The Straight Outta Prison Podcast
Most people who know James K Jones today are surprised to discover that he spent a significant part of his life in prison. Despite being released for more than two decades, based on his numerous charges (including a federal offense), he should still be incarcerated. However, James has since moved on to marry and raise three wonderful children while also owning a business. This is the narrative of how he ended up in prison, his experiences inside: the people, the challenges, the dishonesty, and the deep self-realizations he encountered. Ultimately, James believes that his time behind bars actually saved his life. This is James recounting his journey, now intertwined with his wife Haley's story. Together, they share the tale - including all the twists and raw details - that eventually led to genuine liberation.
The Straight Outta Prison Podcast
From Crime to Redemption: The Journey of a Former Convict
Have you ever wondered how small actions can lead to drastic consequences? This episode is a raw exploration into James' journey from a life of crime to redemption, beginning with his arrest at the age of 20. As we weave through James' upbringing in a Free Will Baptist church, we discover the deep-seated confusion and distress he harbored when he was told his great grandmother was going to hell for dipping snuff. His narrative unfolds, revealing a childhood steeped in religious disillusionment and discontentment, which played a significant role in his early descent into crime.
Together, we trace James' trajectory from shoplifting and petty theft to an escalation into more serious crimes, including attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. He openly discusses the various factors that fueled his criminal activities: the lack of a father figure, the disillusionment with the church, and his jaded perspective on accountability. It’s a heartrending account of how James and his cousin Shannon, emboldened by their early successes, found themselves caught in a downward spiral, using meth and developing a skewed perspective of the world.
As we delve deeper into this compelling narrative, we anticipate the continuation of James' story in the next episode, where we'll look at the events leading up to the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer and the aftermath of that crime. Join us as we explore how James' past haunts him and how he navigates the path to redemption. It's a profound reminder of the power of the "slight edge thing" - how small decisions can lead to either destruction or success. You won't want to miss it!
More from James & Haley:
- The Royal Grant Initiative
- Chef James K Jones Website
- Cooking with Chef James K Jones (YouTube Channel)
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Well, all right, this is episode one of the Straight Out of Prison podcast. I am James K Jones and this is my story.
Speaker 2:And I am Hailey Jones, and this is his story that has now become part of my story.
Speaker 1:And in episode one we're just going to start at the beginning and go from there.
Speaker 2:Now, what were the words you heard?
Speaker 1:Probably the most chilling words I've ever heard in my life. James Keith Jones Jr, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney. If you can't afford one, one will be appointed to you. And that came from a little old man, a detective in Jefferson County, florida, who had been talking to me for about an hour and a half and kind of caught me off guard because I had made up a crazy story, I guess, thinking somehow I could talk my way out of the mess that I was in. But when he looked at me and after he got all his information I didn't know anything about. You know how stuff like that works. He had already gotten everything he needed from me and then he very gently read me my rights, and then there we go, my life was over.
Speaker 2:So how old were you?
Speaker 1:I was 20 years old on the day I got arrested. That was January 23rd 1993. So that was 27 years ago now in 2020. But every year, I mean it kind of changes over the years, but every year, like January 23rd, is a like just a dark day, Just remembering, you know, because it was kind of like I died that day and actually I came very close to getting killed and probably should have gotten at least more than what happened, but that was the roughest day of my life.
Speaker 2:So you were 20 years old and the contrast is, when I was 20 years old, literally in January of my 20th year, I had decided that I wanted to run a marathon before I was 21. So I was running the Disney marathon right around the time that you were being read your rights.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Yes At 13? No when I was 20. Oh, when you're 20.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when.
Speaker 2:I was 20.
Speaker 1:Well, now the time that I was being read my rights in 1993, that would have made you 13 years old. What were you doing then?
Speaker 2:13 years old? Definitely not, that I can tell you Living in my little, very protected Christian bubble where my mom was making sure that I was having my quiet time every day.
Speaker 1:And I was doing none of that, doing none of that Actually when I was 13,.
Speaker 2:that's about the time you start ninth grade, right? So it was right. When I was 13, my parents actually pulled me from a public school and put me in a very small Christian high school where there were, at that time, 17 kids in my class and we wore shorts down to the knees and be Navy blue, collared red or blue, no collared red or white, like polo shirts. So yeah, I was living that best uniformed Christian school life.
Speaker 1:So that is quite a contrast. You were headed off to Christian school to begin high school and I was headed off to prison because my parents thought that I might, just might, be getting into the wrong crowd in public school.
Speaker 2:Little did they know that my future husband had long time been in the wrong crowd.
Speaker 1:We know my birthday in 2013,. I think we had been married about two months when your mom told me at my birthday dinner we're at Chires. I think we're at Chires. And she said I just want you to know, sweet boy, that we've been praying for you ever since May 27th 1980, when Haley was born. Grant and I have been praying for her future husband.
Speaker 2:So I said, wow, they didn't even know how much you needed the prayer. That was funny.
