43, currently imprisoned
Marilyn appears tired but optimistic as she talks with us in the sterile, claustrophobic visiting room at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facilty, Colorado. She has blonde hair, bright, clear blue eyes, and a pale complexion that reflects a life spent largely confined indoors. After years of sexual abuse and violence, Marilyn had finally started to get her life on track, providing for herself and her young sons. Then, in 1996, she was involved in her boyfriend’s death, and is now serving a seventy-year sentence for second-degree murder. During our meetings, Marilyn expressed regret over some of the decisions she’s made in her life, and how she misses the life she’d created for herself and her children. She spoke to us of the events that led to her imprisonment, of changing conditions in prison, and of the degrading strip-searches she and her fellow inmates fought to put an end to.
MY HOME LIFE WAS NEVER VERY STABLE OR CONSTANT
I was born in California. My parents divorced when I was about six, and I lived with my mom after that. I have lots of good memories of my father from when I was little and he was with my mom, and it was good after they first separated too.
I always liked school, and I did well in my classes. But I never really had many friends. It’s hard to fit in when you move around so much and you’re the new kid all the time.
I have one older full-blood sister and one younger half-brother, Samuel, and then there are some steps that I don’t claim. My mom got married to her second husband, Frank, about two years after she and my dad divorced. Frank was sexually abusive toward me. I can say that now, finally. I remember, when I was about eight, him telling me to sit on his lap when no one else was home. He would rub my chest and fondle me—I didn’t even have breasts. He would say it was “our little secret.” One time we all tried to get away from him and he took a shotgun to us. My sister was holding my baby brother in the car, and I was in the front seat with my mom. I remember Frank with the shotgun, trying to bust through the window of the car. My mom took us to my aunt’s house, and she and Frank divorced shortly after that.
My mom mostly bartended for a living, which is how she met her third husband, Sandy—his name was Jimmy Sanderson but everyone called him Sandy. Shortly after he and my mom got married, when I was about nine years old, he sent my sister to live with my dad in Kansas. She had snuck out of the house one night, and I was not allowed to let her back in. When I came home from school the next day, my sister was gone. I can never forgive Sandy for that. After my sister was out of the house, we moved as a family to Colorado. Sandy adopted my brother and me, so that’s why I have his last name. My relationship with Sandy was stormy because he was an alcoholic and he was emotionally abusive to everyone. He was a control freak and wouldn’t let me do anything. He was also physically abusive to my little brother, and he molested me a couple of times. When I was thirteen or fourteen, I was sleeping on the couch, and Sandy had been drinking. I woke up and he was sitting there. He stuck his hand in my shirt, and I asked him to please stop. He said, “Oh, I didn’t realize.” But then he did it again. A few weeks after that, I remember I was taking a shower and I looked up and he was just watching me. I was so afraid of him.
I left my mom and Sandy’s house when I was sixteen and went to live with my dad and stepmom in Kansas. At first everyone got along. They gave me much more freedom than my mom and Sandy had, and I let it go to my head after being caged for so long. My dad and stepmom didn’t check up on me, and I had no curfew. I could just do what I wanted; I was smoking marijuana, I was drinking. It was not a good time for me. The day after I graduated from high school, my dad took me to the Greyhound station to head back to Colorado. I was seventeen at the time, and it was another eighteen years before I had contact with my dad again.
NO ONE REALLY KNEW ABOUT THE VIOLENCE
I lived in Colorado for about a year after I came back from Kansas. That year, I got pregnant and had my first son, Nathan. I gave him up for adoption because I kind of flipped out after I had him. After that happened, I moved to California. I was eighteen, almost nineteen. I moved in with my aunt and uncle in the San Francisco Bay Area for a little while and worked at a health club they owned. Things start to get fuzzy around this time, because I started doing drugs. The first time I did it, I’d been out the night before and I was so tired, but I had to get going and go to work. Someone at work gave me some crank. She told me to try it, that it would help to get me going, so I did. It did get me going, and I was shaking and felt like my eyes were going to oscillate out of my head. That’s how it started.
