by Mark Hewitt
I dipped my fingers in the pool of blood that was forming around my cellmate, and painted my cheeks with two, six-inch lines of blood. For good measure, I put blood on my forehead. I wiped up some more blood off the floor and gave myself a red sash across my chest from my left shoulder to the right side of my waist. I wanted to parade myself as a victorious warrior, defender of the rights of the victimized child. I was too drunk to think coherently, but it made sense to me at the time. I wanted to make him feel as lowly as the children he abused. I think I succeeded. Unlike him, however, his victims had been innocent minors. I felt pretty good about what I had done; I guessed that others would thank me.
I gathered up my weapons and flushed them down the toilet. I would have to find new razorblade pieces and affix them to plastic handles once the furor of this episode died down. I flushed any other contraband I could locate because I knew that there would be a complete investigation and my cell would be searched from top to bottom.
My next step was to call the guard. It was his job to remove the body and clean up the mess. I didn’t want to face up to what I had done, but the cell was covered in blood and there was a body crumpled on the floor. There was no getting out of this one. I turned on my radio and cranked up the volume when I found the song “You’re Still a Young Man” by Tower of Power. Bracing myself for the inevitable consequences of my violent actions, I kicked the door to my cell as hard as I could. “Get my cellie out!” I yelled.
The watchman who had looked up at my kicking responded. “Why?”
“Because I killed him.” I confessed.
A week prior, I had begun to set my trap. I started to brew some my special blend of prison-made wine. Pruno, as prisoner brewed liquor is called, is as popular as it is plentiful. I had saved up about forty apples, thirty small packets of syrup, and some hot chocolate powder. As part of my preparation, I pulled out my kicker (fermented pulp from a prior batch), and proceeded to create new wine. I knew it would take some time to brew, but if there was one thing I had a lot of, it was time.
Pruno is a crude homemade wine. Though we were a few hours drive from Napa Valley and some of the finest wines in the world, we couldn’t enjoy such pleasures. Prisoners are forbidden to possess or consume alcoholic beverages. The prohibition stopped few inmates from drinking, however. Through trial and error over many years of prisoner experimentation, the procedure of crafting prison beverage had been raised to an art form. Any prisoner can now detail all the intricacies of making an alcoholic drink in a cell, but if a convict is caught with hard liquor, punishment is severe and certain.
The most common recipes for pruno require fruit and sugar, whatever fruit and sugar happened to be available. Raisins are popular and usually plentiful. Grapes and apples are also commonly used. Corn syrup and honey can be utilized in place of, or in addition to, refined sugar. The fruit is mixed with water to make a sludge which is carefully placed over some heat source. In a pinch, room temperature will work though the process is much slower. A heating vent or hot water from the sink is preferred for a quicker batch. As the fruit mash ferments, it produces alcohol.
Many prisoners keep a stock of fruit sludge that can be used to start new batches. This stock, called kicker, is hidden away, out of sight of the guard’s eyes. It is brought out and a portion of it is added to a new blend of fruit mash and sugar. The kicker hastens the fermentation process by introducing alcohol and useful enzymes. Once depleted of natural sugars, a portion of the mash is preserved to become kicker for a future fermentation.
Sugar is the best ingredient for large quantities of alcohol because it ferments quickly and enables even a small portion of stock to produce gallons of brew. There is an art to adding the correct amount of sugar and ensuring that it is completely converted to alcohol. Too much sugar or too short a fermentation period gives the liquid a sweet taste without enough alcohol. Seasoned veterans in a state penitentiary can be as skilled in the art of beverage making as any brew master at Budweiser or any enologist at an upscale winery.
I smashed the fruit until it was a mushy applesauce. I put this and some kicker into a fresh garbage bag with some scalding water to start anew the fermentation process. After two days, I added the syrups. I concealed the bag under my bed, carefully wrapped in a blanket. In all, I had about two gallons of mixture. I allowed it to ferment another five days, a short amount of time for a prison mixture. I was able to speed up the process by heating the mixture three times a day: I lowered the bag into my toilet and doused it with the hottest water I could produce. The blanket served the dual purpose of hiding the bag from curious prison guards and insulating the mixture to keep it warm while it cooked.