Speaker 1:That was good, so I'm arrested. Now, how are we going to navigate through this story?
Speaker 2:Well, how did you get there? I mean, that is one question Obviously I had and still I'm getting answers to, even though we've been married for several years now. I feel like I always get more information, which leads to more questions that how, how did you get to that day?
Speaker 1:To that day, probably the previous, like seven or eight years. I mean, I had a. I had a pretty, I guess, normal young childhood. You know, my parents got divorced when I was two, so I never knew living in the house with my dad but I had a stepdad that was like my dad, and then I had a half brother who was just my brother, and they went through an incredibly painful, evil divorce when I was 10 years old and then he took my brother and my mom took me and moved us from Atlanta, georgia, to a small town where she was from Phoenix City, alabama, and it was like culture shock, a different world, different family. I mean, I'd always known them as my family, but they were the family that you like saw once a year and you're like whoo glad to get out of here. But then that became my home and it was just a different. You know, I was away from everything I ever knew. I was away from my family. I was away from my, my grandparents in Atlanta, my granny you know who I'm closer to than anybody. How old were you 10.? But it was just. It was just like something on top of something on top of something on top of something it was.
Speaker 1:It was just a very tumultuous time in my life. I mean, I lost my brother, I lost my, the only dad I'd ever had. Then I lost that side of the family, my brother's family. You know, I'd grown up with them all my life and then they were gone. And then, you know, top that off, my mom moved us to this, to her hometown, which was, you know, we used to always joke that Feeding City was in a time warp, because you know anything that was happening in Atlanta and when you went to Feeding City they didn't even know what you were talking about. So, like in school, they may find me because I was wearing Nikes and I was like I don't know what Nikes you know, just silly stuff like that. But I don't think we really want to go back that far, do we?
Speaker 2:Well what? Obviously it's significant because, like you said, that was the beginning of you feeling, I guess, unstable or lost. I don't know how you describe it, but I would say that we got involved.
Speaker 1:When I moved to Phoenix City, my grandmother, my mom's side I called her me-mall she was very involved in her little Baptist church that she went to and it's not like the Baptist churches you know here it was a free will Baptist, so it was like Okay, I don't know the difference.
Speaker 2:I did not grow up in a Baptist church so you seem to be very familiar with all denominations. But the difference between Baptist and free will Baptist.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, it's like you have chicken and then you have free range chicken. You know like the free range chicken is better.
Speaker 2:So Well, I'm going to be honest I don't know the difference between chicken and free range chicken either. So tell me the difference.
Speaker 1:It's free range chicken is supposed to be better because it's not caged up. It does taste better, I mean Because they're not stressed, they're free, I guess I don't know. And then they, you know, they live off clovers and Wait.
Speaker 2:So then the free range chicken is like the free range chicken, free will Baptist, I guess.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:So it's supposed to be better than Baptist.
Speaker 1:Well, I had a friend that would always say James didn't grow up Baptist, he grew up free range Baptist. So Free range Baptist, it's just. You know, all the people have to add all the extras, but anyways it was free will Baptist. Most free will Baptist are very small. There's not a lot of people that you know want the free will. But I like the people at church. But I hated church, I hated Sunday school, I hated sitting there and I hated getting saved. Every Sunday they would say you know you need to get saved and so the free will Baptist church is part of you getting arrested.
Speaker 2:It's part of the reason.
Speaker 1:Well, it was what started. I believe it started my downward spiral because I was 12 years old and my problem when I was a kid was I didn't have a dad. So all these other guys, these kids, they had a dad, I mean my dad, I had a legal father, but I mean he paid child support and he would buy me school clothes and Christmas presents and birthday presents. But you know, if I had to go spend the weekend with him, I hated it. My mom would try to get me to spend weeks with him in the summer. You know he lived in Birmingham. I just, I hate we didn't have a connection, there was nothing there with us, which is another story for another podcast.
Speaker 1:That would be another podcast. But I mean, he, it wasn't that he didn't try, he did try, but he just, we just never connected. And I was basically growing up as a kid. I was, I didn't have a dad. So I made friends with a preacher's son. His name was Matthew, and I just liked him, he liked me. We were about the same age, we played the same stuff, we just had a connection and so I would go home with them on the weekends, you know, like, especially during the summer, like I could go stay, and my grandmother was just, she just thought that was the best thing in the world that you would, that I would be with the preacher's son, with the preacher's family.
Speaker 1:But I don't know if it was because I grew up around a lot of adults. But I was always very intuitive as a kid and I could see through stuff. And you know, the first time I spent the night with them I realized like the little facade y'all got going on at the Free Will Baptist Church is not really what's happening in your family. And there was three kids and looking at that, now those kids were abused. I mean, like they wouldn't let them eat food, like it was. It was just weird, like stuff that I'd never seen and I didn't have a great childhood. But, like you know, like dinnertime we're going to get KFC, like the preacher and the preacher's wife. They was going to eat first and eat whatever they wanted and whatever was left over.
