from that smell. It would literally permeate every inch of his new home. Finally, the bus reached the prison. Before entering the prison grounds, the bus had to pass through a heavily guarded and fortified opening in a 13-foot-high electric fence topped with razor wire that outlined the perimeter of the maximum security area of Calipatria. The purpose of this fence, which had enough voltage

in it to instantly kill anyone who touched it, was to cut down on prison escapes and to allow correctional officers, who were outnumbered more than 50 to 1 by prisoners, to move from guarding the perimeter to patrolling the inside of the prison. However, this shift in manpower had done very little to stop the violence inside the prison. There was hardly anyone in California, including Reggie, who hadn't heard news reports about the horrible attack that had happened in Calipatria three months earlier. Five inmates armed with homemade knives stabbed and beat eight prison guards. None of the guards died, but the incident sent shockwaves through the state.

After passing through the perimeter fence, Reggie's bus continued on towards the main prison. As they got closer, Reggie suddenly felt scared and wished the bus ride could go on for a little bit longer so he wouldn't have to get off. The bus finally reached a large garage just off of one of the main buildings. When the bus pulled into the garage, the inmates saw several guards standing around inside, clearly waiting for them. And behind these guards on the wall was a big security door that led into the prison. It actually went into an area called receiving andcharge, or R&D. R&D is where new inmates are cataloged,

inventoried, and booked into the prison system and their specific prison facility. The bus driver pulled into the designated parking spot in the garage and then came to a complete stop. As the bus engine idled and Reggie and all of the other fresh fish sat anxiously on the bus. One of the guards outside, who was carrying a clipboard, stepped onto the bus and chatted with the driver

for a moment. Then the guard turned and faced Reggie and the other men on board and started calling out their names one by one. As he did, each man got up and with their hands and feet in shackles, they shuffled to the back of the bus where another guard had opened the back door. There, they would walk down two steps to the garage floor. The guard at the back of the bus would then yell at them to make their way over to the door that led into R&D, and there, standing outside that door, were several more guards, all armed with pepper spray and batons, who would pat each man down and search them. After the men were searched, they were motioned to walk through the door into R&D. Although the chains and shackles he was wearing had already drilled into Reggie the fact that his life was

now totally changed, he was still not prepared for the shock he felt when he finally stepped through the R&D door and was actually inside the prison. Inside, a guard watched every move Reggie made, and security glass and wire separated Reggie from the men and women who processed his paperwork. What little he had brought with him was about to be inventoried and put into a storage compartment. His only possessions going forward would be the items that prison officials would give him over the next several hours. After stepping into a big windowless room, he was told to take off his clothes, and then a guard with gloves on did the first of hundreds of strip searches that would become a routine part of Reggie's life. Then he was handed his prison-issue clothing and told to get dressed.

After he was, he was given his inmate ID card that he would keep with him at all times. Reggie was also given two blankets, two sheets, a washcloth, a pillowcase, soap, toothpaste, and a toothbrush. After leaving R&D, Reggie was walked to his cell. In Calipatria, the cell blocks were all two stories high, with each cell door facing out toward a common area that the guards patrolled. Unlike what most people imagine when they think of jail cells, these cells did not have bars with lots of openings to look through. The cell walls were concrete with no windows, and the doors were heavy sheet metal with only two small vertical slits that were windows that they could look through out into the common area. Inside of Calipatria, every sound

reverberated off of the concrete and metal, meaning it was always noisy and extremely difficult to sleep. As Reggie was led by the guard to his cell, the awful sounds echoing all around of people yelling and banging on things were so distracting and awful that his initial impulse was just to run away to somewhere that was quiet. But of course, as soon as he had that impulse, he remembered that he'll never be able to do that ever. This was his reality. When Reggie finally entered his single-person cell and heard the door shut behind him, he felt himself relax just a little bit. He looked around his tiny room and saw a metal sink and a toilet as well as a

bunk bed. And as he looked at the bunk bed, it took him a second to process that there was another person laying on it. Although Calipatria had only opened three years earlier in 1992, by the time Reggie arrived, it was already completely overcrowded, which is why single-person cells like this one now held two people. The man laying in the bottom bunk stared at Reggie. Reggie looked away. He knew better than to try to be friends with this man. Keeping his head down and making sure he did not touch the lower bunk where his cellmate

was still watching him, Reggie awkwardly made up the top bunk with the sheet and blankets he'd been given and R&D. Then once his bed was made, Reggie walked a few feet over to the metal toilet. He did his business. Then, without a word, he hauled himself up onto the top bunk, where he lay staring at the ceiling in silence. Within the first few weeks of Reggie's arrival, he was given his first lesson in prison survival. He was out in the exercise yard when an older inmate, who was sitting on top of one of the picnic tables, motioned Reggie over. With his elbows

