The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective see a side of life the average persons never exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five of those years I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Welcome to another episode that I Catch killers. Now, can you imagine spending over twenty years in prison for a crime you didn't commit, going into that prison as a teenager and coming out as a middle aged man. It's
hard to comprehend how he would survive such an injustice. Well, today we're going to speak to someone that that happened to. Today's guest is ever Risto Salis, a teenage boy of Mexican Descent, who was convicted and in prison for the murder of Jose Aurelio in California in the United States in nineteen ninety five. Everisto always maintained his innocence regarding this violent crime, but when he was just sixteen, he was convicted and sentenced thirty two years and nine months
in an adult prison. After years of legal battles, he was officially exonerated of the crime in twenty twenty three. We're going to talk to Everisto about his life before during the following his release from prison. It's a fascinating story. We're also going to examine miscarriages of justice and the need for scrutiny in.
The legal process.
I have no doubt you're going to find this a heavy discussion, but I think when you hear what he's got to say, you might also find some inspiration in his story. Everista Sallas, Welcome to I Catch Killers.
Nice to be with you.
Well, look, I really.
Appreciate you you coming on the podcast because we had a chat before we started, and I pointed out the fact that I was a homicide cop for a long time. Now, of all people to have resentment, distrust or whatever in regards to talking to a cop. So I appreciate you, appreciate.
You coming on, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Okay, Well, I got to say up front, you got every right to be bitter and resentful. Like going in the prison as a young fella aged what sixteen two days in the sixteenth year, sentenced to thirty two years and nine months imprisonment, I think it was, yeah, and sentence as an adult, even though you're a kid at at sixteen and an adult prison, that's a pretty heavy situation to find yourself in.
Yeah, it definitely was. And the age of peteen, I couldn't really comprehend the magnet to that situation. Even the time that they had given me was too big of a number for me to understand at that moment. And what's strange about that is my ignorance as a child. It actually prevented me kind of from really dealing with it emotionally, and that helped me in a sense, because I think if I really understood the magnitude of what I was facing, I might have crumbled under that pressure.
Yeah that's interesting you say that, but you are naive at that age. You really have no appreciation what the world's about, and so the full ramifications of what faced you for the next thirty two years probably didn't really sink in.
Yeah, the first two or three years, I kind of lived in that ignorance, you know, And I think that was a way that I protected myself. I think thinking about what took place and what happened to me in my life was too big for me, not only to understand but to deal with. At that moment. I didn't have really the experience or the understanding of how to
deal with that emotionally and mentally. And even here I was sitting in a place I've never been, a hostile environment where everything and everyone seemed to be trying to take advantage in one form of another. And I think that as a child, I dealt with to the best way I could, and that was intervention.
The fact I sit here talking to you now, and I've heard you talk on in other interviews and read a bit about you, the fact that you've escaped through that experience that you've gone through and don't have a resentment and an anger, and that maybe I'm wrong, but you, to me, you come across as someone that Okay, well, that was a big setback in life of the huge dimensions. But you don't seem to carry a bitterness and a resentment. Is that Where does that mindset come from?
Well, it was a choice. I mean it became a choice in prison because that resentment was there, and that was that was a second phase of what I had to go through. Once I begin to understand, once I got older and matured and mentally, I begin to see what happened to me, what took place, and what came was anger and bitterness, anger with the system. I didn't know at that time that the cop had set me up.
I just assumed that it was just a part of this long struggle that had dealt with in my life of just you know, life just throwing in these punches at me. And it was another one of those things.
And I grew angry with everything around me, and it took I think it was it was dipping into that madness and that anger and that frustration that led me down a path in prison to a point in my life where where I was I was isolated, I couldn't function mentally, and I had to make a choice at that moment, a moment of a kind of a self preservation of how I wanted to live my life. Because I was already in the cage physically and at that moment,
living in anger. I was in the cage mentally too, and I decided at that moment that I had to rise above them. I had to make the choice, a conscious decision, to say, you know what this happened to me. Okay, I can't change it at this moment. I can fight to change it, but I don't have to live my life mentally as I'm still in a prison. I can find a way to free myself and begin to live. And it was a choice, you know, and that choice
was hard, you know, for me to accept. But I decided that I wasn't going to hold on to anger, frustration, and hatred because that in itself was the prison, and that was a prison that I created for myself. And
I had to let go then. And I had to look at the most sporable things in my life, not just the wrongful conviction, but everything prior to that, and I had to forgive with the genuine forgiveness in order for me to live, in order for me to find myself, in order for me to become the person I needed to be that had to go, and that was a choice that I had to make, and I had to be willing to say, you know what, I don't know why this happened or what was behind it, but it
doesn't matter to me because I'm going to find a way to live and live in peace in this place. And when I made that decision, I had I had to kind of make the decision every single day because that anger with Flerero. But that was probably the most screen moment in my entire life in prison, was letting gore that burden, because that had carried me down, that had almost destroyed me and didn't allow me to see beyond the file of the pain and suffering that I
was going through. But once I let a go, I could see with clarity and I could make decisions that they were better my life rather than destroyer. Yeah.
I suppose it's the one thing that you can control, isn't it. There was nothing else about your life that you could really had control of the environment that you were in, But you can control your own own emotions and own thought process. So we're going to delve deep into that during the podcast how you worked your way through that anger. But let's get the audience to find out a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, what was your upbringing like, and tell us your story.
