You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good Evening. After three years in Europe, former journalist Carla Conti just wanted to settle her family into the suburbs of Philadelphia. But her high school friend Scott Powell, a lawyer handling a brutal prison stabbing case, needed a favor where she knew it. Carla became part of the defense team and miirred in the terrifying world of federal prison gangs,
penal abuse, and corruption. Then, when she agreed to write a tell all book on the violent machinations behind the court case with Scott's client as an inside source, the stakes turned deadly. Two different prison gangs issued hit orders against the prisoner she and Scott now considered a friend, and the journalist and defense attorney were imperiled by association. Chaine Byrds is a true crime memoir of Carla's tenure journey to advocate for federal inmate Kevin Sanders and help
them re enter society after prison. But the mission came at a cost, as Carla struggled to balance her own, Scott's, and Kevin's safety while writing an expose on the horrific conditions that led to the shutdown of an experimental prison program in Louisbourg, Pennsylvania. The book that we're featuring this evening is Chained Birds, a true crime memoir with my special guest, former journalist and author Carla Conti. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Carla Conti, Well, thank you so much for having me. Dan, thank you so much, and congratulations on this book, Chained Birds.
Oh, thank you. This is my publication day, so I'm extra happy to be talking to you.
That's great. Thank you. Let's go right to your first chapter, and you take us to June twenty eight, two thousand and eight, and a particularly horrifying scene in this book, Bureau of Prisons at Water Prison in California and Jose rivera twenty two year old who really wanted to work for the California Highway Patrol. You say, and he had
applied for that job. The California Highway Patrol tell us about Jose Rivera a little bit about his background and this high security penitentiary, and that he was a unit officer. Tell us about the circumstances of that day at work. June twentyth two thousand and eight.
Yes, so, Jose Rivera was a pretty new correctional officer at Water and he lived in the San Joking Valley near his family. He did a couple of tours in Iraq. He was just expecting a normal work day at Water Prison. The night before, a new inmate had come into intake, and he was from Guam, and he had a history of violence against officers in particular, and he was suspected of a murder in Guam, and his data was not recorded properly into a database that wasn't even really regularly
checked by correctional officers. So Jose came onto his shift not fully aware of this situation with this new inmate, and he was also the only officer on duty for one hundred inmates on his unit. The BOP Bureau of Prisons was pretty understaffed throughout the country, and Atwater was no exception. So he was on his own. That was a Tuesday, I believe, and there were some inmates who
had gathered. He was selling in a section with Asian and Pacific islanders, and they had made a fresh batch of prison wine, and Jose noticed that some of these inmates who had gathered before the afternoon count were intoxicated, and two inmates who ended up selling together, including the one who arrived the night before, were noticeably intoxicated. Jose started his afternoon count, and everybody needed to go to their cell and have the doors shut so that they
could be counted. They're locked in for a short amount of time, and he started that on the lower level of his tier. And then when he arrived to the upper level of that tier, two inmates from Guam who were cellmates, and they were drunk. They had weapons on them, and one of them pulled out a weapon as Jose was about to try to put them in their cell and stabbed him in the torso, so Jose ran down the stairwell. Both inmates were in pursuit, and he managed
to headbutt one of them on the stairwell bottom. A little bit of time, Jose made it to the bottom of the stairs, but then one inmate grabbed him held him down while the other inmate continued to stab him. So there were no other personnel on this unit. As people started to become aware of what was happening, they were able to see this through the unit door through the glass, but nobody could get inside because Jose had
the only keys to the unit. There were a couple of other personnel, a unit secretary and another correctional officer. They were both females. They came upon the scene as Jose was being stabbed and they yelled and screamed at the inmates to stop, but to no avail, and they had nothing on them like pepper spray or anything that could have helped the situation. And finally, after a few minutes, someone arrived with an outside key, and people rushed in
and they got the inmates off of Jose. They rushed him to medical. He ended up going to a hospital, but he died of his injuries. And that is the event that launched a special management unit all the way over in Pennsylvania as a misguided attempt to try to corral all these kinds of the worst of the worst inmates together to try to make the other prisons safer.
You're right that the first. In February two thousand and nine, the US Penitentiary in Lewisbourg in central Pennsylvania began receiving the first inmates for the new Special Management Unit program, the experimental you write s Special Management Unit program, And by the time it began, it was already full of inmates.
Yes, so the powers that be within the Bureau of Prisons decided that this was going to be a new program and a way to try to prevent these episodes with Jose Rivera, and they started sending some of their
highest risk, highest profile, most violent inmates to Lewisbourg. But the interesting thing I learned doing research for this book is that what happened at Atwater may definitely have resulted because the two inmates who attacked Jose were drunk, but they also had been able to fashion a shank out of stolen dishwasher parts from within Atwader. And also that terrible policy where Jose was the only one with a unit key, and the fact that he had no other
officer working for him. All of those things together contributed to his specific tragedy and really had nothing to do with starting a whole new special Management Unit for all these violent prisoners. It was misguided from the very beginning. And I have not seen in any of my research anywhere else where somebody has connected those dots that led the SMU origin back to Jose Rivera.
Now you have a chapter called the Snowball in Hell. Pardon me, and this is February twenty eleventh in Lewisbourg at the Special Management Unit and a inmate named Stephen OK Trombley twenty seven years old, and you take us to the G block Recreation unit and explain first before we start about explaining what happened that day, was tell us about the practice of the recreation cages and the protocol.
