The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How I Smuggled Drugs In Prison | #16

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

Former inmate Johnny Mitchell talks about almost getting caught smuggling a balloon in prison, getting drunk off prison wine and almost dying, plus the craziest stories he heard from his cellmates.   Sign up for the Patreon!  https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow?fan_landing=true&view_as=public Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And so I take two more little Dixie Cup shots of it. And that's when it turned black. They thought I had escaped. They completely lost me somehow. I wasn't saying anything because I'm scared to death of this guy. But I figured today's my day. He's going to march me down and beat the shit out of me. What's up, everyone?

Welcome back to The Connect. My name is Johnny Mitchell. So good to see all of you. Remember to follow us on all socials, like and subscribe. Of course, if you want that bonus content, go over to patreon.com slash the Connect show. That's cooking over there. We got so much bonus content. We got weekly bonus episodes.

We have now YouTube live chats where you can participate and ask me questions. You get to see all that fun footage that YouTube won't let us show. So you guys, if you love the show, it's the best way to support us. Patreon.com slash The Connect show. We've got a killer episode today, so let's get into it. Okay, so for today's episode, I wanted to talk more about. my time in prison. I realize in the course of doing these videos that there's a lot that I've left out just because so much happened during that time that I couldn't possibly fit it in to just

two or three videos. And these are some of the craziest things I saw, heard, and experienced while I was in the joint. Hey guys, today's episode is brought to you by BetterHelp, the world's number one online therapy service. With BetterHelp, you get access to the same professionalism and quality as you would get with traditional in-office therapy, except at a more affordable price, and you can do it from the comfort of your own home. BetterHelp will hook you up with a therapist that's tailored to your needs,

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You've got a little bit of discretionary income. Steak.com. Let's get back into the show. Many of you probably know that prison guards, corrections officers are some of the dirtiest people in law enforcement. They are underpaid. They're uneducated, usually. They're from these tiny little hillbilly towns where they build the prisons. They are just as dirty and corruptible as many of the inmates that they're guarding. While I was at the Two Rivers Correctional Facility, there was this one cop. His name was White, Lieutenant White. That's his real fucking name. I don't have

any problem saying it. If he's still working there, there's no way he's working there. He's dead of alcoholism by now. And White was vindictive. He was constantly, screaming at people. I saw him one time just walk by and smack a dude who was sitting in the day room on the back of his head and he knocked him out of his seat. Just a guy minding his own business playing dominoes. He just came by and bitch slapped him. It was shit like this that made us hate this guy, right? And what's even more fucked up than that is he would wake people up out of their cells in the middle of the night and he would walk them down the hall to a room without cameras and beat the shit out of him. He would do this if you got out of line. If you went and made a complaint to the administration about him, you wouldn't dare do that or else White and another guard would get you up and march you to the broom closet. That's what we called it. And everybody knew what that meant.

And he was doing this to all different kinds of inmates. He was a mean son of a bitch. I tried to avoid him at any cost. And whenever I would wake up in the middle of the night, it was like I figured today's my day. He's going to march me down and beat the shit out of me because he knew that Jimmy was my celly and he probably suspected that I was involved in doing dirt with him. Jimmy had a few different guards working for him, but he could never corrupt White. White was abusive, mean, alcoholic, racist, aggressive, but for some reason he wouldn't take Jimmy's money,

which is even worse if you think about it. I mean, if you're going to be a cop, at least be a cool one. bring us the dope, make money with us, you know, smuggle us in what we need. But White wouldn't even do that. He would just send you to the whole call you a motherfucker, embarrass you in public. I mean, this guy had to go. Now, if you'll remember, there was this one inmate on our cell block named Apple. I spoke about her in an earlier episode. Apple was a transgender person, right?

I mean, I don't even know what to call her, because if you called Apple a transgender person to her face, she would probably beat the shit out of you. I mean, this is before any of that PC bullshit. We didn't talk like that back then. But she had respect because she earned it. She was the Golden Glove boxing champion many years in a row in the Oregon State prison system. We saw her beat the fuck out of a Crip shock caller

who got shipped in and tried to test her. I talked about that in an earlier video. I mean, this girl laid hands on this guy to wear, She might have, like, paralyzed this dude for all I knew. She was not one to be fucked with, but she was sweet. I remember she would, like, prance around the yard sometimes in, like, you know, booty shorts, and she would, like, roll her shirt up. She had this long hair and big, perfect tits.

