Mongoose Distro

          Monday, September 4, 2023

 Seven years. That is how long ago police, admittedly assaulted me on my own property, in the dark of the night, without cause or warrant during a mental-health crisis. They never announced their presence, and they admit to that as well. A year later, after a prosecutor repeatedly lied on record and openly ignored known science, which in my case was further backed up by some 30+ years of medical and psychological records, a judge compared me to a right-wing fanatic—Timothy McVeigh—before declaring I would be set as an example for the entire country, then sentenced me to the harshest sentence ever handed down for the same crime in that district. All of this is on record.

 

 I had no criminal history and no real history of political rhetoric worth noting. I also did not actually commit a crime when, after an unidentified person kicked open a door to my home and opened fire on me in the dark, my returned fire—birdshot from a shotgun, essentially non-lethal—barely injured this intruder—who forensics show was caught by a ricochet after illegally entering a private residence. These officers

Edits:

 I also did not actually commit a crime when, after an unidentified person kicked open a door to my home and opened fire on me in the dark, my returned fire—birdshot from a shotgun, essentially non-lethal—barely injured this intruder—who forensics show was caught by a ricochet after illegally entering a private residence. These officers—as it turned out only after their violations of policy, procedure, and constitutional guarantees—did have histories of questionable behavior, which included cases dismissed because of similar violations. The judge was denied reappointment to the bench for his career of ill-mannered courtroom behavior and his exceedingly poor record of discretion, shortly after he violated my due-process rights (in several ways, on record). The prosecutor has recently lost his primary because of concerns of financial improprieties and corruption at his office (the latter of which my case openly proves).

 All of the above was hidden in plain view, dependent on the naïve trust of citizens in a system that has never properly worked but has more importantly been in a process of cascade failure for at least the last 50 years. A major contributor to that now-epic collapse has been the willful ignorance of politicians, police, prosecutors, and judges towards advancing science. This ignorance being founded, primarily on a near-pathological fear of losing their powers and being forced to adapt to new knowledge. More concisely stated as laziness—habitual laziness.

 One of these key aspects of the advanced science I refer to is our new and more complete understanding of neuroscience: the workings of our brains. This understanding undercuts most of the premises that our very antiquated judicial system has been founded upon, especially where culpability is of concern. Since the 1960s, questions of behavioral choice regarding the brain and the mind—once thought to be separate and distinct—have been laid before the courts as both defense and reasonable blame. In the past 20 years, our understanding has grown in leaps and bounds, and in the last decade alone our understanding of brain process has set forth the evidence in no uncertain terms that the physical wellness of the brain is of paramount importance in deter-mining culpability, and again where any punitive actions may or may not be imposed, and further still where the severity of such punishment is to be decided.

 The criminal-justice system, from top to bottom, small-town rural and big city, state and federal, has refused to keep up with modern science. DNA is a perfect example, as tens of thousands continue to languish in prisons, wrongfully convicted and outright innocent of any crimes. Head injuries, from cumulative concussions to more immediate and severe injuries to the brain, have also now left tens of thousands wrongly held captive, and in the majority of cases also denied the requisite medical and mental-health care.

 I write about this often, having survived a near-fatal traumatic brain injury that reports a mortality rate upwards of 50-60%. I then survived the domestic violence of a wife who saw me suffering for years—including several minor psychological-breakdown events—while she slowly took possession of most of my life (money, phone, car, etc.). Since all of that I have survived 7 years of being openly tortured—including 9 more concussive blows to the head, six by state officers and three by prisoners instigated by state officers, all of which have been reported, documented, and summarily ignored by the state’s officers—while being illegally held captive in contra-diction to state documents that conclusively show I am a victim of bad cops, a dirty prosecutor, and a deranged judge.

 I am also the victim of five separate courts, including a state Supreme Court and a federal appellate, all of whom, on record, have openly ignored the evidence and/or violated the law, my rights, and even their own rules. Politicians not only do not seem to cave in the least but also in some instances (every VA state and federal politician) seem to be supporters of the corruption, the brutality, and the flagrant dishonesty, all laid out in black and white, on the record. What do you say when you have concrete evidence—video and photo—that you were brutalized by police, and when politicians—Senators Tim Kaine or Mark Warner for example—write you a rubber-stamp letter saying they cannot help you, or when state Senators such as David Sutterlein (along with 139 other politicians) just ignore you?

 They are not only ignoring your horror-filled nightmare. They are also ignoring the advances in science, even as concussion awareness and protocols are blasted on the news daily. Or ignoring the rancid filth that passes as mental-health care, pre- and post-incarceration, even as the TV demands we address such issues, immediately. Mostly, and most importantly, they are ignoring their own failures and culpability in a situation growing more dire with every passing week, with every life, every family destroyed. Those destroyed humans are the result of lawmakers and enforcers who live so far in the past that you feel obligated to ask them which year’s calendar they are using.

 

 I continue to fight for my stolen freedom, in courts whose legitimacy is completely eroded. Against laws and statutes that those illegitimate courts have forgotten even existed. And these courts willfully ignore other laws as needed, for their own convenience. There is science that is solid and accepted everywhere—except in those illegitimate courts. How can this system stand on such a flawed foundation, which is crumbling before our very eyes? In fact, it doesn’t anymore, as the majority of citizens have come to recognize, as I have, its failures and the refusal to adjust.

 Seven years. Of beatings, psychological abuse, torture tactics, disregard for my physical and psycho-logical health, ignoring documented disabilities, openly falsifying internal (VA DOC) records to create a—provably—false reality….

 You cannot make this up….

  But you can document all of it…

   Every scrap of paper saved….

    Do you want to see?

         David Annarelli

Here’s just one little story of the types of things “they” did to me. This happened about a month before the actual murder that put me here in November of 2016:

I was in Fort Collins, CO and it was beginning to be too cold to be outside anymore. I had already secured a local government public-housing apartment, but was not able to move into it yet. I had broken up with my girlfriend in Estes Park and the break-up caused me to be homeless because I had been living with her. I suspect “they” had something to do with the break-up too, because “they” can’t, or don’t, want to operate when you are in the close proximity of someone they are not gangstalking. She would go visit her parents on the weekends and leave me alone at the apartment, and “they” would gangstalk me the whole time until she came home Monday morning. “They” would then abruptly stop. My relationship with her was in the way of their gangstalking, so it had it go. So, they used their electronic gadgets to control my emotions, to make me angry or sad for no reason. My out-of-control emotions would cause me to drink excessively and she broke up with me over it.

Anyways, I’m in Fort Collins and “they” decide to turn off the sleep mechanism in my brain. Everyone has one, like the on/off switch to a lamp. Everyone has something in their brain that tells you the body is depleted and it’s time to sleep. The person then finds a place to bed down and go to sleep. At a certain moment, the frontal lobe turns off and the subconscious mind takes over and “sleep” happens. Well, “they”, with their computer-assisted electronic directed energy gadgets, are able to aim their device at you and disable the part of the brain that facilitates sleep, or maybe they just keep the frontal lobe stimulated, so you stay awake.

I went 24 hours without sleep and didn’t think that it was unusual. Everyone loses a night of sleep every once in awhile. Then I went 48 hours. Then 72 hours. Then came day four of being wide awake no chemical assistance. I was not on meth, speed or even coffee, and did not feel the “high” associated with stimulant drugs, so I can’t say someone snuck drugs into my food or anything like that. I became worried and decided to go to a hospital.

I deliberately avoided Poudre Valley Hospital because of having previous gangstalking style incidents there and took a bus across town to a new hospital. I went in the ER and it’s empty. They took me back and I got seen by the doctor right away. There didn’t seem to be any other patients.

I explained my problem, adding that I felt OK but was becoming frightened by my inability to sleep. I told her that I’m not here to be “drug seeking” but, perhaps a sedative of some sort would help? She agreed and gave me a shot of something and left.

She returned about 20 minutes later and asked how I felt. I said I didn’t feel anything. She gave me another shot and left again. She came back about half an hour later and asked how I felt. I said there hasn’t been a change, so she gave me a third shot and left again. She came back 15 or 20 minutes later and did a precursory check with the shine-a-light-in-your-eye thing, blood-pressure, and so on. Then she left again.

She came back again 20 minutes later, this time with a Fort Collins police officer in uniform. She said, “At this point, I’ve given you enough sedative to knock out a horse and it’s not even touching you. It’s had plenty of time to take effect and I see no change in your vitals at all, therefore I have involuntarily committed you for a 72-hour hold, for observation, at the nearest mental hospital.” The cop then unceremoniously cuffed me up and wasn’t nice about it at all, grabbing and jerking me around to put the cuffs on me as if I were an actual criminal he had to chase down to arrest. It was shocking and humiliating. He was treating me as if I had actually done something wrong and was going to jail. He dragged me outside and stuffed me in the back of a squad car.

I was driven to the “nearest” psychiatric hospital, which I can’t remember the name of, but I know it wasn’t the nearest because Fort Collins has one in town. This one was on the outskirts of Boulder. I had been there before years ago and remember liking it because they had a smoking area outside with smoke-breaks once per hour or so, and it was co-ed. My last visit there was in the mid-2000s over a nervous breakdown. I have a history of checking myself in to mental hospitals once every 3 or 4 years because I have PTSD-related nervous breakdowns where I become suicidally despondant and don’t know what else to do. A week or two of institutionalization, regular meals, bed times, and wake up times on someone else’s schedule, usually fixes me up well enough to discharge myself and go get on with life. But this time I was institutionalized by someone else I don’t even know and for a reason that didn’t make sense: How does not being able to sleep for several days mean I need a psychiatric hospital? Why not a regular hospital? What was wrong with the hospital I came from? If the ER doctor was concerned about me, why didn’t she “observe” me for 72 hours?

So, the cop drops me off at this hospital and I’m on a “72 hour hold”. I just got there and I already wanted to leave. My gut feeling told me something was off somehow. I was not yet aware of gangstalking, but unknown to me at that point, I was about to be shown firsthand what it’s all about.

