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Dr. Jim Herbert, Professor of Counselor Education and Rehabilitation and Human Services at Penn State, joins us in the studio today. In this first part of a two-part series, Jim discusses the recruitment challenges identified in his study- Recruitment and Retention of State Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors: A Mixed Methods Analysis.   Please listen in as Carol and Jim unpack this study and discuss the four significant challenges and possible solutions you can apply to your situation.   Stay tuned as the focus shifts to the retention side of the study by Dr. Jim Herbert in the next episode of Manager Minute.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   Music} Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: Well, welcome to the Manager Minute Doctor Jim Herbert, Professor of Counselor, Education and Rehabilitation and Human Services at Penn State, is joining me in the studio today to discuss his recently released study, Recruitment and Retention of State Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors, A Mixed Methods Analysis. I am so happy to have you here today. How are things going in Pennsylvania?   Jim: Well, first off, I'm happy to be had and things are going very well in Pennsylvania. It's a beautiful summer day and the nice thing is that many academician might appreciate it. While we love students, summer session, they're not here, which means you can get parking spaces downtown, lots of restaurants. You don't have to wait a long time to get in. So it's a good time and good place to be in State College, Pennsylvania.   Carol: Oh, that's awesome. Say, are you getting any of that wildfire smoke from Canada?   Jim: You know, it's funny you say that because we just got an alert that indicated like over the next couple of days, Yeah, it's going to be coming this way.   Carol: Yeah, we definitely got hit with it the last two days. And I saw it moving off to the East Coast, looked like the apocalypse here. It was very, very weird. So to set the stage for our listeners, I first met you through the CSVAR Operations and Personnel Committee, and I used to co-chair the old version of that committee. It was called The old HRD with Cynthia Speight, and I continued to participate in it when I entered the TA world. And so back in the day, Cynthia and I were super interested in recruitment, retention issues of counselors. And I'm talking like, this is probably like eight years ago now. And we had done several surveys with state agencies to kind of gauge where they were at with getting new counselors. And we kept seeing this shrinkage of people entering the field and the reduction in universities offering a master's in rehab counseling. And then you came to that committee to collaborate on a study you were doing that was partly supported by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehab Research or NIDILRR,   Jim: right.   Carol: And so in the executive summary, you noted that there had been a consistent shortage of qualified rehab counselors employed by the state federal VR program for actually several decades. I mean, we're kind of thinking this is a new deal. And it's like this has been going on for quite some time and the Covid 19 pandemic really exacerbated the shortage. And you were also looking at the funding RSA provided to graduate programs that encouraged individuals to work and to be in VR. And you wanted to see like what happened after that two year kind of payback phase. And really, I found that interesting, that the funding had been provided for 65 years, but there had been no formal study about the scholars continuing their employment with VR after that period of time. So your study primarily examined recruitment, retention, concerns of the state vocational rehab agencies, and you identified strategies to address those. And in addition, you looked to see if there was a mechanism to track that long term employment outcome of the former RSA scholars working for the state VR program. So we're going to do this in two parts because you have a lot of stuff you did, and I think our listeners will kill us if we're going to do a two hour podcast. So we're not everybody just stay buckled in. We're going to tackle in two parts. And Jim and I are going to talk today about the retention side of the project. And then next month we are going to talk about the recruitment part of this. So, all right, enough background. Let's dig in. So, Jim, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, like how long you've been in academia? How did you get there?   Jim: How did I get here? Well, I've been an Academician here at Penn State for 37 years. And where did the time go in terms of kind of how I got here? Probably like a lot of your audience, when you think about people that work in the rehab field, a lot of times you get in the rehab field because they have either personal experience with disability or a family member. And that's exactly what happened to me. I had a brother who had Down syndrome, and so I got interested and did volunteer work on high school and in college. And I loved working with people with developmental disabilities. That's how I got interested in rehab. And then during my, you know, college, I knew I wanted to work with people. But a lot of times, you know, when we teach career development, we kind of make it sound like it's this very logical process that you, you know, pluses and minuses and I going to do this. And yet we fail to acknowledge there's a lot of things by fate that impact on your career choice. You just happen to be in this office who you just happened to say something who happened to know somebody else who happened to have this job. So when I look back at my own career, one of the things I tell my students is that, yeah, you can plan and you want to be in a position to have opportunities. To come, but there's a lot of things you can't control and there's a lot of things that just sort of happen, if you will. Some might say by divine providence. I don't know if that's the case. But anyway, there's a lot of things that you can't plan. So in my own career, how I got that was sort of a combination of just fate happen to be in this place at this time. And then obviously preparation in terms of formal education and experience. But yeah, it's gone by fast.   Carol: I love that when you said 37 years, we probably have some listeners out there going, I'm not even 37 years old right now. And I was thinking this year I just had my 37th anniversary. And so you and I have been around for a little bit more than a minute. I think that's cool. But I love that that you said by fate, I think a lot of us have fallen into our career trajectory truly by fate in whatever kind of circumstance. Like you said, you came into it at the time. So what went into approaching this study and kind of how long have you been at this?   Jim: Yeah, it's funny. As far as doing this study, how I kind of got interested in it was I mean, I've been a project director for many RSA training grants throughout that time period. There's a lot of investment that you make and help students become rehab counselors and Penn State I think like many universities, we have a strong commitment to the state VR program. You know, I've always said that I feel that State VR people, you should have the best trained people to address the difficult needs and complex needs of people with disabilities have. So there's a lot of investment that's made. And then also, as you know, after they graduate and they get supported through RSA traineeship, they'll typically work for every one year of support, two years of full time employment. So if they work for a state agency, there's a lot of investment the agency makes. You'll often hear it takes 2 to 3 years before you just kind of feel like, I know this job. So when you combine that, you see the amount of financial investment and professional investment that educators and practitioners make. And so over the years when I've had a chance to meet with a number of our former alumni and what are you doing? And one of the things I notice is some of them would be working for a state agency, and then after a couple of years, they do their two year payback and said, I'm out of here. It's like, man, you know, what's going on? What's happening here? What are we doing? And what I came to learn talking with other educators across the country is it's not something I think, wow, is this something just unique to us? Maybe we're doing something wrong here. Maybe we need to do a better job, which of course, we could always do. But what I learned anecdotally was that, no, this seems to be kind of a nationwide problem. So you had that on top of I was interested. So what research has been done to look at the long term effectiveness of the RSA training program? And what I learned was I could not find any study throughout that whole history. I thought that was kind of interesting because I know we followed in the first two years, but after the payback period, that's it. So that started a pilot project that I had done. So I was just interested what happened with the people that came through Penn State, received the RSA Scholarship and worked. And what I learned from that pilot study, even though the data was a small sample size, I learned when we look at the percentage of people who are at the agency versus those that worked at Non State VR, I learned that it was significantly higher. The rate of people who are intending to leave the state VR. So that kind of rang some bells for me. And from there, with that pilot data, we then decided to undertake this three year study to investigate what's going on and more maybe not necessarily more importantly, but just as importantly, what can we do about it? So we are just finishing our second year of data and today and next month, we'll talk about some of the results of what are some of the things that we found from that study. So that's really kind of how this whole thing emerged.   Carol: I really love that you tackled this because that was so interesting to me, especially when you were looking at 65 years of this program. But there was nothing done like there had been no study of what happened to the people. I'm sure as you were talking to directors and I used to be a director, you know, anecdotally we could see and tell you, like we knew in Minnesota, I felt like we were the training grounds for the VA. And so, you know, staff would come in, they would do an internship with us, come on board, Yay, you know, and all of that. And then the next thing you know, there's skedaddled over to the VA because they could make like 20,000 more a year starting. It was crazy. So it's like, how do we combat that? And we'll get to some of that. You had definitely some ideas for folks on how to do it, but I was really super pleased to see what you had undertaken there. So let's talk about the recruitment challenges that you identified in the study. What are the top challenges that VR is facing?   Jim: Right now, the first thing I'm going to tell you, I'm sure your listeners are going to go, duh. I mean, the first big challenge is we don't have enough applicants. We don't have enough people applying for the jobs. And there's a lot of reasons for that. And I'd like to unpack maybe just a few of them. But one of the big things that states are constantly saying is years past, maybe we'd have a job opening and we might have 15-20 applicants today. We might be lucky if we can get a couple and in some cases we get none. So the big problem is we don't have a sufficient number of qualified job applicants. That's, you know, the big thing. So it's like people don't know about us. People don't know how to kind of how's this process work? To varying degrees, I think educators do kind of a mixed job on how do we market this. So why would you want to become a state VR counselor? You know, if you ask college students who want to be counselors, social workers, psychologists, and say, hey, there's this thing called a state counselor, it's like, what? What is that? I don't know. What do they do? That's a big, big problem. Another big, big problem that we have is look at the bureaucracy. You and I, we've had a history of and I'm still working in the bureaucracy here at Penn State as much as I love it. But the big thing is in that bureaucracy, the time it takes to recruit somebody, then you have to kind of review all the applicants. You have all the policies and procedures and steps and levels of people that need to review and sign off on this. Well, that process typically takes 2 to 3 months. And so you're thinking like, okay, for states that are looking and I know that regulations are changing, hiring more baccalaureate people, but especially for master's level credentialed persons, they don't have time to kind of wait two, three months to hear back from a job. If you think back to like when you know, way back in the Stone Age, when I'll just say when I graduated, you finish and you were poor and you needed money and I need to get a job and a job fast. So to ask them to wait for 2 or 3 months after they graduate, we're losing. We're losing a lot of qualified people. We need to do something about how do we reduce that time that's a little bit more manageable and a little bit more reasonable.   Carol: I hear about that from directors all the time, that hiring practices. In fact, we're doing a little bit of a pilot on recruitment retention within our VRTAC for quality management. And so you've been aware I've been working with John Connolly and Ron Vessel, John Walsh, Missy Deal and Crystal Gary on our team where we've been talking about this. We've been also coming to the Operation Personnel Committee. But one of the states we're working with, you know, it's taking them 7 or 8 months to be able to make the offer. So they literally interviewed people. And then by the time HR worked through their processes, it was eight months later. And then you're going to offer to somebody and they're like, we thought this was done because we haven't heard from you. Gosh, you're going on a year, for Pete's sakes. People aren't hanging out. And if they are hanging out, there's probably a reason they're hanging out and somebody else didn't pick them up.   Jim: You're absolutely right. Typically with state directors who we spoke with and we spoke to about 20 in the first part of this study, usually it was about 3 or 4 months. So, boy, if it's 7 to 8 months, oh, my lord, that's really, really bad. So on top of that, another big problem and this is where I think educators need to do a better job. A lot of applicants really don't understand what is it that a state VR counselor does? This might be a little controversial to say, but I think one of the things when we kind of went through the new accreditation process from CORE to CACREP and all and the counselor identity, now this is just my personal opinion. I'm not saying it represents, you know, any other constituent group. But in my opinion, I think what we've lost in that transition is we've lost a bit that the importance of career development, of job placement. We've lost, you know, kind of career counseling. And so I think students really don't understand that while I want to work in private practice, so they have this kind of idealized expectation, like, you know, I just open up my shop or I work out of my house and people just be coming and it'll be great. I'll provide good services, I'll make a good income. It doesn't work that way. It takes time to kind of do all that. And then my wife is a therapist had been doing this for 40 years. Even when you do that again, you have some idea of how you think it's going to work, and they don't really understand, like, Hey, well, what are some of the downsides of kind of private practice? And so a state view job has lots of benefits, I think, that make attractive. And one of the things I say to my students is where should I start? For me, working as a state counselor is a fantastic way to kind of get on the ground floor because you learn different systems, different agencies. You understand the whole network, and you'll also get connected in the community so you understand, you know, other providers and kind of what they do. That takes time. I think that's another problem because people have some understanding and we'll talk about the paperwork and all that. And there are definitely downsides, but there's a lot of upsides. The other big thing, no surprise, surprise, money. We don't pay them enough. We can talk about later on this podcast or the next about what certain states are doing and all. But the big problem is and you just alluded, not alluded, you actually stated that years ago, you take like the VA offer is just one example and it's like, okay, the credentials are the same. So why would I want to work at this place? It's going to pay me $20,000 less to do basically kind of very similar kinds of jobs. And so while some states have been successful in getting higher compensation, others have not. And we'll talk more about this probably in the next podcast because I do have some ideas about what you can do to address the compensation issue. So when you look at those four reasons, the fact that we don't have enough people, the fact that it takes time to go through all the recruitment that applicants, they don't really have an understanding of what's this job about? And the money, that's a deadly combination. And so we need to now think about, well, what are things that we could do to kind of make this more attractive to recruit them?   Carol: I know when we were talking money, so I did a podcast. It was in April with Scott Dennis from Maryland. For our listeners, if you didn't catch that episode, definitely go back and listen, because he was successful in getting a significant increase for his counselors and the supervisors and the regional administrators because he's in this unique position where he's surrounded by like DC and all these other states. So he goes, Gosh, we're the training ground for RSA. Like they're stealing all my people. And folks were making significantly more well by him. And this wasn't overnight. Like everybody needs to know like any of these solutions that we're going to talk about, like it takes time. Literally. They've been working on this for several years. And finally, we're able to get it through. It almost immediately stopped the bleeding because he said he was every week getting everybody was reporting up like all these resignations. And it stopped and they actually started getting people back in that used to work for him, came back and said, hey, we love that job, but now you're paying a decent wage. I will come back. I know it struck me in the study, when you go the range of pay was from like 16,000. When you're talking about like an intern, you know, and it might be like the aid type of thing up to 101,000 and you go, that is a big spread. And there's a whole lot of states talking about, you know, those master's level counselors coming out and they're making $36,000. That's not going to cut it like that is not going to cut it. So I am definitely excited as we kind of get into talking about some of the other strategies folks could use. Now, I know you called out directly that VR agencies do not have an overall strategy to develop a comprehensive recruitment plan. And recruitment really is a reactive process. When somebody leaves the agency and I know we're going to chat about retention next month, so let's talk about some strategies that might help folks on the recruitment front.   Jim: Yeah, that's right. So the first thing is, okay, when you look at traditionally like how does a state VR advertise? And often what we find is they'll do it through the State Civil Service Commission. And because that's the mechanism that historically that we've used. So we're going to continue. That's great. That's fine. But we've got to expand other outlets because number one, as I said, job applicants, many may not even know what civil servant. What is that? I don't know what civil service. I don't even know what that is. Well, we advertise there, but we have to look at accessing other networks. So the things that, you know, like indeed, and LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter, Facebook, there's just tons of social media networks that we need to be aware of. Again, I'm kind of old school, so Facebook. But yeah, I mean, my son, who's 26 TikTok and Reddit is a bunch of it anyway, so I'm not an expert on all that. But the point being is we have to think broader. So when we think about that, we have to recognize there's other tools that we're not using. Now, with that being said, and states are already starting to do this to again, historically, they've sought out rehab counseling programs as a source to say, hey, we're going to have some positions. If you have students coming out, we'd love to interview them. Great. But there are a number of states that you don't have an accredited program in your state and Savannah were fortunate because we have several, but there are some states that have none. So what they have to do in those instances, they've got to look at other programs, mental health programs and social work programs and school and psychology and substance abuse. So there are universities that have those kinds of programs. So we need to establish and I'll talk about this in a minute or two, a better working relationship with individual university program coordinators. Historically, we've had that. But in some cases, I think maybe because of the pandemic, things have kind of necessarily evaporated. But I think, you know, that relationship has been tested a little bit over the last couple of years. And not just that in terms of the network. And I think historically, State VR has done a good job in this area, but they could still do better in terms of the diversity of workforce. So there are groups I'm thinking in terms of ethnic minority groups in particular here where we need to do a better job in terms of recruitment. And so what that means is maybe we can't always rely on kind of traditional sites that many people use, but there are certain job boards and certain postings that are specifically devoted to access to underrepresented groups in terms of disability, may be wrong on this,. I think it's called recruit disability. I think there's another one called 70 million Jobs. So we have that. The other thing too, and sometimes in rural areas we have to do more and want to get back to something actually you mentioned, Carol, was I have to say this was a surprise to me. Originally we were going to do the study. We were going to interview state VR executive directors, and then the HR person who is responsible for recruitment and retention. And based on the people that responded to our surveys, we didn't find anybody. There's nobody that says this is my job title. Like, my job is to focus exclusively on recruitment and retention. And I think that's a big problem because that gets to what you were talking about a little bit earlier and that being that unfortunately, recruitment is kind of an afterthought. It's a reactive process. It's like, Oh, we just lost somebody. We got to recruit people to refill that well, that's the wrong way to kind of do things. That's sort of like we're reacting to something that actually happened and well, we'll get into retention next month. You know, part of that is how do we keep people? That's a separate issue, but also how do we recruit them? So we have to think, you know, what are we doing? So having a designated person who is responsible for this, I can't think of a more important aspect than recruiting and retaining your workforce. Lots of problems. But if you don't have a qualified workforce that is going to be around, everything else is kind of a moot point.   Carol: So I agree 100%, because I even think back to our old agency that I came from in Minnesota, we didn't really have a recruitment strategy. And in our agency, we were in a labor agency. We had all these programs. You know, you've got adult dislocated worker and Wagner-Peyser, and we've got unemployment insurance and disability determination services and all this stuff. And they finally did. They they're like, Oh, we're going to get one dedicated person who's recruiting for all of it, like for every division. And you go, okay, for one, we all vastly do way different work and having some strategies, you know? So you've got this one person I'm going to go to the career fair over at blah blah, blah place. Oh, good grief. You know, we had to all kind of help pitch in to get the message out because a lot of times, you know, on that state website, you know, your career opportunities for the state our ads suck. I mean, they aren't very good. They're not very appealing. It's like, oh, come work for us, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't sound very interesting. And I remember the very first time I was like, okay, heck, no, we are not having that. And I rewrote that advertisement and like, come and join us for this like, mission driven organization and all of that. And people were like, Oh, I don't know if we're allowed to do stuff like that. And we had people apply because they're like, We've never seen an advertisement like that, you know, just getting in some of that fresh thinking. But that is something that VR can think about. Maybe you do only have one person in the agency, but then within your own group, is there a way you can have someone that can assist in helping to like make those advertisements appealing? Can they help to get the word out? I know our colleagues in North Carolina, General, they did a really cool thing through Facebook. They were writing really cool, like, why you want to come and be on my team? I'm like, I would answer that ad like, that was awesome. I think VR has got to get in there and advocate and see how they can help be part of the solution for this.   Jim: You're absolutely right. And again, that's where, you know, kind of the history. Well, we've always done it this way. Well, that doesn't mean that we need to keep doing it that way. In any kind of professional reports that I've written about the study. I wouldn't say, you know, the way we post is sucks, but actually you're absolutely correct. That's exactly I mean, you read these job postings and say, well, is this intriguing? Like, my God, this thing sounds boring as hell. Why would I ever want to work that? No, thanks, but no thanks. And you mentioned North Carolina. That individual also participated in the study. And one of the things I remember that she had done was talking about not just how we do it, but the consistency. In other words, a state position, the same job. It's written one way in one city, it's written another way in another city. So wait a minute, how can we have the same job? And it's, you know, so we got to make sure that, number one, that the information is consistent across. But number two and the larger point that you're hammering on and I would agree, we have to think, especially with the newer applicants, again, I'm baby boomer I'm just about boomed out. But the Gen Z the millennials not to stereotype but I think they have a different view, a different way of thinking as it relates to this job seeking process. So we have to make it present, not just the job. Why do you want to work here in this office? What's unique, if you come in the Philadelphia office, what is it that we got that's so doggone special that you're going to love as opposed to Pittsburgh as opposed to Altoona or Harrisburg? So that's where we have to think a little bit more about on a unit level like and you know this and I know our listeners know this, you can go into one district office and the climate may be you can feel the vibe and you can go to another district office and there's another vibe. And that largely depends on the leadership and the sensitivity. And so you can go in and go, Wow, You know, these folks, they look like they're having fun and then, oh, this doesn't look like much fun. This is not fun. And so you have to be sincere, but you have to think I mean, that gets into a whole other issue in terms of climate, which we'll that's another topic. But anyway, the point being is if you feel like, you know, this is a good place to work, what makes it a good place? Explain to me in simple language why you want to come here. And so that's something. So while you can have the standardized because sometimes states regulations and all it has to be you can have standardized narrative, but you can also incorporate a section on why do you want to come here at this office? This is what we can offer you. This is why it's cool to work here.   Carol: And that's completely controllable, you know, like having that little added narrative, just by like we need to use our words and speak up. I think people get used to the system sort of happening to us and with our situation happening in VR, like we got to stand up and go, Hey, like that isn't working because I'm getting zero applicants from that crappy announcement. Can we just change this wording? I know we need to have in our very specific things, you know, there's required, but can I have a paragraph that I can add at the top and it can be done? We've talked to people and they're like, Well, I don't know if we can do that. Did you ask? Because for sure you're never going to get to do it if you don't ask. You need to at least use your words and ask and show them an example like, Here's all your blah blah stuff, but I need this in there to just like punch them right away. Like how and grab them. This is going to be a really cool opportunity and that is in our control.   Jim: Again, you're hammered that point very well. And sometimes people like the system or those guys, it's like, who are those guys? You know, to quote a line from a Butch Cassidy Sundance movie. So that's a movie for the baby boomers. But any rate, who are those guys? Well, we are those guys. And you're right, so often we don't even ask. We just assume this is the way. Well, could we? Oh, I don't know. No one's asked that. The other thing, too, that we talked about is the time, the time it takes before you get the job announcement and you go through this whole rigmarole and you actually hire can be months or, you know, in your case, three quarters of a year. I mean, that's unbelievable. So the question is, well, what can we do about that? It's funny because now I got North Carolina on the brain and because for confidentiality, I could probably mention but indicate I wouldn't mention people's names, but just say North Carolina, I'll leave it at that. You know, one of the things that what was happening that they identified was, well, why does it take so doggone long? What is going on there? Because the director is here and, you know, all kinds of complaints. Why, you know, from the managers and blah, blah, blah. So what things that she found that was important is like, well, let's talk with the HR people and say, can we do anything to kind of make this a little bit shorter? And so you had these like everything else, it all comes down to the R word relationship. So suddenly, like, I have a relationship with HR and I can contact them. They know me, I know them. We've built up mutual trust here. We're not just sort of a voice on the telephone or that kind of a thing. And so what they learned is, well, there are some things that we can do for reducing that lag time, but it all really kind of depended on staying on top of it. You know, so, hey, we advertise this thing last week. Where are we? What's the process? So we have to monitor and see this again. That makes a big difference when you have a designated person that says, my job. We have 25 vacancies in the state office this year. My job, part of it is finding out where are we? What's happening? What's going on? How many people? So it's that constant monitoring, following up, asking questions. So you have that. The other thing is like, well, procedurally we said, well, kind of reduce. Well, agencies, there's all kinds of background checks. You know, you got criminal background checks, you got child abuse, history clearances, motor vehicle. Sometimes you need to have those kinds of records. Some of that documentation could be done up front. So, in other words, as the application. So maybe that's part of the you know, hey, be aware that we need these. So you're already telling the applicant get started on this because it takes usually 2 to 3 weeks, sometimes a little longer. But if you kind of start that up front as opposed to 3 or 4 weeks into the, well, now we've just added on to that. So what can we do? So one of the things I know, like what I'll say to my students is most places now require you to do these background checks, whether you're going to state or not, to have these kinds of background checks, especially obviously if you're working with children or adolescents, get all that documentation from the very beginning so that when you begin the process, we're all ready to go. So I already have that information. Now, the other thing, too, again, I don't want to get too far in the retention aspect, but, you know, a lot of times like, okay, why do people leave? And one of the reasons is we'll talk about next month is people leave because they don't really understand the job as it relates to recruitment. Then there are a couple states at the moment, I can't say exactly which ones, but I do remember there are a couple states that what they had done is and I found this really interesting, is part of the recruitment process and to address the problem of what were you expecting, what was your understanding about this job? So as part of the recruitment process and the interview process, what they did was they would allow the applicant to actually job shadow a state counselor for maybe a day. You can learn a lot of information. And we know that when we have greater samples of behavior, we have stronger predictive outcomes. You know, they can see like the good, the bad and the ugly of this job. So some people might say, well, boy, if you do that, you know, we might not get that person. Well, maybe that's a good thing. Like this person. I'm not really sure this job is for me now after doing it. Yeah, I kind of think no, I don't think this is the job for me. At the same token, you have people like, Hey, I get this a little bit more. You know, I think this would actually be kind of a pretty cool job. The other thing and I can just talk more from my experience working with students who predominantly, not surprisingly, they're going to work for the state VR program would be here in Pennsylvania. And I get it. Because of hiring, you know, we have to be consistent. But sometimes, like that whole process almost sounds robotic. It's like you can't be human. You know, you have to ask these questions and you can't kind of deviate. And I'm not saying kind of break policy on that, but I would ask the again, this is the point that you made. Well, we've always done it that way. Well, did anybody ask do we have any kind of latitude here? Can we do some other things? So in other words, as they go through that initial screening process, one of the things happened is not that you have kind of the formal but you also have kind of an informal process. So one of the things that I know students really appreciate is if they have an alum who's working at that district office. So it's like, well, yeah, you graduated from Penn State two years ago as Dr. Herbert. Yeah, that guy, he's still there. They can't get rid of him. So then they have kind of a natural connection. So what states are doing is like, well, want to have kind of informal kind of get together. So maybe after you go through the formal process, you give everybody the opportunity. Some would say, yep, that sounds good. Others, no, I don't want to do that. But you give everyone the same opportunity. Would you like to talk with some of our, you know, Richard Bolles, who maybe some of your audience might not know who he is, wrote a book called What Color is Your Parachute? It's all about career and fantastic. Well, anyway, one of the things I remember many, many, many years ago when I first saw him, he said there's two decisions being made in the interview. The first is, do we want you? Do we want the job applicant? But the more important decision is do they want us? We got to pay more attention to that aspect we represent. So when you're interviewing, you know, like who are they interviewing with? It's like, what's the energy that you're communicating with? Yeah, we need to do a better job with that. The other thing I'll just kind of finish up on. This aspect is I talked about the importance of relationship, and that's the same thing here, states and rehab educators. We need to kind of reengage, if you will. I think because of the pandemic. I think that relationship to some extent has kind of impacted. And so make sure that you have a working relationship with your individual program directors and also to think about like, well, when jobs are going to be available, you know, let's say, hey, we're going to have something in May, well, usually they might contact us maybe in April. If you can be a little bit more proactive, if you know something's coming down the pipe, let us know earlier because then we can kind of, hey, these are coming available. I guess the final thing I'll just say, we've done this historically in Pennsylvania and over the last couple of years, it's been phased out. I'm hoping it'll get back phased in. Think about allocating a portion of your budget to offering paid internships. If you can give students the opportunity to say, look, it's a paid internship, you're going to get some income because they're poor, even though they have the training grant. Most programs, that's not going to cover all of the expenses. So providing that kind of paid internship. And in Pennsylvania, I'll say we're fortunate they also provide medical benefits. So you do the paid internship if you do a good job, you know that, Wow, you're going to be hired here. Maybe not this particular office. We do an internship, but one of these offices. And so giving that kind of opportunity and also more importantly is then you can see, I mean, the job interview, anybody can fake it for an hour or two. But when you have somebody for 15 weeks, you know, whether or not, you know, hey, this is a person we want to retain or we don't want to retain. Yeah. So I feel like I've been a little gerbils speed up, but hopefully that that kind of covered it.   Carol: No, I love it. Jim. I think the important thing is to take away from this conversation today is that really VR has got to look at this differently. We cannot be operating the same way we operated 20 years ago. Like times have changed. So we have to deal with the situation where we're at today. We need to be proactive instead of reactive. There are a number of things within our control and we should be good at like we're people, people, relationship building that's in our… like we're good at that, Like buy a muffin for those people. I used to tell folks that whatever you need to do to grease the skids to get things rolling, like really working proactively, looking at your messaging, looking at I love that. Paying for the internships for the folks. Absolutely. We started doing that. I can't believe when I first came, it's like, okay, we're going to have interns come in and we're not going to pay them. Well, nobody has any money. Like, what's wrong with minimum wage or something? Let's give them some money so they'll come and do that. And it is a great insight into how folks can work. I really look forward to us continuing the conversation next month to go through the rest of the study. So I really appreciate your time today and definitely I will put the link for your study out with our podcast announcement as well. So thanks for joining me today. Really appreciate it.   Jim: Thank you. It's a wonderful time and I look forward to talking with you next month.   Speaker1: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