You know, she was like a prostitute during the Vietnam War, you know, like, hey, boys. I mean, it was crazy, but she had a good attitude, you know, and most of us respected her. or maybe even if you, like, you know, didn't believe in transgenderism or just thought that was kind of gross, you at least, like, gave her respect as a human being because that was the right thing to do. So, you know, Apple was our homie. So I remember this one Saturday morning, the guards bust into the cell block and they got the riot gear on, they got the drug sniffing dogs, and it's Lieutenant White leading the cavalry. Cell doors open.

They're barking orders over the radio. They're yelling at everybody, stand the fuck up, face the wall. You know, come in, shaking cells down. They make us turn, you know, and like we're in our underwear. I got a fucking morning hard on. It's 6 a.m. right? Everybody's in a bad mood. They force us to basically in our underwear and our shoes march out onto the yard while they tossed cells.

So they wouldn't even let us stand indoors on the table. tear while they shook the cells down. They made everybody leave. So this put everybody in a fucking foul mood. So everybody's lined up outside on the yard waiting for the goon squad to finish tossing cells. You know, a few people had dirty cells. They got taken off to the hole. And Lieutenant White comes out and he's in a mood already at 6 a.m. And he's talking big shit. Inmate, stand at attention. The fuck's wrong with you. You think this is home? You know, insulting everybody. at Apple is in the corner goofing off with somebody doesn't hear him give the order

and White singles her out and he goes Hey, that's right, he dropped the F bomb. He goes, shut the fuck up. Stand at attention, be quiet. And everybody is just like our fucking hair was blown to the back of our head. It was like watching your mother getting hit by your father at the dinner table.

were like, oh shit. Like, that's fucked up. Now, imagine that. A bunch of these criminals and these so-called degenerates and antisocial people were offended. We're offended by this guard brutalizing this transgender person. It was a real, like, moment of solidarity. And people started to yell out. They were like, hey, man, leave her alone, man.

That's fucked up, you know? Shit like that. I wasn't saying anything because I'm scared to death of this guy. But, you know, like the real OGs were. sticking up for and Apple just kind of purses her lips a little bit, shucks her teeth, stands up and she's quiet and, you know, eventually everybody's led back inside and we're allowed back into ourselves. Well, less than a week later, I am leaving the kitchen from my shift on my way back to the cell block when I see Lieutenant White walking down the tier in handcuffs

being led away by two other CEOs. I don't think I've ever been so happy in my life. I was like, this is crazy. I have to find out what's going on. I get back to the cell block. Everybody's chattering. I mean, the gossip, this is the juiciest thing we've heard in months.

Lieutenant White got caught red-handed, getting sucked off by Apple. Apple was in the broom closet where he would take people down, to fuck him up. Apple was giving this guy a blowjob. There you go. And there is no consensual sex in prison and especially not prison guard on inmate. And this happened multiple times. There were usually female guards who, you know, would get manipulated by the inmates and they would get caught fucking them. And the inmates don't get in trouble. I mean, they probably get sent to the

hole. But the CEOs actually get handcuffed and charged with sexual assault. whatever. So Lieutenant White was getting head from Apple, the girl that he was talking shit to just five days earlier on the yard. I don't know for sure if Apple set that whole thing up, tipped another guard off that Lieutenant White was sneaking around, getting a little sucky-suck from this transgender inmate. Who knows? But we never saw a white again and, you know, hopefully he's rotting in a prison somewhere. But that was some of the sweetest kind of getback I ever saw while I was in prison. Memorial Day weekend is almost here, and it's time to kick off summer right. When I'm getting ready for the first big weekend of

summer, total wine and more is my go-to, especially when I'm firing up the grill with family. I'll grab refreshing beers, easy drinking wines, and some hard seltzers for the cooler. And with everything that goes into summer, it's nice knowing you're getting the lowest prices. Total Wine and More. Your Memorial Day made easy. Shop total wine and more in store or online. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly must be 21. One of the craziest stories that I ever heard from an inmate was from this ex-drug trafficker, this old guy. This was at Two Rivers Correctional Facility. It's right before I got classed down a minimum, I think in about early 2012. It's after the riot happened and Jimmy got taken to death

row awaiting, you know, his trial. And they moved in a guy, this old, like, like ex-hippy. He had a long gray ponytail. You know, you could tell this dude used to be like a surfer bro kind of guy. And, but he had been locked up for like 25 years already. They had shipped him from federal prison and they'd moved him to the state prison, I guess just to make bed space or whatever. Sometimes they would do that. They would, you know, shuffle people around from the feds. But he was getting ready to come home. And he had been locked up since like 1982. And I verified all this because he had his paperwork, you know? Inmates, even the inmates that are doing life and that have been locked up for decades still have the paperwork, their original discovery from court

even back in the day. So I'm looking at papers from the 80s that are typed out on like a typewriter. It was fucking weird. And at first, this guy didn't offer up a lot of information. And that's how I could tell he was legit. Because real criminals, real thorough dudes, usually keep their crimes close to the chest until they trust a person. But we were locked up for like 60 days straight. Somebody had just gotten stabbed.