Speaker 1:As a kid's guy and I I don't know, it was just it bothered my mind and I had a belief that God was real. You know, jesus saw the things. But then they had a summer youth camp that we did. That they did every summer and I wanted to go because my friend Matthew was going and the boys went with their dads and the girls went with their moms, and so the boys were on one side, the girls on the other, and I didn't have a dad. So my, my me mom, she got the preacher to be my sponsor, whatever you want to call it. So she basically told me whatever you know, he's the one that's in charge of you. So whatever he tells you, that's what you got to do. So we get there on day one they had this little sesh where they were telling us about all the truths of the world and the Bible and the scriptures and the Jesus, and they basically told me that everybody's going to hell and nobody.
Speaker 1:You know everybody had all the everybody's got all this sin and they started saying what sins were and they said that tobacco was a sin. And I just got so upset because my Mimo she was actually my great grandmother but she was old and she dipped snuff like the. I mean, I don't even think they have that anymore. I was like this bill was nasty, but she dipped snuff and I was so afraid. I was like me mom, she's so nice, she helped people.
Speaker 2:She loves people.
Speaker 1:She goes to church every Sunday. She don't cuss, she's not mean, but basically they said she was going to hell because she was in sin. She was in sin and that upset me. And then, um, but I was taking it serious, I was trying to read, they were showing me how to read, but it was the, you know, the King James version of the Bible that you can't understand. That, to them, that was the only you know.
Speaker 1:You can't read, knowing them, other ones, like where you can understand it, you have to be able to not understand it because Jesus, you know, he spoke the King James English and I didn't. You know, I didn't understand all that stuff. But I got so confused. But while I was there, I, um this might be given too much information there was an older boy that tried to sexually mess with me and then, on day three, matthew and I did something that was, I remember what it was. We didn't know, but you were sinning for sure. Well, no, we did something to sin against his dad, um, something we weren't supposed to do or say or was supposed to be. So I can't remember, but he told us that we were going to get a spanking.
Speaker 2:So it was something minor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, I promise I don't even remember what it was Like. I can remember some of the worst beatings I got from my mom, but I remember what I did Like. I remember one time stealing some cigarettes from my grandfather and getting a beating for that. It was like it was serious, but this was so minor, it was like nothing. But he took us out in the woods and he made us grab a hold of a tree and he took a belt and started beating us and he beat us from the top of our back all the way down our legs and I had, you know, I got spankings before.
Speaker 2:But I'd never been beating. This is the free will Baptist pastor the preacher that you were friends with his son, matthew yes.
Speaker 1:The one that I had already saw through and didn't really care for. Okay, and probably you know, knowing myself now I don't have my emotions very well he probably knew I didn't care for him and I don't know. Anyways, he beat us like he beat us and I was scared to death, like I wanted to run away. I didn't know what to do, I was scared, and then, you know, I adapted, I played the game, you know whatever. Memorize the scripture. God said love the world. Yes, he did. You know, I did all the things they told us to do. But it happened again right before we left. And I just remember on the bus ride back home, just sitting there and just like it was like a three hour bus ride and it was hot and you know the camp they're at and how many air, and then the bus people were stank in and stuff, and just sitting there thinking this is not, this is not real. None of this is real. And when you say real.
Speaker 2:What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1:Like it was all just a facade, like they're doing all the stuff, like he's the preacher that everybody reveres and bows down to and you know all the things and he's the one you hold up and esteem highly and you know. But he was not that. He was not that Okay. But on the bus ride back home I knew that when I saw my mama and I showed her the bruises and the cuts on the back of my body that all hell was going to break loose at the free will Baptist church in Phoenix city, alabama, and I couldn't wait to get off the bus. I couldn't wait to get off the bus.
Speaker 2:It's like I got a you needed to be free from the free wills. Well, no, but.
Speaker 1:I know, my mama, you know, I know I had to learn when I was a kid, when I was before kindergarten, even like four years old, when at preschool, when a kid said that my toy was his toy and then his mama worked there and his mama said, no, that's his toy. And I told my mama and she came the next day and just this little hurricane came through the preschool. I knew like I learned at like age four you don't tell mama everything you know. You gotta get that down.
Speaker 2:Just a fact hold on that you say my mama, my mama, my mama.
Speaker 1:I knew. No, I knew, I knew what was gonna happen. I knew it was gonna happen so, but when I got off the bus she wasn't there. It was my grandmother that came to pick me up and I held it until we got home and I told my mom, and then all hell broke loose, the little free will back to church, as you predicted, as you knew it would Absolutely no, I mean, but if that was Lou the Mayor, judy James the Royal Grant, it would have been worse than that for me, but I would never have sent my kid off and hopefully he wouldn't be going back to prison months.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean you say that, but I would never. I don't think I could send my kids off somewhere like that unless I really knew like I find new a little more background.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's pause for a minute. We're on the road to prison, so so far on the road to prison.
Speaker 1:This was what started the road.