Right. So, once the inmates arrived at the Special Management Unit, it was a very austere program with mostly twenty four to seven lockdown. The inmates were allowed out for recreation one hour a day, five days a week, and a shower three days a week, and that was the only time they were allowed outside of their cells. And thes were designed for just one person. They were the size
of a parking lot, a parking space. Lewis Bourg's facility was just kind of a crumbling infrastructure and really not designed to house this many inmates under these conditions, and all of these men were very violent and they were on top of each other all the time, and so this led to a lot of inmate on inmate violence.
Going to the snowball incident, we start with Stephen Tremblay, nicknamed Oki because he was from Oklahoma, and he was in a wreck cage, which the wreckages had earned the name Thunderdomes because there was a lot of fighting that
went on in there. And Okie noticed a new correctional officer who was coming to unlock the wreckage, and he recognized him from a previous prison, and it was an abuser of his from a previous prison, Captain Dennis McDonald, and Oki, just on impulse scooped up some snow and slush because it had snowed overnight, and he threw the snowball at McDonald and before McDonald recognized who he was, he was taken off guard and fell down, and then Oaki was able to kind of kick him in the
groin and all the other inmates were cheering him on, and then eventually other officers came in and removed Oki and planted him on the concrete, but McDonald swore vengeance and said in front of a lot of people, who can I put you in a cell with basically as revenge.
Now you take us to the main subject of this book, and Kevin Sanders, also in Louisbourg in twenty eleven. Tell us about Kevin Sanders.
Yes, so, Kevin came from the allan Wood United States Penitentiary High security really only twenty minutes away from Lewisbourg. He had been transferred right around the time of the snowball incident, and his story was interesting. He was involved with a Hispanic prison gang, the Montanistas, and he was a pretty high ranking official with the Montanistas in the Allenwood prison yard, but he refused a hit order given by the shot caller for the Montanistas to give a
really good down to his friend. And because he refused that order, that put him in the hat is one of the ways that the inmates phrase it. He was in trouble with the Montanstas and the only way to keep him safe after that point was to move him. So he got moved to the SMU at Louisbourg, and when he arrived, it's very typical at federal prisons for inmates to fall in line with a race based gang
for protection. That's just what happens. You kind of need the protection of somebody when other inmates want to cause trouble for you, But then you're also beholden to that prison gang and you have to do what they say. So he got absorbed into the white power gangs because he's a Caucasian, which is a little confusing because he spoke fluent Spanish and that's also why he kind of crossed gang lines and was a Montanesa at one point. But when he went to Louisbourg, he became part of
the like An Aryan Brotherhood offshoot. Foot soldier clan Steven Tremblay, who threw the snowball, was eventually put into a wreck cage with Kevin Sanders and Kevin's cellmate, and the two of them were ordered to try to kill or give a really good beatdown or exact this hit order that came down from the shop collars of the Aryan Brotherhood, and that's how we ended up with that wreck cage assault, which is what led to assault charges being brought against
Kevin and Kevin's cellmate and then Kevin's attorney, My high school friend became his public defender and pulled me into the case. So it all sort of started with the snowball which led to the wreck cage fight with Kevin, kevin cellmate and Stephen Trimblay that led to criminal charges and my high school friend becoming Kevin's attorney and he brought me into the case.
Let's go back a little bit too, this wreckage itself and also just sort of the rules of the prison that you outline and the rules of these gangs, but ends up being the rules of the prison that these inmates follow. When you talked about this attack in this wreck cage with this Tromblay, you also talk about the rules that forced Kevin to participate in this, whether he wanted to or not. Tell us about these rules and how those rules worked in that regard.
Yes, So as Stephen Tremblay was being led into the wreck cage that Kevin and his cellmate were already in, Kevin knew that this was not going to be a good situation because the Aryan Brotherhood wanted to send a signal to Stephen Tremblay. They were very unhappy with some
of Stephen Tremblay's behavior inside the prison. So Kevin knew that the Aryan Brotherhood was going to want them to assault Stephen Tremblay, and he told Kevin told a correctional officer as Stephen was being led in, hey don't put this guy in here, don't do this. But the officer said, this is his assigned cage and this is where he's going, And the orders came from a higher up in the
prison hierarchy. Kevin knew that once the three of them were inside and the yelling started coming down from the top tier windows of Louisbourg Prison that looked out onto the wreck cages, and the yelling coming from the shot collar in particular, hey get this guy, you got to
take this guy out, You got to do this. Kevin knew that if he did not act or pretend to give a beat down, his cellmate, who had a shank, would have turned that shank on Kevin, because even refusing to participate in such a fight is disobeying the gang, and it's basically kill or be killed.
Now, in this regard, everything is videotaped at this prison, So this assault is, this incident, altercation is videotape. But also just tell us about Kevin in terms of his attitude towards the gangs. Was he considered a gang dropout or tell us about this concept of gang dropouts.
So he was a gang dropout of the Montanistas when he arrived at Louisbourg, but he was brought into the umbrella system of the Aryan Brotherhood, not a full fledged member, but just someone who was associated with them but still had to do their bidding. Just that clear association meant that he had to follow orders. And his cellmate was a very ambitious up and coming Nazi lowrider, one of
the foot soldiers of the Aryan Brotherhood. So his cellmate was all too happy to make this assault on Stephen Tremblay that the air In Brotherhood wanted to have happened. Kevin did not want to do this, and he mimicked stabbing motions with his fist, but did not have a knife, and he was actually found not guilty of having a knife. They were never able to prove he had a knife, and he just mimicked those motions to make it look to the Aryan Brotherhood and everybody else that he was participating.
