CHAPTER 4

JUDGMENT DAY

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE SENTENCING HEARING on November 25, 1991, I received a surprising phone call at home. The Deputy U.S. Attorney was on the line.

During the last few months he’d usually sounded official, professional, neutral. But this time his tone was apologetic. He said, in effect, “I’m sorry we got you into this.”

I remembered how, soon after the investigation had started, I’d offered him a piece of friendly advice: “When you get to know me, you’re going to think, Why did we do this?”

Now he seemed to be admitting, “You were right.”

When I hung up, I felt a little vindicated —but not much. Then a chill went through me. Did he know or suspect something he couldn’t come right out and say? Something about tomorrow? Was he afraid that the judge wasn’t going to agree to probation?

I tried not to think about it; the stress was already bad enough. Even so, I gathered a few necessities together to bring with me in the morning —just in case things went wrong and they hauled me to jail.

The next morning, just before we went to the courthouse, our family and a few longtime friends gathered in a conference room where I worked.

Many of us were already feeling broken, crushed. Even with the probability of probation, we were worn out from the legal battle. Despite years of ups and downs in the real estate business, I’d never been involved in a lawsuit; fighting a felony charge was out of my league.

We’d met here to pray. As we did so for the next half hour, I couldn’t help sobbing.

My good friend Richard Beach did his best to lighten the mood. More than once in the last few weeks he’d joked, “Bo, if something bad happens and you have to go to prison, can I have that all-access pass the Denver Nuggets gave you so I can go in the arena and sit wherever I want to?”

Now, in that big conference room, he lifted his head and stared at my tear-stained face. “What about that pass?” he whispered.

Gari and the kids, meanwhile, tried to encourage me with a “treasure box” they made. They placed messages and objects in it as expressions of love and support.

One was a card from Ashley that said in part:

I know this is probably one of the hardest days you’ve had to face in your life. I am confident that what happens is for the best —we all have to trust God. He knows your heart —just like we all do. Your faith throughout this long process has taught me more than you’ll ever know. So, see —it’s already done a ton of good!

You are the most loyal, loving man, and even if you were to be in jail forever, I’d still be totally proud to have you as my dad.

All too soon it was time to head for the nearby courthouse. Finally managing to compose myself, I looked at my family.

“This is harvesttime,” I said. “Galatians teaches that whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. This is harvesttime for your father and for our family. Some of the harvest is already bad; we know that. I have to go through this legal process. But look for the good parts too. There will be good things to harvest here as well.”

I hoped I was right.

The day before, a friend had called and told me, “God has revealed to me in prayer that when the judge opens his mouth tomorrow, you will hear amazing grace.”

I hoped he was right too.

The Verdict

The hearing room at the Federal Courthouse held few surprises for anyone who’d watched a movie with a courtroom scene. The darkly paneled walls, the flags, the judge’s bench, the witness stand —it all looked pretty much as expected.

I’d been here before, about three weeks earlier, to submit my “guilty” plea. This was the final hearing.

The small crowd rose as a black-robed figure entered. Chief U.S. Judge Edward W. Nottingham Jr. sat down behind his gavel. He was a dark-haired, distinguished-looking man in his mid-40s.

He was not smiling.

“Please be seated,” he said. “Government’s case number 91-CR-334, United States of America v. Dudley W. ‘Bo’ Mitchell.”

I knew the purpose of the hearing —to bring finality to the plea-bargaining process, including sentencing. The cases and facts wouldn’t be presented. The judge would preside, calling as needed on me, my lawyer, the prosecutors, and a representative of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The judge asked several questions, mostly for clarification. He mentioned having received the pre-sentencing letter from Gari’s psychiatrist just that day.

The prosecuting team made its recommendation of probation.

After about 25 minutes, the judge said, “All right. Anything else? Well, I will hear from the government if the government wishes to make any statements.”

The Deputy U.S. Attorney rose to his feet. “Yes, Your Honor. I have a few comments I would like to make to the court.”

