Latest / Nightmare Success In and Out / Faking Death- fugitive-25yrs prison- to Netflix Filmmaker - Seth Ferranti

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Faking Death- fugitive-25yrs prison- to Netflix Filmmaker - Seth Ferranti · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:03
  What happens when he works here? Becomes your reality.
• 0:06
  Hi. I'm Brent, Cassidy.
• 0:07
  Welcome to the nightmare success in and out podcast.
• 0:10
  But we explore a how to overcome your fears and Nightmares is set
• 0:14
  yourself free. We're going to be exploring this
• 0:16
  topic with guys that was in Leavenworth with and others who
• 0:19
  survived their own nightmare. These stories can be inspiring.
• 0:24
  Sometimes sad, there's some humor but hopefully you can come
• 0:28
  away with a nugget of something that will help you knock down
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  some of the prisons. You built up in your own mind.
• 0:40
  Alright, Welcome Back. 9 /, 6s listeners.
• 0:44
  I got a treat for you guys today.
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  So Seth for odds and I we met up actually Michael Henderson.
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  Who's actually on this show about I don't know.
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  Three or four podcast ago. He texted me said man, I ran
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  into this Seth man. You got to get a hold of him.
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  This guy this guy is, he said he's lit.
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  He's got all kinds of stories. So let me give you a little
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  background of Seth because I pulled this off of what he's mm
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  you look up Seth Ferrante on on Google you'll get a lot but I'm
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  going to give you just a taste of all this when Ryder director,
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  Seth Ferrante received a 25-year sentence.
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  Marijuana LS, D conviction, he was faking his suicide or Faked.
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  His suicide, Landing him on the US.
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  Marshals top 15 most wanted list.
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  He thought his life was over. As a first-time nonviolent
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  offender, the lengthy sentence attracted media attention from
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  The Washington Post Rolling Stone, Washington Times and
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  others as a drug-dealing. Teen Ferrante, sold LSD and
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  marijuana at 15 East Coast colleges crisscrossing, across
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  five states, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky West,
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  Virginia and Maryland, a wannabe rock star and Hunter and Hunter
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  has Thompson style Outlaw whose Heroes were Henry Rollins.
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  Rose and Jim Morrison. Seth decided to Rise Above It,
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  All Above is past and focus on his future.
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  He began building a writing and journalism career from inside
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  the belly of the Beast with unlimited access to criminals
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  and their stories Ferrante started crafting, raw portrayals
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  of prison life. And to crank a crack area
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  gangsters discovering a passion and talent for writing Ferrante.
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  Also studied the trade earning an associate's.
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  A Bachelor's and a master's degree, while in prison, he took
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  it one step further establishes, brand gorilla, convict from
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  prison Ferrante, became a true crime, publisher and built a
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  website. Documenting stories that the
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  mainstream media was not willing to share these stories, reside
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  in his books. And I think he wrote 22 books
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  while he was in prison. Some of them were present
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  stories, Supreme Team Street, Ledges among others.
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  As I were 500 blog, entries written by him and other
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  prisoners. Along with hundreds, if not,
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  thousands of pieces of Ferrante wrote for other Publications and
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  websites, he became the most prolific prison Rider of the War
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  on Drugs era. In February 2015, after serving
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  21 years, he was released from prison to seek and and go into
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  basically as a director and writer and the movies and for
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  any of those who watched that was either on the Starz Network,
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  Or became a top ten hit on Netflix was white boy, and then
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  later, white, boy, Rick, which Matthew McConaughey played, he's
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  appeared on Fox News Inside. Edition news nation is a subject
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  matter expert and is currently directing several documentary
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  projects, light life, which I saw the teaser to, which is very
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  cool. Looking is actually here in St.
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  Louis where they're actually walking the streets and it's all
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  its, if it's all comes out, it's going to catch a Everybody's
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  attention. Seth Ferrante.
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  Wow. Oh wow.
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  Wow, man. Welcome, thank you, man.
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  Appreciate you having me here. So, Seth all this is, I mean,
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  when I, what we had lunch, I pulled you up and thought, man,
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  you have been on a, you have been on a ride, and I think the
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  cool thing about what you've done is for a lot of people. 25
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  years in prison, and we're going to unpack all this, but I mean,
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  25 years in prison. I was sentenced to five years in
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  serve three and that was long enough for me.
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  How you Decided to make what you made in prison.
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  I really want to get into that, but before we do that, I want to
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  go back because I know that you were one of these kids because
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  you originally from California, the one of these kids that was
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  coming to Army brat that moved around.
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  Can you explain a little bit about your early life growing
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  up? Yeah my dad was in the Navy so
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  you know, we bounce around East Coast, you know, West Coast I
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  lived in Germany for a couple years.
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  I lived in London England for three years as a teenager.
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  So I was kind of you know like a typical military brat.
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  I was always kind of on the move and I think this upbringing kind
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  of set the tone for my whole life because always being the
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  new kid and I was always looking for that acceptance.
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  It was like As soon as I found like a group of friends and I
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  felt comfortable we had to move again.
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  So yeah, you know, as a kid growing up, you know, especially
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  as a young kid and then as a teenager, you know, that that
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  can be unsettling because, you know, I was just always looking
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  for something, you know, like I always had this whole, you know,
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  in my life. It finally, what else 13?
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  You know, I started experimenting with cannabis and
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  psychedelics and, you know, this this kind of fill that hole.
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  You know, in in, in fact, in the 80s, you know, this this is
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  like, you know, the mid-80s 8485, you know, right before the
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  war on drugs and, you know, this is just saying, No, this is your
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  brain on drugs and, you know, there was this big kind of
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  outcry and marijuana and LSD were kind of looked upon the
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  same as heroin, and just from from experimenting with these
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  drugs, in the way they made me feel, you know, I really
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  disagreed, you know, with kind of the Outlook because I saw
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  this stuff, I thought it was therapeutic.
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  Oh, cause I thought it was spiritual.
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  I thought it was medicinal, you know, everything that people are
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  saying about especially cannabis and some psychedelics now.
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  But I felt then because it kind of your kind of head of your
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  time on that. Yeah.
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  It kind of It kind of It kind of leveled me out.
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  Yeah, you know it kind of fill this whole guy mean and
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  obviously you know, I'm older men now.
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  So looking back, I can say this whole it was it was basically
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  like insecurities, well I'm curious Seth so when you got
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  into that, was it easy to get into that?
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  I mean were you around a group of kids that you Out with that.
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  That's kind of what you guys were doing and you got into that
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  group. Is that how that worked?
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  Yeah, I really got into it. I got kind of got into the
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  Grateful Dead seen. Yeah.
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  That was kind of my entrance, you know, into that world.
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  And, you know, it's funny and I got a lot of friends that are
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  like, hardcore deadheads. Now to this day and don't go
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  away, does it? But I always tell him, I always
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  told like I was never like, you know, I was never there for the
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  music. I was always there for like,
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  kind of the counterculture. Yeah, you know.
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  That's what they called it back. Then they called The
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  counterculture. All right, I guess now it's they
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  some mainstream. Yeah, but back then they call
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  it. So I was there for the scene,
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  you know, and I gravitated, you know, to those people.
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  And that's how really I got all those connections and then I was
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  basically like, you know, have drugs will travel.
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  You know, I was like a freelancer, you know, I just had
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  good connections through the Grateful Dead Community.
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  I could get stuff sent wherever ya know, and, and I will just go
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  to the college's and sell it. So when you got into the college
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  saying, because I think it's interesting how I mean you you
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  were into the, some of the big colleges on the East Coast.
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  Did you was it? Because you wouldn't how old was
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  you have been at the time you're doing that.
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  And I was, I was pretty much. I was pretty heavy in the game
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  by like 15 16 so I think that's really crazy because you know,
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  big to be able to do what you're doing.
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  You had to First find somebody to supply.
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  You had to find, you know the distribution getting.
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  I don't know if you work by yourself or you had other
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  people, you're working with, but you you more or less put
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  together a company. That's what I've always thought
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  was interesting about. Out.
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  The people I was with, when I was at Leavenworth, the people
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  who were in the drug business was very similar to the business
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  that that I had tried to grow is a national company and that was,
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  you know how, okay, you've got a product, how do you get the
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  product out? You got to distribute, how do
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  you get the gist distribution? You got to have the sales piece,
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  you've got to have incentives and commissions.
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  And all those things that went with that, I found that a lot of
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  the guys that were that I was locked up with they, they had
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  all that. They were just doing it from the
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  drug side but you were doing it at 15 or 16 years old.
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  So did your parents have any idea that you were this guy?
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  I mean, they had their suspicions but, you know, really
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  by mean cassettes, you would have been making money to.
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  I mean, your parents missing, okay.
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  Cesca he's not asking is for anything.
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  But really by the time I was like 16 17.
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  I had like my own place you okay.
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  How would you know, officially I was living at home and I had a
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  room at home but, you know, I was never there, you know, I had
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  like a stash, I had places and I was always the type of kid to
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  everything since I was 13. Like, when I was 13, I was
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  dating chicks. That were like, no 15 16 17.
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  Yeah by the time I was 15, 16 17.
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  I was dating chicks. That were 18 19, 20 year plan
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  older, you know. So I was always all my friends
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  were older, I hung out with older people, you know, I was
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  tall. You know, I got, I guess I had
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  facial hair pretty early on, so, you know, I kind of look older
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  and I Played that role. And I was kind of acted older
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  than I was. I was like that kid that
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  couldn't wait to grow up. Yeah, you know.
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  So, you know, I was doing all types of stuff, you know, that,
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  you know, really people older than me weren't even doing, you
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  know, just because I was kind of, I was kind of bold, you
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  know, I was kind of Reckless and really, I was just like, you
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  know, I'm gonna do what I want. This is the life I want to
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  leave. I kind of saw myself as like
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  this counterculture Outlaw. There was kind of bringing these
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  substances that I called righteous drug.
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  Eggs you know to the people you know to my peers to people in
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  colleges and it all this was kind of built you know, off that
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  kind of Grateful Dead Outlaw, you know, kind of Ethics that
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  was kind of out there, you know. And I kind of just like rolled
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  with it and became you know like I say I had long hair and but I
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  wasn't like the quintessential hippie or anything but you know,
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  I had long hair but then the more successful I got in the
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  drug business, I actually cut my hair short because and I would
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  dress like, you know, Really preppy because I want to blend
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  in with all that end of this age kids.
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  Yeah, so, you know, it was kind of like, you know, I adapted
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  really easily. So Seth did you go to college?
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  Or were you just infiltrated into all these colleges?
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  I mean, I did, I did, I went to a couple community colleges but
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  I don't know, just just like high school.
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  Like I didn't graduate high school.
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  I got a GED. Yeah.
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  So, you know, the whole thing was that because, you know, like
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  I said, I had always had places like before I was 18.
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  And, you know, my parents have this thing like they try to put
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  the hammer down sometimes and they'd be like, you know, you
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  can't move out, you know, until you're 18.
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  And they'll finally when I did turn 18 in January 1989, you
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  know? I was like, okay, I'm going to
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  move out officially even though I was already moved out,
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  basically. But officially I'm moving out,
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  you know? And then they were like, well,
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  you can't move out to you graduate, you know, that was my
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  senior year, So, what I did, I went out and I got a GED the
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  next weekend, you know, and that was crazy too because like the
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  GED test, a, says, supposed to take like five or six hours.
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  I basically did the test in two hours.
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  Like when I handed the lady, that's one thing.
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  You haven't had a problem, whether you are very smart and
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  how you may be able to apply that as is fascinating to me.
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  So you get your GED then. Where do you go?
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  I actually, I went down to Florida and I moved down there,
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  you know, under the pretense of going to school but I don't
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  know. I like college for the parties.
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  I mean, but like going to class, I mean, it was just kind of
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  boring. I didn't really see how it would
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  help me because I mean at that time, you know, I was probably
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  making like, 20, 30 thousand a month.
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  That's so crazy being at that age.
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  Yeah. So I was just like, you know,
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  and that time you're talking late 80s.
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  I mean, that was like people salaries for the whole year.
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  Sure. So, you know, I would go to
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  college and you know, but it was always a pretense.
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  I never apply feel like you had like an Entourage of people that
• 13:11
  are trying to feed off of that. No always yeah.
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  Yeah, no, I had people that I fed basically, you know, a lot
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  of people, you know, like they would, they would sell for me
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  or, you know, I, most of the people I got, they were like
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  friends. Like I recruited people into the
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  drug business like high school friends, you know, you know
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  relatives. You know, people like that
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  people. I knew in the west coast.
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  Trusted. He's Coast.
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  Yeah, yeah. I kind of recruited them in and
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  I kind of told him. Boom, you're doing this and then
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  I would use them to insulate myself, you know, so I didn't
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  have to deal because at first when I was younger like 13, you
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  know, 14 15, 16 even I was dealing with a lot of people,
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  you know? And then eventually I got where
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  I would insulate myself and only maybe, like, five people or 10
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  people had access to me because I was bringing in so much
• 13:56
  inventory. Hmm.
• 13:57
  Interesting. So this thing continues to grow
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  and when you start our, I guess the real question is, did you
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  know that anything was coming down on you No, I didn't.
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  I really had no idea. You know, I the War on Drugs, I
• 14:12
  mean in the late 80s and the suburbs, I mean, the War on
• 14:16
  Drugs had just begun. So it wasn't something that we
• 14:18
  talked about, you know, we knew, you know, we read the headlines.
• 14:21
  Are we saw the news things about, you know, the crack era
• 14:24
  stuff and the inner cities, you know, because it was getting
• 14:26
  really violent, you know. And it seemed like to me that it
• 14:30
  was kind of focused, you know, in there and you know, they were
• 14:33
  basically, you know, targeting, you know, African American
• 14:35
  people, which is, you know, everybody can see now.
• 14:38
  But Even back then it kind of looked at that look like that to
• 14:41
  me. So I thought you know, because
• 14:43
  of my upbringing and where I was in the color of my skin, I
• 14:46
  thought I was basically like Untouchable.
• 14:48
  Yeah. You know.
• 14:50
  And so and I knew a lot of older guys that, you know, from the
• 14:53
  Grateful Dead community and older guys, like we dealers like
• 14:57
  guys that have no sold weed and even some even cocaine and like
• 15:01
  moved into legitimate business and had like these businesses
• 15:03
  dudes that were like, you know, 10 years my senior.
• 15:06
  Yeah. So you know I kind of thought
• 15:07
  that's how you did it, you know, you made this.
• 15:09
  Money and then you invest it into legit business.
• 15:11
  Yes. So that was kind of my plan but
• 15:14
  you know I also had a goal my goal by the time I was 17.
• 15:17
  I had a goal. My goal was to become a cash
• 15:19
  millionaire. Okay, you know, I never, I never
• 15:23
  got near that goal. I didn't like I say, the most
• 15:25
  money I probably have was a couple hundred thousand at one
• 15:27
  time and it probably wasn't even all my money.
• 15:30
  I know I owed it because I got a lot fronted, but, you know, so I
• 15:33
  never came close to that goal, but good to have goals though.
