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16yr Old gets 241 year prison sentence - Bobby Bostic · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:01
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:04
  Hi. I'm Brian Cassidy.
• 0:05
  Welcome to the nightmare success in and out podcast.
• 0:08
  But we explore a, how to overcome your fears and
• 0:11
  Nightmares is set yourself free. We're going to be exploring this
• 0:14
  topic with guys that was in Leavenworth with and others who
• 0:17
  survived their own nightmare. These stories can be inspiring.
• 0:21
  Sometimes sad, there's some humor but hopefully you can come
• 0:25
  away with a nugget of something that will help you knock down
• 0:28
  some of the prisons you built. Up in your own mind.
• 0:34
  All right folks, I'm your success in and out.
• 0:37
  We are back. Thank you for being here.
• 0:40
  You know, we talk about what happens when your worst fear
• 0:42
  becomes your reality, how do you adapt survive?
• 0:45
  Well, I've got a guy here, Bobby Bostick, who man.
• 0:48
  Did he go through? Almost three decades, sentenced
• 0:52
  to two hundred forty-one years in prison, told him he could
• 0:55
  have parole, an opportunity for parole at 112 years old.
• 1:00
  It's a fascinating story and it's been covered by a lot of
• 1:02
  people from the BBC, the New York Times.
• 1:05
  If you go on and Google Bobby Bostick, American writer has
• 1:09
  written seven. AR-15 books.
• 1:13
  I'm looking at seven of them right here that are on Google
• 1:17
  wrote those all while he was in prison.
• 1:19
  Just an incredible story of perseverance, you know,
• 1:24
  tenacity. But I want to give you a little
• 1:25
  bit of background here just a few look him up on Wikipedia.
• 1:28
  This is what you're going to hear.
• 1:29
  This is what you're going to see and read Bobby.
• 1:32
  Bostick was born in 1979, an American writer who was
• 1:36
  sentenced to a term of two hundred and forty-one years on
• 1:39
  December 12. 1895 Bostick age 16 along with an 18, year-old
• 1:44
  Donald Hudson. They were invention eventually,
• 1:47
  they were charged with armed robbery and Hudson was offered a
• 1:52
  plea deal and accepted 30 years in prison.
• 1:56
  On the advice of the family. Bostick declined, the same offer
• 2:00
  an elected to go to trial, he was given a sentence of twenty,
• 2:03
  two hundred forty-one years by judge Evelyn, Baker making him
• 2:07
  eligible for parole when he was 112 years old.
• 2:10
  Bostick was serving the longest sentence in Missouri given to a
• 2:14
  juvenile for a non-homicide offense.
• 2:18
  Bostick's case attracted considerable media attention and
• 2:21
  later years due to changing laws regarding life, sentences for
• 2:25
  minors and the severity of the sentence Judge Baker later
• 2:29
  stated that she regretted giving Bostick the sentence and
• 2:32
  actively supported his unsuccessful appeal to the
• 2:35
  Supreme Court of the United States in 2018.
• 2:38
  These are these this impossible picnic I'm people Ken Starr, who
• 2:42
  was the special counsel for Bill Clinton?
• 2:44
  Sally Yates, who was just in the news recently under the Donald
• 2:48
  Trump Administration and over 100 current and former judges,
• 2:53
  prosecutors and law enforcement officers and 2021 a new law
• 2:59
  passed allowing Bostick to apply for parole.
• 3:02
  His application was approved and he was released on November 9th,
• 3:06
  2022, and he has been on a ride since then.
• 3:10
  And it's a he just he was just showing me like his business
• 3:13
  cards stuff that he's created and and just heat.
• 3:17
  The guy is locked in but before we get to that and I want to get
• 3:22
  to all this and unpack this and I can't wait to get into it.
• 3:25
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  telling Brent from Nightmare success.
• 4:51
  Since you, thank you Fritz zagel.
• 4:54
  Helping me out, helping a guy out.
• 4:57
  All right. Bobby Bostick, man.
• 4:59
  Welcome. And I am so happy that you made
• 5:02
  the time to come here in studio. Man?
• 5:07
  What a ride. You've been on.
• 5:09
  Yes, ma'am. Quite a journey.
• 5:11
  So, we were just talking before we got on here, just the little
• 5:13
  things in life, you know, you were talking about, you know,
• 5:17
  just going and opening the refrigerator.
• 5:23
  It's those simple things when they took away from you that you
• 5:26
  appreciate what an anything. So things that somebody else may
• 5:31
  complain about, I don't because in every failure is opportunity
• 5:35
  for Success. Like many of us returning,
• 5:39
  citizens is doing positive things with our life.
• 5:41
  We know the pitfalls but we also know that there is also upswings
• 5:46
  like, living a good life and just simply enjoying open Ice
• 5:49
  boxes like in prison, you don't have no choice.
• 5:52
  You can look at these four, five, six items on canteen for
• 5:55
  27 years. Yeah, that's what you eat.
• 5:58
  Now in the open ice box, it's like, what do I eat?
• 6:00
  Where do I drink all the choices?
• 6:02
  Yeah, I should drink some water but now you got these different
• 6:05
  flavors here you guys. And I just put that water in
• 6:07
  front of that shoes. Got all this different stuff.
• 6:10
  You got purified. Water prison ain't a come out of
• 6:14
  those. Think the water.
• 6:16
  You got to boil it before you can drink.
• 6:17
  Well, and we were just talking about your carrying two phones
• 6:20
  with you and both of them are cool.
• 6:22
  Bones. You've got the iPhone 14 and
• 6:25
  you've got an Android. You're switching over from that
• 6:28
  to the iPhone, 14. What in the world is that like,
• 6:31
  I mean, 1995, when you go in? I don't know.
• 6:34
  I know, I know, I know there were car phones.
• 6:37
  I wouldn't know cell phone. Yeah, I don't think we were all
• 6:39
  walking around with those where we we have had never used a cell
• 6:44
  phone because in prison we can get them.
• 6:46
  Yeah, right. Put you in the hole for that.
• 6:49
  If they say that's conducting business if they nail you with
• 6:52
  it. Yeah.
• 6:52
  Yeah, I never had in Missouri. You get a year in the hole for
• 6:55
  that so I never had a cell phone never touched one.
• 6:57
  Until I got out November night 2022, I never used the internet
• 7:03
  Because the Internet they had in that when I went to prison.
• 7:06
  So all these little simple things to me is a joyous
• 7:10
  occasion. I'm still learning the cell
• 7:11
  phone, five months later. I still know how to use it.
• 7:14
  Bobby, I'm still learning the cell phone.
• 7:16
  I mean, there's the only people who know how to use cell phones
• 7:19
  or people are like 25 years and younger that they know
• 7:22
  Everything that it does along with the social media and
• 7:25
  everything else, you just start getting older and older and
• 7:28
  older and you become that person who they look at and they said,
• 7:31
  yeah, they're just old, they don't know how to do the
• 7:34
  technology stuff, but the young people, they just grow up with
• 7:36
  it. They get it.
• 7:37
  Oh yeah, speaking of being young, speaking to be in young,
• 7:41
  let's go back to Young, Bobby, take his take, his kind of walk
• 7:47
  us back into your life growing up as a kid, your family, your
• 7:51
  neighborhood. Everything that was going on
• 7:54
  with you back that I grew up in a wall in a Park area of st.
• 7:59
  Louis kind of grew up in extreme poverty, but to us, we didn't
• 8:05
  know that it was probably because when everybody you got,
• 8:09
  you only live by, what you what, you compare yourself to.
• 8:12
  So, when you got surround is where a lot of people live in
• 8:14
  poverty, you can't compare to nothing else.
• 8:17
  But that and you know like we do we was poor because as you read
• 8:22
  my Book the book there. Mama, if you read that book, you
• 8:26
  will see that we lived in condemned houses, vacant houses
• 8:31
  that we would just take the boys down and move in, and we had
• 8:35
  ways to turn it on the gas by digging up the ground and then
• 8:38
  messing with the pipes, he stole electricity from the wires.
• 8:42
  We didn't have, no, we got water from the next door.
• 8:45
  Neighbor boarded, Cooked, our food in it, and took baths in
• 8:48
  it. That's all for me was.
• 8:51
  But to us, we Each other and what was he chose?
• 8:54
  Other was it, Mom? Dad said, please Mom Dad, we're
• 8:58
  not add a two-step dead. And now, the seventh is this.
• 9:01
  That's all sometimes we didn't have a stepdad because some of
• 9:05
  the choices boyfriend she had, they would leave.
• 9:08
  And there's just be us full and her and we survived our welfare
• 9:12
  because she couldn't work and take care of us because we were
• 9:15
  so bad. That she had to keep an eye on
• 9:18
  this and we just lived off welfare and food stamps, you fit
• 9:22
  in. To the, to the sibling
• 9:25
  hierarchy. And that how are you?
• 9:27
  I was alone. All right.
• 9:29
  And you know all all siblings have sibling rivalry.
• 9:33
  Yeah. I was born in November 1917.
• 9:35
  I mean January 1979. My brother was born in January
• 9:39
  1979 so we nine months apart. Wow.
• 9:42
  So we fought 24 hours almost like twins.
• 9:45
  Yeah. But we fought constantly and the
• 9:48
  older siblings Ironically in that same household, they The
• 9:52
  school went to work. Never sold drugs right now.
• 9:55
  They both successful homeowners. Hmm, me and my little brother
• 9:59
  growing up in there. Probably, you had older guys and
• 10:02
  neighborhood is that sold drugs stole cars.
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  So basically, I start off with basic things, like truancy stand
• 10:10
  out, overnight, the liquid stuff, you know, standing on,
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  loitering on the corners and getting locked up, going to
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  juvenile for that overnight and then that led to a path of
• 10:20
  breaking. The cars, just Just still in
• 10:23
  change or radios or CDs wouldn't have CDs but whatever we can
• 10:27
  steal a lot of calls and then that led to okay, here goes from
• 10:32
  drugs, $50, make 100 and our and then that led to me, selling
• 10:38
  drugs, drugs, drugs and then I became for, how long would you
• 10:41
  been Bobby when you got into that 12?
• 10:44
  I saw at 12 years old. Yeah, crack crack cocaine and
• 10:48
  the older guys that you were kind of looking up to the guys
• 10:51
  that were Maybe the you know the guys that everybody looked up to
• 10:55
  in the neighborhood Elwood. Those guys have been if I was
• 10:58
  12, they range from 16 to 25. Yeah but even right there in the
• 11:04
  ghetto this the Raonic Lee of you think it's small, you have a
• 11:09
  guy with a 50 or 60 thousand dollar BMW.
• 11:13
  Yeah and it was Stadium buying a house or buying is this house
• 11:17
  here and you want to look good with this car with all the
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  thirty thousand dollars to said, she said 90,000 all the core
• 11:24
  sitting in front of house is worth 20,000.
• 11:27
  Yeah, he not even Rittenhouse. I mean, he's not, he don't own
• 11:30
  house, but you got the car. Yeah, only thing that matters to
• 11:34
  us was having something because we didn't have nothing.