The stenographer’s hands flew over the keys to record his words:

This case has been very difficult for me. I have to state to the court, I have mixed emotions about it. Mr. Mitchell has been very forthright with us and very cooperative in our investigation. Based upon the information that we have available at this time, I can say to the court that Mr. Mitchell is the least culpable of any of the people in the scheme that’s before this court. Not every person who’s involved in this scheme has appeared before this court at this time. But I can tell the court, based on what we know at this time, that Mr. Mitchell’s culpability is the least of any of them.

There is another aspect of this case that I want to bring to the court’s attention. And that is I really, truly [believe] that Mr. Mitchell is remorseful. And he’s got the ability, based on the information I’ve received, to advise people through his ministry about the fraud that was committed in this case. In structuring any punishment in this case, I know the court has done this in the past, and I would strongly urge the court to include in any sentence a provision that the defendant speak to the public about white-collar crime and how he got in the middle of this and his culpability.

I’d like to talk about that for just a moment. I read a number of letters on the defendant’s behalf, and they indicate —and most of them indicate and Mr. Mitchell has indicated —that his behavior involving these “friends” was an aberration. Based upon what I have seen, I believe that’s true. And there in this case is the tragedy. The defendant’s reputation, except for this incident as I have seen it so far, has been very good —sterling, as a matter of fact. I believe that’s the word that Mr. Mitchell’s wife has used. I’m certain that he felt that in helping his friends by being a straw borrower, that that’s all he was doing —that is, helping his friends. In a sense his friends really cashed in on his friendship. . . .

The letters given [to] this court that I have seen have been truly impressive. In all the years of prosecution that I have done, I have never seen letters that speak so highly of an individual and from so many quarters of the community. The defendant spent, obviously spent a lot of time in his life giving of his talents, his time, and that is giving to the community and not taking away. That’s why I think this activity was an aberration. And that, your honor, as I said before, I think is the tragedy in this case.

The Deputy U.S. Attorney urged the court to take my cooperation into consideration. “Thank you,” he concluded, and sat down.

For a few moments my gratitude for his words nearly overwhelmed my anxiety. I didn’t applaud, but I could have.

I was glad he had tried to tell more of the whole story, the part the plea bargain hadn’t mentioned. It seemed to me that, for all its talk about wanting “the whole truth,” the judicial system hadn’t been all that eager to hear it.

That had certainly been the case at the brief hearing three weeks earlier when I’d entered my “guilty” plea. In this very room the judge had looked at me and asked, “Has anyone promised you probation?”

“No,” I’d said.

I’d wanted to say yes, but couldn’t. They hadn’t quite promised, even though they’d kept telling me the judge followed their recommendation 99.9 percent of the time.

I’d wanted to say, “But let me add to that, Judge, by saying they’ve all but promised me probation. They said they couldn’t put it in writing. They said you had the final say, but that you’d go along with their recommendation.”

Technically, my “No” had been a truthful reply. But it hadn’t been the full answer.

If I’d said, “I’ve been promised probation,” the judge probably would have just pounded his gavel and said, “This is not happening today. You all go back to work, and I’ll see you in a month.” And then we would have started the whole process again, with the same result.

Finally the moment that everyone was waiting for arrived.

I was instructed to stand as the sentence was pronounced.

Once again the court stenographer’s fingers flew as the judge spoke:

This case is difficult. I don’t agree with [the Deputy U.S. Attorney] concerning the tragedy of this sentencing. The tragedy of this sentencing and the tragedy of many sentencings it seems to me is that the sentence of the defendant [is] visited on other members of the family. And in this case I’m talking about Mrs. Mitchell, who evidently is in such [a] state . . . that her health may be adversely affected [if Mr. Mitchell is incarcerated]. And that, I think, is a true tragedy. Because other than marrying him, she didn’t have much to do with this as far as I can tell. That situation concerning Mrs. Mitchell gives me much pause and causes me to favor some sort of light sentencing here.

In addition, it appears to me, consistent with what the government has said, that it was not Mr. Mitchell who concocted this crime —that he came into the crime at the request of [the banker], who said he needed him to do something for two friends who had previously given a lot of money to his church, and Mr. Mitchell went along with that.