Speaker 2:So on the first you said it was obviously not really having a father figure. Second, it was the move to small town Alabama the middle of nowhere, Sweet home. Alabama and the family things, and then it was basically no one should ever go to a free will Baptist church I'm just kidding and the attendance at the free will Baptist church and your experience there. So that's what we got so far. Is there any other like big pieces, elements that you feel like contributed to? Well, this was where.
Speaker 1:I became jaded after that. Okay, because after we came home and if you were at my grandmother's house and it was Sunday, you were going to church. You don't you be sick, you go on church, don't feel like it, you're going to church. After that, I never had to go to church again. Church, well, I was doing church. Now I went for like funerals and stuff, but and it was she even agreed.
Speaker 1:You know, something happened that shouldn't have happened. And then, you know, six months later he got them to loan him some money to buy a house, because he lived in like a church house, and then he ran off with other money. So I was right and I don't know what happened to him after that. But they got another. You know how that denominations work. They got another pastor and then the next guy was good, but that jaded me at the age of 12. Was that God, religion, all it was just all, just all a facade and a mess and I basically kind of became an atheist. You know, the only person that I was accountable to was to myself and I could do anything I wanted to, as long as I was smart enough to do it and get away with it.
Speaker 2:So how old were you with the whole Free Will Baptist Church experience at the camp? How old were you 12. You were 12, okay. So then what happened after that? What was the like? What would you say was the beginning of the end, the end being the day you got arrested.
Speaker 1:Say that again.
Speaker 2:Like what happened after that, that continued to spiral like down the journey, down the road to.
Speaker 1:My mom fell in love with some redneck beer drinking Alabama fan. I won't say his name, but they were like teenagers and he had these two little kids.
Speaker 2:You mean, they acted like teenagers?
Speaker 1:Yes, they were like, oh, we're just in love and but she was like in her 30s and he was in his 30s, he'd been married twice, she'd been married twice, divorce twice, he'd been married twice, divorce twice. So they decided that they would go in together and they would buy a new trailer and move us in the trailer park on the outskirts of Phoenix city in Smith Station, alabama, and Okay, so a lot of people live in trailers and trailer parks, and that does seem like, as you tell it, a natural progression of a relationship.
Speaker 2:If you know you're from Phoenix city, that's what you do, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1:Wait, you've been. Everybody in Phoenix city. Don't live in a trailer.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying there's anything wrong with living in a trailer, it was just. It was just the optics of it for me. Like you're gonna take me all the way from, let me go live with my granny, let's send me back to Atlanta. You got me living in a trailer park in Phoenix city.
Speaker 2:So you're saying the contrast from Atlanta, where you were in Atlanta, to now it's progressed, it's just all going downhill, you, being in a trailer park with your mom and her new man, were they married.
Speaker 1:No, they didn't get married. Okay, so then they moved and they didn't get married. Then I started a new school and then he had a son and he had custody of an adulter that didn't have anything to do with their mom, who was their first, it was just. That was another crazy, dysfunctional story. But the boy was like two or three years younger than me and the girl was like in first grade and they made me and the boy share a room and I was still missing my brother and I had been like two, three years about the time. I haven't seen him. And then I have this little kid that's. They actually put us in the same bed like it was my bed.
Speaker 2:It was a house bed. How old were you? 13 and how old was he he?
Speaker 1:was like eight or nine.
Speaker 2:Okay, but.
Speaker 1:I, he didn't like me, I didn't like him, he couldn't stand me, I couldn't stand him, I hated his dad, he hated my mom. So it was just, it was just a recipe for disaster. And then I was embarrassed, like With the trailer park neighborhood that my mom was living with some guy and so every day I would have this complaint. I mean that's embarrassing as a kid because I say you know, I am, I need everything to be like it's supposed to be.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, and that is true. What year was this, though? I'm curious, because I do feel like there is a difference. It was like 1984, 85.
Speaker 1:Okay, I don't know what divorce rates or whatever it was then, but I do feel like in different periods of time, there's different mentality around well, I mean, it was not quite taboo then like it would be before, but it was still your mom's like shacking up with some guy that works at the cotton mill on second shift and he comes home every night with his beer and His country music. And I didn't. I'd never been around stuff like that, I didn't know stuff like that. So I made the complaint every day that this is embarrassing. I mean you can do whatever you want to do, but this is embarrassing to have a mama Shacking up with some redneck guy and so. So you told your mom that every day like I can't stand this is wrong, I can't stand this, this is I don't like it.
Speaker 1:So they both worked in the cotton mill. That's in them days. That's what you did in Fink City. That was the job either that or work in the grocery store On their way to work. One day they stopped by the courier house and got married and she came home at night and was like we're married. Can you get over it and be? Let me live my life.
Speaker 2:So you think she did that because you were every day bringing you up.
Speaker 1:You should ask her. She says her number three marriage was my fault, cuz you know that a couple years later they were divorced and that was whoo. That was a rough time period, because then all he did after that was fight and the kids and Back and forth, and then his kids would go live with his mom and come back and then they would split up and then they get back together and then prison was like a break.
