My escape ruined any hope I had of ever leaving prison alive (I was now serving a total of 105 years on top of my death sentence) but, strangely enough, for the first time in my life I felt free to be anything I wanted. It simply did not matter any more. I fully expected to die in prison, either by execution or of old age. So, before I left this life, I decided to find out who I was.
The moment I asked my father to call the FBI office in Philadelphia and inform them of my whereabouts, I took my first step towards being ‘different’. I cannot fully express what this means in written words, as it is one of those things you just know. It was as if being brought to this point through all the pain and misery of my early life had at last flipped a switch in me marked ‘on’. I guess, knowing that my escape attempt had ruined all my chances of appeal and knowing that I was going to remain in prison for the rest of my life, I finally began to live.
It’s such a simple thing, yet inside me I really felt as if all of the events I had witnessed and all the hardships I had lived through had brought me to a very momentous point. I was sitting in this hot, nasty-smelling cell on Death Row in FSP Raiford (also known as Starke prison) when that thought came to me. Starke was the main prison where the state of Florida held its Death Row prisoners in the 1980s and I was being held here awaiting my return to Pennsylvania.
I was housed in its old ‘East Unit’ on Q-Wing, just two flights up from the room that contained the electric chair. Starke made Huntingdon look like a hotel by comparison, with 1,100 men locked up in solitary confinement twenty-three or twenty-four hours a day, versus a mere 145 held on B-Block in Huntingdon.
It would take a few months for the relevant paperwork to come through, so I had no choice but to endure the terrible heat of a Florida summer in this place built on top of an old swamp. Temperatures reached 100 degrees plus and the humidity was as high as ninety per cent. It was so humid and hot in the unit that the nurses dispensed saline tablets in order to prevent men locked up in their cells all day from dying of dehydration.
The ‘East Unit’ at Starke is the wildest place I have ever spent time in. No matches were allowed in the whole prison as previously inmates had used them to make gunpowder in order to shoot each other with homemade guns. Q-Wing consisted of a single line of five cells with a shower room configured out of the space where Cell 2 would have been, between Cells 1 and 3. I was placed in Cell 3. Each cell had a solid metal door that could be closed across the set of open bars that fronted it. These bars, in which there was another, sliding door also made of bars, were receded two feet into the solid sidewalls. Basically, each cell was a space within a cement block. They were designed so that if the guards closed that outer metal door, you were left inside a concrete hollow enclosure with only a small five-by-five-inch window cut into the door to allow the staff to look in on you. It was impossible for you to harm anyone in one of those security cells and the guards could just drop open a slot in the door and feed you through the hole.
The ‘East Unit’ was where they held you for your last days alive before they took you downstairs and sat you down in ‘Ol’ Sparky’, as the guards fondly called the electric chair in Florida.
I knew I was not going down there to visit him, so Ol’ Sparky held no threat for me. I just had to make it through the gruelling heat before returning to Pennsylvania to fight to have my appeals reinstated. From there I had to find the will to hope for a miracle of some sort.
Sharing Q-Wing with me were: in Cell 1, Ted; in Cell 4, ‘Frog’; in Cell 5, James; in Cell 6, Ronnie. When the guards closed the unit door and went downstairs to their ‘control area’, we were left entirely to ourselves in this strange, secluded world.
All the cells were connected by a ventilation duct which allowed the man in Cell 4 to speak to the guy in Cell 3 on his left by his sink, or he could speak to Cell 5 by leaning down and talking into the metal vent cover located beside his toilet on his right. Also, every cell backed on to the wall of a cell in the wing behind it, so the prisoner in Cell 5 on Q-Wing could also speak to the prisoner in Cell 5 on R-Wing, directly behind him. I was able to talk to Frog in Cell 4, but not to Ted in Cell 1 without having to talk loudly, as we were separated by the shower unit. The truth was that I was glad about this. For Ted was none other than Theodore ‘Ted’ Bundy, one of the world’s most notorious serial killers.
