The Making of a Man -Pt. 8 — By Dean Boettcher
When I look back on the drive to the children’s penitentiary, I realize that in the 90 minutes it took us to drive there, the two officers who transported me had understood that, regardless of the file that sat on the seat between them which listed all my juvenile delinquencies, I was just a 14-year-old kid.
As they went through the process of transferring custody to the kids’ prison, their attitudes became solemn. They didn’t look me in the eye at all anymore. Especially since the attitude and behavior of the staff at the institution was so cold and downright mean.
There has got to be something wrong inside of some of those people. The ones who take pleasure in the intimidation and humiliation of kids. Maybe it was because they dealt with so many minors who showed them no respect and thrived on misbehaving, (of which there were many), or maybe they were victims of some type of trauma or abuse when they were children and were just passing it on. Perhaps both.
But the way they showed their unhappiness with themselves and the world around them by breaking the spirits of children was truly inhumane. And because they were technically “on the same side” as the transport officers, they were able to act abysmally without any repercussions or even a comment that might have cut a kid some slack.
But like I said, it was apparent in the downcast eyes of the two cops who had brought me, as well as in their uncomfortable movements, that they were only too happy to complete the paperwork and make their exit with haste so that they could wash their hands of the business that they felt they were party to up until that point.
I often wonder if it ever plagued them through their lives. Did they ever recall hearing and seeing the inhuman treatment that took place and wish they had tried to stop it? Or maybe refused to be a part of it? I suppose it’s all a matter of which of them had a conscience and which of them could chalk it up to “just following orders”.
Well, that type of speculation is useless for now, I suppose. And it has no bearing on the present story, so I shall redirect my line of dictation back to the experience which began this tangent.
So, there I was, handcuffed to a wooden bench which was cemented to the floor, watching as the officers who brought me hither were buzzed out of the gate and drove out of sight. In the “Receiving” booth, behind bullet proof glass, sat one large woman and two men. What they discussed I did not know but it had very little to do with me. I realized that after about an hour and a half of just sitting there being ignored while they went on about their business of phone calls and what looked like ordinary gossip due to all the giggling and pantomiming going on.
When I finally got up the nerve to say, “hey, excuse me…”, I was totally ignored. So. Perhaps a little more volume might help.
“EXCUSE ME! HEY!”
It was like I struck the biggest man in the butthole with a lightning bolt. He slammed his hand flat down on the counter, making an incredibly loud SMACK that made me jump, then he was on his feet, jerking the door open so fast I thought he was going to run over and just stomp me right into the floor.
Instead, as he got right up to me, almost nose to nose, he jabbed a large, muscular finger into my chest as he began to growl at me between clenched teeth.
“First of all,” (another jab in the chest), “nobody here is named HEY, got it?”, (jab), “Second of all,” (jab), “we will speak to you”, (jab, jab) “when we are good and ready, got it”, (yes, another jab).
Since he hadn’t stopped to let me respond to his first question, I honestly thought I was safer to just keep quiet after his second one. Which turned out to be a mistake. It obviously angered him even more because he punctuated every single word with a jab, each one a little harder and more painful than the last.
“I SAID, DO-YOU-GOT-IT!?!?”
“Yes”, I managed to say.
“YES WHAT?”, he screamed in my face.
I was a little lost at the last question.
“Um, yes…I got it?”
I think I was lucky that he saw in my eyes that I was already a little terrified and completely off track on what he was going for, because instead of just totally losing it he just glared into my eyes and said, (quite menacingly), “Oh you’re gonna have fun here you little piece of shit, I’ll make sure of that.”
I was off to a strong start, I could tell. The second man from inside the bullet proof booth had made his way out to us by the tail end of the encounter and was inserting himself between the big, angry guy and myself. He removed the handcuffs from one of my hands so that I was free of the bench and had me stand up and he re-cuffed me behind my back and led me by one arm down the hall and into a room that was filled with clothes, sheets, toiletries, etc.
The angry guy yelled something from behind us about putting me in a blue uniform and starting me out in max, which didn’t sound good, but luckily the clothes that were chosen for me were khaki colored and I sort of sensed this was better than a start in blue.
