What Happened In Prison – Part VII: The Last Laugh

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]