I was sentenced to double consecutive life for my involvement in the deaths of two people who at one time were my best friends. However, our involvement in criminal enterprises eventually led to a separation, where we became enemies and competitors. Long before my criminal activities, I was a person who wanted to do the right thing. However, the call of the wild—being an outlaw echoed in my soul and I simply grew callous and cold towards any and all who ever tried to shower me with love and kindness.
Perhaps it stemmed from verbally being abused by my father, who had his own problems with prescription drug addiction and alcohol, due to his becoming paralyzed at the age of 32 from the waist down in a trucking accident he suffered while working as a long-haul truck driver. To compound that, I was physically abused by my older brother by seven years, who resented me for taking his place as the youngest child. To this day I wear visible scars over my body from his beating and manipulations to cause injury to me, thinking he was disguising them as accidents.
From the young age of four, when I suffered my first brain trauma by being hit by a car, to repeated auto crashes where concussions ensued, to football and lacrosse body collisions, to my days an as airborne ranger where I suffered several parachute landing fall concussions, they may have all contributed to delusional behavior. In any case, I became a criminal, and may not have been legally insane but nevertheless, I was insane as crime became my lifestyle.
I refused to marry and father children despite the fact I had several women throughout my life who wanted just that with me. For me, that was a lifestyle I did not want. As my childhood was middle class, where my parents’ provided material needs and wants, but little parental guidance that would have given me necessary life skills to allow me to function as a normal citizen.
So, I gravitated to taking risks with life and freedom. I had various run ins with the law and white privilege, before it became recognized as that, got me off with a slap on the wrist. And I thought foolishly that I could beat any charge. While in the rangers I honed skills of violence to perfection and enjoyed that life but, my thirst for money led me to leave service. Thankfully I had an honorable discharge that would aid me in my return to life once released. But that journey was four plus decades away.
Despite the fact I went to college to become a social worker before the army and had 90 credits upon release from military service I became a certified gemologist. I began selling diamonds to drug dealers that eventually led me to cocaine smugglers in Beaufort, South Carolina. These men owed shrimp boats and would venture into Gulf of Mexico and meet up with members of the Medellin drug cartel and download tons of cocaine and then shrimp for weeks to cover the coke and bypass Custom inspections. In time, I went on these excursions and was rewarded with being fronted six to twelve keys every six weeks and charged a staggering $5.85 per gram. I made hundreds of thousands of dollars and spent it just as rapidly as it was made. Easy money always goes fast. And it always encounters violence.
Thus, at the age of thirty I was sentenced to the Maryland Penitentiary. My first ten years as a white man in a black man’s world was interesting. I experienced little drama and little violence in this world. I walked alone and people knew I was an angry white man, and so they left me alone as I was unpredictable. After ten years I began to realize my actions of making choices always led me to grief and so I decided to change just change. I started taking taxpayer programs that helped me over time begin to change my thought patterns where I wasn’t always thinking about violence or playing out situations in my head what to-do if such and such took place.
In time my activities led to jobs and working with others and I became a caregiver to men who could not read or write. I became a literacy tutor and instructor. Later I moved on to facilitator in conflict resolution. The last fourteen years of incarceration, I worked as a suicide observation aide where I counseled men with suicidal ideation and spoke about how to do time without causing harm to self and others and how to avoid problems overall.
I became a nationally recognized writer who sold 40 articles to the Washington Post, seven to The Christian Science Monitor, and hundreds more worldwide. Today produced radio play by Petaluma Radio Players and audiobook in production by Squeaky Cheese Productions, producer Ralph Scott.
I was paroled on 11/2/2023 after serving 41 years. I currently am in training to become a certified peer support specialist. I wish to work in as a suicide crisis responder, and to help people in crisis with mental health issues. In a nutshell prison actually saved my life and turned me into a human being. I went in as a hateful person who loathed society. I came out as a caregiver and a beacon of light and desire to share my story in the hope I can help others to avoid the pitfalls that ensnared me in the insanity of crime.
Perhaps it stemmed from verbally being abused by my father, who had his own problems with prescription drug addiction and alcohol, due to his becoming paralyzed at the age of 32 from the waist down in a trucking accident he suffered while working as a long-haul truck driver. To compound that, I was physically abused by my older brother by seven years, who resented me for taking his place as the youngest child. To this day I wear visible scars over my body from his beating and manipulations to cause injury to me, thinking he was disguising them as accidents.
From the young age of four, when I suffered my first brain trauma by being hit by a car, to repeated auto crashes where concussions ensued, to football and lacrosse body collisions, to my days an as airborne ranger where I suffered several parachute landing fall concussions, they may have all contributed to delusional behavior. In any case, I became a criminal, and may not have been legally insane but nevertheless, I was insane as crime became my lifestyle.
I refused to marry and father children despite the fact I had several women throughout my life who wanted just that with me. For me, that was a lifestyle I did not want. As my childhood was middle class, where my parents’ provided material needs and wants, but little parental guidance that would have given me necessary life skills to allow me to function as a normal citizen.
So, I gravitated to taking risks with life and freedom. I had various run ins with the law and white privilege, before it became recognized as that, got me off with a slap on the wrist. And I thought foolishly that I could beat any charge. While in the rangers I honed skills of violence to perfection and enjoyed that life but, my thirst for money led me to leave service. Thankfully I had an honorable discharge that would aid me in my return to life once released. But that journey was four plus decades away.
Despite the fact I went to college to become a social worker before the army and had 90 credits upon release from military service I became a certified gemologist. I began selling diamonds to drug dealers that eventually led me to cocaine smugglers in Beaufort, South Carolina. These men owed shrimp boats and would venture into Gulf of Mexico and meet up with members of the Medellin drug cartel and download tons of cocaine and then shrimp for weeks to cover the coke and bypass Custom inspections. In time, I went on these excursions and was rewarded with being fronted six to twelve keys every six weeks and charged a staggering $5.85 per gram. I made hundreds of thousands of dollars and spent it just as rapidly as it was made. Easy money always goes fast. And it always encounters violence.
Thus, at the age of thirty I was sentenced to the Maryland Penitentiary. My first ten years as a white man in a black man’s world was interesting. I experienced little drama and little violence in this world. I walked alone and people knew I was an angry white man, and so they left me alone as I was unpredictable. After ten years I began to realize my actions of making choices always led me to grief and so I decided to change just change. I started taking taxpayer programs that helped me over time begin to change my thought patterns where I wasn’t always thinking about violence or playing out situations in my head what to-do if such and such took place.
In time my activities led to jobs and working with others and I became a caregiver to men who could not read or write. I became a literacy tutor and instructor. Later I moved on to facilitator in conflict resolution. The last fourteen years of incarceration, I worked as a suicide observation aide where I counseled men with suicidal ideation and spoke about how to do time without causing harm to self and others and how to avoid problems overall.
I became a nationally recognized writer who sold 40 articles to the Washington Post, seven to The Christian Science Monitor, and hundreds more worldwide. Today produced radio play by Petaluma Radio Players and audiobook in production by Squeaky Cheese Productions, producer Ralph Scott.
I was paroled on 11/2/2023 after serving 41 years. I currently am in training to become a certified peer support specialist. I wish to work in as a suicide crisis responder, and to help people in crisis with mental health issues. In a nutshell prison actually saved my life and turned me into a human being. I went in as a hateful person who loathed society. I came out as a caregiver and a beacon of light and desire to share my story in the hope I can help others to avoid the pitfalls that ensnared me in the insanity of crime.