I was right. It was the clothes you must wear while you go through reception and orientation. It’s an entirely separate unit where everyone is in khakis and for 30 to 60 days your daily schedule is made up of multiple different orientations on the rules of chow, the rules of school, the rules of the bathroom, the rules of room cleaning, the rules of hygiene, and I think even the rules of the rules. It’s overkill, to say the least, but it was way better than the county jail where I first began this adventure.
So, this was my fate for the next year, unless I did exceptionally well, kept my head down, and convinced the board to let me out early like many of the kids seemed to do. I thought it would be no sweat. I could do this. I just had to be strong. Show no weakness. I had heard all the stories. I even had some associates who had done their stint in this place and survived to talk about it. I could do this. This was a test of my resolve, my manhood, I would earn a badge of honor through this.
I had no idea what I was about to experience, however. It was unlike the temporary places I had been in prior to this. The lengthiest removal from home, up to this point, had been at the shelter home and consisted of about one month. A month seems like an eternity when you’re 14. But it only seems like that because it’s more of a break from life’s routine than it is an actual change. Sort of like the difference between going to Las Vegas for a week on vacation versus living there for a few months. The environment begins to intertwine with your daily living. Things become familiar and commonplace. You begin to become part of the area just as the area becomes part of you.
This realization began to sink in within the first month. I began to realize that this was my new home, not just a spot that I can pop into and pop out of after passing my time creating mischief or what have you. Most of the people are all there for a length of time that makes them become your community, like it or not. My world had shrunk down to the perimeter of the razor wire fence.
To give some sort of perspective, imagine that your daily life is filled with the individuals within a six-block diameter. That’s it. Six-blocks north of your house, to six-blocks south of your house, to six-blocks west of your house, etc. That area becomes your entire existence, day in, day out. Everything that you do and most of what you say, is known and judged by the people who inhabit that area. There is no escape. You can’t decide you don’t like the neighborhood and want to move somewhere. You are there, with these same people, until your sentence is up or until the review board releases you.
In addition, 75–80 percent of these fellow offenders in your new world will return within 3 months of their release. On top of that, you have the family offenders. By that I mean, your fellow inmates have brothers, cousins, and, in many cases, affiliated gang members who will likely finish any business that was left unattended to due to a person’s release, relocation, or death. You learn that you must think very carefully about your words and actions because they have far-reaching implications.
Sometimes they even stretch from the juvenile system into the adult system so that even after you finally are out from under the shadow of this children’s prison, if you persist with your course of poor decisions as an adult, you have a high chance of being revisited by things that occurred before you even had pubic hair. Things that you honestly don’t even remember because they left no lasting impact on you. However, some action made by you may have indirectly impacted someone else and left a scar on them that they have left fester for years and years.
It’s unbelievable the things that some people will carry with them for ridiculous lengths of time. I speak from personal experience here as well. But we’ll eventually get to that.
So, without going through the many strange and unreal situations that were part of the whole juvenile prison package, I’ll just highlight a few things that still stand out in my mind to this day.
I became aware of the sexual abuse that occurred early on in my stay. I was still in the reception unit and still quite naïve when, one night, I turned on my call light to signal the night officer in the main booth that I needed something. (The cells in this unit did not have toilets in the cells so if you had to use the bathroom, or needed anything else important, there was a switch inside the cell that turned on a little light outside of your room above the door.)
I soon learned that the use of the call light is frowned upon by the staff. You WILL receive repercussions for using it unless you, or someone else within your view, is gushing blood or hurting themselves or another inmate. You’re supposed to be able to use it like I did at first. That’s what the rules say. But the rules are more of a bureaucratic device than an actual manual which you should act in accord with. The guards made their own rules. Some were almost fair. The majority were cruel and spiteful, and just plain mean. Some were even inhuman.
But back to the call light ordeal. So, I have my light on and I’m jumping around because I really need to use the bathroom. Badly. I’m standing at my door, craning my neck as I try to look down the long hallway to see if the guard is coming. After what seemed like an hour, I finally decided to jiggle the doorknob and bang on the door. I grabbed the handle and jiggled it, and to my surprise, the door opened. Occasionally a door would fail to be locked, not often, but it did happen, although it was almost always caught by the second guard who comes and does the security check shortly after the first guard does the initial lockdown. Apparently, the second guard missed it as well, or he just skipped his round this particular night.
