Immaculate Recovery

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Best Phone in trouble with state
*The Kansas Corporation Commission may fine or close the Wichita Phone Company, which serve thousands with low income or credit problems.
On April 2, 2006 the Wichita Eagle reported.

“Six years ago, Rick Laham was sitting outside Popeye’s Chicken in northeast Wichita with a bag of crack pipes and 10 rocks of cocaine in a QuikTrip cup. Today, he’s managing partner of a multimillion-dollar telecommunications company. But now the company he runs stands accused...” Read the sequence of events in the life of Rick Laham as he moves from being a penniless drug-addicted street person to becoming the owner of a multi-million dollar telecommunications corporation in:

Immaculate Recovery
the true story

© 2010 Rick Laham All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author. First published by Dog Ear Publishing 4010 W. 86th Street, Ste H Indianapolis, IN 46268 www.dogearpublishing.net

ISBN: 978-160844-533-2 This book is printed on acid-free paper. This book is a work of fiction. Places, events, and situations in this book are purely fictional and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Printed in the United States of America

Part 1

PREFACE
April 2, 2006 on the front cover of the Sunday newspaper, the headlines read: Six years ago, Rick Laham was sitting outside Popeye’s Chicken in northeast Wichita with a bag of crack pipes and 10 rocks of cocaine in a QuikTrip cup. Today, he’s managing partner of a multimillion-dollar telecommunications company. But now the company he runs stands accused... Only a few years earlier I was a fugitive, a drug addict, penniless, homeless, financially, emotionally and spiritually bankrupt. Well, I did have $0.35 to my name. I remember the amount because I was in San Antonio, Texas, wandering the streets, desperately, hopelessly on the run, trying to figure out what to do next, and I was hungry. I went into a grocery store, not knowing what I would be able to buy for $0.35. They had bananas on sale for $0.15 each. I felt pretty good about that, knowing that I could now at least get something to eat. I went outside the grocery store and sat down beside the building to think and eat my banana. Nothing ever tasted so good and filling as that banana was that day. I decided to go back in, spend the rest of my money, and get one last banana. After eating it, I felt a little better about things. Now in April of 2006, only about five years after being down to my last $0.35, there was a story about me on the front cover of the Sunday newspaper in my home town of Wichita, Kansas. A story that would start out that only a few years earlier I was a drug-addicted, homeless street person, and now I was the owner of a multimillion-dollar company, and a thief. Though I was not quite a multimillionaire, I was certainly no thief.

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Preface Thank God, this time in my life I had done nothing wrong; nothing except get in the way of some very evil, corrupt and powerful high-ranking members of society. Only by the Grace and Power of the One True Authority, would I be exonerated and defeat the false and trumped-up charges that these shady Government types had brought against me. It would be a brutal and almost insurmountable battle between the forces of Good and Evil that is at the heart of the non-stop spiritual warfare in this world. Evil that tries to find its way into almost all of our lives, whether by drugs, alcohol, sexual, physical, emotional, or mental abuse, the loss of a loved one, a relationship gone bad, loss of a job or business, or some other devastating event in our lives. We all face it at some point in our lives. Sometimes it seems like a daily battle. We find ourselves desperately searching for hope in what appears to be a totally hopeless situation. We know we must go on. This spiritual warfare comes at us in many disguises. Mine came disguised in an almost deadly drug addiction that took everything except my life from me. I believe my recovery was how God would work through me, and perform miracles in my life, so that you too might know that, no matter what happens in your own world, He can and will do the same for you. Taking from this true story the strength and hope to help you to fight the good fight, and to accomplish your destiny for His glory. Knowing that all things are possible and fulfilling the mission that God Himself has in store for you, whatever that mystery will reveal itself to be, and that you, too, can and will have an Immaculate Recovery.

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CHAPTER 1
“Roll to go! Laham, roll to go.” Wow, those were the beautiful three little words every inmate waits to hear. “Roll to go.” Whether you had been in the Sedgwick County Jail for a day, a week, a month, or years, every inmate was waiting to hear those three little words. Not, “I love you,” but “roll to go,” followed by your name. It came over the intercom, “Roll to go, Laham, roll to go.” The guard opened my cell and gave me my brown paper sack to roll up my few possessions and get ready to get out of jail, or so I thought. Almost as soon as the cell door slammed closed behind him, I was saying, “Officer, I am ready to go.” I couldn’t get my stuff rolled up and thrown in my paper sack fast enough. I was still wanted in Texas, and then Governor George W. Bush had a warrant sitting on his desk to have me held on a fugitive bond and extradited back to the Lone Star State to face trial on drug charges. The times were uncertain for everyone in America back in December of 2000, not to mention that the world was supposed to be ending with that Y2K thing and all that. They were still counting and recounting votes between George W. Bush and Al Gore. I figured maybe I had gotten lucky and then Governor George W. Bush had much more important things on his mind than signing my extradition papers, and maybe I had fallen through the cracks. I had escaped to Texas after being up all night getting high at the Western Hotel just outside of Wichita, Kansas, on Highway 54, with a stripper who went by the name of Kat. Kat had gotten dropped off after she was finished dancing for the night. She was riding in an unfamiliar, governmentlooking, off-white four-door sedan. When I questioned her 4

Chapter 1 about the car, she told me that it was just some city worker who had come to watch her dance at Club Exposure that night. I knew she was a little shady, but figured I could trust her enough to get high and hang out with her. Back then in the dope game, a lot of the girls who used drugs had been busted and talked to the cops to stay out of jail. We had spent time together over the last year and were a little closer than just using buddies. I thought I knew her. Bad assumption. After getting high until sun-up, Kat let it slip out that “they” were going to serve me arrest warrants for being the leader of a drug and prostitution ring. Though it didn’t really come as a surprise, it really got my attention and sobered me up real quick. I had been living out of hotels for the past year or so, and had already been arrested three or four times and had outstanding warrants for not showing up for my court dates. I would be arrested and go to jail seven times in a period of about 18 months. It started when my wife, and the love of my life for almost 20 years, told me she no longer loved me and wanted a divorce. I started using hard drugs, progressing from marijuana to crack cocaine. I was self-medicating to mask the pain. Before long I was addicted and didn’t even realize it. The addiction would lead me to staying out late into the night, looking for and doing drugs. Before long, I was not even coming home at all. I would never check into the dives I was staying in under my real name. Checking into a hotel without the use of an I.D. was tough. Lots of times the cops would roll through the cheap hotels and look for people who were wanted. I would check in as Joe Birch, Johnny Law, Rick Lane and other aliases. Everyone just knew me as Joe. The night before, I had rented a room and started to spend the night at the hotel across the highway, only to get out of the shower and look through the peephole in my hotel door 5

Immaculate Recovery and see a big FBI-looking guy trying to peer into my room through the door frame. He was a great big white guy with a buzz cut and a walkie-talkie, and I knew it wasn’t anything good. I waited until he was gone and snuck across the highway to the Western Hotel. It seemed like I had been being followed for some time at this point. I would go into a convenience store bathroom and when I would come out, there would be a short-haired, stocky, cop-looking guy standing around. A few days later I would go into a grocery store, and the same guy would show up a few aisles over. I acted like Kat’s news hadn’t surprised me. I tried to act like I wasn’t concerned. I felt like Kat had set me up, and after she had thought about it all night, she started to feel guilty. She was an addict, but she was still a person with a conscience, just addicted. She was really a pretty good person. It’s a real tragedy that the disease of addiction does some very bad things to basically good people. It’s a very insidious disease. Worst of all, most who have the disease don’t even realize it. It ends up killing many, many people. After being an addict, I am convinced that drug addiction, and what to do to prevent it, should be taught starting in the second grade. There were several girls who wanted to hang out with me during that time because I always had plenty of dope. Many of those girls were dancers, strippers, and prostitutes. They had names like Aspen, Shadow, Tender, Storm, and Peaches. Some of them were single moms; some of them had boyfriends, girlfriends, or both. Kat was a little older and was really good looking. I would let her hang out more than some of the other twenty or so women who were always calling me. I knew Kat was a bit of an informant, but there was something about the old saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” That would really hold true in the dope game. 6

Chapter 1 Lots of addicts were informants. Some dealers became informants also. They would get busted and the cops would let them off if they would snitch on someone. The cops were just working their way up the ladder to try and get to the bigger dealers. They would follow the addicts to the dealers, and then follow those dealers to bigger dealers. When they felt they had a big enough dealer, the cops would get a warrant and bust the guy’s door down. It was ironic, but I would end up going to jail in Texas and when I got out, had to take a bus back to Wichita. On the bus was a real hippie-looking dude with hair down to the middle of his back. He was wearing a tee shirt that said: “Dope dealers are informants, big dope dealers are D.E.A.” Drug Enforcement Agency. True? It very well could be. I think Kat was feeling guilty about setting me up. I was no drug dealer, gang member, or pimp, but to the police, it probably looked that way. I was staying with different women, in different hotels, with drug dealers coming and going at all hours of the day and night. I was really nervous at this point. I told Kat I was leaving to go get some more dope, and that I would be back in a few minutes. The sun was coming up, and I knew if “they” were coming, it would be around now. I opened the hotel door and my heart about stopped. They were all around me. There were unmarked cars everywhere. I recognized several of the cars that I had seen following me for the past couple of months. I knew this was D-day. Kat was right. They were going to arrest me. I got to my car, acting as if nothing was wrong, and that I hadn’t noticed them. It was freezing out and the roads were covered with ice. That would turn into my saving grace. The unmarked cars were parked, running, and their exhaust was hitting the ice, turning into steam. There were two or three across the street in the other hotel parking lot where I had started the night before. Also there were three or four in the parking lots on either side of the Western Hotel where Kat and I were staying. They were 7

Immaculate Recovery all running and they all had their parking lights on. I guess so they could easily recognize each other once the chase started. I was scared to death as I got into my car and took off. I figured I was barely a step ahead of the cops. The unmarked cars all started moving as soon as I did. No one was going too fast. The roads were a sheet of ice. I knew the area really well and was moving just a little faster than the unmarked cars. I was able to get a half mile or so ahead of them. It was time to get out of Wichita, if I could. I was out of cash and headed to my office a few miles away. I had a Payday loan company and figured I could print some checks, go by the bank, and head out of town. I made it to my office and seemed to have lost them. I didn’t figure I had much time. They knew where I worked. I used to go there to party before I started hanging out in the hotels. I made it to the bank drive-thru before any of the unmarked cars showed up again. It was a little old lady; she made a pretty good undercover. She was laid down in the front seat of a late model Thunderbird. No one would suspect her of being a cop. I pulled out of the bank drive-thru and was watching her in my review mirror as she popped up and took off behind me. I was in my neighborhood, and it didn’t take much effort to lose her. I took some back roads and caught the highway headed out of town. The car I was driving was a rental and had some problems. Almost out of town, it quit running. I didn’t really know at that point if they were still on me. It was freezing out, but I had no choice; I had to keep moving. I wasn’t going to just stop and let them arrest me. I got out and started walking. Not long after, three guys in a pick-up stopped and let me jump in the back of their truck. I made it back to my Payday loan company where my oldest son, Bobby, was. I told him I needed to borrow his car, and I was on my way to Texas.

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CHAPTER 2
Back at Sedgwick County Jail

After being in the county jail for almost three months, I was desperate to get out. I hoped to salvage my business, family and life. It didn’t turn out that way. When my name came across the loud speaker, I was “rolled to go” in no time and standing by my cell door. All I had were a few letters from my kids, some pictures I had drawn, and a Gideon Bible. The Bible occupied most of my time in jail. While the other inmates were in the big day room, playing cards and chess, or watching TV or in the gym playing basketball, I used my time in county jail to read the complete New Testament front to back, three times. It’s funny how God works. I was an altar boy for eighteen years, but never really read the Bible or got close to God until I ended up losing everything and going to jail. I think diving into the New Testament, inside my cell, was the only thing that saved my sanity. It gave me hope in a hopeless situation. As it would turn out, going to jail was my saving Grace. It stopped me from dying in my addiction. Had I not gone to jail, become an addict, went bankrupt and became homeless, I would have also missed some of the miracles that I was to experience. The only thing I wanted since I got put in jail, was to get out of jail. The guard would be right there as soon as a name was called. I ended up in jail after Judge Martin found me guilty of possession in the last of several court proceedings the previous December. Ever since my ex told me she no longer loved me, got a restraining order against me, so I couldn’t go home 9

Immaculate Recovery or see my kids, and took everything that meant anything to me for the last seventeen years, namely my family, I almost lost my mind. Thank God I never believed in suicide, because I did not want to live. Over the next eighteen months, I would just go crazy, get arrested seven times, be involved in two police chases, become a fugitive, flee the state, and have a million dollar bond on my head. I’d find myself in sleazy bars, strip joints, ghettos, and hanging out with drug dealers, gang members, hookers, criminals, and what society would consider the most undesirable. I had been rich and I had been poor in my life, so I managed to fit in about anywhere I would go. It was a good thing that I did have money or I would probably still be in jail. I would go through four bench trials, three on possession charges and one on child endangerment. A bench trial is where you just have a judge, prosecutor, and defending attorney, as opposed to a jury trial. I think my attorney recommended the bench trials because he could influence the outcome easier. A high paid attorney, who knows the judges well, can make a difference in the outcome of the verdict. There are a lot of people sitting in prison for many years that got busted with a lot less than I did. Money makes the difference in the punishment that gets handed out for the crimes. There is an old saying, “justice for all”. It should be “justice for all who can afford it”. One of the felony cocaine possession charges became a misdemeanor marijuana paraphernalia charge after the advice of my attorney that I could pay a much higher fine, directly to his friend the judge, and have the charge reduced. I would give him five thousand dollars that he would give to the judge to make it happen. I didn’t have any idea on that December day that I would be going from court directly to jail. Inside the courtroom 10

Chapter 2 were just the judge and my attorney. I didn’t realize it then, but they were working together. It was probably a good thing they were. Being hopelessly addicted, and not realizing it, and not understanding the “disease” of addiction, I would never have quit on my own and would probably have died from the disease. Looking back now, the judge seemed to care and may have indeed saved my life by having me spend some time in jail to intervene and keep the addiction from killing me. My attorney knowing the judge well helped, but all my attorney cared about was taking my money, and a lot of it. It seemed that they had just finished discussing how they would seal my fate. You could cut the tension with a knife as I walked into the courtroom. It was just the three of us. Judge Martin found me guilty in the first possession trial. I ended up going directly from court to jail to wait on sentencing. For the next three months, the Sedgwick County Jail became my new home. Christmas in jail—boy did that suck.

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CHAPTER 3
My running would end that day in court. Running from the train wreck that my life had become and having lost everything I had cared about. Just a year and a half before, I had everything anyone could ever want. A great family, my own business, big home, fancy cars, lots of money, living the American dream. I never stopped to think that smoking pot every day for the last 20 years was a problem. After all, I had everything going for me, or so I thought. In recovery, I would have been referred to as a functioning addict. Problem was, smoking weed every day, starting as a teenager, keeps a person’s emotions from maturing. Happiness, joy, anger, sadness, just normal feelings. This led to not ever learning to properly process emotions, both good and bad, that we all will face in life. When something good would happen, I would smoke some pot. When something bad would happen, I would smoke some pot. Never learning how to successfully accept or handle life on life’s terms. People who use do so to change their feelings and try to escape reality. However, when we come down or sober up, we are still faced with the same reality, eventually having to face situations that simply will not change or go away no matter how long we continue to use. At that point we may look for a different or stronger drug, or keep increasing our drug of choice until it drives us to an overdose or some other form of suicide. For me, it started when my dog of 15 years, Charlie, died. Charlie was truly a member of our family. He was a Shih Tzu and had as great a personality as any human you would ever hope to meet. When Charlie died I began to really question the meaning of life, and never really got the help needed 12

Chapter 3 to get through the grieving process. Looking back now, I think a new pet can do wonders for a person who has lost an old one. No matter how much I smoked, the weed quit working. I couldn’t get over losing Charlie. My wife and I started fighting more. She got the restraining order against me and filed for divorce. I had nowhere to go, started hanging out in sleazy bars, and discovered crack cocaine. The crack was the answer that I thought I was looking for. It took the place of the weed and seemed to medicate the emotional pain of losing my wife and kids. The crack led to losing everything else in my life. My new addiction would lead to staying up for days at a time, living in crack houses and roach motels, and, eventually, trouble with the law. That would lead to jails and institutions, but thank God, not death. In recovery, we learn that all drugs lead to three places, without fail—jails, institutions and death. I was really depressed over losing my family, and everything else I had worked all my life for. The only thing that would ease the pain was the drug. The crack would numb the excruciating emotional pain I was suffering. As if losing everything wasn’t enough, even worse, at the same time, my youngest son, Donny, was accidentally shot. I was already out of my mind, using nonstop, and believe I went temporarily insane when my oldest son, Bobby, called me to tell me what had happened. I remember putting my fist through the wall in the dive hotel I was staying at. G.B., a gang banger/drug dealer, was at my room at the time. He got me into my car and drove me to the hospital. There is an old Christian saying that God will never give you more than you can handle. I was really close. As soon as I heard the news, I started praying really hard, out loud, and headed to the hospital. I never prayed so hard as I did for the next week after Donny got hurt. Thank God my Prayers were answered. 13

Immaculate Recovery Donny was in pretty bad shape but God came through in a really big way. He spared Donny and restored him wholly. Maybe that should be Holy. It was a real miracle. Donny was out of the hospital within a week and with no permanent damage. Donny would later tell me that he saw the Arch Angel Michael in the hospital room with him. It really was a modern-day miracle. Donny’s recovery was the greatest of all miracles that God would perform and reveal Himself to me. As I was going through hell on earth, God was still with me, during that deepest, darkest, time of my life. I say that was the “greatest” of all miracles, because there were others. Donny’s accident would eventually lead to me facing child endangerment charges, because I had given my other son, Johnny, the rifle that Donny was hurt by. It was put up in a closet, but somehow, Johnny got some bullets and was playing with it when Donny got hurt. I’m sure it was very hard on Johnny, and I’m thankful that God healed both of them. Today, they are not only brothers, but friends; great young men and a benefit to society. I ended up taking the rap and getting arrested for what had happened, even though I hadn’t even lived at home for a year. There was no way, according to the letter of the law, that I should have ever been found guilty of “child endangerment”. The law on child endangerment reads that a parent leaves a child with someone who presents a danger to the child. My kids were living with their mom. That was the last place I had left my kids, over a year previous to the accident. I wouldn’t have thought that she would have been a “danger” to them, especially since she had custody of them, and I wasn’t even allowed to see them. I think my attorney had made a deal with the trial judge on the child endangerment case to find me guilty on that one and get me off on one of the dope cases. That would force Judge Martin, the sentencing judge, to almost certainly give me probation on the drug charges I would be facing. 14

Chapter 3 That was the way it turned out. Funny part was I had already given a confession, claiming the drugs were mine, on the drug case where, at trial, I was found “not guilty”. My attorney, whom I had paid over twenty thousand dollars, earned his money, getting me off on that charge with a “not guilty” verdict, when I had confessed that the drugs were mine to the arresting cops.

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CHAPTER 4
“Laham, roll to go.” Boy, was I ready. The way I felt about being in jail was quite a contrast to that of some of the other inmates who were in jail with me. Many of them seemed to actually enjoy it and even liked being there. It was probably one of the cleanest, nicest places many of them had ever lived. Certainly, it was the safest. There were no bugs; it was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. There were three meals every day, almost no crime or violence, clean clothes, and a private cell to live in. During the day, the inmates were allowed to go to the recreation room called the “day room” and watch TV, play basketball, chess, cards, visit with each other and eat snacks. It was funny that we could even get away with gambling while playing poker. Jolly ranchers were used for chips; the different colors represented denominations. Reds were worth 5, greens 10, orange 15, and yellow 20. Once in a while, one of the guards would catch on and the game would be broken up. Many of the inmates seemed to have been friends on the outside. Some were in the same gangs, some were neighbors, some were even related. Some of the inmates I knew from the street. A few were dope dealers and others were drug users. Jail is really an unavoidable part of where drugs always take those who are involved with them: jails, institutions and death. About every three hours, all inmates were to go into their cells for a head count. Head count is just what it sounds like. Each inmate would stand inside his cell with his head in the door at a small window and be counted. The air inside a jail gets very stale, and once a week, or so we would be able to go out to a cement walled area with a chain-link roof and actually get some sunshine and fresh air. 16

Chapter 4 I had been in jail for a single night on a couple of occasions. Being there for three months straight, was enough to know that I never, ever, wanted to be there again. That is the way jail is supposed to work, but it usually doesn’t, and most inmates return time and time again. With a rush of anticipation, I could not get down to the booking desk and out the door (or so I thought) fast enough. The booking desk was where you would go when you were getting out of, or coming into jail. I thought I was on my way out and back to a life of freedom and partying. Boy, was I in for a surprise. What a shock it was when I got to the booking desk to be grabbed by two big guys dressed all in black with guns and handcuffs. I knew they were not from the local jail because of their uniforms. They were extradition officers. At that point I was a little dazed and confused. I was thrilled with the thought of leaving jail, but now dismayed to learn that I was being extradited back to Texas. What a sinking feeling, from the highest high of getting out to the lowest low of discovering I was headed for even worse times. What happened next was much worse than I could have imagined. I was not only handcuffed, but also shackled at the feet and waist, and led away. What awaited me was way worse than the cell I hated calling home for the last three months. I was led out to the jail garage. There was a white van waiting. All the glass had a dark enough tint that made it impossible to see inside. Once the doors opened, I could see why. I am sure if the public could see inside the van, it would cause quite a distraction on the open road. I was going back to Harris County Jail in Houston, Texas, in what looked like a large dog cage. In the back of the van there had been installed a six-foot by six-foot cage. It was just like what you would see in the back of a dog catcher’s van.

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Immaculate Recovery There I sat, elbow to elbow with five other prisoners, going for a six-hundred mile, ten-hour ride in a small steel cage, with barley enough room to sit down, much less move around. It would prove to be a very, very, long and miserable ride. At one point, we stopped at a McDonalds, got a hamburger, which we ate in our “cage”, and then were led inside to go to the bathroom. That is pretty tough to do when you are handcuffed and shackled together with other people, not to mention having an audience and them all being handcuffed and shackled to you. Even though we all had to go, most of us were unable to. I would get used to going to the bathroom in front of other people. I had to. I would give over fifty urine analysis’s (ua’s) in the next three years with my probation officer observing me. I would pass all of them, but only by the grace of God and some shenanigans and carefully planned schemes of my own. I was still an addict, and, as every addict, I would forever be a carrier of the disease of addiction. Even after jail and treatment, I would continue to use drugs for the first six months of my probation. As soon as I got out of treatment I started using again. I was still under the influence of the drug and was in denial that I was, and would always be, an addict. Even after eventually going to 480 required Narcotics Anonymous meetings and introducing myself, saying, “I’m Rick, and I’m an addict,” I really didn’t believe or understand what it meant for me to be an addict. It was only after I got clean for three years and went back out and could not quit, did I realize that indeed I was an addict. The disease can be put into remission, but only if the addict never picks up and uses again. Three months into my probation I knew I would have to give a u.a. at drug treatment class on Friday night. I had used on the previous Monday. When I used during probation, I would buy home u.a. kits and test myself. Thinking I would

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Chapter 4 be clean by Thursday, after trying a couple of interior body cleansing programs from local health food stores, I was still failing my self-administered u.a. tests, and was really starting to get nervous. By Friday morning, I was still failing my home u.a. tests, showing up dirty for cocaine, and getting desperate. I talked to one of my dope dealers, and he suggested drinking vinegar. Wow, was that ever sickening, and really, really hard to swallow. Worse yet, it didn’t even work and the u.a. was still coming up dirty! The drugs should have been out of my system in three or four days, but it was going on five, and they were still showing up. I was in deep trouble. My attorney had told me to be sure and not fail a u.a. or Judge Martin would certainly have me sent to prison. I knew I couldn’t go give a u.a. at treatment that night. To miss treatment would have been a violation of my probation and could also have landed me in prison. After trying to get clean all week and couldn’t, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was working at Prim Time Autos selling cars. Toward the end of the day, and only a few hours before I had to go to treatment that night. I was putting a scheme together. I would have about an hour from the time I left work until I had to be at treatment. After work, I went straight to the Emergency Room at a local hospital. I told the girl at the desk that I worked at a car lot, and a customer had run over my foot, and I took a tumble and felt like I separated my shoulder. After a little time in the waiting room, I was seen by a doctor. The doctor ended up taking some x-rays. After looking at the x-rays, he said that he thought he could see a fracture, and so he put my arm in a sling and gave me copies of the paperwork with his diagnosis. The paperwork would be perfect for showing the counselor why I had missed treatment on Friday night. The following Monday, I would make it to my regularly scheduled treatment class, show my counselor my paperwork 19

Immaculate Recovery from the doctor, take my u.a. and pass it. That would be the last time I would use for the next two and a half years during my probation.

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CHAPTER 5
Back at the booking desk at Sedgwick County Jail, what started out as the best day I had in months, thinking I was getting out of jail, turned into the worst. Now I was being extradited to Texas. I was headed out on my second extradition trip. The first time I had been extradited was when I had run out on Judge Martin early on in my drug trials in Kansas. I was extradited back to Wichita from Texas, handcuffed and shackled. The only difference was that it was a much easier trip. Instead of riding in a dog cage, it was on an airplane; an airplane that was doomed to fall out of the sky, had it ever got off the runway in San Antonio, Texas. That day in San Antonio, two sheriffs took me from the San Antonio Jail to the airport. We boarded the four-seater prop plane, headed down the runway, and the plane quit. It just quit and wouldn’t do anything. The pilots couldn’t figure out why, and after an hour or so gave up on our flight that day. I was really glad the plane quit before we were up in the air. I guess God knew that it was doomed to fall out of the sky and it wasn’t my time to die so He never let it get off the ground. The pilots said that was the only time that had ever happened. They had to take me back to the jail. Once back at the jail in San Antonio, they really didn’t know what to do with me. They had never had to “return” an inmate. I suggested that maybe they could put me back in the cell they had just taken me out of. That was what they ended up doing. Boy, was my cell mate surprised to see me coming back! I ended up in the San Antonio jail while on the run from Kansas for not showing up for court on one of my drug charges. I was a fugitive from Kansas with a million-dollar 21

Immaculate Recovery bond on my head. The bond was absurd. But that was Judge Martin’s way of trying to make sure that if I was apprehended by law enforcement, I would be held for Kansas to come and get me. I had a license to sell phone service in Texas and had invited an old friend, John, to go into the phone business in San Antonio with me. John was a friend for twenty years and was more like a mentor. I had met him in 1978 in Wichita. At that time, I had just turned eighteen and John was thirty-five and very successful. Through working for John, I would get to know his wife and kids, and they would become like a second family to me. John and his partner, Don, had just bought their first Unimart franchise. Unimart was a “wholesale club”. At that time at Unimart, we would sell a membership for over five hundred dollars for people to come shopping in our catalogue store. We would sell around two hundred memberships a month. John and Don were each making over ten thousand dollars a week. Back in the late 1970’s, that was an awful lot of money. Unimart was similar to Direct Buy. We had a telemarketing room that would call people up and offer a free gift for coming in and seeing our new store. That was before the government’s No Call List. We had a saying in the phone room: “Buy, die or disconnect.” We would call people over and over until they finally came in, sometimes to just get us to quit calling. Once at the office, they were given a high-pressure sales presentation that would last until they either bought the membership or got up and walked out. As sales people, we were trained not to take “no” for an answer. I would eventually assist John and Don in opening several “Wholesale Clubs”, helping them both become millionaires. Don was a real interesting guy and quite the businessman, as well as being a self-made millionaire. Don had opened

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Chapter 5 the first topless bars in Houston. He had also been a professional wrestler who wore a mask and went by the name of “The Masked Radondo”. Don once showed me pictures of himself when he was riding undercover for the Feds in the Banditos motorcycle gang. Don was a good guy but smoked a lot of marijuana and eventually died of leukemia. God rest his soul. John would become what was rumored to be the wealthiest man in Colorado. In the early 1980s, I would carry so much gold off of an airplane for John that my arms would hurt for two days. He made millions in the wholesale club business that he would invest in real estate and make millions more. The district attorney would eventually close down all of John and Don’s wholesale clubs. It had to do with customer complaints of high pressure, the salesmen exaggerating how much money the people were going to be able to save, and deceptive trade practices. The original “wholesale clubs” always had a bad rap with the BBB, Chamber of Commerce, District Attorney’s Office, etc. There are still around 100 or so left in America today. John and Don became my heroes. I looked up to them because they were making a huge amount of money and were fun people to be around. I dropped out of college and planned on following in their footsteps. It was one big party for the next five or six years. Neither of them approved of “hard drugs”, but there always seemed to be some alcohol or pot around. Looking back now, I wish I would have stayed in college.