When the short fermentation period was complete, I strained the pulp from the wine. I set aside the new kicker for a repeat process that likely would not happen if my plans were successful. I was so excited looking over my new pruno! Never before had I created it so quickly; never before had I made such a large batch. A warm feeling came over me when I thought about my “party” that night. I am not sure if I was more excited to drink to my heart’s content or to serve my cellie a nice, cold dish of revenge. Never would he lie to me again about hurting some poor defenseless girl, and never again would he be able to harm a child without thinking about how he had been paid back by ol’ Wino!
The last step, after straining the mixture, was to cool it. This was achieved by lowering it, still inside its bag, into the cold water of my toilet. Knowing that I was doing this under the watchful eyes of the prison guards, and actually getting away with it, was so rewarding. It gave me a high that was better than any sexual experience. I would get years worth of bragging rights once my plans were successfully carried out.
Just after lunch, when I had reasoned that the wine had been sufficiently cooled, I split the bag open and filled my cup for the first sip. The pruno tasted as sweet and citrusy as it smelled, reminding me of some after-dinner wine at a trendy restaurant. It was as good as anything I had previously concocted, despite being very sweet. Given more time, I could have baked off more of the sugar and raised its alcohol content, but I did not want to wait. Today was the day I had scheduled for my party, the day I would exact my revenge.
My cellie was equally eager to taste his first sip. I filled my cup again and offered some to my willing victim. By 11:00 in the evening, we were both fully sauced. I was drunk beyond awareness of many of my actions. My cellie was moving slowly, slurring his speech, and rambling incoherent words. I was rolling around on my bed, constantly changing radio stations as I sought better music than I could find. This angered my cellie. He told me to leave the radio alone: “Stop changing the station. You are making my mind go blew, blew, blew.”
I laughed at how foolish this sounded. In my inebriated state, probably anything sounded funny to me. Since it was my radio, and since I had no interest in being told what to do, I continued to search out new stations. Suddenly, he had had enough. He didn’t raise his voice, or give any undue attention in my direction. He simply started to pack his belongings. It was a strange way to express rage, I laughed to myself. Instead of yelling at me or making threats, he pretended I did not exist.
He stepped over to his locker and pulled out some shirts and tossed them by the cell door. He returned to his locker to retrieve letters, items of hygiene, and other miscellaneous belongings. These he also dumped on the ever-growing pile in front of the door. Maybe somewhere in his drunken stupor, it made sense. I found it comical. Where he was hoping to go? I had no idea. I knew no prison guard would aid his travel plans. He was in jail, for God sakes!
This was the time I decided to set my plan in motion. With his attention directed elsewhere, I carefully slid my prison-made knife out of my mattress, the best hiding spot in a prison cell. In my hand, I gazed at tiny pieces of razorblade affixed to a plastic spoon handle. My weapon was small, but quite effective when used with skill. It could easily end a man’s life. I collected the edge of my bed sheet and began to wrap it around my
wrist. If my flimsy knife slipped as I wielded it, I had no intension of either dropping it so he could gain mastery or of mutilating my own hands.
At this point, my cellie was totally unaware of what I was doing, and even more oblivious to the harm I was intending. Perhaps he had had a premonition that prompted him in his quixotic quest to flee the room.
He started to bang on the door. I mocked him: “Kick it harder. The night man will be up here. Just kick it harder.” The fool did just that. He kept kicking the door. “Harder,” I urged, “and he’ll really be up here fast.” I was enjoying the mocking. He was too drunk or enraged to notice.
I admit that, at the time, I was verbally and physically abusive by nature, not just to my cellmates, but to anyone who crossed me. I’ve mellowed some since that day, but at the time, I was a mean son of a bitch. It’s all I had ever known. Either you menace and attack like a shark or you get eaten by the sharks around you. I had long ago committed to self-preservation: there was no way I was going to be another person’s meal. A true convict stands up for his rights. For me, there is no way another inmate, guard, or any prison official was going to gain the upper hand. I didn’t care what “hole” or what Security Housing Unit they had to put me in: I would not submit. I didn’t care if they chopped me up into little tiny pieces and placed each piece on the electric chair, I would not bow down to someone else and do things his way. I had always done things my way. That is just who I was and what I was about.
