Bessie Elmore: One Call Changed Everything - Never Give Up - Season 6 Episode 2

On this episode of Amplified Voices, Amber and Jason speak with Bessie Elmore who shares how a single phone call shattered the illusion of normal and sent her family into a world of warrants, headlines, courtrooms, and prisons. Everything seemed to move too fast for the truth to catch up. What followed wasn’t a miracle; it was grit. Across decades, Bessie turned confusion into literacy, fear into strategy, and isolation into community power. We walk through the shock of an FBI knock, the weight of a three-day trial that ended with her son receiving a natural life sentence, and the moment at a prison window when a mother and son made a promise to keep each other alive.

From there, the story widens. Bessie and her daughter learned the rules no one explains, how habeas deadlines close doors, how narratives get weaponized, and how transfers can endanger or protect someone inside. They built alliances with advocates and officials, leaned on faith, and used books as lifelines. Along the way, she realized her family was not alone. 

Straight Talk Support Group was born, first as a handful of chairs in a rented room, later as a statewide network, and now as a global Zoom community where families share tools, rides, contacts, and courage. The approach is practical and fierce: take notes, make calls, escalate respectfully, and never accept “no” as the end of the story.  

If this moved you, subscribe, share the episode with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help more families find these tools.

About Bessie Elmore: 

Ms. Elmore is the executive Director of Straight Talk Support Group and has over 25 years of experience in the field of self-help and designing programs for reentry, domestic violence victims, and grandparents raising their grandchildren. As Founder and CEO of Turning Corners Alliance, Ms. Elmore also taught classes at Durham Technical Community College on job readiness, computer skills and resume writing skills. She was also facilitator at the Troy House before it closed its doors in 2017.

Transcript

Opening & Guest Introduction

Intro 0:12

Everyone has a voice, a story to tell. Some are marginalized and muted. What if there were a way to amplify those stories? To have conversations with real people in real communities. A way to help them step into the power of their lived experience. Welcome to Amplified Voices, a podcast lifting the experiences of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. Together, we can create positive change for everyone.

Jason 0:46

Hello and welcome to another episode of Amplified Voices. I'm your host, Jason, here with my co-host Amber. Good morning, Amber.

Amber 0:53

Good morning, Jason.

Bessie’s Life Before The System

Jason 0:55

Amber, today we have Bessie Elmore. Hi, Bessie. Hi, how are you? Doing great. Hey, Bessie, can you tell us a little bit about your life before your involvement with the criminal legal system and what brought you into it?

Bessie 1:12

Okay, my life before, I'm originally from New Jersey and I worked in corporate America. My background is in accounting. I have an associate's degree in accounting. So I worked in corporate America for 30 years. I did not like accounting. Does anybody? I originally wanted to be a nurse and then went to nursing school and discovered I couldn't stand the sight of blood. So my father said, okay, you got to figure out something. So while I was pondering, he said, I have it accounting because my father owned his own businesses. So it was accounting. No, I did not like it, but it paid me well.

Jason 1:54

All right. Okay. So you're working along as an accountant?

Bessie 1:58

Assistant.

Jason 1:59

Okay. As an assistant accountant. Yes. And were you, did you get married? Were you Oh, yes.

Bessie 2:06

I got married and moved to Irvington, New Jersey.

Jason 2:11

Okay.

Bessie 2:11

And that's where my children went to school. And my daughter went off to college. I can't even think of the name of the college now. Oh, it was in New Jersey. I'm recovering from Bell's palsy, so I have a little memory lapse sometimes.

Jason 2:26

Okay. So she went out. What did she study? Did she study accounting?

Bessie 2:32

As it turned out, yes, because she wanted to be a cardiologist and found out that all the botany labs and all of that stuff was overwhelming. So she changed her major and she went into accounting, also. Isn't that funny?

Jason 2:46

Does she like accounting?

Bessie 2:48

Yes, she's doing very well. She used to work for Merrill Lynch before she moved here to North Carolina. Now she works for the city of Durham. How did you get from New Jersey to North Carolina? Oh, my son came to North Carolina to go to college and uh ended up going to prison.

Jason 3:09

Is he older or younger than your daughter?

Bessie 3:11

Younger, younger.

Jason 3:12

He's younger. So your daughter's already was she already in college?

Bessie 3:15

She was out of college, as a matter of fact. They're four years apart.

The Call From Her Son

Amber 3:19

Okay. And what time frame, what year was all of this happening?

Bessie 3:24

This was in the 90s.

Amber 3:25

Okay. Yeah.

Jason 3:27

So I'm sorry, but you have a totally normal, you're an accountant. You have a daughter that's going to school. She's going to go for become a doctor. Then she says, No, I'm going to become an accountant, just like you, mom. And things are going great. You send your son off to college. You think like you're now an empty nester.

Bessie 3:44

I was I got divorced before my daughter went to college. After she was in college, and I asked my son, I said, okay, what are you going to do? And he says, Oh, I'll figure it out. So I decided I would move to Stone Mountain, Georgia to live my life. And uh fell in love with Stone Mountain, Georgia until this situation happened to my son in 1992. And I moved to North Carolina in 1993.