Jim: "I am Bill Buttlicker." Dwight: "Really, that's your real name?" Jim: "How dare you? My family built this country, by the way." Michael: "Be respectful, Dwight." This week we try out a brand new episode format - handing out Dundie awards for the best phone calls over the course of the show. We open with some discussion about the role the phone plays on a show like The Office, how much happens through headsets, and discuss all the Dundie-winning phone calls that happen. We screen our way through the real phone calls, fake phone calls, emergency calls, personal calls, voicemail calls, missed calls, wrong numbers, drunk dials, songs, and Wendy's orders that make up a significant portion of dialogue on the show. Then we head into the conference room to discuss who in the Scranton office that Michael has done the dirtiest. Oh, and there's just a dash of Oscars talk for all you movie buffs out there. Support our show and become a member of Scott's Tots on Patreon! For only $5/month, Tots get ad-free episodes plus exclusive access to our monthly Mailbag episodes where we casually pick through every single message/question/comment we receive. We also have Season 2 of our Ted Lasso podcast Biscuits with the Boss available to our Patrons, as well as our White Lotus Christmas Special. Oh, and Tots get access to exclusive channels on our Discord. On top of that, a portion of all show proceeds are donated every month to organizations that help fund education opportunities for minority students. Help us serve the mission that Michael Scott could not. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“The average maximum security prison nurse gets more time outside than children do today,” shares Jim Laird, master strength and conditioning fitness coach with 25 years of experience. Today, Jim acts as the guest host alongside co-host Jackie Jolie, a recent graduate of the Quantum Health Practitioner Program level one, to talk about lessons learned throughout their careers from lifting weights to watching sunrises.  Jackie met Jim at a CrossFit gym. She was a college student doing all the usual things, barely eating, avoiding proteins and fats, and ignoring weight training in favor of cardio. Training with Jim changed her entire mindset, as she realized she could actually eat real foods and gain muscle tone while staying a healthy weight. When Jackie ended up with Lyme disease, Jim helped her again by introducing her to the world of quantum biology and the role of sunlight in overall health. She had been spending a lot of time outside working with horses, but had not known how the timing of sun exposure played a large role in mitochondrial health. Now they encourage others to think differently, showing people with autoimmune conditions and chronic diseases that healing can be as simple as getting reconnected with nature, seeing the sunrise, and helping the body become more resilient to everyday stressors.  The modern world is designed to limit our time in nature. Kids barely go outside to play, people work long days indoors, and all of this is viewed as normal. If you go back even just a couple decades, people were regularly spending time outside and there were much lower rates of chronic disease and obesity. It is important to lead by example and encourage others to connect with nature daily for their overall wellbeing.  Quotes “Our modern world is designed to pull us away from nature. If you go back even to 1970, and you look at beach pictures of 1970 or pictures from Woodstock, there were no obese people. None. Half those people didn't work out. Women in the 1950s, sixties, it was unfeminine. Marilyn Monroe was one of the first women to actually strength train. And what did they do? They spent a lot of time outside. They didn't eat the garbage that we eat now. They made most of their food from scratch. They mowed their grass. They lived an active lifestyle. They went to the beach. They spent tons of time outside. They didn't have screens. So our number one battle is to look at the awesome technology that allows us to have this conversation and help as many people as we can. How do we balance being in touch with nature with the convenience of modern life?” (17:19-18:19 | Jim)  “The thing that I didn't really expect was going to happen after you see all the physiological stuff is, I had a better ability of coping mechanisms.” (23:16-23:26 | Jackie) “The average maximum security prison nurse gets more time outside than children do today.” (28:02-28:06 | Jim) “In our modern world, we're going to need people that lead by example.” (37:52-37:56 | Jim) “How quickly could racism go away if we were teaching kids in elementary school that skin color is a light story? That your friend has genes that come out of Africa and their darker colored skin, because that body needs more sun than you do.” (56:24-56:41 | Jackie)    Links Connect with Jim Laird on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gymlaird/ Connect with Jackie Jolie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jolie_en_sol/ To find a practitioner who understand the health principles of quantum biology: www.quantumbiologycollective.org  To become a QBC member and get invites to live deep dives & access to our video library: www.quantumhealthtv.com  To take our 8 week practitioner certification in the science of quantum biology so that you can add it to your existing area of expertise: www.appliedquantumbiology.com      Follow on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook: @quantumhealthtv    Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncFy1zRA9HM 28 DAYS LATER Written by Alex Garland CLOSE ON A MONITOR SCREEN: Images of stunning violence. Looped. Soldiers in a foreign war shoot an unarmed civilian at point- blank range; a man is set on by a frenzied crowd wielding clubs and machetes; a woman is necklaced while her killers cheer and howl. Pull back to reveal that we are seeing one of many screens in a bank of monitors, all showing similar images... Then revealing that the monitors are in a... INT. SURGICAL CHAMBER - NIGHT ...surgical chamber. And watching the screens is a... ...chimp, strapped to an operating table, with its skull dissected open, webbed in wires and monitoring devices, muzzled with a transparent guard. Alive. Behind the surgical chamber, through the wide doorframe, we can see a larger laboratory beyond. INT. BRIGHT CORRIDOR - NIGHT A group of black-clad ALF Activists, all wearing balaclavas, move down a corridor. They carry various gear - bag, bolt cutters. As they move, one Activist reaches up to a security camera and sprays it black with an aerosol paint can. INT. LABORATORY - NIGHT The Activists enter the laboratory. CHIEF ACTIVIST Fucking hell... The Chief Activist takes his camera off his shoulder and starts taking photos. The room is huge and long, and darkened except for specific pools of light. Partially illuminated are rows of cages with clear perspex doors. They run down either side of the room. In the cages are chimpanzees. 2. Most are in a state of rabid agitation, banging and clawing against the perspex, baring teeth through foam-flecked mouths. They reach the far end of the lab, where on a huge steel operating table they see the dissected chimp. FEMALE ACTIVIST Oh God... The dissected chimp's eyes flick to the Activists. Blood wells from around the exposed brain tissue. Tears starts to roll down the Female Activist's cheeks. CHIEF ACTIVIST (to Female Activist) Keep your shit together. If we're going to get them out of here... The Finnish Activist is checking the perspex cages. FINNISH ACTIVIST I can pop these, no problem. CHIEF ACTIVIST So get to it. The Finnish Activist raises his crowbar and sticks it around the edge of one of the doors - about to prise it open. At the moment, the doors to the laboratory bang open. The Activists all turn. Standing at the entrance is the Scientist. A pause. The Scientist jumps to a telephone handset on the wall and shouts into the receiver. SCIENTIST Security! We have a break-in! Get to sector... A hand slams down the disconnect button. SCIENTIST ...nine. The Chief Activist plucks the receiver from the Scientist's hands, and then rips the telephone from the wall. A beat. 3. SCIENTIST I know who you are, I know what you think you're doing, but you have to listen to me. You can't release these animals. CHIEF ACTIVIST If you don't want to get hurt, shut your mouth, and don't move a fucking muscle. SCIENTIST (BLURTS) The chimps are infected! The Activists hesitate, exchanging a glance. SCIENTIST (continuing; stumbling, FLUSTERED) These animals are highly contagious. They've been given an inhibitor. CHIEF ACTIVIST Infected with what? SCIENTIST Chemically restricted, locked down to a... a single impulse that... CHIEF ACTIVIST Infected with what? The Scientist hesitates before answering. SCIENTIST Rage. Behind the Activists, the bank of monitors show the faces of the machete-wielding crowd. SCIENTIST (desperately trying to EXPLAIN) In order to cure, you must first understand. Just imagine: to have power over all the things we feel we can't control. Anger, violence... FINNISH ACTIVIST What the fuck is he talking about? 4. CHIEF ACTIVIST We don't have time for this shit! Get the cages open! SCIENTIST No! CHIEF ACTIVIST We're going, you sick bastard, and we're taking your torture victims with us. SCIENTIST NO! You must listen! The animals are contagious! The infection is in their blood and saliva! One bite and... FEMALE ACTIVIST They won't bite me. The Female Activist crouches down to face the wild eyes of the infected chimp behind the perspex. SCIENTIST STOP! You have no idea! The Scientist makes a desperate lunge towards her, but the Chief Activist grabs him. FEMALE ACTIVIST Good boy. You don't want to bite me, do you? The Female Activist gives a final benign smile, then the Finnish Activist pops open the door. SCIENTIST NO! Like a bullet from a gun, the infected chimp leaps out at the Female Activist - and sinks its teeth into her neck. She reels back as the chimp claws and bites with extraordinary viciousness. At the same moment, a deafening alarm begins to sound. FEMALE ACTIVIST (SHRIEKING) Get it off! Get if off! The Finnish Activist rips the ape off and throws it on to the floor. The infected chimp immediately bites into the man's leg. He yells with pain, and tries to kick it off. 5. Behind him, the Female Activist has started to scream. She doubles up, clutching the side of her head. FEMALE ACTIVIST I'm burning! Jesus! Help me! SCIENTIST We have to kill her! FEMALE ACTIVIST I'm burning! I'm burning! CHIEF ACTIVIST What's... SCIENTIST We have to kill her NOW! Meanwhile, the Female Activist's cries have become an unwavering howl of pain - and she is joined by the Finnish Activist, whose hands have also flown to the side of his head, gripping his temples as if trying to keep his skull from exploding. CHIEF ACTIVIST What's wrong with them? The Scientist grabs a desk-lamp base and starts running towards the screaming Female Activist... ...who has ripped off her balaclava - revealing her face - the face of an Infected. She turns to the Scientist. SCIENTIST Oh God. She leaps at him. He screams as they go tumbling to the ground. The Chief Activist watches in immobile horror as she attacks the Scientist with amazing ferocity. INT. CORRIDOR - NIGHT Another ACTIVIST makes his way down the corridor towards the lab. ACTIVIST (HISSES) Terry? Jemma? 6. No answer. ACTIVIST Mika? Where are you? He reaches the door to the lab, which is closed - and... ...as he opens it, we realize the door is also soundproofed. A wall of screaming hits him. He stands in the doorway - stunned by the noise, and then the sight. Blood, death, and his colleagues, all Infected. ACTIVIST Bloody hell. The Infected rush him. FADE TO BLACK. TITLE: 28 DAYS LATER INT. HOSPITAL ROOM - LATE AFTERNOON Close up of Jim, a young man in his twenties, wearing pale green hospital pyjamas. He has a month's beard, is dishevelled, and asleep. We pull back to see that Jim is lying on a hospital bed, in a private room. Connected to his arms are multiple drips, a full row of four or five on each side of his bed. Most of the bags are empty. Jim's eyes open. He looks around with an expression of confusion. Then he sits up. He is weak, but he swings his legs off the bed and stands. The attached drips are pulled with him and clatter to the floor. Jim winces, and pulls the taped needles from his arm. JIM Ow... His voice is hoarse, his mouth dry. Massaging his throat, he walks to the door. 7. INT. COMA WARD - LATE AFTERNOON The door to Jim's hospital room is locked. The key is on the floor. He picks it up and opens the door. Jim exits into a corridor. At the far end, a sign read: COMA WARD. There is no sign of life or movement. Jim walks down the corridor. One of the doors is half-open. From inside, there is the sound of buzzing flies. INT. HOSPITAL WARDS - LATE AFTERNOON Jim moves as quickly as he can through the hospital, still weak, but now driven by adrenaline. All the wards and corridors are deserted. Medical notes and equipment lie strewn over the floors, trolleys are upended, glass partition doors are smashed. In a couple of places, splashes of dried blood arc up the walls. He reaches A&E. On one wall is a row of public pay phones. He lifts a receiver, and the line is dead. He goes down the line, trying them all. In the corner of the A&E reception is a smashed soft-drinks machine, with a few cans collected at the base. Jim grabs one, rips off the ring-pull and downs it in one go. Then he grabs another, and heads for the main doors. EXT. HOSPITAL - LATE AFTERNOON Jim exits and walks out into the bright daylight of the forecourt. The camera begins to pull away from him. JIM Hello? Aside from a quiet rush of wind, there is silence. No traffic, no engines, no movement. Not even birdsong. EXT. LONDON - SUNDOWN Jim walks through the empty city, from St. Thomas's Hospital, over Westminster Bridge, past the Houses of Parliament, down Whitehall, to Trafalgar Square. 8. A bright overhead sun bleaches the streets. A light drifts litter and refuse. Cars lie abandoned, shops looted. Jim is still wearing his hospital pyjamas, and carries a plastic bag full of soft-drink cans. EXT. CENTRAL LONDON ROAD/CHURCH - NIGHT Jim walks. Night has fallen. He needs to find a place to rest... He pauses. Down a narrow side street is a church. He walks towards it. The front doors are open. INT. CHURCH - NIGHT Jim walks inside, moving with the respectful quietness that people adopt when entering a church. The doors ahead to the main chamber are closed. Pushing them, gently trying the handle, it is obvious they are locked. But another open door is to his left. He goes through it. INT. CHURCH - STAIRWELL - NIGHT Jim moves up a stairwell. Written large on the wall is a single line of graffiti: REPENT. THE END IS EXTREMELY FUCKING NIGH INT. CHURCH - GALLERY LEVEL - NIGHT Jim moves into the gallery level, and sees, through the dust and rot, ornate but faded splendor. At the far end, a stained- glass window is illuminated by the moonlight. Jim pads in, stands at the gallery, facing the stained-glass window for a moment before looking down... Beneath are hundreds of dead bodies. Layered over the floor, jammed into the pews, spilling over the altar. The scene of an unimaginable massacre. Jim stands, stunned. Then sees, standing motionless at different positions facing away from him, four people. Their postures and stillness make their status unclear. Jim hesitates before speaking. 9. JIM ...Hello? Immediately, the four heads flick around. Infected. And the next moment, there is the powerful thump of a door at the far end of the gallery. Jim whirls to the source as the Infected below start to move. The door thumps again - another stunningly powerful blow, the noise echoing around the chamber. Confused, fist closing around his bag of soft drinks, Jim steps onto the gallery, facing the door... ...and it smashes open. Revealing an Infected Priest - who locks sight on Jim, and starts to sprint. JIM Father? The Priest is half way across the gallery JIM Father, what are you... And now the moonlight catches the Priest's face. Showing clearly: the eyes. The blood smeared and collected around his nose, ears, and mouth. Darkened and crusted, accumulated over days and weeks. Fresh blood glistening. JIM Jesus! In a movement of pure instinct, Jim swings the bag just as the Priest is about to reach him - and connects squarely with the man's head. JIM Oh, that, was bad, that was bad... I shouldn't have done that... He breaks into a run... INT. CHURCH - STAIRWELL - NIGHT Down the stairwell... 10. INT. CHURCH - NIGHT ...into the front entrance, where the locked door now strains under the blows of the Infected inside. JIM Shit. EXT. CHURCH - NIGHT Jim sprints down the stone steps. As he reaches the bottom the doors are broken open, and the Infected give chase. EXT. CENTRAL LONDON ROAD - NIGHT Jim runs - the Infected have almost reached him. A hand fires up a Zippo lighter, and lights the rag of a Molotov cocktail. As Jim runs, something flies past his head, and the Infected closest to him explodes in a ball of flame. Jim turns, and sees as another Molotov cocktail explodes, engulfing two in the fireball. He whirls, now completely bewildered. WOMAN'S VOICE HERE! Another Molotov cocktail explodes. The Infected stagger from the blaze, on fire. WOMAN'S VOICE OVER HERE! Jim whirls again, and sees, further down the road... ...Selena, a black woman, also in her twenties. She wears a small backpack, a machete is stuck into her belt - and she holds a lit Molotov cocktail in her hand. ...Mark, a tall, good-looking man - throwing another bottle. It smashes on the head of the last Infected, bathing it in flame... The burning Infected bumps blindly into a car. Falls. Gets up again. 11. Blindly, it staggers off the road, into a petrol station - where an abandoned car has run over on the pumps. The ground beneath it suddenly ignites, and the petrol station explodes. EXT. SIDE STREET - NIGHT Selena and Mark lead Jim into a side street. JIM (DAZED) Those people! Who were... who... MARK This way! Move it! Jim allows himself to be hurried along. EXT. SHOP - NIGHT Selena stops outside a newsagent's shop. The shop's door and windows are covered with a metal security grill, but the grill over the door lock has been prised away enough for Selena to slip her hand through to the latch. INT. SHOP - NIGHT Inside, most of the shelves have been emptied of confectionery. Newspapers and magazines litter the floor. The magazine covers of beautiful girls and sports cars have become instant anachronisms. At the back of the shop, a makeshift bed of sheets and sleeping bag is nestled. This has obviously been Selena and Mark's home for the last few days. INT. NEWSAGENT - NIGHT Jim, Mark and Selena enter the newsagent's and pull down the grill. MARK A man walks into a bar with a giraffe. They each get pissed. The giraffe falls over. The man goes to leave and the barman says, you can't leave that lying there. The man says, it's not a lion. It's a giraffe. 12. Silence. Mark pulls off his mask and turns to Selena. MARK He's completely humorless. You two will get along like a house on fire. Selena, who has already taken off her mask, ignores Mark. SELENA Who are you? You've come from a hospital. MARK Are you a doctor? SELENA He's not a doctor. He's a patient. JIM I'm a bicycle courier. I was riding a package from Farringdon to Shaftesbury Avenue. A car cut across me... and then I wake up in hospital, today... I wake up and I'm hallucinating, or... MARK What's your name? JIM Jim. MARK I'm Mark. This is Selena. (BEAT) Okay, Jim. We've got some bad news. Selena starts to tell her story, and as the story unfolds we see the images she describes. SELENA It began as rioting. And right from the beginning, you knew something bad was going on because the rioters were killing people. And then it wasn't on the TV anymore. It was in the street outside. It was coming through your windows. We all guessed it was a virus. An infection. You didn't need a doctor to tell you that. It was the blood. 13. Something in the blood. By the time they tried to evacuate the cities, it was already too late. The infection was everywhere. The army blockades were overrun. And that was when the exodus started. The day before the radio and TV stopped broadcasting there were reports of infection in Paris and New York. We didn't hear anything more after that. JIM Where are your families? MARK They're dead. SELENA Yours will be dead too. JIM No... No! I'm going to find them. They live in Greenwich. I can walk. (heading for the exit) I'm going to... to go and... SELENA You'll go and come back. JIM (pulling at the grill) Yes! I'll go and come back. MARK Rules of survival. Lesson one - you never go anywhere alone, unless you've got no choice. Lesson two - you only move during daylight, unless you've got no choice. We'll take you tomorrow. Then we'll all go and find your dead parents. Okay? EXT. TRAIN TRACKS - DAY Jim, Selena and Mark walk along the Docklands Light Railway in single file. Ahead is a train. Behind the train, as if spilled in its wake, are abandoned bags, suitcases, backpacks. Mark drops pace to let Jim catch up. 14. MARK How's your head? Fucked? No reply. MARK (gesturing at the city) I know where your head is. You're looking at these windows, these millions of windows, and you're thinking - there's no way this many people are dead. It's just too many windows. Mark picks up a handbag from the tracks. MARK The person who owned this bag. Can't be dead. Mark reaches in and starts to pull things out as they walk, discarding the personal possessions. MARK A woman - (car keys) - who drove a Nissan Micra - (teddy) - and had a little teddy bear - (condoms) - and carried protection, just in case. Marks tosses the condoms behind him. MARK (DRY) Believe me, we won't need them anymore than she will. He hands the bag to Jim and walks ahead. Jim pulls out a mobile phone. He switches it on. It reads: SEARCHING FOR NETWORK. The message blinks a couple of times. Then the screen goes blank. Jim looks left. He is now alongside the train. The inside of the windows are smeared with dried blood. Pressed against the glass is the face of a dead man. 15. Jim drops the phone and breaks into a run - running past Mark and Selena. MARK (HISSING) Hey! EXT. GREENWICH COMMON - DAY Jim, Selena and Mark jog across Greenwich Common. Jim gestures towards one of the streets on the far side of the green. JIM (LOW VOICE) Down there. Westlink Street. Second on the left. EXT. WESTLINK STREET - DAY The street is modest red-brick semi-detached houses. They stand outside Number 43. Jim waits while Selena scans the dark facade. SELENA If there's anyone in there who isn't human... JIM I understand. SELENA Anyone. JIM I understand. Selena shoots a glance at Jim. Jim is gazing at the house. MARK Okay. EXT. BACK GARDEN - DAY Jim uses the key under the flowerpot to open the back door. INT. HOUSE - DAY Jim, Selena and Mark move quietly through the kitchen and the downstairs of the house. 16. Surprisingly, everything is neat and tidy. Washed plates are stacked by the sink, newspapers on the table are neatly piled. The headline on the top paper reads simply: CONTAINMENT FAILS. They reach the bottom of the stairs. Selena gestures upwards, and Jim nods. They start to ascend. At the top of the stairs, Selena sniffs the air, and recoils. Jim has noticed it too. His eyes widen in alarm. MARK (WHISPERS) Wait. But Jim pushes past and advances along the top landing, until he reaches a door. By now the smell is so bad that he is having to cover his nose and mouth with the sleeve of one arm. Jim pushes open the door. Inside, two decomposed bodies lie side by side on the bed, intertwined. On the bedside table are an empty bottle of sleeping pills and a bottle of red wine. Mark appears behind him. Jim stares at his parents for a couple of moments, then Mark closes the door. INT. BATHROOM - DAY Jim sits on the toilet, alone. He is crying. In his hand is a piece of paper: "Jim - with endless love, we left you sleeping. Now we're sleeping with you. Don't wake up." The paper crumples in his fist. INT. LIVING ROOM - DAY Jim, Selena and Mark sit in the living room, on the two sofas. Jim looks dazed, uncomprehending. Selena watches Jim, her expression neutral. SELENA They died peacefully. You should be grateful. JIM I'm not grateful. Jim's words hang a moment. Then Mark talks, simply, unemotionally, matter-of-fact throughout. 17. MARK The roads out were all jammed. So we went to Paddington Station. Hoping: maybe we could get to Heathrow, maybe buy our way on a plane. My dad had all this cash, even though cash was already useless, and Mum had her jewellery. But twenty thousand other people had the same idea. (A MOMENT) The crowd was surging, and I lost my grip on my sister's hand. I remember realizing the ground was soft. I looked down, and I was standing on people. Like a carpet, people who had fallen, and... somewhere in the crowd there were infected. It spread fast, no one could run, all you could do was climb. Over more people. So I did that. I got up, somehow, on top of a kiosk. (A MOMENT) Looking down, you couldn't tell which faces were infected and which weren't. With the blood, the screaming, they all looked the same. And I saw my dad. Not my mum or my sister. But I saw my dad. His face. A short silence. MARK Selena's right. You should be grateful. SELENA We don't have time to get back to the shop before dark. We should stay here tonight. Jim nods. He isn't sure what he wants to say. JIM My old room was at the end of the landing. You two take it. I'll sleep down here. SELENA We'll sleep in the same room. It's safer. 18. EXT. LONDON - DAY TO NIGHT The red orb of the sun goes down; the light fades. As night falls, London vanishes into blackness, with no electric light to be seen. Then the moon appears from behind the cloud layer, and the dark city is revealed. INT. HOUSE - NIGHT Jim is on the sofa. In the moonlight, we can see that his eyes are open, wide awake. Selena is curled on the other sofa, and Mark is on the floor - both asleep. The house is silent. Jim watches Selena sleeping for a couple of moments. Then, quietly, he gets off the sofa and pads out of the living room, down the hall to the kitchen. INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT Jim enters, standing just inside the doorway. He looks around the room. On one wall, a faded kid's drawing of a car is framed. Above the counter, on a shelf of cookery books, an album has a handwritten label on the spine: "Mum's Favorite Recipes". Jim walks to the fridge. Stuck to the door is a photo of Jim with his parents, arm in arm, smiling at the camera. Jim is on his mountain bike, wearing his courier bag. FLASH CUT TO: Jim, sitting at the kitchen table as his Mum enters, carrying bags of shopping. Jim walks over to the bags and pulls out a carton of orange juice, which he pulls straight to his mouth and begins to gulp down. His Dad walks in from the garden. JIM'S DAD Give me a glass of that, would you? JIM (draining the carton, and giving it a shake) It's empty. CUT BACK TO: 19. Jim touches the photo, their faces, lightly. Jim is facing away from the back door, which has a large frosted-glass panel. Through the glass panel, unseen by Jim a dark silhouette looms against the diffused glow from the moonlight. Through the kitchen window, a second silhouette appears. Then there is a scratching noise from the back door. Jim freezes. Slowly, he turns his head, and sees the dark shapes behind the door and window. A beat - then the door is abruptly and powerfully smashed in. It flies open, and hangs loosely held by the bottom hinge. Standing in the doorframe is an Infected Man. Jim shouts with alarm as the Man lunges at him - and they both go tumbling to the floor. At the same moment, the figure behind the kitchen window smashes the glass, and an Infected Teenage Girl starts to clamber through the jagged frame. The Man gets on top of Jim, while Jim uses his arms to hold back the ferocious assault. A single strand of saliva flies from the Man's lips, and contacts Jim's cheek. JIM (SCREAMS) Help! Suddenly, Selena is there, holding her machete. The blade flashes down to the back of the Man's neck. Blood gushes. Jim rolls the Infected Man off, just in time to see... ...Mark dispatch the Girl half way through the kitchen window. The Girl is holding Mark, but her legs are caught on the broken glass. Mark jabs upwards into the Girl's torso - she stiffens, then slumps, and as Mark steps back we see he is holding a knife. Jim hyperventilates, staring at the corpse on the kitchen floor. JIM It's Mr. Bridges... Selena turns to Jim. She is hyperventilating too, but there is control and steel in her voice. 20. SELENA Were you bitten? JIM He lives four doors down... Jim turns to the Girl sprawled half way through the window. JIM That's his daughter... SELENA Were you bitten? Jim looks at her. Selena is still holding her machete at the ready. JIM No... No! I wasn't! SELENA Did any of the blood get in your mouth? JIM No! SELENA Mark? Jim turns to Mark. He is standing in the middle of the room. Stepped away from the window. The Girl's blood is on his arm - and he is wiping it away... ...off the skin... where a long scratch cut wells up fresh blood. A moment. Then Mark looks at Selena, as if slightly startled. MARK Wait. But Selena is swiping with her machete. Mark lifts his arm instinctively, defensively, and the blade sinks in. Selena immediately yanks it back. MARK DON'T! Selena swipes again - and the blade catches Mark hard in the side of the head. Mark falls. 21. Jim watches, scrabbling backwards on the floor away from them, as Selena brutally finishes Mark off. Selena looks at Mark's body for a couple of beats, then lowers the blade. She picks up a dishcloth from the sink counter and tosses it to Jim. SELENA Get that cleaned off. Jim picks up the rag and hurriedly starts to wipe the Infected's blood from around his neck. SELENA Do you have any clothes here? JIM (fazed, frightened of her) I... I don't know. I think so. SELENA Then get them. And get dressed. We have to leave, now. With practiced speed, Selena starts to open the kitchen cupboards, selecting packets of biscuits and cans from the shelves, and stuffing them into her backpack. SELENA More infected will be coming. They always do. EXT. HOUSE - NIGHT Jim and Selena exit the front door. Jim has changed out of his hospital gear into jeans and a sweatshirt. He also has a small backpack, and is carrying a baseball bat. EXT. LONDON ROAD - NIGHT Jim and Selena walk: fast, alert. But something is not being said between them... until Jim breaks the silence. JIM (QUIET) How did you know? Selena says nothing. Continues walking. JIM (INSISTENT) How did you know he was infected? 22. SELENA The blood. JIM The blood was everywhere. On me, on you, and... SELENA (CUTTING IN) I didn't know he was infected. Okay? I didn't know. He knew. I could see it in his face. (A MOMENT) You need to understand, if someone gets infected, you've got somewhere between ten and twenty seconds to kill them. They might be your brother or your sister or your oldest friend. It makes no difference Just so as you know, if it happens to you, I'll do it in a heartbeat. A moment. JIM How long had you known him? SELENA Five days. Or six. Does it matter? Jim says nothing. SELENA He was full of plans. Long-distance weapons, so they don't get close. A newsagent's with a metal grill, so you can sleep. Petrol bombs, so the blood doesn't splash. Selena looks at Jim dispassionately. SELENA Got a plan yet, Jim? You want us to find a cure and save the world? Or fall in love and fuck? Selena looks away again. SELENA Plans are pointless. Staying alive is as good as it gets. Silence. 23. They walk. Jim following a few steps behind Selena. A few moments later, Jim lifts a hand, opens his mouth, about to say something - but Selena cuts him off without even looking round. SELENA Shhh. She has seen something... A line of tower blocks some distance away, standing against the night sky. In one of them, hanging in the window of one of the highest stories, colored fairy lights are lit up, blinking gently. INT. TOWER BLOCK - NIGHT Jim and Selena walk through the smashed glass doors of the tower block. It is extremely dark inside. Selena switches on a flashlight and illuminates the entrance hall. It is a mess. The floor is covered in broken glass and dried blood. The lift doors are jammed open, and inside is a dense bundle of rags - perhaps an old corpse, but impossible to tell, because the interior of the lift has been torched. It is black with carbon, and smoke-scarring runs up the outside wall. Selena moves the flashlight to the stairwell. There is a huge tangle of shopping trolleys running up the stairs. Selena gives one of the trolleys an exploratory tug. It shifts, but holds fast, meshed in with its neighbor. Then she puts a foot into one of the grates, and lifts herself up. Shining her light over the top of the tangle, she can see a gap along the top. JIM Let's hope we don't have to get out of here in a hurry. She begins to climb through. INT. TOWER BLOCK - NIGHT Jim and Selena move steadily and quietly up the stairwell, into the building. Reaching a next landing, they check around the corner before proceeding. Through a broken window, we can see that they are already high above most London buildings, and on the wall a sign reads: LEVEL 5. 24. SELENA Need a break? JIM (completely out of breath) No. You? SELENA No. They continue a few steps. JIM I do need a break, by the way. Selena nods. They stop on the stairs. Jim slips off his backpack and sits, pulling a face as he does so... SELENA What's up? JIM Nothing. She gives him a cut-the-crap expression. JIM I've got a headache. SELENA Bad? JIM Pretty bad. SELENA Why didn't you say something before? JIM Because I didn't think you'd give a shit. A moment, where it's unclear how Selena will react to this. Then she slips off her own backpack. SELENA (going through the bag) You've got no fat on you, and all you've had to eat is sugar. So you're crashing. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot we can do about that... 25. Selena starts to produce a wide selection of pills, looted from a chemist. SELENA ...except pump you full painkillers, and give you more sugar to eat. She holds up a bottle of codeine tablets, and passes it to Jim. SELENA As for the sugar: Lilt or Tango? JIM (CHEWING CODEINE) ...Do you have Sprite? SELENA Actually, I did have a can of Sprite, but... Suddenly there is a loud scream, coming from somewhere lower down the building. Jim and Selena both make a grab for their weapons. JIM Jesus! SELENA Quiet. The scream comes again. The noise is chilling, echoing up the empty stairwell. But there is something strange about it. The noise is human, but oddly autistic. It is held for slightly too long, and stops abruptly. SELENA That's an infected. Then, the sound of metal scraping, clattering the blockade. SELENA They're in. INT. SHOPPING TROLLEY BLOCKADE - NIGHT Two Infected, a Young Asian Guy and a Young White Guy, moving with amazing speed over the blockade. 26. INT. STAIRS - NIGHT Jim and Selena sprint up the stairs. Behind them, we can hear the Infected, giving chase, howling. They pass level eight, nine, ten... Jim is exhausted. SELENA Come on! JIM (out of breath, barely able to speak) I can't. Selena continues, and Jim looks over the edge of the stairwell, to the landing below... ...where the two Infected appear, tearing around the corner. INT. STAIRWELL - NIGHT Selena sprints up the stairs... and Jim sprints past her, in an amazing burst of energy and speed. They round another bend in the stairwell... ...then both Jim and Selena scream. Standing directly in front of them is a Man In Riot Cop Gear - helmet with full visor, gloves, a riot shield in one hand, and a length of lead pipe in the other. The Man lunges past both of them, barging past, where the Infected White Man has appeared at the stairwell. The Riot Gear Man swings his lead pipe and connects viciously with the White Man's head. The White Man falls backwards against the Asian Man. Both fall back down the stairs. The Riot Gear Man turns back to Jim and Selena. MAN Down the corridor! Flat 157! Jim and Selena are stunned, but start to run down the corridor. The Asian Man is coming back up the stairs. Jim looks back over his shoulder in time to see the Riot Gear Man deliver a massive blow to the Asian Man's head. 27. INT. CORRIDOR - NIGHT Jim and Selena run towards Flat 157. The door is open, but as they approach, it suddenly slams shut. JIM AND SELENA (hammering on the door) Let us in! GIRL (O.S.) Who is it? SELENA Let us in! The door opens a fraction, on the chain. The face of a girl appears. She is fourteen, pale, solemn-faced. GIRL Where's Dad? Jim looks back down the corridor. At the far end, the Man appears. He is holding the limp body of one of the Infected - and he tips it over the balcony, where it drops down the middle of the stairwell. MAN (CALLS BACK) It's okay, Hannah. Let them inside. The door closes, we hear the chain being slipped off, then it opens again. INT. FLAT - NIGHT Jim and Selena enter past the pale-faced girl. The flat is council, three-bed, sixteenth floor of the block. It has patterned wallpaper, and nice but boring furnishings. It is lit by candles. The entrance hall leads straight to the living room, which has French windows and a small balcony outside. On one wall, a framed photograph hangs, which shows the Man standing beside a black taxi cab. Next to him is a middle aged woman - presumably the Man's wife. Hannah sits at the cab's steering wheel, beaming. Another photo, beside, show Hannah sat in the seat of a go- kart. The Man follows Jim and Selena inside. 28. MAN Come in, come in. They follow the Man through to the living room, and Hannah recloses the front door, which has an impressive arrangement of locks and dead-bolts. INT. FLAT - LIVING ROOM - NIGHT In the living room, the fairy lights hang in the window, powered by a car battery. Lit by their glow, the Man goes through a careful ritual of shedding his gear, helped by Hannah. First, he lays down the riot shield. Then he puts the bloodsmeared lead pipe on a small white towel. Next, he removes his gloves - and places them beside the bar on the towel. Then he folds the towel over the weapon and gloves, and puts it beside the riot shield. Finally he removes the visored helmet. Jim and Selena watch him. They look pretty rattled, not really knowing what to expect. After the Man has finished shedding his gear, he turns. MAN So... I'm Frank, anyway. He extends his hand to Jim and Selena. Jim hesitates very briefly, then shakes it. JIM I'm Jim. SELENA Selena. Frank beams, and suddenly he seems much less frightening and imposing. If anything, he is just as nervous as Jim and Selena. FRANK Jim and Selena. Good to meet you. And this is my daughter, Hannah. (turning to Hannah) ...Come on, sweetheart. Say hello. Hannah takes a step into the room, but says nothing. FRANK So... so this is great. Just great. It calls for a celebration. 29. I'd say. Why don't you all sit down, and... Hannah, what have we got to offer? HANNAH (QUIETLY) We've got Mum's creme de menthe. An awkward beat. FRANK Yes, her creme de menthe. Great. Look, sit, please. Get comfortable. Sit tight while I get it. Frank exits. Selena, Jim and Hannah all stand, until Selena gestures at the sofa. SELENA Shall we? Jim and Selena take the sofa. Hannah stays standing. FRANK (O.S.) Where are the bloody glasses? HANNAH Middle cupboard. FRANK (O.S.) No! The good ones! This is a celebration! HANNAH Top cupboard. Another short, uncomfortable pause. Hannah looks at Jim and Selena from her position near the doorway. Her expression is blank and unreadable. JIM This is your place, then. Hannah nods. JIM It's nice. Hannah nods again. Frank re-enters. Frank is beaming, holding the creme de menthe, and four wine glasses. 30. FRANK There! I know it isn't much but... well, cheers! EXT. TOWER BLOCK - NIGHT The moon shines above the tower block. INT. FLAT - NIGHT Jim, Selena and Hannah all sit in the living room, sipping creme de menthe. Frank is disconnecting the fairy lights as he talks, and pulling the curtains closed, rather systematically checking for cracks along the edges. FRANK Normally we keep the windows covered at night, because the light attracts them. But when we saw your petrol station fire, we knew it had to be survivors... So we hooked up the Christmas tree lights. Like a beacon. Finished with the sofa, he sits on the armchair. SELENA We're grateful. FRANK Well, we're grateful you came. I was starting to really worry. Like I say, we haven't seen any sign of anyone normal for a while now. JIM There aren't any others in the building? Frank shakes his head. SELENA And you haven't seen any people outside? Frank's eyes flick to Hannah. FRANK We haven't left the block for more than two weeks. Stayed right here. Only sensible thing to do. Everyone who went out... 31. SELENA Didn't come back. FRANK And there's two hundred flats here. Most of them have a few cans of food, or cereal, or something. SELENA It's a good set-up. FRANK It isn't bad. He puts a hand on Hannah's shoulder, and gives it a squeeze. FRANK We've got by, haven't we? INT. BATHROOM - NIGHT

“20% of employees in the workplace in the U.S. strongly agree that they trust the leadership of their organization. And that's the highest correlation with another really important item that we ask right now, whether employees feel that their organization cares about their overall well being. That's related to burnout, and it's a really important perception. Because if people do feel that you care about their well being, they're much more likely to stay,” explains Jim Harter, chief data scientist for workplace management and wellbeing at Gallup. Today he discusses the data behind quiet quitting and the Great Resignation and what managers and leaders can do to improve employee engagement. Jim shares that employee engagement has been tracked back to 2000 and the numbers have stayed relatively the same, but the difference is in the boldness of employees to be more vocal against their organizations and managers. COVID provided an opportunity for people to step back and reflect on their positions and see whether their values actually aligned with their duties and the values of the organization. This has led to a lot of people switching jobs, disengaging from their jobs in a form of ‘quiet quitting', or just fully resigning from their positions. According to the data, most Americans do not believe their leadership is trustworthy or cares about their wellbeing. Managers can greatly improve employee engagement and retention by building trust and changing how they approach management to focus on the needs of their people. More and more people are struggling with burnout and managers have a chance to offset this if they take action to provide necessary support, tools, and role clarity to their employees.  The COVID pandemic has shifted a lot in regard to the relationship between employers and employees. There is an overall decrease in engagement on a global scale that needs to be addressed by those in leadership positions. In order to combat disengagement and increase employee retention, managers must be willing to pivot and take new approaches with the members of their teams. In turn, these managers must themselves be managed in a way that provides them with the tools they need to meet their emboldened employees' expectations.  Quotes: “There's more of a boldness so that even though about half of people have been in that quiet quitting category historically, we've been tracking engagement back to 2000 and it's been around that percentage since then. But they're more vocal now, because I think the workplace has a new freedom and I think that had something to do with COVID. And I think that the Great Resignation also had something to do with COVID in that people had a chance to reflect, and sit back and think about what they really want out of their work, and to consider all the other options that are available.” (6:30-7:04 | Jim)  “I think organizations have to pivot in terms of how they think about management. We've always known it's important, but how we approach managing from a distance or in hybrid environments is really critical.” (8:07-8:23 | Jim) “Gen Z and young millennials, people under the age of 35, that particular group has moved more from engaged to actively disengaged. And so they're vocalizing it, they're looking for other opportunities, and they're much more willing to be looking for other jobs.” (8:48-9:05 | Jim) “How managers are managed themselves is a really important component of how things need to work going forward.” (10:45-10:51 | Jim)  “About one in five people, 20% of employees in the workplace in the U.S. strongly agree that they trust the leadership of their organization. And that's the highest correlation with another really important item that we ask right now, whether employees feel that their organization cares about their overall well being. That's related to burnout, and it's a really important perception. Because if people do feel that you care about their well being, they're much more likely to stay.” (13:45-14:17 | Jim) “People want to come to work and have a purpose, and they want to come to work and have a role that they're responsible for and clear expectations, they need to have the materials, equipment they need to do their work. They need to have a chance to do what they do best every day. These are basic expectations. If they do something, well, you better recognize them for it, they want credit for it. And there, they should also be someone who gives recognition to others as well. But so it starts with some of the foundational elements of engagement, really, that's where trust begins to be built. If you fail on those, you're gonna have a really tough time building any kind of trust at all.” (17:34-18:10 | Jim)  “I think it's really important that leaders provide managers with the right tools and resources to have the conversations with people to make this new autonomy that people have now kind of a rational autonomy so that it's not just about me, it's also about my co-workers. And it's also about our customers.” (23:59-24:20 | Jim) “One area that I'd really encourage organizations to ask their employees about, if you're surveying your employees on a regular basis, ask them whether they feel they're treated with respect.” (29:06-29:17 | Jim) Links: Mentioned in this episode: Learn more about Mike Horne on Linkedin Email Mike at mike@mike-horne.com Find more about Leading People and Culture with Authenticity   Learn more about Jim Harter: Website: gallup.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jkharter/   Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Overview Besides writing, Jim does a live radio show each week that talks to a variety of authors. This gets turned into a podcast. We discuss the pros and cons of a podcast and why an author may want to, or may not, decide to include podcasting in their repetoire. YouTube https://youtu.be/ZX5kw0I47zI Transcript [00:00:46] Stephen: All right, so let's move on to some author. Before we get onto a good topic about the podcast and radio. Tell me a little bit about some things you're on book 13. What are you doing? Different? What have you learned over [00:01:00] 13 books. Okay. 15. So in the time we've talked, you've gotten two more books out. [00:01:05] Jim: The a series is 13, then we have 15 and actually I have a poetry book thrown in there too. [00:01:12] Stephen: Okay. So what do you mean the series? [00:01:15] Jim: How to relax and let. I don't try to shove stuff in that doesn't belong. That's a great lesson to learn. And it's a hard lesson to learn. Yes, I agree. And I have now have learned that if the story isn't coming to be easily, move on to another story. Maybe come back to that one. Maybe not. It just depends. [00:01:39] Stephen: So. You mentioned letting it flow, don't putting in things that don't belong. It's interesting. You say that because you mentioned you're a musician. I also have played music most of my life. Not as much anymore, I'm getting back into it, but I was just chatting with some old band mates and we were talking you two and about how the basis is very [00:02:00] subtle in what he plays. His baselines are not complex. All over the place and he leaves room for the rest of the music to breathe. And that's rare. We were just coming and that's a skill in any creative endeavor. Same with a painting music writing. It's interesting. You say that. I like that. I used to play bass. That's what I play. I love those. All right. Yeah. [00:02:23] Jim: I had it. I had an old, the fender P bass pre 64, CBS. Oh [00:02:28] Stephen: man. Those are the [00:02:29] Jim: best. Oh my God. It was such a clean instrument. It just played. So. But mostly we did the band I played in at the time it was a Rottweiler. I played in two bands and this was one set rock group that we put together for shows only was called back-talking. And I played bass in that effect. When they put together the band, a guy named Irish, we can't, he said, I said, I don't play bass. And he goes, if you do, now, [00:02:58] Stephen: these are the strings. Here's the [00:03:00] friends. [00:03:03] Jim: He gave me the basics. And from there I took it on, I was already a really good finger picker and I'm really good guitars. So picking up the place, wasn't that difficult, [00:03:12] Stephen: right? The band, we were all musicians. I played piano. Most of us played piano, but we'd been in band together for eight years. So [00:03:21] Jim: yeah, I believe that I play piano, banjo, bass guitar. [00:03:27] Stephen: I'm working on guitar. Those little strings are so close together. It's hard for me. [00:03:33] Jim: Yeah. I'm actually trying to get back into it. Um, I haven't played in about four years and my, I lost all my calluses. Now I'm going to pick up a classical guitar because I'm a wuss and I want the nylon strings. [00:03:46] Stephen: Yeah. It's almost like a rip your fingers apart. So when you're writing, Jim, what do you use the right? What software services? What's your writing practice? [00:03:57] Jim: I just use a desktop computer [00:04:00] and word. I just use word. I pre format my pages. Give me an idea of where I'm at. And we write everything in six by nine precise. So I always know where I'm at in each page. It's a. And so I never have to worry about, okay, how many pages have I got now? Cause I'm on eight and a half by 11, 12 point 12.5, new Roman double space. Now I don't do that. We ask our writers to do that. I don't do that right now,

Henry 10 years old - Who made hell?  Louise - Granddaughter is transgender. How can I help her?  Vincent - Is the number 13 unlucky because of Judas and King Henry?  How to become a better listener according to science  Kip - Why are we saying 'I am not worthy to receive you' before communion?  Kent - How can I talk with my atheist brother?  Anthony - Comment: Something was said that was irrelevant and you are right Because Relevant radio is where you should be listening  Anne - Wants to explain the specific intentions Bishops are asking for as we fast and pray today  Jim - How can I plant the seed that God loves my older kids? 

David - What is the Church's teaching on prenuptial agreements? Why does a marriage need to be blessed? Amelio - Did God feel pain on the cross? Carol - Can lay people lay hands on others for healing? Jim - How should we as Catholics pray since Volodymyr Zelenskyy supports abortion and Putin seems to not support it? Vincent - is it okay for Catholics to donate their organs? John - Would you say that Zelenskyy is killing the soul and Putin is killing the body? Will - What are your thoughts on the Russian patriarch practically giving blessing of invasion of Ukraine? Chris - If it was consecrated to world and not Russia, it seems analogous to the 'we' baptize you and not 'I' baptize you?

Hosts Julie Slater & Jason Friday chat with Julie's sensei Jim Fortin. Jim is the host of the The Jim Fortin Podcast. The international leading expert in subconscious self-transformation. For more than 20 years, he trained 1000s of people in sales influence, human effectiveness, and NeuroPersuasion®. Jim created programs such as the Transformational Coaching Program (TCP) and the Be Do Have training series, which have helped thousands of people break free of harmful habits and turn their life around while unlocking a future they previously thought unimaginable. Here's what we dig into with Jim: How he got to where he is…he chose to do what he loves…he gives an example of student and artist Joan Marie (https://www.instagram.com/joanmarieart/?hl=en)…don't let money be your master – don't chase money - simply do what you love…money comes from energy and from expansion – when you create growth for people. People search for their dharma…where is it? Jim says it's right in front of you…stay true what you know is your calling/your mission/your message/your way of life. Who is to say you don't have a huge calling if you'd just open up to it? The hardest thing is trying to be someone else for other people...You've got to speak your truth. Do you what you love, be who you are…it's all mental…every fear you have…every fear you have… every block you have…is mental. Stop making everything hard. Face your fears. Stop saying “this is hard.” Remove "hard" from your language. Just because other people tell you something, doesn't mean it's true…especially for you…don't follow the masses…the only person who is going to save you is YOU… Follow @cuzihavetopodcast on Instagram for all the latest news. We'd love to hear from you - email us at cuzihavetopodcast@gmail.com. Find other episodes or leave us a voice message for the show on the anchor website: https://anchor.fm/cuzihaveto. Thanks for tuning in! Keep on living those dreams, friends, CUZ YOU HAVE TO!! - jULIE AND jASON --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/cuzihaveto/message

I have had a bunch of emails come in in the last 2 weeks and rather than answer them in writing, I thought it would be fun to answer them in a listener variety show. Here is what we will cover today: Suggestion from Christopher that I do a podcast on how to start a home roasting business Website and other recommendations requested from Melissa Do you do tours of your homestead from Betsy Getting started on a homestead when you know little about permaculture from Jim How to get started with wild edible plants from Billy What’s Up in the Garden Wall of Tomatoes Dill Germinated Beans are up Strawberries ripening each day -- anti chicken defense system Need to replace lettuce with basil Wishing for automated watering Main topic of the Show: Listener Variety Show Suggestion from Christopher that I do a podcast on how to start a home roasting business Add your thoughts on the mewe post about this topic Website and other recommendations requested from Melissa Buddy Press Untimate Membership Pro Coinpayments Do you do tours of your homestead from Betsy June Open House To Be Announced Next Week Getting started on a homestead when you know little about permaculture from Jim Kerry Brown Strong Roots Resources Nick Ferguson Home Grown Liberty How to get started with wild edible plants from Billy Stalking the Wild Asparagus Make it a great week! GUYS! Don’t forget about the cookbook, Cook With What You Have by Nicole Sauce and Mama Sauce.  Community Mewe Group: https://mewe.com/join/lftn Telegram Group: https://t.me/LFTNGroup Odysee: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@livingfree:b Advisory Board The Booze Whisperer The Tactical Redneck Chef Brett Samantha the Savings Ninja Resources Membership Sign Up Holler Roast Coffee

Title: Why the Affordable Care Act Did Not Make Insurance More Affordable Guest: Jim Vollmer, MHA, GBA & Employer Benefit Solutions President On March 23, 2010, the signing of the Affordable Care Act (often referred to as ACA or Obamacare) rules were established for employers and insurance carriers. Why is it that those rules did everything BUT make insurance more affordable? To answer that 1question, we’ve asked Jim Vollmer the President of Employer Benefit Solutions to come in the studio and walk us through this. 1:00 Jim- What attracted you to work in insurance? 1:50 Jim- How has insurance changed over the past 18 years ago? 2:20 From a doctors perspective, how has practicing medicine under insurance changed over the past 20 years.  5:17 Quality of care- not boxes being checked, but decisions by the providers 8:00 Socialized Medicine, what it was like for Dr. Gaman to practice medicine in Canada 12:25 Preventative care is included in insurance plans, people not using them 13:15 Affordable Care Act- originated to help people with insurance, but it's not very affordable unless partially subsidized by government 14:55 Insurance companies making record profits, why do rates continue to go up? 15:55 Shut down of economy caused utilization of insurance to go down, so for over 50 employees- rates not rising 17:47 Unwrapping the Affordable Care Act 21:53 High risk pools 23:30 Guaranteed Coverage 25:53 Price increases correlate with government coverage mandates 27:23 What should insurance actually cover? Groceries, massages, etc? 31:11 Insurance companies making large, over-projected profits- should they divide excess and rebate it back?  33:00 “Executive Medicine Moment” At Executive Medicine of Texas we understand that true health can only be found when you treat the patient as a whole. That’s why our Executive Physical Exams are second to none in the amount of testing and information we gather prior to making a wellness plan for our patients. Learn more about how you can take charge of your health at http://www.EMTexas.com  33:47 “Pressing Health”- Health news that’s fresh off the press. We’ve talked before about the differences between brown fat and white fat, but as a refresher, brown fat burns calories and helps fight obesity. The problem is that brown fat is no longer in abundance as we age. But thanks to some genetic modification of white fat, through CRISPR, researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have found that potentially transplanting these fat cells, patients may be able to reverse diabetes. The cells (human brown-like) fat cells have been given the acronym, HUMBLE. Mice given the HUMBLE transplants displayed much greater sensitivity to insulin and ability to clear glucose from the blood, the two things that type two diabetics have trouble doing. The pre-clinical trials are promising, so this is the research to watch! https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200826141413.htm Find out more about Jim:  https://ebslp.com/about-us/ Website: StayYoungAmerica.com  Twitter: @StayYoungPod  Facebook: @Stay Young America!   