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CHAPTER 6
The first stop I made when I ran from Kansas to Texas was to get off the highway in the low-rent district in Dallas. I was out of dope and had enough nerve, cravings, or stupidity to ask a guy who looked like a gang banger, walking in what looked like the “hood”, if he knew where I could score some rock, i.e., crack. Turned out, he was familiar with “the game”, the dope game. Most of the time if you were to try to approach someone you didn’t know and tried to get some drugs, and if you gave that person your money, there was better than a fifty-fifty chance that you would never see that person or your money again. That may sound like a crazy thing to do, and it really is, but when you’re craving drugs real bad, that’s just the chance you take. You may get robbed, mugged, your car stolen, or worse. You may come up missing, never be seen again, or be found dead. My new buddy got in the car, and we were off to the dope house. My new “friend” and I hung out for a day or two, scoring and smoking some dope, and checking out some of the women who were hanging around in the crack alley motel I had checked into. He needed me because I had some money, and I needed him because he knew where to get the dope, in a town I had never scored in before. It was a mutually beneficial relationship for a few days. He didn’t have any money, and I didn’t have any dope, and we were both addicts. I was still paranoid about running from Wichita, so I left Dallas, and my new buddy, after staying up and getting high for a few days, and headed to Houston. It just so happened that when I checked into my hotel in Houston, I thought I spotted some familiar cars in the parking 24

Chapter 6 lot. They looked like the unmarked cars that were tailing me the day I left Wichita. There was a sheriff in the parking lot that night recording the tag numbers of the cars that looked like the unmarked cars I had eluded back in Wichita. I figured that they must have been DEA and the cars that the Feds used looked alike in every state. I would spend the next couple of weeks in the “big city.” Houston was the biggest city I had ever been in, and I fell in love with it. One of my favorite things about Houston was at night when the sun was going down, and it was beginning to cool off, the crisp clean smell of the ocean would drift in. I loved the ocean and even the smell of it would give me a little sense of serenity. Houston, what a great place! My first order of business when I got to Houston was to try to score some dope. There was usually dope in the strip clubs. I found one called the Wild Zebra. It wasn’t all that wild, but I did strike up a conversation with one of the dancers who turned out to have a boyfriend who was a dealer. He came through and I scored an hour or so later. I headed for the hotel to feed my addiction. I was getting high all the time. That was all I was doing. It was the only thing that I could do to make the pain and fear subside. I was self medicating. I couldn’t deal with the feelings of losing my wife, kids, business, and being on the run as a fugitive all at the same time. That would be the only time he would score for me. Before long, I was out of dope and searching all over for someone to buy from. I wasn’t having any luck, and after a couple of days I was craving pretty bad. For the non addict, the cravings would be similar to not eating for several days and starving. The addiction started back in Wichita when I couldn’t go home. I started staying out all night and getting pretty heavy into smoking crack, although I didn’t realize I was becoming addicted. I started hanging out in bars, looking for love and companionship. I really didn’t have any luck

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Immaculate Recovery finding it in bars, but I did discover one of the best ways to meet women was over the phone on the singles’ chat lines. I figured I would try it in Houston. I picked up a circular type, free newspaper and found some telephone chat lines that were being advertised. It didn’t take me long to call, record an ad, go to the nearest Western Union to do a “quick collect” to get signed up, and open an account so I could get on the phone and meet somebody. I figured I could meet some local “ladies” who liked to party and who could hopefully hook me up with some dope. The first girl I met was Stephanie. She sounded nice enough. We made a little small talk, and I told her I was looking to meet someone and party. She told me she was looking for the same. She gave me directions on how to find her. I hoped she was telling me the truth, but you could never be too sure, considering the circumstances. Trying to find her turned out to be quite an adventure. Houston and the surrounding area is really big. I was on the highway for close to a hundred miles, lost in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing but blue sky for miles and miles. Houston must have been where the writer was when he wrote the lyrics, “nothing but blue sky, from now on.” What a feeling of freedom. I was hopelessly lost, on the run, and addicted. But for the moment, out in the middle of nowhere, I felt at peace. Palm trees and blue sky. I had never seen anything like it before. There is a saying, “everything is bigger in Texas.” At that very moment, I understood why. It seemed like the blue sky and palm trees would go on forever. After what Stephanie said would take about an hour to find her, four hours later we finally met. She lived out in the middle of the country, just off the highway, in a campground in a trailer. She was a very pretty Hispanic girl. She invited me into her trailer. I got nervous when she said there was a guy there. She said he was only a roommate. I thought maybe I was being set up to get robbed, or worse. He was on his way out, 26

Chapter 6 got in his truck and left. I figured it was safe enough at that point, so I went inside. We talked for a short while, then she asked if I smoked crack and told me that was what she wanted to do. I told her I did. She made some calls, and we headed out to score some dope. Stephanie and I would spend the next two or three weeks together. Towards the end, of our using days together, we had been up a few days straight, and I would end up passing out. It was like sleeping, but more commonly referred to as a “crack coma” when after the drug keeps you up several days straight, the addict would succumb to sleep deprivation and go into a very deep sleep, or possibly overdose and die. Stephanie had outlasted me, stayed up longer, wanted more dope, and ended up loaning my rental car to a drug dealer. He never brought it back. That was pretty common in the game. Lots of dope dealers didn’t even have cars. The addict would run out of dope, then loan their car to a dealer with the promise of the dealer coming back with the car and some dope to give to the addict as payment for use of the car. Lots of times the addict wouldn’t see their car for days or even weeks, or maybe never again. It was the car I had left Wichita in and it eventually turned up abandoned. It was a car that my oldest son, Bobby, had rented. The car would end up being found abandoned by the side of the highway. When the police had it towed, and they found out who it belonged to, they called the local Wichita rental company to tell them where their car was at. The rental company must have been pretty surprised to learn their car was in Houston. That really sucked. Now I was homeless and carless, and ended up walking again for a few days.

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CHAPTER 7
When I skipped out of my court date in Wichita, Judge Martin had put out a million-dollar bond on me. That high of a bond was kind of crazy, but I imagine he was really pissed off that I did not show up in his courtroom as I had promised when he gave me the original hundred-thousand-dollar bond. Judge Martin probably knew I would overdose and die if I was out there using much longer. At that time, I felt that my wife, attorney, family, and everyone I knew had turned against me. In a way, doing the drugs non stop, maybe I was subconsciously trying to kill myself. I would have never purposefully killed myself. I never did, consider or believe in suicide. I felt it was the unforgivable sin, for those who knew better. I knew better. Even though facing the seemingly impossible situation that I was in, I knew that with God, all things were possible. One night, while on the run, I was walking down a road in the low rent area of San Antonio where I was staying, and was talking to God. I asked Him why everyone was against me. A mile or so down the road I came upon a small church. It was about dusk and as I was walking by the church, the neon sign out front came on. It said, “With God on your side, no one can be against you.” I felt at that time that even in the depths of my addiction and desperation, God was still with me, taking care of me, loving me, walking with me, and at that moment, talking to me. Seeing the message light up on the sign, a little feeling of peace and confidence came over me, and something told me that eventually everything would be all right. I was fortunate to have been raised in the ancient faith of the Orthodox Christian Church. I was convinced that it was my faith, and the Grace of God, that had kept me alive and 28

Chapter 7 had gotten me to where I was at, without dying or being in prison for many years. I really was not a bad person. I just had a bad disease. A few days later, I was walking by a used car lot and found a nice old Lincoln Towncar that I bought for $600. After Stephanie lost my rental car, I left her at the hotel. She said she was really sorry and was going to find a way back home to her trailer. After I bought the Lincoln, I called her to let her know we had wheels again, and went and picked her up. We had gone to score some dope that night. We went to see Jimmy, a young, African-American gang banger. He sold crack, but didn’t smoke it. Some dealers did, some didn’t. Some dealers sold to support their own habit. Those dealers who did smoke, usually ended up putting themselves out of business, smoking up all of their own dope. Jimmy really liked going to topless bars, drinking, and doing ecstasy. I had met Jimmy when I first got to Houston and stopped at a convenience store in what appeared to be a lowincome neighborhood. I figured I could ask for a crack pipe, strike up a conversation with who sold it to me, and maybe get a lead on where to buy some dope. The store sold little artificial flowers stuffed in a small, six-inch glass tube. They were actually crack pipes. All you had to do was to take the flower out, put some copper wire in for a filter and whamo, instant crack pipe. I asked the guy who sold it to me if he knew where I could get something to put in it. He suggested I try the apartments at the end of the street. He said there would be some guys hanging out in the parking lot there. He said to tell them that “Bear” sent me. I pulled into the apartments. I could tell there was plenty of drug activity going on there. There were three or four guys giving me the heads up, as soon as I pulled in. That meant that they had dope for sale. I guess they could tell that I really didn’t look like I fit in there and seemed to know what I was looking for.

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Immaculate Recovery They would look right at me. I would give a nod, and they would hold up a hand and unclench a fist, just long enough to expose some little white rocks. Crack rocks. We knew what we were there for. I was looking to buy and they were looking to sell. There was some risk involved for both of us, but that was the game. The dope game. If things went right, they would get some money, and I would get some dope. We would all win in the game. Things could go wrong. I could be a cop, and they could get busted. They could be working with the cops, and I could get busted. They could take my money and run off before giving me the dope. They could sell me pieces of soap, peanuts, or something else that resembled dope. They could give me the dope, and I could drive off without paying. It was all a game. I ended up picking Jimmy out of the bunch. He had on big rhinestone-studded eye glasses and looked a little older than the others. We did a deal and I got his cell number. We would end up doing “business” during the time I was in Houston, until the night when he would set me and Stephanie up to get caught by the cops. I guess maybe Jimmy had gotten busted and made a deal with the cops to get some of his customers busted to get off on his own dope charges. I knew Jimmy for six or eight weeks. He was a full-time crack dealer. One of the things that went along with the dope game, were the girls, i.e. “prostitutes.” If they were not prostitutes when they started using drugs, most would become one to support their habit. The women who were addicted didn’t have jobs in most cases. Many of them would be trying to hang out with men who were using and/or dealing. Most addicts, male or female, are unemployable. Some of the girls were strippers. It seemed like most of the strippers were bi-sexual and would just as soon be with a woman as they would a man. I always had plenty of dope. 30

Chapter 7 This led to usually always having a girl around, sometimes two. Some of the girls liked to sleep with each other. Most men, addicts or not, really do not even understand women. Women mature so much faster than men do. I think that is the major problem between the sexes. Jimmy turned me on to a nice girl named Celeste. Most of the bigger crack dealers had girls hanging around them. The girls would usually be running a tab and owing “their dealer” money. If a guy came around to buy some dope, the girl would move right in and tell the guy she wanted to party and wanted some money to get some dope from the dealer also. So in many cases the dealer was a bit of a pimp. I was now getting dope regularly from Jimmy and told him that I wanted a girl. That was fine with him. He knew if he turned me on to one of the girls that got high, then I would buy more dope from him. It was Just part of “the game”. One night when Jimmy came by my hotel room to drop off some dope, Celeste was there with me. Jimmy had been doing some ecstasy and was “in the mood”. He asked Celeste for some sex. She was a bit reluctant, but obliged him. The next thing I knew, she was naked and there they were, getting it on right in front of me. That was a side effect of the ecstasy; it worked kind of like an aphrodisiac. Jimmy and I had kind of become friends. As an addict and a fugitive, I lived mostly in isolation, hiding out in my motel room, self medicating. Having Jimmy bring me some dope gave me a sense of some sort of camaraderie. We were both kind of on the same team in “the game”. I never figured he would nark on me. I guess when you are faced with jail time, as Jimmy was, anything goes. He may have got a lighter sentence, or no sentence at all, for setting up his customers.

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CHAPTER 8
Stephanie and I had gone to Jimmy’s apartment. I would call him, and he would meet me by a particular trash dumpster. We would do a quick deal and both be back on our way. This time it took Jimmy forever to show up. I would learn the hard way that if you’re doing a dope deal and after making the call it takes the dealer an extra long time to show up, you are probably being set up. I guess that gives the cops time to get in position. When Jimmy finally showed up, we did the deal. Then Stephanie and I headed back to the hotel to get high. the next thing I know, there were two cop cars a few cars behind us. I realized then that Jimmy had dropped a dime on us. He had called the cops and told them we were going to be traveling with dope. That is what took so long. The cops were getting in position. I drove for a few miles making several turns. They were still there and now just one or two cars back. I was pretty good at spotting them. I figured it was time to cut and run. I pulled into a parking lot just to see if they would follow. Sure enough, the cop cars pulled in behind me, red lights flashing. I figured as much. I also knew what I would do. I jumped out of my car and tried to run. Bad idea; I didn’t make it very far, far enough to toss my dope I just got from Jimmy. Before I knew it, one of them tackled me and the rest started in with their billy clubs, hitting me in the back. One of them rubbed my face in the cement. He ground off half of one of my front teeth by rubbing my face in the pavement. I thought I was going to die. The only thing I could think about was that my ex-wife and kids would be ok. I had left my ex with over $100,000. I figured they would be all right, and I was ready to die. The loss of my wife and kids sent me into a desperate state of mind that I didn’t 32

Chapter 8 think I’d ever return from. The dope was the only thing that made me feel me better. Dying would have put an end to the pain of what I was going through. It would also have freed me from active addiction. Being dead, I’d no longer need the drugs to self-medicate and make the excruciating pain of a shattered heart go away. They ended up stopping before they killed me and called in an ambulance. I demanded a police supervisor. I was screaming and yelling, and people were starting to notice. A supervisor showed up and asked if I wanted to go to the hospital. The ambulance driver suggested that I needed stitches. I told the police supervisor, I wanted to file police brutality charges against the cops for beating on me and bloodying me up. He said that the cops told him that I had tripped over a bush when I ran from them. What a bunch of lies. Too bad I had no witnesses. I told him to forget it. He said he would get me stitched up when I got to jail. I should have gone to the hospital, but turned down his offer, and away I went to jail. All they had was an outstanding warrant for me for missing court in Kansas. That led to a search of the car, thanks to Jimmy, I’m sure. They found a crack pipe I had stashed under my seat. That eventually led to a felony possession charge. The Harris County Jail in Houston was the most segregated place I had ever seen. There were three floors. The bottom floor where they took me to get stitched up was made up of all African Americans. There was one Pakistani doctor who took care of me. He was really nice and apologized for the cops. He gave me an orange and some extra time to rest before he called the cops to take me to get processed. After getting stitched up, they took me up one floor to get processed. Next floor, all Hispanics; no Blacks, no whites, nothing else, just Hispanics. I thought that was really weird. After getting mug shots taken and being fingerprinted, they took an xray. That was different. I had been in the Wichita jail several 33

Immaculate Recovery times but never x-rayed. It turned out that they took an x-ray to look for swallowed evidence. After processing me through the system, it was time to get a cell. I was almost looking forward to it. I had been up for a couple of days and had been through a lot in the last several hours. Final step through processing was the top floor. Top floor; all white deputies. Really weird how it was so segregated. I got processed through to a cell and went to sleep. A couple of hours later I was woken up to go to 2:00 a.m. night court. That seemed strange, but there is so much crime in the big city that they keep the justice system going around the clock. Waiting my turn to go before the judge, I kept thinking about God creating an earthquake and breaking the chains and opening the cell door to release the Apostle Peter when he was in jail. I was praying he would do something similar for me. I knew that Judge Martin, back in Kansas, had set a million-dollar bond on me. I knew I wasn’t going to try to come up with the 10%, or a hundred thousand dollars, to bond out. I remember looking at the judge and noticing his eyes getting bigger and bigger as he read the charges against me. He scribbled something on my paperwork and set my bond at ten thousand dollars. My prayers had again been answered. I figured the Texas judge must have thought there was an error in my Kansas bond. After all, it was just for missing court.

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CHAPTER 9
I ended up bonding out the next day and left Houston for San Antonio. I got a room once I made it to San Antonio and headed for the nearest strip club, not far from my hotel, and set out to score some dope. There was always dope in the strip clubs. That’s why the girls danced. They couldn’t hold a regular job due to the addictions, so they would dance at strip clubs. There would be dealers hanging out at the clubs to sell dope to the dancers. There I ended up meeting an older, skinny Mexican man with long hair and a mustache. He was sitting by himself and appeared a little drunk, but I figured he would know where to get some dope at. I struck up a conversation with him. His name was Heimy. He was friendly enough. I bought him a couple of beers and we talked. After some small talk, I got around to what I wanted. I told him I was ready to smoke some rock and asked him if he cared to join me. That was my way of checking him out to see what he would say. I knew if he said “no,” I would move on, and if he said “yes” I would see if I could get him to score for us. He said, “Sure.” Boy was I happy. I had been out of dope for a couple of days and was really craving. We ended up going a few blocks from the bar to his son-in-law, Ray’s house. It was about two in the morning at that time. We ended up staying all night and going back to Ray’s at sunup for more dope. Ray would end up being my number one connection for the time I would spend in San Antonio. A couple of months after I met him. I had to end up dropping the dime on Ray. It was a necessary evil and was for his own good, but I could never convince Ray of that.

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Immaculate Recovery Calvin, a shady taxi driver that was taking me everywhere while I was in San Antonio, ended up being a nark. Calvin had been talking to the cops about Ray being some big-time dope dealer. Calvin ended up getting me busted, and the cops that busted me wanted me to get Ray out of his house and come to my hotel room to sell me some dope in a sting operation to get Ray. Ray had his two small boys, his wife, and his mother-inlaw living with him. The cops didn’t want to kick Ray’s door in, because they didn’t want to take the chance that his wife, kids and mother-in-law could become casualties. I didn’t want to do it but the cops told me they were going to raid his house anyway if I couldn’t get Ray to come out. They just didn’t want to have to arrest his whole family. That would have also led to him and his wife losing their kids. The narks promised me protective custody. They must have forgotten about that part of our deal. After they had me set up Ray, which was after I was set up by Calvin, I would find myself in a cell right next to Ray. I could never convince him of it, but I had really done Ray a favor. The cops already had the goods on him. I just got him to come to the hotel where I was at instead of the cops kicking in his door and having to arrest his wife, mother-in-law and losing his kids to Social Services. He freaked out when he saw me. Ray was in a local Mexican gang. It turns out, I was in a holding cell where there were around 30 guys and at least one of them was in the same gang. That was a bad deal for me. Ray said something to the gang member that was in the cell with me. I didn’t know what he had said, but knew it was bad news for me when out of nowhere I got a sharp blow to the face. I am sure that it was for Ray thinking I had narked on him. All I remember was that my nose was bleeding and the guard was in the cell. The guard took me to a cell by myself. I told him I didn’t feel very well and asked if he could he get me something to eat. He told me I would have to wait. I don’t know who it 36

Chapter 9 was and couldn’t see him, but the guy in the cell next to mine rolled an orange over to me. Oranges seemed to be the snack of choice, or availability, in Texas jails. I remember being thankful and thinking how somewhere inside this “prisoner” there was a good person who had just got caught up in a bad situation, and now he was in jail. All I knew was that he had just done me, a total stranger, a good deed. Heimi, his son Jesse, and I would spend the next couple of months in cheap hotels, bars, and dope houses in San Antonio. I would meet several girls along the way. Vanessa and Rita were my favorites. Rita was a heroin addict, and Vanessa went from smoking crack to shooting up. I never used a needle and didn’t like being around anyone who did. Probably, one of the sickest things I had ever seen, was a guy named Dale that was shooting up and couldn’t hit his vein.

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CHAPTER 10
It was while I was still in Wichita. Dale was a cousin of one of the girls I knew and was just released on parole from prison. He had been there on drug charges for over five years. He would be out on parole just long enough to start using again and have to go back to do another three years. About his second day out, he started getting high. He was a junkie and stuck needles with syringes full of a mix of cocaine and water into his veins to get high. It was during his first week out that Dale started using. He had an appointment with his parole officer who same week. If he had gone to the appointment, he would have had to take a u.a. that would have shown that he had been using drugs. He decided not to go to his appointment with his P.O. I asked him what would happen. He said he would have to go back to prison, whether he went to the appointment or not. If he went, he would fail the u.a. and his P.O. would arrest him on the spot to have him taken back to prison. If he missed his appointment, he could stay out of prison and keep getting high. They would be looking for him, but that would give him more time to keep getting high until they caught him. The way he looked at it, he was going back either way. He figured he would stay out and keep getting high as long as he could. Knowing that I was in a bit of a similar situation, and needing to “hide out” also, Dale and I ended up hanging out for the next couple of days. We were in a dive hotel on Broadway in Wichita, and we were about out of dope. Dale had one last shot in his syringe. He was having a hard time hitting his vein. He ended up sticking the needle in and out of his arm several times. That was a pretty sickening scene.

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Chapter 10 Once he got the syringe under his skin, he kept poking it and digging it into his flesh. He couldn’t hit a vein. At times it is hard for an experienced nurse to hit a vein, much less a junkie out of practice, with no patience, and in a hurry, trying to get high. He was getting the syringe, with the little dope he had left, full of blood. He couldn’t get the needle in his vein, so he decided to shoot the syringe full of a mixture of cocaine, water, and blood, into his mouth, to swallow it and try to get high on it that way. He kept missing his mouth and getting blood mixed with the water and dope all over his face, hair and clothes. He was really freaking out. I must say that I was freaking out a little also, just watching him. He really needed that hit of dope. And now it was all gone. He had shot it all over himself. Addiction is a hideous disease. Dale had been clean for five years while he was in prison. That is the danger of staying clean. Once you stop using, the disease keeps growing and building up inside of you. If you start using again, the cravings will be even worse than before the addict quit. The disease comes back with a vengeance and makes it almost impossible to quit again on your own. In recovery the addict learns that it is much easier to stay clean than to try to get clean. That is why so many times when an addict or alcoholic stops for some time and then starts using again, they are even worse than they were before. Once the addict becomes active using again, most end up not being able to stop, become even more addicted than they were before, end up overdosing, and dying. I’m not sure what happened to Dale. When we ran out of dope, I used that as a reason to leave and go look for more, leaving him at the hotel and never seeing him again.

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CHAPTER 11
Vanessa and I would be using buddies most of the time I was in San Antonio. She was really beautiful and could have been Miss Texas. She had recently gotten out of a relationship with her boyfriend of the past three years. She was really depressed and using the dope to cover up her feelings. We were kind of experiencing the same emotions. I had met her through a taxi driver. Taxi drivers were a good source, because they usually knew girls with no cars who were, many times, addicts, and were always giving them rides. The first time I asked Vanessa to come over and party, she said she wanted two hundred dollars. Most “working” girls might ask for thirty or forty, but usually would hang out and do whatever, if there was some dope around. Vanessa was pretty confident of herself. She was a knockout, and she knew it. She was really a very nice girl, just addicted. She didn’t want to go to the hotel and party, so we went to her apartment, where she lived with her mother, instead. I had given Vanessa a hundred dollars, which she gave to her mom when we got to her house. They both said it would be a big help and would keep their electricity on. Her mom was nice enough, but was a cocaine addict herself. Vanessa was smoking crack at that time; her mother snorted it. Months later when I would run into Vanessa again, she was sticking needles in her arms. That is the way the cocaine addiction seems to progress. Start by snorting it. Then smoking it. Then sticking needles in your arms, and then the veins in your arms collapse, and you have to shoot it in the veins between your toes or wherever else you can find them. Then at some point you put so much cocaine into your bloodstream that makes your heart beat so fast that your heart explodes and you die on the spot. Or the drug makes your heart pump the blood through your veins so fast that you have an 40

Chapter 11 aneurysm, go into a coma, and a week later they take you off life support and, not long after that, they pronounce you dead. That is what is called “partying”. Some party, huh? You start out doing it because others around you are doing it. Peer pressure. You become addicted, not even realizing you can’t stop. Some end up dying. Dying is a side effect of “partying”. The dope accelerates your heartbeat. It would make it beat faster and faster, one hit of dope after another, then in a lot of cases your heart explodes, and you die that way. After knowing Vanessa for a month or so, I decided I wanted to go to Houston to try and open an office for my almost defunct phone company. Vanessa, her mom, and I were on our way to Houston in Calvin’s cab. I had been foolish enough to trust Calvin. He took me everywhere, from hotel to hotel every few days when I would move, even to Ray’s dope house at all hours of the night and wee hours of the morning. Calvin would end up working for me and managing my office in San Antonio. At one point, I gave him power of attorney. Boy was that stupid. Worse than that, he was telling me about a friend that he had who wanted some dope and wanted me to turn him on to Ray. I didn’t, but should have picked up on him being a nark at that point. Calvin would just happen to be driving me the last two times, I got busted in Texas. We were on the highway to Houston, or so I thought. Calvin just kept running his mouth, talking about nothing. That wasn’t like him. He was usually pretty quiet. I should have known something was wrong. It turned out, he was just trying to keep my attention. Next thing I knew, Vanessa was freaking out about a sheriff car being right behind us. It didn’t really concern me. After all, we were with Calvin in his cab. I still didn’t know Calvin was a nark at this point though. Vanessa was a little smarter than me. We ended up getting pulled over. 41

Immaculate Recovery I knew we had a problem when the sheriff started asking who was in the car. I thought about running, but that never seemed to work. The sheriff came right to me and told me to get out of the car. At that point, I started to wake up to the fact that something was really wrong. He asked for some I.D. I told him I didn’t have any. He pushed me up against the cab and started to search me. Next thing I knew, I was in handcuffs, and he was searching the cab. In the trunk, there was a sack. He went right to it and pulled out some pipes and a little dope. Then I figured out that Calvin was a nark. That sucked. I had really trusted the guy. Never trust a taxi driver, or anyone else in the “game” for that matter. I was pretty much busted, lock, stock and barrel. They had dope, pipes, and Calvin talking on me and everything I had been up to. He knew all the dope houses I was visiting and that he was taking me to. They ended up taking all of us into the police station. They questioned me as to who the dope and paraphernalia belonged to. I thought about not claiming any of it. I thought about it and decided to give in, give up, and quit running. In recovery, it is called “surrendering”. I ended up taking the rap and claiming all of it. They let Vanessa and her mom go. Vanessa’s mom was an addict herself, but was trying to raise her daughter the best she could. She was a nice enough gal; had a four-foot statue of the Virgin Mary in her and Vanessa’s living room in their apartment. Vanessa and her mom were an example of what has become a tragic scenario. A single mom, addicted, the kids see Mom using and it becomes a family affair, and gets handed down from one generation to the next. Anyone can become an addict. Addicts will rarely, if ever, admit that they are addicted. Most don’t even realize they are addicted. That makes it easy for Satan to step in and take over their lives. Take away the drug, or alcohol, the liquid drug for the alcoholic, and the person under the addict is very often a good person; just under the influence of the devil—the ruler of this

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Chapter 11 Earth “seeking to devour whomever he might,” using drugs and alcohol to do it. That same addict can be a mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, son, daughter, grandchild, grandparent or friend. Addiction really can, and does, affect almost everybody in our society in some way. The addict wrecks his or her life and the lives of all those they love, and those who love them. In today’s world, I am convinced that addiction is the perfect tool that the devil uses to steal more souls than ever in the history of the world. Addiction is a very stealthy killer and can take its victims before they know they have the disease. I was an addict for more than 20 years before I even understood the disease of addiction. I did not realize, and probably would never have admitted, that I was an addict, even though I smoked pot every day for most of my adult life. Pot may not be that deadly of an addiction, but it is known to increase the heart rate 20–100% shortly after smoking it and studies have shown that there is an almost 5-fold increase in the risk of heart attack in the first hour of smoking it. Not to mention it is a gateway to other drug abuse, and it contains almost twice as many cancer-causing agents as does tobacco smoke. Looking back now, I imagine I was addicted about two years into my pot-smoking days. It was when I was 18 and smoking weed on a regular basis. At that time, an older hippie-type by the name of Jeff was my only real connection. Jeff always seemed to have it, but once when Jeff was out and didn’t have a car, I volunteered to take him to look for it. We must have gone to 12 or 15 different houses, driving all over town. He would go in and I would wait in the car, and he kept coming back empty-handed. I think Jeff was really looking for some hard stuff for himself, probably heroin, and just used me for a ride. The more places we went and the more he kept coming back without it, the more I wanted to get high.