Amber 4:15

Okay. First thing is I happened to have gone to high school in Georgia, not near Stone Mountain, but in Augusta, Georgia. So we have that in common. Yeah. And so you thought you were living your life, you were doing the thing, and then all of a sudden, this happens. What was going through your mind at that moment?

Bessie 4:35

I couldn't believe what my son was telling me.

Jason 4:38

Um, did you get a phone call? Was it a phone call?

Bessie 4:41

Yes, I did. I got a phone call.

Jason 4:43

Walk us through that day.

Bessie 4:45

The phone call was, Ma, come get me. And I was like, What? And it was like, Ma, come get me. And if you have children and you get a call and they're saying, Hey, Ma, hey dad, come get me. And I was like, Okay, where are you? And he told me where he was, and I did not know what was going on. All I knew was the voice. His voice was like, I need you, come get me. It was like he was five years old now. I came to uh North Carolina, picked him up, and drove back to Georgia. The whole time he didn't say a word, he didn't say anything. So it was total silence driving back to Georgia. So when we got back, he wanted to take a shower, he wanted to sleep in my bed, just like when he was a kid. He wanted to come and get in my bed, and then he told me what happened. And I was like, wait a second, this just doesn't make sense. Tell me everything. And he told me what happened. I said, okay, I need to get a lawyer. In the meantime, I did not know I had taken him from North Carolina to bring him to Georgia, and I was interfering with the law. I didn't know that. Oh no.

Jason 6:06

I mean, you when you picked him up, you didn't even know he had been arrested at that point.

Bessie 6:10

He wasn't arrested. He was, they were looking for him. The police had put out a warrant for his arrest.

Amber 6:18

Oh no. And so you had no knowledge of that.

Bessie 6:21

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Amber 6:24

As any mom would do if their child said, Come get me, I need you. And you're just gonna bring him home. Like you don't know what you don't know.

FBI, Warrants, And Legal Shock

Bessie 6:32

Oh, I was confused. My protective instincts kicked in. I was totally confused because I didn't know what the heck was going on. I was totally in the dark. And then my daughter called me and she said, Ma, the FBI had came to my apartment. And I was like, the FBI, what is going on? And she says, they said that my brother was involved in a shooting and a man died, and now they're looking for him. And I was like, okay, I got to get off the phone because I don't know if people are listening. I don't know what's going on. So it was so terrifying because I didn't know that I had picked him up to bring him to Georgia, and all of this stuff was going on in North Carolina. I didn't know the FBI when unlawful flight. That's what they had charged him with. Unlawful flight from leaving one state to come to another state. And that's when the FBI got involved. And then after my daughter told me all of that, the next thing I know is I get a call from the FBI.

Jason 7:47

Oh my God.

Bessie 7:49

Telling me that they're looking for my son, and do I know where he is? Oh goodness. And of course, I now I need to get a lawyer. I need to hire a lawyer, and I also need to hire, what do you call it, a private investigator? Because I need to know what happened in North Carolina. I need to have some information before I turn my son over. So I needed to find out. So I set out on this quest to find out. My son was apprehended and arrested in Georgia.

Jason 8:26

So he was with you, and then you brought him back?

Bessie 8:30

No, I didn't bring him back. The FBI, once they made that phone call to me and did whatever the FBI does, they came to well, they were already in Georgia and they arrested him and they brought him back to North Carolina. And that's where he stayed for a whole year until they got ready for the trial. In the meantime, my lawyer, once I spoke with my lawyer, he was like, okay, Bessie, you need to hire a lawyer in North Carolina.

Amber 9:01

Right, because you're potentially being charged in North Carolina because you're an accessory, quote unquote.

Bessie 9:08

But when the FBI apprehended him, they dropped, they didn't have any charges on me. They didn't charge me with unlawful flight. They just talked to me very nicely. They were very nice FBI agents and they told me the process. They told me exactly what was going to happen. They allowed me to spend some time with them because they said they were afraid I was going to have a heart attack. So they sat me down in their car and they talked to me very nicely and they told me exactly what was going to happen. And they advised me on some things that I could do because they couldn't tell me what to do. So I said, okay. And after maybe 20, 25 minutes after they saw that I had calmed down, they left and they brought him back to North Carolina.

Amber 10:06

And so after they leave and you're there, and you're just like processing everything that has gone on, you've been in touch with the lawyer, they've given you advice. What really surprised you about the whole process?