Speaker 1:Huh, no, that was just husband number three. You know. We got the husband number four after that, which was another whole Disaster. And then during that time period I Was not like messing around with drugs, but I was messing around with crime, like I learned how to do stuff, like what steel stuff think it started with shoplifting, progressed into Um, I Don't know what came after that. I know I stole some money one time from my great-great aunt, which to this day, when I think about her and how much she loved me, it, just it. I know I'm forgiven and you know all the things now, but it still just bothers me that you know.
Speaker 1:But I had a cousin and I don't think we should say his name. He and I were less than a year apart and we Played off each other. I could come up with like a plan like we could do this, this and this, and he had the balls to do it. Like I didn't have the balls to do a lot of the stuff that we did, but I could plan it out and then he could do it. Does that make sense? Sounds like us, we mean.
Speaker 2:I'm not doing crime strategy and then I go, okay, like you come up with a good plan and then I Activate, not with crime obviously, but just I mean I have the balls to do things.
Speaker 1:I mean Come on, I went out started a restaurant started on business. I mean I've done, we digress. I didn't have the balls to do crime. Okay, I did. Okay, but I could plan it, plan out as long as he did it. So we weren't. We stayed in trouble from the time I was about 12 years old until we got arrested, and it was always low level stuff, stealing stuff. I remember we busted all the windows out of school one time.
Speaker 2:Do you remember the very first crime that you did, very first thing that you did that was against the law?
Speaker 1:Yeah, stealing something out of a store. Okay and just say shoplifting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like wow, that was not even hard, you know. And then Right after that we started smoking cigarettes. That was a big, that was a big part of my you know my little secrets I had and we couldn't buy cigarettes. So we learned how to steal them and Cigarettes and that turning the alcohol later on. I mean I could tell you so many. Lord have mercy. There was a store in our, my cousin's, neighborhood that my aunt worked at. We in one day stole 42 cartons of cigarettes from there. I mean I don't know if you can imagine like how much money, how much. That's worse, like I've never bought a pack of cigarettes, I have no idea when those days a pack of cigarettes was like two dollars. There's ten packs of cigarettes in a carton, so they're like 20 bucks. But it was basically like the girl that worked there got in trouble, like the guy that owned the place was like you took all their inventory.
Speaker 2:What happened.
Speaker 1:No, but we just did it one time. I mean we would come up with ways to do it when we got a little older and we wanted beer. We couldn't buy beer, so we'd want to have a party, so we would. I think this, I came up with this we take the cooler down to the store and we say aunt I'm not gonna say her name, but my aunt, you know, she works here she said we could get some ice. Can we go get some ice? And the girl or whoever was there was, I was sure.
Speaker 1:So you'd go back in the back room to get the ice. I Would stand at the ice thing and just rattle the ice, so it sounded like I was getting ice. And then he would go in the cooler and Come fill it up with beer. And then we would leave with the full cooler, but it didn't have any ice in it, but it was filled with beer. Does that make sense? Yes, so I mean it started out and I mean that's nuts. If one of my kids did something like that, that would not be a small thing. But the crimes that sent us to prison, those were the small, the little stuff that we did. They got us in trouble.
Speaker 2:But almost like you realize you could get away with it. It's just like anything else.
Speaker 1:It was a progression, yeah oh no, it was worse than that. We got caught several times doing our nonsense. That was a question I had to like did you ever get we?
Speaker 1:Probably more often than not, did not get caught. But when we did get caught for something, my mom and his mom were sisters and you know I didn't have a dad and then his dad died when he was to have a stepdad, but our mothers were. They would do anything to keep us out of trouble. They would do anything and they did. They would find a way to get us out of it. If they had to pay somebody off, if they had to get, you know, if I had to get a second mortgage on our house.
Speaker 1:So they would bail you out basically every time, like we never really, we never really suffered any consequences. I remember when I was like 16, no, it must have been 15, because I wasn't driving yet we lived in an apartment complex where we would go to every night and see who left their car open and whatever was in there we took it. We were just little thieves, little criminals. I mean I wanna sugarcoat it. I mean cause you know, louie May asked me. I've always tried to be open with my kids about my past. Like daddy got in a lot of trouble. Daddy was not a good person. He I made a lot of mistakes and you know told her that I was arrested and went to prison If you were in jail. Like she can't believe it.
Speaker 2:She had the exact same reaction I had.
Speaker 1:Well, no, I mean because she knows me now, Right, but I think for the purpose of like telling the story, you gotta tell it like it is. It was not like you know, most people say. Oh, I was just a wayward child and got involved with drugs and went to prison. I was a criminal by the time I was 15. And it fed something to me because I had such a rage against the world. I had a rage against I was just filled with rage, and it came from hurt, like I was, you know, at a young age, and I learned all that when I went to counseling later on. But just some of the stuff that I experienced early on just kind of led me down that path, and I mean, it is what it is, but we always got out of everything we did. And then the thing about it was, though I didn't do a lot of stuff on my own, and I don't think he did either we needed each other to do stuff like that. That's interesting.
