Joe Loya has agreed to answer our questions, so please send yours to info at Orbitmedia dot fm or leave them in the comments on Spotify or Apple.
Thank you.
Hire there Steve Fishman from Orbit Media. And this is Get the Money and Run. A warning, today's episode gets dark. If Joe has made crimes seem like a lot of fun, well that's about to change over to Ben.
You are listening to The Burden season four, Get the Money and Run. I'm Benadair and this is episode six, Life on the Inside.
Okay, Joe, I have a question. We had talked about how you took your friend to go rob for you. Your friend who it turns out, looks a lot like you, and he got iddas you. But it turns out when they went to check the cameras, he was four inches shorter, and that made the FBI think that you had this double out there, and I assume it through the eyewitness identification under suspicion.
Yeah, I mean it was actually when I called courters because I I had explained to my dad and courtus I had not been in that bank. I swore in my mother's grave I had not been in that bank. So when courtis went to especially in quarters that is, went to go look at the film. I called him and he says, okay, Joe, I'm going to tell you something right now, and you need to pay attention. These women were robbed and within a couple hours they both
falsely identified you and they had just been robbed. The women we've been going to you robbed thirteen months ago, ten months ago, nine months ago, eight months ago. That makes all of those suspect too, because of these two women who had just been robbed by you could be so wrong right now, all of those are suspect. He's basically saying, this is your argument with your lawyer. You need to tell him you got to double.
So suddenly you're not going to jail for sixteen or even thirty banks Banks.
I'm going for three for three. So they say, listen, we got you in these three. That's you in the photo, and not only that, you're the right height in this one. These three we got you on. We believe we could take it to trial and we win. We want to risk trial or do you want to just plead out? And I was like, where do I sign? Going down? For what I was looking at is possibly thirty years.
When they were talking about it in the beginning to eight years, I'm like, hell, yeah, let's do this right now, easy choice.
Easy call, Part one falling in.
And so I'm in a holding cell and then I hear a helicopter outside and my body freeze. What the fuck?
Oh?
And then I realized, Oh, I'm already cott. I'm already cott. I don't have to wait. And then one thing I think you remember was like, Oh, thank fucking God, for the next age two years, I don't have to worry about a helicopter. Like my body was like I could
let go of fear of a helicopter. And I also chuckled because in that moment, I realized, Oh, that's where that phrase you were rescued, you weren't arrested comes from, because I was like, I felt like I was more rescued in that moment from the fear and anxiety of being a fugitive, and like, oh, I I could sell.
Joe.
Let me ask you, it sounds like you're getting in pretty deep. Did you really know, like really understand what you were getting into.
No, federal prison. I didn't know what I was getting into. I wasn't prepared for it in a lot of ways. I wasn't prepared for the kind of crimes I could get away with behind bars there and you basic things like you know, you can make weapons, you can get drugs smuggled in in the FEDS. Everything was a hustle everything. It was an economy man. I saw things I didn't expect to see. I mean stuff that you would see on TV and things like that's impossible. Like I saw a guy get lit on fire in his cell. I
could see it from my window. It is late at night, and he just went up. His hair went up and he was screaming in his cell. And then the cell next to him it went up. But the guy wasn't on fire. It was just parts of his bed were on fire. And then the third sound next, some guy had been in there screwtin acidtne in the sounds the night when they were sleeping, and the guy was walking down the tier and he just lit them on fire.
I remember watching that and thinking, shit, that could happen here too, Like I know staff, he's gonna have it. I know you get choked out. I know somebody could come and strangle you with a with a with a sheet, turn it into a rope. I know, a bunch of things should happen here in there, and I'm finding watching them like shit, they could like to on fire too, goddamn. But it was and it was dark and it was beautiful night out. It was clear, and that sound just
lit up. Prisons are chaos. It just really is total chaos. I mean, guys would squirt ship on guards when they would come to feed them if they are mad at them. They got their shampoo bottle and they put some of their ship in there, stirred it up and just and there would be this long stream of ship chasing a guard off the tier. Like it was. It was madness. It was crazy at that level. Guys just in care.
I didn't like a guy, he didn't like me. We were talking ship to each other, and so I was under impression when we were like, okay, let's meet out in the reckyard. So I had a sawmide, He had a saw meade. And what they would do is the guards would come in. They would open all this the food trap doors and all the sale. All the guys who were going to come out to wreck. He and I were going to go down there and then we were going to have it out well. They open up
the food traps and all the doors. The guys who are going to go out to wreck. You stand there with your hands behind your back. A guard comes and he handcuffs you through this little slot. He handcuffs you. He opens your door, he opens twelve. The door opens, you step out, and you go wait towards the front of the tier, and there's guards moving out there doing this, and then they close the tier and they go to the next south. They know nobody's walking you over there.