Bessie 10:22

That what the heck was going on? It felt like this wasn't, couldn't be possibly happening to me. Right. Could not be happening to me. Now I have to go in the house and call my daughter. And she's at work. But I have to tell her what happened. And I tell her what happened. And she almost goes ballistic over the phone. So I said, Well, Cheryl, you need to leave and go home and then we'll talk again. Because now I'm afraid that maybe my phones are tapping. You watch TV and you see all of these things. I was like, now I have to watch my conversation. I don't know what I'm saying, but I don't want to say anything that would incriminate my daughter or myself because we don't know anything. So once my lawyer gathered some information, I think he spoke with either the detective or the DA or whomever, and they had the warrant and all the things, what do you call it? Indictments and all of that other stuff. He read all of that stuff to me. And I'm, I don't know the law. So I don't, I hear what you're saying to me, but I've never experienced anything in the criminal justice system. So everything is foreign to me. But with my daughter, because of the type of person she is, she wanted line by line. She wanted explain this, explain this, explain this. And I'm just totally dumbfounded because I was like, Cheryl, how do you know all of these things to ask? She seemed to be very calm, where I'm almost hysterical.

Jason 12:02

Was your daughter close with your son when they were growing up? Very close. And she was very she was also very protective of him.

Bessie 12:11

Very much so.

Jason 12:12

Okay, so her big sister instincts kicked in.

Trial, Portrayal, And Conviction

Bessie 12:16

It kicked in, took over. She really took over. I don't think I would have made it through that particular time without her because she was so precise. She knew what questions to ask. And she made it very clear. When they got the paper with the indictment and spelled out first degree murder, shooting in an occupied vehicle, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She wanted to know dates, time, who was there, who wasn't there. How do you know it wasn't my brother? Yada. She wanted to know everything. And then when we came to North Carolina, I came first because we came for the trial. We came, I came first, and then she came. And during the trial, the trial only lasted three days. It was some other friends that his friends that had came down to North Carolina that was involved in selling drugs. So the boys snitched. So he wasn't in North Carolina anymore. He was on the run. So it didn't look good for him. It didn't look good for him at all. And then being apprehended in Georgia, so it didn't look good.

Amber 13:44

And I didn't know this. So I think I want to just take a quick pause there and highlight some of the things that people don't realize. And I think, you know, everybody experiences the criminal legal system in different ways. So you were saying your daughter was looking at things line by line. She sounds like my kind of gal. And then also there's this huge emotional component, right? That is very heavy on you. The other thing is this idea of what happens when somebody is charged, crossing state lines, things like that. This really resonates with me because in my family's case, we lived very close to the border of one state, and my loved one worked in the other state, right? And so he just came home and they called him a fugitive from justice. So this crossing state lines and the way things are sensationalized, like you came and picked up your son, didn't know what was what, and then this is sensationalized into he's now absconded. When people see these things in news stories and all of the things, it's really important to take a minute to interrogate, right? Am I being told is this what's real? Did they talk to the people involved? Of course they did. So thank you for sharing that. So you get to North Carolina, you said that you came first, then your daughter came. And so your son opted to go to trial. That's actually pretty rare. Tell us a little bit about that.

Bessie 15:26

He wanted to tell his side of the story that he did not do this. And the prosecutor, she was very adamant about taking him to trial because she said all of these young men from the north coming down to Raleigh, North Carolina, bringing all of these drugs and infesting the community. And William looked like this typical collegiate college kid. He didn't dress like, quote unquote, a drug dealer. He didn't wear his pants down, he didn't wear jewelry. He looked like one of these preppy college kids. So he had to be the ring leader. And that really upset me because that was not the case. Even if he did sell drugs, why do you have to depict him in that light? And they sent some detectives down from New York to talk to William. And they went back because they told me, and they told the prosecutor, this kid is not a drug kingpin. He's just a kid. But that's how they painted the picture of him because all the other boys said, yes, it was him. It was him, not us.

Amber 16:52

Did you did you get any indication that there may have been any racial component to I'm sure it was.

Sentencing To Natural Life

Bessie 16:59

I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was. But at that time I couldn't think that way. All I was thinking of, I gotta get my son out of this crazy thing that he's gotten himself into. The lawyers that we finally talked to in North Carolina, they wanted $25,000 just to take the case. And I was like, we don't have $25,000. At that time, well, $25,000 now is a lot of money. Right. But at that time, it was like a million dollars. So we had to go with a public defender. And I want to tell you, that was, I could have done a better job because he was a criminal defense attorney. And taking this case, he wasn't going to make any money off this case. So that was not his top priority. He didn't spend any money on the private investigator. I hired a forensic pathologist. I hired all of these people because I needed to know everything, because nobody was telling me anything. So I needed to know. Right. And everything I found out wasn't admissible in court. Right. So, okay, now what do I do? So after three days, my son was found guilty of first-degree murder. And the judge, he's deceased now, Judge J.B. Allen sentenced my son to natural life in prison. I didn't hear that in the beginning. I just heard after I read about the North Carolina criminal boat on life in prison, it carried 20 years. And I was like, 20 years? That's a long time. Anyway, natural life means exactly that he would spend the rest of his life in prison. And I just couldn't see that. So my daughter and I put on our Sherlock Holmes hat and went to work. And it took us 25 years. But my son got out of prison. He's been home now for 10 years.

Amber 19:18

So, Bessie, take us back to the day of the sentencing just quickly. Um, you were in the courtroom. We were not allowed in the courtroom. Interesting. Yeah. And so how were you told that you were not allowed in the courtroom?