But he did not do the stabbing that his cellmate did to Stephen Tremblay.
Now you say that that he didn't do the stabbing, but we're getting ahead of the allegations that he did do the stabbing. Like I said, there is videotape of what happened. So let's talk about that videotape of that incident and the analysis of that, and then also the practice of the prison self every fourteen days to erase tape.
Yes, so if you look at the videotape, it appears that he would be stabbing because he was making stabbing motions with his fist. At the end of the videotape. There is only one weapon found on the concrete floor of the cage, So that was the basis for the defense team's argument that he did not have a weapon. And yes, the videotape system at the time did self erase every fourteen days because there wasn't enough storage in the database, and neither Kevin nor his cellmate understood anything
about that. If they had, they would have asked for it to be preserved because there was evidence on there that was in their favor, especially the very beginning where Kevin was warning the correctional officer who was bringing Stephen Tremblay into the cage not to put him in there. Kevin even used motions like, you know, moving his flat hand back and forth under his chin, which is kind of like a cease and desist, you know, universal gesture
telling the officer not to do this. If that had been preserved on the tape, that could have been very helpful for his.
Trial, just as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, let's get to how the prosecution itself or the stabbing, this assault of this Trumblay. Let's get to how that's done and the controversy with the tape itself, as you just alluded to.
Right, because Kevin and his cellmate were considered short quote unquot quote, meaning they had just a few years left on their sentence. That is the ideal type of inmate that the FBI would pursue charges for. They're not going to bother charging somebody who's a lifer or who's got twenty five years, but they go after these inmates that are short. And Stephen Tremblay did suffer a lot of puncture wounds, he had a collapsed long he spent a
few days in the hospital. So it was a serious assault and Kevin and his cellmate were indicted and brought up on charges of assault with a weapon and other related charges.
Tell us about your friend and attorney Scott Powell how he becomes involved with Kevin Sanders' case.
So, my friend Scott was in private practice in Pennsylvania and he also served as one of the area's public defenders. And it was his very first federal prison case when he was called to come and represent Kevin at hearing, his first indictment hearing, and he had represented clients in state court before, but didn't know anything about the federal
prison system. And he found it very eye opening to hear all about prison gangs and orders that you have to follow, and all of the things that led him to believe that if a jury heard these things, that they might see the situation for what it is. You know, one, certain rules happen in the outside world, but there are different rules that have to be followed on the inside. I believe Scott always felt that if all the evidence could be presented, that his clients stood a good chance at trial.
Scott, right away, here's from Kevin that there's something missing from the tape. Right away, He's intrigued, isn't he very.
Much so right, And he always felt that the tape when it was released to them on DVD and did not contain anything at the beginning that would have shown Kevin waving off the guard. Scott always felt that that had been selectively edited. He really felt for his client, who was clearly an underdog, and he was willing to take the case all the way if his client wanted to do that. And not a lot of public defenders
would do this. I mean, there's usually a revolving door of pleading out, and certainly the prosecutor and the judge, they all would have loved this case to be pleaded out and not dragged through the legal system and to the stage of a trial. But Scott was willing to take it that far.
One of the reasons was some of the revelations that Kevin Sanders gave to Scott. Like you say, he didn't know anything about the federal prison system, but he got a full dose of what goes on. And also Kevin spoke initially about participating guards in all of this debacle, specifically Captain McDonald didn't he.
Yes, And Kevin wrote letters to Scott outlining all of these things, multiple letters and sometimes the letters didn't reach Scott, they were taken. Kevin was basically threatened for trying to reveal this kind of information to his attorney. Kevin was even told he was spending too much time with his attorney, and he was transferred out of Louisbourg at one point just to keep him away from his attorney who was
trying to build a case for trial. So it was very illuminating for Scott to hear about all of these things that happen in the underbelly of the federal prison world related to gangs and how correctional officers often collude with them, and sometimes it's foreign vendetta, and a lot of times it's to help try to keep the peace because sometimes these prison gangs are the only ones who can discipline their own properly, and they all just kind
of have an enabling relationship with each other, or they did at this time.
But Scott, here's the whole story of how this story starts with the snowball and ends up with revenge by virtue of Captain Powell and this wreckcage situation.
Yes, we very much wanted to try to tell this story of the snowball and Captain McDonald. But when they finally got to the point where witnesses were being subpoenaed, and this case dragged on for a little bit, Captain McDonald had retired and the Bureau of Prisons would not give our defense team his whereabouts or help us find him, and they didn't even let us know that he wasn't available until I think a few days before tryle So it was quite impossible to tell that version of the
story to the jury. And in fact, Stephen Tremblay himself, the victim, had been transferred to a different prison and then deported to Canada, not even allowed back into the country, so he was not someone that we would have called for reasons like that. But also he was the victim, and at the time we didn't know what kind of
testimony that would bring. We didn't have the full picture of the vengeance and Stephen Tremblay's role as far as what he thought had happened to him and why, so he would not have been a witness at the time, but things became clearer later on.
Let's get to how you become involved. You're not in a atney. You're a journalist, so and you're a friend of Scott's So how do you become involved in what is your rule?
So? Scott is my high school friend, and he knew that I was a journalist and I enjoyed making websites, and he figured that he needed a website and someone to write about his client to try to do some crowdsourcing and raise money for a defense expert. His judge was not allowing any public funds to be used to pay for an expert witness that Scott wanted to try to help explain what it's like in prison and prison gangs, etc. To a jury. The judge wouldn't pay for an investigator.