So there's for a minute, there's a guys just moving around the south. We're all handcuffed behind our back. And so I saw him get out of his cell, walk over to another cell with his hands behind his back, and that door was open, and I saw a guy slide a knife into his back with his hand, so I knew he was gonna stab me. Wow. The difference between me and him is I did the same move to a friend of mine, But a friend of mine didn't just put a knife in my hand. He unhandcuffed me.
So this guy's walking over all cool, hiding the knife under, you know, in his clothing. As he's walking back, hands behind his back and he's thinking we're gonna get unhandcuffed, and then he's gonna make a move on me. I don't wait for that. I now have a weapon. I have no handcuffs on me, and so I go over them where he's standing. I think he's all come on. Walking up to him, I kick him in the balls. He bends over and boom boop. I just gab him
real quick. I get taken the solitary confinement. I don't just get taken a solitary confinement. I get taken to the basement of solitary confinement. Everyone down there was hardcore. It was guys had killed other men in the prison. There's fourteen cels. That was terrible. That was terrible.
We'll be right back part two.
The whole. Because you're in solitary and because you're by yourself and you're so fucking erotic, you start breaking on the conversation. Wait, what do you mean by that? Well, that motherfucker thinks I'm a punk. Oh, I got some differens. Ask I'll fuck that. Next time I get loose, I'll
go it like. You can just be, you can let your mind go crazy and you can concoct all sorts of plots and intrigues against you, and you can ascribe all certain manner of disrespect coming from that man's heart towards you, and plot the fucking end of his days. That's the group of men I was in. There was killers there. There was just so much. My brain took in all that crazy and violence and menace, and now
I couldn't get it anyone. Like, if you've ever gone out of your handcuffs, they don't ever give me a chance to get out of your handcuffs again. They're not only a handcuff you. They put a big black box around this handcuff and they locked that underneath. And I was just like, it's terrible. You can't move, you can barely barely move. See. I was starting to get all this rage just building up in me like it usually did, but I would always be able to find a victim.
And now I'm like it just cannibalized me and went inward. You know. I just was hating myself, hating life, and I just had And then I was this is the most tense place I've ever been. That tier was the most tense place I've ever been. And everybody was imaginations were completely fucked I mean everyone was fucked it. Just I had a clear mind of like, I fucking hate it, I hate life, I hate myself, fuck everything, you know, like and it just went inward. So first thing that
started happening was, you know, writing. I was up. I couldn't sleep right, chatty as fuck with myself, like writing all the time, obsessively between words and man, what's going on? Like almost like if you saw me in there, you would hear me like not talking to myself. But there was a voice in my head. There was a racing mind, racing right, I'd be that guy if I was outside. I had a bunch of notebooks and I explaining the whole universe kind of thing. And then I started hearing
the voices in my head. First wasn't voices. First was like I felt like there's somebody's going wrong with my hearing. Like it was at a party and I was in the bathroom and I could hear outside the door, oh, like of a party going on, right, no noise, no voice, nothing. And then one day I heard Joe And I'm lying down in bed and I get up and I go look out there, and I'm like, what the fuck was that? Nothing nobody like, hey, Joe, man, you got a book,
And nobody called. A couple of days there Joe, like a voice was coming above the den. Was the den always there? I was always there. I was always there, stayed there. I was like, oh, one day I was at my desk and I hear Joe and I turned around. Joe. The first time, I thought maybe a homeboy was fucking with me or something. I didn't have a home book.
I mean, I thought maybe someone was sucking me. And then so I used to play concentration games where I would look at one spot on the wall and if you look at one spot on the wall on you know, yeah, it's hard on your eyes. I just want to move. And it was challenging five minutes the first time. I eventually got up to an hour and like psychedelic shit
starts happening around that one spot. And eventually, because the world is moving and your eyes are moving, nothing is steal and your eyes moved, and so that spot will start moving. And so it was like, oh shit, it's moving and I'm watching it move. And then it became a horse galloping, and then it became I was like, oh fuck, something's happening. It's kind of cool. But what ended up happening? One day I'm looking at that spot and then all of a sudden, it was a face
and it morphed into another face. It's like, oh fuck, that's crazy. It wasn't where I was looking at, ended up migrating over here to where I looked over here. It was in my vision. Now to go my vision. It's like, wow, that's crazy. So next day I do it again, except this time when I pull away, it's showing it again. I close my eyes and it's in It's in the darkness in my head, in my eyes. I was like, oh fuck, the dean is getting louder. And now it kind of it feels like there's voices
but you can't make them out. But now instead of like it's like I get more animated. Right John, Well, one day I hear something. I turn around and there's a little bald boy standing in the corner of my cell and I'm totally shocked and I'm totally scared. I feel like I'm going mad. I'm going mad. I'm going mad. I'm going mad.