I opened my door a little bit so that I could peek down the hall at the guard booth which was a plexi-glass encased cubicle in the center of two long hallways, one extending on either end of the cubicle. I couldn’t see the guard at all. I could see through the cubicle all the way down the other hall, so I knew the only other place he could be was the staff bathroom. I could see the door to that bathroom if I took a few steps down the hallway, which I did, and I saw that the staff bathroom was empty as well.
Just being out of your cell at night was enough to get you thrown into maximum segregation for a month, and although I hadn’t had the pleasure of visiting the segregation units yet, but I heard they were bad places. People would come back from there a little different than when they went in.
Being the curious chap that I am, as well as my penchant to live on the edge, I crept further down the hallway. The inmate bathroom entrances were on both sides of the guard cubicle. There was a huge plexiglass window in the back of the guard cubicle so that the guards could see the entire bathroom. The urinals, the toilets, the showers, and the sinks were all in plain view of anyone in the guard cubicle.
My plan was to pop into the bathroom and have a quick pee and haul ass back to my cell and pretend that I’d never left. I was moving swiftly towards the bathroom entrance when I heard a little noise, at the same time I looked through the guard cubicle into the bathroom and had a plain view of the shower area. What I saw froze me in my tracks and turned my blood cold. I’ve read that expression many times in books, but until I saw what this guard was doing to this kid, I never knew how realistic that description was.
The guard was a big man, probably near six feet tall and muscular. He had this little kid completely naked and forcefully bent over with one hand gripping the back of his neck, his other hand was being used to hold himself study against the shower wall as he just rammed away on this poor kid. I recognized the kid from the cell about five doors closer to the guard cubicle than mine. As soon as it registered on my brain what I was looking at, I panicked. Then I saw the blood all over the boy’s rear end and it broke the frozen spell. As quietly and as quickly as I could, I zipped back into my cell and jumped under my blanket and just tried to stop breathing so heavy and sweating. I was in total shock at what I saw, plus I was terrified that I would be caught. I was so scared of what might happen to me if the guard knew that I knew.
Luckily, I was never found out. But from that night on, any sense of safety or security I had was gone. After a while you begin to see who the kids are that are picked by these staff members. You could see it on their faces. The shame, the guilt. Sometimes there would be attempted suicides.
For the entire time I was there, no one was caught for their acts, at least not that I was aware of, and news travels fast in lock-up situations due to the small and concentrated population. Sexual abuse was probably the worst thing a kid could endure, in my opinion. Physical wounds heal relatively quickly compared to psychological damage.
After being through the system for so many years, I have learned how predators select their victims. They look for small, timid, and somewhat androgynous appearing individuals that can be easily separated from the flock and then groomed for a period until the predator feels confident that he/she can proceed without fear of being caught or that the victim will reveal him. It’s a cautious process that demonstrates that it is no way an act of impulsive, compelling urge formed from passion. It is premeditated and done very skillfully. It’s almost as if pedophiles have a handbook to consult so similar are the techniques used by many.
I consider myself fortunate because for the first half of my stay at the institution I stood 4’ 11’ and weighed a whopping 105 lbs. I also had semi-long hair and was quite boyish, to say the least. In hindsight I believe I may have been singled out a time or two, but for whatever reason, fate intervened, and I was spared the sexual assault part of the abuse. Although witnessing an assault produces its own type of trauma. Things such as trust go right out the window and is replaced by fear, which is then compounded by the other things that are part and parcel of the wonderful world of juvenile detention centers.
As for the kid who was the victim, the very next morning I saw him as he came out of his cell. It was obvious that something was wrong. Or maybe it was just because I knew what had happened to him just hours before. I remember during cell clean-up that morning I saw him take his little garbage bag we had for the little trash cans in our room, and quickly stuff it far down into the large can that is passed down the hall for that purpose. His little trash bag was stuffed full, which was odd, but I could imagine exactly what was in there. His bloody clothes and towels and sheets and whatever other evidence he had to dispose of. I felt incredibly bad for him, but there’s no room for weakness in these places. You don’t befriend and console the weak for two reasons. First, it makes you look weak as well, and secondly, it could likely get you drawn into whatever is going on with the person you choose to befriend. You have plenty of your own troubles to worry about without taking on anyone else’s.
