A Death Row Tale: The Fear of 13 Storyville

This programme contains some strong language and scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

Time.

This is the strangest one.

Do you know that the worst part

and yet the best part of being in solitary confinement is

time can be a blisteringly fast thing,

where in the blink of an eye,

you can look, and ten years are gone from your life.

But the next week is agony.

It's like you look at your wristwatch

and instead of there being a face, there's a calendar and it flips.

But then, if you look out the window,

it takes all day for that sun to go down.

HE INHALES

I always wanted to tell somebody that.

We got into the prison about 11.00am.

They took all the other prisoners off this bus

and then four men came on.

They lined up against this red brick wall...

..and here comes Lieutenant Borner.

He walked right up to me,

right up to my face - he was like very quiet, like...

"There's no speaking in my prison.

"Dead men do not speak in my prison, especially. Do you understand me?"

Just like that, same tone of voice. Nothing raised, nothing threatening.

And that Lord quietness...I did, I went to answer. I was like, "B..."

Backhanded me right in the mouth.

It like stung like you wouldn't believe.

DOOR SLAMS

And then I was thrown into this world where there's no sunlight

and it's deadly silent.

You see, the Pennsylvania prison system was developed by the Quakers.

The doors were cut low, so you had to stoop and bow to go into them...

..and while you were in the cell, you were meant not to communicate.

It was part of your punishment.

And it was eerie,

because of almost 140 men at the time in B Block, no-one spoke.

You'd hear them cough or urinate and flush the toilet

but there was no real sound.

And that was the worst for me,

especially the first couple of months.

You still can hear your mother crying at the trial.

You can still smell the aftershave on the witnesses, man -

I mean, like it's just every little detail's just eating your life,

because you've just been put here.

The door was just still ringing in your ears cos of the slam

and you're just left there, and you're like...

HE INHALES SHARPLY

And yet, like, you don't come to your door

and talk to a neighbour, cos if you broke the speaking rule,

you were struck or beaten by the guards.

In level five, you were allowed to exercise

in these dog-kennel like cages, 19 feet long, ten feet wide.

You got an hour to exercise by yourself,

cos you were a death-row prisoner.

But the guards, being pricks -

if you had a problem with another guy, and they knew you were enemies,

they'd put you in a cage together, knowing that

as soon as they'd walked off a few steps,

you two were going to go at it.

And if that didn't work, they simply picked out two big guys,

and put them in together.

And they had some fun.

Usually it was a white guy with a black guy,

Spanish guy with a black guy, Spanish guy with a white guy.

Gladiatoring, they called it.

SHOWER STARTS

The shower was the most vulnerable time.

If you were going to get somebody, that's the place to get them.

You got access to them, there's no handcuffs, and they're naked.

SHOWER RUNS

I had only been there a few days and I walked into the shower

and just as I turned the corner, there was a Puerto Rican boy

and he had sharpened a pork chop bone

and then stabbed this man in the back of the liver with it and

the guy started flopping, and then they just cut all the water off

and just beat all six of us senseless and drug us back out of the shower.

And then they served food.

Like they got everything cleaned up and began serving lunch

and it went on as a routine day.

CANTEEN CHATTER

And two guys were arguing, cos one guy didn't get enough

bread on his tray and I'm like - this is crazy!

You're so whacked out of your mind that you're going to

call down to that guard, "Hey, man! I only got one slice of bread on my tray,"

when a human being just died!

I lived in silence.

For two whole years.

The first two years.

And that's when the drugs were discovered in the choir room.

And everything changed.

These prisoners from the choir were locked up with us

in empty cells on death row.

And because none of them were going to tell where the drugs came from,

they were going to ship all of them to individual different prisons.

To the other eight members of the choir, it really didn't matter.

But two of the men had a bond that was special. Wesley and Butch.

Wesley was this fair-skinned, green-eyed beautiful black guy

who just exuded this eloquence and sweetness about him.

Everyone liked him.

And he had a voice that was gravelly and wondrous.

He had met Butch when they were children in the church

in West Philadelphia, where Butch was a foster child.

Obviously, Wesley was gay and they formed this bond that seemed

to like be invulnerable.

And then, Butch began stealing and getting in trouble

and he was arrested and thrown into county prison in Philadelphia

and Wesley went nuts without him.

He was the only thing in his life that protected him

from the scorn of his parents, the bullies in the neighbourhood,

the people who knew he was weak without Butch.

So he began committing deliberate crimes

and getting arrested so that he could be with Butch

and they found out prison was the one place they could be normal.

They got themselves put into the same cell and together,

in the setting of a prison, where homosexuality is an accepted

form of expression, or just life, no-one bothered them.

And that's when the drugs were discovered and the guard

on duty at nine o'clock that night started tormenting Wesley.

"Hey, faggot, you're going.

"Your boy's going to Western. I just looked on the transfer sheet.

"You're going to Dallas.

"Opposite ends of the State of Pennsylvania. Bye, nigger!"

And I guess Wesley went crazy in the cell.

Cos about 40 minutes later, just before ten o'clock, there was

like 20 minutes left before shift change at 10.00pm.

This voice took over.

# Ah, oooh

# Yeah

# I have a dream, the dream Of every common man... #

Every man on that block just stood still.

# I have sworn by my blood as your man, my love... #

We knew the penalty.

# That one day, I promise one day all of your heartaches would stop... #

Then you heard the keys. HE MIMICS RATTLE OF KEYS

The footsteps behind it.

"What the fuck are you doing, singing in my block?

"I will beat your head in. If you don't stop that singing right now, I will beat your head in."

# Oh, thanks to you baby

-SINGER LAUGHS

-# For just loving a common man... #

-More keys.

-# I want to thank you this evening, honey... #

HE MIMICS KEYS SHAKING Here they come.

-Everybody knows what's coming.

-# I thought that I'd failed you... #

The lieutenant came running down

and he was this militant asshole with the brush cut

and the uniform that was pressed to precision

and he ran down and he ran down and he said, "Hold it." Like that.

And even Wesley stopped cos we know, when Lieutenant Norris

raised his hand, that was it.

He said, "I leave in 20 minutes.

"If there is a noise on this block, from anyone, when I leave this unit, we will beat every man's head in.

