featured guest writer
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The Last Day of a Life Sentence
David Anderson
Aurora,Colorado
a-shedusa@comcast.net
303-489-6972
Aurora,
a-shedusa@comcast.net
303-489-6972
The prison guard came to my cell and told me
to gather up the things, I wished to take with me, it was a beautiful spring
morning; April 29, 1983. Today was my birthday and I had much more reason than
most people to celebrate on this birthday.
I had gotten up long before the sun on this special day and had watched as the sun made its appearance into a brilliant blue sky, there was not a cloud to be seen anywhere; never had the sky looked so blue or the air smelled so sweet as on this day. It was one of those warm spring mornings that you feel the rays of the sun on your face and know that the long hard, bitter and cold winter is over. That warm sun gives you a special feeling and a glow; it’s a joy to be alive and to have survived the cold winds of winter.
The cell door slid open and I picked up the brown paper grocery sack that held all of the things in life I owned, with a pen, the night before I had written in bold letters on the sack “Canon City Suitcase”, ah! It was nice to see that after all these years my sense of humor was still intact, as you will soon see. I believe that it was my sense of humor to a good part that helped me survive.
I had given away most of the things I had accumulated in the last seven years to the other prisoners; men who had become my close friends over the years. The bonds of these friendships had become very close, so close that a few had even offered to kill for me.
I stepped through the cell door and looked around at what had been my home; there was a mixed feeling of pain and relief at walking out of here still alive, with only the scars of the prison left on my mind unseen. The very spot where I stood outside my cell door had been covered with blood of a prisoner only weeks before; where he had fallen in pain, bleeding from his stab wounds, life ebbing away.
And now I stood in the same spot to begin my journey to freedom, to once again join the living and begin life anew.
I looked down the tier and saw Pierson (a prisoner) standing in front of another prisoner’s cell door. Pierson was serving a life sentence for first degree murder; although he was capable of murder he was not a very strong person mentally.
The prison had turned him into a homosexual, the day before my release Pierson came to my cell door and told me how happy he was for me and my impending release, I considered Pierson a friend but not a close friend. In prison unlike the free world your selection of friends is much more limited. Your only choice for friends is from the men who are locked in the cells around you. Often I have seen the prison administration place a known homosexual within a certain cell block as a means of keeping it quiet. The prison guards figure that if the convicts are busy having sex then at least they are leaving the guards alone.
Pierson knew how hard I had struggled in court for this day of freedom. Very few things in prison are kept unknown from the other prisoners; prisoners have little else to do with their time but talk and so everything about the prisoners is known by the other prisoners; his politics’, his sexual habits, his drug habits; if any, if he is married and how his relationship with his wife is withstanding the test of prison.
As Pierson stood in front of my cell door, he told me that he wanted to do something for me; when I ask him what? He told me that he wanted to give me “head” so that I would have something to remember the prison by and he would have something to remember me by. As soon as I got over my shock, I told Pierson “Thanks but no thank you” I declined his gift and told him that I had made it for seven years without sex and I was sure I could last one more day, I told him that I already had more than enough things to remember the prison by.
The cell door banged shut behind me and there I stood with my paper grocery sack (my canon city suitcase) ready to begin the long slow walk out of the prison.
Had it really been seven years ago the prison door slammed shut on me, on what was supposed to be for the rest of my life. When it did slam shut on June 30, 1976 it was suppose to stay shut for the rest of my life, I’m sure many of my friends and family thought it surely would stay closed as they picked over all of my material possessions for themselves. I thought of the story from the bible; as Jesus hung on the cross and the soldiers cast lots for his garment.
In no way, shape or form did I think of myself as a Jesus but I certainly could relate to the feeling of betrayal. There is an old saying “When you go to prison, you find out who your friends are”.
I never gave up the struggle to free myself from that prison, I always felt and believed that someday I would, in spite of the many things that happen to me in those seven years to hold me there. It was much more than a dream that I knew this day was coming for me.
As my escort guard and I were leaving the cell house, another guard came up to me and wanted to shake my hand, I declined his offer, I told him that we didn’t shake hands when I entered the prison and that I didn’t see any need to do it now. He also said that he wanted to wish me “Good Luck” and hoped that I made it out there in the free world. Not more than one week earlier this same guard had refused me two minutes time to go to the shower and get a bucket of hot water so that I could wash my clothes and now here he was wishing me “Good Luck”, somehow I did not feel his wishes were very sincere; and so I ask him if he would wish all of the men (prisoners) there the same “good Luck” that I had had, knowing that if they did the prison would soon be empty and he would be without a job? He never replied as he turned away with a pained expression on his face. I was well aware of the anger and bitterness that I held inside of me, not just for what the prison had done to me but also for the many men that I saw there and what it had done to their lives and even reaching beyond the prison walls to hurt the people who loved them.
In my seven years there at the prison I had always been known for my strong criticism of the guards and the warden, for writing letter to the media, the courts, for filing law suits (One that closed old max) and it was mostly aimed at the injustice that I saw being done by the warden and his guards to the prisoners. The warden classified me as a troublemaker and said I was very dangerous (the truth is I was a pacifist) and because of their classification I spent nearly all of that seven years in “Administrative Segregation” This is what Geo Carlin would call kinder and softer words, I was in the “Hole” for the greater part of those seven years for the crime of being critical of the warden and his guards. I never let them reduce me to screaming at them “F**k you!” as most of the prisoners did in frustration. Maybe the warden thought if he called it “Administrative Segregation” instead of the “Hole” it wouldn’t be as painful for the prisoners and it would appear to the general public that the prisoner were all living in a country club. I often reminded the guards that we were prisoners in a prison……not inmates in a correctional facility and then I would add “You can’t correct the problem in your own life and have little time left to work on mine”.
