A Life Wasted

Prison Again (Continued)

They kept me in the hole at the Georgia prison I'd escaped from. I'd expected to be beaten and abused, but to my pleasant surprise I received the opposite. The guards and staff were polite and respectful. It didn't take me long to realize that on some level they respected what I'd done. I found it ironic that even though they tried hard to kill me while I was in the process of escaping, having succeeded I earned their respect. Whatever the reasoning, I had a steady flow of visits in the hole. They all asked if I was okay or needed anything, but it was always a prelude to their asking about my run. They were all involved in the chase at some point and they all had "How did you do this," questions. Those questions were non-stop. But the one that got me most was this one: "Why did you nail photos of yourself to pine trees?"

Recall those photos I took with the instamatic camera? To see what my face looked like. Somehow a false story developed that I had taken those photos to torment those chasing me. That I'd left a string of them nailed to pine trees all over the woods. There was even a story that I had taken a photo of my pursuers from up in a tree, then nailed it to that tree after they'd passed. None of this was true, but the guards and sheriff's deputies who had chased me were convinced of it. The only answer I've been able to come up with was that the Chatham County Sherriff had made up this story to make them push harder to catch me. Whatever the case, by the time I was returned to Chatham County this story was fact and I had become a legend.

After two easy weeks in the hole I was moved to the Chatham County Jail and charged with escape. Naturally I was held in the most secure part of the jail, which in this case held the county's most dangerous men. I was the only one there not charged with murder. One guy (I think his name was Jerry Spurges. I'll be amazed if that is correct since I'd not thought of his name since then, but it flashed in my mind while writing this) had already been given the death sentence and had done time on Georgia's death row at the Reidsville State Prison. He was back in Savannah for an appeal hearing. I wasn't close to any of these guys. They were all too dangerous to make friends with, but Jerry and I talked some. Jerry had been in the Navy, stationed on a nuclear fast attack submarine, so he had lots of interesting stories. I wasn't there long. I plead guilty to escape and was given another year. Immediately after sentencing I was sent to Georgia's most maximum security prison. The one with death row, and Georgia's undisputed most dangerous prison.
Reidsville State Prison is without a doubt the most dangerous place I have ever been. I abhor violence. I can't stand to watch a boxing match on TV. So in prison I don't watch fights or stabbings. I am a rarity in this as most guys enjoy watching fights in all forms. I am sickened by them. For this reason I'm not going to write about what I witnessed in that horrible place. I will just say that it was bad and leave it there. It was something no man should have to experience no matter what he did to get there.

My mom visited me at Reidsville. During the visit she said, "I'll bet this place is able to hold on to you." I told her I could get out of Reidsville if I wanted to, that the only reason I stayed was because Mary wanted me to stop breaking out of prison so we could get this over with. In this respect Mary had more control over me than anyone ever had, but my mom wasn't buying it. It wasn't that she didn't think me capable of breaking out, what she didn't believe was that my wife would be able to control me. It wasn't that Mary controlled me so much as I was respecting her wishes. I didn't want my mom to think I was using my wife for an excuse so I explained how I could break out if I wanted to. Mom seemed impressed with my plan. I never used it and I never told anyone else about it, but a few years later several guys did basically the same thing and got away. After seven months in Reidsville I was surprised when they told me my sentence was up. I had four more months to do on my first year plus another year to do because of the escape conviction in Savannah. Like the idiot I often am I said, "Are you sure." The guard gave me a smirk and said, "You really want to argue about this?" I didn't and said so. Because I had a detainer from Ohio I wasn't actually released to freedom, just released from the Georgia State Prison System. Rather than take me to the bus station they dropped me off at the Tattnall County Jail.

The Tattnall County Jail was unlike anything I'd seen before or since. It was a hundred year throw back. A few cells down from me was a cell with a built-in gallows. A place where men had been hanged back in the day when you were sentenced, given a few days to make peace, then executed. It was a creepy place. My mom came to visit me there and it was a memorable visit. Mom was a beautiful woman. She didn't have to work to get men to fall for her, all she had to do was show up. The Tattnall County Sherriff didn't stand a chance.