Ted Bundy was also probably the most hated inmate I had ever met. I learned this immediately. As soon as the guards placed me in my cell and left, the other prisoners started to call to me through the vents telling me not to deal with that ‘baby-killing scumbag’ in Cell 1.
In response to being abused like that, Ted aimed comments back to the others along the line of cells. I had no clue at this stage which prisoner was in which cell; they were all just disembodied voices coming at me through the vents. The other inmates all took it in turns to yell into the vent over the top of Ted, telling me how his boasting had ruined everyone else’s prison visits.
Apparently, Ted had managed to get one of his so-called ‘Death Row groupie’ girlfriends pregnant on a visit. Then ‘Big Mouth’ Ted had gone and told the press that he was able to have sex in prison. When the prison administration found out, they had taken away contact visits for everyone on Death Row, only allowing the inmates to see their families from behind glass. As a result, everyone on Death Row wanted to kill Ted for taking away their precious ability to hold or touch their families.
I tried to stay out of it. I was going back to Pennsylvania in a short while and all I wanted was just to get out of this place without being killed by one of the other inmates. I made no comments on what was being told to me. Mostly, I just spoke to Frog in the cell next to me, who was also from Philadelphia. In 1985 Florida was still routinely killing inmates and I knew he was facing a date with the electric chair as he was convicted of abducting the owner of a furniture store chain and killing him. Frog was desperate to find a way out. He would be the first of these men I came to know who was put to death. He knew his days were short when we met.
The man in the cell that backed on to mine was named Jesse. To me, he was just a quiet voice through the wall who invited me to play chess. By each numbering our chessboard squares, we could play a game of chess by calling out our moves in turn, as in the children’s game Battleship, and placing both sets of pieces accordingly.
Raiford was almost entirely indoors. One of the few times you actually saw another prisoner was when the guards felt like giving you some exercise and placed you in small dog-kennel-like cages located in a yard between two of the buildings.
We barely got any time out there, though; it was just too hot outside and they did not make any real effort to let us out anyway. From my wing of Q-Block, only James went out regularly into the heat.
That meant that the only other time you saw another inmate was when you signed up for the ‘law library’. Each man was entitled to have six hours per week in the library, where a small number of law books were kept on hand.
The library, which consisted of a pair of cages situated in a large room next to the prison’s main corridor, was located just beside the entrance to Q-Wing. We were taken there two at a time and placed in a separate cage each before our handcuffs were removed through a small slot cut into the cage door. When we went to the library we sat on white plastic chairs in our individual cages reading law journals or books, trying to find legal arguments with which to fight our cases.
I signed up for the law library every chance I got as I intended to go back to Pennsylvania and fight, no matter what. Now that I had made the choice to give myself up and face the battle, I knew I needed all the legal weapons I could muster. It seemed to everyone else that I was completely screwed legally at this point, but all I wanted was for the truth to be told, even if I died in the process. Therefore, I really needed to try and learn the law in order to become proficient in presenting my appeal arguments.
In Joe Bullen I had a lawyer who had already made it clear he thought I was guilty, so I had little to lose there. And I had no money to employ another lawyer. So I had better get sharp and become my own champion. It was only the thought that my family knew I was actually innocent that kept me going, and I owed it to them to try. I figured that if I had the nerve to hand myself over to police, then I was also brave enough to find out what I was about as a person.
That was all I thought about every day. In fact, that was what I was thinking about when I was brought into the library one day, only to find that I was going to have to share my time there with Ted. Now, he and I had already had a few cold exchanges during one of the air-vent conversations. Although he had not aimed his sharp-tongued wit directly at me, I had bristled when he had started butting in on one of my conversations. Whenever any of his enemies spoke, Ted gave a sarcastic running commentary and made barbed jokes about their moronic levels of speaking. Any and every conversation that I or anyone else had he regarded as his chance to get back at his many tormentors.