I want to be clear that this is not my current philosophy. I personally believe that if we taught the troubled youth things like compassion, empathy, mindfulness, and how much better everything is when you uplift and support those around you, then perhaps there wouldn’t be so much pain and suffering and trauma dragged through life and projected onto others. But we shall get to all of that in due course. First, there is much, much more wreckage to sort through.
Unfortunately, this was not the last sexual assault which I had either witnessed or been aware of. Nor was it the last abuse that this specific boy had suffered. I wouldn’t say it was it was a commonplace occurrence, but it definitely took place. Everyone knew something about it who was there, but it was one of those taboo things that was only spoke about in whispers or not at all. If you didn’t talk about it maybe it would go away. To speak of it was to make it real and no one wanted that. At least not anyone that I knew.
After reception, they move you to your units, which are assigned after an evaluation by the staff. They group you according to similar crimes and/or similar behavioral dispositions. There was even one unit known as the “unmotivated” unit. They were made to wear bright yellow shirts every single day. Occasionally, there would be an industrious individual who would work his way through the impossible programs imposed upon that unit, who would find his way into general population. But they were very few, and very infrequently.
Even in that place it was obvious how money made a difference. If your parents were loaded, and most likely connected with judges, governors, prosecutors, etc., your stay was guaranteed to be plush and relatively short, regardless of behavior. The few kids who made it out of the unmotivated unit, well, I would bet every one of them had parents of influence. The point is, you knew who had money and who didn’t. Capitalism at it’s finest.
If you were a real big problem to the staff, you would find yourself in a yellow shirt, but even that was rare. It kind of makes me wonder if the yellow shirts really were “unmotivated” or if they were grouped for another reason that wasn’t made public knowledge. Like perhaps sex crimes. Looking back, it makes more sense. This is the first time I have thought about that since I was there. Wow, it adds up perfectly now. No wonder they couldn’t even be on the yard at the same time as general population. I feel dumb. Lol. Anyway, on to the unit placements.
So they had separate units, about 16 if I remember correctly. All carbon copies of one another, except for the minimum- and maximum-security units. They were the same building blueprint but each one was set up a bit more securely than the normal units. The max unit had the big steel doors with the food slots in them, just like most jails, and the steel toilet-sink combo in one corner plus a steel bed bolted to the floor in the middle of the room that was only four inches off the ground so that you couldn’t get underneath it and cause problems for the staff.
It’s shocking what some kids are capable of for whatever reason you want to put to it. Maybe they’re mentally ill, abused, or both. But it was sort of common to have a kid just decide he was going to make a spectacle of himself and wait till they lock us down for the night, then begin destroying their entire room. Breaking all the glass, burning anything that will catch fire, smashing the porcelain toilets, throwing feces and urine at the staff while rubbing shampoo all over their naked bodies so that they would be harder to get a hold of and neutralize. It was the same routine every time. Some kids would be more successful than others and even get some blows landed on staff members before they would be subdued.
It was almost a nightly event in one of the units or another. You’d see the lights flashing and see the “goon squad” come flying to whichever unit was in distress, dressed like they were going to an all-out, full-scale war. Huge cans of mace would be used, and if you were in a cell anywhere near where it happened, you’d be dealing with burning eyes and skin for the next twelve hours till you could shower the next day. That stuff got everywhere.
But the worst thing, at least to me, was the shock shields. They had shields that were four feet high and concave from side to side lined with tazer electrodes. They would get the door open, and the lead guy would hold up the shield while the five other guys behind him all just shoved him forward with the shield till they had the kid pinned on the floor or in a corner and then just light him up with those electrodes. There would be a lot of screaming and all the fight would go right out of the kid and next you would hear the kid screaming, “Okay! Okay! Stop! Please! Stop!”
You would think it would be over, right? Oh no. not yet. Next came the revenge from the storm troopers. These guys must train and wait for the opportunity to put every hurtful thing they learned into practice. They usually shocked the kid until he was senseless, all the while kneeling on any sensitive areas they could find, like the knee and shoulder joints, the neck, the spine. And they would be using their batons whenever they could as well. When they finally dragged the kid out of his cell he would be utterly defeated, bleeding, snot running out of his nose. And they would carry him “hog-tied”, hands behind the back in handcuffs, feet in cuffs as well and a pair of cuffs connecting his hands to his feet. Their carrying handles would be the cuff chains which I know from experience is incredibly painful.