Basically, I was born in reised in Sunny Start last time. My entire life there to the age of fifteen until I was charging and wrongly convicted. The environment that I grew up in was pretty hostile. I grew up with a mother who was an alcoholic. My biological father was never in my life. I knew who he was, but he was a stranger to me. He lived in the same small town that I lived in. The town that I live in was only about ten thousand people at
the time. It's only about sixteen thousand now, so it's a small, conservative, farming town. It was kind of probably about fifty or sixty percent of Hispanic back when I was in the nineties. Now it's up to about eighty or ninety percent of his Spanic. So the environment was starting with my parents. Being with my mother who was so chaotic and in the drugs and alcohol. That was the beginning of the struggle of my life because everything that she brought into her life she brought into our
life and I had to accept it. She split with my stepfather who raised me and who I believe is my real father. And I don't call him my stepfather, but I do that just for clarity. And he was probably the only thing stable in my entire life. But he split with my mother when I was about five or six. But their relationship was pretty chaotic because my mother would leave and then come back drunk around some kind of drugs, and so it was. It was a
constant feeling with insecurity. When they split, my mom decided that she didn't want me no more for whatever reason. I came back from school one day and I couldn't find anybody there. My sisters weren't there. I have one older sister, one younger sister, and one younger brother. At the time, you know, I was seven or eight, my younger brother. I think i'd just been been born. And nobody was there when I returned from home. And at first I thought, maybe they're in the back room, so
I went to the ground. I couldn't find anybody, and I began to panic, and I began to yell from my mom. I couldn't I couldn't yell her name, and she didn't append then she just I couldn't find it. Where and then once I kind of just gave up and started kind of sobbing in one of the rooms, stinking that maybe she had just left me. I mean, everything was still there, but I just couldn't make sense of the situation. And then my mom peered out of nowhere and kind of just walked past me and kind
of had this like she didn't see me. So I felt this kind of this this moment of happiness, like, oh, there's my mom. So I jump up and I kind of chase her down, and she turns around and looks at me, and she had this kind of weird look in her eyes and it was kind of glossed over. And I had seen my mother, you know, high and on drugs, and she didn't seem like she was on that, but there was something different about what she had in her eyes. And she looked at me kind of in
a stoic voice and with no emotion at all. She looks at me and she says, you're a bad kid, and I want you anymore. And it was that direct and that cold, and I couldn't really process what she was saying. It didn't really make sense to me, and she kind of just turned and walked away, and I kind of sat there, kind of lost in my thoughts,
sticking understanding what this really meant. And it felt like it just happened, you know, five or ten minutes later, but it must have been twenty or thirty minutes later. The cops showed up at my house, and he said it was two cops and they came into the house and and I didn't really understand what they were doing there, but as they approached me, my mom kind of spoke to him and then she kind of like looked back at me, and they kind of started walking towards me.
I got this kind of gun wrenched feeling like, oh, they were going to take me for some reason. And they were there. They were there to take me to the foster gear. My mom had given me up and didn't me anymore, and they literally took me out of the house, kicking and screaming. I was begging my mother at that point, you know, please gonna let them take me. I was crying, but like I said, she had that kind of indifference look in her eyes, and they pulled
me out. I was screaming and crying. They were trying to control me. They handcuffed me but the cuffs were too big and they were just slipping off my hands, and so they threw me in the back of the cop car, kind of rough handled me a little bit, tried to tie me in with the with the seat belt and ended up getting the cuffs on me in some kind of weird way, and then just took me,
took me to the police station. I still couldn't really figure out where I was going, what was happening, And then they said to me, all I wouldn't tell him my name, my mother. My mother had told most things, but I just kind of was crying and kind of inconsolable. And then they took me in the back of cop corn or transported me to Yakima County, which is the city of Yakoma, which is about forty five miles away.
Still didn't know where I was going. We got halfway there, they turned around, and at that moment, I felt like, oh, okay, maybe my mom had to change my mind, and I felt kind of a sense of hope. And when they brought me back, they took me my dad. My stepdad looked in sunny. He must have got word. I don't know how he found out, but they had heard that my mother had had CPS or you know, the chop tech servant and taking me somehow he got ahold of
the police station. They took me to my dad's house, and I remember pulling up at my dad's house and my dad comes to the back of the cop corn as soon as he's seen me. I remember the looking his eyes he had, like his face kind of it was just like a beat sadness when he see me, and he kind of put his head down and kind of just started crying. And he says to me, and I'm crying. I'm screaming that camp you know I mean. And he says to me, tried to call me down.
He says, he said, your mother loves you. She's just in a bad place right now. And I didn't really understand iver. I didn't understand that until I got a little bit older what that meant. But I remember him picking me up, kind of crying at the same time, and then taking me into the house. And that began the process of me living with my dad and my mother kind of not want having to do with me. She lived in the same town and not too far away. But I think it was two days later I ran
away and went back to her house. She called the cops on me again, and it was the same traumatic event almost for about two or three weeks, and then the last time, I just decided that, yeah, I get it now. And my father, I mean, he had to work. He worked, you know, twelve to thirteen hour days, but he had a house, and there was stability there. When I was living with my mother, we were always they
would always shut the water off, We're always hungry. She would leave us sometimes for two or three days at a time. We'd be just me and my older sister, my younger sister by ourselves, and then she would bring these men in sometimes and or get to get into these relationships where she had really abusive ment, and I seemed to be a target of all them. I don't understand what the reason was behind that. And so living with my dad, even though it was away from my mom,
who I loved, there was stability there. There was a commonists there, there was a structure. And although my call had to work all these hours, he had this strength towards him, the way he carried himself, and he carried himself in an honorable way. He wasn't really a religious man. He was a moralistic man and pragmatic and everything he did. And you know, so he wasn't a big speaker either. He didn't speak a lot. I didn't talk a lot,
but his actions spoke valuance to me. And the way he carried himself is how he affected me the most, which I didn't see at that time, but that came later when I was in prison, and so that was kind of the environment that I grew up in. That The other side of that was that the gangs have already kind of began to form, you know, began to grow in the town. You know, they originated in California and brought down your individual to removing down here. So
that was the other act. My father, being the good man he was, he still had to work, so he was gone the majority of the day when I get back from school, which left the void in my arm, and I was alone. It was just me and him for the first years, and then my older sister came to live with us. Then my younger sister came to live with us. So my dad end up raising all three of us by himself. But again it was he was gone at work. He had to work to support us and and and you know, get us things we need.