At the time I was dating this guy Armando, and I ended up moving in with him. He was the garage attendant at the building where I worked. He was also a drug dealer, so after that I started doing crank all the time. I was really, really addicted. I couldn’t wake up in the morning unless I had it, and I couldn’t even go to sleep at night unless I had it. It was a horrible thing.
During the four years we were together, Armando and I would get in fights all the time. I used to go to work with bruises and black eyes and who knows what else. I would try to leave, but he would always say he would kill me and leave me in a dumpster and no one would ever know. After one fight when I felt like I had to escape, I moved back to Colorado and started living with my family. A short time after that I found out I was pregnant, and Armando convinced me to move back to California.
I went back and forth for a while between Armando in California and my family in Colorado. During this time, I had my son Tom, in 1991, but I was still hanging out with Armando and doing drugs here and there. My mom gave me an ultimatum and said, “It’s either your baby or your drugs,” so I stopped. Whenever I would think about getting high, I would think about not having my baby. I’m in no way saying that it was easy. The decision was easy; it was the follow-through that was tough.
The other issue is that when I had Tom, it was very obvious he wasn’t Armando’s, because my son is half black, and Armando is Filipino. Armando hated black people, and I was worried he would do something to harm the baby or me, or both of us. I didn’t want to take chances, so I finally decided to come back to Colorado for good.
MY BROTHER HAD EVERYTHING TAKEN FROM HIM BECAUSE OF ME
In Colorado I worked odd jobs, mostly fast food, and at a factory. I worked for temp agencies and when I got pregnant with my youngest, Timothy, I went on welfare. He was born in 1994. But by the middle of 1995, I got off all assistance except the food stamps. I was working a good job, and I bought us a new car, a Subaru wagon. It wasn’t actually new, but it was nice and new to us. Then it all happened.
I met a man, Tony, and it went very quickly from start to finish. It was probably after two months that he ended up moving in with me and the kids. He took care of them while I went to work, which I was fine with.
Tony’s death is why I’m in prison. On February 17, 1996, Tony and I got into an argument, and I put him out of the house. He kept calling and calling, but I wouldn’t answer the phone. Later that night the phone rang and I thought it was a friend calling, but it was him. He convinced me to let him come over, but as soon as he walked in the door, he started yelling at me, beating me, raping me. I had been through this before with Armando, so I knew how to react and let it be as minimal as possible. Sunday, I woke up early, dressed myself and my baby Timothy—Tom was visiting his father—and I woke Tony up very lovingly. I didn’t want him to touch me, but I was trying to wake him up in a good mood. Then I took Timothy to my sister’s house.
I was really freaked out. When I was at my sister’s, I had a conversation on the phone with my brother Samuel about Tony raping me and beating me. Later that day, I left Timothy at my sister’s and went home. My plan was that if Tony wasn’t there, I was going to hurry up and lock the doors. But when I walked in he was there, making dinner.
Then my brother came over with a friend of his. I went upstairs, and I heard my brother tell Tony to get up and get out. Tony refused, saying he wasn’t going anywhere, and then I heard them start fighting. I don’t remember much after that. I was taking a lot of Xanax1 during that time, so my memory is fuzzy. I just know that Tony ended up dead. Later on I learned the cause of death was blunt-force trauma. My brother and his friend took Tony’s body somewhere, and I went to the police and made up a story about some guy coming over. I don’t even remember what I said exactly. Then somebody called the police and said that they thought my brother had been involved in Tony’s death, so they called him in for questioning. At first he denied it, but two days later he turned himself in. He tried to say it was just him involved, but once I found out my brother had confessed, I told the truth and I got arrested. My brother’s friend was also arrested, but he lied and cooperated. He did maybe eight years only.
After my arrest I was so distraught that for days I rocked and cried, rocked and cried. I was scared of everybody in jail. I was afraid I was going to get beat up. I never even really thought I would come to prison at all. Until the day I walked into prison in 1997, I was like, This isn’t real, this isn’t real, this isn’t real.
I was charged with multiple counts, for first-degree murder, conspiracy to murder, and kidnapping. The prosecutors told me that if I went to trial the state would take my children and there was no chance I’d ever see them ever again. My attorneys, who were court-appointed, agreed with this, and I believed them. So I took a plea agreement for sixty to eighty years.