"Do you understand me?" Silence.

"Finish that song, inmate. Let's go."

The guards looked at him like he had lost his frigging mind.

They were stunned.

"Let's go. You. You've got 20 minutes."

And walked off the block. HE MIMICS KEYS SHAKING

He even had an argument on the way out of the door.

When the gates shut... GATE SLAMS

..that big wide B block gate - when they left the block alone,

we were like...

"Oh, my God! We are totally and utterly unsupervised."

And he came back right in mid-lyric like he had never stopped singing.

# You said, "I love you, baby

# I love you for just being a common man... #

SINGER JOINS ON BASS NOTE

And like you could hear them, here they come,

the other members that had a little bit of guts, yeah?

They were blowing, you know?

They were giving bass, and it was wonderful.

These voices, yeah?

# I thank you, baby, yeah, for respecting me, yeah

# I want to thank you, baby

# For telling me

# I want thank you for respecting me

# In a time of worry

# Thank you for calming my troubles... #

GOSPEL-TYPE VOICES CONTINUE

FINGER-CLICKS KEEP BEAT

Then, out of nowhere...

# Ooh... #

..we heard this woman's voice.

Dorothy Moore's Misty Blue.

# Ah... #

I thought, I swear to God, somebody had gotten a radio in on B Block.

# Ah

# Looks like I'd get you... #

No-one really knew who it was that was singing and then I figured it out.

Butch was six foot four and 240lbs.

He had a big jagged scar that ran down the side of his face,

like from someone trying to cut his head open.

I was terrified of this man.

# Oh, honey

# Just the mention of your name... #

To hear him sing in this beautiful voice...

# Turns the flicker to a flame... #

..as his way of showing love for someone who was being taken from him the next morning

made me want someone to care for me in that place so much

that they would sing, knowing that singing would have gotten their head beat in.

They shipped Wesley that morning at 3:55am.

But the next day,

like a few guys were talking outside of their cells to each other,

like a normal conversation, and when the guard went by

he didn't tell them that they was going to beat their brains in, he just simply said,

"Keep that down, the lieutenant doesn't like it.

They weren't going to torture us with silence any more.

CELL DOOR OPENS

BUZZER

Joe Bullen, my first appellate attorney, God bless him,

got the attention of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

He didn't like me, but he filed the appeal nonetheless

and got us the hearing scheduled for February 20th.

I was excited to go to court, you know.

Two Delaware County sheriffs were waiting for me.

They come up, they put the handcuffs on me.

Both men were in their 60s.

Two sweetheart guys who were already bullshitting about basketball

and football and all this stuff in Philadelphia.

They're giving me updates on some things that

I haven't caught up on and people back down in the county jail

who was going up to the state prison.

We're talking about how damn cold it is. It was bitterly cold.

In fact, it was the coldest day of the year that year.

I'm sitting in the back and we're driving along.

And we get down there four-and-a-half hours later.

It's now about 4:30pm, almost 5:00pm, and nearly pitch dark.

We pull in to go to the bathroom.

The driver drives past it by like 25 yards.

We get out of the car and we're hit with that blast of cold.

We run right over, the three of us, to the cubicle and I go in

and the door is being held open by the taller officer.

And he stands there while I urinate and watches me.

I'm peeing, I'm minding my own business,

I'm thinking about getting back into that warm-ass car.

It's freezing, I turn, I look up, he's got his hand up,

I put my head under his arm and I make a left turn

to go back to the car.

What I did not know is that the officer who was driving

went back to the car and waited.

I came out of the cubicle and started trotting towards him.

He looked past me and he didn't see his partner.

He doesn't know if I've killed his partner or not.

He just knew he was seeing a death row prisoner

running at him unescorted.

That's when he pulled his gun.

When he did that motion of sticking his hand on his hip and pulling

the weapon from the holster, I just turned and started running.

He fired that weapon and it was like this huge percussion.

GUNSHOT

At 2,700 feet per second, that bullet went past my ear

and so did anything else that I was looking behind me for.

I went down and I hit the ground

and ripped all of the skin on my hands and it's just like... Oooh!

Then they started this attitude, you know,

"That's it. I'm going to do what I got to do."

So I just got up and I ran towards the big plate-glass window

of the restaurant next door.

I figured if I'm running directly at the window, he can't shoot me.

I ran about 100 yards across the road and I circled back.

And I came right back to where I had escaped.

Now, I'm looking at them as they're yelling at each other

who was the bigger idiot for letting this happen and then I hear them.

POLICE SIRENS

All the sirens in the world are coming.

There was cars coming from everywhere.

They had an escaped death row prisoner alert.

They pulled out all the stops.

So I took my eye glasses off,

pulled the plastic off the end of the eyeglasses and I stuck

the eyeglass pin into the handcuffs and I picked the handcuffs.

I could see the buildings off to my right and one of them had a flag.

That's a police station.

I said, man, I'm going to hide behind the police station.

So I navigated down behind this alleyway

and I got down in this recessed area and I just huddle

and I just waited.

I was so cold.

When I lost my core temperature like an hour later, I was shivering.

I was like, oh my God, this is killing me.

I was going into these bends. It was hurting.

My ribs were aching from going into these convulsions like that.

So I was hurting so bad.

I'm going to get up and get out of here.

I came flying out of that parking lot and they saw me.

HELICOPTER ROTOR BLADES

This guy came out of nowhere, just hovered above me.

And the blinding candlelight of this magnitude, I can't even describe.

And he circled and he had the whole area lit.

He came back, he lit me up and lit me up.

This guy chased me for literally three hours with this helicopter.

My feet split open, my calves erupted, my hamstrings were pulled.

But I got lucky, didn't I?

The helicopter had a FLIR - forward-looking infrared camera

and it wasn't working because it was so cold it malfunctioned.

I ended up on a pair of railroad tracks

where I walked on broken feet for five miles.

Until I got to Frazer Pennsylvania where I stole a car.

It was a 1965 green Mustang.

I found a quarter.

I went over to the coin box and I called a family member.

I drove over to the house and they gave me 100,

a handful of bandages and gauze

and then a Philadelphia green Eagles ski cap.

Like that wasn't going to give away my city location!

I drove to New York City and I got a hotel room

in the Bowery in a flophouse on the lower East Side.

