What Happened In Prison – Part VI: The Streets

After over 15 years of imprisonment and psychological torment for doing to a younger boy the same thing that older boys and men had done to me all my adolescent life, I was paroled at last. But, I wasn’t free, and knew I never would be. My rage was my prison. It took a lot of effort to keep it hidden. But, I’d been practicing for several years, preparing explicitly for this very opportunity. Soon I would make society pay for what it did to me, but first I had to make sure I could hit them without getting hit back. I had to make them unwary of my intentions, and I knew exactly how.

I was the model parolee. I got my first job within days of my release, as a telemarketer for Time Life Libraries, Inc. I never missed a rent payment for my room at the Interaction Transition (I.T.) House in Seattle, and even saved up enough money within just three or four months for first, last, and deposit on an apartment of my own near downtown in a newly renovated complex, called the Tuscany, with all brand new appliances, carpeting, and bathroom fixtures. I especially liked the large mirrored closet doors that made my new studio apartment look twice as big as it really was.

I registered as a “sex offender” on my first day in Seattle, right after my older homosexual friend --- and soon to be lover --- Dave, picked me up at the Sea-Tac Airport. My mother was with him, and after a quick stop at the City-County building downtown (so I could register), we all three went to the Seattle Centre to celebrate my release. Nothing could have been more surreal than that day, especially looking up at the Space Needle with my mom by my side --- as I once did as a child only 17 years hence.

But, the unrealness of it all didn’t distract me for a moment. Most of my life had been one unreal/unbelievable moment after another. So the surrealness of my first day on parole was taken in stride. I hit the ground running without even giving any of it a second thought. I had a clear goal in front of me, and until I reached it little else mattered to me.

Of course I couldn’t let the obsession show, so on the outside, for my mother’s sake and for Dave’s sake, I was like a kid on his first visit to a Toys-R-Us store. Not that I didn’t feel the excitement that I projected --- feeling it was part of the art --- but deep inside, in the part of myself that I ended up referring to as “the dungeon”, I sat coldly watching myself pretending on the surface, knowing it was all just for show; knowing nothing was real, not my mom, not Dave, not my excitement, not even the city. Only one thing was real: my rage. It was the only thing in my life that never changed; the one constant that kept my head above water, and the only part of my reality that made any sense to me. It was my raison d’etre, and my love.

Everything went as I planned. I avoided all the traps and pitfalls layed out by the system to keep people recycling through the system once they are caught up in it; like the narc dressed like a hippie on the busride to work one day who asked me where he could buy some weed. If I had so much as just mentioned the part of town he should go look in then I would have violated my parole. So I said, honestly as it turned out at the time, “I have no idea, sorry I can’t help you.”

Traps like that are what account for the extremely high recidivism rates for parolees, not actual crime. Not that I didn’t commit a crime or two while I was on parole. I just never did anything “stupid”, like buying drugs from someone I didn’t know, or dropping my pants in front of someone in the park who wasn’t already hard and waiting for me to do so. Once I went so far as to steal a boy’s underpants out of an unlocked locker at a public swimpool, but I never said as much as “hi” to the boy himself, nor did I let him see me checking him out as he dressed into his swim trunks. In fact, I was always extra careful around children at all times. Aside from the underpants, which I only kept for a few days before I got rid of them as “too risky”, I never did or kept anything questionable in that regard. Unlike “stupid” pedophiles, I kept my obsession hidden deep in my dungeon, and very very rarely ever let it manifest on the surface of my reality.

That’s why I never got caught. People who “knew” me “knew” that I was not a pedophile, or otherwise sexually interested in children. I never sought children out in parks, or stores, not even just to look. I did not keep child related items or pictures in my apartment (again, with rare and extremely limited exceptions, like those underpants).

Once I was using the men’s room at the Jack In The Box restaurant on Broadway and a gorgeous little boy, no more than six years old, came in all by himself. I could have easily pretended to wash my hands while I checked him out and no one would have been the wiser. But instead I did what most men would do; I hurried up and got out of there before anyone thought it was even a little strange that I didn’t hurry up and got out of there. As it turned out the boy’s mother was waiting just outside the door, and she actually smiled at me when she saw me rushing out just seconds after her boy went in. I understood “the cod” of “expected behavior” around children the way most pedophiles never do.

I later reported this “incident” to my parole officer, who in turn reported it to the polygraph examiner, who in turn included it in my bi-annual parolee polygraph exam; I passed with flying colors when he asked, “Did you attempt to peep on a boy in a public restroom?” (or something like that). It was because of this nearly complete detachment of my “dungeon” from my surface reality that allowed me to convince so many people, including my parole officers, and psychologists, that I was not interested in children for sex at all.

In fact, I even started to fool myself, in a sense (actually, I had to fool myself first if I really wanted to fool anyone else). Only by fooling myself could I fool others without even thinking about it. But there still had to be at least a thin thread of truth that ran up from my “dungeon” or else I wasn’t fooling anybody. Without that thread of malice then I would have nothing to hide, and I would have been exactly what I pretended to be; an honest to God repentant rapist who never wanted to hurt anyone. But my act was so good that after a while I started to question my need for that thread. And that question ended up becoming a major source of stress and internal conflict for me.