I called my AA sponsor at that time. I think now, looking back, that was my best move, and probably saved me from being kidnapped. See, there is this thing few people know about medical-kidnapping, because of the HIPPA laws. Noone can ask a hospital if you are there and get an answer from any staff there, either by phone or in person. It’s feasible to go literally room-by-room, floor-by-floor at a hospital, looking for someone, but chances are a security guard will get curious why you are there and step to you. But, a mental hospital is a lockdown ward. Noone is allowed in or out, except staff. So, if you are there and noone knows it, they can keep you there forever! If anyone calls to ask if you’re there, the HIPPA law prevents staff from saying if you’re there or not. But that ward had a payphone, and allegedly the phone wasn’t “tapped” but we know from Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, that all phones are tapped, and I’ve got to conclude that a mental ward phone is listened to like a jail phone is. So, by calling my AA sponsor and telling him what happened, whoever was eavesdropping knew better than to try to do medical-kidnapping to me.

But that didn’t stop them from trying. Within my first hour there an angry nurse approached me with some paperwork and said, “You need to sign this”, pushing a pen into my hand, and standing over me like she’s in a hurry and I’m holding her up. I said, “I don’t sign things without reading them first.” I read it and it was a contract giving the hospital permission to hold me there “for an indefinite time period” with the release date “to be determined”. In other words – forever. They wanted my permission to me medical-kidnapping to me! I said, “No way!” She seemed to get even more angry and left.

About a half-hour later, the same nurse came back with more paperwork. This time, she tells me to sign it, as if I don’t a choice. I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I do not sign things without reading it first!” She got bitter angry, I mean her face was like she just sucked a lemon. Sour. I read it, and it’s another contract, but this one wants me to admit that I have mental issues that are so beyond my control and so dangerous that I agree that I should never be legally allowed to own a firearm of any kind, every again, for the rest of my natural life. I wondered what sort of file a document like that would be put into. Medical? Federal? Law enforcement? I’ve never owned a gun, and, in fact, don’t like them. But what if I wanted to, say, buy a shotgun and take up duck hunting? This document I’m sure would “red flag” me on every gun dealer website on the planet. Plus, I just don’t agree with giving up any of my rights voluntarily. That’s why I cringe when I watch these reality-TV cop shows and people get in trouble because cops ask them questions and they can’t keep their story straight. Don’t they know they have a right to remain silent before the arrest? Just say “I want a lawyer if you are going to ask me questions” and that forces them to get to the point. They will either arrest you, which, believe me, they already planned to do anyways no matter how you answer their questions, or they have to stop asking questions and let you go, period. Why don’t people know that?

So, of course I told the lady, no, I’m not going to sign this document. She seemed to get furious and stormed away. It made no sense to me at the time. I’ve been to some version of a mental hospital for PTSD-related stuff a dozen times in my life, and that particular hospital I think three previous times, and I never experienced a nurse bring me any documents like that, much less get emotional over it.

Well, it makes sense now: The gangstalkers wanted to be able to disarm me for their own safety. They want to be able to stalk you without any repercussions or danger to their person. Most targeted individuals never even see their stalkers, or if they do, it’s in passing but not up close and personal. But in my case, my stalkers wanted me to figure out who the players are, because it was personal to them. They wanted revenge. Why? They have huge, fragile, narcissistic egos, and if you insult them to their face like I did, they want to get even.

For example, a lot of people don’t know this, but if you have a digital “smart meter” installed on your home to replace the old analog one for your electric, you just gave “them” a way to watch and listen to anything and everything that goes on in your house 24/7. The old analog meters are hardwired to your home’s electrical line and reads how much current you draw. The new “smart meters” are not hardwired on your electrical intake, they work by sending out a radar signal that “reads” your house and sends data back to the device. It also will “talk” to your “smart appliances”, which is how the electrical company in your area tries to soft-sell the device. But be warned: with the right software, any laptop can dial into your house to watch and listen to it’s inhabitants. A laptop called the Panasonic Tough Book comes already pre-loaded with the software to do this, and can also dial into local cell towers and grid systems to enable gangstalking with electronic surveillance and mind-torture tactics. In Fort Collins, Colorado all of the street lamps in the city are a relay system to enable this.

Knowing this, I used to sit on my couch and just shit talk them, because I knew they were watching and listening. I know they are Satan worshipers (they prefer the terms Lucifer and Luciferians) and I knew they are Illuminati and connected to the local Mason lodge, the Fraternal Order of Police and the FBI, and as such have access to a vast tunnel network under the city. They believe in the Holy Bible and the Book of Revelations, but they believe that by carrying out Satan’s work they are actually “doing God’s will” because if God didn’t want it to happen it wouldn’t happen, or some such nonsense. It’s like an excuse and a justification, on a grand scale, to do whatever they want, up to and including human trafficking, pedophilia, and even human ritual sacrifice, as long as they “stick to the script” as outlined in Revelations. But most people don’t know this, and if you do know it and are not one of them, and are in fact against it, you are considered an enemy and they’ll go after you.

The whole thing is justified by the same philosophy inscribed on the Georgia Guidestones: The world is overpopulated. Most people are essentially like dumb cattle and deserve to be eliminated, for the betterment of mankind in general and the “illuminated few” in particular. It’s basically Hitler’s philosophy, without the Jew stuff. You’re either down with it, or you’re not. If you’re not, God help you! How do I know all of this? I’m nosy and kept on investigating them, and they noticed me. At a certain point they asked me to join it and I said “no”. That is when all hell broke loose and the gangstalking intensified to the point of violence. The endgame for gangstalking is to keep on messing with you until you break. They want you to act out in some kind of violent or bizarre way so they can incarcerate you in jail or a mental hospital.

Anyways, I knew they were watching me in my house, actually my girlfriend’s, with the smart meter and other CIA-style secret monitoring devices. They also have a device that looks like a gun except, instead of a barrel, it has a mini-satellite dish-thing on the end of it. They can point it at your house. It sees through walls and listens. It’s a two-way device, so it also transmits microwaves. I would shit talk to them, using their own philosophy against them, and would use God and the Book of Revelations to taunt them. I’d say things like, “So you think them tunnels are gonna save you when shit hits the fan? You think He doesn’t know where you are? Do you really think you can hide from Him?! Them tunnels aren’t gonna save you! The whole planet is gonna burn! Even NORAD can’t save you! You better read that Book again. It doesn’t end well for you! Ha! You’re as dumb as the Egyptians chasing the Jews into the sea! You think He won’t drop a tidal wave on you when you get far enough in? When you dug them tunnels, you dug your own graves! Dumbasses!”

So between 2011 and 2014 I got gangstalked a lot at my girlfriend’s house, and I used to sit on her couch when she wasn’t home and taunt them like that, because I knew they were listening, which was confirmed when I got arrested in November 2016 on this murder charge, caused by them, and the gangstalking continued unabated at Larimer County Jail, because certain cops who were involved in it would come over my intercom speaker in my cell and repeat back to me, verbatim, some of the things I said to taunt them as I was surveilled at my girlfriend’s house. See, they have a vengeance mindset and are like spoiled brat, pouting, 5 year olds. That’s the egos I dealt with. These are hateful Satanists.

I’ve gotten a bit off topic. To continue, in hindsight I believe the nurse got upset because she was probably in on it and the idea is to disarm the targeted individual so they don’t pose a danger, so they can gangstalk them with impunity. Also, that first contract was to be able to legally have authority to “medical kidnap” me, so they could keep me trapped in mental institutions forever. A mental hospital is the ideal place to gangstalk someone because if they file complaints it works against them being released. There are no credivle witnesses to what they do, and anyone who might be a credible witness is dealt with, as you will see later on in this true account of what they did to me.

After the nurse tried to get me to sign that stuff and I said no, it was getting pretty close to bedtime and lights-out on the ward. I called my AA sponsor and told him where I was and what happened. He said to just be cool and ride it out for the 72 hours, don’t give them any reason to justify a longer stay. He also told me to try to get a notebook and keep a journal, which I did. I have no idea what ended up happening to that journal.

I went to bed. Magically, whatever had been keeping me awake for the past four days stopped. I slept like a baby. I didn’t understand what was happening to me at the time, but a few years later when I started to read the literature about gangstalking, I found out that they have the human brain mapped out and know what parts do what, and have invented electronic gadgets that can remote-control the brain from a distance, to make you fall asleep or stay awake against your will, for example. There is an on/off switch in the brain responsible for being awake or asleep, and they have a remote electronic gadget that affects it at will: They just push a button on, say, a Panasonic Tough Book laptop that has the software, it sends a signal to a cell tower near you, the microwave dish on the tower beams the signal at you using your own device, and they can make you fall asleep at the wheel driving home with a car full of kids, or stay awake for days on end. But, I didn’t know that then.

The next day was uneventful: Writing in a notebook the staff got for me, TV, smoke breaks and calls to my AA sponsor. Then at dinnertime in the evening, it happened.

The people who just got there aren’t allowed to go to the cafeteria dining hall because they need a couple days to make sure you are not dangerous before you can be around silverware. The dining hall has actual metal silverware that they wash and sterilize, like at a diner. So, the new arrivals get a meal delivered to them on a styrofoam clamshell container with a plastic spork, like in jail. These meals are pushed into the TV room on one of those stainless steel meal-tray dollies on wheels, like in hospitals. Everyone lines up to get a tray and eat it in the TV room, followed by a smoke break.

I noticed something odd: all the trays had our names written on them with black Sharpie ink, but all the meals were the same. It wasn’t like one person got a Kosher meal, the next person got a diabetic meal, the next person got a low-sodium meal, and so on. Every person got exactly the same thing: a scrambled egg sandwich and fries and a fruit cup. Or was it chicken salad? I just remember it was a sandwich of some sort and was cooked. But they were all the same. Yet, the nurse was adamant that each person get only the tray with their own name on it, and NO sharing. I thought it was odd enough that I asked why, and was told, “Some people have problems with paranoia”. But if that were the case, wouldn’t the “name only” thing make a “paranoid” person more paranoid? But I was hungry and decided not to press the issue. I remember the sandwiches were cut in half diagonally, corner to corner, the way I like to do grilled cheese. But mine tasted …funny. Not rotten exactly, not like it “went bad”, just …funny somehow. I didn’t like it, and did not eat the other slice, which is good, because I almost died on just the half of a sandwich.