As he continued, the judge stated that he had concerns about the two loan transactions. There was confusion, he said, as to where the total of $200,000 had gone, and his comments caused me great frustration. He was essentially asking whether I had kept for my own use $35,000 for some reason. He wondered whether my friends had benefited from the full amount of $200,000.

I thought, What difference does that make? If I had kept all of the $200,000 for my own use we wouldn’t be here now discussing it.

The confusion his comments caused set a negative tone throughout the courtroom.

The judge went on to say,

And nevertheless what comes through in all of this is that Mr. Mitchell was not the mastermind of this scheme. He was not the bank officer who owed a fiduciary duty. He acted at the urgings of others.

On the other hand, I am convinced that these so-called white-collar crimes can be deterred, and they will be deterred, if a message goes out that people who are caught participating in this kind of scheme face more than a slap on the wrist. They face more than probation. They face jail time. And that purpose of sentencing, the purpose of general deterrence —deterrence of others who are in Mr. Mitchell’s position out there today —requires jail time in this case.

Jail time.

I swallowed, and the judge concluded:

Accordingly, Mr. Mitchell, on your plea of guilty to the one count information charging you with aiding and abetting bank fraud, it is the judgment and sentence of the court that you be committed to the custody of the Attorney General of the United States, and by him imprisoned for a period of 11 months.

And that, sir, is about the lightest sentence that I can give you consistent with the need for deterrence and consistent with factors that dictate the jail sentence.

When I heard that, my first thought was that the government had broken its “unofficial” promise to us. If I’d ever heard that even one day in prison was a real possibility, I’d have fought for my freedom and most certainly won. How could I have defrauded a bank when the president of the bank was the one who’d asked me to borrow the money and assured me that I qualified for the loans?

Imprisoned for a period of 11 months.

When I realized what the judge had said, the blood seemed to drain from my head. Dizzy and unsteady, I asked whether I could sit down. When permission was granted, I did.

Things quickly became chaotic. Ashley started crying hysterically. The Deputy U.S. Attorney stood up again, protesting.

“Your Honor,” he said, “I’m not sure you heard me. I said prison time is not merited in this case. There’s been no money lost. He’s been honest with us. He’s been helpful in this case.”

The judge’s frown deepened. “I heard it!” he snapped. “Now sit down!”

I thought, Wow. Something’s wrong with this judge.

Finally I stood back up, still shaky.

I turned to my attorney, who seemed more in shock than I was. I reminded him that I’d heard mention of self-commitment —turning myself in at the prison later —rather than letting myself be handcuffed and taken away immediately, which is what they seemed ready to do.

My attorney made the request.

The judge was reluctant, but said, “Because of Mrs. Mitchell’s illnesses, I’ll allow him a month to get his affairs in order and report to prison on January 6.”

The hearing was over. I turned to Gari and the kids. “You go up to [the Deputy U.S. Attorney] and give him a hug and tell him thanks,” I said.

He’d done his best. He’d been civil and professional throughout the whole process. Not being able to deliver on his part of the bargain was likely tough for him.

I reminded my kids, “Your dad has subjected us to this. I’m the one who’s put us in this position by my bad decisions seven years ago. So we’re going to make the best of it. There are only two choices when bad things happen: You surrender or you rebel. Well, we’re surrendering —to God. We’re making this a God deal.”

Despite the pain and anger they must have felt, they walked over and hugged the deputy.

Then, as I sat down again and tried to get my act together, I noticed Andy, my strapping teenager, wandering off by himself. He seemed to be heading for the back hallways of the courtroom. Uh-oh. Was he looking for the judge’s chambers? Did he want to confront him, maybe start a fight with him?

Somebody reeled him back into the courtroom. If he was trying to defend me, I appreciated it. But I thought, Hey, pal, don’t make things any worse.

Besides, Judge Nottingham must have had his reasons. Maybe he just assumed he was helping the world by sending me to prison.

But “general deterrence”? I guessed that meant he wanted to make an example of me. I wished he’d just sentenced me based on what I had done —not on the example I could be for others. That seemed odd and unfair to me.