Seven dollars a night.

I paid for a whole week in advance

and then I went to a little bodega and I got a box of Epsom salt

and went up to my room.

Oh, my God.

Like, I literally had institutional sock

all threaded into the torn tissue of my feet.

And I just soaked in it

and I started pulling it out and it was like...

I would just cry, man. The first three days...

That's why I didn't even venture out. I literally couldn't walk.

CAR HORNS

After four days, I went out one evening.

It was excruciating to finally go out.

And Macy's had this long display window of all the electronic

products and there were all these televisions and on them

were all these different channels and on some of them was the news

and there was the video footage of me obviously being hunted.

And in that one moment I was hit by the reality, I'm not free.

Not by a damn shot. I am just like...

I'm temporarily out on a leash

and if they catch me I'm going to catch a bullet.

Like, it was so terrifying in that moment.

In 1985 you didn't need to even show photo identification

to get on an aeroplane.

You didn't have to show who you were or anything.

So I went to this upscale restaurant.

And I just waited and waited. I waited by the men's room.

Waiting, waiting.

As soon as I saw a guy go in the bathroom without a jacket on,

I walked over to his table and I stole his jacket

and he had his wallet in his jacket.

Then I went to the cloakroom and grabbed a fur coat.

And I left.

So I simply just used the credit card,

bought last-minute tickets to Orlando

and when I got to Orlando I told the taxi driver

to take me to the pawn shop area.

When I went into the shop the guy behind the counter,

the owner, was obviously a criminal.

So I told him,

"I don't have any identification but I want to sell you this coat."

So I negotiated with him to give me a gun and 100 for the coat,

which was worth 5,000.

A very nice fur coat.

And so after he gave me the gun, he refused to give me bullets,

he asked me if I was willing to rob this guy that he knew,

Anthony Manilla, who had a collection of gold coins

that were worth 350 each.

He said there was at least 100 of these coins in this guy's house.

I met Anthony Manilla just outside of his house.

I was driving by on a bicycle I had bought at a flea market.

So when I rode by I pretended that I recognised him from prison.

Anthony knew he didn't know me

but he pretended he also recognised me in that fake way some people do.

He asked me what I was up to.

I told him I had these pills for sale

but I couldn't find anybody to buy them.

So he told me he could get me 7 each for them if I waited.

Now, I knew and he knew that each pill was worth 30 each.

The cops in the area know he doesn't have a valid licence.

So he actually gave me the wheel.

We drive towards where I tell him I have the drugs stashed.

I pulled the gun and I said, "OK, freeze, I got you."

And he was like, "OK, take it easy."

I pulled over and demanded that he give me

the nod of money he had been bragging with.

He gave me that.

He had a Rolex watch and he had diamond jewellery all over him.

I said, "Now I've got to tie you up

"because I've got to go back into your house and get that money."

He flat out refused. I said, "What do you mean, no?"

This is like a 140 pound person.

I grabbed him and I said, "Please hold still."

I tied his hands up, put him in the trunk, I slammed the trunk deck down

and I don't know that the trunk deck clasp has gone through

the rope and is now just stuck but not locked

because three red lights later he jumps out

and when he jumps out he looks like a mummy who has unravelled

and he runs up to the car behind and knocks on the window

and says, "He tried to rob me! He's trying to rob me!"

And then he ran off.

The two women in my rear-view were looking at each other

and looking at me and I just gunned it across the red light and went

flying across to Station Road and went right up the middle of Orlando.

And I didn't go back to his house.

So I drove all night.

At 2:30am in the morning I get to Daytona Beach, Volusia County.

And it's Bike Week, March 10th.

I've been an escaped prisoner for 25 days.

And I'm sitting there and I'm like, I can't get a hotel room anywhere.

It's booked, everything is solid.

My eyes were all gravelly and I was just so exhausted.

So I just put the seat back and went to sleep.

The next thing I know,

three sharp raps right on the window and there's a cop right there.

My heart is pounding.

He's making the motion like this so I put the window down.

He said, "Did you hear anybody screaming?" I said, "What?"

He said "Some woman screaming.

"There's been a call, a domestic dispute. Is there a problem?"

And I was like, "No."

I was talking to him and I was just focusing on him trying to answer him

and that's when I heard from the passenger side

the other officer yell, "Hey Bert, there's a gun."

And he immediately pulled his weapon and I said,

"Hold on, hold on. What's up?"

I didn't know this,

but about that much of the pistol was laying out under a blanket.

So I got out of the car, I had my hands up.

I gave a false name.

They put handcuffs on me. They locked me up.

I'm sitting in prison and waiting.

And I said, to hell with this.

TELEPHONE RINGS

My father immediately picked up.

Hello?

I said, "Dad I need you to call the FBI and tell them where I'm at.

"If they don't come and get me I'm going to go before this

"judge in the morning and I'm going to bail out and get out of here."

He hung up the phone.

He called an agent by the name of Bud Warner, Philadelphia FBI office.

Man, the doors came open. They came flying in there.

DOOR SLAMS

They added 35 more years to my sentence for that robbery.

Put me on death row in Florida.

And left me there to swelter all through that summer.

By the time they came and got me in September

I was so eager to go back to Pennsylvania,

even though I knew I was going to get some serious beatings.

I had made an enemy of every guard on shift.

I was going to go through some extreme punishment.

Man, it was hard.

I stewed and I seethed.

I was so angry I was beating my head on the wall.

So every couple of weeks they would take me out and patch my head up.

And, erm...

This one officer when he was escorting me back

from the nurse's station stopped by this cell

and he said "Go in there and get them books."

So this guard, nice guy too turned out to be,

he lets me go in to the cell and I get these books.

And some of them were just too hard to read, you know.

You see, by the time I reached the eighth grade at the age of 13,

school was just an area to meet up with your friends

to go swimming or fighting, you know.

So my reading comprehension level was basic, to say the least.

But patience and I had all the time in the world.

So I started working with these books.

In the front of the General Education Development booklet

was a note, 'Tips Of Learning'.

And it said, "If you take a word

"and write out its spelling 10 times while covering each previous one

"and then apply each of those to 10 sentences using that word,

"you will not forget that word."

The 10 times rule.