Bessie 19:35

My son's attorney said that we may be we might be called to be witnesses. So we were not allowed in the courtroom. We find out when the jury came back with the verdict, that's when we were allowed in the courtroom.

Amber 19:50

And were you able to see your son before he was taken into case?

Bessie 19:55

He never turned around to look at us because he said that he didn't want to see us crying. But we weren't crying. We had already, we were sitting there holding our holding hands, and we knew instantly that this is not how our story was going to end.

Jason 20:14

That takes a special something to have that to kick into gear when you're kicked down.

Amber 20:21

Yeah, I would say. So while you guys were going through this process, you had each other, right? So you had your daughter, and so you were like the sort of like unbreakable unit that was like advocating for your son and hiring private investigators and forensics and this and that. Did you visit your son? Was he he was incarcerated that whole time? No. And did you encounter other families when you might visit, or did you know anyone else who was experiencing something similar?

A Promise Through The Glass

Bessie 20:59

We knew nobody, no one in North Carolina. Oh, yes. It was just us. And we used to, after my divorce, and we considered ourselves the three musketeers, one for all and all for one. And no matter what we were going through, we shared that experience. Now, my daughter and my son were very close. So some experiences they shared that I didn't share. But when it came down to us against the world, as you would say, it was the three of us. And we were hell-bent. My daughter and I were hell bent. And at first, my son was like, you guys just get on with your lives and forget about me. And we was like, Are you crazy? Yeah. Did you do this? And he said, No. Then why are you telling us to get on with our lives? We're gonna fight for you. The most heartbreaking thing that we that I experienced when I first visited my son at Central Prison in Raleigh. We sat in a little room with a thick plate glass, and it had some little holes down at The bottom where you can hear each other when you're talking, and he said to me, Ma, if I have to spend the rest of my life here at this prison, I'm gonna do something to harm myself. And I said to him, Look at me and put your hand up on that glass, and I'm gonna put mine. And if you promise me that you won't do anything to harm yourself, I'm gonna promise you that I'm gonna do everything within my power to get you out of this situation. And he promised me. And when I left that prison, I was like, oh my god, how am I gonna do this? I just got him to promise me he wouldn't hurt himself. I don't know anybody here, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Jason 23:16

And how old was he? He was 21, 21 years old, and he goes in.

Amber 23:24

Wow, I mean, just a baby.

Jason 23:27

Yeah, and then you made him make this promise. He makes the promise, and you kick into gear, and what does that look like? What do you do?

Learning The Law And Hitting Deadlines

Bessie 23:36

I met some of the most phenomenal people. How I started working for the Battle Women's Coalition. I got to meet people at the ACLU, told them my story. They helped me as far as helping me learn the law. We had hired an attorney, like I told you, my daughter's an accountant, and when she came here, she worked for a software company, and she had stocked there, and the stock split four times. So she was able to get the money to pay for an attorney. But we did a motion for appropriate relief. We did habeas corpus, but habeas corpus before my son, during that time, before Reuben Hurricane Carter, habeas corpus had no end date. Habeas corpus says, if you have new information, you can bring the body to the court, and this information can be presented. And if the information has enough weight, then that person is released. But after Reuben Hurricane Carter, they changed it to 10 years.

Amber 25:03

Changed it where you could only bring a habeas corpus claim for 10 years after. Yeah.

Jason 25:10

So even hang on, let me think through that. So what you're saying is even if you have evidence that says this was wrong, and you find that in year one, you have to wait another nine years before you can even present it.

Amber 25:24

No, you only have 10 years.

Jason 25:25

So let's go there. So it's 10 years in one day. You find something, and you're like, we don't care, we're gonna keep this person in prison forever because we arbitrarily made this 10-year mark.

Bessie 25:35

That's right.

Jason 25:36

Okay.

Bessie 25:37

See, when I hired the forensic pathologist, the gentleman didn't die from a gunshot wound. He died because he bled to death, because his friend drove around getting rid of all this, these guys were stick-up guys, they told me. And I was like, What's a stick-up guy? They robbed drug dealers. So the friend drove around and the man bled to death. He didn't die from the gunshot wound. And we still haven't proved that my son actually shot the guy. But according to the state, yes, he did. So when the pathologist came back with her report, I'm too late. I'm 10 years too late. And that had to be like infuriating. I was so angry, so very angry, but it did give me the opportunity to meet Reuben Hurricane Carter before he died. He was a prize fighter that was accused of murdering some people in Patterson, New Jersey. And he was sentenced to life in prison in Trenton State Prison. And he wrote a book, and I forgot the name, 12th round, I believe it was. And some people and a young man in Canada got interested. The young man was interested in the book. He read the book, and three people in Canada got involved in Reuben Hurricane Carter's case, and they did research and all of this stuff, and they were able to present the habeas corpus to get Reuben Hurricane Carter out of prison. And years later, Genzel Washington did the movie The Hurricane. Right. And it was a very good movie.

Amber 27:30

Yes. So thank you for sharing that. So it seems, and again, this is for folks who haven't necessarily experienced the system. It's not as cut and dried, particularly for families, right? That someone's accused of a crime, you say, hey, I didn't do it. And you go to court, you present all the evidence, and the truth rises to the top. That was not your experience, clearly.