I didn’t know what he thought of the letters my family and friends had sent. I wasn’t sure what he thought of the Deputy U.S. Attorney’s defense of me, either.

But apparently it wasn’t enough.

The Aftermath

When the hearing was over, we drove home and were greeted by relatives and a few visitors.

Most of us cried. All of us were in shock and couldn’t believe what had happened.

I looked around at the familiar faces. I have let everybody down, I thought. I’m not sure why this has happened, but I’ve disappointed everyone.

My next thought, though, was more practical. I have to start preparing for whatever this new life looks like.

The next morning Ashley and I started calling the federal prison at nearby Camp Englewood and asking, “If you are supposed to self-commit at a future date, what are you allowed to bring?”

We ended up making at least five phone calls to the prison, independent of each other and spaced days apart. Each time we heard a different answer. One person said, “Nothing. Just show up.” That seemed like terrible advice. What about clothes? Medicine?

The only consistent thing about the other replies was, “One Bible, one hardback book, and all the pornography you can pack.”

I felt like saying, “I don’t look at pornography, so I don’t have any to bring in. But thanks for letting me know.”

So, with less information than we would have liked, we started preparing to do what had been unthinkable just a few months before.

For me, that included resigning from several positions of responsibility. In fact, it pretty much required me to resign from my life.

I started with Cherry Hills Country Club. The morning after sentencing I wrote a letter of resignation, mostly to make things less awkward for my friends there. When an officer from the organization came over to see how I was doing, I gave him the note. As it turned out, the club eventually passed a new bylaw barring anyone convicted of a felony from being a member, so I would have been kicked out anyway.

Next I quit my position as associate pastor at Greenwood Community Church, which I’d helped found. I stood in front of the congregation and told them how sorry I was.

I resigned from the board of directors at Promise Keepers. Since I’d been involved in leading so many organizations and businesses and small groups, there were others, too.

Resigning was easier than I’d thought it would be. It didn’t feel embarrassing; it felt biblical, sound, and fair to all those institutions. It was the correct thing to do as a Christian leader.

You’ve done this, Bo, I reminded myself. You’ve created this —not them. It was only right to let people off the hook of having to explain my story over and over.

What was embarrassing to me was the way some people acted toward me. They said, “Well, you need to resign, because we can’t associate with you.”

Wasn’t that what I was doing? Did they need to be mean to me as I did so?

One pastor told me, “I am really tired of thinking about you, praying for you, and talking about your situation.”

Well, okay, I thought. How about if I just go away? It would make life easier on you.

Still, Gari and I worried about how some of these resignations would affect us financially. I wondered how I would keep the household going. Because of some real estate deals that hadn’t panned out, we were in debt —already tight month to month.

One of my employers basically said, “We’re not paying you anymore; we need to distance ourselves from you.” I was an embarrassment.

But not to Philip Anschutz.

I knew the Anschutz Family Foundation had reason to separate itself from me. That weighed heavily on my mind one day as my self-commitment loomed —and Phil called me into his office.

It was a humble office for a man with his accomplishments and assets —just Phil behind a desk, with a couple of chairs in front of the desk and a sofa to the side. He’d been in the same office as long as I’d known him, since 1982 when we’d met at church and become friends. After the sentencing hearing I felt I had disappointed him. I was embarrassed to be seen at his company, where I worked part-time. I wonder what these people think of somebody who’s this much of a bonehead, I thought.

But as I sat down in front of Phil, his expression was kind, his voice soft —even sorrowful. He said, “We’re with you. We’re sorry this happened. We’ll close the door to your office and pick up our dreams when you get back.”

As I recall, he added, “I know you were just trying to do what you always do, which is help your friends.”

It was humbling, and an amazing, unforgettable statement of friendship. With his high profile and involvement in a variety of companies, it would have been understandable if he’d distanced himself from me.

Instead he said, “We will send your checks to your wife.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Phil’s generosity would allow me to go to prison with at least a little peace about how Gari was going to pay the bills.

Phil was a stark contrast to another group I was working with. They knew us well, but acted as if I were Al Capone. They seemed to say, “Boy, we need to pretend as fast as we can that we’ve never heard of Bo Mitchell.”