I recalled a time a few months before my release that a guard named “Rocky” confided in me that I was different than most of the convicts there and that he didn’t believe that I belonged in prison, I told “Rocky” that if he had lived with these men as I had for the last seven years he would see that there are many more men that do not belong in prison. “Rocky” hated his job as a prison guard but he was also faced with a family to feed and a home mortgage that needed to be paid and little prospects for other employment in the small town ofCanon Rockies ’ problem was
that he was trying to put me in a neat little box with a simple little label
“Inmate” and it didn’t work. I don’t think we should do that to people; in
prison or out of.
On June 30th 1976 the day I entered prison to serve the first of three life sentences, I vowed to myself that I was not going to let the prison rob me of the things I believed in, that I would not become a part time homosexual for lack of a normal sex life,
That I was not going to start drinking home brew or start using drugs to escape the terrible boredom, monotony and drudgery of every day prison life. Nor would I become a “Snitch” looking for a few small favors from the guards. I saw many men who went down this path and most always became very disappointed and ashamed of their actions. I wanted to hang on to what self respect I had left; I believed the one thing the prison can never rob me of, “My thoughts” and how I responded to my environment no matter where I found myself. I believed that when we find ourselves in an uncomfortable environment, do something positive and constructive to change that environment or leave. And so at the beginning I took the course of escape. My freedom had been illegally taken; I reasoned that I had every right to take it back. And so that is just what I did with two successful escapes from “Old Max”. Escape from prison was not that hard, remaining free is the hard part; because as J Edgar Hover said “No man can remain free on escape, because someone either loves’s him too much or hates him too much”.
I found this out with the tragic loss of my family. And so I set a new course for myself; I was going to walk out the prison’s front door; totally free. And this would require that I study the law that had sent me to prison, and so with my 8th grade education I poured myself into the law books and in my spare time of which there was a lot of, I used my sense of humor to entertain the other prisoners and myself; of course! At the prison and guards expense. One of the more memorable and funny event happened while I was in the
“Dog Cages” of cell house three, the “Hole.” It happened soon after I was returned to “Old Max” from my second escape in 1979, it all began when I happen to come across a small plastic bottle with a lid, the bottle was about the size of the small bottles of shampoo, like the ones they give out in all the finer motels. I confided only to my close friend (Carlos Henry) in the cell next to me of what I was going to do. He fell out laughing when I told him and said that he didn’t believe the guards would be that stupid to go for it. My reply was “We’ll see”. I pissed in the bottle and secured the lid. I was allowed a one hour weekly exercise period in a small yard, I hid bottle in my underwear when I went to the yard; there was a guard tower atop the 30 foot wall and whenever I was out in the yard, I was watched closely because of my previous escapes.
I walked in circles around the small yard keeping a close eye on the tower guard, at one spot I dug a hole with the heel of my shoe so that I could bury the bottle undetected. Because of the watchful eye of the guard, it took several passes to accomplish this. When my one hour was up I return to my cell and took up pen and paper, I was composing what is called a snitch letter, but of course my snitch letter was anonymous, the way I had it figured; someone was really going to be pissed over this little game. I began my anonymous snitch letter with; “Someone one is going to get killed and I don’t want to be any part of it” I went on to explain that the convicts in cell three were planning to escape, They had a bottle of “nitroglycerine” and planned to take the cell house guards hostage and then use the “nitroglycerine” to blow a hole in the east wall of the small yard. I told them where the “nitroglycerine was buried on the yard; under the second wall light, five feet out from the wall. I signed off on the letter with “please help! I don’t want to see anyone get hurt. I sent the letter to John Snow, who was the chief investigator (the convicts all referred to him as Barney Fife) at the prison and who was in charge of all crimes committed on the prison property. The following two days after I sent the letter I spent standing on the foot of my bunk where I could peer out between the bars to the spot where I had buried the bottle of piss ( by the way; nitroglycerine is a light yellow color, just like piss) And nothing happen. No guards digging up the yard.
A week went by and nothing. And then one day all hell broke loose; guards were coming out of nowhere hollering “Lockdown” “Lockdown” we all jumped up to see what was going on, we didn’t have a clue as to what it was all about until we saw some strange uniforms and people we had never seen before, there were about 20 of them and they all had dogs, never seen dogs in prison before, there was such a mad commotion of men running up and down the tiers and then it became clear, the strange men were from the Denver Bomb Squad, flown to the prison in an emergency call from the warden. They needed to find that nitroglycerine and stop the big prison break. The convicts were all hollering to add to the pandemonium that had broken out. Some of the convicts were whistling at the dogs distracting them from searching for the nitro and the bomb squad was having trouble controlling their dogs. It was total insanity for well over three hours and all the convicts were laughing and hollering; it was like the 4th of July, Christmas and New Years all rolled into one. The convict’s lives were so void of any activity in cell three, this was a great event.
Carlos slid his hand through the bars of his cell with his mirror in his hand, he had the biggest smile on his face that I had ever seen in the seven years I’d known him. It was only one of the events that I dreamed up for a distraction from the horrible monotony of prison life. I learned later the reason for the delayed reaction to my letter; John Snow had left on a two week vacation just a few days before I sent it and it wasn’t opened until he returned. A small foot note; is that even after I gave them clear instructions on where the nitro was buried, they never found it as I discovered a few days later.
