Undisputed Truth

by Mike Tyson

  Shortly after that, Ed Gerstein, Desiree’s original ambulance chaser, got an opinion from the suit he filed with the Rhode Island Supreme Court over his original retainer agreement with the Washington family. Among other things, the court issued a public opinion saying that they believed that the State of Indiana should look into this matter because Desiree may have committed perjury in addressing the issue of the retainer during her cross-examination at my trial. Dershowitz was immediately all over this information, calling it a “smoking gun” that would get my conviction overturned. He also called Desiree “a money-grubbing gold digger who is a liar to boot.”

  On July ninth, five hundred people showed up at a rally to support me in downtown Indianapolis. A city councilwoman from Compton came all the way to address the crowd.

  “We will not let Desiree get away with using us as a tool to destroy one of the greatest men we’ve ever known.”

  But about a month later, Judge Gifford dashed my hopes again. She denied me a new trial and affirmed an earlier ruling that Dershowitz couldn’t depose Desiree about her retainer agreement with her civil lawyer. She made it personal, saying that she was shocked by Dershowitz’s “attempt to perpetrate a fraud upon the Court.”

  In October of 1992, my father died. I wanted to go to the funeral but they wouldn’t let me. They were really trying to break me in there. I was still getting penalized heavily for marginal offenses, racking up more and more time. I actually paid for two funerals for him, one up north, and then we sent him down to North Carolina. My nephew told me that my father’s common-law wife was so mad because all of his ex-prostitutes were sitting in the front row to pay him homage.

  After the New Year, there were major developments in my case. On January twelfth, Globe magazine broke the story that Desiree was not as innocent as the prosecution portrayed her. They interviewed friends of hers who all said she was sophisticated when it came to sex. One friend even said that Desiree only cried rape when her father found out that she’d had sex with me and he was furious.

  At the end of January, Hard Copy produced a one-hour special called “Reasonable Doubt” about my case. When Desiree had gone on 20/20 earlier, she had told Barbara Walters that she would have dropped the charges against me if I only would have apologized to her. Dershowitz was all over that.

  “Can you imagine anyone saying they’d accept an apology for being raped?” he asked.

  On February fifteenth, the Indiana Court of Appeals heard arguments on my appeal. Prior to the hearing, the justices had finally released the retainer agreement with Desiree’s civil attorney. Dershowitz had four major issues that he felt could warrant a reversal—the witnesses who were excluded who saw Desiree and I necking, the exclusion of the implied consent instruction to the jury, the admission of the 911 tape, and the Gerstein retainer for a civil case against me. Many legal experts, including Mark Shaw, thought that Gifford had made enough errors to warrant a new trial.

  After the arguments on that appeal, another bombshell hit, this one concerning Desiree’s prior claims of being raped. Wayne Walker, a high school friend of Desiree’s, alleged that Desiree told her father that he had raped her and then told Wayne that she had done it “to cover myself . . . or I would have been in big trouble.” Walker told ESPN Radio that when he heard about Desiree accusing me of rape, “the first thing that came to my mind was ‘she’s doing it again.’”

  Later that same month, the New York Post reported that in October 1989, Mary Washington had Donald arrested and charged with assault and battery against Desiree. Desiree told police that her father had “hit me and pushed me under the sink . . . he continued slamming my head into the wall and the floor. I freed myself and reached for a knife to protect myself.”

  What could have caused her father to assault Desiree? Well, when we look at her mother’s deposition for my trial, she claimed that her husband “flew off the handle” when Desiree told him that she had lost her virginity. Her mother was so concerned that she arranged for Desiree to undergo “psychotherapy because of severe depression and suicide threats.”

  So Desiree’s mother was confirming that Desiree had lost her virginity in October of 1989, which was exactly when her friend Wayne said they had sex and she had falsely accused him of rape. Desiree, of course, swore in an affidavit in response to my lawyer’s amended appeal that she never had sex with that boy.