They had a dingy visiting room, but the Sherriff wouldn't allow my mother near it. For her he set up our visit in his office. He closed the door and waited outside. My mom hugged me then took in our surroundings. She gave me a hard look and said, "No!" I'll describe why she said this, but most won't believe it. Most glaring where the two windows open to the outside. No bars, not even a screen, just two separate three foot by four foot openings to the outside. I walked over to the window and looked out. Nothing but grass and the small town's sidewalk. As a joke I asked mom where she parked. She shook her head and said nothing. The next thing I spotted was the unlocked rack of rifles and shotguns. I walked to the gun rack and looked but didn't touch. Mom said, "They can't be loaded." I agreed. Not possible. I walked to the Sherriff's desk and opened a side drawer. I smiled at my mom then held up a box of shotgun shells. She shook her head. I returned the shells and pulled out a loaded .38 revolver, just to show mom. I put everything back then went and joined my mother for our visit. She said, "No one would ever believe this." I agreed. I would have never escaped with my mother there, but it was tempting none-the-less. What held me was my promise to Mary. That promise carried a great deal of weight, but it was a near thing.

A few days later a private company that specializes in transporting prisoners from state to state showed up to return me to Ohio. They used a small light twin-engine airplane. Weather forced us to land in Tennessee. Inside the small FBO facility I was allowed to go to the bathroom in handcuffs. The bathroom didn't have a window or second door, but it did have a drop ceiling. I removed my handcuffs, stood on the sink and pulled myself into the drop ceiling. I crawled over to the next room, which was an empty office with several windows with the dark night on the other side. I stayed there for a moment, with my head hanging into the office, looking longingly at the windows. For all intent and purposes I was free. All I had to do was drop to the floor and crawl out a window. What I did was put the ceiling tile back in place, then drop back into the bathroom. I put my handcuffs back on, then walked back into the waiting area where one of the private guards was watching the door, thinking it was the only way out. I had no intention of escaping because of Mary's request, I just needed to know I could. Warped, I know, but that's how I think. I'm okay with being punished for what I've done, as long as I know I'm allowing it to happen.

Back in Ohio I was sent to Marion, one of Ohio's medium security prisons. I assumed I'd go to a maximum security prison, which is always bad because they are so dangerous, so the safer medium security prison was a relief. I didn't know how this had happened until many years later when the United States Department of Justice did a thorough background check on me. From this I learned that due to a clerical error in the Chatham County Courthouse, my escape conviction and sentence in Savannah never reached my record. That wasn't the only error related to this sequence of events.

This is a bit confusing, but interesting enough to summarize. When I was arrested in Georgia I had a detainer for an untried case in Ohio. This meant that I would have to complete my Georgia sentence before the Ohio case could be tried. So my Ohio sentence wouldn't start till I completed my Georgia one. After my second Georgia escape I was caught in Ohio and sent to Cleveland for trial, then put into the Ohio prison system when I should have been returned to Georgia. This mistake caused my Ohio sentence to start early, and once a sentence is started it can only be stopped if you escape. Then Savannah made a paperwork error that caused my extra year for escape to disappear. On top of all of this, my Georgia sentence didn't stop after my two escapes, which it was suppose to do. The entire time I spent with my wife and daughter counted towards my sentence. Not only did my two escapes not cost me another day in prison, the time I was out of prison after the two escapes actually counted as days in prison. Also, due to Ohio's mistake, the time I spent in Georgia also counted towards my Ohio sentence. In Ohio I was suppose to do two years and nine months in prison before I was eligible for parole, but because of the errors, I saw the Ohio parole board and made parole two years after I was returned to Ohio. I actually did less time in prison because I escaped twice. You can't make this stuff up.