Did I really need vengeance? Could I not live out my life without ever again thinking about all “they” took from me, and all the pain they cause me and my family? Couldn’t I just become the content, if not happy, person I pretended to be? Must I rape and kill, as I had for so long planned, in order to avenge my years of degradation, humiliation, pain, and fear?

I asked these same questions over and over so often that it became almost a melody of desperation in my mind. I honestly did not want to rape or kill anyone. I was searching for the way to an answer that would let me out of my real prison; my “dungeon”, as it were. But no amount of pleading, or rationalizing, or even good reasons could dissuade me from the one answer that overcame all attempts to change the course I was on. That one answer was simple and pure: I swore to myself that I would have my revenge, that I would make “them” pay for what they so ignorantly and so callously had done to me. It was that oath that gave me the will to live, and the desire to prosper, just so I could hurt those who hurt me, and my family. Justice is a cruel and demanding god, and one that is impossible to reason with. No real evil is ever done in the name of evil.

I was doing so well. I was honored as Rookie of the Year at Time Life Libraries. It seems I had a real knack for salesmanship. I averaged over $12 an hour with commissions, which was pretty good for someone fresh out of prison and no job history to speak of.

I also applied for a job with a Temp agency, and eventually got placed doing tech support for Microsoft’s Flight Simulator over the Christmas rush. My employer reports were so positive from that job that I got placed again almost immediately doing inside sales support for a medium sized software company in Brothel (just North of Seattle). They hired three temps to help with a new version release of their “Laplink” software, but they kept me on and even assigned me to a cubicle in with the regular sales staff after they let the other temps go. Amongst other things, I became the technical liaison between the sales staff and the new company-wide database technician. My job was to train the sales staff on how to use the new database software, and also relay the sales staff requests for changes and updates to the I.T. staff. This, and other aspects of my job, required me to communicate frequently with people from several different departments, including the CEO on at least one occasion. I was even invited once to a sales staff meeting in hopes that I could provide some “fresh input” of ideas (I didn’t), which really made me feel out of place, though honored at the same time. I never got invited again after that, but I did get invited to join the company softball team, which I did, and played several games that summer as a fielder.

Because of the increased income from the inside sales job (I never did any actual sales, I was more like support for the sales staff), I was able to afford a car. I bought a used (’87) Buick Skylark at a big used car sales event at the Northgate mall. Of course I did it by taking out a high-interest auto-loan, but I had a car! My first! (A week later I got a notice from the bank demanding a larger down-payment; money I didn’t have, and I almost died from the heartbreak of it. But my friend Dave bailed me out, not by loaning me the money for the larger down-payment, but instead by co-signing for the car, which satisfied the bank with his credit. Of course Dave got burned when I absconded with the car about a year later, but he was able to save his credit by just paying off the loan, and I eventually, though slowly, paid him back after I got out of prison and moved to Fargo.)

I loved my car, it had power everything, A/C, and the larger six-cylinder engine. The previous owner, literally a little old lady, who I met when she handed me complete service records from the day she bought it brand new, right down to every scheduled oil change and tired rotation. There was a design flaw in the engine mounts that caused the larger engine to vibrate the car at certain speeds, but other than that the car was in perfect condition. It was also the last piece of my plan that I needed to enact my revenge against society, and as such marked the beginning of the end of my parole.

With a car I had the mobility I needed to carry out my plan. And my plan was to establish a base of circumstances that would allow me to seek out and take advantage of any stray child I came across. This “stray child” strategy is a classic in the annals of nature making it a tried and true technique. I knew from studying police tactics and procedures that it is also almost impossible to get caught so long as you maintain stealth and distance (i.e. lack of connection to the “crime scene” and/or victim). The police rely on pure chance to solve crimes of opportunity like this. So, my plan was to reduce the odds; and a car was a huge odds reducer.

Another part of my plan was to act as soon as practical. I knew that the odds of completing my parole successfully were already against me. Being a model parolee helped reduce the odds of my being violated, but those odds were still high and against me. So, I knew I had to act quick, or lose my chance, possibly forever (note: I am relaying the frame of mind I was in at the time; the truth of all this is only relevant in so far as it is what I believed at the time – even though my current beliefs and understanding are quite different).

Interesting enough, though my focus back then was clearly on enacting my revenge much of the time, I still had a very active and sophisticated life in many other regards. Dave and I joined a club of gay couples that met monthly for social functions. I visited my mother in Tacoma often, and my sister in Poulsbo a little less often. I sometimes attended parties where I was invited by co-workers (at Time Life Libraries), and even got involved with a couple different women and lots of different men on occasion.

One of my parole conditions was that I enroll in an outpatient sex offender treatment program. At first I attended some weekly meetings held by a company that was founded by an x-con who got a doctorate degree in psychology and then started his company catering to sex offenders who were required (like me) to receive “sex offender treatment” as a parole/probation condition or court order. It quickly became clear to me that this was just another scam designed to get money for simply writing meaningless reports; in this case the reports were “treatment” reports to the parole/probation officers or court judges.