I describe some of these events so that the reader to get a feel of the constant state of anxiety or alert that a person, a child, must be under. It wasn’t a case of normal living between the occasional horrible event, it was a daily existence of heightened emotional states that usually result in some type of psychological scarring. How could it not?
Many of you probably think a lot of this is just not possible. It can’t be real, can it? They can’t treat children that way. Well, I have news for you. They have, and they still do. I guarantee it. Or maybe you think the kid deserves it? If this is you then there is only one of two possibilities, one, you just haven’t witnessed it so you have no clue the extent of the brutality and excess of force used, or two, you are one of those guys on the goon squad and need some serious psychological help to sort things out in your head.
Speaking of psychological things, as I’ve said, most of the children in these circumstances end up much worse off after being released than they had been when they went in. Some, of course, were already damaged goods before they got there. In fact, it’s the very reason certain ones ended up there in the first place. As for kids like me, I can honestly say that had I not been exposed to the extreme side of childhood delinquency I may have taken an entirely different course in my life. I have several ideas and suggestions on how to help avoid the things that turn a mixed-up child into a full-blown criminal, but there are not enough people in the places of power that matter who would even consider diverting funds to new types of programs. To them, you’re pretty much a rotten apple already so punishment and incarceration trumps rehabilitation every time.
Another interesting fact that most people are unaware of is the amount of money there is to be made in the correctional industry. I have heard it’s in the top 20 of American businesses who gross the most annually, but I can’t state that as fact. What I do know is that every single prison in our country has a industry which employs inmates for pennies on the dollar and they usually run 24/7. But I digress. Back to my juvenile incarceration journey.
For the first eight months I was there I was a decent inmate. Not a whole lot of trouble. The few altercations I had gotten into had been well screened so that there was no staff involvement. It was usually taken up in the handball rooms with a couple inmates on point watching for the guards while you and your opponent settled your differences. Being young and small, you will get tested a few times until you demonstrate that, win or lose, the other guy is walking away with some marks and wounds as well. After that, the only fights you will probably be in are either spontaneous, or someone has purposely crossed a line with you over some stupid territorial reason such as a seating issue at chow, or theft of someone else’s things, or most of the time it was gang issues,
Anyway, I had about four months left till my year was up. That was the maximum sentence they were allowed to give a juvenile. So, in my mind I thought, worst case scenario, I’d be home in 120 days, maximum.
Three months before my year was up, I went in front of the review board. Standard procedure at that juncture in your sentence. Either they grant you the last three months to re-integrate to society by sending you to a group home, or they keep you till the end of your year, then you discharge home.
The board’s decision came as a complete shock. I was not even aware they could do what they did. I was sitting there waiting to hear if I was headed to a group home or if I had to do the last ninety days flat, (which, honestly, I preferred since I could skip another move to a place full of crazy rules and just go straight home), and the decision they handed me made no sense. As I read it I could hear them explaining it to me but it was like I was in a daze. My stomach felt like I was about to throw up and I suddenly was cold. It had to be shock. They were telling me that, due to my repeated display of a poor attitude and my apparent disregard for structure and authority figures that they would be referring me back to juvenile court for the extension of an additional year.
I was so dumbfounded and so angry, the only thing I could think to do was to stand up, tears in my eyes, and throw the stack of papers at them and just scream at them at the top of my voice. Naturally, I was immediately immobilized by the ever-present staff who cuffed me and took me to the minimum-security unit where I spent the next two weeks for some rule infractions that I cannot even recall this long afterward.
I couldn’t believe it. I had never even been to either of the security units, so although I was admittedly a mouthy, sneaky little bugger, I never thought I’d be looking at any additional time. Like I said, I didn’t even know that was an option they had.
A month later I was taken back to court, extended another year, and I began counting sown another whole year. Except now I was what that place called a “lifer”. It’s sort of ridiculous considering an adult lifer has an actual life sentence to serve. But in this place, it was anyone who had been there longer than a year. We were a rather small crowd, believe it or not. Many kids left and came back, some several times, but not many remained for an entire year or more.
This next part of the story I will make short and just stick to the major events since it is an entire chapter all by itself. However, if I was to describe every single event in detail that was out of the ordinary, I would be typing forever.