• 11:36
  Yeah. And that's the mentality of why
• 11:38
  you see guys bragging on things or studying them invest in
• 11:42
  money. They they want to look good.
• 11:45
  I'll live beyond their means, right?
• 11:47
  It's just like today when you have people over spending on
• 11:50
  credit. Yeah, it was just like that back
• 11:52
  then. Then but it was in a different
• 11:53
  Lane. Yeah.
• 11:54
  But what we was doing wasn't saving money.
• 11:57
  We spying it. Yeah, once you got it, you
• 11:59
  bought it. Yeah.
• 12:00
  Then it was a literal war in the, in the city with the blood
• 12:02
  and crip thing, came to st. Louis.
• 12:05
  And about 80 60 in about 88. When I was like nine, right?
• 12:13
  A 9 and 10 and 1988 1988, I became a blood because the
• 12:18
  neighborhood we was in, was all Bloods.
• 12:20
  These are guys, you've been hanging with it's Gasps in
• 12:23
  California when they start moving down, heard one of them
• 12:27
  may see, one are cousins and he thought having get her pregnant
• 12:32
  and move into the house. He got he got Cocaine by the
• 12:36
  bundle. We can't get access to it like
• 12:38
  he can and he will blood or crip and he teaches his gang like man
• 12:42
  this is why I'm from California so we started claiming various.
• 12:47
  It's almost like opening up a franchise.
• 12:49
  Yeah, that's exactly what it was and we have Claim they gain put
• 12:54
  our st. Louis spend on it.
• 12:55
  And then the guys around the corner, a somebody else, they
• 13:00
  start cleaning the house again. Now, prior to this, we grew up
• 13:03
  with these guys, we played football with him, played Court
• 13:07
  baseball, but when they became obviously game, you guys
• 13:10
  seriously and the guys, you start shooting at with glass,
• 13:13
  you can you actually knew ya all day was of Crosstown, we still
• 13:17
  went to skating rinks and still saw him and know him.
• 13:19
  Yeah, it's a gang thing became real As soon as then fight lead
• 13:25
  to a shooting and then the shooting lead to death, then it
• 13:29
  just spread all over st. Louis.
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  And by always being Bloods or we will read all the time and we
• 13:35
  outnumber it was for every for Crips, there's only one blood.
• 13:39
  So wearing that color, you had a big Target on your back and we
• 13:43
  went out there every day, like, prepared to die, basically
• 13:45
  because he got to that point because you have a guy at a club
• 13:50
  he had get into it about a female.
• 13:52
  And him he starts shooting a guys and then dudes, no way
• 13:55
  from. So we are her just selling
• 13:57
  drugs. You don't know nothing about the
• 13:59
  fight he had last night. Yeah guys, come shooting at us.
• 14:01
  I'm like, man, who was that? Like all minutes to do some over
• 14:04
  there. Man, he got into him last night,
• 14:07
  it's like, okay, so now coming from everywhere.
• 14:09
  Yeah. And it's red when you look at
• 14:11
  Street and she's reading like their egos and start shooting
• 14:14
  and you got to the point where we had to sell drugs out of the
• 14:17
  gangway gangway. Became all ordering we because
• 14:20
  we, in the streets are police going to see us.
• 14:22
  He going harasses, if the Crips is they going to start shooting
• 14:26
  at us, then it gets to the point where Blood start getting into a
• 14:31
  blood. So now you got trips eunetta's
• 14:33
  blood, she would flood zone Bloods.
• 14:35
  Yeah. Wow.
• 14:36
  That sounds like a lot and at the age you were you're just a
• 14:41
  kid, you know, 13, 14, 15. So, the Hudson guy that you get
• 14:51
  wrapped up with, was he? He part of the Bloods and that
• 14:54
  whole thing that night that all happened or was that like a guy
• 15:00
  that you hung with he was a crib, there's a crib, he's a
• 15:04
  crib but he his his my sister and his sister had the same
• 15:11
  brother boyfriend. Okay.
• 15:13
  And I knew him prior my auntie used to go with his mother to I
• 15:19
  mean my uncle used to be with his mother, so I know I'm so
• 15:23
  them. That's the only time back then
• 15:25
  you will see Crips and bloods hanging together and got to be
• 15:27
  like family relationships. Now do they?
• 15:31
  It is not like that the more they all hang together back then
• 15:35
  those guys didn't hang together. Yeah but you know we did the
• 15:40
  night of this crime. We weren't even together that
• 15:42
  night. It was a just walk us through
• 15:44
  that thing because I mean reading it you feel like you get
• 15:48
  bits and pieces from one article and bits and pieces from another
• 15:51
  article. I know one thing That this
• 15:53
  consistent is that Hudson who plead said he was really the the
• 15:58
  main instigator in the deal. You were kind of a bystander,
• 16:01
  definitely part of it but definitely not the guy that was
• 16:06
  leading the charge in it and then he obviously got a
• 16:08
  different. Well he chose to take his plea
• 16:12
  bargain and you chose to go to trial but can you kind of lead
• 16:15
  us through what happened that night?
• 16:18
  What happened that night is like I said, he He stayed around the
• 16:23
  corner where he did his sister stayed around the corner, and he
• 16:27
  happened to be over house, but that night it was a night of at
• 16:31
  this time. 1995 in December. It was a drought in st.
• 16:37
  Louis. Nobody can find drugs.
• 16:40
  So when it, when it comes to that, then we got to spend the
• 16:43
  money every day. We're not making money.
• 16:45
  So we are start selling fake drugs, you will cook up some
• 16:48
  baking soda and some residue and make it look like drugs.
• 16:52
  So the total customers knew that we didn't have dope and he knew
• 16:55
  we selling fake do so, he stopped by.
• 16:57
  So this was a robbery aspect come in.
• 16:59
  I was really, I was the type of guy that sold drugs.
• 17:02
  I wasn't a robbery, it's just when it was your job, we had to
• 17:06
  do something to get money. So long story short, I'm from
• 17:10
  the north side of st. Louis.
• 17:12
  But I was living on the South Side, on the south side is
• 17:16
  create areas called The Dark Side.
• 17:18
  A lot of these guys over there was killing each other within
• 17:21
  the Tories neighborhood. We've hanging over there, and
• 17:24
  those guys allowed us to hang over there.
• 17:27
  But why we use over there when our home girl, she's typing like
• 17:31
  to instigate stuff and talk crazy to do that.
• 17:34
  She felt like that she can get that off on one of the do
• 17:37
  smacked her and told her to go get us and when she came in the
• 17:41
  house saying somebody smacked, we like okay you always order a
• 17:44
  few, that's what happens. She's like, yeah, but they told
• 17:47
  me they come and get y'all punks.
• 17:49
  So when he said she said that, We grab our guns and went around
• 18:10
  and I was with it was to us walking around.
• 18:14
  There's like 32 you do to her as we walk around to guns and I
• 18:18
  stupidity because they could have kept us out there.
• 18:20
  Yeah, but they just know. Knew what well we've driven off.
• 18:24
  And he's like man, I ain't none. So when I'm coming out to put
• 18:27
  the girls up Donald coming up after stormy him, I'm like what
• 18:31
  you gonna do? He's like man, I just got some
• 18:33
  blunt something over high like man.
• 18:35
  Let's go, get high. Let me put these guns up first
• 18:37
  though and the guy was with walked upstairs McDonald walked
• 18:41
  off. And so, when we walked about, I
• 18:44
  say Eight houses down the street, the people that was
• 18:48
  giving charity, we know what they was doing, they pull it up
• 18:50
  and it's what they pulled up. It is dope said that if you
• 18:53
  don't live in this neighborhood or you weren't coming to buy
• 18:56
  drugs, you didn't come over there and there was just a rule
• 18:59
  of that type of street. But when we saw those people, it
• 19:03
  wasn't even a plan. Robbie is like, I looked at him.
• 19:06
  He looked at me, it was like, she was, it was just an Impulse.
• 19:09
  Yeah. And instantaneous just happened,
• 19:12
  I looked at him. He looked at me and we both knew
• 19:15
  that we can derive these people, it's automatic.
• 19:17
  I have to say, let's Rob when you know verbal reading, it was
• 19:20
  just a look like look I can forward it them look to him,
• 19:23
  he's like option and the guns came out and it was three,
• 19:27
  females, getting out the call, and we approached them.
• 19:30
  And when I approached him and said, give me what you got.
• 19:33
  And he's like, well happening, and I moved on to the just left
• 19:37
  them alone, but there were Street robberies, three
• 19:40
  attempted robbery story on crashing.
• 19:42
  That's six charges just for pulling the gun and say, give
• 19:46
  you a possession. They say they don't have that
• 19:48
  level 6 charged in the guy. One of the guys was one of your
• 19:50
  boyfriend's, he came around the corner.
• 19:52
  Car. Actually what we was doing and
• 19:54
  we like minutes Robbie. He's like I don't have none his
• 19:58
  girls like just give him the money instead of Saturday was a
• 20:00
  look, I can forward and that's the guy who got shot raised with
• 20:06
  the bullet, right. Fortunately he wasn't seriously
• 20:10
  injured in that and the other guy who's getting out the back
• 20:12
  of a truck down, Hudson was talking to him and shot at the
• 20:17
  ground. That's another four charges
• 20:20
  robbery ACA. So ACA and the guy who got shot
• 20:25
  at, that's when I was standing in front of, there's four more
• 20:29
  charges when you got Grace with the bullet.
• 20:32
  So AC a robbery ACA that was 14 charges from that way incident,
• 20:38
  we walked around the corner and then I was went over my
• 20:43
  girlfriend house real quick, and she had a girlfriend over there
• 20:46
  with her, and she didn't want to deal with us and that was with.
• 20:50
  So I'm like, man. Let's go.
• 20:51
  Let's go to the other side of town.
• 20:52
  Town, we because we had over anyway.
• 20:54
  So, when we leave now the house we sent another lady with a hood
• 20:58
  up with a bunch of stuff in the trunk.
• 21:00
  Like, okay? That's why I've heard that we
• 21:02
  did. Say that was a plan for like
• 21:04
  that's robber and get the car and get away from her, but in
• 21:07
  the car took a blogs, took her jewelry off.
• 21:10
  And put out the call, I call him, I call short time like
• 21:14
  that, and that's another Robbie on contraction and kidnapping.
• 21:20
  It was 17 charges. Got pulled over her, some
• 21:23
  marijuana them, that was another felony.
• 21:25
  So that was 18 families. I had right all in the course of
• 21:29
  that night. Yeah, quick unplanned brief
• 21:32
  moment. All that happened.
• 21:34
  It in. I was facing 17 18, felony
• 21:38
  shouldn't in the workhouse and Old City Jail.
• 21:42
  How did you get? How did you get arrested?
• 21:45
  What what how did you get arrested that night in that.
• 21:48
  Cool. And that car?
• 21:49
  We had took her. So you had card Jack that Car
• 21:53
  stolen that car and they pulled you over in that car.
• 21:56
  Yeah you know how she's home, she called the police told the
• 21:59
  license is somewhat. They we happen to be trying to
• 22:03
  get to the other side of town and before we can get there, we
• 22:06
  cross deal more or Natural Bridge.
