Latest / Nightmare Success In and Out / Fox & Rob Richardson: 21 Years as an Incarcerated Family | TIME Documentary, Angola Prison, Clemency & Redemption

Transcript

Fox & Rob Richardson: 21 Years as an Incarcerated Family | TIME Documentary, Angola Prison, Clemency & Redemption · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:00
  When I found out that Rob had been sentenced to 60 years, I
• 0:02
  almost fainted and pregnant with twins, I turned hot all over.
• 0:06
  I'm on the prison rec yard myself.
• 0:08
  He's talking to me through a barbed wire window that he's
• 0:12
  tied mattresses up together to stand on top of in another
• 0:16
  cellmates room so that he could talk to me while the women that
• 0:20
  are incarcerated are outside on the rec yard.
• 0:23
  And so in that moment, you know, is when God really showed up
• 0:26
  through me and my words see him in response to that instead of
• 0:30
  fainting, which, you know, I I clearly felt my words to him
• 0:36
  immediately were it will make the movie more better.
• 0:39
  But I promise I won't let go of your hand.
• 0:41
  We'll walk it together. What happens when your worst
• 0:45
  fear becomes your reality? Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy, welcome
• 0:48
  to the Nightmare Success In and Out podcast where we explore how
• 0:51
  to overcome your fears and nightmares to set yourself free.
• 0:55
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:58
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 1:02
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes sad, there's some
• 1:06
  humor, but hopefully you can come away with a nugget of
• 1:09
  something that'll help you knock down some of the prisons you
• 1:12
  built up in your own mind. All right, welcome back
• 1:15
  Nightmare Success. And now listen, this is where
• 1:17
  you come from. What happens when your worst
• 1:18
  year becomes your reality? How do you adapt, survive,
• 1:20
  overcome? Set yourself free, folks.
• 1:23
  I know I sound like a broken record, but don't forget to to
• 1:25
  subscribe, follow this thing out, like it up, comment.
• 1:28
  It helps the show and I really appreciate it.
• 1:30
  So who are we talking to today on Nightmare Success?
• 1:34
  I've got to tell you we I we're talking to Fox and Rob
• 1:38
  Richardson and I just watched their documentary last night
• 1:43
  with my wife Julie and I got to tell you, it was so powerful.
• 1:46
  If you've got time and that's the name of the documentary
• 1:50
  time, you can get it on on Amazon and they've got another
• 1:53
  one that's times time to that's, I'm not sure exact.
• 1:55
  I'll ask them where you get that.
• 1:57
  But this was just, man, I, I don't even, I don't know how to
• 2:01
  explain it except it just pulls you in and you ride the journey
• 2:04
  with them. And it's quite the journey that
• 2:06
  and how they got through it and survived.
• 2:07
  It's just so inspiring, really. So, you know, I say this all the
• 2:12
  time. You know what happens when your
• 2:13
  worst fear becomes your reality? Well, what happens when your
• 2:16
  worst fear becomes your reality? And it lasts for months and then
• 2:20
  it's, it's for years and then it's for decades.
• 2:23
  Well, today's episode is about love under pressure, about a
• 2:27
  family stretched across prison walls, about resilience that
• 2:31
  refuses to break. My guests today are Sybil Fox
• 2:34
  Richardson, known to many as Fox, and her husband Robert
• 2:38
  Richardson, known as Rob. They are a New Orleans based
• 2:42
  couple who endured 21 years as an incarcerated family, 21 years
• 2:47
  of raising six sons while navigating a system designed to
• 2:50
  separate silence and fracture families.
• 2:54
  Their story is captured in the award-winning documentary Time,
• 2:58
  a film that moved the world. But for them, it wasn't a movie,
• 3:01
  It was their life. Through it all, Fox and Rob
• 3:04
  chose faith over fear, purpose over bitterness, and love over
• 3:07
  despair. Today, they lead advocacy
• 3:09
  efforts through the New Orleans chapter of the Precipitary
• 3:12
  Defense Movement and initiative of Rich Family Ministries, the
• 3:17
  organization they founded with a bold mission, changing lives and
• 3:21
  laws through love. I want to recognize our show
• 3:24
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• 3:27
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  deserve. Auto Plaza Direct telling Brett
• 3:59
  from Nightmare Success sent you folks.
• 4:01
  I want to share with you a powerful and moving new book you
• 4:03
  won't want to miss. My name is Saffron Voices.
• 4:07
  Silence stifled and taken away by author Saffron Gustafson.
• 4:11
  This isn't just a story. It's a journey through resilient
• 4:13
  survival and reclaiming your voice after being silenced for
• 4:16
  far too long. Saffron's story takes you inside
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  the hidden struggles, the pain and ultimately the triumph,
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  refusing to be defined by circumstances.
• 4:23
  As Saffron was putting the finishing touches on her book
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  the prison, she had just been released from federal Dublin.
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  FCI, was permanently closed because of sexual abuse of the
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  takes to rise from the darkness of places, to find your truth
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  Trust me, you'll be moved, challenged, and changed by her
• 4:50
  story. Wow, wow.
• 4:55
  I can't wait to jump into this one, guys.
• 4:56
  Fox and Rob, how are you guys? Great.
• 5:00
  It'd be wonderful since we're now here with you.
• 5:03
  That's. Right.
• 5:04
  Thank you for having us on the show.
• 5:06
  Well, I've got to tell you and, and thank you for pulling over.
• 5:09
  You guys are on the road. You just told me you've been all
• 5:11
  around the southern parts of the world, the United States, and
• 5:15
  you've pulled over on the side of the road nice enough to do
• 5:18
  this doc, this podcast. So I I appreciate that.
• 5:23
  Listen, tell. These stories are so important.
• 5:27
  Well, I, I know it is. I the, you know, the documentary
• 5:33
  talks about how you guys were high school, you had the high
• 5:37
  school romance and you were young kids.
• 5:41
  Can, can you tell me a little bit about that childhood growing
• 5:45
  up Fox What 'cause I know your mom was a big influence.
• 5:48
  What, what all was going on in in your world as a little kid?
• 5:53
  Man, let me tell you, at 16 years old, this young fella
• 5:57
  comes knocking on my door to connect with a girlfriend of
• 6:00
  mine. We had called him because we
• 6:03
  needed a ride to our second school.
• 6:05
  We took what I like to refer to as a mental health day.
• 6:09
  The morning you can read between the lines and but so in in our
• 6:13
  health day break, our mental health break, she called this
• 6:16
  gentleman to come and take us to the school.
• 6:18
  And and when I opened the door, I was like, OK, Wanda, that was
• 6:22
  my girlfriend. And I thought, you know, she
• 6:24
  went on and on about this Rascal.
• 6:26
  And so when I finally laid eyes that on him, I was like, OK, you
• 6:30
  know, you telling the truth or whatever, you know, edging my
• 6:33
  girlfriend on. And later on that night,
• 6:35
  somebody calls me and I'm like, wait a minute, hold up.
• 6:39
  I thought, how'd you get my number?
• 6:40
  I thought you were Wanda's guy. You're.
• 6:42
  Supposed to be Wanda's guy. So Rob, I couldn't tell.
• 6:45
  I couldn't tell in the documentary.
• 6:48
  Did Box's mom like you or not? I.
• 6:52
  Think Box's mom was much was much like Fox, so they both at
• 6:56
  the at the onset of it would not ever admit that they liked me as
• 7:01
  much as they did. I knew that they both loved me
• 7:03
  from the from the onset of it all.
• 7:05
  It was just going to take some coaxing on my part to convince
• 7:09
  them to go ahead and own what I think was truly happening on the
• 7:13
  on the. Yeah, I think that is typically
• 7:16
  the the thoughts on the, you know, the positioning that
• 7:20
  usually happens when it comes to our in laws is that usually the
• 7:24
  husbands don't typically get along with the the mother or the
• 7:27
  father on the other side and vice versa.
• 7:29
  So yeah, our story began much in the same way, Brett.
• 7:33
  So did you guys, did you come from big families as as Yeah,
• 7:37
  like Rob, how many siblings did you have?
• 7:41
  I am a mix of eight. Also there was eight of us all
• 7:44
  together. I am the the youngest of eight
• 7:46
  and Fox came from a family. About half that side, yeah.
• 7:51
  Yeah. And and then we have six sons
• 7:54
  together. OK.
• 7:56
  And was I know you have six sons together and that's one of the
• 7:59
  many things I want to talk to you guys about.
• 8:02
  So you guys meet up and this romance starts.
• 8:05
  What's the next thing that happens?
• 8:06
  Well, it goes off about 10 years, on again, off again, on
• 8:10
  again, off again. But you know, throughout that
• 8:13
  whole 10 year time frame, Fox and I stayed married.