Even though there was a chance that I could cut my second year short by earning an early release to a group home for good behavior, I had had enough of that carrot dangled in front of me the first year. I held back and honestly turned away from many things the first year just to try for the early release and, well, you see how that went.
So, my second year began with absolutely no respect for rules or authority. I was becoming a problem fast. I began to think about yet another year after the present one and it just made me angry. What to do?
Well, it just so happened that in my second year, the big trend was to escape, or at least attempt to. The institution was surrounded by woods for miles and miles so the kids who actually made it over the fence and into the woods didn’t stay gone long. I think the record was right around 24 hours before they were returned and spent the next 60 days in the max unit followed by 30 days in the minimum unit, provided they had no rule infractions during that time.
For some reason, kids are dreamers, full of hope and possibilities. Even after repeatedly witnessing multiple failed escape attempts, some of us truly believed that if we could just make it out, we could be gone forever. Kids are not great future planners by the way. At least none that I was with.
So it came to pass, after one escape attempt where we made it over the razor wire and into the woods, we planned yet another. The first one was the same as for the other kids. We became lost, eaten up by bugs, hungry and cold, until we were relieved to be found. One poor kid tried swimming through a swamp type body of water and drowned so we decided we were going to formulate a new plan.
This plan was months in the making and required discipline. The staff at the institution would occasionally take a group of youths into the nearest town to go to a roller-skating rink, however, you had to be on the highest levels which meant really being a model suck-up inmate for an extended period of time. Out of the five of us who began the plan, only three succeeded in making the cut for the “off-grounds” privilege.
The plan was simple, once we got into town and headed from the vehicle to the roller rink, we split. Period. That was the plan.
To make a long story short, the plan worked. Fortunately, the staff who ended up taking us were not the normal off ground staff, (who might have posed a challenge during the dash phase of the plan since they were quite physically fit), they were a little tiny woman about 45 years old and a few other women who were in no shape to pursue even if their life depended on it. Fortune had indeed smiled upon us.
So, once the group began piling out of the van at the destination, we did not hesitate for one moment. Almost as one, we bolted in approximately the same direction and headed across the street to a grouping of buildings.
As I said before, most kids do not think very far ahead. If we had, I’m quite certain that we would have reconsidered this course of action because there were multiple obstacles we had not anticipated. We were thinking, “FREEDOM!”, and it never crossed our minds that not one of us had ever been to this town, much less even heard of it. I believe the population was around 3,000 people, mostly farmers and retirees.
The group of buildings we dashed for cover behind turned out to be the post office/city hall, which was adjacent to the police department. Our only piece of luck was that the town had three on duty police officers at the time and they all were out as of that moment. I would bet that one was at the donut shop and the other two were probably sleeping in their patrol cars with their radar guns set up on the dashboard to make it look like they were hard at work monitoring the mean streets for traffic violators. But that’s just a guess.
At any rate, the only thing that every building on that street had in common was the fact that directly behind them all were nothing but trees and farm fields. Seeing as the open fields offered no cover whatsoever, we opted for the woods.
Another thing we failed to factor in was that it was February, and we were in the upper Midwest. The only thing further north was Canada, if that gives you any idea as to the cold we just ran into with our little jackets, no gloves, and tennis shoes.
We were still not deterred. Our options were to turn around and walk back into custody or give it hell and see where the fates would take us. Either way, our punishment would be the same. We had technically Escaped no matter which route we chose. So, off into the woods we went.
The woods turned into more woods, and more woods, and frozen lakes. The snow got deeper and deeper the further we went into the woods. It was around 2:00 pm when we split from the herd. A little over three hours later we were frozen, it was dark, and our feet and hands were losing all feeling and function rapidly.
Suddenly, we popped out of a thick part of the woods onto an old country road that had been plowed rather recently. It had to lead somewhere. One of our crew had been crying for about thirty minutes at this point, so when we saw the road, well, that was it for him. He had had enough. He was ready to take whatever was coming just to be able to get warm again. He honestly thought he was dying. We all had hypothermia already, but death was still a way off.
As we started down the road, we became aware of lights from vehicles. both regular vehicles and the telltale red and blue lights of cops. From our viewpoint we could tell that the road we had stumbled upon was just one of many that crisscrossed through this part of the land. Our crying compadre turned and headed straight for the nearest lights, waving his arms, and yelling to attract attention.