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Immaculate Recovery I was really craving some weed and that was about the only time in my life there seemed to be none to be found. Maybe it was around but Jeff was really running me around because he was trying to find what he was looking for and had no other transportation except for me. I would drive and he would go inside. He kept coming back empty handed and just telling me there was no weed where we were going. Drug addiction and lies go hand in hand. I didn’t realize it then, but looking back now, that was probably the first time that I was feeling the effects of addiction. I thought I just wanted to get high really bad, but it was really my addiction that kept pushing me to drive around and keep looking for it. Jeff would eventually have me take him home. He had probably scored some dope he was looking for and just used me for a ride to get what he was after. He probably could have gotten me some pot all along. A couple of weeks after that day, Jeff would die from his disease. Unfortunately, his would not be the only death he would cause. His friend and using buddy, Brad G., had been in inpatient drug treatment and recently got out when Jeff had Brad take him to get some dope for himself and Brad. Brad would end up overdosing and dying. Brad’s family was wealthy, and rumor had it that they blamed Jeff for Brad’s overdose. They were going to try to have Jeff put in prison for the rest of his life. No one could really blame them. Jeff was poor and lived in his grandmother’s garage that she had turned into a room for him to live in. I remember going over there and seeing syringes sticking in the ceiling like darts. That always gave me the creeps. After Brad overdosed, Jeff was scared and freaked out, thinking he was going to jail forever. Jeff was really using heavy, and no one really knows for sure if it was suicide, but Jeff would be found dead, bleeding from his eyes, nose, mouth and ears from a drug overdose. He probably couldn’t face what he had done, getting his friend the dope that had killed him, or the fear of going to jail. He would use to try to escape 44

Chapter 11 the reality of where the drugs had led and ended up killing himself. Over 30 years later there is still an active recovery home for people wanting to get off of drugs and change their lives named after Brad G. For Jeff, I imagine this will be the only memory of him. God rest his soul.

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CHAPTER 12
It took jail, treatment, probation, over 480 Narcotics Anonymous meetings, staying clean for three years, getting off probation, going back out and using drugs again, and realizing that once I started, I could not stop, to understand that indeed, I was an addict. After almost 30 years of using, I finally realized and believed I was an addict. Only by the Grace of God did I live long enough to quit and get clean before I died from the disease of addiction. For the addict, it is next to impossible to admit to having the disease and even harder to stop using. Addiction always ends in the same way—jails, institutions, death, and once in a great while, maybe one out of 50, the addict gets clean and stays that way. My first experience with “drugs” was around 1972. Integration had just come to the school system in Wichita, Kansas. They were busing African-American kids into the mostly-white school districts and sending white kids into the mostly-black school districts. It was supposed to be to raise equality in education. Until this day, some would argue if it worked. I wonder if the NFL Hall of Fame running back from Wichita, Barry Sanders, would have been the great success he would become had we not had busing back then. Barry’s older brother, Boyd, was in one of the first groups of kids to get bused. Boyd was in my class. Back then, the Sanders were by no means wealthy. There were eleven kids in the family. At that time, when it was your birthday, you got to have a party in your classroom at school. I remember my mom coming in to help put on my party. It was always one of the best. She would bring cupcakes and Kool-aid. My mother, what a saint; all of the other kids would say what a cool party I always got to have. 46

Chapter 12 At Boyd’s birthday, he was the guest and the host. I imagine his mom, Mrs. Sanders, was working. Boyd brought a bag of lemon drops to school for his party. I remember him going around and putting a lemon drop on everyone’s desk. As he was doing it, he had a big smile and a look of real happiness and pride. His was a big family and were probably a little frugal out of necessity. I imagine after his younger brother, Barry, made it big in the NFL, that all changed. At that time though, Boyd was very careful not to drop any of the lemon drops that he was passing out to the class for his birthday party. That was about 40 years ago, and I can still see him smiling today. I felt a certain identity with the kids that were being bussed. Up until that year, with my Arab-American heritage, I was about the darkest kid in the school. Discrimination would have sounded strange to me, had I known that was what was happening to me. I just knew that the white kids seemed to pick on me. Then along came the black kids. I remember the white kids were not particularly nice to them. There would even be racially motivated fights. There I was, somewhat stuck in the middle. I didn’t seem to have many friends, or fit in with the blacks or whites. Before they started busing in the African-American kids, there was just one American-Indian girl, one Hispanic boy, and me, that were all a little darker than the entire school of around 300 kids. There was one of the African-American kids, Edward Brown, who when my mother would pick me up from school for lunch, I would have Edward over sometimes. His dad once told me at our yearly school carnival called “Fun Night”, how much he appreciated me doing that. I liked Edward and was just being a friend, and really didn’t understand where his dad was coming from, but when I got older and really understood discrimination, I understood, and it made me feel good to have done it.

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Immaculate Recovery Another of the first African-American kids who came over during busing was a really big kid. He had been held back a few years. Wayne Gibson was his name. One day all the kids were gathered around Wayne at recess. Wayne had a matchbox full of marijuana. That was the first time I would see “drugs”, but would not try it until several years later. Some people today think that there is not really much wrong with marijuana, and that it should be legalized. The biggest concern for marijuana is too often it becomes a gateway drug and leads to harder, more addictive and deadly drugs. When the person smoking weed gets immune to the effects of it, they may turn to harder drugs. Many times people start out smoking pot, then there seems to be a natural progression to the harder stuff. Had the person not started with the pot, then there is a good chance they would have never gotten into the more destructive drugs: cocaine, alcohol, meth, heroin, uppers, downers, acid, and prescription-abusing drug abuse. That year would lead to not only busing, but the mixing of the poor white and black kids with the richer white kids that, for the most part, had been strangers until the different school districts came together. It would work out to where the rich kids had the money and the poor kids seemed to have access to the drugs. That made for the getting together of the two socio-economic classes. Now they needed each other and had to get acquainted for everyone to get what they wanted. There were some kids from the “orchard”, a more rural part of Wichita that got its name from the peach orchard that used to be there. The white kids from the orchard were less affluent than a lot of the other kids and already into experimenting with drugs at 12 or 13 years old. That year we all ended up in an English class together. The wealthier white kids, the poorer white kids, and the newly-bused AfricanAmerican kids. Our English teacher, Mrs. Smith, was quite concerned when her new group of kids that year came up with a project 48

Chapter 12 that was a skit all about drugs. That would have been in the early 70’s and drugs were just starting to come into the Midwest. The setting for our skit was at radio station T.O.K.E. At the time, taking a “toke” meant smoking pot. Our toke radio station skit had announcers with names like Bennie Barbiturate, Ronnie Roach, and Valerie Valium. It was all set around drugs and doing drugs. We would act like we were doing the weather and say things like, “In the weather today, the highs are going to get us really high, and the lows are going to be taking some good downers.” Most all the kids at that time were smoking pot before school. When you would see another stoner in the hall, you would say “hi” and they would say “gh” if they were a little high or “lb”, like they had just smoked a pound of pot, if they were really stoned. That was back when it was pretty unheard of for such young people, especially in conservative Kansas, to be that knowledgeable about drugs. I was hanging out with the kids who were using, but was still clean myself. I wouldn’t do drugs until a few years later, but found it all very interesting and entertaining. For a kid, getting away with something they shouldn’t be doing, or at least being around people who were, was half the fun.

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CHAPTER 13
The peer pressure caught up with me, like most everyone else who starts doing drugs. Now all my friends were doing it, so I eventually started also. Had I changed the people I was around, I may have never started. It is kind of like hanging around a barber shop. If you hang out at the barber shop long enough, eventually you’re going to get a haircut. By the time I got started, it seemed like everyone was smoking weed. This brings up an important point. The most critical thing for a person who wants to get clean and sober and stay that way is to disassociate and avoid at all costs, people, places, and things that are, or were, associated with their addiction—their old using friends, places, and anything and everything else associated with their addition. In recovery, we have a saying, “the only thing an addict has to change, to stay clean is everything.” Surprisingly enough, the Hispanic security guard at school had the best weed. It was called “Vietnamese blue.” The stuff would make you hallucinate. Then there was African, Mexican, Ti stick, Buddha stick, Acapulco Gold, Red Bud, Gold Bud and Rainbow Colombian, Afghanistan, Jamaican—just all kinds of different weed, seemingly from all over the world. Back then it was a lot easier to smuggle it into America. I smoked pot almost every day for the next twenty years with no real degree of problem, or so I thought. I got hooked on it and didn’t feel “normal” unless I was high. I was an addict and didn’t even realize it. Of course, as it so often does, over time, the weed eventually led to the harder drugs. That led to police, gangs, and all kinds of problems. Gang life in Wichita would introduce me to the Bloods, Crips, Junior Boys, Folks, and Second Streeters. Many of them were disadvantaged African-American kids who had grown up together in the same neighborhoods and become 50

Chapter 13 young adults only to leave junior high or high school, join a gang, and start dealing drugs full time. For many of them, it was an unavoidable process. They really had little or no opportunity. Most came from poor, single-parent homes where they may have had a good loving parent, parents, or grandparents, but just not enough love, attention or money to go around. They would form a family relationship with the other gang members. I would end up getting well acquainted with a local gang called “Second Street.” The Second Streeters were a “set” or “sub group” of the more widely known Junior Boys. Today most of the gang bangers I knew from that time in my life are in prison or dead. I got in pretty good with them. I had plenty of money and was buying lots of dope. “J” had me over to his mother’s home once where he showed me all the newspaper clippings of his “homies” that were in his gang and had been killed in drive-by shootings. Gang bangers are basically a bunch of guys, mostly underprivileged, young, and minorities, who turn to selling drugs and become what they considered “businessmen.” In their minds, that is exactly what they are, “businessmen” not criminals. Most of them barely had transportation or a place to live, and seemed to end up in jail or dead. The Second Streeters got their name from being raised on Second Street in Wichita. That is how some gangs at that time got started; they grew up as neighborhood kids.

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CHAPTER 14
Lots of the poorest parts of Wichita were just one drug shack after another. I could go hang out and get high at one of these dope houses, and the dope just seemed to show up. One day there were what seemed to be a lot of dealers, maybe seven or eight, who came by the back door of one of the dope houses in the hood that I was hanging out in. The next day “T” showed up to sell some dope, kind of went crazy, pulled out a 9mm and started pointing it at everyone in the room. T said if anyone wanted any dope that they were to buy it from him and no one else, or else! T lived behind the dope house I was hanging out at and could see what was going on. I guess he figured this was “his” hood and no one else was going to get “his money”. You would go to his house, and he would have a table set up with lots of little baggies filled with crack or pot. It was his display table, you might say. I would buy the dope and turn on the person at whoever’s house I was at. I was about the only white guy in an all-black neighborhood. That just happened to be where the dope was, and a few white girls wanting to get high. Next time I saw T, he had brought me some dope to a hotel I was staying at. After he left, the cops rolled slowly by. That was the last time I saw T. I ended up in the “hood” via a little dive in Wichita on south Broadway named Billy’s. I had been to Billy’s years before with a kid who worked for me by the name of Kevin Paulley. Kevin worked for me as a furniture salesman in a place called Bargain Time. Most of the Bargain Time stores would be bought out by what is now Big Lots. Bargain Time was a company that was owned by Mechum Riklis. Riklis was known for marrying Pia Zadora, also known as the “unknown actress.” Riklis was a billionaire 52

Chapter 14 who would go in and buy companies like TG&Y, Samsonite Luggage, Spalding Sporting Goods, Riviera Casinos, Smirnoff Vodka, McCrory Stores, and other big long-standing companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in credit. He would use up all of the credit to buy as much merchandise as he could get his hands on and then sell it all off for cash, not pay any bills, and then bankrupt the company after he had put millions of dollars in his pocket. Now all of his companies, and he, are bankrupt. That was before laws like Serbanes-Oxley and others could stop that sort of illegal activity. Kevin’s grandmother lived in a trailer across the street from Billy’s so he was pretty familiar with the place. Billy’s was run by Mary and her son Jim. Jim was also known as Jim Shady. There was a popular song at the time by rapper Eminem called Slim Shady. Jim was definitely “shady,” rumored to be an informant. Jim would serve drinks at one end of the bar and dope at the other end. Jim had a girlfriend by the name of Star. They would both end up helping me get hooked on crack, Jim selling it to me and both of them smoking it with me. Star was a cute girl. Her mom hung out at the bar and was a crack head also. Star would turn tricks for money to buy dope. Star and I spent some time together. I don’t think Jim minded too much. He had other girlfriends. Problem with Jim was that it turned out that he talked to the cops. There were a couple of low rent hotels just around the corner from Billy’s. One was the Wichita Host and another was the Day Dream Inn. They were both filled with crack heads, prostitutes, dope dealers and informants. It was hard to tell who was an informant, but you knew some of the people you were partying with were. It seemed that the cops were involved in selling and that some of them were also using drugs. Jim told me that the cops knew the smokers from the sellers. He eventually told me, that “they” knew I

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Immaculate Recovery was a smoker. Sometimes the sellers, like Jim, were also the informants. Jim was my first real connection. He would end up narking on me more than once. He helped get me hooked by selling me the dope, and then got me busted for using it! Billy’s, what a place. They would occasionally find one of their customers dead outside of the bar. Thank God I was never much of a drinker. Alcoholism is a horrible addiction. Alcohol is the “liquid drug,” no question about it. I think I had fallen in love with Star. I met her about the time my wife left me. Star was a really cute, petite blond with pretty blue eyes. She always wanted to get out on her own, get a job, get away from Jim, and clean up her life. That is what a lot of addicts wanted—to get clean. A lot of conversations among addicts are that they know they should quit, and how they are going to. Problem is, they are addicted and in most cases don’t understand or realize that they have the disease of addiction. Or worse yet, are in denial. They know they are addicted and say they could quit anytime they wanted to. They just never do. The cravings from the drug controls everything they do, their whole lives: looking for drugs, using drugs, and finding ways and means to get more drugs. Addicts hardly ever quit on their own. They usually end up dying from an overdose, or if they get lucky, they go to jail instead of dying. That’s how they stop. Then they get out of jail, use more, and then die or go back to jail. It’s really almost an impossible situation. It is a vicious cycle, and a disease that too often kills its victims, just like the disease of cancer. Like cancer, addiction can be put into remission, but the addict will always carry his or her disease. Sobriety is the addict’s only medication. Prayer and finding a belief in a Higher Power is an immense benefit to the addict and those that love and care about the addict. If the addict finds a twelve-step group, gets clean, and stays in recovery, there is still the chance for a better life than the addict has ever known. 54

CHAPTER 15
I told Star I would help her get out on her own. I wanted to, but things didn’t work out. Things got out of sorts between Jim and I when he found out Star was having a romantic relationship with one of my occasional live-in girlfriends, Victoria. I had never met anyone like Victoria. She would be the first woman I would spend the entire night, and until sunup, partying with. My wife had not let me live at home for over a year, and I had nowhere else to go so I was just living out of wherever I could. Usually sleazy hotel rooms. It was nice to have some company, even if it was just another addict. My wife, Cindy, and I had been together for 17 years. I loved her with my entire heart, mind, and soul and did not want to lose her. We fought almost the entire time we were together, but I would have never left her. After she told me every day for a couple of years that she did not love me, no longer wanted to be with me, and wanted a divorce, I finally gave up. When she got a restraining order against me, I could not live at home or even see my kids. I was really lost and lonely. Losing her and my kids drove me to use more and more, trying to stay high continually, not wanting to come down and face the reality of my family no longer being there. Victoria was beautiful, and lived with a gorgeous stripper named Kristy. They were big time crack addicts. I met the two of them through an old junior high friend from the orchard, Theresa Casey. I hadn’t seen Theresa in 10 years, but ran into her in a bar over by the orchard after Cindy kicked me out of our home. Theresa liked smoking crack and introduced me to her dealer Kristy. Kristy and Victoria were more than “roommates,” they were lovers. One night shortly after I met the two of them, I went by their home and Victoria was standing outside yelling at Kristy to let her in. It was Kristy’s home and she had kicked Victoria 55

Immaculate Recovery out that night. Lover’s quarrel. I took advantage and told Victoria she could come to my hotel room, get high, and hang out with me. She was happy to hear the offer and take me up on it when she knew I had plenty of dope. Kristy was dating an attorney and he would give her lots of money, so she always had lots of dope and she would use it to control Victoria. Kristy and Victoria could both make the front cover of any men’s magazine. They were real show stoppers. They were both knockouts on their own, but when they were side by side, there were no heads that they would not turn. They would get dressed up real sexy and I would take them to their favorite gay, bar so they could dance together. The gays and the straights would all stop, watch, and drool over them. They loved the attention and got a lot of it. I am sure they could have been very successful at whatever, they wanted to do in life. It was too bad all they wanted to do was smoke crack. Too bad they were addicts. That is the problem with addiction, it ruins people’s lives; many times very intelligent, talented, beautiful people. Kristy ended up doing some serious prison time and having a child by one of her dope dealers. Her attorney boyfriend got hooked on crack as well, and lost his law license. Not sure what became of Victoria. At one point, I had gotten Victoria a little house on Volutsia in Wichita where she could get out from under Kristy’s control. We would later find out that the house was either where the infamous serial killer B.T.K. killed one of his victims, or the house right next door to it. Victoria moved out not long after we found that out and that would be about the last time I would see her. One night while we still had the house on Volutsia, Victoria and Star were in the bathtub together and “Pops” came by. Pops, a.k.a. Gary Washington, was a 70-year-old black man who I had met when I first got in the game. Pops was a really nice guy, and a great cook. He’d cook once in a while

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Chapter 15 and invite me over to his house. I would get him high, he’d feed me, and we would hang out for a while. He came by Victoria’s and I told him to go and check out what was in the tub. Victoria and Star were in the tub together. He came out and told me that he had never seen anything like that and could not believe his eyes and almost fainted. It was really sad—Pops would end up getting killed, taking a bullet from some young gang banger who had just gotten out of prison. Pops was selling him some dope and I’m not sure what exactly happened, but the young punk tried to steal Pops’s dope. Pops went to wrestling with him and the punk shot him. I guess Pops pretty much died on the spot. What a sad end to the life of a really nice guy. That is life, and death, in the game. The dope game always has a bad end: jails, institutions or death.

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CHAPTER 16
I started keeping a journal (diary) on 12-16-2000 when my time in the game ended. I found myself in the unreal situation of being a prisoner in the Sedgwick County Jail. Much of this book comes right off the pages of that journal. It will give you a personal feel of life behind bars as I give you a first-hand account of what went on inside the jail and take you into my cell with me. My diary starts when I first found myself behind bars. It looked like I would be there for a while. It would probably be a good idea if everyone “journaled” every day. It gives us a snapshot of our life to look back on. Maybe looking back on our lives might just help improve our futures. My life had been so bizarre. I felt if I thought things were as bad as they could get, as soon as I started recording things, it would only get worse. Now having lost my wife, kids, home, car, business, and everything else that I ever loved or owned or that meant anything to me. Being in jail, I was pretty sure things couldn’t get much worse. In addiction, this is where most addicts end up if they do not die. It is called “hitting bottom”. When I started keeping my journal on 12-16-00, one of the first things I wrote was, “it will get better”. At this point I had lost everything, except my Faith in God, and I would now be able to totally surrender to Him. I was in an eightfoot–by–eight-foot cinder block cell with nothing except the jail-issued clothes I was wearing and a two-inch foam mattress on a steel bunk. I had no control over my life. I was just a prisoner. It was like being an animal locked in a cage. I was all alone but knew that God was there with me. Looking back at that journal now, and thinking about it, that was not the first time I had been in jail. The first time 58

Chapter 16 would have been years before, probably about twenty years earlier. The first time that I ran from the cops. I had just turned twenty and moved to Omaha, Nebraska, with my job at Uniway; I left my family, friends, and girlfriend, Susie Pyle. Susie was a beautiful Southern girl who had found her way to Wichita from Fairfield, Alabama, with her job as a receptionist at Uniway. I had gone to work for Uniway in the summer of 1978. At that time, I would learn first hand about discrimination in the workplace. It surprised me that we would be instructed to put two x’s on everything that had anything to do with any African-American customers, from the customers’ paperwork to their membership cards. We had one black salesman, Van, and the manager would even refer to him as the “New-coon”. Van didn’t seem to mind, and it was all in the open. I just thought it was pretty tasteless. I would end up working at different wholesale clubs all over America and eventually owned a couple myself. It could be very profitable. Selling a paper card for $500 that cost almost nothing, and doing that as many as 200 times a month was really quite a concept, making the owners of the clubs huge amounts of money. Some very similar clubs still remain active. The membership today can sell for several thousand dollars. If the member uses the service enough it can be worth it. Back then there was no internet and few discount stores to buy from, so I think it was a better deal at that time.

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CHAPTER 17
It was the summer of my 18th birthday. I had been sacking groceries at Dillons, now part of Krogers, for the past couple of years and when I graduated (barely) high school I felt like I wanted a change. In 1978 in America, there was a lot of optimism. At that time in my life, I felt, like most young people should feel, like the sky was the limit. I had always been a bit of a salesman, ever since I was six years old, in the summer, going door to door, pulling a little red wagon, selling vegetables. When a six-year-old shows up at your door, chances are you’re going to buy whatever he or she is selling. I did pretty good at it and developed the attitude that whatever I was selling, people were buying. Success in sales, and in life, is attitude. There is an old, but very true, saying: “It is your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude in life.” In the summer of 1978, as I was graduating high school and deciding it was time for a change, I found an ad in the Wichita Eagle that said “up to $7.00 an hour in sales”. At that time, even though working at Dillons for over two years, I was only making a little over minimum wage at $2.90 an hour, so needless to say I was all for the sales opportunity to have a chance to make $7.00 an hour! It turned out it would be selling Fuller Brush door to door. Back then a lot of things were sold door to door. Nowadays, it is harder to get people to open their door to a salesman, and understandably so. I did well at it, but kept looking in the paper for other jobs and found the Uniway ad for “inside sales”. That sounded like it would be air conditioned and a lot better than walking in the hot summer sun. I would end up working for the next year and a half at Uniway in Wichita. It was 60

Chapter 17 evenings and Saturdays, and I made over $20,000 the next year working part time and going to school at WSU. Back then that was a whole lot of money for the few hours a week I was working. In 1978, for a kid just out of high school, living at home with no expenses, and making good money, I thought for sure I had found what I wanted to do the rest of my life. After working for about a year, and out of about 300 salesmen across the country at all of the Uniway stores, I would win a nationwide sales contest. First prize was a two-week allexpenses-paid trip to Acapulco. Making that kind of money and winning that trip, I decided that I did not need college. I dropped out of WSU, and was sure that I could have a career and make a lot more money in sales. I wish I would have stayed in college. That fall I would move to Omaha with John, his wife Arlene, Arlene’s sister Jeanette, and Jeanette’s husband Doug, and we would start John’s second Uniway franchise. I think at this time John had already saved over a million dollars from his Wichita franchise, and I figured I would ride his coattails and become a millionaire myself. Leaving for another state at 20 years old, moving out of my parents’ house for the first time, and getting away from everything I had known all my life was a huge change for me. I was a pretty good kid with good work ethics, fairly responsible, and an “altar boy” for the previous 15 years. Looking back, the only real problem that I had was that I was smoking pot every day, not realizing I would soon become an addict and smoke it literally every day for the next 20 years. Smoking marijuana may not be the end of the world and might not be the worst thing that people do now days, but there is a chance that it could have deadly results as a gateway drug leading to the “hard stuff”. I would not see the effect that it had on my life until many years later when I was clean, and able to reflect back. I didn’t understand what it meant to 61

Immaculate Recovery be an addict, or that I was one, until I finally decided I wanted to stop and discovered I could not. I couldn’t see that I had not matured like others my age who didn’t smoke pot every day. My life was fairly decent. I had been self employed most of my life and was taking care of my wife and kids. There is no telling what degree of lasting success I could have had if I wasn’t smoking pot every day and eventually getting into harder drugs and losing everything. Had I not ever started, and kept smoking, weed, I probably would have never discovered cocaine, speed, acid, mushrooms, crack and other drugs. The crack addiction would be the final drug of destruction, eventually ruining my life, family and everything else that I loved and had any real meaning to me. The lack of serious drug education in American schools, starting at the earliest possible age, is almost as criminal as the drugs themselves. Something really must be changed, and we must start to educate our young in the classroom on the harm that drugs do. This needs to happen as early as first grade, and continue for several years, kind of like math. It is as important as math or any other subject.