  “I categorically and unconditionally deny that Wayne and I ever had sexual intercourse with penetration. I also categorically and unconditionally deny that I ever accused Wayne of having raped me.”

  There was only one problem. Dershowitz had uncovered another boy, Marc Colvin, a friend of Desiree’s, who came forth and stated that what Desiree swore to was a lie.

  “I am very reluctant to come forward with this information because I still consider Desiree Washington to be a friend. She called me on the telephone towards the end of 1989 and confided in me that she had sexual intercourse with Wayne Walker. . . . She also said that after it happened, she went into the bathroom and cried.”

  Oh, what a tangled web we weave! Fast-forward two years. I can only wonder what her father would have said and done if Desiree told him that she had had consensual sex with me. We’re obviously not dealing with the most stable family unit here.

  I was feeling pretty confident about my appeals with Dershowitz heading the case. So I was stunned when I lost the appeal before the Indiana Court of Appeals on August seventh. In a 2–1 decision, two of the justices felt that Gifford didn’t abuse her discretion in blocking the testimony of my most important witnesses. One judge saw it my way. Judge Patrick Sullivan wrote, “My review of the entire record leads me to the inescapable conclusion that he [Tyson] did not receive the requisite fairness which is essential to our system of criminal justice.” In other words, this nigga got fucked. I finally lost whatever little confidence I had left in our system. This was crooked business as usual. So I wasn’t surprised at all when, six weeks later, the Indiana Supreme Court refused to even hear my appeal.

  But check out why they didn’t. To consider my case, they would have had to have a 3–2 majority vote. I would have gotten that vote except for the fact that Judge Randall Shepard, a liberal member of the court, had withdrawn from the case because of a conflict of interest. It seemed that the judge and his wife had gone to the twentieth reunion of his Yale Law School class. The judge’s wife went to the ladies’ room and on her return bumped into Dershowitz.

  “She said she had told Dershowitz that she had seen him argue the bail request before the Indiana Court of Appeals and that he needed to be better attuned to the Indiana way of approaching things as this appeal progressed. . . . I agree . . . that this conversation was improper. My wife is not a lawyer and she did not fully appreciate the reasons why such conversations are considered improper. . . . She regrets very much having initiated this colloquy and feels a deep sense of embarrassment about it. My own decision not to disclose the reasons for my disqualification was motivated by a desire to protect my wife from the embarrassment she would feel about public disclosure and debate concerning her conduct,” Judge Shepard later wrote.

  It seemed that Shepard’s wife was giving Dershowitz some pointers on how he could win my appeal. But the judge didn’t want to make it appear that his vote was dictated by his wife’s opinions. So in saving his wife’s face, he fried my black ass. The final vote without Shepard was 2–2, and that was enough to shut me down.

  Now I had no hope of getting right out of prison. It took me about thirteen months to figure out the right way to do my time. My whole first year was hell, getting months and months added to my sentence. I was suspicious of everyone there. They had put me in a cell with a guy named Earl who was a model prisoner. Earl was in there for thirty years for selling drugs, which meant that he had to do at least fifteen years. The administration thought that he would be the best guy to mentor me and keep me out of trouble.<
br />
  The first night that we were together, I took a pencil and held it menacingly.

  “I’ll fucking kill you if you touch my shit, motherfucker. Better nothing be missing,” I said. “And I’m not cleaning no room. Just don’t talk to me.”

  Earl just looked at me.

  “What the fuck? Yo, Mike, I’m not that guy,” he said. “I’m with you, brother. I’m here to help you. Don’t get caught up in that bullshit. It’s just gonna get you a whole asshole full of extra time. I knew guys who came here with a year, three years, and they wound up doing life for the same bullshit. You just don’t know how to move yet, young brother. You need me to teach you how to move and it’s gonna be easy sailing from here on in.”

  Little by little Earl schooled me. It took me some time to realize it, but Earl was awesome. We’d walk around the dorm and Earl would point things out.