It was very bare bone. So Scott reached out to me to ask if I would write about his client and put together a website in the hopes of raising money for Kevin. And that's how I started my involvement. And then eventually he asked me to be part of the defense team, and I offered my services pro bono and was almost like a Della Street to his Perry Mason. Then we eventually got a second pro bono person, Jack Bear, to join us, and we shouldered the burden together, the three of us.
You just mentioned Jack Bear, So tell us who this prestigious attorney is. Jack Bear give us his background.
Well, he is a figure larger than life. He and Scott had known each other for quite a while. They had tried a couple of cases together in federal prison. And Jack had seen the website and the stories that I had eventually posted about Kevin and was very compelled by his backstory and offered his services to Scott, saying, you know, he's happy to help a brother. He is a like minded libertarian like Scott is, and really roots for the underdog and likes to take on the system.
And he said he would sit second chair pro bono if Kevin agreed, and we were thrilled to have him join the case because he was very experienced and it helped take off a lot of the pressure.
Let's get to the strategy that you decide to all employ, and let's get to the explanation of justification for this. Say, many people would have liked this just ended up into a plea agreement. But you are trying something. Scott is trying something and Jack Bear trying something novel in terms of trying to prove there was justification explain that for us.
Yes, So that was really the only legal strategy they could employ that Kevin was justified for doing what he did, or he would have faced certain assault, possibly killing in that wreck caage at the time, because his cellmate would have turned his shank on Kevin. And it was a novel approach at the time. It was brand new court case law that had just come down from the appellate court, and there were some very specific points that we had to meet, and we felt we met all of them.
But it made it a very complex concept to impart to a jury because there was a preponderance of evidence standard and not just reasonable doubt. So it was great that we had that option to try, but it also made it more complex to try to impart that information to the jury.
Part of this justification, you say, was, as you just mentioned, that the cellmate, the selly, would have turned on him if he didn't participate in the assault. But Kevin said that he didn't participate in the stabbing and just made the motions as you had already mentioned, but also that on the video the prosecutor was contending that he had reached into the back, into his back of his pants and secured a weapon. What did Kevin say in his defense to that allegation.
Oh yes, So now we get into the business about what a kite is. Kit A kite, a kite in prison as a small piece of paper with sensitive information written on it, rolled up very tightly, about the size
of a cigarette. And these kites can be flung underneath doors with a string attached, which is kind of where it gets its name, and passed down to a cell And Kevin was in charge of carrying a kite that had a lot of sensitive information that the Aryan Brotherhood needed to know, you know, inmates and their inmate numbers and various things about them, various things about correctional officers, what they called sensitive intelligence. So it was Kevin's job
to carry the kite. It was Kevin's cellmate's job to carry the shank, and Kevin, what was not seen on the video was him reaching into his shoe to grab the kite where he stored it, and then something that you can see on video is a very quick motion where he has his hand in the back of his pants.
And it was Kevin's contention that he stored the kite into a more secure location because there would be a very expected strip search and pat down following the type of assault that he expected to have happened.
Also, Kevin said made allegations about certain guards, one being a officer named Shemp, that were testifying that they didn't get any signals from Kevin whatsoever, indicating that he didn't want and was warning them that not to put Tromblay into the cell, into the wreck cage.
Absolutely, there were at least two correctional officers who heard and or saw the signals coming from Kevin not to put Trimblay into the wreck cage. But they lied on the stand. They cover for each other. It's typical. It's not something that made us happy, but we expected it. What are you going to do?
Let's get to the point where in this prosecution, the idea of this videotape is. Kevin says that what they were showing and what you had seen yourself, was not indicative of the entire assault itself. Previous to the assault especially was missing suspiciously from the video. Tell us what he said was missing from that, and tell us about your defense team's fight to have and to look at and to observe that video in its entirety.
Yes, Initially, the Bureau of Prisons could not even provide this video on a disc for us. It was a computer file that was in a proprietary format, and I was able to figure out how we could burn it to a disc so that we could look at it fully.
And there was a hearing prior to the trial all about the video tape and whether there was exculpatory evidence that had been erased or it had been selectively recorded, and the judge ended up determining that nothing untoward had happened with recording that video, so that became part of the evidence that was allowed to be introduced at trial.
And they were both Jack Bear and Scott Powell were able to hint and slightly indicate that there were things missing from it, but the video was quite damaging on its own. It was up to a jury whether they believed the story of what was missing from that video.
Yes, and it's important that Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now tell us about the campaign, the motion to try to get an expert witness and obviously have the state paid for or that expert witness. But first off, what was the expert witness going to speak to specifically?
Yes, Scott had found an expert that he really wanted to bring into the case, someone who had worked in the Special Management Unit and was very aware of all the things that go on in federal prison and that facility, in particular the hierarchy with gangs. You know what a shot caller is. When a shot caller gives an order, you have to obey. What happens if you don't obey. Scott felt it was very important to have a third
party explain this world to a jury. Well, the judge wasn't interested in having any public funds be spent on an expert, witness or an investigator. I mean, Kevin was an indigent defendant and Scott was his public defender. So you know, a different client who was able to pay for an attorney would be able to have those things. But in the public system, the money had to be approved by a judge, and the judge said no. So at one point Scott said, fine, I'll pay for the
expert myself. And this was a very expensive expert, like ten thousand dollars expensive, and Scott was willing to pay that himself, and he wrote briefs and motions to this effect, and Jack Behar helped him, and the judge said, no, you are not allowed to bring in this expert witness, whether you pay for it or not.