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CHAPTER 18
Once in Omaha and a long way from home, I started to discover a whole new world and a life all on my own. Thank God I was never much of a drinker and didn’t get addicted to alcohol, but there were a couple of bars by Uniway that we would go to after work sometimes. There was a place that was kind of a dive called the “Losers Club” next door to Uniway, and caddy corner and across the street was the Omaha Super Club. The Omaha Super Club had a bit of a checkered past. A few years before we opened, there was an African-American family that had tried to go to dinner at the Super Club one Christmas Eve and were denied entry. The father of the family would return with a shotgun and kill several people at the restaurant that same night. The Omaha Super Club kind of had a stigma after that. From then on they did allow minorities in though. We were in the warehouse district of Omaha. The rent was cheap (John liked that), but we were a little hard to find. We could tell people we were across the street from the Omaha Supper Club and people would know where we were at. Sometimes we would buy gift certificates from the Super Club and use them for free gifts to get people to come in to Uniway. Those always seemed to work real well; the food was real good, and the people felt like they were doing something a little daring even going into the place. On Saturday night we would usually get off a little early. Our regular hours at Uniway were from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., but we would never get out before ten at night and sometimes later. Sometimes an eight o’clock appointment could last until 11 or 12 at night. At that time at Uniway we were instructed to keep talking and giving reasons why the

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Immaculate Recovery customer should join, even though they did not want to. We were trained to change the customer’s mind. The two-hour presentation could take another two hours of the salesman trying to talk the customer into finally say yes. That would lead to a lot of customers regretting it the next day. Some of those presentations would later turn into complaints of “high pressure” at the local Better Business Bureau, District Attorney’s office or maybe even the Attorney General. The customer would sign a “non-cancelable” contract and at times, the next day they would want to cancel but were told they couldn’t. That would usually cause problems. The B.B.B. has always had plenty of bad things to say about these kind of wholesale clubs. A couple of months after we opened in Omaha, I was done one Saturday night at 9:30 or so, and went across the street for something to eat and a drink. That night I had a drug called a “downer”. Downer was the street name; it was actually a prescription drug called a “Quaalude”. Taking a Quaalude was similar to the feeling a person would get if they just downed a twelve-pack of beer. If you were already feeling happy, it would make you even happier. If you were sad and took a Quaalude, you might start crying. For me, that night, I was somewhere in between. I had a good day and made around three hundred dollars in commissions on the memberships I had sold. We would get paid sixty dollars per membership. I had sold all five of my appointments that day. On average, a good salesman would sell 40% of his appointments each month. Everything was great, but I was missing my girlfriend, Susie. When I moved to Omaha, Susie and I decided we would stay together, even though she was in Wichita and I was in Omaha. Bad idea. Long-distance relationships between girlfriend and boyfriend rarely, if ever, work out, especially back then. I was still really just a kid exploring the world, looking to have fun and looking at other girls. I think Susie was much more dedicated than myself. We were close in age, but I have dis64

Chapter 18 covered that women seem to mature much faster than men do, and possibly are more loyal in general. I had a year-old 1979 Corvette. It was red with black Ttops. It was a really hot and fast car for that time. I had taken the Quaalude, had a drink, which enhanced the effect of the drug. I was ready to go for a ride and smoke a joint in the country. We were close to a highway that led out to the middle of nowhere. I could take the Corvette out and really get my foot into it. I would drive it kind of stupid fast and am lucky to be alive. There was not much traffic where I was going, so I was pretty surprised when far behind me I noticed flashing red lights. In my intoxicated state of mind, I decide to floor it and make a run for it. Before I stopped, I had gone through Omaha, Douglas and Sarpy counties. There were around 40 cop cars when they finally caught up to me. I had a pretty good lead on them, but noticed they were no longer in my rearview mirrors and were not coming after me. Something just did not seem right, so I just stopped and before long they were all over me. I asked one, as he was putting me in a squad car, why they had quit chasing me and he told me that I was coming up on a curve and as fast as I was going, they wanted to see if I would live through the wreck I was about to have. That would be the first time I would find myself behind bars. The next morning I called Doug and let him know what had happened, and asked if he would come and bail me out. While waiting on Doug to get there I had breakfast with about 50 other inmates. It seemed like they were all giving me dirty looks. It was just the beginning of the Iran Hostage crisis in 1979. Anyone who looked different, especially Arab, at that time was a bit of a target for abuse. I was thankful to have a guard come for me right after breakfast. A few months later I would go to court to face the charges. It would turn out that a guy driving a red Corvette like mine had assaulted some girl 65

Immaculate Recovery in the area. Her boyfriend was looking for the guy and mistook me for him. He would get involved in the police chase. He was arrested along with me. Turned out he had a 45 caliber revolver in his car when the police stopped him right before stopping me. Good thing the cops got to him before he got to me. I had hired an attorney and asked him what he would charge to go to court and take care of the ticket for me. He said it should be no problem and that he would look at it the morning of the court date. He gave me a price and I paid him. I think it was $150 back then. He said he would just see me in court. I didn’t see him again until the morning of court. I was in the courtroom, and when he saw me, he looked a little disgusted and motioned for me to go outside with him. He was a little excited when he asked me about the six police roadblocks I had run. Thinking back now, I can still see them. The roadblocks the police set were two white saw horses with a couple of orange stripes on each one. They seemed to set them apart with just enough room to swerve in between. That was the way they did it 30 years ago when you ran from the cops. Nowadays they lay down road spikes, and might even shoot you. Thank God, for me it was a little different world at that time. By the time I quit running, I had driven through three Nebraska counties. As one of the cops was putting me in a squad car, I figured I might try to get out of going to jail and asked him if we could talk about it. He almost acted like we might, but then kind of snapped to, looked surprised and strapped me in. I doubt they had many Arab looking, Corvette driving, arrest resisters out in that part of the farming community in Sarpey County, Nebraska in 1979. That would be the first, and last night I would spend in jail for a long time.

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Chapter 18 Doug came and paid the $300 that it took to pay the 10% of the $3,000 bond to get me out the next morning. John had sent him down to the jail with the cash to make sure I got out. It wasn’t that John was so concerned that I was in jail, as he was that I was one of his best salesmen, and he didn’t want to lose out on any sales I could be making for him. John was already a millionaire at that time and was real good at making money, and even better at saving it. I guess that is how rich people get that way. John was generous in his own way. He would often offer to buy me dinner, but we would end up splitting a meal. I thought John was tight, until I met his father. In the late 90s, John and I were going into the phone business in Texas. John’s dad lived just outside of Houston, so we were spending the week with him. John’s dad, Al, was around 95 at the time. One night Al was making us dinner, and I was boiling some vegetables. When the vegetables were done I was going to strain them, and pour the water down the drain in the kitchen sink. Al stopped me and said, “Oh, Rick, don’t do that. We can save that water and rinse the dishes with it.” It became obvious where John got his frugal ways. Really nice people, like family to me, but really conservative.

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CHAPTER 19
John and I left Omaha a couple of years later and went to Denver to open up a new Club. Denver was awesome. I fell in love with the mountains, and a couple months later I fell in love with a girl there by the name of Linda Lee. Not long after we met, Linda and I would move in together. She was a very pretty Jewish girl. She was great, and I think we fell in love as soon as we said hello. Her dad was against us totally, her being Jewish and myself of Arab descent. Something about an Arab and a Jew he said would never work out. A couple of months after moving in together, I asked Linda what her book “All About Herps” was about. She said that we needed to talk and that she had something to tell me. I said okay, but what was this book “All About Herps” about. She said, “It’s not herps…it’s Herpes.” A couple of months later I left her, and Denver, and John, and headed to Oklahoma to work for Don Dorrell, John’s competition. It was a stupid move, but I was young and living life free and easy, and if I decided I wanted to try something new, I would do it with no regard to the consequences or other people. I started at Uniway in Wichita in 1978, and for the next 10 years would end up traveling America working in Buyer’s Clubs in Albuquerque, Omaha, Denver, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Shreveport, Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Tyler, Longview and Mineola TX. It was a lot of fun and made for an exciting life. I would learn a lot about being a professional salesman from one of Don’s partners, Judge Ziglar, Zig Ziglar’s brother. Zig is great, but I think I liked Judge better because he was down to earth and had a lot of great wisdom. Judge passed away some years ago, but if you can find a copy, and would like to make a career in sales, read Judge’s book, Timid Salesmen Have Skinny Kids. 68

Chapter 19 Several years would go by after going to jail in Omaha before I would find myself behind bars again. After working in the Buyer’s Club business for John and Don for the next eight or nine years, I would go out on my own, and open my first Club that I actually owned in Longview, Texas. Longview is in East Texas and not far from Shreveport, Louisiana, where I was working for Don at the time. I would meet the love of my life in Shreveport, Louisiana. Cindy came to work for me when she was 17 and had a six-month-old baby boy, Bobby. Cindy was in an awkward marriage, one she got into when she got pregnant. She wasn’t happy; she was pretty, and I was very attracted to her. Her then husband, 16-year-old Robbie, was a bit of a drunk and feeding Bobby beer through his baby bottle. I was going to have none of that and told Cindy she needed to get away from Robbie. It was a bad situation for all of them. It is something that happens all too often. Young people having sex, the girl gets pregnant, has the baby, and then society has kids trying to raise kids. Over the next six months, Cindy and I would fall deeply in love and she would end up getting a divorce from Robbie. Cindy, Bobby and I would end up spending almost the next 20 years together, along with Cindy and I having two more wonderful boys. After working in Shreveport together for a couple of years, Cindy and I would go out on our own, and open our first Wholesale Club, L.J. Stewards, that we actually owned in Longview, Texas. A couple of years later, L.J. Stewards would go out of business for failure to pay some taxes. It was really pretty innocent, but one member of our Wholesale Club was a probation officer who had lost a couple of thousand dollars in the deal. The probation officer had a friend who was a sheriff. The sheriff was a little shady and decided he was going to try to make me out to be a criminal who stole the probation officer’s money to try to get me to pay it back. Kind of the

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Immaculate Recovery way it worked back then. Small-town justice, I think it was called. I would leave Shreveport the next day, buy an airline ticket to Albuquerque, use the name Michael Johnson, and escape the law. Albuquerque would be where I would end up in 1988, back working for John. It was a day after I would find myself, for the first time, as a fugitive. The day before I went back to Albuquerque, the sheriff would come on the noon news in Shreveport to say that I was “wanted” and that they were “searching for me,” and that he thought I was somewhere between the 45 miles that separated Shreveport, Louisiana, and Longview, Texas. That was scary. Even though I had operated just outside of the law for years, I had never gotten into too much trouble. This was pretty serious, being on the news and being “looked for”.

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CHAPTER 20
After escaping to Albuquerque, and being there for a couple of days, I would call Sheriff Wollerford and complain to him that what he was doing was wrong, and that I was no criminal as he was trying to make me out to be. The I.R.S. had gotten his friend’s money. He told me that he disagreed and said that I was “slippery,” but he would do everything he could to try to catch me. He wouldn’t catch up with me for a few more years. It was a good thing for me that at the time you could buy an airline ticket without showing an I.D. I would make it through the Shreveport airport, buy my ticket, board the plane, and get away. All the while being scared to death at the airport, using a false name and no identification. Try that today; it won’t happen. I would end up safe in Albuquerque. Cindy would join me there a few months later, and we would have our second child, Johnny. After about six months in Albuquerque, we moved back to my hometown of Wichita, Kansas. Back in Wichita is where Sheriff Woolerford and his posse would eventually catch up to me. It was a couple of years later, and about the time Cindy and I had our third child, Donny. After a couple of years had passed, I think the sheriff had lost some of his enthusiasm to try to look like a hero to his friend the probation officer, and only discovered where I was when he got a lucky break. I ended up paying back a little over $15,000 in money the Club members had lost, and avoided going back to Texas for any type of court proceedings or facing any jail time, or the sheriff. Cindy and I were in Wichita living on Smith Circle and had gotten into an argument. Maybe a yelling match. I think our oldest son, Bobby, had called 911 and the cops came. She

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Immaculate Recovery told them to leave, that there was no problem. The cops practically broke our door down and forced their way into our home. That was when the laws on “domestic violence” had just changed, and if the cops were called out for a domestic disturbance, someone was going to jail, even if there was no violence. There was a $500 diversion program to get out of the domestic violence charge. This change in the law was designed not so much with the safety of the citizens involved, but a new way for the city government to make some big money. Once the law changed, the new rules would generate the city an extra $50,000 a month. They would process me at the police station, and my problems in Longview would show up. I would end up spending the day in jail, but would settle things a few months later by paying the $15,000 in “restitution” the sheriff wanted. It was like blackmail. I had to pay it or go back to Longview and go to jail, bond out, go to court and take my chances. I didn’t have the money, but… I guess that is why God gives us dads. Thanks, Dad. Thank God I had a dad who was able to loan me the money, and thank God again I was eventually able to pay him back.

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CHAPTER 21
In all of the hundreds of N.A. (Narcotics Anonymous) meetings that I have been to and the multitude of sad and unfortunate stories I have heard of addicts that were children of dysfunctional famililies, I must say that this was not the case with me. The last thing I could do was blame my parents. My problems were all of my own doing. I had very loving parents, married for a long time, who did everything that they could for me. Though many addicts are a product of the environment that they were raised in, seeing their parents, many single parents, drink, drug, and abuse them, it just was not the case with me. My addiction was a product all of my own making. In treatment, they say you are not responsible for your addiction, but that you are responsible for your recovery. That is the thing about addiction; we start by using drugs or alcohol (liquid dope) because our friends are using or we see our parents using, and we think it is the fun or grown-up thing to do. Then we keep using, and the more we use, the more our body gets a need for the substance to feel “good” or “better”. I do not think addiction is hereditary. I think it is only hereditary, or handed down from our ancestors, when we are watching and observing our parents use. “More attention our children paid to what we do than what we say.” So I guess it could be hereditary if our kids see us using and they use to imitate us, the “grown ups”, it is not so much in the genes but in the actions of the parents. Some of the women I used with were also daughters of the mothers I used with. I’ve seen immediate family members rob, fight and literally mug each other for drugs. One of the worst cases was Wendy and her mom. I was saddened when I recently heard that Wendy’s mom had fallen 73

Immaculate Recovery into the path of an oncoming semi truck and had been killed. I was told by a mutual friend that the police were looking for Wendy. She and her mom were arguing before her mother was killed, probably over some dope, and there was a question of whether or not Wendy had maybe pushed her mom in front of the oncoming semi. That was just one of the mother/daughter using buddies I had. There was Tandy and Julie, Vanessa and her mom, then there was the very nice Mary. God rest her soul. Mary had three very lovely daughters. Jeney, Janey and Joney. Really a very nice family, except for the disease of addiction. Jeney and Joney were addicts like their mom; Janey would basically never use drugs, except to sell. Jeney and Janey both “dated” professionally and had kids at a fairly early age. Mary was a good grandma and helped the girls with her grandchildren. If you met them and did not know they were addicts, you would just think they were a nice family. I “dated” Mary and her daughters Jeney, and Joney over the period of about ten years, and was close to all of them. Sadly, Mary died from a brain aneurysm a couple of years ago. It was due to the disease. She was smoking crack, got a bad headache, went to the hospital, went into a coma, and never woke up. It was from the accelerated heart rate weakening one of the capillaries in her brain, and it breaking from the expanding blood flow of the cocaine making her heart beat faster and faster with every hit off the pipe. I am sure Mary is in God’s hands. She was such a sweetheart and a very nice person to everybody she came in contact with. She and her daughters believed in God, as many addicts do, and tried to function as a family. They were just involved in and hooked on drugs. Mary had told me that her husband had died from a big shot of cocaine when the dope made his heart explode. I don’t really believe in coincidences, but as I am writing this tonight, December 16, 2008, my mother invited me over for dinner. She showed me an article in the newspaper; it was 74

Chapter 21 about Phil Ruffin buying a $775 million dollar hotel in Las Vegas. My mother has never liked Ruffin ever since he lived in Wichita and she and some women from the Church asked him for a small donation. Ruffin owned a chain of stores and the women asked him to donate some Styrofoam coffee cups for a church dinner years ago. Even though he was worth millions then, he told them no. Here’s the strange part. As my mother showed me the paper, I saw several small pictures and thought I recognized one of them. Sure enough, right there in the newspaper, in the part where they show a weekly update of Kansas’ Most Wanted, was Jeney Brown. Possession of cocaine, Jeney Brown, my old friend, Mary’s daughter. I met Mary at Billy’s. Mary was a little older than most of the girls I was using with. She was in her 30’s. The night I met Mary, she and I left Billy’s and went to a little crack hotel around the corner called the Wichita Host. There I was introduced to Jeney and her “boyfriend” Nathan. Jeney was white, and as beautiful as she was addicted. She was really addicted, staying up smoking for days, until she passed out. Nathan was black, her boyfriend, pimp, and drug dealer. Jeney and I ended up getting our own room next door at the hotel that night. A year or so later, she would be the first one to nark on me. It seemed that she and Nathan had a habit of talking to the cops. One time Jeney asked me to take her to J.C. Penny’s, and had me wait outside. I knew she was going in to steal. I figured a ring or something that she could shoplift and slip into her pocket or purse. She had me park by the door, and wait outside for her. After about 20 minutes she came running out the door with her arms full of clothes. Technically called “boosting”, this was a much more daring form of shop lifting that involved large quantities of stolen goods. The shoplifter would go into the store and get as much as they could carry, and make a run for it. There would be another criminal sitting outside with the car running, ready 75

Immaculate Recovery for the attempted getaway. The other criminal this time happened to be me. I was clueless as to what Jeney was up to, or that she was involving me in her boosting scheme. I am certain she was trying to get me busted again. It would turn out that Jeney was a top police informant. That would have been the second time she got me busted, had she succeeded. When she came running out of the store with her arms full of clothes, I freaked out and just kind of sat there, looking at her with my jaw dropped. She jumped in the car and started screaming at me to take off, trying to tell me which way to go to get away. I had a strong suspicion she was trying to set me up, and went the opposite way of where she wanted me to. She got really mad and started yelling at me to turn around and go out the other mall exit. I knew then this was another set-up. I took my own way out of the mall and got away without falling into her scheme to get me arrested again. It would turn out she worked with the cops a lot. The first time she got me busted was one night when Jeney and I had left the Wichita Host where her and Nathan were staying. We had all been getting high, and Jeney for no apparent reason started crying. She wouldn’t tell me why, just something about Nathan. She asked me to take her to another roach motel on Broadway a few miles away. I thought it was unusual, but agreed. I was pretty new in the game at the time. About a couple of blocks from where we had left the Wichita Host, I noticed some headlights pretty far behind me, but seemed to be coming up on us really fast. It was a Sunday night and there was not much traffic on the road. We got to the motel and started getting high when there was a knock at the door. “Police, open the door!” That would be the first time I would hear that. I immediately told Jeney to get away from the door and headed to the bathroom to flush some dope and a pipe. No sooner had I done that than Jeney was opening the door for them. That night would be the first time I would be arrested for 76

Chapter 21 drugs. Over the next 18 months I would be arrested at least six more times, but now that I think about it, it may have been eight. TIME IN THE COUNTY 12-16-2000 My running ended in Judge Martin’s courtroom that cold December day in 2000. I was not really sure why I had run from the cops, the courts, my problems…maybe just trying to run from the pains of life. Didn’t have any idea what I would do if I got away. This time there was no way out. Martin had me taken directly from court to jail. I had spent the night in jail on a couple of occasions, but this was starting to look like it was going to be much more permanent. I had been in tight spots all my life, but had always been able to talk my way out or find some other escape to get out of trouble, never really having to “face the music.” This would change all of that. With nothing but steel bars and cinder block walls, a stainless steel sink and toilet, an iron cot with a two-inch mattress, and a cement floor, the reality of my situation was starting to set in. It had been a couple of days since I had any dope. The cravings were there, but not my main concern, as the dope had been, for the last year and a half. As an addict, all I did for the past 18 months was use drugs and look for more drugs. It was an endless cycle. An addict’s mind is consumed with using. The addict uses, the dope runs out, the addict looks for more dope. Another other unfortunate step for those addicted is looking for ways and means to get more. That is the step that leads to crime, prostitution, robbery, kidnapping… and worse. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, I had plenty of means, money, to get my drugs. 77

Immaculate Recovery Right after court I was processed through the county jail, getting assigned a cell. I had never been in jail long enough to have my own cell and I was not sure really what to expect. It would turn out the cell was nicer than a lot of the dive motels or dope houses I had called home for the past year and a half. The cell was clean, fairly new, and there were no cockroaches, unlike a lot of the crack houses and hotels I had been staying in. It was a nice and warm; an eight foot by eight foot room that I had all to myself. The guard would have you stand in front of a small window in the door of your cell at seven in the morning for what was called “head count”. That was to make sure everyone was still there. Head count would happen two or three times a day. Before head count would come breakfast at six in the morning. All of the inmates would go to the day room where there were several tables set up with four chairs at each table. We would all get in line and the trustees would roll several tall baker’s racks into the day room with meals on them. We would get our meal, go sit down, and eat. After that I would usually go to my cell, think, sleep, write in my journal, listen to the radio, read the Bible or another book. There was a gym where you could play basketball, or you could walk or jog. Sometimes there would be an inmate smoking in the gym. Not sure how they would get cigarettes. That was, of course, against the rules in the county jail. They would use a piece of foil and stick it in the electric socket to light the cigarettes. Once in a while the inmate would have a lighter. If you were in prison I guess you could smoke. At the county jail, that was not allowed. I always wondered about the smell and why the guards would not get all excited and try to find the guilty party. I imagine the guards may have been involved in giving the cigarettes to the inmates. The day room had several televisions sets. After meals, most inmates would hang out in the day room and play cards, play chess or checkers, talk, or watch television. A lot of the 78

Chapter 21 inmates did not seem to mind being in jail. They seemed to enjoy it. I guess that is why they keep going back to jail; they actually like it there. For me, it sucked. I hated every minute of it.

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CHAPTER 22
The worst thing about being in jail was that I had no control over my life. The guard told you when to get up, when to go to bed, when to eat, when to take a shower, when to change your clothes, when to make your bed, everything. Being in jail I had no control over anything. Previously I had been in control over everything in my life, all my life. Being self employed most of my life, I never had to answer to anyone and always did what I wanted, when I wanted, the way I wanted, right or wrong. Now being in jail, it worried me sick how my family was doing without me. I was a control freak all my life and especially when it came to my wife and kids. It was for a good cause. I felt totally responsible for the success or failure of my family. I wanted the best for my wife and kids and would do whatever it took to try and give them the best life I could. Before becoming an addict, for years I had worked 60 to 80 hours a week, enjoyed it, and didn’t think twice about it. Life and business were different compared to the way they are today. There was a lot of opportunity for a person to find success in America from about the time I started working in 1975 to about 1995. Starting with the end of the Viet Nam War. A lot of people do not realize it, but that war was the longest war that the USA ever fought, lasting from 1957 until 1975. After it was finally over, there seemed to be a new optimism, a good economy, and things were looking good for just about everyone in America. The economy would slow a little in the 80s but then into the 90s the personal computer and the Internet would come into their own, and the dot com boom would erupt, creating new wealth and opportunity.

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Chapter 22 I was self employed and making a lot of money, but I had missed getting a good education to learn how to manage it. I never quite figured out how to pay my taxes properly, and I had much disdain for law and government. In my early 20s I would see first hand how our Government’s “legal system” worked, and how corrupt it was. It was when I went to court for a problem with the police in Texas. The cops involved got up on the witness stand, put their hand on the Bible, swore to tell the truth, and then proceeded to have all sorts of lies fall out of their mouths—right there in court, under oath, like it was nothing to get up on the witness stand and lie with total conviction. I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen it first hand and knew they were lying, because I was the one they were telling their lies about. That was in a small town city court. They swore to tell the truth, and then did just the opposite. They were cops, and supposedly upstanding citizens. I thought maybe it was just something done in small towns with the locals. Then I would eventually see an even more corrupt Federal Court. The Feds were hot on the trail of a mother and daughter who had worked for me in Longview, Texas. A few years after the IRS shut me down and I left Longview, these two kept turning in false tax returns claiming they still worked for me, and that I was taking Federal and State withholding taxes out of their checks. For the next couple of years they would turn in tax returns claiming they were owed thousands back from the government, that they claimed I withheld from their paychecks. Then they would get thousands of dollars back from the government in tax return checks. The IRS would figure out their scam, and decide they wanted me to testify against them. I was supposed to arrive in Dallas on Sunday night before court on Monday the next morning. The IRS called me the week before court and said they were going to fly me to 81

Immaculate Recovery meet the agent at the Sheraton Hotel at 10:00 pm that Sunday night. They said they would call me back on Thursday to give me my flight instructions and the room number. I asked the agent why Sunday night at 10 pm and why at the Sheraton. It sounded kind of shady to me. Meeting an IRS agent on a Sunday night at a hotel. The agent told me it was so that the Federal prosecutor could “give me my testimony.” I thought wow, how crooked is that? They are going to “give me my testimony”. In other words, they did not want my testimony at all. The prosecutor was going to fabricate my testimony, give it to me, and tell me how they wanted me to deliver it, under oath, with no regards to the truth so that they would make sure that they won their case. Witness tampering at its best. I know; I was the witness. Witness tampering by the government. Justice for all… sure. I was not looking forward to helping the Feds do their dirty deeds, but they had more or less told me if I did not go, they could make a case against me, and they would turn their efforts more aggressively at prosecuting me. By late Friday afternoon I had not heard from the IRS agent to give me my final instructions. It was just two days before our planned meeting, or so I thought. I placed a call to the agent, and was informed that I was no longer needed. The girl and her mom copped a plea and gave a confession, in exchange for a lighter sentence. I was really relieved at not having to go back to Texas to help the Feds do their dirty work. It really sucked that they were not even going to call and tell me not to make the trip from Kansas to Texas. They couldn’t have cared less about what they were putting me through. All they cared about was prosecuting someone. Guilty or not. The Feds strongarmed me into taking part in their scheme, told the girl and her mother that I was coming to testify against them, and got them to give a confession. I’m

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Chapter 22 not sure how guilty they were. All I knew was that the Feds didn’t seem to care about breaking the law, tampering with a witness, and trying to scare me into delivering their false testimony under oath for them.