The escort guard and I walked an open area toward the sally port and I could see the other prisoners at the windows watching me and waving goodbye, as I made that final walk across the prison.
In the sally port I would be put for a final time into a cell, stripped of my prison clothes. I would put on the clothes of a free man, the clothes that Lila had left for me to wear home.
I quickly removed the prison clothes and discarded them in a pile on the cell floor, those long hated, ill fitting prison clothes. No longer would I have to look at them or feel them next to my skin.
The clothes that Lila left for me were simple clothes but yet they felt so good on my body. I remember looking down at myself and thinking; I looked so strange in these clothes. They fit and they had color, how strange they seemed from the world I had known this past seven years.
I stepped out of the cell in those beautiful free world clothes and waited for the last three doors to open. Those doors were all that stood between me and freedom and as I waited for the door to open the thoughts began to creep in; this was all a mistake, somewhere along the line a guard would come running up and say it was all a mistake, for me to be taken back to my cell, I would not be released because they had a new charge against me. And just then a guard that I knew well came walking towards me, Charlie Linam, I was a little shocked by his question, he wanted to know how it was that I was being released from prison with all of the sentence’s that I had, he meant the three life sentences.
I explained to him that the sentence’s had all been overturned and the judge had ordered me released, he wanted to know why I had not received any time on the second escape. I explained to him that I would not plea bargain and that because the DA had spent so much money on my first trial, he elected not to waste any more money on me, the DA stated to me that I was like beating a dead horse. If we had had the second trial I was going to make them spend every dime I could. When you have three life sentence’s you don’t feel the fourth that much. And beside that if I was going to get them overturned? It didn’t matter if was three or four.
Charlie’s eye’s, face and voice were filled with anger over my release, he told me that he would take me out to a car that was waiting to escort me off prison property.
This was not the first time I had felt Charlie’s anger for me and it was not the first time I had been the cause of his deep anger for me. Charlie never quite knew how to deal with me and that was just how I liked it. When I was in junior high school a teacher had told me that if I had a weak spot to never let any of my enemies see it or they would use it against me. Charlie’s weak spot was he had a deep seated anger for convicts and I was at the top of that list. I truly believe that if Charlie thought for one minute he could have got away with it, he would have shot me right there in the parking lot and then claimed I had tried to escape while being released. One of our more infamous meetings between Charlie and I took place in Anchorage, Alaska where he had come to pick me up from the county jail after my second escape from “Old Max” I had been working on a ship when I was captured at Dutch Harbor and then moved to Anchorage for safe keeping while I fought extradition. I did not kid myself into thinking I could win; I was only stalling, looking for another chance to escape. The more I stalled the angrierColorado Canon City Anchorage
Poor Charlie, he just couldn’t get any respect for his authority. We boarded the plane without incident, but after I was seated Charlie began to put the chains back on me, until the stewardess saw what he was doing. She walked quickly to where we were seated and told Charlie that he could not put those chains on me or we would have to get off the plane, he didn’t argue with her as he removed my restraints. There was an authority in her voice that quietly said “I’m in charge here” it was a beautiful thing to see and experience. This small woman standing up to the big powerful prison guard with all of his chains, guns, his symbols of power and her message was clear to Charlie.
My eyes met with her eyes and in that moment I saw something that I had not often seen, compassion.
Her instincts told her that I was not the dangerous convict that Charlie wanted her to believe. And she was right. I might run away or escape (who doesn’t want to be free) but I did not want my freedom at the cost of hurting another human being.
I have a great fear of flying but I can honestly say it was a flight that I forgot my fear because of the kind human treatment of the stewardess. It was a beautiful flight to Seattle for me as the stewardess showered me with kindness and service, while Charlie’s request for a coffee refill were ignored. This strong small woman turned the world upside down with her common sense and compassion.
Did Charlie think that I was going to jump from the plane at thirty thousand feet?
When we arrived inSeattle
The following morning after check out at the county jail, I was driven to the airport where to my surprise, was waiting a small six passenger plane. It had the state ofColorado
After we had been in the air for some time and everyone began to relax, Charlie turned to me and said “David” just for my own curiosity; I wondering how you got those hacksaw blades into the prison; did a guard bring them to you? Yea, right Charlie. I didn’t believe him for one minute when he said for his own curiosity that he wanted to know.
And so I thought to myself; well Charlie, two people can play at this game; tell me everything you know and I won’t use it against you, remember the Miranda warning?
I told Charlie that I would tell him how it was done but it would only be in strict confidence (these last words had a nice sound of truth telling) and that if he ever revealed how he found out I would deny telling him. Boy! The bullshit was getting so deep in this small plane we must have lost a thousand feet of altitude. Charlie loved it, there was a gleam in his eyes as he was sure he was about to learn and extract the truth from me.
I told Charlie one of the biggest bullshit stories I had ever manufactured; unknown to me and Charlie at that time, it would have disastrous effects for Charlie in the distant future for his authority over the convicts and make him the laughing stock of the prisoner’s and guards alike.