And you write about the not the behavior, but the treatment by Judge Anderson of your friend Scott in terms of almost being hostile and very much in opposition and confrontational in this trial, so much so that as a team you decided that Jack Bear would do the closing arguments just because the judge had seemed to have so much animosity towards Scott.
Yes, that's how it certainly appeared to us. We don't know if it appeared that way to the jury. As I said, I feel that the judge had certainly wished this case had been pleaded out and not taken up space on his docket and in his court scheduling. And there were a number of hearings and appearances and then the trials, and it did go on for quite a while,
so that had to be part of it. I know that Scott was extra glad to have Jack on the case after this animosity seemed to build, and it built in the way of briefs and motions and what you would read Scott type out for the judge, and then what the judge's response would be, in return, it was quite testing.
There was four points of justification that they had to find. There was four specific elements of that affirmative defense. But in the end they said that regardless of whether he had stabbed him or not, whether he had a weapon or not, he was still guilty of aiding and a betting the stabbing of this inmate.
Yes, that's ironically what it ended up coming down to. Even if we had met these four elements, the prosecutor was able to convince the jury that aiding and a betting superseded it all. And even if the jury didn't think Kevin had a weapon, and they did find that he did not, still it appeared that Kevin aided and abedded, and that's all they needed.
The other concept that came up, and that's what they wanted the expert witness to testify to, was that in a combination of the bylaws or the laws of the prison itself, that Kevin acted in a sort of justifiable self defense because of the rules. And the judge said something to the effect that we all have to live by the same rules, and regardless of whether a prison has different rules, that we all have to abide by the same rules.
That's right, And really it was almost talking out of two sides of your mouth, because he certainly had many cases appear before or him from Louisbourg prison. He was well aware of what went on behind bars, and at one point he claimed he didn't know very much about what happened, but the roster of cases he had before him would indicate otherwise. And of course there are two different worlds, and if Kevin had chosen to not follow the rules behind the bars of Louisbourg, he could have
ended up being dead. So kill or be killed, assault or be assaulted. It's really disingenuous to say that it's not feasible to live in that world and not follow those rules.
In the end, you all felt that the case was hampered by the lack of an expert witness and also the CEOs lying on the stand. And you say the general imbalanced favors the prosecution. In federal court, the jury is deliberating. You say that after an hour and a half or so they have a couple questions and regarding the four points of the justification. But you say about another hour and a half later they have a decision. The charges were assault with a dangerous weapon, assault resulting
in bodily harm, possession of a dangerous weapon. Tell us what the verdicts are After about four hours of deliberation by the jurors.
Yes, he was found guilty on all the charges except for having a weapon because there was no video evidence and they had no photographic evidence that he had a weapon, and we were pretty clued into their thinking when the jury came back with some questions. One of their questions was, what is the definition of imminent because one of the four points that we had to abide by for the justification was that he was in imminent danger and all the best anybody could come up with was reading a
dictionary definition for them. And then one of the other questions was did all the jurors have to agree yes or no on every single one of the four points, And basically they did so if any of the jurors didn't feel that zero point three had been met, even if it was one or two, the whole thing didn't matter. We weren't able to prove our four points, and they would find him guilty on those charges. So he was found guilty on all the charges except having the weapon.
You're right, before this you weren't completely confident in a not guilty verdict, and Jack had said that as well, he was somewhat optimistic. But you all said that you hug Kevin and promised to be working on the appeal. And then you say right after that, a few hours after the verdict, you visited with Kevin, shook hands, but that Scott had also mentioned to Kevin that he could file twenty two fifty five and he refused, what does a twenty two to fifty five? What does that stand for? Yeah?
Ineffective assistance of counsel? Yes, thank you, And it's something that defendants will often file if they lose their cases, and that basically claims that their attorney screwed up, and they screwed up so badly that the court should consider appointing a new attorney or overturning the verdict. And Scott offered to even help Kevin write this motion, and Kevin
said absolutely, no, no way. After everything that Scott did, in Kevin's opinion, going above and beyond representing him as an indigent defendant, Kevin said, no way.
Let's just as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now you say he's in Douglas County Prison. He was awaiting his sentence for these charges. And while he was there, he was enjoying himself and doing one of the things that gave him great pleasure, and he exhibited a lot of talent and that was his artwork. And then after a short period of time, he was sent back to Florence, Colorado.
Tell us about just the correspondence that you have with and the differences he notes from the two places, and his prospects he believes going back to Lawrence in Colorado.
Yes, so, Douglas County Prison was Douglas County jail night and day from what he experienced in Lewisbourg with correctional officers who took their job seriously, but it was they were just more respectful to inmates, treating them more humanely. And Kevin thrived under that circumstance, and he was able to interact more with other inmates and spend time outside
of his cell. And Kevin was a very talented artist, and he was able to convince the warden to let him have some prison painting projects, and those really filled his soul and it was great for the prison and It was a terrific circumstance, but he wasn't able to
stay there for too long. When he got transferred to Florence in Colorado, a high security federal prison, everyone on the defense team was very concerned because there were grumblings from the Aryan Brotherhood about Kevin having testified at his trial and for some of the things that Kevin said about the gang at trial. I mean, that's one of the unwritten rules. You do not testify and say all
these truthful things about the gang. And when he got to Florence, he found trouble in the way of one inmate in particular, who was posing as a dropout from the Aryan Brotherhood, but who was in fact sent there to take revenge out on Kevin for testifying.