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CHAPTER 23
Ever since my early firsthand discovery of corruption in State and Federal Government, I had no desire to be involved with it at all, especially being a prisoner. The food in jail was almost bad enough not to eat. The only salvation to the food was “Commissary”. Commissary came around once a week and if you were lucky enough to have someone on the outside who would put money in your account at the jail for you, you could buy something a little better than the food the jail was serving. Commissary offered soups, crackers, coffee, candy, chips and other assorted snacks, for sale if the inmate had any money on their books. You could also buy pens, papers, envelopes, a radio, shampoo and other things that could make things a little better behind bars, but Commissary would only come around once a week. If you got to jail on a Thursday and Commissary was on a Wednesday, you were stuck for a week with nothing but the garbage they fed you. You could find an inmate who had an underground “store”. The inmate with the store would give you a “front”, or loan, on some Commissary. Basically, he would give you a soup, or candy bar, bag of chips or whatever he had that you wanted, and then when you got your Commissary, you would have to pay him back double. This was frowned upon by the guards, but they did not seem to mind too much. One of the inmates who was running a “store” asked me what nationality I was. I told him Lebanese. He said, “So am I.” We got to talking and it turned out he was the nephew of a priest, Father Sabbaugh, who was an important figure to me for several years as I was growing up. 84

Chapter 23 Father Sabbaugh had told a story that would cement my faith in God at an early age. The story was set in Lebanon. There were Muslims who were ridiculing Father Sabbaugh’s brother for being a Christian and believing in Christ. Father’s brother had a big mole he had carried all of his life that covered almost the whole side of his face. They questioned if his God was real, why would He allow such a horrible disfigurement. Father Sabbaugh would tell of the defiance of his brother standing up for his God to his persecutors. The next day, Father’s brother would appear to all who had been chastising him and, much to everyone’s astonishment, the mole would be gone. Father Sabbaugh would tell the story with such enthusiasm and conviction that if you heard him, you would know, as I did, that the story was truth. I felt some renewed encouragement and faith, and a little bit of peace, through the chance meeting of Father Sabbaugh’s nephew in the Sedgwick County Jail. 12-17-2000 Commissary would help me keep my sanity. It also seemed like a nice profit center for the jail. With the garbage the jail would feed you, it almost seemed like they knew you would buy your food from Commissary, if you had any money while you were there. Another good stream of revenue for the jail would turn out to be the only inmate calling system to the outside world. Collect calls were about $5.00 each. There were several phones inside the jail for the inmates to place calls from. I really did not have anyone who I could call at this time. My mom would take my calls, but that was about it. What would the world do without mothers? I think I owed my mom over $600 when I finally did get out. It could add up fast at almost $5.00 per collect call. I would call my home to try to talk to my ex or my kids, but my ex was against taking my calls. Finally, one of my sons, Johnny, said he would pay for the calls. He was only 10 years old at the time, but we were 85

Immaculate Recovery very close, as close as son and father could get. Being self employed and having other people work for me, I had spent most of every single day with him and his younger brother Donny all of their lives as they were growing up. I was really blessed to be able to spend a lot of time with my kids. We would go fishing, hit golf balls, go to the park and feed the ducks, play on the swings, and just have a really good time. I really wanted to be a good dad. Biggest problem was, I was always high on weed and kind of childish myself. The addict does not think he or she is hurting anyone by using drugs. That could not be further from the truth. As addicts, we might not intend to, but we do great harm to our husbands, wives, children, parents and friends when our addiction takes us away from them, especially when it comes to children. They are always the most innocent victims of the addict. We do not mean to hurt them, but we do. As the old saying goes, “We always hurt the ones we love.” What kids really need most is our love, time and attention. Most of what you are about to read comes directly out of the pages of the diary I kept everyday while I was in jail and will give you a good sense of daily life and the misery of being behind bars.

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CHAPTER 24
12-18-00 11:20 a.m. Waiting on lunch, had breakfast. Been in cell reading Bible, thinking. Worried about wife and kids. Need to get out of jail. 12-19-2000 Shake down. The guards went through everyone’s cell looking for a razor that was missing. 12-20-2000 Got my first Commissary order and paid off a bunch of stuff that I owed to the inmates that had stores. After paying off the other inmates, out of the $40 I had to spend in my account, I ended up with a new legal pad, a bag of Jolly Ranchers, 7 soups, 3 small bags of trail mix, 1 bag of coffee, a box of Club Crackers and a pencil. This was all that I owned at the time, a little bit of food and a pencil. I was 40 years old, had hit bottom, had lost everything, and had nothing. But getting my first order of Commissary was a start and I was feeling better about things. I was spending most my time in my cell reading the Bible. It gave me hope in what appeared to be a very hopeless situation. It was almost Christmas and I would be spending it in jail. I was spending the time in my cell making some homemade Christmas cards, doing some crossword puzzles and just trying to pass the time as best I could, trying to keep a positive attitude about things. Attitude makes all the difference in the world, especially during trying times of life. There is a saying that I refer to when I get down: “It is your attitude not your aptitude, that determines your altitude in life.” I was fortunate. As a child, my dad had written a book about the positive results that come from having a positive attitude. There seems to be one infallible truth of life, and that is the single “common denominator” or character trait of all successful people is a positive mental attitude. I could have 87

Immaculate Recovery really easily had a very negative attitude considering I was 40 years old, lost my family and everything I had worked for all of my life for, had nothing, was all alone and was in jail. I knew somehow, some way, this too would pass. The biggest loss of all was my wife of almost 20 years and my three sons. I could have easily had a very negative attitude, say, “Why me Lord,” and think I was doomed. That would have been the easy way out, but would have changed everything I believed in all my life about faith, and a positive attitude. I had to keep believing, and decided that not knowing how, but knowing somehow, some way, my faith in God, and keeping a positive attitude, would eventually bring me through this. I know today, as I did on that day, for a fact, that Faith in God, along with a positive attitude, will always get you better results than to have no Faith and a negative attitude. Just give it a try. Faith and a positive attitude. With bad credit, no money, lots of debt, no car, homeless, addicted, in jail and facing three years in prison, I could not have known or imagined that in a just a few years I would be on the front page of the Sunday paper as owner of a “multimillion-dollar phone company,” living in a big home on a golf course, with good credit, new cars, and a better life than I had ever known. It could have only happened through the miracles of a loving Higher Power that absolutely did everything for me, loved me, and brought me through it all. My only part was to keep my faith, keep believing that things were going to work out, and stay clean. That was something I had not done for close to twenty-five years and could not have done on my own, or without His help, in making an Immaculate recovery.

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CHAPTER 25
12-21-2000 Well, I’m now on “lock down”. I fell asleep after breakfast and did not wake up for head count. That meant that Deputy Conklin had to actually get off his butt, go over to my cell and look in to make sure I had not somehow escaped! He put me on “lock down” and I had to stay in my cell until 3 this afternoon. All that meant was that they brought me lunch in my cell. It looked like cat food, some sort of chicken or ham salad. Whatever it was, it was gross. If you are a picky eater, go to jail and that will all change. Thank God for Commissary; I had trail mix for lunch today. Got out of my cell at 4:30. Could have got out at 3:00 but wanted to make sure Deputy Conklin knew his “lock down” meant nothing to me. Things got steadily worse today. Even worse than the cat food for lunch. Called my mother who graciously took my call. She told me that her and my dad, married for 42 years, were getting a divorce. I told her I was sure that wouldn’t happen, or be a good idea, and I knew their recent problems were due to their disagreements over how to help me with my problems. Addiction leads to problems for the addict’s whole family. Thank God, as I am writing this book in 2008, we recently celebrated my mom and dad’s 50th wedding anniversary. 12-24-2000 Wow, a new low in my life, Christmas Eve in jail. The reality of the destruction of my life, through my drug use, was becoming more and more evident. What hurt most of all

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Immaculate Recovery was thinking of my children, knowing how they were hurting because their dad was in jail on Christmas Eve and not home with them. There was nothing I could do. I felt so helpless and trapped. When I was out there getting high, all that mattered was the drug. Now everything was starting to hit me where it hurt, and the guilt of what I had done to my family was setting in. 12-25-2000 Merry Christmas. Same crap for breakfast. Went back to my cell. Everyone else was out in the day room. They were watching television, playing cards or chess. Some of the inmates were in the gym playing basketball. It is no wonder there is such a high rate of criminals going back to jail. They are comfortable there. They have their friends, a place to stay, food, and someone telling them what to do. Some of the inmates are not all that bad, they just make bad decisions. In jail they are better off. They have someone running their lives and making their decisions for them. I think a lot of them are more comfortable that way, than trying to live and survive in the outside world. Most of them seemed to like it in jail. I hated it and spent 90% of my time in my cell. I came out of my cell at noon. The Deputy on guard at the time handed me a box with a bow on it. Wow, a Christmas gift! A box of crackers, candy cane, cookies, candy bar, hard candies. Gave the candy bar to Alanzo, one of the gang bangers, I knew from the street. He asked me what I wanted to trade for it. I told him not to worry about it, just to keep it, Merry Christmas. He seemed a little surprised at my generosity and acted like he really appreciated it. For some of the guys, that Christmas gift box would be the only food, other than the crappy jail food, that they would ever see while they were locked up. A lot of the inmates had no one on the outside to help them at all. They had no one to 90

Chapter 25 try to talk to their public defender or court-appointed attorney, and no one to put any money on their books. Alanzo was probably 6’5” and 250 lbs., but at the time he looked to me like he was going to cry. It was almost like no one had ever done anything nice for him in his entire life. That Christmas Day would have a special meaning for the rest of my life. It would be the day I would meet a Hispanic guy by the name of Manuel. He told me the story of how his eight-year-old son was mistaken for a gang member and killed in a drive-by shooting. His son, Tony, was a big kid for his age. Manuel told me that when his son was killed, he lost all faith in, and became angry at, God. After Tony’s funeral, Manuel told me that he got drunk for three days straight. At one point he couldn’t stop crying, laid down on the couch in his living room, and said he felt like he was having a dream. He told me that all he could see was an incredibly white, bright light and his departed son walking toward It. His wife was sitting on the couch beside him and said that even though Manuel seemed to be asleep, he kept yelling out his son’s name, “Tony, Tony, Tony.” Manuel explained to me that his wife tried to wake him, but couldn’t. Manuel said that he remembered that when his son walked into the “Light”, his son and the “Light” seemed to drift away. After that, he said he woke up and felt at peace. He said he knew that his son was with, and that the “Light” was, God. Hearing his story at that moment in time, even though I didn’t want to be in jail, made me feel that God had a purpose for me to be there, and part of that purpose was to hear Manuel’s story. Here is why. Months before, I’d heard the same story of pain, suffering and the “Light”, from a mother who had lost her child. She had also seen the same “Light” and told a very similar story. These were two totally different people who 91

Immaculate Recovery had never met or knew of each other’s tragedies, yet they would tell me the same story several months apart. During the time I was at the bottom of my addicted life, and in jail. I felt that part of God’s purpose for me to be in jail, on that day, was to hear that same story again, from a totally different person. In a way, the “Light” had also come for me when I heard that story, to give me faith and strength to go on. The same story that the two totally different people, who didn’t know each other, told of the “Light” convinced me it could only be God, and how He came to them to comfort them at the worst part of a parents’ life: the loss of a child. Niki’s story was as hauntingly tragic as Manuel’s. Niki was suffering from a broken heart from her, husband leaving her. She started dancing in a topless bar to support herself and her child. There, she started using drugs, became addicted, and, as the story usually goes, her life went downhill from there. Niki had a seven-year-old son. He had a friend spending the night. She was dancing and got a call from the babysitter that her son and his friend had gone outside to play and now she couldn’t find them, and it was getting dark. Niki went home and frantically searched for hours for her son and his friend. When she couldn’t find them, she called the police. A police search was started, but the boys would not be found. The next day when it was light out, a detective was going back over everything with Niki and the babysitter. They went outside and the detective noticed an abandoned freezer in the field behind one of the houses next door. The tragedy ended that day when the detective checked and found Niki’s son and his friend dead from suffocation inside the abandoned freezer. The boys had probably crawled into the old freezer to play, the lid closed on them, and they could not get out.

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Chapter 25 She told me that she just kind of lost it, and was out of her mind for the next three or four years. She said one day she lay down, and was crying, and remembered going into a dream-like state. Just like Manuel had described to me, she said that God brought her son to her. God told her that everything was going to be okay, that her son was with Him and that her son was happy in Heaven, and everything was all right. I asked her what God looked like. She told me the only way she could describe God was that there was an incredible white, bright “Light”. It was the exact description Manuel had given me of his deceased son, Tony, walking with the “Light”. I had heard somewhere before in my life that God is the Light of the world and that His face Lights up all of Heaven. Now I had just heard, for the second time, a first-hand account of it; from Niki several months ago, and now in jail on Christmas Day from Manuel. Two totally different people who didn’t know each other telling identical stories of God and the mysterious “Light” that had come to comfort them at the loss of their children. As I am writing this seven years later in 2007, it was recently on the news that the Mexican authorities had caught the shooter who killed Manuel’s son and that they were working on getting him back to America for prosecution. Thank God. As it would turn out, a couple of years later, at the final editing and preparation for publishing of Part 1 of Immaculate Recovery, now in 2009, I would hear the third description of the Light. Again from someone who knew nothing of the first two events or people who had described their experience with the Light to me. This time it was from my cousin Anna, and her account of seeing her dad and my dear Uncle George. Uncle George had gone to be with the Lord a couple of years ago. Anna had 93

Immaculate Recovery just sold her dad’s home and was having a hard time letting go. Anna told me the account of how she found herself involved in a vision, where she felt like she could see her dad on a small flight of three stairs and that he was ascending up the stairs into a Light. As he ascended into the Light, she could see that he was happy and at that moment a feeling of peace and serenity finally came over her, and she felt like she could move on with her life. May we all someday see the “Light”.

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CHAPTER 26
12-26-2008 Went to the clinic to get weighed. 157 pounds. That’s up from when I got into jail. One sure sign of addiction, especially to cocaine, is weight loss. There used to be a lot of talk about the study that was done on mice in the 1980s. Cocaine in America was starting to become a widely used recreational drug. The mice were put in a cage where they could press a small bar and would get a dose of food from one bar and a dose of cocaine from another. You don’t hear much about the study anymore. I guess too many people decided to try it for themselves. In 2009, CNN would report that 90% all US paper money has traces of cocaine on it. Once the mice were given their choice between food and cocaine, the mice would become addicted and always choose the cocaine, every time. They would stop eating all together and would eventually die. Human addicts do the same thing, many times using until we die also. Sometimes becoming addicted the first time a person even tries the drug. It can kill even the strongest of its victims, as in the case of the Len Bias. In the 1986 NBA Draft, Bias signed with the Boston Celtics, and became instantly worth millions. He was compared to Michael Jordan, then in his second year, it appeared that Bias had gone to “celebrate,” and would die from heart failure caused by cocaine. Here was a star athlete in perfect health that was killed by a little white chemical, and it was rumored that he had never even used before this day. Drugs can be deadly the first time a person tries them. I was starting to gain weight in jail, not having the choice between cocaine and food. Moved me to a new cell after the clinic. Moved me from cell #30 down by the guard’s desk, to cell #20 “up.” Asked the 95

Immaculate Recovery deputy why and she told me that they had someone coming in that was on suicide watch and he would be put in cell #30. Wondered if they had had me on suicide watch. Thank God, that was one thing I would never do. I always believed it was the only unforgivable sin. Scripture says that all things are possible through God. So if you know the Scripture, as I did, to kill myself would have been blasphemy, saying God did not exist and that there was no hope, not even in Him. I was hopelessly addicted, bankrupt, in jail, but I still had hope in Him. As it turned out, He would never let me down. Growing older, I came to believe that when a person, especially a young person, takes their own life, that God may have redemption for that person, especially if that person loved God. It is just so heartbreaking that the person that takes their own life does not understand that there are people who love and care about them, and that things can and will get better. God willing, someone reading this right now will realize this and change their mind, and also think about how bad it would hurt the people that are left behind. On “suicide watch,” they would put you in a cell with nothing but a paper jumpsuit. That way, it would be next to impossible to do harm to yourself. I wasn’t suicidal and was happy to move. There was an advantage to being in cell# 20, up. The AM radio stations came in better. Spending all my time in my cell, having a radio to listen to was a big deal. There were many nights where late-night radio put me to sleep. I always tried to make sure I had good back-up batteries for my radio. They could be ordered from Commissary. One thing I did learn while I was in jail, was that if the batteries were dead they could be revived by putting them in hot water for a while, maybe 20 to 30 minutes, and interestingly enough, that would bring a dead battery back for an hour or two. Something about the old saying, “necessity is the mother of all invention”. 96

Chapter 26 12-30-2000 Saturday late nights. Bed time at jail was 10:30. Friday and Saturday night were called “late nights” and we could stay out of our cells until midnight. I loaned out my radio to Lonnie for the night and got three bags of chips, five crackers, and two brownies from him. Lonnie had the main “store” in my pod. Pods are sections of the jail. Each pod might have 25 cells. There were some large rooms the size of a school gym where there were just a bunch of cots set up and there might be 50 inmates in those rooms. I guess I was “lucky”; I had a cell of my own. Not sure why, but I started using a pen at this point in my journal. I would write “Have a pen will probably start using it! Yea I think it will last longer- wonder if I will have this 10 years from now?” Don’t remember if “this” was the pen, or the journal that I still have and is helping me to write this book today, over seven years later. Another good reason everyone should keep a journal, not only does it give us a snapshot of our past, but who knows when we might need it in our future.

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CHAPTER 27
12-31-2000 New Years Eve. Just another lonely day for me in jail. It was late afternoon and a Sunday. I was in my cell listening to Casey Kasem’s Top 100 for the year 2000, waiting to go out to the day room for dinner. I was always hungry, the food was horrible; there were feelings of loneliness, desperation, hopelessness, and not a lot to look forward to for the coming New Year. Only that the next year would be putting time between where I was then and where I would be, a year down the road, hopefully better off, next New Years. I still tried to look for a silver lining, and maintain a positive attitude. I was also praying a lot. A positive attitude and faith seem to go hand in hand, and work well together. When you have nothing else, you can still have a positive attitude. Keep it long enough, and things seem to work out. I would have court in two days, and was thinking I would probably be getting out of jail after court. Boy, was I wrong. At that time, I was spending most of my time in my cell listening to my radio, reading, and sleeping. “Do your time; don’t let your time do you.” That was the advice that I had learned out on the street about spending time in jail. I had a lot of misguided faith in my lawyer. I thought because he charged a lot of money that he would take care of me and do a good job. He wasn’t worth it. He talked a good game about everything he could do for me. Said all I had to do was pay him $25,000 and he would get me off of everything. Liar, liar, liar. All he really did was line his pockets. I would find out later that there was only so much any lawyer could have done. The “experienced” inmates seemed to know as much as my

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Chapter 27 attorney knew. I didn’t understand it at first, but it eventually made sense to me. In the court system, there are sentencing guidelines that almost all of the time judges are required to follow. The sentencing guidelines are pretty clear for the punishment handed out for any type of crime. First time, non-violent offenders, like myself usually always get probation. Lawyers are just high paid interpreters of the sentencing guidelines. A high paid lawyer might make a difference if he and the judge on your case are drinking buddies. Other than that, Criminal Defense lawyers are about as shady as their clients, maybe more. 01-01-2001 New Years Day. Not much happens on Holidays or on Saturday or Sunday in jail. There is no court and no visitation, so if you’re wanting to get out of jail, weekends and holidays are nothing to look forward to, and pretty uneventful. 01-02-2001 It was pretty cold in the cell that night. Jail cells are like that. Metal bunk, cement floor. Not the best sleeping conditions. Wake up sometime, look around, hard to believe you are there, shake your head in disbelief and try to go back to sleep. No extra blankets, no thermostat to turn up, nothing to help the physical pain and discomfort. It is mentally taxing as well. You are just stuck, like an animal in a cage. Like being put in a box and stuck in a warehouse, just stuck there. Extra hard time sleeping that night, court the next day. 5:30a.m. rolled around, time to go out for breakfast. Something that resembled oatmeal, a scrambled egg, and a biscuit. Had breakfast with Everett and Lloyd, two black men. Everett said he would pray for me at court and he told Lloyd to do the same. Being in jail draws people who are in there closer together; they are all going through the same thing. 6:20 a.m. and back in the cell. Had to stay up until 6:50 for head count. That was always hard, getting up at 5:30, being tired, going out for breakfast and then back in the cell, stay up a half hour for head count before being able to go back to 99

Immaculate Recovery sleep. If you missed head count, you would be locked in your cell until the next day. 10:30 A.M. I was back from court, but nothing really happened. Court for that day was scheduling for Child Endangerment and one of the drug possession cases. Scheduling was reset for Thursday. That sucked, two more days of waiting. Both cases got set for a bench trial. A bench trail is where there is no jury, just a judge, the prosecutor, your attorney, and you. It makes it easier if the attorney and the judge are working together for them to rig things. I should have fired my attorney. Looking back now, he was just taking my money to do nothing. The Child Endangerment case should have been dismissed. I gave a non-working rifle to one of my kids. The rifle was put up in a closet with no bullets. Six months later, and a year after I had moved out of the house, he accidentally shot his brother. The kids were at home under their mom’s supervision. The definition of child endangerment was when a parent or guardian leaves their child with a person who the parent or guardian should have known would, or could, hurt the child. The kids were with their mom. No way I could have, or should have known they were going to get hurt by leaving them with her, and no way I should have been charged with child endangerment for leaving my kids with her, but I did. She never got charged and she was the one there with them when it happened. I did not mind taking the charge, otherwise the kids probably would have been taken from her.

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CHAPTER 28
My lawyer calls my parents to a meeting at his office to tell them that things did not look good for me and that he would need more money. At that time in my life, even though I was 40 years old, all I had to help me were my elderly parents. Thank God for parents. As for my lawyer, the jerk was just trying to scare my parents, trying to get more money out of them. My parents had never been in any kind of trouble, much less been involved in a criminal court case, and had no idea what was going on or what to expect. They were perfect prospects for a shady lawyer to fleece. There is no doubt in my mind that my lawyer knew then that the sentencing guidelines called for probation. My lawyer was always hard to get a hold of and wouldn’t return calls. I have learned that it is a sure sign to get a new attorney and fire the one who won’t take or return your phone calls. Not all attorneys are bad news, but I have dealt with enough of them to be leery and have an idea of what to watch out for. Many I have known put themselves through college selling used cars, and you know what they say about used car salesmen. I would like to say that I have an ex-father-in-law who is a great lawyer and a jewel of a guy, so there are exceptions to everything. Not to mention that my dad was a great used car salesman and honestly raised a family doing it. 01-03-2001 Starting to realize that “my” attorney is telling me some lies. First he told me of all of these great things he could do for me, all I had to do was pay him big money. Then as it turns out, all he can do is request what is in the

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Immaculate Recovery sentencing guidelines. It is no wonder that once in a while you hear of an attorney’s client going back and blowing the guy’s head off. 12 noon: Organizing my Commissary that came today and was out in the gym shooting some baskets. Tried calling lawyer, wouldn’t take my call. I was starting to get down and really feeling defeated. I did not think I should have been in jail at all. I was no threat to society. I had never hurt anyone, never stole anything, never broke into anyone’s house, never really did anything “criminal” except get high. Drug addicts and their court cases need to be looked at differently than they are, but there is too much money involved; money for the lawyers, judges, treatment centers, jails, and everyone else involved. The drug trade has to be run by a branch of our own government. You can buy drugs in just about every neighborhood in America. I know, I have done it for over thirty years all over America. Not bragging, just a fact. To be able to do that there has to be trucking, distribution, bookkeeping, accounting, warehousing, shipping, sales, banking, security and a whole host of other entities involved with such a huge nationwide enterprise. The only one that could handle that is our government. After all, it is called the D.E.A., Drug Enforcement Agency, not the D.P.A., Drug Prevention Agency. 01-04-2001 10:30 A.M. Just got back from the clinic. Weighed in at 159 lbs. Had gained two pounds since being in jail. Before starting my “crack diet” a year and a half ago, I would have weighed 175 or so. Two things happen when you get hooked on drugs. You lose weight when you first start using drugs. Then you eventually either die from it or get arrested. Then if you get lucky, and go to jail instead of dying, you eat the junk jail food and start to gain your weight back. 102

Chapter 28 4:00 P.M. Back from court. Jan 23rd new sentencing date. More waiting, lots of waiting in jail. The Texas fugitive warrant that Governor George W. Bush finally got around to signing, was in. My first appearance in court on that was at the same time, only it was in video court. In video court, there might be eight or ten other inmates in one room, similar to an enlarged cell. Each inmate would wait their turn to step in front of the video camera and talk to the judge about what they were charged with. I was charged with possession of cocaine. What was really bizarre to me was that in the same room with me was one of the two Carr brothers. No handcuffs or shackles, just in there with me and a dozen other inmates in the same holding cell. The Carr brothers had just been picked up and brought in on murder charges. Carr was sitting on the floor a couple of feet away from me. I thought about going over and kicking his face into the wall really hard. A couple of months before, four people were murdered, two men and two women. It was the Carr brothers who did it, and as of this writing, both of the Carr brothers are sitting on death row awaiting execution. Thank God their fifth victim, another woman, survived and lived to identify them. There I was in the same room with one of the Carr brothers for video court. How messed up was that. I was a drug addict. Carr had killed four innocent people, attempted to murder another, and Carr and I were being treated as equals. Kyle, my attorney, was in the courtroom with the judge and when I came in front of the camera, he put in a not guilty plea for me on the Texas charge. I called his office at 5:00 P.M. to see where the Texas case would go from there. Both of my parents were at his office. Turns out things were moving in the direction of me getting probation in Kansas. My lawyer was making a big deal 103

Immaculate Recovery out of nothing. Even if I was found guilty of everything, being a first-time offender, the charges called for probation. Kyle had done his best work, scaring me into paying him over $20,000 in legal fees. All he really ended up doing for me was what Everett and a couple of other inmates told me I could have done for myself, or with a court-appointed attorney: get probation. What a rip-off. 01-05-2001 Court set for 23rd January. Now I knew I would be locked up until at least then. The judge would not give me a bond; said I was a flight risk since I had taken off on him before. Spent the day playing dominoes with Lonnie. Lonnie was a comical character and a guy I knew from the outside. He was a friend of a friend that I had gone to junior high school with, and Lonnie and I had partied a few times on the outside. Lonnie was into burglary. That was how he paid for his drugs. Lonnie had been caught and arrested for breaking into his neighbor’s shed. He had never had a felony, so he was made a “trustee”. In jail a “trustee” is generally a guy who has been there a little while and has gained a little “trust”, enough to help serve meals, clean the gym, or other miscellaneous light duties inside the jail. Being a trustee could help pass the time a little better, because as a trustee you might have more to do than the other inmates. Lonnie really wasn’t much of a criminal or burglar, but that is where drug addiction took him. He was out of drugs and he had to find a way to get more. His neighbor’s shed just happened to be the closet place to find something to steal. The stolen merchandise could be traded for drugs or sold, and the proceeds used to buy drugs. That is the life of a drug addict, looking for and using drugs, and when the drugs run out, looking for ways to get more.

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Chapter 28 01-06-2001 Not much going on. Wrote my attorney to tell him how screwed up everything and everybody was. That is another thing drug addicts do a lot; blame everyone except themselves for how messed up their lives are. Most addicts do not realize, and would not admit, that they even are addicts. If the addict won’t admit, won’t accept, or maybe doesn’t even realize he/she has a problem, it is really hard, maybe impossible, for the addict to solve their problem. That’s where a loved one or even the courts have to step in. Tough love, rules of law, could save an addict’s life. Probably did mine.