EVERYONE HAS BEEN AFFECTED
For the longest time I didn’t take any responsibility for Tony’s death. I thought, I didn’t physically kill him, so why was it my fault? But now I have to accept responsibility. It is my fault that Tony is dead. It’s my fault that my brother is in prison and my sister got charged with accessory after the fact. My brother had everything taken from him because of me. He got married in jail because his girlfriend was pregnant at the time. His son is going to be fifteen this year, and he’s never been able to be a dad to him. I feel really horrible for what I’ve done to everyone else—not just Tony and my brother, but my sister, my kids, my mother. Also Tony’s family, his friends—everyone’s been affected.
My sons Tom and Timothy were bounced around between my mom, Sandy and my sister for about six to eight months. Some family friends also agreed to take them after I was in prison. My mom convinced me that it would be better for them to stay together and not be moved around so much. After I was sentenced, the family friends started talking about adopting them, and I was against it at first because I was still in denial about everything that had happened; I thought I was going home any time now. Finally, after two or three years in prison, I said okay to the family friends adopting my kids. I agreed because I wanted the kids to have stability, security, and parents who loved them. I didn’t want to risk the state taking them away permanently. I felt so depressed to give them up, but I knew I was doing the right thing for them.
Today my sons are seventeen and twenty. I haven’t seen them since they were about two and five. I don’t see them because I think their adopted parents feel it’s better for them this way. I have no relationship with them, and I’ve never heard from them directly. I have no idea what they think or feel about me, which is strange as a mother. A few months ago, I got a message from my youngest, Timothy, through my niece. All it was was “Hi.” When my niece told me that, my heart bloomed with happiness. I was just so happy, I cried and cried. I was telling everyone, “My baby said hi.” It was great. It still makes me smile.
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS I HAD SEEN
I’ve been incarcerated at three different facilities in the Colorado system. I arrived in the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center (DRDC) in the middle of 1997. That was before they built the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility, and everyone, men and women, had to go through DRDC. They’re supposed to decide where you belong after that, but they just kept me there on permanent assignment for about a year. Then in July of 1998, I got sent to “Cañon,” which is Colorado Women’s Correctional Facility, in Cañon City. I spent six years there before they brought me to Denver Women’s Correctional Facility (DWCF) in 2004.
Each facility is different. At DRDC, we were treated like humans. Officers would joke around with us and talk to us. If there was something wrong, they cared. They would say, “Hey, Marilyn, are you all right? Do you need to talk to someone? Do you want me to call Mental Health for you?” It wasn’t, “Prisoner X, what’s your problem?”
At Cañon, it was way more spacious. There were only about 200 women there. We had a yard, a tennis court, a baseball field, a volleyball court. It was expansive and it was nice. We got to go out into the yard, sit on the grass, look at the flowers, lean up against the trees, take nice pictures. There were chain-link fences, but you could see outside the facility. There were two horses on the land nearby, and every once in a while you could catch a glimpse of them. The first time I saw the horses, I thought I was seeing things! After being caged up and not seeing any animals other than rats and snakes and spiders for so long, seeing the horses was just incredible. You could tell they were old and had been around a while, but I thought they were the most beautiful things I had seen in my whole life. I used to imagine they were mine, and that we were on a beach somewhere.
I WONDER IF THE STAFF CONSIDER US HUMAN AT ALL
Some of the staff at Cañon, at least when I first got there, were similar to the staff at DRDC. They talked to you, and the inmates called them by their first names or their nicknames. But after a few years, prison administration was really cracking down on the staff being familiar with us. They had to call us by our last names, and we had to do the same. After a while they got new staff in, new captains, sergeants, and lieutenants, and it started turning into a real prison. The staff started being mean, and it just trickled down through the system.
Some of the staff would tell us that, in their training, they were taught that basically we are all animals and they shouldn’t trust us with anything. They were taught to go the extra step to take our humanity away from us. It is so bad now that I seriously wonder if they consider us human at all. Women are affectionate creatures, and we need physical contact. But in prison, we can’t ever touch anyone. We can’t hug, hold hands, or pat each other on the shoulder to comfort each other, because you’ll get a write-up for sexual abuse. I’ve created friends and families in prison, but I can’t hug the women who I think of as my aunties.