• 8:17
  I'm not married, but we stay connected to one another.
• 8:19
  We were always friends and I think that is probably the thing
• 8:22
  that we were first and foremost is that we had found a
• 8:25
  friendship to one another. Because when we met, the fox did
• 8:30
  not mention is that as she was she was 16 at the at the point
• 8:34
  that we met. But I was home visiting from
• 8:37
  leave from the from the military and my first assignment sent me
• 8:41
  overseas. It's all the first two years
• 8:44
  that Fox and I were together were spent with me living abroad
• 8:48
  and hold it like Scotland. So much of our communication
• 8:51
  happened, you know, via letter. There were no emails back then.
• 8:53
  There were no text messaging. You know, nothing of the sort of
• 8:57
  long distance phone calls were just that long distance phone
• 9:00
  calls and they came with long distance phone call pricing.
• 9:03
  And so, you know, just try it. I'm giving you all just all of
• 9:06
  those pieces just for, you know, the audience to see, you know,
• 9:09
  how much effort had to be had to be employed in order to, you
• 9:14
  know, stay in communication with one another.
• 9:16
  So fat and I basically begin our relationship as far as
• 9:19
  communication was concerned over a telephone and and and buy
• 9:23
  paper, pen and paper. And we would spend years writing
• 9:28
  to each other, you know, just through pen and pad and, you
• 9:30
  know, occasional phone calls. And they're in kind of begin our
• 9:34
  relationship. But it required us to learn and
• 9:37
  know so much about one another because of our communication,
• 9:41
  the way that we were forced to communicate.
• 9:44
  That's really, that's interesting.
• 9:46
  I didn't know that part of the story because that's some
• 9:49
  foreshadowing of how you guys had to figure out how to
• 9:53
  communicate over a 21 year sentence.
• 9:57
  Or actually you were sentenced to 60s.
• 9:58
  What was it? 61 years, but 61 years, right.
• 10:01
  Yeah, but the so you get back Rob from from being overseas did
• 10:09
  is it is it like an immediate thing that that you and Fox
• 10:12
  think, OK, it's time it's get to go time.
• 10:15
  We're we're going to get married.
• 10:17
  No, by the time I came home from overseas, I think we had about
• 10:20
  another five years. And it's on again off of the
• 10:22
  other thing. Yeah.
• 10:24
  When I came up, when I finally came back back home, this was
• 10:28
  during a period of time that we were off again.
• 10:30
  And so when I say off again, meaning that we weren't, we
• 10:34
  didn't, we didn't set claim to one another.
• 10:36
  We saw friends. And so no matter if I was dating
• 10:39
  someone else or Fox was dating someone else, it never cut off
• 10:41
  our communication to each other. We continued making phone calls.
• 10:45
  It wouldn't be until 1997 that Fox and I would, would
• 10:51
  ultimately decide, you know, that we wanted to do more than
• 10:54
  just date on again off again. It was just during one of those
• 10:58
  periods in our life. I think I had been moved by an
• 11:04
  event that I attended in 1995. I went to the Million man
• 11:07
  million man March. And one of the request or
• 11:12
  suggestions given during the March was that young men would
• 11:15
  go back home and that they would start businesses so that they
• 11:18
  could hire people in their communities, that they would
• 11:21
  they had children out of wedlock, that they would go back
• 11:23
  and and married the women of of, you know, of those who had given
• 11:27
  children to them. And Fox was all practical
• 11:30
  purposes. She was my baby Mama, you know,
• 11:32
  And but that being said, I thought that she deserved to be
• 11:36
  something more than just the mother of my kids, but that they
• 11:40
  deserved it, right? To be, you know, brought up on
• 11:43
  in a structured setting. And with that being said, if I
• 11:47
  said I thought that marriage would be be the ideal thing for
• 11:50
  us, or at least I did in the moment I proposed and then she
• 11:53
  denied me. And then I think she says, well,
• 11:56
  just give me a little time to think about it.
• 11:58
  And she maybe took all about 5 minutes and she came back and
• 12:02
  she was like, yes, yes, yes, I'll marry you, I'll marry you.
• 12:04
  Yes, I'll marry. You.
• 12:07
  That's good, so. Under town.
• 12:09
  It took you long enough. So, so Fox, it's, it seemed like
• 12:13
  to me Fox, that you, there's a little bit of this in the
• 12:16
  documentary that you had an entrepreneurial flair all your
• 12:19
  own. It shows you talking to the
• 12:21
  people on the phone about the cars and the doing the
• 12:24
  commercials about getting the cars.
• 12:26
  And what were you doing in that time period?
• 12:29
  Those those that time before you were married, Were you jumping
• 12:33
  into the business world or how did how did your world form in
• 12:36
  those early years? I was working on my, I had
• 12:39
  gotten my BS degree in biology. I was thinking about medical
• 12:43
  school, But by that time I actually had given birth to our
• 12:46
  first son together. And so that, that made my career
• 12:50
  choices a little stagnant, if you would.
• 12:52
  And so then I went on to get my master's in public
• 12:55
  administration. And after completing my master's
• 12:57
  in public administration, I moved back home to Shreveport
• 13:01
  and started teaching as an adjunct professor at the
• 13:04
  university while working on my doctorate degree.
• 13:07
  And so, you know, just point that the higher level of
• 13:09
  education would, you know, give me an opportunity to be a higher
• 13:13
  earner in our society. And so that while I was working
• 13:16
  on my personal life and getting the foundation for it
• 13:19
  established for our family, that I could at least be progressing
• 13:22
  in my career. And in about that time was when
• 13:25
  Rob had said, you know, we both just came to a fork in a row
• 13:28
  where we knew that getting married was really bigger than
• 13:31
  us, that, you know, the community was counting on this,
• 13:34
  Our children was counting on this, the success of them was
• 13:37
  counting on this. And so it was without hesitation
• 13:40
  that I understood that sometimes marriage even is not just about
• 13:44
  how much you love somebody or how in love you are.
• 13:47
  When Rob and I married, I actually was not in love with
• 13:50
  him. We weren't even dating.
• 13:52
  He was just every time I turned around, all of a sudden he was
• 13:54
  right there. And I'm like, where are you
• 13:56
  going? He's just like hanging out, you
• 13:59
  know, like, we weren't even dating.
• 14:00
  And within 30 days of that, he asked me to marry him.
• 14:04
  And in 30 days of that, we actually married.
• 14:06
  And so I think, again, it was just about the importance of the
• 14:09
  institution of marriage that made it so easy for me to say
• 14:13
  yes. Not only do I know I've always
• 14:16
  loved you, but this is the best, next right thing for us to do
• 14:21
  for ourselves, for our children and our community.
• 14:25
  I like that. So you guys get married and how
• 14:30
  much longer is it after that that you decide to become
• 14:34
  business owners, entrepreneurs of the first hip hop apparel
• 14:37
  store? Does that happen soon or do you
• 14:41
  jump right into that? Or is.
• 14:42
  It, oh, it was absolutely, it was always a theme.
• 14:45
  It was always one of the things that attracted Rob and I to one
• 14:49
  another because we were always dreaming, dreaming of having
• 14:52
  your own, building your own. My father was an entrepreneur
• 14:55
  and and so I knew that that was just something that was really
• 14:59
  important to me. And and so to be able to connect
• 15:03
  with not only my best friend, the father of my children, but
• 15:07
  to connect with him who was also a dream chaser like me, was just
• 15:12
  like perfect time. And then I will have to add, we
• 15:14
  didn't just get married, we eloped.
• 15:16
  And to consummate that marriage, he bungee jumped the night of
• 15:21
  our reunion because of course we had to prove to everybody like
• 15:26
  nobody thought we would pull it off, you know?
• 15:28
  And so it was just like, yes, we did it in spite of, not because
• 15:33
  we had all of the right answers or did all the next right
• 15:36
  things, but we still made it to the finish line, if you would.
• 15:39
  And so that next day, we drove back from Kissimmee St.
• 15:43
  Cloud, FL where we had danced the night away with strangers
• 15:47
  and I went to Disney World on our the day.
• 15:50
  What for our honeymoon the next day we went to Disney World and
• 15:53
  then drove back home, signed the paperwork for what would become
• 15:57
  our first home and and then started negotiating the lease on
• 16:01
  what would be the location for our first business.
• 16:04
  So the entire road trip of going to get married and coming back
• 16:07
  was all dreaming about how we were going to come back home and
• 16:11
  and launch our first business together.
• 16:12
  Not only were we going to marry, we were going to just wrap up
• 16:15
  all of our dreams all at one time.
• 16:19
  We thought it. Was, and you can tell in the
• 16:21
  documentary that you, we started filming early on.