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CHAPTER 29
01-07-2001 I was spending most of my time in my cell, listening to the radio, drawing and reading. When I would come out it would be to eat. The food was so bad I would not eat it most of the time. I would just give it away to another inmate. I was lucky to be able to survive on Commissary. When that ran out towards the end of the week, I would start looking for more. Kind of like the dope game. I always had the money to buy it, so I would use it and then when it ran out, I would go find it and buy more. Sometimes finding it could be a challenge, but there is a lot of dope out there on the streets. It is an endless supply, now more than ever. It would appear that the 30-year “war on drugs” is a complete failure and a huge waste of time, money, and police resources. It was Sunday and in jail during football season there would be lots of football. Different games on different televisions. All of the inmates with Commissary would be betting on and watching the games. Betting bags of chip, soups, candy bars, whatever they had. There were playoffs on that Sunday, so everyone was excited and getting into the games. If it weren’t for the fact that they were in jail, you would have thought it was just a bunch of buddies watching the games together on a Sunday afternoon. 01-08-2001 Monday, stayed in bed most of the day. Had been in jail for about three weeks, and I was really hating it. Worst of all, I was worried about my kids. Jail is such a waste of a person’s life. Just stuck there hour after hour, day after day, week after week. Lots of inmates who were there did not seem to care if they were there or not. For me, just sitting in my cell hour after hour, day after day, I decided that “time” was the most precious asset any of us have. Whether we think we have a 106

Chapter 29 few days or many years to live, life really goes by pretty fast, and it really is not that long at all. As we grow older and the years begin to fly by, we realize that we too, like time, will be gone. Perhaps at some point, we all begin to wonder what the meaning of our life really is. Maybe God gives us time on this earth to see what we will do while we are here. We experience the happiest times, as well as the most excruciating pains of life. Maybe a preview of how we could spend eternity, Heaven or hell, depending on what we do while we are here. There was a man that worked for me as a salesman at one of the wholesale clubs that I owned in the small town of Mineola, Texas. His name was Phil Carroll. Phil told me that his name meant “Song of Love.” Phil explained that there was a language in which his first name, “Phil,” meant “love” and his last name, “Carroll,” meant “song.” Out of the hundreds of salesmen that I had ever employed, Phil was probably about the best. Phil had medical problems, and told me that he thought he was dying from AIDS. He told me that he thought that we all had already died and gone to hell. He felt nothing could be worse than the emotional pain that we experience in our lives here on earth. Whether it is the loss of a loved one, a relationship gone bad, or some other devastating event that we all experience at some point in our lives. Phil thought that this was as bad as it could ever get, and could not imagine anything worse. One of the most amazing things that I had ever seen, in my entire life, happened when Phil took me to a large old abandoned Victorian-style house in Mineola. It was built in the late 1800s by then-Texas Governor Jim Hogg. There was a joke about Hogg having two daughters, one named Ima Hogg and one named Ura Hogg. He did have a daughter named Ima Hogg. As for Ura Hogg, I think that was just folklore. Phil told me that Governor Hogg’s old house was in bad need of repair, and was for sale. He said that in front of the 107

Immaculate Recovery old house grew the second largest Magnolia tree in the state of Texas. Phil had a plan that if we bought the home, we could get a historical grant from the government for $50,000 to fix the place up, and turn it into a bed and breakfast inn. His plan never developed, but while we were there looking the place over, something amazing happened. There was an upstairs room where the windows were all broken out. On one of the windowsills, there appeared to be two birds sitting on the ledge. On the floor a couple of feet below the window sat a cat. Upon closer examination, we discovered that the two birds were dead. The cat had eaten everything except for the top half of the birds and had left the heads, necks, rib cages, wings, and feathers intact, and had actually perched the birds’ dead bodies on the windowsill, creating perfect “decoys.” The cat was crouched down on the floor below the windowsill, waiting for another bird to come, and land with the decoy birds so the cat could reach up, and snatch the unsuspecting live bird, and have it for lunch. Incredibly smart cat.

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CHAPTER 30
The time I was spending in jail seemed like the biggest waste of time to me. All I could do was worry for my family, who I loved and cared for more than anything. I had always been in a hurry, trying to work harder and faster to make more money, and do good to provide for my family. I was always in sales of some sort. The more sales I made, and the faster I made them, the more money I could make, at times working 12 to 14 hours a day. I decided while being stuck in jail, the one thing that was much more important than money was time, and at the end of life, we would not want more money, but more time. Maybe time to try to change some of the things we had done in our lives. Time to do some things we never did, or time to finish some things we started. Time to tell someone something we felt we should tell them. Time to make amends with a loved one or just tell them how much we loved and cared for them. Time is truly the coin of our lives; we should consider carefully how we should spend it. 01-09-2001 10 A.M. Tuesday, Chapel day. Get out of my cell and go to Chapel. Always a nice break from the monotony of being in jail, doing nothing. 2 P.M. waiting to see a psychologist to see if he can give me a recommendation to go to impatient treatment. Lots of waiting in jail. If you don’t have patience, go to jail and you learn some. In treatment they would teach that all addiction ends in three places: jails, institutions and death. Thank God I was still alive. I ended up in jail and that was bad enough, but there were worse ends that drugs lead to. The worst one that drugs and addiction lead to, which there is no hope of recovery from is death. 109

Immaculate Recovery I was addicted, had lost my family, lost my home, business, cars, money, all my earthly possessions, everything I’d worked 30 years for. I was still alive, and as long as I was, I knew I had a chance. I had nothing, but was sure somehow, some way, things would get better. I guess that is Faith. Had to hold on to Faith, that somehow God would bring me through and all would get better. It eventually did. 1-11-2001 Just back from the law library. Part of being in jail is access to the jail’s law library. It really does not do much good, just lots of confusing law books. I suppose if you were in jail for years, you might be able to help your case. By that time, you would be out anyway, but by law I think all inmates in America have to have access to a law library. It was a good reason to get out of the pod and do something different. 5:50 P.M. waiting to go down for supper 6:45 P.M. had supper, yuck. 10:30 P.M. been drawing, praying for my loved ones, reading, listening to the radio. 1-12-2001 6:15 A.M. Waiting to go to breakfast, seems like breakfast is never on time anymore. Listening to the news on the radio. Something about the Russian space station Sputnik falling to the earth. 7:00 A.M. had breakfast, yuck. Lonnie and I seem to be the only ones in here with a sense of humor. He showed me a “ceramic” pig he is making out of newspapers. 10:00 A.M. Went out and hustled up some Commissary. I’m out for the week. Lloyd and Cecil converged on me begging to share some. Couldn’t turn them down, God says feed the hungry. I figured I could make it until Wednesday when Commissary comes next. Part of being in jail was that everyone in there is always hungry. 10:30 P.M. time has passed fast today. Doing a lot of drawing. That is a good way to pass the time behind bars. Never was 110

Chapter 30 much of an artist, but seem to be drawing some pretty good pictures.

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Chapter Title 1-13-2001 11:30 A.M. Getting ready to go down for lunch. 1:30 P.M. taco salad for lunch, still hungry, been reading Bible, sick of this place, very bored- listen to radio- would like to go outside, see family, play golf, work, anything but being here. 10:00 P.M. talked to Johnny. His friend Alex had been killed in a car wreck. Three kids went joy riding. One sixteen and two thirteen year olds. The car flipped and ran into a house, now Alex is dead. Life is so short. Johnny is planing on going to Alex’s funeral in a couple of days. Only 12 years old and already going to a friend’s funeral. Life is short, how very sad. 1-14-2001 Almost 30 days in here. Hungry, ate none of breakfast, really sucked. About out of snacks. It is 11:00 now, getting ready to go out to the day room I guess. 12:30 P.M. Had lunch yuck, yuck, Giants killing Vikings in playoff game. 4:30 P.M. took nap, drew picture of Tiger Woods out of a magazine, read Bible. 5:00 P.M. Nine days after today until court. Waiting on dinner, always hungry, never enough to eat, food sucks, couldn’t eat too much of it anyway. Lord help me, amen. 6:00 P.M. ate, shot some baskets, watched a little TV. Back in room, will call folks at 7:00, kids might be there. 1-15-2001 30 days in the county jail. I had heard that doing time in prison is easier than doing time in the county jail. Actually heard one young inmate tell another that he was “finally getting to go to prison”, and that he was excited and how much he was looking forward to it. I thought, wow what a goal in life, going from jail to prison. What a sad thing to look forward to. Not sure what time it is, 1:20 or 2:20 P.M. Been reading Bible. Just waiting. Today is Martin Luther King day. Court one week from tomorrow. Sick of this place. Going to listen to radio and nap. Thank you Lord for this day, Amen. 113

Immaculate Recovery 3:30 P.M. trying to figure out a budget for Commissary. The most any inmate could spend in any one week was $20.00. 4:00 P.M. Got another box of club crackers from Lonnie to get me through until Wednesday. Really starting to hate this place. Wondering more and more about my lousy attorney. Thief. 6:30 P.M. Back in room, Ate dinner, yuck. Upper tooth bleeding, got a headache, wonder what that is all about. Probably stress. 9:00 P.M. This really sucks, been here over a month as of tomorrow. Court a week from tomorrow. Listening to radio and going to sleep now. God watch over my boys and folks and loved ones. Amen. 1-16-2001 2:00 A.M. Can’t sleep, 31 days in here, thanks CindyCindy started a new job (so she says) Mom is picking up Donny. Where are her so-called friends? Why don’t one of her “friends” pick up Donny instead of my mother? Looking back now, I can see the anger and isolation I was feeling. I felt I had taken care of my wife for 17 years, most of her life, but now when I needed her, she had left me for another man. There I sat in jail, 40 years old, with no one to help me except my elderly parents. I was angry. I wrote in my journal that day and asked myself… So what else is going on in Rick’s mind? My arm still hurts. It has hurt for four months now. It is about over hurting, I think. Not much I can do about it being in jail. 1:00 P.M. been in my cell all day except for breakfast and lunch. 2:30 wrote attorney a letter, wrote Judge Martin a letter. 7:00 P.M. went out at 5, watched news. Waiting to call Cindy at eight. Tooth started bleeding at dinner. Tried Cindy at 8, no answer, tried Mom and Dad’s, no answer. No one really wanted to talk to me. 114

Chapter 30 Looking back, I really cannot blame them. The calls were getting expensive. There I was all by myself, with nothing, and felt like nobody cared about me. What a lonely place. 9:55 P.M. Johnny answered, kids had been at folks, asked Cindy why she didn’t answer, she said she had “gone to store”, liar. Figured she had been at our old house with her new boyfriend, while my parents watched our kids. Things were getting worse. 10:00 P.M. cop made me get off phone. Last calls were at 10:00 P.M. Love them boys Lord. Thank You for them, please take good care of kids and folks until I can get out and help them, Amen. 6 days left till court! 01-17-2001- Wednesday, turned in Commissary order, had breakfast, listening to radio. Lonnie wants to use my radio, had him order me crackers, BBQ chips and five Snickers and he could use it. Be in good shape this coming week on food, hope it is my last! Saw on news Dave Winfield got into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Have two of his rookie cards, were worth $200, hope they go up now that he is in the Hall of Fame. Thank God I still have my baseball card collection! Still no Doctor Harrell, no lawyer visit. Hope to see kids and folks tonight 5:20 P.M. tried to call lawyer, wouldn’t take my call. Got Commissary. Sent letter to lawyer, listening to radio, heard on the radio local news that my lawyer started picking jurors in a big murder trial. I am afraid that could run into next Tuesday- my sentencing date- which could mean another three week re-set for my court date. What a bunch of crap!!! Need to get a hold of him. 6:20 P.M. Had dinner (Yuck) sick of this garbage, took two Bayer aspirin, waiting for 8 o’clock visit. 01-18-2001 Saw kids and folks last night. Kids look great, folks look very well. Guess they are getting used to seeing me being in here, what a shame. 115

Immaculate Recovery Lonnie and Patch about came to blows after breakfast. I stepped in between them, they went to their cells and kept yelling at each other. I went to sleep, woke up for lunch. Guard moved Lonnie to another pod. Guess I’ll write him. It really helped me having him to joke with the last month in here.

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01-19-2001 12:30 P.M. Had lunch, yuck, tried calling my lawyer, didn’t take my call, that dog. I had paid him over twenty thousand dollars and he wouldn’t even accept a five dollar collect call from me. Tried calling Cindy, she had the number blocked. Tried my mom and dad, no answer there. I’m just stuck here all alone. God, I’m glad You’re here with me, amen. That is another problem of being locked up: no one to talk to. After so many collect calls, it gets real expensive for the people you are calling. Bobby, my oldest son, had his own phone. He accepted my call that day. We talked about his new adventure of trying to make money by selling things on Ebay. I didn’t really understand it, but it sounded good at the time. Ebay had not become the phenomenon that it is today. You can really buy or sell about anything on there. It was intriguing to me that people all over the world were sending money and selling things to each other, and everything was actually working, without people getting ripped off and losing their money. 1-20-2001 I was coming to the realization that being in jail was not that different than the life I had led on the outside the last year and a half. In the dope game, I would get my dope and go to some place where I would be alone and isolated and self medicate, usually some sleazy motel room. In jail, I was locked in a room, isolated. Only no dope. No bugs in jail. That was a change from most of the places I had been staying in, and they give you food in jail (if you want to call it that) and clean linens. It was just isolation; easier in some ways, just constrained. It was “free”, but there was no freedom. 8:30 P.M. at night in my cell reading the Bible. Finished the New Testament. Read it from front to back. Everyone should do that at least once in their life. I would end up doing it three

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Immaculate Recovery times during my stay in jail. It gives you a whole now outlook on the Bible, and life, when you do that. 1-21-2001 Had breakfast, yuck. Had lunch, yuck, yuck, yuck. Gave it all away it was so bad. 630 P.M. Not done much today, went out at 3:00 o’clock. Every hour the guards would call “ins and outs”. That would be five minutes when all inmates would have to leave the day room and go into their cell. Most inmates would stay out in the day room all day, watching television, playing cards, dominoes, basketball, chess or just visiting with each other. Not quite the picture of doing “hard time”. I was just the opposite. I would come out for a minute, sometimes after ins and outs when the guards would reopen the cells and day room. On that particular day, Cecil was in his cell and got tired of waiting to go back out to the day room, and yelled, “Call ins and outs you mother-******”. That pissed the guard off, so everyone had to stay in their cells until dinner at 6:30, which in turn pissed off all of the inmates. I didn’t care and was planning on staying in anyway. Cecil was a guy who I had known when I was out on the street in the game. Funny part about it, I would run into Cecil again years later and now in 2008, Cecil works for me part time doing some odd jobs at my business. 01-22-01 “Had breakfast (yuck) had lunch (yuck, yuck), sick of this place. Slept between breakfast and lunch, back in room to rest, read, listen to radio, same old stuff, 37 days in here. What a bunch of crap, page 37 on my journal, coincidence huh? Called and talked to my mom. Thank God she was always there for me and still taking my collect calls. She let me listen to a message from a “Detective Merek” who had called her and my dad’s house looking for me. All he said in his message was that he was calling for me and needed to talk to me. Great, more trouble. 01-23-01 6:30 A.M. had breakfast, yech, yech. Gotta wonder about this Detective Merek and what he wants. I figured then 118

Chapter 31 that if he had anything to do with the trouble I was already in, he would know that I was in jail and where to find me. 7:45 A.M. Guard called me to go to court. Told the guard that I was pretty sure that court had been canceled due to my attorney being involved in a murder case that was set for court at the same time. She said it was still showing up on the computer. So I went and, as I figured, it was cancelled. The jail was in the court house, which made it easy to transport inmates back and forth from their cells to the court rooms. I didn’t mind going, something to do, and get out of my cell for a while. 8:45 A.M. went to Chapel. After you were in jail for a week or two you were able to sign up for N.A. (Narcotics Anonymous) or A.A. (Alcoholics Anonymous) groups that would meet for an hour a week. You could also sign up to go to Chapel, which was an hour a week of a preacher coming and praying, and leading the inmates in singing Gospel songs. It was a good way to break up some of the monotony of being in jail and would give the inmates who went a little hope. A lot of them were in hopeless situations. 10:30 A.M. Been out in the day room. Cold in cell. Found an inmate that was headed out, going to prison, traded him five Baby Ruth bars for a pair of thermal underwear. Felt like I had made a good deal. Looking forward to seeing my kids tomorrow for visiting day. 1-24-01 9:00 A.M. Had breakfast, shaved, took shower, looking forward to seeing kids. Listening to news on radio. There was a story in the news about how Southwestern Bell had opened their local markets to competition and they were being allowed back into the long distance market that they were banned from since 1984 for being a monopoly. The government had made them a deal in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Since Southwestern Bell, now A T & T, had become an illegal monopoly and owned all local residential and business 119

Immaculate Recovery phone lines for the last hundred years, they would make a deal with the government that if the government would let S.W.B. back in the long distance market, that S.W.B. would open their local residential and business markets up to competition. That is what brought about companies like MCI, Birch, Sage and others that got into the local phone service. Supposedly by 2001, Bell was no longer a monopoly, and they were allowed back into the long distance market since they had “opened” their local markets to competition. Nothing was further from the truth. I knew first hand. In 1998, I had become an owner of one of the companies that they were now falsely claiming that they were inviting competition from. My journal that night read “Need to sue SBC.” Several months earlier, S.B.C. had turned down a $180,000 payment on a $350,000 bill that my little “competing” company owed them. They didn’t want or care about the money. All they cared about was putting my company, and every company like it, including big companies like MCI, out of business and regaining their monopoly status. 6:45 P.M. Commissary came. Having a “good day” in jail. Got Commissary, kids coming to visit. God was still blessing me. Sometimes we are moving so fast in this life that God is blessing us and we fail to realize it, and see the small miracles that happen in our lives. 10:30 P.M. Cindy, Johnny, Donny and my mom came to visit. Mom cried. Parents do that when they see their kids in jail. Pretty hard on them. Kids looked good. I hope them seeing me here would keep them on the straight and narrow, so they never end up in this situation. Cindy said Detective Marek was wanting to question her over the collapse of our Payday Loan Company. Our ex-partner, Ed, seems to think we embezzled money. Funny, it was our money. I imagine Ed is just trying to figure out what happened with me. He wasn’t aware I had got into drugs, and the divorce between Cindy and I.

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Chapter 31 01-25-2001 11:20 A.M. Just woke up. Went to sleep after breakfast. Changed clothes, turned on radio, wait for lunch, yuck. 11:30 P.M. 12 hours and nothing written, that’s probably a first since I have been here. Slept a lot of the day. There was a fight here tonight. “Little J.” Jimmy (Junior Boy gang member) and Eric Kiser, old Payday Loan company customer. The guards were going to put lil J in the “hole”, solitary confinement. The hole was full so they put Little J. in his cell and now he can’t come out for 10 days. 01-26-2001 This sucks so much. Up at 5:30 A.M. every morning, eat rotten food at 6:00 A.M. back in room at 6:30, have to stay up until 7:00 for head count. I think they hope you will fall back asleep so they can “lock you down” for the day. Have to be up again at 8 to turn in sheets. Oh well another day. Thank God for another day, Amen. I could be dead. 6:30 P.M. went out and tried to call attorney- wouldn’t take my call. Jerk. Played cards with Cecil Walker, Michael Barnes, Alanzo Baker. Tried to call kids. Cindy has number blocked from collect calls. Really needed to talk to the kids today/tonight and didn’t get to. Really feeling isolated, alone. Left behind, abandoned. God is with me. Thank God. Lord, help my loved ones. Please help me and my loved ones. God is with me always, I thank Him for my faith. Amen. Cindy left me to burn, when I needed her most, hope she’s ok. God forgive her, and take care of her. Looking back now, I was doing a lot of praying. That must have been what got me through it all. Faith and forgiveness. Forgiveness instead of seeking and plotting revenge. The Lords Prayer says “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I think there was a word lost in translation over the last two thousand years, and it should say, “Forgive us our trespassers as ‘much’ as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

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Immaculate Recovery 01-27-2001 1230 P.M. Had lunch (yuck) Kind of tired. This whole place is starting to smell like a bathroom. 2:30 Been watching some golf on TV. Tiger is 12 back. Looking forward to playing some golf a.s.a.p. It’s 3:30 now and the one time I wanted is to go out of my cell, this stupid guard is so slow. Wanted to watch golf, be about over by the time he lets me out. I hate this. Lawyer better get me out Monday, or I don’t know what! Maybe try a new lawyer. That won’t work, no money. Upset not being able to talk to kids. Hope they are ok. God help them, amen. 01-28-2001 11:30 time to go out for lunch. Super Bowl today. Maybe go home tomorrow? 1:00 P.M. boy did lunch SUCK! Back in room. Read and rest. 6:30 P.M. Super Bowl Baltimore-7, N.Y-0 1st quarter, lost interest. Been out, played some cards, had dinner, watched a little football. Tired, sick of this place. Jump lawyer’s butt if no progress tomorrow. Had guard look up my case, He said no court date. Hope he is wrong, should be tomorrow morning. 1-29-01 1:30 A.M. Can’t sleep. Desperate to get out of here this week or get a new attorney. No money, not sure how I can get a new attorney. 7:15 am trying to go back to sleep thinking I wasn’t going to court. Guard just called and told me I had court. Lawyer better get something DONE TODAY!!! 10:00 A.M. Lawyer in jury trial and couldn’t come to my court!! This is CRAP! Sat in a court holding cell for an hour and a half and NOTHING! Tried calling, couldn’t call out, phones shut down for now. 2:30 tried call lawyer, didn’t take my call. Cindy’s number still blocked.

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Chapter 31 1-30-2000 12:30 P.M. had lunch, Went to Chapel this morning. Should hear something from lawyer this morning. Should have fired him long ago, guess I’ll read for a while. 2:30 P.M. Randy Wake from the Kansas Securities Commission was here to see me. Wow, who is he, what does he want with me, what kind of cop is he, and what now??? 5:30 P.M. Randy was here to see me about Wichita Direct, the wholesale club that John and I opened up out on East Kellogg. It seems that Gordon Sindler had been selling “stock” into Wichita Direct that he didn’t own! Gordon was the manager, but I think John had fired him. Randy from the SEC just wanted to know what I knew about the whole situation. No new trouble, thank God. Amen. 7:00 P.M. will get a hold of lawyer TOMORROW. MUST GET MOVING ON GETTING OUT OF HERE TOMORROW. GOD HELP ME, AMEN. 1-31-2001 7:30 A.M. Just got out of shower, guard called to tell me I had court??? We shall see, Thank You Lord! 10:00 A.M. Never made it to court. Guard said, “Attorney missing in action” no lawyer Again!!! 12:30 had lunch (sucked) Got through to lawyer. Court tomorrow. Should be out of here soon. 2:30 Got Commissary order. They screwed up and sent me 5 beef sticks instead of the 5 snack trails I had ordered. That sucks, I don’t eat beef sticks. Did some hustling, and traded out the beef sticks to another inmate for 2 brownies, 1 bag of chips and some crackers. 6:15 Kids coming up tonight with Mom and Dad, can’t wait to see all of them. Just got called by guard for Chapel. Wednesday night Bible study. First time I get to go. Signed up for it when I first got here but there was a six week wait. Probably going home soon anyway!

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Immaculate Recovery 8:00 Back from Chapel. Guard says I haven’t been called for family visit? Wonder if the guard is right, or just being stupid as usual. 9:00 Kids came to visit. Johnny has spiked his hair! Told him I did not care for it, he did not like hearing that. Almost 13 years old and definitely has a mind of his own. 9:15 Listening to radio. Freebird and then Big Pimpin! 02-01-2001 3:45 A.M. Having a hard time sleeping. Worried about Johnny. All F’s on his report card?! Spiked hair?! Nail polish?! Poor boy, Cindy must really be neglecting him. She thinks by destroying everything I love that she is somehow hurting me, what a fool. Poor Donny, Bobby and her. Wondering about getting an apartment, house, money, lawyer being a crook, hungry. Trying to see the future. Need to leave it in God’s hands. 10:00 A.M. Went to court to waive jury trail on other dope case. I think the judges look favorably on that. That way they do not have to go through all of the trouble of calling and picking jurors. They may give a little leniency for those who waive their right to a jury trail, as not to put anymore pressure on the legal system than already exists. Maybe it is because my lawyer has to do less? Lawyer says doctor be in to see me (this week?) other dope case set for 22 or 23 of this month. Texas case got continued until cases here in Kansas finished. 2:30 went out of cell at noon played cards with Cecil and Alanzo, then basketball. I was really down and upset after seeing lawyer, finding out Texas case was not dismissed. 02-02-2001 7:00 A.M. Started Old Testament. It’s Friday. Linens day. Stayed up to turn in linens, clean room, might take a shower. Getting over Cindy. What a disaster, God help her and the boys. Thank God for their Grandma and Grandpa! Please get me through this Lord, Amen. 2:30 Called lawyer, finally got through to him. Told him I was very unhappy with him. Told me I could fire him any time. Course now he had all my money, jerk. 124

Chapter 31 Told him to give me at least $10,000.00 back. Told me he wouldn’t give any money back. Thief. 3:30 Sent Donny birthday card. 02-03-2001 2:30 P.M. been out since lunch (yuck) Hate this place! Looking forward to getting out, spending time with kids, making money, playing golf, suing Southwestern Bell. 6:00 Been out all day. Been in jail 50 days and not a note or card from Cindy, how cold, God forgive her. 02-04-2001 9:00 A.M. Wow this is sad. Stashed the bread from my breakfast tray inside my jumpsuit inside an empty Fritos bag and smuggled it up to my cell. Not supposed to take any jail food to your cell. About out of Commissary, it’s Sunday and Commissary doesn’t come until Wednesday. 1:00 P.M. Been watching History of the World part 1. Didn’t come back in cell until 2:00, golf on at 2:00, might go back out then. Worst part of being in here is worried sick about something bad happening to kids or parents. All I can do is sit here and worry. Mom told me Donny was wearing a big chain to school when she saw him on Friday. 6:00 Had dinner (sucked) This is really sad, shouldn’t be here, had the world and now have nothing. How sad. Guess I’ll listen to the radio. 02-05-2001 12:30 P.M. Tomorrow is Donny’s 11th birthday. God bless him, keep him, love him, cherish him and reunite us, Lord I pray, amen. 6:30 Talked to boys. Johnny kicked out of school again, 5 days, flipped off a teacher, said he was flipping someone else off, told him not to flip anyone off and wouldn’t have to worry about getting in trouble. 8:30 been drawing Churches. Favorite thing to draw, Churches. Can’t take much more of this, sure hope lawyer does something. 10:30 Been out discussing religion and The Masons with “outlaw” Tony Shephard. Heard some talk of how anyone 125

Immaculate Recovery who is going to get probation gets a couple months of jail time, hope that’s true. Got $20.00 money order from Mom for Commissary. God bless her. Please Lord protect my loved ones, amen. Will read Bible and listen to radio now. Love you Lord, please help me get out of here, amen. 2-06-2001 Called lawyer, secretary took call. Tried to question her what was going on and how they could just leave me in jail, and do nothing after all the money I had paid them. She said she was getting too upset to talk to me and hung up on me. 11:00 A.M. went to Chapel. 8:30 P.M. Talked to Donny. Happy birthday Donny! Talked to Johnny, Donny loved his scooter Grandpa got him. Haven’t heard him so excited in a long time, Johnny too, poor baby boys. Donny had cake and ice cream and Dr Pepper for birthday. 10:30 P.M. No radio, broke. This sucks. Patch says he can fix it for 3 to 5 candy bars. Been hearing that if I get probation on one case while another case is pending, that I have to get probation on other case! God help me that it turns out that way, amen. 02-07-2001 6:00 A.M. Had cereal, looked and tasted more like saw dust or some sort of wood shavings. This is sick. 11:30 what a bunch of losers in this place, nothing doing, waiting for lunch (yuck). This is so sick. 1:30 Back in room waiting for Commissary. Kids coming to visit today. Can’t wait to see them! 3:00 Got Commissary. Talked to Donny, got the card and pictures I had sent him, said he loved the pictures and his new scooter. Coming to see me tonight. 10:30 Went to Wednesday night Bible Study. On God being infinite and man not being able to understand Him, sent Jesus in image of man so some would understand God. Cindy