propped on his knees, the inmate stared at Reggie as if sizing him up. Then he told Reggie, you need to find people from your neighborhood, and then you need to join one of the gangs, and if possible, you join the same gang that you ran with on the outside. And don't trust anyone. No one here is your friend. Oh, and make yourself a knife. Reggie thanked him and decided he would take his advice. Inside the prison, Reggie began scanning the inmates for tattoos that signified they were in the cribs,

like he had been when he was still a free man. Outside in the yard, Reggie continued to scan the inmates, but he kept to the perimeter where he couldn't be seen as disrespecting anyone or invading their space. Reggie also always carried a homemade knife, which was a toothbrush he had filed down against the concrete. But before Reggie was invited to join a gang which would offer him protection, he was challenged. Reggie had been making his usual perimeter walk out in the yard when a bigger inmate and a few of his crew walked over and stood in front of Reggie, blocking his path. Then the main guy started muscling Reggie against the fence.

Reggie already knew what happened to Fresh Fish, who did not stand up to the first sign of any kind of disrespect or aggression. In fact, he'd seen it over and over again right in his own cell. His cellmate, the same one who had been laying on the bottom bunk when Reggie first arrived, had made the mistake of thinking a few visitors to their cell, men neither of them knew, were there as friends. His cellmate had welcomed them inside and shook hands with them while Reggie had remained on the top bunk and pretended to be asleep. The men who had come inside immediately

grabbed Reggie's cellmate, threw him on the ground, and raped him. When they were done, they left without touching Reggie. Because Reggie's cellmate had not fought back during this first assault, these men would come back many more times, and each time Reggie would be forced to listen to it while he lay still and silent in his top bunk. And like most of the inmate-on-inmate attacks at this prison, the rapes went unreported. Even if a guard took a charge like that seriously, the consequences of snitching on another inmate were much worse than any punishment a correctional guard could deal out. So out in the yard as Reggie found himself being muscled against the fence by

this big guy, the thought of his cellmate being raped over and over again ran through Reggie's mind. He knew he had to stand up for himself. So Reggie reached into his waistband, he grabbed his homemade knife, and he stabbed the bigger inmate in the side. His aim was not to deliver a wound that would kill, or be so serious that the guards would have to investigate, but to use his weapon for defense and intimidation. From that day forward, while Reggie would never be known as a brawler, he did start to build a reputation as someone who was quick to use his blade,

and therefore someone who was not to be messed with. I'm Peter Frankopan. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time, somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of

her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone.

what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years, and we finally decided to take the plunge and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. Each story is totally true and totally terrifying. Go follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a Prime member, you can listen early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Shortly after this stabbing, Reggie was welcomed into a gang called the 49 Deuce Crips. All the Crips at Calipatria were run by a single man, one of the

most violent inmates there, a 200-pound bodybuilder named Eddie Clark, who went by the nickname El Diablo, or the Devil. For El Diablo, Calipatria was not just his home, it was his business. Calipatria was known as a money prison, where drugs were just as pervasive as unchecked violence. Reggie had seen dozens of inmates smuggle crack and heroin around the prison. They would put the drugs inside balloons before inserting them into their bodies, a practice that was extremely risky because the balloon could break or disintegrate once it was inside of them. And all this was part of the drug empire that was ruled by El Diablo. side of them. And all this was part of the drug empire that was ruled by El Diablo. Even the guards recognized his power as Calapatria's shot caller, allowing him to wear a bright orange do-rag

wrapped around his head out in the prison yard. Under the general protection of his new gang and their leader, El Diablo, Reggie's life got noticeably better. Not only was he now much more safe at the prison, but being a part of this gang also allowed Reggie to feel somewhat human again. Whether it was playing basketball or leaning up against the picnic tables and chatting with fellow gang members, Reggie finally had people around him that he felt like he could trust. But, like everyone else in the Deuce Crips, Reggie did his best not to interact with or attract any attention from El Diablo. Because even though El Diablo was their boss and main protector, they were all afraid of him. El Diablo

was only 34 years old, but he had spent 20 of those years behind bars. When he was a juvenile, he beat another teenager to death. When he was an adult, he sexually assaulted an elderly woman and shot her son in the course of robbing their house. In prison, El Diablo was known to turn on people, even his own people, suddenly, viciously, and without warning. The Devil was also connected to prison staff. Two years after he'd entered prison, he'd fallen in love with one of the corrections officers who oversaw one of the common areas where the devil spent time. He wrote her an eight-page-long love letter where he told her that, quote, she had 75% of his heart. This was apparently enough for Lisa Finch,