What ended up happening was that it was the gang that filled that void. You know, there was a part of me that that I felt missing because my mother was gone and I was looking for that love and other things and looking for that acceptance and other things. They were going through similar things in their own household, and it was the tragedy and the trauma of that
moment that caused us to band together. And when I looked, when I look back at that moment, it wasn't so much that we decided, oh, we're going to be this gang or that kind of stuff. It was it was the trauma of our lives and the understanding that we had with each other that formed the bond that in the you know, morphing into the gang and all that kind of stuff.
The YU described that it's understainable that I age, and Yeah, I just want to say to you, what a tough, tough start in life.
But you're lucky that you had your your father. There was stepfather there.
It's interesting how you talk about getting drawn into gangs, because I hear on this podcast and throughout my career, I saw that happen so many times. It's that sense of wanting to belong, to be part of something, to feel you know, you've got your tribe basically, some people that care for you and look out for you. So what sort of stuff did you get into when you found your way in the gangs? And what age were you at this time?
I was about eleven when I started going to hang around with them. I didn't really get it onto two. I was like twelve. But the stuff that we did was very juvenile in the beginning. It was basically just walking around protecting each other, fighting with the arrivals here and there. Which was strange about it because the town was so small that we went to school with all these kids and they were friends prior, and so it
wasn't really serious. In the beginning. We were fighting, there were plates were really that bad, and oh you got med this and that kind of stuff. And as you know, as I got to about the age of thirteen, then it became started getting serious. You know, then people started shooting at us. And the gang I was part of was very small and it was an opposition of all the other gangs in the entire time, and so there was about two streets that we didn't control, but that's
where we kind of lived at. That was our neighborhood. And so in any direction I went, I would get chased or drump or shot at. And that's just the way it was. And it was people that I knew that I grow, our parents knew each other. That's how small it was, you know. But now we hated each other because of these gangs that brought this in. And then it was just a weird kind of mixture of us dealing with each other and finding each other for no apparent reason. We were too young to kind of
challenge the challenge. That kind of mindset or it came from. All we knew was once it started that we hated this guy boy he jumped you this time, or I don't like him because you know, he hit me this time, or he shot at me this time. And that's what it became. The kind of daily things that we did was just kind of walk around. Sometimes we would steal things, you know, or break in the cars or tag up
and just kind of juvenile kind of de linklents. And then since we were so outnumbered, we were always on the defense. There was no offensive on any kind of way. You know, I mean, there was everywhere we went, and I was very I was really small, and I got pretty much beat up every single fight that I got into.
There was and there was no I couldn't challenge these guys that were just too big, and it would always seem that they I don't know if it was because I would I would accept I fight them even though I didn't want to, and I would just take the beating. But it always seemed like they wanted to fight with me. And maybe because I was the smaller all of them, the me with my you know and Spanish called my cheese more you think you're you know, well, I'm looking to back down, and then I.
Would just kidding to stripid Yeah exactly, Yeah.
As if there was something I was gaining from that, you know. And so I mean those first uh you know, twelve to thirteen to fourteen, I got beat up a lot a lot of times, you know, and I found myself how to fight, which I think I won my first one, I think right before I went to prison, and that was pretty I didn't win. It wasn't like a big win, but I didn't get beat up.
You take any take any victory you can't get, yeah.
He didn't give me on the ground this time. I don't have a black guy. This time, I might do up on my head of beard. But you know, so it was it was a small victory, but it just too a young kid like that, it seemed I think when when I was twelve thirteen, it didn't seem that serious. But when they started shooting at us and we're trying to kill us, that's when I begin to understand that, you know, I'm part of something that that's not very good.
You know, by then it was too late that confronted you in the big Why I believe you had a friend that for the nine year old that was shot and killed in your presence.
Yeah, he was seventeen.
Are you you were full of honey at the time.
I was working, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was working.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Talk us through that, because that's the reality of saying something like that sort of brings at time the world that you were sublving in.
Yeah. So, I mean we were. It was my friend Robert, and he was like, almost to a certain states, like an older brother, and we kind of just connected and we just formed this kind of inseparable bond. We were always with each other and I was younger and he was older, so he always had a tendency to try
to protect me. And he got into a lot of fights because of me, you know, Like I said, people wud challenged me because I was really small, but you would get in for me, and he saved me, I mean two or three different times of One time, this guy ran up on me with a knife and almost stabbed me. He jumped in and almost got stabbed himself.
And then another time, these two guys ran after me with machetes, which and he stood his ground and he was telling me to run and I didn't want to even there, and they were swinging the machetes at us, but they didn't. Uh we were kind of were more new over and so they couldn't. And then they ended
up bringing away. And it was moments like that that really kind of solidified our bond together, you know, and I felt really close to him, and like I said, it was another one of those things where where you know, there was something missing in my life and his life, and that caused us both to kind of you know, bond towards each other, you know. And and one day we just went out and I went to his house and there was you know, a few other friends with us,
and we went to go walk around. I think, I don't I think we're looking for for some weed or something like that. I wanted to smoke some weed or something like that. And he was at home and he didn't actually want to come with us, and I was like, well, hey, if we can't find all this, we'll just to go buy some burritles or something, you know. And that's the soldiers like, oh, I'll take some brieoles in. So we didn't find us, so we went to the store right
by It was right by his house, and uh. I had went inside the store and a car of rivals had put up as a full corn end section and they ended up kind of rushing the car or fighting right there or something. And then I heard a shot and I walk out and I see, you know, the car peel out, and I run up to the corner and my friend's laying on the ground making a weird noise, rolling on his back, and you can't see anything. It's not like in the movies or there was a bullow.