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Chapter 31 brought boys to see me. Mom won’t bring them anymore, doesn’t think it is good for them to see me here. Need to get out of here NOW! Must…help me, God, amen. 02-08-2001 6:30 A.M. Been out discussing case with Outlaw. Pretty sure I’m getting ripped off by lawyer. Outlaw suggests Federal Attorney and file civil suits. Alonzo described case like mine where defendant got off on illegal search an seizure. 11:40 tried lawyer twice back to back. Wouldn’t take my call. 12:15 Called and got through to lawyer, He said he would be taking my calls from now on. Asked him when I was getting out of here. He said when I “stop screaming at his help and pissing off his employees”. Jerk. Asked him if Dr Harrell was coming to give me the evaluation as promised. He said “yes”. Asked him if he checked on district attorney dismissing child endangerment case, he said district attorney would not dismiss child endangerment case, he said Dr Harrell was on phone now, and he had to go. Liar. 5:30 called to talk to Mom and Donny. Donny not there. He and Cindy had an appointment to talk to principal, didn’t tell me that at visiting on Wednesday night. Asked Mom how she was doing, not so good, asked her what was wrong, said lawyer said Dr Harrell wanted $1300.00 to come and see me. Needs to be paid before tomorrow. Starting to sound more and more like a scam between the lawyer and the doctor. Thieves! 10:30 Just don’t know about all of this, feel really bad for Mom and Dad. I’ve really become a problem to them in their old age and what were supposed to have been their “golden years”. God forgive me, amen. Wonder what’s up with Donny having to go to principal. What could he have done??? Why did they say all was ok at school? Why does everyone have to lie to me??? God help them, amen. 02-09-2001 2:00 P.M. Been up and out since breakfast, took shower, got clothes washed, talked to Outlaw, tried lawyer 127

Immaculate Recovery 9:15, 9:30, 10:00, 10:15 never took my call. Very cold and snowy out. Please God, take care of my loved ones, amen. 6:30 Talked to Mom at 5:30. Mom talked to Dr Harrell. Gave Harell half the money he wanted and he is taking the rest in payments over 4 months. Had to pay the thief to give me an evaluation I should have had from the State for free. Theif. Dad wrote him a check. This is all such a scam! Johnny and Donny looking for my baseball cards for Bobby to put on the Internet for sale to raise some money. Need to write Bobby. 8:30 Cleaned room, wrote Bobby, no envelope, great. 10:30 Been out trying to hustle up an envelope, finally traded a bag of BBQ chips for one. Cecil grabbed the empty cup I had with me and poured me half of his cup of coffee. Nice of him. 1200 midnight, Mike Marler, never talked to me before, (2 months) watched a little golf with me, told me a joke, went something like this. “Moses, Jesus and this ‘other guy’ were playing golf. Moses tees off, hits a hook and goes to the left, lands in a river, Moses parts the water and hits his ball up on the green right by the hole! Jesus tees off, hits a slice to the right. His ball lands on a log in a pond, He walks on the water, hits his ball and it lands on the green right by the hole! The other guy gets up, hits his ball, his ball hits the club house, bounces off a car, goes in the lake, lands on a frog sitting on a lily pad. The frog jumps up, an eagle sees it, swoops down and grabs the frog, carries the frog and the ball up in the air, the ball falls off, lands on the green, bounces up, hits the flag and drops in the hole! Jesus turns to Moses and says, ‘There goes Dad showing off again!” Best golf joke I ever heard. God bless us help us, and protect us all, amen. Marler also told me under the new law, if you go to the penitentiary, they cut your time in half and take 15% off for good time! 2-10-2001 Slept from breakfast until lunch. 12:15 P.M. called and talked to Mom. Some guy at church had problems similar to mine. Said he got his time cut in half.

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Chapter 31 Strange I just heard that from Marler the day before, must be some truth to it. Mom was doing fine, thank God! Another day in jail. Saturday. Golf on TV. Monday Dr Harell should be here. Hope to go home shortly there after. Texas warrants??? 6:45 Been out, watched golf, ate. Thursday, February 15 will be 2 months in here, what a bunch of crap! It’s been an education. 10:30 Been watching XFL first overtime in the new XFL league history. Might go back out for late nights. Monday is a holiday, no mail, Presidents Day. Dr Harrell better show up. Wondering how much longer I’ll be here. Then go to trial in Texas? Hope kids and folks ok. 11:25 went out for late nights. Worried about Johnny. No school Monday. He has been suspended for a week. Can’t believe they can keep kicking him out like this, poor boy, God help him. Amen. 02-11-2001 1 P.M. Had breakfast, slept until lunch. Back in room after lunch, waiting until 2 or 3, golf on then, read Old Testament, listen to radio, trying to wait it out! 6:30 Watched Phil Mickelson beat Frank Likliter with a double bogey! Probably the only time ever a double bogey won a PGA play off! Saw a little history? 02-12-2001 6:40 A.M. Up for breakfast. Boiled egg and some sort of flesh (ham??) gave it away. Ate a little cereal and milk. Need out! God bless and protect my family this week, Amen. 1:15 Been waiting on Harrell. Had lunch, have headache, just waiting, Harrell probably won’t show. Tried Kyle- call not accepted. 3:30 Harrell showed about 2:15. Said I’d probably be put in some sort of half way house or rehab program. Will type report and get with Kyle tomorrow. 6:00 Had dinner sucked. In room just waiting until whenever to get out of here. Read, listen to radio, rest. 129

Immaculate Recovery 10:30 Been out in big room. Talked with Dank, Outlaw, and Cecil. Knew Dank from the Second Street set of the Junior Boys. Tuesday 02-13-01 640 A.M. Been out to breakfast. ½ a biscuit, oatmeal, yuck. Listened to Outlaw “preach”. Linens day. Need to stay up to turn in linens, Church at 9:30 . Shower? 2:30 P.M. Stayed out after lunch. Talked to Outlaw and Psycho. Tried Kyle. Outlaw seems to think giving Johnny a gun broke the law. Uh oh. 6:30 Called Kyle, didn’t accept call. Talked to Mom, got my letter, hasn’t heard from Kyle or Harrell. Talked to Donny. In trouble at school for not “co-operating”?!?? Johnny doing ok, Bobby ok, Cindy still hasn’t done anything to try to sell my baseball cards. 10:30 went down and watched news. Trying to keep my mind off things. Being in jail. Hungry. How sad. God give me strength, amen. 02-14-2001 615 a.m. Valentines Day. Ordered Commissary. Been up since 430 a.m. or so, worried about boys, folks, God help them, amen. 2:00 P.M. Got up, went out for lunch. Back in room waiting for Commissary. Officer Conklin gave me a “friendly reminder” to make my bed. Instead of 24 hour lock down. Guess he thinks he is being a nice guy. Very upset I am still here. Cecil and St Louis left yesterday. 6:30 P.M. Talked to Mom, she talked to Sherri at Kyle’s office. Kyle talked to Harrell and Kyle wants Harell to make some changes in his report. Trying to get child endangerment case dismissed. 02-15-2001 640 A.M. Cold in here. Talked to Johnny and Donny last night. Donny eating brisket, so he was happy. Johnny told Cindy to shut up, when she was talking ugly to me on the phone. She practically threw the phone at him, and

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Chapter 31 told him he would “regret” telling her to shut up. Poor boy. God help her, she is really sick. Court tomorrow for child endangerment. 02-16-2001 11: 30 A.M. Court was a disaster, found guilty on 2 counts of child endangerment. Now found guilty on the previous dope felony and this misdemeanor. Kyle said something about appealing it. Cindy wasn’t even in court. Had Bobby bring Johnny and Donny. How sad. 3:30 Not doing great. Wrote Bobby, Johnny, Donny, told them thanks for going to court and they did great. God help me. Wrote Kyle also. 6:30 Tried Kyle at 4:40, didn’t accept call. Mom not home, this sucks and really have to wonder about Kyle. 12:00 midnight. Been out for late nights. Cold in here. Trying to keep my faith. God help me, protect my family, amen. 02-17-2001 12:00 noon Had lunch. Got copy of USA Today. Came to room to read. God help my family, amen. 1:00 Called and talked to Mom, she sounded good, said Dad was better. She tried Kyle and Texas attorney Bill Stradley, no answer. 2:30 Back in room. Talked to Cindy. She going to SRS to apply for welfare and help with the bills. 9:00 P.M. Been out since 4ish, had shake down at 7:30 this morning. 3 or 4 extra guards. Inmates went to gym and guards went through all rooms. I had a “trash sack,” “altered radio,” “unauthorized container with snack trail,” guards should have taken all, they didn’t take any! Seemed like they ate some of my snack trail though!!!? Weirdoes. Probably felt guilty after they did that, so they left my stuff alone, have some scriptures an pictures of Church on walls. Thwarted off their evil spirits. Tonight watched Steve Martin movie Trains, Planes and Automobiles. Never laughed so hard in a long time. Thank you Lord.

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Immaculate Recovery 02-18-2001 6:40 A.M. 12 inmates locked down because of what the guards found in their cells yesterday. Out for breakfast, yuck. Bread and jelly. Nothing new. Worried about Mom, Dad, kids and Cindy. God help them, amen. 12:30 P.M. Hate this place. Sure hope Kyle gets me out this week. 22nd next court date. God help my family, amen. 10:30 P.M. Been out all day. Watched golf, Joe Durant set a PGA record, most under par at -36. Watched Dale Earnhardt crash into the wall and die in a wreck on the last lap of the Daytona 500. Told Cowboy it had happened. Cowboy is a BIG racing fan, knows all the drivers and their records, acted like he didn’t believe me. Looked like he was crying when he asked around, and found out it was true. Lot of these guys in here are pretty tough and habitual criminals, but they seem to cry a lot. Maybe it is just the depression of being in here. Kiser went to a so called “pro visit” at 9 P.M. Sunday night. I’m sure he’s an under cover cop. No lawyers or other professionals are coming here on a Sunday night. Played some basketball with Outlaw and Dank, game of chess with Outlaw. 12:00 midnight Well back in from late nights. Listened to the some of the brothers talk. Mostly about trying to figure out how to make money. Poor guys really do not have a clue. No wonder they turn to gangs, drugs. Tomorrow Presidents Day. No mail, no money. 02-19-2001 6:30 A.M. Flag at half staff. Dale Earnhardt. Dead at 49. Wonder why they fly flag at half staff??? Thought that was for Government people. Just got back in from breakfast. Listening to the other inmates visit with each other. They really seem to enjoy it in here. Listening to radio, trying to stay awake for head count. 11:30 A.M. Waiting to go out for “chow”. Wonder why they don’t call it “lunch”, cause it’s not food! Just thought of something, the paper (Eagle) said Kyle didn’t charge Jack Hudson for his murder trial. Kyle financed his office overhead while he was defending him on my $25,000, jerk. Obviously Kyle is thinking of getting Hudson off for killing his daughter, and 132

Chapter 31 blaming her death on the ambulance company, and going after a wrongful death case. He blew me off for that. He spent a total of two hours with me on the first dope case, and zero, never even came and saw me or talked to me or asked me anything on the child endangerment case!!! The only time I saw him, since I have been here, is when he came and got me to sign a check. What a thief. 12:30 P.M. Had to “rack down”; fight between Steve and “Patch”. Poor Patch has one bad eye and a patch over the other. Steve is a big bully. Both of them are pod workers, bunch of guards ran in, it was upstairs, over before it started, all inmates to rooms. Hate this place. 9:00 P.M. Been out since 3:30 , talked to Mom and Dad at 6:15. Dad sounds better, Mom does too, not heard from Kyle. Been out watching TV, news, Antique Road Show, McNeal Lehr, got a couple of candy bars, coffee, getting through the day. Guard told me, I look like Frank Zappa! Steve caught a case. Patch is back. Steve deserves it, fighting a guy with one eye. 10:30 Went out to watch the news. Looked for a book, found “Garfield” cool! Tomorrow Kyle should do something. Going to sleep. God look after Mom, Dad, Bobby, Johnny, Donny, Cindy, Loretta, Ron and boys. Love you Jesus. Amen. 02-20-2001 12:00 A.M. Can’t sleep, stayed up to listen to World News. Only thing any good on late night on FM. No AM thanks to Kiser. Need to reiterate to Kyle I have two witnesses to illegal search and seizure. Cop pulling me out of Durango and attacking me to search me. That’s why I ran!!! 6:30 A.M. Back from breakfast at 6:15. Guard said it was too noisy. Great. Gotta stay up till 7:00 for head count. This really Sucks!!! 830 Shaved, took shower, turned in linens. 9:00 tried Kyle’s, didn’t take call

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Immaculate Recovery 9:30 Tried Kyle’s. Didn’t take call. Going to Chapel. Lord protect my loved ones, amen. 11:00 Back from Chapel, nothing too exciting, feel a little better, wait on lunch, linens, call Kyle later. 12:00 Had lunch, cold in here, waiting for linens to come back. 1:55 Tried Kyle’s, 2 times didn’t accept. 2:00 Tried Kyle’s, 2 times didn’t accept. 2:15 Couple of “brothers” say they gonna beat me up if I don’t pay Rockey’s store bill to them. Let Taylor (guard) know. Tried Kyle. Really need to talk to Kyle or Sherri. Didn’t accept. 3:30 Tried Kyle, didn’t accept call. 6:00 Called Mom at 4:45 . She’s feeling better, Dad throwing up yesterday. God help him. Talked to Donny, he not feeling well, stayed home from school. Johnny suspended again, Cindy out till 4:00 A.M. Saturday night. God help my boys, Lord please get me out of here!!! Amen. 7:30 Tried Kyle at home, didn’t accept. Called Mom, had her call, talked to him, sounds like he has some plans. Maybe he’s trying to cover his butt from me suing him?! Had her call Cindy. She is being obnoxious. Johnny didn’t go to school, she said “he didn’t have a ride”! Idiot. 9:30 P.M. Got through to Johnny and Donny. Johnny asked about what they’ll do to me cause I lost in court. Told him it would be ok. Donny had not been feeling well. Cindy spouted off, “Yes, you were, you just didn’t want to go to school.” She hurt his feelings. WITCH. God help me get out of here to save those kids!!! Please. Amen. 02-21-2001 640 A.M. Court on dope case tomorrow. I pray everything turns out ok. Amen. 6:30 P.M. Didn’t realize the day had gone by. Talked to Mom at 4:40. Donny didn’t go to school, again! No ride??? Tried 134

Chapter 31 Kyle, didn’t accept call. Mom tried Kyle and Sherrie. Wouldn’t take call. 8:45 Back from visit. Johnny and Donny look good! Cindy looks like she has a beer belly or pregnant or just gaining weight. Johnny and Donny are going to help me sell baseball cards. Talked about court tomorrow. God help me get out of here for them! Amen. 02-22-2001 7:40 A.M. Guard called me for court. 4:00 P.M. THANK THE LORD!!! NOT GUILTY!!! TRIAL 9:00 A.M.- 4: P.M. !!! THANK YOU JESUS. Psalm 70, turns out they got some lab specialist, another cop, and they even had the cop who arrested me who was off the force and had moved to California, come back to testify against me. They all became confused!!! Evidence bags mislabeled etc!!! Psalm 70! Thank you Lord! That was a dope case where I had already confessed to the drugs being mine. About a quarter ounce of crack cocaine. Angel and Trichell and I had been at Angel’s home in Plainview. Plainview was one of the lowest rent districts in Wichita. It was built during World War II, and was military housing at that time. For the past 50 years, it was about the cheapest place to rent a home, so it attracted a lot of lower income recipients, unemployed and drug dealers. Trichell, Angel and I had planned on going and getting a room that night, and doing some partying. Angel took an hour to get ready and I should have known something was up then. It would turn out that Angel was an informant. Once we left Angel’s house, and got a block or two away, a police car got behind me. We went for about a mile and every turn I made, the cop car followed. After three or four turns, it was red lights and sirens right behind me. When I got out of the Durango I was driving, the cop grabbed me, pushed me against the car, and went to searching me. He started to reach in my pocket, and I took off running. I needed time to toss the dope I had on me. The cop ran after me, and eventually I came to a fence I couldn’t get over. He caught up, hit me with his 135

Immaculate Recovery billy club, and we went back to his squad car. On the way back to his squad car, he found the dope he saw me toss. When we got to the police station, I confessed to the dope being mine. It was a miracle to hear the judge announce me “not guilty,” when I had already confessed, and claimed the dope that the cop had found. 9:30 P.M. God bless Judge Vinning. Judge told prosecutors that he thought they could have proved their case, but did not, so he was finding me not guilty! Thank God!

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CHAPTER 32
02-23-2001 6:40 A.M. Been at breakfast discussing whether or not women should work. Outlaw and Val, those poor guys, I am more convinced than ever there is no opportunity for the poor. 10:00 A.M. Yesterday’s case was one where I had already confessed to having the dope, told the cop it was mine, had smoked one hour before, and planned to smoke some more! Still got found Not guilty, Glory to God. There was a break in the trial for lunch, I got on my knees, for the first time in my life, outside of church, and in that little holding cell they had me in, prayed really hard. I remember reading a book since I had been in jail that said, “The most powerful position on Earth, is kneeling in prayer, to the Creator of the Universe.” He sure was all ears to my Prayers on that day! 2:30 Been out playing poker with Jolly Ranchers for chips. Lost a bag of snack trail to Terrance. Not much else happening. Got linens. 10:30 This place, what a joke. People in here are really stupid. Guess that is why we are here, being stupid. Friday night, just 20/20 and the news, listening to babble from the inmates. Oh well, be out in one to two weeks. Hope to God. Lord save my loved ones, amen. 12:15 A.M. Been out for late nights, back in. 02-24-01 Sick of this crap!!! Need to work out something on Texas, get probation and get out of here!!! 10:30 P.M. Well still here. Imagine that! Kyle had answered at his house, told Mom couldn’t talk just then. Told her, “At least he answered.” What a jerk! Just been watching some TV. Played a little hearts with Cowboy, Jim, and Terrence, back in room. Saturday night, 137

Immaculate Recovery maybe out next week. Saw a guy on Americas Most Wanted, killed a guy in Houston. 100k bond! I only had a possession charge and had a 100k bond! 12-24-01 12:00 A.M. In from late nights. Hearing some stories of first time possession charges going to prison, need plea in writing, recuse Martin! Need to try to get plea deal finalized next week. Lord help me, amen. 6:20 A.M. Breakfast must be late. Dreamed of riding some sort of little round go cart?! Have some really weird dreams in jail. 12:00 P.M. Took shower, Sunday. Had lunch (Yech) Slept from b-fest to lunch, dreamed of playing golf with Randy and ? Not much else doing. 2:30 Been out talking (listening) to older guy “Ross” alcoholic. Works at Boeing. Going to treatment at Atishawan. Same place Dr. Harrell recommended. Sounds pretty good. Based on God. Back in room. NEED out of here!!! 02-26-2001 11:30 A.M. Hungry. Waiting to go to chow. (Yech in advance) 1:00 Back in room. Been out listening to the gang bangers talking about fighting other gang bangers. What a life they lead. 5:05 Talked to Mom and Donny. Donny had a headache, didn’t eat all day. Cindy didn’t have time to fix him lunch, Dad still not well. Said this has taken 5 years off his life. I really needed to hear that. God help him, amen. Donny going to skating party, Johnny was asleep. Donny and Johnny started doing something with baseball cards. 6:30 Had dinner. Fish sticks (Yech). Sent Cindy letter. Keep thinking about what dad said. God help him, Mom, Johnny, Donny, Bobby, Loretta, boys and Cindy. 10:30 Called folks again at 8:30 . Talked to dad, sounds better. Thank God. 02-27-2001 6:00 A.M. Got up from table and went to trade boiled egg for doughnut. Someone stole my milk, what a bunch of losers! 138

Chapter 32 12:00 noon Had lunch (yuck). Back in room. Waiting for what??? See family. Desperate to get out of here!!! God help me, and protect my loved ones, amen. 6:15 Talked to Mom. Stacy at AAmigo bail bonds in Texas, had to talk to “Jim” and said after she talked to him, that she could send our money back. Stacey is full of crap. Should send money back tomorrow. Donny didn’t go to school, hope he’s ok. Cindy getting baseball card value book tonight, wanted to know how much of the money from selling cards she was getting. Johnny ok. 10:30 P.M. Came in room. Got up on my sink and was looking out the window. Guard “Steve” opened door, and told me to stay off of the sink. Too easy for me to fall off and break my neck, he said. Kind of a nice guy. The way he said it sounded like he really cared. Been out. T.V., basketball, dominoes with Outlaw. Waiting to order Commissary. Tonight kind of hungry. NEED OUT. Lord get me out soon! Amen. 02-28-2001 Shaved, waiting to use the shower. God help my loved ones today, let Mom get money from A Amigo bonding. Let Dad feel better, protect them from the icy road. I love you God. Amen 12:00 Back in from lunch. Waiting on Commissary. New radio and food, yea! Wednesday. Should see kids tonight. Not much else going on. Thank God for everything. Amen 1:20 Been listening to radio, waiting for Commissary, call Mom at 4:30, see if she got money. God help her, amen. See if roads are clear, kids can come tonight? 2:15 Still waiting on Commissary, about 1 hour late. Idiots. 3:30 Commissary came about 2:45 . Radio works great! Ate bag of barbecue chips, ate bag of corn chips, 2 Jolly Ranchers, part of a Snickers candy bar, ate part of a Baby Ruth candy bar, hot tea. Nice little party in my room! Thanks Mom.

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Immaculate Recovery 5:00 Tried Mom. Phone in jail not on, will go out and try again. 6:15 Back in room. Tried Kyle’s, didn’t take call. Still can’t get through to Mom. Had dinner. Yech. Wonder if kids coming for visitation. Streets slick. 7:00 Not going to Chapel, wait to see if kids come. Not sure exactly what time it is, clock not working. Kids, Mom, Cindy just left. Kind of got into it with Cindy. Being a witch. Mom got my $10k from bonding company. Thank You Lord! Amen. Please God let them have a safe trip home. Cindy says she has to move to Memphis, no money. Says her mom will support her if she moves (sure!) Told her I’d give her $2000, she said that should work. Said she makes too much money to get welfare SRS told her. Have to get out of here! Need to help support her and kids. 03-01-2001 9:00 A.M. Went to video court on city case. Set for March 20, going back to sleep. 2:00 P.M. Been out, everything I hear says I have to be allowed probation. 10:30 P.M. Been out since 4. Hanging out w/ Outlaw. He’s leaving Sat, so been hanging out with him, he really likes that. He is a big, muscle-bound, older black guy. Did several years in federal pen for breaking his cousin out of jail! Mellowed now he says. Talked to Mom, she’s good, Dad so so, talked to Johnny and Donny, doing good. Thank you Lord, please help dad, watch over mom, boys, Loretta, Ron, their boys and Cindy. Help me get out of here ASAP amen. 03-02-2001 6:30 A.M. after breakfast, yech! Working on flyer for wholesale club I want to try to get back into to make some money when I get out of here. 11:30 Been sleeping, getting up and around. 2:30 P.M. Back in room. Been out working on flyer w/Outlaw. Showing it around creating much excitement. Looking real good! Tried Kyle 11:30, 12:30, 1:30, 2:30 didn’t take calls 140

Chapter 32 7:00 Talked to Mom, have not heard from Kyle. Tried Kyle at home 4:30 and 7:00 at home, not talked to him. 9:00 P.M. Been talking to Deputy Gradine, Jewish guy, about the Bible for 1 hour. Thank you Lord, I needed that! 10:30 Outlaws last night. I probably won’t be out much after tonight. No one here I really want to talk to. 03-03-2001 Sister’s birthday, Happy birthday Loretta, God bless you! Amen. 12:00 A.M. Been out for late nights Friday, Outlaw made soup, “last supper”. We laughed about Dr. Harrell’s crazy report, visited about Everett Lee, the other inmate Outlaw and I were hanging with until Everett left. 8:30 A.M. Outlaw woke me up at 7:30, he supposed to leave at 8 or 8:15 . Told him he better check what was going on, he didn’t seem too concerned. Seems like he likes it here, weird! I guess that is what they mean when they say a person becomes institutionalized. They get to where they actually like being in here. How sad. 12:30 Had lunch, yech. Outlaw still here. I’d be raising hell, he is pretty cool about it?! 2:30 Talked to Mom. She ok, Dad ok. Going to look at new cars. Left message on Kyle’s office recorder, his home phone still busy. Called Cindy, she hung up on me, mom wouldn’t call her back, hung up on Mom. 5:40 Going out for chow. 10:30 Outlaw still here. He thinks maybe he lost some good time. Thinking what to do about Cindy, God help her. Amen. She’s so hateful to me. How could she, why would she. Something seriously wrong w/her. Said she’s too busy to call Kyle during day. Guess her $8.00 hour job is worth more than me, unbelievable. She says money’s is not important. She sure is miserable without it though. God help the kids, forgive me for hanging up on Mom. God bless my loved ones, amen. 141

Immaculate Recovery 03-04-01 7:00 P.M. Been in and out all day. Outlaw still here. Walked in the gym for 30-45 minutes. Sort of have a headache. So sick of this place! Not much happening today, Sunday. Will try to get Kyle to answer tomorrow. 10:30 P.M. Went out for news, world getting crazy, lots of fires, had a cup of coffee and a piece of a doughnut I had saved from breakfast. God bless my loved ones. Amen. 03-05-01 5:45 A.M. It sucks when breakfast comes on time ( 5:30 ) have to wait up until 7:00 for headcount. This place is so full there were almost no chairs, what a joke! God help my loved ones, keep them safe, bless them and get me out of here! Amen. 12:00 Slept from breakfast to lunch. Back in room right after lunch. Beginning to wonder if Kyle is doing anything. 2:45 Left message for Kyle to try for a retrial on the dope case I lost. 4:00 P.M. Called down to get out of room, idiot guard said I called too late, now can’t get out of cell until 5:00. 7:00 Called and talked to Mom, SBC left message on her recorder that I owe 33K for office in Texas, going to collection. 8:00 Been working on ides for stuff to sell on internet. Will pay SBC in Texas . Will make millions on Internet. WILL COME BACK FROM THIS. GLORY TO GOD. GOD BE WITH ME. 03-06-01 9:45 A.M. Took shower, forgot to shave, too late to get razor now. God help my loved ones. Amen. 2:00 Came up to use phone, Guard Conklin coming up stairs, asked him to let me in my room (toilet won’t quit running since 12:00 told him that). He lets me in, sees pictures and scriptures on metal shelf, locks me down till shift change with toilet running full blast. Requested Grievance form and to speak to Sgt. 142