• 15:36
  You know, if it's a vote of that, if I would have been Out
• 15:39
  there, you know, you know, I got busted a real young, you know,
• 15:42
  at 20. So you know, if I would have
• 15:43
  been out there to the age of 25, if I were to have, you know, I
• 15:46
  had a real short run there where I was my actual run where I was
• 15:50
  actually making like 20 30 thousand a month.
• 15:53
  It was probably like nine months.
• 15:55
  Yeah. You know before then it was just
• 15:57
  building up to that point to get to that point O learning you
• 16:00
  know establishing connection. And you know finally like 1920 I
• 16:04
  got to that point where I was like man I'm on but only lasted
• 16:08
  nine. You know, and then you were only
• 16:10
  20 years old. That's what's crazy, all came
• 16:12
  toppling down. So can you can you walk me
• 16:15
  through because you had a couple of different things that happen,
• 16:17
  you get tagged, but then you become a fugitive, walk us into
• 16:24
  that. Whole thing says, like, a movie,
• 16:27
  by the way. I'm that should also be scripted
• 16:29
  out by you. And how all this happened, but
• 16:31
  that sounds like something you watch.
• 16:33
  Yeah, so what happened was my case, this I wasn't even in the
• 16:39
  area, you know, but I always, I was still sitting and it was
• 16:42
  like You know, the summer 91. And if anybody remembers back
• 16:47
  then, especially on the East Coast, like in late 80s, early
• 16:50
  90s, like the weed it would get real dry because, you know, we
• 16:54
  were getting the good bud from Humboldt County, you know the
• 16:56
  Emerald Triangle. Yeah, but that was like only the
• 16:58
  Fall by December January that stuff would usually be gone.
• 17:02
  So the rest of the year, you know, I was talking like, you
• 17:05
  know, I'll sell them like brick, we'd like people to hear brick
• 17:07
  we today. Like they have no idea like the
• 17:09
  we that we skin smoke compared to the Quality that we get today
• 17:13
  in this. Day and age.
• 17:15
  So, the rest of the year, you know, I was basically how can
• 17:17
  brick weed and even in the summertime like, it would get
• 17:19
  dry. There would be like no weed,
• 17:21
  right? So, and I was always gearing up
• 17:24
  for the fall because I had the contacts in Humboldt County and
• 17:28
  I saw have the hump contacts in Kentucky, where, you know, a lot
• 17:31
  of people grow wheat and South South Eastern.
• 17:34
  Can I think you're doing a documentary on Humboldt County?
• 17:37
  Possibly okay, I'm doing advisories but you know, so I
• 17:40
  was always gearing up for the fall was trying to get my money
• 17:43
  up. Actually, when this
• 17:44
  investigation started, I was actually in Hawaii for three
• 17:47
  months. Hmm.
• 17:48
  Because I would do that too. Like I was type of dude, like
• 17:50
  just take off. I would do a loan, you know, I
• 17:52
  would work, I would finish the load.
• 17:55
  Now, I'd be flush with money and I take off, you know, disappear
• 17:58
  for three months. So, I was actually in Kona, and
• 18:01
  I was in Hilo on the big island. You, I stayed out there for
• 18:05
  three months and while I was there, I was still, you know,
• 18:08
  funneling no LSD into the area and, you know, looking Back, I
• 18:14
  did. I made a big mistake because all
• 18:17
  my friends that were in all these 15, colleges and five
• 18:20
  states, they were all back in Northern Virginia.
• 18:23
  And these were all people that I kind of, you know, pushed into,
• 18:26
  you know, selling drugs, you know, some more than others, you
• 18:28
  know, about a lot of my recruited in and they would move
• 18:31
  my stuff and they were all back. And we just flooded saturated
• 18:35
  the area with LSD and that the area was so saturated.
• 18:38
  It was like, you know, this shows you how saturated was is
• 18:42
  like, you know, first when First started.
• 18:44
  Maybe it might be 810 to hit and then, you know, when I got
• 18:47
  going, it would down to five a hit and then in the summer of
• 18:49
  91, when it was really dry. And I all my friends who are
• 18:53
  back and we were all gearing up for the fall, you know?
• 18:55
  Because we made a lot of money in the fall off of harvest with
• 18:58
  weed. You know, I flooded the area
• 19:00
  with LSD and it dropped down to like, two dollars a hit because
• 19:04
  there was so much LSD. So, all my friends are back
• 19:07
  there selling LSD competing against each other, you know?
• 19:10
  And it was actually this Big Field party out of Clifton.
• 19:14
  Clifton's and Fairfax County in Northern Virginia but it's like
• 19:17
  it's like an area where back then they had all the
• 19:19
  million-dollar houses you know like finder and a lots.
• 19:22
  Yeah and Pete, you know when people's parents you know we did
• 19:25
  the classic Suburban thing when people's parents would go out of
• 19:27
  town, you know, the kids would have parties.
• 19:30
  So there was this big field party know, they brought a
• 19:32
  skateboard ramps you know, they brought in stages for the bands
• 19:35
  and on there was just a ton of LSD, eventually the cops got
• 19:38
  called the cops came to this party.
• 19:41
  And there was like a young kid, like 15 years old.
• 19:44
  And he was tripping on LSD and he was like, running through the
• 19:47
  woods naked or something. You know, one of the Fairfax
• 19:50
  County police officers, actually chased him tackled him somehow.
• 19:53
  You know, the kids started freaking out, he grabbed the
• 19:55
  cops gun and he shot the car. Cop in the arm.
• 19:58
  Wow, okay. So that triggered the whole
• 20:01
  investigation, you know, which, you know, I can see, you know,
• 20:06
  as you know, as time has gone on, I can see how from the
• 20:09
  Fairfax County Police Department.
• 20:11
  Yeah. One of their own got shocker,
• 20:12
  you know, it was just like you, So basically, you know, flesh
• 20:15
  wound or whatever, but still he got shot, so they didn't like
• 20:17
  that. But, you know, to me that
• 20:20
  triggered like, you know what, I see in my mind it was like LSD,
• 20:24
  Witch Hunt so and they just started going crazy.
• 20:28
  You know, that they the Fairfax County Narcotics, you know, they
• 20:31
  brought in the DEA and and it was all timing like everything
• 20:35
  in life is timing. So, this is 91.
• 20:37
  So this is also the time, you know, these these Federal
• 20:39
  mandatory minimums, you know these war on drug laws have been
• 20:42
  on the books like Years at this point.
• 20:45
  But you know, the prosecutors especially Northern Virginia and
• 20:48
  Maryland, they're getting a lot of heat because these laws are
• 20:53
  only being applied, you know, to basically like African-Americans
• 20:57
  from DC for crack cases, you know, so they're getting heat
• 21:02
  politically. So then, you know, the DEA
• 21:05
  starts, this new initiative like, you know, we're going to
• 21:07
  go out to the suburbs, we're going to bus white drug dealers,
• 21:10
  you know, and I kind of fell on that.
• 21:12
  I was in that first wave Wave you know, when the DEA went out
• 21:16
  to the so aggressive. Yeah.
• 21:17
  And and you know, just wrong person, wrong place wrong time,
• 21:21
  you know? And and I've had flooded, the
• 21:24
  area with LSD, this cop got shot, so they start
• 21:26
  investigation and on like this was in June and then by August,
• 21:31
  you know, II got arrested and they indicted me.
• 21:34
  Okay, so you get indicted you get arrested, how do you And
• 21:41
  when do you become a fugitive? Well yeah, shortly thereafter.
• 21:47
  So Actually, cuz I mean, I think it's an interesting question to
• 21:52
  so because you know, a lot of people you knew you were looking
• 21:56
  at a lot of time. This is when they were getting
• 21:58
  aggressive, you know, the 90s 80s and 90s was crazy time that
• 22:05
  they would give for drugs, but it makes its kind of an
• 22:08
  interesting question. If, you know you're looking at
• 22:10
  25, 50 years, what would you do? You know, do you stay at you
• 22:13
  just sit around and wait? Or do you take off and and see
• 22:17
  if they can find you? You because the alternative is
• 22:21
  you're going to be spending a lot of time in prison.
• 22:22
  So I think it's interesting to think about what would you do if
• 22:25
  you were in your shoes because you knew you were caught?
• 22:29
  Yeah. The back end of it was.
• 22:31
  How much do I get out of this? Yeah.
• 22:33
  Well, what I did right? Because anytime, especially back
• 22:36
  then when you, when you get caught by the feds, right?
• 22:39
  All your lawyers are doing is they want you to please, you
• 22:42
  know, they're pushing you to cooperate, you know, because
• 22:44
  they're saying that's the only way, you know, if you go to
• 22:46
  trial, you're going to get hit, you know, or whatever.
• 22:48
  So, So well they did what they do is they stack up all those
• 22:51
  years on him and say you know really if you go the, you know,
• 22:54
  we could get past, you know, ten of these.
• 22:56
  But, you know, I get one of them that's 20 years.
• 22:59
  And you know, that you look at those crazy statistics of the
• 23:02
  people who get indicted 97% plea.
• 23:05
  Yeah. That's in the United States of
• 23:07
  America. So it's There's your right when
• 23:11
  when the defense criminal attorneys get involved in there,
• 23:13
  just negotiators. Yeah.
• 23:15
  They don't want to go to trial because I think even like the
• 23:18
  thing either side wants to go to trial the feds at that time.
• 23:21
  I mean, they had like crazy. They had like a 99 percent
• 23:25
  conviction rate or something. Yeah.
• 23:26
  So and like most of the cases do plea.
• 23:29
  So, actually, what I did, you know, I had no intentions of
• 23:33
  cooperating, you know, I was going to flee from the outset, I
• 23:35
  was like, I'm not doing this time.
• 23:37
  I had a little bit of money, you know.
• 23:39
  So I told my lawyer, I said look, I said I'll sign a plea
• 23:42
  deal and I'll say I'm going to cooperate, right?
• 23:45
  But as soon as I sign the plea deal, no like I took off because
• 23:48
  they gave me a, you got his on today, I got personal
• 23:51
  recognizance you know because they thought I was going to help
• 23:53
  them you know like they were how they thought I was going to
• 23:56
  bring in people from California and set people up like I was
• 23:59
  gonna put all these feathers in their cap and and make their
• 24:02
  career sure. But you know so basically I
• 24:04
  tricked them I took off. You know, and you have an idea
• 24:09
  where you were going south like, I'm because that's kind of like,
• 24:11
  you know, you do, I know I was going back to California, had a
• 24:14
  lot of contacts had family in California, so I was going back
• 24:16
  to California, but, you know, then I did something else to
• 24:19
  throw them off my trail, I faked my Suicide.
• 24:22
  Hmm. Because my idea was like, you
• 24:25
  know, if Seth Rollins, he is dead, you know, after seven
• 24:28
  years, if they don't find a body, I can be declared legally
• 24:32
  dead and once I'm declared legally dead than there is no
• 24:35
  case. The case is gone because I'm
• 24:37
  dead. So I developed this ruse, you
• 24:41
  know I remember when I was a teenager in Northern Virginia I
• 24:45
  would always read like the newspapers I was a big sports
• 24:47
  fan and you know right in front of the sports section The
• 24:50
  Washington Post was a metro section so sometimes I would
• 24:53
  catch like the Metro headlines as I was going to the sports
• 24:56
  section and there was this area called Great Falls on the
• 24:59
  Potomac River National In Northern Virginia, where a lot
• 25:02
  of people would commit suicide I would always see in the metro
• 25:04
  section like you know so-and-so has committed suicide.
• 25:07
  Yeah because they would jump in the water and what it is it's
• 25:10
  like class five Rapids you know but then it takes you away.
• 25:13
  Yeah. And that but it's also like a
• 25:14
  lot of rocks. So you can't swim in class five
• 25:16
  Rapids. And it's like rock.
• 25:17
  So, you know, if you don't drown, you get smashed against
• 25:19
  the rocks and you die. So it was pretty much a feel
• 25:21
  like a terrible way to go. Pretty much like a foolproof way
• 25:24
  though. Yeah, it to commit suicide.
• 25:26
  So I'd known this over the years.
• 25:28
  So when I got in this situation, that kind of popped, To my head
• 25:31
  and I was like, you know, how can I throw these dudes off my
• 25:34
  trail, you know, how can I really, really, not only
• 25:36
  disappear but really disappeared, you know, just make
• 25:39
  Seth Ferrante like dead Obsolete.
• 25:41
  And so I came up with this plan. I went there, like I staged it,
• 25:45
  you know, I made it seem like I went in the water and you know,
• 25:48
  that I took off and I went to California and I was in
• 25:51
  California, I'll stay in Allah with some friends and, you know,
• 25:54
  back then they had like the big new stands on every corner with
• 25:57
  all the big National papers, right here, we have the internet
• 26:00
  and so So I would go to the news newsstand every day and I went
• 26:04
  by The Washington Post and like first, you know, it was cool
• 26:07
  because it was like, you know, Fairfax Fairfax LSD kingpin, You
• 26:12
  Know, commit suicide and I was like yeah I was so they covered
• 26:15
  it. Yeah.
• 26:15
  I was like, I got them. I was like I gotta you know, his
• 26:18
  imprint. Hmm.
• 26:19
  No. But then after two weeks, you
• 26:22
  know, I went and I got the met the Washington Post and I went
• 26:26
  to the metro and I saw the headline and like, you know, my
• 26:30
  heart just Saying because it said prosecutors declare, you
• 26:35
  know, LSD, Fairfax County, LSD, Kingpin, suicide a hoax.
• 26:39
  Oh wow. Right.
• 26:40
  So so I started reading it and I was like, I was like, man, where
• 26:43
  did I mess up once? Thank you, wrong.
• 26:44
  I thought I had them. Yeah, okay.
• 26:46
  That was only 20 but I thought I'd like I'm this super smart
• 26:48
  really smart, you know, Outlaw genius, criminal mastermind or
• 26:51
  whatever. And so I started reading it.
• 26:55
  And it says the park rangers. They dragged the river for two
• 26:58
  weeks. Wow, they didn't find a body
• 27:01
  because where I messed up was I staged my suicide on the wrong
• 27:04
  side of the dam, you know? So the area where I did it, you
• 27:07
  know, because they got all the bridges, you know, going into
• 27:10
  DC. So they calm the water down, you
• 27:12
  know, before it goes out to the Atlantic Ocean, so I did it on
• 27:14
  the wrong, side of the dam. So they dragged the river, they
• 27:17
  didn't find a body, they always have them bodies and this part
• 27:19
  where I did it. So, you know, there goes,
• 27:22
  there's nobody me being super smart.
• 27:24
  I thought I I was so smart and I committed my suicide on the
• 27:27
  wrong side of the day or Faked. My sister.
• 27:30
  Just one just one detail. So once that happened and I was
• 27:35
  declared a fugitive. Yeah.
• 27:37
  And not only was I declared a fugitive but you know, because I
• 27:41
  had basically tricked them, you know, like they thought I was
• 27:46
  going to call operate and then they didn't, they weren't happy
• 27:48
  with either get any. They were not happy with me.
• 27:50
  Yeah. So then, you know, because like
• 27:52
  I say I didn't carry guns, I wasn't violent.
• 27:53
  I didn't have a criminal. Relation I was in the mafia I
• 27:56
  wasn't in a gang you know I wasn't in any type of
• 27:59
  organization. I was just basically a
• 28:00
  freelancer you know that front is stuff to people under me.