• 22:09
  You get into the inner city. Yeah.
• 22:10
  And he's Crossing police, ain't it.
• 22:13
  They already had an APB a bolo out on.
• 22:15
  Yeah. Pour this over.
• 22:16
  Went on a high-speed chase and I call like eight blocks after a
• 22:19
  high-speed chase or he's sinking Bobby.
• 22:22
  We Because you've been in and out of trouble, but this
• 22:25
  probably felt different, didn't it?
• 22:27
  Oh yeah, it was different. Because the certification
• 22:30
  situation, when I went to juvenile, the same charges I got
• 22:33
  arrested for if I was 12 or somebody got seven, eight months
• 22:37
  Hogan street, right? But now, he's charged her fired
• 22:41
  a life and it's like, at the time, you're 16 years old when
• 22:45
  that happened, right? Yeah.
• 22:49
  Again, at the time, I didn't have a the magnitude of what it
• 22:52
  was. Has been set in everybody else
• 22:54
  it did because it was on the news and the good with the
• 22:58
  pupils going. There was I was giving charity.
• 22:59
  It's like yeah, read that and you guys didn't know that you
• 23:02
  just thought they were in the neighborhood and pulled up and
• 23:04
  we're moving stuff in and out or whatever.
• 23:06
  Oh, yeah, we know. But, you know, but that's the
• 23:09
  sad part about these type of situations when you do things.
• 23:13
  They don't ya. Trying to think of a grown man.
• 23:15
  Would at least my life was the people.
• 23:18
  What do they do? Yes.
• 23:19
  Are you just going to partially act?
• 23:21
  And these are Consequences, that's what happens, right?
• 23:24
  Because I mean, that's probably why it also made a big part of
• 23:27
  the news was they were charity people.
• 23:29
  Oh yeah, it was a bad bad situation.
• 23:32
  Fortunately, nobody got hurt. I mean, seriously injured.
• 23:35
  Yeah, because he could have happened, but when I was in the
• 23:39
  gestation and workhouse, I never realized the seriousness what I
• 23:43
  was facing because down there, it's all like everybody getting
• 23:46
  hired. We try to incorporate the
• 23:49
  streets inside of you inside the jail.
• 23:50
  Yeah, we keep everything. We Did in the street, we gamble.
• 23:53
  We shot dice. Yeah, you didn't have guns, but
• 23:57
  we picked up nice. We did everything.
• 24:00
  We did on the Street Music. It was an illusion.
• 24:03
  We create like we won facing its interest, I'm in prison.
• 24:07
  So every day I got high smoke weed and then when I did stress
• 24:11
  off my case, people like look man you do.
• 24:13
  Young is now her we all got murdered sudden says left.
• 24:17
  He only got 10 years. Yeah you got 15 minutes.
• 24:20
  People do not tell you man, you got some robberies.
• 24:22
  Juvenile ain't no big deal, her get high.
• 24:24
  And that's what I did. Like, man.
• 24:25
  You know, big deal. I think it's interesting because
• 24:28
  when you read about your story, one of the things that comes
• 24:32
  across is that when you go through your case and to go to
• 24:36
  trial, the judge says that she at the time believed that you
• 24:42
  weren't feeling regret. And and but she then realized,
• 24:49
  as as she talks later, is that you were just trying to be be a
• 24:52
  tough 16 year old put on a brave face because that's what you do
• 24:56
  in the hood. And I think that's you know when
• 25:00
  you put all that at you were probably scared, but you were
• 25:04
  wanting to think, you know, I have this is how I act.
• 25:07
  This is what I do when I'm in a situation in the streets.
• 25:10
  And you know I can't show my fear but when when you get
• 25:15
  brought in and they're telling you hey this is 18 charges and
• 25:20
  You know, you're looking at a lot of time.
• 25:22
  Did you have the opportunity to get an attorney?
• 25:26
  That was your attorney, or did you have a public defender or
• 25:28
  how did all that work for you? Oh yeah, probably finding the
• 25:32
  way that go to is a lot of the, at the time, a lot of public
• 25:36
  films just being trained. So you got a new somebody on New
• 25:39
  on the job. Yeah, it's never been a child
• 25:42
  before. So my trial was his first trial,
• 25:44
  right? And I was guilty, right?
• 25:46
  I wasn't going to trial because I thought I was going Be
• 25:50
  acquitted. I knew I was going to be found
• 25:52
  guilty. Yeah, but a my young mind I'm
• 25:54
  thinking that. First of all, the guys in
• 25:56
  prisons like man you not is no big deal, man.
• 26:00
  You got some robberies they don't give you change yours.
• 26:02
  Yeah, it hot man. Quit stressing making us
• 26:05
  stressed out. So I wouldn't realize the
• 26:10
  magnitude of what I was facing until I'm sitting in the
• 26:13
  courtroom. My demeanor is when you went to
• 26:16
  war in the streets, right? When you want in a constant
• 26:19
  battle for you. You your demeanor horns, right
• 26:22
  there. So I want to look like a typical
• 26:24
  16 year-old Mark. I've been through different type
• 26:27
  of things in the street, so my demeanor kind of look rough.
• 26:30
  Then I had braids, but I had an afro out real puffed out.
• 26:36
  I'm sitting in the courtroom, the jewelry looking at me like,
• 26:38
  and they looking at the victims. The victims to me in the streets
• 26:43
  are robbery, is arriving, people get robbed all the time.
• 26:46
  Yeah, three or four times at gunpoint in 1415.
• 26:50
  So in my mind, it was no trauma to me because that's the world I
• 26:53
  come from victims. They don't come from that world.
• 26:56
  So it's day on the stand. Talking about what they went
• 26:59
  through, the jewelry looking to me, and I'm sitting here with
• 27:01
  this hard to manner as firewood made him.
• 27:04
  Say 30 and 30 because he looked like I didn't care, but that's
• 27:07
  how it is. When I talk to you, I go to
• 27:10
  juvenile detention and talk to those with kids.
• 27:12
  And I see the hardness on a face.
• 27:13
  Yeah. And I can imagine they go to
• 27:15
  trial, how, to jewelry going to look at them.
• 27:17
  It's like, you actually don't clearly?
• 27:19
  Yeah, because As we do career we just can't express it the way
• 27:23
  you want to. Yeah you misunderstood.
• 27:25
  Yeah. And you're not used to that
• 27:27
  because you're more or less taught that you have a certain
• 27:30
  look and you got the, you know, your street face on.
• 27:34
  That's shows no fear. Yeah.
• 27:36
  You won't have it on in the courtroom looking at.
• 27:39
  Yeah he looked at me like, do you care?
• 27:41
  What do you know, what, if you said you did?
• 27:44
  And I do care, is hurting me on the inside with these people
• 27:46
  went through, but I came to is no way out.
• 27:50
  An Express that well, like Bobby what.
• 27:53
  So you go through this trial and he got all these Witnesses and
• 27:56
  things that happen and the whole experience.
• 27:58
  I'm sure you know is not awful When you stand there and and you
• 28:07
  know, the comes back jury comes in, they say you're guilty, and
• 28:10
  then there's sentencing. I can't I can't even I just have
• 28:17
  to ask you like what went through your mind on because you
• 28:21
  were thinking ten years maybe if the worst at their worst.
• 28:25
  Yeah so what what he you here 241 years run consecutively,
• 28:31
  what and possibility of parole when you're 112 which is good
• 28:37
  luck with that. It was a I was numb.
• 28:43
  Like, I couldn't believe it. Like, partial Nathan say, it
• 28:46
  gives you a loss. 18 counts. Yeah, I'm like, man.
• 28:51
  I know I'm facing a lot of time, but they give you a 30 day
• 28:55
  period between sentencing and the verdict to sentencing,
• 29:00
  right? Yeah, so what I'm doing, I'm 30
• 29:01
  days. It was the same way lawyer, the
• 29:05
  pub defended, especially the image.
• 29:06
  Like, man. They ain't quit stressing, man.
• 29:08
  You people from to give you ten years at the worst, man, you'll
• 29:10
  be right out, man. You already got.
• 29:12
  You're Amy, but I do like seven, man.
• 29:14
  And then you get out, man ain't no big deal and you're
• 29:16
  communicating with your mom and siblings and stuff too.
• 29:20
  Yeah, yeah we just hope for the best.
• 29:24
  Yeah, we come from were depriving.
• 29:25
  We couldn't afford an attorney on no level.
• 29:28
  Yeah, so we just another when you do so I thought was going to
• 29:32
  be 10 or 15 or something. But the day of sentencing it was
• 29:37
  like a three-page thing where she just told me I was
• 29:41
  hard-headed. And I didn't, listen, let this
• 29:45
  be a lesson for other young people.
• 29:47
  She, she said, imma make you as an example.
• 29:49
  For other young people, listen to your parents and of us young
• 29:55
  people at the time. Juvenile crimes, at all time
• 29:58
  high. Hmm.
• 30:00
  This is the super predator. And I mean, this is a black
• 30:03
  female judge whose I think at that time is pretty new in the
• 30:08
  world of being a judge and I don't know that.
• 30:14
  I don't know that she was new being a judge, but I know that
• 30:19
  her views changed over time. So I don't know when I think
• 30:22
  she'd, she retired like in 2008? Yeah, it's time.
• 30:27
  She had prior to meet. She was new as an adulterous.
• 30:31
  She had been a juvenile. Okay, so she had experience in
• 30:34
  the juvenile court, which may be?
• 30:36
  No, I'm not not invited been a good thing because he had heard
• 30:41
  from her twice as Yeah. And so, she already knew of you?
• 30:45
  Yeah, my family name, because we stayed in trouble.
• 30:48
  So it's like the same guy in front of me and she was known
• 30:52
  for giving good deals out though.
• 30:55
  But it's some people, she didn't like me.
• 30:58
  She was the first black judge in the state of Missouri, right?
• 31:03
  82, I think she was appointed by Governor 82.
• 31:07
  That was governor. He's a Republican.
• 31:11
  Got his name. But Ashcroft, I was the one
• 31:14
  before him and I forgot his name.
• 31:19
  But whoever was governor he to he appointed as the first black
• 31:23
  circuit judges and state of Missouri.
• 31:25
  So she had been around a long time, she's Assistant Attorney
• 31:28
  General in Jeff City in the 70s. So she had been in this in this
• 31:32
  Arena long time and for me she I guess she was like this guy
• 31:37
  don't curse and because maybe my demeanor appeared.
• 31:41
  Way, but I did occur. But on the outside, it didn't
• 31:44
  show. And, and then like it.
• 31:46
  She said, she saw my family tried to give me plead guilty
• 31:51
  and I did, and I guess she felt there was no hope.
• 31:55
  So gave up on you. Yeah, I gave you a sentence as
• 31:59
  if she had given up on you. Yeah, her last any words was,
• 32:03
  you made your choice. You will live with your choice
• 32:06
  and you would die with your choice because Bobby boss, you
• 32:09
  were dying Department, correction.
• 32:11
  Man, and before I can say, some she said, do you understand
• 32:14
  that? And before I can say something
• 32:15
  again. She said, well, you don't go for
• 32:17
  parole and cheddar your 200. And 2035 said, nobody in this
• 32:23
  courtroom would be alive and a year of 2235 it's back.