In this week's podcast, hosts Jason Zenger and Jim Carr invite guest Jenn Ryan, SVP of Global Network Operations at Xometry to discuss how they pivoted during COVID and how it helped them transform who they are as a business. Segments: Jim and Jason’s businesses thriving when the industry is down (1:44) Good news at Carr’s: 4th new CNC machine (6:06) Jason Discusses the Manufacturing News: Foxconn fails to meet requirements in Wisconsin (6:47) Introducing our guest: Jenn Ryan, SVP of Global Network Operations at Xometry (11:40) Check out our previous episodes 122 & 189 with Xometry Jenn: How 2020 affected my work-life balance (13:48) Jenn: Keeping the doors open during COVID shutdowns (15:23) Jenn: Changing the binary questions “What part of this job can I do?” (18:23) Jason: Why we created the Makingchips podcast (20:35) Jenn: Partner Success stories in 2020 (21:45) Jenn: If you don’t raise your hand, it’s hard for me to find you (28:10) Jenn: Think horizontally instead of vertically (31:12) Jason: Should shops go all-in on Xometry? (33:30) Jim: How can a shop like Carr’s position itself with a company like Xometry (38:00) Jason: We need more manufacturing in the US (40:00) Raising the voice of Women in manufacturing leadership (41:45) Jenn: Xometry is a Wraparound service provider (45:20) The Boring Bar Newsletter - Text CHIPS to 38470 to subscribe!

We are joined by Jim Easton (CEO of Care UK) to discuss the role of the independent sector in supporting the NHS and the wider care industry, both during the pandemic and in a post-COVID world. In this COVID-19 series, Tom Clarke (Director -  NHS Insights & Interaction, Mtech Access) is joined by NHS and other UK healthcare experts who offer real-world, first-hand insight into the challenges facing the NHS and explore the implications for market access, brand and HCP-facing teams, in pharmaceutical and medical device companies.In this episode, Tom asks Jim:- How has the private sector responded to COVID?- What have been the biggest challenges/risks in private provision?- What has been the impact of COVID on public-private relationships and collaboration?- How important is the private sector going forward, and in which service/therapy areas?- What does the future hold for independent providers?This episode was originally broadcast on 19th June 2020 as a webinar. This podcast series has been converted from our webinar series 'How is COVID-19 impacting the NHS?'. 

Shane comes in for a convo conversation. He has such an interesting story but he doesn't want the story to take the hour. He's got questions so here we go. Airforce brat Father was an outlier Colorado springs, met shane's mom School bus and some goats, from San Antonia to Montana, 100 acres on top of a mountain Enough education to teach. Not a good mix. Logging community Eureka Montana, population 300 7th day Adventist church, father trained for leadership in it, moving around Female prophet debunked, it wrecked his faith Left the faith, got involved in all sorts of things Moved to Missoula, Mom maintained her faith because of all of that Experience of worshipping with a black church is so much different from a Montana church He has to be loving, he has to be able to do miracles By 12 had been in the meaning crisis without being a victim of evil Drugs, adult relationships early, friends of older siblings Got girlfriend pregnant as a sophomore in High school, Convince her to marry him University of Montana Legally divorced lost the financial aid Vervaeke Jordan Peterson Don't have to betray a deep value to entertain an idea that might be contradictory Compound interest applies in ways of knowing It's having a dad who's been able to have a certain kind of relationship with other people Bring the 4-P of knowing into church Dr. Jim How can we get people to trust each other first… Teach people to trust and be trust-worthy We need an economy of trust. Churches are counterfeiting the economy of trust They are obligating people to give credit to people who are not credit worthy Eric Weinstein super-position. 1. Share thoughts on how might people try to structure a trusting community 2. When I think about my responsibility to God, what do I think that is as it relates to building a community of trust 3. What do I think is possible within my lifetime in the age of decay Unconditional positive regard for the human but call out and respectfully say BS That's how you trust somebody because you see them exercise their trust in God Click here to meetup with other channel viewers for conversation https://discord.gg/jdVk8XU If you want to schedule a one-on-one conversation check here. https://paulvanderklay.me/2019/08/06/converzations-with-pvk/ There is a video version of this podcast on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/paulvanderklay To listen to this on ITunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/paul-vanderklays-podcast/id1394314333 If you need the RSS feed for your podcast player https://paulvanderklay.podbean.com/feed/ All Amazon links here are part of the Amazon Affiliate Program. Amazon pays me a small commission at no additional cost to you if you buy through one of the product links here. This is is one (free to you) way to support my videos. To support this channel/podcast on Paypal: https://paypal.me/paulvanderklay To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin (BTC): 37TSN79RXewX8Js7CDMDRzvgMrFftutbPo To support this channel/podcast with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) qr3amdmj3n2u83eqefsdft9vatnj9na0dqlzhnx80h To support this channel/podcast with Ethereum (ETH): 0xd3F649C3403a4789466c246F32430036DADf6c62 Blockchain backup on Lbry https://lbry.tv/@paulvanderklay https://www.patreon.com/paulvanderklay Join the Sacramento JBP Meetup https://www.meetup.com/Sacramento-Jordan-Peterson-Meetup/ Paul's Church Content at Living Stones Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh7bdktIALZ9Nq41oVCvW-A  

This evening we hear from Jim Rex, the National Chair of the Alliance Party. COVID-19 has our nation in its grip, and with most people keeping social distance and sheltering in place, we ask Jim: How did we get here? What can - or should - our leaders do at this time to help? How can we keep this from happening again? And what is life going to look like when this all blows over? Obviously, there are no definitive answers, but it's always worthwhile to discuss these topics, take some time to be retrospective and commit ourselves to going forward a little smarter for the experience. By sharing his wisdom and insight, Jim helps make this journey a little easier.

Welcome! Good morning, everybody. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning and we discussed a one-second mistake that can cost millions - Business Email Compromise. So, here we go with Mr. Polito. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com ---  Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Millions transferred electronically. I have a copy of the email in front of me right now I'm looking at it. It seems like it's from a German company. Supposedly, it's for some renovations in the building. It is what scammers do. They look at you, and they look at your business, they looked at what would be a kind of typical ask for your business. In this case, that's what they did. They knew Barbara, and they found out who her executive assistant is and what the executive assistant email address is, who bookkeeper is, and the bookkeeper's email addresses. Craig Good morning, everybody. It is something that really could happen. It happened to Barbara, and I don't want to happen to you. So listen in as we go through some details. I hope again that this is going to help you from becoming a victim. Jim Here he is. He is our tech talk guru, and he is our good friend, and it's great to have him on our side. I'm talking about Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir. Craig Good morning, Mr. James. Jim How are you, buddy? Craig I'm doing great. I'm excited. Today's Super Tuesday. Maybe Finally we can finalize of this stuff today. Well, I don't know. Jim I think we're heading into a brokered convention. But we'll see. We'll see. But I wanted to start with you today with something exciting. My wife is a big fan of Shark Tank. I understand that one of the sharks got tanked out of $400,000 and didn't have any equity in that $400,000 Craig Oh man, I wonder what trades you made. Yeah. It is an example of what, Jim, you and I have talked about for how long now? It is the whole concept of business email compromise. Jim Yeah, you have said, it happens to the smaller businesses too. That is the weak point, the weak link in the chain, and they are more susceptible to the hacks. Craig They are. There tends to be less training for the employees. One of the most significant risks you have, and I've seen people who've analyzed this who stay maybe 80% of a company's risk. One of the most significant risks out there is our employees. It's our not typically lower-paid, but not necessarily, who will click on stuff. Now this story about Barbara is interesting. Barbara Corcoran is one of these investors over there on Shark Tank. She's a big-time real estate investor. That's what she's been doing forever. That's how she made her money. It's interesting to read through what happened, and this one, Jim, it did have a happy ending. We typically don't see this at all. There was an invoice that forwarded to her bookkeeper that supposedly came from her executive assistant. Now, there was one minor difference here. Maybe the bookkeeper should have noticed. There was one character different in the email address that sent it. Jim So, a difference you've taught us about this before? Craig Yeah, exactly. The scammer posing as her executive assistant, forwarded this fake invoice earlier last week, requesting that a payment of $388,700 and 11 cents be transferred electronically. I have a copy of the email in front of me right now I'm looking at it. It seems like it's from a German company. Supposedly, it's for some renovations in the building. It is what scammers do. They look at you, and they look at your business, they looked at what would be a kind of typical ask for your business. In this case, that's what they did. They knew Barbara, and they found out who her executive assistant is and what the executive assistant email address is, who bookkeeper is, and the bookkeeper's email addresses. Now, you know, Jim, it's pretty easy to find most of this stuff out. It was interesting to me that I sat down with the FBI because we had pulled them in on an investigation where we found that some criminal activities going on against a small local company. They have eight employees. I sat down with the FBI. The first thing the FBI did when I did the report was they went to my website, my business website. They just tried to find out the lay of the land? Who are the people that work there? Who are the executives who are the accountants? You know, they were impressed because I didn't have any of it on my website. If you go to @mainstream.net, you'll see that under who works here, who are executives are it says due to security concerns, we don't post any of it. Yeah, exactly. But you know, what people do, right? Look at your website, or Facebook, Jim All that information is right there. Craig Now, what do we give out? Then when talking about Facebook, but you and I mentioned our wives on our Facebook page. Yeah, you and I know, well, I think both of us know not to say, Hey, I'm going to Italy. I'm going to Ireland. Next week, although obviously in your case, yeah, you're tied in with the business. Yeah. Typically, we don't mention anything like that until after the fact, so right here, that means we are relatively safe. In this case, what happened is they invested what probably amounted to 10 or 20 hours doing some research. It was thought that they're probably from Eastern Europe will tell you what happened here specifically. Jim Big surprise, Eastern Europe. What a big surprise. Craig Yeah, exactly. And 400 grand How long will that last? You know, if you're in a country where the average person makes five grand a year, do a little mental math on that. That's going to last you and your family for a long time. For what? Divide that 400,000 by 20 hours, how much an hour? That's a nice payday. It is. Barbara said, Hey, listen, when talking to experts, I'm not counting on getting me this money back. She had an excellent attitude about this whole thing because, indeed, her accountant did wire it. How they found out about this was that when the accountant wired the money, the accountant CC'ed the executive assistant, and using the correct address. Okay, so initially, the bookkeeper just replied to the email from the scammers thinking it was the legitimate executive assistant, and she wires the money. After wiring the money, she copies the real address of executive assistant who says wait a minute, hold-on now, let's stop this. People, when this happens, you don't get your money back. The FBI says it's 90 seconds. It's 90 seconds from the time that they get that wired money that it is out of the country. And pretty much gone. Jim 90 seconds. It just reminds me of like, what was that movie? Craig Gone 90 seconds. Yeah. Like, boom, there it is. You can watch it go by on the computer screen. Jim That's it. I like to think that Steve McQueen's version was better than the remake of Nicolas Cage. Yeah. Craig Yeah, exactly. So here's the good news and the weird news, it never happened. They were able to contact the bank that the bookkeeper had wired the money to, and they responded quickly, right? So the German bank was able to freeze the funds in the account. Before the scammer knew it was in the account and transferred it out. Here's where it was going. In this case, it was going to China. Jim Oh, so it wasn't our friends in Eastern Europe. Craig It wasn't in this case, and it is not common, it was China. It makes you kind of wonder who in China? Much of the criminal activity in China is, of course, sponsored by their socialist government. So here's the bottom line. One hundred fourteen thousand people reported being a victim of this type of scam last year. We're talking 10s of millions of dollars in losses. According to the FBI's internet crime report. It is huge. It is a common way hackers are going after you. If it is in China or Eastern Europe, do you know who the next most person probably knows? Jim Right, it's your roommate. It's someone you know, who's going to hack. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, we're talking with Craig Peterson, Tech Talk guru, and at the end will tell you how you can get more information from him. Craig, you know what, before we run out of time, I want to talk about this because it caught my fancy here, this VHS vault? Pretty, pretty good idea. Why don't you explain it to everyone? Craig Yeah, there's a web service out there that, when started, was called the Wayback Machine. Now it's called archive.org. It is the coolest thing ever. I go on there, and I looked at old versions of my website. One time, I lost my website, and the Wayback Machine had a copy of it. It clones all of the websites, and you can go back to your favorite website and look at it as it evolved over now decades. And they got this cool new thing that you just mentioned, which is what's called the VHS vault. And if you go org, you'll see they have several different types of vaults there are. I use this one all the time where there are these ink drawings. Yeah, the 1800s of patent pictures and other things, and they've got them all there. But the VHS vault as of right now has 20,701 videos in there. And these are old VHS tapes from the years gone by some of them back, not the tapes, but the content in 1922. And wow, you can watch it in its original brilliant 480 lines if you're lucky, worth of resolution right. None of it is the stuff that you can generally find out there. It is such a cool flashback right near the top. The Beatles Let it be, and the original 35 millimeter was you know, put up there, and They're in their collection. It's called the VHS vault. You'll find it and all this other cool stuff at archive.org Jim Sounds pretty cool. All right, Craig, they can find more. And when I mean they I mean our audience, if they text My name to this number Craig 855-385-5553. Text Jim to 855-385-5553 Jim Standard data and text rates apply, Craig Peterson will provide you with updates. There's no charge for this. He won't try to sell you anything, and he won't hack you, Craig, thanks so much. We look forward to talking with you next week. Unknown Speaker 12:41 Take care, Jim. Bye-bye. All right, a final word about Hillary Clinton. When we return, you're listening to the Jim Polito show, your safe space. Transcribed by https://otter.ai ---  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Craig is on the Jim Polito show as they discussed two factor authentication, how to manage your passwords, and the data breach that leaked 773 million emails. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Biggest Data Breach Yet Has Leaked 773 Million Emails. Here’s What You Need To Do Now --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 01/29/2019 Safe Gun Technology - Huge Hack Collection - Proper Use Of Passwords And 2FA Craig Peterson: 0:00 Hey, good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. Before I was on with Jim Polito this morning, it was talking about an interesting case down in Mass where there was a guy who was defending himself with a firearm and the bad guy decided he was going to take off and he hopped into his car and the guy with a firearm hopped on the hood of the car and held the you know the bad guy right obviously this whole thing has to go to court and everything figure out you know, was he a bad guy what happened here but but anyways he was on the hood of the car pointing his gun at them just incredible. So that's what we started out with today. Talking about that, what that meant, what that means. And I talked a little bit about the technology behind guns and some of the things that have been tried and frankly, and failed. And we also correspond some time about data leaks more on 1Password. And the way to use 2FA. All of that this morning with Mr. Jim Polito, take care Have a great day, everybody and keep an eye on your mailbox. Hopefully you've been getting my emails this week. We're building up to something big next week Unknown 1:17 Everybody. Everyone's favorite Canadian and Tech Talk guru our good friend Craig Peterson. Good morning sir Good morning Jim How you doing today Craig I'm doing well interesting topic when it comes to firearms some technology proposed over the years you know these these guns we see on the sci fi movies they can only be fired by the rightful owner or someone who's on the guys side yeah and the fields of the years one what was interesting was you were a mike medic rings and that was used to unlock the city as this gun and then they're continually our proposals by Unknown 2:00 Senator Schumer and other results as the years that they somehow build in some sort of computer thing that may be reached your fingerprints, or maybe he says DNA, none of those types of things, actually working guns. And that's just the work of science fiction Southern. There's really a lot of misunderstandings about firearms and using them safely and what the law allows and and what technology can do with them Unknown 2:27 to go around corners with the Angelina Jolie and Unknown 2:34 Mr. And Mrs. Smith or Unknown 2:38 one of them. But anyway, it's understanding. Yeah, yeah, it is. And look, the bottom line is the real technology that the best control guns is between your ears. That's the real technology. So hey, here we go again. Craig. 773 million emails. What's going on? Unknown 3:11 Yeah, as you as you were saying earlier this morning, it really is time to change your password again, your email password. And to that, and I'm continuing to recommend 1Password. It's a piece of software that now not only keeps track of your password and your accounts and automatically will fill them in for you on websites, as long as you remember your master password. Yeah, but it also keeps track of hacks, it keeps track of what passwords have been found out on the dark web. Yeah, really, it says all kinds of things. So what we're finding now is three quarters of a billion email addresses which tens of millions of passwords. This is likely a collection of passwords and email accounts that they've been found over the years. Unknown 4:00 It's all the put together and is now being sold on the dark web. Unknown 4:06 And if they're successful in using the gym, and that's what really kind of kept me going here, because the only reason that the bad guys is successful in using these passwords, some of which are older, is this piece, reuse the same credentials on multiple services. Yeah, and that simple, it's that so so they get one from you, and they get them all. Yeah, well, that's kind of what it is right? If you use the same email address, and you use the same password on multiple websites, or let's say you use it on your face website. And let's assume the bank has reasonable security and email says it's probably as reasonable security right? And then you use the same email address with the same password on Joe's morning cartoon website. And Joe's cartoon site gets hacked. Unknown 5:00 Now what happens is the bad guys take your your email address and your password from Joe's cartoons that they stole. And they try it on Bank of America and you name it every major bank out there and the end you if you use the same email address and the same password, they are in your bank account information. It's just that simple. We're talking with our good friend Craig Peterson. And at the end of this segment, we're going to give you a number and you can text My name to it. And when you do, you'll get all of this information from Craig Peterson. He will not annoy you with incessant messages or try to sell you anything. It's just it's a great service that he offers to listeners to the show which we truly appreciate. Standard date and text rates apply. Okay, what was it password one is the Is it an app that you were talking about to help manage your passwords and protect you Unknown 6:00 It's called 1Password. Oh 1Password. Just 1, and then password. Now they have some 3 levels, I use the paid stuff, we use it for businesses. So there's one other thing that you got to do. And that's called two factor authentication. And 1Password support a lot of two factor authentication sites. But at the very least, set up two factor authentication, sometimes a brief abbreviated to App a. And what that allows them to do now is in the simplest form, send a text message to your phone. So by the way, if you lose your phone, you might have some issues here. And if you also lose your phone number, change your phone number. Remember if you've used it for two factor authentication, but the idea is you try and log in on the website and then the website confirms what you know which is your username and password with something that you Unknown 7:00 You have, which is your cell phone. Or in the case of one password, you've got the 1Password app on your phone. And that type of basic security something you know, along with something you have. So even if the bad guys have your know side to say, have your email address and your password, they don't have your phone. So if they try and log into your account, or if you try and log into your account, your your bank or whatever site you're going to, he's going to go ahead and send you a text message with a confirmation code. You then enter that confirmation cozy, and then you're all set. So if someone tries to log in and was on authorized, you're going to get that text message with that confirmation code. And immediately you're going to know something is a foot Now there are some major things in progress. This year, we're going to see some major advances because Google Chrome already has Unknown 8:00 This built in so far is getting it a lot of browsers are getting and it's using some special types of two factor authentication the Yubikey than others and and I'm going to put together the master class that will have for the listeners again absolutely free for them to attend that explains how to do this yes particularly if you're a business you've got a fiduciary responsibility to keep data safe particularly personal information and you know I've got to help house because it's happening to everybody and Jim you brought up at three quarters of a billion Unknown 8:39 in that one file that everybody okay Unknown 8:45 yeah that is downtown. What's a huge But no, it is huge. Now I was reading that this is called what in the hacking world collection number one which means there could be Unknown 9:00 More collections on the way Yeah, they're almost certainly are going to be Unknown 9:06 you know that what here's what happens they say seals the data they break into a website and they use different technologies sequel injection other things but they use technologies to get at the database this behind the website and then once they're they have access to that database so just dump everything out of it because most businesses just hard keeping it safe enough, right you shouldn't be able to do that. But anyways, they dump it out and then they go ahead and they go to keep it as an eBay for the bad guy that goes to these websites on the dark web. Yeah, allow options allows them to sell things and then they start selling them and then after a while that data becomes signs of sale. So they sold your email address and password for effectively a fraction of a penny as part of our collection of a breach. And now it's been 16 Unknown 10:00 months since they did it last so they building these collections This is all collection of a one Jim because it's the biggest ever but there are dozens if not hundreds of these collections out there already and it's you have not changed your password in the last few months you are incredibly susceptible to having your data stolen your money stolen and your identity stolen and we talked before about this you could get pulled over by a police officer the side of the road for a broken taillight. Yeah, and all of a sudden it's a felony Unknown 10:36 in the could happen to you because your data with solar you gotta keep up on that. I know, can you imagine that, that there's a warrant out for you, you know, and that's a standard part and folks don't understand a warren check is a standard part of a pullover just to make sure there's no outstanding warrants for you. And let's say somebody did take your identity. Unknown 11:00 They went out and they did something that resulted in a warrant guess what they're gonna rescue and then you can you imagine you're trying to explain to the cop Unknown 11:12 never been I've never been on the floor right you're Unknown 11:17 you're you are in jail kissing the pavement and 10 degree weather is this can happen. Look at one password. This is it. One password is how you'll find it online. There's a couple of others that are okay. last pass is pretty good. But I really if you want the best stuff, one password is the way to go. Change your passwords, make it a year New Year's resolution, get one password, have it generate the passwords for you. There's lots of videos on how to use it out there and then go and use it all year long. Start using two factor authentication. You are the only one who cares enough about your personal information, frankly. Unknown 12:00 really do anything as far as these big companies out there that lose your data, you're just the balance sheet entry. It's your life. You've got to take control. There's a lot of other information about this. There's information about other things. And Craig Peterson has it all. And as I said earlier, all the jab to do is text My name to this number 855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553 standard data and text rates apply Craig as usual, right on top of things. We really appreciate the time Unknown 12:40 Talk to you next week when we return a final word. --- Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating! Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year!  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

How do Huck and Tom Sawyer differ and how are they similar? How does Huck change as a character while he bonds with Jim? How has having pap as a father affected Huck? In your opinion, what was the biggest change in Huck’s character?

Talking Through The Code!!! On this episode of Fear the Walking Dead Talk Through, we discuss Fear the Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 11, which is titled The Code. It was written by co-showrunner and executive producer Andrew Chambliss & staff writer Alex Delyle and directed by Tara Nicole Weyr. This was a well-acted episode, with interesting new characters, but beyond that, the episode falls apart. For me, the plot of this episode was one of the weakest of the series, and maybe the entire franchise. How does Morgan not wake up even once while the truck he is sleeping in is being driven from Texas to Mississippi??? Trust me, I recently drove a truck 1200 miles across several states, and there is no way Morgan could have slept through it without being drugged. What were these characters doing BEFORE they met Morgan? Were Sarah and Wendell driving a different truck? If they weren’t transporting these boxes, how did they know all the routes? What about Jim? How was Jim going to become “rich” in the apocalypse if he never left the brewery? It goes on and on from there. Listen to the episode for more. Ratings were down slightly… Ratings for The Code were a 0.61 in the 18-49 demographic with 1.827 million viewers, down from last week‘s 0.63 and 1.855 million viewers. Charts below. That’s it for The Code! Please leave your feedback for Fear the Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 12, titled Weak, by 6 PM Eastern/5 PM Central on Tuesday, September 4, 2018. The best way to submit feedback is on our Facebook group. Other Fun Stuff Completely Unrelated to The Code! I also took a few minutes to give an AMC Premiere update. It does not let you watch past seasons of shows, which really sucks. I continue to have authentication issues. Although I had downloaded a copy of this week’s episode on my phone through the app, which I was planning to watch on my lunch break, the app wouldn’t let me watch the episode because it wasn’t authenticating. I don’t know if the problem lies with Spectrum or AMC, but it led to a bad user experience. If you want to help pay for the editing of this and other podcasts, I mentioned a while back that you can donate credits to my Auphonic account, which I use to make these episodes sound so good! That link is https://auphonic.com/donate_credits?user=bmeloche. Subscribe to us Please remember to subscribe to us on

Talking Through The Code!!! On this episode of Fear the Walking Dead Talk Through, we discuss Fear the Walking Dead Season 4 Episode 11, which is titled The Code. It was written by co-showrunner and executive producer Andrew Chambliss & staff writer Alex Delyle and directed by Tara Nicole Weyr. This was a well-acted episode, with interesting new characters, but beyond that, the episode falls apart. For me, the plot of this episode was one of the weakest of the series, and maybe the entire franchise. How does Morgan not wake up even once while the truck he is sleeping in is being driven from Texas to Mississippi??? Trust me, I recently drove a truck 1200 miles across several states, and there is no way Morgan could have slept through it without being drugged. What were these characters doing BEFORE they met Morgan? Were Sarah and Wendell driving a different truck? If they weren’t transporting these boxes, how did they know all the routes? What about Jim? How was Jim going to become “rich” in the apocalypse if he never left the brewery? It goes on and on from there. Listen to the episode for more. Ratings were down slightly… Ratings for The Code were a 0.61 in the 18-49 demographic with 1.827 million viewers, down from last week‘s 0.63 and 1.855 million viewers. Charts below. That’s it for The Code! Please leave your feedback for Fear the Walking Dead, Season 4 Episode 12, titled Weak, by 6 PM Eastern/5 PM Central on Tuesday, September 4, 2018. The best way to submit feedback is on our Facebook group. Other Fun Stuff Completely Unrelated to The Code! I also took a few minutes to give an AMC Premiere update. It does not let you watch past seasons of shows, which really sucks. I continue to have authentication issues. Although I had downloaded a copy of this week’s episode on my phone through the app, which I was planning to watch on my lunch break, the app wouldn’t let me watch the episode because it wasn’t authenticating. I don’t know if the problem lies with Spectrum or AMC, but it led to a bad user experience. If you want to help pay for the editing of this and other podcasts, I mentioned a while back that you can donate credits to my Auphonic account, which I use to make these episodes sound so good! That link is https://auphonic.com/donate_credits?user=bmeloche. Subscribe to us Please remember to subscribe to us on