I never actually met the x-con himself. Even though he signed off on all the reports, they were actually written by one of several “therapists” who worked (or rather, did all the work) for him. In my case the therapist was an extremely manipulative and domineering woman with (to me at least) very obvious dominance issues over men. She ran the group meeting like a psychological dominatrix, controlling every aspect, and even steering the conversations with obvious manipulative tactics in order to get the men to say what she needed them to say for her reports. If anyone failed to cooperate, like me for instance, she would stir the group into a frenzied and practiced attack on that person’s position, whatever it might be.

I couldn’t believe the kind of garbage therapy she was dishing out for those men. Just for example, I remember one man disclosing to her (in group) that he had had anonymous sex with men in a public park. Her advice was to seek anonymous sex at a sex club instead. She referred to this as a “responsible alternative”.

At the time I had never heard of either (public sex or sex clubs; yes, I was that naïve; remember, I had been incarcerated since I was 16, and a very inexperienced 16 at that). So for me it was all food for my own perversions (i.e. it made me “sicker”).

I ended up getting permission from my parole officer to change to a private therapist who specialized in therapy for gay men, not sex offenders. His rates were a bit higher, but the sessions were one-on-one, much closer to where I lived (the previous meetings were in Bellevue, a long bus ride at the time for me, and late in the evening so if I missed my bus I wouldn’t be able to get home), and less frequent (monthly instead of weekly).

Most parole officers would never have approved such a change. But my first parole officer in Seattle was close to retirement and more interested in treating his charges like human beings than x-cons. I really respected him for this. I had to switch to a downtown parole officer when I moved out of the I.T. House into the Tuscany apartment, so I only had him for short time. But I honestly believe that he was the one who really made me question my need for revenge against society. Not that I ever spoke to him about it, but the way he spoke to me, and treated me, made me feel welcomed and wanted. I really think that if I could have kept him as my parole officer that I might have actually successfully completed my parole (i.e. gave up my desire for revenge and become a “responsible” member of society). I make this claim based on the fact that every time I chose the path of revenge (or, “justice” as it is often called from the other side of the fence) I did so as a direct consequence of some major rejection. So, feeling wanted and accepted, especially by an official officer of society, really made a big difference in how I felt in general, the choices I made, and in my overall reaction to any rejections I experienced.

The subsequent parole officers I was assigned to treated me like an x-con, always with suspicion and cold detachment. Shortly after my move to the Tuscany and getting a new parole officer (my first parole officer actually vouched for me so I could get into the Tuscany, and the manager --- a restricted marine who, along with his wife, became my friends and invited me over for dinner on occasion --- told me later that when he found out I was a sex offender he was going to reject my application, until my parole officer convinced him to give me a chance; any other parole officer would have remained “neutral” in a situation like that and I would have been rejected once again) I was soon visiting public parks at night looking for some anonymous “acceptance” that I desperately needed just to feel “normal”. I did this, of course, without telling anyone, not even my lover, Dave. I always used “protection” at least, and the cops, undercover or not, were always so obvious I could avoid them easily. The only real threat was getting mugged or otherwise assaulted, but that was a threat no matter what I was doing (and it only happened once, when a man decided he wasn’t finished pleasuring himself after I was, so he grabbed my privates to prevent me from leaving and I just coldly told him, “If you don’t let go, in three seconds I’m going to break your neck.” He calculated the threat for two seconds, then let go, and that was that). I never took risks with STDs, by not using a condom for example, and I always made sure there was enough light so I could inspect the bodies I had sex with before doing so. And I never caught so much as crabs or anything else, which I admit was some luck, but mostly caution (you might be surprised to learn how cautious most other men were as well, the in-cautious ones don’t last long by virtue of simple natural selection at work).

I got along so well with the “gay therapist” that he invited me to attend an annual retreat that he held for select clients, all expenses paid! This was shortly after I had bought my car, but still living in the Tuscany apartment. The therapist convinced me to leave my car in the garage (a small parking space that cost me an additional $120 a month in the basement of the Tuscany) and car pool with another one of his clients, Dave “Wingy” Wingert, who turned out to be a popular day-time radio show host for one of the biggest stations in Seattle. I had never heard of him before (I wasn’t much into day-time radio) but he was nice and we got along famously (get it? “famously”?). He had just bought a “pre-owned” Lexus, and was happy to take it out for a stretch, and “share the wealth”, so to speak, with someone less fortunate. (Actually, for what he told me he paid for the only slightly used Lexus I wasn’t very impressed. It seemed to me that the main “feature” of the car was the name, “Lexus”. My Buick Skylark had everything his Lexus had, except the price tag and the name brand.)