So I sat there with a pen and every word I didn't understand

I did the 10 times rule to it.

I remember I would go through a day

where I would have 50 word days, 40 word days,

I counted days sometimes on the accomplishments

of being able to sit down and to orally go and say,

Robert is a triskaidekaphobic.

Robert is afraid of the number 13.

Robert does not understand that it's just an illusion

that 13 can harm him.

And I would just talk to myself until I had that one down.

Then I would move on to phantasmagoria

and I would understand that phantasmagoria

was the fear of ghosts and I'd like, boo!

You know, so I just played with it

and it just became this stupid image of this kid

sitting in a room by himself entertaining himself with words.

And it was quiet because I was in the back of the B block

and I was quietly just doing it.

Triskaidekaphobia.

The fear of 13.

And like, it worked.

For some reason, that small gesture of humanity by that guard

just changed everything for me.

I loved it. I was hooked on dime store novels.

Series. Detective series.

Jack Higgins, Robert Ludlum, Elmore Leonard.

The first 1,000 books,

I remember I was so proud of the accomplishment.

I had written down 1,000 titles of 1,000 different books

that I had personally read.

It took me three years.

I loved Rudyard Kipling.

I loved tales.

I loved storytelling of tales like Sinbad and Homer.

Like, true story telling is the telling of life.

Isn't it?

I loved it. I loved it.

I'm so glad I was a drug addict in one way.

I was addicted to books and I got hooked on them in the worst way.

Meanwhile, I was reading law books and studying serology.

I went to college.

I really opened up all this time and structure for reading.

And with every new book I found something wonderful about myself.

I found...

I found myself. Like, it was wonderful.

I was happy on death row at times when I shouldn't have been

and it was only because I became comfortable

with being who I was, finally, in life.

CELL DOOR OPENS

BUZZER

And that's when I met Jackie.

Jackie Schaefer was a 31-year-old woman

living in Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania who was going to visit

some death row prisoners with her friend Pamela Tucker,

who was the organiser of an abolitionist group

from Pennsylvania.

They went monthly to prisons around Pennsylvania

and visited death row prisoners to check on their mental state,

to see if there were issues they could get involved with to help

the better treatment of the overall population of death row prisoners.

They came to the prison and they visited five men.

I was the fifth one.

The other preceding prisoners all went out there

and lamented how terrible it was, the things they were encountering,

the conditions and all that.

I walked in, I sat down and said hello to my friend Pam.

I asked her about her daughters.

We interacted about a few things and I turned to Jackie

and I started flirting with her.

I started being gregarious and open.

It was completely unlike all the other men who came out

with little lists of things to talk about, while I simply was myself.

She came back the next week by herself.

Scared to death.

So in this four foot by literally five and a half foot walled room,

she would walk in and sit down with a notepad and we'd talk.

Week after week.

She drove 275 miles from Pittsburgh to Huntington,

through these mountains, each way, and we'd start talking.

And it was weird.

I started to find out one true thing about myself

and I think this is true for every prisoner who goes into prison

at the age of 20 and is ready to exit in his 30s or 40s.

You can only grow so far as a man until a woman teaches you

enough about yourself that you can further develop.

And it's only through the eyes of that person that you give

yourself openly to that they teach you

so many things about yourself that are qualities

that you rely upon and like and respect

because you've been shown from afar something no mirror,

and believe me I didn't have a mirror, could show you.

But at the heart of it, I kept feeling dirty.

I did not want to be that prisoner who is serving life

who lets a woman fall in love with him,

knowing he's going to suck the life out of her.

I had the death penalty plus 105 years. I wasn't going anywhere.

And then I get a newspaper.

And it's funny how my whole story and life and this journey

has all been changed by either photographs or newspapers.

But there it was. Five months after I'd met Jackie, four months.

Newly developed DNA science makes a big splash in the crime world.

Criminal convictions being reversed.

People were walking out, left and right and left and right.

Whoa.

I write a letter to Jackie, I cut the article, I sent it to her.

She came back on that visit.

As soon as the doors closed, I said, "I didn't kill that woman."

That was the first thing I shouted.

I was, like... That was the first time I'd told her.

And I was, like, "I've got two things to tell you.

"One - I didn't kill Mrs Craig.

"And, two - I think I'm in love with you, too."

She was, like, "Let's handle the first one, first."

You know what I mean? Let's deal with the difficult one first.

I was, like, "Oh, man."

CAR DOOR SLAMS

KID SHOUTS, ENGINE STARTS

ENGINE REVS

In the 1970s, a lot of the vehicles still didn't have locks

on the steering column, so you could just stick

a screwdriver into the key slot

and literally just turn the ignition.

So, my friend Eddie and I used to steal the early Fords,

and we would joyride them.

This man knew we were 15-year-old kids,

and knew that we didn't own the car, and knew that it was stolen.

He was, like, "Come here, I'll give you 200 for the car."

We looked at each other, and 200 was, like, an enormous

amount of money. We figured we just hit the jackpot.

We knew he owned a collision centre that fixed and repaired cars.

So we said, "Can we get you another car?"

And he told us what one he would need, when he needed it,

and we'd go out and look for it.

PLANE FLIES OVERHEAD

ENGINE TURNS OVER

ENGINE STARTS

So, usually, my friends and I would go to the Philadelphia airport

and wait for what we called vics...

TYRES SCREECH

..which was somebody who walked up,

took their luggage out of the rear of the car,

and then walked inside with the family members to see them off.

And never got a car when they came out.

I've had several people in the rear-view mirror

chasing behind you as you drove off with their car.

You dropped the car off, you got 200-300.

And then you took that money and you bought drugs.

And by the time I was 17, I was really,

really getting hooked on methamphetamine.

My favourite vein was right there on the outside.

I can still feel the hole in my arm.

I can still taste the drug in my mouth.

When you inject methamphetamine into your arm,

you get the burning numbing sensation shoot up your arm,

and then you get the taste of...

ethanol in your mouth.

And it's like a cough...

HE BLOWS

..just like that.

And then the other Nicky came out.

The one I didn't cringe in the mirror from.

The one who wasn't weak.

The one who wasn't afraid.

CHILD PANTS

'I wasn't just hooked on one drug.'

I was a mess of multiple drugs.

And alcohol.