• 32:28
  Then you got to do 85% of your senses.
• 32:30
  Yeah so I've had to do like two hundred twenty some years of
• 32:35
  that 30. Now what happened on the 112
• 32:37
  name is that at first I can go over Pro I was 10 I was too.
• 32:41
  And it will when Graham versus Florida, came out.
• 32:45
  If the case in 2012 US Supreme Court said of juvenile haven't
• 32:50
  killed. Anybody can have a life
• 32:51
  sentence, right? All other states start saying,
• 32:55
  okay, anything over 30 or 40 years, equals life without the
• 32:59
  juvenile was already said that? No, it doesn't equal life.
• 33:03
  Without they said, you don't have life without you got twenty
• 33:05
  forty one years which is not life without, right?
• 33:08
  And they slashed for parole purposes.
• 33:10
  They / 100 years old. So first, I can go up to a 212.
• 33:14
  When they case came out, I follow something courts and
• 33:16
  adored 112. Yes.
• 33:18
  It applies a hundred years off. Yeah, he's okay.
• 33:21
  Well, now you get to live to be a hundred twelve had the
• 33:24
  possibility of parole, and, you know, when they'd like, well
• 33:26
  legal filings is, who knows? He may be little, to be honest
• 33:30
  with ya. Anyway, I was no other stations
• 33:33
  moving towards that back since 2010.
• 33:35
  So it took 12 years from the root and ground rooting for me
• 33:39
  to get the relief. That Graham said I should go.
• 33:41
  So, let's go back into you, were you 18 at the time that you, the
• 33:46
  sentencing came down because a 16 is when your your crime
• 33:49
  happened but were you 18 at the time that you went out, I was 17
• 33:54
  when I went to trial and my birthday.
• 33:56
  Yeah, it happened. Right then and there and then I
• 33:59
  turn 18. Okay.
• 34:00
  So you're an 18 year old kid that would normally be in high
• 34:03
  school graduating and instead you're walking into I'm sure do
• 34:11
  You're not walking into one of the local prisons.
• 34:14
  You're walking into a high-security prison.
• 34:19
  How does how do you start navigating that world as an 18
• 34:22
  year old? It's all because as you see it
• 34:27
  now I got sentenced. I mean I got found guilty on the
• 34:32
  Friday. I got sentence like on that on a
• 34:35
  Monday next month, but the Friday, I called was prom and
• 34:40
  all that I called. So all my other High School
• 34:44
  prayers was going to a prom that night and you know, going to
• 34:48
  people looking to what college they go on to another list
• 34:51
  called home, I was that money. I was being shipped to prison.
• 34:55
  I got sent this on the Friday and I'll they ship you out next
• 34:58
  week on the first bus. So, I was numb.
• 35:02
  I mean, I can't even, I don't even know how I walked.
• 35:05
  You know, like I don't either felt like there was on my foot
• 35:10
  is that side difficult at The whole process was you cry to,
• 35:13
  you can't cry. No more, no matter how tough you
• 35:16
  is, when the judge said you're going to die and pray, when you
• 35:18
  get a died in prison, that's a lot to deal with, that's a dark.
• 35:21
  That's a dark path. Okay.
• 35:23
  Why not, why? Not boohoo my silently cry, but
• 35:26
  you gonna cry and I cried. But and it's a although I was
• 35:30
  trying to figure out like man and 16 your whole life gone.
• 35:33
  I didn't you what happened and that's when they made me reflect
• 35:36
  back on my life but thinking about it, it was those horse
• 35:40
  childhood. Burns that probably going
• 35:43
  through all that, it made me hard enough to endure prison or
• 35:48
  withstand know the hardship because I had already been poor
• 35:52
  had already been through probably and face Unthinkable
• 35:56
  things as child. So knowing as an adult, it was a
• 36:00
  whole different world because Prison was violent.
• 36:04
  And even though I'm not going to say 80% but 60% a guys you guys
• 36:08
  sexual predator 60%, that's what that was.
• 36:11
  The makeup of the prison then it's like if the makeup now is
• 36:16
  games or something back, then it was like homosexuality because
• 36:21
  you had 90%, I'm say, 95% of the prison wasn't going home because
• 36:28
  to be at a Maximum Security Prison you had to have 30 years
• 36:31
  or more so you got 30 or 40 and 50 years or more.
• 36:36
  Oh I meant easy escalate into a stabbing, that's how you handle.
• 36:41
  Was baked in this violence. Yeah.
• 36:43
  Because if the way that the weight of predators was some
• 36:47
  predators wouldn't homosexual, they wouldn't trying to rape
• 36:51
  people. They were just Predators.
• 36:53
  Like if you if you fight is do and you don't fight them like
• 36:57
  you're trying to hurt him or you kind of show a sign of weakness.
• 37:00
  Then them guys, first thing on come and steal all your stuff,
• 37:04
  I'll take it from me and then if the homosexual see them take it
• 37:08
  from you. You don't put up a fight and
• 37:10
  dues they don't they don't want, they just want to material
• 37:13
  wealth. Right.
• 37:14
  Then you got the other predators to sexual predators.
• 37:16
  They saw it. Ok, he didn't fight them back.
• 37:18
  Now, I'm gonna go try to rape me and that's that was the law of
• 37:21
  the land back. Then they'll read newspaper
• 37:24
  articles. They knew who was coming.
• 37:25
  They like all. We got this little young dude,
• 37:27
  coming up here. Yeah.
• 37:28
  And there's there's a big case they get covered.
• 37:30
  Yeah. They like you know a bit like I
• 37:32
  got them he's like no I bet you can't get a knob trying to get
• 37:35
  them and let's who see them first and then they are go to
• 37:39
  war about another dude yesterday.
• 37:41
  Stab each other about him trying to get somebody trying to get.
• 37:46
  Unfortunately I mean fortunately for me I didn't have those
• 37:49
  problems man. When I walk in prison those guys
• 37:51
  every Tuesday and Thursday the new guys the no Rivals pulled up
• 37:56
  so prison just it's not a fake seen in Shawshank Redemption.
• 38:02
  Yeah I'm short out the bus. Probably looking at her buddy.
• 38:04
  Yeah everybody pull up and like Who coming?
• 38:06
  That's actually what they do in prison.
• 38:08
  Yeah especially when I went in in the 90s, right?
• 38:11
  They would wait on the bus, but it would be the same type of
• 38:14
  best to hear this in a movie like, man, he's gonna break.
• 38:16
  I'm gonna get him. Yeah, and it wasn't like the
• 38:20
  movie, though. These guys are stab each other
• 38:22
  about their new arrival, who won't get them first, but I got
• 38:26
  off the bus my whole Shelly unfortunate for him two or three
• 38:31
  weeks later, walking around with makeup on and lipstick because
• 38:34
  they turned them out, right? It was something about my
• 38:38
  demeanor or something that you know, guy tried to pass As we
• 38:41
  know. No, I'm not because I wouldn't
• 38:43
  know what my mind made up and I got nothing to lose.
• 38:46
  So, yeah, you don't life. Yeah, you look at me wrong.
• 38:49
  I'm trying to kill you because you won't try to kill me.
• 38:52
  Because back then when you fight, even a fistfight, you
• 38:56
  going on sales, those guys wouldn't just fighting you a
• 38:59
  regular fight. It's like, it's all his anger
• 39:02
  coming out on you. Yeah.
• 39:04
  Like, man, this, it was about a basketball game, but yeah, you
• 39:07
  see death in his eyes. It's like if I don't fight this
• 39:10
  guy with the Same type of aggression.
• 39:12
  He got them get killed in this exactly.
• 39:14
  Because if you fall some dudes on keeps dumping you tell, maybe
• 39:18
  somebody come and get him off you all because we are locked
• 39:20
  down. They sell.
• 39:23
  Everybody got to keep moving on and can't.
• 39:25
  Nobody keep looking in this area because the goal is to see.
• 39:27
  I looking so we are fighting in her as you want him and
• 39:32
  hopefully one of y'all come out on the winning end but that's
• 39:35
  how dangerous it was. And then you don't know if this
• 39:36
  guy got a knife and then it was just a gladiator school and I
• 39:40
  walked I lived through that. All because of had to add to
• 39:43
  survive. He not only just lived through
• 39:45
  it for a week or a month or a year.
• 39:48
  You lived through for 27 years that's almost three decades and
• 39:53
  I'm curious like you some point and I can't.
• 39:57
  That's why I'm interested to talk to you about your time in
• 40:00
  prison because it doesn't, you know, things I've read and
• 40:04
  things that, you know, you talk a little bit about that.
• 40:07
  What we're was, what changed in your world will You went like,
• 40:12
  really into reading and poetry and writing and what was going
• 40:17
  on. How did that all?
• 40:18
  Come about. Yeah, books, always dharan
• 40:21
  prison. Some guys really just a Pastime,
• 40:24
  right? But when I went to prison I was
• 40:28
  I didn't read. I stayed how they ran a yard
• 40:33
  Garden gang rides and that's how we imprison.
• 40:36
  You got a lot. When do we had all that time?
• 40:39
  They were never going home. If it is it was no violence
• 40:42
  going on is get bored. Yeah, towards right time.
• 40:45
  Man is dead around yourself to kick someone off man.
• 40:48
  Yeah, and they're just, you know, had to tell you something
• 40:51
  to keep the excitement going and then we get locked down and then
• 40:55
  we get back out. It seems like the games just
• 40:57
  recycle. Yeah, and it's just a complete
• 40:59
  man. That's right.
• 41:01
  And I was like looking around like, man.
• 41:02
  This can't be it, man. It got to be more to life than
• 41:04
  this, right? How long, how long do you think
• 41:06
  you'd been in there? When you started thinking that?
• 41:09
  I mean, the back of my mouth. I thought that When I first went
• 41:11
  in, but now this I'm in somebody else world.
• 41:14
  Yeah, this is a world and the world is how you handle things
• 41:17
  as violence, right? You know, you had the law
• 41:20
  clerks, you had them, guys. They had their own the world,
• 41:23
  right? He was highly respected.
• 41:25
  Got the religious guys over here, and I looked at them as
• 41:27
  foreign, I'm looking at him. Like, I ain't going to be with
• 41:30
  Lizzy and I ain't gonna never do that type of stuff.
• 41:33
  And it's lost of it's like, how can I know law?
• 41:35
  How I ain't graduated, right? I'm brother Wyoming.
• 41:39
  Yeah, so it's no way. Anyway, I'm finding my way
• 41:42
  daily. I'm getting high every day.
• 41:45
  This is how I get away. Marijuana.
• 41:46
  Your Escape eventually though that start working and I'm like,
• 41:51
  maybe it was due to handle good. We'd let me go get it from
• 41:53
  somebody else and eventually it just stopped working.
• 41:56
  I couldn't get home. We do more.
• 41:57
  That's one, the books came. I'm reading everything,
• 42:02
  philosophy, science, anything. Any discipline Arthur.
• 42:05
  I'm reading it constantly day and night, right?