Chapter 32 2:15 Said he’d tell 2nd shift to let me out early, if I behave. Told him I wanted to speak to Sgt, he said Sgt knows about the toilet. I told him Sgt doesn’t know about me being locked in here with the toilet running! 2:35 Conklin turned off water? 6:30 God takes such good care of me. Out of coffee, Terrance (black store man in a wheel chair) (nice guy) gave me couple of cups, out of food, traded Outlaw potato salad (Yech) for Brownie! Tried Mom 4:40-5:15 no answer, probably with Uncle Mike and Debbie. Tried Kyle 4:50 didn’t accept. 8:30 Talked to Cindy. Johnny at friends, said hi to Donny, he had friend over, Bobby at work, he’s behind on truck payment, bank closed his checking account, sounds like his credit’s getting all messed up, great. Told Cindy that is bad news, she says nothing she can do, tried talking to him. I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Deville (attorney) called house today, told her to call him, told her I’d give her 7500 if we get money and what to tell attorney. Told her to check with Dad on “talking” watches to sell on internet and to get me catalogue, she said she would. Now that she has cost us everything, she’s ready to cooperate, great. God help to save this family. Amen. 03-07-01 1:30 P.M. Been out since lunch, walked in gym, guy in there smoking. Turns out he is Mike Phillips (dope dealer) Phil’s cousin. Small world. 6:30 Talked to Mom, called SBC lady, not there, talked to Donny, nothing on baseball cards yet, got Commissary, called and left message at Kyle’s. Computer shows sentencing on Friday on case I lost on only. This sucks. God please get me out, Amen. 8:40 Kids and Cindy came at 7:30. Cindy did zero so far, no Deville, no Dad, nothing, no book on baseball cards, zero! Witch. Looks like she wants me to stay here and stay broke. God forgive her and heal her, Amen. Kids look good, Lord keep a close eye on them, Amen. 143

Immaculate Recovery 03-08-01 Still here! 6:55 A.M. waiting on head count. Reading Bible. Praying for kids and loved ones. Things to do today. God help me, Amen. 4:55 No answer at Mom’s? Tried Kyle, didn’t accept call. Walked 30 minutes in gym, had headache all day. 6:30 Talked to Donny, he got a kid off Paul who was fighting with him. God bless him. Talked to Cindy. Didn’t call attorney, she’s not feeling well. Going to get baseball card book today supposedly. 9:00 Took 2 Advil, headache better. 10:30 Well my headache is 90% gone, went out for hot water for coffee. Just as a foot note, this room has no bars. It’s about 8x12 with a very high slanted ceiling, a metal door with a remote at the guard’s desk, a stainless steel sink and toilet built together, a metal desk and my cot. One 8” tall, 4 foot long window at top of wall by bed. Found my severity level for my “crime”. This Definitely Calls For Probation! 1 non personal felony, this is really bull that I am still here. Fully expect to be out within 2 weeks. 03-09-01 1230 P.M. Really sick of this, seeing lots of guys with lots of crimes getting out in little to no time on probation. Knowing now what I know it’s time to have it out w/ Kyle. This is a bunch of crap for me to still be here. Got up, took shower, just hanging out in room, had lunch, back in room, call Johnny at 1:30, will try Kyle also then. 2:30. Tried Johnny 1:45, couldn’t use the phone that transferred, supposed to call him at 1:30. No answer at 1:45, maybe he thought I wasn’t calling and left or something. Hope he’s ok. God help him, amen. Back in room. Shift change. Tried Kyle, didn’t accept call. Computer still says 22nd for sentencing for child endangerment case. Kyle had better put in a motion for a retrial like Sherri said (did she lie?) Got message back yesterday I had sent to the court myself for a retrial, they needed the case number, I’ll need to get that. 144

Chapter 32 8:30 Called kids. Got baseball card book. Wrong one. Bobby tells me he has not made his car payment! Now he’ll ruin his credit and probably Cindy’s too, she co-signed. Hope she’s happy, divorced me, turned her back on me, the only time I ever needed her in 17 years. Hope she’s happy she ruined all our lives. What a fool! God forgive her. Amen 03-10-01 6 :15 A.M. Well had a jailhouse experience today. At breakfast, went to grab a chair, big dumb white guy jumps up and says, “Someone sitting there.” I grab the chair and start to take it and told him no one’s sitting there, he jumps up. Val (black guy I had played pool with sometimes on the street) jumps up and gets ready to slap him. I let go of chair and told Val not to worry about it. Didn’t want to jack him with the chair in the face and catch a case or get locked down. Going back to sleep now. God watch over my loved ones today, amen. 2:30 Been out, walked in gym, been working on some ideas to make some money when I get out. Wholesale club, sell memberships, don’t cost hardly anything to get started. Talked to Mom, sounds like her asthma is acting up. Oh God Dear Lord heal her, I pray totally, Amen. *** As of this writing in 2008, my mother has been healed of her asthma since about that time. Pray for each other, it works. Mom and Dad getting ready to get new car. Dad feeling better. Tried Cindy’s, no answer. In room getting ready to work on presentation for wholesale club pitch book. 3:40 Have come up with a real nice pitch book, gave 3 pages to Val to look at. 9:40 Tried Cindy 8, 8:30, 9, 9:30, no answer. Wonder what’s up. She has “company”, kids say she has been having different guys over, great. No telling. God forgive her and protect the kids, Amen. 11:50 Late nights over, been in working on wholesale club. Thinking and worrying about kids, folks, future. God forgive and help me, protect and watch over my loved ones. 145

Immaculate Recovery 03-11-01 2:30 Been in and out of cell. Got a hold of Johnny at 2:00, Donny not there, call him back at 5. Loaned radio to Val, just got it back, in for shift change. I feel like I am going insane with grief, heartache, and sadness for Bobby, Johnny and Donny. God help me, amen. How could she have ruined everything in all of our lives? Having mental problems I guess. I will make it all up. Glory to God, Amen. 4:00 Just been in room reading, cleaned up, read, just went out and got hot water for coffee, wait till 5 to call kids, raining out, hungry, low on food from Commissary, rationing myself. 6:30 Heartbroken. Cindy out Friday, and Saturday and tonight. Poor kids. Poor Bobby, now he’s 2 car payments behind, 500 each. Donny suspended again! Cindy says I haven’t been a good father, Johnny gets on to her, she screams at him. God help her, heal her sick mind. Amen. Need to call Mom and let her know not to pick up Donny. 9:00 Called kids, they trying to get a hold of Cindy, she’s out again, they were hungry and ordered pizza but have no money, trying to get a hold of her to see how to pay for pizza. Johnny and Donny home by themselves AGAIN!!! Can’t believe she’d leave them by themselves!!! God protect them, and let them get along. Amen. 03-12-01 5:40 A.M. God I hate this place. Waiting to go out for breakfast, awful early. Got to stay up until 7:00. Stupid guard calling to open doors now. Can’t believe it. Cindy left Johnny and Donny Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night to “go out”. God help my boys, heal her sick mind. Amen. 1:30 P.M. Been in all day, out for lunch, going to go walking in gym. Still upset over Cindy “going out” abandoning kids all night and not answering her cell phone for them. She is so sick. Lord please heal her, Amen. 2:15 Out walking in gym for 40 minutes today. Made a cup of hot tea. Officer Cash (Pretty) here today. She’s nice, sweet, and cute, wonder what she’s doing here??? 146

Chapter 32 6:00 Back in from dinner, yech. Trying to wait it out! What a waste, nothing but losers in here! 10:00 P.M. Tried kids 9:00, 9:30, 9:40 let it ring several times. Guess Cindy picked up and hung up, called back and the number was blocked! Wonder if she has “company”. She must be dead set against me, what a shame, gave my life for her, and all she can do is hurt me and the kids. How sad. God forgive her, amen. Wonder where the kids are at, what they’re doing, and who is at the house with her while she ignores the kids! 03-13-01 5:15 A.M. Been up since 4am or so, hungry. Ordering all chips this time, tomorrow Commissary. Listening to radio, waiting on breakfast. 2:30 P.M. Tried Kyle’s. Didn’t take call, just waiting to call mom. Got up, shaved, stayed out after lunch. Looked at PC magazine guard had. 4:15 Been out walking, got linens. 6:30 P.M. Called Donny. Cindy out paying to get water back on! Owes 300 for 4 months. He helped Bobby clean out his truck. Asked him why, “bank coming to get it”. Great, called her, she’s broke, Bobby and her both 2 months behind on payments and insurance. 10:45 P.M. Exhausted over the tragedy Cindy has brought upon our family and now she says, “You need to get out of jail and help us.” What a fool. **** Now in 2008, looking back I can see one glaring behavior of any addict, and that is not taking or accepting the blame for their own actions and the consequences that those actions result in. Blaming others for their drug use (alcohol is a drug) and all of the problems that using leads to. Of course it wasn’t just the actions of my ex-wife that had brought our family down, but my own actions as well. 03-14-01 6:30 A.M. Well today is Outlaw’s last day supposedly! Val went to court yesterday, got 9 months for traffic 147

Immaculate Recovery tickets. What a bunch of bull, putting him in jail for that long because he didn’t have the money to pay his traffic tickets. Wow, I’ll be here 90 days as of tomorrow. 5:00 P.M. Talked to Mom, she got her new car. Black Maxima. Sounds real nice. 6:15 Had dinner (yech), waiting for kids to come see me. 10:15 P.M. kids came. Donny not feeling real well, Johnny ok. Asked Cindy if I could move in when I got out. She got real hateful. Gave her all the money I had to my name yesterday, and she can’t give me the time of day today. Johnny asked about me getting out. He is having to do some emotional test at school, poor boy, it must be really hard on him, and Donny for me to be here. For 12 and 11 they are really going through a lot. God help them, amen. Told him not to worry, that I would take care of everything when I got out. 03-15-01 11:00 A.M. 90 days today. Yesterday Donny told me he was hitting the golf ball 150! Johnny and I were talking about me being found guilty on the last case and which Bible verse I had credited for the not guilty verdict that I had been praying, Psalm 70! Thank God for those boys, protect them, keep them, bless them, Amen. 11:45 Lunch was so bad I didn’t eat it! Carla McClinton is on guard duty. What a tragedy, I used to loan her money at Payday Loan co and now she “guards” over me. 6:30 Talked to Ed, said, they were looking for me, asked him who, cops? He says that he filed embezzlement charges. He says Cindy wrote out two checks to me for 20k and 35k!!!! But even if that is true and she did, he got 35k from the bank account. So we were 60/40 partners, about even I’d think. He may be interested in recovering licenses for Payday loans. 7:15 Got hold of Cindy. Said she never wrote checks for 20k or 35k??? 03-16-2001 Back in from breakfast. Jelly sandwich. Talked to Val about HUD Housing. Remodeling run down houses, and 148

Chapter 32 get paid. Get Ed to invest with me, let Val fix them up and rent them out to HUD. God help my loved ones today, Amen. 9:15 Took shower, tried Ed at 9, no answer. 12:00 Talked to Ed. He called Officer Marek, he’s supposed to come talk to me, told Ed he was silly, he owes Cindy and I if anything!!! Told him to drop charges, we did nothing wrong. 12:15 Called Cindy, told her what was up with Ed, she said he’s crazy! Said she never wrote no checks for 20 and 35k. 1:30 Linens are here. Need coffee, think Terrance switched mugs with me. 8:30 Just in room thinking about things, what a life! This is a joke, charges call for probation, here I am 90 days later. Maybe getting closer to being over. God help me, amen. Need to take care of my family like all of my life until Cindy “took over” three years ago, what a tragedy! Now she’s regretting everything she’s messed up, just like I knew she would. God forgive her, Amen. Tried Kyle at 4:50, didn’t take call. 10:30 It was just on the radio that the Bible is the most banned book in the world, and is one of the only books that cannot be read in the schools in America! SO stupid. Our country was built on the Bible and now it can’t even be read in schools. No wonder there are so many problems in schools. 03-17-2001 12:40 Called Cindy. She’s going to Memphis where her mom is. Asked her about the checks she wrote for 55K. She started acting crazy, said checks were made out to my dad! Called Mom, she called Cindy, asked her why she said they were Local Phone checks, told her she was going to jail, she hung up, told mom to call Ed, she wouldn’t, I hung up. Tried Ed, he wouldn’t accept call, tried again wouldn’t accept call. 9:30 P.M. Called Mom back, Donny going to Memphis tomorrow, told mom that’s not a good idea, tried Cindy, no answer. Walked in the gym for almost an hour, trying to walk off some stress. Not much I can do. Calling trying to reach out 149

Immaculate Recovery and control things. Not working. Stuck here, no control over nothing. 03-18-01 Waiting to go to breakfast. Sunday, Donny supposed to leave today. Ready to go back to sleep, brushed teeth, gums bleeding a little, probably from crappy food being no good, and gross stale air been breathing in here. Feel like I am getting a cavity in one tooth. Great, there’s no dentist here! 4:50 P.M. Been in room all day, about time for supper, pretty bored, sick of this crap long ago. Not fair for me to be here, ridicules. Cindy left me the one time in our 17 years, I really needed her, what a fool. Nothing but fools in here! Hope Donny’s having a good time, and Bobby and Johnny are ok. God bless my loved ones, Amen. 6:30 Had dinner (yech). Back in cell, will listen to radio, read, rest, go for a walk after a while. 8:00 Went and walked in gym from 7 until 8. Finished off my doughnut from breakfast, still have ½ cookie from lunch! Not bad, make a doughnut last all day, eat ¼ at a time! 10:00 Tried Cindy, wanted to tell her I’d be talking to police tomorrow, she didn’t accept call. 03-19-01 2:00 P.M. Been in room all day. Monday. Court tomorrow on City charge. Wondering if Kyle has done anything. Hope so. Will try him when I talk to Mom, sentencing this Thursday on child endangerment charge. 4:00 Tried Kyle, didn’t accept call. 5:00 Called Mom, her and Dad went to Kansas City casino on Sunday. New car is real nice, both like it, didn’t win any money. She got a hold of Kyle on Saturday, he knows sentencing is 22nd, didn’t know much else. Sherrie’s no longer with him. He said Sherrie probably quit because she got tired of me calling! Good. 03-20-01 5:30 A.M. Can’t believe I’m here. This is insane, what a life.

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Chapter 32 11:00 Been to city court. Was waiting in holding cell to go to court and guard brings me in paperwork to sign! I guess Kyle showed and entered a guilty plea to a possession of paraphernalia charge, got $400 fine and 6 months non reporting probation. That was for the first time I got busted for crack when Jeney and Nathan set me up. Charges got reduced to marijuana paraphernalia, thank God, Amen. 1:30 Got linens finally, relax now till 3:30. Read, listen to radio. 8:00 P.M. Talked to Mom. Kyle called last night at 9 wanting to set an appointment for her and dad today at his office. Afraid the child endangerment charge could carry jail time! So he says, liar. Thinks probation on the dope charges. Sounds like he is full of crap just trying to scare them to get them to pay him more money. Said they were making some changes at his office, Sherries gone and his son Dan would now be doing what she was doing and maybe Sherrie wasn’t giving him my messages?! Sounds like he is setting up to defend himself against malpractice, thinking I might want to sue him! 10:00 Talked to Cindy at 9. Bobby is in jail! Cops picked him up at work, warrant out for not going to court on a traffic ticket! She had a bondsman go to get him out. Turns out Bobby has a warrant in Lyons, KS??? Driving on suspended, she says. Who knows if she is telling the truth! 03-21-01 9:30 Tried Kyle. Dan took call! Couldn’t tell me anything new. Said to call back at 3 for Kyle. Things might be turning in my direction. Thank God, amen. 6:15 Talked to Kyle at 3:45, says Judge Martin has to give me probation on dope case! May give me jail time on child endangerment, up to 6 months, asked if that was on each charge, he didn’t know, asked him if it was a year max on each charge, he didn’t know??? More of his lies. Said if so that we would go for a retrial for sure. Asked him about my $20k in Texas, told him I’d give him $2,500 if he could help me get it back, said I didn’t owe him anything now but figured he’d charge me $2,500 for Rite of Habeas Corpus. Asked him when I 151

Immaculate Recovery could get out, he said a week! I said really?! He said yes! We’ll see. Talked to Mom at 4:45 told her about Bobby being in jail, she’s very concerned. 8:20 Talked to Cindy, Johnny asleep, not coming up to see me tonight. Tried to talk to her about putting our family back together, says she “didn’t know, too much on her mind”. Bobby got out of jail, went to court in Emporia. God help Bobby and help me in court tomorrow. Amen 03-22-01 12:00 midnight. I’m up eating chips and listening to radio! Thanks Mom and Dad. Up listening to Art Bell late night talk radio. Wondering about sentencing court tomorrow. Radio talking about some sheep imported from Belgium??? Why would the USA at this point in time with foot and mouth disease and Mad Cow disease let anything, much less sheep, come in from over seas?!? They think these 200 sheep have something like Mad Cow disease. Never heard of sheep being imported from Belgium? Food getting ready to go way up, stock market crashing, no energy, it’s all phony. World could be ending. God help me tomorrow, amen. 12:15 A.M. Wow, this is weird. Art Bell talking about a railroad crossing where a bus load of little kids got killed when their bus stalled on the tracks, and years later another car stalled on the tracks with a train coming and the ghosts of the little kids pushed the car across the tracks and later the cops found little fingerprints on the back of that car. Here’s the weird part. The train that runs by the jail just blew its horn as it was going by and as Art Bell was talking about the train that killed the little kids! How strange. 03-22-01 GLORY TO GOD- 36 months probation. Probation on dope and child endangerment! Dr Harrell’s report calls for me to go to inpatient drug treatment, hope we can get that changed. Kyle and Judge Martin pretty tight it seems. Judge Martin talked about how they could “work” Texas case. Kyle looked like he couldn’t care less what happened to me in Texas. Looks like Judge Martin really is a good guy and 152

Chapter 32 cares about people and Kyle is NOTHING but a money hungry lying thief! 10:30 A.M. Having a little snack party! Barbeque chips and a bag of corn chips!!! Thank you Lord! Amen. 12:40 Talked to Cindy, everything was fine until I told her to get rid of her boyfriend. Said she wouldn’t, and hung up on me. 2:30 In cell. Waiting to talk to Kyle, get my money from Texas and be out of here soon! 5:15 Talked to Mom, she’s happy! Her and Dad are taking Uncle Mike and Debbie to dinner. They are back in town, Debbie’s dad not doing well, God help him, Amen. 7:00 Been out for supper. Not much up. Waiting to go! 8:00 Tried Kyle, didn’t accept call. 9:00 Tried Cindy, picked up, hung up. 03-23-01 2:45 A.M. Can’t sleep, too much on my mind. Cindy said something about how me asking her to leave her “boyfriend” would be wrong because “they’ve been together” for 8 months and now I “just come along”. We been together for 17 years and now she says I “just come along.” I said, “So you were with him before we were divorced?” She said, “Well I knew of him.”(liar) Poor Johnny and Donny. God help them. Amen. 6:15 A.M. What a coincidence, my inspirational booklet that has a different short spiritual thought and Bible verse for each day of the month, called “Our Daily Bread”, today’s reading is about sleepless nights! How very clear God does speak to us if we will only listen for Him. Thank you Lord, Amen. 2:45 Went to Pro Visit to see jail release coordinator to get paper work for probation. What a bunch of bull, part of probation is going to include six to eight weeks of inpatient treatment! 153

Immaculate Recovery 5:00 Another Pro Visit to see Detective Marek. He had copies of checks from Payday Loan Company. Can’t believe Cindy had wrote herself checks for $20K and $35K. Wow, I wouldn’t have believed it, had I not seen copies of the checks Marek had. I about fell over, but didn’t want to give Marek anything to go after Cindy for. Needed to try to protect the kids from getting taken by SRS. Talked about the check Ed wrote himself for $35k, told Marek that Ed and Cindy both owed me money, but as for the business me and Cindy owned 60% and Ed 40%, so everything between us and Ed was basically even. He seemed to agree. Ed got 35k, Cindy got 55k and I got nothing!!! 7:20 Talked to Mom, Debbie’s dad died. God rest his soul. Amen. Went to walk in the gym. Guard stopped me, and said I couldn’t take my radio and headphones in gym. Been doing it since I got here. First time I got caught, oh well. Just waiting to get out of here soon anyway! 8:30 P.M. Talked to Kyle. He wants me to call my Attorney Bill Stradley in Texas and have him call Kyle to try to get rid of the dope case there. Kyle said he was surprised by me getting probation. Liar, he knew it all along, thief. Mirror, treatment center in Newton, is supposed to come and talk to me. I have to wait to get out of jail until they come to take me to treatment. If Texas doesn’t drop case it gets more complicated. Kyle says, realistically, I will have to be here 2 more weeks! Wow. 10:00 Talked to Donny and Johnny. Donny heartbroken. Cindy “out”. “Some guy not her regular.” (“Brad”?) Donny crying, poor boy, God help him, Amen. He says she tells him she will be home at 11 and then doesn’t show until 4 or 5 in the morning. No cable, she didn’t pay the bill. Johnny wants to go somewhere with his friends tonight, asked him not to. Didn’t want Donny to have to be alone. God help them, Amen. 03-24-01 12:20 P.M. Talked to Mom, she had called Stardley, he’ll call Kyle Monday. Talked to Donny, Johnny messed up his scooter. Cindy got home at 11:45 last night. Thank you 154

Chapter 32 Lord, amen. Donny doing better. 2 p.m. Walked for an hour. Called Cindy. Asked her to pay attention to the kids. Says she is trying her best. Going to try to do something with my baseball cards. Told her God would bring us through this, she said, “All you ever talk about is God.” I didn’t realize that. I take it as a compliment though! It shows change. I know one thing for certain. I’m most thankful for my New Testament. When I am down all I have to do is start reading it and everything gets better- thank you Jesus, Amen. God just spoke to me again! On the radio a song just came on as I was writing this that went- “God is always around you- don’t give up on the brink of a miracle- don’t give up God is still on His throne, don’t give up, remember you’re not alone!” Thank you Jesus. Amen. 7:00 P.M. Stayed out 6-7, had supper, yech! Sad place, sad people, just real sad. Hopefully leaving soon! 03-25-01 2:30 p.m. Been out since lunch. Had Bible Study with three black guys. 7:00 P.M. Talked to kids. Cindy went out last night again. Johnny and Donny doing ok, Cindy went to pick up Johnny’s friend, Daran. Guess Bobby is at work. 10:30 It’s been a long day, I’m really distraught over Cindy going out last night from 7 to 2 or 3 in the morning and going out the night before. It’s like she can’t stay home with the kids and be a mom. Or give me any consideration. She wrote herself checks for $55k that she never told me about. For what? For who? Not only has she ruined our business, and family and tried to ruin me, but also our three boys and their lives and futures. She’s really insane. 11:00 P.M. God get me out of here NOW! Amen. All the inmates were downstairs whooping and hollering like they’re having the time of their lives. They are in jail and seem to be really enjoying it, this is crazy! 03-26-01 Monday 5:45 A.M. What a mess. Can’t believe I’m here. God get me out of here soon, amen. Lord help my loved ones this week, amen. 155

Immaculate Recovery 2:30 P.M. Walked for an hour. 6:30 Talked to Mom. Went to Debby’s dad’s funeral, said it was nice, Dad ok. Talked to Johnny and Donny. Johnny asked if I was going to give Mom some money when I get money from Texas. Asked him why he asked, said she couldn’t pay rent! Poor family, God help me get that money from Texas and watch over them, amen. Mom sent me $20, God bless her, and let her get feeling better, amen. 10:30 Had a Bible study. Terrance Jones told how he got shot at Town East shopping center. God please get me out of here! Help my loved ones, watch over them and protect them, amen. Thank you for all you do for me Jesus, amen. 03-28-01 Tuesday 8:00 A.M. Took shower, shaved, maybe get out today, maybe see kids tomorrow. Just waiting. God bless my loved ones, amen 12:00 Had lunch (YECH!) back in room 6:30 Called Mom, she talked to Bill Stradley (he’s worthless). He called Kyle. Kyle hadn’t called him back. Talked to Kyle, he said I need to go to Texas to face the music. He’s going to talk to prosecutor tomorrow. Donny went with Uncle Mike and girls to hotel last night. Cindy “went out” with some new spook, idiot. No one is sure where Johnny was, “probably with a friend” she said, this sucks! She acts like she couldn’t care less. Fool. 03-29-01 Wed 6:30 A.M. Missing my loved ones 3:00 P.M. Guard called to tell me I had a “Chaplin visit.” Scared me to death, thought something had happened to one of the kids or mom or dad. Turns out to be Father Anthony, came to visit me. Said he talked to Dad yesterday, and asked him if I was “ready to have visitors”. What a phony, he knew I was about to get out and now he comes to see me. Cindy had told me that she and Father had been to lunch together… something shady about her and him. Father also told me about “how easy he falls in love.” I think it was his way of

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Chapter 32 relieving the guilt he was feeling. I was all but certain that he and Cindy had an affair. 6:30 Been out for dinner (yech), waiting for 7:00 P.M. for in and outs to call Mom. Hope kids coming up. 9:00 P.M. Cindy, the kids and Mom came up! Everyone looked great! Don’t know what is up with Cindy. Says she is getting part time job. Says she stays home with the kids, but tomorrow she is “going to dinner to learn how to do some business contacts”. Sure, what a liar. Donny had on a backwards hat. Johnny had carved a little something on his wrist. Begged him not to do that anymore! God help and bless them all, thank you, Lord, amen. 03-29-01 8:00 P.M. Talked to Mom at 4:30, talked to Dan at Kyle’s office, he thought Kyle had done dictation for Texas case and that Kyle was planning to do motions for retrials, sounds good, could be a bunch of B.S. Tried Bill Stradley, not in office. Talked to Donny, got suspended today, fighting with another kid. Asked Donny if the kid was smaller or bigger. Biggest kid in the class! God love that boy, amen. Johnny walking to Tim’s, called him on his cell, Bless him Lord, amen. Mom sounded good. Walked for an hour in gym, just waiting to get out of here, God help me, amen. 03-30-01 6:30 A.M. Dear Folks: Please forgive me for the many awful things that I’ve said. I guess I just wasn’t in my right mind, and am very, very sorry. Neither one of you deserved the way I have been towards you. You’ve shown me nothing but love and kindness, and I’m forever grateful for the two of you. God willing, I’ll be able to make it up to you, and everything will be wonderful in the end. May God richly shower you with all of His love and glory now and forever, on earth and in Heaven, for all you have done for me, the kids and everyone. With all my respect, appreciation, admiration, love and devotion. Forever grateful, your son, Rick. I love you both with all my heart and soul.

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CHAPTER33
OUT OF JAIL, FOR NOW…

Not sure how I knew, or if I did, but looking back now in 2009, that letter to my parents on March 30, 2001, would be the final entry in my journal to end my stay, for the time being, at the Sedgwick County Jail. Three and a half months after I got there. Probably the longest three months of my life. The next notes I would make would be after I got out of custody, a week later in Texas, and had walked four miles to the bus station to make it back to Wichita.

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