The retreat was on the Eastern slopes of the Cascade mountain range, in a modern cabin next to a stream set in the forest, but with several other similar cabins all neatly lined up in a row along the stream; extremely bourgeois. We slept in our own sleeping bags (one of the “must bring” items) on narrow bunks that seemed to occupy odd places throughout the cabin (like along the stairs, and in the upstairs foyer). There were about ten or eleven other “clients” in attendance, and the activities as I recall centered around group meetings in the cabin dayroom (though instead of sitting around in chairs arranged in a circle like some typical therapy group we sat on far more comfortable cabin furniture arrange haphazardly).

Aside from “Wingy” and the therapist (whose name I just remembered was Glen), there were only two other men at this retreat who stand out in my memory. The first was the top psychiatrist from the University of Washington’s psychological trauma research center, who despite the retreat “rule” of no sex, screwed my brains out several times over that weekend (when I tried to apologize to Glen later about so flagrantly break the rules he said, “No problem”. The other retreat members, who couldn’t avoid knowing that we were having sex every chance we got, thought it was “very romantic”. Glen was referring to the fact that on the second night of the retreat, the professor and I shared the same sleeping bag outside on the back porch, “under the stars”. Of course the real reason we slept “under the stars” was so we could have a little privacy to do, you know what!).

It seems I have a thing for successful doctors, as I’ve had flings with several over the years. Or, maybe it's they who have a “thing” for me; I don’t know. All I know is that when someone tells me they’re a doctor I become like putty for them to do with what they like. (I wonder now how much that has to do with the fact that my very first orgasm, at the age of thirteen, was at the hands of a doctors as I lay with my pants down on his examining table while he masturbated me. When it happened I had no idea what an orgasm was, so I had no idea I was technically being “molested”: all I knew was that it felt good; very, very good.) Needless to say, I didn’t initiate anything with the doctor at this retreat, I just went along with whatever he wanted, and that seemed to turn him on more than anything. I admit though, I was certainly turned on as well. Not only because he was a successful doctor, but also because he was tall (taller than me by several inches; hence over 6’3”), muscular, and good-looking, which made him practically irresistible to my libido (which he seemed to know well). I saw him a couple of times more after the retreat, but as it turned out our personalities clashed (we were both sexual narcissists), so it never went any further than that.

The other man that I remember from this retreat was a short overweight balding man. He was also, I found out later, the wealthiest man there. I was told that he was the owner and CEO of a mid-sized manufacturing company in Seattle with over a thousand employees. But that’s not the reason I remember him (money has never impressed me much, especially not at that point in my life). What I remember about him is what he said to me during a trust-building exercise that Glen asked us to do as part of the retreat.

It was in the afternoon of the second day (a Saturday), before the doctor and I had had a chance to get really steamy (that happened Saturday evening). Glen had asked everyone to pair off in twos, and I was approached by this fat bald guy and asked I I’d be his partner for the exercise. I agreed for no particular reason, and then Glen instructed everybody to find a private space to talk, and to share a secret with each other.

My “partner” and I headed out back down toward the stream. I honestly don’t remember what “secret” I shared with him (though it certainly wasn’t anything about the contents of my “dungeon”) but his “secret” stands as one of the many shocking revelations I received relatively late in my life. This man, this multi-millionaire and CEO of his own successful company, told me, the x-con/sex offender (by this time I had already voluntarily disclosed that information), that he secretly wished he could be a popular and likeable person, like me!

Like me?!

I was flabbergasted! Everyone else at this retreat were very successful gay members of society. I was a social outcast invited on a whim by a therapist who probably just wanted to fill an empty bunk (that’s what I thought at the time, but I realized later that Glen genuinely respected me as a person and knew I would be accepted by these men for who I was, which he thought would be “therapeutic” for me; Glen was one of those rare souls who understood naturally what a person needs to “heal”). Once more I was learning that the negative way in which I saw myself wasn’t how other people saw me. I grew up believing I was an ugly child, but all my childhood pictures show a genuinely beautiful and healthy boy! I thought I was stupid too, and a slow learner. But even though I had only completed the ninth-grade when I got to prison all the academic level tests showed me to be at college levels for all categories! And now, after believing all my life that I was an unlikeable “dork”, I was being told by a man with no ulterior motives that I was popular, and likeable! Wow!

I actually ended up consoling this guy with platitudes that emphasized the fact that I did not see myself as popular at all, and if I were, then there was certainly nothing to be desired about it since I could perceive no benefits from being so. But his “secret” stuck with me, and has helped open my eyes to how I so often deceive myself, both positively and negatively, ever since.

As I already mentioned, throughout all my adventures on parole in Seattle I was constantly struggling with the “monster” that lurked menacingly in the dungeon of my mind. I had never anticipated such a struggle to ensue and was quite unprepared for it. The question remained: Should I compromise my private principles by breaking such a sacred promise to myself; the promise that “kept me alive” all those years of unjust torment, the promise to get even? Or, should I take my revenge as planned, without remorse, and with clear conscience? There were a couple of incidents that finally pushed me over the ledge of retribution, but in hindsight I was destined to be pushed over that ledge one way or another by sheer proximity alone. It’s one thing to visit the edge, look down, then back away. It’s completely another to just stand there, looking both ways over and over, trying to decide whether or not to jump, until it’s too late.