who eventually quit her job as a prison guard, married El Diablo, and on her visits to him in Calipatria, she smuggled in PCP laced cigarettes that he could sell to other inmates. Over the next four years, Reggie carved out a relatively safe life for himself in Calipatria. He had managed to fit in with his new gang without upsetting El Diablo. He also managed to avoid making any real enemies outside of his gang. Over the course of those four years, Reggie spent much of his time exercising, which added some muscle to his thin frame. He also got several tattoos, including a Ghetto Star prison tattoo on his shoulders, as well as two Crips tattoos on his chest and stomach.

But despite settling into a routine and starting to feel relatively comfortable, Reggie knew he and everyone else at that prison had a big problem. By 2000, so five years into Reggie's prison sentence, El Diablo had gone from just being a very intimidating inmate to being a monster. He would attack virtually anyone for virtually anything. Sometimes all it took was looking at him wrong to get stabbed or beaten or raped. This of course made life inside of the prison even more precarious than it already was,

as no one knew who El Diablo's next target was going to be. By the fall of 2000, the devil, who was now manufacturing alcohol from the fruit juice he stole from the prison kitchens, had developed such a substance abuse problem that some of his own fellow gang members had tried, unsuccessfully, to stage an intervention. As one inmate recalled, when he was drunk, he was an animal. If he raped you, nobody was going to say anything. But it would turn out that out of all the violent and dangerous offenders in Calipatria who might have stood up to El Diablo and challenged his authority, it would be Reggie, one of the least ruthless inmates,

who would finally do it. In late October of that year, an inmate using a slingshot fired a homemade dart at one of the corrections officers out in the prison yard. The dart missed and stuck into a gate post instead. Immediately, the guards ordered all the inmates to lay on the ground so they could do a weapons check to see who had thrown the dart. The guards didn't discover who had thrown it. However, during their search, they did find a homemade knife inside of a cotton glove laying out in the grass. The guards didn't know this, but the knife belonged to El Diablo's cellmate, who was one of El Diablo's most trusted lieutenants. And so as the guards picked up the knife and began asking whose it was, every inmate in the yard knew El Diablo was going to do something to protect his cellmate from getting caught. El Diablo's eyes traveled across the yard and came to a stop on Reggie Cole, who just happened to be

out on work assignment painting one of the prison walls that faced into the yard. Reggie was already serving a life sentence without parole, so adding a weapons charge wouldn't actually change his sentence. Paintbrush in hand, Reggie held his breath, but even with his eyes down, he could feel El Diablo's sudden attention and the silence that filled the yard. Reggie looked up and saw the devil staring right at him. Then El Diablo made a single motion with his hand, pointing to the knife in the corrections officer's hand. He might as well have shouted his order. You, Reggie, you take the blame for this. For just a moment, Reggie's mind went blank. Then he saw in his mind what would happen if he agreed to do this for the devil. He might be sent to solitary confinement,

he might have his family visitation rights revoked, and he would be publicly submitting to another inmate, which would make him look weak. And if he agreed to submit this one time, then he'd likely spend the rest of his life at Calipatria under the thumb of other inmates. So, with El Diablo staring at him expectantly, Reggie paused and then said the words that changed the course of his and El Diablo's life. No, not my knife, Reggie said. The silence that followed the statement was deafening. Even the corrections officers looked stunned. Reggie did not look at El Diablo, but both men knew at that moment Reggie was now a marked man. El Diablo would make sure that Reggie paid the highest price possible for refusing this direct order. Over the next four weeks, Reggie expected to be attacked by El Diablo or one of his henchmen

at any moment. As the nights grew colder, Reggie would lie in his by El Diablo or one of his henchmen at any moment. As the nights grew colder, Reggie would lie in his bunk, sleepless, thinking about his options. The way he saw it, there were only four of them. He could submit to El Diablo and do whatever he wanted to pay for his insubordination. He could snitch on El Diablo to the guards. He could kill El Diablo, or he could be killed by El Diablo. Reggie obsessed over these four choices. He'd pace around the perimeter of the exercise yard, keeping a very wide berth around El Diablo, weighing out the pros and cons of each action. Finally, Reggie made up his mind. He didn't know exactly how it was going to happen, but he knew he'd be ready when the time was right.