Of course this is because of all the problems with rape and sexual assault in prison. But that happens more often between staff and inmates than between two inmates. Sexual assault between staff and inmates happens fairly frequently, but it is undercover. Sometimes it starts off being consensual, but then later it becomes an abusive situation.
A lot of women in prison are very vulnerable, and there are staff members who take full advantage of that. It used to be easy for women to be sexually assaulted here at DWCF, but now they have cameras everywhere, so it’s not so easy. They started putting the cameras in a year or two ago, in the units, in the work areas, in the storm room, everywhere. But there are still areas where sexual assault can happen, like in closets that don’t have cameras.
One time an officer came into my room during count. They aren’t supposed to inspect while we’re there; they’re supposed to make us leave the room. But he came in, and he kept telling me to touch him—you know where. He said, “Come on, just do it, no one will know.” I kept refusing, and he finally left. This sort of thing happens all the time.
There is a lot of verbal abuse by staff that goes on in prison, a lot of emotional abuse and screaming and yelling at us. Under the rules, you cannot have your head covered at night, because the staff have to be able to see that you are there. They count us at about 2 a.m. and they count us again at 5 a.m. If they don’t see us or they don’t think we’re moving, they’ll bang their flashlight on the bars. It’s a loud cracking noise in the dead of night. A lot of us have PTSD,2 and a lot of us have other emotional issues and problems with loud noises. When they bang the flashlight, I am up for hours with my heart pounding because they startled me so badly. So many of us are sleep deprived, because it’s hard to get a deep sleep when you’re in this environment.
There is little access to hygiene products unless your family sends money. We get one roll of toilet paper one week, then two rolls the next week, and if we need more we have to buy it. Soap, shampoo, tampons, toothpaste, toothbrush, lotion, etc. all have to be purchased from Canteen, which is sort of like a store that you order from. Things are expensive, and if you have no help from the outside, you’re pretty much screwed. As far as earning money from our prison jobs, most people only get 60¢ a day for five days a week of work. Out of that, 20 percent is taken for restitution owed to the state. Generally speaking, most people only have about $10 a month to buy all their hygiene products, which isn’t enough when you consider how much everything costs.
THE STRIP-SEARCHES WERE BEYOND HUMILIATING
One of the worst things the staff put us through was the strip-searches. Before when we got strip-searched, we’d give them our clothes and stand there in the room with nothing on. You’d run your fingers through your hair, show them the inside and the back of your ears, and run your fingers inside your mouth. If you have a belly, or boobs that hang, you’d lift them up. Then you’d raise your arms up, lift your feet up and wiggle your toes, bend over and cough, and that was it. That was bad enough, but after a while you got used to it.
Then after a while they started the “labia lifts” (that’s what we called it). It wasn’t just bending over and coughing. We had to spread our labia, and staff would make us cough while they were looking. They gave you an option: you could either lean forward, squat a little bit and spread your lips apart while they looked, or you could put your leg up onto a chair or a toilet and just cough, and you didn’t have to touch yourself. Either way, it is invasive. If it’s not to their satisfaction, they tell you to do it again. Then they tell you to turn around and face them and spread your most intimate parts apart so they can inspect. It is beyond humiliating. They were having us do it in a room that didn’t have a sink, so we couldn’t even wash our hands afterward. It was horrible.
Some staff would get right up on you and inspect in there with a flashlight. Now, if there’s a legitimate concern with a particular inmate, with a history of smuggling contraband, that is one thing. But they were making all of us do this every single day. It was awful. Sometimes it was one officer at a time, sometimes two. When there were two officers, they would talk about you and what they were doing with you as if you weren’t even there.
There is a captain who, when she stripped me out, said, “Now I want you to do this. I need you to bend over all the way, grab your butt cheeks, lift your butt up, and cough as you come up so I can see both of your holes.” I said, “What? I have been here well over ten years, and no one has ever told me to do it like that.” I felt extremely violated. I went back to my room and cried, I was so upset.
A lot of us talked about it and started filing grievances. Eventually the press found out about it and the facility was forced to realize how violating the labia lift really was.3 At first the prison administration responded by making it discretionary, then they finally stopped the facility-wide strip-searches. Now, where I work, in the print shop, only one person a day gets stripped out at random. It is way better. But there are still some officers who think they’re supposed to do the labia lift, so it still happens.