And so I began my wild tale; I told Charlie that several weeks before the escape, I was out on the big yard of the prison with a friend when the idea came to me of how to smuggle the hack saw and blades into the prison and that at this same time the plan for escape began to form in my mind;
As my friend (Pollock) and I stood there on the big yard, Pollack was once again telling me of his misfortune at getting caught selling drugs in Denver, especially when he had worked out such a fool proof plan on getting the drugs into the states from Mexico. I had heard Pollack’s story a hundred times before, but this time something clicked! Maybe it was because of the spot where we were standing as Pollock once again told his story. We were standing on a small bridge of the prisons big yard; the bridge covers an open irrigation ditch, the bridge was about thirty feet from the north wall, there is a guard tower directly over the irrigation ditch (see illustration) where the guard had a bird’s eye view of all below. The irrigation ditch comes into the prison on the south wall through an archway that is cut into large sandstone wall; the archway is covered by a double set of heavy steel bars that allow that passage of the water. The irrigation ditch travels directly from the south wall to the north, dividing the prison in two. Pollock and I stood at the north wall that day as the water flowed to its exit with another set of heavy steel bars. The water was about four feet deep in the ditch, as it leaves the prison it travels through the heart ofCanon
City
Often I stood and day dreamed that I was a leaf floating on the water and that the current would carry me to the freedom beyond the wall. I somehow knew that it was right here in the water that we would make our escape. It was about this same time that Pollack came to the part of his story of how he and his wife would travel toMexico with
their trained ducks; Pollock would go across into Mexico Rio Grande
I stopped Pollock in his story and ask him if his wife still had the ducks? He told me that his wife was inDenver
Right on time Pollock’s wife contacted him and said everything was ready on her end.
On our pre arranged date I headed for the big yard with my red ping pong ball safely hid in my underwear and the string wound around my waist hidden under my shirt. Pollock was with me and would act as my spotter for the tower guard.
When we got to the bridge I dropped the ping pong ball into the water and began letting the string out. I waited 15 minutes and then began to reel the string in; when I saw the ball at the bar there were no ducks following it, Pollock said let it out again and give her a little more time. Pollock was right as the ducks were right behind the red ping pong ball when it got to the bars; where I left it floating until the guard was on the other side of the tower, Pollock quickly slipped into the water and retrieved the hacksaw blades and frame. I broke the string and the ball began its journey back to where Pollock wife waited to retrieve the ducks.
And this is how I got the hacksaw and blade into the prison, Charlie. And then I added a little flavor to the story; I told Charlie the reason there were no ducks following the ping pong ball the first time was because Pollock’s wife had tied too many blades and the frame to one duck; when she sat him in the water, he sank to the bottom of the ditch and drowned.
The story I made up and told Charlie that day was pure fiction; it was my way of saying to Charlie; if you want to bullshit me by saying “Just” for my own curiosity then I will give you some bullshit back. The truth was that a guard had carried the hacksaw blades into the prison; but he didn’t know he was carrying them, and had I given Charlie his name, Charlie would have had him fired in a heartbeat. I reasoned that the guard should not be fired for something that he was not guilty of knowingly doing.
At that time I had no way of knowing that the story of the “The red ping pong ball and Ducks” would ever come up again.
A few months after I was returned toCanon
City from Alaska ,
a preliminary hearing was held in the District Court, downtown Canon City
There was one person that could have stopped that from happening with a few well placed objections; the DA, Dennis Falk, but he was also so engrossed in Charlie’s story he forgot his job and sat there listening.
A few days after the hearing the word spread like a prairie fire at the prison, by both the guard and prisoners who I informed of the event; they loved it and you always knew where Charlie was in the Prison by the “Quacking” sound the convict made behind his back.
And now here we are again, April 29th 1983 back together again, David the convict and Charlie the prison guard; how much Charlie must have hated his job on this day; to have to be a part of my release.
On Charlie signal to the control center the first steel door slid open and we stepped in, as this door closed the second door opened. We walked to the last door and on command it also opened; beyond this last steel door was that lost freedom, I had hungered for these past seven years. We were still on prison property but there were no more walls or steel doors to pass through; I could smell and taste the air of freedom. As Charlie and I walked the last hundred yards to the parking lot where a van waited for me I fell into a silence and calm in knowing my nightmare was finally over. But Charlie the prison guard would get one last turn to exercise his power over me. Unknown to me, my attorney, Norm Muller and Lila Gracey the two people who had been so instrumental in making this day happen were waiting for me. They had both worked so hard and wanted to be a part of this special day when I walked out of the prison. Norm had gone inside, trying to find out when I would be released. Lila remained in the parking lot. They wanted to be the ones that drove me away from the prison. That was also very important to me, quite simply because they were the ones who had made it all happen.
Lila saw me before I saw her, she cried out my name “David” and came running to me; she wrapped me in her loving arm and began kissing me, and then Charlie stepped in, he ordered Lila to get back away from the prisoner, he told her I was still a prisoner until I was off of state property, there would be no joyful kisses or loving embraces on state property. Lila turned and began walking away, then stopped and turned to Charlie and said “You want him for every second that you can have him”
Charlie put me in the prison van; I was driven to a small parking lot near the hi-way where the prison guard left me standing alone.
In a few minutes Lila and Norm came driving up and we all celebrated my release without any interference of a prison guard. We took some pictures with the prison as a background, and then started up that hi-way to freedom.
God!.. What a beautiful day this was, what a wonderful birthday present I had received all because some very special people cared. For me I know there will never be another day like April 29th 1983.
I’m sure if you had looked at me as I sat riding in the, I would have appeared calm and relaxed; maybe I was stunned. But inside there was an explosion going off; explosions of beauty and pleasure, dear god! The pure sweet taste of freedom.
I had gotten up long before the sun on this special day and had watched as the sun made its appearance into a brilliant blue sky, there was not a cloud to be seen anywhere; never had the sky looked so blue or the air smelled so sweet as on this day. It was one of those warm spring mornings that you feel the rays of the sun on your face and know that the long hard, bitter and cold winter is over. That warm sun gives you a special feeling and a glow; it’s a joy to be alive and to have survived the cold winds of winter.