You write that his selly, his cellmate Diablo from another gang, offered him a knife for the fight, with a nine inch blade, and you write that Kevin said, no, I'm not a gangster. And so what he proceeded to do was to create what tell us about what he tried to create to protect himself.
Yes, when Kevin learned that a cellmate from the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas send a Kent was looking around for a shank and meant to do Kevin harm. Kevin made himself a protective vest out of magazines he had tattoo magazines and other types of magazines, and he sewed them inside of a T shirt which he then sewed inside of a sweatshirt. And he was able to have some means of protection because he just assumed that this Aran brotherhood from Texas whose name was Tiny, ironically, and he
was not Tiny. He assumed that Tiny would come after him on the open tier of the prison, and so he wore this stab vest underneath this sweatshirt every day for a really long time, just waiting to see when this knife fight might occur. And yes, his cell mate at the time in Florence Diablo offered him a knife, and Kevin said, no, I can't do that. I will just get into more trouble and I'll get more time
added on to my sentence already. And Kevin's hope was that the stab vest and him fighting Tiny off with his bare hands would work well enough until officers could intervene, and that's exactly how it did end up playing out.
He had some near fatal wounds as a result of this though didn't.
He yes, right under his left arm pit, maybe an inch or two from his heart. He had a staple suture to help with that, and the nurse told him, you are lucky. Another inch and you would have been dead.
Very interesting, you say, they throw him in the hole. He's in there for in early twenty fourteen, for eighty three days, nothing to do but draw and write to you and Scott. And he had also written a twenty five page letter regarding the hit itself. It's interesting too, you talk about that the cellmate now is sentenced. His name was his nickname was Arson, but his last name was Keys, and he is formally sentenced to five years.
Before we go on, why is it exactly that Kevin was interested in trying to go to trial and risking something more than the five years that, for example, his cellmate got.
You're absolutely right that was a risk, and Scott conveyed this risk to Kevin, and Scott even brought an attorney friend in to meet with Kevin and underscore the risk of going to trial. And Kevin was determined. He really
felt that he wanted to tell the truth. He wanted this information to come out in the public square, so to speak and he was willing to see how that would happen, and Scott supported him, and so, Yes, his cellmate Arson got a five year sentence because he did not waste the taxpayer dollars and the judge's time and the prosecutor's time on a trial for himself. Kevin ended up getting seven years because he did all of those things.
It's interesting you say that Scott gets a copy of Stephen Tromblay's deposition and at some point he claims that he would be willing to testify on Kevin's behalf.
Yes, this is something we learned after the trial, and it was something that would have been part of our appeal strategy. Yes, Stephen Tremblay had been deposed by a United States Assistant attorney from the Harrisburg re Agent by video link when Stephen Tremblay was in Victorville, California. And the primary reason for that is because Stephen Tremblay was suing the Bureau of Prisons over his injuries and it was a civil suit, and so the Bureau of Prisons
was doing, you know, its part and deposing him. But the whole topic of the wreckage assault involving Kevin and his homemate. Arson of course came up because that's how he received his injuries. The FBI agents who came to see Stephen Tremblay right after the assault and then later on and this prosecutor who deposed Stephen Tremblay, they all wanted to know if Stephen Tremblay would testify for the government,
and Stephen Tremblay said, no, I will not. In fact, I will testify for Kevin because it's my understanding that they had to do what they had to do, and Kevin was really just not trying to kill me, Like, thanks for not killing me. I understand what you had to do. So that was a whole, very interesting wrinkle that wasn't available to us for the trial, but it's something that we wanted to be able to use for an appeal.
You take us. After this decision, he's being sentenced and he ends up meeting someone quite notorious in Orlando. Tell us who he meets in jail.
Right after he was sentenced, Kevin was sent to his permanent home at the Coleman Too Correctional Facility near Orlando in Florida. And after he got off one of the con Air flights and he's on the tarmac in Orlando. He is sent to line up in front of the bus that will take him to Coleman and he's standing there next to someone who he hears grumbling about one of the officers in a real heavy Boston accent, and
they exchange a couple of words. And then as all the inmates line up and they're getting onto the bus, they each have to state their name and their inmate number, and this Boston accented old man, he called him old School, is in front of him and he tells the officer on the bus what his inmate number is and says he's James Bulger and Kevin knows that that means Whitey Bulger and he cannot believe he is going to be sitting on a prison bus heading to the same prison new home with Whitey Bulger.
You write further on that the appeal fails and you talk about Fall twenty and sixteen and Jackson B. Bear. Soon Jackson Bear dies, doesn't.
He yes, very unexpectedly from a heart attack, And this was after the appeal was lost, and we knew that the legal case was ended. And he yes, he didn't live to see many things. It was shocking for his wife and family and friends and colleagues, and he never knew that this book had been written about this case.
Interesting, you're right too as well, that Scott at some point during this thing had to take a job at a law firm. Tell us about him leaving this case to go to a law firm.
Yes, he got very tired of being in private practice and did not want to be a public defender anymore. This case defending Kevin Sanders really wore him down, and he was not in a great place in his personal life. He had been going through a divorce and he just wanted a fresh start, so he had been looking for other firms to join. Still wanted to stay in Pennsylvania, and he ended up going to Pittsburgh and joined a
firm there. But he really had to kind of start over in a way like a lot of the young associates. I mean, even though he was seasoned and much older than they were, he was given the same newbie tasks. You know, DUIs and simple, not very exciting cases to start out with.