Bessie 28:00

No.

Amber 28:01

And so after that was denied, what did you, what did y'all do?

Strategy, Allies, And Safety In Prison

Bessie 28:05

I said, okay, we got knocked down. We got to get back up. We got to find another door. It has to be a door to get him out of here. We just got to find it. And in doing so, again, I met Jim Hunt, who was the uh governor of North Carolina. I worked on his campaign. I read this book and I did this course. It was called How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Jason 28:30

Dale Carnegie.

Bessie 28:31

Yes. And I wanted to meet so many different people to help me to help my son. And I did. I met so many good people that were able to assist me in helping my son to get him to different prisons and to get him because my fear was: here's my little skinny kid. And you see these horror stories on people in prison where some big old guy does something to a little skinny guy in prison. My son spent most of his time in prison in a single cell. And that gave me relief because no one, I just no one's gonna bother him. And he's he doesn't know anybody in North Carolina. He doesn't know anybody in these prisons, he's never been to prison. So the people that I met, our is too short for me to tell you all the things that happened to me.

Amber 29:34

Sure.

Bessie 29:34

All the people that I met.

Amber 29:36

So you change your entire sort of career, but you move to North Carolina, you change your career path, and you start figuring out how to strategically be in spaces with people that can open doors. You just casually was like, Yeah, I met the governor.

Bessie 29:53

No, I worked on his campaign, so I met a lot of people while I was working on this campaign. Yes. And what happened was it was all about my son in the beginning. It really truly, I could care less about other people's. It was all about my son until something changed.

Jason 30:13

What changed?

Bessie 30:15

I met people at the by the women's shelter, the women who had sons that were in prison. And I started helping them. My son would say, when he was in prison, he would say, Hey, Ma, this guy's mother needs a ride and she doesn't know how she's gonna visit her son. I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. We're I'm doing all this stuff for you. He was like, Yeah, Ma, can you send this guy some money because his parents don't have money? And I was like, I'm helping you, and you want me to help somebody else. Until I started helping other people, things started opening up for us. It really did. And I met George Linden.

Jason 31:06

Um, it seems like it seems like there were some gifts that you found along the way.

Bessie 31:11

Yes, it was. It really, I'm telling you, it was like, yes, he's still in prison, but he's nobody he's not been harmed. Yes, he's been moved around. And when I met George Linden that worked for Governor Hunt, I would call George up, and he and I became friends, and I did hadn't met him yet. We just talked every day on the phone. Every day we talked on the phone because North Carolina had a contract with different states that they would send inmates to different states. And my son was sent to Texas, and that's when I thought I was gonna die. Texas.

Amber 31:56

Wow. And you're thinking, how am I ever gonna visit my son in Texas?

Transfers, Texas, And A Crucial Ally

Bessie 32:01

Exactly. And when I called and spoke with George, and I was telling George what happened, he was looking at the computer and he saw everything I was telling him was true. My son had no infractions and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So George said, okay, I'm gonna see what I can do. So I said, Okay, George, thank you so much. Now this happened in August. So George called, we talked every day. Like I said, every day, George would call me. And he called me in October. And he said, Guess what, Bessie? And I was like, What, George? He says, I'm gonna get your son back. I was like, really? He said, So tell me, where do you want him? And now, mind you, he's asking me, where do I want him? So I said, Outside of my apartment, George. I said, George, I want him at the same prison he was at before he left to go to Texas. So George said, okay, I'm gonna see what I can do, and I'll call you back. He says, but tell me that you will not tell your son that he's gonna be coming back. I said, Okay, George, I won't tell him. But I lied. I really I lied to George because when my son called me, I said, guess what? You're gonna be coming back. So sure enough, William came back to Nash Correctional Facility, and my daughter and I drove to Nash to see him that day, that Saturday. But I wanted to know one thing. One thing I wanted to know. Are you in the same cell you were in before you left? And he said, Yeah, Ma, how did you know that? I knew it was not George, I knew that my faith in God had changed everything now. That if I kept my faith in God and trusted for God to lead me to people that was going to help me based on what I was doing for people, things would be okay.

Amber 34:21

And so your your spiritual walk and your faith was a very important part of your journey. Yes, yes, that's amazing. And so he comes back to North Carolina, and so you're keeping up the fight. How do you get from him coming back from North Carolina to such point that he is being released?

Bessie 34:48

It wasn't all pretty him coming back, because now the Nash Correctional Facility didn't understand what was going on and they didn't like that. So they sent him, my son, to a work farm, one of the one of the oldest prisons in North Carolina. I think it was Odham Ortillery, they're the work farm. And it was horrible conditions there. So of course I call George and I tell George what happened. So George says, okay, I'm gonna get him from there, but he has to stay there for a little while. Otherwise, he'll the prisons, they talk to each other. So he says it'll look like he's a plant. So he's gonna have to stay there for a little while, but I'm gonna move him to a different prison. Now, mind you, I still haven't met George. We just talk on the phone. So George does, after Wayne was there for maybe a month, George gets him to Salisbury. He gets him to Salisbury prison. So hang on.