• 16:25
  I mean, there's a there's a, the, the beginning, there's of
• 16:29
  you guys driving in the car. The kids are little bitty and
• 16:34
  the two of you are in the front. You're going to, to I think a
• 16:37
  family member's house. But you've, I mean, we're
• 16:40
  talking about a while back when people didn't have their their
• 16:43
  cell phones to film with. And you, you start capturing
• 16:48
  moments on film that later becomes you documenting your
• 16:53
  life through, you know, this that happens.
• 16:55
  And so walk us through guys, this thing that happens with you
• 16:59
  because everybody who has started a business, they know
• 17:03
  that it's tough. It's like a roller coaster ride.
• 17:06
  And sometimes you have investors and sometimes you have banks,
• 17:09
  and sometimes you have people for family money that'll, you
• 17:12
  know, make an investment. How did you guys get into it?
• 17:16
  Feet first. I was thinking.
• 17:17
  Head first, probably that. One too, just at that, I guess
• 17:22
  for context, it would be important probably just to add
• 17:24
  some context in terms of we're talking about like in the 1990s
• 17:28
  at this point. When you think about camcorders,
• 17:31
  camcorders being, I guess you could say, a new advent, you
• 17:34
  know, at that point, a new discovery, a new find.
• 17:36
  And very few people even own camcorders that bank for
• 17:40
  personal use. Because I think they were almost
• 17:43
  $1000 or better at all when they first came out.
• 17:46
  And then it would later on later go on to be to be argued that
• 17:52
  that Fox is the is in fact of the mother of selfies because
• 17:57
  most people documented other things, but no one ever thought
• 18:01
  to like turn the camera on themselves and then become both
• 18:05
  director and subject of of the recording.
• 18:08
  And so that was, again, like you said, just an early on
• 18:11
  fascination that Fox has always shown, you know, with this new
• 18:15
  technology, you know, filmmaking therein kind of began began that
• 18:20
  part much and on about the same time.
• 18:24
  Just the culture of of hip hop had its origin on at around the
• 18:28
  same time and fashion shows and clothing stores and those kind
• 18:34
  of things as well. Yeah, You know, those were also
• 18:37
  new discoveries or things that ventures then people were
• 18:41
  getting into. And it was one of my own because
• 18:44
  I had been living in New Jersey for quite some time and just
• 18:47
  seeing a lot of these shops popping up in the in the East
• 18:50
  Coast area made me want to open up one in our hometown and so
• 18:55
  on. Fox and I started, you know,
• 18:57
  looking at what a business idea or concept of a business would
• 19:01
  look like for us. Then we start figuring ways that
• 19:04
  we would be able to combine, you know, our love, my love for the
• 19:07
  culture of hip hop and her love for the filming and speaking.
• 19:13
  And so that being said, culture kind of became my birth child in
• 19:18
  terms of how we thought that we would combine our interest.
• 19:22
  So how long, how long did it go on when you started this that
• 19:26
  you were like, uh oh, we're, we're in trouble because I, what
• 19:31
  I read, I think that there was an investor that was going to
• 19:34
  invest or backed out and that put you guys in a jam.
• 19:38
  Like right before our opening. OK, yeah, it was maybe just some
• 19:42
  after. Six months, OK, after we married
• 19:46
  that we actually had everything in position, the investor pulled
• 19:50
  out and and everything else started crumbling down around
• 19:53
  us. Mr. Cassidy.
• 19:54
  So, you know, it's a matter of I'll tell you a joke.
• 19:57
  I had a friend I was sharing with her that we were only
• 19:59
  married 6. Six months before we entered the
• 20:01
  criminal justice system. And a friend of mine says back
• 20:05
  to me, she says, wow, you know, that must have been an amazing
• 20:08
  six months. And I say, you know, it was
• 20:11
  actually incredible. That's why I would spend the
• 20:13
  next 21 years trying to get it back so.
• 20:18
  Things move so swiftly during those first six months of
• 20:21
  marriage, as 5 to may mention, just days within us coming back
• 20:25
  home from eloping, we had closed on, you know, what became our
• 20:29
  family's first home that we bought in that same week.
• 20:32
  We also closed on a on a 36 square foot building that would
• 20:37
  become the home of our family's first business.
• 20:39
  Simultaneously, we were closing on a piece of real estate
• 20:42
  property that we were using as a rental property.
• 20:45
  And so we were like, you know, foot on the gas, you know, just
• 20:49
  really moving at lightning speed.
• 20:51
  And, you know, and then I think that there was just some
• 20:54
  hesitation on parts of all. When you talk about investors,
• 20:57
  you know, that it would probably be like trying to sell Bitcoin
• 21:01
  or trying to sell the Internet or trying to sell any of these
• 21:04
  new tech ways or an electric car, you know, to people that,
• 21:08
  you know, we had no clue about any of these things.
• 21:11
  And so hip hop clothing stores and all those types of things,
• 21:14
  they were foreign, you know, to, to what I would be investors,
• 21:18
  you know, would typically look at, you know, when they consider
• 21:21
  putting their money up behind something.
• 21:23
  And so one of our investors, I guess got a little antsy about
• 21:26
  about the investment that he had committed to and on and around
• 21:30
  that time, all those other things were now in motion and
• 21:34
  really contingent up on the the installment of that of that
• 21:38
  investment. And and it didn't happen us
• 21:41
  trying to figure out then how do we juggle it all coupled with
• 21:45
  the house that we thought that was what we thought was our
• 21:48
  family's dream home, the foundation that shifted and we
• 21:53
  discovered that the foundation that shipped when.
• 21:56
  And when it rained through the roof and all of the water and
• 21:58
  the roof fell in all of it, it was like, oh wow.
• 22:01
  This is like our first rain. We hadn't even been in the house
• 22:04
  a good maybe 90 days to 120 days at the time that this rain
• 22:09
  happens. And all, all of the carpeting
• 22:10
  and everything that we had just, you know, had put into the
• 22:13
  house, the furnishings, you know, this stuff was destroyed.
• 22:17
  Being in our mid 20s, you know, doing all of these things, we
• 22:20
  didn't have the best of mentors, you know, our people that could
• 22:24
  even guide us through what what we were experiencing at the
• 22:27
  moment. And left to our own devices, you
• 22:30
  know, we started entertaining thoughts that would ultimately
• 22:34
  lead to the action that would change our lives forever.
• 22:38
  Well, I think it's, it's fascinating how, and I wanted to
• 22:41
  ask you guys like, because up to this point, you guys are just
• 22:45
  people getting by doing things that people do, buying houses,
• 22:48
  buying property, starting a business, going overseas, doing,
• 22:51
  you know, serving the country. How does it hatch that?
• 22:56
  Because I know, you know, you say Fox, you know, desperate
• 23:00
  people do desperate things. How does the idea hatch that?
• 23:05
  I mean, you, you're not bank robbers.
• 23:07
  You mean you're not good at this.
• 23:09
  You're not like, you're not sophisticated into the well,
• 23:12
  we've knocked off 7 banks. We might as well knock off.
• 23:15
  No, this was like, this is like, you're just people getting going
• 23:19
  and, and how does it hatch? How does it happen?
• 23:22
  Like, you know, many things, people don't just wake up one
• 23:25
  day and decide that I'm going to commit suicide.
• 23:28
  You don't wake up one day and decide that I'm going to go
• 23:30
  murder someone. You don't wake up and decide
• 23:33
  that, you know, many of these things that happened that we
• 23:35
  know is crime, they happen through a series of events, You
• 23:39
  know, that happened. Hardship happens, you know,
• 23:41
  first and foremost. And then depending on how much
• 23:44
  hardship that happens, it has a way of dictating what the
• 23:48
  actions ultimately become. Culture dictates a lot of these
• 23:51
  things. Media dictates a lot of those
• 23:54
  things. I think back to, you know, just
• 23:56
  whenever I have these kind of conversations, Brett, I'm always
• 23:59
  forced to go back in time in order to be present in my
• 24:03
  sharing, you know, about what took place.
• 24:05
  And when I think back to those times, I think about like how
• 24:10
  bank robbery movies exist during that time.
• 24:13
  They had dead presidents. They had set it off.
• 24:16
  They had Keanu Reeves and them played Point Break and they were
• 24:21
  a bunch of guys that dressed up like the presidents.
• 24:23
  And they surfed by day and, you know, and they go surfing all
• 24:26
  over the world. But you know, that was their
• 24:29
  thing. But all of these movies, you
• 24:32
  know, were movies that, you know, when you think about
• 24:34
  programming, we program or we present movies and in ways and a
• 24:40
  lot of times they followed up on very impressionable minds in our
• 24:44
  early to mid 20s. We were still very
• 24:46
  impressionable at that point. And never in a million years
• 24:49
  left to our own devices what we have thought to do such a thing.