We'll be right back Part three. Dig your way out.
So Joe, you see this bald boy in your cell and you feel like you're going mad. What happens next?
Memories started coming from that period of time with my mother still alive, and all it just stories of my innocence came.
How did you like, how did the memory of your mom and the memory of your dad kind of play in that story being created?
Well, the thing was that all of a sudden, my mother's alive again in my memory. Right as I've I've been thinking of my mother's dead. I never really thought that much about her was life, And in this memory my mother was still healthy. So I was like, oh, this is real innocence. My mother's healthy. And then I started having memories and my mother healthy at that time when I was seven on de Land Street, Man, I remembered all sorts of stuff. What it was mostly about
was that we were happy in those days. That was a happy time. My mom and dad. I remember they laughed because on that street I used to go down the block. There was a guy who did repairs on bikes and I would go there to get free air on my tires and stuff. And then my mom and dad went there once and the guy was like, hey, you know your son been coming here, I've been fixing his bike and doing these things. So you guys owe me a little bit of money. And my dad came
home and he wasn't mad, and neither was my mom. Like, hey, you can't just got that guy, I said, But he gave me free air that yeah, he said, yeah, but all that other stuff stuff free. You can't just do that. But they weren't mad. They weren't mad. I was just a little seven year old boy, and I loved and that guy loved me down there, and everyone in the neighborhood knew me like it was like that kind of thing.
So I was remembering a pristine period of time in which I was loved and nurtured and safe and everyone was healthy and I was innocent. And there I am contrasting where I am not fucking going mad and solitary confinement all those years later, with all the terrible things
I'd done, all my conscience. I earned that place in that dungeon, but that, you know, all the terrible things were going on, all the things i'd become cheering on, the shit on the guards and the burning, the fires and whatever, the stabbings and other man like, all that stuff that I was, and now there's a time for me to remember how was a sweet kid. I was like, wait,
what the fuck? Like this memory came up. It was like the dirtiest fucking ground in the dirtiest fucking neighborhood in the United States, and there's this beautiful little flower coming out of the concrete. That's what it felt like. Man, I'm like, what the fuck, there's some beauty under here somewhere, like to be reintroduced to myself in that story. And then it started happening, and I started saying, wait, this wasn't this wasn't determined that I would be this guy.
There's all this other evidence. I'm a kind of a sweet guy, a nice guy. I could have been something else. And so I just started writing stories from my past. That's it felt good and terrible. I feel shitty to write out things that happened to me. We had all these talks growing up. Well, God break me, God break guess what. I fucking just got humbled fucking all day long with that thing. It was. It was humbling, Jody.
You feel like if you hadn't been in solitary, that any of this would have happened.
In the Bible, the book that I knew, the piece of literature I knew the most of the stories. I knew. Most about Found Redemption was that all the men who did something great all went to the desert, and they all had to grapple with the hell of themselves. Jesus forty days and forty nights, Moses in the desert, Saint Paul, he becomes a Christian. He spends nine years studying the scriptures before he becomes the greatest missionary ever. David wrote the Psalms and the Caves. You know what he was
hiding from Saul. You saw. So now what I'm doing is I'm in solitary confinement. And after this happens, it fits right into my thinking that oh this is my trial alone. I have to confront myself. Everyone had to deal with their solitude. Everyone you want to make great change in your life, and all the great changes of the men that I had studied growing up, it happened in solitude. Terrible solitude, anguish want to kill themselves, solitude. And now I was in it, and I was like, well,
maybe this is actually what I'm supposed to do. This is it? And when I was a boy and they said plan we have a plan for you. God has a plan for you. Maybe this is it. To get right here like everyone else did, oh the great men that I had admired and the mystics, this is it. I'm in my solitude. I gotta better figure out how to do something with a solitude. I better figure out how to let a higher harmony assert itself in here than the madness. And that's what I work to try
and do, to try and earn that mantle. Solitary, worst experience of my life. Guess what, paradoxically, because I believe in paradox one of the best experiences of my life, because it created the occasion for me to observe something about myself, to experience something so deeply, this humility, that it created this propulsion another way in a very dramatic fashion. Right. So I'm broken, I'm fractured. I'm not as strong anymore.
Now I gotta be careful because if I want to even think about changing, how the fuck is I'm setting myself up? That was scary, super fucking scary.
You are listening to The Burden season four Got The Money and Run. The Burden is produced by Orbit Media. That The Money and Run is produced by Western Sound and Acast Studios. Next up season finale, episode seven, Fatal Peril.
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