We couldn't see anything. There was no blood or nothing. And we lit up his shirt and there was like a little weird like bolte right here. But we didn't know it at the time, but apparently he had got shot in the back and then it had came in and pierced the part and was literally peeking out of his chest right here, and he was making a weird noise, and then he just stopped making the noise, and we're trying to shake him to wake up, and he died
right there, right there in that corner. One of the worst part about that is that as we were trying to kind of get him to wake up, his dad had pulled up on the intersection, was coming around because he lived right there and he had to. His two little sisters were in the car, and he seemed the commotion or something kind of pulled into the driveway and somebody yelled at it was his son and everything. He jumps up and runs out and it's two little stifters
seen that. We're screaming in the background. And eight nineteen years old, I can't remember. And and that was that added tode, you know, to the horrors the horrors of that woman, you know. And to me when I lost him, it was I mean that was to me, it was it was like I couldn't. I couldn't deal with it anymore. And it wasn't fun for me at all anymore. And that right there kind of solidified my thought process of thinking that I have to find a way to get
out of this. I just I cannot live like this anymore. Yeah.
I was going to ask you that something is confronting the saying the friend killed lot that your mind said that that time, was that this wasn't the life that you wanted to live.
Yeah, I mean it hit me pretty hard that day. And then when we buried him, had already been kind of thinking about not being a part of this anymore, because you know, it was just it was just watch I mean literally we're getting shot at all the time, you know, and it wasn't like it was it was like a weekly thing. And some of these guys that didn't even know just because of the color our word and where I lived at, and if it became too real, it wasn't fun anymore. It wasn't a joke, it wasn't
where we're just there for each other. Now we've got to survive. And and so that kind of solidified that moment in my mind and then became well, how do I do that, you know, I mean, I my dad's were poor, even though my dad works in a way where he doesn't. We don't feel that we're poor, but we are. We can't just get up and leave. My dad at the same time is trying to do everything best to say it me from that. You know, he feels bad for the other kids, but lucky here I'm
his son. But he has no way. I mean, he can't just pick up and go somewhere else. And and it was just like I felt stuck. And then we end up burying them. And then the next days when they came to my house and charged me murder murder or not didn't committee So I didn't even have a time to really cross it at that moment. And then I was thrust it into another life changing, you know experience.
You know, you just on that on that pathway, tell us about the murder that you were convicted of, that you you didn't commit, but tell us about the circumstances surrounding the murder.
Why can't tell that begin for me? And then I kind of explained what I learned from the cours and stuff. So it just you know, we buried my friend. You know that day the next day that they wake up about nine o'clock. These cops I had known my entire life. You know, they harassed me. I set things to them, you know, and so they know who I am. I know who they are. You know. I've picked me up plenty of times. So they come to the house and they want to talk to me about my friend that
was killed. I hadn't really slept that whole week. I definitely sleep that night, and I was really mad because you know, I didn't know anything. I was in the store when it happens. I couldn't give them anything. But they, uh, we said, all we're just going to take you down there, nass. So I just cussed at them, like, I don't know why you got always messing with something to that effect. And I finally agreed him. I throw, all right, whatever you and he'll be back in a few minutes, I said, okay.
So I remember walking out of my house and I see two cop cars, and like I said, it became so routine for them to pick me up that I was used to the process. Sometimes they would cook me up, sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes they would you take me to the police station. Sometimes they wouldn't. But I seen two cop cars and I looked at it and it seemed weird to me, and know, we're like two cop card two cop cars. But then I just brushed it off.
And when the cop crad went to the police station, as soon as I got there, they sat me down, which was regard in Travino regard being at the leed detective Travino being a second second hand. They look. He looked at me and says, you know why you are here, and I said, yeah, because my friend Robert, and he was like, no, no, so many said he killed somebody.
And I almost laughed when he said that, because I was it was like, who, you know, you're trying to say I killed my friend, you know what I mean? Because there was nobody that you know that I could have really kind of understand what they're talking about. And then they they they always begin this way. This is their their interrogation technique, every single time when somebody said somebody said that, and so it was almost a routine that went through all the time. And then he looks
at me and he said, no, I'm serious. And with the way he said that, I'm serious, and I was like, I said no, no, what you talked himbout? And he said, oh, well somebody they killed somebody when you were fourteen years old and and six months ago, and I was like, And then I was even more lost. I was like, I was like, I couldn't even like, what are you talking about?
You?