• 28:03
  I want they didn't cash buyer, I fronted people colleges and came
• 28:06
  back collected the money. So in my mind I was like this is
• 28:10
  really in the big scheme of things, a little small no drug
• 28:14
  dealer even though they called you a king that yes, selling
• 28:17
  what I thought were righteous drugs.
• 28:19
  Yeah and you know being marijuana LS D mushroom stuff
• 28:22
  like that but for some ungodly. Reason I guess because I piss
• 28:26
  them off or I made them look bad or I was like the black mark on
• 28:29
  their record. Like they were like how did this
• 28:31
  young kid? Like outsmart the feds, you
• 28:34
  know, they pushed and they did all the paperwork and made me a
• 28:36
  top 15 u.s. Marshals list, which I didn't
• 28:39
  even know that until I was finally caught.
• 28:41
  But I was a fugitive from 91 to 93.
• 28:44
  I was in California first, but after six months, I ran out of
• 28:49
  money and I didn't have a lot of money.
• 28:51
  But, you know, I had a substantial amount of money for
• 28:53
  that time. Was it hard to stay under?
• 28:57
  Like I mean did you feel like you couldn't go anywhere or do
• 29:00
  anything? Why I had?
• 29:01
  You had a whole bunch of ID's man.
• 29:03
  I got all my ideas for like real DMV.
• 29:05
  So you know when I was a future right before I became a
• 29:08
  fugitive, I read all these books you know back then they had
• 29:10
  these companies like Paladin press Loom panics that, you
• 29:13
  know, they do subversive books. Like the most famous being
• 29:16
  probably like the Anarchist Cookbook.
• 29:18
  But you know, they had all these ID books.
• 29:20
  Like identity theft paper trip in reborn in the USA.
• 29:24
  Yeah. So I had read all these books
• 29:26
  and they told you how to get how exactly I do it, ID from
• 29:29
  legitimate sources. So what I would do, I would find
• 29:33
  an obituary. I would comb the obituaries.
• 29:35
  I would go like, on the microfilm in like big libraries,
• 29:38
  you know? And I would find, I would find
• 29:40
  an obituary. It would be someone that I was
• 29:43
  looking for candidate. It was born in one, state and
• 29:46
  died in one state under the age of five.
• 29:49
  Okay, once I found that out, I had all the information I needed
• 29:53
  for the death certificate, you know, just Person's name, place
• 29:55
  of death date of death. So then I would write, you know,
• 29:59
  and I had like a mailbox etcetera or ones that you can
• 30:02
  you know, use like a suite number and apartment number and
• 30:05
  I would write in. I would say like I'm the
• 30:06
  person's and I'm their Uncle, you know, and I would send the
• 30:09
  $10, send me the birth certificate.
• 30:11
  So once I got our, the death certificate.
• 30:13
  So once I got the death certificate in the obituary, I
• 30:16
  had all the information I needed to order the birth certificate
• 30:19
  which you need a person's name, you know, place of birth, you
• 30:22
  know, date of birth mother's. Aydin name, father's day and
• 30:26
  that was all on there. Yeah, so from those two, you
• 30:28
  know, from the death and the obituary on guy would have all
• 30:30
  that information. So then I would write and get
• 30:34
  the birth certificate. And as long as it was someone
• 30:36
  who died in one state and was born in another, they don't
• 30:39
  cross even to this day. They don't cross her a crazy to
• 30:42
  think, to think that Seth that they don't cross reference that
• 30:45
  they do. If you're born in the same
• 30:46
  county, the same state, because I tried some of the same state,
• 30:49
  and if you go outside and cross-state get the birth
• 30:52
  certificate, it would mark, it would be marked deceased But if
• 30:55
  you know, born in one, state died in another, you know what,
• 30:57
  I learned all this by reading the books.
• 30:59
  And once I had the birth certificate, I was home, free
• 31:01
  because you can verify a social security.
• 31:03
  Number really easy. So, I actually have this book
• 31:06
  called understanding u.s. identifying documents, and it
• 31:09
  broke down. Council Security numbers, you
• 31:13
  know. So, so what social security
• 31:15
  numbers. The first three numbers that
• 31:17
  goes by state. Okay, so you know each state is
• 31:20
  has their own servers. Yeah, those three no but it
• 31:22
  might be like you know, it could be like from 0 3 9 0 for 6.
• 31:25
  Yeah. You know might be like Rhode
• 31:27
  Island or something. Yeah.
• 31:28
  And then the next two numbers are by year but it's not like,
• 31:33
  you know, it's not like the year, like it's not like if you
• 31:36
  know you were born or in 1971, the number would be 71.
• 31:40
  But if you were born In 71 the number might be like
• 31:43
  corresponding 35. Yeah, so it was all and then the
• 31:46
  last four numbers are random, okay, so I got these books and
• 31:49
  it broke all this down. So with that you could kind of
• 31:53
  figure. I couldn't make out the birth
• 31:54
  certificate. I could.
• 31:55
  I could create a so shrink security number and then a lot
• 31:58
  of these DMVs like you don't have to have a Social Security
• 32:01
  called. All you have to have is a W-2
• 32:03
  form. I think I still to this day, all
• 32:04
  you have to have as W-2 form and the W-2 forms you can go buy at
• 32:08
  a business wholesale supply Any store right there like those
• 32:13
  things, you know, like the the old.
• 32:15
  So I think they're probably still like that where it has
• 32:17
  like the multiple she to make the copies.
• 32:19
  Yeah, so I would go and buy those.
• 32:20
  I type them up that formula to get my Social Security number
• 32:24
  and I'd go in there and I'd have the birth certificate and I got
• 32:27
  the with all the information and maybe I need like a bill or
• 32:30
  something in my name at the address where no, I'm sending
• 32:33
  the ID. And and I did it.
• 32:36
  So I was getting like legitimate state ID.
• 32:39
  So by they say, by the last two years, you know, the end of the
• 32:42
  time, I was a fugitive before I got caught, I have like 25 fake
• 32:45
  IDs and I have four passports because the four passports in
• 32:49
  fake names. So my ultimate plan was to, I
• 32:54
  mean, first know, what made you think?
• 32:56
  You wouldn't leave the country. What makes I wanted to leave the
• 32:59
  country? Another country.
• 33:13
  And then you know establish an identity over there, right?
• 33:16
  And then maybe eventually that's the money.
• 33:17
  You thought you needed to take a job.
• 33:19
  Maybe eventually come back to the States.
• 33:21
  Yeah. As somebody from a different
• 33:22
  country. Yeah.
• 33:24
  So that was my plan. You know what?
• 33:26
  I was working toward that goal because, you know, the whole
• 33:28
  time and once I ran out of money after six months in La, I went
• 33:32
  back to Texas. I Hooked up with my Mexican week
• 33:36
  Connections in Dallas, Texas. And I started running, we'd
• 33:42
  loads of weed brick pot from Dallas, Texas up to St.
• 33:45
  Louis. So that's like my whole st.
• 33:47
  Louis connection was when I was a fugitive because I started
• 33:50
  reading running like hundreds of pounds up here.
• 33:52
  That's how you met your girl 2. Yeah.
• 33:54
  That was mostly I would do that on the train.
• 33:57
  So I was doing that on Amtrak so I would bring I would bring like
• 34:00
  two duffel bags in sometimes I would check.
• 34:03
  I'm sometimes I Wouldn't you know with like 50 pounds each
• 34:06
  and I would get like a Sleeper Car you know?
• 34:08
  And I would I would take it was only like at in our shot from
• 34:11
  Dallas to st. Louis.
• 34:12
  Yeah. Amtrak and I would take that
• 34:13
  ride, you know, like a 10 12 hour and I was bringing, you
• 34:17
  know, like every once a month, every other, two weeks and
• 34:20
  mostly I was taking a lot of it up to Columbia ml most Mizzou.
• 34:24
  Yeah. And and that was kind of like my
• 34:26
  second little drug run. That I had for, you know, like
• 34:30
  another maybe 18 months or so. And like I said, I was making
• 34:37
  money. I kind of got my mojo back.
• 34:38
  I kind of got where I was a so paranoid.
• 34:40
  I started dating, you know? But everybody called me,
• 34:43
  Christopher Haas because I had a whole bunch of different fake
• 34:47
  IDs were. My first name was Christopher
• 34:50
  and then I don't want anybody know my last name.
• 34:52
  So you know I acted like I was from Texas and in Texas Back.
• 34:55
  Then late 80s, early 90s like the everybody they used to be
• 34:57
  like what's up Captain, what's up Hoss?
• 35:00
  You know, that's what I can't Chris for us.
• 35:01
  So that was how I like the instead of seen do down.
• 35:04
  There they'll call you like Captain or Hoss, so I call
• 35:07
  everybody Hoss, you know, like I'm from Texas.
• 35:09
  You know? That's my backstory so everybody
• 35:11
  called me Christopher Haas well. So when did So you're doing
• 35:17
  this, you're kind of getting more comfortable with the fact
• 35:22
  that you're a fugitive. Did they?
• 35:24
  Surprisingly grab? You know what?
• 35:27
  So what happened is, I was actually with a friend.
• 35:31
  Actually he was a guy I met in Texas.
• 35:33
  It was from St. Louis that, you know, led to me
• 35:36
  coming up here, you know, because he's to buy weed from.
• 35:39
  He worked in a restaurant and used to buy weed from me down
• 35:41
  there. And I was like, he was like, I'm
• 35:43
  going back to st. Louis.
• 35:44
  You know, that's where I went to high school.
• 35:45
  He's like, you want to come here and party?
• 35:46
  I was like, what can you sell weed?
• 35:48
  No, people that are buying weed. He's like, yeah.
• 35:50
  So I grabbed like 20 pounds and I went out there.
• 35:53
  I didn't even sell it all but you know maybe I brought some
• 35:56
  back probably like 45 pounds, but I made enough connections
• 35:58
  you know made it worth my while so Basically I have like another
• 36:06
  little mini drug run, you know, but I never made you know, like
• 36:11
  I said I had that go like 250 so I never came close but it was
• 36:16
  like because before that the first six months I was like
• 36:19
  really, really, really paranoid like looking over my shoulder
• 36:22
  you know? Because when the feds come in
• 36:23
  and just like take your whole life sure, you know, you changed
• 36:26
  everything, don't your world upside like all powerful, they
• 36:29
  know everything is going on but you know in reality I mean they
• 36:32
  just rely on On on Co-operators and snitches, you know, they
• 36:36
  don't know anything. Yeah.
• 36:37
  There's no, like, inspector, clouseau's and on the force,
• 36:40
  right? You know I'm saying that?
• 36:42
  Yeah, no, really. I think our law enforcement and
• 36:44
  stuff if they've got so lazy because of the War on Drugs, you
• 36:47
  know, they don't do any investigating, you know I'm
• 36:50
  saying, they just rely on people telling them stuff.
• 36:52
  So, but yeah, it was kind of nice to kind of get my mojo
• 36:57
  back. I mean, I actually started
• 36:58
  feeling like a person again but then how it all came crashing
• 37:01
  down. I was I was actually with the
• 37:04
  same dude that introduced me to st.
• 37:07
  Louis. And he was still working at a
• 37:09
  restaurant and we were actually going out to party in st.
• 37:13
  Charles down on Main Street and we were doing a drop and he was
• 37:18
  doing a drop of the restaurant, but forever to reason, it was
• 37:21
  too busy or something. So he couldn't do the job but I
• 37:23
  didn't know this. It wasn't even a lot of weed.
• 37:25
  It was merely a half pound or something.
• 37:27
  And so then we went out. And I had to do a drop too.
• 37:31
  So I dropped like more. I think I dropped like 3 pounds
• 37:34
  and dude, how to go to dudes house and he was going to come
• 37:36
  back but you know, like a lot of drug deals like they take
• 37:38
  forever. So we went and we were in this
• 37:40
  Burger King and st. Charles and we actually went at
• 37:43
  8:00 and then like a closed and we're still waiting for this, do
• 37:47
  to bring me three pounds and I don't know, there's any read and
• 37:49
  the truck. So then you know we went and we
• 37:52
  want to sit in the truck and smoke some weed.
• 37:55
  So we don't want to do it right in the parking lot so we kind of
• 37:57
  pulled behind the Burger King. In the back and it was closing
• 38:01
  time. So they were doing like what
• 38:02
  people do closing time. And unfortunately this Burger
• 38:06
  King had got robbed like two weeks before.
• 38:10
  Like in the people went right in the back and robbed him.
• 38:13
  So looks like you guys were casing The Joint.
• 38:15
  Yeah, we're just back there smoking weed.
• 38:16
  So they call the cops on us. The cops come and really, we're
• 38:20
  smoking a joint and I got a couple other joints in my
• 38:23
  pockets. You know.
• 38:24
  I got them like on the inside pocket of the gene you know I'm
• 38:26
  saying because you had to conceal stuff back then just in
• 38:28
  case. So, you know, I think we're
• 38:31
  cool, right? Because I don't have any weed
• 38:33
  and my dude, he supposedly made his drop.
• 38:36
  So you know and it's my guys car, it's not even my truck.
• 38:40
  So you know they're taking her ID whatever you know, asking if
• 38:44
  they can search a vehicle. You know guy says yeah you can
• 38:46
  search the vehicle, you know, they might smell weed but you
• 38:49
  know we don't have any, they pat me down, they don't find nothing
• 38:52
  and so then they go in his truck and they look around and they
• 38:56
  actually guy was a musician. So he had a couple guitar cases
• 38:58
  in the back. And so they first look and they
• 39:01
  look they don't see nothing. So I mean as a truck like it's a
• 39:03
  lot of room so they're like okay cool but then the other cop you
• 39:06
  know because then by then like another cop car comes up like
• 39:09
  every time you know there's always like two or three jobs
• 39:11
  got to come up for one thing which I always thought was crazy
• 39:14
  like why do you need so many cops?
• 39:16
  You know I guess it's an intimidation thing, I don't
• 39:18
  know. But um so there's other cop
• 39:20
  comes and then you know, I think we're good to go and he looks in
• 39:23
  the guitar case, he wants to look in the guitar case and
• 39:27
  under the guitar, there's like a half pound of weed.
• 39:29
  You know, the guy couldn't drop because it the kitchen was too
• 39:32
  busy. So, so I'm like, fuck, but still
• 39:35
  at the same time I'm like, well, it's not mine, it's his truck.
• 39:39
  I'm saying, I got a fake ID, I'm good, they don't know who I am,
• 39:42
  so they but they arrest both of us.
• 39:44
  Yeah, we go to the station, I hollered to do because we're the
• 39:49
  cell they put in some cells and I tell him, I'm like, man, it's
• 39:51
  a tone. That shit is yours, bro.
• 39:54
  That shouldn't have been there, you know?
• 39:57
  So he fucking tells him, he's like, oh, it's mine.
• 39:59
  Fine. You know, it's my car.
• 40:00
  He didn't have anything to do with it.
• 40:02
  So they let me go. They'd already printed me, you
• 40:05
  know, like when they first booked us imprinted us.
• 40:07
  So I don't get a charger. Nothing.
• 40:08
  They let me go because he says it's his.
• 40:10
  Yeah. So I get out.
• 40:12
  I go pick up the money for the three pounds.
