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Ever knew someone that served prison time? (1 Viewer)

Jail and Prison are two very different things, son.  Jail is where you go once arrested until bailed out, charges dropped, found innocent, or convicted.  Prison is where you go to do a long stretch after conviction.

They say a man develops a "Prison Switch" in his mind that allows the easy passage of time.  Very similar to marriage.

 
They say a man develops a "Prison Switch" in his mind that allows the easy passage of time.  Very similar to marriage.
The Click, they useta call it. Inadvertent self-hypnosis in which (though you have to be shown it physically, this is the closest approximation i can put into print) where you listen for the moment when society is gonna shut you in and you shut them out JUST before they do.

A guy (Numbers, the serial killer who for some reason didnt kill me, who i've written about here before) taught it to me on the road in my hitchhiker days. Valuable tool, esp for bipolar types like myself.

ETA: Only county time for me, so far, though i'm rather proud that i spent a night in jail for smiling.

 
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I've had several uncles and cousins over the years. One cousin in particular, has probably spent 30 of his 60 years in prison. He's out now, but it never lasts. 

 
Someone that I was friends with in law school is currently serving 18 years, but I haven't talked/communicated with him since he was arrested.  In my connection to it, I was getting frustrated by his not responding to e-mails about whether he was returning to the fantasy football league that I run among our group of friends (and the scheduled draft date was approaching).  So, I googled him to see if I could find his work e-mail address, since he was not responding to Gmail.  I ended up discovering the news articles that he had been arrested and was being held on pretty serious charges.  Everyone from our law school was completely in the dark about it. 

I'm sure there is a federal agent somewhere who was monitoring his gmail and had to read through my serious business e-mails to him and the group about my fantasy football league.

 
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I know multiple people who served time from my days of growing in in Detroit.   2 are lifers for murder.

Check bouncing, armed robbery, car theft, assault, murder...all are out now except for the 2 that committed murder. 

 
I've worked with a guy in our sister company that did time in federal prison (drugs).  He said it was no fun and he doesn't want to go back.  I didn't really ask any more questions.  :shrug:  

I just looked it up and it was at a minimum security prison camp in Yankton, SD.  What a wussy.

 
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My mother's cousin did a few years for embezzlement not long after I was born. That followed him being a cooperating witness against some connected guys. He was on TV at one point with his face in shadows, voice altered, etc. He also visited my parents while my mom was pregnant with me and FBI agents were with him for protection.

 
I've known 2. Guy I went to HS with became the band director at said school. Married one of his students when she was like 19. Then got arrested for sleeping with another one of his students while she was still in HS a few years later. I'm not sure if he's still in jail or just got out. 

The second guy was a guy I met in college. I'll call him Bill. He lived a couple buildings over. Stole a car right after high school but had some other brushes with the law so he served a couple years. Nice enough guy. Really laid back and chill. But one time we were heading out to a bar and he invites a buddy of his. Turns out it was a friend from prison. Again, nice guy, but a little rough around the edges. Just would say this inappropriate stuff here and there, but then he barely knew me and my other buddy that was there that had not been to prison. I could only imagine the stuff he would say if he knew us better.

So later on in the night, people are drinking, people are dancing and he sees some chick he likes out on the dance floor. This girl is dancing with her girlfriend. He walks out there and physically pushes the girlfriend aside and tries to dance with the other girl. The girlfriend tries to push him back and he shoves her again and nearly knocks her down. Then they both push him away violently as I'm walking up to say... I had no idea what I was going to say other than, "Dude, that's not how to do this," and hope he didn't shiv me. I get right up to him just as the two girls give him the third hard shove and he raises his hands and backs off saying, "What the #### did I do?" He turns and looks at me and says, "F'ing dykes." I couldn't think of anything to say other than, "Uh, let me buy you a beer." It was all I could think to say to get him away from the girls and the dance floor in general. Luckily this guy didn't hit on (or physically assault) anyone else the rest of the evening. I never hung out with Bill after that. He never did anything out of line that I saw, but that friend of his was a mess. 

 
When I was in my late teens, I knew a guy who tried to break into prison.

He was a lunatic and the rumor was that he was wanted by the mob. It was a big enough rumor that most people didn't even want to be standing next to him out on the streets. He was arrested for trying to break into a prison, I used to keep the newspaper clipping of the story in my wallet because it was so crazy. A week after he was released they found his body cut up into pieces in garbage bags.