I mean they said his name, which is a RL. I didn't know that name, was like and then they said his uh, his tag name or his gang name or what they called him on the street, which was bugs. I had heard somebody by that name, but I didn't know him personally. And he begins to go on with someone said that someone so that, and I'm telling him, Look, I'm telling you right now, I don't know anything about this. I heard about that murdered, you know, months back, but
it had nothing to do with me. I don't even you know this, It wasn't even thought of my head. And man, I don't say that as as being in a reflection on somebody being murdered on that, but it's just that if someone gets killed and you don't know him, it doesn't really impact you kind of an emotional Yeah, yeah, it's just someone died. All that's messed up, you know. So it wasn't even thought of my head. And so he began to go on and say, well, he doesn't
tell me really much. He just says someone said this, someone said that. And I'm arguing with him back and forth, and I tell him, I said, look, you guys know me my entire life. Yeah, I do stupid stuff, and I kind of talked trash you guys and all that kind of stuff. But I'm no killer. I didn't kill anybody. And then he looks at me and he says, you didn't think we're ever going to catch you on And with that statement right there, I knew that he'd already
made up his mind. And he looks at me, so I'm much charge you with a murder, and I don't know. By this time, I'm crying. I'm telling him, look to you, anybody, I'm telling you that right now. But there was nothing I could. It didn't matter to him. He was charging me. I called my dad out to that, and I tell my dad, my dad is always going on. He's like, I mean, I said, Dad, I looked her, saying this,
because you have anything to do with it. I said, no, douab, I'm telling you right now, I don't even know what you're talking among. He says, okay, just look, just calm down, you'll be all right, figure it out, It'll be all right. And they carried me out the juvenile that tried me a fresh grat murder threw me in the juvenile, and so that's where it began for me. That was the beginning bro this whole episode.
Can I ask you what was going through your mind at that stage? It's hard to even comprehend being told you're going to be charged with murder? Did you know evenly think this will saw itself out, like I haven't done it, so the justice system will kick in. What was going through your mind at that point in time when you were told you're going to be charged with murder?
At that moment, was shot and I already suffered the blow. Wasn't a friend just a couple of days before. I was already in this mindset where I was just feel tired of living the life that I had been living, and this was just another hit and it was like I just couldn't at that moment deal with it. It was such a shock that I was. It was weird. I was almost like I just you know, I had been crying and and and then I just kind of just put my head down and it was just like
I couldn't mentally deal with it. And when I remember them taking me to the juvenile hand cuts and everything, I remember looking at Sunnyside and getting this dreadful feeling as if that was going to be the last time I seen it, and I just I was just stunned. I remember, I was just I couldn't even speak, and I remember getting to the juvenile and trying to trying to process this, you know, and like I don't understand, you know. And and then came a little bit after
that that gave me a little bit comfort. I was like, oh, wouldn't even figuring it out. I really didn't do it, So I don't I don't have much to worry about. But then that only gives a certain monoic for maybe a comfort that feeling for a moment. But then you're stuck in that place and you realize that, look, it's every day is another day that they don't figure it out.
And so it helped to a certain extent in small moments, but it didn't really relieve any kind of It was just a really shock and I just I couldn't understand.
I take it after the charge you were locked up in you weren't biled, you were locked up in juvenile detention center at that side.
Yeah, I went to the Actamaal Juvenile and I remember telling all the guards over there that I didn't do it. You know, you come in for a murder charge. They look at you a certain way, especially when you're you're as young as I am, and I remember a few of them saying, I hope, I hope not. But I had this feeling that I had to tell every single person I can because I didn't do it. I had to defend myself some kind of way. It didn't matter if there were people that kids that were there with
me or if it was guards. I had to say to every single person. But it was a look that I got from a single person was the same thing, yeah, okay.
Yeah, and that that was heard that before.
Yeah, And that was a look I got for twenty plus years until that documentary came out.
And we'll break it down and go through the whole process. But I can't.
I can't honestly comprehend carrying that frustration of what you've gone through, Like you think this can't be right. This is a nightmare. When's it going to stop? Just going through what you went through the process once you once you've been charged, Just talk us through that, the cored appearances, the trial, and what happened there, your experience throughout that process.
Well, I was when I was in a juvenile it was the juveniles sealed with a bunch of young gang members, and so it was battles all over the police fighting, NonStop lockdowns and NonStop people hitting you up where you're from.
So it was just a.
An enclosed version of where I came from on the streets, you know, and now they had to fight. They're trying to house anybody together. So it was just like it was. It was hard in that environment. And then I had this heavy burden of knowing I'm in prison for something I didn't do, and nobody cares, nobody believes me. It doesn't matter to anybody else because it doesn't acceect them personally, So I'm stuck. I'm alone in my own thoughts and
my own feelings. And then going to these hearings where they're reading out these charges and the consequence of those charges, just what I had, you know, to the anxiety I have already had, you know, like you know, and and there's a part of me that felt like screaming out. I didn't do it, but the consequences of doing that would only send me to a strip cell and they put me locked down for you know, four forty eight hours.