Well, not surprisingly, I didn’t jump. I got pushed. And one of the people who pushed me was the new polygraph examiner. He was an x-cop, and unlike the previous examiner, who seemed to actually want to help a parolee pass their routine exams, this pig clearly brought his “good guy, bad guy” attitude with him into the exam room, and all x-cons --- as far as he was concerned --- were the bad guys.

I only ended up being examined by him twice, and both times he pushed and pushed and pushed, until he had what he wanted; proof that I was a “bad guy”.

The first time he examined me caught me completely off guard. Though I had been struggling with my conscience, I had not yet done anything that could seriously be considered a real violation of my parole. This x-cop decided otherwise. During the pre-exam interview I disclosed to him (thinking he’d be on my side) that I had accidently picked up my brother’s handgun, which he had removed from his belt and set next to the computer in my apartment during a visit. I explained that the holster it was in looked like a triangular wallet, and completely concealed the weapon inside. I told the examiner that I didn’t realize it was my brother’s gun (which I knew he was licensed to carry concealed) until I felt the weight of it in my hand, at which time I scolded my brother for even having it in my apartment, and asked him to take it out and lock it in his car.

Now, I’m tempted here to leave my story about “the gun incident” just as I told that x-cop examiner. But, the truth is that in an effort to befriend my brother during the visit I had expressed an interest in his gun, that I knew he was very proud of and always had on him. I asked him to show it to me, at which point he removed it from the holster, ejected the clip, insured the champer was empty, then handed it to me unloaded. I feigned fascination for his sake, then handed it back. I then explained to my brother that even being near a gun could potentially get me in trouble, and asked him not to bring it, or at least not mention it, when he visits. The only reason I told the polygraph examiner anything was to avoid a “fail” on a question like, “Have you touched a gun or any other weapon in violation of your parole?”

Well, I actually passed that particular polygraph exam, but that oinker filed a report about the “gun incident”, calling it a “parole violation” and possible criminal offense. The exam was on a Friday evening, so I had to go the entire weekend thinking I would be arrested on the violation on Monday, as soon as my parole officer saw the report. That was all the “push” I needed. Even though on Monday, when I called my P.O. to get the bad news, she told me not to worry about it. She said she had to submit the report to the parole board, but that she was recommending no violation. I thought I “skated” on that one, but the close call only reminded me of how terribly easy it would be for me to get violated for some completely stupid and unexpected reason at any time, in spite of all my efforts to be a model parolee.

When the parole board saw the report they ordered that I be arrested and held for a violation hearing. But, that was many months (as I recall) later. In the meantime I had gotten the push I needed to step up my plans for personal justice before I lost my chance, possibly forever. (A “deadly weapon” possession charge could send me back to prison for at least ten years, or more, and Washington state was notorious for taking criminal charges to the extreme limits. They once convicted a man for manslaughter after he was arrested for eluding the police, because one of the “investigating officers” at the arrest scene walked off a cliff in the dark and fell to his death, while the suspect sat handcuffed in the back of a squad car! And that’s just one example of the state’s insane lust for what I calls “justice”. So in my mind I had good reason to fear being arrested at any time for almost anything, just because in the state’s mind I was a “criminal” and therefor fair game).

Consequently I redoubled my efforts to find a vulnerable child to kidnap, rape, and murder (because that’s exactly what I felt was “expected” from me, or at least “feared”; thus making it the most potent “punishment” I could invoke personally against my most feared and hated enemy, the “faceless” society that condemned me as a child and took my life away before I even understood what life was) as my “poetic” revenge. Any question of ever being able to forgive “them” and move on with my life was answered by that x-cop polygraph examiner’s accusations: NO! He made it imminently clear that I could never have my life back, that I would never be accepted by society no matter how hard I tried to be “normal”. And worst of all, that I would always be forced to live in fear of my prison nightmare happening all over again, at any time, for any reason. That “pig” being the pig he was, accomplished exactly what he wanted, to make me feel HIS power and control over my life, and my lack of power and control over my own life. That’s what pigs do, ignorantly believing that their imposed dominance will somehow make things better, and completely ignoring the so very obvious fact that it consistently only makes things worse. (My first parole officer was no such pig. More people like him in positions of “authority” in this world would make for far fewer people like me.)

(I should emphasize again, that I am relaying my thinking at that time as best as I can, and that this is not necessarily my thinking now; i.e. I have since broadened my understanding, to say least.)

I got my chance on July 5^th, 1996. It was just a week before I was planning to move in with a couple of gay meth-heads, paying them $250 a month for an extra room in the house they rented together right on the North Seattle city limit line. The move was meant to save money. Rent had gone up at the Tuscany, and the expense of a parking space, not to mention the car itself, was a little more than I could afford; I had bit off more than I could chew, and this move was my first step backward from all the progress I had been making until then.

Joe and Ed tried real hard to be accepted as a regular gay couple. My friend, Dave, had met them, apparently the same way he met me, through a personal ad in the Seattle Gay News (I don’t remember ever asking whose ad it was, but I’m sure it was Dave’s). I never used meth with them, and they kept their meth use to themselves. But we smoked a lot of pot together.