We ate at about 7pm. I remember going on a smoke break and talking to a pretty girl in her 20s who was there because she had been raped at a college party, maybe a frat thing. She was matter-of-fact about it, and calm, but wary. She looked at me in a way that let me know she no longer trusted men, in any context. I remember wanting to help her, but not knowing what to say or do, so I decided to just avoid her to “give her space”. After that, I went to bed.

The poison hit me at about 10pm. I remember it was late enough that literally everyone had gone to bed, including the “late stragglers”. Some of the patients have trouble sleeping and they go out to the nurse station to get a nighttime snack of a pudding cup or a banana. But the lights were out all over the ward.

I was in bed and couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about my own girlfriend, Helena. I had a bad breakup because of my drinking. It was 100% fault the relationship ended. Or was it? It wasn’t her fault, but… I had never in my life experienced the roller coaster ups and downs of emotions, disturbing emotions, like I did when I was with her. I was irrational in a way O had never been. I didn’t realize it then, but they were most likely using the gangstalk-mindfuck electronic gadgets, the same kind now used to keep me awake for days, against me, to cause me to have crying fits and bouts of irrational fear and anger that I tried to control with excessive drinking, which ended up just exaggerating the symptoms.

When the poison hit, it seemed to hit all at once out of nowhere. I’m lying in bed thinking about what to do when I get out, when all of a sudden I had a bout of uncontrollable burps and farts. It felt like something was fermenting inside my gut. One moment I was normal, then, as the burps and farts got worse, I also started to get dizzy. Then, I instantly started running a fever. I felt my forehead and it was hot. Then I felt sick and ran to the toilet.

There began the beginning of hell itself. As soon as I puked, I felt the diarrhea begin. I sat on the toilet and soon it just became dysentery. Basically it was just hot water shooting out my ass. Then the puking again, then, full body cramps. I stripped naked and layed on the floor, in the fetal position, projectile vomiting and shitting at the same time.

I cried for help and no one came. I was screaming at the top of my lungs: HELP! HEEELLP! SOMEONE GET A DOCTOR! , and nothing. I thought at least another patient would wake up and come see what the problem is. But, noone. Nothing.

Then “they” came in. First one, then another: two orderlies. The first came in and stood over me, staring down at me with cool indifference. Five minutes later, the second one came in. They stood next to each other, silently staring down at me with eyes of stone. That’s when I realized with horror – this is on purpose. This isn’t a bad sandwich, they poisoned me!

Another five or ten minutes later I had begun to scream messages to other patients who may have woken up, that I had been poisoned and someone needs to call 9-1-1. A white woman in her 50s came in. This wasn’t one of “them”, this was the actual night nurse on the ward. She was hysterical, but not because of me. They had got to her. She was screaming at me. “I’m a good nurse! I’ve never been in trouble! I have a perfect record! I’ve been a nurse 30 years! I….” But she did nothing to help me. She stood there next to the two orderlies who were obviously enjoying the spectacle, and screamed that the same message over and over at me. I realized, with terror, “they” had threatened her. They told her if she helps me in any way they would find something horrible to put in her file, have her fired, maybe even arrested. She’d never work as a nurse again.

The three people standing over me, the two cool-as-a-cumber orderlies and the panicked, hysterical old white woman, started to get blurry and sound far away, and I realized I was going unconscious. My body knew somehow that I was slipping into a coma. It was going to be a coma for sure, but maybe even death? My body relayed this information to me in a way I can’t explain.

All of a sudden, right before I did actually go into a coma, I became convinced these people had murdered me. The only person who knew I was in this hospital was my AA sponsor. They had probably tapped the phone, and knew he was my only contact and no relation to me. If he asked, they could just say I had been released, or tell him the HIPPA laws prevent them from telling him if I was there. He would think I just went on a drinking spree and ditched the AA program and him along with it. This is how medical-kidnapping works. They know who does or does not know where you are. He was my only contact. My friends, family, girlfriend, noone knew where I was! They could kill me and get away with it, take my body out on a gurney, put me in an ambulance, and drive me to a morgue. Incinerate me. Gone.

As I slipped into unconsciousness I heard myself say, in a childish voice, this: “But, but I haven’t helped enough people yet!” Then, lights out. And that is how I discovered we do have a soul. My mouth said it, but it wasn’t my voice, and I didn’t put thought into it. It was like a child had used my mouth to say that. The “child” was my soul, saying it to God.

The next morning I woke up still naked on the bathroom tile, covered in shit and vomit. I cleaned up and went directly to the nurses’ station to complain. As expected, they played dumb. They said I still had 15 or 16 hours to go on my 72-hour hold and refused to release me. The phone didn’t work. Each time I tried a new thing, what I expected to happen, happened. The moment I woke up I knew they would do what it takes to cover it up, Of course the people involved were long gone. “That was night shift”, they said. “This is day shift. We have no idea what night-shift does.” I was not released until approximately midnight. Time for the poison to clear.

The mental ward was part of a larger hospital. I went next door to the ER of the regular hospital and told the doc that I wanted an emergency blood-test to determine what kind of poison was used. The doc who was most likely “in on it” refused. I threatened to go to a different hospital or involve the police. He said, “You’ve had a rough day. How about a morphine drip?” The junkie in me fell for it, and I agreed to the morphine drip, knowing that this doc was most definitely “in on it”, because ER docs don’t go around offering pre-op morphine drips to strangers coming in off the streets babbling about being poisoned by the hospital next door, without even making a call to see if I was ever even a patient at the hospital next door in the first place! But I was, in fact, physically and mentally exhausted, and the doc said I could have a private room to myself and enjoy the morphine drip all night, sleep, and leave in the morning well-rested. I agreed. He put the IV line in my arm, hooked it up to the drip, and sure enough it was morphine, like he said. I enjoyed the familiar mindless floating sensation of a hospital-grade opiate for a while, and went to sleep.

I woke up the next day and discharged myself. Nobody even remembered admitting me. I wasn’t on file. I simply left the hospital. The doctor who put me on the morphine drip was gone. I was ashamed of myself because I knew he had to be “in on out” and he had bribed me with the morphine drip, and I fell for it. I feasibly could have made good on my threat, found another hospital to get a blood test, and involved the police. But how? I t was midnight, I had no car, and calling the police would’ve probably backfired on me somehow. Usually the police are “in on it” in these gangstalking situations. And if they are not, they won’t believe you anyhow. They think you are crazy. After all, who would do that to someone? Why? I might have ended up right back in the same nuthouse I just got released from if I had called the cops. Not only that, but they had enough power to put their people in a mental ward as “employees”, threaten a legit nurse who actually did work there bad enough to scare her into not helping me (and presumably to keep her mouth shut if questioned) and even sway the morals of a doctor in the ER next to the mental ward. With that kind of power, what good could the cops do, even assuming they were moral enough not to be bought or threatened?

The question remains: who? And why? I believe this originates with the CIA as one of those MK Ultra-style projects they do to experiment on the unwitting public. Beginning with the LSD experiments they did in the 1950s by slipping it into the drinks of businessmen visiting a brothel, then observing them with a 2-way mirror, the CIA has been doing psychological experiments on unsuspecting public ever since. But now, as a result of the Patriot Act, they can use Homeland Security funds to pay for gangstalking, and the CIA sub-contracts most of the work to private-sector operators, only stepping in personally when they need to. Why? Because they can. Because they have power and like to show it off. It’s technology-assisted Satanism!

David Matthew Strunk 102504
Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility
12750 Hwy 96 @ Lane 13
Ordway, CO 81034

How I lived, what I ate

And what I wore is not who I am.

My skin is my sin,

Which was dealt to me

Like a shantytown hustler’s sleight-of-hand win.

I ask for my freedom

But I’m told no such thing exists.

I’m told I’m not human,

I’m not worthy and I am not a man.

If I’m am not a man and you are,

Why do I slave and thrive above your soil?

Isn’t a man one who can harvest his own spoils?

Better yet, for his family’s sake to stay alive,

Doesn’t a man struggle to survive and provide?

Not coward out when the stocks drop,

Buy a gun from the hood and commit suicide.

This is not a case of Jason versus the state.

This is a case of a proletarian against capitalism,

A momentum shift to determine our own fate.

Don’t hate, participate, I just peeped your game.

You threw dust and debris in my mother’s face

And I thought she was to blame for years on end.

The torch was passed to me and I ran with it.

Before I knew it, it went out faster than I could think,

Faster than I could breathe and faster than I could blink.

Just like that, this legacy continued its wrath,

And was predisposed and rehearsed before my first bath.

I am so full of shame, full of hate, and tired of deceit,

That I can only sit back, laugh,

And remove these invisible chains from my feet,

Like a losing team’s cleats after a lopsided defeat.

It seems like every time I’m in for the score,

The ref throws the flag and the clock stops,

Clearly giving my opponents a free shot.

Even though they aren’t panting and in debt,

I give them a drink for their health

And a better way to distribute their wealth.

Principal contradiction, I look down on you,

Like you look down on your slaves.

Don’t be stupid, this is not about race.

This is a class struggle

And nobody’s safe from its

Round ‘em up and ship ‘em out

Mass incarceration haste.

I am blind to your hand to help me

But conscious to your plan to sell me,

Distribute me and bun me, like my mother’s keeper

Her true love, her desire, her features.

Dear Friend:

Imagine that you are going about your daily business, maybe walking down the street, keys in hand, and just as you turn the corner you stumble upon a horrible crime, a murder. You happen to be acquainted with the victim, a former schoolmate. What’s more, as the murderer flees you recognize him as your neighbor, Frank, who you always found to be a bit of a shady character and was even rumored to have a criminal record.

Now suppose that after you summon the police for help, you and Frank and a few others are taken to the station for questioning. Inexplicably and beyond comprehension, the police release everyone but you, who they arrest and charge with murder. It turns out, unbeknownst to you, that Frank was a favored confidential informant for the officers assigned to investigate the case and had pointed his finger at you. But Frank is hardly credible. Indeed, he gives a series of facially false, sometimes fantastical, and inconsistent versions of events surrounding the murder, all obvious fabrications intended to shift blame to someone else.