• 24:53
  But when you adapt to, you know, desperation or when you add to
• 25:00
  hardships and you add music and you add movies and films and all
• 25:05
  of these things that tend to condone such a such behavior,
• 25:10
  you know, and and sensationalize it in certain in certain
• 25:14
  instances, then you kind of are you have a predisposition toward
• 25:19
  doing certain things when the right scenario creates itself
• 25:23
  and desperation was a was a right situation that created the
• 25:28
  the moment, you know, where we thought that this was the best.
• 25:32
  Best alternative So when it when the day happened, just because
• 25:36
  your your mind of curiosity of because you of somebody that
• 25:42
  does that event when you pull up to that and are you thinking are
• 25:48
  you 100% in or are you thinking I don't know if I don't know if
• 25:51
  we should do this. I think all of us, all three of
• 25:54
  us were probably 1 foot in, one foot out.
• 25:57
  Yeah. When you do anything, you know,
• 26:00
  you know, basically everyone knows the difference between
• 26:02
  right and wrong unless, you know, there's some type of
• 26:05
  mental challenge that's happening that don't allow that
• 26:08
  to happen for you. But most normal people, all
• 26:11
  normal people pretty much know the difference between right and
• 26:13
  wrong. You know, when you are on your
• 26:15
  way to go rob a bank, you know that it's wrong the entire way
• 26:18
  going to the bank. The thing is, is because of peer
• 26:22
  pressure and all of those things, no one was bold enough
• 26:25
  in that moment to say, hey, man, this is some stupid shit we're
• 26:27
  thinking about. Should we catch the next exit
• 26:30
  and turn back around and go back home and do what normal people
• 26:33
  do? But in that moment, no.
• 26:35
  But you know, God being God, God did what God did in that moment,
• 26:39
  as he always manages to do. And we had a bus accident on the
• 26:42
  way to the thing. God had given us a moment right
• 26:45
  then to say, Hey, not so you guys think you, you, you might
• 26:48
  want to rethink this, right? You do know that a bus just ran
• 26:52
  over you. They're wrong.
• 26:53
  The police report is, has been written in your favor.
• 26:56
  Just sue for just sue for the damages.
• 26:59
  You'd have the money that you need in order to open up the
• 27:01
  shop. But at that point we saw a
• 27:03
  wrecked car and said, Oh man, now the car is wrecked.
• 27:06
  Throw that on the pile. And so we got to get the car
• 27:09
  fixed. So we got to do this.
• 27:10
  And but these are the binds of, you know, early to mid 20 year
• 27:14
  olds. And so when I look now at my
• 27:17
  early to mid 20 year olds, I'm like, wow, OK.
• 27:22
  All gets past this. This day gets past you.
• 27:25
  When the nightmare happens, how does it happen?
• 27:27
  How do they how do you guys end up?
• 27:31
  Is it do they do they come? They come and get you?
• 27:34
  How do you turn yourselves in? Like what happens from that day
• 27:37
  forward? Both of those things happen.
• 27:40
  There's a shots fired, there's there's foot race, there's
• 27:45
  illusion, and then there's ultimately capture on one
• 27:48
  instance and in another. There's a matter of turning
• 27:51
  themselves in. But as Fox may have mentioned, I
• 27:53
  wouldn't want to give away all of the details of that.
• 27:55
  I got it. One of your audience members
• 27:57
  the. Big question.
• 27:59
  The big question I have is that, you know, you guys were in this
• 28:04
  together, but you made separate decisions.
• 28:07
  One chose to do a plea bargain and one chose to go to trial.
• 28:11
  How did how does that happen between a husband and wife?
• 28:14
  Like what? How did you guys come to those
• 28:17
  decisions? It wasn't our decision.
• 28:20
  It was actually the decision of our attorney that thought that
• 28:23
  it was the best. What a lot of people don't know.
• 28:25
  And again, that's why we employ reading books.
• 28:28
  Books and films have a way of just kind of broad stroking the
• 28:32
  details of a person's life and then people walk away thinking
• 28:35
  that they have the details of it.
• 28:37
  But how do you condense 21 years of a thing into an 80 minute
• 28:41
  film? It's it's virtually, it's
• 28:42
  impossible. But that being said, what people
• 28:45
  don't know is that we all plead guilty to the crimes or at the
• 28:49
  onset of them, we had already had a plea bargain that had been
• 28:52
  worked out where Fox would do no jail time.
• 28:55
  And that Ontario and I, my fall part of our fall partner that
• 28:58
  was on the charge with us would not face anything more than 10
• 29:02
  to 18 years pending a pre sentence investigation.
• 29:06
  And so all of the things that came back from the pre sentence
• 29:09
  investigation indicated that that there was nothing out of
• 29:14
  lying about Fox not doing jail time or Ontario and I are
• 29:18
  receiving a lighter sentence. But we had a overzealous
• 29:22
  attorney that entered the picture and in his efforts to to
• 29:26
  get a quote, UN quote better deal for us, of course, in
• 29:29
  exchange for a check or he upset all of that and then went he
• 29:34
  felt that he needed to upset it all in order to renew or to
• 29:37
  refresh the conversation would be later, many years later that
• 29:41
  I would learn that the plea bargain didn't have to be upset
• 29:44
  in order for you to negotiate further.
• 29:47
  Are there were ways that the plea bargain could have been
• 29:49
  maintained and kept in place in the interest of justice for
• 29:53
  yourself. And then, you know, other
• 29:55
  factors could have, you know, been brought in later that may
• 29:57
  minimize all the sentence beyond where they were already looking.
• 30:01
  That is the part or a part of the story that a lot of people
• 30:04
  don't know is that we all plead guilty.
• 30:06
  But in the midst of the attorney who came in and upset the plea
• 30:10
  bargain, ultimately he pulled out when we were no longer able
• 30:13
  to pay him. So now we were left now from
• 30:16
  under of the the sanctity that the plea bargain originally
• 30:20
  offered. So we were out without a lawyer
• 30:23
  and we were also without plea bargains at that moment.
• 30:26
  In comes a overzealous prosecutor now at this point,
• 30:30
  and the overzealous prosecutor at this point pulled all deals
• 30:34
  off the table and said that he was pushing for trial because
• 30:38
  that's what special prosecutors do.
• 30:41
  And that being said, we ultimately went to trial, was
• 30:45
  sentenced to, you know, to 61 years.
• 30:49
  My 61 year sentence came as a result about a 60 year armed
• 30:54
  robbery sentence that was given to me as a first offender and
• 30:57
  then the other two crimes that I was facing, which was 2 counts
• 31:00
  of jury tampering for having shared information with two
• 31:03
  members of the jury. That information, what people
• 31:07
  don't know is that I was facing a, we were facing 5 to 99 years
• 31:11
  for each count of the jury tampering.
• 31:13
  Because the way that Louisiana law is written is that if you
• 31:16
  tamper with the jury while a jurors are empaneled, you now
• 31:20
  face the same amount of time for those tamperings as you would
• 31:25
  for the crime that the jury is impaneled for.
• 31:27
  And so there and we were facing now 297 years of the District
• 31:33
  Attorney and his request was sentenced, ultimately decided
• 31:36
  that he would suspend my jury tampering charges down to five
• 31:40
  years to spend 4 of the years leave me with one year and that
• 31:43
  one year would run separate from the armed robbery.
• 31:46
  But it was to remind me the last time in the jury tampering
• 31:50
  happened in the city of Lincoln Parish.
• 31:53
  And so it was 1938 when the last jury tampering it happened in
• 31:57
  their city. And 1999 is when I was
• 32:00
  sentenced. Therein was 61 year difference
• 32:03
  between 1938 and 1999. And so he figured that that
• 32:07
  would be a a provocative enough of a sentence that I would
• 32:13
  entertain it for the time that I was serving at Angola.
• 32:16
  Maybe some other people would learn that, one, not to mess
• 32:19
  with their parish and two, don't commit crime.
• 32:22
  So were you that? And I just ask you because I
• 32:26
  don't know, this was Fox and you did that sentencing all happen
• 32:30
  around the same time. No, our sentencings happened
• 32:33
  differently because I was when they decided that they wanted to
• 32:38
  take us to trial, when they decided that they would take us
• 32:41
  to trial, they took us to trial separately because she had a
• 32:44
  different attorney than me and my nephew.
• 32:46
  And as a result of it, he thought that it was in his best
• 32:49
  strategy to wait to see what the outcomes would be for myself in
• 32:53
  Ontario before deciding what the next steps would be for Fox's.