  “Stay away from these motherfuckers over there, Mike. And don’t ever talk to those cops there. Don’t even say ‘Good morning’ to them. Just keep your mouth shut at all times, Mike. Listen, if you see me sucking somebody’s dick or fucking his ass, don’t be surprised. I would never do that, but if you saw it don’t be surprised. Don’t ever be surprised at anything you see here, all right? And don’t comment on nothing, just keep your mouth shut. If you see a bunch of niggas stabbing someone, just keep moving. Don’t look at them, don’t let them see you look at them. Whatever you see here, you don’t see. Somebody is fucking someone, just mind your business. Don’t make no jokes or comments about it because that’s his wife, nigga. Just like if you disrespect somebody’s wife in the street they’re gonna kick your ass, it’s the same if you disrespect their wife in here.”

  He was right. You couldn’t apply your outside standards to what was going on in there. You think about homosexuality in the outside world and you might think of a meek person who could easily be taken advantage of. But these people were warriors. They’d kill you in a second. You’d see two big strong guys walking in the yard, holding hands. You respected those people because if you didn’t, you’d have a very serious problem. In prison, anybody is capable of murder. It doesn’t matter how big or small they are.

  After a while in prison, I began to see the humanity in everyone, even the racist guards. I don’t care if it’s black gang members, Nazis, Mexican gangbangers, you started to get familiar with them when they told you that someone in their family died or that they had problems with their wife.

  Once I really saw how the system worked, I began to manipulate things to my advantage. This inmate named Buck helped me in that process. Buck was a lifer from Detroit who had done about fifteen years. I used to get a ton of letters a day from people all over the world. One day he was in my room reading through some letters.

  “Hmm, Mike. I can tell that you don’t know how to read your letters,” he said.

  “What do you mean, nigga?” I said. “I can read.”

  “You can read, but you don’t know how to subliminally read. There are messages here. People don’t want to hurt your feelings because you’re a famous fighter and they think you have lots of money, but they’re using words that you’re not aware of because you haven’t been to school a lot, Mike,” he said.

  He was telling me this shit, but it wasn’t offensive.

  “Look, this one broad says, ‘If there is ever anything you need, anything that I could do, please let me know.’ See, that doesn’t mean ‘If I could do anything for you,’ that means ‘I want to do something for you, you just need to tell me.’ Or take this other letter. ‘I would love to get to know you and cultivate a relationship with you as human beings.’ Listen, that means that she wants to elevate your status in life, your health, and well-being. That means if you need anything, she would help you out.

  “We are in a unique situation here, Mike. We’re on the edge of making a lot of money. Times aren’t so good for you. You spent a ton of money on lawyers. You’ll probably have to spend a ton more on that bitch who’s suing you. You need commissary money. How are you going to eat well? You can’t eat this food in the cafeteria.”

  “You’re right, I do need commissary money,” I agreed.

  So I went with Buck. He started taking my letters and writing replies to these people and the money started flowing in. We were getting cash, we were getting jewelry, there was foreign currency coming, we were drowning in money. Around that time, Voyles got a phone call from one of the wardens.

  “We have a problem with Mike’s commissary,” Warden Slaven told Jim.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “He’s got one hundred thousand dollars in his account,” Slaven said.

  But soon I started to get scared because some of these people wanted to come and visit me. What do I do? I had no idea what Buck had told these people in the letters. I was thinking that he had me ready to marry some of these women. I was starting to think it was a setup.

  I knew I needed to break off Buck for doing this, so I told him to have the people send money to my “sister” or my “aunt” and then Buck could arrange to get the money from the people they were sending it to. Buck left prison so I had a young gangbanger named Red write the letters. All of a sudden, Red was sporting a nice new watch and was looking like a pimp with diamond rings and chains.

  One day this girl from England showed up wanting to see me. She was a girl that Red had been corresponding with. He was in the hole then and he told me to go out and see her. But he didn’t tell me that they had a tumultuous relationship and they were beefing. So I went out there thinking, This is going to be great.