A New Approach to Decision Making for Nonprofits with Jim Dygert Interview Transcript Hugh Ballou: Greetings, it's Hugh Ballou and Russell Dennis. Russell, good day to you, sir. Russell Dennis: Happy Tuesday, the last Tuesday of August. Welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. We have a brilliant financial mind here today in the form of young Jim Dygert. He is going to talk to us about money, something some of us get a little uncomfortable with, but we always have to keep in mind. Hugh: Oh, Jim Dygert. Tell us about yourself please. Jim Dygert: Good day. I began a journey after college with a little operation called the U.S. Treasury Department. I scored very high in some adaptation skills that I had, which allowed me to move into what they call a systems analyst. As a systems analyst, I am looking for not only the repeated process steps inside of an organization or an activity, but I am also looking for the aberrations that are caused when things don't work right. With that, I was advanced to be an examiner for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is a division of the U.S. Treasury. They're charged with establishing the solvency and liquidity of our entire national banking system. When I was doing my work there, we were doing the things that ultimately are now considered stress test. The ability for a financial institution tor any organization to behave according to its mandate, its vision, and its mission, and its purpose such that it becomes sustainable. I learned the term “sustainability” long before it was applied to the green world of sustainable businesses beyond economics. I learned it from the standpoint of what we call triple bottom line and the ability for an operation to not only create cash flow in those organizations that do create cash flow, or to serve and store the cash flow so that it might be provided to it in the world efforts and the arena of, say, nonprofits, where there may be a grant or sponsors or contributors that are allowing those funds to be available to pursue a particular goal and vision or mission. In that process of learning systems dynamics and systems analysis and procedural process steps and mapping of flow of work force behaviors, ultimately in the last 15 or 20 years, the industry that's applied to, I wanna say consulting, but not really, the work I do is not really consulting. It does give consul, and it does give a procedural step. We actually have built a non-technology-based, non-IT-based, non-software-based procedural process steps for risk mitigation. In effect, the decision-making skills that any organization needs to go through, whomever is stewarding the direction of that organization, needs to have a tool set for discerning and determining what are the best decisions to make. Now there is a lot of prior work we all say that we stand on the shoulders of giants who came before us. There is a lot of prior work in this industry. But no one has taken the position that we have, that we create what we call a mirror and complement to the chart of activities or the chart of accounts that is associated with financial statements. I think you'll agree, and your audience is probably familiar with, financial statements. Whether it's a personal solopreneur that needs to have a financial statement and does have one, or an enterprise or organization, whether they are for profit or whether they are not for profit, those financial statements are often the story that is told of the history of that organization's activities. To be able to read that story is much like reading a language. Understanding the nuances of how those outcomes came to exist is the story which we dive into. We give the real practical, actionable, practitionable events that allows the decision-maker, again, whether it's a solopreneur or all the way through to a larger organization. We have worked with very large organizations with more than 2,000 employees. The process works because it does what we would call- it goes beyond business process management. Some people may have heard of things like Adjul or Balanced Score Card or Sig Sigma or a whole arena of disciplines that approach and help to describe the inter-working relationships that go on inside of an organization because an organization is a living, breathing entity. It goes and lives in essence beyond the work force. It creates it. Hopefully it does. Whether it's a proprietor who built something and some day steps away, because they have sold it or it grew up, we have worked with employee stock option programs where employees have purchased the operations that were created by an original founder. We have worked on mergers and acquisitions where a company is going to be absorbed by someone else or merges, and there is a cultural clash that goes on between them. Oftentimes, cultural clashes are merely an outcome of not sufficient information and not sufficient communications. There is a whole arena of work in that environment. We encapsulate that. We encapsulate financial literacy and mastery of financial statements, and we encapsulate this entire process of organizational behavior and created a mirror and complement to the chart of accounts that mirrors and complements what we call a chart of activities. When we do that, we get a true line of sight between the behavior inside the organization and the financial outcomes it produces. From there, we can create performance and projections. Hugh: Russell, what is that spark in your interest? You work in the financial area. What kind of interest does that spark by you? Russell: One of the keys to being able to make money in nonprofits is to tie a story to it. Money tells a story. As you said, it has a language of its own, and people can tie- I like that statement: chart of activities. It's COA. In painting a picture for people that support you, it's important to be able to talk about how what they're contributing is making a difference or an impact in the lives of other people. Being able to follow that activity is important. As we teach here at SynerVision, the money should be tied to the plans. All of those numbers mean something. All of it has a place, as all of your activities have a place and should have a place. Unpack that a little bit for us. People will sit there and look at a chart of accounts and think of a budget. What is a good example of an account that becomes activity? If you were to take a certain set of items off of that chart of activities and relate it to a chart of accounts, what would those things be, and what kind of story would they tell? Jim: Sure, that is exactly what the process begins to do. We actually map those, and we end up with a value creation map. The value creation map is indicative of the collection of activities. It is not just usually a single person or a single node that ends up impacting the financial direction of the organization. Either the past, or if we intend to change its future. We are actually looking at that collection of things that may drive the results we are looking for. For instance, we may have in a nonprofit as you say the source of funds coming from an outside environment. We don't have to have operational activities to drive source of funds the way a product or service company does. But we still have an activity that might be needed to raise funds or to maintain funds or to continuously create an additional flow of funds. That behavior activity, as a group of things that are done, end up being the driving factors that will of course show up instead of income like a for-profit company, it will show up in the direct revenue sourcing. Russell: This sounds like an interesting hybrid between a spreadsheet and a value proposition map, for example. Jim: Exactly. You're capturing the concept of what this is. The process is rather definitive. We define the exact ways in which things are done in order to solicit and create the organizational alignment because as we all know, whether it's a for-profit or nonprofit organization, if we don't have alignment of vision, purpose, and mission, we don't have the right contribution of human energy in order to get the things accomplished we need to, whether it's run a particular campaign or do a particular event or maintain the back office in some way. We go through a process that first aligns people. Secondly, through that alignment process, there is a dissection or depiction by the individual parties of what are the value creation activities inside the organization that create a thrilled and delighted customer? We can use the term analogy “customer” in any vernacular we like. Who is our customer in this? Who is our customer in that? When we go through that process, we are looking for the hand-ups and hand-offs of the things that are going on, the action steps, the behaviors and activities that then can be mapped and charted and now because of that grouping and analysis work, we can find out what impact it has. If it's on traditional financial statements or a nonprofit's financial statement, now we can begin to tie that together. We have actually redefined what is called a KPI. People have heard of that: key performance indicator. When the KPIs were first identified and created, they had a very significant and purposeful meaning. Over the years, KPIs have slipped a little bit. The integrity of what a KPI is has been lost and is a minutiae almost inside of so many other disciplines. Sometimes today in a manufacturing world, a KPI company might be how many widgets we produce today, this week, or this month, or this quarter. Or how many cartons did we ship off the loading dock. Those are certainly performance indicators, but they are not what we call keyperformance indicators, and they are not master measures of what kinds of things are being done inside the organization. When I say how things are being done, not just what is being done. When we apply the process steps to which we derive key performance indicators, first of all, we are looking for an operational data point, something that we can demonstrably describe in an operational statement, and how is that measured against a financial data point, and that data point may show up in the financial statements. Once we have those two, now we are looking for discernment as to whether it's historic activities are in line with where we want to take the direction of the organization, or they may not be, and what changes do we need to make in order to impact the future growth of the organization? There are some similarities in for-profits and nonprofits. Not always. But in some for-profit businesses, they have a board of directors. The board of directors may be implementing operational directives that the chief executive officer or a hired president may need to have as a mandate to move forward to directionalize the growth of that organization. It's coming from the board. Similarly, nonprofits may have an operating manager or an ED or a managing director that is stewarding the direction of the organization, but they may also have a board that has some mandates to what the outcomes we are looking for are. As the decision-maker and the go-to process person, the president or the managing director, they have to make decisions regularly on what is the direction that the organization is going in. Is it consistent with the mandate? And it changes. Hugh: Russell opened up a good topic. I'm sorry, I thought that was a period, it was a comma. He opened up this fascinating topic, this channel. You have delved into the data. It is almost like a three-dimensional way of looking at a static document. I find that there is remarkable similarities in entrepreneurs, whether they are working for a for-profit or for-purpose enterprise. Virtually, the board of directors has financial oversight responsibility. Financial oversight and governance are the two big ones. Russell's area of work is high-performance nonprofits that generate money. My work overlaps with that. Our work overlaps each other. It's how we generate the culture of high performance. Jim, what occurs to me as you are explaining this, is the similarity is the people running the organization don't really understand the numbers and what they mean. There is a fundamental lack of understanding of the balance sheet and the P&L budget and they don't really know what a cash flow projection could be used for. They also don't realize the metrics you are putting on the plate. You are measuring what we do, how we do it, but we also need to measure the results of what we are doing. That is the real meat. Speak in that direction a little bit. You are creating a whole new picture. We named this interview – I took the liberties in saying it's “a new systems approach of financial decision-making for nonprofits.” What you are opening up is a whole new paradigm of how we, the governance of this organization, make effective financial decisions. Jim: Correct. Because it's not just financial decisions. We have non-financial outcomes as well. That may be job satisfaction, enjoyment in what we do, the contribution of time and talent, besides the treasure people may be giving to a nonprofit or a for-purpose business activity. We are looking at that holistic approach from an operations- how does the grease move between the wheels? If we called the money the cash flow, the grease that moves between the wheels, how does it get there? Where does it go? How is it used? What decisions processes do we have to go through in order to implement change and/or growth and/or strategies that we wouldn't otherwise be able to project forward without the understanding of how much grease there is, where it comes from, and where is it best used? Because this is a decision process tool to help discern the activities inside the organization that will drive the organization to where its intended destination is. A lot of budget process steps are analysis work to discern how much did we do last year, what is our deviation differences between the few years before and where we want to go? We set goals as dreams, as visions, as desires. We begin to move there. We don't have the tools to stay on track. We don't want that train to jump the track. We have to lay down the track in a way that is consistent with the activities of the past and consistent with our intended outcomes and set the mile posts and the signs on the track ahead to ensure that it stays on the track. If it starts to get off the track, which happens, how do we know it's getting off the track before we derail it? Long before we have derailed it so that we can make sure we are staying on track and staying focused with our vision and purpose. You had it right, Hugh. This is like a three-dimensional view of a single-dimension financial statement. When a business operator looks at their financial statements, oftentimes, the individual who is running that organization or that entity has a little depth into it, has a second level view into it. But until that second-level view can be catalyzed and articulated to the other members of the organization, such that the other members have full unanimity and an understanding of what is happening inside the organization with the value creation activities that create a thrilled and delighted customer, all those things that begin to manifest and create the organization as an entity, that is your second level of depth. Your third level of depth is once that takes place, we need a loop back system. We need a way in which those activities are not only understood, but they are inculcated into a system in a way in which those behavior traits begin to manifest by everyone inside the organization. The deeper we take it through a work force environment, the more sustainable results that we can end up achieving. Believe me, the beauty of this is it's not particularly hard or difficult. It's not tech, and it's not software. These are process activities that can take a very limited amount of time when we implement them in the strategy we have created. Hugh: Tag on that a minute that was a direction I was hoping to go. As you explained it, I am melting down here. This looks like it's really hard. For Russell, it's a piece of cake. For me, it sounds hard. Can you give- This is one thing you can implement without breaking a sweat. Jim: I will use an example where a chief financial officer or president of a company, a for-purpose organization, has a viewpoint of the operational activities of that endeavor. We begin to do a process map and let them unpack that tacit amount, that information we have in their head. How do we do this? How do we operate? When that is done, we usually go to the next key performer inside the organization. In a for-profit, sometimes that is a controller or a CPA or the CFO. We get their alignment. We get their vision of it. Once we get unanimity between the two, then we can begin to move that out into the next realm of responsibilities: senior teams, the core teams of a for-purpose organization. As that begins to become a real map, a real value creation activity map, now we begin to tie those things into, in their case, their financial statement, whatever that financial statement is. The system, we have used it for early-stage start-up organizations that are less than three years in operations, and it does have tremendous value, and we can get alignment. The best use of what we have accomplished is in larger organizations that have been established for a period of time and have a lot of working modules. There is a theory of domains that say in an ordered and in an unordered states. Ordered states are things like simple and complementary. Unordered are things like chaos and complex. We work in that world of simple and complexity. Because of that, every organization has intended activities. Therefore, we have a loop. Once we know there is intended activities, we have a loop. When we have a loop, we can define the elements that support that loop. If I can bring it back down to that working relationship for you to understand, Hugh, it is simply diagnosing the activities inside the organization. Looking for systems that are created. Some of the best activity that we have applied this to is there is a thing called the theory of constraints. If you constrain a volume of water and constrict it, you are going to reduce the amount of flow the water has. You may increase the speed, but potentially you are restricting that. When we applied this process using the theory of constraints, we are applying it to the aberrations in the system. Remember I said something about my background as a systems analyst of aberrations in systems. That is what we look for. When we apply it to an organization, we are looking for those things that just don't connect well, the things we call disconnects and strengths and problematic areas. The things that keep people staying up late at night, those little worrisome areas that say, “I wish I could fix this.” This process begins to unpack and peel back the activities that create the process which are the intended outcomes. We define those unintended outcomes that are the consequences. Then we can reapply the same process to discern what are the intended outcomes we want and giving us the gauge point that behavior statement, data point, on top of a financial data point. Now we can begin to monitor and make sure the activities are what carry forward. We are a big believer in organizations should run under what we call non-directive leadership. We have gone through the development stage in organizations where directive leadership is command control, rank and file, orderly activities. I am not saying that's being replaced. There is still a lot of need for the process steps that that has been built on. But in today's environment, to become nimble and to be able to adept itself as a living entity in an environment that is also changing, the better you can encapsulate your living environment and ensure you are in command and control of that environment, means you can be nimble. Command and control in that sense means that you have diversified some authority and moved that authority down through the rank and file so that decisions can be made by people who have the responsibilities and then need the authority to make those decisions. We look at non-directive leadership in that the hierarchy of work force, be it up through managers and presidents, is all about red light, green light, or yellow light projects. The projects are being brought from the lower level and brought in as saying we believe this is a better way to accomplish what we intend to accomplish. Here is how we propose to change what we have happening to improve that process. Senior personnel will either then red light the process because it is not acceptable for whatever reasons, yellow light it with exceptions being like “I'll green light it once you have these answers. We have to look at the system elsewhere and see where we have some aberrations that might take place,” or green light it, “You did a great job. We don't see anywhere wrong with this. We have checked, and we believe you have a solution to a problem and this is the way to mitigate it. Our blessings. Implement this process.” Hugh: Russell, you are contemplating some of these themes. What is brewing in that good-looking shiny head of yours? Russell: A lot of people are jealous of my naturally curly hair, but we will save that for another episode. What I am thinking, because that is the third piece of building what I call a high-performance nonprofit, is staying on track. Having good tools to measure is critical. I am going to ask you about how you get around some of this overwhelm because as you talked about, these things can look overwhelming, especially to somebody who is in a small nonprofit. What I look to do, and I remember meeting a young man by the name of Brendan Brouchard who talked about creating tools. His theory was that they should be easy to access, understand, and use. I have some things that are not necessarily scientific, but it gives nonprofit leaders ways to measure things, just like a profile of a donor or a customer, very basic things. I find that with tools, if the tools kind of flow into the work that people are already doing, it becomes easier for them to actually access them and use them. I think there is a bit of resistance. I know you are working with larger systems. I can't imagine how much you see. What I was going to ask you was because a lot of people, their eyes will glaze over. How do you break down this need in a way that people sort of get it and convince them that it's really in their best interest to use it? There is that human resistance to things that look like they will take more effort than the benefits produced. How do you work around that? What are some good ways to talk to people, especially nonprofit leaders about the importance of this and some things they can do that don't look so large and overwhelming? Jim: Good point. Here's as simple as it can be. When we look at an organization, any kind, no matter its size or purpose, there are four major activities. We get all caught up in all kinds of strategy sessions, but there are four activities. There is sourcing and discerning who our client is, whatever that client is, for-purpose or for-profit. There is servicing and ensuring that that client, prospect, customer is cared for. There is research and development. Then there is back office. Our proposition in the way we have designed and created this simply follows those four arenas. When you look at your whole existence, and you discern yourself in those environments, now, yes, we can get into all kinds of permutations and chart of accounts and 300 line items and financial statements that come off as reams of data because it is a big organization. If we really step back and look at it and say what we are doing here, why are we doing this, what are those elements or arenas that say if we could encapsulate and roll up all those charts of accounts into categorical arenas, those are the four arenas we would find. It is possible to have other minor arenas. But our contention is that is not the focus and motivation of what the organization was intended to accomplish. It may have grown into some of those other arenas along the way. They can be carved out or pushed away or sold. Maybe they developed so deeply that it was a great idea, and it's time for it to carve out or to break away and become its own existence. We'd have to nurture it and support it along the way. But when we look at those, at the aberrations and not the real content, we now are putting them in the right perspective, and we can stay focused on the right content in the right context so that we can actually create operational behavior. Intended organizational, operational behavior for intended outcomes. Russell: This is all very exciting stuff. Because you can get lost in the weeds with software and tools and what's out there. When you are working with people, what would you say is the primary deliverable they get that they can take and use to, once this system is built, keep themselves on track? Jim: Perfect. Well asked. If we hold onto those four arenas, and you simply look at each of those arenas and give yourself four or five activities in each of those arenas that constitute the major activities of that arena, what are the most dominant things that go on in that arena? Whether it's sourcing or profiling or understanding what our client perspective is, or whether it's the supporting and product and service delivery, or whether it's R&D, or back office, if we looked at five or six major activities inside that organization, they will be able to map out for themselves. This could be a six-person organization. It doesn't have to be 6,000. This can be a very small or ongoing activity. Once they begin to find that, now you are really fine-tuning who is doing the things. How many hats does somebody have to wear to get these done in a small organization? When we get into bigger ones, we are just carving them out and breaking them down deeper. We look at the chunk-it-up to the top. Look at it from that 10,000-foot view and simply understand the mechanics of what is going on. When you get those mechanics down, you can actually create a map. We call that the value creation map. Those are the four or six things in each arena that are done to make a thrilled and delighted customer. Russell: That is brilliant. At what point do they have a number of items in those four arenas, is an organization in danger of losing its effectiveness? Is there an optimum number of activities under each area? I'm certain probably that there are certain things that are most important to each one. What would you say an optimum number is in terms of the effective span of control and efficiency? Jim: I don't know there is an absolute way to discern that because different things do different things. For us to look at things, whether it is a 6,000-employee organization or 60, we still maintain there is probably an optimum number to define for yourself. A master measure of defining, this is what we call, that leads to the KPI, that master measure is the pinnacle of activities, whether it encompasses several thousand people or just a few people underneath it. We do look for an optimum. When we build a chart of activities, we are looking for just 20-22 activities. That's it. That constitute well over 98% of the activities inside the organization. Russell: I was just thinking about those KPIs. They are different for everybody, for every industry. Those KPIs, with a nonprofit, your donor, your funding sources, there are a lot of other people that help define what those are. The people that get your services. A lot of definition and customization. Jim: We also believe a KPI is something that expires over time. When we build a KPI, we are building the data point for the problem, the theory of constraints. We are building a data point over a financial outcome point. We are looking to improve that KPI to the point where the problem has been negated. It's not a problem anymore. It's gone away. Or another problem becomes more prevalent and more important. We rotate KPIs over time in having a history base of what those KPI measures are and maintaining an index of those. Now we have assessment tools of what we have done over time and what the process steps of the organization have been. It literally builds the generic environment that allows the organization to thrive and survive over time and be nimble moving into its future. Hugh: For some people who aren't familiar with KPIs, give us an example of what some typical KPIs might be. As a group, we are looking at a staff, board, committees, volunteers in a for-purpose enterprise. As we look at the KPIs and the measurability of our processes and outcomes, it would seem that would be a way to engage the culture in a performance standard they have not otherwise envisioned. Jim: Sure. Let's use something that has typically been done, and is probably done regularly still, in a for-purpose organization. Let's say they do something called a fundraiser. They are doing an activity. I don't care if it's a 5k run or a pie-eating contest. They have done this before. They know what they are likely to redo again this next season. They are planning for it. In their planning steps, they begin to find out how many people do we have to do this, how many people do we have to do that, how many things do we have to do. The KPI in that activity would be something more along the lines of do we have the punch list created for what we need to accomplish? Surprisingly enough, that simple activity is usually where most of our consult ends up being and mentoring being when someone is failing at an activity. Are you doing the basic block and tackling? If we can now say we need to have an overall planning strategy that constitutes the punch list necessary that defines all the activities before we go in and assign activities, we need to make sure we have a reconcilable document effectively that says now we know how many we are going to assign for this and for that. Now we have a better predictability of the results happening the way we had intended. Now we can define that against the outcome which is how much did we accrue that day or weekend or five-day event? That seems rudimentary. But it does give you an idea that we are looking at a facts of activities. Not the who, not necessarily the what, but about the how. Are we defining the how clearly enough that we can answer it so that we can provide the who that ends up coming out to be the what? In a for-profit business, it could be as simple, and in a for-purpose business, let's say we are not having good success in driving traffic to our website, and we don't have a good conversion rate. People are not hitting our landing page; it's not doing well. Do we have an overall master plan that includes the process steps associated with all the right things necessary to make that work? Or did we just venture into it with a hope, a wish, a dream, a desire to have this outcome? It might sound like tediousness, but we are not talking about the actual things that need to be done. We are talking about defining what needs to be done. Once you define what needs to be done, now you can have the measurement tool to say are we doing that? Hugh: Let's connect the dots. What Russ and I are good at is creating the strategy and a strategic plan, what we call in SynerVision a solution map. It's fundamentally the same. Where do you want to be, and how are you going to get there? Subsets of that, we have milestones that have price tags on them. We have to generate funding for those. We have a marketing channel – we have to let people know what we are doing so they will fund us. The people who attend our events, the people we want on our board or committees, know what we are doing. We are coming to the last ten minutes here. Give a short answer here, and then we will have a wrap and you will get the final tip before we cut loose this interview today. How do we connect all those different parts? Jim: How do we connect them? That was the question. Hugh: Your tool providing, is it a way to take what we think we want to do on paper, what we actually want to do, and integrating it. Does your process help us connect those dots? Jim: Yeah. In that we are looking at the actual activities that are being performed today. A little bit of what you were describing was a proactive going-to-do thing. Did I garner that a little bit when you said if you looked at the strategy, we want this to happen so we have to budget for it? We are applying it in the realm of is that activity working now? Because if it is, that is how we are applying our systematic approach. If it's not working now, that becomes hypothetical. It only allows us to accept the framework, but we don't have the loopback in the financial outcomes yet. In our environment, for what we are doing, we have to have the loop back. It's a quad-loop activity instead of a dual loop or a triple loop. By the time we get done, we have to have that connectability between operations and the outcomes. Hugh: That's missing often, isn't it? Jim: If it's an ongoing organization, it's there. If it is an early-stage start-up or brand new or doesn't have enough history to it, it is extremely difficult to tie this together. We can do theory, and we can get people to understand. They can adapt the process steps that allows for the alignment to take place. That vision forward, that alignment that goes on. That's good. But in order to create the line of sight reconcilement to the financial statements, if there is none that exists, or it's too early stage, we don't have that history yet. Russell: That's why I built that four steps to performing a high-performance nonprofit course because you have to start somewhere. You have to begin where you are. By having some tools that you can take and start tracking certain things, you can build that history. It's important to build that history. If you are talking about a start-up and you have probably come across some that are looking at raising large amounts of money, it's critical to have that system in place, I would think. Jim: It's about the source and use of funds. If we go back to that value map, and we go back to 20-22 activities within those four arenas, anybody can do that. Start-ups can do it. Early-stage developments can do it. Ongoing activities that haven't had a huge history yet, anybody can do that. When you step back and look at and get real about if this is what we are doing here, now that you can begin to do that, you will channel the activities, that precious time, and that precious talent that is wanting to support that idea, concept, or project that is being launched, now can devote their attentions to the right things and minimize those things that might be important but are not critical. Now we can spend energy and time in the right things. Hugh: Russell, I bet you're thinking what I'm thinking is that these things are highlighting some of the things that donors want to know about. Russell: When somebody comes to you, somebody may be listening here, and we hope people get listening here get value out of it. That's why we do this work. It's very important. When somebody approaches you and says, Okay, well, I think I understand in theory why I need this. Where do I start? Where is it that you tell them to start? Or you begin the process so that they can move in the direction of implementing this system. Jim: Again, working from the inside out, we start with the chief steward of the organization. Whoever is the responsible party for making the focused decisions of what to do here. We interview them and have them unpack that story that is that chart of activities, those 20-22 activities inside those four areas. Once we unpack that, we begin to hone it a bit. More importantly, since we are not really ever talking to people who are solopreneurs, someone who has a few people around them, we begin to go to the next responsible party. Without the answers provided by the first, we allow them to do the process maps themselves. Then we begin to get the alignment. When we get the alignment, now we begin to say where is our energy and time? As that system begins to manifest out into larger circles, from that alignment process, once we have alignment, we can begin to make measure. Depending on what we are measuring against, whether it's the history of the story and the financials or whether it's what our intended outcomes are, now we can at least begin to apply it. Hugh: A lot of good intentions. This backs it out with some tracking. I think this is an energy field where people understand what's going on, and it begins to build the collaborative energy in the organization. Your website is Management Operating Systems, MOSUpgrade.com. Spell out the word “upgrade.” People can find out more there and contact you at that site. *Sponsor message from Rock Paper Simple and SynerVision Leadership* Jim, what do you want to leave people with today? Jim: Because of the nature of your questions, I know you wanted me to simplify this. I believe we have. I may not have explained it quite that well, from the standpoint of it's very, a professional can do things that look so simple. When we take a look at your organizational activities, we really do look at the complexity of every organization, but we simplify it. If I can leave one message behind, it is that this ain't so hard. This ain't so hard. As I said, we built it on the shoulders of giants. There is a lot of research and data behind this that proves the process and theory. We have some practical demonstrations of outcomes that have worked for some good-sized organizations. MOSUpgrade, which is Management Operating Systems, Upgrade.com. You can find me there listed as one of the team members. We do have an organization to implement this with some specialized talents. Directly, people can contact me easily on JimDygert@zoho.com. Love to be able to walk some people through this. Our real challenge is to find people who have a real desire to impact and are having some difficulty making that happen. Hugh: Russell, let's say goodbye. Russell: Jim, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much. It's always important to measure what you're doing. It's not rocket science. Contact Jim. Go to SynerVisionLeadership.org or RussellDennis.com, and there are tools for you to do all of these things. Many thanks again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Through his life in martial arts, Jim Bouchard transformed himself from dropout, drug abuse, and failure to successful entrepreneur and a Black Belt. Over 30 years of practice, studying, and teaching, he has developed the tools needed to master life, career, and business. As a speaker, trainer, and author of “THINK Like a BLACK BELT” and “THE SENSEI LEADER”, Jim is in demand internationally among corporate and conference audiences. He appears regularly on TV and radio including BBC Worldview and FOX News. What you’ll learn about in this episode Jim’s background Some of the greatest gifts that martial arts have given Jim How mastery is about getting somewhere, not about being somewhere The techniques Jim uses to stay on course for the day The importance of developing the habit of discipline Why you need to ask yourself “Am I where I want to be today?” Why, as leaders, you need to let people fail constructively Why you need to respect your core values to do the difficult things Why you need to be comfortable with uncertainty Why Jim feels that success is nothing more than the product of abundance How best to connect with Jim: Website: www.thatblackbeltguy.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jimbouchard

In this episode, Mickey interviews a senior leader of Conversant, Jim Motroni, on his thoughts of why annual performance reviews might actually decrease performance. Leaders must learn hot to be partners for improvement. Learn more about how leaders influence the performance and wellbeing of other people. Working with humans can be unpredictable, but the outcomes are sure to be much more positive through open lines of communication between leaders and the people they work with. Highlights The only people who should care about learning how to influence are people who have ever been responsible for others. So basically, everyone. Dominating in the moment may seem like the easiest possibility, but it means backward growth in the long run that impedes productive aims. The antidote to the misguided use power is connecting people from your own humanity and the humanity of the people around you. The fundamental role of leaders is to create self-supervising, committed people in action. Have conversations as soon as the need is apparent, because the longer you wait, the greater the risk of having an easier conversation turns into a more difficult—or even crisis—conversation. Seek to inspire open, frequent dialogue rather than avoid the difficult conversations.  Instead of punitive assessment measures that may actually hinder growth and productivity, reviews can be an invitation to work in partnership toward collective improvement. The Responsibility of Leaders to Influence 0:59 Mickey Connolly: Today I have with me one of our esteemed colleagues, James Joseph Motroni. Jim and I have known each other for 22 years. It was March of 1994, and in all that time I’ve known you, you’ve had a varied career including being a bank executive and then counsel to over 75 CEOs. Jim is a senior leader here at Conversant, where we work on how the human interactions and big systems affect the quality of people’s lives and the results they produce. 1:56 Mickey: A particular area of interest for you is how leaders influence the performance of other people. 2:10 Jim Motroni: This idea is one of the first challenges I was introduced to when I was in a leadership role. I thought, “There has to be a secret formula for how this happens.” A lot of what we do in business is anticipatable that yields to formula approaches and standard ways of doing things, but the challenge of working with human beings never really changes. 2:50 Jim: Since then, I’ve been a student of what it takes to create great results, but it is a never ending challenge to look at how this happens. I’m in that game from a personal and professional point of view. 3:23 Mickey: It’s interesting that we bring our families into the conversation, because the desire to influence the impact of others is also deeply embedded in the notion of parenting. The only people who should care about this are people who have ever been responsible for others. When we have the responsibility for the wellbeing and performance of other people, we can take that on in ways that are constructive and ways that are destructive. Human Connection as the Antidote to Corruption 4:05 Mickey: In our leaders, bosses and bastards trio of ways of being, leaders evoke contribution. They bring out the best in people and they help them operate at the top of their talents. Bosses issue instructions, which may or may not help someone operate. Bastards issue demands and provide no support whatsoever. 4:42 Jim: There’s something that encourages us to ignore what we know about how human beings coordinate and inspire each other. Something gets lost when we take on authority. When we have power over someone, we can act like the rules don’t apply to us. Sometimes we forgot the basic principles of how humans get things done, inspire others, evoke the best in each other, create the kind of ongoing relationships that can handle increasingly difficult breakdowns. 5:21 Jim: Sometimes we rely on what looks to be the easy way out, which is to be a boss or a bastard. We may put up this veneer of, “I told you to do it, I dominated you or I had authority so I could make you do it.” 5:42 Jim: Those of us who have ever been parents or had parents will attest that sometimes that feels like the easiest way. But that’s one of those times when fast becomes slow. It actually moves us backwards in terms of our long-term ability to turn things out. 6:02 Jim: Leaders understand that they can use authority and power, but they use it judiciously and they use it inside of the desire to grow a relationship and evoke the best of what each person brings to the table. 6:26 Mickey: Jim is the co-author of The Vitality Imperative: How Connected Leaders and Their Teams Achieve More with Less Time, Money and Stress. You just reminded me of the Lord Acton quote that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The antidote to power is community—connecting people from their humanity and the humanity of others. 7:02 Mickey: Senior leaders can create development community around them, where people are free to give feedback, say what they see and report the impact the leader is having (whether it’s positive or negative). If leaders promote an environment where leadership occurs in an open network of relationships and everyone has a right to give their view, that helps us maintain the humility that ought to come with the opportunity to be that influential in the lives of other people. 7:46 Jim: As we work inside of organizations that are attempting to manage that dynamic, part of the structure of how they manage it actually works against that sense of community you’re talking about. I’m referring to the challenge of having quarterly or annual performance reviews. There’s too much time between when we talk about how things are going. 8:17 Jim: One thing we talk about here at Conversant is how we can have conversations early and often that keep us at “Point Easy,” the time when it’s relatively easy to have a conversation to bring us back on track. Community is built piece by piece with frequent interactions. If you try to build it on a quarterly or annual basis, it works against how humans operate. 8:46 Jim: Humans like to be at Point Easy, where small adjustments add up to big adjustments over a long term, and where talking about where we are frequently takes out the sting, fear and disconnection the times when we look to adjust performance. 9:00 Jim: This is adjusting performance and results in both directions: I want feedback from people who work with and for me and I want to give feedback to the people I work with and for. Building community sometimes flies in the face of the structures that we’ve set up in organizations that no longer scale or work for how we work anymore. Inspiring Contribution through Autonomy and Transparency 9:27 Mickey: Over the years that you’ve counseled CEOs, it’s likely really frequent that leaders want to talk about the influence they have over others. What have you found over the years about how senior leaders can inspire the contribution of others and cause improvement without domination? 10:30 Jim: One is to have a sense of how I can connect a person to what our largest purposes are. There is an idea I reflect back on a lot that our colleague, Tom Knighton, introduced me to in a slightly different way: The role of leaders fundamentally is to create self-supervising, committed people in action. 10:58 Jim: If create people that are self-supervising, they don’t need to keep coming back to us. If people are committed, they’re personally inspired and in the game so that when they run into a roadblock, they’re still disciplined and resilient enough to work through it. When they’re in action, people aren’t waiting to be told what to do. 11:22 Jim: If you look at that as a framework for how to create self-supervising, committed people in action, part of it is that they know what we’re trying to do as an organization so their efforts can move in that direction. 11:42 Jim: The second thing that leaders need to be able to do is to understand this unique individual in front of them and what inspires him or her and what support he or she needs to make this work. 12:00 Jim: The third thing is that leadership is a reciprocal arrangement. We are both getting smarter as we work together. I’m as interested in what you see that informs my leadership as I am with my capacity to tell you what to do. 12:20 Mickey: That’s an interesting triad to connect people to a purpose that’s important to the enterprise and one they can admire, to look at how their unique needs are and how that person can contribute to that purpose and to contribute to one another. That’s a pretty good recipe. Open Conversation Rather Than Avoidance 12:24 Mickey: I’m going to look at the other side of the coin. Those are things to be for. I think there are also things to be against and I’d like to look at the relationship between them and see how they apply to each other. 12:59 Mickey: Our friend David Dotlich talks about a senior executive he knows, the CEO of a global corporation who could not bring himself to tell his executive assistant that his personal hygiene was so bad people didn’t want to be in meetings with him because of the smell, which had been going on for months. 13:29 Mickey: That story reminds me of how many things we see and don’t act on. You were talking about Point Easy earlier, and there are so many things we avoid. 13:43 Mickey: I was with some executives last week and I had to manage my own reactions. There is part of their company that is not going well relative to their strategic commitments and the people who can make the difference don’t have all the facts. They don’t want to “be negative.” Senior executives saying, “Well, we could just hurt everyone’s motivation.” Okay, so keep everyone feeling good while the place goes bankrupt… 14:14 Jim: “We’ll be the happiest people in the unemployment line.” 14:18 Mickey: It’s amazing how many people who are sophisticated and successful enough to get into these senior leadership positions who then shrink away from actually having open conversations with people. 14:34 Mickey: What do you say to these senior executives who seem to be otherwise competent but are afraid to actually give their people complete awareness of what is going on around them that might affect their ability to contribute? 15:30 Jim: Part of what these executives are holding as a false equivalent is that the pain of having the conversation is the flip side of the gain we have short and long term. There’s confronting that falsity. And also asking, “How do I have a conversation with this person that forwards what they care about and what we all care about together?” 16:18 Jim: That’s a different question than, “How do I give them some feedback that only hurts them in the smallest way possible?” That’s preparing for a different conversation than: “How do I give them the feedback they need to be effective in their job and satisfied in a way that has them be appreciative of the risk I took and the amount of information they get?” 16:58 Jim: It’s a more sophisticated understanding of the leader’s role than just, “My job is to do the best I can to avoid all possibility of having to stand up to fear.” No, fear and the challenges of it are the natural outgrowth of the position you’re in. 17:15 Jim: Not everyone is up for the level of leadership they’re being asked for. People aren’t always confronting what it’s really going to take to be a leader. It has them shrink from the opportunity that’s in front of them. 17:37 Mickey: One of the things we’ve seen in the nearly thirty years we’ve been looking at how leaders produce the most results per unit of time, money and stress, there are many people who get in positions of leadership and then shrink from the challenges that come with that position. 18:03 Mickey: One of the challenges of being a leader is your job is to get people connected to reality and give them the information they need to know how they’re doing relative to their own desire to make a difference. And then, provide an environment where they have access to all of the people and resources they need to improve. Moving from Formal Review to Frequent Conversation 18:24 Mickey: These are really important, informal conversational skills you were referring to. You can be with someone, can understand they’re frightened and disappointed because the results aren’t good. You can connect with someone on what is deeply important to them and help them recover their whole self, not just the scared part. 18:51 Mickey: There are some skills there. You mentioned earlier the issue about formal reviews and there are some companies doing some experiments to move away from these mid-year and end-of-year formal reviews. They’re now betting the everyday conversations are the leverage point for performance improvement. There was a study we used some years ago that showed formal performance conversations actually decreased performance. 19:32 Mickey: What is it about the formal conversations that doesn’t improve performance and what do you think is crucial for leaders if we’re going to move to this reliance on informal discussion to make a difference in the success of our organizations? 19:51 Jim: The structure that is used for a lot of these conversations actually prevent the conversations from happening. The idea is fill out this form, mark these numbers and somehow handing people the paperwork that’s headed to HR is the review and will cause the change you want. That’s nonsensical. 20:27 Jim: The preparation is great as a starting point for conversations; they are not the conversation. For people to move from annual or quarterly to way more frequent, highly leveraged conversations and discussions, it means a shift in how the conversation takes place so it really is more of a dialogue. It doesn’t depend on written sheets or checking boxes. 21:05 Jim: The second thing is to treat a review as a discussion. It goes both directions. What do you see that I don’t see? Where do I have points of view that I’m interested in getting informed and educated? How can I help shape what I see you doing as a person who works for me in a way that evokes and invites more of what you want to be excited about? Leadership as Partnership 21:30 Mickey: The formal environment creates this spirit of assessment, where you are now called into the principal’s office to be told if you are good or bad from someone who sits on high and can tell the difference. 21:50 Mickey: The reality of doing great work is we’re in it together. The way you’re speaking, it’s we are partners in improvement. Our best day is still to come, not behind us. We need each other because together we see things we can’t see by ourselves. 22:13 Mickey: That spirit you have of someone in a senior executive position an open partnership of improvement that allows all parties to contribute to one another is an act of leadership. 22:30 Mickey: The boss just fills in the forms the way you were talking about. The bastard is just annoyed and wants better people. 22:40 Jim: That’s right. “How did I get stuck with all these losers?!” 22:44 Mickey: “It’s amazing. There were a lot of these at my last company too; they must follow me.” The bastards don’t realize what they are actually procreating. 23:02 Jim: That kind of conversation doesn’t preclude the importance of corrective conversations. It’s not all a “Kumbaya” moment. 23:11 Mickey: Absolutely not. I’ve seen so many leaders do a terrific job of bringing up very difficult issues but they bring them up in the context of a purpose all parties care about, and being there to help the person make a bigger difference in they’re currently making. 23:57 Jim: Where it’s necessary, bad news doesn’t get better over time. What is important for leaders is to recognize that every day they delay moves them from Point Easy to Point Difficult to Point Crisis. 24:18 Jim: How can I engage in the conversation without having to know how it’s going to turn out and without having a clear sense of how I’m going to make difficult conversations easy. Sometimes difficult conversations are just difficult. My strong encouragement is having tough conversations is rarely as bad as we think it’s going to be, but I can almost guarantee you, not having them pushes it to a time that makes it even harder to have an outcome we can all be proud of.

Some of the latest developments in business tech you might not have heard of are competitive intelligence and predictive campaigning. Competitive intelligence keeps tabs on what the industry is saying about your company, what your competition is doing as well as your prospective and existing customers. Predictive campaigns are the latest evolution in marketing: they provide key information about customers based on thousands of data points, and show you why certain customers work with you and uncover others like them already in your database! On this episode of Grow My Revenue I have two key leaders in this area join me to talk about both of these topics and how they are shaping the future of sales and marketing. Listen to this episode and discover: - What is crowdsourcing, according to Jim? - How do you know if you are paying enough attention to your competitors? - What you should be looking for in competitive intellingence, and probably aren't. - 97% of all so-called leads never result in a sale: true or false? - What does predictive analytics actually do? - And so much more… Episode Overview On this episode Jim shares how Owler helps people spend less time gathering information on their competition and their own company's place in the market, and how Owler has turned competitive intelligence into a democracy for everyone. In the past only large companies could afford competitive analysis but with the advent of Owler and similar companies everyone can receive competitive intelligence data. Also on this episode is John Bara, a 25-year veteran of Silicon Valley who works with some of the fastest growth companies there. He is the President and Chief Founder of Mintigo. Today he explains what predictive campaigns are, and how they are at the forefront of the latest in the evolution of marketing. Predictive campaigns are the latest way for marketers to gather customer and prospect data. They are based on predictive analytics, predictive fit and intent data. Predictive analytics creates a broader profile of a person, Mintigo calls this the customer DNA. An example of this is let's say you're a tech company and you're selling software. What you know about your customers is fairly light: you know their name, title, email and and what they've bought from you, how much they paid and how long ago they bought. That's not a lot of data and it doesn't go very deep into the person. Predictive analytics would gather thousands of data points about that person and add to their profile, to help give you get a pattern of who they really are. Some examples would be: the job title of who they are hiring, what types of tech are they using, what certifications do they have (legal, regulatory, tech). You'd also find out how much they are spending on Google ads and other PPC ads, and what are their geographic trends. You have a broader, richer look at your customer. Predictive fit helps you understand those thousands of data points to find out why you are doing well with certain types of customers, and who else in your database fits that mold. It also helps you understand how to have a sales conversation with that prospect. John goes on to explain what intent data is, how it's useful as well as hi best piece of advice for marketers on this episode of Grow My Revenue. On this episode both John and Jim provide valuable revelations about the latest technology in sales and marketing, and how it can help you grow your revenue. Discover more at http://www.growmyrevenue.com/podcast/competition/

Listen Mobile:   Jim: Ryan, I know that we have come up will all kinds of high tech gadgets to keep our kids safe, but are there now devices for little baby pigs too? Ryan: Swineguard is a company that is currently going through the Iowa Startup Accelerator, and they are trying to solve the problem of mother pigs lying down on their babies. They actually have a device that listens to particular squeals from the pigs, and it then uses a belt to lift the mother up so the piglet can escape. http://siliconprairienews.com/2015/10/swineguard-protects-piglets-from-being-crushed-to-death/ Jim: How common is this problem?

This is a different Jim (How many Jims does Jerry know?), but the results are just as hilarious as in "Uncle Jim Wrecks the Toll Booth." Who will win, the rangers, the deer, or the campers? Find out with more nighttime shenanigans on Comedy Parenting!Photo Credit:"Pictograms-nps-ranger station-2" by NPS Graphics, converted by User:ZyMOS - http://www.nps.gov/hfc/carto/map-symbols.htm, Converted from PDF to SVG for the Open Icon Library. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pictograms-nps-ranger_station-2.svg#/media/File:Pictograms-nps-ranger_station-2.svg"Seattle - Discovery Park ranger John Bierlein leading nature walk, circa 1985 (14886331416)" by Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle, WA - Discovery Park ranger John Bierlein leading nature walk, circa 1985. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seattle_-_Discovery_Park_ranger_John_Bierlein_leading_nature_walk,_circa_1985_(14886331416).jpg#/media/File:Seattle_-_Discovery_Park_ranger_John_Bierlein_leading_nature_walk,_circa_1985_(14886331416).jpg

This is a different Jim (How many Jims does Jerry know?), but the results are just as hilarious as in "Uncle Jim Wrecks the Toll Booth." Who will win, the rangers, the deer, or the campers? Find out with more nighttime shenanigans on Comedy Parenting! Photo Credit: "Pictograms-nps-ranger station-2" by NPS Graphics, converted by User:ZyMOS - http://www.nps.gov/hfc/carto/map-symbols.htm, Converted from PDF to SVG for the Open Icon Library. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pictograms-nps-ranger_station-2.svg#/media/File:Pictograms-nps-ranger_station-2.svg "Seattle - Discovery Park ranger John Bierlein leading nature walk, circa 1985 (14886331416)" by Seattle Municipal Archives from Seattle, WA - Discovery Park ranger John Bierlein leading nature walk, circa 1985. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seattle_-_Discovery_Park_ranger_John_Bierlein_leading_nature_walk,_circa_1985_(14886331416).jpg#/media/File:Seattle_-_Discovery_Park_ranger_John_Bierlein_leading_nature_walk,_circa_1985_(14886331416).jpg

SHOW NOTES Jim Krueger’s Web Site (where you can link to amazon.com and buy works by Jim) How do you choose the best Teat Dip?…

In this shorter episode, Dan poses a quickfire topic to Jim - How responsible is Hal Jordan for his actions as Parallax? Tune in to hear the discussion! Music by Chad Farran and interlude from JLU! Please visit our site at http://www.LanternCast.com