The trial date arrives, and instead of putting Frank on the stand the prosecutor calls one of Franks criminal cohorts, Jack, who was in the vicinity when and where the crime occurred and testifies that he’d seen you kill the victim. You can only sit and listen, visibly upset and utterly flabbergasted, but you continue to hold on to faith in the criminal justice process. Surely the system will protect the innocent.

Finally, it is your turn to put on evidence and your attorney, an experienced litigator, requests that Frank, the very person you had stumbled upon in the murderous act, be called to testify. You have no doubt that once his lies and prior inconsistencies surrounding the murder — all conveniently fabricated to put the crime on you — are heard by the jury, it will see right through the farce and just as assuredly see you exonerated. But the prosecutor also realizes this and, not one to lose so easily, immediately objects. The judge takes up the prosecutor’s cause and rules that your attorney may not question Frank on the stand as to his murder of your schoolmate because he has not been charged and no other evidence has been presented against him and, therefore, the judge continues, his testimony runs the risk of confusing the jury. That jury, never having heard about Frank or his prior falsehoods or motives or opportunity, wrongfully convicts you of murder.

Fortunately, this did not happen to you. But it is precisely what happened to me. Please find out more, including what you might do to help, by going to www.freemarkjordan.com.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

Granite bulwarks and wrought iron barriers lay half buried in sand and mud. The sepulcher’s quiet inhabitants pulled into the sea by a hungry surf. Others survive the draw of receding breakers and lay on the lawn in confused foiled resurrection. The dead’s private, eternal time, intruded upon by the elements and wandering eyes of squawking seagulls and roving killdeers.

From the ground, caskets have popped up; like a child releases her submerged rubber ducky, the earth lets go of her prey: soulless bodies too buoyant to keep their vessels sunken: plain pine boxes and intricately decorated brass caskets: death’s equity hidden by life’s inequality. Hank drags his tired boots through the debris. His eyes locked onto the small path, shame and sadness are blinders. The mound of freshly turned soil beckons for daddy’s attention, but what’s the point. He’s proven that all the attention in the world cannot keep love alive.

The funeral: a week ago: a mile up the beach, Allie was taken into the storm; her own casket empty of more than an innocent soul. For Hank, seven days are one endless night. For now, time blankets no memory. The floral arrangements have wilted, providing a vivid, flaccid jungle for dozens of teddy bears and other knickknacks.

Years ago a greedy funeral planner provided a discount on cemetery property. He stands beside the space formerly reserved for him — in the other is the wife’s empty box — her body was never recovered after she jumped from their anniversary cruise a decade ago. Now his spot, filled with his daughter’s vacant casket, leaves Hank wondering if there will ever be a place to bury his own broken spirit. The monument company has yet to replace his tempered name with Allie’s.

He stares at the infinite half-inch between his wife’s name and his own. A blank space beckons for the date of his own demise. The rustling of a recent newspaper, blown against a nearby tombstone, catches his attention. Hurricane Hollie Annihilates The Texas Coast. Returning attention to the absent family, he brushes his fingers across the raised letters next to his and mouths the name he once wrote on the top of love letters and spray-painted on the lighthouse wall, the name he spoke after lifting the wedding vale, the name he screamed out during passionate couplings, the name he cried throughout lonely nights weeping, and the name which never leaves the empty yet haunted house sitting on his shoulders. “Well Hollie, looks like you’ve come roaring back into my life, and once again left it in shambles.”

On their second anniversary, Hank’s wife jumped from the bow of the cruise-liner, Serenity. She left their daughter, Allie, with him for ten years before returning in a whirlwind to assert custody. An inability to properly deal with grief prevented Hank from sharing memories of Hollie with Allie. The two were so alike that Hank had attempted to fit his well-rounded daughter into the complex hexagon of her mother. He had yet to learn that love never kept anyone alive. People keep love alive. Hollie and Allie share the ocean. Hank has no-one to share his memories.

Write to Ross at:

Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice
Ross Hartwell 1893452, Memorial Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266

“When you look at the policies and goals of the Security Management Unit, it blows my mind that there was [even] one homicide” – Jack Donson, corrections consultant and former FBOP official on violence at USP Thompson. 

Edgar Garcia and Mark Snarr couldn’t have scripted the murder of Gabriel Rhone any better. Given that each of them were in single cells and were only allowed out after a thorough strip search and handcuffing, such a feat seemed more like a Pipedream,or a fantasy. It would first require an insurmountable plot, straight out of an action packed prison escape movie. Anything less wouldn’t work. 

Guards would have to forget, or ignore, strip searching them coming out their Security Management Unit (SMU) cell for recreation, and going back in.Check! 

They would have to overlook the fact that one of these inmates was under a two man guard escort only order,which would over emphasize that two inmates can’t be pulled out at the same time. Double check! 

A prison disturbance would have to ensue, causing recreation to be terminated early and discombobulation.Triple check! 

The guards would have to believe that the inmates’ need to use the bathroom is more important than the need to follow policy, allowing two inmates in particular to be removed from their recreation cages at the same time,for security convenience. Quadruple check! 

No different than a blockbuster suspense thriller, every element that needed to be met, was met. A disturbance in another part of the prison ensued,resulting in guards being ordered to stop rec and put each inmate back in their cell,one by one. Since one of them claimed he had to use the bathroom, officers Dewight Baloney and Josh McQueen took a routine gamble and skipped the order they were going in and removed Garcia and Snarr from their single man recreation cages together. 

Since time was limited these inmates weren’t strip searched, according to policy, coming out or going back into their cells. Thus the makeshift handcuff keys and shanks weren’t discovered. Fellow neighbors and Rhone, who had listened to Garcia and Snarr plot this movie-like murder through their cell doors days before, silently listened as the plot thickened down the corridor from them and the handcuffs fell free from behind Garcia and Snarr’s backs. 

Officer Baloney was stabbed twenty three times until he slipped to safety. McQueen was approached by Snarr and stabbed while a demand for the cell door keys was made. A poke of the shank by Garcia and the keys were yielded to Snarr from McQueen’s duty belt. Both inmates excitedly dashed down the corridor to Rhone’s cell. It was time for him to pay for talking shit and ejaculating on a female guards shoe,through his cell door slot.(1) 

It took a minute of Snarr fumbling with the keys to get the right one into the keyhole, while threats were made to Rhone as a pregame filler. Just like that, the cell door opened and out came a panicking Rhone. One inmate in particular that watched the gruesome stabbing claimed both killers were in a “frenzy” stabbing Rhone over fifty times in the heart, lungs and liver, as guards pleaded for them to stop. On May 24 2010 a jury sentenced them to death by lethal injection. 

Overkills like this one is why inmates in the federal United States Penitentiary in Beaumont Texas, USP Beaumont, quickly named the maximum security prison ‘Bloody Beaumont’ not long after it opened in 1997. 

It would only take until 2001 before the USP claimed its fifth victim, Luther Plant, who was killed in a two man recreation cage by Shannon Agofsky. Agofsky was serving a life sentence for the 1989 kidnapping and murder of State Bank of Noel president, Dan Short. Plant’s head was repeatedly stomped in the ground by Afgosky, until he choked to death on his own blood. 

On July 17 2004, a jury sentenced Agofsky to death by lethal injection. Inmates that were questioned about the incident, claim that guards often place at odds inmates in the two man cages together and watch them fight, thus giving the recreation cages names such as ‘gladiator school’ and ‘thunder dome’. 

Officer Christopher Matt, who admitted placing Agofsky and Plant in the same cage together, denied having knowledge of the gladiator school activities. And surmised that he didn’t know a murder was about to take place, nor did he see the fight.(2)

Bloody Beaumont had only been in business for two years, when on December 16 1999 one of its first five murders occurred. The victim, Daryl Brown. The accused, Arzell Gulley and David Lee Jackson. According to court documents all three inmates were seen arguing with each other in an area of the prison called the compound. Here, inmates throughout the prison are allowed to intermingle between 5:00pm and 8:30pm. 

Brown could be seen fleeing the compound and into unit 3B-1, and eventually cell 125, while knife-wielding Gulley and Jackson chased after him. Just under a minute later, Gulley and Jackson strolled out of the cell and were met by prison guards,who apprehended them. A bloody and half dead Brown then stumbled out of the cell,collapsing near one of his killers where he died.(3) 

In 2006 Jackson was sentenced to death by lethal injection for his role and Gulley received life in prison. As a whole, administrative officials have no control over any federal prison within the Federal Bureau Of Prisons(FBOP). So in an effort to tone down the violence, it is expected that gang leaders will run the prison for them, creating unwritten rules, punishing violators and warring with gangs that try to impose their own counterproductive authority. And many try. 

One gang,mainly consisting of El Salvadoran immigrants, MS-13 is not only the most violent prison and street gang in America, it was undeterred by the intimidation tactics imposed by the other federal prison gangs. 

Federal prison officials saw this too, so the federal government created a gang intelligence group within the FBOP called Joint Taskforce Vulcan, which focuses on the activities of gangs in general and MS-13’s violent rise within the federal prison system in particular. 

On January 31 2022, this joint task force operation proves ineffective. 54 year old Guillermo Riojas, 34 year old Andrew Pineda and two other Hispanic inmates belonging to the Mexican Mafia and Sureños gangs respectively, were ambushed by seven members of MS-13.(4) The group felt it was time to bust up the unity that Mexican Mafia and the Sureños created to strengthen their numbers against the larger MS-13. 

Riojas and Pineda received the worst of the punishment as Pineda was stabbed around 45 times and Riojas was stabbed multiple times in the heart and lungs.The other two unnamed inmates were the only survivors. The 15 count indictment includes charges of racketeering, murder and attempted murder. All 120 of the FBOP’s prisons were placed on temporary lockdown status, in anticipation of subsequent riots and vengeance. 

On February 24 2022, the lockdown was fully lifted and normal prison operations continued. On May 1 2022, Bloody Beaumont would give up her latest victim. This time, it’s 35 year old Eric Jermaine Leday, who has no documented gang affiliation. He was serving a 37 month sentence for gun related charges.(5) 

Since his death was deemed unrelated to the prior ambush, his body was shipped to the morgue and immediately thereafter, prison business carried on as usual, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. 