• 42:08
  But by then, by that time, being I Establish myself in prison
• 42:14
  because one thing about prison, they respect to things more than
• 42:17
  anything violence and knowledge. Right.
• 42:20
  The guy with knowledge such a good point that is exactly true.
• 42:23
  Oh yeah, violence and knowledge Guy where knowledge he needed to
• 42:27
  file a lawsuit. He goes to the hole.
• 42:30
  He needs. You need him to follow your
• 42:31
  divorce papers. You need him to file a motion or
• 42:34
  something. Yeah.
• 42:35
  Or just help you read some guys on.
• 42:38
  Yeah, if you got is Each of a business plan or whatever those
• 42:43
  things are. Yeah.
• 42:44
  Yeah. He and it took discipline him to
• 42:45
  get that knowledge and prisons based around disciplines, right?
• 42:49
  Everything is structured around discipline and those guys are
• 42:52
  the most disciplined guys. There is especially the
• 42:54
  religious converts. The guys are pray.
• 42:56
  Five times a day. The guys, this is served a
• 42:59
  religion, a more respected to because it takes a lot of
• 43:03
  discipline to get to that level or knowledge.
• 43:05
  So they even the violin guys, respect those type of guys,
• 43:08
  right? And I saw that and I was like,
• 43:11
  Well, this violence. Oh, I can do that.
• 43:14
  But that's not the these guys over here.
• 43:16
  Got this knowledge. These day trying to go home.
• 43:18
  You say trying to find a self so I gravitated towards them,
• 43:21
  right? But by me being a natural loner,
• 43:25
  I was on my own, I didn't follow up on it.
• 43:27
  Nobody, I just read books in it when I read it gave me a natural
• 43:31
  hat, man. I was really literally on the
• 43:33
  intellectual intoxication. I was high on the whole
• 43:35
  different. Yeah, plane.
• 43:37
  And I enjoy that. I, so I read books to stay in
• 43:40
  this, and that I am Toxication. Yeah, but it was a holder
• 43:43
  because I wasn't going home, right?
• 43:45
  So I'm like man it's something you got to be bigger than this
• 43:48
  man because I'm going to lose it on, ain't gonna lose it.
• 43:52
  And this time I'm reading books and I'm read, spiritual books,
• 43:57
  and Islam was a, you know, I'll listen I'm is is a population
• 44:01
  and really and imprison. But for us it wasn't, we looking
• 44:04
  at them dudes like and we don't want to hurt that, man.
• 44:07
  I don't come over here with me trying to hit on the bottom of
• 44:09
  religion. So, We stayed away from them
• 44:12
  guys, basically. But by me reading books, I had
• 44:15
  to find God because I couldn't do it alone man.
• 44:19
  I needed something bigger than me and that was Faith, right?
• 44:24
  Because I wouldn't go home. They deny my last appeal.
• 44:28
  In the process, my mother she was 42 years old diagnosed with
• 44:33
  cancer in June I mean the September, that's how and then
• 44:38
  she died, two or three months later.
• 44:41
  Because B, I need, I know, she's already full-blown with our
• 44:45
  dive. I mean, with a cancer, lung,
• 44:48
  cancer, and breast cancer. So, by her dying at their young
• 44:53
  age. I can't imagine that happening
• 44:56
  to you while you're in. Yeah, man, I was 21.
• 44:59
  She was 42 and it was, this is what she gone.
• 45:03
  What is the hold on to you? She was everything.
• 45:05
  Yeah. So but at the time, that's when
• 45:08
  I found God at the exact same time as she passed is when I
• 45:12
  found God and it had a not did that then I lost it.
• 45:16
  I went crazy. I wouldn't have made it but at
• 45:19
  the time I found the spiritual anchor and that led me through
• 45:22
  that process. So when she died I just wanted
• 45:25
  to hold onto and I read all all her Letters Daily.
• 45:29
  I was like, man, I got to write this story.
• 45:31
  My got a, I want the world to know who she was and it used
• 45:35
  this as a lesson. Listen to tell kids, listen to
• 45:37
  their mother, don't take their mothers to what I took my mother
• 45:40
  to. So I wrote it the book called
• 45:42
  their mom loves my first book. And then I thought I wrote that
• 45:46
  book when he wrote the book, I know one of the things that that
• 45:50
  talks about that that's one thing you wanted to take with
• 45:53
  you when you were released. Did you type on that typewriter
• 45:57
  these books? Yet at that time I tried it was
• 46:00
  also that was my to of, to try to get out of prison.
• 46:02
  I had to type letters. Yeah, I typed all my legal
• 46:05
  motions. On that type of typewriter, I
• 46:08
  had to buy. It was the best investment
• 46:09
  fridge. That's the only thing I took
• 46:10
  home and I left 20 years, I thought.
• 46:13
  Yeah, are 22 years. I bought about the tie rod in
• 46:16
  2000 and I that was better to work.
• 46:20
  Yeah, put it to work. I type my books on.
• 46:21
  It took a lot of typing, I would wake up at 7:00 in the morning,
• 46:25
  type all we ate at night. So what I'm interested though?
• 46:29
  What happened? Like you start reading and get
• 46:32
  into this. You find your spiritual side.
• 46:36
  You decide to write a book about your mom, which is, I can't wait
• 46:40
  to read it, but and the other cool thing about your books is
• 46:44
  you've got artwork, that is from guys, that were a guy in prison,
• 46:50
  your cover work, which is really cool, but that did you just
• 46:55
  decide? Hey Bobby.
• 46:58
  I'm going to write a book or not.
• 47:00
  I was the first one he passed. I just you start writing.
• 47:03
  Yeah, I had already read hundreds of books and, and
• 47:05
  right. I'm like, man, you can write you
• 47:07
  got a story to tell to write her story first?
• 47:10
  Yeah. But it's also a story to kids
• 47:13
  and mothers like even though we don't show you how we do
• 47:16
  understand we just we just being rebellious.
• 47:19
  So it's a two-sided book and then the next book was a
• 47:22
  generation. Misunderstood I had read a lot
• 47:26
  of Sociology type of books and I was like, people always, don't
• 47:29
  understand kids, white kids or violent?
• 47:32
  Why kids are doing what they doing?
• 47:34
  I'm like, I got to write about that.
• 47:36
  That. So, I wrote that book
• 47:37
  generation, misunderstood Generation X, just telling
• 47:41
  people, I teams end up involving a self and drugs and guns.
• 47:46
  What's so cool about you writing?
• 47:47
  Those books is your, a great voice because you lived it.
• 47:50
  Well, yeah, you know, is you're not, you didn't just read about
• 47:54
  it and think, hey, that would be a good topic to talk about.
• 47:57
  You actually experienced it in real time and you were writing
• 48:02
  that while you were in prison, but to me that's like some of
• 48:05
  the best things. Can happen is that somebody who
• 48:07
  experiences a trauma like you have in a crisis like you have
• 48:11
  and you have a voice that you understand that that can affect
• 48:15
  other people and you go out and talk to those kids and tell
• 48:19
  them. Listen, hey, you don't look like
• 48:20
  that. You, you know, you can't put
• 48:22
  that face on. You got it.
• 48:24
  You know, you got to be more really going to be empathetic
• 48:26
  all those different things. That means so much more coming
• 48:28
  from Bobby than some guy that showed up.
• 48:31
  That's got a master's degree that thinks he's, you know,
• 48:34
  understood. You know how to figure Figure
• 48:36
  everybody out because we automatically built against
• 48:40
  those people. Yeah, glutathione attorney.
• 48:42
  Sure. Number one thing, it's like you
• 48:45
  never been through what I've been through.
• 48:48
  You never felt this type of thing but now I know you ain't
• 48:53
  got to go to none to know occur from some, right?
• 48:56
  But back then I didn't and I young mind it's just like when I
• 48:59
  talk to those little dudes right now, today I go to the juvenile
• 49:02
  detention center, every Thursday I teach writing Workshop.
• 49:06
  Cops when they get out of taking the job interviews.
• 49:09
  I'm entering when they get out and what a in juvenile and I'm
• 49:12
  looking at some of them. That's got first-degree
• 49:14
  second-degree murder and I'm looking at him, they, I'm like
• 49:17
  me. You really don't realize what
• 49:18
  you could be doing. Now, what you face in the time
• 49:21
  you face? Yeah.
• 49:22
  Talking about what you finna, get out and do this.
• 49:23
  Like, I mean, he talking like a man when I get out next month or
• 49:27
  yeah, man, they got you almost on camera during this murder how
• 49:30
  you take you from to get out but now young man, we don't even
• 49:33
  realize don't fuck her then. But at that age, when I had a
• 49:40
  lost her and I was doing all the reading, I wanted to just put
• 49:43
  those other books down and writing for him.
• 49:46
  And I went to a Sigil lat. I went to solitary confinement
• 49:49
  lot because I was rebellious. Yeah.
• 49:51
  And while I was down, I was forced to write while you're in
• 49:54
  solitary ten poems a day. Yeah, I got nine books of poems
• 49:59
  and 69 fiction books, I just kept writing over the years a
• 50:03
  lot Bobby. That's a lot.
• 50:06
  It's a lot of right man. Oh yeah, I just wanted the time
• 50:09
  to be meaningful but I guess that was your, that became your
• 50:12
  escape and because everybody's got to have, you know, everybody
• 50:16
  talks about a hustle in prison or how do you get by in prison.
• 50:19
  But you actually need to find a way that you can do your time in
• 50:22
  prison, you know, some guys, get into their prison jobs, you
• 50:26
  know, there's there's all kinds of different ways, but that
• 50:27
  sounds like, that's how you did your time, you get you once you
• 50:30
  got to that part of your journey.
• 50:32
  That's how you did your time. Oh yeah, it was a costly.
• 50:35
  Reading and writing, right? Just to me, I didn't watch TV.
• 50:39
  Not that. I was averse to TV his.
• 50:42
  I got ten bucks. I got you're busy.
• 50:44
  You're busy right. And well how did it come about
• 50:48
  that? And I guess the question I guess
• 50:52
  I should ask is, did you start feeling like that?
• 50:55
  Something was shifting in the world of the on the law and the
• 51:00
  courts that you might have a shot?
• 51:03
  Yeah, as I see it in 2010, the US Supreme Court stated, he was
• 51:08
  under 18 and you didn't kill nobody, you shouldn't have a
• 51:12
  life sentence. But as soon as I found out and
• 51:17
  filed that Missouri said it, don't apply.
• 51:19
  So that most a kilt a lot of dudes, hope right?
• 51:23
  And for me though, I just always had hope like had I not had
• 51:27
  hope. I was going to change one with
• 51:29
  the other probably it could have been for the worst of the better
• 51:32
  once I changed for the better. I had just had hope like
• 51:35
  something on give one day. Just like how did you and the
• 51:38
  judge come to play to get to back in touch with each other?
• 51:43
  And I was wondering what happened was when the US Supreme
• 51:46
  Court has accepted another case in 16.
• 51:50
  Miller versus Alabama and that made the Press.
• 51:53
  Look at all the research, all the juveniles, where life
• 51:57
  without and then somehow they my name came up.