 
My mom's second husband had been in prison for drug charges.  He really turned his life around and became a model citizen after getting out.  Dude was freaking JACKED, muscles on muscles.  It had been a decade or so since he'd been in and the only time he really talked about it was a "scared straight" talk to my little brother.

My uncle is currently in prison for 10 years on child porn charges.  His work computer broke, he took it in to the help desk and they found all kinds of images.  He's supposed to get out in a couple years but I'll never talk to him again (turns out my sister was a victim) and hope he dies the day he's supposed to get released.  He destroyed his family (his adopted daughter was also a victim) and within a few weeks of his sentencing my grandmother died.  It pains me to no end to know that her final time here was spent thinking about having raised a monster.

 
assuming most of us are middle age or so, i'd be shocked if there were people here that didn't know multiple people who had at least been in jail.. and many that know someone who has been in prison.

 
Jail and Prison are two very different things, son.  Jail is where you go once arrested until bailed out, charges dropped, found innocent, or convicted.  Prison is where you go to do a long stretch after conviction.

They say a man develops a "Prison Switch" in his mind that allows the easy passage of time.  Very similar to marriage.
:lmao:

 
I did, actually. Knew a few people. Some cried while relating the experience as so awful they could barely stand it. 

No place to be for a man. You come out way more ####ed up than when you went in. 

All drug crimes, too, End the drug war, IMO.    

 
The Click, they useta call it. Inadvertent self-hypnosis in which (though you have to be shown it physically, this is the closest approximation i can put into print) where you listen for the moment when society is gonna shut you in and you shut them out JUST before they do.

A guy (Numbers, the serial killer who for some reason didnt kill me, who i've written about here before) taught it to me on the road in my hitchhiker days. Valuable tool, esp for bipolar types like myself.

ETA: Only county time for me, so far, though i'm rather proud that i spent a night in jail for smiling.
You knew a freaking serial killer? 

 
My former roommate Bart spent the better part of the past 25 years in the California prison system serving a couple of stints on drug related charges.  He's been out for the past year and a half and seems pretty determined to live the rest of his life as a free man.

 
A buddy did 30 (20) days in jail, but got work release.  Being his own boss he could pretty much say his work hours were from whenever to whenever so he really only stayed in jail during the evenings and Sundays.  He had never "worked" that many hours before or since.  

 
Off the top of my head 2 guys in my neighborhood (few years older than me) both went to prison for rape.  One I knew since we were kids, he even drove me to school freshman year, other guy was my friends older brother.

IIRC they were 18 and she was 15 and under the influence, or she may have been a little older and under the influence.  I only had one side of the story but sounded like the old started out consensual, turned into a threesome and either she regretted it or parents found out and pressed charges.  Details are fuzzy for me but bottom line they both went away for awhile.  Not sure if/when they ever got out

 
BIL did some years for dealing coke.  a guy I went to college with killed his wife and was convicted and sent to prison for life with no possibility of parole.  his conviction was overturned a year later and he's out on the streets now.

 
BIL did some years for dealing coke.  a guy I went to college with killed his wife and was convicted and sent to prison for life with no possibility of parole.  his conviction was overturned a year later and he's out on the streets now.
So was he innocent? Like he didn’t actually kill hos wife but was wrongfully convicted? If so that’s terrible!

 
I know lots of dudes who have been to jail. Prison... a high school acquaintance got busted for selling lsd. He spent quite a few years in prison. Totally nice and cool dude too. He said it was similar to high school. I think he was high when he made that comparison. 

 
Uncle got caught up in the S&L scandal kiting loans and things like that.  Got 8 years but was out in 3 after paying a 8 figure fine.  

Did some really stupid stuff and the case is now common case law in law schools across the nation so his name is super googable.  Ooops.

He got time in min security country club type prison and honestly I think he enjoyed it.  Got totally jacked working out, and became an awesome tennis player and poker/spades/cards player. 

 
BIL did some years for dealing coke.  a guy I went to college with killed his wife and was convicted and sent to prison for life with no possibility of parole.  his conviction was overturned a year later and he's out on the streets now.


So was he innocent? Like he didn’t actually kill hos wife but was wrongfully convicted? If so that’s terrible!
or was it overturned on some sort of technicality/procedural issue?