Phil more than made up for that. It felt good to be understood and supported. It made me always want to repay him for that kindness.

Still, I felt the most appropriate thing to do in most of my other leadership roles was to step back. I was obeying Scripture; at the moment I wasn’t qualified to be a leader.

I felt that way about going to prison, too. I wasn’t going there to be a leader, either.

I was going in to shut up —so I could hear what lessons God wanted me to learn.

Whispers from God

So far we’d assumed that I’d be incarcerated at Englewood Federal Detention Center, about 30 minutes from our house. My family and friends would be able to visit. It wasn’t probation, but it was something.

Then, at 8:10 the Monday morning after the sentencing, I answered my phone at the office. It was my introduction to how things really worked.

A brusque male voice at the other end of the line informed me that I’d been assigned to a prison in South Dakota.

I almost gasped. That was at least 500 miles away.

“I —I thought I’d be going to Englewood,” I said.

The man scoffed. “You’re just a number in the system,” he said. “You don’t get to choose where you go to prison.” The conversation was over.

Numbly I hung up. What should I do? I thought. Call home? Gari would need to know.

But before I could call her, the phone rang again.

It was one of the last people on earth I expected to hear from: the attorney for the banker who’d asked me to do what the government saw as “straw borrowing.”

“Have you been assigned?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, “as a matter of fact, just five minutes ago.”

“Well, we can get that changed in 24 hours,” he replied. “Here’s what you need to do.” He proceeded to give me detailed directions about walking to a certain nearby building in Denver, going to a particular room down a specific hallway, and filling out a certain form.

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

He said, “I know more right now about how the federal system works than any other attorney in this city.”

I was in no position to disagree. I’d heard he was a high-class lawyer. And I knew he’d done a good job for his client, my banker friend.

And he did it —he got me reassigned to Englewood. I saw it as a miracle.

But why did he do it? I wondered.

I took it as a major whisper from God —a reminder that He hadn’t forgotten me.

Not long after that I received another surprising call.

This time it was the banker himself, the one who’d asked me to take out the loans. He was already in jail for his culpability and actions.

“You’ll be okay,” he said. “Just calling to tell you a couple of things.”

He explained a part of the prison admission routine called the Cold Room.

“They’ll just sit you in there and leave you alone,” he said. “It’s all part of the brainwashing process, or the process of acclimating you to the submissive life as an inmate.”

It was a pretty awkward conversation.

I couldn’t tell whether he was afraid of me, wanted to find out whether I was angry with him, or just trying to help. I guessed he was just trying to help.

I appreciated his warning. But I couldn’t help thinking that he could have helped so much more just by being truthful about my loans and my conduct.

Impending Doom

The holidays were not exactly happy that year.

We visited my sister, Lana, for Christmas, but it was a somber time. Slowly I felt more and more broken. My spirit was being splintered under the weight of what I faced.

How do you prepare for something like this?

Since the sentencing, I’d tried to keep in mind what Gari and I had gleaned from Kay Arthur’s teaching about being refined through trials. I was determined to keep my mouth shut in prison, to fall on my face before God, and find out what He wanted me to learn. Gari and I weren’t joyfully saying, “Hey! Wonder what God’s got for us!” But we were thinking with broken hearts, There’s got to be an end to this. God’s in control, so let’s see what He has.

We prayed constantly for His protection, for any word of comfort He could give us, for assurance that He was in the midst of this, that we hadn’t slipped through His fingertips, and that He had allowed this to happen for a greater purpose.

We prayed these things as a family, though it wasn’t easy. Andy was angry. Ashley was in shock, often tearful.

Gari was strong, supportive, and kept a smile on —even though she must have felt like crying.

It was like enduring your worst nightmare, and then waking up feeling relieved, thinking, Oh, I’m glad that was just a dream —only to find that it wasn’t.

As bad as events had been so far —reading reports about myself in the paper, feeling terrorized by the government, feeling misled about probation and the plea-bargaining process —they were just a warm-up. Now I was crossing from the judicial side to the Bureau of Prisons, with no idea how life-threatening that might be.