According to the Department Of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, the federal prison population has grown 1% since 2001.While the annual murder rate inflated by 44% from 39 a year to 120 in 2018. But in regards to the accuracy of these numbers, the full extent of FBOP mismanagement can’t be fully reported because of the highly effective damage control routine by its press corps and its ability to restrict public access to information. 

Many relatives of victims that died while incarcerated, find themselves being fed partially true statements, outright lies, being given the run around and having their Freedom Of Information Act requests denied, or painstakingly delayed. In many instances, it isn’t administrative prison officials who know the truth about what goes on in prison, but unspoken inmate witnesses and their ilk. 

If prison walls could talk, the amount of in-custody deaths that are ruled suicides, erotic asphyxiation, overdoses and undetermined would literally clog up the courts dockets with staff-instigated murder cases and their co-conspirators, who sometimes are other inmates and their relatives in the free world.(6) 

One thing that is widely known among staff and the incarcerated, is that when death calls your name, it can only be prolonged or countered, but never escaped unscathed. 

The violence that goes on at places like Bloody Beaumont, on its face, is senseless. Though there are many contributing factors that can compel someone to play within, or step out of their comfort zone and commit murder. To believe violence exists in prison without a spark is buffoonery. 

One factor lies in the clutches of the underground drug trade. Another can stem from violating inmate-created penitentiary rules. Another is behooved by the kind of inmates you have in federal custody, the resources they bring with them and the fact that their reputation from the free world is jocked by those on the lower rungs of criminalization. In effect, they must hold themselves to this same standard or lose social value, which connects to respect, power and their chances of surviving among the masses. 

Observing an active member of a drug cartel, mafia, or street enterprise carousing on the compound, is as common as a cavity search. And adding this with the lethal mix of convicted millionaires and money-hungry guards that are overworked and underpaid, and you have an unregulated, untaxable, underground economy and environment, that is virtually indestructibly violent, extortive and bribable within the highest levels of the administration. 

Before Bloody Beaumont came into fruition, the inmates living in the federal prison system called it Club Fed. Which was due to the average prisoner residing there being either affluent, or were involved in crimes and schemes designed to meet that status quo, making it a felon’s Club Med.

Remember the commercial? Likewise, they spent their prison sentences enjoying the fruits of their labor and the vast amount of privilege given to them, that has since been slowly stripped to a bare minimum. Which has a lot to do with the fact that many small-time cases that get prosecuted under federal law now, never left the clutches of state prosecutors then. 

Plus the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), created to bring down entire Mafias, for the actions of one of its members, eventually began preying on ineligible, neighborhood gangs that had never risen above low-level drug dealing. 

On top of the fact that anybody convicted in the District of Columbia (D.C.) and sentenced to prison, does their time in a federal facility, regardless if it’s a federal charge or not, as D.C. doesn’t have a state prison system. 

As a consequence, Club Fed was watered down with reams of petty criminals that brought their petty tendencies and violence with them. In effort to match this speed, the FBOP took away most of the privileges and leeway that the new wave started taking for granted. Which was masked by accommodating budget cuts. 

BLACK MARKET DEATH SENTENCES – THE USP WAY 

On May 6 2005, an inmate named Keith Barnes arrived to Bloody Beaumont, well aware that he would be killed immediately. In 1998 Barnes and several others were convicted for the murder and robbery of Israel ‘Dog’ Jones in a Washington D.C. apartment. Despite receiving hand-written death threats from James ‘Rat’ Carpenter, a co-defendant who actually killed Jones in his apartment, Barnes testified against his cronies in exchange for a lesser sentence. 

This resulted in Barnes being threatened and sought, each time he was transferred to a different federal prison to protect him from his co-defendants’ vast connections within the FBOP. 

Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a D.C. congresswoman, wrote letters to the FBOP on his behalf, just as relatives did to no avail. Barnes explained his situation to his case worker, upon arriving to Bloody Beaumont, but he was sent to the general population anyways. 

Marwin Mosley, Michael Bacote and Charles Sherman (all D.C. residents) approached Barnes as soon as he hit the cellblock. He didn’t give them his real name because he knew there was a hit out on his life. 

It is routine that newly arriving inmates are asked who they are and where they’re from, in which they are pointed to where the denizens of their geographical location mingle, or are dealt with accordingly if their name has a green light on it. 

Mosley thought he recognized Barnes as being the one that testified against Carpenter and explained this to Joseph Ebron.His real name was quickly figured out and a plot to kill him made. Within less than twenty four hours of Barnes arrival to Bloody Beaumont, he was discovered on his top bunk with over one hundred stab wounds in his body.(7) 

After Sherman was investigated by officials, he fingered Ebron, Mosley and Bacote as the killers. In 2005 Ebron, Mosley and Bacote were convicted for Barnes’s death. Ebron was the only defendant that was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Mosley died in 2006,resulting in the dismissal of his pending court appeals. 

A LITTLE TOO MUCH TOUCHING UP? 

Christopher Cramer and Ricky Fackrell are members of a federal prison based group called Soldiers of Aryan Culture(SAC). Cramer served as its General, while Fackrell held the rank of Lieutenant during their stay at Bloody Beaumont. Among other rules and regulations, all members must sustain from drinking alcohol, doing drugs and gambling. 

According to Fackrell’s own statement during his trial, one of the penalties of rule violations is to “touch the violator up a little bit”. Members are recruited based on their belief in white supremacy and paganism. 

According to both Cramer and Fackrell, an unranked member by the name of Leo Johns had been caught drinking and gambling, in violation of SAC rules. While Johns was in his own cell, Cramer and Fackrell entered it with shanks. Johns was stabbed up until he died. 

On June 13 2018, Cramer and Fackrell were convicted of Johns’ death and sentenced to death by lethal injection. While Fackrell suggested to the courts that their intention wasn’t to kill, but only meant to “touch up [Johns] a little bit”.(8) One can only wonder where the line to what one uses to “do a little touching up” with is drawn. And the illogical thought that, had Johns survived, he would’ve held his allegiance with the group. 

United States attorney, Britt Featherston who prosecutes federal cases in the eastern district of Texas, promised that any inmate who causes physical injury to another person will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. 

Nowhere in her diatribe did she suggest,or recommend, remedies that would curtail the death sentences that are being handed out like candy. And you can see from the frequency in overkill deaths, that the punishment for doing such a thing isn’t a hardcore enough measure, that will deter future inmates from attempting to top past slaughterings. 

Nor have past reform measures done anything besides increase sentences and already full court dockets. Since the 1994 crime bill was signed into law by Bill Clinton, making all murders committed in federal custody death penalty eligible, the amount of murders that were committed afterwards skyrocketed, while the amount of inmates placed on federal death row increased to unprecedented numbers.

BLOODY BEAUMONT’S EVIL TWIN 

While Bloody Beaumont might be the most violent federal prison in Texas, when measured up to the rest of the United States Penitentiaries (USPs) under the jurisdiction of the FBOP, it can bee seen as the nicer twin of a more sinister, more diabolical Juggernaut. 

Bloody Beaumont is just one of the three federal correctional complexes grouped together in Beaumont, Texas. The other two complexes are minimum and medium security compounds, that contrast to Bloody Beaumont’s reputation for violence. 

Overall, every USP in America is virtually a house of death. Factors that determine who goes to a USP and who doesn’t, is based off of criminal history, gang affiliation, current criminal charges and the amount of points all of these factors generate. There are other factors that can reduce these points,such as taking responsibility for the charge, becoming a government informant and maintaining good behavior while there. 

The majority of inmates incarcerated at USPs used to be mob bosses, gang leaders, drug lords, high profile drug dealers and terroristic and paramilitary networks. Now it’s this same mixture, coupled with obviously nonviolent inmates. With a twist of sociopaths that were sent to them from other prisons because of recent and past disciplinary issues, like assaulting and murdering other inmates. 

In 2002, Carlos David Caro was serving time at a low security prison in Oakdale, Louisiana. As he had risen to the rank as leader of the Texas Syndicate (TS) prison gang, Staff approached him and gave him the heads up that rivals of TS were scheduled to be transferred to Oakdale. They asked him if he would keep the peace. 

Upon their arrival to Oakdale, Caro launched an attack on them. He beat one so bad that he was hospitalized. With bloody clothes and boots, Caro told guards “I don’t give a fuck if they send me to the USP. My brothers follow orders. They know what they’re getting themselves into. It doesn’t even matter if we’re prosecuted”(9) 

Shortly after the assault, Caro was transferred to USP Lee in Jonesville, Virginia. In August 2003, Caro and another member of TS stabbed another inmate twenty nine times, resulting in Caro being placed in the prison’s Secure Housing Unit (SHU). The SHU and SMU are basically one and the same. Double man solitary confinement. 

Caro eventually pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to an additional twenty seven years in federal prison. On December 17 2003, less than two days after Roberto Sandoval’s arrival as Caro’s new cellmate, Caro wet a towel, wrapped it around Sandoval’s neck and strangled him to death. 

As guards walked by during their security check, Caro got their attention, showed them Sandoval’s body and demanded that they remove it because it was stinking up the cell. Caro justified this act by claiming Sandoval had disrespected him for confronting Caro about eating Sandoval’s breakfast while he was asleep. 

Days later Caro jokingly confronted a guard about when they would give him another cellmate. Of course, Caro was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection for Sandoval’s death. On September 14 2018 around 4:06pm, USP Lee guards were doing a security check when they discovered Samuel Silva standing at his cell door with his prison I.D. and shower shoes in his hands. Upon further observation, Silva’s cellmate, Abraham Aldana, could be seen laying on the ground, face down in a pool of his own blood. Medical examiners would learn that Aldana had been stabbed over one hundred times, with the murder weapon, a metal shank, still lodged into his skull.(10) 

Silva was serving a 564 month sentence. At the time of the murder, USP Lee was on an institutional lockdown, which can last over a month, and stops all inmate movement and recreation until the lockdown is over. 

A year later at USP Lee’s SHU, a mentally ill and delusional Eric Horne murdered his cellmate as an inmate in another cell watched. The inmate testified to the grand jury that he saw Horne place his arm around the victim in a headlock.