This story has quite an expansive time, and you take us to Keaven has got a release date. It's a few months away. He's going to go to a halfway house. You have been corresponding with him, You've been part of his life. He has thanked you for everything that you and Jack and Scott have done for him. You're continuing believing in him and helping him. So tell us about this this release that he is supposed to do and some of the fears that he has on the eve of that release.
So he was supposed to be released a year, say a year to eight months prior to an official release date, to a halfway house, which is typical, and he was looking at that in April of twenty twenty. Well, we all know what happened. In the spring of twenty twenty. COVID hit and that shut down you know, everywhere everything and including the halfway houses. That was just not available to inmates at the time. So he ended up having
to serve his entire sentence. He finished it out at Coleman and was eventually released in April of twenty twenty one. And he had almost some premonitions ahead of that that he shared with me over the phone, worried about gangs that wanted retribution over him, and my first thought was the Aryan Brotherhood. He reminded me of the reason he left Allenwood to go to Louisbourg in the first place, because he refused to carry out a Montanista hit order.
There was retribution wanted for that, and that worried him, and he found out that they still wanted that retribution when he got out of prison and off the prison bus.
Within hours, you intercepted or met him along the way, gave him a five hundred dollars phoned gift card. Scott gave him his father's his late father's wallet with a thous dollars in it. So you were giving this young man, well not so young man, really, you were giving this person a real good start. And so but two days after that meeting, you hadn't heard from him, and either had Scott tell us what had happened.
Yes, I was naturally suspicious after I got no further communication with him, when I knew his bus had pulled into the place where he came from in California, Valleeuew And it was maybe a week after that that I learned for sure from Scott that Kevin had been picked up and was jailed for an encounter that happened in
a motel room. He had been able to call Scott from jail, and Scott relayed the information to me, and it was the first time of many that I had heard a version of the story that occurred, and the version included being at a motel near the homeless shelter where he was released to right, and a bloody showdown happening inside the hotel room because some Montanista associates were there to carry out this revenge for the gang leader.
You also talked about, though there was a confusing bit of information where he said there was a hotel room, but they switched the room numbers, so it was a confusing tale. It seemed from this guy that all the other correspondents you had seemed a little bit more rational. So all of a sudden, this story was not seeming to line up, because there was different variances of this story in a short order.
That's right. I was used to taking what he said at face value, and he seemed to be very paranoid, and really his premonition about being worried about the Montanesas seemed paranoid, But then it seemed to bear out, so that seemed to have veracity. And he told different versions
of the story over the following months. As I was able to communicate with him, he came up with this version where his belongings were in room one oh four, but the bloody showdown happened in room four oh one, and the Montonesas moved his things from one o four to four oh one and this back and forth thing.
And at that point he had been assigned a public defender for the state because there were state assault charges and a federal public defender, and those two attorneys were asking him, well, why don't you why do we have this confusion of four oh one and one o four, And he said, well, because there was beer and drug paraphernalia found in this one room and that wasn't mine, and meaning that if those things had been his, that would have been an immediate parole violation and he would
have gone back to federal prison. So I started understanding that his substance abuse history, which you can still get substances in prison, was very much a part of his new persona being released on the outside side. And my eyes started opening a little bit as I heard these new stories.
Now, also he included another phone call, and a very alarming phone call to you with some strange and disturbing allegations, tell us about that phone call.
Yes, well, all through these years he and I collaborated on this book project. It was one of the things that kept him going. He wrote me so many letters and drew pictures and sketches and a lot of artwork for the book, and it was our collaboration project, even though along the way I had decided many times not
to write the book because of the dangers involved. I especially didn't want him to have to look over his shoulder when he got out of prison all the time, because there was a book out there that revealed information that unhappy gangsters didn't want to be out there. He told me that on the bus people were talking about the book. Well, how can people be talking about the
book if he doesn't bring it up. And then he told me that his possessions were taken inside that bloody hotel room, and that included his address book with my information in it and Scott's information in it. And he told me my life was in danger, and I was incredulous. I really didn't know how to respond, and I downplayed it. I said, what are you talking about? And he said, you don't think they would kill a prosecutor. And then bad, and I about killing you and Scott to get a
message to me. And that's when I washed my hands of the book project for quite a while and really had to do some soul searching about my involvement in this case.
Yes, you're right, did you looked at things differently? He also at some point had said that they had these gang members had Scott's mother. So it was a horrifying situation that you had first kept that information from your husband, but then it came out and he was concerned as well and called your friend, Scott.
Yes, this is true. I don't like to burden people with things that maybe can't be helped or who knew how much of it was paranoia or actually true. And at one point everything culminated and became too much, and I did let my husband know more details than I had previously about exactly what Kevin said about the address book. And yes, then my husband had a talk with Scott and made me promise not to keep any more secrets, and I agreed, and we started to move on in
our lives, and that included not writing the book. At that point, You.
Right about Kevin. Now he finally those charges are dropped against him, and he's at this Crossroads Academy, and again you're in correspondence with him, and you'd like to help Kevin out. But the academy, the people officials at the academy tell you something about Kevin. What do they tell you and advise you?
Yes, So this academy was a place that he could have gone while he was awaiting the state charges in California, which did get dropped. But he needed a place to live. And it was for homeless people and people with substance issues, addiction issues. And he met with the director of this academy and there was an interview and the director thought he would be a good candidate, and Kevin joined them.