And by December 20th,

I had already been homeless on the streets for about most of that year.

And that's when I stole two cars in a row for 500 each,

and I went out, started partying again.

I was on the binge. Burning it, they called it.

Every time I think of that night, I smell wet, burning leaves.

It's almost sweet.

I was driving around in another stolen car.

LOUD FUNK MUSIC PLAYS

The radio was blasting.

POLICE SIREN BLARES

You must have heard the radio before you saw me.

When he flew out, I knew he was going to stop me.

I just... I just felt it coming right at me.

And...the adrenaline.

HE POUNDS HIS CHEST WITH HIS FIST

His hand's on the butt of his gun.

Here he comes. Now, I'm like, "Oh, I can't stop it."

HE GULPS

Shit... I can't do anything.

I remember, like, looking just like that.

HE MIMES

I don't understand whatever he's saying. His hand's going.

HE MIMES

The door pops, and the vacuum now, when the door comes open,

and there's all that quiet on the street, and the noise

on the radio's still going... IMITATES GUITAR

..that's when I realised the radio was still on.

LOUD MUSIC PLAYS

"You didn't stop for the light. Didn't you see the stop sign?"

All those things, but... I panicked, you know?

Like, I remember I did that. Like, stand-up.

He was, like, right against my throat with his forearm.

Bang! Against the car. When he shoved me back like that,

I remember, like, coming up with my left arm.

And it was, like, gone, right for the stick,

and I just followed it along, grabbed his arm.

He had the stick come out,

I took it right out, like it was nothing.

Right out of his hand.

He was furious! And that's when the right-hand came out.

I saw that gun.

I grabbed it. I reached out, I pushed his arm straight down.

Then you felt the percussion of the blast.

And then you heard the pop.

GUNSHOT

"OK! OK! OK!"

He stuck the gun right there. He said, "You son of a bitch!

"You almost got us killed!" He was, like, "Get in the car!"

And he slammed me in the back, in the cage area, shut the door.

"Shots fired, officer assist."

I remember just... He said it four times.

I remember, I was just sitting there, like this.

What the hell happened?

KEYS RATTLE

HEAVY DOOR CLOSES

They threw me in the intake unit.

And I crashed.

I must have slept at least 16 hours.

HEAVY DOOR OPENS

I was so scared. They pulled me out.

I'd been arrested enough to know this one's scary, this is serious.

This one's bad.

And the public defender was this young kid, and he turned to me.

He said, "Look, Mr Yarris,

"do you understand the serious nature of these charges,

"because if you're convicted of these charges,

"you face life imprisonment."

I said, "What's my charges?" He said,

"Kidnapping of police officer.

"Attempted murder of a police officer.

"Reckless endangerment, possession of a firearm,

"robbery, resisting arrest,

"possession of a stolen vehicle."

I started crying.

They take me back to the cell, and there was the newspaper.

The December 16th Delaware County Daily Times.

The front page was missing, so the front page on it was page three.

And right there was the story of Linda Mae Craig.

I swear...

something about that newspaper kept calling me.

On December 15th, 1981, at 4:05pm, Linda Mae Craig left work.

She was knocked out of her shoes in the car park

of the Tri-State Mall, dragged into a car that she owned,

and then driven into the state of Pennsylvania,

about two-and-a-half miles away,

where she was taken behind a church...

..where she was stabbed after being raped, and dumped in the car park.

The next morning, two children...

..walked up to what they thought

was a mannequin that had been covered in the newly fallen snow.

One of the boys walked up, and kicked the snow from the face

of the mannequin, so that they could see if it was

a boy or a girl mannequin...

..only to discover the disfigured face of Mrs Craig.

I lived 20-something miles from the murder scene.

And I said, "Man, if I had knowledge about a crime this big...

"..I can get out of this. I bet you they would let me out

"and then I could get out on bail and I'd run."

Like the stupid mind of a child.

So I sat in my cell.

And I started making up a story.

And I said I would tell 'em...

that somebody did the murder, right?

And then I had to find out who I could blame.

And the only one I could think of was Jimmy.

I had met Jimmy Brisbois in 1980, when I was doing drugs.

And I stole some coins from a car that I'd gotten from the airport.

1,000 coins? There was a lot of coins in this big bag.

I made the mistake of showing Jimmy, and, out of nowhere,

his friend hit me with this 357 Magnum.

THUMP

I've still got a chip out of my eyebrow that I can rub at this time.

TYRES SCREECH

And they had an old carpet in the front room that nobody

used in this house we were living in on Woodland Avenue.

So, rolled me up in the rug,

threw me into this pick-up truck that Jimmy had,

and they took me behind the Westing House warehouse.

And I heard the spliff - PEW! - like that.

One of them took a 22-calibre pistol and shot the rug.

But being drug addict idiots that they were,

they shot it where the folded part over of the rug was,

about two feet above my head, way out of range of anywhere I was.

I was enraged.

I went looking for Jimmy.

"Hey, Michael, what happened to your buddy, Jimmy?"

Cos he knew Jimmy.

"So, what happened to your old rat-bastard Jimmy?

"I ain't seen him for a while." And that's when he told me the story.

Jimmy and his friends were over in Jersey. Jimmy had an overdose.

They weren't taking him to the hospital to get arrested,

so they dumped him, stole his drugs, and he's dead.

So you don't have to look for him no more.

All I wanted them to do was lower my bail enough that

I was allowed out temporarily, at which time I could abscond.

Jimmy was dead, they were going to find out eventually, right?

They took me to the warden's office.

They brought me in, took my handcuffs off, the warden goes,

"Hey, get him a drink, man. Get him a cold drink."

So they went out and got me a Coca-Cola.

I'm sitting in a lounge chair, no longer in a prison setting, like.

And I'm sitting there, and he's got my file.

He's, like, "Oh, man, you're a young guy.

"What are you charged with all this for?

"You don't have any violence on your record. What's this bullshit?

"Attempted murder? That doesn't sound like you, Nick.

"You're a car thief. What's going on here?"

I tell him my story.

Like a proud parent, everyone's praising me.

In just a few hours,

I went from sitting there with 100,000 bail waiting to go

to prison for the rest of my life to being told

I was going to have a hearing set up next week in which

I would possibly be released on my own recognisances

and my charges would be reduced to nothing more than resisting arrest.

