It was not long until I was to try suicide again. The outcome was close to the same. After I was over the hepatitis I was put into a holding tank with about thirty other inmates. This was where I was about to learn what life in a county jail was really like.

Being in an overcrowded jail is truly a hell on earth. The county jail holding tanks are made to fit fifteen inmates at a time but being that there was an overcrowding problem with the nation’s jails at that time, there was anywhere from thirty to fifty inmates in the holding tank at one time. Jailhouse rapes where fairly common. Inmates that where unable to defend themselves or were too afraid to fight if someone came up to them and took something of theirs and did nothing about it were easy prey. Well, that was a very big mistake, because that was viewed as a sign of weakness by the predators in there, and that was when they would start plotting to rape you. This was something that I learned by watching others and after about my second week in it was my turn to get tested.

Another inmate stole my cigarettes. I found out who did it and I went to him and asked for them back. I proceeded to try to kick his face in. Once the man was unconscious I took my smokes back. Later that week after he returned from the infirmary I overheard him plotting with a few of the clique that he associated with to catch me the next time I was in the shower. This was in the evening. I had to sleep on the floor of the dayroom area that night and I stayed awake all night. The next morning after worrying that whole night over what to do I decided to take a few pencils that I had, about five of them, and work him over with them. So I did. I stabbed this guy about seven times with a handful of five pencils. Needless to say none of his friends stepped in to help him. When the guards came in to get him to take him to the hospital it was quite amazing that no one out of all the people in the holding tank had seen or heard anything. Not only that but another inmate that knew what was going on grabbed me before the guards came in and pulled me into the cell that he had a bunk in and took the pencils away from me and made me change into a new set of cloths that he had hidden under his bunk. This guy’s name was Mike. He was in for manufacture of methamphetamine. After I had changed clothes he took what I had on and with a homemade razor knife he cut the blood stained clothes up into smaller pieces and preceded to flush them down the toilet. After that Mike got me to move into the cell that he and three other guys occupied where he kind of kept an eye out for me cause after that I got to where I would sleep all day and would only wake at night after everyone else was asleep and every night I would find my evening meal there waiting for me. I gave my breakfast and lunch to Mike and in return he would hide my evening meal away for me. I lived like that for a good three months until the depression got to me again, and once again, I attempted suicide. After another blood transfusion I was returned to the county jail but this time I was placed in segregation so that the jailers could keep a better eye on me.

In the county jail I met a person, well three people, that made a dent in my memory. The first was a jailer named Mr. Stevens. Mr. Stevens did nothing more but talk to me, that was all. He kept me occupied and would not let me sleep all day. Next was a nurse named C.K. I don’t know her real name but she would bring me books to read and puzzles to keep my mind occupied and she will always have a place in my heart. She made me realize that I was someone that mattered to another person and she gave me a will to want to stay alive. And the third person I will mention is A.J. McConnell and what Mr. McConnell did was nothing more than be nice to me. He did his job as a jailer but he was nothing other than nice. C.K. had come to me and asked me if I wanted something to do and I, of course, said yes. She talked the sheriff into letting me paint the segregation floor of the jail. Well this took me about a month by myself, when all of a sudden the sheriff decided that I could not do it anymore. I could not understand why I was not allowed to paint and no one could give me a reason. I had gotten quite used to being able to roam around the halls of the county jail. I was a model prisoner. I had gained the respect of a few people while I was in there and they saw me for more than the killer that I thought I was and felt very bad about. I just could not understand why this privilege, that I had and was working very hard to keep, was now being taken away without cause and, well, it hurt me. Being that I still was not very mentally stable I was about to attempt suicide for the fourth time. This time I was determined to succeed.

I scammed a razor off another inmate and I braided a rope out of a bed sheet. I climbed up on the small writing desk that was in the cell and tied the homemade rope to a light that stuck out of the wall. Then I took a razor blade out of the razor and remembering what a county sheriff had told me on the previous try "son you got to cut lengthwise up your wrist to do it right". So that was what I did, and then I stepped off the table.

I must not have been there long before I was found again and cut down and no matter how you cut your wrist I found they can be stitched up. After that CK, knowing how down I was, showed up one day with a puppy. It’s kind of funny, this little dog didn’t care who I was or what I did just as long as I played with it and loved it. Now it was a black lab pup and of course being that I was in jail I could not keep the dog but CK would sneak this pup in whenever she got the chance up until the day I left for prison. I don’t really understand what had changed but I never attempted suicide again after that.