It all happened on the morning of November 28, 2000, roughly one month after Reggie had refused to take the blame for the knife. That day, Reggie was walking around the perimeter of the exercise yard when he noticed the Devil walking toward him. The Devil wasn't even trying to sneak up on Reggie. It seemed like he wanted Reggie to know that he was about to get attacked. Reggie stopped and just watched the devil as he got closer, not really sure what he should do. When the devil was finally right in front of him, he didn't say anything. He just reached out and grabbed Reggie's shoulder with his left hand,

and then with his right, he drove a knife into Reggie's side. Not far enough to be a lethal blow, but enough to send a very painful message that Reggie's days, not far enough to be a lethal blow, but enough to send a very painful message that Reggie's days were numbered. As he pulled the knife out of Reggie, El Diablo leaned forward and whispered into Reggie's ear, you are my bitch, and then he chucked the knife onto the grass and casually walked away. Reggie pressed his hand over his wound, he gritted his teeth, and he walked in the opposite direction of El Diablo over towards the fence. There was nothing anyone could do for him. The guards made no sign of having even noticed the attack, and even if they had, Reggie, like other victims of

El Diablo's violence, would have lied. About 15 minutes later, a bell sounded signaling the exercise period was over. The guards and inmates knew the drill. The inmates would line up and be searched for weapons or contraband before they were allowed to re-enter the cell blocks. El Diablo was ahead of Reggie in the line. Reggie, hiding his stab wound under the waistband of his pants, stood there quietly, clutching a six-inch long knife that he had dug out of its hiding place near the fence just minutes after he had been attacked by El Diablo. A corrections officer ordered El Diablo to turn around while he was still in line and to stretch out his arms so he could be searched. The devil did this,

and as he was turned around, he stared menacingly at Reggie. On the devil's right forearm, there was a tattoo of a hand gripping a sword. On his right ribcage was a self-portrait of El Diablo slitting a man's throat. Looking up and finally meeting El Diablo's eyes, Reggie suddenly leapt over the crouched prison guard who was between them searching El Diablo, and Reggie drove the point of his homemade knife directly into the front of El Diablo's throat. El Diablo, still staring at Reggie but now with a look of terror on his face, staggered backwards and off to the side. The blade had gone straight through his voice box and blood was now pouring out of that one-inch hole in the center of his neck. Reggie immediately threw himself to the ground, putting his hands

behind his back. As he laid there looking up at the stunned El Diablo, Reggie knew the wound he had just inflicted was fatal. As everyone else in the yard also got down on the ground and guards started firing off their cans of pepper spray, Reggie told one of the nearby guards, I know what I did, I know what I did. By the time the doctor arrived 30 minutes later, El Diablo was dead. By late that afternoon, Reggie had been placed into solitary confinement. Other inmates may have hated and feared El Diablo, but by killing Calapatria's shot caller, El Diablo's lieutenants would be gunning for Reggie. Not only that, Reggie now faced another murder charge.

If he was convicted, the only punishment left was the death penalty. And no one contested the fact that Reggie had committed this murder. There had been dozens of eyewitnesses, including prison guards who had seen Reggie fatally stab El Diablo. Also, there was security camera footage, and there was Reggie's own confession, one that he never tried to recant. Instead, Reggie actually went on record saying that he felt bad for killing El Diablo because El Diablo was a human being who had a family that was going to hurt when they heard the news. But Reggie also insisted that he murdered El Diablo in self-defense. If a judge accepted

this, the first-degree murder charge would be dropped to manslaughter and Reggie would escape the death penalty, but he would still face 10 years in solitary confinement. Both outcomes seemed so grim that even to Reggie, hiring a lawyer and preparing a defense seemed both hopeless and pointless. When Reggie was handed a list of county-approved attorneys, he looked at it, but none of the names meant anything to him. However, it would turn out that Reggie's random choice of a lawyer named Christopher Plourd would be the second most important decision of his life, right after his decision to kill El Diablo. Because over the course of the next three years,

his lawyer, Christopher Plourd, dressed in his crumpled suits and peering out from behind his wire-rimmed glasses, would make a huge discovery about Reggie that would change everything. And the way Christopher made that discovery was by digging into the murder case that had landed Reggie in Calipatria in the first place. Six years before the murder of El Diablo, late on the night of Monday, March 28, 1994, two LAPD homicide detectives arrived at the scene of a murder. It was right outside of a known house of prostitution on Figueroa Street, the street in South Central that Reggie used to spend a lot of his time on. The victim was a 29-year-old man named Felipe Gonzalez Angeles. He was found lying on the ground with a gunshot wound in his back. The police located the

prostitution house manager, a pimp named John Jones, who also became their star eyewitness. According to John, who saw the attack from the second floor window of the house, he said Felipe showed up to the house that night in a car with two other men. Felipe had gotten out. He had walked up to the door and knocked loudly. When one of John's staff members had opened the door, Felipe had asked to see a specific prostitute, but he was told she was busy. So Felipe turned around and started walking back toward the car where his other two friends were. But before he could get to the car, three teenagers, two of which had guns, appeared out of the darkness and demanded