I jumped down from my bunk. “Fuck it, do you want to just get off?” I asked to initiate a fight.
“Yeah,” he responded passively and without emotion. He didn’t possess enough control of himself to protect himself, let alone engage in a fight with the enraged mountain of muscle that I was that evening.
I covered the nine feet of cell between us in one fluid motion. My knife landed in his chest before he was able to raise his fists. Again and again, I stabbed and cut. The knife slid in my hands and broke repeatedly, but I was always able to retrieve enough of it to continue my violence. I put my full weight behind each thrust. I struck him with my balled up fist several times too. My drunken frenzy would not allow me to stop. I pressed my anger near his heart, at his jaw, and all over his back. Even when the strength had drained from my arms, I slashed out at him a couple times more. Finally, he doubled over unconscious and slumped to his knees.
In the state toilet of my cell, C-yard, Building 12, cell 235 at 11:45 pm, the weak bastard gave in to my strength.
I turned to my radio and changed the station. James Brown was finishing the song “The Big Payback.” How appropriate, I laughed to myself. I changed the station when the song was over and yelled for the guard.
Once notified, the first guard, the night watchman I had alerted, turned on the alarm to notify other guards that there was an emergency at hand. Within seconds, a swarm had assembled a few feet away, ready to take me out.
Once tamed with handcuffs, I was led to a holding cell on the tier. One of the guards pressed me inside a portable enclosure which would house me for several hours. It was a kick-proof, heavy-gauge steel cage with one-quarter inch diamond-shaped holes throughout. I was left in handcuffs as the guards attended to my cellie. I watched the flashes of a camera as the investigation commenced. My cellie was carted off on a stretcher, bound for the infirmary. He required numerous stitches and a large quantity of painkillers. I was told that he awoke in a gurney the next morning with no idea where he was or how he had gotten there.
A guard asked me whether I was injured.
“Ha,” I answered, “the blood on my Puerto Rican face is his!” I smiled broadly, not entirely from the alcohol.
Another guard exposed four photographs of the scene to preserve evidence for the possibility of some future legal action. Once the pictures were taken, someone wheeled up a bucket of hot bleach water. With what looked like level-4 Hazmat suits, complete with boots and rubber gloves, necessary protection against HIV or any other blood-borne diseases, three guards grudgingly scrubbed at the results of our fighting. Mop full by mop full, my cellie’s blood was reunited in the bucket.
Another guard collected my cellie’s belongings: his television with Winnie the Pooh and Tigger stickers on it, his clothing which was strewn about the floor, and his scattered collection of toiletries. In a separate bag, he placed all the blood-stained items he could find, destined to be carefully examined as evidence then destroyed. He performed a final sweep exploring for contraband. All he could find were a few empty pruno cups. I had carefully flushed away everything else that was incriminating. Meanwhile, the cleanup crew had completed a second wipe down of my cell. They took rags, dipped them in the hot bleach water and carefully removed every minute detail of blood from between cracks and around uneven surfaces. They meant to return the cell to its pre-fight state.
I watched from the holding cage for about three hours as the guards photographed, gathered up personal effects, and sanitized my cell. Midway through the process, I was taken to the shower to clean up, and issued a fresh set of clothing so my bloodied shirt could be inspected and booked as evidence. When I was finally returned to my cell from the holding cage, I could see that they had carted away all my cellie’s belongings and many of mine as well. In my own freshly made bed, I descended into the sleep of a drunk, glad to be alone and back in my cell, though I knew my time there was limited. There would be consequences, I was certain. I didn’t know the specifics; however, I did know that the event would follow me like a Bloodhound.
I awoke later than usual to the words of the morning guard. “Fucking Wino. Fucking Wino.” Using my nickname in a wholly unfamiliar tone, he was obviously disappointed with my behavior. The smile on his face, however, betrayed his enjoyment of the moment. I returned his smile and turned away. My head throbbed out a hangover in steady beats as he updated me on my cellie’s condition. “Yeah, he’s alive. I haven’t seen him, but I heard that he’s fucked up real good!”