Well, as all this other stuff was happening, I was also being indicted. The grand jury would not indict me for murder in the first, second, or third degrees but they did indict me on the charge of involuntary man slaughter. This was the first time that I had ever had a felony charge against me. I had a few brushes with the law when I was younger and my dealings with Tom where never known to any law enforcement so I had a clean record. I had a fairly good court appointed lawyer who told me to take this to trial and he thought I could get off with probation. I, on the other hand, felt that I deserved to go to prison so when the district attorney offered me a five-year sentience that was non aggravated I accepted it and was off on my way to prison. I had about another week to go sitting in the county jail before I was on my way to the diagnostics unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville Texas. What a shock this was. Upon arrival you are stripped, searched, deloused, showered and your head is shaved. Also, to make things more interesting there was a smart-ass in amongst us who kept wise-cracking to the guards. Well the guards finally had enough of him and preceded to beat the shit out of all of us using night sticks. There where about twenty of us, we were all buck-ass nekkid and when the guards were through we where thoroughly beaten.

Once we where done with our ass-whooping we were given cells and allowed to go to commissary--the ones that could walk that is. The next day we were all herded into the infirmary for x-rays, a physical, tetanus shots, and to have any broken bones set from the day before. The day after that we where assigned an inmate id number, finger printed, given a statement on what we were in for and had to strip again to show any distinguishing marks that might have been on our bodies. The next and final day at the diagnostics unit was spent talking to guidance counselors about what programs an inmate could get into and you had a trip to see a shrink, then it was back to the cell. The next day everyone on the cell block was shipped to the Goree unit for classification and your first parole hearing. Some inmates never got past here. As a matter of fact, about fifty percent of the people that were on the bus with me were released that day without ever going any farther. I, on the other hand, was considered a risk by the parole board and received my first set off, and at that time was misclassified as a high security prisoner and was sent to the Ellis unit.

Ellis was a very foreboding place. It is home to some of Texas’ most hardened convicts. It’s also home to death row. I learned two very important things while living at Ellis: 1. Never change the TV from Days of our Lives, it will get you killed. 2. Never tell a death row inmate good morning, cause there is nothing good about their mornings, their evenings, or their afternoons. The ones that are going to die and know they are going to die do not give a shit and will be more than happy to kill you just for looking at them wrong. Granted, whenever they were out in the general population they were under guard and where chained up but then again handcuffs could strangle a person pretty toughly. And the reason you never changed the TV channel, well at least I didn’t the third day I was on Ellis.

I decided one day after lunch that I was going to go watch a little TV in the day room area. There were two other inmates in there already watching TV. One was a black guy who was sitting on a bench right in front of the TV and the other was a Mexican sitting right behind him. Well, the black guy was wanting to change the channel but the little Mexican dude was watching Days of our Lives. The black guy, not giving a shit, jumped up and started changing the channel, disrespecting the Mexican. The Mexican did not take to kindly to this. He wanted the Black guy to find what he wanted to watch and sit down. Then the black guy turned to the Mexican guy, jumped at him a little, and asked him if he had a problem with it, to which the Mexican replied "no" so the black guy sat back down. Again in front of the Mexican. The Mexican without ever saying a word reached down into the sole of his boot, pulled out a toothbrush that he had sharpened at one end and melted razor blades into, and proceeded to stab the black guy. When he was done he got up and went and changed the TV back to Days of our Lives. I left the day room never to return for the rest of my stay on Ellis. I figured I would just read a book.

I decided that I wanted to do more than just sit around and work for free for the state so I started back to high school. I finished in less than three months. Then I thought I would give college a try so I took the SAT and passed fine. The first series of studies I would take was administrative office management. I, being able to study almost day and night, I was able to complete the course of study before the end of the year and got this nice diploma from the Temple junior college. I had received a BA in less than a year. Soon after that I came up for my next parole hearing at which I was informed that at my first hearing I was misclassified and was to be shipped from Ellis 1 to the medium to light security farm of Hilltop. I was to go immediately, I was not paroled.