• 40:15
  You know, from the guy that we're selling the three pounds,
• 40:16
  you had to be Society relief. Do they just let you out of
• 40:19
  there? Oh, yeah.
• 40:20
  Of course. I go get the money three pounds.
• 40:22
  I go back. I bail out the other, dude.
• 40:24
  Yeah, that money. They impound his car.
• 40:26
  I paid to get his car out. You know, he has a charge but
• 40:31
  you know, they took my prince. Hmm.
• 40:35
  So you know at that time to I was watching all the shows like
• 40:37
  I was watching America's Most Wanted they are but you were one
• 40:41
  of them unsolved mystery. I used to watch all that stuff.
• 40:45
  Yeah he like how long did it take prints to match up and I
• 40:48
  remember you know vividly I'd watch the thing about like The
• 40:51
  Night Stalker Like Richard Ramirez.
• 40:52
  Yeah and it was something crazy like this dude was like a serial
• 40:56
  killer. And it took like something like
• 40:59
  six months to match up his matches Prince really so.
• 41:02
  So I'm thinking, man, I'm just like this little yeah LSD
• 41:05
  dealer. I'm like, it's going to take
• 41:06
  forever to match my prince but she because I had no idea, I was
• 41:09
  like, top 15. U.s.
• 41:10
  Yeah, you didn't know that, right?
• 41:12
  They match my prints up in three days.
• 41:14
  Oh, right then they had like the whatever like the the Midwest
• 41:20
  Missouri u.s. Marshals task force, you know
• 41:23
  like they'd only we're going to st.
• 41:24
  Louis like they bounce all around the Midwest so they're
• 41:27
  like it. No my case.
• 41:28
  I find out all this afterwards so the guy that I'm with, they
• 41:32
  have his real name and his address.
• 41:34
  So they go right to his house and his addresses like with his
• 41:36
  mom and his grandparents. So you know, they convinced him,
• 41:39
  you know, they bust him and they convinced him?
• 41:41
  Yes, to turn. There's a new dime, he has to
• 41:43
  cooperate. So then he starts driving US,
• 41:46
  Marshals around to all the people that we were selling weed
• 41:50
  to because every kind of like my partner to him, you know, he was
• 41:52
  like my right-hand man or whatever.
• 41:54
  He's the one who introduced me to all these people.
• 41:56
  So we're there. Driving the US Marshals and it
• 41:59
  just so happened, you know, people are telling me.
• 42:01
  So I'm getting phone calls and I'm like what am I going to do?
• 42:05
  You know, some kind of like hiding out at hotels?
• 42:07
  You move it? I don't know who to trust so I'm
• 42:08
  like staying I'm paranoid hotel hotel and I got like a load of
• 42:12
  weed that I'm trying to move. You know.
• 42:15
  I'm trying to turn into money like I'm having like a fire
• 42:17
  selling. I'm calling it.
• 42:19
  Nobody wants to mess with me because I'm hot.
• 42:21
  You're hot because he's everybody's getting word you
• 42:23
  know that the u.s. Marshals are looking for me,
• 42:26
  right? So finally I talked to this guy
• 42:29
  up in Colombia that I did a lot of business with and I give a
• 42:31
  good deal and he's like okay is that gonna be down there
• 42:34
  tomorrow? I got the cash, I'm gonna take
• 42:36
  everything you got, okay? I'm like cool and then it just
• 42:40
  so happens like one of the local dudes that I had dropped him
• 42:44
  off. You know, he'd bought like five
• 42:45
  pounds and right. When he pulled in his house, the
• 42:48
  US Marshals pulled in right after him.
• 42:51
  Well, he knew at the hotel that I was at you know while I was
• 42:53
  setting up this big yeah of Columbia deal.
• 42:56
  So he tell them some so you know, They come and they do
• 43:00
  surveillance on me because they want to see what I'm doing.
• 43:02
  So they watch me all night but nobody comes and goes because
• 43:05
  I'm just waiting on this one. Dude, he was supposed to come
• 43:07
  see me like 10 a.m. that morning US, Marshals busted into my
• 43:11
  hotel room, I'm staying right by the airport.
• 43:12
  I can Bridgeton, they busted my room like 6 a.m.
• 43:17
  Bust me with the we only had like whatever 20-something
• 43:19
  pounds. I don't have that much money,
• 43:21
  man. I maybe had like three, four
• 43:23
  grand but I had all my fake IDs 25.
• 43:27
  Fake IDs. I had like four past.
• 43:29
  All those it on. Yeah.
• 43:30
  Everything you don't because I'm ready.
• 43:31
  I'm ready. Like as soon as I make this deal
• 43:33
  like I'm not really gone, I was already made plans.
• 43:35
  I was going down to New Orleans, right?
• 43:37
  Some people down to New Orleans and then I was going to go like,
• 43:39
  Baton Rouge, go to like a this is blast deal.
• 43:41
  I was going to get some more weed in Texas and I was going to
• 43:43
  go to LSU, I have friends in Baton Rouge and I was going to
• 43:46
  sell we there you don't hide out and they come in, they get me
• 43:52
  and you know and then I know it's obvious they tell me that
• 43:55
  your top 10. Yeah 15 US Marshals is you know
• 43:58
  they take me into the federal holding cells you know in st.
• 44:02
  Louis. Yeah and it was crazy because
• 44:06
  Like when they caught me, like I still had no idea.
• 44:09
  Right? Then I was just high priority.
• 44:11
  Yeah. Like everybody's coming by like
• 44:13
  they want to see me like I felt like I'm an animal in a zoo
• 44:16
  they're like oh is that him? That's him.
• 44:18
  And then the US Marshals, finally come back.
• 44:21
  And, you know, they do stuff like they're like, bring me a
• 44:23
  little office and they're like, they're like, you know, you want
• 44:27
  a Coke, you want a candy bar or like, sign your wanted poster,
• 44:31
  mmm, that's wild. And they gave me like a Coke and
• 44:34
  a candy bar and I'm still like, I'm still, you know, Really
• 44:36
  clued in and they kind of, I'm like, what's the big deal?
• 44:39
  And they tell me and I'm like, I'm like, how am I?
• 44:42
  Like you got like killers and murderers?
• 44:46
  And I made the list and you gotta like a basically.
• 44:49
  I'm like a cannabis psychedelic activist nonviolent and I'm
• 44:53
  like, top 15. So I just thought it was like
• 44:57
  one of those crazy things, you know, but whatever, you know,
• 45:00
  it's cool. I got a cool wanted poster out
• 45:01
  of it, so I guess you did and not too many people have that
• 45:05
  Seth So, you did. How did it happen?
• 45:11
  Pretty fast the from that point, forward to getting into prison.
• 45:17
  I mean, but yeah, so I was caught like, October, I was
• 45:21
  sentenced, like, I was caught like, I think, October, 30
• 45:24
  others, and I was sentenced to simmer 13th, and what was your
• 45:29
  your world like when you when they gave you that 25-year
• 45:32
  sentence? I mean, what did that?
• 45:34
  Do know. He was crazy.
• 45:35
  So, when The Judge first said it, right?
• 45:37
  So I got 300, you know, the feds give you months only sees what
• 45:40
  you have to figure. That out, we have four months.
• 45:42
  So when he's first said, three hundred four months.
• 45:44
  I was kind of like, hmm. But then I started out I was
• 45:48
  like, wait, there's a lot twelve twelve, twelve, twelve twelve.
• 45:52
  I'm like how, how many? Like I don't even know how many
• 45:55
  years that is. Yeah, I couldn't even do the
• 45:56
  math. It's too much man, twelve
• 45:58
  twelve, twelve, twelve twelve, you know?
• 46:01
  And so you know, it ended up I had 25 year, four months
• 46:05
  sentence, I was only 22. So I had more time and how old I
• 46:08
  was, then what they were given. And for a first time, I'm not
• 46:11
  violent. Cannabis.
• 46:13
  Yeah, let's do you fence? So whatever, I basically this
• 46:16
  point, like I'm kind of in shock, you know, my first time
• 46:20
  in prison, you know. I just been in the county jail.
• 46:22
  Yeah. But still and and the county
• 46:25
  jails awful, I mean, you know, that's one of the things that as
• 46:28
  you get through the system, you understand, that the county jail
• 46:31
  is kind of like the Bottom Rung of society, and then you go
• 46:35
  live, basically create a life for yourself a prison.
• 46:38
  So, You get sentenced to get the 25 years.
• 46:42
  Where did they send you to Seth? So I started out as CI
• 46:45
  Manchester. Okay.
• 46:46
  Okay, so I started out, send a medium.
• 46:49
  Yes, started out like a medium-high like look because
• 46:51
  they're not going to let you download because you're just a
• 46:54
  president. Yeah that was a keeper of.
• 46:55
  So I had all these security look when I first came in, right?
• 46:58
  Like when I first got captured and then even my first five
• 47:01
  years like when I would transfer, I was Black Box.
• 47:03
  Yeah. And they made me like sit in the
• 47:05
  back of the plane so sure I got this other thing.
• 47:07
  So right when I first come in like I came Like, they should me
• 47:10
  to El Reno as it was before they had Oklahoma City.
• 47:13
  So, El Reno was a Transit spot, and I didn't even know that I
• 47:16
  just have always heard of Oklahoma City be in some
• 47:18
  transport laughter. So, I go to El Reno, right?
• 47:21
  And I get on the plane and, you know, they're taking me back,
• 47:25
  you know, after I get designated, I go from, you know,
• 47:27
  they fly which is crazy. True, they find me from Virginia
• 47:30
  out to El Reno to fly back to Kentucky.
• 47:33
  Yeah, it will zigzag. That's the peopie and the US,
• 47:36
  Marshals logic. But that's how they always do
• 47:38
  it. So, we go there, R, boom.
• 47:40
  I'm in El Reno, whatever, you know, week or so, waiting from
• 47:42
  to catch my plane or my bus and we go back and I get on this
• 47:45
  plane and we land in Terry Hut. Ya know where the penitentiary
• 47:50
  is, right? They got an airstrip there.
• 47:52
  And so, here I am. I'm like, I'm Tom like 61 but
• 47:57
  I'm like maybe, you know, 185 pounds, you know, I was
• 47:59
  athletic, you know, I didn't really work out though.
• 48:01
  I was just, you know, athletically but all sports
• 48:02
  growing up and stuff like that, and I'm sit, but I'm like short
• 48:06
  hair, you know, I look like a college kid, you know, pale
• 48:09
  because I Only 20 years old or 20 years old and so I'm sitting
• 48:13
  in the back of the plane and I'm black box and there's like a
• 48:16
  u.s. marshal sitting like right across from me like looking at
• 48:18
  me the whole time. So here comes, you know, the bus
• 48:20
  from Terry. Heck you might explain what
• 48:22
  black box is because people get Shackled, but then the the bad
• 48:25
  boys of the bad boys, get the black box.
• 48:27
  Yes, with the black box is it's like a little box.
• 48:30
  It like makes your wrists go like right together.
• 48:32
  So it's like handcuffs they put the black box over the handcuffs
• 48:35
  so you have no movement, can't move it all in and then they
• 48:38
  attach that to your Waist chain. Yep, you know so it's like you
• 48:42
  have no hand movement like anything, that's what they do.
• 48:45
  And being Chuckles worse enough. I mean that that makes you feel
• 48:48
  like you're an animal. But the Black Box thing is a
• 48:50
  whole nother. Yes, we love crazy.
• 48:52
  So we're at the airstrip and Terry Hut and, you know, they
• 48:56
  bring the bus from, you know, the USP Terre Haute, which was a
• 48:59
  pretty violent prison, you know, a lot of people lifers.
• 49:02
  And so I'm kind of sitting there in the back of the plane like
• 49:06
  and they got weights there too. So like all these yuge Jude's
• 49:08
  you know, all these like big Biker-looking, dues, they look
• 49:11
  like Thor, you know, a tattoos, all muscled out, you know, all
• 49:14
  these big black dudes like Debo, you know, getting on.
• 49:19
  And, you know, all these like, you know, hardcore Spanish
• 49:23
  Colombian cartel looking dudes and like Italian mafia dudes,
• 49:27
  and they're all getting on the plane and they like, they're all
• 49:30
  turning. Because I'm right in the back of
• 49:31
  the plane where they get up, they're all just guy with the
• 49:33
  black box at me and they're like, you know, I could just see
• 49:35
  it in their eyes are like, like, who's this, dude?
• 49:38
  Yeah. Why is he here?
• 49:40
  Who's this? What is this?
• 49:41
  Like Jeffrey Dahmer something? You know, I mean they have a
• 49:44
  muzzle on the right Trail. They're just looking at it.
• 49:47
  Look like a little college kid. Yeah.
• 49:49
  So you know, that was kind of like my first memory like a like
• 49:54
  real prison with being indoctrinated and I'm looking at
• 49:56
  these dudes and I'm like, man, I'm like, I'm like, I'm glad,
• 49:59
  I'm not going to Terry hunt. Yeah.
• 50:01
  Yeah. You know, but I don't know what
• 50:03
  Manchester is but you know, I know it's only SEI and not a USP
• 50:06
  so I'm like, I'm glad I ain't going to you sp.
• 50:08
  So finally you I get I get to the Manchester and is actually
• 50:14
  kind of nice. It was like a college campus,
• 50:16
  actually, when I first came in, they actually had a professors
• 50:19
  from Eastern Kentucky, like, coming on the, on the school
• 50:22
  side. I immediately rolled in college
• 50:24
  courses and they used to be able to use Pell Grants for
• 50:26
  prisoners, are that only lasted my first two years?
• 50:28
  So that kind of college program lasted like my first two years.
• 50:31
  When I was there, I got like 24 credits and yeah, I would just
• 50:35
  work out. Play sports, go to class.
• 50:39
  No, was it easy for you to get, you know, because going into
• 50:43
  prison I think is always interesting from the standpoint
• 50:47
  that there you are. The new guy, they do look at you
• 50:50
  they try to you know, check you out.
• 50:51
  So you who you are, did you find your people fairly easily in the
• 51:00
  beginning? Because, you know, I your I
• 51:02
  think probably for use that's your for your first.
• 51:05
  Five years would probably be different than your next You
• 51:10
  know, 15 18 years. I mean walk me through some of
• 51:13
  that that happened to you first five years are there because
• 51:17
  then you became pretty, you know, prolific can how you get
• 51:21
  involved with the sports, you got involved writing the, the
• 51:25
  newsletter that had all the stats on it that everybody was
• 51:28
  sending home to their their their families.
• 51:30
  And you got involved in so many different things but kind of
• 51:32
  walk me through how that all happened.
• 51:34
  Yeah, well, I mean, looking back now.
• 51:36
  I mean I was, I was kind of I was kind of Lucky in a sense.
• 51:39
  Since could because Prison is really about people judge you by
• 51:42
  who your allies are some, who you hang around or really see
• 51:45
  you on the compound with. That's kind of, you know, they
• 51:47
  equate you with those movements. So, I had two things going for
• 51:50
  me, because I mean, Kentucky my cases out of Virginia.
• 51:53
  I'm oe3 number. But immediately, when you hit
• 51:55
  the compound there, like where you from, I'm from California
• 52:00
  because I grew up in California, so I'm from California.