Jason 35:54

So horrible conditions at the place where he was. That's what does that mean? Meaning that in addition to just being incarcerated, he is he's doing labor that's backbreaking type work.

Bessie 36:06

And they have roaches and they have rats, and I was like, George, please, I gotta get out of there. He can't, I can't just I can't sleep at night thinking about that. People dying, people being tortured, people being killed. And what year was this? Oh gosh, this was in I'm gonna say maybe 2000, early 2000.

Jason 36:31

Okay.

Bessie 36:32

So he does, George does get a move to Salisbury to the prison, and uh, it's a high-rise prison, and it's a nice prison, and prison can be nice. And George told me this is a transfer out prison. So, Bessie, I know you're working on your son's case, so this is the prison that he would be in to transfer out. And I was like, Okay, George, thank you so much. Then George told me something that really shocked me. He said, I'm gonna be retiring. Oh, so this will be the last thing that I can do for you and your son. So, of course, I wish George, I thanked him. I said, But you know, George, I want to take you to lunch because we never met. I take him to lunch. Actually, he takes me to lunch, and I met him and I gave him a hug, and I never saw George again.

Amber 37:32

And y'all had been talking every day.

Bessie 37:35

Every day. Yes, he had helped me so much. So, all of this stuff that and all of the books that I sent my son, I was sending him books. At that time, you could send books to inmates, right? And one of the most profound books was Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning. Excellent book.

Amber 38:00

Everyone listening, get the book, read the book.

Bessie 38:02

Yes, yes.

Amber 38:04

What was so profound about the book?

Faith, Books, And Keeping Hope

Bessie 38:07

Choose your own attitude of how you're gonna live your life under the harshest conditions. Choose your own attitude. That was the most thing that stood out for me. And then all the guys at the prison wanted that book. So of course I was sending everybody that wanted that book. I sent him Nelson Mandela's book, Malcolm X. Oh, he read so many different every book he read, we read. So we had our own little book club going on. The Roadless Travel, Travel by Scott Peck, so many different books that we read.

Amber 38:45

And that kept a level of connection, yes?

Bessie 38:48

Yeah, because you see, our focus was to keep William focused and to keep hope alive inside of him. That we're doing everything out here, working on your case, and we just want you to stay focused.

Jason 39:05

And the whole time he's got this advocate in you who's making sure that when he gets sent to Texas, he can come back, that he's not going to be sent there forever. When he gets sent to this work, obviously you're interacting with people who don't have that level of support. So people do get sent away, and it's really things that you never expected to see, and you've been through all this. And now he's there, and so it sounds like you're helping along the way and making it as good as possible, sending books, keeping your spirits up, and then but you still don't have an expectation that he's gonna be released.

Bessie 39:42

Always had that, just didn't know when.

Jason 39:44

How do we end up seeing that actual path?

Bessie 39:48

Well, again, blind faith, but believing doing everything that we could do, meeting people that we met, and having the belief and faith that this is going to happen because we were just hell-bent saying this is not how our story is going to end. Now, I know that might sound crazy.

Jason 40:08

No, Bessie, were there people that told you, like, you're out of your mind?

Bessie 40:13

Even my some of my family members felt that way.

Jason 40:16

Why are you wasting your time? I think that's really tough because when you see this, it's like every situation is different and everything is different. So people say, John Smith down the road, he never got out. So obviously, in this case, you're not going to see it. And so it's very easy to be brought into that negativity. It sounds like you, your superpower is that you're able to you're able to go walk through that and come out like stronger. Every negative barb that's thrown at you, you absorb and turn it into positive energy.

Bessie 40:47

My daughter and I were hell-bent on, oh heck no, this is not how our story is going to end. We did not come to North Carolina, leave our lives, and come to North Carolina for my son, her brother to spend the rest of his life in prison. That just didn't make sense to me.

Amber 41:11

And what was the legal mechanism that allowed for your son's release?