But, before I moved in I was in their neighborhood visiting my lady-friend, Dee. I picked her up at her home, took her to a Dairy Queen restaurant, and bought enough ice cream for her and her family (two young girls and estranged husband, who stayed home) and a sundae for myself. When I dropped her off back at her house (she lived about five blocks west of Joe and Ed’s house just across Aurora Avenue) her husband, Lee, came outside and started yelling at me for taking Dee away from her family obligations. Instead of just driving away, as Dee tried to get me to do, I rolled down my window and invited him to say his piece.

Apparently he, Dee, and the girls, had planned to watch a rented movie together as a family when I showed up “out of the blue”; and ran off with the children’s mother. I listened to his complaint patiently, but instead of defending myself, or Dee, I simply told him that his was a grown woman responsible for her own choices, and if he had any issues with her decisions then he needed to talk to her, not me. I have to give the man some respect though, because as clearly offended as he rightfully was, he was still able to see the logic in my reasoning, and promptly aborted his verbal assault on me and went inside, presumably to finish the conversation with Dee. (I actually spoke to Dee about this whole incident later, and told her that I had to take sides against her in that case: she should have put her family ahead of me, and I made sure she understood that in the future I hoped she would.)

So anyway, after dropping Dee off I drove onto Aurora Avenue, but instead of heading home downtown I decided to find someplace to pull over so I could eat my ice cream before it melted. I spotted some children out in front of a motel at the same time and decided to park across the Avenue in an empty parking lot from where I could see the motel as I ate my ice cream. By the time I had parked in a secluded enough spot I could no longer see any children at the motel, but the main reason I stopped was to enjoy my sundae, so that’s what I did.

What happened next was a point of no return in the tragic course of my life. My struggle to decide if I would take revenge, and become the child rapist/killer that society feared and expected at the same time, seemed to finally resolve itself (though, as I have admitted many times since, I actually made the decision long before it became evident to me).

As I sat quietly enjoying my ice cream, I saw two young girls suddenly appear out of nowhere and dart across the five lanes of Aurora Avenue almost directly in front of me. They crossed the road coming in my direction, but then quickly passed out of my view to my right because I was parked right next to a building (to be in its shadow). But, it was clear to me that they were unescorted and up to some sort of mischief.

I remember clearly the thought that went thought my head at that very moment: “You stupid little girls!”

I opened my door and dropped the remains of the sundae on the concrete, then started the car and pulled onto Aurora in their direction. I saw them walking hurriedly on the shoulder and then as I drove past they veered off the road completely and into the shadows between two closed business buildings. I knew if I could catch them there they’d be mine, free and clear; nobody would see anything.

Everything seemed to just fall into place for me to kidnap those girls. I pulled around the block and parked in the shadows of some tall bushes on a side street behind the businesses where I saw the girls disappear. Then I got out and walked half a block to where I thought they’d be. But, when I got there the girls were nowhere in sight. So I quickly gave up and headed back for my car, and that was when I spotted them climbing over a low concrete wall coming out from behind another closed business. They were directly in front of me and I had caught them in the act of trespassing; stupid little girls indeed!

No planned kidnapping could ever have worked out so perfectly. I had only tell the girls that I owned the property that they were just caught trespassing on, and that gave me all the “authority” I needed to accost and question them. I ordered them back behind the building that they had just come from, under the pretense that I wanted to see what they were doing back there. Then I asked several questions to determine exactly how vulnerable they were: Where do you live? At the motel across the avenue. Why are you here? Our brother sent us out to buy cigarettes from the vending machine in the lobby, but we wanted to explore. Where is your mother? She’s playing bingo. What are your names? I’m Carmen, she’s Sammiejo. We’re half-sisters (though Carmen was clearly the younger of the two, she was the dominant and assertive one). How old are you? I’m nine; I’m eleven. Do you realize how much trouble you are in right now? No answer, just wide eyes.

It so happened that I had parked my car directly next to the place where the narrow alley behind the building (where the girls were) came out to the side street, and in a shadow, so it was easy to get the girls into my car with no chance of anyone seeing anything. I told the girls I was only going to teach them a lesson, but I already knew by this point that I was going to rape and kill them both, all according to plan. Justice was to be had after all!

I drove the girls --- both crouched on the floor of the car --- out to a location in Bothell near to where I worked for the software company. It was an abandoned farm house that I’d found on a lunch break once while driving around for the fun of it. I parked behind the house, then told the girls they could get up off the floor. Sammiejo sat up front with me and Carmen was in the backseat. I remember there was a full moon that night and as I sat waiting to make sure all was quiet (and that I hadn’t been followed by the cop car I saw a few moments before), Sammiejoe asked some childish question about the moon and I answered as if she were a niece and we were just spending some family time together.