My other partner and I decided it was obviously time to part ways, quickly. We could both understand the desire to be warm and get food and all of that, but our drive to see this thing through was greater. At least at that point. We wished him well, (in reality, we called him a sissy and some other things, but that was more about feeling betrayed than it was about understanding his situation, and kids are mean sometimes anyway), and we set off as fast as our frozen legs would carry us. Back into the woods.
My feet felt like blocks of wood and my fingers went from numbness at the tips to incredibly painful near the place where they joined the hand. The very tips of both of our fingers were blue and getting darker and darker as it got colder and colder. Our blood was freezing in our extremities. I know that now. I did not know that then.
We saw the lights come together in the area we had just vacated and knew that our third member had been located. We began to hear bullhorns calling for us and trying to warn us of the freezing temps, telling us to just turn ourselves in before someone got hurt.
About that time, we came across a cabin in the woods. Not some old, dilapidated thing, but a nice cabin that was most likely someone’s summer home or vacation home. Behind it there was a long set of stairs that led down to a lake, although the stairs were barely visible underneath the snow and the lake was frozen solid and covered with a couple feet of the white stuff as well. You only knew it was a lake because it was the only huge depression that was devoid of all trees, bushes, or anything else for that matter.
Obviously, the cabin was locked, but a stout piece of firewood that was stacked next to the building solved that problem. We entered through the window and the warmth that hit us was like heaven. We basked in it momentarily before running around the place looking for gloves, boots, or anything else to stay warm. We knew we couldn’t stay there for long, but when my friend came around the corner with two bottles of alcohol in his hands it was time to warm the insides. We indulged. On empty stomachs. We also were kids who didn’t weigh much and hadn’t had a drop of beer or anything in over a year, at least. (My friend was a fellow “lifer”).
It didn’t take us long to get good and polluted. To make matters worse, during our trek through the woods I had lost my glasses, and if you’ve read any of my other stories you might recall that my eyesight is horrendous from an injury when I was young. So, since the point where I lost my glasses, our adventure was pretty much a big blur to me. Literally.
Now that we were drunk and feeling no pain, we suddenly realized that we had remained in that cabin far too long. I saw the blinking of red and blue lights growing closer rather quickly. Then I heard the snowmobiles. They had called in the sheriff’s department who had deployed their snowmobiles and brought reinforcements in addition to all the available staff from the correctional facility, as well as volunteers from the community. It was unbelievable how many people they had involved in this escapade.
I would like to take a moment to issue an apology to anyone whose person or property was affected by my actions. I truly am sorry. I made many mistakes in my life without thinking about all the other people whom my actions affected. Please know that if you happen to be reading this and it sounds familiar to you.
Back at the scene, as the group located us and began to close in, our only route of escape was out the back and down to the lake. What came after that we didn’t know nor care, we only knew that it was in the opposite direction as inevitable capture.
Being inebriated as I was, in addition to being almost blind, I could not recall exactly how we had entered the cabin. Plus, it was extremely dark. It was slightly less dark outside, so when I got up to make good my escape, I remember seeing the moonlight coming through the shape of a door. Thinking that we had entered through that opening, I jumped up and ran full speed and expected to just keep running and jumping and rolling down the embankment to the lake below. What happened instead, was the light I saw was not coming through an open door, but through a sliding glass door that was tightly closed and locked. I hit the large glass pane with a lot of force. It almost knocked me unconscious. I was dazed for a moment until I heard my partner yelling for me to hurry up, which brought me out of my daze enough to allow me to sit up, register what happened, and feel this flow of warm liquid down the front of my face.
Fortunately for me, the glass was of the safety glass type and not like a normal house window. Had it been the other kind of glass I’m sure I would have been sliced up quite severely. Seeing as it was safety glass, I sustained only three cuts on my head and face. One was right beneath my left eye and had sliced the lower eyelid clean through but somehow left my eyeball unscathed. Amazing.
Still drunk, still belligerent, and spurred on by my newfound warmth and drunken strength, I was on my feet and down on the lake at almost the same time my partner had reached it.
Looking up and scanning the ridge that ran around the entire lake, it was obvious that we were surrounded. There was no way out. They were calling down to us and had spotlights on us from multiple angles. What to do? We gave it our best for a while yet. We yelled obscenities at them and swore they’d never take us alive, and all that good stuff that sounds very powerful when you’re drunk.