The cell door slid open and I picked up the brown paper grocery sack that held all of the things in life I owned, with a pen, the night before I had written in bold letters on the sack “Canon City Suitcase”, ah! It was nice to see that after all these years my sense of humor was still intact, as you will soon see. I believe that it was my sense of humor to a good part that helped me survive.
I had given away most of the things I had accumulated in the last seven years to the other prisoners; men who had become my close friends over the years. The bonds of these friendships had become very close, so close that a few had even offered to kill for me.
I stepped through the cell door and looked around at what had been my home; there was a mixed feeling of pain and relief at walking out of here still alive, with only the scars of the prison left on my mind unseen. The very spot where I stood outside my cell door had been covered with blood of a prisoner only weeks before; where he had fallen in pain, bleeding from his stab wounds, life ebbing away.
And now I stood in the same spot to begin my journey to freedom, to once again join the living and begin life anew.
I looked down the tier and saw Pierson (a prisoner) standing in front of another prisoner’s cell door. Pierson was serving a life sentence for first degree murder; although he was capable of murder he was not a very strong person mentally.
The prison had turned him into a homosexual, the day before my release Pierson came to my cell door and told me how happy he was for me and my impending release, I considered Pierson a friend but not a close friend. In prison unlike the free world your selection of friends is much more limited. Your only choice for friends is from the men who are locked in the cells around you. Often I have seen the prison administration place a known homosexual within a certain cell block as a means of keeping it quiet. The prison guards figure that if the convicts are busy having sex then at least they are leaving the guards alone.
Pierson knew how hard I had struggled in court for this day of freedom. Very few things in prison are kept unknown from the other prisoners; prisoners have little else to do with their time but talk and so everything about the prisoners is known by the other prisoners; his politics’, his sexual habits, his drug habits; if any, if he is married and how his relationship with his wife is withstanding the test of prison.
As Pierson stood in front of my cell door, he told me that he wanted to do something for me; when I ask him what? He told me that he wanted to give me “head” so that I would have something to remember the prison by and he would have something to remember me by. As soon as I got over my shock, I told Pierson “Thanks but no thank you” I declined his gift and told him that I had made it for seven years without sex and I was sure I could last one more day, I told him that I already had more than enough things to remember the prison by.
The cell door banged shut behind me and there I stood with my paper grocery sack (my canon city suitcase) ready to begin the long slow walk out of the prison.
Had it really been seven years ago the prison door slammed shut on me, on what was supposed to be for the rest of my life. When it did slam shut on June 30, 1976 it was suppose to stay shut for the rest of my life, I’m sure many of my friends and family thought it surely would stay closed as they picked over all of my material possessions for themselves. I thought of the story from the bible; as Jesus hung on the cross and the soldiers cast lots for his garment.
In no way, shape or form did I think of myself as a Jesus but I certainly could relate to the feeling of betrayal. There is an old saying “When you go to prison, you find out who your friends are”.
I never gave up the struggle to free myself from that prison, I always felt and believed that someday I would, in spite of the many things that happen to me in those seven years to hold me there. It was much more than a dream that I knew this day was coming for me.
As my escort guard and I were leaving the cell house, another guard came up to me and wanted to shake my hand, I declined his offer, I told him that we didn’t shake hands when I entered the prison and that I didn’t see any need to do it now. He also said that he wanted to wish me “Good Luck” and hoped that I made it out there in the free world. Not more than one week earlier this same guard had refused me two minutes time to go to the shower and get a bucket of hot water so that I could wash my clothes and now here he was wishing me “Good Luck”, somehow I did not feel his wishes were very sincere; and so I ask him if he would wish all of the men (prisoners) there the same “good Luck” that I had had, knowing that if they did the prison would soon be empty and he would be without a job? He never replied as he turned away with a pained expression on his face. I was well aware of the anger and bitterness that I held inside of me, not just for what the prison had done to me but also for the many men that I saw there and what it had done to their lives and even reaching beyond the prison walls to hurt the people who loved them.
In my seven years there at the prison I had always been known for my strong criticism of the guards and the warden, for writing letter to the media, the courts, for filing law suits (One that closed old max) and it was mostly aimed at the injustice that I saw being done by the warden and his guards to the prisoners. The warden classified me as a troublemaker and said I was very dangerous (the truth is I was a pacifist) and because of their classification I spent nearly all of that seven years in “Administrative Segregation” This is what Geo Carlin would call kinder and softer words, I was in the “Hole” for the greater part of those seven years for the crime of being critical of the warden and his guards. I never let them reduce me to screaming at them “F**k you!” as most of the prisoners did in frustration. Maybe the warden thought if he called it “Administrative Segregation” instead of the “Hole” it wouldn’t be as painful for the prisoners and it would appear to the general public that the prisoner were all living in a country club. I often reminded the guards that we were prisoners in a prison……not inmates in a correctional facility and then I would add “You can’t correct the problem in your own life and have little time left to work on mine”.