In this episode of Bloody Angola: A Podcast by Woody Overton and Jim Chapman you are brought back to the 50's as Woody and Jim cover some of the more infamous stories regarding Louisiana State Penitentiary as told through the pages of the Angolite Prison Newspaper.#TheAngolite #1954throughtheinmateseyes #bloodyangolapodcast #convictGET 50% OFF PLUS FREE SHIPPING AT HELLOFRESH!HelloFresh delivers step-by-step recipes and fresh, pre-portioned ingredients right to your door. First, you set your meal plan preferences with options for carnivores, vegetarians, calorie-counters, and more. You'll choose from 30+ delicious weekly recipes carefully put together by the amazing chefs!Click Here to Take advantage of 16 FREE MEALS and FREE SHIPPING!www.Hellofresh.com/BloodyAngola501954 THROUGH AN INMATES EYES: Bloody Angola Podcast TranscriptJim: Hey everyone and welcome back to Bloody-Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison.Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman. Woody: And I'm Woody Overton.Jim: And we got some Angolites.Woody: Right? I love these stories, man. True, true history from the past. Before we get started, we want to say our thoughts and prayers are with all our people in Florida and Georgia that are getting slammed right now, or got slammed yesterday and came ashore as a Category 3.Jim: And continue to get slammed. Woody: And it's just bad. And they said they haven't seen a storm like that in 125 years. So, just prayers for them. I guess you call it Idalia, I-D-A-L-I-A. It's just bad, prayer for them. We know what they're going through.Jim: Yeah, we've been through a few of those ourselves. So, our hearts and prayers and thoughts are with those folks and the road to recovery. You will recover. It'll seem like you won't, but you'll come back. Look, we've done a lot of historical podcasts with relation to the Angolite, the prison weekly paper that Angola has put out for so many years. This is an award-winning paper all over the world.Woody: And actually turned into a magazine because I had a subscription to it back in the 90s. Jim: Absolutely. Some of the stories from back in the day, y'all, you just won't believe until we read them. We've had a lot of people ask for us to do another one. Got a lot of messages. So, we're bringing you another one today because we got our hands on a lot of them from the 50s and 60s. So, we kind of cherry pick what we feel like are the best stories out of those magazines, and we go over those with y'all. And I'll start it off. And this is an Angolite from April 21st, 1956. Woody: Wow.Jim: Yeah. That was a heck of a time in America, and even in Angola, as you're about to hear. Woody: Definitely Bloody Angola, man. Jim: Yes, for sure. And as a matter of fact, we're going to start off with a bloody story at Bloody Angola, and it was a headline. It said, "Two Dead, One Hurt. Tragedy trip hammered a triple blow at Angola last weekend, leaving two inmates dead and another maimed for life." It says one of the two dead suffered fatal injuries in an accident. The second died of a heart attack. Maimed with his right hand amputated at the wrist was a third.Woody: Wow. Jim: The dead Charles D. Clarkson, 24, of Caddo Parish. He had fallen under the wheels of a tractor last Friday. A broken rib punctured his lung. He died enroute to Charity Hospital, New Orleans. Lawrence Virgil Turley, 55, a carpenter, died Sunday afternoon at the General Hospital of a heart attack. Injured only a half hour after he had been assigned to work on the Mammoth Press at the Tag plant, Venice Landry, 20, had his right hand mangled under the giant bolster ram. Woody: Wow. Jim: Which is the thing, y'all, that stamps it. Woody: Slams.Jim: Yeah, slams that steel and stamps those plates. His hand was amputated at General Hospital Saturday. Pretty, pretty wild stuff going on at Angola. And look, these days, they don't give you those reports. Typically, you really got to dig for them.Woody: The General Hospital really wasn't a hospital. That's when the nurse, the angel-- they call her angel, was there, there was no doctor and all that. It's crazy, right? Jim: That's right. Woody: And the language they use in these, y'all, is really comical. Jim: And you've got to remember, this was a different time. So, you'll hear things like colored and whites. Woody: It's their words, not ours. Jim: That's right. Woody: All right, so the next one says, "Two Fail in Brief Freedom. Wallace McDonald and Norman Stroupe are in a tight, locked cells today following a brief bid for liberty Tuesday night. Security officials said the two took off from the transportation department in Downtown Angola-" That's funny. "In Downtown Angola Tuesday about noon. They were recaptured within a six-hour period by local authorities, both formerly bedded down at Camp H2," the report said. Jim: [laughs] Woody: Kind of brief on that. Jim: Yeah. Basically, they turned a jet-- and that's what I really like about these, is they do tell you about the escapes and stuff. I mean, they don't hold back.Woody: Downtown Angola.Jim: Yeah. [chuckles] Well, how about this one? "Cleaver in an attack tried," says, "John Newton, a new prison kitchen worker, was jailed Monday on a charge of felonious assault with a meat cleaver." Yes, sir. "Newton is said to have sliced Albert Johnson upside his head following an argument. Johnson was hospitalized with lacerations." Woody: Jeez Louise.Jim: Yeah. So, Mr. Johnson got a--Woody: Meat cleaver to the head. Jim: You don't attack people with meat cleavers.Woody: Bloody Angola for sure. Jim: That's right. Woody: So crazy. And then this next one, y'all says, "Heavy equipment acts to rush free houses. Using earth from the miles long embankment of the old Louisiana and Arkansas right of way, the LSP Heavy Equipment department-" That's funny. "Under Superintendent Dennis Johnson was last week engaged in an all-out operation to fill a five-acre plot of ground for the construction of 21 new free personnel houses. The plot is located on the B-Line at the foot of the old receiving station hill. It is to be filled to a depth of 36 inches. Johnson says he expects his department will wind up with the earth fill operation within two weeks. Construction houses will then start, he said." It's funny. They're talking about building part of the B-Line, another 21 houses added.Jim: Yeah. So, this is back, y'all, for those that may just be joining us, the B-Line is where all the free people live. Woody: Inside the wire. Jim: Inside the wire. And this was during the construction of that way back in 1956.Woody: And my mama lived there during that time.Jim: And we'll go on to another page of this one. And there's an article, it says, "More crippled birds. A second group of crippled pelicans, each with the wings broke by hail in the recent storm, were sighted last Sunday by deck passengers on the Angola ferry. The birds have roosted on the log a few feet from the shore and near the middle of the ferry landing. Observers said the wings will heal in time and that it is no rescue operation."Woody: That's crazy. Jim: And the reason we included that one is, it's interesting that they try to keep you up to date with what's going on the outside. And the only way they know that is to look out those bars in that wire and actually see it. A little story on pelicans. Who knew hail could injure their wings? Woody: The news of the day, right? Jim: Yeah. Woody: All right. This one says, "O, let us spray. An old-fashioned mattress spraying bee was held at Camp E last Monday, under the eagle eye of the unit captain, A. Couvillon. The action was aimed at eliminating any wandering insects who had hoped to make the unit their dwelling place this summer." [laughter] Woody: It's spraying for bedbugs, basically.Jim: Yeah.Woody: That's funny.Jim: And something that you had to do up in Angola for sure. Woody: It had to be really bad for them to do it for the convicts. Jim: That's right. And then, we'll continue on. And there's one that says, "Falls upstairs, breaks his jaw." Woody: Uh-oh.Jim: That's right. "Joseph Tornabene, Camp H-1 juvenile, fell upstairs one day last week and broke his jaw in three places."Woody: I bet that didn't happen. Jim: [laughs] "The adolescent was returning to his bunk after a shower, according to the story told to the hospital. He was taken to Charity Hospital in New Orleans for treatment." So, they're basically trying to say-- Woody: They beat his ass.Jim: [laughs] Broke his jaw--[crosstalk]  Woody: "You better tell them you fell up the stairs, boy."Jim: Yeah, that's it. Woody: That's funny. Jim: Broke his jaw in three places from a slip. That was one that I really thought painted a picture of the times in prison. Woody: Funny. I think that's when they had the convict guards too. All right, so here we go. The title of this is "Pocketed Razor Draws Jail Time." Says, "He told arresting officers he was just going to shave, but they didn't believe him. He is James B. Shivers of the STU, and he was caught with a straight razor. The board assessed a term on bread and duck because they said only blades for a razor are lawful."Jim: [laughs] [crosstalk] Jesus Christ. And when they caught him, he said, "Well, I was just using it to shave." Woody: "Yeah, I was just using it to shave." Jim: "What's wrong with that?" All right, how about this one? "Fresh fish leave sheltered cloister as labor beckons. 34 fish, until recently swimming unfettered in the administration unit tank-" And, y'all, when they refer to fish, they're talking about new prisoners. "-At the General Hospital have been screened, tested, probed, and activated by members of the classifications board at a recent session. Purpose of the session was to ascertain whether the fish can earn his bed and board. A few whose records indicated they were unlikely to run were made trustys on the spot. Others who must wait and further test went on jobs under the gun. [crosstalk] 18 of the fish are today assigned to the Angola Cane Corn and Cotton Company as field laborers."[laughter] Jim: "In the number were those who will live at Camp A, H and H-2. Culinary work attracted three men, a clerkship and garage work for a third and a welding for a fourth." So, they were classifying them into jobs. And of all those people, 34 fish, only three were made trustys. So, that tells you most of them, they were like, "Eh, you're going to run--[crosstalk]"  Woody: Those three had probably been there before, and then the ones under the gun, that's the shittiest job in the world. Can you imagine, like this summer, when it's 105 and then 116 with a heat index out there all day long, swinging a hoe? That's crazy.Jim: Yeah, that's insane.Woody: But they did something to get there.Jim: That's right. Woody: This one says, "Brown bags chops. John Hunt told the man he was hungry, and he had purloined the poke chops-", and they spell it P-O-K-E, y'all, "-for a midnight snack. The man sighed and put his pencil in notebook and told John, 'Put them back.' But on going through the gate again, the same suspicious bulge was evident." Jim: [laughs] Woody: Right. "Searched for chops, were confiscated, as was also Hunt's trusty pass from Pine Ford dormitory, his mail is now being sent to the local jail."Jim: Which means lockdown, basically. Woody: That's funny. Jim: They locked his ass down. Woody: Extra poke chops out the kitchen.Jim: Poke chops. Woody: Poke chops. Jim: Yeah. So that was from that one, and we're going to do another one here from August 11, 1956. And there's a headline on there. It says, "Angola's Informal Hot Seat. Someone at Angola that I'm not going to name, that I neither know nor care was almost burned to a cinder one day last week."Woody: Uh-oh.Jim: Oh, this guy must have been mad at him. "It seems that this 'worker' presumably was doing a little digging under the steel plate that separates the medium from the trusty compounds, which is located beneath the walkway directly below the snitch box at the medium security gate." So, this dude was digging a hole--[crosstalk] Woody: He wanted to get out. Jim: "He quit in a hurry-" it gets better, "-when a bolt of sizzling lightning momentarily blinded him and luckily did not fry his hide. His shovel had cut through one of nine cables, each of which was live with 2300 volts of crackling death."Woody: What? Jim: Yes, sir. "The soil around the cable was burned to charcoal, and if the lucky bum had come into contact with that current in that cable, they'd have been buried right there where they found him."Woody: Wow. Jim: "Take this information for what it's worth and continue grave digging. The Angolite or dig your own grave, literally, with the assurance that the Angolite will make your name famous throughout the state. It's up to you."Woody: That's funny. Jim: [laughs] That guy was [unintelligible [00:15:55] trying to escape. Woody: [crosstalk] -dig out and dug into the cable lines. [crosstalk] -signs you see, "Don't dig here." They didn't have those back then. Crazy. All right, here we go, Bloody Angola. So, this one's called "Dumbbell Opens Passoit's Scalp." Jim: Uh-oh. [laughs] Woody: "Veral Passoit, was removed from the cell block to the hospital, August 8th, with a head wound. Veral, who was removed from the cell block area, August 8th, with a head wound, which he claimed to have suffered when a weight he was lifting fell on his noggin. Hospital records show that he is getting along very nicely despite the 15 or 18 sutures required to close the clean tight wound."Jim: Somebody hit him with a dumbbell. [laughs] Woody: Hit him with a knife. Dumbbell wouldn't leave a clean, open wound, it'd be smashed. Jim: Yeah. Woody: But they weren't going to rat on each other.Jim: Mm-hmm. Woody: [crosstalk] -take your lick.Jim: And y'all imagine this, now this is the 50s. These guys, there is no TV and all that. I mean, this is the only entertainment you get, and the only way you can keep up with what's going on in prison as an inmate. Woody: It was a huge prison, right? Jim: Yes. So, we'll move on. This is February 21st, 1959 edition. And the headline says, "New Prices at the Camp Store." And I really enjoyed this one because I'm going to give you actual prices, but it says, "Mr. James Thornton, Chief Administrative Officer, announced new price levels for many items at the camp store this week. And we have printed the price list on page 6." So, when you go to page six, I just highlighted some of these, and I'm going to read off to you that I found interesting. So, back in 1959, if you needed some Alka Seltzer, it was going to cost you 28 cents. Woody: Really? Jim: 28 cents. Cheez-It's, 10 cents. Woody: I can't believe they still had Cheez-It back then. Jim: Yeah. No, it surprised me. Cigarettes. You want some king size cigarettes? It's going to cost you 30 cents. Woody: What? Jim: So, if you want some kings and then some regulars, 29 cents. Woody: Yeah, but that was their currency back then. That's what they paid each other with. Jim: That's right. Community coffee, 40 cents. Woody: Community coffee, way back then. Jim: Way back then, and it was instant. Noxzema, 19 cents. Woody: I was using Noxzema in prison. Jim: [laughs] That's a great-- Look, they got nail clippers for 20 cents. Woody: Keep yourself properly clean. Jim: That's it. Potato chips, 5 cents. Woody: Really? Jim: Yeah. Shampoo, White Rain brand. Who knew that was around then? 41 cents. Rolling tobacco, 12 cents. Woody: Wow. That's a big deal in prison too, when I used to be there and they still had cigarettes, you could tell who was a really poor convict because they had the Bugler in the can or that blue can. The Bugler was a yellow, red, white, blue, and the other one was just a light blue can. But they were the ones that couldn't afford the Camels or the Marlboros or whatever and had to roll their own cigarettes. And the ones who couldn't afford any of those, when the other ones would throw their butts out, they'd go pick up the butts and smoke the butts. Jim: Oh, come on. Ugh. Toothpaste, everybody's got to have toothpaste. Well, it cost you 12 cents for Colgate. Woody: Wow. It's cheap.Jim: Yeah. Vicks salve, 35 cents. And they had Vaseline hair oil back then. That was 14 cents. So, I'm going to take this and I'm going to post it on the Patreon.Woody: Yeah, because there's a lot of stuff. Jim: Yeah, it's a lot of stuff, but pretty cool to go through. They got pork skins on here. They got all kinds of stuff. Liver pills. Woody: Liver pills. [chuckles] Jim: What they call hives, which are like crackers back then. So, we'll post that on there so you patron members can look through it and really have some fun.Woody: Yeah, that's funny. Jim: Checking that out. And we'll go to September 10th, 1955. Woody is going to start us off on that one. Woody: All right. So, September 1955. "Airport here averages plane per day. Attendance at the Angola airport were a shade busy last week. Logged in and out were three planes." They were real busy, huh? "Monday, the Paul A. Lambert Cessna arrived and departed. Tuesday the Jas F. O'Neill craft. And Wednesday, a Red two plane bearing number N970246." Jim: Oh, my God, they even knew the tag number.Woody: [chuckles] I know my mom when she was on the parole board, they used to fly them around the state because more cost efficient and quicker to get them there and stuff. But I can't believe they had it back in the 50s.Jim: Yeah, planes have been around a while. They were flying them in World War II and all.Woody: Yeah, but not passenger planes. Jim: Yeah.Woody: I mean some, but I guess it was probably military surplus. Jim: Yeah. "One on the lam still running," it says. "Police in four states--" and I'm going to look up this case, y'all, because I was like, wow, this would be a good one to cover. "Police in four states are today looking for Ray Coughron, 28, a 15-year termer, formerly domiciled at Camp H-2. Donning a correctional officer's uniform, Coughron quietly slipped out of the yard gate last Sunday. Bloodhounds failed to pick up his trail." Woody: He must have somebody waiting on him. Jim: Well, they have to have checked out [crosstalk] never heard of that.Woody: I mean, he had a CO uniform and then he got out. And if the Angola Chase team couldn't get on him? He's gone. Jim: Yeah. And he did. Woody: If I was going to run, you--[crosstalk] Jim: He got correctional officer's uniform. Must have worked in a laundry or something. Woody: If I was going to run or you were going to run, you'd have somebody waiting on you, right? Jim: Yeah. Woody: I wouldn't be running those hills or trying to swim the river. Jim: And I guarantee, y'all, one difference because I've read a lot of these Angolites between then and now is they don't post escapes in the Angolite anymore. They don't want any other prisoners reading that.Woody: It's kind of like the mass shootings nowadays. We don't say the shooter's name. Like the one that just did it in Dollar Store, he copied the one in the same city five years before and mentioned it in his manifesto. Jim: That's right. Woody: But anyway. All right, so let's go to September 10th, 1955. That's 73 years ago, y'all, next week or the week after, says, "New laundry washes for all. For the first time in the history of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, a centrally located laundry is now handling washing and ironing for the entire institution."Jim: Oh.Woody: Right. "Today, wheels are rolling at the new prison and a crew of 15 men is daily turning out clean sheets, towels, pants, shirts, and personal linen of male inmates at all camps. The work formally had been done in part at the women's unit. The other part at individual camps. Set up in preparation for the time when all male inmates are housed at the new prison. The laundry, under the managership of Captain Bill Kerr, is currently turning out 1100 pounds of dry wash hourly. With the mangle of four ironing sheets, the plant will later on press pants and shirts. 'Ten pressing units have been ordered and are to be installed,' Captain Kerr said. A schedule has been worked out to handle washing five days per week. Saturday is general cleanup day for the plant. The plant at the woman's camp now handles only free personnel laundry." [laughter] Woody: They want to mix them up. That's your job. Another one building, they didn't have AC and they turned out 1100 pounds. Jim: Oh, yeah. Woody: It's crazy. Jim: And it's interesting that back then, 1955 is when they started just finally having this main laundry facility for the--[crosstalk] Woody: One thing they don't mention in there is underwear. So, when you get in, they give you prison-issued underwear. But when you do send your stuff into the laundry, most inmates keep their underwear and have their bitch wash them. That's why I say you'll be tossing salads and washing dirty drawers. They'll actually rent out their bitch to wash people's dirty underwear in their sinks. And they hand scrub them with soap and wash them and they hang them and make them fresh for whomever for like a couple of cigarettes. Jim: Wow. There you go, straight from the wolf, right there. "Prison guard post reaching skyward," this one says. "Those new two-story steel skeletons you see poking skyward with the yellow-painted girders are indications it won't be long. They're the structural steel columns for the new guard towers at the new prison. Each will be complete with glassed-in cupola and searchlight." Woody: And they're still there today. Jim: And they're still there today. Yeah. They made them to last back in those days, but built those new guard towers way back then. Woody: Yeah. The funny thing about those is when you go up in them, the outside doors lock, but they're manned 24/7, never take off. I've worked them before. You go in, they actually sit on the outside of the fence. So, inmates can't get to that door. So, you have to go to the door and holler up at the guard, the CO, and they lower you a key down and you unlock it and it's on a string. They pull it back up and you go in and you lock it from the inside. And it's got a spiral staircase. You come through, like a trap door, and it's a round room. That's where your rifle and your shotgun is and your lights and stuff like that. Jim: Yeah.Woody: It's pretty cool. Jim: Awesome. Woody: And then a telephone. That's the only other thing you have. You might have a radio, but pretty interesting. All right, so let's go to, again, on September 10th, 1955, says, "Free Ferry soon to open at St. Francisville. According to the Plainsman of Zachary-" That's the plainsman. It is the Zachary newspaper. "According to the Plainsman of Zachary, named The Feliciana, the vessel costs $200,000 and it may take a load off the Angola ferry. Visitors may enter via the front gate." Jim: Interesting. Woody: I have to ask my mom about that one because it didn't run for long.Jim: Yeah. Woody: Now, they have the ferry that still to this day that runs across into-- I think it might be [unintelligible 00:28:20]. It runs across the river and a lot of free people live over there. Or they'll drive into that ferry and the ferry drives them across and they come in. But this one would-- imagine how many COs lived in St. Francisville, which is back then, you had to take that long ass, hour-long road out, then get to St. Francisville another 10 or 15 minutes, I guess, they just ran them right up the river about a 15-minute ride. Jim: Yeah. Back then you had to have a ferry to go across that. Woody: Yeah. There's no bridges. You're right. Jim: Continuing on. This one is hilarious, y'all. It says, "Voodoo-Hoodoo. You've seen those copper wire amulets and necklaces of beans and so on. Voodoo stuff, maybe. Anyway, Edward Harris of Camp A walked up to the man last week and said people were after him. He didn't elaborate whether he had been hexed or just plain conjured. They locked him up lightly in the sneezer until the bug doctor examines his head." [laughter] Woody: We'll call it [unintelligible 00:29:33] of a mental case. The man said, "They're after him, so lock him up." Jim: The funny thing is with that particular deal is this guy's exposing him to the whole prison. Woody: Yeah. Jim: So, these guys, look, they gossip worse than anybody you've ever seen, and they're all nosy. Woody: They've got nothing else to do. Jim: That's right. Woody: Basically, he went to the man and ratted himself out. Crazy. Put him in the sneezer.Jim: Sneezer. Woody: "Ex-guard hurt in camp fracas. Frank Peoples, who until last Saturday was a guard was busted back to trusty-ship that day." So, that means he was an inmate guard. Jim: Yeah. Woody: "The following morning, he was rushed to the General Hospital suffering with a knotted head."[laughter] Woody: "He's resting well on the colored ward today." Think about this, the prison guards and we talked about that was a way for them to save money and everything back then, but at nighttime, they might have had one CO per camp, in nighttime, they just locked them in. And the prison guards in there were like gods. And you can get one taken out, he got demoted, and he got his ass beat that night. Jim: [laughs] Love that. And we got a couple on this page, and they're short, so I'm going to read a couple. I'll let Woody read a couple. The first says, "Bathing to be enforced." Yes. "Beware your long-eared scouts and men of wrath who nothing fear except a bath. White dormitory at the new prison were all set to give one of their number a dunking last week on account that he hadn't put the showers to use since he entered the joint, which is a violations of the rules, besides." [chuckles] So that was a little short one. Woody: Even most of the convicts don't like a stinky ass. Jim: That's right. Woody: You get some people in there, not only have they not ever followed the rules in civilization, but they don't have any personal hygiene. So, I think what they're probably saying is the inmates drug them in there [crosstalk] ass down. Jim: That's exactly what they did. Gave him a GI shower. [laughs] Woody: [crosstalk] -stinky motherfucker.Jim: They basically forced his ass take a bath. He must have been stinking. Imagine you're working out in those fields all day. Oh, my God.Woody: Nasty. No deodorant and everything else. Jim: You would think you'd want to take one. But anyhoo, "Localite knifed in camp affray. Henry Davis at Camp F underwent a ham stitching at the emergency ward of the General Hospital one day last week. Henny ran afoul of a knife in the hands of an unidentified assailant." Woody: [crosstalk] -he's unidentified. Jim: [laughs] Woody: He ran afoul of him. Jim: Yeah. Woody: That's crazy. Jim: Yeah. I love the way they wrote back then. Woody: I love it. Jim: It's a totally different dialect. Woody: Nobody was ratting anybody out. They just did. Jim: Yeah. Unidentified, I'm sure. Woody: And again, this is still September 10th, 1955, and says, "Cuts out early, ends in jail. He was trying to get to camp early for dinner, Calvin Mitchell, a camp aid trusty, told officials last week. Cutting grass with a crew, Mitchell was missed at a field count. A chase ensued and the lad was found wondering. They put him in the hole, pending DB action." The disciplinary board, y'all. Crazy.Jim: Yeah. Basically, he tried to say, "I was just hungry, going early to eat." Woody: [crosstalk] -get that meal. Jim: [laughs] Wandering.Woody: The next one. "Pipe used in knotting spree. When Warren Guidry of Camp of F uses a pipe, he uses a big one. One and a half inches. One day last week, he wielded it with painful and telling effect upon the noggin of Manson Powell, authorities said. Guidry is awaiting the outcome of a trial. Powell is awaiting the taking off of bandages." [laughter] Woody: That's funniest shit.Jim: That's crazy.Woody: It's like every day, this one's getting knifed, this one's getting hit.Jim: I'm telling you--  Woody: In the noggin. Jim: Yes, the noggin. And look, we're going to go way back to 1954, November 27th. And the headline on this one really struck my interest. It says, "34 shot in rabies try-out." Woody: What? Jim: Yeah. Now, y'all got to remember there was a time there was no rabies shot. You got rabies, you just went nuts or whatever. And a lot of times when they would get these shots, they would try them out on like inmates.Woody: New medical procedures. Jim: Yeah. They would be the guinea pig. Woody: Drug companies come in and basically pay the prison to get their test subjects. Jim: Yeah. So, it says, "34 Angola inmates, six of them women, are today nursing slightly sore arms in what is said to have been the first guinea pig effort ever made here in the interest of medical science. The 34 last Saturday and Sunday were given the first of a series of inoculations aimed at testing a new type of vaccine for the treatment of rabies. All were volunteers," the prison management said.Woody: Yeah, bet.Jim: [laughs] They might have paid them something, I don't know. Woody: [crosstalk] -cigarette. Jim: Yeah. "Under the auspice of the School of Medicine at Tulane University at New Orleans, the inoculations were given by Dr. DP. Conwell, a Tulane medical staffer." There you are, at the start of the rabies vaccine in history. And who knew Angola played such a big part in that?Woody: Well, I had actually heard something before about them trying new procedures on convicts, because who were going to complain? And they gave them a couple of smokes. They were like, "Whatever." Jim: That's it. Woody: [crosstalk] "-anyway. Give me the shot." That's crazy. That shit wouldn't fly nowadays. Jim: No. Woody: All right, so let's take you to the next one we're going to do. And it says, "Count soars, official--" And that's spelled count soars, S-O-A-R-S, "Official sore," S-O-R-E, "Fresh fish may find no room." And then, y'all, we're talking about fresh inmates. "Today's inmate population swelled to a total of 2810, brought consternation to camp officials and worried frowns to the management last week. For the headcount is the highest here since the end of World War II, an authoritative source said. Already overcrowded at most units, Angola camp chiefs have been hard put to find sleeping room for their new borders. The count is suspected to hit 3000 by mid-year of 1955."Jim: Dang.Woody: That's crazy. Jim: Yeah.Woody: It's double that now. Jim: And they've added on--Woody: They've got a bunch of other prisons now too. They didn't have DCI and Winn and all those other prisons back then.Jim: Yeah. And so, we're still in 1954. And it says, "Here's that stuff again. Like the old saying about the character who, every time he opened his mouth, put his foot in it, last week, The Angolite carried a story about a patch of that nauseous stuff, okra, [laughs] situated just outside the fence of the woman's camp. And proving that the dames don't look into other people's backyards, as soon as she had read the account, buxom Alice said-," buxom Alice, they called her buxom Alice. "Buxom Alice said, 'Where's the okra? Why, I just love okra.' Yesterday at all units the food service department ordered for supper, you guessed it, boiled okra." Yuck. [laughter] Woody: That's funny. Jim: They didn't like that boiled okra.Woody: They're feeding them-- [crosstalk] Jim: I kind of like okra myself. Woody: [crosstalk] -especially my [unintelligible 00:38:15]-- Didn't cost them a whole lot to feed them. Jim: Buxom Alice, she liked her some okra. Woody: Right. Buxom Alice. That's funny. Well, y'all, I'm going to read you these next two. "Four men fail to rise, shine. Captain says your neck is mine. Four localites who bed down at Camp A were collared by police at that unit one day last week and charged with failing to rise and shine in the morning, as is customary in places like this. The four, Claudius Wall, Victor Stewart, Howard D. Keyes, and Robert Lewis, were escorted to the camp lockup to weigh the action of the disciplinary board. Because the quartet was asleep when they should have been awake, the camp count was snafued. Nothing will irritate a prison management as much as a fouled-up count of heads, it was said." [laughter]Woody: You messed up the count, you were going in a hole. That still happens today. And these dudes just didn't want to get up. That's funny. All right. Jim: Love it. Woody: Let me read this one. "Loader whops, hurts worker. Sammy Robinson of Camp F was hospitalized Monday for injuries when he met up with a cane sling while working on a loader near the unit. Robinson is said to have been whopped about the head by the loader slings, which broke loose." Jim: Oh, my God. Woody: "He's on the colored ward." Wow. So, I guess one of the things flew off the machine or somebody probably hit him in the head with one of those [unintelligible 00:40:02]. That's crazy. Jim: Yeah. They're not going to rat each other up. Woody: Yeah. Jim: All right, we'll go to 1955, June 18th, and this headline says "STU-", and I'm not sure what STU stands for. Woody: It's going to be a Special Lockdown Unit. Jim: There you go. "STU men stage short-lived buck. Residents of the STU, disgruntled over the quality and distribution of the food and a few other items, refused to enter their mess hall Wednesday evening, declaring a camp wide buck."Woody: Uh-oh. That's right. "When the people came, however, the usual conversation settled everything." [laughs]Woody: They're like, "I'm about to shoot your ass." Jim: The usual conversation. I love it. Woody: That's funny. So, bucking up, y'all, and I've been a part of a couple of them, but they were like, "Fuck it, we're not doing it, and we're going to protest." And Warden Burl Cain, we talked about this on an episode, came in. He said, "Give the first one--" They weren't going to work in a crawfish plant. "Give the first one a direct verbal order, and as soon as they say no, arrest them." You still get arrested. So, bucking up. And the usual conversation was had, probably the same thing, like back then, "We're going to shoot you if you don't go to work." June 18th, 1955. "A little girl wants her dog. Tuffy, where are you? A farm-wide search has failed to produce any sign of Tuffy, the six-year-old Boston terrier who was owned by plumber foreman, Harry Dwyer, who'd made his home at Camp E and claimed the yard there as his personal domain. Dwyer says he is sure Tuffy is not dead. His body would have been found by this time, he reasoned. Meanwhile, Tuffy's little mistress, eight-year-old Nickie Dwyer, sent the following message to the Angolite. 'My dog's name was Tuffy. He was eight years old at the time he disappeared. He was a faithful dog and I loved him so. I was raised with Tuffy. He was smarter than most dogs. I do have three other dogs, but they will never mean as much to me as Tuffy. Please bring him back to me, Nickie Dwyer.'" [laughter] Woody: I wonder if my momma knew her.Jim: That's crazy. So, this was apparently a plumber foreman. He had a dog that hung out at the camps.Woody: And they were all inside--[crosstalk] Jim: Daughter sent a plea to the Angolite. Woody: Let me do another real quick, says, "Stray dog round-up now in operation. In accordance with an order from the management, all stray dogs on the farm are being rounded up for disposal each evening. The drive will be in effect through July 4th." So, they were looking for--[crosstalk] Jim: Oh, my God.Woody: Stray dogs, they were killing their ass. Jim: Yeah. For disposal. Woody: Right. Jim: That's crazy.Woody: What if they cooked them? Jim: 1955, y'all. All right, "What's in a name?" This was a good one. "James Williams, who boards at Camp I and has a Yankee accent, which he acquired in Madison County, Wisconsin, wishes the management would learn that he is not James A. Williams. It's a little confusing at first, but not so very difficult once you get the hang of it from Williams. 'Their James A. Williams lives at Camp A,' he explained earnestly, as our eyes began to get glassy. 'Like last October. I almost went to the Red Hats,' he continued. 'Or November, when they called me to the visiting room and walked me into a family of total strangers,' he continued. 'It's getting so I never know who I am, much less where I am.' Williams said it happened again last week. He came within a split second of appearing before the parole board with a lawyer and four relatives, but not his relatives. 'I keep wondering what's going to happen when this other boy's time is up,' he sighed, shaking his head dolefully. It is an interesting thought at that." Woody: What was his name? Jim: James A. Williams. But they had two James A. Williams. Woody: They probably had five of them. He's from Wisconsin. Boy, you know he was doing a hard time [crosstalk] Wisconsin the other day, it was 50 degrees in the morning. I got in Louisiana, it was 100 degrees. Jim: Come on. Jesus. Well, James A. Williams, hopefully they released the guy-- Woody: [crosstalk] -Madison County where the guy was from. Jim: Wow. Woody: All right. "Busy tag plant takes short order," from June 18th, 1955. "An order for 40 large game preserve signs, each with replicas of the bobwhite quail in the corners, was turned out on time by the tag plant last week. They are on 24-hour duty producing a million new auto licensed tags for 56." Jim: Unbelievable. Woody: "Plus hundreds of steel bunks for the new prison. Sheet metal gutters and what have you." [laughter] Woody: Most of these, y'all, are just like a little bitty short articles. All right, the next one says, "Knife victim has loss of memory." I can imagine. "Hyde Walker of Camp F was hospitalized Tuesday with superficial knife wounds on his left arm and shoulder. Stricken with a lapse of memory, says he was unable to recall how he got hurt. Security officials suggested that he might have got careless while shaving."[laughter] Jim: That is great.Woody: They weren't even worried about him. Jim: And they might have been the ones that hurt him. He might have got lax while shaving. Yeah, that's crazy. Here's one I found interesting. It says, "Dental clinic cracks own record. The biggest week in the history of the dental department went on record during the seven days from June 5th through the 11th of 1955, according to their bookkeeping department. The figures show a total of 115 patients were handled. Seven plates were complete and fitted, and 12 others were put into process. There were 51 extractions, 34 marked miscellaneous, and a variety of other entries." So basically, they're pulling teeth left and right. That one week, they pulled 51 teeth. I thought that was interesting. Woody: [crosstalk] -too many feelings when they could just rip them out. Jim: Yeah. And I'll give you this one. It says, "Two use razorblade, put cells in stitches. Two unidentified colored women from Camp D were treated for minor lacerations at the emergency ward last Tuesday. Weapons used is said to have been a razorblade. Following treatment for both, they were released and returned to camp." So, they tried to commit suicide. Two women.Woody: I wonder if they got in a fight with each other. Maybe they did. Two unidentified women from Camp D were treated for minor-- They might have gotten in a knife fight with each other. Jim: Maybe.Woody: Maybe it was suicide. I don't know. All right, September 18th, 1954, y'all. "Uniforms for free personnel soon. For the first time in the history of Louisiana State Penitentiary, correctional officers will be garbed in uniforms." Wow, this is interesting. "'Hats, coats, trousers, and shirts are on order and will be issued,' Secretary Chief W. H. Maynard said Wednesday. The uniforms will be of a forest green hue with beige-colored shirts, the official said. There will be no badges, however, nor any marks of rank worn. A shoulder patch will designate the wearer as an LSP officer."Jim: How about that?Woody: 1954 is when they had got the first uniforms. That's crazy.Jim: That's crazy. It had been around since 1901 as a state prison, and it took till 1954 to get-- so they just wore whatever they wanted, I guess. Button up shirts or something.Woody: Blue jeans and something. Real quick, at the top of this page, it says, "Dixie's only prison weekly, The Angolite." And it gives Volume 2, number 41. Angola, Louisiana. September 18th, 1954, 10 pages. But then, it had this box that says "Warning!!!! Laggards are warned. Monday, September 20th is the deadline for filing your petition for the October Pardon Board. Don't get stuck out."[laughter] Jim: Even in Angola, inside of Angola, you have thieves that steal from other inmates. "Dees, the barber shop got looted. The barber is offering a reward." In this article, it says, "Yes, sir. It never rains, but when it rains, it pours. Seems a fella has to get down in bed sick to find out who his friends are. Monday, Dees, the rotund Camp E ex-barber, woke up one day at the General Hospital where he is suffering from a diabetic onset, to find out that his shop at Camp E had been burglarized. Missing, he said, is $300 worth of barber tools and unfurnished leather goods. Dees has posted a $25 reward for the arrest and conviction of the miscreant. Or, he'll pay it for the return of the goods, no questions asked."Woody: $25 back then, shit, you can always buy a car for it. Jim: Yeah. And he was basically saying, "Look, if you took it, if you just give it back to me, I'll give you $25, or I'll pay someone $25 to find out who it was."Woody: That's pretty much their craft. And each camp would have one. That's an esteemed position, most of them-- Jim: And $300 worth back then? Inside prison, that's a million dollars.Woody: Yeah. September 18th, 1954. "Free inmate menus now the same. For what is believed to be the first time on Angola, menus for free personnel and inmates were identical last week, with the exception of breakfast. The innovation is by order of food services manager, J. H. Bonnette. A huge saving is expected to result from the consolidation, the food department said. Breakfast in the inmate dining rooms are planned, but for free personnel consists of short orders only." [laughter] Woody: I guess if you're free personnel, you can order your eggs over easy or whatever, and the rest of them are just getting shit on a shingle. That is funny.Jim: Yeah. So, you actually have a choice if you're free personnel. If you're not free personnel, you get what they throw on that plate. I'm going to read a couple of these, and I'll let Woody read the last one we're going to do for you today. And this was a correction from Old Wooden Ear. And he says-- Old Wooden Ear. He says, "Irate Camp Fers have asked for a correction. Seems one Freddie Armstrong, whom The Angolite said last week had been stabbed in a humbug, was not from Camp F, but from Camp A. The Angolite is happy to make this correction and with the hope that if any others get stabbed at Camp F, they won't bleed." Woody: That's funny. Jim: Even The Angolite had to issue retractions. And then, this one says, "Escapee, guards play hide and seek. Guard lines were still out yesterday for Ulice Baker, 28, a colored Camp C trusty who was found to be missing last Saturday. Baker, serving a seven-year sentence, is thought to still be hiding somewhere on the farm." How about that? Look, they were escaping left and right back in them days.Woody: The way it was they're still trying to, but they got a whole lot more security stuff in place, razor wire and all that and the wolfdogs. All right, this one says, big headlines, "Frazier is oldest! A glance at the records settled the question once and for all who's the convict with the longest time in point of service on Angola. Records showed Charlie Frazier--" We need to talk about him. Jim: Yeah. Woody: "Records show Charlie Frazier Camp H-2 hospital steward was received in September of 1933 with one sentence of 18 years, one of 28 years, and a life term, all stacked on top of the other. Charlie is registered number 23409, is the oldest on the books. His discharge date, however, is still 20 years away. The book says December 3rd, 1974." Now, look in the DOC, you're known by your inmate numbers. Now, they're alone. Fucking that means he was the 23409th inmate when he came in, ever to go to the gates of Angola. After the Civil War when they started.Jim: And probably one of the most notorious-- really, in American history, there's a whole big, long story for Charlie Frazier, and we will tell his story one day. He's a tough one to research because this was so long ago, but I'm going to come up with some stuff for him. Just two quick short ones, and then we got to wrap it up for today. This one says, "Toe whacked off. Andrew Peters, a resident of the STU, lost the third toe on his right foot via surgery last week. The operation was performed at the Angola General Hospital." So, something happened, he had to whack his toe off. Woody: He had diabetes or something. Jim: And then, the one below it says, "Three and a hassle. Three juveniles at H-1 were sporting an assortment of moused eyes, puffed lips, and other sores today as the result of a free-for-all hassle last Tuesday. The trio, all of whom were unidentified, were given first aid, a piece of steak for their eyes and sent home--" Woody: And they run a piece of steak with a baloney. Jim: [laughs] Yeah, there was no steak, I can promise you.Woody: We need to look in that too, because they're housing the juveniles there now and they're so fucking pissed off about it. But [crosstalk] back then they had women and juveniles too. Woody: Yeah, they sure did. And so, we'll be bringing you stuff on that. Appreciate all you patrons out there that follow. Look, we dropped a bonus episode Monday just for patrons, where we covered the first 20 death row inmates that are requesting clemency and got those hearings. We went into an in-depth breakdown of each of those, dropped that on Monday. So, if you're not a patron, join Patreon, you can get that. Another quick announcement, Apple Podcast. For those that don't do Patreon for whatever reason, we're now on Apple Podcast as a subscription option as well. You just go to your Apple Podcast app, and you'll see it. I'm going to label all those. It'll say Apple Podcast Bonus Episode.Woody: Yeah. Also, what happens on Apple Podcast, anytime you go to the Apple Podcast player, and you type in "Bloody Angola," it'll pull it up and it'll give you, like, I think it's free trial for whatever, for seven days. It'll list episodes and everything else. Pretty cool deal, I think. Jim: If you're not and you want to try it, there's a free trial going on. Woody: Some people [crosstalk] either they don't know what Patreon is or they don't want to use it. I have that on the regular Real Life Real Crime. Jim: Well, some people want-- and they want to listen to their podcast through one particular app and not have to go different places. So, Apple Podcast enables that. Woody: So, if you like it and you want to try it and then get your free seven-day trial and go listen to some bonus episodes because we got a ton of them. Jim: We got a ton. Woody: And thank y'all and we love you so much. We appreciate each and every one of you. Jim: Yeah. And until next time, I'm Jim Chapman. Woody: And I'm Woody Overton.Jim: Your host of Bloody-Woody: -Angola. Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making. Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison.Jim and Woody: Peace. [Bloody Angola theme]Our Sponsors:* Check out Factor and use my code bloodyangola50 for a great deal: https://www.factor75.com/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode of Bloody Angola:A Podcast by Woody Overton and Jim Chapman, We continue to cover the stories of those inmates eventually executed at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, from the crimes to their final walk.