And I had a phone call with the director because I wanted to send Kevin some things that had been stolen that we had given him previously, a new phone, you know, some clothing, some toiletries, things like that. And the director asked me, he said, did you buy those things yet? And I said some of them. He said, return them. Don't do it. Kevin needs to stand on his own. You are just enabling him. When he's finished
with this program. He could buy his own phone, he could buy his own car, he'll get a job, but he needs to stay in this program. And after my very long conversation, it was pretty illuminating, and I realized a program like that would be Kevin's salvation, you know, something that would almost replace the halfway house that he wasn't able to have. But he needed an outreach and a program that would help him with his substance abuse and help get him grounded and able to move in
a good direction after prison. But that didn't last very long. Kevin wasn't there but for a few weeks.
Yes, you say he left the program, and then he called again and he sounded better in that he had met a woman named Maria at a church. And then weeks later you write that he called you and said I'm getting married and said he wasn't afraid of using his own name or his face being out there, which you cautioned against because he said that God protected him. And that was the last time you spoke to Kevin. But you did speak to Maria. Tell us what Maria had said regarding Kevin and their relationship.
Yes, they got into a very quick relationship. After Kevin was released looking for work, and Maria helped him get a job at her company painting, and they moved in together. She allowed him to move in. It was a very quick romance, and she acknowledges that her heart just ran away with things. But Kevin was very charming and they were happy together for that last summer that I had talked to him. But she started noticing some behavior changes.
He started to become detached. He was less loving, and he also started to not eat, and he was getting very skinny. And she had an ex husband who had addiction issues, and she started to recognize that he was probably reigniting a meth addiction was his previous drug of
choice before he was incarcerated for many years. And things came to a head one day she came home from work and he was in her bathroom with a homeless man shooting up meth with a hypodermic needle, and that led to yelling and screaming and shouting, and she kicked him out and she just stood up herself and said, you know, I deserve way better than this. This is
just over. She kicked him out, and he threatened her and went off and had lost his job at that point because he wasn't able to really focus on anything except his next score and ended up living out of a stolen car, and she moved away to be with a sibling and needed to keep herself safe, and I supported that.
Let's get to how you finally decide to complete this book, and more importantly, what you wanted to accomplish with the book now that you decided to complete it. What you thought this book most profoundly the biggest statement that it makes well.
I always felt at the heart that it was bose on the SMU program at Lewisbourg, which, by the way, piggybacked on some prior reporting by NPR and the Marshall Project. They teamed up and had an expose of their own in twenty sixteen. So my story covers many of those same abuse issues, but of course adds to it. I felt it was important to tell that part of the story,
and there are many themes involved beyond prison. You know, substance abuse is one, childhood sexual abuse, unfortunately is another one. Kevin was a victim of that and also another one of the main characters. Yes, and the themes just seemed to all run together and form a story that needed to be told, and it was a way of getting closure for myself in this dark chapter in my life to put pen to paper and put it out there. So it's out there. It launched today, and I hope
I've done justice to some of these themes. I've had some early readers tell me that they resonate the sections on the abuse, and so I hope I've done justice to that. And really to also give a voice to the voiceless. I think people who are incarcerated, men and women, they have no agency. Nobody wants to know what goes on inside of prisons, and maybe through infotainment some of this information will become more well known.
One last question. You seem to be at some point very disappointed in how Kevin turned out of the fate of Kevin Sanders, because you had so much optimism in his character and him be able to overcome all of the things that he encountered in being in prison most of his life. You say, the last sentence he had was eleven years, so you thought there was hope his artistic abilities, some of the things he had done. His attitude was not to happen, was it.
No? And he had gifts and skills that so many inmates don't have, and he had an opportunity. I mean, he had someone who loved him and gave him a home and helped support him, and for a time he and Maria were a very happy domestic couple. But that pull toward substance abuse and the mesta, mean, that was a big part of his prior life. That pool was just too great and he couldn't resist it. He didn't
want help for it, even though help was offered. And it's such a tragedy that he had all of these positives and pluses in his life, and yet he couldn't get out of his own way because of the meth to give himself that happy life on the outside that he always dreamed of.
What was the reason for the book being called Chain Birds? And you provide a diagram of Chain Bird's artwork on the cover of this book. Can you tell us about that?
Yes, the book is titled mostly after a sketch that Kevin had drawn of a predatory bird, an eagle. It's a lovely black and white sketch that you see on the cover of the book. The bird is perched on a branch and it has a chain around its foot and a chain around the branch, but the chain is broken and I always found the drawing very haunting. It's kind of like, why isn't the bird flying away? He's
not chained anymore. So I thought that that would make an ideal title when I eventually decided to write the book, and one of my early readers for the manuscript was my mother, who was a retired English teacher, and she told me that my title at the time, chained Bird Singular, was utterly misleading, that of course Kevin was the chained bird, but also Scott and I were chained to him and to each other. We were all chained birds for various
reasons and another. And of course she was right, so the title became Chained Birds.
Yes, absolutely appropriate. Thank you so much. I want to thank you so much for this interview regarding your book, Chain Birds, a True Crime Memoir. This is a Wild Blue Press release. Can you tell us if there's a Facebook page or a website if they Could you do any social media?
Yes, I have a blog under my name Carla Jean Kanti, and all my social media handles are Carla Jen Kanti. I'm pretty easy to look up.
Thank you so much, Carla Kanti. Chain Birds a True Crime Memoir. Thank you so much for this interview and you have a great evening. Thank good night, Thank you Dan, thank you