The MAP Path To Parole

Bessie 41:16

Okay. A MAP program, MAP, a mutual agreement between the parole board and the prisoner. And how that came about, my son, I told you he was at Salisbury, forever. He took all the classes, he did all of this, all the stuff there. And he was transferred to this other prison at Brown Creek. We would have to take a whole day off work. That's how long it took us to get there. So we had to take a day off from work. William hated it there. He'd call me every day. Mine, you got to get me on and help get me on the transfer to get me back to Salisbury. I would call everybody I knew, but it wasn't happening. But he met a lawyer there, James Cromer, who's now deceased, who used to work on the parole board. And William met Cromer. And after being interviewed, Cromer said to him, I'll take your case. This will be my last case. Wow. That I'm going to take. And because it's my last case, I'm not going to charge your family what I would normally charge. So when William called me, he said, Okay, Ma, James Commer is going to take my case, and this is what he's going to charge. But he wants X amount of dollars to come back and do some other, have another conversation with me. And I was like, that much money just for him to come back and have a conversation. So he says, yeah, I said, okay, but I need to talk to Mr. Croomer myself. No one's getting the wool over your eyes, Bessie. So after we paid the money, after I paid the money, and William gave me all the information, and I called up James Croomer, and he said, I can't talk to you. You're not my client. And I said, but I paid you. He said, but you're not my client. Unless your son gives me permission to talk to you, then I can talk to you. I said, he's going to give you permission. I just paid out all this way. Oh, this sounds very familiar to me. So what I liked about Cromer, he was a no nonsense person. So we had a hearing date before the parole board. And my daughter and I, my son's godmother, and another friend of mine, Dennis Gatty, we went to the hearing. Now, mind you, Mr. Cromer was a no nonsense man. No nonsense. But after the hearing, he came to me and he said, You did good. And he shook my hand, but he squeezed my hand. And I was like, okay, I know he's gonna get this mat. And a couple of weeks later, I get a call from William, and he says, Guess what, Mona? I was like, what? He says, I'm gonna go to Orange Correctional Facility, which was an honor grade prison. I got a mat for 36 months. Wow.

Amber 44:51

So explain exactly what that means. So parole is where someone can't you said he went before the parole board, and parole is where someone is released, but still under the supervision of the state. So explain what that agreement meant.

Bessie 45:09

So William would be on parole for five years. He would have to meet with a parole officer. They would have to come out to look at the house. He had to be inside. He had to be home by seven. He couldn't leave the house until seven in the morning. And he had to be back in the house by 7 p.m. He never knew when the parole, anybody, probation officer would come to visit him. So he had to be inside. If he was not, that's a violation. He could be violated and he could be sent back to prison. So for five years, he was on probation. He could get a job, but he had to be back in the house.

Amber 45:52

Right. And was he mandated to have employment? So it wasn't just he could get a job, he was required to have a job.

Bessie 46:00

You have to get a job because you still have to pay your probation fines and fees, which I think is crazy.

Amber 46:06

Yeah, and what did that look like? A lot of people don't know that you have to pay for your own supervision.

Bessie 46:12

So he while he was at Orange Correctional, he got a job working at Niece's farm where they did the meat, killing the hogs. So he had a job there, but he wanted another job. So he got a job working with landscaping. So he was able to do that, which turned into him starting his own landscaping business.

Amber 46:36

Of course. He comes from folks that are just determined to do the thing.

Jason 46:42

So when he he got this, so he's on he got the parole. What year is that?

Coming Home And Reentry

Bessie 46:47

Oh gosh, let's see, 10 years ago. So he's been home for 10 years.

Jason 46:51

10 years. 2016. All right. So take us back to 2016.

Bessie 46:59

Oh, we pick him up from, and again, we pick him up from Orange Correctional, and he's getting in the car, and we're headed to dinner because my sisters had come down. Well, everybody had come down, and we're driving, and we start laughing, and we're saying, see, this is how we get to write the end of our story. And we do a reversal in our minds, and we go back through everything we had gone through to get us to this place.

Jason 47:40

Was the map program available at the time that he was originally convicted?

Bessie 47:46

Yes. It was it's only good for people who were convicted under the old law. The laws changed in 1993, I believe it was. So if you were convicted after 93, the map does not apply to you. Okay.

Amber 48:03

So it was some sort of mechanism to right the wrongs of over-sentencing of the past. Is that characterized correctly? Yes. Okay. Yeah. And so he he comes home. This is this big celebration, and folks can't see you, they can only hear your voice. But the way your face lit up, and uh you put your hands up in a victorious gesture just really shines through that. That was a joyous time. We won. We actually won. Right. And let's walk through what it was like to reintegrate. And then we know that you're doing some amazing work that somehow developed during this time period from working with the battered women, and then there's some other work that you're doing now. And so we want to sort of walk through that timeline with the time that we have left. So, what happens when he gets home? Obviously, he came home and everything was just fine, right? Not exactly. So tell us about that.

Building Straight Talk Support Group

Bessie 49:09

I started when he first got to in 19 in 2013, to be exact. I started a support group. I was looking for a support group for family members who had loved ones that were incarcerated. There was no such thing in North Carolina. But the Osborne group in New York, we're familiar. So I contacted them and I told them what I wanted to do in North Carolina. They were so supportive, they gave me information, yada yada. So March of 2013, I started a support group for family members who had loved ones that were incarcerated, and it was called Straight Talk. I didn't know there was a phone call, Straight Talk, but I started this support group. The newspaper did a little article on me about I was going to start this support group. And I started it at this organization called Health Touch. I was involved with them, and they had rooms and different things like that. So I rented this room, and uh the first Tuesday night of the week, nine people showed up. And I was like, maybe it's not gonna get off the ground. So I said, Well, I'll do it again every two weeks. So the following week, the following second week, I did it. 30 people showed up. And I was like, I guess I gotta keep it going on. And it's still going on to this day.

Amber 50:44

Wow.

