Latest / Red Onion Randy - Life in a Supermax Prison / Eight Crazy Days

Transcript

Eight Crazy Days · Red Onion Randy - Life in a Supermax Prison

• 0:12
  Hello, this is a prepaid call from Branda and make it the Virginia Department
• 0:17
  of Corrections. Read Onion State Prison to accept this call Press zero. This
• 0:24
  is Randall Vaugh. I'm currently serving one thousand, two hundred and fourteen years
• 0:29
  in Wallings Ridge State Prison in Big Stone Gap, Virginia for Capitol murder.
• 0:33
  This is my podcast Read On Your Randy. Today. I'm going to talk
• 0:38
  about an eight day span here at Walling's Ridge. I hope you enjoyed listening
• 0:43
  to me. I don't know if this is true or not. Let me
• 0:46
  start off with that. My neighbor that I hang out with the most in
• 0:50
  this part is was watching the news and he told me that he had seen
• 0:55
  a story on there that of the dangerous, the most dangerous prison in the
• 1:00
  US, and Walling's Ridge. He said they classified Walling's Ridge as the deadliest
• 1:06
  prison in the state of Virginia. I don't know where it ranked in the
• 1:11
  US, but this is what he told me. I did not see the
• 1:14
  story myself. I haven't gotten confirmation simply because I really haven't tried. But
• 1:21
  I can see it. And he said it wasn't just you know, murders
• 1:23
  and fights and stabbings. You know, it was overdoses and depths from that,
• 1:29
  and so on and so forth, gang fights and activity and what have
• 1:34
  you. But I will say this, this place is a little bit wild.
• 1:38
  This place reminds me of back in the day when I first came into
• 1:42
  the system. I don't think it's as bad as red Onion was when red
• 1:47
  Onion first opened up. When I was there, and uh, it was
• 1:52
  red Onion was crazy for real. I mean, that's the reason why I
• 1:56
  am called red Onion Randy. I was there for twenty some years. I've
• 2:01
  forgotten more about red Onion than anybody else will probably ever learn. I was
• 2:06
  there longer than anybody as far as I know, to the best of my
• 2:08
  knowledge. So this is what happened in eight days on a Monday, and
• 2:15
  the pod next door to me. I'm in a four. This happened in
• 2:17
  a five. Evidently you have this one blood and supposedly he's a big guy.
• 2:24
  Supposedly he's got some size to him, and he's got a pretty he's
• 2:29
  got a pretty good fight game. I don't know the cat personally. This
• 2:34
  is just what I've heard. You know, we talked to them, guys.
• 2:36
  We're on the reckyard with him. We walked to and from medical or
• 2:40
  school or video visits or wherever with other people up here red Onion, they
• 2:46
  keep every single pod separated. Up here, they don't do that. I'll
• 2:51
  go to video visits where gouts from other pods and other buildings, and we're
• 2:54
  not shackled or cuff to secure it in any way. As a matter of
• 2:58
  fact, they actually just had a fight the other week, you know,
• 3:02
  where two dudes from two separate buildings they saw each other and I guess they
• 3:06
  were beefing from back in the day, and they ran up and got the
• 3:08
  rumbling with one another until the CEOs broke it up. But that's the way
• 3:13
  it is up here. So this is what I heard. You know,
• 3:16
  Like this guy was supposedly as a bully. He's throwing his weight around and
• 3:21
  uh, you know, he was chopping at the cripts in the park even
• 3:23
  though he was outnumbered. He didn't care, evidently, or he just didn't
• 3:27
  have enough damn sense. So five cribs chumped him and beat his ass.
• 3:35
  And uh, well, you know, as far as I'm concerned, if
• 3:38
  you're a bully, get what you deserve. I don't have no sympathy for
• 3:43
  you. If you get your ass whooped by one, two, three,
• 3:46
  five, or ten, if you started it, that's on you. You're
• 3:50
  just gonna have to wear that ass whooping like a man and keep it moving
• 3:53
  and hopefully learn something from it. And if you don't, you probably gonna
• 3:55
  get your ass whooped again. So that happened on a Monday. They locked
• 4:00
  us down to deal with it, and the next morning on Tuesday, they
• 4:04
  let us out. All of this took place at the end of December,
• 4:09
  the beginning of January. Tuesday ninth, you had two guys in b building.