As people in the households around us strung Christmas lights and prepared for the holiday, a dark cloud seemed to hang over the home of my sister and brother-in-law. Lana and her husband, Charlie, did all they could to help. They were very giving, and it was good to be with them. But when some other extended family members talked to me, they seemed to be saying, You were stupid. You never should have been trapped in the process. You never should have talked to the FBI. You should have had a better attorney. You’ve fallen through a trapdoor that you never should have been near.

As far as I was concerned, that phase was over and didn’t need to be rehashed. We’re going to make this a God deal, I kept telling myself. Whether other people understand it or not.

The critics hurt a little, but what hurt most was a feeling of impending doom, of imminent separation from my family. I’m getting ready to get on a spaceship to Mars and be dropped off on a foreign planet, I thought, among people I’ve never encountered in my life, doing things I never even dreamed I would be around.

I started bracing myself, thinking, I can’t do this alone, but with God, with my family, maybe we can get through it. It does have a beginning and an ending.

Despite everything, some family members were finding a silver lining on the dark cloud that hovered over us.

On Christmas Day Ashley gave me a card with this Bible verse: “Blessed is the man who makes the LORD his trust” (Psalm 40:4). Ashley had circled the verse and written a message of her own:

Lately I’ve been looking at you, just amazed at how blessed I am to have you as my dad. Your faith is unreal. I don’t understand how you’re staying so strong and positive through this. But I’m proud of you! I’m proud you’re my dad. I could never have the courage you have to stand up in a terribly hard time and be God’s man. I will miss you so much. My heart just hurts that you have to go through this. You have always done such good for others. This whole situation is unfair and confusing. I know we’ll all grow through it. And hopefully a lot of good will one day result. I hope you feel and understand my strong, unconditional love for you. You are truly the best! I love you, Dad!

When New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day came, though, we didn’t really celebrate. No resolutions, no looking forward to the happiness 1992 might bring. Our calendars were already filled with sad and fearful expectations.

We bore down, getting ready to face what was coming. Let’s do these things while we can, I thought. Because after this day I won’t sit at this desk again, I won’t watch this TV again, I won’t take walks in this neighborhood again. The things I’m doing right now I’m not going to be doing for a long time.

There was a lot of hugging, a lot of prayer, a lot of clinging to each other. That part may have been hardest for Andy, who’d been angry from the moment my sentence had been pronounced. His perspective was, “Okay, it’s nice that you all have God. But I’m done with Him.”

I could see why he felt that way. I prayed it would be temporary.

All I knew was that some part of me had died at that hearing. The best I could hope for was that the dead part was the bad part —the one God wanted to remove.

A Sleepless Night

It was the night before prison —January 5, 1992.

Gari and I sat together at home. I was watching her write my name with a marking pen —like I was going to summer camp —on the backs of a couple of white T-shirts, a pair of sweat pants, and a couple of pairs of underwear. They were things that at least one person had told us I could bring into prison.

The phone rang. It was time for another unlikely call.

The man on the line was a friend of mine —Dr. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade, now known as Cru.

“Bo,” he began, “I heard you’re in some kind of trouble, and I was calling to see whether I could help you at all.”

“Well, that’s interesting timing, Dr. Bright. Because I’m going into federal prison in the morning.”

“Wow!” he said. “How did that happen?”

I told him about the whole thing.

Finally he said, “Let me pray for you right now,” and he prayed over the phone.

Another whisper from God, I guessed.

We had a subdued family dinner, and now we were all just kind of huddled there at home, trying to get ready.

When bedtime arrived, I couldn’t sleep. Instead of tossing and turning, I went upstairs in the hope that Gari would doze a bit.

I felt awkward, lonely. I need to start preparing for the reality of prison, I thought.

Sitting in the half-light, I found a new fear beginning to grip me. Okay, I’m going to federal prison for something that happened seven years ago, and no one lost any money. No one was even inconvenienced except me. If they sent me to prison for that, what’s next? This has no ending to it.