When he later asked Horne where his cellmate was at, Horne said “gone”. Then Horne said “you can’t be, you can’t be afraid of death if you want to go to heaven, game over.” Then Horne used a finger to mimic slicing his own throat.(11) 

Days before the murder, Horne was acting psychotic, prompting other inmates housed in the SHU to warn the victim to get out of the cell immediately. 

Readers that are interested in more recent accounts of this nature, whether occurring at Bloody Beaumont or her evil twin, should visit the United States Attorney General’s website in the relevant state and district sought, as I based much of this article on inmates that received the death penalty, not those who pled guilty through a plea agreement, whose cases are outstanding to this article. 

Through trial and error, the FBOP has learned to conceal the ongoing epidemic of murders at USPs, even making it difficult for the media and journalists to get details until years after the incident. I had trouble myself getting up to date records. Consequently, it will be years before a lot of Bloody Beaumont’s affairs will become public records. 

As you can see, most of these events weren’t actually prosecuted until many years later, and the general public wasn’t updated until the inmate was convicted, as was the case of an inmate that was killed in 2013 at USP Victorville, listed in records as J.S. 

It wasn’t until January 18 2023 before 39 year old Aurelio Patino, 48 year old Christopher Ruiz and 41 year old Jose Villegas, were convicted of punching and stomping J.S to death after a guard escorted him to the recreation yard they were on.(12) 

Inmates have fought the federal courts for years in a failed attempt to have double man solitary abolished, as well as being forced to live in a cell 24 hours a day with inmates that have reputations for attacking and killing past cellmates. 

David Paul Hammer revolutionized the art of killing cellmates, again and again. At the time he was serving a life sentence for shooting a gay man in the head three times. Originally sentenced to death for the murder of his cellmate, the courts vacated his death sentence to life in a maximum security federal prison, only for Hammer to kill another cellmate(13) 

Despite that taking place decades ago, the horrors of double celling in Security Housing Units, uncontrollable violence at USP Beaumont, the invisible ink note that jump started a white suprmacists war on blacks(14)and security breaches that result in movie scripted style murders continue. 

USP Thomson in Illinois is clear evidence that the FBOP has absolutely no control or interest in upholding a mission that they claim is designed to prioritize protecting the health and safety of inmates in their care.(15) The institutional goal is all bark. Inmates are the only ones doing the biting. 

Write to Jason:

Jason Renard Walker 1532092
TDCJ Powledge unit 
P.O.Box 660400 
Dallas,TX 75266

Jason’s support crew:

JRW Support Network
PO Box 6777
Colorado Springs, CO 80934

Sources 

1) U.S v. Snarr,704 F.3d 368 

2)Leah Caldwell, USP Beaumont,Texas: Murder and Mayhem In The Thunder Dome 

3)U.S v. Gulley,562 F.3d 809 

4)Keith Saunders, Gang Violence In Texas Federal Prison Results In Two Deaths, Nationwide BOP Lockdown 

5)Beaumont Examiner and Port Arthur News 

6)Reported in a past issue of PLN 

7)U.S. v .Ebron, 683 F.3d 105 

8)U.S. v. Fackrell, 991 F.3d 589 

9)U.S. v. Caro, 597 F.3d 608 

10)U.S v. Silva, 2022 U.S.Dist. Texas 221466 

11)U.S v. Horne, 2020 U.S.Dist Lexis 9724 

12)California U.S Attorney General report 

13)See U.S v. Fackrell (citing David Paul Hammer) 

14)U.S v.Bingham, 653 F.3d 983 

15)Christie Thompson and Joseph Shapiro, How The Newest Federal Prison Became One Of The Deadliest.

Clicking and clacking, the drumsticks announce swerves, dips, bumps, and turns in the road. Now and then I look down at the gift for my brother. My adolescence would have been an excruciating feat without him, while his own tumultuous childhood was only made tolerable by the sticks perpetually glued to nerve wracked hands. In the seat of my car, they roll back-n-forth and rattle out memorable tunes of our desperation; the crescendo ceasing as my mind recedes into a crepuscular tempo, marking the past. I drive along, thinking of my lost brother and other trips we once made together along this road. 

Some people throw stones. My brother did his best to shield me from the rocks and those who launched them in my direction. Try as I might, I could not protect him from the malignant affairs of life.

Saturdays, on those afternoons where bare feet are endangered by molten blacktop, Billy Jack would grab my hand on the walks to the swimming pool. Any time he and I were together in public he tightly held my hand, or else hovered. My face never failed to burn with embarrassment. He rarely sympathized or responded to the putty resentment, except when teasing.

“What’s the matter Kris, don’t wanna be seen holdin’ big brother’s hand.”

“You know dang well I don’t like it–and why.”

“Hey, I’m not protecting you from them, I’m protecting them from you.” He grinned, and pulled at my arm–me, swinging a size four tennis shoe at some sort of kickable refuse.

“Don’t ever forget, just ‘cause I’m a girl don’t mean I cain’t strike you out or take care of myself when hateful boys throw stuff.”

At church camp, in summer of ‘82, back when boys and girls could camp together, BJ caught a dinner plate size rock with the back of his head. The camp counselor asked the chucker, “Why did you do it, son.” The kid sniffled and stammered, “He was picking on me and I was scared because he’s a giant.” The counselor paced and worried, speaking to the picture of the Lord’s Supper hanging on a far wall, “But it’s such a big rock–the kid is going to need stitches and he’s most likely concussed.” Reaching over a What Would Jesus Do plaque on the desk, he picked up the phone and while dialing, shot a glance at my hunched over big brother then shook his head. “You’re as big as a man.” To the sputtering boy he said “I guess he bullied the wrong person, didn’t he.” I started to speak but the counselor held up a hand to “Shush” me as he spoke into the mouthpiece. “No ma’am, the church will not be responsible for a hospital bill.” Across the office, sitting on a couch and holding a towel to BJ’s bleeding head, I heard momma’s screeching from the phone. She sounded more animal than human. The counselor interrupted her rant. “No, Ms. McGee, your son is a delinquent and, as such, our church cannot be held responsible.” For a moment murmuring logic seemed to flow from mother’s end, but she was interrupted again. “We will not take him to the hospital–you must pick him up immediately.” The man pulled the device away from his ear as if it were alive. What he held in his hand hummed like the honey bee box I’d hit with a stick. Mom spewed disgust all over the camp counselor, the church, and her troublesome son. The call ended with, “Oh, you will also pick up your daughter. She attacked the boy your son was bullying.” 

Truth be told, the boy tried to lure me into the woods, and because I wouldn’t go, he berated me. “Nobody wants your kind around anyway.” He pushed me to the ground. “WHY DON’T YOU GO TO AFRICA WHERE YOU BELONG.” Billy Jack heard the yelling and came running, only to meet the thrown rock.

Momma didn’t want to hear the truth anymore than the counselor did. After arriving home from the emergency room, she added a few matching knots to BJ’s sore head, then took away his most prized possession for a month. Mother always keyed in on her son’s beloved drum-set whenever she really wanted to punish. But she never kept it for long because he’d drive us crazy beatin’ on everything in the house until he got it back. 

“Hey sis, guess what I dreamed last night,” he asked while we were watching cartoons.

“What, that in the alter-world mother actually is the ‘Wicked Witch of the West,” I popped off. 

“Yeah, dummy,” he said while tapping a beat on the coffee table, then continued “It was Oz and you were a clueless brown Dorothy skipping down the yella brick road.” Pushing him and interrupting the rhythm, I spat. “Shut up, don’t say that.”

“Calm down, you started it.” Tat-t-t-tatat. “Anyway, I dreamed Charlie Conner came into our room while I was getting my groove on and said ‘Boy, you won’t find the beat until you’re lost in it.’”

“Stop all that racket will ya.” Mom’s voice was barely heard over our sibling discourse and the pitter-patter. BJ’s wide eyes cautioned me of the danger. He set the sticks down.

“That’s the dumbest dream ever.” I mumbled around a mouthful of Fruity-O’s, then inquired, “Who the heck is Charlie Conner.” BJ slapped a palm to his forehead, sighed and picked up the drumsticks. The unrelenting musical messages his head sent to his hands were hard on the tools of the trade. The sticks never outlasted their logos. After examining the Ludwig Stamps, both worn like battle scarred war paint, he said, “Charlie Conner.” Ding-da ding-tat-tat-tattattat! “He’s the inventor of the rock-n-roll eight count beat.”

“SHUT UP”, came from the kitchen.

“Ohhh, that Charlie Conner. I thought you were talkin’ bout the guy T-Bone brought over who drank all momma’s wine and got sick all over the couch.” I paused before adding, “Billy Jack, that’s ridiculous. How can a person get lost in a sound, anyway?”

“Would you quit comparing a living legend to a drunken mutt. He’s Little Richard’s drummer.” Sticking me in the arm he continued “If not for him, there’d have never been a Bonham or Ward or any other decent skin beater.” I looked at him with cross-eyed questioning. Exasperated, he said, “John Bonham. Bill Ward. The rhythm keepers of Zeppelin and Sabbath,” and bounced the sticks off of an empty cereal box. 

“I said HUSH.”

Now wedded to another world, with a look akin to something you would see in the eyes of a zealous church congregant belting out Amazing Grace, my brother continued his roll. Having not much in common with the hymns of old, his playing was as beautiful and, surely, just as pleasing to God. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” mom raged as the curly cue cord began to unravel from the wall phone. “I’m talking to my boss. Stop all of that noise or I’ll…” Overruled by a fully extended phone cord and over-matched by the spectacular living room solo, mother’s wrath would not penetrate Billy Jack’s splendor. Now only a few feet away, with greenish slits glaring, her blond bangs bounced in time to the end of the fly swatter, shaking a promise at us. BJ’s own golden locks hung between bare knees, almost touching the combat boots his feet had yet to fit into. Lids now tightly shut, there’s no telling where his cornflower blues had gone. They were eyeing something in the darkness, though. Something more glorious than the world around him. Something no one else but my brother could see. I whispered, “I wish you could come back and mom would get lost in a beat.”