And then I remember the prosecute attorney. It was was a female prosecut turner names I think her last names, oh well or something like that. She had a fire about her, like as if I personally did something to her. And the way she spoke about the murder, the way she and maybe this is just you know, the way prosecutunings are supposed to be towards the fact. I get that, but this seemed real personal things that she would say, so of the things are really mean spirited, you know,
towards me, and I felt that for her. And I remember going back to the cell, I'm thinking, you know that that was you know, that's that's a certain amount of abuse that I'm I'm going to be facing face from everybody. It's a jacket that you get. And I didn't know how to deal with it at that moment. I just kept thinking, why is she being so mean? I get is she's a prospect attorney, but she's saying some of the things she's staying are person take a shock of my family, take a jot to me, saying
things that are not true. But I couldn't defend myself. I couldn't get up and say anything. That's where it was. And then it got progressively worse. My Lord tells me I didn't know anything about being declined or sent to an adult jail. I didn't know nothing about that. Nothing wrong. And so he tells me the process. And so I remember, I said, what do you I said, you mean they can send me to prison. I mean they can send
me to the county jail. And he's like yeah. He goes, and that's what they're trying do, and and he goes, most likely that's where you're gonna go. And I said, what do you mean most likely less one? He goes, well, murder chargers, if you were sixteen, you would have already been automatically sent to the county jail. I said, but I'm fifteen. I'm a kid. He goes, Uh, it doesn't move round. So we're gonna go to these hearings and they're going to determine whether or not. And I was like,
and he goes, and he was blunt with me. There was no he wasn't going to be around the bush. And now what took place. He goes, if you go there, he goes, you have to be very careful. I was like, what do you mean be careful? He said, because well, he said, you're real small and they're going to try to do things to you. And like, what do you mean do things? He says, well, they'll try to rape you or beat you up or do all these kind
of things. So he filled my mind with all the chorals of what jail would be like for kid like me. That didn't help, you know, that made it worse. But I get, you know, he wanted me to, you know, see it the reality, and yeah, the reality of it, and you know that the juvenile wasn't even better. They had the scare, this scare straight uh thought process where they wanted to show us how terrible the prisons were and the way to kind of get us to stop
doing what we're doing on the streets. So what we got every Friday was documentaries of all the horrors in prison, of what happened to people juveniles, all that kind of stuff, and they filled our mind with that on loop every Friday,
every Saturday or something Camember. They would give us that And so this was my thought process, you know, whether reality or not, That's what was in my head, Like, oh God, I had to deal with that Helmemeking survivor and I go to my heares and my declared harriets, like COMMITI trial and everything I ever did bad in my life, every fight I got into the fact that I was a gang member, every incident I had with the cops, every issue I had in school, every single
thing I ever did was brought up in there. And they're not when you look at them, you know, they're not big things, but when you combine them all together, they can They can really paint a picture of the pat that a person is going.
Sounds to me like they're painting the narrative that will excuse the facts.
But look at this kid, he was destined to go down that path. It sounds like that.
And you talk about the prosecutor and the passion that she had the vitriol like it's almost like they've assumed you're guilty. This is just a process. It feels like to me, the way that you're telling your story is that people have already convicted you and just accepted you've convicted the crime. And here you are, as a kid sitting in there thinking I haven't done this.
Yeah, And that's and like I said, I never I've always been to a certain extent, I'm an introvert to a certain extent. I've always I lived alone with my dad. I don't like the center of attention. I like being whenever I was in a group, I was always in a corner of trying, like that's just the way that was my personality. And here I am the center of attention.
And and the anxiety that had at that moment, not knowing what was gonna happen, the prospect of going to this jail, which bad things are probably gonna happen to me that I probably couldn't control, And here I had to sit in at court and this, this prosecuttorney just would lay into me. And at the moment, when I was a kid, I didn't think about, oh okay, I'm arguing in school, but I get in a fight with this kid, maybe they'll bring it up later on in
my life. I never thought about those moments. And here are here I am. There's a trail of things that I'm thinking of. Wow, that makes me look horrible. And and they're, like you said, they're painting this narrative, you know, of who I was to convince the judge and you need to sentence guy to prison whether he's guilty or answer, and it doesn't matter because he's a threat society. And that's what they were saying. Left un check all this
kind of stuff. You'll big birth society. And I mean the the detective was up there saying all kinds of things and all this stuff, you know, and you know, I just had to sit like this and just and just take it. And my lawyer would get up and argue this and rg that. But there's you know, whenever whenever somebody is accusing you of something personally, or whenever somebody attacking me, your first instinct is to get up into finish. So, oh no, that ain't true. Well you
know that's not the person I am. But I couldn't do that because the consequence of speaking out in court would just be worse for me. I had to have to kind of be there, send a submissive kind of for me, because that's the way the American justice admitted, you know, and you learn that right away, because if you don't, then you know, you go directly to a holding cell or you know that kind of stuff. You don't want to be stuck in neglige when you know.
And so we're going through this process, and I remember the judge, you know, when she made her decision to decline, man, send me to the even though their expert, which was a psychiatrist, said that he was against sending me to the dog court. Too young, immature and my mind was informed, right and all that kind of stuff, and I would benefit. They were already talking as if I would go in person anyways, Oh, he would benefit for you know, being in jubail system because you know, he will learn this
and learn that. So they're speaking in terms as if I'm guilty and I'm going to jail. It's not like, well, if he's convicted, then this is none of that is well, when he goes here, he goes there. They were already you know, but he voted against send me to the doll court. To mistay that a probation officer did the
same thing. The judge ruled against that and said and in the way she said it too she told my dad directly, your great father, you've been here for your son and done all these things for you, and it's obvious that you love your son. And she says to him and front of me to she goes, but your love can't save him. And and those words right there cut me.
It's cruel.
He cut me. And I remember the words. We played in my head, you know, for for over twenty years. And she declined me. She decided to send me to a dark cord. And then she said, she wrote in the paper, said that I was a threat. I was a threat to the public, and left unchecked, that I would become worse. And I've already proven that the way I was living already. And and I read that, I mean,
I got the PaperWorks. I got the paperwork, and I was just it was It was so strange because in that moment, you're already you know, in an emotional warnable position, or you know, mentally the world seems to be caving in, and these people like they kick you even more. It's almost that they don't they don't see you as a child, They see you as something else. They don't even talk
to you as if you're a child. Mhm. They speak to you as if you know they're here's something other than that, and and and and so I had to deal with those words and I got sentilated to the Akamaal County jail. I remember when I came back from the hearing, they could be straight into the volieef and then want me around the other juvenile because I was considered an adult now and I couldn't be how the dreils. And I remember coming back and I remember this this guard.