• 4:15
  They owdeed on drugs and they actually died. They actually lost their lives.
• 4:21
  So Wednesday morning we was on lock for a little bit, but then
• 4:25
  they let us out around like eight o'clock. And like, drugs are everywhere
• 4:30
  up here, Like I cannot walk across the yard without somebody asking me,
• 4:34
  yo, man, you're trying to buy some or yo man, you've got
• 4:38
  something to sell or you know somebody to sell them. Hey, I'm not
• 4:42
  interested in that, fellas man. I'm on a different path. Yeah,
• 4:45
  but man, just no, I'm on a different path man, And keep
• 4:47
  it moving. I'm not getting caught up eating through simple conversation. But this
• 4:54
  place is flooded with it. They are combating it, they are fighting against
• 4:59
  it. I'll get into that here in a little bit. But you had
• 5:01
  two guys die, and I don't know if they were selling. I think
• 5:04
  they were selling off because normally, under normal circumstances, if you got a
• 5:09
  guy in the cell with you and he od's this selling is going to scream
• 5:15
  for medical help out the side of the door. He's going to scream for
• 5:18
  the CEOs to come get this dude, get in the medical get medical over
• 5:21
  to him, narcnnon, bring him back. Because at the end of the
• 5:25
  day, you don't want to get a fake murder charge because this dude o
• 5:29
  d and they thinking that you you strangled in the death or beating the death,
• 5:32
  or killed them in some form, shape or fashion. So pretty much
• 5:35
  everybody is going to call for help. So that leads me to believe that
• 5:40
  these two guys that you know died, you know ode were in the cell
• 5:45
  together and they got help, they got high together, and they died together.
• 5:49
  So we come off Wednesday morning that they dealt with all of that.
• 5:53
  They shook down their pod and everything and uh, maybe a couple of other
• 5:57
  parts. I don't really remember. It was a while ago. But they
• 6:00
  didn't shake us down over here. We was just down for a couple of
• 6:02
  hours and then to let us out. So Wednesday afternoon, word got over
• 6:09
  to the Bloods and See One part and that one of their homeboys, you
• 6:15
  know, one of their big homies. And whenever you hear someone in the
• 6:19
  game world refer to a big homie, a big homie has been in the
• 6:24
  game for a while. He's got rip, he's got respect and authority,
• 6:30
  and he's put that work in. You don't rise up in a gang unless
• 6:32
  you're willing to fight, or you're willing to take someone's life or so on
• 6:36
  and so forth, and you keep your mouth shut. So when they found
• 6:42
  out that one of the big homies got jumped by the Crips, I don't
• 6:45
  know the exact number between the Bloods and the Crips and See One. All
• 6:49
  I know is it was eighteen dudes got to rumblin, you know, the
• 6:54
  Bloods came out to Part. They pulled knives and they started stabbing up the
• 6:57
  Crips and fighting, and the Crips pulled knobs and started fighting back. And
• 7:00
  fabbing and and them boys went at it like. It took the CEOs a
• 7:03
  minute to get that fight broken up. It didn't mind if they were shooting
• 7:08
  guns, didn't matter if they were shooting tear gas. It didn't matter that
• 7:11
  they were spraying mace. It didn't matter that they had attack dogs in there
• 7:14
  fighting and trying to drag them down and sedue them. Like these dudes were
• 7:17
  going at at Hardcourt. I mean they were. They were putting that work
• 7:20
  in for real. So eventually they get it secure. Eventually they get everybody
• 7:27
  down. You know, they've blocked the whole compound down while they was trying
• 7:30
  to subdue that and everything, you know, And that's the thing, like,
• 7:32
  you know, when the CEOs are run to the bars and mail scream
• 7:34
  locked down, lockdown, lockdown, now all excited and they're hoppitched voices and
• 7:40
  everything, and you know, they're pointing the guns at you to make sure
• 7:42
  that you can fly and whatnot, while they rest of the CEOs they're hauling
• 7:46
  ass, you know, to go over there and help deal with whatever the
• 7:48
  situation happens to be. And they had their hands full of that day,
• 7:53
  they definitely had their hands full, and it actually took them like thirty or
• 7:57
  forty minute to break that fight up and subject. So Thursday we're on lockdown.