• 52:00
  It was like okay this guy got two hundred forty, one years, he
• 52:04
  got more time than all other juveniles because the
• 52:07
  first-degree murder guys, they even the guys who got
• 52:09
  premeditated murder, who was kids, they've passed a law
• 52:13
  allowing them to go for pro after 30 years or something 25
• 52:17
  years. And he's like, well, what about
• 52:18
  this other guy who, Don't even have him and he's like, well,
• 52:21
  he's stuck, he's falls into the gap of do return.
• 52:24
  Yeah. And you need to research like he
• 52:26
  got more tiny, all other juveniles in the state, he
• 52:30
  didn't kill nobody. And then it went National.
• 52:32
  Then it went International and in the Press local, National and
• 52:38
  international right contact. Evelyn Baker, but the BBC got
• 52:42
  involved, which was that did that light the fire for a lot of
• 52:48
  the rest because I I know that I kept trying to remember the
• 52:51
  timeline would between the BBC, the Supreme Court, those
• 52:57
  different things that we're going on.
• 52:58
  You your case or your name kept rising to the top of what was
• 53:03
  going on and then Missouri got somewhat the heat.
• 53:07
  I thought it was. I wouldn't it easy, but I
• 53:09
  thought that there was there was something interesting that
• 53:10
  happened because the the first law they were trying to pass,
• 53:15
  that didn't get make it to but then you didn't know that.
• 53:18
  I think an amendment I've been attached and that past I don't
• 53:22
  even I think you were confused that the whole thing didn't
• 53:24
  happen and you found out later that you had the opportunity to
• 53:27
  be paroled. Is that right?
• 53:29
  Yes. Correct that's correct the first
• 53:32
  time. Yeah the fired I didn't like you
• 53:35
  said the second time or when the fire took off.
• 53:38
  Yeah. That was an 18 the right and it
• 53:40
  took four years of advocacy. Yeah, the judge came back.
• 53:46
  My lawyers and her two connected and she started coming to see me
• 53:49
  and said, A mistake that how wide will how Wild was that?
• 53:53
  Because I mean, the other part of this story is that she's on
• 53:56
  the other side of that fence, when you get released and you
• 53:58
  hug her, who's put you in prison for that 241 year sentence?
• 54:04
  What was it? Like communicating with her on a
• 54:06
  one-on-one basis? Once you guys connected the,
• 54:09
  she's on your side, advocating for your release.
• 54:13
  You never in my wildest dreams, I have a think that she will
• 54:15
  come back. I never thought I would hear
• 54:18
  from her again, period. I guess she meant what she said.
• 54:22
  When she told me I would die in prison.
• 54:25
  That was a blessing. It was a, it was like a another
• 54:30
  numb feeling. When I found out that she came
• 54:33
  back and she had went to press with it.
• 54:36
  Like I'm right Stakes as that, never happens in from justice
• 54:40
  system that much. So, that was a profound
• 54:43
  experience. And right now today up until
• 54:46
  almost like a movie. Bobby that, you know, you've got
• 54:49
  this. This judge that has experienced
• 54:52
  you two or three times, and then says, I've given up on him, I'm
• 54:56
  done with him. I'm putting him in forever.
• 54:58
  I'm going to put him in a sentence that no one can get him
• 55:00
  out of. And then she goes through this
• 55:04
  metamorphosis of reading, understanding and learning that
• 55:09
  the brain develops differently for somebody who's teenagers to
• 55:14
  whatever age of 22, 23, whatever that is how it matures.
• 55:18
  And then she becomes an advocate for you and then now you guys at
• 55:23
  some point in the, you know, 2000, whatever that is and the
• 55:27
  teens start locking on. Arms and trying to fight what
• 55:33
  had been put in place, which I just think that's fascinating.
• 55:38
  Oh yes. A blessing blessing because I
• 55:42
  was trying to get myself out of prison.
• 55:43
  I didn't have a known that Allah will have to be passed.
• 55:46
  Yeah, taking me out of prison. So all that work, that's for
• 55:50
  anybody who will listen to man, hard work, you don't never see
• 55:53
  the results immediately, but that's you know.
• 55:55
  How the saying that hard work pays off its a true saying
• 55:58
  because we just talking about a living testimony.
• 56:01
  Of guy who hard work paid off because there's a lot of work
• 56:05
  behind the scenes. I wrote hundreds of letters
• 56:07
  every week to different organizations, state
• 56:10
  representatives churches, every week.
• 56:12
  I did this. I don't want to go away from
• 56:14
  that either because are, I don't want to slide over that because
• 56:17
  one of the things that that you read about, you wrote letters to
• 56:21
  everybody and and you never get because, you know, there's so
• 56:24
  many knows that happen in that sequence of things and you just
• 56:28
  kept with it, even to the point when you got into that read,
• 56:31
  Being you, you wanted to fill the prison up with that type of
• 56:36
  knowledge, and experience and, and intoxication that you were
• 56:39
  having and you connected with the libraries.
• 56:42
  And they started. It's almost like the movie was
• 56:44
  Shawshank. You built a library from the
• 56:47
  library and they're still advocating for you.
• 56:51
  Oh yeah, that was that's the power read.
• 56:54
  Man. I actually wrote the library
• 56:56
  before I had any books published, and I told him that
• 56:59
  when I get out, I want to do book signings.
• 57:02
  I have no books on the time. I bushes wrote they wouldn't
• 57:05
  publish. Yeah, I love that.
• 57:07
  And passionate letter made the director of the library.
• 57:10
  Try to reach out to the DLC to get a library program started.
• 57:14
  And she got rebuffed. But what she did was went to
• 57:17
  Clayton the county jail in St. Louis, Nate.
• 57:19
  And I got it. She started a GED program.
• 57:22
  They gave they given Library cause when they get out Hobbs
• 57:25
  and sister and she was able to start all this and she said it
• 57:28
  all started with a letter for me, right?
• 57:30
  Yeah. So you can never know the power
• 57:33
  wherever another tire and and not and the fact that you just
• 57:37
  kept writing letters and I, you know, 27 years is a long time to
• 57:41
  live in an environment where you have to look over your shoulder.
• 57:44
  Every day, every minute that something might occur.
• 57:49
  Did you get, did you get used to the Rhythm and flow of This.
• 57:55
  And I'm sure that you became I can just tell by the way that
• 57:58
  you handle yourself a respected person and in that environment
• 58:03
  was it just you created your own little world in there.
• 58:06
  I'm typing, I'm reading, I've got my car people that I hang
• 58:10
  with and you just did decade after decade of that type.
• 58:16
  Oh yeah, I'll be. Yeah, I had to because in
• 58:19
  prison, I grew my short teeth, not to be a predator but the
• 58:22
  bike if the shorts bit or the bye.
• 58:24
  Back, right? You got to imprison and I had
• 58:28
  been through it. I had, you know, hundreds of
• 58:30
  fights and been involved in all type of violence or whatever it
• 58:34
  was in prison, I did it. I was involved in all type of
• 58:37
  violence, the violence prison can be.
• 58:40
  I was involved in all that and guys knew who I was and you
• 58:44
  know, so it was like dude over there reading and writing are
• 58:47
  you always typing man. Don't bother if you do then he
• 58:52
  might do something to you, he's alone.
• 58:54
  Crazy. Don't interrupt him when he's
• 58:56
  typing doing read all day. When those results came, those
• 59:11
  same guys that come back like a memory, the book you told me
• 59:14
  about two years ago. Yeah.
• 59:15
  Anything to let you all. Can't believe it with yours.
• 59:17
  Now, as they was really felt for you.
• 59:20
  Yeah. People think that people hate
• 59:22
  and present guys was literally Watch me grow up in there.
• 59:25
  Yeah, so when they had bill passed, I didn't even know about
• 59:28
  the amendment because I didn't think it was going to pass,
• 59:31
  right? Literally because laws never
• 59:33
  pass it and Missouri to let violent offenders.
• 59:37
  All right? It may do some for a non-violent
• 59:40
  offender and your age that's why I tell kids, your age can be
• 59:44
  used against you right there silly for you.
• 59:46
  So what did you get notified that that they installed in
• 59:51
  those get emails on our tablets? It's time as we can get emails
• 59:55
  but not access to the internet but a closed-circuit email,
• 59:58
  right? Which by the way, Bobby, this
• 1:00:01
  particular podcast goes into, 275 prisons now and then and
• 1:00:06
  still be able to hear your voice on there.
• 1:00:09
  That's good. They gave all those tablets.
• 1:00:12
  Yeah man and it gave us all hope though.
• 1:00:14
  I got the email and see if the amendment passed.
• 1:00:18
  And I read the amendment like Manny.
• 1:00:20
  This amendment been floating around for months and it never
• 1:00:23
  went nowhere. And at the And the session that
• 1:00:25
  never happened right happen. At the end of session.
• 1:00:27
  Very end of the session. I'm like, man, and they like,
• 1:00:29
  all they got two or three days and then it was a lot of
• 1:00:32
  back-and-forth. Take this part out.
• 1:00:34
  Yeah. Put that part in and actually
• 1:00:37
  got there. And they gave us all hope
• 1:00:40
  because we sink. We all sing, We, because I'm
• 1:00:44
  them. Yeah, we sent this guy fighting.
• 1:00:47
  We seen them deny everything, but he kept going and now not
• 1:00:51
  only do we got a chance to get out.
• 1:00:53
  It's so many other units in Spired, you opened up a door for
• 1:00:55
  for so many people? Oh yeah, they change the law.
• 1:00:59
  Yeah, no, it's huge, tell me Bobby.
• 1:01:03
  What? 27 years?
• 1:01:07
  They, you know, I was reading the thing.
• 1:01:09
  You didn't believe it until it said released on your cell, you
• 1:01:12
  know, you I know you packed up everything but that moment
• 1:01:16
  didn't feel, right? And that it was real until you
• 1:01:19
  saw released on yourself walking out.
• 1:01:23
  Of prison walk us out there with with you.
• 1:01:28
  First of all like that day. That morning is you saying I
• 1:01:33
  couldn't sleep, I stayed up, you know, I probably slept an hour
• 1:01:35
  with that but just just seeing the letters on the board.
• 1:01:40
  Yeah, well, you know, like every they put sale moves everybody
• 1:01:45
  got to go. Look at it again.
• 1:01:46
  I see a moves on the thing every morning.
• 1:01:48
  And what my said was that while I was at it said released, I'm
• 1:01:52
  like man, it just That's real. It was like music.
• 1:01:55
  Like music knows his reading those words.
• 1:01:57
  Like least. That's when the sat down at the
• 1:02:00
  table and everybody came in there and saying their goodbyes
• 1:02:03
  and like no like man you gon man you made it, like you said,
• 1:02:08
  you've grown up with them. Oh yeah, I had I had been are
• 1:02:10
  literally all you would have been what 40?
• 1:02:13
  What when you get released 43, 43 years old, went in at 18,
• 1:02:17
  some guys was there when I was there when I came and saw me
• 1:02:21
  walk out that day. Is like a like man you getting
• 1:02:25
  out and then I don't know yet, just all these other guys got
• 1:02:28
  out days behind because of you. Yeah, and it was like, that's a
• 1:02:31
  blessing. Now, what sort of life is we got
• 1:02:34
  to do what you was referring to get out to because we from the
• 1:02:37
  work to get there. Yeah, it becomes inspiration
• 1:02:39
  thing, right? Because he did is, I can do it.