So they were investigating it. And we were just sailed in. And when you're locked up 24 hours a day with just one other person, trust me, everything starts spilling pretty quickly because there's nothing else to do. do, but just tell your story. And little by little, I find out, okay, this dude used to be a fucking whale. I mean, this guy was moving real large scale coke back in the 70s and 80s. And he'd been caught with over 200 kilos red-handed in Miami back in the late 70s. And I said, wow, that is fucking crazy. I was immediately like enamored by his story because you never meet guys like this,

especially not in state prison. So I just picked his brain for hours and hours. And I basically said, you know, this is my story. How did you get caught? He told me back in the day he was in the boat business. So he owned a bunch of warehouse space in the Miami Harbor where he repaired speedboats and go-fast boats. And of course, back in the day, who were the people buying go-fast boats, those cigarette speedboats? They were drug traffickers. And that's probably how he fell into the business himself, as he got connected through all of these guys that he was repairing boats for. And he told me that his supplier was Rafa Salazar, the guy featured in the Cocaine Cowboys movie. He was basically the lieutenant of the Medellin cartel in Miami at the time. So he dealt

with that guy Max Murmolstein, that whole crew, and he was picking up from those guys. They were the source. They were the connect. So this guy was plugged in. And he's slick. He's moving weight. He said he went for about five years, moving 300 keys a month, he said. So this dude was rich.

He had owned property even to that day in prison. So I knew he was, I knew he's a man of means. I could tell someone someone's bullshitting. I believe this guy's story. And he was even tied into that criminal enterprise with them, too. So it's about 1981, and he meets a woman in a bar. And, you know, she was beautiful. She was Latin.

So he's chatting her up. They begin dating. Six months later, she moves in with him. And, you know, everything's going well. He lets her know, this is the business I'm in. I am in the boat business. And I make money renting out my dock space, right? He was thorough.

He didn't just spill all the information at once. A few months later, his girlfriend tells us, him, hey, I'm pregnant. Now, he's in love with her. It's a little soon, but he says, fuck it, I'm going to marry this broad. But before they tied the knot, he wanted to, you know, tell her the truth. He thought, wow, this is the person I love more than anybody in the world. I can trust her, like I can trust no one else. So I deserve, she deserves to know what I do for a living. So he brought her to his warehouses and was like, he showed her this stuff. He was like, look, I don't want you involved in the business, but God forbid, something happens and you need to access money,

drugs in order to, you know, pay these dangerous, crazy Colombians that I'm working for. You know, here it is. And he said she took it relatively well. She was a little surprised, but you know, got to remember, this is Miami back in the 80s. So it's like every third person was handling this much weight. It was normal back then. But a couple of days later, she goes missing. And he's freaking out. he's calling everybody. He's calling up his Colombian connects. He's calling up his friends. Have you seen her? Have you seen her? He doesn't know where his chick is. This is before cell phones. He's freaking out. He even calls the cops. And, you know, at the same time, he's got this load of cocaine waiting to be moved that he's storing in one of his warehouse spaces. He shows up early morning to the warehouse.

He gets raided by the DEA. And guess who's leading that raid? badge out hat on M15 to his face his girlfriend his pregnant soon-to-be wife it gets that deep they set this whole thing up they planted her in that bar that day

you know this piece of ass that got recruited by the DEA probably for reasons like this set this motherfucker up lied said she was pregnant and he pulled the classic mistake he showed the broad where the was at and everything came tumbling down. That was the most chilling thing I ever heard. I mean,

my nipples are hard right now. I got fucking goosebumps every time I think about that story. And he got 30 years in prison. He was charged, you know, with racketeering and, you know, heavy drug trafficking. And she was there at his sentencing. She showed up and testified against him. And I mean, not for nothing. I mean, talk about commitment to your job, you know? Like, she was fucking this dude for almost a year. So, hats off to her for doing her job well. But it costs that guy his life, you know?

It occurred to me that we have not talked about prison wine in these videos yet. We call it Pruno. And it's the inmates' version of moonshine. And it gets you, as I would learn, extremely fucked up. I don't know the recipe exactly. I know it involves a shitload of oranges and tons and tons of sugar. In prison, every gang or set has a specific person who has a hand for making prison wine. And that will be their job.