I had grown kind of close to her kind of in the juvenile and she was like just a real nice lady. And I would fold the clothes and all this kind of stuff you know about and clean and all that kind of stuff, and we just she was just really nice to me. And I remember seeing her just crying, you know. And I remember looking at her when I was in the Holy Skuy. I could see the booth and she was just crying right and looking at me, just crying, and I could I really, I
wouldn't coudn't understand, you know, why she was crying. Well, when I look back years on that, the reason she was crying is because she understood the horrors that I was going to face that place. She understood what awaited me, and I was too young and ignorant to really understand, even though I was scared and I couldn't read, and and her tears were in its Russian, you know, restore me, you know, and and like I said, she was such
a nice person to me. And I ended up getting transferred to the doc to to the Akmo County Gern I mean nothing, even nothing to me. I was sort of smile.
Is this before you've been convicted? Is this when the decisions made that you're going to get tried? So they're virtually throwing you, throwing you to the wolves before you're even even convicted.
Yeah, they just throw you in there. There's no if you're convicted. They say it's it's weird in American. In America just they always tell that as being you united to guilty. But the system is not based like that. If that was the case, they.
Would be treating you like this, you know, they wouldn't be putting.
No exactly, you know. And they tossed me straight in and I went straight to solitary confinement.
How old were you? I was fifteen fifteen in a mile adult prison in the Yeah, which is adult journ Yeah, yeah, okay, talkers through that experience, like, hey, hey, you saved from the time you go there.
Well, they took me straight to solve their employment. I had never really experienced being in the seller or small team for twenty twenty four hours a day. I never experienced that. But they had to do that to protect me and other juveniles because the adults will prey upon us and the only way to do that is is put us in solda, throwing straight into a cell string too attain with other There was maybe two other three other juveniles that were they're also charged as adults. And
there I sat and we had nothing to do. It was just us, and you know, we just sat there and play games and dealt with their emotions, you know, and there was they were always fighting because you know, yeah, that's what kids do it, I guess. But it's a really dirty, grimy place because it's it's the whole basically
what it is. The food is horrible. You never leave that area, and and everybody, the juveniles over there all facing you know, thirty forty years in prison because they got declined to so that the level of hope is pretty low, you know, and my dad, though, would come and see me everyday. Is anything. He was there, called him every day and he wanted me to call them every day. And that was my strength in that place, was him. He always reminded me, you know, to be
strong and all that that stuff. But you know, I adjusted try again and again. I was a little hope wild, but they can't convict myself and I really didn't do There's no way it's not gonna happen. Because growing up in America, the day they they they get you into believing that the American system of justice is this they have all these praises when that's what school knows. It tells you how greater our country is. And it doesn't talk about the wrongful convictions, the racism or whatever. They
just this is America. It's great and these are the reasons why they said, well I should love it, and our justices was the best in the world. So you grew up with that. Even though I was kind of outside of that, you know, I still believed in it because that's all I'm so. I was like, it's I'll
be all right, you know. And as we started tryal I was they ad a bad my trial and basement of the Acual County Jail, and it was really cold down there, and they would take me in the morning and put me in a holding sell by myself, and I would sit there for an hour before I would go home into court, and it's just an anxiety filled hour where you just couldn't I didn't know what the thing, couldn't I really understand what was going on. I couldn't
really comprehend the words they were saying. These are all big words that I've never used in my life, not to mention the legal you know, jargon, all that kind of stuff, and understood now of that stuff. I probably
understood maybe twenty percent of what they were saying. So I go in there and I remember what happened was me and my dad kind of developed this, uh, this little routine, so he put me out of the hold in soul and it would go straight into the court room and my dad would be sitting in there already wait.
I would sit down once they put me down in the ballotfore lead, and then I would look back like this over my shoulder and he'd be sitting right back down in the public area and he would whisper to me, and I couldn't really hear him, but I could kind of read his lips and he would say he would tell me to stand it. And that had a habit because you always tell me shoulders up, you know, your chin up, and just that little those words right there would give me the strength to push through that moment.
I think if he had not been there at least one day, probably would have because he was my my strength in that moment.
It sands to me the way you describe him and the support that he was. You said strength, that it's a rock that held you together by the sands of it.
Yeah, it was.
I mean he.
Was there with me. You know, he didn't he let him and that never he never let me feel like I was alone, and he always kind of gave me strength, words of strength, and and just that that moment right there was was I know he could see it. He can see you know, my dad, he could see what it was doing to me. And I think that heat As as a father, you know, I mean, you have
to and the best way you can. I mean, how do you when I think you know what he went through, how to take about you as a father protect your son in that kind of moment or uplist him and I let him, you know, start taking you know, things you know, or you know, kind of lose himself. And I remember going through that process and just always every morning him being there, right there, and I felt like, Okay, I can I can deal what's going to go on today.
How long did the trial runfull?
I think it went from I think the sixth of the nineteenth. I was convicted on the nineteenth. I think could begun on December sixth and December sixth, and then ended on the ninet December nineteenth.
Okay, so we're looking at the almost two weeks.
Yeah, but don't count the weekends because we didn't put a court on the weekends. And try was was brutal for me because it was it was it was just witnesses getting up there and then and saying things that were true that I knew were true, and I couldn't understand why they were saying them. And I remember thinking when Dificans Grocery up there, I'll feel I remember thinking, Okay, now she got good views, she's gonna see it wasn't me. And when she said no, that's same. I'll never forget
his face and I was just shocked. I've never seen this girl before in my life, you know, how could she not see this?
You know?
And I remember I looked right at her, you know, and and and she would give me this really ugly dirty looks, and I was like, well, she's gonna she's gonna realize that. And she did, you know, she said that's him. I'll never forget his facing. And then for the informer to get up there, and and you know, said that I said this, and which I knew never happened. It never happened, and I just I just I remember
going back to the to the cell. I just thinking that I was living in some kind of bizarre world that you know. It was like some kind of nightmare that I just didn't wake up from because nothing seemed to be going right. It all seemed to be going to point in one direction. I didn't want to think about what that direction was. And I remember I was having bad dreams and my dad had come to see me, and this was right before they had been convicted, and where I think we were waiting for the jury too.