• 1:02:42
  We read about a guy to another state, just eat this in Missouri
• 1:02:45
  because in Missouri that never was happening like that.
• 1:02:48
  And it's like, it'll make guys, just want to give up.
• 1:02:51
  But now we just hit but I want eyes out.
• 1:02:53
  Fighting to get out. Yeah.
• 1:02:54
  Hope when I got there last year other people.
• 1:02:57
  Some people like man why would they give you your and he
• 1:03:00
  letting you out but I chose I said mom uses last year as a
• 1:03:05
  year of service, I got my date. Let me help these other dudes
• 1:03:08
  can take days. So I started like that was
• 1:03:12
  interesting too. I thought that that was you got
• 1:03:15
  that parole and but it took a whole year for you to get out.
• 1:03:18
  Once the that was, why did that takes care of?
• 1:03:22
  They said it. Since I was never getting out at
• 1:03:25
  first, I needed to take classes and Q accumulate to the fact
• 1:03:30
  that I was getting out. Okay.
• 1:03:31
  It's like don't we just this guy would never getting out all the
• 1:03:34
  re-entry stuff? Yeah let's go through all this
• 1:03:37
  stuff to get herself ready family, you re a strange held
• 1:03:40
  event. Are you ready?
• 1:03:42
  Exactly? Your was a long.
• 1:03:44
  Oh man, that would have been the longest year ever that you did
• 1:03:46
  27. I can't imagine that you're
• 1:03:48
  that, you know, that you're going to be released so long,
• 1:03:50
  your and prison. The way it is is guys, was that
• 1:03:53
  Getting high. They are dropped dirty in there.
• 1:03:56
  Take the out dates. Yeah.
• 1:03:57
  All you get into too many fights they going to take you out.
• 1:03:59
  Yeah, so that happens in any of these prisons and I think
• 1:04:02
  there's a couple of reasons for that though Bobby.
• 1:04:04
  I think that guys the longer they're in the more familiar
• 1:04:10
  that world becomes and the more unfamiliar Freedom becomes and I
• 1:04:15
  think that they sell sabotage themselves to stay in because I
• 1:04:19
  think someone's don't. All right.
• 1:04:21
  It's like me. I was at a Maximum Security
• 1:04:24
  Prison for 26 years. Yeah.
• 1:04:26
  Then I go to a minimum prison. What do these guys like to play
• 1:04:29
  all this whole different? Yeah, so they'll do something to
• 1:04:31
  them. He's just playing.
• 1:04:32
  But the five, the max you come from with what?
• 1:04:36
  Dude, is enough to get them really hurt.
• 1:04:37
  Ya and then, so if you got that same mentality, you end up
• 1:04:41
  hurting somebody lose, you all day.
• 1:04:42
  Oh, it's you can be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
• 1:04:45
  One time, definitely can be at the wrong place wrong, time in
• 1:04:48
  prison and you'll say, oh that you only see a, one of my
• 1:04:50
  Sally's had was getting high to go.
• 1:04:53
  I see. The walk back and then came back
• 1:04:55
  and took down the sill. They actually found 100 postage
• 1:04:59
  stamps and I told you I write hundreds of letters.
• 1:05:01
  Yeah, even when I got out there, I continued writing letters, you
• 1:05:04
  know, continued advocacy, right. And they found Hunter stamps and
• 1:05:09
  they tested the stamps and said they test positive for K2
• 1:05:12
  residue and sent me and my cellie to the whole now.
• 1:05:16
  It's up to him to take the weight.
• 1:05:18
  Yeah but it ain't he is it's my stamps.
• 1:05:20
  They knew he was getting high but they could have took My day
• 1:05:23
  for that, it would have been bad.
• 1:05:25
  Yeah. But then, when they tested at
• 1:05:27
  the real lab, then they said, okay, we made a mistake.
• 1:05:30
  It was the sticky stuff off the stamp.
• 1:05:32
  So let him out. Wow, they could have kept me in
• 1:05:34
  prison, though, for you could have lost it.
• 1:05:37
  Yeah, I could have been this High easy.
• 1:05:38
  It is just because you're selling smoking weed, but this
• 1:05:42
  is that's a lot to think about all on himself.
• 1:05:44
  And yeah, this is what goes on in prison.
• 1:05:46
  Tell me about like when you walk out that day and you got your
• 1:05:51
  stuff. Yeah.
• 1:05:52
  Because I I can't imagine, I don't know who always around
• 1:05:55
  there, but I do know. The judge was there.
• 1:05:57
  What was that? Like a man going back to that
• 1:05:59
  day, like I said, I saw my name release.
• 1:06:02
  It was time, it was like hurry up, man.
• 1:06:04
  It's, you know, that day is saying that the booking process
• 1:06:07
  take all day, but finally, it was 8:00 in the morning.
• 1:06:10
  I had been out there since 4:00 in the morning weight and 8:00.
• 1:06:14
  I go, I got a blue three-piece suit.
• 1:06:16
  I told my family. I want to walk out of the suit.
• 1:06:18
  Yeah. And the media asked me, why?
• 1:06:20
  And I said because it represents the new businesses I am, it's
• 1:06:24
  not a fashion statement, a new business of new life up in the
• 1:06:27
  yeah, and put on that suit felt like a million dollars.
• 1:06:33
  I can't believe I'm walking out of prison in the suit and then,
• 1:06:35
  you know, when I stepped out to camera /.
• 1:06:37
  So yeah, it's weird to to put your clothes on in prison when
• 1:06:41
  everybody else has the other clothes on.
• 1:06:42
  Yeah. And if and I'm shaking hands
• 1:06:44
  with the suit on. Yeah.
• 1:06:45
  And I'm leaving them guys. They had me see me go.
• 1:06:47
  But just like yeah you know like and I'm leaving and I get Out
• 1:06:53
  there in the parking lot and you know, the judges the first
• 1:06:56
  person that they, you know, like look it's full circle and then
• 1:07:01
  to whatever she was experiencing about me being in.
• 1:07:04
  And I was like, let us lift that burden off her.
• 1:07:07
  Yeah and you know she's the first person operation I walked
• 1:07:10
  out of her. Then my lawyers reserve.
• 1:07:13
  My family had on hoods Church to see if Bobby is free and it was
• 1:07:19
  a beautiful experience that day was sunny cloudy.
• 1:07:23
  And it was beautiful. Yeah no and it was it was
• 1:07:26
  covered a lot of media coverage to you walking out of there are
• 1:07:31
  you know it was a blessing I'm still dumbfounded about that day
• 1:07:35
  wasn't that long ago. You know let's talk about what's
• 1:07:39
  going on with you now because you know I know that you're
• 1:07:41
  doing this nonprofit. I know you're getting you're
• 1:07:46
  doing a biography book to tell me what's going on with you now
• 1:07:48
  because I can't and I kind of like to know what your world I
• 1:07:52
  don't want of the things you talked about was is that you
• 1:07:54
  got, it's a Taco Bell and ate it and because of the motion and
• 1:07:59
  the movement, can you explain that whole thing you getting out
• 1:08:02
  and moving? It was only down we left the
• 1:08:06
  prison went to the capital of the state and I was talking
• 1:08:10
  about the school to prison Pipeline and cost Mash
• 1:08:14
  Corporation and how the system to change their to Cetera.
• 1:08:19
  My lawyers just talking about that.
• 1:08:20
  I was just talking about how grateful I was.
• 1:08:22
  To be out how I'm glad her Mentor Youth and all the things
• 1:08:26
  I'm doing. Now, the things you're doing
• 1:08:27
  now. Yeah, it's like this.
• 1:08:29
  Welcome to go do and then, you know, of course, the big Mill we
• 1:08:33
  go, that's the celebration, let's go eat.
• 1:08:36
  So we go, they set up a table for 18 order of everything in
• 1:08:40
  the restaurant heat on the way. So we got in the car, I got my
• 1:08:44
  sister called, and when she got about 30 miles down the road, I
• 1:08:49
  told her to pull over and then come up, then I jump back in the
• 1:08:52
  truck. And we rode off and then the
• 1:08:54
  second time, I felt it coming up and it actually did come up.
• 1:08:58
  So that was they told the lawyers told her that she should
• 1:09:02
  have a plastic bag in the car because I was going to mention.
• 1:09:05
  Yeah. And I'm like - it's called
• 1:09:08
  motion sickness that when you haven't been in the car that
• 1:09:10
  long and then you ride, you can have motion sickness and I threw
• 1:09:14
  up whole meal. And then when I went to my
• 1:09:17
  sister's house at night, like 400 people came over there cause
• 1:09:20
  lined up around the block family.
• 1:09:22
  The strands. It came to see me, man.
• 1:09:25
  Like yeah, like, yeah, she got out like it.
• 1:09:28
  Don't happen too much had to be wild too.
• 1:09:30
  Because a lot of people you were seeing were a lot older.
• 1:09:33
  Oh yeah. We all was.
• 1:09:34
  But he said, I looked the same and it was beautiful man.
• 1:09:38
  Just seeing people I hadn't seen in 40 some years.
• 1:09:41
  What do you think, like, your bigoted?
• 1:09:43
  What, what do you think that was the biggest change getting out
• 1:09:45
  when you see the world out and moving and like the biggest
• 1:09:49
  change, knows how Wow, everybody.
• 1:09:53
  The key is is taller than me. Yeah, okey is I use baby.
• 1:09:57
  She had kids. That was taller.
• 1:09:59
  That's being weird. It was wearing in things like
• 1:10:02
  Alexis, you know, people talking to tell me this like man, what
• 1:10:07
  is that man? Hey look dude over there talking
• 1:10:10
  to her on the phone. Yeah I'll do water fountains,
• 1:10:21
  did you know? Comes out, it's, you know, it's
• 1:10:24
  scary, you know, like the new technology, that's the most
• 1:10:29
  coaches shouting thing, out of the spirits.
• 1:10:30
  And then when I go to the juveniles, do I tell the kids
• 1:10:35
  man, you can do anything you want to just put your mind to
• 1:10:39
  it. I go teach writing workshops as
• 1:10:41
  juvenile single mother thing that their mom worked in the
• 1:10:45
  nonprofit organization. We do pop-ups in an impoverished
• 1:10:49
  neighborhoods throughout st. Louis twice a month.
• 1:10:53
  Just giving back Mansion the kids Smiles on those kids faces
• 1:10:56
  is priceless and just and then when I get advice, I think
• 1:11:00
  that's your passion. Now is is your is your journey
• 1:11:04
  voice experience? Giving back to the kids and
• 1:11:07
  trying to help them through their own struggles.
• 1:11:10
  Oh, definitely, man do not see them go through this man.
• 1:11:12
  Like you down here, especially Hogan's to you been convicted,
• 1:11:17
  but you you got a chance and not go to prison.
• 1:11:20
  Like I did your whole life in front of you, man.