• 32:59
  Fox and I think at this time you're pregnant with twins and
• 33:01
  and your your husband just gets sentenced to 61 years.
• 33:06
  What what goes through someone's mind with that type of situation
• 33:10
  lands on? You well, you know, I think that
• 33:12
  if you don't have a higher power, you will find 1.
• 33:15
  You know, I think that this system, it does exactly what
• 33:18
  it's designed to do. And it's not to rehabilitate
• 33:21
  people or redirect our citizenry or build them up or restore them
• 33:26
  to, you know, to grace. It is really to dehumanize to,
• 33:30
  to destroy us. And so when they sentenced Rob,
• 33:34
  when I found out that Rob had been sentenced for 60 years, I
• 33:37
  almost fainted and pregnant with twins, I turned hot all over.
• 33:41
  I'm on the prison rec yard myself.
• 33:43
  He's talking to me through a barbed wire window that he's
• 33:47
  tied mattresses up together to stand on top of in another
• 33:51
  salemate's room so that he could talk to me while the women that
• 33:54
  are incarcerated are outside on the rec yard.
• 33:57
  And and so in that moment, you know, is when God really showed
• 34:01
  up through me and my work words see him in response to that
• 34:05
  instead of fainting from which, you know, I I clearly felt my
• 34:09
  words to him immediately were it will make the movie more better,
• 34:12
  but I promise I won't let go of your hand.
• 34:14
  We'll walk it together, you know, but it was that commitment
• 34:19
  of saying that I won't let go of your hand.
• 34:21
  We'll walk it together, whatever this is.
• 34:23
  And that was the truth that I always work to maintain
• 34:28
  throughout the incarceration, even when our marriage was being
• 34:31
  challenged. All the things, my commitment to
• 34:34
  him to never let go of his hand and make sure we are able to
• 34:38
  restore him and get him back home.
• 34:40
  Because truthfully, yes, we, we deserve to be sanctioned.
• 34:44
  How dare we think about harming other people even and with the
• 34:47
  scare tactic of trying to take something from an institution
• 34:51
  that did not belong to us. Our behavior was way out of
• 34:53
  line. But at the end of the day, no
• 34:56
  life. There was no loss.
• 34:58
  Loss of life in our offense. So then the state sanctioned
• 35:02
  violence comes in and takes our lives away from our children for
• 35:07
  taking $5000 from a bank break because that's literally how
• 35:11
  much we got outside of the banquet that they got back
• 35:14
  immediately. And I tell a joke in Time 2 you
• 35:18
  were saying about the links. And for those that may want to
• 35:20
  see the the sequel to the Oscar nominated film, it is available
• 35:25
  through a limited exclusive release at time to twomovie.com.
• 35:30
  But I tell a joke in time to movie that says that, you know,
• 35:34
  they gave him 61 years for taking $5163 and, and and 36
• 35:39
  cent. And I could have sworn the 36
• 35:41
  cent was ours because I know we had some money before we went in
• 35:45
  that bank, Right, right. You know, But it is, it goes
• 35:51
  without saying that truthfully, had it not been for our faith
• 35:57
  and that has been rooted in our love and our love for for God,
• 36:02
  it just would not have been possible for us to overcome the
• 36:05
  depths of hell that we walked through for 21 years.
• 36:07
  Because anybody that knows anything about Angola State
• 36:10
  Prison, it is a living breathing.
• 36:14
  Yeah, no. And I told you guys that before
• 36:16
  we got on, Lester Holt did a 60 Minutes piece that was was
• 36:21
  Angola. And it's, you know, there's some
• 36:23
  prisons that you just know the name of, Angola Leavenworth.
• 36:26
  There's, there's things there. Some people just know Alcatraz
• 36:29
  and Angola is one of those. And let's take a break here
• 36:32
  because when we get back, I want to talk about the survival and
• 36:35
  the redemption of how you guys get through all this because
• 36:38
  it's pretty remarkable. You know, a lot of people don't
• 36:41
  like how they show up online. Many individuals think there's
• 36:43
  no hope when it comes to managing your reputation.
• 36:45
  On Google, there is hope. It's called the Discover
• 36:47
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• 36:49
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• 36:52
  after a negative news story. Discover Building can also help
• 36:55
  you how you portray it on popular AI services like
• 36:57
  ChatGPT. To learn more, visit
• 36:59
  discoverability.co. Itsnot.com, its.co listeners and
• 37:03
  Nightmare Success can get $100 off with coupon code Nightmare
• 37:06
  Success. And the Nightmare Success
• 37:08
  Podcast is sponsored by the White Collar Support Group, the
• 37:10
  world's first support group devoted to people navigating the
• 37:12
  white collar criminal justice system.
• 37:14
  I'm a member of the White Collar Support Group.
• 37:16
  I can tell you this is a bunch of people who help each other
• 37:18
  through the criminal justice journey for free.
• 37:20
  Whether you're just starting your journey or you made it
• 37:22
  through the other side, this is great space where you can join
• 37:24
  us on Zoom Monday, 7:00 PM Eastern Time.
• 37:27
  For more information, go to prisoners.org.
• 37:29
  It's prisoners.org. OK, so all this is set.
• 37:33
  The nightmares happened. Now the nightmares goes on that
• 37:37
  fox you're doing you find out that you you're not going to do
• 37:41
  probation and and you're going to have to do time.
• 37:46
  And it was heart wrenching in the in the show, the documentary
• 37:49
  for the the kids thought that too.
• 37:51
  And and you saying to your son, you know, we just got to hurry
• 37:56
  up and count the days before I go in.
• 37:59
  And and it was just like that time period too, for parents.
• 38:03
  When you know, you're going in is, is just such the most
• 38:06
  awkward time in the world. But when you guys are in prison
• 38:11
  and you're serving time, when you walk into this space that
• 38:16
  you didn't plan on being in Fox, what was your mindset going into
• 38:20
  that, knowing that this was nowhere that you'd ever thought
• 38:23
  you were going to be? The immediate thought that came
• 38:28
  to me was just that when I saw all of the atrocities that
• 38:31
  actually existed in how they were warehousing of the human
• 38:35
  beings. And I just looked around and my
• 38:37
  prayer was just the God would let me use my voice for the
• 38:40
  voiceless. May I use my voice in my life
• 38:43
  for us to speak to what is going on here.
• 38:46
  I just thought that maybe if people knew more, that's why,
• 38:49
  you know, Rob and I are so really grateful for your podcast
• 38:52
  Nightmare Success. Because if people know more, I
• 38:56
  think we might as a society do better.
• 38:59
  We might treat people when you break the law, if you don't
• 39:02
  break your humanity, you don't break your citizenship and
• 39:05
  you're not your citizenship as AUS citizen is not removed.
• 39:10
  And if that be the case, then we should not want to mistreat any
• 39:14
  human being, in particular in AUS citizen on our own watch
• 39:19
  using our own taxpayers dollars. Yes, we want to correct
• 39:23
  behavior. Yes, we want our people to do
• 39:25
  what is right just, but at the same token on the state
• 39:29
  sanctioned violence that our system implements is another
• 39:32
  level of that lessens humanity than than than it should be.
• 39:37
  And so when you talk about having to serve time in prison
• 39:43
  and my prayer was that I could use my voice to make a
• 39:45
  difference and that they gave the right one time out because I
• 39:49
  was going to use this time. I was going to show them what I
• 39:52
  would do with the time that they had set me aside away from my
• 39:56
  children and my family because they knew the tendency for me to
• 39:59
  reoffend again was slim to none. You know, here I am on.
• 40:04
  Fire Fox, you came, Yes. Fire.
• 40:06
  Yeah, I had to that. While you were in, you were
• 40:08
  thinking, hey, when I hit the door, you were here.
• 40:11
  I am because you, you were documenting you were you.
• 40:15
  You dove right back into everything that a mom does.
• 40:18
  Plus, and I mean, it's pretty incredible what you did because
• 40:24
  re entry, just as anybody might or might, re entry is really,
• 40:29
  really tough. But you took it on and started
• 40:32
  knocking through barriers and really became a powerful voice
• 40:37
  within this 21 years. Rob, you are on a whole nother
• 40:42
  world of looking at something that 61 years is not.
• 40:48
  I mean, how do you eat that elephant?
• 40:52
  Repeat that question for us. I'm sorry.
• 40:54
  Rob's looking at 61 years. You walk into Angola, how do you
• 40:59
  eat that elephant? Mindset wise?
• 41:01
  What are you thinking, Rob, when you go into that?
• 41:05
  I'm not looking at, you know, I had this weird experience where
• 41:08
  I was looking down on this place and I was getting ready to go
• 41:10
  into the next day and I was thinking, well, gosh, those guys
• 41:14
  walking around the track, I'm not going to be there for like a
• 41:17
  week or a month. I'm going to be there for years.