Speaker 2:Well, it was, he was my partner in crime, like I guess two are better than one, even when it comes to crime. Yeah, that's in a backward, I guess, or can accomplish more or, like you, embolden each other and, like you, you know both of you brought something to the table that the other one needed to move forward with. You know the plan, so it does make sense. I mean you can work that in towards good or bad direction, but in this case it was obviously.
Speaker 1:Mad.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But when I was 18, I think I was 18, he moved away. He moved, his brother had moved to Asheville, north Carolina, and his mom knew that he needed something different and he moved up there with them and he wouldn't work. I mean, he quit school when he was like 16, never had a job, would always, you know, would get a job, work one day and then couldn't do it. So they needed something else for him. So he moved up to Asheville, north Carolina, and got a job in a I think it was a milk jugging up company or something, and those were probably the best years of his life because he had actually had purpose.
Speaker 1:He started, you know, it was a different time. And then but the same thing for me, like I was pursuing a career in, you know, I wanted to be a chef and I had went to work for Patrick, who later on will he's a big part of my story but he was a chef, that kind of a real chef, not a, you know, a French chef. Right, he was from France, he was French, yeah, but he took me under his wing and, you know, wanted to teach me and basically he was gonna send me to culinary school and those were probably the best years of my young life.
Speaker 2:So then, what the heck happened.
Speaker 1:So he got fired and he came home your cousin, yeah. And then my mom had during that time she had divorced her last husband and so she had kind of swore off that. So there was like a there was peace in the land for a little while, because there was a lot of chaos in my teenage years just from a home life. He moved back home in it must have been May or June, I know I'm just trying to remember where it was warming up because I was wearing shorts when he moved back, and then that was in, say, spring of 1992. And then by January of 1993 was what? Seven, eight months later? We would both be looking at life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Speaker 2:Did you say seven or eight months later? Yes, so basically y'all were each other's partner in crime. Then his mom, he moved away, got a job, started doing pretty well, you started doing pretty well, and then how many years was that that y'all were doing well? About two years. And then he moved back after he got fired and six, seven months from there you were facing life in prison.
Speaker 1:Spring of spring of 92 was when he moved back and by the way, I'm not trying to blame him, like I'm not trying to say he made me do it. He never made me do anything. It was just there was some kind of like dynamic between us where I understood him, he understood me and but it was never for good. We never did anything good together. There's always something destructive or something evil and something to like, not anything good.
Speaker 2:So you were able, though, to just pick up where you left off, basically before he moved.
Speaker 1:Well, no, I was determined when it came home, Like I had decided I'm trying to build a life. You know, I didn't wanna live there forever. I wanted to get out of there and I decided, you know, whatever we do going forward, I'm gonna limit my time with him. But he started dating some girl and then I started dating her best friend. So there you go. And that just led into what was next. And really what was next was we don't have to steal stuff. We can steal money Like why would we steal stuff to have to go get money? We can just go get some money which is moving, like to the next level.
Speaker 2:Basically, yes.
Speaker 1:I mean it's a progression. I mean that's how stuff like that works you start off with something, I mean, and you just keep progressing. I mean it's the same way in reverse. I mean you start off doing something good you can, it starts. You know your dad did the slight edge thing. You know the little things kind of add up.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's true for anything.
Speaker 1:It is, but this was in reverse, like we were headed for destruction, and it came upon us very fast.
Speaker 2:So what crime were you committing when you got arrested? The day you got arrested?
Speaker 1:The day I got arrested. I was arrested for attempted murder of a law enforcement officer.
Speaker 2:The day I got arrested, not good no. So just tell me about that day. I mean, let's start when you woke up that morning, the day.
Speaker 1:Well, actually we, by that time we had started doing meth. I don't know if you know what that is.
Speaker 2:I know it's a drug. I know it's a bad drug.
Speaker 1:That's very. It is. I went to a party with him and his older brother in November of 1992. And I would like play around with drugs. But you know, I've always been like a learner and they told us in high school when we did the I mean you probably didn't have all that, but it was the Nancy Reagan just saying no to drugs.
Speaker 2:I remember that in elementary school because you're like what? Eight years older than me. So, I think that push was when I was in elementary school.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I do remember that vaguely.
Speaker 1:Well, we had they like drill that into us. And it was, I remember, because I would ask questions like they were like if you do cocaine, you're going to be a junkie and addict forever until you die or go to rehab. And if you do heroin one time, it only takes one time. You know they were like drilling that into us Takes one time for you to die or To be an app, to be hooked, to be addicted to it. I mean, I don't know how much of that was true or I was just a fear, like don't do that. So they were snorting a substance that looked like cocaine and it scared me and I said I mm-mm. Who was doing that? My cousin's older brother and then all his friends. They were having a party.
Speaker 2:You mean the night before or what Cause? We're talking about the morning you got arrested.