• 1:11:22
  Just you will become great. You can do anything, you put
• 1:11:25
  your mind to. I give them different examples
• 1:11:27
  of how Thomas Edison tried ten thousand times to make a light
• 1:11:31
  bulb. Yeah, don't type of books.
• 1:11:33
  I had to do that lightbulb, still Burns.
• 1:11:35
  Yeah, it know. A lot of people don't know that
• 1:11:37
  his light bulb that he made still Burns, but because they
• 1:11:41
  had to mass produce and make a business out of it, they had to
• 1:11:45
  make it where they burn out. Yeah.
• 1:11:46
  Mary, do not know what he's doing, don't stories.
• 1:11:49
  All right. Yeah, if a man tried it many
• 1:11:51
  times, That's them. So when they deny me in prison I
• 1:11:55
  read about guys who walk from Africa, to go to school over.
• 1:11:58
  Yeah, guys, who left Costa Rica to become a United States
• 1:12:02
  citizen. They can become an astronaut,
• 1:12:05
  all these dreams. People had the WWII prisoners of
• 1:12:09
  War had they had to endure concentration camps and being
• 1:12:12
  locked up like that all of years, not knowing what was
• 1:12:15
  going to happen, then they finally make it home and how do
• 1:12:17
  you installed and yeah you know, all this stuff every book.
• 1:12:21
  The book on bro. Token.
• 1:12:23
  I don't know if you read that one but that they actually made
• 1:12:25
  a movie out of that. What were those guys?
• 1:12:26
  Crashed in the in His World War Two crashed in the ocean and
• 1:12:30
  they floated for 30 some odd days in the ocean and then they
• 1:12:34
  floated up on the Japanese island and they end up in a
• 1:12:39
  prison and he gets released, then he becomes an incredible
• 1:12:43
  you know person once he gets out of that prison camp but I think
• 1:12:47
  I think that's what's really I'm trying to but find a better word
• 1:12:53
  than inspiring because the I don't want that's almost too
• 1:12:56
  cliche but your your mindset Bobby.
• 1:13:00
  Is it? Everybody knows?
• 1:13:04
  It would have been easy, just to fetal position.
• 1:13:07
  Give up. Be the nastiest person in the
• 1:13:10
  world. I don't ever have the chance of
• 1:13:13
  ever getting out of here. I'm going to die in here and
• 1:13:16
  Manny didn't do that. It was those type of books.
• 1:13:21
  The guy's meet Amar there was captured yapanese and wars and
• 1:13:25
  hoping that. Yeah and I gave every tear bit I
• 1:13:27
  really gave me inspiration. Like even though this Thomas
• 1:13:31
  Edison with this light bulb stuff for Henry Ford this motor
• 1:13:34
  don't you don't correlate to prison but it's the same hope.
• 1:13:38
  It's the same Spirit of not giving up when he said it.
• 1:13:43
  Can't be done, you do it. Yeah.
• 1:13:44
  So I applied all that stuff to my situation.
• 1:13:48
  Why go to college? When you?
• 1:13:49
  We're getting out. Okay, I'm get a college degree.
• 1:13:51
  So I got my degrees in college while in prison to
• 1:13:55
  correspondence courses. Right.
• 1:13:56
  Because I never felt I would not getting out.
• 1:13:59
  I was like I'm getting out one day.
• 1:14:00
  What do you study for college? Like what was your what is your?
• 1:14:04
  I got my associates in science and my bachelor's and sociology
• 1:14:08
  I'm like six class away from that.
• 1:14:10
  Okay, I just wanted knowledge and people like man why would
• 1:14:14
  you waste 10? I didn't pay for college on my
• 1:14:16
  own. I wrote hundreds of letters to
• 1:14:18
  various colleges These organizations churches, whoever
• 1:14:21
  trying to get fun and it was just random citizens of the
• 1:14:25
  helped you through. Yeah random lady.
• 1:14:27
  She read my letter and said look I'm going to help you pay for
• 1:14:30
  her and her husband and she pay 18 thousand dollars and pay for
• 1:14:34
  my degree. She's still alive.
• 1:14:35
  I wish he died while I was in prison.
• 1:14:37
  Yeah, she died. I had to start a hundreds of
• 1:14:40
  letters again. And I found a professor on the
• 1:14:42
  East Coast. He paid eight or ten more
• 1:14:46
  thousand. His pocket help me.
• 1:14:47
  That's incredible, but that You got hunger is people in the
• 1:14:51
  world that help man. But yeah, the home and passion
• 1:14:53
  is okay. They say you can't go to college
• 1:14:55
  and prison because you don't have no money but it's money in
• 1:14:58
  the world. Just keep trying to find got to
• 1:15:00
  keep. Just hitting that fall through
• 1:15:02
  the doorway eventually. Yeah.
• 1:15:04
  And that's what I'm saying about perseverance and we silence,
• 1:15:08
  man. You can get through anything you
• 1:15:09
  going through, if you just look within and find your inner self,
• 1:15:13
  oh, back to who your childhood Essence was, and think about
• 1:15:16
  your dreams and become that again.
• 1:15:19
  And Try to become something because we all here for a
• 1:15:22
  purpose, if you heard, and you sure your purpose, you can have
• 1:15:25
  an impact and your impact can touch people hundred years or
• 1:15:28
  even after you're gone. When I'm dead.
• 1:15:30
  Mine diamonds. Mentor jewelry.
• 1:15:33
  Life goes on inside prison. During mom knows book should be
• 1:15:36
  read hundreds of years from that.
• 1:15:37
  Yeah, so that's my impact. So, make an impact and become
• 1:15:41
  some no. Make it worse impact, because
• 1:15:43
  you never be remembered for that because that's, it's just a
• 1:15:47
  ripple in a way. But if you do some Monumental in
• 1:15:51
  it, always be here. So create some discover yourself
• 1:15:54
  and find yourself and you can become your life purpose.
• 1:15:58
  I love that. That's probably what you would
• 1:16:00
  tell your 16 year old self. Oh yeah, I wrote the essay
• 1:16:04
  called, what I would tell my younger self, it's in the back
• 1:16:07
  of his generation misunderstood but I'm going to put all that in
• 1:16:10
  the episode description. So people will be able to find
• 1:16:13
  that because I think you well, I like this, the other thing Bobby
• 1:16:19
  I One of the things I do on this show, at the end of the show, is
• 1:16:24
  I always ask people. You know, what do you think, is
• 1:16:28
  your message, you want to impart to the people listening today
• 1:16:31
  through your life Journey? What do you think that would be?
• 1:16:35
  You want to present? See you design your conviction
• 1:16:38
  to become great? Man.
• 1:16:41
  You can be anything you want to be as as this book, my book
• 1:16:44
  covers a test. I was a lot of talent in prison
• 1:16:48
  guys. Just accountant or a guys.
• 1:16:50
  This scientist Engineers, all these guys are in prison with
• 1:16:54
  these kill says Just all you got to do is apply yourself and
• 1:16:59
  become who you want to be, but stay away from negativity of
• 1:17:02
  possible and don't give into it and you on the street living in
• 1:17:07
  the prison because you don't have to be in prison to be
• 1:17:09
  inside, Prison Break Free from their prison, listen to my story
• 1:17:13
  and how I appreciate the simple things out like looking outside
• 1:17:16
  right now. Seeing the trees, it's beautiful
• 1:17:19
  and the world is beautiful. Sun is shining come on, do Your
• 1:17:22
  Own Prison and you're not even in prison break out of the
• 1:17:25
  prison. And for the kids, don't be
• 1:17:28
  illegal, hustle, become an entrepreneur, man.
• 1:17:31
  Take your skill set and get paid for it.
• 1:17:33
  You don't have to steal cause you can go work for two months.
• 1:17:36
  Get a pay stub, or get credit, and buy a car.
• 1:17:39
  Because when you stealing cars, people, insurance premiums going
• 1:17:42
  up. I got insurance for the first
• 1:17:44
  time in my life. You still a lady called, she
• 1:17:47
  can't take our kids to school, realize the impact that we have
• 1:17:50
  on victims, we all create victims by a crimes, but most
• 1:17:54
  importantly victimize ourselves because You don't suffering.
• 1:17:57
  It's a. You can't be with the woman you
• 1:17:58
  around a man, 24 hours going to suffer in prison.
• 1:18:01
  So why would you victimize yourself?
• 1:18:04
  You heard your mama? You can't be there for your kids
• 1:18:06
  and then your family probably already living.
• 1:18:09
  It's probably a middle class. They got to take money to come
• 1:18:12
  see you on visits, they got to spend money to send you mail,
• 1:18:15
  they got to spend money to send you food stamps envelopes.
• 1:18:19
  They got to pay for all that. So why would you victimized your
• 1:18:21
  family? If you commit, a robbery that is
• 1:18:24
  going to let you two or three thousand dollars.
• 1:18:26
  You that's going to be going to too much.
• 1:18:28
  You're going to spend that in prison, in two or three months,
• 1:18:30
  trying to get a TV or radio and utilities cetera cetera.
• 1:18:33
  So whatever you do, don't commit a crime when you can go do
• 1:18:37
  illegal ways. I mean, legal ways of getting
• 1:18:39
  money, just use your mind. Find out all these legal Avenues
• 1:18:43
  to get money and train yourself. Go get a trade could have
• 1:18:46
  degree, develop yourself. If you some of us all said we
• 1:18:50
  share drugs, good. That means you a good salesman
• 1:18:53
  become a Salesman sale product sales.
• 1:18:56
  Full Sail, water. Sell a commodity that people
• 1:18:59
  need is some people always need you good at selling sell the
• 1:19:02
  right thing and they and when you get if you go 5 mins then
• 1:19:06
  nobody can take yours you legally earned it.
• 1:19:10
  So that's, that's my message. I love it.
• 1:19:12
  I love it Bobby and and people check out.
• 1:19:15
  It's even he's easy to find Google Bobby Bostick and you'll
• 1:19:19
  find a lot of things. You can find his books there.
• 1:19:22
  I will have that in the episode description.
• 1:19:25
  All is book. Looks, but I can't wait to jump
• 1:19:27
  into his books. In fact, he just gave me one of
• 1:19:29
  them signed heroic. I'm excited to read that.
• 1:19:32
  Hey, for all those out here, every week, I love you guys,
• 1:19:37
  share, and share the show. Sure the show.
• 1:19:40
  If you like, if you get any peace information out here,
• 1:19:43
  share it. If you think something was good,
• 1:19:45
  write a review on Apple. It really helps the show.
• 1:19:48
  It's easy to do, hit the follow button on Apple.
• 1:19:52
  Hit the Bell on Spotify. If you To go check out more of
• 1:19:57
  my stuff broadcast e.com. Leave me a message there.
• 1:20:00
  I love to go back and forth on that and as I say, when I was
• 1:20:05
  writing back and forth from Leavenworth, stay strong and
• 1:20:08
  I'll do the same. I'm your success in and out.
• 1:20:11
  Thank you, Bobby Bostick for being here today, I appreciate
• 1:20:13
  it. Alright, thank you, Joe.
• 1:20:15
  I'm access in and out will see you.