• 52:03
  So the only other dude, so that the people on the Block, they're
• 52:06
  like, okay, when you get your homeboys.
• 52:08
  So the only people from California are the surenos the
• 52:11
  Mexican gangbangers. There's not a lot of them,
• 52:14
  there's maybe like five six on the whole compound, you actually
• 52:16
  to or some hardcore, 20 of them, you know?
• 52:19
  Luckily, two of them happened to be on my blog.
• 52:21
  Yeah, so. So they bring these Mexican
• 52:24
  gangbangers to me, they're like, where you from.
• 52:25
  I like our group, in San Diego, you know, blah, blah blah.
• 52:28
  Other like what? Okay.
• 52:29
  So my case out of Virginia, you know, I was I was shipping stuff
• 52:31
  from Cali Northern Cali to Virginia selling ecologist, you
• 52:36
  know. So then they're like, okay, you
• 52:38
  know, you gotta write this cop out, you got to get your PS, I
• 52:41
  know we got to check out your paperwork so I do that.
• 52:43
  They get my PSI, you know, check out my sentence read it.
• 52:46
  You know, they sit there in the cell with me and they read it,
• 52:49
  they're like they're like, okay, you're okay.
• 52:51
  So they're like and then they told me they're like, look
• 52:54
  anybody else ask for your paperwork?
• 52:57
  Like we don't care white boys. Whatever.
• 52:58
  Hmm, tell him. We read it.
• 53:00
  We value good. Read your shit.
• 53:02
  Yeah, you're good. You can walk, right?
• 53:04
  So then I go. I'm working out with these
• 53:06
  dudes. Are like, come on, homeboy.
• 53:07
  We're going to go work out. So I'm working out with this.
• 53:09
  Is your part of your car. Yeah.
• 53:10
  Cuz it's only California, dude. Yeah.
• 53:12
  In these fucking like five, Serena will do.
• 53:13
  Yeah. So I'm with them.
• 53:16
  So, then immediately all the other white boys.
• 53:18
  See me with these guys. And this is where to, because at
• 53:20
  that time, I didn't know. Like I was so naive.
• 53:23
  Like these Serino dues, like they're running the Heroin on
• 53:27
  the compound. Wow.
• 53:28
  Like I have no idea. Yeah, so I'm like this new white
• 53:31
  kid. I got like this 25-year
• 53:32
  sentence. You know, people find that out
• 53:33
  real quick. Mmm, you know?
• 53:35
  Because even some people like, they're like, how much time you
• 53:38
  got em. Like, 25.
• 53:39
  They're like, what'd you do kill people?
• 53:40
  Mmm, no mass murder. I'm like, no, I sold LSD and
• 53:43
  marijuana. Mmm.
• 53:44
  So this was still a lot of people were stolen from the 80s,
• 53:47
  like the Old Law. So this is like still the
• 53:49
  beginning of the new law, you know.
• 53:50
  These laws are core loss. Yeah.
• 53:52
  The the mandatory minimums and stuff and so, you know, see
• 53:56
  people coming And with that kind of time you know and especially
• 53:59
  not like a little white kid from the suburbs so that was one
• 54:02
  thing that helped me. The other thing that helped me I
• 54:07
  got to tell you last name. Yeah, very time.
• 54:10
  I'm on the East Coast. You know, there's a lot of mob
• 54:13
  dudes. So, all the mob, dudes, start
• 54:15
  coming to me all the times. They're like, you know, who's
• 54:18
  your grandpa, your dad, you know, my grandpa my dad were
• 54:21
  both military guys. Yeah.
• 54:22
  You know, where you from your family from you know they're
• 54:25
  trying to see if there's any connection.
• 54:26
  A connection there was no connections but still they liked
• 54:28
  me. They saw him messing with the
• 54:30
  Cerritos. Yeah, they say I'm messing with
• 54:32
  the sureno so they figure like I got to be somebody.
• 54:34
  So, you know, within a couple weeks of Being on the compound
• 54:37
  I'm walking. I'm sitting, you know, I'm
• 54:39
  sitting in the chow, hall with the mob, dudes, you don't send
• 54:42
  it, the Italian Table. Yeah, and I'm working out with
• 54:45
  the surenos. Yeah, you're plugged in.
• 54:46
  So all the white dudes are looking me.
• 54:48
  Like, who is it? Yeah, and then I like I say I
• 54:50
  didn't know that Serena was running the drugs.
• 54:52
  Oh, I had no idea. So eventually, like, I'm in
• 54:55
  there like, you know, four, five, six months, like a lot of
• 54:57
  white dudes start coming up to me and, you know, especially the
• 55:00
  guys from Virginia because they find out.
• 55:01
  I got a Virginia case, I'm over 83 they're like yo homeboy
• 55:04
  they're like my plug us in. I'm like, what are you talking
• 55:07
  about? If I plug Us in, man, with your
• 55:09
  homies and like, I have no, I had no idea.
• 55:12
  I have no idea. Yeah, so this was kind of like
• 55:14
  my entrance. You know, the federal prison.
• 55:18
  So, I did 12 Years in the mediums, my first 12 years of
• 55:21
  medium. So that's like in and, you know,
• 55:23
  if you've been in the feds, they call the meetings, like, glad it
• 55:25
  Gladiators Gladiator school, right?
• 55:27
  You know, you gotta fight, you know?
• 55:28
  Like I say I'm a well, I had a fight, I played a lot of sports,
• 55:31
  I was out on the yard. So you know, luckily, I was
• 55:34
  always the type of dude that I never let stuff Fester like you
• 55:38
  know there's certain things. A lot of stuff can happen out on
• 55:40
  the yard. Yeah but there's a lot of stuff
• 55:41
  like you can't call personally basketball, you can't call dudes
• 55:45
  like like like certain words, Yeah, you know, once you know
• 55:49
  you know because actually the Sereno dude, actually sat me
• 55:51
  down and he was like, you know, don't do drugs, don't gamble,
• 55:56
  don't mess with punks. He was like if you got a
• 55:58
  problem, come get me. Okay.
• 56:01
  You know what I'm saying? So that was kind of like my
• 56:02
  rules you know you gave me the your prison rules so then you
• 56:06
  know and then I learned to like there's certain things like you
• 56:08
  know you don't call a man like you can't call a man a bitch you
• 56:10
  can't call a man a punk you can't call him a faggot you know
• 56:13
  whatever. So you know I was all these type
• 56:16
  of dude. I played a lot of sports like if
• 56:17
  somebody came out of their mouth wrong, I mean II don't care.
• 56:21
  If there was cops or anything there, I would just punch them
• 56:24
  because that's how the Serino dudes taught me.
• 56:25
  They're like, man, if you got something, don't take it.
• 56:28
  Don't let it Fester. Have it right there and it stand
• 56:30
  up because in whatever you guys are good.
• 56:32
  Both going to go the whole you know, you might come out, you
• 56:34
  know because if you make it a beef and it becomes racial or
• 56:37
  then you want to get it knife or come stab you and it can turn.
• 56:39
  So they're like just handed a their attitude with any care of
• 56:42
  was in the chow hall. Hmm.
• 56:43
  Eagle handle it right then handle your business.
• 56:46
  So that's what They taught me. So you know I was in you know,
• 56:48
  not a lot of situations like that but a little, you know,
• 56:50
  like I'll fight like I always tell people like my nose, my
• 56:54
  broken like five times. I got my right split right here.
• 56:58
  Yeah, we're that I got split right here and I got split right
• 57:01
  here and like I don't have a knuckle.
• 57:03
  Oh wow. You don't, you know, that's all
• 57:06
  from fighting like that. I probably broke this like, five
• 57:08
  times. I got like they call like a
• 57:10
  boxer's. Yeah, a boxer's knuckle.
• 57:12
  I don't think I've seen that. You know what I'm saying?
• 57:14
  You don't have a knuckle there. It's from punching people.
• 57:17
  But, you know, so like I said, don't worry though.
• 57:19
  Yes, I did. Like I did like 12 years in the
• 57:22
  Gladiator school. That's a good thing to say,
• 57:24
  like, if your bar is, I why don't you have a knock?
• 57:26
  I was when I was looking at a bunch of fights in prison, you
• 57:31
  know, not to say I was not a tough guy or nothing but, you
• 57:33
  know. Yeah, you said you had to handle
• 57:34
  your business as the headlight and I played a lot of sports and
• 57:37
  I in a primitive world. And like in there, anyhow, you
• 57:40
  know, if you don't fight, it's like your own people are the
• 57:42
  ones who are going to come and pray on you, right?
• 57:44
  So like I say, you know, I kind of stylish my Reputation is like
• 57:47
  a crazy, white boy. Like, I was a white dude.
• 57:49
  That was out running running full court with all the black
• 57:53
  dudes. Yeah, I was a white dude.
• 57:55
  It was playing soccer with all the Spanish, Mexicans in
• 57:57
  Jenkins. You know, I was always that guy
• 58:00
  but you know, one thing I thought about, you know, playing
• 58:02
  sports and prison. I think the one cool thing about
• 58:06
  the whole Sports scene in prison was really was an escape, you
• 58:10
  know. Definitely you go out there and
• 58:11
  you play a basketball game. Play softball game.
• 58:14
  Play volleyball game. Play soccer.
• 58:16
  Ever it is or we even had a tennis court that was crazy.
• 58:20
  As tennis court that moved, it was a sport court and we had to
• 58:25
  it's hard to explain. But anyway, we would play a
• 58:27
  little bit of test, but all those things, you had an escape,
• 58:30
  it felt like you were outside of the fence, you know, it really
• 58:33
  did you away, you know, that's why, that's why I'm saying,
• 58:36
  that's why I played Sports, I worked out and then, you know, I
• 58:39
  start taking the college classes, you know?
• 58:42
  And then eventually I get into my writing because that was kind
• 58:44
  of like my Escape. So do you think Seth, that that
• 58:47
  is when you started doing those courses, is that?
• 58:51
  What kind of fueled your flame to say?
• 58:54
  Wow, I got a bunch of stores in here.
• 58:57
  Yeah, yeah, no. No definitely, man, because you
• 59:00
  created a business for yourself inside prison, which is terribly
• 59:05
  unique from the standpoint that it's hard to get things done
• 59:10
  your, you know, your your phone calls or fell or taped, they
• 59:15
  record them and limit. Unlimited you have whenever
• 59:19
  you're sending stuff back and forth with true links and I
• 59:21
  don't know if they had true links and core links in the 90s
• 59:23
  but they look at that. Yeah, they did it in.
• 59:25
  So they come around to like 2,000.
• 59:27
  So, what do you understand any of that stuff is, it's all
• 59:30
  monitor. That's all monitored.
• 59:32
  So you were able to write columns for vice and other
• 59:36
  things inside prison, which I find is fascinating.
• 59:40
  But tell me how that all because you you started kind of open it
• 59:44
  up your mind to my God. These there's guys in here, Here
• 59:47
  that are famous pretty much on the streets, but they don't have
• 59:50
  any books about them, we'll see, because I was thinking the
• 59:54
  college courses, I was in the library all the time, you know?
• 59:58
  Because because first I was taking the college classes on
• 1:00:00
  the Pell Grant. But then I start seeing
• 1:00:02
  correspondence courses know which my parents pay for them
• 1:00:04
  the prison and pay for them. So I had maybe 24 credits that
• 1:00:07
  were funded by Pell Grants and then you know, I was doing so
• 1:00:10
  good. You know, I kind of convinced my
• 1:00:12
  parents, you know I parents are everybody, my family has a
• 1:00:14
  master's degree anyhow. So it was like some time.
• 1:00:16
  Using its, your master's degree in prison just took a lot
• 1:00:18
  longer. Yeah, but it was a long journey
• 1:00:21
  for me. But, um, so I was always in the
• 1:00:23
  library and I was always typing stuff up because I was always
• 1:00:26
  send my papers out, you know, and I was taking mostly, you
• 1:00:29
  know, in correspondence, you can go like a business route or you
• 1:00:33
  can kind of go like a, like, a literary, English root.
• 1:00:37
  Yeah. You know, like Humanity.
• 1:00:38
  So I want the humanities route, you know?
• 1:00:40
  I was always kind of creative person, anyhow, you know, I like
• 1:00:43
  play guitar song and bands. You wrote poetry.
• 1:00:46
  Could be a rock star. Yeah, I was like, dungeon master
• 1:00:49
  for like D&D and stuff like that.
• 1:00:51
  So I was already kind of creative.
• 1:00:52
  I don't even started, like, you know what, I would have called
• 1:00:55
  like the Great American novel couple times is teenager but
• 1:00:57
  never, you know, yeah, wrote more than a couple of pages
• 1:01:00
  because it was too much work. I was out there partying, right?
• 1:01:03
  But, um, I was always in there on the typewriter and then being
• 1:01:07
  that I had all these connections like by playing sports, you
• 1:01:11
  know, in there, they have that like the administrative remedies
• 1:01:14
  like the cop out, you know, BP Deputy eight and a half.
• 1:01:17
  So every time people had problems, or we go, the whole,
• 1:01:20
  or they would take their privileges, or they were trying
• 1:01:21
  to move, get closer to family or get their visits back or good
• 1:01:24
  time, they had to file these and the way they did it, like, you
• 1:01:28
  had to type them up and there was like limited typewriters.
• 1:01:30
  So I have like all the time like white, dudes, black dude,
• 1:01:34
  Spanish Jews that I knew from playing sports.
• 1:01:36
  They would see that I was in there.
• 1:01:37
  So they would come and they say, hey man can you type this off
• 1:01:40
  em? You know whatever I'll give you
• 1:01:41
  a book is Taps. Maybe like gold.
• 1:01:44
  Yeah, I would do that. I would do that a lot.
• 1:01:45
  And so then I started Started doing this as I was doing my
• 1:01:48
  college courses and eventually after a couple years, like I
• 1:01:53
  got, we're like, I could charge like 25 bucks because I was
• 1:01:57
  winning, you know. I was giving people good time
• 1:01:58
  back. Yeah.
• 1:01:59
  Didn't you just throw you back? I was getting people
• 1:02:01
  transferred. I was getting people.
• 1:02:03
  Lower bunks. Yeah, you know, I was getting
• 1:02:05
  people like special tennis shoes, like anything, you can
• 1:02:07
  get that people were trying to get.
• 1:02:09
  I became known as you know, not a like a jailhouse lawyer.
• 1:02:13
  No but that gets around yeah but in-house guy can help you Yeah.
• 1:02:17
  So it started out just typing, you know?
• 1:02:20
  And so I got this was like my side hustle, right?
• 1:02:22
  And the same time, I'm doing my college courses and so I start.
• 1:02:26
  I'm doing really heavily and I'm reading into like when I first
• 1:02:30
  get in there I'm reading like every prison book I can find
• 1:02:32
  because now basically school at myself, I don't know anything
• 1:02:34
  about prison. Sure, you know, so this is kind
• 1:02:36
  of like, you know, my guy to prison.
• 1:02:38
  So very first, two years. I was in, I probably read like
• 1:02:40
  every, you know, I really like in the Billy the beach Jack,
• 1:02:43
  Henry Abbott Soledad brother, George Jackson live from Death
• 1:02:46
  row, mumia abu-jamal, you know, every prison, but anything you
• 1:02:50
  get ahold of I read because it was all like no information or
• 1:02:53
  education of prison. So then to I was like I started
• 1:02:57
  thinking, right? I'm like, I want to write my
• 1:03:00
  version of this. So that was a basis of my first
• 1:03:04
  book, prison stories. And actually, the first prison
• 1:03:06
  first 30 pages of prison stories.