Don’t know which she hated more, his constant drumming or Billy Jack himself. Nothing was safe from his unexpected eruptions, nor was he ever safe from mom, unless T-Bone was around. Whenever BJ wasn’t in our bedroom playing his own set–an overturned laundry or fruit basket might become a snare drum, the table would do as a tom-tom and stomping the floor stood in for a base. If mom couldn’t access a belt–a hairbrush, flyswatter handle, or ring-studded backhand would suffice in response to his usually innocent misdeeds. She hit him, he hit the drums: a steadfast competition between who or what must suffer the most. 

My brother’s musical talent seemed like a birthright. Mother’s mistreatment appeared to be its twin. To say he suffered abuse is an understatement. Not sure who slapped him first, the OB-GYN or mom. I don’t believe she tended toward violence before having BJ, and the jury is still out on justification. Him being her first born offered the first chance to hit on a kid and not be held accountable. Also, beatings she withstood from his father only stopped while carrying BJ. Fortunately Vietnam’s draft preserved her and the unborn child. At least that unpopular conflict became someone’s salvation.

After coming home, his daddy, full of Quaalude and Johnnie Walker, stood on the railroad tracks behind our house with arms spread like he was waiting for a hug. A southbound Kansas City Southern and eighty coal cars willingly obliged. Mother always said, “His spirit made its last stand in ‘68 at Khe Sanh and life just was not worth living after that bloodletting.”

She whipped him because he looked too much like his father. She whipped him because he sounded too much like his father. She whipped him for my indiscretions and she could even figure out a way to blame him for her own misdeeds, then whip him for vindication. He constantly stayed bruised for being born left handed. Apparently, his father had been a lefty. The assaults were never ending, but Billy Jack couldn’t seem to get enough because he also caused a lot of trouble which called for more ass-whoop-pings. The punishments always outweighed his conduct, whereas misbehavior on my part rarely drew much fire from anyone. 

BJ never knew his dad and my own was a mystery to me. Mother wasn’t promiscuous, just hard to live with. Until T-Bone, I don’t remember her dating anyone. Except when mom would kick him out for some reason or another, (like when he sold the Airbag idea to the “suit wearin’ foreign guy” for $250 and beer for a year; a contract on a barroom napkin), he was around throughout my adolescent and teen years. I loved the old grease monkey, and in his own way, I always felt he loved all of us. Even when I meticulously painted, with ‘Passionate Pink’ nail polish, every other spoke on the front of his Harley, the most I got from him was a little hurtful teasin’.

“Girl, I’d tell your daddy on you if we knew who he was,” he said while rubbing the spokes with momma’s nail polish remover and complaining ‘bout his cracking knees. “I’ll bet he’s one of those looney’s out atcha mom’s workplace. Just wait till I find him,” he kept pickin’ as I giggled at the folded over funny looking father figure. With the pointy little welders cap, the dirt and grease burnishing his hands, face, and everywhere else the tank top failed to cover, he resembled the Tin Man. I always felt like oiling his bad knees.

Mather’s workplace was the ‘Deep Woods Tranquility Home,’ located a few miles outside of our tiny Northeast Texas town. It was there, at a Christmas party, I first noticed the beginnings of Billy Jack’s dark side. I didn’t like going to the hospital because mom was such a big ol’ fake in front of her co-workers and patients; like she should get a ‘Parent of The Year’ award or something. Plus, I’d taken T-Bone seriously and spent most of the time sizing everyone up for paternity. 

After passing the guard shack, I stared out the back window of our Chrysler and wondered for the millionth time if Mr. Sims was my father. As we drove toward the main parking area, I twisted the dark coppery orange curl uncoiling from under my beanie while scrutinizing the charcoal sideburns springing from the sides of his uniform cap. His skin shined a deep ebony and mine matched the ‘Piggly Wiggly’ grocery sacks kept under our kitchen sink. No, I didn’t resemble Mr. Sims, too much, nor anyone else in our small town. Hell, I was even a novelty in a family of oddities–a caramel complexion separating from those I loved. White and black makes brown and brown doesn’t mix with white any more than black does. I seemed to notice it more than they did, though. 

A mansion, originally built in the 1840s, and modified in the mid twentieth century, served as the administration office. The interior, gutted of all memories of the slave master who’d built it, now transformed into work cubicles and doctor’s offices, could not hide the remaining shell and what it stood for. From the outside, the colonial resistance continued on, supported by eight, twenty foot, rigid, marbled, albescent, columns. A scarlet brocade bunting smiled between the two center columns; its raised white letters spelling a paradoxical “Welcome” glared above an excessively large porch. The wooden surface, polished to perfection reflected its knotty pine brothers surrounding the house. As a child I looked upon this gigantic marvel in awe and wonder. In school, the bun-haired, mealymouthed teacher, taught that only a few decades prior, a person such as I wouldn’t have been welcome on that porch, unless she was pouring sweet tea or mixing mint juleps for those she served. As a teen and young woman, the smiling bunting became a vulgar and unwelcoming gash. Anytime I walked under it to enter the office, I understood that crossing the threshold cast a shadow which, in the not so distant past, would have never darkened that front door. But now, as a psychiatric hospital, the place protected no one from their unrealistic fears–and only trapped one in the drug induced safety of an unrealistic reality.

A long, broad driveway, once trampled upon by horses, and eventually traced by America’s first automobiles, no longer permits anything but foot traffic and the occasional ambulance. From the pedestrian gate to the administration office, six, five story buildings, built by the facilities originator, lined the way. With no windows, the sienna bricked monoliths squatted, three on each side of the way, facing each other in faceless showdowns. Without the waxy green ivy weaving its way up the walls and choking out the rain gutters, the buildings would look like run of the mill government housing projects in any large city. Together, the office and these structures mimicked antebellum and contemporary slavery in co-operation.

Daylight dwindles early in tree covered east Texas, especially in winter. Flinty shards and earth toned pea gravel lead up to and around a grand fountain before circling around to the first of sixteen steps. A ceiling of hard gray sky matched the flintstones crunching under our feet. The ivy and lichen covered bricks of insanity’s edifice towered over BJ and me as we walked in silence under the shadows of trees and treatment dwellings. He’s gotten quieter and quieter over the past couple months and I did not like leaving him alone in whatever universe he was stuck in.

“Who do you think’ll win the Super Bowl this year?” I asked, peering up into his downcast face.

“Hunh?”

“You heard me Billy Jack.”

“Yeah I heard you sis but I think you’re just talkin’ to talk,” he said in a hollow voice.

“No, I’m serious. I know it’s early in the playoffs, but who do you…”

With a storm in his eyes, he shot those cornflower blues toward me, gritted his teeth and said, “You don’t even watch football. You’re all about baseball. It’s always Rangers this, or Astros that, or the Yankees are bil ol’ cheats, or, or…” The tempest quickly subsided and his jaw relaxed before continuing, “Kris, you don’t have to act like there’s always something wrong. Why do you want to fix everything anyways.” Before the denial could fly out of my mouth, a scene caught my eye. Pointing, I said “Look it’s the sisters.” Intrigued, we stopped and watched while disagreeing, twin septuagenarians completely relieved a sticky holly bush of its leaves. One leaf at a time, they plucked and chanted in unison, “He loves me–he loves me not. He loves me– he loves me not.”

The Tschesky sisters were residents of ‘Deep Woods’ long before mother went to work there. This ritual was more than a lover’s question to the gods of fate, it was an annual competition. Every winter when the holly’s were covered in bright red berries and the leaves were at their sharpest, the twins would choose a lone bush and pull all but the last bits of foliage from it, one leaf at a time. Legend has it, one of the twins had a short affair with Lee Harvey Oswald and hides a secret the other sister and the rest of the world would like to know. But in order to learn the answer to that mystery, another enigma must be resolved. Which Tschesky was it? I guess, once the sisters settle on which one of them spent time with Mr. Oswald, the other puzzle must be solved. 

Another year without a resolution passes as the twins abandon the last two leaves. The unresolved whodunit ending with a long hug and elderly shoulder-pats. Our mouths hung open as we watched them walk harmoniously toward the Santa Clause line–bloody handprints on each other’s backs. Picking up where we left off, BJ asked, “Why don’t you fix them, huh Kris.” He paused and continued, “Some people just can’t be mended. Yeah, you can patch ‘em up a little by smiling and saying nice things, or by trying to pull away from whatever they’re lost in with meaningless words…” Now waiving his arms at the buildings, the moment found its summit “… or you can even try to treat ‘em in places like these.”

Looking down at his father’s old combat boots he’d stuffed with paper and extra socks, he lightly kicked a pebble and spoke as if in a trance. “Nobody could fix our dad’s. Mine jumped in front of that train before I was old enough to help him. Yours, I remember. He was a nice guy but he chose his family over our momma. They just wouldn’t accept a white woman, her white son, and the little half-breed Kris to come.”

“Shut up Billy Jack.”

“No, you listen to me, little sister. What about mom, huh. Why can’t she be fixed? Why does she hate me so much? I never done nothing to be whipped all the time. Some people cain’t be fixed. You and T-Bone try to protect me from her but that’s just temporary and doesn’t work half the time anyway. All them kids that throw rocks at us and call you racist names can’t be fixed. Yeah, they can be controlled sometimes, or stopped from chucking things and their words, but that doesn’t fix ‘em. You cain’t make a bad person good no more than you can make a good person bad. Mean people and the patients here are a lot alike–it’s just a different kind of sickness.” His last words chasing a teardrop down his cheek, “Some people are just broke on the inside and only an inside job will fix them.” Our hands met in the cold space between us and we walked in quiet solitude, my mind awash in these new complications, and his reverting back into the hidden chamber he’s been crawling into lately.

The fountain and the makeshift Gingerbread house the hospital had put together, for patient and visitor Polaroids with Santa, came into view. A centerpiece of the old plantation, the fountain continued to be the focal point of the mental institution. Peeing Cherubs kept their business to themselves during the winter months. The huge bowl, absent its supply of water, served as a gathering place for pine needles and cones, and bits of rubbish representing humankind’s dependence upon chewing gum and vending machines. The line to Santa’s lap seemed to snake until after the New Year, so we made our way to the other side of the fountain to find a place to sit. 