I recalled a time a few months before my release that a guard named “Rocky” confided in me that I was different than most of the convicts there and that he didn’t believe that I belonged in prison, I told “Rocky” that if he had lived with these men as I had for the last seven years he would see that there are many more men that do not belong in prison. “Rocky” hated his job as a prison guard but he was also faced with a family to feed and a home mortgage that needed to be paid and little prospects for other employment in the small town of
On June 30th 1976 the day I entered prison to serve the first of three life sentences, I vowed to myself that I was not going to let the prison rob me of the things I believed in, that I would not become a part time homosexual for lack of a normal sex life,
That I was not going to start drinking home brew or start using drugs to escape the terrible boredom, monotony and drudgery of every day prison life. Nor would I become a “Snitch” looking for a few small favors from the guards. I saw many men who went down this path and most always became very disappointed and ashamed of their actions. I wanted to hang on to what self respect I had left; I believed the one thing the prison can never rob me of, “My thoughts” and how I responded to my environment no matter where I found myself. I believed that when we find ourselves in an uncomfortable environment, do something positive and constructive to change that environment or leave. And so at the beginning I took the course of escape. My freedom had been illegally taken; I reasoned that I had every right to take it back. And so that is just what I did with two successful escapes from “Old Max”. Escape from prison was not that hard, remaining free is the hard part; because as J Edgar Hover said “No man can remain free on escape, because someone either loves’s him too much or hates him too much”.
I found this out with the tragic loss of my family. And so I set a new course for myself; I was going to walk out the prison’s front door; totally free. And this would require that I study the law that had sent me to prison, and so with my 8th grade education I poured myself into the law books and in my spare time of which there was a lot of, I used my sense of humor to entertain the other prisoners and myself; of course! At the prison and guards expense. One of the more memorable and funny event happened while I was in the
“Dog Cages” of cell house three, the “Hole.” It happened soon after I was returned to “Old Max” from my second escape in 1979, it all began when I happen to come across a small plastic bottle with a lid, the bottle was about the size of the small bottles of shampoo, like the ones they give out in all the finer motels. I confided only to my close friend (Carlos Henry) in the cell next to me of what I was going to do. He fell out laughing when I told him and said that he didn’t believe the guards would be that stupid to go for it. My reply was “We’ll see”. I pissed in the bottle and secured the lid. I was allowed a one hour weekly exercise period in a small yard, I hid bottle in my underwear when I went to the yard; there was a guard tower atop the 30 foot wall and whenever I was out in the yard, I was watched closely because of my previous escapes.
I walked in circles around the small yard keeping a close eye on the tower guard, at one spot I dug a hole with the heel of my shoe so that I could bury the bottle undetected. Because of the watchful eye of the guard, it took several passes to accomplish this. When my one hour was up I return to my cell and took up pen and paper, I was composing what is called a snitch letter, but of course my snitch letter was anonymous, the way I had it figured; someone was really going to be pissed over this little game. I began my anonymous snitch letter with; “Someone one is going to get killed and I don’t want to be any part of it” I went on to explain that the convicts in cell three were planning to escape, They had a bottle of “nitroglycerine” and planned to take the cell house guards hostage and then use the “nitroglycerine” to blow a hole in the east wall of the small yard. I told them where the “nitroglycerine was buried on the yard; under the second wall light, five feet out from the wall. I signed off on the letter with “please help! I don’t want to see anyone get hurt. I sent the letter to John Snow, who was the chief investigator (the convicts all referred to him as Barney Fife) at the prison and who was in charge of all crimes committed on the prison property. The following two days after I sent the letter I spent standing on the foot of my bunk where I could peer out between the bars to the spot where I had buried the bottle of piss ( by the way; nitroglycerine is a light yellow color, just like piss) And nothing happen. No guards digging up the yard.
A week went by and nothing. And then one day all hell broke loose; guards were coming out of nowhere hollering “Lockdown” “Lockdown” we all jumped up to see what was going on, we didn’t have a clue as to what it was all about until we saw some strange uniforms and people we had never seen before, there were about 20 of them and they all had dogs, never seen dogs in prison before, there was such a mad commotion of men running up and down the tiers and then it became clear, the strange men were from the Denver Bomb Squad, flown to the prison in an emergency call from the warden. They needed to find that nitroglycerine and stop the big prison break. The convicts were all hollering to add to the pandemonium that had broken out. Some of the convicts were whistling at the dogs distracting them from searching for the nitro and the bomb squad was having trouble controlling their dogs. It was total insanity for well over three hours and all the convicts were laughing and hollering; it was like the 4th of July, Christmas and New Years all rolled into one. The convict’s lives were so void of any activity in cell three, this was a great event.
Carlos slid his hand through the bars of his cell with his mirror in his hand, he had the biggest smile on his face that I had ever seen in the seven years I’d known him. It was only one of the events that I dreamed up for a distraction from the horrible monotony of prison life. I learned later the reason for the delayed reaction to my letter; John Snow had left on a two week vacation just a few days before I sent it and it wasn’t opened until he returned. A small foot note; is that even after I gave them clear instructions on where the nitro was buried, they never found it as I discovered a few days later.
The escort guard and I walked an open area toward the sally port and I could see the other prisoners at the windows watching me and waving goodbye, as I made that final walk across the prison.
In the sally port I would be put for a final time into a cell, stripped of my prison clothes. I would put on the clothes of a free man, the clothes that Lila had left for me to wear home.
I quickly removed the prison clothes and discarded them in a pile on the cell floor, those long hated, ill fitting prison clothes. No longer would I have to look at them or feel them next to my skin.
The clothes that Lila left for me were simple clothes but yet they felt so good on my body. I remember looking down at myself and thinking; I looked so strange in these clothes. They fit and they had color, how strange they seemed from the world I had known this past seven years.