 
I’ve got an uncle that spent 8 years in prison for conspiracy to sell narcotics

he was guilty as hell, moved boat loads of bud through the Florida panhandle back in the late 70s 

my SIL spent 6 weeks in county(we left her there to detox) , that counts right? 

 
You knew a freaking serial killer? 
Yeah, i've told it here before. When i was a runaway, almost 50 yrs ago now, there were still hobo jungles. The biggest one in that time was in NPlatte, NE a great spot for wanderers cuz the trainyard there was always pretty loose on hopping rails and you had i-80 too. Being 16 & homeless (and kinda illegal as a hippie) is scary & lonely and being hungry is worse and the old guys were kind so the jungle was actually a better stopoff than Kearney or Lincoln (jackhole central) if you got lifts from college kids who werent going thru the state (a very underrated state, Nebraska, but a big matzo ball for hitchers).

There was this guy Norman, who i called Numbers, cuz he had this huge army trench coat with 50 pockets and seemingly a roach or full "number" in each one. I'd doubled with him a coupla times in Cheyenne and Fernley NV (two notorious hitchhiker hells) and he'd taught me the Click and some tricks for finding cover & food, didnt say much but was as pleasant as he was weird.

I was in the Platte jungle one time and i saw Numbers. He kept to himself a while but eventually come over. "East or West?" "East" i says (i was visiting a gal in Holland MI). "Me, too. Head out in a while?". "Sure" (his army coat - not a vet, stir most his life, i knew - got rides). So we did later on. The old gents were giving me weird looks, but they're weird. 

We get to DesMoines, rainy af, we're working a truck stop. Numbers has this fat middle-aged guy going up to Minny. "I'm heading east, Norman". "I could go north" he says, obviously wanting to get out of the ####. "Go north, then". "OK". Never saw him again.

Couple months later, i'm back in the Platte jungle. The old farts are surprised see me as tho i was the Queen. I ask why. "Young boys who leave with Norman don't come back". Matter of fact, they were pretty sure, if he left me alone (unheard of), he was worked up enough so that fat Minny salesman probably ended up raped & dead along the road. Yikes. And that, children, is your story of the day.

 
Yeah, i've told it here before. When i was a runaway, almost 50 yrs ago now, there were still hobo jungles. The biggest one in that time was in NPlatte, NE a great spot for wanderers cuz the trainyard there was always pretty loose on hopping rails and you had i-80 too. Being 16 & homeless (and kinda illegal as a hippie) is scary & lonely and being hungry is worse and the old guys were kind so the jungle was actually a better stopoff than Kearney or Lincoln (jackhole central) if you got lifts from college kids who werent going thru the state (a very underrated state, Nebraska, but a big matzo ball for hitchers).

There was this guy Norman, who i called Numbers, cuz he had this huge army trench coat with 50 pockets and seemingly a roach or full "number" in each one. I'd doubled with him a coupla times in Cheyenne and Fernley NV (two notorious hitchhiker hells) and he'd taught me the Click and some tricks for finding cover & food, didnt say much but was as pleasant as he was weird.

I was in the Platte jungle one time and i saw Numbers. He kept to himself a while but eventually come over. "East or West?" "East" i says (i was visiting a gal in Holland MI). "Me, too. Head out in a while?". "Sure" (his army coat - not a vet, stir most his life, i knew - got rides). So we did later on. The old gents were giving me weird looks, but they're weird. 

We get to DesMoines, rainy af, we're working a truck stop. Numbers has this fat middle-aged guy going up to Minny. "I'm heading east, Norman". "I could go north" he says, obviously wanting to get out of the ####. "Go north, then". "OK". Never saw him again.

Couple months later, i'm back in the Platte jungle. The old farts are surprised see me as tho i was the Queen. I ask why. "Young boys who leave with Norman don't come back". Matter of fact, they were pretty sure, if he left me alone (unheard of), he was worked up enough so that fat Minny salesman probably ended up raped & dead along the road. Yikes. And that, children, is your story of the day.
Your writing style and a lot of your stories remind me of Penn Jillette. Just an observation.  Please keep it up.