Speaker 1:No, no, I took you back to November of 1992. This is where I started Because there was no morning before, because I hadn't been asleep in like four days when I got arrested. So there's kind of a little bit of a backstory, like I could say that this is where my lack of experience that morning there was no waking up.
Speaker 1:You said when you woke up that morning. I didn't wake up that morning, okay, I never went to sleep so I had been up for like three days. Okay, wow, on the day I got arrested. So they were doing the. They called it crystal and I was like I'm getting out of here. You know I'm not mm-mm, y'all ain't gonna get me. I'm not getting Nancy.
Speaker 2:Reagan had gotten through to you.
Speaker 1:Nancy Reagan had gotten something ahead. But here's what I tell people now is had I, and I knew, I knew run, give a stay away from that and run. But the next weekend, guess where. And I didn't do anything that first night, nothing, I didn't participate in anything. But the next weekend, guess where I was.
Speaker 2:Where.
Speaker 1:I was back with my cousin at the same place. They were doing the same thing. If I think, if I would have like changed my Friends I mean, even though he was my cousin, he was my best friend growing up my life would have taken a different turn. But the next weekend, you know, pastor Chris, he says show me your friends, I'll show you your future. I believe that. I believe that with all my heart, because you will eventually do whatever you're surrounding yourself with, even if you don't want to. I didn't want to do it, but the next weekend, my cousin's older brother, he told me he's like this is not cocaine, it's not what you think it is, it's like speed, it's like taking speed. You've taken speed and I had taken like diet pills.
Speaker 2:Is diet pills the same thing as speed? Pretty much yeah.
Speaker 1:I did not know that it is. I mean it's an upper, I mean whatever that was.
Speaker 2:This is something you taught me that I had no idea that drugs are either an upper or a downer and downer. Well, I don't remember all the details, Upper just makes you up.
Speaker 1:And downer takes you down. So like a downer's, like Xanax stuff like that that gets you. You know that calms you down, or like a sedative or a volume stuff like that, so down.
Speaker 2:So this is an upper.
Speaker 1:Well, he told me it was the same as taking up a pill.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I had experimented with pills up to that time and so I was like, well, maybe he's right and I tried it, and it was just like Nancy Reagan said there was no turning back from that. 45 days later was when we got arrested, and almost a minute.
Speaker 2:From that day that you took that From 45 days.
Speaker 1:Yep, wow, I've did the math.
Speaker 2:And you know that, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I mean immediately we went into a different kind of a zone, cause then we were doing drugs and it was great and you didn't even have to sleep, you could just, you know, just keep doing the things.
Speaker 2:See, that doesn't even sound fun to me, cause I like to sleep, I mean, as most people do, I think.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love to sleep, but not that.
Speaker 2:At that age.
Speaker 1:No, it wasn't just drugs for me, it was, and I've said that you know, oh, I just got on drugs. The drugs made me do it, but it was. I was still filled with such a rage and a hatred and I just wanted to win and I, you know, I just wanted to beat the man. You know what I'm saying. Beat what man? Just the man, whoever they are, whoever set up the system where you know some kids get to have a dad and get to go to college and get to, you know, feel safe in their home. You know, I wanted, I was just in a rage.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it wasn't that drugs made me do crime. We were already doing crime. It was just that drug. When we started doing meth, it took away my inhibitions. Like we can do anything, and we did. We almost immediately started making plans and we was going to get money from places.
Speaker 2:So where are some of the places you stole money from?
Speaker 1:Um, we didn't want to do it at home or close to home, because we didn't want to get caught. So we hatched a brilliant plan to go into, like cities and finally, cause I knew, the restaurant world, I'd been in cities like what's the first city you went to. First city. That's so funny that you asked that. It was the Quincy Steakhouse on 280 in Shelby County.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:That was my first. That was the first one that we did. Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2:It's crazy.
Speaker 1:It's like when you're going to find yourself full circle, basically. Oh, no, no, no. When I first moved to Birmingham in 99, I was haunted, like every time I would ride down to a and I didn't live two miles from there the first seven, eight years of my life here. It was crazy, it was very haunting.
Speaker 2:Crazy. So Shoney's 280, shelby County was Not Shoney's. Oh, Shoney's. No, what did you say? Quincy's, quincy's, which is like all the same to me All.
Speaker 1:Through high school I worked for Ryan Steakhouse and I knew how they operated and I knew their setup. And Thursday there's no Quincy's anymore. They're already gone but they were operated in the exact same way.
Speaker 2:Everything was the same.
Speaker 1:The setup everything, and so I knew we couldn't go rob a place like robbing a bank. So I came up with the idea that we would go in, then we would sit down and eat and be nice to the server and we would ask them I hear y'all hiring and I knew that they were always hiring and even if they weren't hiring right then they wanted applications so they could keep that going. So we would ask for an application. We never filled it out and I did the talking on this part because this was the part Paul's getting in the foot.