When they found James Brisbois alive,

you could have knocked me over with a feather.

Jimmy had gotten off the drugs, got his life together.

I was screwed.

When they came back to me, they knew two things.

One - James Brisbois had nothing to do with that crime.

And I had more information than anyone else.

It was all guesswork, but it didn't matter to them.

KEYS JANGLE

CELL DOOR OPENS

I was charged with the abduction, rape,

and murder of a woman I'd never met in my life.

I was already sitting in prison for the attempted murder

of a police officer.

I'm a 20-year-old drug addict,

who's been thrown out of his own house

onto the streets by his own family.

What chance do I have?

No-one's going to believe me.

In April, the trial for the attempted murder

and kidnapping of Officer Benjamin Wright was to begin.

By then, I had already been charged with the murder of Linda Mae Craig,

so the media was having a field day with stalker stories

and making me out to be a complete deranged lunatic.

So, my trial began and Officer Wright testified.

He got up on the stand, and he started telling a completely

different story than what actually happened.

He said that when he pulled up to the car, I had opened the door,

got out, and punched him in the face,

and knocked his glasses off his face.

He then said he was trying to flail and defend himself

while I pummelled him a couple more times in the face,

before I reached down and grabbed his gun

and took his gun from him, and after which he said I had

the gun pointed directly at his face

when he heroically reached out with both hands,

and grabbed the gun, and pulled it from me

as it discharged right next to his face.

And he had a photograph of his hand with a 2.5cm scratch on it

to prove all of the things that he said.

CHAIR SCRAPES

And Sam Stretton, my defence lawyer, got up

and calmly walked over with the photograph in his hand,

placed the photograph down on the bar of the witness box

in front of Officer Wright and said,

"Is it your testimony that Nicholas Yarris punched you

"in the face three times, breaking your eyeglasses,

"he then took this pistol and held it up,"

and said, "Hit you in the face with it,

"like, a seven pound metal object twice.

"Why didn't you photograph your face?"

Officer Wright knew that the jig was up.

He turned and said, "I'm a good looking man.

"I didn't want the jury to see my face all scratched up.

"I don't have to show that." He got all defiant.

The jury made this snorting, scoffing kind of noise and, like,

everyone saw in that one moment that his story was really a lie.

The jury deliberated for a very short...very, very short time,

and came right back. Not guilty of attempted murder.

Not guilty of kidnapping of a police officer.

Not guilty - aggravated assault.

All charges - not guilty.

And then Barry Gross, the prosecutor,

who is, like, really pissed off, he was so angry, he tells the jury,

"You just let a murderer go, you just let him go!"

And the jury foreman was this woman who stood up and said,

"Excuse me, we didn't try that case.

"We tried this case, and your case stinks." And my mum said, "Yeah!

"That's right, tell him again, lady."

And it was the worst thing.

Oh, my God.

The very next week, Barry Gross takes over the murder prosecution

and begins seeking the death penalty.

I went from April, when I was acquitted of all charges,

to the June trial for the murder of Mrs Craig.

I was so scared.

Arthur Craig, the victim's husband, was asked to testify.

That first click in the rotation.

IMITATES CLICK

And, there it was, the portrait photograph.

Mr Craig, Mrs Craig,

and their three adopted children in a family-type setting.

And the prosecutor asked Arthur Craig, "Is that it your wife?

"Can you identify the people in the photograph?"

He did, along with his wife as well.

And then...

IMITATES CLICK

..there was Mrs Craig, laid out on the autopsy table,

six stab wounds, clearly visible

and her broken teeth and everything visible.

There was...a gasp, almost.

People were looking away.

IMITATES CLICK

The next one.

The photograph was white and black.

But for when you got closer towards that figure that was

covered in snow...

you could see the children's footprints in white snow...

..and then they scattered.

The first steps were dark and lighter,

so you had to imagine it was bloody...

and that they must have been horrified as they looked down

and saw the treads of their own feet, blood-soaked,

as they ran in different directions.

And the jury...they looked up at the screen.

They looked at me.

And, like uniform animals in one of those documentaries,

where they all do an alike thing, they all went...

And it was the last time any one of them could look at me.

I had just turned 21.

And they were going to take my life.

The only science that was available in the early '80s was blood type.

That was the cutting edge of technology

as far as identifying someone.

That was it.

And there was no real evidence at my trial.

Not a signed confession, not an eyewitness testimony,

no murder weapon.

Nothing but speculation and circumstantial evidence.

But unfortunately, I shared the same blood group as the murderer.

And at the time, that made me a near slam dunk

for being probably the person who did it.

And then in February of 1988,

there was this newspaper article about DNA testing.

And I'm like blown away.

I can't believe I have the key to my cell in my hands

because I knew I didn't kill that woman.

I know none of my biological materials were anywhere near her.

I wrote to Joe Bullen, my lawyer,

and I asked him to begin the process of the DNA.

And the phone call, I can still recall...

All week, just on pins and needles and then Monday morning

I get taken downstairs at 10:00am, which is a bad time

because they've got all the food going.

They brought in the food trucks and they are just banging

and clanging these metal plates that they put food on

and they put them in these racks and run them up these stairs

and it's just noise and it's all going.

I get a hold of the secretary first

and then I get hold of Joe Bullen and he says, "I got news for you."

"You've got to slow down." I was like, "What? What?"

He says, "The coroner has explained to me

"that they've lost all the autopsy material."

And there was just banging and yelling.

I didn't hear them.

I was like, "Slow down. Say that again. What do you mean?"

I wanted to turn around and just shout, "Just please shut up!"

I knew that would get my ass whooped.

So I just stood there shaking with the phone in my hand

and I said, "What do you mean the autopsy materials?

"That's the stuff they used at my trial, the evidence at my trial.

"Is that what you are trying to tell me?

"All the evidence at my trial has been thrown away?

"How am I still on death row if after the trial..."

And I start talking like this and he's yelling into the phone.

"I said, shut up for a minute and I'll tell you."

And then in this very supercilious voice,

he said, "The coroner's office has looked all week

"and I just got off the phone with them at 9:28am and he's informed me

"that they've lost all the autopsy material from the Linda Mae..."