I stepped out of the cell in those beautiful free world clothes and waited for the last three doors to open. Those doors were all that stood between me and freedom and as I waited for the door to open the thoughts began to creep in; this was all a mistake, somewhere along the line a guard would come running up and say it was all a mistake, for me to be taken back to my cell, I would not be released because they had a new charge against me. And just then a guard that I knew well came walking towards me, Charlie Linam, I was a little shocked by his question, he wanted to know how it was that I was being released from prison with all of the sentence’s that I had, he meant the three life sentences.
I explained to him that the sentence’s had all been overturned and the judge had ordered me released, he wanted to know why I had not received any time on the second escape. I explained to him that I would not plea bargain and that because the DA had spent so much money on my first trial, he elected not to waste any more money on me, the DA stated to me that I was like beating a dead horse. If we had had the second trial I was going to make them spend every dime I could. When you have three life sentence’s you don’t feel the fourth that much. And beside that if I was going to get them overturned? It didn’t matter if was three or four.
Charlie’s eye’s, face and voice were filled with anger over my release, he told me that he would take me out to a car that was waiting to escort me off prison property.
This was not the first time I had felt Charlie’s anger for me and it was not the first time I had been the cause of his deep anger for me. Charlie never quite knew how to deal with me and that was just how I liked it. When I was in junior high school a teacher had told me that if I had a weak spot to never let any of my enemies see it or they would use it against me. Charlie’s weak spot was he had a deep seated anger for convicts and I was at the top of that list. I truly believe that if Charlie thought for one minute he could have got away with it, he would have shot me right there in the parking lot and then claimed I had tried to escape while being released. One of our more infamous meetings between Charlie and I took place in Anchorage, Alaska where he had come to pick me up from the county jail after my second escape from “Old Max” I had been working on a ship when I was captured at Dutch Harbor and then moved to Anchorage for safe keeping while I fought extradition. I did not kid myself into thinking I could win; I was only stalling, looking for another chance to escape. The more I stalled the angrier
Poor Charlie, he just couldn’t get any respect for his authority. We boarded the plane without incident, but after I was seated Charlie began to put the chains back on me, until the stewardess saw what he was doing. She walked quickly to where we were seated and told Charlie that he could not put those chains on me or we would have to get off the plane, he didn’t argue with her as he removed my restraints. There was an authority in her voice that quietly said “I’m in charge here” it was a beautiful thing to see and experience. This small woman standing up to the big powerful prison guard with all of his chains, guns, his symbols of power and her message was clear to Charlie.
My eyes met with her eyes and in that moment I saw something that I had not often seen, compassion.
Her instincts told her that I was not the dangerous convict that Charlie wanted her to believe. And she was right. I might run away or escape (who doesn’t want to be free) but I did not want my freedom at the cost of hurting another human being.
I have a great fear of flying but I can honestly say it was a flight that I forgot my fear because of the kind human treatment of the stewardess. It was a beautiful flight to Seattle for me as the stewardess showered me with kindness and service, while Charlie’s request for a coffee refill were ignored. This strong small woman turned the world upside down with her common sense and compassion.
Did Charlie think that I was going to jump from the plane at thirty thousand feet?
When we arrived in
The following morning after check out at the county jail, I was driven to the airport where to my surprise, was waiting a small six passenger plane. It had the state of
After we had been in the air for some time and everyone began to relax, Charlie turned to me and said “David” just for my own curiosity; I wondering how you got those hacksaw blades into the prison; did a guard bring them to you? Yea, right Charlie. I didn’t believe him for one minute when he said for his own curiosity that he wanted to know.
And so I thought to myself; well Charlie, two people can play at this game; tell me everything you know and I won’t use it against you, remember the Miranda warning?
I told Charlie that I would tell him how it was done but it would only be in strict confidence (these last words had a nice sound of truth telling) and that if he ever revealed how he found out I would deny telling him. Boy! The bullshit was getting so deep in this small plane we must have lost a thousand feet of altitude. Charlie loved it, there was a gleam in his eyes as he was sure he was about to learn and extract the truth from me.
I told Charlie one of the biggest bullshit stories I had ever manufactured; unknown to me and Charlie at that time, it would have disastrous effects for Charlie in the distant future for his authority over the convicts and make him the laughing stock of the prisoner’s and guards alike.
And so I began my wild tale; I told Charlie that several weeks before the escape, I was out on the big yard of the prison with a friend when the idea came to me of how to smuggle the hack saw and blades into the prison and that at this same time the plan for escape began to form in my mind;
As my friend (Pollock) and I stood there on the big yard, Pollack was once again telling me of his misfortune at getting caught selling drugs in Denver, especially when he had worked out such a fool proof plan on getting the drugs into the states from Mexico. I had heard Pollack’s story a hundred times before, but this time something clicked! Maybe it was because of the spot where we were standing as Pollock once again told his story. We were standing on a small bridge of the prisons big yard; the bridge covers an open irrigation ditch, the bridge was about thirty feet from the north wall, there is a guard tower directly over the irrigation ditch (see illustration) where the guard had a bird’s eye view of all below. The irrigation ditch comes into the prison on the south wall through an archway that is cut into large sandstone wall; the archway is covered by a double set of heavy steel bars that allow that passage of the water. The irrigation ditch travels directly from the south wall to the north, dividing the prison in two. Pollock and I stood at the north wall that day as the water flowed to its exit with another set of heavy steel bars. The water was about four feet deep in the ditch, as it leaves the prison it travels through the heart of
Often I stood and day dreamed that I was a leaf floating on the water and that the current would carry me to the freedom beyond the wall. I somehow knew that it was right here in the water that we would make our escape. It was about this same time that Pollack came to the part of his story of how he and his wife would travel to
I stopped Pollock in his story and ask him if his wife still had the ducks? He told me that his wife was in
Right on time Pollock’s wife contacted him and said everything was ready on her end.