At one point Sammiejo insisted that she saw someone, “or maybe a ghost” in a darkened window of the house out in front of the car. I thought it was just her childish imagination at the time and completely dismissed the notion that we weren’t alone. I found out years later that there was in fact a homeless woman in the house at the time, and she saw me in the car but thought only that we were young lovers looking for privacy from our parents. She gave the police a very vague description of me and my car when she came forward after seeing the publicity about the bodies being found in a shallow grave over a year later by a construction crew that was clearing the land for a new office building.

After I tried (and failed) to rape the girls inside the abandoned house (still oblivious to the woman inside also), I masturbated to achieve climax, then took the girls into a patch of trees next to the house and killed them as quickly and cleanly as I could. Then I hid their bodies in some berry briars, wrapped the VHS-C tape I had made in an oily rag and hid it in the engine compartment under the hood (in case I got pulled over on the way home – a pretty stupid thing to do I realize now), then drove back to my apartment at the Tuscany. (I hid the video tape under a false step in my apartment, but only kept it a few days before I destroyed it in the microwave and threw it away). I didn’t keep any other souvenirs.

The next day was a Saturday. I drove back out to Bothell to make sure there was nothing happening around the abandoned farm house. Then I stopped at a Home Depot and bought and pick and shovel (again, stupidly). Then I drove home and waited until the wee hours of the next morning (2 or 3 a.m.) before driving back to the farm house, and burying the girls beneath a pile of old rotting wood. (I used the pile of wood to cover any signs of that something had been buried there.) Then I hid the shovel and pick in the abandoned barn that stood about 50 yards from the house, and went home again, exhausted.

The missing girls were in the news, but there was a lot of speculation that they had run away. That week my parole officer came to see me at work (something she had never done before) and she brought a “trainee” with her for the interview. We met at a cafeteria near the officer where I worked and she asked me a bunch of questions about why I had asked permission to visit my father in Nevada on short notice. I told her that my grandmother had fallen ill (she had) and I wanted to offer help and support during the crisis. Of course the real reason I wanted to go was to get as far away from the crime scene as possible (another stupid move), which I knew she suspected. I also knew that the man with her was no trainee. He sat quietly the whole time, clearly paying careful attention to me, but not acting nervous or apologetic the way a normal trainee would. Besides, I had never heard of parole officer trainees, and doubted if there even was such a thing. Of course he was a detective, and they we rechecking me out as a possible suspect. I’m sure that if they knew how close we were to those little girls’ bodies as we ate lunch that day I would have been more than a casual suspect. But, they didn’t know, and my nonchalance about the whole meeting seemed to put them both at ease. I know now, from Federal court proceedings more than ten years later, that I never became a serious suspect in this case, not even after the bodies were found (at which time I was in the King County jail, in Seattle, for absconding parole, and they “investigated” me again as a possible suspect, again under a transparent “cover”, (i.e. pretending to be another inmate that I could tell was a cop almost as soon as I saw him because of the way he acted all wrong), and I again played it off nonchalantly and this never became a serious suspect).

A couple of weeks later I moved in with Joe and Ed and gave up my Tuscany studio. This was a definite step backwards that totally disrupted all the progress I had been making before. I started getting high with my new roommates almost every day, which of course resulted in my getting a “dirty U.A.” (urine analysis) for cannabis (I’ve never used meth in my life, despite what some of my “official” records assume), which in itself is not enough to get my parole revoked, but the gun incident with my brother was.

Joe and Ed, as I have already mentioned, were a gay couple. I’m not really sure about what that means though. I only actually had sex with them once, upon Joe’s invitation. But, I’m not really sure if I’d call what we did “sex”. They were into weird stuff that I’d only read a little about in novels once in a while, but never took an active interest in myself. They must have sensed my disinterest, because I never got invited to have “sex” with them again.

Because I now lived about 20 miles from downtown, and away from all of my favorite anonymous sex parks, I started frequenting a nearby park, that was usually completely deserted at night when I liked to go. I would park in a secluded location then go into the woods and take off my clothes then run around naked and masturbate to fantasies of letting men I meet use me for sex. It remained a mere fantasy, for that particular park at least, but it was more than enough to keep me sexually satisfied.

On Halloween my “girlfriend” Dee stopped by Joe and Ed’s house so she and her girls could show off their costumes. They came inside and visited for less than ten minutes in the living room only. Apparently because I stayed (and didn’t run out the back door or something) after the children arrived I had violated another condition of my parole (i.e. no contact with minors without prior approval). Actually, the violation hinged on the fact that I greeted them and complimented them on their costumes. My parole officer had told me previously that some brief contact with minors was okay, as long as I did not initiate it or prolong it. I felt well within those limitations during this visit, but that pig polygraph examiner apparently felt otherwise and put it down as another violation in his report.

So, one day I got a call at work from my parole officer asking me to come to her office that afternoon. I had to leave work early to make the unusual appointment, which I did. And when I arrived at her office two policemen were waiting to arrest me for violating parole. My parole officer apologized for the arrest explaining she got orders from the parole board against her recommendations, to have me arrested. She said I would be held until I could have a parole hearing (about a month), and she assured me that she was on my side.