And he's reading from something, like his notes or his crib notes

of what this conversation was and it was very deadpan.

I started getting angry and I said,

"Do you remember when you came to first visit me?

"You told me I was guilty because of all the overwhelming evidence.

"Well, where's all the overwhelming evidence when I want DNA, Joe?"

And he hung up.

I go back up in my cell and I'm furious.

I wanted to kill somebody. I was so angry.

I was out of visits for the month.

That meant I had to wait until March to see Jackie again

and explain to her that the evidence was lost and...

..we had no hope.

So, erm...

I went, like, completely blank.

But then after a while, I started to think,

that's not possible because at my trial they went on and on

about how the killer had B positive blood, didn't he?

And, like, I said to myself, wait a minute, who did the test on that?

So I started reading the trial transcripts and I found out

some material was sent to a laboratory at the time of my trial.

I wrote to the lab director and he wrote me back and he said,

"Dear Mr Yarris, I have searched my files

"and we do have two preparations that are unstained

and they have high weight visible DNA from the sperm."

And I was like, oh, my God.

This DNA works, I not only can prove my innocence

but I can be out of here in a few years.

And it was like opening up this flood gate to this woman.

Jackie.

I married her on July 1, 1988,

six years to the day that I was sentenced to die.

I was so in love.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

Like, I was into this thing where music was beautiful.

If it rained outside and I caught the smell of it through my window,

even though I couldn't actually see the rain, it was beautiful.

Like, every little nuance in life was magical.

And I loved this person in my life so much.

And I was like offering this person not only hope

that I could prove myself innocent and get off death row,

but I could be home and we could begin a life.

And then one year became two.

And three.

It took us five years to get to the DNA test.

And the results came back inconclusive.

Inconclusive results due to degradation.

But then, in a miracle of miracles, the victim's clothing

was located in a clerk's office at the courthouse.

My mother had recoiled in horror at the end of my trial

when my parents were almost accidentally given a box marked "Yarris"

and inside of it was the victim's blood soaked clothing.

And she remembered that and she told the custodian,

"Don't you remember how you almost gave me the victim's clothing?"

And he said, "Oh, that's right."

And he went off and found the victim's clothing.

Those clothes yielded sperm from the victim's underwear

and it was high weight and there was a lot of it.

Cuttings were placed into these tubes

and then they were sent to Germantown, Maryland, for keeping.

It took me from 1993 to 1997 to finally get court approval

for the foremost authority of DNA in America to do the DNA testing.

Hallelujah! I got Dr Blake.

He already did the OJ Simpson case,

he's very famous, very well respected.

He's the man.

They take the new evidence and they send it down to California.

And they improperly package it and it burst open in transit.

And Dr Blake says, "We're not going to test it.

"All it would do is produce results

"that would be contested by the prosecution.

"I'm not going to test it."

And he just put it on a shelf.

It killed a part of my marriage and it killed a part of Jackie

and it killed a part of me.

She fought with me for nine years to get DNA

and she just said, "Nicky, I can't do this any more."

I said, "Man, go."

I went back to my cell and I was just sitting there by the window

listening to the radio and this song came on.

I was listening to the lyrics, you know.

"They say that you're leaving.

"It comes as no surprise.

"And still I like this feeling of being left behind."

I was listening to the lyrics and I was thinking...

You always do that to me.

You always torment me with words from someone else's song

and suddenly they're my words.

and they are ingrained in my thoughts.

Even though I was being told they were leaving,

I still kind of liked that feeling of being left behind.

It's a strange phenomenon when you felt good for their leaving

because you knew all along you had stolen a lot of their life away.

# It's just like going home. #

On a December night, on a snowing night,

just like the lyrics said, I just started writing this letter.

I wasn't crying or upset or anything.

I simply sat down and tried to tell somebody why I loved them

and why saying goodbye to them was this wonderful gift.

I knew she didn't have to fight for me any more.

I knew she didn't have to make copies of my legal documents

and send them back to me, call lawyers, chase up new DNA.

She didn't have to go and chase up my mum or any of these other things.

She could just be free.

One of us.

You see, at the end,

that wonderful gift that was given to me for so long,

I didn't cling, trying to hold on to what wasn't mine anyway

because it was a gift.

It was like a ten year confirmation

that I was becoming that person that I liked.

I was so proud of that.

I woke up to a different person.

By now, I had been in prison for 18 years.

And that's when I got sick.

I lost 31 pounds in a month and a half.

I was really feeling poorly and then I had blood work done

and they told me what it was.

I'm infected with this strain of hepatitis C

that all the men who had dental work at Huntington had contracted.

15 other men had got this hepatitis.

So the first guy to die was DC, Dale Carter.

He died in the vents underneath me screaming in agony.

Oh, my God.

So when I found out I immediately said

"Yes, I'll take the drug treatments. I'll sign up for it."

But the years of drug abuse had damaged my kidneys

and after about seven months I started suffering

all the side effects of this drug.

I was peeing this horrible coffee-coloured urine.

Everything tasted dead in my mouth.

I was just not right.

And then it was August.

I was out in the exercise yard.

I was so weak.

I was looking directly up at the sky.

And then...

I couldn't see anything. It went blank.

I knew what darkness is, but this was black.

And that's when I found out I was dying.

I was so afraid that...

I was shaking. I really was.

And so I remember I stuck to my ritual.

I stood over the top of the toilet bowl and I bathed

and I was doing the same ritual, bathing, three days later

and I saw these swirls around my thighs

and I realised I was seeing swirls.

So if I was seeing swirls, then I was seeing.

OK.

The very first thing I did later on that evening

was I sat by a very bright light at my desk

and I wrote a letter to the judge handling my appeals.

And another song, Patty Griffin's "Gonna Let Him Fly".

It's so strange because the lyrics are obviously a love song,

but to me it was all about me.

"Ain't no talking to this man.

"Ain't no pretty other side."

It's so true.

There was absolutely no pretty side to hope for any more.

No Jackies, no love, none of those things that you could have

a pretty other side to hope for.