The only bad thing about Hilltop was after coming from a high security pressure cooker like Ellis to a place that now reminds me of "boys town" was quite a culture shock. Ellis had some of the cream of the crop as far as cons go. You had your lifers that knew they had no hope of parole; they were the murders, the rapists, the armed robbers. These were people that you knew, just by the look of them, to stay clear of. Then there were the people you knew to stay clear of or make friends with. You showed them respect if they deserved it or not and you showed no weakness to them or it was like drawing vultures to the kill. At Hilltop the average age of the inmate was twenty-five, the average severity of their crime was breaking and entering, grand theft, or forgery, and the longest sentence that I saw on Hilltop was twenty years for a guy that committed armed robbery. I was not on Hilltop a full hour before I was beating the shit out of a guy. Right after I got to Hilltop I was run through the shower. Well at the same time the Hilltop yard squad was taking their showers and being I was what these guys thought was new meat, one of them whistled at me and slapped me on the ass. Well I turned around and punched the guy so damn hard that I fractured my arm and he just went down. I didn’t get to finish my shower. I was made to get dressed and was marched to the captains' office along with a few witness. I was taken into the captain’s office and this guy was pretty fair. He asked me what happened and I told him the truth. He looked through my folder and saw where I had just came from and shook his head. He then asked me if the story I gave him was going to be the same from the other guys and I told him that I believed that it would. He then talked to two other inmates and sent me to the infirmary under guard where my arm was X-rayed and being that though it was broken it didn’t really move anywhere so it was placed in a cast and the cast was allowed to set for a little while and then I was escorted back to the captain’s office where I was informed that I had put the other guy in the hospital but being that it was him that laid hands on me first no charges were to be brought against me. I was to work for the captain until he could find a suitable job for me.

The next day I started asking about what kinds of vocational training were available on the Hilltop unit and soon I was enrolled in classes for electrical trades, which I really enjoyed. The classes in theory of electricity amazed me and contrary to poplar belief Benjamin Franklin did not discover electricity. It was the Greeks. But anyway, electricity intrigued me. While in prison I was allowed to experiment. I was allowed to build a Tesla coil. Also in class we built a machine that would shrink a quarter down to the size of a nickel using a small but extremely powerful electric magnet, some very large capacitors, and a large amount of electricity. It was quite amazing. The experiment would usually end with quite an explosion followed by a bright ball of electric plasma that was undischarged current that would take a few minutes to dissipate in the air. It looked like a ball of lightening. But when all was over there would be a shrunken quarter. I finished up my schooling and came up for parole again and once again I was turned down but I did learn one thing: I was not going to come out of prison the same person that I was when I went in to prison. I made a promise to myself that very first day right after the beating that this was not a life that I wanted to return to and I was not going to. I was finally released from prison on December 20, 1992.

I was never release on parole, I was released on what was called a mandatory release date. That is where your good time and the time that you had severed equaled up to the full extent of your sentence. In short, I either had to do something so the state could take away my good time or by law they had to let me go. And so they did.

I called my mother from the bus station in Gatesville Texas. I was forty-seven miles away from home and fortunately for me she would come see me while I was in and we managed to develop a pretty good relationship that we still enjoy today. The first few months after my release were a little difficult because of the adjustment of free life and the need to find a job having the skills that I had acquired. I thought finding a job would be a breeze but you know what there isn’t much need for an office manager that also happens to be an ex-con even if he is a licensed CPA. So after about six weeks of going to every damn place in Waco trying to get a job in an office I gave up and went to work at Whatabuger. I flipped hamburgers for a whole two weeks till I got a job dispatching wreckers. I figured what the hell, that beats flipping burgers. I did that for two years and in that two years I took up drag racing motorcycles till I broke a leg, then I switched to cars.

I met my soon to be wife. I was now twenty-one. After I got married I went to work for the commercial metals steel group as an industrial electrician, where I learnt even more, due to an accident with an air tank that almost cost me the use of my right hand I ended up going to school for industrial hygiene and was trained by the department of labor and became a safety director. I started traveling around doing safety inspections for commercial metals. Also at the same time I became interested in computers and started teaching myself how to build networks and computers and how to administrate networks. Well the steel company found out about this and took interest and also gave me some very valuable training in this field. After working for them for four and a half years as a safety directory/network administrator, I decided that I liked computers better and went to work full time as a network admin. Which is where I am today.

I have to admit it’s a long way from being an addicted kid who was headed nowhere to where I am now. And to tell ya the truth, my life has gotten pretty damn boring since my release from prison. I have a beautiful wife and child that I would be lost without and sometimes I look at them in disbelief.

All I can say is that I have proven myself to be more than I ever thought possible. I hate that I had to take someone’s life to do it, and there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him.

I have to admit that I owe my life to a dead man.