• 1:03:08
  I have actually wrote for a fiction.
• 1:03:10
  Fiction course that I was taking through the College Iowa State
• 1:03:13
  University, our University of Iowa, And also at the same time
• 1:03:18
  like you know, there's all these Mafia dudes, you know, something
• 1:03:21
  I'm calling my mom or my or my girl.
• 1:03:23
  I'm like I me some books, this Mafia dude like they're out
• 1:03:28
  there like in the next block or send me the books and there's
• 1:03:30
  all these at that time, early 92, there's all these Colombian
• 1:03:33
  car cocaine, cartel, dudes. So I'm like find me the books
• 1:03:36
  and then, you know about 95, that's when gangster rap blew
• 1:03:39
  up, right? Right.
• 1:03:41
  So, you know, like I was a lot of times I was like the only
• 1:03:43
  white dude like in the yo MTV Raps are the BET room, you know,
• 1:03:47
  because I liked hip-hop, anyhow. And I played basketball with all
• 1:03:50
  these guys so I could go in there, you know.
• 1:03:52
  So I'd be like the only white dude.
• 1:03:53
  So I was like privy to like these, you know.
• 1:03:57
  Stories it were in people talking to you couldn't hear
• 1:04:00
  anywhere else. No besides prison, you know
• 1:04:03
  about you know the African American you know hip-hop
• 1:04:07
  mythology like drug lord, Street law, or whatever you want to
• 1:04:10
  call it. They were with you.
• 1:04:12
  Yeah. So we're watching these wraps
• 1:04:15
  and they're dropping names of these different dudes you know
• 1:04:17
  from like New York DC Philly. A lot of the big cities even La
• 1:04:21
  you know, the big rappers but at that time a lot of the big
• 1:04:24
  rappers were the East Coast guys.
• 1:04:25
  You know in wa had already come and But you know, like 50 Cent
• 1:04:29
  was big, you know, like Nas. And they're dropping these names
• 1:04:33
  of all like the street Legends, you know, these Hood Legends and
• 1:04:37
  in like two dudes would talk about in, there might be like, a
• 1:04:38
  do from Queens. And he's like, I asked my homie
• 1:04:40
  blah blah. He's like, I'm like, oh yeah,
• 1:04:43
  I'm like, what's that? He's like, oh yeah, he's over on
• 1:04:45
  B Block. I'm like, what?
• 1:04:46
  He's right here. So so then I call my mom or my
• 1:04:51
  girl and I'm like, I'm like find me some books on them and
• 1:04:55
  there's like no book, there's no books, there's no books on these
• 1:04:58
  days. He might find a magazine article
• 1:04:59
  over there, you know that they, you know, by this time you know,
• 1:05:02
  it's like the internet and started, you know, like around
• 1:05:04
  96. So they print me out stuff, or
• 1:05:06
  they would try to find me newspaper articles, or they, a
• 1:05:09
  lot of times you go, like, on LexisNexis and find the article
• 1:05:11
  and stuff like that as soon as he and on.
• 1:05:14
  So, I started reading this stuff, so then I start forming
• 1:05:18
  in my head, I'm like You know, the same time, you know, I'm
• 1:05:22
  working Recreation and I'm doing like sports newsletters on the
• 1:05:26
  interim intramural sport leagues which is huge in prison.
• 1:05:29
  That whole thing is gigantic, can't explain how big that is.
• 1:05:33
  Well, how big the sports world is for and you're keeping their
• 1:05:36
  stats and right Source, I started out with doing the stats
• 1:05:41
  and doing like the win-loss records and posting those.
• 1:05:43
  And then when I was doing that, like, dudes from like some of
• 1:05:45
  the older prisons or the USPS, they would be, like, why don't
• 1:05:47
  you do a newsletter? Yeah, be like, what?
• 1:05:50
  I was, I was a Jew that I would walk around to every unit and
• 1:05:53
  post this stuff like on the bullets, but they loved that
• 1:05:55
  job. And dudes kept hitting me up,
• 1:05:56
  like, why don't you write like a column, why don't you write a
• 1:05:59
  newsletter? I'm like, what do you mean?
• 1:06:00
  So they started showing me once. Here's what you want, here's
• 1:06:03
  what we want. Yeah.
• 1:06:04
  From other thing, they've done, right?
• 1:06:06
  Yeah. And so I started looking at it
• 1:06:08
  and then, like, I used to get USA Today every day, you know,
• 1:06:11
  mail call and I'll for the sports section and I remember
• 1:06:14
  back then, like, Peter Vesey had like a calm, and some indyk
• 1:06:17
  phyto had like a problem. Yeah, nice to read that stuff
• 1:06:19
  for obviously. So I'm seeing these Sports News
• 1:06:21
  letters from these other prisons and are reading these columns
• 1:06:24
  every day and then I'm like, I'm like, boom, I can write these
• 1:06:28
  columns. Yeah.
• 1:06:29
  So I go propose the recreational.
• 1:06:30
  They're like, yeah, cool. So, you know, I start doing
• 1:06:32
  that. I'm taking writing Kyle classes
• 1:06:34
  at College, I'm writing in the prison for my prison audience,
• 1:06:38
  right? Right.
• 1:06:40
  And then I find out there's all these gangsters that are Lying
• 1:06:44
  Eyes din mythologize in hip-hop lure, right?
• 1:06:48
  And they're all on the compound with me, there's no books about
• 1:06:51
  no books So it's just like, boom.
• 1:06:55
  Yeah, like hits me, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:06:58
  And I love it. I mean, I love it for so many
• 1:07:01
  different reasons because you what a way to what a way to do
• 1:07:09
  your time to find a passion that you're really good at and then
• 1:07:15
  you've got the content right there and you can work with it
• 1:07:18
  and to me that's just I don't know what you call that Seth but
• 1:07:24
  you know you weren't in the right place but it was the right
• 1:07:29
  time for you to find that thing that you were you were
• 1:07:33
  passionate about good with and had a talent for and then all of
• 1:07:37
  a sudden When you start writing all these different books which
• 1:07:42
  and another big thing that it kind of motivated.
• 1:07:45
  Yeah, gave me like a blueprint. So at the end of the 90s That's
• 1:07:50
  like when the urban fiction genre blew up, hmm?
• 1:07:54
  Right. And so, there's all these books
• 1:07:57
  coming in the prisons, it's all Urban fiction, right?
• 1:08:01
  For some dudes in prison like Terry Woods, with a big author,
• 1:08:05
  you know, Shannon homes, you know, Vicki Stewart in there for
• 1:08:11
  me like their own companies, right?
• 1:08:14
  And they're like selling like hundreds of thousands of books
• 1:08:16
  because it's like this new genre, you know?
• 1:08:18
  It's basically like you know, if you Back a while you got like
• 1:08:20
  Iceberg Slim and Donald goines but that's like the only books
• 1:08:23
  you can in those were in the 70s.
• 1:08:24
  So that's the only books. You can even compare these books
• 1:08:26
  to. So I see these books and I see
• 1:08:29
  how the people are reacting to the right, right.
• 1:08:34
  And I see like these are like totally like independent
• 1:08:36
  companies, right? So I just I look at like you
• 1:08:39
  know, I looked at like Terry Woods imprint and I looked at
• 1:08:42
  Viki Stringer which was Triple Crown books and I just look at
• 1:08:46
  these and I'm like man I'm like I can do this except I'm going
• 1:08:50
  to write about these real gangsters.
• 1:08:51
  I'm going to do nonfiction and at the same time I had started
• 1:08:56
  doing articles and stuff too. Like I'm prison life you know.
• 1:08:59
  Like I had I had this calm for vice called like I'm busted.
• 1:09:03
  Yeah. You know where I'm writing about
• 1:09:05
  different prison. That's out in the real world
• 1:09:07
  when you're in prison. Yeah.
• 1:09:08
  And I'm doing other, I'm doing a lot of stuff for like prison
• 1:09:10
  newsletters about Criminal Justice Reform.
• 1:09:13
  But, you know, I start, I start, you know, trying to work myself
• 1:09:16
  as a journalist, but at the same time, I'm like, I want to do
• 1:09:18
  books. So, You know, all this is kind
• 1:09:21
  of going through my head and I'm thinking like, what can I do for
• 1:09:24
  my future? Hmm, you know, because I start
• 1:09:26
  my first five years, I was like really angry, you know, my
• 1:09:29
  sentence but you know, after the first five years, you're not
• 1:09:31
  kind of settled down and like I had a couple different mentors.
• 1:09:34
  Hmm, you know, older me, dudes, it done more time, you know, the
• 1:09:37
  kind of tell me how to do your time and showing value and me
• 1:09:40
  and you know, I had one do there was really influential on me
• 1:09:43
  now. Michael Santos had like crazy
• 1:09:47
  here, like 45 years, I cold or heat it up doing like 26.
• 1:09:50
  You know, he's a cocaine dealer from Washington but Cuban
• 1:09:52
  descent. So He like influence me,
• 1:09:57
  tremendously entered you, you know, and that was his seeing
• 1:10:01
  like what are you doing now? For your future.
• 1:10:02
  He's like, every day you're in here, you have to do something
• 1:10:04
  for you, plan for your future and I used to work out with this
• 1:10:06
  dude everyday. And you know he started writing
• 1:10:10
  books to like this dude was like this dude was like a genius.
• 1:10:14
  He had it actually like he made like over a million dollars like
• 1:10:18
  on the.com. Boom in the 90s like by
• 1:10:21
  basically watching the bottom line in the TV and then calling
• 1:10:24
  it. Sister who would like by him
• 1:10:26
  stocks. Wow, obviously, he had a little
• 1:10:28
  money to be sure to buy the stocks, but he basically turned,
• 1:10:30
  like, 100,000 into like 1.2 million.
• 1:10:33
  Then I think he lost his ass, like, when the in the late 90s.
• 1:10:36
  Yeah, the.com busted. Yeah.
• 1:10:38
  But, you know, he did all this from prison.
• 1:10:40
  That's course. I saw someone of an idea and I'm
• 1:10:43
  seeing what he's doing, and, you know, even I at that time, I had
• 1:10:47
  got a couple pieces, you know, I've been doing the prison
• 1:10:50
  basketball and sports intramural stuff in the prison.
• 1:10:53
  So I was like a prison even journalists on the compound, but
• 1:10:57
  I will also had a couple things, you know, I wrote about my case,
• 1:11:00
  like in different fam, G, or different, November Coalition.
• 1:11:04
  And and so, you know, and I took some classes, you know, it was
• 1:11:08
  working on my associates and bachelor's degree by this time.
• 1:11:11
  So I would tell people, like, I'm a writer.
• 1:11:13
  I'm a writer writer, you know, and you were a writer.
• 1:11:18
  Yeah, but he was a dude. He's to bust my balls.
• 1:11:20
  So I'm with him and he's like, well, what have you written And
• 1:11:24
  I'm showing them basically, like the same piece has been
• 1:11:26
  published in all these different prison newsletters.
• 1:11:28
  And he's like, well what else have you written?
• 1:11:31
  I'm like, what are you talking about?
• 1:11:32
  I got all these pieces published, you know?
• 1:11:33
  I'm like yeah, this Rider right? You know, and I write all these,
• 1:11:38
  you know, stuff in prison. It's posted on the bulletin
• 1:11:40
  board, he's like, oh yeah, that's cool.
• 1:11:41
  So he takes me to a cell Seth when this got published out in
• 1:11:45
  the world, did you use your name?
• 1:11:46
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:11:47
  Did they cover come back on you and the prison world and put you
• 1:11:50
  in the hole and say, hey, you can't conduct business in
• 1:11:52
  prison? Yeah, I got I got put in The
• 1:11:54
  Whole Town's at. I fought battles with them.
• 1:11:56
  Yeah. But so this guy, Michael Santos.
• 1:11:58
  He became like a real big man. Entering for me, he took me to
• 1:12:02
  his cell and he just had like boxes and boxes of stuff.
• 1:12:06
  He's written. He's like, you know, he's like
• 1:12:08
  most of this stuff will never get published but he goes, you
• 1:12:11
  know, this is me practice my trade.
• 1:12:13
  So he's like if you want to be a writer write as you need to
• 1:12:16
  start writing so then I you know, I started writing more
• 1:12:18
  stuff and he was real big influence on me and I started
• 1:12:21
  pitching more stuff. And I kind of became a
• 1:12:22
  journalist from prison. soon, as I started, become a journalist
• 1:12:26
  from prison writing for like, Don Diva magazine, FEDS
• 1:12:28
  Magazine, you know, Vice and in other places, like I even had
• 1:12:31
  stuff like in Maxim and shm, And I started getting paid.
• 1:12:37
  You know, that's when the problem came because in like the
• 1:12:39
  sis who are like the prison investigators, they started
• 1:12:42
  writing me shots for running a business conducting a business,
• 1:12:46
  you know, acting as a reporter. Yeah.
• 1:12:48
  And they start locking me up because a lot of times I would
• 1:12:51
  call the people right on the phone because back then you
• 1:12:53
  could call straight, you know, it wasn't till like the late 90s
• 1:12:55
  where they did, whether you have the call yet to push to accept
• 1:12:58
  and stuff like that, right back then you could call straight.
• 1:12:59
  As long as you have money on your phone and there was no
• 1:13:02
  limitations on how much you could talk.
• 1:13:04
  That came later than 3:00. Under a minute rule.
• 1:13:06
  But, um, which is really 10 minutes a day.
• 1:13:09
  Yeah, which sucked. But so, I'm getting locked up
• 1:13:12
  and then, and I kind of found this loophole, right?
• 1:13:15
  So, I'm looking at all the rules and regulations and stuff like
• 1:13:20
  this, and I find this loophole where basically, it said, like
• 1:13:25
  if you own a house or a car and you're in prison, You can give a
• 1:13:33
  relative or friend power of attorney absolutely to sell that
• 1:13:36
  property. Yep.
• 1:13:38
  You know, then you're not conducting business, like a
• 1:13:40
  broken-down, this is not. But if you get on the phone and
• 1:13:42
  you're trying to sell yourself and you're conducting business,
• 1:13:44
  that there's somebody else has the power of attorney, a so I
• 1:13:47
  was like, okay. Well, all my writing is
• 1:13:49
  intellectual property, right? Right.
• 1:13:52
  So I gave you know, my girl. It should became my wife, I gave
• 1:13:59
  her power of attorney, and so she used to conduct all the
• 1:14:03
  billions. I would send the stuff that the
• 1:14:04
  people would like, they would ask me to write this and asked
• 1:14:07
  me to write that like editors, yeah, but I was sent it to him,
• 1:14:11
  and I would type it, but she would negotiate, and she would
• 1:14:13
  conduct a brilliant and they loved it.
• 1:14:16
  And she would put, she would get the check from them and she
• 1:14:18
  would, you know, put deposit her account and she would put it
• 1:14:20
  right on my account. So, I started doing this and
• 1:14:24
  they hate it, but he wouldn't like that.