That's like they don't do anything else but make the pruno. And it's tough work. It takes so many oranges and so many packets of sugar and a lot of time just to make a bag full of wine. So it was very valuable. One time this dude actually snitched on a group of guys, a group of Nortenos, who were making prison wine, and those guys got let off to the hole, and the guy who ratted ended up getting stabbed. He didn't die, but they were trying to kill him, and that's because that's serious shit. People need to drink on the outside and on the inside. So you don't fuck with somebody who's making a batch of Pruno.

And if you've ever been in jail or prison, you'll notice there's always a few guys. that always want your fruit. So in every meal, you get an orange, whether it's a hamburger day, sloppy Joe's fucking shepherd's pie, whatever kind of crap they're feeding you, it will always come with an orange on the side. And there will always be one or two dudes who will always want somebody's orange, right? But they don't eat it right there. They take it back to their cell. Those are the guys making pruno. And what they'll do is they'll just accumulate a shitload of oranges and, you know, squeeze them down and add packs of sugar and essentially let it ferment. Now, I know it's a little trickier than that.

I'm not saying that I know the recipe exactly, but that's kind of how it works. And I had never had it before, but I heard you had to be careful because you take too much of it. You black out and come to with somebody's dick in your mouth. So one time I'm working in the kitchen, and lots of pruno was made in the kitchen, obviously, right? Because you got access to all the fruits. and they were having a party for this Latino dude who was getting ready to get out.

You know, he was involved in one of the sets. And so everybody was drinking, getting fucked up. And I said, you know what? I'm going to have my first cup of Pruno. Why not? And I just got a little Dixie cup, a little plastic cup, and my buddy filled it up with prison wine. And I took one sip, and I immediately started tearing up.

It was like drinking battery acid or something. It was a next-level discussion. There was so much sugar in it that it was like, it felt like it was flammable, right? Like worse than any kind of like bottom shelf vodka that you've ever tasted. But I'm in prison and I'm miserable like everybody else. And come on, let me just hold my nose and toss it down my throat. So I did that. And, you know, I start to feel it in the back of my neck and I'm feeling good.

And I said, you know what? Fuck that. This isn't so bad. and so I take two more little Dixie Cup shots of it. And that's when it turned black. I can't tell you how much time passed. I can't tell you how I got there. But I came to in the produce closet,

and I was lying behind these big sacks of flour at the back of the closet. I had vomit all over my shirt, and I had a splitting headache. So I kind of stagger up, and I walk out of the closet, and everybody is gone. I'm, there's nobody else in the fucking kitchen. And then this alarm starts ringing. And now my head is like throbbing. I can barely stand up.

I start puking again on my clothes and my shoes. And I'm like, I feel like I'm going blind. I start staggering towards the door. And I'm like, where the fuck is everybody? Like, I thought it was like a jailbreak or something. Because you're never not accounted for in prison. Like, you're counted everywhere you go. You're counted in the morning.

You're counted when you go out to yard. You're counted when you get to work. So I was like lost in prison. And as I'm walking up to the door, I see the CEO on duty run up to me. And he goes, inmate, inmate, on the wall. And in my drunk stupor, I just put my hands on the wall. You know, he busts me in the back of the neck. He handcuffs me.

I continue puking all over myself as I'm being led away in handcuffs. and long story short, they thought I had escaped. They completely lost me somehow. Everybody had left their shift and I was missing. That's what that alarm was. They thought I was trying to bust out when a reality I just blacked out and passed out on the floor in the back of a closet. So they quickly realized what was going on. They sent me to medical to get an IV in my arm because I was puking and throwing up.

and then they sent me to the hole for 10 days. The closest I ever came to getting pinched for drugs in prison was when I used to put in work for Jimmy, my cellmate. He would have me keister balloons and bring them to the kitchen where I worked. So if you haven't watched the videos, keystering is when you shove, you know, an object, a drug balloon, a shank, up your keister.

It's when you jam contraband in your ass. And he would get the balloons brought in. He knew I was not affiliated with gangs or anything like that. So he would have me keester these balloons and bring them to the kitchen where I would drop it off to, you know, another member of his set, right? And you'll remember that Jimmy had a lot of these guards either working for him directly or indirectly kind of just letting him run his operation unabated. But I didn't know who a lot of these guards were. I mean, when you're not really affiliated, when you're not a shot call, are in prison. You don't know which guards are on the take and which guards are clean. So one day,