What if the judge or the prosecutors or an FBI agent decided I hadn’t suffered enough? What if the government started looking for ways to charge me with something else? What if I broke some rule or got in a fight that wasn’t even my fault, and my sentence was lengthened? What if another inmate killed me?

I don’t want to tell my family this, I thought, but I’m never coming home.

Some might call it paranoia. But that thought started to haunt me, and kept haunting me.

I started mentally digging in, pulling away from life as I knew it. I might never know it again. My top priority now was survival. I’ve got to figure out how I’m going to deal with whatever’s thrown at me, I thought.

Sometime that evening I found the journal I was planning to bring to prison. It was tiny, barely bigger than an index card, bound in fake burgundy leather and printed with fake gold ink:

The Christian Pocket Planner

1992

Denver Seminary

It was one of those freebies filled with little calendars and spaces to note appointments and prayer requests. It even had an introduction written by Paul Borden, Executive Vice President and Academic Dean. Its ending was ironic and prophetic:

Denver Seminary can’t give you time, but we can give you this planner to help you to use your time well. I hope you’ll live every moment of this coming year to the hilt and live it in the will of God.

I decided to write my first entry, even though I wasn’t in prison yet. There was barely room to write anything in it. I’d have to keep things brief and write really small.

As I’d found with the plea bargain and the hearing, there never seemed to be room to tell the whole story.

Mars Landing

The day before my self-commitment, I had called Phil Irwin and Dan Hendrick, two of my best friends from college. They still lived in Boulder. Both had been great football players at the University of Colorado when I was playing basketball and baseball there. Of all the things I’d taken with me from my time at CU, my friendship with Dan and Phil was the best and most meaningful.

“I don’t know what tomorrow looks like,” I said, “but would you come to our house in the morning and drive us to prison? Because I don’t know what’s going to happen to Gari and Ashley and Andy after I’m dropped off.”

My friends agreed. Their role would be to give moral support to my wife and kids after I was delivered to the prison at 10:00 a.m.

The morning of January 6 was uneventful as the minutes ticked by. We prayed briefly as a family —mostly for safety and protection and that I would have wisdom in dealing with others. Fear of the unknown surrounded us like fog.

Nothing felt right. Everything felt final.

When Dan and Phil drove up, we all climbed into our silver Plymouth Voyager van and headed to the prison.

It was a quiet ride. Usually Dan and Phil and I could keep things stirred up pretty well with conversation, but everybody was overcome with sadness. It was like driving to my own funeral.

Later Dan described what happened next:

The closer we came to the prison, the quieter and more uncomfortable we were as the realization hit: Bo would not be coming back with us.

We arrived a few minutes ahead of Bo’s check-in time. Good-byes were said, smiles exchanged, and tears fought back as he walked across the parking lot into a fairly nondescript door and disappeared. We waited a couple of minutes, looking at the entry door, somehow half expecting to see Bo walk back out —with this whole scene just a bad dream or mistake that had been corrected.

But it wasn’t a bad dream. As I walked across that parking lot, I thought, This is like I’m walking onto Mars. Here’s this door. I’m waving good-bye to them, and I’m in another world.

And so I was.

Gari’s Story

When the judge said “11 months,” I couldn’t believe it. My gaze shot to Bo. He turned chalk white —then bright red —then chalk white again. I thought he was going to have a heart attack.

That’s when he could have been handcuffed and taken away, had the judge not approved self-committing. I credited God’s mercy for that.

As soon as the judge pronounced the sentence, the courtroom went silent for me. Suddenly I heard a voice in my heart —or my head —that said, This will be the salvation of your children.

I thought, Wow! Then all the sound came back. I saw Ashley, who was so upset. I could see that Andy was angry and hurt.

This will be the salvation of your children. I didn’t know what it meant. It seemed strange; after all, my kids were both Christians.

But I knew God knew. I guessed He gave me that promise to say, Hang in there. Good will come out of this. There will be a reason.

After the sentencing, three or four friends came up to me and said softly, “You know, this is going to be something great for your kids in the long run.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, either, but it seemed to confirm the message I’d already received.