I was held in the King County Jail for one day, and then, to my great surprise, and horror, I was unceremoniously transported on the prison bus to the Receiving Center in Shelton, Washington. That was the place where the nightmare of my incarceration really began, where I was beat up and repeatedly raped as a kid, and where I first discovered the true meaning of despair. It was the place where the very foundation of my rage was laid, and returning me there now was like pouring gas on an ember that I had hoped to let die after I’d killed those girls and vented the bulk of my rage against society. It seems now, in hindsight, as though some sinister plan had been laid and my rage was intentionally refueled by sending me to Shelton for that month to await my fate once more before the parole board. Being there made me feel like the nightmare was starting all over against from the beginning, and that it would never truly end.

But, I kept calm, and stayed out of trouble, even passing up a pinner (marijuana joint) that someone offered me out of sheer respect for the queen they knew me to be (I wasn’t being flamboyant at this point, nor even looking for sex, but I was well known throughout the state prisons as “Jazzi” and my reputation apparently carried in my absence).

They moved a man into my cell the first week I was there whom I knew to be an informant from my connections in the past. But, he didn’t know that I knew, so when he started pumping me for information about my activities on the streets I kept the information I gave him on the up-and-up, and “confessed” to things that weren’t really illegal in order to make him think he had my confidence. I’m not sure, but there’s a good chance that the whole “violation” arrest was a ploy on part of the police and parole office just to get me in a cell with this rat so he could feel me out on the two girls who were still missing. He was obviously pumping me for information, and the story he gave for why he himself was violated was obviously contrived (I didn’t ask, but he insisted on telling me, a sure sign that he was on the make).

But, I was well aware of such tricks, and whether he was on an assignment specifically aimed at me, or just pumping me for info on G.P., didn’t matter because I didn’t tell him anything genuinely incriminating. And when I saw the parole board after one month they reinstated my parole, with some superficial new conditions (to make it look good I suppose) and let me go. The only problem was now I was so angry, and terrified at the same time, that there was no chance in hell I was gonna finish my parole.

From the very moment I walked out of that jail (they’d brought me back to Seattle for the parole hearing, so I was released from the County Jail immediately, after the hearing) I knew I wasn’t going to stick around, and I knew that another serving of “justice” was in order.

Because of the parole violation I lost my job as an Inside Sales Rep Liaison at the software company. But the Temp agency quickly placed me with another Web-based software company called iCat (which has since gone defunct and now a new and completely different company has that same name) located on two floors of the Seattle City Centre Building downtown, one of the most beautiful office buildings in the city! The new job didn’t pay as much, but I was very proud to work in that building. I was hired to process data from customers that the company collected from their Website, and to call and interview customers about their use and satisfaction with the company’s flagship product (Internet Catalog software, thus the name iCat, pronounced “eye-cat”). I was actually given responsibility for the entire interview process, including what questions to ask. I used my telemarketing skills to develop a fixed script that I typed up and submitted to my supervisor. They were so impressed by the job I did, and the results I was getting (i.e. useful customer feedback), that they brought in two more temps from the temp agency and put me in charge of them. I trained them, much as I had been trained at Time Life Libraries, and supervised their calls fulltime (i.e. I no longer made customer calls myself) and collated the data they generated. I was also given more responsibility for generating other reports from the web data that went straight to the sales V.P., which I handed to him personally once a week. I actually improved the report in ways that got me some kudos from the V.P. himself.

But, the job still didn’t pay much (only about ten dollars an hour if I remember right), so I decided to go back to Time Life Libraries part time as well, so I’d have enough income to build the capital I needed to abscond (I figured I needed at least a few thousand dollars if I wanted to make a good run for it, i.e. last long enough to complete my revenge!).

Of course, I was still getting high (marijuana only) almost every day with Joe and Ed, even though one of the new conditions of my parole said that if I got another dirty urine test I would be automatically violated. But, I had no intention of sticking around long enough to get another piss test. But my parole officer must have sensed my skittishness --- it couldn’t have been too hard for her to miss --- and she ordered another U.A. sooner than I expected.

I had only been back out for a couple of months and had only saved up just under two-thousand dollars from working two jobs. I pissed dirty on a Friday, and by the time my parole officer showed up at Joe and Ed’s house with two cops to have me arrested on Monday morning I was no longer even in the state of Washington.

Once I left the state without permission I was officially an escape and no longer considered to be in custody. So everything that happened next, including the kidnap, rape, and murder of a ten-year-old Southern California boy named Anthony, won’t be included in this “What Happened In Prison”-series. Instead, I’ll pick up again, with Part VII – The Last Laugh, when I am arrested again in Missouri and taken back to prison in Washington to skip through the last three years of my 20-year-sentence, and “maxing out” to be released with no more parole. I call it “The Last Laugh” because I knew I had taken my revenge and killed three innocent children, and yet I was released after just three years with no parole!

Even one day of freedom after the crimes I had committed would have been enough to make me laugh victoriously; I had almost five years of underserved freedom before the system once more reminded me that laughing was not allowed for people like me, and I lashed out once more…

But, that’s another confession altogether.