I pick up and finish off this summary
of my first (20-year) prison experience after I was arrested again in
Kansas City, MO at my step-sister's townhouse apartment, where I was
living with her and her two beautiful young children (never molested,
by me at least). If you remember, I had absconded while on parole in
Seattle, WA and a few days later kidnapped, raped, and murdered a
ten-year-old boy in California. Then I spent the next few months
driving around the country staying with friends and family and
eventually ending up in Kansas City with my step-sister. (Oh, and for
all those people who «don't understand» how I can talk about such
things so «casually»; yes, I feel bad, but I'm not looking for
sympathy --- not much point there --- I'm focused solely on
presenting the truth, as it happened; my present thoughts and
feelings about all this are irrelevant.)
My step-sister, Tammy, had arranged the
arrest with the police in Kansas City, but only after she had been
contacted by them (i.e. she didn't turn exactly turn me in). I was
arrested without incident at her front door, which I had just
answered when the bell rang. I was held for a week or so in the KC
jail, then picked up and escorted in cuffs back to Washington state
by two Department of Corrections officers via commercial jet (from KC
to Minneapolis, and then from there on to SeaTac). They then drove me
in their state Crown-Vic («The last rear-wheel drive sedan made in
America», one of the transport guards proudly told me) back down to
the Shelton receiving center, processed me through the front entrance
after hours, and put me in a cell.
I sat in «R-3», population for about
two months (if I recall) until I scared a big black snitch into
telling the guards that I was pressuring him for sex. Seriously! He
must have outweighed me by a hundred pounds, at least! But, one day I
told him, «Look, your breath stinks up this entire cell. So, please,
brush your teeth or we're going to fight; because I'd rather get my
ass kicked than put up with your stinkin' breath.» That's honestly
all I told him. I figured he was big enough to kick my ass if he
wanted, but I also guessed that he was a punk, more scared of me than
i was of him. I didn't expect him to squeal like a pig though.
The guards took me to the hole and
wrote me up for pressuring that fat ass rat for sex. When the FBI
contacted him after my most recent arrest in order to get him to
testify how I «pressured him for sex» (to convince the jury that I
should be killed and not sent to prison), he admitted that he made it
up in order to get me out of the cell. A lot of good that did me back
then. I sat in the hole for another three months or so before finally
getting sent to Twin Rivers Correctional Center (TRCC) in Monroe, WA.
But, before the transfer I had a few
visits from my physician friend, whom I had met in a «coffee shop»
in San Francisco (we really met in a gay bar on Polk Street, but he
told the Parole Board that we met in a coffee shop and that his
interest in me was purely altruistic, yeah, right). Rich used his
doctor credentials to arrange a private one-on-one «contact visit»
(i.e. no glass between us) in a conference room in the administration
building. He also arranged for another «sex offender» specialist,
Dr. White, to do a private evaluation of me, with polygraph exam and
the whole nine.
I didn't pass the polygraph exam, but I
didn't fail either. The results were «non-conclusive» on two
questions («Have you ever committed any sex crimes?» and «Are you
attempting to deceive this examiner?», if I recall). Dr. White
concluded that I was nervous, but being remarkably honest. He wrote
the report that my physician friend, Rich, paid him well to write,
but it didn't impress the Parole Board, so they «maxed me out» when
I saw them (i.e. set my release date equal to the maximum, which was
20 years minus my time on the lamb). They even refused to give me
credit for the time I spent in juvenile before I was declined to
adult status merely because the juvenile facility where I had been
held had lost their records in a fire (something that happens an
awfully lot in government offices).
TRCC was the state's sex offender
prison. Not everyone there was a sex offender, though. Only one of
the four main housing units was used for the SOTP (Sex Offender
Treatment Program). I was housed in the unit furthest away from that
one. I was known throughout the Washington state prison system as
«Jazzi Jet» (or just «Jazzi», mostly), Big Al's Girl. So there
were plenty of prisoners even at TRCC who knew me, some personally,
but mostly by reputation. The amazing thing was that nobody knew I
was a sex offender! Or, at least nobody ever told me they knew, even
if they suspected otherwise.
As was my habit, the first place I
visited after arriving at TRCC was the education department. I
inquired about what classes they had available, but all their classes
had long waiting lists. So, not one to be deterred by rules, or
waiting lists, I just started going each day to the computer lab,
blending in with the other students, and began insinuating myself
with the instructor, Mr. Gillis, and his T.A. inmates. They figured
out pretty quick that I had «skills» that they could use, of
course, and put me to work, off the record. I ended up developing a
computer-based course on basic programming that was so automated that
Mr. Gillis told me he was still using it years later after I got out
of prison (I had contacted him as a reference). (By «automated» I
mean that all the lessons and tests were done online by the students
over the intranet in the computer lab, and at the end of each
quarter the program would generate a report showing all the students
grades and scores so Mr. Gillis could just plug them into his own
reports.) It was a very popular course with the other prisoners.
I got in one fight while at TRCC. I got
celled with a young Native American kid with a chip on his shoulder
for all «white men». He tried to tell me how to do my time (a
well-known prison taboo – you never tell someone else how to do
their time, unless they're your punk, of course) by telling me that I
had to take two showers a day (he was a clean-freak). He even tried
to tell me when I had to take my showers. I told him to fuck off, of
course, and, well, to make a long story short, one day I deliberately
walked on the cell floor he had just freshly mopped, and he got mad
and punched me in the face. I didn't hit him back, though. His punch
was weak and ineffective (i.e. it didn't hurt or daze me at all). So
I actually just stood there and let him punch me (ineffectively)
again. And then I walked down to the guard station and told them,
«Something's wrong with my celly, he's freakin' out in the cell.»