THERE IS NO REAL MEDICAL CARE IN PRISON
If you have an obvious emergency or an injury, the prison staff will deal with you immediately. Otherwise, you submit a “kite,” which is a medical request form. You turn it in with your problem, and you may or may not hear back, and you may or may not get scheduled. You definitely won’t hear for at least a couple of weeks; it’s at the prison’s discretion. You can do a self-declared emergency, where you say you need to see someone right now, but they charge you $5 for it.
I’ve had some medical problems. The prison has been slow to respond to a serious foot problem I had, and they failed to give me pain medicine after a biopsy and a hysterectomy. The worst was about two years ago, when I woke up one morning and the left side of my face was drooping. My tongue felt like it was ten times bigger than my mouth. My mouth wouldn’t form words, even though my thoughts were working fine. At work that day, I was supposed to be the one answering the phone, but I told my boss I couldn’t do it because I could barely talk. There was obviously a problem. It hadn’t really occurred to me to go to medical at first, because I’d never had a good experience with medical since I’d been in prison. But a few days later I finally went. It took a few months for them to finally send me to an outside neurologist, who did a CT scan and an MRI. He found two white spots on my brain; one was the size of a silver dollar, and the other one was smaller. The neurologist expressed concern and said he needed to do some more tests. Next thing I know, they have me going to a Department of Corrections (DOC) neurologist, who could not figure out what was wrong with me. They did additional tests, but not the advanced tests the outside neurologist wanted. They did an eye test, a blood test, and a spinal tap. For the spinal tap, you’re supposed to lay still for a few hours after it, but they put me back in the truck to come back to prison, which was a bumpy, hour-long ride, and then I waited for hours before I got back to my unit. I felt like I was dying, and my head hurt worse than it ever has in my life.
I never saw the outside neurologist again. The DOC neurologist told me they thought it might be white-matter disease, which means I have spots on my brain. They said there was no way of telling what caused it so they couldn’t determine what it was for sure. I still have trouble getting the words from my brain to my mouth. And my face will still droop and I’ll have trouble talking. It happens to me a lot. They won’t let me see a neurologist any more, because they said no one can figure out a diagnosis so there’s no point. Of course I am concerned that there are spots on my brain, but I’m already resigned to the fact that nothing is going to happen while I am in prison. I’ll have to wait until I’m out to get real medical attention.
I STILL HAVE HOPE. I DON’T ACCEPT THAT PRISON IS MY FATE
The governor’s clemency board4 is meeting in June. My mom talked to someone at the governor’s office, and they told her that I’m first on the list of cases they’re considering. I’m very nervous about it. My clemency is being sought on the basis of sentencing disparity, and the fact that my involvement in the crime was minimal.
I find strength because I still have hope that I’ll get out. I don’t accept that prison is my fate, and that’s it. There are times when I just want to give up. I get overwhelmed with sadness and regret about everything; the knowledge that I was involved in a man’s life being taken, everything he missed out on, everything I missed out on, my children growing up not knowing me and how much I love them, my brother missing out on his son’s childhood. Those are things that can’t be gotten back. But my mom helps to give me hope. And my biggest hope is that someday I’ll have a relationship with my children. That keeps me going.
1 Alprazolam, a medication used to treat anxiety disorders and panic disorders. Side effects include memory impairment.
2 Post-traumatic stress disorder. For a description and a list of symptoms, see the glossary.
3 In a letter to the Colorado Department of Corrections before it had ended this practice, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote that “it is virtually inconceivable that the new requirement that prisoners hold open their labia contributes anything to prison security,” and noted, “prisoners at the DWCF [Denver Women’s Correctional Facility] have complained that the new breed of search exacerbates prior sexual trauma—an effect no doubt compounded by threats of being doused with pepper spray for noncompliance.”
4 A state-government board that meets to review clemency applications, with the power to commute sentences and grant reprieves and pardons for certain charges. People in prison may apply for clemency if their cases meet certain criteria defined by state law, and after all other judicial remedies have been exhausted.