• 8:03
  All day, we're on lockdown, and then Friday morning they they're over
• 8:09
  there and uh see one shaking down. They're they're searching the rest of them.
• 8:13
  Because the way it is up here in Wallin's Ridge and Red Onion,
• 8:18
  you know, because we're super max prisons, the bottom tier will come out
• 8:26
  by themselves while the top tier stays in the cell and they'll get an hour,
• 8:30
  hour and a half or two hours, just depending on what the day
• 8:33
  looks like. And then when their wreck is done, they'll let the top
• 8:35
  tier out and then after lunch they'll do the same, you know, and
• 8:39
  they alternate daily who comes out first, So if the bottom tier comes out
• 8:45
  first today, the top tier will come out first tomorrow, and they keep
• 8:48
  them separated. So it was, if I remember correctly, this happened on
• 8:54
  the bottom tier. You know, we're all on Wednesday when the Bloods and
• 8:58
  the Crips got to fight, and all on the bottom tier, so everybody
• 9:01
  else was in to sell on the top tier waiting to come out for reck
• 9:05
  that day. So Friday morning they shake down just that part. They don't
• 9:13
  mess with any of the other parts. But they go in looking for knives,
• 9:16
  looking for drugs and you know, anything else contraband related, you know,
• 9:20
  and to send a little message. So after lunch, you know,
• 9:24
  they're finishing everything, they let us back out for reck. I'm in a
• 9:30
  four fourteen. I'm at the cell right at the top of the steps.
• 9:35
  So we come out and we're standing there and they tell us, all right,
• 9:39
  y'all, come oncause you're supposed to stand in front of your cell until
• 9:41
  all the doors are open, and then all the doors are closed, you
• 9:46
  know, And that's just to keep guys from running up in to sell on
• 9:48
  someone and so on and so forth. I make it to the bottom of
• 9:52
  the steps before the CEOs run to the bar screaming locked down, lockdown,
• 9:58
  lockdown, lockdown. We're like, damn right, So you know, we're
• 10:01
  upset about it, but we go ahead and we lie down because it was
• 10:05
  facing man. We ain't got much choice except the buck, and yeah,
• 10:09
  I ain't bucking over something like that. So we find out that when they
• 10:15
  let the top tier out, the crips came out and they started to fight
• 10:20
  with the bloods on the topsier and they pulled knives and weapons and just started
• 10:24
  going at it. They shook the pod down that morning, and they didn't
• 10:30
  even find nothing. I will say this in their defense, man, we
• 10:35
  got some pretty damn good hiding spots in here that you it would take a
• 10:39
  genie to figure out, or it would take somebody snitching and telling them,
• 10:43
  hey, yeah, you might want to start checking this or checking out and
• 10:46
  looking in this. You know what I'm saying, which I'm not going to
• 10:48
  give you all that information because people do listen to this podcast that works in
• 10:52
  the Department of Correction. So they don't find nothing, and the dudes go
• 10:56
  out and they set it off again. That's that's the last straw. By
• 11:01
  this time, the Warden ar Trip and Warden Blove assistant Warden Blevins, they're
• 11:07
  trying to open the place back up. They're trying to make sure we get
• 11:09
  the wreck we're supposed to get. When they first got up here, yeah,
• 11:13
  I was. I was a little worried. It kind of looked like
• 11:16
  things were actually going to get worse because we spent a lot of it.
• 11:18
  I think we spent their first two months up here pretty much on lockdown.
• 11:22
  The whole two months, except like we came out like maybe once a week,
• 11:28
  every other week or something like that. You know, it was crazy.
• 11:31
  But in their defense, you know, they were trying to change the
• 11:35
  culture. They were trying to change the way the CEOs think and and so
• 11:37
  on and so forth, you know, and it took a while, and
• 11:41
  now it's starting to clear up and everything, thank god. So we're on
• 11:45
  lock. I mean, they got no choice. They just had three gang
• 11:46
  fights in a week and two od's, So yeah, we're on lock.