I received no extra provisions for breakfast or lunch that day. The guards wanted me to know in no uncertain terms that what I had done was not acceptable to the administrators of the prison. Whatever their feelings for a child rapist, they weren’t going to condone my actions.
This was in June of 2003. For the eighteen months I was housed in Mule Creek State Prison, I released a lifetime full of rage on anyone, and everyone, who crossed my path. I must have been one of the worst of the nearly 4,000 inmates at that institution. I was not a nice person to anyone; I stabbed two inmates and assaulted two others with my bare fists. I requested to be transferred to Pelican Bay, in Northern California, on the border with Oregon, or to Corcoran State Prison, just outside of Fresno and to the North of Bakersfield. For the incident with the sex offender, I got my wish with two months left on my SHU term. On September 4 of 2003, I would board a bus bound for Corcoran.
Once settled at Corcoran State Prison, I completed my last two months in the SHU in my new prison home. From there, I was transferred to a separate building, a sort of holding cell area called “the hole” by prisoners for its unpleasantness. The only view available from one of these cells is a bare, white hallway wall. And the hallways were often not lit. I had to endure little or no sensory stimulation from breakfast to dinner. My lunch was provided in a sack at breakfast time so I was deprived of the human contact of receiving a meal at noon. The hole is one of the worst places to be housed, but I knew it was temporary and that made it livable.
I was wakened suddenly and unexpectedly one morning. Having no plans for the day, I had gone back to sleep after downing a breakfast of cold cereal and eggs. A burly guard banged on my door, disrupting a sound and restful sleep. I was perturbed, and groggily asked what he wanted.
“You’ve got ICC [Institutional Classification Committee]; Get dressed!” He barked. I complained that I had to wash up, brush my teeth, and get a fresh jumpsuit on.
“Give me five minutes,” I demanded.
When he returned, I was cuffed up an
d led along the bare white hallways to the meeting-room area. As I waited for the committee to see me, my rage burned with new intensity. I didn’t like surprises, and I had had no time at all to prepare for whatever this gathering represented, neither mentally nor emotionally. I yelled at the committee members when finally placed before them. “Why don’t you just kill me like you did back in the early 1990s?” I swore at them, reserving my choicest comments for the women.
Two guards grabbed me out of my chair and led me off to the holding cell, where I was to do another two months of the sensory deprivation I had grown to hate. I had a big chip on my shoulder, the committee had concluded. Also, due to my violent past I would not be trusted with a cellmate.
The “hole” was just a temporary stop, as I suspected. Soon, they would need to place me somewhere more permanent, somewhere away from the general population, somewhere I could be observed, controlled, and restrained from attacking others. Soon, I would be housed alone, in a slightly smaller cell, for the protection of others, next to the world’s most notorious serial killer.
CHAPTER 3
Willie Grows to Adore Charlie
“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
Zelda Fitzgerald
I was not star struck when I met the old man. In my travels through the California prison system, I had already met many famous inmates and prison guards. After the first couple of so-called important people, I saw mere men who put on their pants like me: one leg at a time.
I met Eason Ransom, a former football player of the San Francisco 49ers. He worked for my favorite NFL team from 1979 to 1983. Our paths crossed after he was picked up for a DUI in Tracy, California. I would see him again in Solano State Prison, and again much later in San Quentin. In Tracy, I also met one of the Onion Field killers. I was introduced to the Ski Mask Rapist in Santa Clara County jail in San Jose. I have spoken with a Denver Bronco in Centinella State Prison. I saw Rick Stevens of Tower of Power, and a center for the Atlanta Hawks, both in Solano State Prison in Vacaville, California. I made the acquaintance of daughter-killing Juan Salcido in San Quentin. I even brushed shoulders with the notorious brothers, Lyle and Eric Menendez, now serving time in two different facilities for the brutal murders of their parents. Knowing people doesn’t always make the time easier, however. Sometimes it’s better to distance yourself from the bad influence of others.