# Ain't no talking to this man

# Ain't no pretty other side

# Ain't no way to understand

# The stupid words of pride

# It would take an acrobat

# I already tried all that

# So I'm gonna let him fly

# I'm gonna let him fly

# Things can move at such a pace

# The second hand just waved goodbye. #

"Dear Judge Giles, as a criminal plaintiff

"I ask that one right that I have remaining to me

"as a condemned prisoner be recognised.

"And that is a condemned man's right to be executed."

# I'm gonna let him fly. #

"I hereby ask that counsel be dismissed,

"that my record be then transmitted to Governor Edward Rendell

"for my execution date to be set

"within 60 days of receipt of this letter."

# Took a while to understand

# The beauty of just letting go. #

"I hereby swear that I am sane at the time of this writing.

# I've already tried all that. #

"Signed, Nicholas James Yarris.

"August 2002."

# Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh

# I'm gonna let him fly

# Fly

# Yeah

# I'm gonna let him fly. #

When the letter was received by Judge Giles,

he ordered that my lawyers come to a conference hearing

and he wanted to know why someone who had been asking

for DNA testing for 15 years claiming that they are innocent

would now ask to be executed?

And he was really hard pressed

to get them to give up any answer I guess,

because I didn't copy them in on the letter

and they didn't even know I wrote to the judge

so they were hearing this for the first time.

So the judge, by law, really was hamstrung in the fact

that he was going to be required to transmit my record to the governor

as law required for me to be executed

within 60 days from that point.

Instead he said,

"All right, whatever DNA testing is remaining in this case

"I'm ordering it now tested."

And that was April.

April turned to May. May turned to June.

July 2nd, 2003.

I wasn't expecting the results.

For some reason, when he brought the phone to my cell,

I really wasn't expecting to talk to my lawyers about Dr Blake.

But he gave me the phone and said, "Your lawyer wants you to call."

So I dialled the number

and I'm waiting for the collect phone call process to ring through

and it does and on the other end was Michael Wiseman,

a lawyer who had been representing me for seven years.

When I heard Michael Wiseman say...

"I just got off the phone with Dr Blake.

"The gloves that were left inside the victim's vehicle

"were found to have DNA from an unknown male,

"DNA from Mrs Craig and DNA from the sperm matching the killer's gloves."

That was it. I didn't have to hear anything else.

I knew.

You didn't have to tell Nick Yarris what those results meant.

I started screaming, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!

"It proves me innocent! Don't you see?!"

The guard came back to collect the phone and he saw me huddled.

Crying on the bed.

In the foetal position.

And he said...

"Nick, what's up?"

And I lifted my head up and I just shook my head

because I didn't even have the strength to say anything, you know.

And he said, "Go down to the shower and take a shower."

And I got up, I put on my shower shoes

and I started trudging towards the shower.

And he opened the gate down on the end of the block

and he walked into the shower and he put a chair in there.

And as I got the last few steps there...

..he grabbed my arm gently and he sat me down

and he just pushed the button and left me there.

And I cried.

I cried like you wouldn't believe, man.

I waited 15 years to cry.

The happiest memory I ever had...

..is that we lived at 2439 Milan Street.

Just like Italy. Milan.

There was a fibreglass awning attached to the front of our roof.

And whenever it rained, it gave off this hollow drumming sound

that just drew me out of wherever I was and whatever I was doing.

And I would get a blanket

and Jaco my dog, who was a little black poodle,

and we would go out and sit on this lounge chair

that was set up like a deckchair.

And there, under this tattered old green blanket

I would listen to the rain

and play out all these daydreams in my head of adventures I would have.

And it was like this...

..cocoon.

All I had was that blanket and the dog

and this...

..feeling that I was on a journey.

I remember as I ran out the door with Jaco,

the last thing Mum said was,

"Don't you dare get those school clothes dirty!"

It was still early. Early, like April.

And in Philadelphia in the springtime it's just beautiful.

Like 67, 68 degrees and you just get these very nice days.

So Jaco and I were just like throwing the stick

and doing the things that we loved to do.

And I was walking along deeper into the woods,

when I saw him.

I said, "Damn."

I was so afraid of him.

The hobnail boots, denim jeans, white T-shirt,

armband rolled up with a pack of Lucky Strikes in the sleeve.

And he said, "Fuck are you doing?"

Like that, you know.

"Take it."

I looked up towards the houses.

Then I went like that. And he said, "No, puff."

And I went...

And I just got...

My head went crazy and I heard this sound.

HE CLAPS

And it was the stone that was in his hand that he hit me with.

And then I felt him bend down and he turned me

so that our shoulders were parallel and my leg was on his arm there.

And he was raping me.

And he was making this, like, guttural sound.

I started, like, whimpering.

He's like, "Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up!

"I'll fucking kill Jaco and your whole family if you say to anybody.

"You understand me? I'm not a faggot! I'm not a fucking faggot!

"You understand me?"

Then he left and I screamed.

I was like, "Jaco!"

I kept screaming for Jaco.

One of the things that he said to me when he was putting his pants right.

He looked at me and he said, "You tell everybody you fell off a wall

"with that shopping cart over there. You hear me?"

He like gave me this quick rundown of what to say.

And as soon as I told the first lie,

it was like once it was believed, it was so hard to undo.

It spiralled.

And then...

..everything changed.

From that day I found out I was proven innocent from science,

it still took me seven more months.

I went back to death row

and I found out they took everything out of my death row cell

and then they took me to this unit.

I was beside myself. They took me to H block, the mental ward.

"What are you doing to me?" I didn't understand.

I went over and I saw Major Locket, the major of the guards.

I said, "What's going on? Why am I here?"

And he said, "Mr Yarris, after the experience that you had

"we don't want to risk any of the staff

"being murdered by you in a rage

"in recognition for what we have done to you."

I went back to my cell.

And I had a plastic milk carton and that was it.

A plastic mattress, two sheets, two towels,

a pillowcase for that plastic pillow and that was it.

They took every book, they took my artwork, they took every comfort.

And I sat down on my bed

and I said,

"Oh, my God. They did me a favour."

I folded my legs, I sat straight in my yoga position.

And I started to dream of the life I was going to have.

I was going to have a great life.

I'm going to meet me a girl, I'm going to fall in love.

I'm going to have a family and best of all I'm going to be a great dad.

That's what I'm going to do.

If you're going to take everything from me,

OK, then instead...

I think I'll give myself everything.