• 11:52
  And there's no question about that. It is what it is. You know.
• 11:56
  I was a little pissed about it because we were supposed to get library
• 11:58
  books and we got screwed on that again. Now Sunday, they had just
• 12:05
  brought a guy up and put him in the game pod with a game,
• 12:07
  because you know, normally they try to keep gang members in the same parts,
• 12:11
  in the same area, so they're not really affecting everybody else. Because
• 12:15
  games have a tendency of trying to want to run things and own things,
• 12:18
  like you can't use the phone or the kiosk unless they give you permission,
• 12:22
  and normally that involves you paying them. And you got some of us civilians
• 12:26
  that ain't gang members. We ain't tolerating that, and we ain't going for
• 12:30
  it, you know. So they do try to keep it as separated as
• 12:33
  they can. So they have a game pot up here, you know,
• 12:37
  which they originally tried to put me in, even though I'm guaranteed single sales
• 12:41
  status and I've been charged three for seventeen years, and i ain't had a
• 12:43
  SELLI in seventeen years. But I've already discussed that now. Evidently the guy
• 12:50
  that went to video visits when he came back, he didn't trust is Sally.
• 12:56
  He didn't know it's Sally, and so on and so forth. So
• 13:00
  he checked his commissary. And everybody in prison they know exactly what they have
• 13:07
  in that cell. Commisary wise, they know how many soups, how many
• 13:09
  chips, if the bag of chips is already open, they know what level
• 13:13
  it is. All of that. Now, the dude Shelley was eating some
• 13:18
  of his commissary while he was at UH while he was a video visit.
• 13:22
  So he beat his celly to death. He killed him in the cell with
• 13:26
  his bare hands, and then stuffed the bag of Cheetos down the stroke,
• 13:31
  you know, to send a message and uh, that's why we was already
• 13:39
  on lockdown, and the dude killed the celly while we was on lockdown.
• 13:43
  And then that Monday they bring the strikeforce up here. They bring the strikeforce
• 13:48
  up and uh, they go into a six first. Uh. I don't
• 13:54
  know why they decide to go in a six first, because normally they go
• 13:58
  into the kitchen pot the workers part and they get them done so they can
• 14:01
  go to work and do whatever. But this time they go into a six
• 14:05
  and the strikeforce is it's a group of CEOs from prisons all around the state
• 14:11
  of Virginia. They apply for strikeforce, they go through some extra training,
• 14:16
  they get a little extra pay and so on and so forth for traveling and
• 14:20
  staying away from home for a week or two while they shake a whole institution
• 14:24
  down. So they respond to riots and stuff of that nature. Now they
• 14:30
  come up here and they do it different because normally, when they pull you
• 14:33
  out for a shakedown, they put you in handcuffs and shackles and they pull
• 14:37
  you out, you know, with three CEOs per inmate, and they go
• 14:39
  in the cell and shake you down and then put you back in and go
• 14:43
  on to the next cell and you've got three or four celles getting shook down
• 14:46
  at once. So that's how they normally shake us down, but this time
• 14:50
  they do something completely different. They've got like ten drug dogs in the pod.
• 14:56
  They've got like fifty CEOs, and they're pulling the whole bottom tier and
• 15:03
  a whole top tier out at one time. And they've got everybody lined up
• 15:07
  in the middle of the pod, and they run the drug dogs down the
• 15:11
  middle of them and then run them up around them several times. They take
• 15:15
  it and they put you in a chair that's uh, the detects metal metal
• 15:20
  detection. Chaer, sorry, So they do that, and then when you
• 15:24
  get up, you got to go stand in front of this tall pole thing
• 15:26
  that's got a bunch of colored lights and centers on it that detect cell phone
• 15:31
  signals. I don't know what happened. I don't know what set dudes off,
• 15:35
  but evidently something set them off. And a bunch of them white dudes
• 15:41
  Spanish, there's black dudes like different games. Like, they just started jumping
• 15:46
  on the CEOs and started fighting, and they they had a basically had a
• 15:50
  small little mini riot, you know, and they got the ruming with them
• 15:54
  and it took a while for the CEOs to get control of them and everything.