• 41:20
  You were looking at decades, Rob.
• 41:22
  What were you? What was going on in your mind?
• 41:25
  Man, probably the first thought is probably just whenever you
• 41:31
  think about going to prison, and especially when you think about
• 41:34
  going into prisons as notorious as as many of those that you
• 41:38
  just named a second ago. Angola, of course, being being
• 41:42
  one of those. And at the time that I had gone
• 41:45
  into the prison, it was still considered one of the bloodiest
• 41:48
  prisons in America. And so with that, you, I, my
• 41:54
  health, you know, whether or not I lose my life or, you know,
• 41:57
  whether or not I'd be harmed, you know, while while I was in
• 42:01
  prison. Those things are like probably
• 42:03
  some of the knee jerk responses that that happened for me when I
• 42:07
  first got there. And then by the time we had, you
• 42:10
  know, ventured, you know, all the way of getting there, it was
• 42:14
  all really a build up because it started out early that morning.
• 42:18
  When they picked us up early that morning, a shackle chained
• 42:21
  us and put us on a bus and and we drove all over the state of
• 42:24
  Louisiana. We started at the north tip of
• 42:27
  Louisiana and by the time the day was over, we ended up all
• 42:30
  the way down on the swamps of Angola.
• 42:33
  Angola is the 18,000 acre farm that used to serve as a
• 42:38
  plantation where they received or even before was a plantation.
• 42:41
  It was a slave breeding ground. I got its name Angola from
• 42:45
  Angola Africa, because they shipped slaves from Angola
• 42:48
  Africa. And that was the landing point
• 42:50
  when they got to the Americas is that they landed on what we now
• 42:54
  know as the territory of our Angola prison.
• 42:56
  Later years, of course, they would move to shut it down as a
• 42:59
  breeding ground and then they turned it into A to an all male
• 43:03
  facility. And as an all male facility,
• 43:06
  like I said, it would go on later to become one of the most
• 43:09
  violent places you know that that you could be in.
• 43:13
  So like I said, just kind of the history was going through my
• 43:16
  head. Potential threat for violence
• 43:19
  was always all, you know, was in my head.
• 43:21
  And then finally we went down this 21 mile windy Rd. in order
• 43:26
  to get, you know, to to, you know, to the front gate of
• 43:29
  Angola. And it's surrounded on 3/4 of
• 43:32
  the way by the Mississippi Rivers, much like Alcatraz.
• 43:36
  It sits in the middle of the water.
• 43:37
  And so I got there was loud, it was noisy.
• 43:41
  And you know, in my mind I was like, oh man, these guys are a
• 43:44
  lot. They're rocking and rolling in
• 43:45
  there. And, you know, there's a lot of
• 43:46
  cursing and profanity and you know, you know, it was a lot of
• 43:50
  BS and OS being being yelled out.
• 43:53
  And I'm like, wow, BS and OS. I thought this is all male
• 43:56
  facility. And you know, it's just those
• 43:58
  kind of things. I'm like, man, those are
• 43:59
  fighting words. Are they fighting in there?
• 44:01
  You know, that's all I could hear, but it was just roaring,
• 44:03
  roaring, roaring that was going on.
• 44:05
  I would later learn there was a football game going on in the in
• 44:08
  the cell block and the dudes were actually rooting for their
• 44:11
  teams. But when you come in and you're
• 44:12
  facing 60 some odd years, are you former military, former
• 44:16
  former college student, former do writer or the last thing that
• 44:19
  you think is a football game is going on.
• 44:21
  And that's what all the noise is about.
• 44:23
  So when I got in there, I'm looking around, you know, trying
• 44:26
  to think for myself, like, you know, like, well, damn, I don't
• 44:29
  have a weapon. You know, how do how do you know
• 44:31
  what what are you doing this scenario?
• 44:33
  You know, so I concocted what I thought would be and the answer
• 44:36
  to that I had a belt, an extra belt that I had that that I was
• 44:39
  able to come down with because they didn't have me on suicide
• 44:42
  watch. And I knew I had a couple of
• 44:43
  padlocks that have been issued to me.
• 44:45
  So I said, well, I can lock these around and all around my
• 44:47
  belt. You know, worst case scenario,
• 44:49
  you know, I might be able to keep three people off of me.
• 44:51
  You know what I'm saying? At least enough to the police
• 44:53
  came. And so I ended up going into the
• 44:56
  dormitory. When I got in the dorm, it was
• 44:58
  it was quiet, you know, when I got there and I found it odd
• 45:03
  because it was summertime and everybody was asleep and because
• 45:06
  they were asleep, they are had sheets over the top of them.
• 45:09
  And it felt like a morgue to some degree.
• 45:11
  But I can hear people snoring. And then the other thought was
• 45:14
  like that image that they give you like of a slave ship where
• 45:18
  people are sitting for the app where they hit sleeping like
• 45:22
  head to foot. Well, it was just people that
• 45:25
  were sleeping head to foot because, you know, in these
• 45:27
  prisons, they warehouses. And so I finally made it to my
• 45:30
  bed, you know, in the middle of the night.
• 45:32
  And as the room started to, you know, my eyes started to adjust
• 45:35
  to the space and I just hear men around me kind of breathe it.
• 45:38
  And, you know, a few, you know, quiet whispers that were
• 45:41
  happening. But you know, all of that would
• 45:43
  go on for the rest of the night. And also I woke up the next day
• 45:45
  and realized that, wow, I made it through that day.
• 45:49
  And, you know, as it would go on, I would make it through
• 45:52
  another day and another day and over space and time, you know,
• 45:55
  just like any environment that you go into, you eventually get
• 45:58
  to a point that you start kind of learning some things.
• 46:02
  And I started learning enough that that I felt like I could be
• 46:07
  OK, you know, in a place like this.
• 46:09
  And then, you know, just like anywhere else, you get people
• 46:12
  that approach you with with different suggestions from
• 46:15
  becoming more educated to becoming more criminal.
• 46:18
  It's a matter of which one of these routes are you going to
• 46:21
  choose. And so I chose to become more
• 46:23
  educated and also I spent a lot of time in the law library.
• 46:26
  I spent a lot of time at all, you know, at legal writing and
• 46:29
  research classes, spent a lot of time and, you know, self help
• 46:33
  programs and things like that. And so the people that I met
• 46:36
  were people that were part of those programs.
• 46:38
  And because they were a part of those programs, that means that
• 46:41
  my community, even inside a prison, had become at least
• 46:44
  made-up of the people that were positive thinkers and people
• 46:47
  that wanted to return home. And you know, that genuinely
• 46:50
  would just do right kind of people, but that has just, you
• 46:53
  know, made some terrible decisions are in life and
• 46:56
  ultimately a land that they've been in a place like that.
• 46:59
  And so that is kind of how my my prison journey unfold, you know,
• 47:04
  in terms of how I came in, like every man probably would.
• 47:07
  You know, coming into a place like that is that you have some
• 47:10
  fear factor that's there, you know, and then you move past the
• 47:13
  fears because you realize that you got to make it through this
• 47:16
  and give it up. Was never an option for me.
• 47:19
  No, And you know, I think you, what you said, there is just
• 47:21
  such a nugget of wisdom too about for anybody who's
• 47:24
  listening, the prisons out there are having to go in not losing
• 47:31
  yourself in prison, but finding ways to make yourself like
• 47:35
  you're, you're still feeling you're making a difference.
• 47:37
  And you got you got in that lane, Rob, and you stay in that
• 47:40
  lane, Fox on your side. You've got these kids.
• 47:45
  You're coming back out into this world.
• 47:47
  You're wanting to stay connected to this man that you love.
• 47:52
  And and the one thing that's that's that's clear all the way
• 47:55
  through these 21 years is you, you guys stayed so strong with
• 47:59
  the hope factor. And you know, I always, when I
• 48:01
  was watching your documentary last night, always brings, I
• 48:05
  think I've seen Shawshank redemption probably like 15
• 48:07
  times. But you know, the the
• 48:10
  interesting thing about that movie is, is that read at the
• 48:14
  end, everything he's saying is I hope this, I hope this, I hope
• 48:18
  this, and at the end, you know, I hope I see my my friend.
• 48:21
  And how did you guys keep hope alive?
• 48:24
  Because I think for me there were.