On our pre arranged date I headed for the big yard with my red ping pong ball safely hid in my underwear and the string wound around my waist hidden under my shirt. Pollock was with me and would act as my spotter for the tower guard.
When we got to the bridge I dropped the ping pong ball into the water and began letting the string out. I waited 15 minutes and then began to reel the string in; when I saw the ball at the bar there were no ducks following it, Pollock said let it out again and give her a little more time. Pollock was right as the ducks were right behind the red ping pong ball when it got to the bars; where I left it floating until the guard was on the other side of the tower, Pollock quickly slipped into the water and retrieved the hacksaw blades and frame. I broke the string and the ball began its journey back to where Pollock wife waited to retrieve the ducks.
And this is how I got the hacksaw and blade into the prison, Charlie. And then I added a little flavor to the story; I told Charlie the reason there were no ducks following the ping pong ball the first time was because Pollock’s wife had tied too many blades and the frame to one duck; when she sat him in the water, he sank to the bottom of the ditch and drowned.
The story I made up and told Charlie that day was pure fiction; it was my way of saying to Charlie; if you want to bullshit me by saying “Just” for my own curiosity then I will give you some bullshit back. The truth was that a guard had carried the hacksaw blades into the prison; but he didn’t know he was carrying them, and had I given Charlie his name, Charlie would have had him fired in a heartbeat. I reasoned that the guard should not be fired for something that he was not guilty of knowingly doing.
At that time I had no way of knowing that the story of the “The red ping pong ball and Ducks” would ever come up again.
A few months after I was returned to
There was one person that could have stopped that from happening with a few well placed objections; the DA, Dennis Falk, but he was also so engrossed in Charlie’s story he forgot his job and sat there listening.
A few days after the hearing the word spread like a prairie fire at the prison, by both the guard and prisoners who I informed of the event; they loved it and you always knew where Charlie was in the Prison by the “Quacking” sound the convict made behind his back.
And now here we are again, April 29th 1983 back together again, David the convict and Charlie the prison guard; how much Charlie must have hated his job on this day; to have to be a part of my release.
On Charlie signal to the control center the first steel door slid open and we stepped in, as this door closed the second door opened. We walked to the last door and on command it also opened; beyond this last steel door was that lost freedom, I had hungered for these past seven years. We were still on prison property but there were no more walls or steel doors to pass through; I could smell and taste the air of freedom. As Charlie and I walked the last hundred yards to the parking lot where a van waited for me I fell into a silence and calm in knowing my nightmare was finally over. But Charlie the prison guard would get one last turn to exercise his power over me. Unknown to me, my attorney, Norm Muller and Lila Gracey the two people who had been so instrumental in making this day happen were waiting for me. They had both worked so hard and wanted to be a part of this special day when I walked out of the prison. Norm had gone inside, trying to find out when I would be released. Lila remained in the parking lot. They wanted to be the ones that drove me away from the prison. That was also very important to me, quite simply because they were the ones who had made it all happen.
Lila saw me before I saw her, she cried out my name “David” and came running to me; she wrapped me in her loving arm and began kissing me, and then Charlie stepped in, he ordered Lila to get back away from the prisoner, he told her I was still a prisoner until I was off of state property, there would be no joyful kisses or loving embraces on state property. Lila turned and began walking away, then stopped and turned to Charlie and said “You want him for every second that you can have him”
Charlie put me in the prison van; I was driven to a small parking lot near the hi-way where the prison guard left me standing alone.
In a few minutes Lila and Norm came driving up and we all celebrated my release without any interference of a prison guard. We took some pictures with the prison as a background, and then started up that hi-way to freedom.
God!.. What a beautiful day this was, what a wonderful birthday present I had received all because some very special people cared. For me I know there will never be another day like April 29th 1983.
I’m sure if you had looked at me as I sat riding in the, I would have appeared calm and relaxed; maybe I was stunned. But inside there was an explosion going off; explosions of beauty and pleasure, dear god! The pure sweet taste of freedom.
There is only one small footnote to this
story; when I left the prison for the last time that day, I thought I would
never have to look at Charlie Linan again in this lifetime. I was wrong.
A couple of years after my release, I was walking down the street ofCripple Creek , Colorado
Coming down the street is none other than Charlie Linan, he is in civilian clothes and a woman was beside him who I assumed was his wife.
As we came within speaking distance I broke out into a beautiful smile, not so for Charlie as he just stared at me not knowing what to expect. I kept the smile on my face and just said “well hello Charlie”. I could see that he was pretty stunned by this chance meeting. And then he came up to me and said “David” I’ve often wondered if that story you told me about the Ducks and Ping Pong Ball was true? I reminded him that if he ever brought that subject up again, I would deny I ever told him. Those were my final words to Charlie as I walked past him never looking back.
A couple of years after my release, I was walking down the street of
Coming down the street is none other than Charlie Linan, he is in civilian clothes and a woman was beside him who I assumed was his wife.
As we came within speaking distance I broke out into a beautiful smile, not so for Charlie as he just stared at me not knowing what to expect. I kept the smile on my face and just said “well hello Charlie”. I could see that he was pretty stunned by this chance meeting. And then he came up to me and said “David” I’ve often wondered if that story you told me about the Ducks and Ping Pong Ball was true? I reminded him that if he ever brought that subject up again, I would deny I ever told him. Those were my final words to Charlie as I walked past him never looking back.