Oh, wait, I almost forgot. I didn't hit
him, but I did throw a cup of hot coffee on him that I had been
holding when he hit me the first time. So, anyway, when the guards
went to go «check» on my celly, he thought I had ratted on him
(which I hadn't, at least, not technically). So when they asked him
what was the matter, he blurted out, «He threw coffee on me, so I
hit him!»
Essentially I had tricked him into
ratting on himself. But, the guards interpreted it as a «fight»,
so we both went to the hole for fighting. After I got out of the hole
I saw him in the gym (they'd moved him to another housing unit but
left me in the same one), and he just nodded to me respectfully. (It
couldn't have been too hard for him to figure out that he ratted
himself off, and me, at the same time from the guard's reports of
what he said and what I said. So, I assume he was just letting me
know, «You got me», with his respectful nod --- but I could just
be stroking myself, since we never actually spoke after.)
Rich helped me request my transcripts
from Walla Walla Community College, where I was just one course shy
of finishing my A.A. degree (the degree that the parole board
prevented me from finishing by sending me to camp before I was
released on parole several years earlier). He then paid for a
correspondence course (on writing) that gave me the credits I needed
for the degree in General Studies (my second A.A. degree earned in
prison). (I ended up writing a research paper on the decline of
prison education programs and how numerous studies concur that such
decline only increases recidivism rates far beyond the cost of the
programs that were being cut, supposedly to save money!)
Then, after a couple of years, and less
than a year shy of my max-out release date, they told me it was time
for me to enter the Sex Offender Treatment Program. I refused,
because I knew a bureaucratic trap when I saw one. If I entered the
program and co-operated, by admitting my sexual desire for children,
they'd use that against me for civil commitment (to keep me locked up
as a dangerous sex offender). And if I entered the program but
refused to admit my desire for children, the «doctors» would claim
this made me even more dangerous, and I'd still be civilly committed.
But, if I refused the program then the doctors couldn't say anything,
except what was already on record. And because I was only 16 years
old, and my victim was 14 years old, they could not legally call me a
pedophile. So, as long as I stayed out of the SOTP, I could not be
civilly committed. In other words – the system was designed so I
could only get released if I didn't get «treatment». Go figure!
Because I refused treatment they
transferred me to the Correction Center in Spokane, WA. That's where
Big Al was! I hadn't seen him in years, since before my parole in '94
(it was now '99). Also, in Spokane (I don't recall the name of this
CC), there was a special software development program in the
education department that had ties with the computer lav at TRCC.
When I told the inmates in this program that I knew their
counterparts from Twin Rivers, they weren't very impressed. But, they
let me take a skill test anyway. The next day they hired me (I only
missed one question on their test, and nobody else had ever come
close to even passing it before, not even the other inmates who were
in the special program). The project was funded by a grant (from the
DOE, if I recall) and consisted of a team of prisoners who planned
and developed a «Competency Based Training» computer program that
would supposedly be used in institutional education programs to help
track and facilitate the idea of inmates training inmates. I was put
in charge (officially) of «Quality Control», but that basically
meant that I would work with the other prisoners to help them do
their part of the coding, which in most cases they couldn't do by
themselves.
So, I spent all my time there working
happily on that project, and visiting with Big Al when I could in the
chapel (because we were housed in separated units the only way we
could visit was in the chapel). I also was required to take a «drug
class» that I thought was a huge waste of time, but they threatened
to remove me from the programming team if I didn't attend. So, of
course, I did.
And then one day I got called back to
my housing unit unexpectedly, and told to pack up my stuff, I was
being released on a court order. Rich had hired a lawyer who filed a
«Personal Restraint Petition» so I could get those six months of
lost juvenile time served credit. That put me well past my max-out
date, so the judge ordered that I be released immediately.
As I was actually carrying my box of
stuff to «Receiving» to be processed out, I saw Big Al on the
walkway and ran over to tell him the news and give him a big hug
goodbye. It was extremely surreal, to say the least. In all the years
I'd been in prison in Washington state, I was in a total of no less
than four different prisons with Big Al, and in three of those we
were cellmates! And now, I get to hug him goodbye, by some «chance»
on the very last day, and my very last minutes, of all those years!
Totally bizarre! (And judging by the way he kept looking at me, with
total disbelief as well, I'd say he felt the same way.)
They gave me $20 cash, and a check for
$80 more, plus a bus ticket from Spokane to Tacoma, with a stop in
Seattle. Then two guards gave me ride downtown (in another Crown Vic,
no less!) and dropped me off at the bus station. My bus wasn't
scheduled to depart for several hours, so I walked over to a
shopping mall where I called my mom and told her I was on my way
«home», and got something to eat. I didn't get to Tacoma until late
that night, then paid a taxi to take me to my mom's tiny apartment. I
stayed with her for a couple of weeks, while I renewed my driver's
license and squared away a few other affairs. Then Rich paid for a
one-way plane ticket to Fargo, ND. And the best years of my life
began.
[J.D. May 14, 2015]