 
Yeah, i've told it here before. When i was a runaway, almost 50 yrs ago now, there were still hobo jungles. The biggest one in that time was in NPlatte, NE a great spot for wanderers cuz the trainyard there was always pretty loose on hopping rails and you had i-80 too. Being 16 & homeless (and kinda illegal as a hippie) is scary & lonely and being hungry is worse and the old guys were kind so the jungle was actually a better stopoff than Kearney or Lincoln (jackhole central) if you got lifts from college kids who werent going thru the state (a very underrated state, Nebraska, but a big matzo ball for hitchers).

There was this guy Norman, who i called Numbers, cuz he had this huge army trench coat with 50 pockets and seemingly a roach or full "number" in each one. I'd doubled with him a coupla times in Cheyenne and Fernley NV (two notorious hitchhiker hells) and he'd taught me the Click and some tricks for finding cover & food, didnt say much but was as pleasant as he was weird.

I was in the Platte jungle one time and i saw Numbers. He kept to himself a while but eventually come over. "East or West?" "East" i says (i was visiting a gal in Holland MI). "Me, too. Head out in a while?". "Sure" (his army coat - not a vet, stir most his life, i knew - got rides). So we did later on. The old gents were giving me weird looks, but they're weird. 

We get to DesMoines, rainy af, we're working a truck stop. Numbers has this fat middle-aged guy going up to Minny. "I'm heading east, Norman". "I could go north" he says, obviously wanting to get out of the ####. "Go north, then". "OK". Never saw him again.

Couple months later, i'm back in the Platte jungle. The old farts are surprised see me as tho i was the Queen. I ask why. "Young boys who leave with Norman don't come back". Matter of fact, they were pretty sure, if he left me alone (unheard of), he was worked up enough so that fat Minny salesman probably ended up raped & dead along the road. Yikes. And that, children, is your story of the day.
Holy shirt! That’s crazy dude. I haven’t read your other stories but I’m now hooked. Why did you runaway from home?

 
One of my closest friends growing up went to prison about 6 years ago. We grew up together but had not seen or stayed in contact very much until about 8 years ago when I moved back to OH near where he was already living. We’ve got kids same age, wives got along, we hung out a lot. 

We had bought a house, a fixer upper and our realtor is a mutual friend. The realtor stops by one day while me and the wife are working on the house. He asks me if I had heard about our friend...going to jail for some awful things...we were floored. I’ve known this kid since I was five and he was three. Our families are very close. 

I gave my friend the benefit of the doubt and when we saw him, he told me it was true. He got 18 years. His wife tried to hang in there but she bailed after two years. I visited him twice and wrote him maybe six times but his crime is to hard for me to overlook.  I haven’t had any contact with him in probably three years. I feel the worst for his dad and mom, who have stood by him. He’s also got a kid that is headed down a similar path.

He did tell me that the worst part of prison are the first days. Your scared, you don’t know if prison is like the movies, etc. After he settled in, he said his biggest problem is boredom and missing his family. He’s taken about every type of education program you can take. He teaches other inmates various programs. He seems like he’s trying to do the right thing now but I probably won’t see him again.

 
One of my closest friends growing up went to prison about 6 years ago. We grew up together but had not seen or stayed in contact very much until about 8 years ago when I moved back to OH near where he was already living. We’ve got kids same age, wives got along, we hung out a lot. 

We had bought a house, a fixer upper and our realtor is a mutual friend. The realtor stops by one day while me and the wife are working on the house. He asks me if I had heard about our friend...going to jail for some awful things...we were floored. I’ve known this kid since I was five and he was three. Our families are very close. 

I gave my friend the benefit of the doubt and when we saw him, he told me it was true. He got 18 years. His wife tried to hang in there but she bailed after two years. I visited him twice and wrote him maybe six times but his crime is to hard for me to overlook.  I haven’t had any contact with him in probably three years. I feel the worst for his dad and mom, who have stood by him. He’s also got a kid that is headed down a similar path.

He did tell me that the worst part of prison are the first days. Your scared, you don’t know if prison is like the movies, etc. After he settled in, he said his biggest problem is boredom and missing his family. He’s taken about every type of education program you can take. He teaches other inmates various programs. He seems like he’s trying to do the right thing now but I probably won’t see him again.
What did he do?? You left out the best part!!

 
What did he do?? You left out the best part!!
Not at all the best part!! It’s disgusting and it makes me ill. He deserves to be in prison forever. If it would have been my personal family, he would have been dead and i would be in prison. You think you can figure it out?