• 15:58
  And you know, and this is the thing, the way they do
• 16:00
  it. They had just a strikeforce in the pod, none of the regular
• 16:04
  four officers if you worked at Wallace Ridge, who wasn't allowed in the pods,
• 16:08
  while a shakedown crew was shaken down. So they had a riot.
• 16:14
  And then that afternoon when they had gotten everything in a six done, and
• 16:21
  I mean they tore that pod up. They towre those dudes' property up.
• 16:27
  They strew away trash back after trash back after trash back. If you waited,
• 16:33
  it probably literally weighed a ton worth of personal property that the strikeforce stew
• 16:40
  away and destroyed because in retaliation for the riot. And then that afternoon they
• 16:47
  went over to a POD and B building and the same thing happened. They
• 16:52
  had another riot where the inmates there jumped on the strikeforce and started fighting them.
• 16:56
  So that whole week goes by and the strike force they just they retaliate
• 17:03
  against everybody up here. They broke over three hundred inmates televisions. This isn't
• 17:11
  coming from the inmate grape vine. We had CEOs come by and tell us
• 17:15
  that my neighbor. When they took us out and we went over to the
• 17:19
  gin. While they shook us down, they broke a couple of TVs in
• 17:22
  this part. They broke my neighbor boss life. They broke his television,
• 17:29
  you know, and he started to snap out. And then our flow officers,
• 17:32
  byy that time, was back in the party. It was like,
• 17:33
  man, dude, just chill out. Man, we're going to tell somebody,
• 17:36
  we're going to talk, and so on and so forth. And I
• 17:38
  added the mass up just on TVs. The TVs are two hundred and thirty
• 17:48
  some dollars. I don't remember. It's been a while since I had to
• 17:51
  buy one. Times that by three hundred, it's almost seventy thousand dollars,
• 17:56
  give or take. The television is that they broke up here. There's only
• 18:02
  like nine hundred inmates up here, so they broke over one third of the
• 18:07
  inmates televisions. And not every inmate has a TV. Probably only five hundred
• 18:12
  people up here have a TV. I will say this. When the wardens
• 18:18
  and then found out that they'd broken these televisions and so on and so forth,
• 18:23
  they did make right on it. Now I don't know if they made
• 18:26
  right on everybody's up here, or if they was even capable of making right
• 18:30
  on everybody's up here. But I know that people in this part, the
• 18:33
  televisions that got broken, they could prove that they was broken. They got
• 18:37
  their TVs replaced, So Archip and Blevins they did a stand up thing right
• 18:41
  there, because I tell you right now, most wouldn't. They really would
• 18:45
  not. They didn't break my TV, but I got a bubble TV.
• 18:48
  I got one of the big ones. Everybody else's television that were broken were
• 18:52
  the flat screens. And those things are they're not worth the money there may
• 18:57
  be worth forty five bucks most and yet Keithee is charging US two hundred to
• 19:03
  some dollars for the damn things. But that was the eight days up here.
• 19:08
  You had three game fights, you had two ods, you had one
• 19:15
  murder, and you had two riots, and you had to strikeforce team with
• 19:19
  just breaking everybody's TVs and throwing away a bunch of property. They even threw
• 19:23
  away a bunch of my property, but you know it was some small stuff.
• 19:26
  I didn't even let myself get mad upset over it. That's my life
• 19:33
  in wallings Ridge. Things are starting to improve a little bit. We're starting
• 19:36
  to get more wreck We're starting to get some of the things that we're supposed
• 19:40
  to get. But yeah, that was that was a rough eight days up
• 19:45
  here for some fellas. I hope you enjoyed listening to me today. Don't
• 19:49
  forget. In the US, if you would like to call me ask the
• 19:53
  question, leave a message, call one eight eight eight five two four one
• 20:02
  nine three two, and for all international calls, just put a plus in
• 20:07
  front of the one. Don't forget to check out my website red Onion Randy
• 20:11
  dot com. Take care, stay safe. Thank you for using GTL