• 1:14:26
  I hated that when I did that but I had them, they couldn't do
• 1:14:29
  nothing. So, I always had what I call
• 1:14:31
  sit-downs. Yeah, like with the sis and a
• 1:14:34
  lot of times I had to bring somebody else with me, you know,
• 1:14:36
  because if you can run the Sis, Sis Sis is an acid peel.
• 1:14:39
  So your snitch, right? So I would always have to bring
• 1:14:40
  a friend with me and I would have the sit-downs and even like
• 1:14:43
  the dudes on bring. They'd be like, dude, like how
• 1:14:45
  do you, like, like, you're talking to S is like your equal?
• 1:14:48
  Yeah, you know, because I would have the Social Security people.
• 1:14:51
  I knew the rules. There's a, they're the guys
• 1:14:53
  there, the cops within the prison.
• 1:14:56
  Yeah, like the are the odds that the cops.
• 1:14:59
  Exactly. Was it busts a cost for bringing
• 1:15:01
  enjoy? Exactly.
• 1:15:02
  They rest cops and walk them off the compound, right?
• 1:15:05
  But um, so I'm having sit down since with these guys because
• 1:15:08
  they're, like, really concerned about my writing, they're like
• 1:15:10
  really concerned like I'm going to expose something something
• 1:15:13
  sure and come back on them. Yeah.
• 1:15:15
  So you know, once I found out what their kind of concerns
• 1:15:18
  were, I started writing stuff, you know, I would write
• 1:15:22
  something like even if it was from the institution I was in, I
• 1:15:25
  would make it seem Mmmmm, like, it was from a somebody somewhere
• 1:15:28
  else. Yeah.
• 1:15:29
  So I started doing stuff like that.
• 1:15:30
  Changing names, obviously, so smart going to get targeted, you
• 1:15:34
  know, but I would still use my own name.
• 1:15:35
  Yeah, as a because I was trying to build career for myself.
• 1:15:37
  Exactly building with a longer building brand, even when they
• 1:15:41
  locked me up. Yeah.
• 1:15:42
  You know, like dude, I wrote like whole manuscripts, like in
• 1:15:46
  the hole when you were in the hole in the hole with those
• 1:15:49
  little flimsy pencils. Yeah.
• 1:15:51
  Did you can barely write with all right, I've wrote hundreds,
• 1:15:54
  and hundreds of pages. Like that free hand.
• 1:15:57
  And then I would wait till I get out and I would type it.
• 1:15:59
  Unbelievable know. And so I used to tell the sis do
• 1:16:02
  is I'd like, go ahead and put me in the hole, I'll just write
• 1:16:04
  more. Yeah, and I, my basic my whole
• 1:16:06
  attitude was like, you cannot stop me.
• 1:16:08
  I'm doing something for my future.
• 1:16:10
  I don't care if you lock me up. Short term.
• 1:16:11
  I said I'm not doing nothing wrong and they would always lock
• 1:16:13
  me out to under under some BS. Like I was trying to smuggle in
• 1:16:16
  drugs or later on like, well, he's pretty much throw you in
• 1:16:19
  the hole for anything. I mean, your, your rights of
• 1:16:21
  going in or out of the hole in prison, you just don't have any.
• 1:16:25
  So So Seth you get through all of this.
• 1:16:31
  And what I think is just incredible as you stand up,
• 1:16:36
  somewhat 23 years, 21 years, 120.
• 1:16:38
  Okay, so 21 years. So you basically went in the 90s
• 1:16:43
  you come out, your 2015, 2015 you're 40, I was 43 43 how the
• 1:16:54
  world must have felt to you. Walking out of that prison.
• 1:17:00
  Can you explain that? I mean, that's yeah, so that's
• 1:17:03
  just wild to me because so mean everything had changed you still
• 1:17:08
  see it on TV but walking into it right when I got out.
• 1:17:13
  So I did the trick that a lot of people do when they get out like
• 1:17:16
  they say they're going to take the bus.
• 1:17:17
  Yeah. But they don't take the bus,
• 1:17:18
  they have their people pick them up right?
• 1:17:20
  You know, because if your people pick them up, they only give you
• 1:17:22
  like a certain amount of hours. But if you say, get the bus, you
• 1:17:24
  get three more hours, right? Yes, you get like, All time.
• 1:17:27
  So I did that. My wife picked me up.
• 1:17:31
  And first thing we did is we went to Walmart.
• 1:17:34
  Hmm, I was going to halfway house and I need like some work
• 1:17:37
  clothes, you know, because I already had a job lined up at a
• 1:17:40
  kitchen and And, and I remember walking around the Walmart and
• 1:17:46
  it was just like, I had to go back in the car and tell her
• 1:17:50
  what I wanted. Because it was like, since Rio
• 1:17:53
  sensory overload Lisa's looking for, like, 21 years, I was used
• 1:17:56
  to like, you know, there's like, one brand of peanut butter is
• 1:17:59
  actually, you know, and I just write it on the list and I put
• 1:18:01
  the list and they slide it down to you.
• 1:18:03
  So like walking around, you know, like having all those
• 1:18:05
  options and trying to choose. Yeah, it was like too much for
• 1:18:08
  me. Like I literally, I went back on
• 1:18:10
  this too much and I'm like, just just give me stuff you're my
• 1:18:12
  size. I can't, you know, I can't take.
• 1:18:16
  Yeah. You know.
• 1:18:17
  And then so that was a big thing and the other big thing was
• 1:18:20
  like, the phones like the technology.
• 1:18:22
  Yeah. And you know one thing I did do
• 1:18:25
  so, like two years before I got out I got a bunch of books like,
• 1:18:29
  you know, the idiots guide. Yeah.
• 1:18:31
  The idiots guide to like internet's like the dummy's
• 1:18:33
  guide to iPhone. So you started reading all that
• 1:18:36
  before you got out I would I did like a textbook.
• 1:18:38
  Yeah. Like I would almost like you're
• 1:18:40
  testing yourself to understand. I like something I read these.
• 1:18:43
  Looks like 20 times. Yeah.
• 1:18:43
  Years. So totally what so was an
• 1:18:46
  unfamiliar to you when you got out.
• 1:18:48
  I mean, I mean but it was just certain extent you.
• 1:18:50
  I just had a little knowledge. I'm trying to school myself as
• 1:18:53
  much as I can. But yeah, I read all these books
• 1:18:55
  about the internet iPhones MacBooks.
• 1:18:57
  Yeah not even read like some video stuff because by this time
• 1:18:59
  I've formed in my mind, you know that I wanted to do film getting
• 1:19:02
  into film. I got out but on the biggest
• 1:19:05
  thing that took me like six to nine months to figure out when I
• 1:19:08
  got out, was the difference between cellular and Wi-Fi?
• 1:19:13
  Because I didn't I didn't understand bandwidth and even
• 1:19:16
  like talking to people like younger kids.
• 1:19:18
  Now, like they always say like you ask him.
• 1:19:19
  Hey man, can you do this for me? I don't have the bandwidth.
• 1:19:21
  Yeah. I was like what the fuck you.
• 1:19:25
  What does that mean? Like I didn't like right.
• 1:19:28
  What do you mean? This is like Dan with I was like
• 1:19:30
  what do you like you're like on the radio?
• 1:19:33
  Yeah you know I'm thinking like what?
• 1:19:35
  Like like a radio dial your bandwidth.
• 1:19:38
  Yeah this was the only experience I had with that word.
• 1:19:40
  Yeah you know like what you're like, don't panic.
• 1:19:43
  With like, what are your on a CB radio?
• 1:19:44
  I had no idea. And so, it took me a long time
• 1:19:48
  to figure out like cellular Wi-Fi.
• 1:19:50
  Because I was like, well, you both, you can go on the
• 1:19:51
  internet. You can download stuff, right?
• 1:19:53
  But you know, then I figure you took me like six to nine months
• 1:19:55
  ago that I had a kind of conversations a lot of people
• 1:19:58
  and some people that even know how to use bandwidth and no
• 1:20:00
  cellular Wi-Fi, they still can't explain it to you.
• 1:20:02
  Right? Because I was trying to figure
• 1:20:03
  out like what is the difference but you know as I was doing
• 1:20:06
  journalism stuff and I was working with like pictures and
• 1:20:09
  files, you know, for the print stuff and they always wanted the
• 1:20:12
  biggest Files with the highest resolution.
• 1:20:16
  So you know, eventually I figured it out.
• 1:20:18
  It's all about the data and the size of the file.
• 1:20:20
  Yeah. I need Wi-Fi and downloaded some
• 1:20:22
  things won't go unless you get bandwidth.
• 1:20:25
  So, you know, I figured it out and now, you know, with all the
• 1:20:27
  film stuff I do, you know, like, I'll upload stuff to Dropbox.
• 1:20:30
  We transfer all the time so I understand all that stuff now,
• 1:20:34
  you know. But then I was like, you know, I
• 1:20:36
  was like, why can't I download the picture but you know, you I
• 1:20:39
  got cellular. But the thing of it is set to
• 1:20:41
  you, you Walked in pretty fast into the film world.
• 1:20:46
  I mean, I know that you'd been working on a lot of different
• 1:20:49
  things, but the time that you got out of prison in the whole
• 1:20:53
  world's different to you, the whole world is changed, it
• 1:20:56
  wasn't very long before you're in a situation where you're
• 1:21:02
  producing directing and and making white boy that, you know,
• 1:21:07
  what is just wrote. I just wrote and produced that
• 1:21:09
  Sean Reckless director. Yeah, director.
• 1:21:11
  So he says, So transition Studio transition Studios.
• 1:21:14
  So in that whole series of things though, that was that it
• 1:21:19
  like a two-year span. So you got 2,050 like that was
• 1:21:22
  like that happened. Like, yeah, within 18 months to
• 1:21:26
  Crazy. Did that same?
• 1:21:29
  When I got out, I knew I wanted to do film.
• 1:21:31
  And, and another, it's another, like I have a lot of these
• 1:21:34
  things that For some things, I have really good timing.
• 1:21:38
  For some things I have. Yeah, bad timing.
• 1:21:40
  But I'm just like a timing guy, you know, you're Relentless,
• 1:21:44
  like if it's good or bad you're Relentless.
• 1:21:46
  Keep going. Yeah, but you know, I always
• 1:21:48
  have good timing but like sometimes I have real bad timing
• 1:21:51
  but I'm one of those people, I'm timing, I'm always in this
• 1:21:53
  stream angle, I don't know. Whatever it is about me.
• 1:21:55
  I'm like a lightning rod for that.
• 1:21:57
  So, I mean, I get out 2015, like, making a murderer is like
• 1:22:02
  blowing up on Netflix, putting the True Crime genre.
• 1:22:06
  Yeah I'm like a true crime journalist.
• 1:22:09
  Yeah no I'm like a true crime author.
• 1:22:11
  So you know all these different people are got different stuff
• 1:22:14
  from projection Productions and their hit me up.
• 1:22:16
  They want me to be like a talking head on their stuff.
• 1:22:19
  So I do that maybe like three or four times and I kind of started
• 1:22:21
  seeing like, you know the setup you know just like you would
• 1:22:23
  come in here. You want to do a podcast.
• 1:22:25
  You see your dad cast, set up, what's this?
• 1:22:27
  What's that kind of, you know, Quitman You Got What brands?
• 1:22:30
  You know, how does this work? So I'm asking these questions as
• 1:22:33
  I'm going to these documentary sets where they interview me.
• 1:22:36
  And so I'm kind of figuring out I'm like, you know, within two
• 1:22:38
  years, I'm like, man, I can do this, this is not that hard, you
• 1:22:41
  know, because you know, when you first see film you think that
• 1:22:43
  cameras like it's, you know, it's so expensive.
• 1:22:45
  You know, so much technical ability.
• 1:22:47
  Yeah, seems overwhelming. Also, it's like, man.
• 1:22:50
  Can I do this? I'm just a writer, you know, I
• 1:22:52
  knew how to tell a story, but I didn't know how to make, you
• 1:22:54
  know, a documentary film per se. Even though I had taken classes
• 1:22:57
  about, and I drove some scripts and stuff like that.
• 1:23:00
  So but I was doing a lot of times for my journalism for vice
• 1:23:05
  and other place. I was writing for, obviously,
• 1:23:07
  I'm concentrating on True Crime stuff but a lot of times I'm
• 1:23:10
  picking people that not only am I interested in what they're
• 1:23:14
  doing, but I'm trying to form a relationship with them, right?
• 1:23:17
  So, you know, sometimes people like you sometimes they don't so
• 1:23:20
  you know, I keep eating these different directors,
• 1:23:22
  interviewing them, you know, producers whatever showrunners
• 1:23:26
  and I'm interviewing and I'm telling about my story and I'm
• 1:23:28
  telling them about my ideas and some are I stood in some are
• 1:23:31
  like, whatever. Fuck off, you know, just do the
• 1:23:33
  article, see you later, and, but I'm always probing trying to
• 1:23:39
  network, you know, trying to get those contacts.
• 1:23:41
  And, like, I would pick and choose, like, what I wanted to
• 1:23:44
  cover based on, who the person was.
• 1:23:46
  And if I thought I could form a relationship with them, to get
• 1:23:49
  my goals and my agenda off. So, finally, I interviewed Sean
• 1:23:54
  wreck, he did this movie. His first feature doc, Sean
• 1:23:57
  wreck, cut his teeth. He did like 200 Crime Stoppers
• 1:23:59
  shows for All the, all the networks.
• 1:24:03
  He won like nine Regional Amy's in Ohio, so that was his world.
• 1:24:06
  Yeah. He was very common filmmaker.
• 1:24:07
  And he did his first feature, it was called a murder in the park
• 1:24:10
  and he was on Showtime. So I interviewed him for vice,
• 1:24:14
  but for whatever reason, Vice ended up not even running it,
• 1:24:18
  you know, they didn't even run it.
• 1:24:19
  So, you know, I like it didn't even happen the the interview we
• 1:24:22
  did so I didn't even get him the publicity that I was once he
• 1:24:25
  kind of found my backstory out it was a venture Centrist.
• 1:24:28
  Yeah. So yeah.
• 1:24:29
  So He was looking for his next documentary at that time.
• 1:24:33
  So office success of a Murder in the park and so he actually flew
• 1:24:38
  me, he flew me to Cleveland. And I pitched him and I pitched
• 1:24:42
  him stuff. And I originally we were going
• 1:24:45
  to do this thing. You know about prison about the
• 1:24:48
  prison industrial complex, you know where how you know, they
• 1:24:52
  form all these prisons and then they pay for them.
• 1:24:55
  All these support businesses around the prison's Cottage, no
• 1:24:58
  strings gun and a lot of times, the people that own, these are
• 1:25:03
  somehow related to the serratura representative.
• 1:25:05
  Who passability get the prison there.
• 1:25:07
  Yeah. So eventually we're going to do
• 1:25:09
  something like this. It's just kind of look at prison
• 1:25:12
  profit ears and you know he knew I had a lot of people we can
• 1:25:15
  interview and we going to tell their story.
• 1:25:16
  Why kind of because that's what he likes to do stuff.
• 1:25:18
  He likes to expose stuff you know kind of like me that's kind
• 1:25:20
  of like his genre and then we're talking.