Over the past weeks Ted had listened to me tell Frog through the vents that I was going to be extradited back to Pennsylvania. I did not realise it immediately, but Ted had deliberately chosen to come out to the library with me that day. We were going to be left there for two hours by ourselves and during that time, he decided, he would dazzle me with his amazing command of law (he had studied law at university) and show me how I could thwart the extradition order back to Pennsylvania. I had gotten my legal papers out of their manila envelope and was just settling down to read a law book when he started on this terribly rehearsed introduction to his ‘show’.
Standing there in his blue denim trainers and orange jumpsuit, with his prison number printed on its left breast pocket, he looked like just another middle-aged prisoner. Then he adapted this ‘position’, in which he perched on his left leg while resting his right leg on the seat of the plastic chair. Then, as he leaned back as far away from me as he could, he tried to give the air of being ‘composed’.
I just looked at him, curious to see how he was going to play me. Everyone in the entire prison knew his story: over a four-year period from 1974 to 1978 he had raped and murdered at least twenty-nine women, most of them college girls.
I also knew that this man was really bright and dangerous but, having had to kind of grow up in the harsh environment of Huntingdon prison, I was hard to impress.
Ted began: ‘Ya know, I’ve been extradited twice and I know every flaw in the Interstate Compact Agreement, so I’m telling you right now, you can cheat Pennsylvania out of bringing you back to fry you until after you’ve served your sentences in Florida.’
He said this as if he were trying to sell a hopeless man new hope. But it was a pure ‘lawyer’ move, done with the smarminess of a pro trying to persuade you that he was your new guy, with you all the way.
But before he could get going properly, I took the smirk right off of his face by cutting in brutally with: ‘I actually asked to go back to Pennsylvania, Ted. I’m not like you; I don’t get my rocks off murdering little girls while thinking I am killing my bad “mommy” who was mean to me.’ I said all this in a mocking tone, adding the last bit in a child-like sing-song voice.
He went nuts. In a flash, this cord of a vein throbbed in his forehead and then the jugular vein in his neck became mottled and swollen as it pulsed away. It was frightening to see this otherwise apparently quiet person fly into such a rage so fast. I barely had time to hold the manila folder up in front of me before the first mouthful of spittle splattered all over my glasses. He was literally frothing at the mouth as he screeched out endless threats and screamed filthy, degrading things about my mother.
It was so scary that I kind of laughed nervously – although I had certainly set out to annoy, I had not really thought that what I said would provoke this sort of reaction. I was staring in the face of a creature on fire with rage.
I ducked behind my folder and waited as the sound of rattling keys and hurried footsteps running down the long corridor outside indicated some guards were on their way to see what was going on.
I was taking shots at him verbally here and there, but I was stunned by the sheer rage and demented explosiveness of this person. Ted Bundy was a very slender man – no more than 160 pounds on his best day – and I was physically much bigger than him at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing over 200 pounds. Also I could handle myself, I felt. But as he kicked and smashed his fists against the metal cage bars between us and spewed out all that madness, I really was not sure. It was one of the creepiest experiences of my life. Just to witness such a complete change in a human being to the point that his voice changed. He even smelled different. I really mean it: he exuded this terrible odour of ammonia. It was as if I had just stepped on some hidden mine within his personality.
It took the guards about twenty minutes to go and get some shields and two sets of handcuffs in order to take both Ted and me out of there. During that whole time he continued to kick, trying to destroy the barrier between us, and scream and spit at me. Having his saliva on my face and in my hair truly sickened me. He thoroughly scared me because here I was standing next to something so evil that it was not human.
I admit that there were times in the days that followed when I wished that, as well as being taken out of that law library following our encounter, I had been taken straight back to Huntingdon. For the rest of my days at Raiford, this madman became the bane of my existence. Every morning he started on me and kept at it all day long. No matter what I was doing, he did what he could to get back at me.
I tried every approach in dealing with him. Perhaps unwisely, I taunted him by telling the others all about our encounter and what I had said about him killing his mom. I tried to drown him out with noise. I tried to block him out by playing chess for hours and hours with Jesse. It did not matter. He met every challenge and he tormented me every day because he knew that, sooner or later, I would be leaving so there would be no comeback.