#Louisianastateprison #AngolaPrison #BloodyAngola #TrueCrime #Podcast #WoodyOverton #Podcasts #Deathchamberpart2 #deathchamber #Execution #ConvictOur Sponsors for this episode have a great deal for you!GET 16 FREE MEALS PLUS FREE SHIPPING AT HELLOFRESH!HelloFresh delivers step-by-step recipes and fresh, pre-portioned ingredients right to your door. First, you set your meal plan preferences with options for carnivores, vegetarians, calorie-counters, and more. You'll choose from 30+ delicious weekly recipes carefully put together by the amazing chefs!Click Here to Take advantage of 16 FREE MEALS and FREE SHIPPING!Full Transcript Death Chamber Part 2[Bloody Angola theme]Jim: Hey, everyone, and welcome back to Bloody- Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: The complete story of America's bloodiest prison. Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: And I'm Woody Overton. Thank y'all for listening and liking and sharing. Please continue to do so. Leave us a review wherever you listen up in your podcast. And Patreon members, we appreciate y'all, you rock. Thank you for your continued support. This one, we're going back to one that got a whole lot of interest and-- [crosstalk]Jim: People loved it.Woody: Well, I love it.Jim: Yeah.Woody: I guess, you're twisted y'all, right? We're going to tell you about- Jim: Death chamber.Woody: -death chamber stuff.Jim: Yeah, Part 2.Woody: Execution. Yeah, Death Chamber Part due. Jim: Part duh.Woody: Duh.Jim: Yeah. So, we're going to get into it and what we do with these folks-- If you hadn't listened yet, you can go back and listen to Death Chamber Part 1. The good thing about these is we cover just individual convicts that were executed at Angola. We tell just a little synopsis of their crime, and they got some really interesting final words in there for these guys.Woody: [crosstalk] -things like that.Jim: People just loved it the first time, so we're going to continue with it. I'll start out with our first convict up for, I guess, grabs today, and that is Leslie Lowenfield. Leslie Lowenfield was executed in 1988, and he rode the lightning.Woody: Yeah, he graduated-- [crosstalk] Jim: Electrocuted. Gruesome Gertie. Woody: Gruesome Gertie.Jim: He had a seat in that chair. And to tell you a little bit about this guy, he was a native of Guyana. He came to Louisiana from Canada in 1981, and he met his primary victim, which was a lady named Sheila Thomas.Woody: I think he's well-traveled. I think Guyana is like in Africa or somewhere.Jim: Yeah, then he goes to Canada.Woody: And then he comes to south, to Louisiana.Jim: He figured it out. He figured out the USA was where he wanted to be, I guess. And we didn't want him here after--Woody: To make [crosstalk] Gruesome Gertie.Jim: Yeah. Sheila Thomas was his primary victim. She was a deputy sheriff in JeffersonParish, Louisiana,-Woody: JP. Yeah.Jim: -which is around the New Orleans area.Woody: Actually, it's one of the largest parishes geographically, because it expands all the way around Orleans, all the way down to Grand Isle. Did you know Grand Isle is in Jefferson Parish?Jim: I did not.Woody: Absolutely. There it cut across all that marsh and everything else, land wise,Tangipahoa is the longest parish in the state. North and south, I think JP is the biggest. Jim: Interesting. I didn't know Tangi was the longest.Woody: Yeah, Tangi is longest state north and south. Very longest parish--[crosstalk]Jim: Very interesting. So, Sheila Thomas was a deputy sheriff. And Ms. Thomas, along with her daughter, young daughter, who was Shantel Osborne moved in with Lowenfield in the summer of 1981. So, you can already see. Uh-oh.Woody: Right.Jim: Lowenfield and Ms. Thomas, they lived together off and on for about a year. During that year, Ms. Thomas left Lowenfield on three separate occasions and returned to live with her mother. So, they're probably fighting, having arguments.Woody: Off and on. Went off and on.Jim: Yeah. Lowenfield became increasingly bitter following each separation. So, every timeshe would leave, he would get more and more pissed.Woody: Right.Jim: When Ms. Thomas returned to her mother's home for the last time, he repeatedly threatened and harassed Ms. Thomas and her mother, victim, Myrtle Griffin. In the late afternoon of August 30th, 1982, Owen Griffin, Sheila Thomas' stepfather, was in a vacant lot near his home in Marrero, which is like an outskirts of New Orleans. He was playing cards with friends. Owen Griffin, all of a sudden, hears shots ring out from their home. He runs to the house, rushed inside, where more shots were fired. When police arrived, they found five bodies sprawled about the living area of the house, they found the bodies of Sheila Thomas, her four-year old daughter Shantel, Owen Griffin, his wife Myrtle Griffin,Woody: Wow.Jim: -and Carl Osborne, the father of Shantel. All of the victims had sustained multiple gunshot wounds, each had been shot in the head at close range.Woody: That's crazy. Well, think about that last seconds when you're sitting there and whatever pops off and he shoots the first one. You're like, "What the f--?" And then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.Jim: Just blasting--[crosstalk]Woody: You're just sitting there. You know, I'm sure someone trying to scramble and getaway, but he's close enough to shoot them in the head. Jim: No doubt about it.Woody: No mercy. Animal.Jim: No mercy, and total animal. And he goes to court, gets convicted, gets sentenced to death. And eventually, as a matter of fact, in 1988, he does get executed. His final statement included remarks directed at his two attorneys, Wayne Walker and John Craft, who had worked on his trial and appeal. His last words were, "I hope you feel satisfied. Don't give up on me. Although my life will be over tonight, because the one responsible is out there."Woody: Wow.Jim: Yeah. Deny it to the end. "There is no reason to hold anything against me. And the rest who would lie when I'm gone, the body will be gone, but the spirit will live on. Mr. Walker and John Craft, your job was more important than my life. I hope you feel satisfied. Thank you to all of you, and peace."Woody: Did he say peace?Jim: He said peace. That was his final words.Woody: Peace-- [crosstalk]Jim: How dare he use the word.Woody: Right. Road to hell. Yeah.Jim: [chuckles] Yeah.Woody: [crosstalk] -use a moniker.Jim: But here's an interesting thing about this entire case. Dale Brown, the head basketball coach at that time, actually attended his execution.Woody: Oh, I didn't know that.Jim: They had been corresponding since Dale Brown toured Angola years earlier with the LSU basketball team actually became friends, and he attended that execution. I found that very interesting.Woody: Wow. That's crazy. So, that was the real deal execution. Gruesome Gertie. I got to sit in probably around that same time, and the chair would not, obviously, get executed, but think about the difference between what they do now. They just put him asleep, in a Gruesome Gertie,-Jim: Oh, yeah.Woody: -they strap you in and you about to ride, "rahhh." Jim: Yeah, lights.Woody: Yeah, lights in. And off-on. rahhh. They don't just hit him once. They did it like, three or four to five times. So, fuck him, and he got what he deserved.Jim: Yeah. And don't use our peace anymore. [laughs]Woody: Yeah. Never use the peace. Tell the devil peace, son of a bitch. Jim: That's right.Woody: All right. I'm going to take you to a guy named Timothy Baldwin. And the date of the murder was April the 4th, 1978. He killed a lady named Mary James Peters. Now, what's unusual about this killing one person and getting a death penalty? Well, Mary James Peters was 85 years old. That's bad, right?Jim: Yeah. Elderly.Woody: But she was blind.Jim: Oh, my God. That's horrible.Woody: He beat her to death with a skillet, a stool, a small television, and a telephone. You would think, me being retired from, say police, I would have all these pronunciations correctly, but I'm going to say this one wrong, because every time I say it, somebody corrects me. But I say Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, which is, y'all, is all the way up northeast in Louisiana. Great fishing and hunting. He was electrocuted in Louisiana on September 10th, 1984. Let me tell you about the case.Timothy Baldwin, and his wife Rita, and their seven children were neighbors of Mary James Peters in West Monroe, Louisiana. Again, y'all, that's way northeast Louisiana. He was roommates with them from 1971 until 1977. Mrs. Peters was godmother to their youngest, Russell. During the latter part of their stay in West Monroe, William Odell Jones also resided with the Baldwins. Okay.The group went to Bossier City for six months, and now, y'all, Bossier City is on the other end of the north part of state by Shreveport. All right, so probably about a three-hour drive. The group went to Bossier City for six months and then moved to Ohio. The oldest daughter, Michelle, remained in West Monroe with one brother. A second son entered the service. Marilyn Hampton and her three daughters stayed with the Baldwins in Ohio. Marilyn, Timothy Baldwin, and her children then left, accompanied by Jones. Baldwin and Jones worked together in the business of installing aluminum siding. After the departure of her husband, Rita Baldwin got into financial difficulties and was picked up on bad check charges. Her four younger children went to live with Michelle in West Monroe. Meanwhile, Timothy Baldwin, our bad guy, Jones, Marilyn Hampton and her three children led an itinerant existence. Their last means of transportation was a 1978 black Ford van which had been rented in Tampa, Florida.On April 4th, 1978, Marilyn Hampton and Timothy Baldwin drove the van to West Monroe. Jones and the children stayed at a cabin in Holmes State Park, near Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson, Mississippi is not that far. Ouachita, however you want to say it in the Monroe is pretty much on the Mississippi, Louisiana. And just north of that is the Arkansas line. So, about an hour from there to Jackson. So, Baldwin and Marilyn Hampton visited Michelle's apartment in West Monroe but left there around 8:00 PM. Shortly thereafter, a van was seen parked in front of Mrs. Peters' house. A man and woman were observed leaving the residence between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM. Shortly before their departure, passersby saw and heard indications that someone in the Peters' home was being beaten.Baldwin testified in his own behalf and admitted that he and Marilyn visited Mrs. Peters that evening but denied the murder. Mrs. Peters, who was 85 years old, was beaten with various things, among them a skillet, a stool, and a telephone.Jim: Oh, my God, and this is a blind woman. Woody: Right.Jim: She doesn't even know it's coming at. Woody: Right. Yeah.Jim: Poor. Damn.Woody: That's unimaginable, right? Jim: Poor lady. Argh.Woody: Think about the one I had Ms. [unintelligible [00:12:39] had the 57 blows. It was from a base and a Coke bottle, but she was on a walker and stuff. But at least she could see it coming, yeah?Jim: Yeah, that's awful.Woody: Anyway, she remained on the kitchen floor overnight and was discovered the next morning shortly before noon by an employee of the Ouachita Council Meals on Wheels, who was bringing her noon meal. Although helpless and incoherent, Mrs. Peters tried to defend herself against the police officers and the ambulance attendant who took her to the hospital.Jim: Poor woman, man.Woody: She doesn't know who they are. Jim: Yeah.Woody: Dr. A. B. Gregory saw her in the emergency room around 12:30 PM on April 5th, 1978, and found her in a semi-comatose. Her left cheekbone and jawbone were shattered. She had brain damage from multiple contusions and lacerations. According to Dr. Gregory, Mrs. Peters could not communicate rationally. She died of the injuries the following day. Dr. Frank Chin, who performed the autopsy, attributed her death to massive cerebral hemorrhage and swelling, secondary to external head injuries. So, brain bleeds ultimately killed her and it didn't kill her instantly. Can you imagine that, living there, laying there on the floor all night?Timothy Baldwin and Marilyn Hampton were subsequently located in El Dorado, Arkansas. Remember, y'all told you, Arkansas is just north. Timothy Baldwin signed consents for the search of their motel room and the van. Two blue bank bags, one empty and one containing savings bonds and certificates of deposit payable to Mary James, were found in the van. Jones, to whom Marilyn Hampton and Timothy Baldwin had made statements both before and after the crime, helped police officers locate a safe that had belonged to the victim in the LaFourche Canal in West Monroe. Baldwin's finger and palm prints were found on various items in the Peters' home, a cigarette lighter, a television set, and a coffee cup.Baldwin was found guilty, and the jury did what they should have. They recommend the death sentence. So, Timothy George Baldwin was executed on September 10th, 1984. Baldwin was convicted of beaten to death the 85-year-old blind woman, Mary James Peters. And Peters, who was a former neighbor of Baldwin's and the godmother's of his youngestchild, was beaten with everything I told y'all about. Baldwin maintained his innocence and gave this final statement. He said, "I've always tried to be a good sport when I've lost something, and I see no reason not to leave this world with the same policy. After all, it was a hell of a battle. I therefore congratulate all those who have tried so hard to murder me. I definitely have to give them credit as it takes a very special kind of person to murder an innocent man and still be able to live with themselves."Jim: Victim [unintelligible [00:15:37], huh? Woody: Burning in hell.Jim: Yeah.Woody: I'm going to tell you something. Jim: Hella jail as usual.Woody: Hella jail. But you go through all these years, he sat on death row for shorter time than they do now. You know, you're strapped down and that's going to be your last words. I'm thinking about trying to find me some Jesus.Jim: Amen.Woody: Even if I don't believe them and be like, "Oh, Lord, if you could please forgive me ifyou're really there and bring me home." But he's saying, "Mm, I didn't do it."Jim: What a horrible human. Wow. Yeah, we're getting real on this one. Look, these guys, they were executed. So, you're going to hear some disturbing stuff, but we're real with this stuff.Woody: Executed for a reason.Jim: That's right. I'm going to tell you about Sterling Rault. And Sterling Rault was executed, y'all, by electrocution, Gruesome Gertie in 1987, August 24th to be exact. And this is an interesting case, because a lot of these guys that end up on death row and executed, they come from really hard upbringings, and a lot of them didn't have money their whole lives. Sterling Rault was a little bit different. He had a good job, he was a Comptroller at a company called LUTEX. And there was a lady there named Janie Francioni. And Mike, if he were here, could help me pronounce that Italian last name.Woody: Right. [crosstalk] -for sure.Jim: But we're going to go with Francioni. She worked as a secretary. On the evening of March 1st, 1982, which was a Monday, fellow employees observed Rault and Francioni leaving work together in her car. Less than an hour later, three U.N.O. students, which is University of New Orleans inside of New Orleans, they saw the two struggling in the campus parking lot. Francioni screamed at the students, asked them to call the police and make him leave her alone, because he was attempting rape. The students closest to the car observed what appeared to be splashes of blood on her clothing. Rault repeatedly said he had to get her to the hospital, before throwing her into the car from the driver's side all the way to the passenger's side and driving away.Woody: He was saying [crosstalk] the witnesses.Jim: Yeah.Woody: "Oh, I got to get her to the hospital." [crosstalk]Jim: Basically, grabbed her and threw her so hard into the car, she went straight into the passenger seat. So, he was probably a strong guy.Woody: Right.Jim: Approximately 9:20 that evening, a state trooper driving north on Paris Road in an isolated area of New Orleans East stopped to investigate what appeared to be a brush fire and discovered a burning female body.Woody: Ah, worse way.Jim: Close by were partially used five-gallon cans of gasoline and Francioni's blood stained car, which smelled strongly of gasoline. So, he's trying to burn the car in her. A spent bullet was even found on the floor of the car. The victim had a man's belt wrapped around her neck and a jagged wound on the right side of her neck. She had been shot twice. One bullet had struck her in the thigh, traveling into the abdomen, through the small intestines, stomach and liver before exiting the left side of her chest. The pathologist actually testified that this that this would have caused extensive slow bleeding. The wound would have been very painful and would have resulted in death in less than a matter of hours.The second bullet entered directly into the abdomen, and damaged blood vessels in the right kidney and the large blood vessel known as the interior vena cava, before lodging in the spine and would have also caused really rapid bleeding. That wound would have been fatal in 5 minutes or 10 minutes. So, we're painting a picture of here is how she suffered. It was just horrible. The victim was dead-- [crosstalk]Woody: [crosstalk] twice. Yeah.Jim: Yeah. The victim was dead when the neck wound was inflicted and she was set on fire. Thank, God. Her fingernail scrapings have human blood on them. So, she fought. She's a fighter. Janie Francioni had been with her mother and a friend during the preceding weekend and had had no sexual encounters. I'm sure they tested for that. Her mother took her to work on Monday morning. However, she had engaged in sexual activity 12 to 24 hours prior to her death. Vaginal swabs showed semen fluid but no sperm. Sterling Rault had a vasectomy in 1979.When police searched the area, they detected movement under a nearby bridge. As they approached, a man broke out and ran. After a brief chase, he turned around, threw up his hands, and hollered, "I'm Sterling Rault".Woody: Ran like a bitch.Jim: Yeah. He appeared quiet, calm and relaxed. He was dressed in casual clothing. He was lacking a belt. What his detective brain can put two and two together on that one. And he had a strong aroma of gasoline. So, there were several fresh red scratch marks across his chest. His right hand was swollen. After being advised of his rights, he claimed two men in ski masks kidnapped him and Francioni and raped her. Of course.Testimony at the trial revealed that Rault had been embezzling funds from LUTEX, and his secretary was about to basically ride him out. So, in December, 1981, .25 caliber semi-automatic weapon had been sold to a buyer with a driver's license in the name of Jerry Jones. In executing a search of Rault's residence, they recovered a gun box or the pistol, a box of .25 caliber cartridges and a Mississippi driver's license in the name of Jerry Jones.Woody: Jerry Jones.Jim: So, there it is. They end up taking him to court, obviously, and he gets the death penalty. So, he got executed on August 24th, 1987. He was convicted of raping, stabbing, shooting, and burning the body of Jane Ellen Francioni, a 21-year-old secretary, as we told you. And his final statement was, "I would like the public to know that they are killing an innocent man at this time."Woody: Yeah, three for three. All innocent, huh?Jim: Crazy. "I pray that God will forgive all those involved." How nice of you. "I, personally, do not hold any animosity towards anyone. The country professes to be 'One nation under God,' but the death penalty goes against the word of God. Into the arms of--" [crosstalk]Woody: So does murdering, shooting, laid twice, and choking her with a belt and everything else.Jim: Yeah. "Into the arms of love of God I now go. I love y'all. May God bless y'all." There was a little write up in the paper shortly after these. It was interesting, because he was fighting to try to get these stays of execution, as are typical, but unsuccessful. He rode the lighting as he deserves.Woody: I'm so glad Gruesome Gertie was still involved in all these stories. Jim: Yeah.Woody: I just think that's such a good way for them to go. I know so many people hate the death penalty, and I don't want anybody that's innocent, but these people-- [crosstalk]Jim: Hear some of these stories. You know what?Woody: It's like having a migraine. Everybody knows about someone, not someone about murder, but unless you're going through it, unless it's your loved one. I've seen people who said before their family members got murdered, they were against the death penalty. And after their family members got murdered, they wanted the death penalty.Jim: Yeah.Woody: You understand it, but you don't get it. Jim: That's right.Woody: Well, let's take to our next winner, Antonio James. And, y'all, he's a murderer during some robberies, and he killed two people in January of 23rd, 1979, and was arrested on the 26th of 1979. He was born in 1954, so he was at 1964, 1974, so he was like 24, 25. This happened in Orleans Parish. He actually, this winter, got lethal injection instead of Gruesome Gertie.Jim: Got the needle.Woody: Right, got the needle. Let me tell you about it. So, James had amassed a very extensive juvenile and criminal record by the time he was tried for the murder of-- He murdered two people, y'all, Henry Silver, age 70, and Alvin Adams. I don't know what Adams age was. But James had amassed a very extensive juvenile and criminal record by the time he was tried for the murder of Silver. The post-sentence investigation report-- Let me tell you about that. Anytime you get convicted of any crime, especially you're going to do a lot of time, there's actually a division of the parole officers and probation officers who do, what they call a PSI, presentence investigation report on you, and they tell your whole priorcriminal history, work history and everything else, drug use, whatever, and then they write a synopsis on whether to tell the judge whether or not they're likely to offend again.Jim: Yeah.Woody: So, that helps the judge determine how many years or whatever they're going toget.Jim: I didn't know that.Woody: Unless it's automatic life in prison. The post-sentence investigation report prepared for the sentencing court listed 37 juvenile incidents. 37. That's the ones that they called [crosstalk]. That's the ones that they called him for. Think about all the ones he got away with.Jim: Probably double it.Woody: Right. James was ordered confined to the Louisiana Training Institute at age 14.And, y'all, that is basically the Angola, we need--[crosstalk] Jim: LTI.Woody: LTI.Jim: [laughs] That's what you used to call it.Woody: That was right down the road from me. We're going to actually cover that one day, because that's real shit there too. But most of these guys, a lot of them go to death row. But anyway, he was locked up in basically juvenile prison which was a very bad place at age 14.In 1973, he was convicted of attempted armed robbery and sentenced to serve three years at the state penitentiary. During this period of confinement, he was convicted of attempted simple escape. He was released in 1975. I don't understand all these years, because armed robbery carries 99 attempted, I think is 40 up to, and then the simple escape alone is 10 years. Anyway, he was released in 1975. In 1978, he was charged with aggravated rape. That's a mandatory life, if not death penalty. But the charge was later refused by the prosecution.James was convicted of the first-degree murder of Alvin Adams on January 23rd, 1979 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Okay. The first-degree murder, he could have got the death penalty. He was convicted on January 26th of 1979. So, just shit, three days later, armed robbery of Robert Hooten and was sentenced to 99 years for this offense, the maximum under Louisiana law. Now, we go to Henry Silver.On January 1, 1979, James approached 70-year-old Henry Silver as the latter was getting out of his car in his neighborhood in New Orleans. James placed a gun to Silver's head and demanded his money. When Silver shouted for help, James placed the gun under Silver's right ear, cocked the hammer, and fired a shot into Silver's head. James then rifled through Silver's pockets and removed his wallet containing $35. He drove away in a nearby waiting car. Silver died a few hours later at Charity Hospital.Now, let me tell y'all this, I used to go there all the time back in the day. It's closed now after Katrina, but Charity Hospital was rated as the number one trauma center in the world for gunshots [crosstalk] you know why? Because it handled all New Orleans shit. In the 1990s, the Orleans was the murder capital of the world. So, I've seen some crazy shit in there. But anyway, he obviously lived on the machine for overnight. James was arrested on January26th, 1979 when he bungled another armed robbery attempt and was shot with his own gun. He was indicted for first degree murder.At trial by Orleans Parish grand jury indicted in first degree murder. In December 1981, jury found him guilty as charged at a trial where the principal witness against James was his accomplice, Levon Price. After deliberation, the same jury unanimously recommended that the defendant be sentenced to death. Rightfully so.Jim: Yeah.Woody: So, let's go to March 1st, 1996. All these years later, that's 15 years later, Jameswas executed by lethal injection at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, listeners know it as- Jim and Woody: Bloody Angola.Woody: -at the age of 42. The execution team had difficulty locating a vein to insert the catheter into his arm in order to commence the execution. Our hero, Warden Burl Cain requested that James make a fist in order to assist the process. James complied to this request. James declined to give a final statement. However, when Warden Cain later said that James stated, "Bless you," as he was strapped to the execution gurney. His last meal was fried oysters and crab gumbo.Jim: Wow. Good choice. I'd say that. Woody: It made me hunger.Jim: Yeah, dang.Woody: James' execution was the subject of an ABC News documentary on Prime Time Live. In the UK the BBC broadcast a 40-minute piece on April 18th, 1996 on Radio 4 about this case, with particular reference to the role of the British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith in providing adequate defense. So, there you go.Jim: Yeah. Antonio James, we talked about him a little bit on our-- [crosstalk] look, go back and listen to that series, the Burl Cain series, we just wrapped up.Woody: Three or four parts.Jim: Well, it was three parts.Woody: Three parts and then me and Kelly. So, it's four parts. Jim: Yeah. So, the patron, we did an episode with Kelly Jennings. Woody: That's right.Jim: Only available to patron. So go join that patron. Listen to that one. But we discussed Antonio James, and it was interesting. That was the second execution for Burl Cain and the one that he said, "I'm going to do this one right:"Woody: Because the first one-- y'all, go listen to series.Jim: It's really good.Woody: Super powerful. Burl, we're still waiting on you to come on the show, buddy.Jim: You know what I notice about that whole thing? Yes, we are. What I notice about that whole thing is, he's the first one we've come across today that didn't blame it other people.Woody: Yeah, that's right. The first one that didn't-- [crosstalk] Jim: He just said, "God bless, and I'm out."Woody: Yeah, God bless and riding out.Jim: Yeah. At least took it like a man. That's right. So, John Ashley Brown. Let's get to him. John Ashley Brown was executed by lethal injection in April of 1997. I'm going to tell you a little bit about this crime. On the night of the murder, Mr. Laughlin and his wife had eaten dinner at a restaurant near the corner of Dauphine and Touro Streets in New Orleans. Very famous.Woody: Yeah.Jim: Yeah, area of New Orleans. At approximately 11:45 PM, they left the restaurant and began walking to their car, which was located about a block away. Brown exited a nearby vehicle and he confronted the Laughlins. He pinned them against their car, and demanded money from Mr. Laughlin. Mrs. Laughlin screamed and ran back towards the restaurant. When she returned to the scene, her husband was dead.According to NOPD, who had arrived at the location, the victim who had arrived at the location, the victim was found lying face down in the street and bleeding profusely. An autopsy later revealed that Mr. Laughlin had been stabbed 13 times.Woody: It's a lot.Jim: Mrs. Laughlin provided the police with a description of the perpetrator and the vehicle which she had seen him get out of prior to the attack. She also told police that a woman with dark hair had been driving. So, Sergeant James Scott of the NOPD was stopped at a traffic light when heard the description of the crime and saw the suspect being broadcast over the radio. He looked to his left, and there's Brown sitting in a vehicle that matched the description given by the victim's wife. And there was a female at the wheel of the car.Brown's vehicle was pulled into a nearby service station, and Sergeant Scott followed, believing that the occupants of the car might be the suspects. The officer watched as the woman put gasoline in the car while Brown walked over to a water hose and he began washing his hands. He then-- [crosstalk]Woody: [crosstalk] -blood all over him.Jim: He then re-entered the car. Good point. Sergeant Scott approached the vehicle and ordered Brown to step out and place his hands on the hood, when Brown did so, the police officer observed scratches, marks and droplets of blood on his forearms. He also observed blood between Brown's toes, which were visible through the sandals that he was wearing. In plain view on the floor of the car was a New Orleans shopper's card which belonged to the victim. Wow, the evidence is mounting up, right?Woody: Right.Jimmy: He was arrested, taken into custody, and a search yielded Mr. Laughlin's wallet. A second search pursuant to a properly secured warrant led to the discovery of a Bowie knife which had been concealed underneath the front seat of the car on the passenger side. Mrs. Laughlin positively identified Brown from lineup and basically nailed that, "This is the guy that attacked my husband and killed--"Woody: For those of you who don't know, Bowie knife is a big ass knife.Jim: Yeah. So, obviously, he goes to court, he gets convicted, he gets sentenced to death. And on April 24th, 1997, he was put to death by lethal injection at Bloody Angola. His final words were, "Let my baby sister know I love her and the rest of my family, for supporting me. I love you very much. I'm ready to go now." As he felt the lethal drugs enter his system, Brown stated, “Wow.”Woody: Really?Jim: That's it.Woody: Wow. That's crazy.Jim: Pretty crazy stuff. And those final words, man. But I guess, credit to the guy for not denying it.Woody: Yeah, saying, "You got me bad. Go find the real murderer," and all that shit, right? Jim: Yeah.Woody: And he said, "Wow."Jim: "Wow," when he felt that stuff-- [crosstalk]Woody: [crosstalk] -saw face of Jesus. Jim: Yeah, it could be.Woody: All right. So, now, y'all, we're going to take you to our next, whatever you want to call him. His name is Willie Watson, and he's a murderer. And not only he is a murderer, he's a rapist and a kidnapper and a robber. This offense took place on April 5th, 1981. And Willie Watson was born in 1951. And he killed a lady, Kathy Newman, who was 25 years old, who was a Tulane University medical student. If you don't know that, if you're not from Louisiana, Tulane is basically the Harvard of the south. He did so by shooting her in St. Charles Parish.On the evening of April 5th, 1981, Willie Watson abducted Kathy Newman, a third-year Tulane University medical student, at gunpoint as she arrived at her apartment building in the Carrollton section of New Orleans. Very familiar with that. Watson forced Newman to drive to an isolated area in St. Charles Parish, which would be towards El Paso, he drove her across the bridge, anyway, where he robbed her of her jewelry and raped and sodomized her. [unintelligible [00:37:42]Watson then instructed Newman to dress herself, and as she did so, he shot her in the back of the head, killing her. Watson later confessed to the murder, stating that he shot Newman because he feared that she could identify him. On June 5th, 1981, Watson was found guilty of first-degree murder. And Willie Watson was executed on July 24th of 1987. Watson was convicted of the kidnapping, rape and murder, like we told you, of Kathy Newman. When they asked if he had any last words, Watson calmly shook his head, "No." Let me read you the article.Jim: Mm, no last words.Woody: This article is from The New York Times. It's right up after execution, dates July 25th, 1987, New York Times. "Willie Watson went calmly and silently to his death in an electric chair of Gruesome Gertie." They didn't say that, y'all, it's me.Jim: [laughs]Woody: "Early today, for the rape, robbery and murder of the Tulane University medical student. He was the sixth murderer executed in Louisiana since early June and the second this week--" [crosstalk]Jim: Wow. They making it happen back in those days.Woody: The student, Kathy Newman, 25 years old was abducted, raped, and shot. Now, not just raped, y'all, sodomize I'll say, also and shot to death in 1981. Mr. Watson, 30, confessed that he killed her, attributing the crime to his drug addiction while an adolescent growing up in New Orleans housing projects. Look, back then they were real and legit projects. Did I ever tell you about that? You could be on where Mike's house is on St. Charles and go two blocks in any direction, they had the project-projects. The big high rises and shit. They had their own New Orleans police authorities for it. It was so bad. They wouldn't go in there in the daytime unless they had three units at a time.Jim: Wow.Woody: But anyway, this is a-- [crosstalk] Jim: So, he grew up rough.Woody: That was rough shit, the concrete jungle. So, the execution, which had been scheduled for midnight, was delayed two hours after the US Supreme Court rejected Mr. Watson's appeal on a 4-to-4 tie vote. And Mr. Watson's lawyers made a last-minute plea to Governor Edwin W. Edwards, my boy, in Baton Rouge, and he refused the final statement. At 1:58 AM, Mr. Watson walked into the death chamber. His head had been shaved of the shoulder-wide afro, because he had a big fur, y'all, hairstyle he had the day before when he appeared at the state Pardon Board in a futile appeal.Asked if he wanted to make a final statement, Mr. Watson shook his head, "No." He was then strapped into the wooden electric chair before his face was masked. Y'all, they do that because the eyes fry out of the head and the scalp will catch on fire. Before his face was masked, he looked at his spiritual adviser, Sister Lee Scardina, and mouthed ''I love you, Sister Lee.'' Then he received the first of four jolts. Remember I told you earlier, hit it, they go, "Hit it. [imitating electric sound]." Turn it off. And they did, "Hit it," four times. Anyway. So, then he received the first of four jolts of electricity at 2:02 AM. He was pronounced dead at 2:09 AM. After it was over, the spiritual adviser went to Jed Stone, Mr. Watson's lawyer, who was outside the death chamber, and cried on his shoulder. Outside the prison, six advocates of the death penalty marched in the darkness.Now, I remember back in those days that basically the neighbor in parish where I grew up and-- Shit, I remember, they were rolling [unintelligible [00:41:39] Governor Evers was in office. My mom was on the parole board, parole and pardon board. Anyway, he was good friends with my dad.Jim: Wow. That was like six minutes, they were jumping.Woody: Yeah, they give him for a minute, turn it off, give him another minute, and then--[crosstalk]Jim: Good. Very good.Woody: Nothing more but fuck you. Jim: Yeah. [crosstalk]Woody: Killed 25-year-old, she was going to be a doctor. He raped her and butt raped her.Jim: Awful. All right, we're going to tell you-- Look, and this one's disturbing, so prepare yourself. But we're going to tell you about Andrew Lee Jones. And he was executed by electrocution on July 22nd of 1991. Tell you about the crime. On February 17th, 1984, 11-year-old Tumekica Jackson was living with her mother, grandparents in the Scotlandville section of Baton Rouge. Tell them about Scotlandville, Woody.Woody: Yeah, I'm just going to tell you. I'm about to do a full-blown episode. I have all the research and everything on this case, and it's bad.Jim: Yeah.Woody: Scotlandville, y'all, it's in north Baton Rouge almost to Baker, what they call Baker, Louisiana, which is really Baton Rouge just runs into Baker. It's all still east Baton Rouge Parish.Jim: Bad part of Baton Rouge.Woody: Yeah, it's-- [crosstalk]Jim: A lot of gang activity in that area. It used to be way back in the day, a decent area.Woody: Decent. Back in this time, it wasn't that bad. But this dude is that bad. Again, Real Life Real Crime original episode, you're going to get all the details, we'll get you.Jim: There you go. So, at 04:00 AM on February 17th of 1984, the grandmother discovered that the child, the 11-year-old Tumekica Jackson was missing from her bedroom. The police discovered that someone had broken the screen of the rear den window and had opened the back door. In the muddy ground, near the house, police obtained a cast of an imprint made by the left shoe from a pair of size 8 1/2 tennis shoes. There were no signs of a struggle inside the house. The investigation immediately focused on Jones because his stormy romantic relationship of several years with the victim's mother. It had been broken off the week prior to this incident. The victim knew Jones well, and he had been in the home many times. On the evening of the child's disappearance, Jones had called the mother's home three times and had told the grandmother that he would not be responsible for his actions,-Woody: Not going to be responsible.Jim: -if the mother continued to refuse to see him. About 6:30 AM, the police went to the apartment where Jones lived with his sister, Terry Jones, and his half-brother, Abraham Mingo. Jones told the police he had been home all night, and Mingo and Ms. Jones confirmed his story. A few hours later, Ms. Jones called the police and said she may have been mistaken about that. After questioning her further, the police obtained a written consent to search the apartment. When no one answered the officer's knock, Ms. Jones used her key to open the door and officers found Jones in the bathroom washing a pair of size 8 1/2 tennis shoes. The bath tub was full of dirt and leaves. The officers seized the tennis shoes and a pair of green gloves, and they requested that Jones give them a statement. After signing a waiver, Jones gave the police a tape-recorded statement in which he denied any knowledge of the offense.Woody: "I don't know nothing."Jim: Lack of evidence, so they had to allow him to leave with his sister. But approximately 06:00 PM, the victim's partially nude body was found in a drainage canal.Woody: In a ditch.Jim: An autopsy established a child had been beaten, raped and manually strangled. The police again questioned Mingo. Although he initially told conflicting stories, he eventually gave a detailed account of his activities with the defendant on Friday night and Saturday morning. According to Mingo, he and Jones were out with the defendant on Friday evening, but dropped him off in Scotlandville. About 1:00 AM, Mingo and Jones went to the Snowflake Lounge, but Jones left alone about 30 minutes later, and Mingo returned to the apartment.Now, at some point between 04:30 AM and 05:00 AM, Mingo was awakened by Jones, he knocked on the door, whereupon he let defendant in and went back to bed. When Mingo and Jones were alone in the apartment later that morning, the defendant told him that he should've stayed home, that he did something he didn't want to do, and that he done fucked up. Jones gave Mingo a TG&Y bag and asked him to throw it away, which he did without looking inside. At Mingo's direction, police recovered a TG&Y bag from a dumpster near a grocery store. The bag contained socks, a pair of blue jeans and a pink sweatshirt, which were wet, muddy and stained. Of course, they put some analysis on that and identified the stain is a mixture of blood and semen fluid.Woody: This is before DNA.Jim: Mingo also told the police about a pair of boxer shorts that he had found in the bathroom of the apartment. The shorts belonged to Mingo, but Jones had worn them on Friday night. Pursuant to Mingo's written consent, the police recovered a pair of stained brown and white boxer shorts. Analysis confirmed the presence of blood and semen fluid on the boxer shorts. On the basis of this information, they finally got a warrant. They arrested Jones. Jones gave a videotape statement in which he asserted that he and Rudolph Springer had gone to the victim's house on Saturday morning to commit a burglary. They were scared of being recognized, so Jones remained in the car while Springer entered the house. When Springer returned carrying the victim, Jones got in the backseat and pulled his cap over his face.After a few minutes, Springer drove Jones to his apartment. That was the last time the defendant saw the victim. That was his story, they didn't buy it. And eventually, he gets sentenced to death.So, he was executed on July 22nd, 1991, by electric chair. While he did not make a final statement, at a pardon board hearing three days before he was executed, he said, "There's a possible chance I did it. A possible chance I didn't do it. If I had not been drunk, nothing like that would have happened. I'm like anybody else. I don't want to die or anything like that." So, that was his statement after that. I hate it when it involves children. It's disgusting.Woody: Yeah, I actually have some more in-depth knowledge on that case. I'm going to bring it to you on a original RLRC episode in the future.Jim: Oh, very good.Woody: He is a real piece of shit. I know of Mingo personally, and I'll explain all that. Jim: I look forward to that, fellas.Woody: Right. Let's take to the next one. John Brogdon. I'm going to give you the facts of the case. On the evening of October 7th, 1981, Rubeta Brown and her 11-year-old sister, Barbara Jo, walked to a convenience store near their home in Luling, Louisiana. Y'all that is in St. Charles Parish. Again, down there in the El Paso area and all that kind of outside NewOrleans, but across the swamp. So, they walked to use the telephone. 19-year old Brogdon and his 17-year old friend, Bruce Perritt, arrived at the store while Rubeta was on the phone.Perritt approached Barbara Jo and put his arm around her. Rubeta called her sister away, and the two left. On the way home, Barbara Jo asked her sister if she could visit a neighbor's home for a few minutes. Rubeta allowed her sister to leave her to do so. Rubeta went to the neighbor's house, about 10 minutes later to pick up Barbara Jo. Barbara Jo wasn't there. And after short search in the neighborhood, Rubeta informed her mother that Barbara Jo was missing. And they called the sheriff's office.After that, a friend of Barbara Jo's came forward to say that he had seen Barbara Jo earlier that evening in a car seated between Brogdon and Perritt. Two men discovered Barbara Jo's body later that evening behind a levee. Again, y'all levee are high dirt walls, usually dirt, sometimes cement, hold back the rivers in the water. But anyway, they saw him behind the levee in Luling. And look, you get no fucking business being behind a levee, period.Jim: Yeah, especially in Luling.Woody: Right. Perritt's car was found parked a short distance away. Two other men later informed authorities that they had seen Brogdon and Perritt walking on the road near this levee. Brogdon was without a shirt and appeared disheveled. Brogdon and Perritt were arrested that evening at Brogdon's home on suspicion of Barbara Jo's murder. After being informed of his Miranda rights at the sheriff's office, Brogdon waived his right to counsel and confessed to the murder and aggravated rape of Barbara Jo. In his statement, Brogdon told how he and Perritt tortured and killed her. Instead of visiting the mother's home that night, Barbara Jo had returned to the convenience store and met with Brogdon and Perritt. The confession-- Well, that's their story, y'all. Confession admitted that after they picked her up at the convenience store, Brogdon and Perritt drove her to the levee where her body was later found.They repeatedly raped her and forced her to perform oral sex on them. All during these acts, they beat Barbara Jo with their fists. They also broke bottles on the cement and then stabbed her repeatedly with the edges. Perritt also struck Barbara Jo in the head with a brick that he found lay nearby. Brogdon then beat her with the brick. The two also used pointed sticks to pierce her body. Brogdon and Perritt left the scene of the crime and Perritt's vehicle when they heard another car approached and they hauled ass in Perritt's vehicle.Brogdon was convicted by St. Charles jury of murder and aggravated rape and sentenced to death. So he was executed on July 30, 1987. Brogdon and his co-defendant Bruce Perritt were convicted of raping, beating. We told you about all that. Perritt received a life sentence, y'all, because the jury deadlocked in the penalty phase. I don't know what fucking--Jim: Some juror. Yeah.Woody: -idiots on that jury. Brogdon made no formal final statement. As he turned to seathimself in the electric chair, his last words were, "God bless y'all." It's crazy, right? Jim: Horrible.Woody: We do some really uplifting stories. We've done some great, great shit. But sometimes, you got to let it be known. Wow.Jim: How the cow eats a cabbage.Woody: Right. [crosstalk] -the worst fucking place in the world.Jim: Yeah. These people that are getting executed are not always angels. Woody: They did everything to that girl. Poor-- [crosstalk]Jim: Blind woman. That's just awful. Thank y'all so much for supporting us. We hope y'all enjoyed this episode. We've got a Part 3 that we'll drop at some point that you'll really like as well. But we just thank y'all for all you do for us.Woody: Definitely patron members, hope you're enjoying your commercial free, early releases, and all your bonus episodes, and everything else. And you want to be a patron member, you can go to patreon.com, type in Bloody Angola.Jim: Yes. And it'll pull it right up.Woody: Follow us on Facebook, and look for Bloody Angola announcements and everything Real Life Real Crime, including Real Life Real Crime app, and follow our other show, Real Life Real Crime Daily, [crosstalk] me and Mike Agovino.Jim: Yeah, absolutely.Woody: Original Real Life Real Crimes like the one I'm going to tell you about with Mingoinvolved in it. It drops on Tuesdays as of now, y'all. Jim: Until next time, I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: And I'm Woody Everton.Jim: Your host of Bloody-Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: Complete story of America's bloodiest prison.Jim and Woody: Peace.[Bloody Angola theme]Our Sponsors:* Check out Factor and use my code bloodyangola50 for a great deal: https://www.factor75.com/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