• 1:25:26
  And and I mentioned the white boy Rick story, because I know
• 1:25:31
  I've written about Rick's case. While I was in for like I did
• 1:25:34
  this one article for the fix like in 2012, they're like went
• 1:25:38
  viral covering his case, you know?
• 1:25:41
  And this another thing I had no idea what viral meant till I got
• 1:25:44
  that. I had friends that were getting
• 1:25:45
  out before me. Yeah.
• 1:25:47
  Knew about my writing and they got, they were called, you know,
• 1:25:49
  I'd call him and they'd be like, dude, you don't even know how
• 1:25:51
  big your stuff is out viral like you have no idea how big Your
• 1:25:55
  stuff is out here because I didn't, you know, I'm not even
• 1:25:59
  on the internet, I'm getting printouts from the internet,
• 1:26:01
  right? It's snail mail.
• 1:26:03
  So I meet Sean and it was probably like the fourth thing.
• 1:26:06
  I pitched him the white boy Rick?
• 1:26:08
  Yeah, story, you know, because I did a piece for Vice news.
• 1:26:10
  I had done some stuff for advice and I done this stuff for the
• 1:26:12
  fix. You know what, I'd been kind of
• 1:26:14
  champion his cause, you know, not like I was the only one
• 1:26:16
  there were other writers to and I had to form a relationship
• 1:26:19
  with him through the mail that I started in 2005.
• 1:26:22
  So I've been writing Rick for a while ten years by the And I
• 1:26:27
  first got interested in him when I was doing my street Legend
• 1:26:29
  series. Because when I was in Beckley
• 1:26:30
  and Gilmore West Virginia, there's a whole bunch of
• 1:26:32
  Detroit, dudes. And I was always hearing like I
• 1:26:34
  knew the whole story, these young white kid 14 supposedly.
• 1:26:39
  I informed, that was running the black underworld, and I felt a
• 1:26:42
  lot of parallel. Sure.
• 1:26:43
  Because we both got busted young.
• 1:26:45
  Yeah. You know, even though we had
• 1:26:46
  different circumstances, we both did a lot of time knowing then
• 1:26:49
  like, you know, he was like in the black underworld in the
• 1:26:52
  street but you know, I played basketball and I like hip-hop So
• 1:26:55
  I hung around with a lot of black dudes, and I wrote books
• 1:26:57
  about drug lords. Yeah.
• 1:26:58
  So there was like this, there's a connection.
• 1:27:01
  Yes. So so I pitched on wreck the
• 1:27:03
  story and this was like they hit they had just taught they had
• 1:27:07
  just like you know went into production or announced the
• 1:27:11
  white boy Rick with Matthew McConaughey mood.
• 1:27:13
  So, he knew this so like he was like, oh, that's, that's a sexy
• 1:27:17
  story because, you know, in his eyes, he's seeing like with the
• 1:27:21
  Hollywood movie, that's like, free promotion, sure.
• 1:27:23
  Because a lot of these documentaries Nuri Productions
• 1:27:26
  are only a couple hundred thousand dollars, whereas that
• 1:27:29
  Hollywood movie probably their marketing budget was like 11
• 1:27:32
  million dollars. So, you know, he seemed like
• 1:27:34
  man, this is something we might be able to hit on that
• 1:27:36
  piggyback. Yeah, so we go into promotion
• 1:27:40
  with that. And I kind of make a deal with
• 1:27:44
  them. You know I make a deal with
• 1:27:45
  them. I say look you know I'm going to
• 1:27:47
  give you access to all this stuff, you know.
• 1:27:49
  You can base it you know, off my writing, all these articles I've
• 1:27:52
  done. But I said, you know, I want you
• 1:27:54
  to Mentor me, I want you to train me.
• 1:27:56
  I want you to fly me into the Chute.
• 1:27:58
  I want to want to learn sit in the director's chair.
• 1:28:01
  Hmm. You know, I will learn to be a
• 1:28:02
  director. I want to learn the business.
• 1:28:04
  I love that, you know? And so, and so yeah, and he
• 1:28:07
  accepted my offer. Because you could easily have
• 1:28:11
  not have done that you you learned that as it may that a
• 1:28:14
  training ground for yourself Seth.
• 1:28:16
  And I think that's what's interesting about you is you've
• 1:28:19
  been in some real shitty situations and you've been able
• 1:28:25
  tenacious Relentless, whatever you want to wrap, your arms
• 1:28:28
  around that but you've made your situation work for you which I
• 1:28:31
  think is really, you know, we always try to say, you know, on
• 1:28:35
  this program nightmare success is you know, what happens when
• 1:28:39
  Or when your worst fear becomes your reality.
• 1:28:41
  What do you do? How do you adapt you adapted?
• 1:28:44
  And you also found a a whole passion for yourself that
• 1:28:49
  clearly? It's a young age.
• 1:28:52
  I can tell by everything I read about you were smart, you, you
• 1:28:57
  ended up in an area where you got caught, but then when you
• 1:29:00
  get into prison, you get your master's degree.
• 1:29:04
  You start writing all these books and doing all these
• 1:29:05
  things. I'm curious from the journey you
• 1:29:09
  are at and you're just a few years younger than me.
• 1:29:13
  I'm 55. What do you think your biggest
• 1:29:16
  takeaway is from all this that you've been through Yep.
• 1:29:21
  My biggest takeaways. I mean, if you want something,
• 1:29:24
  you got to go after a man and nobody's going to give you
• 1:29:27
  anything. Nobody's going to, you know, I
• 1:29:29
  tell people all the time, people hit me up on social media all
• 1:29:31
  the time and they like have an ID in there.
• 1:29:33
  Like, put me on. Yeah.
• 1:29:34
  Like nobody's going to put you on, man.
• 1:29:36
  You got to put yourself on, right?
• 1:29:38
  You know, you got to, you got to be proactive, not reactive, you
• 1:29:42
  know, if and everybody sometimes you find yourself in life
• 1:29:45
  becoming reactive, but when you become reactive, you're losing
• 1:29:49
  exactly like to be proactive. You have To be ahead of the
• 1:29:51
  game. You have to see things before
• 1:29:53
  they happen. You have to be on that Cutting
• 1:29:55
  Edge and sometimes, you know, I feel like I've been on that
• 1:29:58
  Cutting Edge, you know, a lot in life, you know.
• 1:30:00
  And sometimes I was on The Cutting Edge of the Cannabis and
• 1:30:02
  psychedelic game but I was way too soon so I had to pay a hefty
• 1:30:06
  price but you know other things you know, like like the True
• 1:30:09
  Crime, you know Doc's. Like I came out I was kind of on
• 1:30:11
  that Cutting Edge good time and now I feel like, you know, as a
• 1:30:15
  speaker as a personality as an influencer, I'm kind of that
• 1:30:20
  kind. An edge, like, in the Cannabis
• 1:30:22
  and psychedelic world, you know, because there's a lot of people
• 1:30:25
  in this world, you know? They might be CEOs, they may be
• 1:30:27
  part of these big companies, you know, where they might be this
• 1:30:30
  or that, but there's no substance.
• 1:30:32
  You know, I got the whole backstory.
• 1:30:33
  This is my culture. That's what I love about your
• 1:30:35
  story, though, is that you? You don't wait for things, you
• 1:30:40
  do take action and even if you don't know what it is, and it's
• 1:30:44
  not something you done before you still step into it and learn
• 1:30:47
  it even to the point where you you were getting the books.
• 1:30:50
  Before you got out to see how the house everything work.
• 1:30:53
  You know. Don't a lot of people do that
• 1:30:55
  but taking action and and like you said being don't be reactive
• 1:31:02
  go after it step into it. That's that's, that's good.
• 1:31:06
  That's a good tip because I think so many people have
• 1:31:09
  talent, they have this, whatever that's a passion or theirs but
• 1:31:14
  they stand on the sidelines and watch everybody else play the
• 1:31:16
  game. You just stepped into the game
• 1:31:18
  City. I'm in, I tell people.
• 1:31:21
  The time. And this is what I told myself
• 1:31:23
  before I got out because I saw people get out.
• 1:31:25
  And, you know, I saw people come back or I saw him, you know,
• 1:31:28
  just get stuck in life and these were dudes that they had dreams,
• 1:31:31
  they had goals, they wanted to do things because my friends
• 1:31:33
  would sit around and we would share all this stuff up, you
• 1:31:35
  know, as we got out, you know, and I had longer side to do a
• 1:31:38
  lot more time. But I saw people got out that,
• 1:31:41
  you know, I really believed in and, you know, real life would
• 1:31:44
  get in the way. You know, be it.
• 1:31:47
  Be it drugs? Yep.
• 1:31:48
  Be it kids, you know, be it relationships.
• 1:31:52
  Yeah, you know be you know getting back in trouble
• 1:31:54
  violating come back to prison, you know, be it finances.
• 1:31:57
  Be it bills and I told myself, you know, what before I got out.
• 1:32:01
  I'm like, do I want to become a filmmaker?
• 1:32:04
  Yep. You know, I, you know,
• 1:32:05
  eventually, you know, I mean My My ultimate goal is, you know, I
• 1:32:08
  want to be like a showrunner for a series and I want to do like,
• 1:32:11
  you know, Hollywood movies like narratives you know fictional
• 1:32:14
  things yeah. You know, my Gene would
• 1:32:16
  actually, to be like do some Marvel movies as ya later
• 1:32:18
  director, you know? So I think I'm setting myself up
• 1:32:22
  and you do comic strip stuff with what was it called grind.
• 1:32:24
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:32:25
  I love Comics. Yeah, but my whole thing was
• 1:32:29
  before I got out I was like I'm not going to let real life get
• 1:32:33
  in my way. Yeah, a lot.
• 1:32:34
  They focused. They let real life gets in their
• 1:32:37
  way and you can get bogged down and you can and you know, like I
• 1:32:41
  say I've got bogged down, I've got bogged down with bills.
• 1:32:44
  I've got badger with everybody. I've got bogged down with of
• 1:32:47
  relationships but you know, and everybody goes into shell
• 1:32:50
  sometimes. You know, I feel like I'm coming
• 1:32:53
  out of this show that I've been in like the last four or five
• 1:32:55
  months where I've kind of been bogged down with stuff and it's
• 1:32:58
  kind of been affecting everything I've done, but I feel
• 1:33:01
  like I'm at the tail end of that and and I'm ready to go, man.
• 1:33:04
  I'm ready to go back in beast mode, you know, and a lot of
• 1:33:08
  times in my life beast mode, a lot of times in my life, you
• 1:33:11
  know, I get bogged down but I won't let my stuff stay bogged
• 1:33:14
  down, I might get bogged down three It's six months, nine
• 1:33:17
  months but I always come back. And well, you know why I think
• 1:33:21
  that is though, Seth is you you have something you're grabbing
• 1:33:24
  for, you have something that's a goal of yours and you are wired
• 1:33:29
  away to where you take action on it.
• 1:33:31
  Even if you get sidetracked you get back on the track.
• 1:33:33
  There's an old Chinese proverb says Get Knocked Down seven
• 1:33:36
  times get up. Eight reason you get up eight
• 1:33:38
  times is because you have a reason to get up and and I think
• 1:33:41
  I see that in your life story is you get knocked down You don't
• 1:33:46
  stay down, you get knocked down, you figure out.
• 1:33:48
  I'm not going to do that again. I'm going to figure out, you
• 1:33:51
  know, how them continue to make it what I'm going to make.
• 1:33:53
  I think it's a it's a fascinating inspiring story
• 1:33:57
  because for most people who would have been in your
• 1:34:01
  position. Seth it would have put a lot of
• 1:34:04
  people in a fetal position and it could have institutionalized
• 1:34:07
  you in that world you could have come out and never have been
• 1:34:12
  anything. And and what you did is you grew
• 1:34:14
  in that world you become Came more of who you were internally,
• 1:34:18
  and you use that passion when you got out and I had knows what
• 1:34:21
  you're going to do here in the next five years.
• 1:34:23
  But it's going to be exciting to watch Seth man.
• 1:34:28
  I really appreciate you being here.
• 1:34:29
  Today is just a cool story and sharing it with everybody for
• 1:34:35
  and and for people who want to find your stuff as Guerrilla
• 1:34:38
  convict.com the best place to go.
• 1:34:40
  I mean, because it's got every it's got everything their
• 1:34:42
  website, I got a YouTube channel to on their side.
• 1:34:45
  What's that? It's under my name is Seth
• 1:34:47
  Rollins said, okay. And then I got social media to
• 1:34:49
  actually deactivated, but I'll be putting it back on.
• 1:34:52
  I just take a break from social media so yes, I get so much.
• 1:34:56
  I don't know. I found two like the, you know,
• 1:34:58
  the the bigger I get or the bigger following.
• 1:35:01
  I get negative comments, I get more - oh yeah.
• 1:35:04
  And I just, you know, I don't like that.
• 1:35:06
  I take that, you know, I try not to read it.
• 1:35:08
  Yeah, says don't read it but you know, it just, you know, I cuz I
• 1:35:11
  can't believe cuz I'm trying to do so much and I feel like I've
• 1:35:14
  come so far in the like, You know, like people say stupid
• 1:35:17
  just a cheap shot? Yeah.
• 1:35:18
  Just like my college courses. Like oh like I wish I wanted it
• 1:35:21
  went to prison and they could fund my colleague.
• 1:35:23
  Yeah, my Master's Degree by my parents paid for that.
• 1:35:25
  It's just, it's all based on false at ease and then, you
• 1:35:28
  know, I get stuff like just because I write about prison
• 1:35:30
  stuff, I write about drug lords and people say, like, I'm a
• 1:35:32
  snitch and I'm like, like the people are telling me their
• 1:35:36
  stories. Exactly.
• 1:35:37
  You know, it's what it's gonna say.
• 1:35:39
  This is not a fiction story. This is not Fiction.
• 1:35:41
  It's yeah. But it's just, you know what?
• 1:35:44
  That's the cool thing about you. Seth is That is for a lot of
• 1:35:47
  people, especially in the world, we live in now that Social Media
• 1:35:50
  stuff really eats people up and you've got to be strong and stay
• 1:35:54
  strong with it to to not let it get you and and I think you know
• 1:36:01
  what you're doing and how you're doing it man.
• 1:36:03
  Stay stay Relentless day after because that's just use it, I
• 1:36:08
  use it for a promotion but sometimes I just deactivate.
• 1:36:10
  Yeah, I just don't feel like I get it, you know.
• 1:36:12
  But then like you know as soon as I Notch night last coming out
• 1:36:14
  soon so there's two. Yeah.
• 1:36:17
  Promote I'll be cranking it up for everybody out there and I've
• 1:36:21
  also got a book, it's called Niners success, loaded loyalty,
• 1:36:25
  betrayal Life Behind Bars. Finally Breaking Free, you know,
• 1:36:30
  everybody, I love the the likes comments.
• 1:36:33
  If you want to find me and bring kasa.com, I'm trying to build up
• 1:36:36
  the Apple reviews, so go there, give me a review.
• 1:36:40
  It helps promote the show as I used to say to everybody I was
• 1:36:45
  writing from prison stay strong and I'll do the same nightmare
• 1:36:50
  success and it out. Seth.
• 1:36:51
  Thanks today. Appreciate it.