Standing on the bench we had in mind was a boy smaller than me, but his demeanor did not match his size. Because we’d never seen him in our past excursions to mom’s place, BJ and I figured he was a visitor here for the Christmas party. We quickly learned differently. With optimism contrasting the gray sky, he smiled into the distance, and began to play an invisible violin while absorbing the attention of an audience seated within his blemished mind. 

“Come on sis, let’s throw rocks at ‘em,” Billy Jack said as he stooped and scooped up a handful of gravel before running the rest of the way around the fountain. Frozen. Appalled. My feet suddenly grew roots as I witnessed the caring and kind brother I’d always known and cherished turn into an intolerant and mean stranger while chucking small stones at the mentally ill child. I learned the meaning of stoicism as the little boy, with a newly brooklyn tooth and small cut on the bridge of his nose stopped his imaginary baroque symphony long enough to straighten his onyx arrow-headed bolo tie and starched cuffs before continuing the drawn-out push-n-pull of the unseen bow. 

Was my brother’s newly acquired barbaric behavior an angry outcry at the injustice he’d been harping on–a response to our mothers savage and unfair treatment? Was it lying deep within a physiological plane, seeded in D.N.A., and sprouting as a result of life’s rainfalls? I don’t know if the egg came before or after the chicken. Our mother and BJ’s father were both broken people. That day, I stood planted to the ground of a place of nightmarish reality, watching a horrible boy, more like his mother, or his father I’d heard stories about, rather than the Billy Jack I’d always known. The Christmas season bringing a not so lovely gift–a thoughtless and mean stranger hatching before my eyes.

The last summer of sanity for BJ is memorable, mostly because the city swimming pool was out of commission. For the few weeks before we broke for those rapturous three months every kid dreams of during math and science classes, he was mostly himself. Except for moments when the private place beckoned his attention, he was the same ‘ol big brother who teased me one minute then protected me from the same kind of pestering, doled out by others, the next. 

That summer, swimming in the public pool was out of the question. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” had touched our town not long after his shortened last term. The federal monkey trickled down to our tadpole of a town and kissed it with the jewel three generations had adored. Every May through September since 1946, that aquamarine rectangle served our community with endless days of waterborne anesthesia. An escape from the heat and humidity of the south could only be found in two places: a commercial refrigerator or the Rondale city pool.

Well into its third decade, the north side of the deep end gave way to the roots of an oak tree that had staked its subterranean claim long before our bastion of coolness attempted a hostile landocracy. FDR’s plan did not include perpetual maintenance and the city budget was not braced to take on the task that year, so BJ and I were left up to our own devices. I dug both cleated shoes into a pitcher’s mound and became the first girl to pitch a six inning no hitter in East texas little league. Billy Jack did not fare so well. A mind numbing infernal pit of inhalant intoxication wrapped its insidious roots around his damaged and fluctuating emotional condition. The thin wall gave way to the eternal stateroom he’d faded in and out of for the last couple of years. The swimming pool would recover, but my beloved brother could not be rebuilt. With gold lips and teeth, Billy Jack spent most of that summer on the front porch perched on the same couch T-Bone’s friend had puked on, a can of spray paint in one hand and the other tightly gripping his drumsticks. These are the last recollections of my brother being at home. 

Driving along the solitary route to the ‘Deep Woods Tranquility Home,’ the telephone wires rise and fall in steadfast compliance of the tar scented poles they are connected to. The blacktop, abutting high-wires, and drumsticks in the seat, respond to the waxing and waning of the landscapes’ ever changing expression. The road unfolds itself toward the next distant point of view, the wires carrying heavy loads of humanity’s binding conversations. From zenith to nadir-apex to antapex– hill to dale, roads, and words carry us through life. They are all influenced and escorted by the landscape or another. We are directed by whatever we are attached to. The loads we bear are held upon the shoulders of others. They not only carry burdens, but also the load-bearers. In fact, those who carry those, who carry loads, have their own loads to bear. Some people carry the loads, and still others transfer theirs, one chucked stone at a time.

Mom’s heart gave out after just fifty years of yielding to anger and resentment. T-Bones whiskey soaked liver made it almost to seventy before his Tin-Man knees took their last creaking step on a burnt out bricked road. BJ’s been a patient at ‘Deep Woods’ for the better part of two decades. I don’t know what is directing his thoughts and actions, but I still hold out hope he’ll be returned to the boy who protected me from rock throwers. Maybe his dream about ol’ Charlie Conner will prove true. Clicking and clacking, the drumsticks announced the swerves, dips, bumps, and turns in the road. Now and then I look down at the gift for my brother. Maybe he’ll discover his beat and get lost in it rather than continuing to hide from the unrelenting reality he could never really depend upon.

Ross Hartwell 1893452
Memorial Unit
59 Darrington Road
Rosharon, TX 77583

Quite honestly I don’t believe Mr. Webster could define a more beautiful city. I’m currently living in a high-rise in downtown Redwood City, California with views that belay a generosity of spirit, rock solid values of decency, and with Old Glory and the California Bear flying high above the local V.F.W. a sense of civic duty accentuates the panorama. At night, “looking towards the West” the firmament juxtaposes with the lights of the not-so-distant hills. In the pre-dawn, the marine layer outlines and edges the geometric canvass of the Santa Cruz mountains. In the afternoon I can clearly make out a hiking trail as it snakes up the Eastern flank of the redwood covered mountains. On weekends I find myself daydreaming about joining the droves of hikers as they attack its summit and are presented with the City of Half Moon Bay and the Pacific Ocean beneath them. I also have a fine view of the historic wooden homes on Arguello Street. The infrastructure and identity of this Coastal Redwood Community has me looking inward too. To be part of this community is also a daydream. I have faults that I recognize plainly and regret them. Like many people I’ve faltered in life. My views may be limited by the steel anchored slit windows of the downtown county jail, but my hopes aren’t. I hope you readers won’t bereave my circumstance. I’ve spent most of my life looking for myself outside of myself. Writing changes that for me. I’ve never felt a belonging to a community in my life. To be part of this community, “even for a brief moment” by sharing my views and thoughts with all of you is lifetime cool. From the vantage of his hermitage the Jesuit hermit “Thomas Merton” was asked to reflect on the meaning of community. “The woods” he said, “would be very silent if the only birds who sang were the best.” This statement is even more profound when considering the fact that the cloistered monastery from which he retired had adhered to a strict vow of silence. I can’t sing. I don’t mean that like other modest people mean it. I’m dead serious. Still, I can’t help but chirp away at the beauty unfolded beneath, “and I hope not beyond” my dreams.

Like serving in an old World War I diesel submarine that’s been depth-charged and is laying at the bottom of the ocean, the claustrophobic, re-circulated air, and little hope of the county jail provides a close estimation of your fellow prisoner under pressure. This morning I witnessed someone “who obviously has Mental Health issues” scream profanities at a nurse. Uhg! With some quick conflict resolution on the nurse’s part the malcontent sailor was promptly taken to another part of the submarine. Watching her on the front lines of this country’s Mental Health Epidemic was like watching a composer write symphonies in subsonic tones, or a poet inscribe sonnets in invisible ink. An unsung hero in this dark realm. A rockstar! Who could voluntarily work in a building whose ceilings are obstructed by black tumultuous clouds constantly threatening?

Having been diagnosed with type-1 bipolar I know the importance of medication, “especially at the bottom of the ocean.” For those of us who can surface the dangerous waters of jail has most of us swimming towards the tiny desolate islands of ourselves. Sheriff Departments who run our nation’s County Jails are completely unprepared for the task of responding to the Mental Health Epidemic that faces our Justice System. Not only is there no training in recognizing and assessing prisoners who are symptomatic their draconian use of force to instill order contrasts sharply with the accepted practices currently being pushed forward in Justice Reform Legislation.

In a system of self-serving checks and balances the level of policing brutality “especially framed against the canvas of Mental Health Awareness” is chilling. The indifferent violence used against myself and my fellow sailors here would make those guards who stood on the train platform at Auschwitz blush. It’s afternoon now and the nurse is back with a smile on her face. Wow! I wonder if she knows what that small display of humanity does for us forlorn prisoners?

Ask any chronobiologist, “the study of innate biological rhythms,” what the vacuum of solitary confinement does to the psyche and they’ll probably refer you to the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca and his descriptions of silver miners who encountered phenomena from long term mental distress, psychic pressure from claustrophobia, and the full tempest of panic as they imagined the ceilings and walls enclosing them. With no sunsets or sunrises you pass time on a kind of primordial instinct. Like animals in a zoo, you become sad and pensive. Eventually you succumb to your enclosure and fall into a paralytic shock which you can recognize by the endless pacing for hours on end. My extended stay here in this subterranean cave has nothing to do with breaking any rules. As a bank robber I’m viewed as an escape risk and leader/organizer. I find it difficult to organize my own thoughts much less lead an uprising against the bologna sandwiches which we are served trice a day. In a system that created darkness where light is desperately needed, this place is the front lines of little hope.

The use of solitary confinement is draconian. There is an urban legend that this place permanently dismantles the good parts of you. Instead of becoming easier over time, the accumulative effects of a prolonged stay results in diminishing returns. In the 1980s an expedition into a cave called Sarawak Chamber, “in Borneo,” a group of cavers had to be guided out after becoming emotionally despondent. Being isolated in these places you become adroit at communicating with your fellow condemned. Reading lips, American Sign Language, or passing lines.

Yesterday I spoke with a kid from Stockton, CA. For hours we shared life experiences vis-à-vis the vent. He was in prison for a parole violation. Although he had lived in Stockton, he worked at the Costco in Tracy. After speaking with him for a while things just weren’t adding up. He said he worked part-time, however, he left for work at 5:00 a.m. and didn’t return until 5:00 p.m. Finally he admitted that he didn’t own a car and was embarrassed to admit that he had to walk 20 miles to work. Can you believe that he was ashamed of that?

There is always an uncanny mixture of bravado amongst a den of thieves, however and prisoner worth his salt displaces these false veneers and finds within himself elements of authenticity. I’d rather befriend someone who walks 20 miles to a part-time job than someone who drives a Ferrari. It’s easy in this place to lose sight of the beauty that’s in the struggle. His story emboldened me to look deeper within myself and focus on that inward voice and not the echo of my resounding footsteps in this concrete cave.