Speaker 1:This was the part I knew how to do. But see, I couldn't do the other part. He had to do the other part. So I would ask for the manager, call him over and then he my cousin would tell him we're here to rob you, but we don't want to make a big thing out of it. So I have a gun and we're gonna walk back to the office and you're gonna give us the money and that's how this is gonna work out.
Speaker 1:Did you actually have a gun? I didn't. He did. Oh okay, I did not, and interestingly enough, it was a gun that he stole, or we stole, because I knew he was doing it from my girlfriend's stepdad. So it wasn't just a gun, it was a stolen gun. I mean, that led us to all kind of legal problems later on. If I could just clarify, we had an agreement with each other like we were not gonna shoot anybody. I mean it wasn't. We can get into that later. I had nightmares after I was in prison where I realized, like what we had done? Just the mere fact of somebody having a gun pointed at them. But that was how we did it, and then we would take the money.
Speaker 2:Okay, so how much money did you get?
Speaker 1:The first time. Yeah, like $5,000. Okay, and then we would leave, but then they couldn't call the cops fast enough to get there, so you got $5,000. Okay, and then they call the cops, but you were already gone, no this was every time they would, because we would like um, okay, this is gonna sound really bad, but are we just telling the whole story of the truth?
Speaker 2:That's why we're here, yes.
Speaker 1:We would uh, make them sit in a chair and then he would put duct tape on their arms, so it would take them about 10 minutes to get out. Wow, so that way we could leave. Tell people by they thought we were going to be there the next day working at Ryan's flipping stakes.
Speaker 2:So only the manager knew that you were arriving, and then you would put duct tape on them. Put them where.
Speaker 1:Sitting in his office chair. They would put you to no, no, not like, tape them up where you couldn't get out. It was a uh, tape him just enough to where we can get away before he calls the cops. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I know it's awful, I'm not trying to make light of it, but I mean, if we're going to tell a story, we, I think we need to just tell the story.
Speaker 2:I've actually never heard that part of the story.
Speaker 1:Well, that was part, that was the getaway. So then we could leave.
Speaker 2:Did you come up with that?
Speaker 1:Yes, but then no, but then we could get away.
Speaker 2:It's not funny, I shouldn't laugh. It's not. No, that's horrible, like I still. It's this bad.
Speaker 1:But then we could have the money, tell the people by they thought we got a job and would be back to work there. And I think I maybe even said that to a couple on the way out, sometimes Getting the car leave. We would always pick one close to the highway so that we could be off Almost every time. We would be like six or seven minutes out and we would be going one way and we would see the cops come the other way with the lights on blaring and that gave some kind of adrenaline Like that was more than a drug, that part of it for you, for him too, Like yeah, we got away with that. And then we would get back in the car, head back home and then split the money.
Speaker 2:And what would you spend the money on drugs?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know living it up, and then did you ever go to sleep?
Speaker 2:Eventually Died for you, and so how many times did you do that?
Speaker 1:When we were on the day we were arrested.
Speaker 2:Well, because you, I know we're we're 45 days out, like in those 45 days. How many times did you do something like that?
Speaker 1:On the day I got arrested.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Seven, we had done seven.
Speaker 2:Oh, you did seven in one day.
Speaker 1:No, oh, total, okay, over the months, over that month and a half or whatever, we had done seven armed robberies in seven different places.
Speaker 2:Seven different cities or Cities. Yeah, oh, wow, okay.
Speaker 1:But we were so smart we thought we got away, we were getting away with it. But what we didn't know was the last one we did was in Panama City, Florida, maybe five hours before we got arrested. They had just called them and told them to look for us. So we had developed. I mean, I've just studied a lot of like crime stuff since then, especially after, you know, I became rehabilitated. But, no, it's just, it's called an MO, Like when you start doing crime Right Mode of operation right, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's an MO. You develop an MO, so we were doing the same thing every time. Same Everything was the same. They didn't know who we were, they didn't have any like fingerprint, they didn't have any way to get us, other than knowing that we were going to do it again. Because people that detectives and people that study crime, they know that when somebody's doing stuff like that, they can't stop.
Speaker 2:They can't stop. They just can't stop Because that, like you said, was seeing the police cars and now you got away in and of itself is addictive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't stop. I guess this was the lead up to the day I got arrested, but I guess we just come back in and just do the. I'm on IT in Florida and I got pulled over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on that final, on the final.
Speaker 1:Lord.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna say Final run.
Speaker 1:That was. That was I'm lucky to be alive. Yes, I'm lucky to be alive, and to this day I know I should not have survived that. What happened after that?
Speaker 2:It's coming next week, folks, stay tuned.
Speaker 1:All right, so we're going to stop this right here and then we'll come back and we'll just pick up where we left off and I'll get into the details of that last day of freedom and how that all ended in a very bloody way on the side of a highway, and it's just the beginning folks. It was, yeah, all right. Well, we'll see y'all next time. Bye, hey guys. Thanks for tuning in to the Straight Out of Prison podcast. For more, follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Look up Straight Out of Prison podcast.
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