Bessie 50:44

And what that did, it empowered people to be able to be around other people who were experiencing some of the same things. And then we had uh share ride where people weren't able to travel to visit their loved ones, because at that time, North Carolina had 100 counties and they had prisons in every county. You may be in Durham, but your loved one might be almost close to South Carolina.

Amber 51:12

Right.

Transitional Housing And Community Work

Bessie 51:13

And you don't have the money to travel there. So if you became a member of the support group, we had to share a ride program, and we would either provide the ride or provide gas for you to travel to see your loved one. And the group kept growing. It was amazing that people then we had one in Salisbury, we had one in Carey, we had one in Rocky Mount, and we had one in Durham. But people wanted me to come to every one to facilitate it. And the reason why I knew how to facilitate support groups because I did it at the Bad Women's Shelter. And we had Vegas rules. What goes on in this group stays in this group. And the group was empowered. And we invite I invited some of my friends from the ACLU. I invited lawyers, therapists, senators, everyone I could think of to invite to talk to my group because people wanted to know how I knew what I knew. And I would tell them because I'm a very inquisitive person. So it empowered other people to be able to ask questions at the correctional facilities, ask questions of their senators, ask questions of lawyers to ask questions and get answers and not just say no for an answer, but know how to climb that ladder. Don't start at the top, start at the bottom and work your way out. And when COVID came along, we went to Zoom, and it's still going on. I don't facilitate it anymore. My daughter does. But in 2004, I opened up, had the opportunity to do some work at a federal transitional house. And it gave me the opportunity to put some of my work that I had been doing to test some theories. And I did that work up until 2018 when that federal transitional house lost its funding. And it gave me the opportunity to once again start my own transitional house. And that's what I did.

Amber 53:40

So, Bessie, you really unpacked a lot, and it the theme that seems to run through everything is I'm glad that you said something that really resonated with me. That was people were able to feel empowered by the power of curiosity, by being in space with other people that were experiencing what might be similar to theirs. And I think that's really important to highlight because what we see is a lot of people who have been impacted by the criminal legal system and their families have been told by society that, like, you know what, you I understand that this is horrible, but that was brought on yourself. You don't deserve to ask questions, you don't deserve to have a space for you or have empathy for what you're going through. And that's a very isolating place. Does that sound familiar to you? Oh, yes.

Bessie 54:41

People, when people would come and I had every nationality came. So this wasn't black. It was every nationality. And they were like, oh, Miss Elmore, I didn't know that. I didn't know I could do that. I didn't know I could call a facility. I didn't know I could call Raleigh and talk to the Department of Public Safety. Yes, you can. That's your loved one. Yes, you can. It's important to let the facility know that somebody cares about that individual that's incarcerated because they're going to treat him a little bit different once they know. So, yes, it is important. And people were becoming so empowered. They would have their little notebooks and they would be writing stuff down. And it felt good to know that I'm giving back. I have been given something that money could not buy. Because money could not have bought my son's freedom, because we spent a lot of money, right? So it was I was bound to give back to much to whom much is given, much is required. Beautiful.

Amber 55:50

And so that's still going on today. You adjusted to the times. There's Zoom-based, um, which I imagine can increase accessibility a little bit.

Bessie 56:00

Oh, yes. We have people from Australia, people from Mexico, Canada, all over the United States that join our Zoom to want to let us let us know what's going on with them. And I tell you, it's remarkable.

Jason 56:17

If somebody wants to be a part of that, how do they do it?

Bessie 56:20

All I have to do is go on the website to see when the next meeting is going to be. It's uh www.straightalk supportgroup.org.

Amber 56:33

We'll make sure that we get that in the podcast notes for the listeners to check out.

Bessie 56:39

I'll give the phone number. Our phone number, this phone is specifically for people that are in crisis and they want to know more about the support group. It's 919-599-5125.

Amber 56:57

And so, Bessie, um, I I am sure that we could speak with you for many, many hours with all of the different things. And we are so grateful to you to for coming and spending time with us today and sharing a little bit of one sliver of the many stories that you have to tell. I want to sort of move us, because we have a limited time left, to go to our final question. And it is if you had one piece of advice for someone who is embarking on a journey similar to your own, what would that be? To believe in yourself.

Bessie 57:44

And if you feel that you are right, to never give up. To never give up. And don't be afraid to ask for help. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Reach out. Reach out.

Empowerment, Access, And Reach

Amber 58:04

Thank you, Bessie. We are so excited to have had you here on Amplified Voices. And Jason, did you have any last thoughts before we wrap up?

Jason 58:14

Yeah, Bessie, it's it was great to have you as a guest, meeting you, learning your story. It's absolutely inspirational. I want you on my team supporting me because I could use the energy. And thank you for all of it. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being generous with your story. Thank you for all the work that you've done for all the families, and congratulations to you on having your son home with you. And with that, I'm going to say until next time, Amber.

Bessie 58:44

We'll see you next time. Thank you so much. Thank you both.

Outro 58:50

You've been listening to Amplified Voices, a podcast lifting the experiences of people and families impacted by the criminal legal system. For more information, episodes, and podcast notes, visit amplifiedvoices.show.