Jimmy tells me that he's got another balloon for me to bring to the kitchen. It was a couple of grams of weed. And I learned eventually to stop asking what I was keistering. I just got my orders and followed through with them. So I keestered that thing and put my work boots on and I headed for the kitchen. But on the way to the kitchen, I see a couple of COs stopping inmates and putting them on the wall, lining them up for random strip search. So obviously I'm freaking the fuck out. And I consider turning around, heading back to the cell block, or walking up to one of them and saying,

oh, I feel like my appendix is about to burst, something like that, send me to medical. I didn't know what to do. And one of the cops says, Mitchell on the wall. So I line up on the wall behind four or five other inmates, and there's a little strip searching room, conveniently right there for the guards to just,

bring you in really quick, tell you to strip down, cough, spread, boom, have you on your way. So I'm sitting there like, oh, my life is over. This is another four years onto my sentence. So I start trying to squeeze the balloon out of my butt, like actually shit it out. So, you know, try to stuff it at my boot. When I take my underwear off, you know, try to hide it somehow. And I'm about two inmates before it's my turn to get strip search when a guard walks by and he looks at me and he says,

Mitchell, you got to get to your kitchen shift. Let's go. And one of the CEOs says, hey, we're doing strip searches. He goes, no, that guy's good. And he kind of outranked that other guard. And he goes, you're late. Get to your shift.

And I go, yes, sir. And I get out of line and I walk to my fucking, my shift in the kitchen. And later on, I told Jimmy about that. And Jimmy told me, you lucked out. That guards with us. So I've said it before on this program, Jimmy saved my life and my freedom more times than I can count while I was locked up with him.

That's how deep it gets, folks. Being, you know, with the guy that had the juice, it put me in harms way a lot, but it also saved my life. So, yeah, that's just one of the many times that, you know, I got in sticky situations being cellmates with Jimmy. So many of you already know, my cellmate Jimmy, was a shock caller for the Hells Angels on the outside, too, before he went to prison. And he told me this one story that stuck out in my mind about this shootout that he got while he was in New York City. It was like 85, 86, and he was with a couple of his Hells Angels associates, and they had some Coke that they needed to unload.

He said they had a couple of bricks, and the buyer they had fell through. So now they're just sitting there with kilos and nobody to buy it. So they went up to Harlem and they drove around until they found a crack spot. And that, of course, is like a little corner where a bunch of junkies are getting served Ready Rock. And in New York City back in the 80s, that was like everywhere, you know. And what they did was they waited until the little kids, the little foot soldiers who were serving it got the re-up. So they saw this black guy drive up in, you know, a nice. car and serve them the pack to these little corner boys. And they followed that guy. They were like,

that guy is the shot caller. That guy's the one buying weight and cooking it up and giving it to the street dealers. So they followed this guy back to his house. And they waited for him to go inside and they went up and they knocked on his door. And this black guy comes to the door and they're just like, hey, want to buy some coke? And of course, this black guy looks at these bikers. and is like, hey, get the fuck off my stoop, as he should have, right? So they go back to their car, and they waited, and they waited for the guy to leave, to go serve another corner, and he came back, and Jimmy and them knocked on his door again, and they say, hey, man, do you want to buy this Coke?

You're probably getting low by now. We got kilos at a good price straight from New Mexico. And he said, the guy pulled a gun out now. He was stuck it in their face, and he said, get the fuck out of here, honky. You know, he kind of dissed him, right? and Jimmy's no punk and by this time he's already smoking crystal and snort and Coke so

you know these guys are live wires so they said they waited until the guy left again and it's nightfall and Jimmy said you know what fuck it we're going in they kicked in his door and they just start looting his house looking for the work right

if they can't sell this guy to Coke they're going to take his was they're thinking and he said he found the stash a bunch of coke and crack and money and shit and they stuffed it all into a duffel bag and as they're getting ready to leave this guy comes back and he's with a couple of dudes so they pulled out their guns jimmy and the fucking crew pulled out theirs and they're getting in a shootout in the middle of this fucking Harlem brownstone walkup and they start running for the back door and as they're backing up they're shooting they're shooting

in between like the living room in the kitchen they fucking bail out the back and Essentially, they start running through a Harlem alley while these dudes, these black guys are dumping at them from the fucking balcony and they're shooting back. And he said nobody got hit at all that shit and all those bullets flying. Nobody got hit. But they escaped with the guy's fucking drugs. And yeah, dude, pulling a home invasion on a crack dealer in Harlem in the 80s. Probably not the best idea. Probably not the safest criminal move,

but that was just one of a thousand stories that I heard from Jimmy and some shit that I'll never forget. All right, you guys, that's been today's episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. Like, subscribe, share, follow us. We appreciate all the love and support. Check out our podcast that come out every Sunday morning.

We've got amazing guests on there. So, you know, we're ramping up the content. And, of course, Patreon, patreon.com, slash The Connect Show for all the bonus footage. We will see you guys next week. Take care of yourself.