  We sat down in the visiting room and this girl started in on me. She was holding a baby.

  “Where’s my diamond chain? Where’s the watch I gave you? I want them back, you motherfucker!” she screamed.

  Whoa! I didn’t have to take this shit from some crazy lady I didn’t even know. I called out to the guard, “I’m ready to leave,” and I walked away.

  I guess she complained to the administration and they started an investigation. The guy handling the case came to me and said, “You don’t know this girl, do you? She never gave you any jewelry, right?” He knew I had something to do with it, but they didn’t want any heat from Internal Affairs.

  “No, sir, I don’t know anything about any of that. I never wrote that girl,” I said. The prison was very concerned that they might get sued since I was a ward of the state. But they did some more investigation and caught Red and shipped him out.

  By now you’re probably wondering what a young, virile man like me was doing for sex in jail? Well, I was getting some in jail thanks to this little white inmate. I would see this guy get a visit from this girl who came in all pregnant. I was thinking she had somebody else’s baby and was coming in to break the news to him, but it wasn’t like that. They were kissing and he was tonguing her. The administration went crazy and confronted him.

  “You don’t care that your wife is having someone else’s baby?” they said.

  “Hey, this is my personal business. Why are you up in my business?” he answered.

  So I asked him what the real deal was.

  “They’re my babies, Mike. I’ve had two of them since I was in here. This is how you do it. You get your lady to come in wearing crotchless underwear and one of those loose summer dresses with the buttons down the front. But you have her wear it backwards so the buttons are in the back. Then you request an outside visit and you go to the yard where they have the picnic tables set up. And she sits on your lap facing away from you and you just give it to her right there. There’s no cameras out there, you just have to watch out for the one guard who’s monitoring the inmates.”

  That guy never should have told me that shit. Since I was falsely imprisoned, I thought, Why do I have to stop my sexual activities? I didn’t commit that crime. Why do I have to stop having sex? That was my mind-set. I’d go through my f
an mail and pick out the girls who I liked the most. I’d write them back, “Hey, would you be interested in visiting me? I’ll send you a ticket.” I’d give them all the instructions about the loose dress and the crotchless underwear. They were probably thinking that we were going to do the cheap-feel shit.

  So when the first girl came, I was already sitting in the outside yard. I couldn’t go up and greet her because I was sitting there thinking nasty stuff so that I’d be ready for her. She came over and kissed me and I turned her around and, boom!

  She could have had AIDS or anything. I was just reckless. I just flopped her on top of me without a condom on.

  Lord, I didn’t even know this girl and we were doing it in broad daylight.

  After a while, I had it down to a science. As soon as the girl got on my lap, I’d hold her hand and start stroking so that they couldn’t even see that she was moving. Because if you’re doing it too hard she’s up in the fucking air like she’s on a trampoline and that wasn’t going to work.

  It was going great until I got stupid. One day I couldn’t control myself and I was just laying it down and going for it. What happened was that the guard had left his post and he had circled around and snuck up on me from behind and saw what was going on. Somebody probably ratted me out because the guards never left their position in the window. I got sucker-punched.

  Around this same time, one of the girls who had visited me from Atlanta came out with an article in Star magazine. She claimed that I had got her pregnant in jail and they showed this picture of her with a big belly. Thank God it was just a fake belly that they rigged up so she could sell the story to the rag. I was really relieved, but that was the end of my little sexual escapades. They canceled all outside visits for the whole prison. Everybody was so pissed off at me. They even called it the Tyson Rule.

  By now Earl was getting ready to get out. Before he left, he sat me down.

  “When I leave, I want you to go with Wayno. He’s the only good guy here. Be careful of all those other guys, Mike. You’re an inmate, but those guys are convicts. They’re gonna do this until the day they die. Just stay with Wayno, he’s not going to run you up into some bullshit.”