Our captors had been in similar positions many times before. We were not the first, nor the last, to dash off on an off grounds’ excursion. That is one of the reasons they took us to the town that they did. There was nowhere to run. They knew this well. They also knew that, given the time we’d already been out, added to the condition of the first one of us to surrender, it would not be long. No need to chase us around the lake because sooner or later we would probably be begging to get into one of those heated police cars.
We lasted about another thirty minutes. I had blood frozen all down the front of me and on my face. That began to concern me. A facial wound bleeds profusely and makes a tiny injury look like some sort of terrible butchery had taken place. Once the police saw the blood, they began to call to us in earnest because the last thing they needed was another dead escapee on their hands after the last kid had drowned the summer prior. But they did not need to ask for very long. The cold had set back in our hands and feet. Our faces were frozen. The pain that goes along with frostbite was stinging and aching, it was up our feet and legs as well as our hands and arms.
Without too much further ado, we agreed with each other that it was time to pack it in. The fat lady was singing, and we were ready for this to end.
We needed help to make it back up the embankment. We were in rough shape after our little ordeal. As far as I was concerned, the fight had gone completely out of me. They took us to the local hospital where we were treated for hypothermia and frostbite, and they gave me a couple little stitches in my eyelid and butterfly stitches for the cuts on my head. My partner still had a little fire left in him because once he warmed up at the hospital, he jumped up with the chair he was cuffed to and began smashing everything that seemed breakable in the waiting room until they subdued him with pepper spray and some painful holds.
Not me. I was finished. I was led like a sheep through the hospital, then back to the institution where I was actually happy to be put in maximum solitary confinement with a warm blanket. It took me two days before the chill was gone from my body.
I spent the next two months there, then another month in minimum security before I reached general population again. Escape doesn’t happen very often, so when it does, it becomes a big deal amongst the inmates. You have a new standing once you get out of security. They make you feel like a legend. It was intoxicating. And that was not a good thing because it only reinforced that type of behavior in me.
I never made any of the high levels again, so I never received any special privileges anymore. I also had zero chance of getting an early release, so I did a full 24 months at that place, after which I was transferred to a “transitional housing” program which consisted of a regular house, run by “house parents” who ruled over the three girls and two boys who ended up there at the time. It was a place where they were supposed to teach us how to integrate back into society since when we left, we would all be 18 or very close to it. I think I got to go home six months before my 18th birthday. There were many instances of shenanigans that occurred during my stay at the transitional home, including an expulsion from school, a few altercations with some of the local non-desirables, and I also met the first girl I ever fell in love with. But love and being a criminal don’t mesh well, and although I had a nice romance for the many months I was in that town, it ended not long after I arrived back home and contacted one of my cell mates from the institution who moved in with me and my family, briefly.
Just to give you an idea of the type of friends I associated with, my friend whom I mention above is now serving a life sentence for an armed robbery gone terribly wrong.
When he moved in with me, I had a job and life was going somewhat okay for me, but all it takes is the wrong combination of individuals and you get a recipe for trouble. We became professional burglars for many months that followed and became quite good at what we did. Of course, this type of behavior leads to socializing with like-minded individuals, so it was just one step on a long path of my career as a criminal. The more criminals I met, the more I learned, the smarter I thought I became, and the higher the ante went as far as crime was concerned. It became a matter of how the time should fit the crime. Instead of doing a crime that would net between $100-$1000, and carry a maximum penalty of ten years, why not do a crime that carries the same penalty but has a possible net of $1000-$20,000? It was simple math. And it was also a huge diversion from what is right and what is good.
But we will get into all of that in the next installments. I will close this one by asking you to bear in mind that there is more going on in the minds of people than just the commission of a crime. Many factors come into play. In my case, I had been developing a hatred of all that was good and godly. I despised talk of blessings and God’s plan and anything to do with a Christian. I had been delving into arcane books and began studying everything evil. From Nazi’s to Satanists, if it was wrong and it shocked and frightened people, I wanted to know about it. The things which come next will say more about the state of mind as it pertains to the crimes, etc.
Judge me not. At least not yet. This is a journey which I am sharing with you for good reason.
Be well. I shall return…