• 48:26
  So many, there were so many ups and downs where you guys could
• 48:28
  have just said I'm done with this, but there was nowhere that
• 48:32
  you guys stayed with it. And you can see the frustration,
• 48:35
  Fox, on your some of these phone calls that you got off of, but
• 48:38
  you stayed with it. Say we had to learn to count the
• 48:42
  small victories. We never we would never hope
• 48:44
  less. There was always, even though as
• 48:47
  as as as dim as the light may have been the light of hope, but
• 48:51
  it never went out, you know, and there was always a glimmer of
• 48:54
  hope that was there. And you just have to grab on to
• 48:56
  it when you see it and and never let it go and you ride it all
• 49:00
  the way to the light man. You know, that was again, like I
• 49:02
  said, just our experiences and in my letters to, you know,
• 49:06
  giving her what my experiences already are inside of the
• 49:09
  prison. It at least this informs her in
• 49:12
  ways of, you know, like I guess how it is that maybe she could
• 49:15
  even consider doing her time. You know, once she got there.
• 49:19
  You know, again, like I said, just through communications with
• 49:21
  us, back and forth with each other in terms of things that I
• 49:24
  had learned along the way that I was able to even suggest to her
• 49:28
  when she answered. And then probably for us too,
• 49:31
  was the very first book I sent Rob when he got to Angola.
• 49:35
  I went into Barnes and Noble and remember it like it was
• 49:38
  yesterday. And I'm like, what can I send
• 49:39
  him? You know what, in this moment
• 49:43
  when we are so much is stacked against us, our our entire
• 49:47
  existence is questioned right now.
• 49:50
  And and that's when I discovered this book man search for meaning
• 49:55
  by Victor Frankel and and I sent it to Rob and I didn't have a
• 49:59
  chance to read it, but when I read the cover, I was like,
• 50:01
  well, this should help him. If this man made it through the
• 50:04
  concentration camp, you know, then then certainly he should
• 50:07
  have something in here to pass on to Rob.
• 50:10
  And after he read the book, you know, he told me that I needed
• 50:13
  to get a copy. And I went back and did.
• 50:15
  And in doing so, the thought of finding the meaning in your
• 50:20
  suffering, that was what resonated soul with us.
• 50:24
  We had to find the meaning in our suffering that this was so
• 50:28
  much greater than us. And then to count all the
• 50:31
  victories. He talked about how, you know,
• 50:33
  they would put honey on them and let then let the honey go back
• 50:36
  and let the others lick the honey off so that they could
• 50:39
  eat. Or, you know, when they would
• 50:40
  find crumbs or just something to eat, it was a a victory.
• 50:43
  Or if you found some shoes that, you know, even in his book, he
• 50:47
  counted the winds. And that's what Rob and I always
• 50:50
  strive to do. If I just got somebody, they
• 50:52
  return our phone call, that was a win.
• 50:54
  If they just accepted my call, that was a win.
• 50:58
  But we can't begin to see ourselves in our lowest moments,
• 51:01
  if anything other than winners on their way to the greatest
• 51:05
  victory. And I think there was a moment
• 51:08
  there, Fox, that it shipped off $15,000, basically got a letter
• 51:14
  back. And it seemed like at that
• 51:15
  moment that it clicked and you took control of, I'm gonna get
• 51:19
  understand this, I'm gonna power through this.
• 51:21
  And I don't know when that was in the course of all these
• 51:25
  years, but. It was March, a big moment.
• 51:28
  As a matter of fact, it was March 5th of 2013 that that
• 51:32
  letter was dated for. But I, like many people, I kept
• 51:35
  hoping that I could just pay the right lawyer and the right
• 51:38
  lawyer would handle this. You know, we kept thinking if if
• 51:41
  we just get the right lawyer on our matter.
• 51:43
  But it wasn't until Rob started learning law and then I started
• 51:47
  understanding the law he was learning that we begin to even
• 51:51
  get back into court. And that was probably 15 years
• 51:55
  into our sentence by that time. But once he started learning in
• 51:58
  law and I started understanding it, you know, then we could
• 52:02
  really activate and move toward what we needed to do in order to
• 52:05
  obtain freedom for ourselves. I think that we all make some
• 52:09
  kind of mistakes. So I don't think that it is
• 52:12
  righteous of us, any of us, to give up on an opportunity to be
• 52:16
  free. Right.
• 52:18
  And I think you know, what a great teamwork of, of you guys,
• 52:22
  you know, of, of Rob becoming basically a, an in house
• 52:25
  attorney in Angola and then you feeding off of that and using it
• 52:29
  on the outside. When was it that you, the both
• 52:33
  of you thought, oh man, this, this is close, this is real,
• 52:36
  this could this could really happen?
• 52:38
  Like what when, when did because you had so many different times
• 52:43
  that it happened. When did it finally feel like
• 52:45
  wait a minute, because I know there's a phone call that
• 52:48
  happens and Rob, you are talking about and boy, like really
• 52:53
  brings you like down to to the sole to understand.
• 52:57
  You see, you're talking about the pecan trees that you know
• 52:59
  were planted 20 years ago and now there's a whole Grove of
• 53:01
  them. But in that phone calls, I know
• 53:05
  that you all still had to have thought, you know, another shoe
• 53:07
  could drop and it won't happen. But was that the time that you
• 53:10
  guys on that phone call that you thought, OK, this, this is the
• 53:14
  governor's might really this might all all the dots connect.
• 53:19
  Those were other arguments that we were arguing.
• 53:21
  And I'd have to tell you, we always thought that this that
• 53:25
  was the the heartbreak. It was like always think this is
• 53:28
  it. I got a drawer for you.
• 53:32
  I'm putting your clothes in a drawer.
• 53:36
  You know, the whole night we always thought this was it.
• 53:39
  But when we finally, when it finally was, it was April 2017,
• 53:45
  when our youngest son went to hear Frank Luntz, the Republican
• 53:49
  poster, speak at Loyola. And he stood up and asked Frank
• 53:52
  a question. And Frank says them, hey, kid,
• 53:54
  don't leave. I'm going to change your life.
• 53:56
  He met Frank Luntz a couple of days later for coffee, invited
• 54:00
  me to join them. And he says your son is the most
• 54:03
  impressive person I've met in the past 25 years.
• 54:05
  And if you know anything about Frank Luntz, that's quite a
• 54:08
  compliment. And he said, what can I do for
• 54:11
  your family? And, and to which Freedom's
• 54:14
  mother, who knew he had this meeting coming up, had already
• 54:17
  prepared him that, you know, when you sit with this man of
• 54:21
  importance, you need to think about what it is that you want
• 54:24
  to ask his assistance with. And so to which Frank says, how
• 54:28
  can I help you? And Freedom was prepared to
• 54:30
  answer. And his answer was, my father
• 54:33
  needs a pardon. And I'm trying to get him home,
• 54:36
  not for me, but for my baby brother who deserves an
• 54:38
  opportunity to grow up with our dad.
• 54:41
  And, and he says I never asked these people for anything.
• 54:44
  But I have a meeting scheduled with your governor and I will
• 54:47
  ask him about your family. I can't make you any promises,
• 54:50
  but I will raise your family to the governor.
• 54:52
  And two months later, he did call me on January the 9th from
• 54:56
  the governor convening of governors in Rhode Island and
• 55:00
  said that he had just met with our governor for an hour and
• 55:03
  his, our governor had committed to signing my husband's pardon
• 55:07
  as long as he got past his pardon board.
• 55:09
  And so that was 2007. We didn't even have a hearing
• 55:13
  date till the next year. But that is when we knew that
• 55:16
  the governor had committed to sign for us and and so he was
• 55:19
  released the following year in September.
• 55:21
  It's just incredible. And you've got to be so proud of
• 55:25
  those sons of yours. I mean, they and, and you know,
• 55:29
  because that's another thing about there's always such a bad
• 55:33
  narrative that everybody loses the family and the family breaks
• 55:36
  up and there is a lot of that, but you guys put in so much
• 55:40
  extra work to make sure that those kids were a part of the
• 55:44
  and they walk with pride. I mean, they're, they're, I
• 55:46
  mean, and they should be proud because they they're, they're
• 55:49
  accomplished. And, and they were part of this,
• 55:52
  this movement that you 2 did together.
• 55:55
  And and finally, we're the time when when Rob you get out and
• 56:00
  there's that joyous, you know, reunion man, that had to feel
• 56:04
  good. Yeah, yes, indeed.
• 56:06
  Yes, indeed. It was all like on Fox News,
• 56:09
  just that moment when you know that it was over, or at least
• 56:13
  you knew that that part of it was that part was over.
• 56:16
  Even, you know, as early on as we knew that we had the
• 56:19
  governor's support for my clemency, it didn't stop me from
• 56:22
  feeling like I was walking inside of the prison.