Felipe give them his money. They also yelled at Felipe's two friends who were in the car to do the same thing. But Felipe and his friends didn't speak English and just stood there seeming confused. At which point, the teenagers just started shooting at Felipe and his friends in the car. Felipe got hit in the back as he tried to flee, and his friends, they sped off in the car. Felipe got hit in the back as he tried to flee, and his friends, they sped off in the car. The teenagers turned and ran down an alley, but before they disappeared, John said he noticed one of them was limping. John figured in the chaos, this teen had gotten

accidentally shot in the leg by his own friend or even by himself, potentially. A few weeks after the murder, a tip from police working a different crime altogether would lead those two LAPD detectives who arrived at Felipe's murder scene to Reggie Cole and his friend and fellow crip, O.B. Anthony, who were both in jail at the time on charges of suspected carjacking. One of the two detectives brought Reggie

into an interrogation room and during the questioning, the detective examined Reggie's legs and very quickly he found a gunshot wound. Based on the presence of this gunshot wound on Reggie's leg and the eyewitness testimony of the pimp, John Jones, Reggie and Obi were both found guilty of murdering Felipe Angeles and they both were sentenced to life in prison without parole. But looking at that case six years later, with his client, Reggie, in solitary confinement facing yet another murder charge, all Christopher Plord saw were some very big cracks in the LAPD investigation. Over the next three years,

Christopher unearthed forensic evidence showing that the bullet that killed Felipe had not been fired from street level, but rather from above, maybe even from the roof or from John Jones' own apartment window. There were no fingerprints at the crime scene that matched Reggie's or Obi's, and no witness could ever identify Reggie as the shooter. and no witness could ever identify Reggie as the shooter. John Jones himself had retracted his own testimony, saying that he had told the cops what they wanted to hear in exchange for a lighter sentence when it came to his own crime of running a prostitution house. But by far the most surprising and damning discovery Christopher made about Reggie's case had to do with the wound on Reggie's leg. It was indeed a gunshot wound. However,

it was not anywhere near recent. It was the result of an accident that had happened to Reggie when he was 13 years old, five years prior to the murder of Felipe Angeles. And when the LAPD detectives saw this wound in the interrogation room, they would have known it could not possibly have happened recently. It was just a big scar, and Reggie clearly wasn't affected by it. He was not limping at all. In addition to the extremely flimsy case against Reggie for that murder charge, another factor that enhanced the likelihood that Reggie was innocent was Reggie's own behavior after getting convicted. In Calipatria, where violence was power and inmates proudly talked about being killers, Reggie was one of the only inmates who insisted he was not a killer, that he was innocent

of his crime. And whenever he wasn't in his cell or working or exercising in the yard, he was spending hours in the prison law library researching wrongful convictions. In February 2008, after Reggie had spent 14 years in prison, eight of those years in solitary confinement, his lawyer, Christopher Plourd, took Reggie's original murder case back to court. And this time, the judge decided that Reggie was innocent, that he had been wrongfully convicted. Following that decision, the state prosecutor agreed to drop the capital murder charge against Reggie in the death of El Diablo. Instead, he reduced the charge to 10 years in solitary confinement for manslaughter, agreeing that

in killing El Diablo, Reggie had acted in self-defense. By the time that ruling came down, Reggie had already spent eight years in solitary, which were counted towards his 10-year solitary sentence. So, two long years later, on May 15, 2009, Reggie Cole finished his solitary confinement sentence and walked out of Calipatria State Prison. He was a free man once again. But Reggie was hardly a happy man. Wrongfully imprisoned for a murder he did not commit, Reggie was only cleared and made free again because of a murder he did commit. And this haunts him. After Reggie's friend, O.B. Anthony, was also determined to have been wrongfully convicted,

he too was released. In October 2012, the city of Los Angeles paid $8.3 million to O.B. Anthony, and in January 2017, it paid $5.2 million to Reggie Cole. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please invite the five-star review button to your barbecue, where you only serve enormous portions of food on flimsy paper plates. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Google, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday

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