 
Not at all the best part!! It’s disgusting and it makes me ill. He deserves to be in prison forever. If it would have been my personal family, he would have been dead and i would be in prison. You think you can figure it out?
You know what I meant. Don’t try to paint me as a bad guy. So he’s a pedo? Yeah, he’s a fuggin scumbag. 

 
So was he innocent? Like he didn’t actually kill hos wife but was wrongfully convicted? If so that’s terrible!
I don't know if he is innocent.  he had some new witnesses come forward after he was convicted and they said they saw a vehicle fleeing the scene, so he got a new trial and was found not guilty.  its fascinating to me reading up on it.  he was the nicest, most laid back guy I knew and apparently his wife was quite controlling.  I don't know what to think.  they lived out a few miles from a small town so its hard for me to believe it was a random robbery as his defense states.  what criminal would pick a random house in the country in broad daylight and then shoot the wife while she was showering, leaving valuables out in the open?

if anyone wants the details, google Tom Foley Coldwater MI

 
Your writing style and a lot of your stories remind me of Penn Jillette. Just an observation.  Please keep it up.
I didn't know he wrote. We're approx the same age, the same size, same looks more or less, from the same state even. He has a little more hair, i have a little more talent....

Got a book recommendation?

 
1. friend's brother-in-law. Stole $200,000 from his company on 12/31/1999. He was in charge of Y2K compliance so he set the whole thing up to look like a Y2K glitch. And it might have worked if every other business in the world had a catastrophic failure on 1/1/2000. But since that didn't happen, his scheme was discovered after about a month. He spent 8 years in prison. Seems like a decent enough guy.

----

2. former co-worker. He was one of those guys who was always looking for ways to get rich quick. Always had a side business (usually a MLM thing) or some deal he was working on. He used to complain about how our commission schedule didn't allow him to make the "big bucks" like other salesmen did. I actually hooked him up with another company which specialized in web advertising (which was a fairly new concept at the time) and had no ceiling on commissions. So he left our company and quickly became one of the top sales guys in the country, pulling in close to $1M per year. But after a couple of years it was discovered that his entire sales pipeline was built on a series of scams. He would structure his commissions by placing huge orders, then cashing his commission check, then having his client cancel half the order -- then, before his company figured out what happened, he would have the same client place another huge order (which would also be partially canceled a few months later). His company didn't notice what was going on because the whole thing looked like a continuous series of orders. Also, he hired some other company to pump up the web traffic for all of his clients, which gave the appearance (to both his clients and his company) that the web advertising actually worked.

When the entire scheme was discovered, he withdrew all of his cash from the bank, declared bankruptcy, and moved out of state. He got a new job and went about his life as if nothing happened. End of story, right? NOPE! Six months later, he was arrested for money laundering, fraud and theft. By that point he had spent most of the money that he'd stolen, so he couldn't even afford to bail himself out (he actually asked me if I would help pony up the money -- "I'm good for it, I swear!" he said. I told him to pound sand). So he spent 3 months in the county jail while he scammed his friends and family into "loaning" him bail money.

Long story short: he was able to get the money laundering charge dismissed, but he still ended up pleading guilty to fraud and theft and spent a year in jail. His wife left him -- not because he went to jail, but because the money ran out. He's out of jail now, back working in sales and trying to convince his ex-wife to take him back. It's pretty pathetic. But I don't feel sorry for him. He never did pay back the people who posted his bail.

 
I gave my friend the benefit of the doubt and when we saw him, he told me it was true. He got 18 years.

--

It’s disgusting and it makes me ill. He deserves to be in prison forever.
Based on your response, I am assuming that the crime involved young children.

So......why on earth would he tell you that it was true? Did he mistakenly think that you would express sympathy or something?

 
Based on your response, I am assuming that the crime involved young children.

So......why on earth would he tell you that it was true? Did he mistakenly think that you would express sympathy or something?
Yes, it involved a child. When I heard the rumor, I wanted to give my friend the benefit of the doubt as my wife and I never would have thought he could do such a thing. 

He really didn’t have a choice in telling me the truth. It was out and known at this point. Once confronted by the evidence against him, he turned himself in to the police and confessed. He was out on bail for a few months and then sentenced to prison. 

If I can give him any credit, once caught, he did not fight anything. Because of that, the child was never forced to testify or even be interviewed extensively by the police. My friend also got a longer prison sentence by going this route but I told him he deserved a life sentence. 

 

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