• 56:25
  Because if you've ever been to prison, you know something as
• 56:27
  simple as a, you know, having too many pair of shoes on your
• 56:31
  been leaving a wet towel out. You know, all those things are,
• 56:34
  you know, rule infractions and can be cause for a write up.
• 56:38
  And a write up could very well upset my, my recommendation that
• 56:42
  had just been made, you know. And so for me, it wasn't really
• 56:46
  over until I walked out the gate.
• 56:48
  And when I finally walked out the gate, shit, I couldn't even
• 56:51
  shout very much that I was like, yeah, they might see me leaving.
• 56:54
  They might think that this is a mistake or something.
• 56:56
  Wait, we made a mistake. He.
• 56:57
  Didn't he didn't know what to do when he walked out the gate?
• 57:00
  He's just like, Are you sure? They are letting me go.
• 57:04
  You should. You could definitely hear Fox.
• 57:07
  Right, right. You know, but for me, like I
• 57:11
  said, my excitement didn't happen until we had gotten off
• 57:13
  that 21 mile windy road and was back up onto the main road.
• 57:18
  And I was like, wow. And as I'm you know, as we're
• 57:20
  driving past, if you look close in the in the in the in the
• 57:25
  picture, you would be able to see that there were buses going
• 57:28
  toward Angola. And then there was our limo that
• 57:31
  was driving away from from Angola.
• 57:34
  And so just at that moment, you know, I was thinking like how
• 57:37
  many of those guys were new guys that were just coming into the
• 57:39
  prison for the very first time, as I had been at one at one
• 57:43
  point, you know, in just a reverse.
• 57:46
  And so, yeah, it was a really well. 1.
• 57:50
  Of those really all worthwhile moments.
• 57:52
  It, it just, you feel, you feel it.
• 57:55
  You know, it's, it's like when you see the, the hockey team win
• 57:57
  the gold. You feel when, when you walk out
• 57:59
  and you grab each other and it's just that moment of elation.
• 58:03
  So you guys get back together after all this time and you know
• 58:08
  the kids and you know that you see in the documentary that
• 58:12
  everything and they they burn that picture of you that's been
• 58:14
  hanging that now he's really here in our home.
• 58:18
  Let's talk about what you're doing now.
• 58:20
  We do a work with other justice involved families called
• 58:23
  Participatory Defense Movement NOLA, It's PDM. nola.org is our
• 58:28
  site. It's an initiative of our
• 58:30
  ministry where we teach families legal awareness as you join
• 58:34
  together with your white collar crimes group and talk about
• 58:37
  matters. We do the same thing with
• 58:39
  families every Thursday night in New Orleans.
• 58:42
  We call it participatory defense when we teach families how to
• 58:46
  work on their own defense, how to get some support from the
• 58:48
  community, how to leverage community relationships before
• 58:53
  the court actors so that the courts know that you are someone
• 58:57
  of value to the community and not just another number that
• 59:00
  they could discard. And so we have, we count our
• 59:03
  success by how much time we save families from serving in prison
• 59:07
  versus how much time they've been sanctioned to serve.
• 59:10
  And our organization which is 1 hub of 40 hubs across this
• 59:13
  country doing this work, we have saved 4000 years of time in
• 59:18
  prison. And nationally collectively we
• 59:21
  have saved over 40,000 years of people serving time behind bars.
• 59:26
  So for bringing home the longest serving woman in the state of
• 59:30
  Louisiana, Mama Globe and we started a campaign for her.
• 59:33
  Six months after Rob got out, we bought her home.
• 59:36
  Our fall partner who was not able to get out.
• 59:38
  Through clemency, we were able to get a change of policy in the
• 59:43
  state of Louisiana that not only gave an opportunity for parole
• 59:48
  for our fall partner, our nephew, but it gave almost 3 /
• 59:52
  3000 other families who thought they were going to die in prison
• 59:56
  because they had 30 years of more of a sentence an
• 1:00:00
  opportunity to get paroled at 20 years by after 20 years behind
• 1:00:04
  bars and reaching the age of 45. So that was legislation that was
• 1:00:10
  initiated by Rob and I and completed once he got home
• 1:00:15
  through getting the change of policy done through the state
• 1:00:19
  legislature in 2021. And so that's what we do.
• 1:00:22
  We understand, Mr. Cassidy, that.
• 1:00:26
  To be free is to free others, and that is what we live by and
• 1:00:30
  that's what we work every day to do.
• 1:00:32
  I love it. I'm only have one more question.
• 1:00:35
  OK, Fox, I've only got one more. Rob, what do you think's your
• 1:00:40
  biggest take away through all of it?
• 1:00:42
  Because you've lived a journey. Probably the biggest take away
• 1:00:46
  is the one that Fox just made mentioned, and that is is that
• 1:00:49
  is that the the very function of freedom is is is rooted in
• 1:00:54
  freeing someone else. And so when I left prison, you
• 1:00:57
  know, I left prison with, you know, with, you know, survivors
• 1:01:00
  guilt, you know, like many people do when they leave war,
• 1:01:03
  you know, they go back home and they leave, you know, our
• 1:01:06
  friends and others, you know, and war written territories and
• 1:01:10
  they get, you know, back home and they realize that bad
• 1:01:12
  Sergeant so and so on corporate so and so should have had the
• 1:01:15
  same opportunity, but instead they're still ducking bombs.
• 1:01:18
  Or, you know, much of the same way.
• 1:01:20
  When I left out of prison, I knew that there was some other
• 1:01:22
  guys that I knew that were equally, if not greater are
• 1:01:25
  deserving than I. It was, you know, in that
• 1:01:26
  moment. The one thing that you're
• 1:01:28
  hopeful for in the moment is that they would be able to to
• 1:01:31
  see the same. And so I knew that if any of
• 1:01:33
  that was going to really happen, it wasn't going to come from us
• 1:01:36
  guilt that it was going to have to happen, but a level of
• 1:01:39
  ambition was going to have to kick in.
• 1:01:41
  And as Fox may mention earlier on the call, we just began to
• 1:01:44
  use our voice, our platform, you know, as a, as a mouthpiece for,
• 1:01:49
  you know, for people who don't have a have a voice.
• 1:01:53
  Well you guys are creating real change.
• 1:01:55
  Anything to add to that fox with your?
• 1:01:59
  Takeover Jessica Well that that is it for us, but for you, I
• 1:02:05
  just say thank you. Thank you for being willing to
• 1:02:07
  use your story and for the betterment of others.
• 1:02:10
  It's it takes a lot of sacrifice to share, to expose yourself in
• 1:02:14
  such a way. And so for you to be willing and
• 1:02:17
  to have the courage that it takes to speak freely about your
• 1:02:20
  transgressions and hopes of empowering others.
• 1:02:23
  I just our hat goes off to you. Thank you so much and thank you
• 1:02:27
  for allowing us to share with your community.
• 1:02:29
  Yeah. And I wanna give another shout
• 1:02:33
  out to the documentary. It's an Oscar nominee
• 1:02:35
  documentary that you can find on Amazon called Time and you can
• 1:02:39
  find their book Time, The Untold Story of the love that Held us
• 1:02:42
  Together, an incarceration kept us apart and just a little bit
• 1:02:46
  more gratitude here. I want to give a shout out to
• 1:02:48
  Homestead financial list, but use this studio with all the
• 1:02:50
  fancy lights and cameras. If you got home mortgage knees
• 1:02:53
  out there, a Greg Aftiev is your guy.
• 1:02:55
  Go check out my book too. If you got time.
• 1:02:57
  It's nightmare success, loyal to betrayal, life behind bars and
• 1:03:00
  finally breaking free. Leave me a review on Apple.
• 1:03:02
  If you got time, go to brickcassie.com.
• 1:03:05
  I spell it wrong. I spell my my name with a Ty,
• 1:03:07
  not a DY, as I used to say to my people when I was writing my
• 1:03:10
  emails back and forth from Leavenworth.
• 1:03:12
  Stay strong. I'll do the same.
• 1:03:14
  Fox and Rob, I'm just so glad you're doing what you're doing.
• 1:03:17
  I'm so glad you have each other and doing it together.
• 1:03:20
  It's just it's an inspiration of of how you guys are making an
• 1:03:23
  impact and just keep going, keep going.
• 1:03:26
  Thank you. Well, I got to add a shout out
• 1:03:28
  to that as well. I got to shout out Brian Newton
• 1:03:33
  for even connecting us we've. Gone through the thing.
• 1:03:37
  I didn't want to get out. To Brian Newton, he put us all
• 1:03:40
  together. Brian.
• 1:03:41
  Newton, Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Thank you so much for what
• 1:03:46
  you're doing and we look to talk with you real soon.
• 1:03:49
  Yeah, take care, Brett. Folks, not your success in and
• 1:03:52
  out.