In spite of his shock, Bo also made a point of reminding the three of us that this was a “God deal.” Again, Kay Arthur’s principles were center stage. This was yet another chance to apply what we’d learned from watching her videotape over and over:

1. Have an eternal perspective.
2. Remember that God is in sovereign control.
3. Remain under the suffering and don’t waste it by not letting God perfect you.

We’d been prepared. God had us ready. He’d known this was coming even though we hadn’t.

Was it really a God perspective for Ashley and Andy? Maybe not at that point. But they did recognize that we considered this a “God deal.” For the time being, they were probably just following along. We couldn’t ask for more.

After the hearing, about 20 people came to the house. They’d kindly offered to go through this experience with us. Not surprisingly, it felt like a funeral reception.

This group agreed to read Oswald Chambers’s classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest every day while Bo was in prison. Bo and I would read it too. And together, all of us would treat this as a God thing, believing He was in control.

During that gathering, the phone rang. It was someone who worked for a politically conservative organization in Washington, D.C. “Do you have any complaints you want to make against Judge Nottingham? We’ve been watching this case and watching him.”

Bo had been sentenced only two hours before; we were still in shock. “Who are you?” I asked. I didn’t know much about them, or how they’d become interested in our case.

All I knew was that I didn’t want to pursue it. We were too scared. We didn’t want to make things worse. So I said, “No comment.”

Later that day our good friend Dr. James Dobson called.

“Oh, Gari, I heard about this, and I’m so mad about it,” he said. “You’ve got to come on my radio show and we’ll talk about it.”

I was grateful that he cared so much about what was happening to us. But I said, “We’ve got to get through it first, Jim. Then maybe we can do a radio show.”

“Okay,” he said gently. “But as soon as you’re through it, you’ve got to come. This is not right. It never should have happened.”

“Well, it did,” I said wearily.

It was tough on all of us, but in a way Andy may have been hardest hit.

He and Bo had always been extremely close; Bo was Andy’s best friend. Now, when the four of us prayed together as a family, Andy said, “Lord, where were You? It felt like You put the devil in the judge’s chair, and we asked for angels.”

It was also hard on Andy when word got around about his father’s fate.

There was an article in the Denver Post. The headline was something like “Ex-Athlete Arrested in Probe of Bank Failure.” Technically, Bo did go through a process of being arrested after the sentencing, but we thought the way the paper chose to present it made it sound like he was facedown in the front yard with five police cars surrounding him.

That version of the story took on a life of its own. Andy’s friends would come up to him and say, “Hey, Andy! I heard that your dad was arrested in the middle of the night, and he was handcuffed and dragged out of your house and taken to jail.”

So two days before the sentencing Andy gathered his basketball team together to set the record straight. “Look, here’s the deal,” he told them. “This is what’s happened to my dad. This is what’s going on.”

After he explained the situation, he said, “I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.”

I was so sick it was hard to celebrate Christmas, and looking forward to our future was like looking forward to surgery. We dreaded it. As Bo’s self-commitment date approached, Ashley and I made lists of prison’s pros and cons to help us deal with our fear of the unknown. These were a few of mine:

GOOD NEWS

1. When we see each other in prison we will be able to share what’s going on in our lives because we will not have as much going on people-wise —and no distractions like TV for our conversation.
2. We will truly treasure the time we have now.
3. Compared to a lifetime of 70 years, this sentence is not a lot of time.

BAD NEWS

1. Missing Bo at night.
2. My best time of the day is when he gets home from work, and I will find it hard not to see him.
3. Having Bo in a place where he is in potential danger and cannot leave.
4. The uncertainty and anxiety of the future.

These were a few on Ashley’s list:

GOOD NEWS

1. We’ll all grow through this experience.
2. I will and have learned to appreciate Dad more.
3. Others will learn from it.

BAD NEWS

1. Miss having Dad at home.
2. Can’t call anytime.
3. Worry about Mom’s health and Dad’s feelings.
4. Stress on the family.

But Ashley didn’t stop there. She added, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).

Each of us, in his or her own way, clung to that promise as if it were our only hope.

Because it was.