It hurt. If only I had kept my mouth shut and played along with him, none of this would have happened. Once, a particularly slow guard accidentally gave him my mail, so I had to put up with him reading my parents’ letter to me out loud over and over, claiming that he was masturbating over it as well. I really was not happy when that happened.
In order to get away from Ted, I tried to go outside into the exercise yard as much as possible. It was only James and I who could put up with the intense heat and humidity of the yard. Ronnie was too fat to make it down the steps, so he just stayed inside all the time. Jesse did come out, but his wing used a set of cages a bit away from ours.
So, I sweated my ass off out there, the only place I could get away from my tormentor. Just me and James, who was this little 5 foot 2 inch, 110 lb black guy from Cell 5, doing his endless push-ups and sit-ups. Trying to escape the madness inside by roasting in the heat, I guessed.
I sat in the strip of shade cast by the fence, trying not to get burned badly during my one hour out in the sunlight. Even so, I always got a headache and felt dizzy out there. Meanwhile, James did nothing but work out. He kept trying to get me to join him in his cage so that we could work out together. A bit of me wanted to, but something in me never let its guard down. Just as well.
In one of our last conversations out there in those cages, once everyone knew I was being shipped back, James told me that he had killed seven human beings. I would have been number eight if he had had his chance. He told me that as well. No emotion, just told me right out.
James had been on Death Row once before in Florida, in the 1970s, but had been spared execution as there had been a change in the law and his sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment. When they reinstated a new death penalty law a few years later, he began killing inmates. He told me that he just wanted to be killed, as they had promised would happen to him years before. So he decided to kill an inmate in the chapel during Mass in front of thirty witnesses. ‘It gave me back my chance to be executed,’ he said between incessant push-ups. However, the state failed to put him back on Death Row for that, so he went on to kill another two inmates before they finally granted him his wish. He wanted to die, and so he decided that the state was going to do it for him.
Frog had warned me to stay clear of this guy previously, but he was such a slight man that it was difficult to feel afraid of him. Also, he spoke in this strange little croaking voice, because at one point he had been strangled so badly that all his vocal cords had been deadened. I found myself having to lean over to hear him speak, even when there was only the two of us out in the yard.
Although I knew James was trying to get me to let my guard down (though I never knew why), he was so physically unthreatening that I was kind of lulled into a false sense of security with him. Foolishly, I probably would have let my guard down at some point and gone into the cage with him.
That is, if it were not for the fact that finally, after months of waiting, the extradition papers came through and I was told that I was being brought back to Pennsylvania to face my charges there. Just like that, I was leaving.
At last I could get away from the remorseless heat and daily torments inside of that little pocket of misery on earth called ‘Q-Wing’.
My parting gift from James on one of the last days when we were out in the cages together was simply this: he told me that, not only had he killed those seven people and murdered those other inmates to get himself put back on Death Row, he had done it because they were white.
He looked me right in the face and said calmly, ‘If I had got a shot, I was gonna kill you.’ Then added, ‘It ain’t nothing personal as you’s a pretty cool white boy’n’all, but I’m gonna kill me as many of yous devils as I can before they take me out.’
Then he simply went back to doing his sit-ups in the corner of his cage like it was no different from him sharing his favourite childhood memory with me. As freakishly scary as Ted Bundy was, it was this man with his icily calm demeanour who chilled me more. Looking at James’s face was like looking into the eyes of a great white shark. There was no soul behind them; he did not even need the spark of anger to find his hate, he was well beyond that.
As I stood two feet away from James, talking through the fence to him and watching him pace the cage even as we spoke, I understood that it was not anger or misery that drove him to keep moving; it was this quiet resolution simply to kill every white person who came near him until ‘they’ killed him. To this day, every time I hear the Bruce Cockburn song ‘Pacing the Cage’ I get chills down my spine thinking about how James’s words stilled my heart that day. To him, it was the ultimate sign of respect actually to tell me that he would have killed me had he been given the chance.
It was as if he saw me as a trophy he had earned the right to nurture before adding to his collection. I swear to God, he was the scariest person I have ever met.