They were deliberating to think or something. And I remember telling my dad, I have bad dreams, you know that I was convicted, and he told me, no, I don't don't, don't talk like that. It's all right. Believe me, they're going to see it. It's all right. He didn't do it. Just focus on that. Okay. I'm scared that he was crying. It was tone. It was no I he said no,
he wouldn't hear it. So I remember going in there, and I remember the jury coming in and that made a decision and my little looks at me and says, it's really bad. It's pretty bad. And I said, what do you mean it's back. He goes that, Jerry's not looking at you. I said, what do you mean? They're not looking at me? And I loaked up and they all wouldn't stare me, and they I look like they're doing like this, and I really didn't understand what that man.
But I remember looking at him. He said it doesn't look good. And then I had to stand up and they read it, you know, get it to the first murdering. And I remember thinking at that moment there was a feeling that just it's almost like when you almost like we almost said a fall something, or like when you're driving and almost sits and me like, oh, it's that kind of just rush of feeling and everything kind of
just falls out of you. And I just sat there and I remember thinking, of course, because my mind had already put in my head, looked, you've already suffered all this in their life, what's another blow. Of course, it went to that. It went to like, yeah, yeah, of course is it's like every single freaking thing. Yeah, but it was. It was a shock. And I remember hearing my sister screaming in the background, and I even looked back and I kind of just was a little bit shocked.
And this other strange thing about I don't know if they do it in every court room, but seven or eight of the biggest guards I ever seen in my life, but at least over six feet at least that's what they seem like, come up and just rush throom, turn around the handcuff me. I'm already in the channel, you know. I don't understand. But it was a show, that's what they were doing. It was part of this little terrible theory that was going on, and they wanted to show
I guess I was tiny. It was five foot in like one hundred and ten.
Powers making a statement your as now and this is.
Yeah, yeah, and they towered over me. It was like, you know, I was you know, I looked like it was just horrible. So they kind of roughed me out and take me on. I'm taking in my head, does it make sense? They take me all the way to there are there's they're called rubber rooms, or they're like panic rooms or something like that. They don't have nothing but a hole in there in the ground. Why are you guys taking me here? They said, you're gonna be into you. Calm down. I said, calm down, I'm not
even doing nothing, and they just let me there. They left me there for eight hours in that room, and I just walked and all I kept saying is it didn't happen. It didn't happen. It didn't happen, over and over and over and over.
So I thought myself, line didn't happen, as in that you it didn't happen. I wasn't just convicted of a murder. I didn't do Is that okay? I look the way you describe it, I can understand all these emotions going through through your head, and up until that word guilty comes out, you'd be thinking, okay, this has been chaos.
But just it'll be right. It'll be right.
Justice will kick through and people see it for what it is. The reaction from your father and all the way through and your sister, I would imagine the type of person that you are that would have weighed heavily on you as well, seeing your your family, the people love you and support you, how it impacted on you as well.
Well, That that wasn't even the worse of it, because that was that kind of corporate really fast, So a little tiny bit of it. And there wasn't visity for two days, and I remember having to go back to sell and that was just running through my mind and I was, you know, I was angry. I was anger with God, I was angry with everything. And I couldn't really but I just kept saying it over and over. It didn't happen, didn't happen. So my dad is able
to come see me two days later. He couldn't see you, and I can get him on some kind of blackout where I couldn't talk on the phone or something because of the car. I can't remember, but that was the first time we were able to talk. So they called me to visit us and I walked into the it's just a cel and like there's a big window and anything just typical with the point and I see my dad and my dad did it's just crying. I mean I had never seen him like that before. I mean,
he can't even speak. My dad has always been my rock, he's been my hero, my superman, He's always been kind of This man is still in my life. I think I've only seen him maybe cry me one other time, and that was when my when he's seen me in my in the back of a con car when my mother had given me up. I've never seen him cry out of him. And here he was. He couldn't speak, and yeah, he was kept saying know me, know me, and me means son in Spanish, so he's saying no, son, no, son, no,
and he can't can't even look at me. He came and he just went on and ten to fifteen minutes of me, and I remember at that moment thinking all the strength that he had given me in my entire life, all those moments that he had looked at me up and saved me. He needed me to be there for him, and at that moment, the you know that it had switched and I had to be strong for him. And I remember telling him. I looked at him and I said it, it's all right, I'll survive. It's all right there,
I will survive. And I kind of calm tone and that I had to say that for maybe almost ten minutes, and you finally slowly came down, slowly, slowly, and then he couldn't really talk. He was just, you know, just got his blank stare in his eye. I just kept saying it over, I'll survive, and then he calmed down, and then the visit was over. It was only an hour ago. And that's when I went back to the room and I broke down, because that was the moment work not only became real to me, but seeing him
that way my rock. And you know, the man is still in my life. You know, he he was mortal at that moment, you know, he was no longer.
Yeah, I can't imagine. But it says a lot about your character that you could see that you had to
be the strength for your father in that situation. We might take a break now, and when we get back for part two, we're going to talk about your time in prison, how you survive prison, and then we're going to dissect the case against you and the failings of the case that I said to you upfront form a homicide detective, I'm mortified by some of the things that went down in your trial and that slipped through the system and you had your life stolen away from you.
It seems so unfair, But.
I don't know how you carry. You carry the trauma, Robert, better than I could say again, credit to you. Let's have a break and when we come back, we'll delve into that part your time in jail, the case against you will break that down and then you fight for freedom.
And what you're doing with yourself now.
Yours is good. Good cheers in Na