In this episode of Bloody Angola, Woody Overton and Jim Chapman tell you some stories you will have to hear to believe regarding inmate of Louisiana State Penitentiary who were sentenced to DEATH ROW getting exonerated after DNA evidence or other substantiating evidence cleared them of their crime and saved them from getting the needle.#DeathSentence #DNA #InnocenceProject #BloodyAngola #PodcastFULL TRANSCRIPTJim: Hey, everyone. And welcome back to another edition of Bloody-Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making. Woody: The complete story of America's bloodiest prison. Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman. Woody: And I'm Woody Overton. Jim: And we're going back to our roots, Woody Overton.Woody: Right back inside the wire. Jim: Back inside the wire. Just when you thought we got out. Just coming back here. Woody: Yep. [crosstalk] They made me come back in. Jim: That's right. Look, we talk a lot on this show about the advancement, especially DNA, something you've worked with in the past many times. Woody: Yeah. This is a huge testament to DNA. When I started, it was really coming in its own. Now it's so much more advanced. I remember putting rushes on murder cases, and it taken six months to get the results back. Jim: That's crazy. Even back, we talked about Sean Vincent Gillis, and that was really probably one of the first times they were ever able to really rush something to the point where it really helped because you had to get that serial killer off the street. Woody: Derrick Todd Lee too. Still, even the rush back then took a long time. Not like it is now. Jim: Right. Woody: You know what? I'm totally for it. And let me do this real quick. I want to give a shout out to all our patrons. We love and appreciate each and every one of y'all. We love all you listeners, and bloody shooting to the top of the charts. It's because y'all are listening, liking and sharing. Please continue to do so. And we love y'all very much. Back to the DNA, it's just come leaps and bounds that continue to change every day. We always tell you Bloody Angola is going to be different, and this is different. You would think, oh, hard ass like me, lock everybody up, I don't believe in that. I believe if you're innocent you're innocent. Jim: If you're guilty, lock them up.Woody: If you're guilty, you- [crosstalk] Jim: Don't wait [crosstalk] Woody: [crosstalk] -you'll pay hella jail. Jim: [laughs] Hella jail, that's right. We did want to preface this episode with some of these guys were exonerated from DNA. Some of them, it was other reasons. And we're going to get into that. The intriguing thing about today's episode is many of these guys that we're going to tell you about were actually serving in death row. They've been sentenced to death. Woody: Today, we're going to be talking about people or convicts who were exonerated and released from Bloody Angola.Jim: Yes. We want to kind of start this off. I'm just going to tell you about the Innocence Project. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck, y'all, familiar with him through OJ. It was basically formed to assist incarcerated individuals who could be proven innocent, primarily through DNA testing. Although sometimes they find so many holes in a case, they'll pick up a case where there's so many problems that they take that case on and look for exonerations in those cases. The average prison sentence before they'll take on a case is 14 years before their exoneration or release. And so, it's a process, even with those guys, but we're going to them to it. Woody: They don't just take anybody, right? Jim: Yeah. Woody: One of the ones I can tell you about if-- ready to get started?Jim: I'm ready. Woody: Is John Thompson. John Thompson was from Orleans Parish. I'll just read you some of the facts of the case, some of the highlights, and what ultimately ended up happening. Shortly after midnight on December 6th, 1984, Raymond Liuzza was shot several times in the course of an armed robbery just around the corner from his New Orleans, Louisiana apartment. When the cops arrived, they found Liuzza laying on the ground, but he was still conscious. He told them he was robbed and shot by an African American male and then took him to hospital and he died. On December 8th, responded to tip, the police arrested two men in connection with the crime. John Thompson and Kevin Freeman. Photos of the two men were published in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and soon afterwards, police received a call from a family that had been carjacked several months earlier, claiming that Thompson looked like the person who had robbed them. Thompson was charged with the murder. Meanwhile, Freeman agreed to testify against Thompson in the murder trial, and in return, prosecutors charged him only with being an accessory to the murder. He was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. We're talking about Freeman, y'all. The world-famous New Orleans district attorney, Harry Connick, Sr,, not Junior, that's his son, the singer and actor, decided to try Thompson for the carjacking case first, knowing that a conviction could be used against him in the murder trial. Based primarily on the eyewitness testimony of the three carjacking victims, all of whom were minors, Thompson was convicted on April 4, 1985, and sentenced to 49 years in prison. That is for the carjacking. Y'all, always told you that eyewitness testimony is the worst testimony there is, but doesn't mean it's not true. At his murder trial, held shortly thereafter, the prosecution demonstrated that Thompson had at one time been in possession of both the murder weapon and a ring taken from Liuzza's finger. Thompson decided not to testify in his own defense because if he did, his felony carjacking charge would have been admissible to the jury. As a result, he was unable to tell the jury that Freeman had sold him the murder weapon and the ring. Freeman, the main witness for the prosecution, claimed that he and Thompson had robbed Liuzza together and that Thompson had shot him. This testimony was contradicted by the statements of eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen only one man running from the scene of the crime. Richard Perkins, who had originally called in the tip implicating Thompson and Freeman, also testified for the prosecution, claiming that he had heard Thompson make incriminating remarks. Thompson was found guilty and sentenced to death on May 8th, 1985. Fast forward a whole bunch of years, y'all, and events took a dramatic turn in April 1999, 30 days before scheduled execution, an investigator discovered that there was a blood stain from the robber on the clothing of one of the carjacking victims and that this evidence had never been disclosed to the defense. It's Brady, y'all. If they had it, they got to give it up. The prosecutor had ordered testing to determine the blood type of the stain, and in fact, they had rushed the test. But when the blood type was determined-- I guess this was before DNA. Blood type was determined and was different from Thompson's. They concealed it. Defense attorneys then obtained an affidavit Michael Rielhmann, a former district attorney, who said that five years earlier, in 1994, Gerry Deegan, one of Thompson's prosecutors, admitted on his deathbed that the blood evidence was intentionally suppressed and that he left a report about it on the desk of James Williams, the lead prosecutor. Williams denied ever seeing the report. Defense attorneys also learned that Perkins, the witness who testified that Thompson had admitted the murder, had received $15,000 from the Liuzza family as a reward. When this evidence was presented to the trial judge, he granted a stay of execution and dismissed Thompson's carjacking conviction, but he denied Thompson's motion for a new trial on the Liuzza murder. In 2001, however, he reduced Thompson's death sentence to life in prison without parole. Jim: Wow. Woody: Pretty crazy, right? Jim: Very crazy. Woody: In July of 2002, the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal overturned Thompson's murder conviction and remanded the case for retrial, ruling that the false robbery conviction obtained by deliberate government misconduct had deprived Thompson of his constitutional right to testify on his own behalf at the murder trial. Y'all, I'm not against that. I mean, give him a new trial, if it was messed up. At the second trial, Thompson was able to explain that he purchased the murder weapon from Freeman, and the defense called several new witnesses who claimed to have seen only one man fleeing the scene of the murder. They said that the man did not look like Thompson, but did resemble Freeman who, in the meantime, had been killed in a shootout with a security guard. On May 8, 2003, a jury acquitted Thompson after deliberating for 35 minutes, and he was released from prison the same day. Y'all, 35 minutes is for conviction? That's outstanding. But for exoneration, I mean, that's unbelievable. It normally takes hours--[crosstalk]  Jim: They were pretty convinced. Woody: Yeah, they want to make sure. In 2008, Thompson won a $14 million civil suit against the District Attorney's Office. That judgment was reversed by the US Supreme Court in March 2011 on the grounds that the misconduct in the case was not the result of a deliberate policy or systematic indifference by the New Orleans DA's Office. He got $330,000 in state compensation. But you know what? That's a long time to be on death row, and you didn't do it. Jim: He's a good example of someone that it wasn't necessarily DNA evidence that exonerated him, but it was the facts of the case. Woody: I have heard this case before, and actually, I think it's pretty well documented-Jim: Thank you.Woody: -but what's right is right and what's wrong is wrong. But you know what the sad thing is? In 2017, Thompson died of a heart attack at age 55. Jim: Yeah, man. And you nailed it when you're talking about those bloodstains. Back when he was convicted, it was '85. There was no DNA. Woody: I think it was like '92 when the first time it was used successfully. Even then, most prosecutors thought it was junk science. So, it had to be used over and over again successfully and tested and tested and tested and it grew to what it is today. Jim: That's right. Let me tell you about another case out of death row in Angola that was actually-- Woody: That place you don't want to go.Jim: No, you don't want to go there. But was actually reversed over DNA, and that is the case of Ryan Matthews. So, Matthews was 16 years old, y'all, at the time he was sentenced-- or arrested rather, and was 17 when he was sentenced to death for shooting of Tommy Vanhoose, who was a convenience store owner in Bridge City, Louisiana. You familiar with Bridge City? Woody: Yeah. That's where the juvenile prison used to be. Jim: There you go. So, in April of 1997, a man wearing a ski mask entered the store and demanded money. When Vanhoose refused, the perpetrator shot him four times and fled, taking off his mask and diving into the passenger seat of a window of an awaiting car. Several eyewitnesses viewed the perpetrator's flight. One woman was in her car and watched the perpetrator run from the store, fire shots into her direction, and leap in the car. So, these guys were hightailing it. They done shot somebody four times. When she was later showed a photographic array, which is like a six pack, y'all, she tentatively identified Matthews as the assailant. By the time of the trial, she was sure that Matthews was the gunman. Two other witnesses in the same car watched as the perpetrator shed his mask, gloves, and shirt as he fled. The driver claimed to have seen the perpetrator's face in his rearview mirror while he was being shot at and trying to block the escape. The witness and his passenger were brought to a show-up hours later. The driver identified Matthews. His passenger was unable to make an identification.As per our previous case, identifications not very reliable now.Ryan Matthews and Travis Hayes, both 17 at the time, were stopped several hours after the crime because the car they were riding in resembled the description of the getaway car. They were arrested and Hayes was then questioned for over six hours. His initial statements to investigators, Hayes claimed that he and Matthews were not in the area where the crime occurred. Hayes eventually confessed that he was the driver of the getaway car. He stated that Matthews went into the store, shots went off and Matthews ran out and got into the car. Both boys were described as borderline intellectually disabled. In 1999, based mainly on identifications, Matthews was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.Woody: There you go. Jim: Hayes was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Matthews had maintained his innocence since the arrest. The defense presented evidence that forensic testing of the mask excluded both Matthews and Hayes. A defense expert also testified the car the two boys were driving, the reason they were stopped, could not have been a getaway car because the passenger side window that Matthews allegedly jumped through was inoperable and could not be rolled down. How do you get around that? I don't know, but they did. Other witnesses to the crime described the shooter as being much shorter than Matthews as well, which that's not necessarily that reliable. Height is hard to determine. Woody: You can put four people in the room and four people may get the different height and weight or whatever on. If it's a correct identification, basically you can bring them back two weeks later and they can still pick out the facial features.Jim: That's right. So, y'all ready to hear how this person got exonerated? Well, DNA testing in another murder case proved to be the keys to proving Matthews' innocence, another murder occurring shortly after Vanhoose's death in the same area. A local resident named Rondell Love was arrested. He pled guilty, and Love bragged to other inmates that he also killed Vanhoose. And that happens, y'all, you'd be surprised. Woody: Street cred. Jim: This got back to Matthews' attorneys, I'm sure, through Matthews, and they began to investigate Love. DNA test results from the second murder were compared to the results from the Matthews' conviction, indicating that Love had been wearing the mask that was left behind in the Vanhoose's murder. Testing on the mask, gloves and shirt had already excluded Matthews and Hayes, but they became conclusive after Love's profile was included. Woody: There you go. Jim: So somehow, even though they were excluded from all that DNA in the first trial, there was no one to necessarily pin it on. So, it got pinned on them. Well, you can't get around it when someone else's profile shows up. Over a year after this information was discovered, he was granted a new trial. He wasn't released. He was just granted a new trial. But he did eventually get released. The new trial, he was found not guilty and became the 14th death row inmate in the United States proven innocent by post-conviction DNA testing. Woody: That's crazy.Jim: After two more years of legal battles, you'd think he'd get out right away?Woody: They got to make sure. Jim: Yeah. Travis Hayes was released in December 2006 and exonerated in January of 2007. You may think that someone in this position, they must have got a ton of money. I mean, you sentenced to death, for Christ's sake. He received $252,000 in state compensation and another $133,000 from the federal courts. To tell you how resilient this cat is, in 2019, Matthews graduated from Texas University with his bachelor's degree. Woody: Cool. Jim: I get chills from that because, man, look--Woody: They were going to kill him.Jim: They were going to kill him. Woody: I get it, not to get into death penalty arguments, whatever, but I'm telling you this I'm glad John Thompson got off death row, and I'm glad he got off a death row, but I promise you, there's some monsters up there deserve to be there.Jim: Oh, there's no doubt about it.Woody: Don't deserve [crosstalk] to breathe. Jim: Well, it's like you always say, just make sure you get it right. That's the important thing.Woody: Yeah, that's it. If you're going to do it, do it right. Especially when you're talking about taking somebody's life. That's why they have the appeals process the last 20 plus years before they kill them. Let's talk about Glenn Ford. Glenn Ford from up in Caddo, that's where Hugo Holland-- Jim: That's right. Caddo--[crosstalk]  Woody: He was another one, y'all, sentenced to death. He was convicted in 1984. But let me tell you about it. On November 5th, 1983, a 56-year-old Isadore Rozeman, a jeweler and watchmaker, was found shot to death in his shop in Shreveport, Louisiana. His pockets were pulled, and items were missing from the store. One of the first people to be questioned was 34-year-old Glenn Ford, an affable man who did yard work for Rozeman. Ford denied being involved in the crime, though he admitted he had been near the store at some point earlier in the day and witnesses told police they saw him near the store. In February 1984, items from Rozeman's store turned up in a pawnshop and a handwriting analyst said that Ford had signed the pawn slips. Marvella Brown told police that her boyfriend, Jake Robinson, Jake's brother, Henry, and Ford were at her house on the day of the crime and left together after Ford asked "if they were going." Brown said Ford was carrying a brown paper bag. When the men returned later that day, Ford was carrying a different bag and had a gun in his waistband. Jake Robinson also was carrying a gun. Brown said Jake showed her a bag containing watches and rings. That is suspicious.Ford, along with Jake and Henry Robinson and a fourth man, George Starks, were charged with capital murder and conspiracy to commit armed robbery in February 1984. November 1984, Ford went to trial. And Ford was represented by two appointed defense attorneys, neither of whom had ever handled a criminal trial, and one of whom had never handled a criminal case of any sort. That's kind of bad. Jim: Yeah. That's not the attorneys I want to represent--Woody: Right. When you're on trial for your life. Jim: Oh, my God. Woody: If you're in Livingston Parish, you want Jasper Brock handling your business. [crosstalk]  Jim: Yeah. This is a death penalty trial. Woody: If you're anywhere else over on that side of Louisiana, you want Thomas Davenport out of Alexandria to handle it, because that's what they do. These guys had never even handled a case like this. Jim: It's crazy. Woody: Anyway, Brown fell apart on the witness stand and said on cross-examination that detectives had fabricated her responses and she had lied in her testimony. She said she had been shot in the head earlier in her life and the bullet was never removed causing difficulty with thinking and hearing. Jim: Makes sense.Woody: Several witnesses testified that they saw Ford near the victim's store on the day of the shooting, but no one testified that they saw the crime. A gunshot residue expert testified for the prosecution that after Ford had voluntarily come in for questioning, he recovered gunshot residue on Ford's hands. A fingerprint analyst said he lifted a single fingerprint from a paper bag found at the scene. He said that the print contained a “whorl” type pattern and that Ford had such a pattern, while the Robinson Brothers did not. Dr. George McCormick, Caddo Parish coroner, testified that he had analyzed the scene of the crime, including the position of Rozeman's body and a duffel bag found next to the body with a bullet hole in it. McCormick said he concluded that the victim was shot by someone who held the gun in his left hand. Ford is left-handed and the Robinsons are right-handed. Not looking good for Ford.Jim: No, not at all. Woody: McCormick also said that Rozeman had been dead for as long as two hours by the time the body was discovered, a time when witnesses said they saw Ford near the store. Ford testified on his own behalf, which most of them don't, but he testified and denied his involvement in the crime. He admitted selling items to the pawn shop, but said he'd got them from the Robinson brothers.On December 5th, 1984, the jury convicted Ford of capital murder and conspiracy to commit armed robbery. Following the jury's recommendation, Ford was sentenced to death on February 26th, 1985. After Ford was convicted and sentenced, the prosecution dismissed the charges against the Robinson Brothers and Starks. Jim: Let me just say this, okay, the inexperience of the lawyers that you mentioned is glaring when they allowed him to testify in his own defense in a death penalty case. Holy crap.Woody: I don't know when they changed the law, but I know Jasper Brock in Livingston Parish-- [crosstalk] Jim: Yeah. Jasper Brock would say, "He ain't talking." [chuckles] Woody: And I know Thomas Davenport, they're certified in death penalty cases. You have to actually get certified to defend somebody in death penalty cases now.Jim: Yeah. Probably, this case caused it.Woody: Probably one of them I mean, they should've known this shit was going to get done the way--[crosstalk] Jim: That's crazy. Woody: Still, I believe everybody has the right to a fair trial. Ford goes to death row. His appeals were unsuccessful until 2000 when the Louisiana Supreme Court ordered a hearing on post-conviction petition for a new trial filed by the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana. At the hearing in 2004, a defense expert testified that McCormick's attempt to reconstruct the crime had no connection to known facts and were speculation at best, and I agree with that, they're talking about the coroner. You can't tell somebody's left-handed from a bullet hole and a duffel bag. Anyway, another defense expert said that the gunshot residue evidence was meaningless because it was gathered more than a day after the crime and that Ford could have easily picked up the residue merely by being in a police station where such residue is extremely common.Another defense expert said that the prosecution's fingerprint expert misidentified the fingerprint on the paper bag, and it could have been left by the Robinson Brothers. All very, very true. Ford's lawyers at the trial testified that they were very inexperienced in criminal cases. Jim: Even the lawyers. Woody: [crosstalk] -Jasper and Thomas Davenport. And had no training in capital defense. If I was Ford, I'd be raising hell. I'm like, "You got me two guys that are wet behind the ears. Give me a pro."Jim: Crazy, man. Woody: Jasper Brock or Thomas Davenport. They're even saying that he deserves--Jim: Yeah. They go on the stand and say, "Yeah, we pretty--" [crosstalk] Woody: One of the lawyers who specialized in oil and gas law had never tried a case to a jury, either civil or criminal. That's like my brothers. One's a tax lawyer and one's a maritime lawyer. They've never been inside a courtroom. The extent of his prior criminal work was handling two guilty pleas. That's easy enough. The other lawyer, who was out of law school less than two years and was working at an insurance firm handling personal injury cases. Both said they were unaware they could seek court funding for defense experts, shocker, and didn't hire any because they couldn't afford to pay out of their own pockets. Both were unaware of how to subpoena witnesses from out of state. So, Ford's family members, who lived in California, did not testify for Ford at the guilt or punishment phase of the trial. The defense presented numerous police reports that had never been disclosed to the defense.The report showed that Shreveport Police had received two tips from informants implicating only Jake and Henry Robinson in the robbery and murder. Other police reports showed that some detectives had falsely testified at Ford's trial about statements Ford made during his interrogation. Testimony that the prosecution should have realized was false, the defense claimed. Moreover, other police reports that were withheld from the defense contained conflicting statements by Marvella Brown and by the witnesses who said that they saw Ford near the store at the time of the crime. Reports could have been used to impeach the witness testimony at trial. Jim: Wow. Woody: But still, the post-conviction motion was denied. In 2012, the Caddo Parish District Attorney's Office began reinvesting the case, and in 2013, disclosed that an informant told authorities that Jake Robinson had admitted shooting Rozeman.Jim: Oh, wow.Woody: So, the honorable and right thing to do, in March 2014, the prosecution filed a motion to vacate Ford's conviction and death sentence in light of the newly discovered evidence from the informant. On March 11th, 2014, a judge vacated Ford's convictions, and the prosecution dismissed their charges, and Ford was then released. Jim: How about that? Woody: Even after all that, they'd fallen so hard in the second trial, etc. They came forward-- I think, you know what? I don't know if Hugo Holland was still the prosecutor up there at the end. I'll have to look it up. Maybe I'll ask him. He just messaged me last night. But that's an honorable thing to do. But in March 2015, a Caddo Parish district judge denied Ford's request for state compensation. Judge ruled that Ford knew the robbery was going to happen, did not try to stop it, that he attempted to destroy evidence by selling items taken robbery, and that he tried to find buyers for the murder weapon. Unfortunately, in June of 2015, Ford died of lung cancer. Jim: Yeah, that's a good kind of segue for a second, Woody, just to talk about, look, not all the guys we're going to tell you about today are Citizens of the Year. Some of them definitely committed some crimes or may have withheld some evidence, like in this case. But that's a long jump from being sentenced to death for a murder you didn't commit. Woody: Look, we have our legal process for a reason. A lot of my cases are bad cases where the witnesses are like really shady people or they're criminals themselves. Well, guess what? A lot of these crimes don't happen with a bunch of choir boys. You know what I mean? You're not running with choir boys when you're going to murder somebody and steal the jury. Jim: You're going to put them to death--Woody: But having two inexperienced attorneys and all the other stuff and the guy saying about-- whatever, that's not enough to kill somebody.Jim: That's right. We're going to give you a two for one right here. And you're not going to believe this. Woody: Let me tell you real quick, I know I keep talking about [unintelligible 00:31:23]. I don't know if this is-- we'll have to get him on. This part, he's a part of this Innocence Project, but I don't think it's the same one. Barry Scheck is another one. He got a guy off a death row. Jim: Wow. He'd be great to sit down and talk to.Woody: He got a guy off a death row. He told me about the case, and I was like, "Holy shit." But I think it was out of Missouri. He's in all federal courts and everywhere else, Thomas Davenport, but he believes everybody deserves a criminal defense. And I agree with that. If you're a cop and you got it right, you got them right. Don't sentence them to death, don't send them away for life on some bullshit. Jim: That's right. We're going to tell you about Michael Graham and Albert Burrell. Now, both of these gentlemen were sentenced to death back in 1986.Woody: I was 16 years old. Jim: That was a long time ago. Long time ago. On the night of August 31, 1986, 65-year-old William Delton Frost and his 60-year-old invalid wife, Callie, were fatally shot in their two-room home in Downsville, Louisiana, which is almost like a plantation area of Louisiana, very rural. The front door had been smashed in and police believed the motive was robbery because Frost didn't trust banks and was believed to keep cash in a suitcase in his home. A lot of older people, especially in those times, they didn't put money in the bank. They put money everywhere but the bank. The shots appeared to have been fired through a window and their bodies were discovered a couple of days later.Now, six weeks after the murders, in October of 1986, Janet Burrell told police that she had met with her ex-husband on the night of the crime and that he had $2,700 in $100 bills and blood on his boots. That don't look good. She said he admitted firing the shots and she saw Frost's wallet on the front seat of his car. Wow. That's dead to rights. So, Burrell was arrested within the hour. Not long after, Kenneth St. Clair, another witness, told police that he had come to Louisiana with Michael Graham to find construction work. St. Clair told police that on the night of the crime, Graham and Burrell left the trailer where Graham was living near St. Clair about 8:30 PM returned, Graham had blood on him, St. Clair said. Now, you've got another person seeing that blood. At the time, Graham was in the Union Parish Jail on forgery charges for stealing a checkbook from a woman who hired him in St. Clair to do some work and then cashing about $300 worth of checks. Woody: Like you said, everybody in these stories aren't angels. Jim: Yeah. On October of 1986, Graham and Burrell were each indicted on two counts of murder. Two days later, Graham's cellmate, Olan Brantly, told authorities that Graham had admitted he and Burrell committed the crime [crosstalk] [chuckles] that's it. And that Burrell had fired the fatal shot. So, Graham goes on trial in 1987 in the Union Parish Courthouse. The state's key witnesses were Janet Burrell, who we told you about, and Brantly, we also told you about. So, they got him dead to rights although police reports said that Frost's wallet was recovered in his home. A deputy testified that he believed Burrell had returned to the Frost home and put the wallet back because he suspected his wife had seen it the night they met. Woody: That makes a lot of sense, right? Jim: Yeah. Woody: Why wouldn't you just throw it the fuck out-- [crosstalk] Jim: Yeah, that's a stretch and a half right there.Woody: If you go back to the murder scene to put the wallet back, you got to think, "My wife might have seen it." Jim: [chuckles] Yeah. You're dumping it in the ditch or something. You're not putting it back. Another witness, 14-year-old Amy Opiel, who had spent the night of the crime with the St. Clair Family testified that she saw Graham Burrell sitting on the couch of a trailer with a suitcase and stacks of money. So, Graham was convicted on March 22nd, 1987, and sentenced to death. Burrell went on trial in August of '87, and he was also convicted and sentenced to death on pretty much the same evidence as Graham. Five months after Burrell was convicted, Janet Burrell, who by then was remarried to Burrell's brother James, I told you this was a good one, recanted her testimony, Woody Overton. She said she lied because she wanted to get custody of their child, which had been awarded to Albert Burrell prior to the murders. That's called motive to lie. So, the Louisiana Supreme Court, they grant--Woody: That's cold hearted.Jim: Yeah, that's cold.Woody: [crosstalk] Jim: That's as cold as you can get.Woody: How shitty of a mom does she have to be for the dad to get custody in the state of Louisiana? That's a rare deal. Jim: Well, somewhere along the line, her conscience weighed on her and she admitted she lied. The Louisiana Supreme Court granted Albert Burrell a hearing. A hearing. But at the hearing, Janet Burrell changed her testimony back, she's figuring it out, "Uh-oh. I might get in trouble for this," to her original story. The motion for a new trial was denied. Eventually, the conviction and death sentence got upheld by the Louisiana State Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Graham, don't forget about him, his case was also sent back for a hearing in motion for a new trial because of all this going on. His lawyers, they continued to get extension after extension, and they began to cover new evidence. By 1995, Janet Burrell shows up again. She says, "I'm going to recant my testimony again."Woody: She's unreliable now. Jim: Yeah. The crazy thing was, the execution date was in August of '96, she recants it in 1995. The lawyers, closer it gets to that execution date, they're 24 hours a day trying to get you a stay. 17 days away from his death, Burrell's lawyer obtains a stay. In 1998, Amy Opiel shows up again and recants her testimony, claiming she was pressured to lie and that it was St. Clair she saw with blood on his clothes and counting money. It wasn't Burrell. Okay, so Graham, he finally gets a hearing in 2000 where lawyers present all these recanted statements, as well as evidence that prosecutors failed to turn over, exculpatory evidence and impeachment evidence, including that Brantly had cut a deal with prosecutors on a pending charge, and then he was taking medication to control his mood swings. So, Brantly had a little bit of an anger problem, probably. On March 4th of 2000, Graham was granted a new trial after the Third Judicial District judge, Cynthia Woodard, ruled that prosecutors have misled the jury and failed to turn over exculpatory evidence. Woody, what is exculpatory evidence? Woody: Anything that could possibly make the jury find them not guilty.Jim: Yeah. On December 28th of 2000, they dismissed charges against Graham, and he was released from prison. This is a man that was 17 days from getting the needle. Woody: From executing.Jim: Yes. On January 2nd, you may wonder, "What about Burrell?" January 2nd of 2001, charges against Burrell were dismissed and he was released. Now, in 2016, a state appeals court upheld a lower court ruling denying Graham and Burrell compensation from the state of Louisiana. Burrell and Graham filed a federal lawsuit, but a jury ruled against them.Woody: They never solved the crime now. That's a cold case.Jim: Cold case. And here's the interesting thing. You may wonder why they're denying this money. Woody: It's hard. It's almost impossible to get a nickel for being wrongfully convicted.Jim: Exactly. Especially when you don't have DNA evidence to back it up, because basically that was so many inaccurate statements, but it didn't necessarily mean you didn't do it. It just means the people that said you did it were lying.Woody: A lot of times, if they have find gross negligence, they have to prove that DA actually did what they said that you did or whatever. Jim: That's it. Woody: Really, people don't really care about people that are exonerated, basically in paying--Jim: Those are two for one right there for you. Woody: A lot of states have a set amount. If you get exonerated, it's just whatever, which is crazy. There's no amount of money worth being on death row. In Angola, much less on death row. Jim: Yeah, the guy that was the singer that we did the episode. Woody: Yeah, Archie. Jim: How can you give that guy enough money? Woody: You can't. Jim: And he was exonerated on DNA evidence. He did not do it. Woody: You cannot give him enough.Jim: You can't give him enough. So, why are you putting a ceiling on it? Because every situation is different. Someone like that, you can't give them enough, but Goddang, you need to give them millions. Woody: They should never have to work or do anything.Jim: Period. Woody: Y'all, we will tell you another one, and this one is a rape and a murder. It's the case of Damon Thibodeaux, which is a good, strong Cajun name. And another Louisiana man that was sentenced to death row at Bloody Angola. On July 19th, 1996, at around 05:15 PM, 14-year-old Crystal Champagne left her apartment in Marrero, Louisiana, to walk to a nearby supermarket. When she didn't return home as expected, her mother went looking for her. At around 6:45 PM, her father and 21-year-old stepcousin, Damon Thibodeaux, also went out to look for her, as did several neighbors. The search continued until the following afternoon, when friends of the family heard that a girl who looked like Crystal had been seen walking on the levee. Y'all, if you're not from South Louisiana, levees are manmade walls that hold back the rivers or the bayous or whatever. Said Crystal been seen walking on the levee in previous evening. Not long after, Champagne's body was found near the levee. She was partially naked and had been strangled with a wire.Before the girl's body was found, JPSO investigators began interviewing people who had been with Champagne before she disappeared. An officer was interviewing Thibodeaux, who had been at the Champagne's home when Crystal left for the store. When he was informed that her body had been found, a homicide detective then took over the questioning. Thibodeaux initially said he knew nothing about the murder. He agreed to a polygraph test, which police said indicated deception regarding the girl's death. Uh-oh. Jim: And you being a former polygrapher--Woody: I'm still a polygrapher, actually-- it's just so hard. Basically, at that point, the polygraph is an interrogation tool. It's hard to clear somebody who's accused of murder if you're not good as fuck like me.Jim: [laughs] Woody: No, seriously. You got to set the questions, the questions that they lied to, their response has to be stronger than, "Did you rape and murder this girl?" Well, fuck you, you're in the hot seat. You're looking at a death penalty. It's hard to do. So, they failed him, whoever it was, I don't know who it was. They failed him on the polygraph, which, let me tell you, the polygraph is a long process, but it's basically made to break people down if they're guilty. And it's five or six hours. But I always said a good homicide interrogation doesn't even begin until after five or six hours. That's when you really start to get in that ass. Eventually, after nine hours of questioning, Thibodeaux said that he had raped and murdered Crystal. He was arrested and charged with both crimes. After he was allowed to eat and rest, Thibodeaux quickly recanted his confession, but was ignored. At Thibodeaux's 1997 trial, the prosecution built its case around his confession to the rape and murder. Dr. Fraser MacKenzie of the JPSO Coroner's Office, who performed autopsy on Crystal, testified the girl had been strangled to death and had injuries to her right eye and forehead consistent with getting hit by a bat or a rock. He noted bruises on the girl's buttocks, which he said indicated a struggle. He estimated Crystal had been dead about 24 hours before she was found. Separately, Dr. Lamar Lee, a professor of entomology at Louisiana State University, testified about the insect samples taken from Crystal's body. He said flies will lay eggs on a carcass within a couple of hours after death but will not lay eggs after dark. He said that the eggs were laid before nightfall--Jim: That's true?Woody: Yes. Jim: [crosstalk] as hell.Woody: Came out of the body farm originally out of Tennessee, but I didn't if they used maggots and the generation of flies, and they could tell you how long a body's been down like almost within 15 minutes. Jim: Damn.Woody: On July 19th, 1996, and calculated the age of the fly larvae or the maggots at between 24 and 28 hours old. They eat until they turn and fly, die and have more babies in cycle. There was no physical evidence linking Thibodeaux to the crimes, and though Crystal was found undressed, they found no semen on her body and no other physical evidence that she had been raped. A police officer testified that the semen could have been eaten by maggots. I guess.A week after the crime, detectives questioned two women they found walking on the levee. Both said they saw a man pacing and acting nervously on the evening of the murder. Both women picked a photo of Thibodeaux from a photographic lineup, and both identified him at the trial. Thibodeaux's attorney argued that detectives coerced the confession and suggested facts of the crime to him during their interrogation. On October 3rd, 1997, a jury convicted Thibodeaux of first-degree murder and rape. He was sentenced to death.Jim: Oh, my God.Woody: It's another one of our boys going up to death row.Jim: Death row. Woody: So, fast forward ten more years, in 2007, the JPSO district attorney's office agreed to reinvestigate the case with the Innocence Project and other lawyers who volunteered to work on the case. Now, DNA testing as well as other forensic testing was performed, and investigators interviewed numerous witnesses. The investigation revealed that the women who identified Thibodeaux as the man they had seen pacing near the crime scene had seen Thibodeaux's photo in the news media before police showed them the photo line-up. Moreover, the date of the sighting turned out to be the date after the body was found, when Thibodeaux was already locked up.Jim: That could be a problem. Woody: Right. Well, you know what, you got to give props to JPSO DA's office for even trying to reopen and look at this, because most of them are like, "Fuck you. I [crosstalk] conviction."Jim: Yeah, you did it. Woody: And he's on the death row. But extensive DNA testing on items recovered from the scene of the crime failed to detect any trace of biological material connecting Thibodeaux to the murder. Tests also showed that despite Thibodeaux's confession to rape, Crystal had not been sexually assaulted. And DNA testing on the cord used to strangle Crystal identified a male DNA profile that did not belong to Thibodeaux.Jim: Uh-oh.Woody: Well, doesn't totally excuse him. It could have been anything. Somebody else could have held the cord, and Thibodeaux could have been wearing gloves, we don't know. But the reinvestigation established firmly that Thibodeaux's confession was false. He claimed to have raped Champagne when in fact, no rape occurred. He said he strangled her with a gray speaker wire he took from his car, when in fact she was strangled with a red cord that had been tied to a tree near the crime scene. The prosecution consults an expert in false confessions who concluded that the confession was the result of police pressure, exhaustion, psychological vulnerability, and fear of the death penalty.Jim: Wow. Woody: Yeah. I mean, it can happen, y'all. I hope every day that I didn't get the juice from somebody on the wrong level, and I don't think I did. Anyway, on September 29th, 2012, he was released from death row. Thibodeaux later filed a federal civil rights lawsuit that was put on hold in January 2017. Like most of our guys, he died in August of 2021.Jim: Wow. Woody: But you know what? I know false confessions do happen. It's a real deal.Jim: Yeah. You'll confess to anything if you're tired enough.Woody: You had your ass [unintelligible 00:49:06].Jim: Yeah. Woody: [laughs] -eight, nine hours not eating, I mean, you're going to get the needle, da, da, da. It might have been, "Help me help you. You tell us what happened, we're going to tell that you cooperated." But the fact that he confesses and then they give him some food and he's like, [crosstalk]Jim: Yeah. All right, we're going to give, y'all, one more today. We're going to tell you about a guy that definitely did not do it, was exonerated by DNA evidence, and that is Mr. Rickey Johnson. I saved this one for last today because he was in prison a long time for a rape he didn't commit. Matter of fact, he was in prison 25 years. Woody: That would suck. Jim: Yeah. One day in prison for something you didn't do, it sucks. All right, imagine 25 years. Let me tell you about the crime. In the early morning hours of July 12th, 1982, a 22-year-old woman awoke in her Northwest Louisiana home to find a man holding a gun to her head.Woody: Wow. Jim: The man raped the woman twice, stayed at her house for four hours. He told her his name was Marcus Johnson, and he mentioned several details. He claimed they were about his life. He claimed to be looking for an ex-girlfriend of his from Many, Louisiana. He said he was on probation. He was from Leesville, Louisiana. He even said he had relatives in the town of Natchitoches and Monroe. The weird thing is, he raped this chick twice and then he starts telling her his life story. It's almost like he felt like, "Now, we have a connection." Woody: Yeah, I got this special nut dumping connection.Jim: Yeah. What do you think the victim did? Woody: Pillow talk. Jim: She reports the rape the next morning, and at which point she told police her attacker was an African American man. He was between 5'6" and 5'8", and he weighed about 140 pounds. He had facial hair and a scarf tied around his head. A detective from the Sabine Parish Sheriff's Department contacted the Leesville Sheriff's Department to ask if they had a man named Marcus Johnson on file. There was no record of Marcus Johnson, but Leesville officers did tell detectives about Rickey Johnson. They said, "Well, we got another Johnson here. His name is Rickey. He's African American," and he was on probation for a traffic violation, a misdemeanor. Rickey matched some of the details that the lady provided of the perpetrator. He was from Leesville, he did have a child with a woman in Many, and he had relatives in Natchitoches and Monroe. So, he becomes a suspect. Nothing wrong with that. Police showed the victim a six pack, but it was actually only three pictures in this one. So, we're going to call it a three pack. Woody: Three pack. Jim: Yeah. It had Johnson's photo, which was at the center. Woody: I don't know how you get away with that.Jim: That picture was eight years old, and it was in the center. That's important. Mentally, you go to the center picture first. The victim told police that she had ample time to see the perpetrator's face and she identified Johnson as a perpetrator, even though he had a prominent gold tooth, which was never part of her description of the attacker. If a guy rapes you or a girl rapes you and they have a gold tooth, you're probably going to mention they had a gold tooth. Woody: You mentioned facial hair and everything else, and the gold tooth would stand out. Jim: Two days later, what do you think they do? They go arrest Rickey Johnson and they don't even investigate any other suspects at this time. They think they got their man. Johnson asserts his innocence. He says, "I didn't do any of this crap." Six days later, they conduct an in-person lineup with five individuals. Again, Johnson, they put in the center. And again, the victim identifies him as the assailant. The lineup was not presented at Johnson's trial because it was ruled inadmissible since Johnson did not have an attorney present at the lineup. I mean, it happens. Doesn't mean he didn't do it. Tests at the Shreveport Crime Lab determined that evidence collected from the victim at the hospital included sperm and serological testing that showed Johnson and 35% of the African American population could have been the contributor. So, that's basically no evidence. Too many people. Woody: Too many people are-- [crosstalk] African American. Jim: 35% of the entire population. Johnson was charged with aggravated sexual assault and tried before a jury in Sabine Parish, Louisiana. The victim identified him at trial saying she was positive. Woody: Game over.Jim: Positive that was him, and there was no question in her mind. She said the apartment was dark until about 15 minutes before he left. Prosecutors presented the victim's photo ID of Johnson and the serological evidence that his blood type matched the blood type of the perpetrator as determined--Woody: Back then, they didn't have DNA. They could give you blood types, basically. Jim: That's it. So, long story short, he gets convicted by the jury and he's sentenced to life without parole. Woody: Bloody Angola.Jim: Bloody Angola, baby, that's where you're going. So, Johnson contacts the Innocence Project at the suggestion of a guy named Calvin Willis, who was also a fellow inmate at Louisiana State Penitentiary. Willis was exonerated in 2003 after the Innocence Project secured DNA testing that proved his innocence. He basically called his boy and said, "If you really didn't do this, I got some people you need to talk to." Now, in late 2007, that DNA testing was performed on the sperm from the perpetrator of the crime. Remember, we said they had sperm. And the results proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Johnson could not have been the attacker.Woody: Wow. Jim: This is the first DNA exoneration using the new technology with DNA at this time called Mini-STR, which allows labs to accurately test degraded or extremely small samples. First time. [crosstalk] In January 2008, they do what anybody would do, they took that DNA profile and now they have a database in 2008.Woody: CODIS.Jim: Uh-oh. Woody: They got somebody else.Jim: They got a hit, Woody Overton. And John McNeal, who was already in prison serving a life sentence for rape committed in 1983 in the same apartment complex incidentally as the crime for which Johnson was convicted.Woody: How the hell do you not investigate that?Jim: It's crazy, ain't it? He's already in prison for that rape committed in the same complex. And so basically, they offer their apologies. After 25 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit, Rickey Johnson was released and exonerated in 2008 after 25 years in prison. The state of Louisiana later awarded him $245,000 in compensation. That ain't even close to what he needed. Woody: Did Johnson go beat that other guy's ass? [crosstalk] Jim: [chuckles] That's a good question. I couldn't find the answer to that. I'm sure he wanted to. Woody: [crosstalk] -find, you could. Jim: He would've got some inmate justice. Woody: Yeah. "Bitch, you knew I've been here all this time for this," and you know they all know what they're down for. Jim: Oh, yeah.Woody: You get your David Constance been in there lying, saying, "My wife put me up, but not on rape charge."Jim: No. Woody: [crosstalk] Jim: In the same apartment complex.Woody: No doubt. That is crazy. Jim: It's freaking nuts. You would think that guy's already serving another life sentence. Why not just come clean and say, "I raped that girl"? Yeah, that's exactly right. Woody: Even convicts don't like rapists. Jim: That's right. Woody: Especially kid rapers and all that. Jim: That's right. So, long story short, he got $245,000 from the state of Louisiana. A federal wrongful conviction lawsuit was settled confidentially in 2011. So, he did get some money federally. Doesn't say how much. [crosstalk] Look, we hope y'all enjoyed these. Woody: We got to do more of these. Jim: Oh, yeah.Woody: These cases you find, criminal mind is always fascinating to me, but this shit is--Jim: Love it. Woody: Hey, we're all about the Gerald Bordelon getting executed for raping and killing Courtney LeBlanc. We're all about--[crosstalk] Almost every one of these, except for Rickey Johnson was on death row. Jim: Yeah, something. There's been actually, for those of you out there that are playing trivia games, there's been 11 people released from Angola alone from death row based off of either DNA evidence or strong evidence to force an exoneration. Woody: I get that why people are against it. They say, "Oh, you kill one wrong, it's too many, shut it down." You haven't sat across the table or looked at the dead bodies and shit that I've looked at and looked in the face of evil. But hey, I'm a champion, and would go on-- As you know Jim, after my law enforcement career, I went on and defended people that were innocent, that I believe they were innocent. So, it is what it is. We're not totally one sided, but hell or jail or freedom. Jim: That's it. Woody: It's another great episode. Jim: Yeah. We loved it. Thank you, patrons, couldn't do it without you. Woody: Yes. Jim: If you're not a patron member, go join Patreon. We may do some of these just for patron members. Woody: Patrons get commercial-free, early release episodes and locked up episodes, which we probably have more locked up for Bloody Angola than I have locked up for Real Life Real Crime, so a bunch of them. All different kinds of stories. So, y'all go check it out. You can go to patreon.com and type in "Bloody Angola."Jim: Yep. /bloodyangolapodcast will pull you right to it. We appreciate it. We love each and every one of you. And until next time-Woody: I'm Woody Overton.Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman, your host of Bloody-Woody: Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making. Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison.Jim and Woody: Peace. [Bloody Angola theme]Our Sponsors:* Check out Factor and use my code bloodyangola50 for a great deal: https://www.factor75.com/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Woody Overton and Jim Chapman of Bloody Angola Podcast tell the story of Clifford Etienne and the Louisiana Prison Boxing Program at Louisiana State Penitentiary and other prisons.#cliffordetienne #theblackrhino #bloodyangolapodcast #podcastFull TranscriptBloody Angola Podcast ( THE BLACK RHINO)Jim: Hey, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Bloody-Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: The Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison.Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: And I'm Woody Overton. Welcome, y'all, back to another episode of Bloody Angola. And we appreciate you listening and liking, subscribing, and all that good stuff.Jim: Yeah.Woody: We want to thank our Patreon members who are very instrumental in the show. Y'all stay tuned at the end of the show and we're going to talk about that some more. But, Jim, today we've got something-- We always said it'd be different. Today, this is a very, very interesting story, which I do have a lot of personal connection with.Jim: I think we can title this one The Black Rhino.Woody: The Black Rhino. Absolutely. I knew the Black Rhino when he was becoming the Black Rhino. This guy's name was Clifford Etienne. And that's, y'all, not from South Louisiana. It's E-T-I-E-N-N-E. Clifford Etienne grew up in New Iberia, Louisiana, home of tabasco. We call it affectionately the Berry. If you're from South Louisiana, they just call it the Berry. I got paternal brothers from down there and Bobby [unintelligible 00:03:03], if you're listening, shoutout, Probation And Parole, State of Louisiana.Jim: But there's not much out there either. It's the tabasco plain if you're going to New Iberia pretty much.Woody: It's growing up a lot over the years, but back then, and specifically in this time frame that I'm going to be talking about, Clifford Etienne was coming up and he was truly, basically a stud.Jim: Yeah. He dominated in wrestling. He played baseball. Woody: Linebacker in football.Jim: Track and field. He threw the disc and the shot. Woody: 6'2", 290 pounds.Jim: Big boy. And was recruited by LSU, Nebraska, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, which these days are dominant, but back in those days were extremely dominant.Woody: And recruited as a linebacker. And he just was a stud-stud. But sometimes, life happens and people try cocaine or different things or they hang with the wrong crowd. And that's what Clifford started to do. He could have had the world as his oyster, and he would it in later years and seems like history repeats itself, unfortunately. Back then, on a certain day in Lafayette, Louisiana, when Clifford was a young man--Jim: Yeah, he was 18. As most 18-year-olds do, he was getting away with what he could, and him and four friends decided it would be a good idea to rob some customers at a shopping mall in Lafayette.Woody: It was the only shopping mall in Lafayette at the time. And that was in 1988. I was there in 1989. And when USL was USL, now it's ULL. Go, Cajuns.Jim: Yes.Woody: But they robbed some people. And ultimately, he got busted.Jim: Yeah, he got sentenced to 40 years. The first stint was Bloody Angola. That was where he first went.Woody: And 40 years, y'all, would have been the minimum on armed robbery. It carries up to 99 years in the state of Louisiana. I think he was like 18 years old, he gets sentenced and they ship him to Bloody Angola.Jim: That's right. Eventually, after a few transfers, he ends up at DCI.Woody: That's Dixon Correctional Institute, y'all. That's where I would come to know him. What happened was I was working the working cell block, which y'all heard me talk about before. It's different than admin seg, because there's two men to a cell. But working cell block is where you only get sent for major rule violations. Basically, for street charges, whether you're smuggling, dope, you attack an officer, you rape somebody, or you fight with weapons. Now, I had two tiers of the working cell block that I ran and I can remember distinctly, Clifford Etienne was in the cell with a guy from Livingston Parish, a white guy from Livingston Parish. Now, Clifford Etienne is a black man, and they were in the next to the last cell at the end of the tier. The tier only had cells on one side, y'all, face the screen windows. They had a couple of black and white TVs down the tier.But I would stop and talk to them all the time because the guy from the LP, I knew him from the street, and I knew him back from the club days. We knew some of the same people. You're not supposed to become friends and stuff with the convicts, which I submit to you that when you are working 12-hour shifts in two on, two off, three on, two off, two on, three off, but even on my days off, the Department of Corrections was always short and they had an on call list. Basically, I could work 30 days a month.But I'm doing time just like they're doing time. I was doing time just like they were doing time. They locked those doors behind you on that 12-hour shift, you can only shower them and feed them and have nurse calls so much and shit gets a little boring. So, I would stop, and I did a couple of years back there-- and I say it, I'm like a convict, but it [Jim chuckles] really was like doing time. Did a couple of years back there. When you get locked up on the working cell block, once you get locked up, you have to do 90 days without a low court or a high court write-up. You go back before the board and they basically hear your case as to whether or not you can be released in general population. Well, the problem with that is, y'all, in the working cell blocks, basically, they're worst of the worst because these are people that can't even follow the basic rules in prison, even the small rules, and the ones that, like I said, were back there for serious charges. Now, the white guy in the cell was back there for having or suspicion of having sex with a female guard. That's a no-no, but it is what it is, right?[laughter]Woody: If you can get over and do what you do, that's what they're going to do. Now, his cellie was Clifford Etienne. So, I began to talk to him. Look, this is a massive dude. Now, I was 6'2", probably 250 at the time. And he's 6'2", 300 pounds but he was all muscle. I mean, like solid as a rock. But he was a really cool dude, and I say that. I know he robbed people and shit like that, but he could have been an asshole to me or anything else, but I would hang out and stand in front of the cell late at night and shit. I'm entertainment for them also. We were talking and I found out that Etienne was a boxer, and he was actually on DCI's boxing team, but also found out that he was an accomplished artist.He asked me when we're talking one night, said, "You married? You dating someone?" I said, "I'm dating someone." "Can you give me a picture of her?" "Bro, I'm not bringing you a picture of my girlfriend." [Jim laughs] He said, "No. I'm an artist. I'm going to draw a picture and you can give it to her." So, the next time I came back to work, I got a little snapshot and I gave it to him. The next evening, I came back to work, and he had hand sketched an exact likeness of this girl. And I can't remember her last name. I think her first name was Debbie. It was just fucking piece of artwork and I was blown away. It's on a basic piece of paper done in pencil. I'm like, "Bruh, you got talent." I didn't know what I would come to find out later on and what we're going to talk about.Also, I talked to him about boxing because I like boxing, and I like to box. Both of my grandfathers went to college for boxing, one at USL and one for LSU. They boxed on the college boxing teams. I asked him, I said, "You get into a fight--" just more like bullshit. I said, "If you're going to hit somebody." He said, "Woody, if you're going to hit somebody, I want you to hit him hard as you can in the stomach. Don't let him know it's coming. You rear back, full body swing. Hit him in the stomach." And I said, "Why is that?" He said, "Because if you do it right, you're going to knock the air out of him. Then, they're defenseless. You can just beat him to a pulp."Jim: Yeah.Woody: He would go on to become the Interprison Boxing Champion for the state ofLouisiana. Y'all, each prison has their own boxing team, and it's big shit.Jim: Yeah. I'm going to tell you about his reputation in prison and a little bit about a trainer that had actually started working with him in prison. There was a guy named Valrice Cooper. And Valrice Cooper had a nickname. It was Whoop. They called him Whoop because of boxing. Whoop, whoop. That's how he would say when you punch. It was a whoop. Everybody knew Whoop in the prison system. He was a steward of the Louisiana prison boxing scene. He was an inmate himself. Whoop, he didn't have the pleasure of meeting Etienne until after the boxer-- He was already the most dominant prison fighter in Louisiana. As Woody said, these different prisons have their own boxing teams. Angola has one, DCI has one. There's one in North Louisiana.Woody: Hunt.Jim: Hunt has one. This is a big deal in prison, these boxing teams. Whoop was the guywho kind of managed that, even as an inmate.Woody: Basically, helped Etienne perfect his craft better.Jim: Absolutely. He had heard about this guy, this 6'2", 290-pound fighter, and he started working with Etienne. From the first second he saw him, he could tell from his movement, he had a ton of natural talent. He countered right, he stepped back right, he circled correctly. As a matter of fact, Whoop would describe him as a prison version of Muhammad Ali, y'all. That's how good he was. Anybody describes you as Muhammad Ali, you're good. But theprison version of Muhammad Ali from a guy who really knew that sport was amazing. Etienne continued to dominate in the prison world. He actually won 30 bouts, never lost.Woody: Y'all, real quick. Certainly, they would practice amongst themselves at Dixon Correctional Institute, etc.Jim: Shadow box.Woody: Right. Well, you're locked in a cell, you got a lot of time to shadow box. Jim: [laughs] That's right.Woody: These bouts we're talking about that, they would actually go to other prisons, or sometimes they would host it there, and they would fight against other prisoners in the state. At the end of the year, whoever had the most wins got the banner.Jim: That's right. And these were big deals. As a matter of fact- Woody: Huge.Jim: -family of these prisoners would go to the boxing matches and they would have to pay. They would have to buy tickets. It was $5 for adults, $3 for children back then, and you would watch as if you were watching sanctioned event on HBO.Woody: Even though they wore headgear, the bouts were three 3-minute rounds. I would bet you people love to go see the radio because they care about getting hurt and laying up in an infirmary in the air conditioner rather than a cell block. I bet you these guys got in there-- I wish I would have got to see one and just tried to absolutely annihilate each other.Jim: I'm sure there was a lot of first-round knockouts. Headgear or no headgear. Woody: Headgear really doesn't mean shit.Jim: [laughs]Woody: It's not like you're wearing the NFL helmet.Jim: Oh, yeah. Some of these people are lifers, y'all. Look, they're in there and they're swinging. You've heard on Real Life Real Crime, Woody described like prison muscle. It's a totally different type of muscle and all these guys had it. He fought in the heavyweight and the super heavyweight divisions. So, he was fighting the baddest of the bad, the biggest of the big-Woody: And beating them.Jim: -and beating them. Just never losing, 30 bouts inside. And that gets around. Outside of the prison system, Don King and all these guys are hearing about this Clifford Etienne and how he is the toughest man in prison and winning all these bouts. After his 10th year in prison, he gets paroled.Woody: Right, which is basically, y'all, I would tell you that that's because of the outside influences from these promoters. They were like, "This guy can be heavyweight champion of the world." They go in for the parole board, "Look, we got contracts. We're going to train him. We're going to keep him on the straight and narrow. He can be on parole if need be, but we need permission to get his boxing license and everything else."Jim: Well, let me tell you how promoters think. Number one, you've got an extremely talented individual to start with. He's getting paroled from prison. Here's your chance. I don't know if this is fact, but I would imagine his success helped with his parole because in a parole board's mind, this guy can probably actually rehabilitate and change his life because he's going to have unique opportunities not everybody is going to have when they're released from prison. He was well known.Woody: Let me digress for a second. The reason he was on the working cell block, he got in a fight with a guard, with a correctional officer--Jim: Named Woody Overton.Woody: No, it wasn't me.[laughter]Woody: I wouldn't have fought that dude. [laughter]Woody: He got in a fight with a correction officer. Now, when they went to the board hearing, and I remember telling me this, he had already been on the boxing team. So, the board considered his hands deadly weapons. So, they charged him with fighting with deadly weapons on a correction officer.Jim: Oh, wow.Woody: That's why he got sent to the hole for that. Now, he did his 90 days, maybe a little bit longer, maybe he went twice, I don't remember. But he got out while I was still there. He was good. He was locked on the block. He was good. He was never any problem. He was actually a pretty cool dude. He got out. You know why he got out too? He wanted to box again. He was like, "Fuck that. Imma going to behave. I know my future is in boxing."Jim: Yeah, he was just the shit, y'all, in the Louisiana prison system and really the national-- He was well known in prisons all over the country as probably the best boxer to ever come out of prison. You're talking about-- look, Sonny Liston came out of prison, and he was getting a lot of comparisons to Sonny Liston. These promoters, they're not only salivating at the chance to get a hold to a guy who has an extreme amount of talent, he also had a hell of a story, and they loved that. He had a nickname in prison, which was the Black Rhino. Come on, y'all, if that don't scare you before you fight the 6'2", 290-pound boxer, I don't know what does.Woody: Basically, he got that because the most dangerous animal in the world, the Black Rhinoceros or the Black Rhino was the name that he embraced. Like Jim said, these promoters, holy shit, now you got the Black Rhino coming out of prison that would sell tickets regardless.Jim: Look, you can't spin a better story with all this. He gets out and he turns pro in 1998. Woody: That was five years after I left him or after the last time I saw him.Jim: So, how does he do? Well, his first four opponents, he knocked them out. As a matter of fact, three of those first four was inside of the first ring.Woody: He's cold cocking people.Jim: Cold cocking people. Ring Magazine actually named him-- believe it or not, y'all, hewas later named The Most Exciting Heavyweight Fighter of the 2000s. Woody: That's true.Jim: How about that?Woody: He absolutely was destroying people. I remember late 80s, early 90s, when Tyson was coming up, and when pay per view had first come out, and we had all put up $20 and got a keg of beer, and he knocked out Spinks in like 30 seconds or whatever it was. Black Rhino was doing the same thing. A lot of the times, when big guys fight, they'll get tired and they'll hug on each other and stuff. Black Rhino didn't have time to get tired. He was annihilating people, like Tyson did when he was young.Jim: Yes. And loving it. And what's he doing? He's living his best life, y'all. He's making tons of money. He's knocking people out for a living. Everybody's courting him. And he does what sadly, a lot of-- seems like it's not just athletes, but it seems like they struggle with this because there's so much of an influx of money under such a short period of time.Woody: And fame.Jim: And fame and all of that, that he starts dabbling in cocaine. Woody: Right. A line here, a line there.Jim: Yeah. Give me a little bit of that sugar, whatever you tell them.Woody: In the beginning, you think you can handle, it makes you feel even better. You're already on top of the world. Remember, you came from a working cell block. First of all, you got out in 10 years instead of 40. You come from a working cell block. You build yourself up to the prison boxing system, and now you're building yourself up as one of the top heavyweights in the world.Jim: That's right. And he continues on. He continues knocking people out, and eventually he scoops up the IBA Continental heavyweight title. He actually won that title in Baton Rouge.Woody: In Baton Rouge. It was at the Belle of Baton Rouge in the atrium. I didn't get to go for whatever reason, but I remember when it was happening and the white guy from the cell reached out to me, said, "I can get you tickets. Do you want to come see him?" And I couldn't go for whatever reason. But yeah, he won that there. Even though that's not like the biggest championship in the world, it's still a championship belt.Jim: That's right. And continues on. Eventually, he suffers his first loss, that was in March of 2001, and y'all, it was a beating. He actually got floored seven times in that bout.Woody: Knocked down seven times, and on the eighth, I think the referee finally stopped it, but he said it was just basically like a blood bath. But Black Rhino never gave it up. You knocked me down two times, I'm probably going to stay down. Seven times, but he kept getting up and fighting back.Jim: That's it.Woody: Finally, the ref is like, "Number eight, I got to stop this shit, he's going to kill him."Jim: Yeah, he went out on his shield and never quit. After that bout, you may start to think, "Well, that was it." Well, no. Etienne couldn't be stopped. He ended up fighting six more bouts after his loss and knocked everybody out. He was again the talk of the boxing scene. When you become that much of the talk of the boxing scene, eventually you're going to run into somebody you got to fight.Woody: When he was talking to the boxing scene, basically, besides being the Black Rhino, and he was always compared to young Mike Tyson.Jim: Yeah. They actually knew each other before the opportunity showed its face and always got along. If you're a Tyson fan, you would know that he grew up very rough. He was very similar to Etienne, except for Cus D'Amato discovered Tyson before he had gotten so far out of hand that his whole life would have been spent in prison. Much younger when Tyson got discovered at 12 years old by Cus D'Amato. Etienne and Tyson had a respect for each other because they both came from the streets, they were both super tough, both amazing boxers. And in 2003-Woody: Memphis, Tennessee. Jim: That's it. Tyson come a calling.Woody: Tyson came calling. That was the first fight-- if y'all remember this, that was the first fight that Tyson had the tribal tattoos on his face.Jim: Yes. If Tyson wasn't scary enough, he comes out-- and look, Etienne, I'm sure, was intimidated just like-- Tyson can intimidate anybody. I don't care how tough you are. Yeah. Except for Holyfield maybe. [laughs]Woody: Yeah, he bit his ear off.Jim: He did do that. In 2003, Tyson, the pinnacle of boxing and the Etienne fight, and Tysonbeats the shit out of Etienne in 48 seconds.Woody: Now, the same guy from the LP, I talked to him after that, and he told me that what happened is one of the first punches that Tyson landed hit the Black Rhino on his eardrum and it busted his inner ear. So, Etienne's equilibrium was off, and he couldn't even defend himself.Jim: Yeah. Could you imagine how hard Tyson hits to bust your freaking inner eardrum? Woody: In one punch. To Etienne's credit, he tried to stand and do whatever, shit, your roomspinning. I can't imagine that. Tyson, he ain't going to quit punching.Jim: [laughs] No, he ain't. And I will never forget the interview, because actually, I can distinctly picture myself when I watched that live. I actually watch that fight live. After the broadcast, Jim Gray, who was a famous interviewer in boxing, pulls Tyson and he says, "What did you think of Etienne?" and all that, "And how did your training go?" Tyson says, "I broke my back last week." [laughs] And I'll never forget. I was like, "What?" It was bizarre, y'all.Woody: That's crazy.Jim: He supposedly broke his back in training.Woody: The reason they were fighting in Memphis, Tennessee, Tyson couldn't get licensed in Nevada or anywhere else because of the rape allegations and all that.Jim: Yeah. If you're getting a little upset about Etienne because he lost and all that, don't cry for him too much.Woody: He made a million bucks.Jim: [chuckles] Literally a million bucks in 48 seconds.Woody: Paid for 48 seconds, I think I could last for 48 seconds. He might have hit me in the back of the head, but I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. For 48 seconds, I'm going to give you a show for a million dollars.Jim: For a million dollars.Woody: I'll fight Tyson a day for a million dollars.Jim: I'm telling you. Yeah. Etienne gets that million bucks. He unfortunately does what a lot of people who get money that never had money do. And that is he blows it. He buys sports cars, jewelry, multiple houses, and he actually got into a couple of businesses that suffered. He was in a busing company. It went nowhere. He opened a restaurant-- or he actually started a restaurant that never opened. He did the cardinal sin in any business which is, didn't pay his taxes.Woody: Right.Jim: I don't care who you are, ask Al Capone about that.Woody: Tax man cometh.Jim: Tax man cometh. So, he's spiraling downward.Woody: Yeah. He's not surrounded by the best people either, taking advantage of him. Like I said, he never had so many cousins.Jim: Okay. He's going along in life, Etienne, and he's making a lot of bad decisions. At some point, he decides it is a good idea to go get some money as he was spending all of his. [crosstalk] He figures, what better place to get money than a check cashing place, right?Woody: Genius idea.Jim: The only problem was he didn't have no checks. Woody: He didn't have a checkbook.Jim: He didn't have anything to cash.Woody: I'll tell you what he did have, he had a pistol. Jim: He had a pistol.Woody: He had a cocaine habit.Jim: And a bad cocaine habit.Woody: Getting as high as fuck, yeah.Jim: That's right. Etienne goes to a check cashing place in Baton Rouge with a gun, and he pulls the weapon, and he decides he's going to hold up this check cashing place, and he gets a little-- I guess you could say a little pushback on that from the check cashing people. He takes a gun, and he shoots it in the air, and he says, "I will kill you, bitch." That's exactly what he said, because they have it on recording because she was dialing 911 while this was going on.Woody: She was an African American.Jim: African American female. Eventually, he gets in his hands $2,000 after he fires thatthing in the air, and he hauls ass out of there.Woody: Right. Unbeknownst to him, the silent alarm had been hit and Baton Rouge PD was responding in force. They met him in the parking lot.Jim: They did. They were there really fast for a specific reason. And that was that same day, sadly, an officer in Baton Rouge named Terry Melancon who was serving a warrant with some other officers in Baton Rouge was tragically killed.Woody: They were making the entry-- we call it a high-risk warrant. It was a narcotics warrant. They were making entry in the door, and he was shot and killed. Rest in peace, brother. I was on the SWAT team at the time that happened. We went from serving high-risk warrants narcotics-- We used to do them every day without the SWAT team because the SWAT because it took so long. The policy got changed after that. Any high-risk entry warrant, you had to use the SWAT team. Rest in peace, brother.Jim: Yeah. It was really just more bad timing for Etienne as this was going on, they were able to easily get there.Woody: Before they got there, he's trying to make an escape. Well, you know what? I think he [unintelligible 00:31:37] this time, he goes rob a check cash in place with a piece of shit pistol, and he leaves, and he's trying to make his getaway, and he makes two attempts.Jim: That's right. An officer with the Baton Rouge City Police Department, who was in an Exxon station across the street from the cash door, received a report of an armed robbery in progress. Comes over his radio, and the officer observed one of the check cashing employees actually outside of the business at this point, and he could tell she was panicking. At this point, he goes across the street and he starts talking to her and he says, "Did you report an armed robbery?" And she says, "Yes." A bunch of police officers at this time are pulling up. It becomes pandemonium. Etienne escapes into a little wooded area, and when he comes out of that wooded area, he sees a vehicle, and he just jumps in the vehicle. I guess he thought he was going to hot-wire it or whatever. He didn't realize when he jumped in there were two children in the back of that vehicle.He goes to start it, realizes, "Oh, shit, there's no keys." The lady had ran into this beauty supply place and just left her kids in there while, I guess, she was quickly grabbing shampoo or something. He goes to steal that vehicle, realizes the keys aren't on in it, and the cops are kind of on to him at this point. They're pursuing him through the woods, and he's panicking. He's in a bind and--Woody: Still armed.Jim: Yeah, still armed. He immediately exits the vehicle, and he has his weapon in his hand, and he aims it at two police officers.Woody: Not only does he aim it- Jim: He pulls the trigger. Woody: -pulls the trigger.Jim: And the gun jams.Woody: Click. It's probably a piece of shit, high-tech 9-millimeter or whatever. I'm sure if it was an expensive weapon, he could have traded for coke instead of trying to rob a cash store. He pulled it and pulled it again.Jim: He panics again, obviously, because at this point, y'all, Etienne just tried to shoot two police officers. If it wasn't for that gun jamming, he would have shot them, possibly killed them. So, he panics. He runs to a gold Pontiac Grand Am. He opens the door, and there's a driver in there. He puts the gun to the driver's head. He says, "Get out." The driver, he protests this. Why? Because his two young children are in the vehicle.Woody: It's kiddie daycare around there.Jim: That's it. Etienne pulls him out of the car physically, throws him to the ground, jumps in the car, and starts to drive away in reverse at a high rate of speed. He just basically goes backwards. He gets about 60ft. The vehicle hits a curb, and it stalls. Officers approach the vehicle with the weapons drawn, and they apprehend Etienne. How do you think that apprehension went?Woody: I don't know, man. I mean, his weapon's jammed, and what we call a felony stop, I'm sure Black Rhino ended up getting some dirt in his face.Jim: Oh, I can look. And then, don't forget, they are already dealing with that day a police officer getting shot and killed.Woody: Absolutely. And you just tried to kill--Jim: And you just tried to kill two more. If I'm a police officer, you're getting a fist to the face. Woody: Yeah, well, definitely.Jim: Swim would have punched him.Woody: Yes, Swim.Jim: [laughs]Woody: Swim would have gave him some justice, that was just us. But he might have sprung a leak too. Anyway, he gets arrested, armed robbery, two counts of attempted first-degree murder on police officers. So, God or somebody was taking care of them and those officers letting that pistol jam.Jim: Amen.Woody: He gets prosecuted, y'all, by the Baton Rouge's DA's office. And the prosecutor was Prem Burns. Now, I don't think we've ever talked about her on Bloody Angola, but I know her. I've been in the courtroom with her. She is fire. They had their best prosecutor on it, Hillar Moore's best prosecutor. The DA generally, in bigger parishes, is a political figurehead who oversees all the cases, but they have their top lieutenants or generals, whatever you want to call them, that handle the big cases. Prem Burns was the one.Jim: And well known for the serial killing.Woody: Yeah. For Derrick Todd Lee. As well as every top case in East Baton Rouge. She said that across 34 years and 100 plus felony cases and even taking down meddling cartel members and serial killers that she recalls looking at Etienne and thinking, that dude is huge, she remembers the day he was sentenced, he said something to her like, "I'm so sorry. The drugs were just really bad for me." But Burns also remember the 911 call and the words Etienne barked out that were recorded on security footage says, "I'm going to kill you." She remembers using that against him in her opening remarks. She remembers the jury convicting the boxer quickly and easily.Years later, the prosecutor picked apart Etienne's processing the trial, and he said he received insufficient representation. She was like, "Dude, you could have Johnny Cochrane and you weren't getting off on this charge." And the jury are possibly in prejudice. She was like, "Your victims were black. You're black. It's not a racial issue." Anyway, he got sentenced to forever this time, but for luck, he would have been on death row. Y'all, he got 160 years. And guess where he was going? Bloody-Jim: -Angola.[chuckles]Jim: No doubt about it. And look, let's recap real quick. This is a guy that just a couple of years-- as a matter of fact, a year before this, had just gotten a million dollars and fought arguably the most-- I would say the second most popular boxer of all time outside of Muhammad Ali, which was Mike Tyson. Definitely the most popular boxer in my era, by far. And now, you just got sentenced to forever, as Woody aptly put it, the rest of your life, pretty much in Angola. Etienne actually, in 2004, for whatever reason, applied for a pardon to Mike Foster, the then governor, which was denied, obviously. I don't know if he thought his popularity might get him a pardon, but it wasn't working with Mike Foster.Woody: I think he was also trying to say stuff about traumatic brain injury and CTE and all that other bullshit.Jim: Right. Look, here's why I don't buy that at all. I definitely think that brain injury from boxing or pro football, absolutely, it affects your decision making and all those sorts of things. But you were doing this at 18. I mean, you were robbing people at 18.Woody: This lawyer said he's entitled to a new sentence because the CTE should be a major consideration. He said, "It's not his fault. The science wasn't there ahead of time. So, he did not do all this bullshit." I'm not even going touch on that anymore.Jim: Yeah, that's ridiculous. Now, one thing we haven't mentioned to you is a unique-- and when I tell y'all this is a unique and an absolutely God-given talent is his ability in the painting world. Art, paintings, canvas.Woody: I told you about the drawing. I didn't know that he was a painter also, but he drew that picture of that girl for me.Jim: Yeah. If you're a Patreon member of any sort, we're going to put this on Patreon. It's just some examples of his artwork. It is unbelievable, y'all. God definitely touched him and gave him a talent with artwork. So, we're going to put that up there. Look, Woody mentioned this earlier, and I want to read this to y'all. Woody had mentioned, "Hey, he was a nice guy."Woody: Yeah. He was cool.Jim: Great personality. Cool dude. I'm going to read you a letter that he wrote to a fan. This is in 2019, so this is fairly recent. I'm also going to put this up on Patreon. But a fan had just wrote to him and asked him for an autograph, basically, a boxing fan. He said, "Sorry I took so long getting back to you. Just rediscovered the letter you sent me at the end of May. I always take time writing anyone back since they took time to write me. All letters are screened for contraband, and because of some drug heads attempts to smuggle contraband in here, the mailroom discarded the index card you sent me to sign. So, I'm sending you this large piece of paper signed by me. To answer your questions, I am still healthy, and I look forward to a better future. I WILL GET OUT OF HERE." And he says that in all caps."I paint and I cut hair almost every day. Number three, I'm not in a cell. I'm in a dormitory with a bit over 100 guys. I do watch TV sometimes, mostly news and sports. I have a TV in the barber shop where I work. Number four, my whole boxing career was an interesting story. Started writing a book about it, but I haven't finished. Number five, fighting Mike Tyson was like fighting the other 30 fighters I fought. It was a job that took care of my family. I never got into all the hype. I met Tyson years before they even talked about us fighting each other. Number six, the most fun I had in boxing ring was every time the referee raised my hand as the winner after all that hard training. You take care of yourself, and I wish you and yours all the best. Clifford Etienne."Woody: Pretty cool.Jim: Reading that letter, that don't sound like a guy they tried to kill two police officers, rob a check cashing place. So, when Woody mentioned that, "Yeah, he seemed like a cool, nice guy," reading that letter that sounds like a guy that is out of prison right now, is living his best life, just doesn't sound like that type of character, does it?Woody: But that cocaine shit, does funny shit, even less [crosstalk] to people and will never take away the fact.Jim: Nose gold.Woody: Not only did he try to kill those two officers, but who knows what would have happened to those kids in the car, etc., had he not wrecked it, and stalled it out. But when he went back in the prison this time, y'all, it wasn't without incident. He had issues, he survived an attack. He would start painting, but we'll talk about that. He would start painting. The last I had heard of him before we talked about this, was I was watching something on the Rodeo about Angola Radio and they had him selling his paintings and they were street scenes and murals. Now, you're not allowed to make money off your crimes. He's not painting trying to kill two cops, but he's painting like murals-- Not murals, but like oil paints. Shit would cost you $20,000 in a gallery, and it was fantastic. The one I saw was of a second line that's a funeral procession for those from Louisiana where they play the music, the jazz band does it and they go behind the coffin and all that. But he was very, very good at it. And his paintings are hanging all across the world, people commissioned to do paintings, etc. But even when he was in the painting room one time, somebody tried to kill him.Jim: Yeah. So bad in fact that he had to get transferred.Woody: Right.Jim: I do want to mention on those paintings, a lot of people may be surprised to know thatone of his paintings hangs in the New Orleans Police Department. Woody: Oh, I didn't know this.Jim: Sure enough, yeah, I found that somewhere. [laughs] Woody: Only Jim Chapman can get that shit up.Jim: I found that somewhere. There's a picture online where the two New Orleans PD officers are posing in the police department and his painting is hanging. I guess to them, it's an example of convicts have talent too somewhere. God touches us all, gives us all unique talents, and that was his. And it's just a shame. In addition to his boxing, which was also a unique talent.Woody: I'm going to digress for a second when I said he attacked a correctional officer with fists, I believe now, I'm thinking back on-- I think it was just another inmate. But instead of being charged with a regular fist fight, which wouldn't send you to working cell block, they charged him for fighting with weapons because his hands were considered deadly weapons because he's such a renowned boxer.Jim: I believe it.Woody: Y'all, he would go on-- after that attack, he talks about surviving COVID when they put them all in cells. When everybody else in the world is trying to be separated, they were locking them down. He talks about that, but at some point after the attack, another inmate, a friend of his, told him, say, "Hey, man, basically you got to get shit together." I mean, he'd let himself go, he'd gained weight, he was dressing sloppily. And Etienne listened to him. So, he started dressing better. He shaved his head bald. He started to exercise every day at 5:00 in the morning. He said he stayed away from rats or dudes, they would never amount to shit in their lives. That friend asked him, "What do you need to start painting again?" Etienne told him. Two weeks later, the supplies arrived like magic, canvas boards, paints and brushes. The friend told Etienne, "You're the Black Rhino. The man who went from prison to pinnacle boxing." Eventually, Etienne returned to the painting room, hearing or no hearing, he had to move forward. Now, talk about his hearing, y'all, I told you his eardrum got busted.Jim: By Mike Tyson.Woody: By Mike Tyson, and his equilibrium was still off and all that. But he to this day paints. Jim and I have had several offers to attend the Angola Radio, and I said that's the last fucking place you'll ever catch me on the face of this earth because of all the people I've put up there. But if I ever do go, I'm going to go see the Black Rhino.Jim: There you go.Woody: And I guarantee he remembers--[crosstalk]Jim: We need to do that trip soon, and that would make for a great episode. Incidentally, we do want to welcome Woody back. Last week, of course, I flew solo for you Patreon members.Woody: I appreciate you doing that.Jim: So, we did a bonus episode. It's only up on Patreon, so if you're curious to hear about it was called Iron Mike.Woody: Iron Mike.Jim: It's about a guy that could fight in prison for sure, but it's just an absolutely crazy story of a guy who killed three inmates inside of Angola and just some amazing stuff there. But Woody was on a special assignment, which in the future we'll be able to tell everybody about. And I also recorded another episode that I'll be dropping as a bonus episode. It's Boss Bitches Part 2. But I'm glad to have Woody back now because I have to freaking think all by myself, brother. [laughs]Woody: I appreciate it but tell them about Boss Bitches 2.Jim: Yes, Boss Bitches 2. Of course, if you listen to the first one, we feature Martha Stewart, M. Diddy, and a bunch of other lady convicts. And this one, much of the same. It's four other lady convicts. Look, join Patreon and you'll find out who they are. How about that?Woody: Y'all, you go and check it out. We have numerous bonus episodes. Jim, I appreciate you covering me while I'm gone.Jim: No worries, man.Woody: The bonus episodes are fire, and as are all Bloody Angola. But the Patreon, wehave different tier levels now each, go look it up. It'll be in the show notes.Jim: Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned it, because I want to shout out-- We've got over 130 members now. We're blessed to have that. They support us. We couldn't do this without them. So, we're going to read out real quick each of our Tie Down and Warden Team members, give them of a shoutout. Just to tell you really fast are what our teams include. The Warden Team is our top tier. You get ad-free episodes, obviously, early access to these episodes. You get full transcripts of all the Bloody Angola Thursday regular drops. Any shows that we do that are live, you get automatic VIP access. And you get a free piece of Bloody Angola of merch every quarter. So, four times a year, we're sending you something. I know I've sent out a bunch of merch lately to a bunch of people that are our Warden Team members, I appreciate y'all so much. If you're a Warden Team member, you haven't got that first piece of merch, please just message me and we'll get it to you.Woody: If you're a Patreon member on any level-- because it's a lot y'all, but it's very important to us. If we miss something, we're human beings. Please, please message us, check into it.Jim: Yes, that's our Warden Team. We also have our Tie Down Team, which they get ad-free episodes, early access, full transcripts of those Thursday drops, and they also get our Sally Port companion episodes like the Boss Bitches that we're going to drop as a bonus for them. Woody is going to read our Tie Down Teams, and I'm going to read our Warden Teams today.Woody: And the Tie Down Team gets you--Jim: That gets you the ad-free episodes, the early access, the full transcripts, and the Sally Port companion episodes.Woody: Carol Hagen, you are a love. We appreciate you for being a Tie Down Team member. I hope you're enjoying your benefits. We appreciate you so much. All right, Kirsten Dahl. Now, Kirsten has been a Lifer forever, and she used to send me pickles and all kinds of stuff, Jim.Jim: There you go.Woody: But thank you, Kirsten, for supporting Bloody Angola also. We really, really love and appreciate you. You're awesome. Lisa Stevens, I know who you are. Thank you for being a Tie Down Team member. We love and appreciate you so much. And Tina Johnson. Tina, thank you for being a Tie Down team member. You rock. You kick ass. And we appreciate you. We couldn't do without you. Ms. Julie Easterday. Julie, thank you so much for being a Tie Down Team member. Enjoy those benefits, sweetie.Jim: All right. We also want to thank our Warden Team members. Our Warden Team is our top tier. You just can't get any more than what we give those Warden Team members. They are high support. Look, if you can't even be a Patreon member, we still love you and appreciate you.Woody: Absolutely.Jim: But we really, really appreciate the support of all our Patreon team, especially ourWarden Team members.Woody: Especially in these hard times when eggs are $9 a dozen and you take the time to subscribe, we're going to hook you up.Jim: That's right. So, Melissa Jewel, thank you so much for being a Warden Team member. Ms. Christine Spence.Woody: Thank you, Christine.Jim: Thank you so very much for being a Warden Team member. And how about Ms. AmberMorrow?Woody: Ms. Amber. Thank you. We love you. We appreciate you.Jim: 100%. Ms. Lisa Marks.Woody: Ms. Lisa Marks, we don't even have a term for you. You know we love you.Jim: Double Warden Team member. [laughs] She's just amazing. Thank you so much. Love you. Mandy Oliver.Woody: Mandy Oliver.Jim: Ms. Mandy.Woody: Thank you so much. She's awesome.Jim: Leah [unintelligible [00:53:53].Woody: A part-time researcher, full-time crime junkie. Jim: And hellraiser. [laughs]Woody: You don't want to mess with Leah. Leah, thank you so much.Jim: That's right. That's our Warden Team and we really appreciate the support of all of those members. We're going to be shouting out as many as we can every week here going forward. Thank you so much. And until next time, I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: I'm Woody Overton.Jim: Your host of Bloody-Woody: Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: A Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. Jim and Woody: Peace.[chuckles]Jim: Bloody Angola is an Envision Podcast Production in partnership with Workhouse Connect. Music produced and composed by Alfe Derouen in Studio 433, with vocals by Thomas Cain. Created and hosted by Jim Chapman and Woody Overton.[Bloody Angola theme]Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Woody Overton and Jim Chapman open up season 3 of Bloody Angola: A Podcast by Woody Overton and Jim Chapman give you a ton of insight into Louisiana State penitentiary at Angola by reading you the actual diary of the founder of the "Angolite" magazine and editor Old Wooden Ears" from the 1930's!#Louisianastatepenitentiary #AngolaPrison #Podcast #Applepodcast #spotifyTranscript of episode2023 Jim: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another edition of Bloody-Woody: -Angola.Jim: A podcast 142 years in the making.Woody: A Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. Jim: And I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: And I'm Woody Overton.Jim: First of all, Woody Overton, it's Season 3.Woody: Yes, love, right? [chuckles]Woody: I can't believe that. Thank you everyone for liking us and sharing us and helping us grow. It's been amazing. Chase Team members and now all our higher levels of Patreon.Jim: Warden.Woody: Warden and C.E.R.T. Team. Thank you so much. We appreciate you. But yeah, Season 3, it's amazing. We've sold out two live shows now. Y'all's Response has been phenomenal. We appreciate you. You're about to start getting Bloody Angola three days a week.Jim: And as is our tradition, Woody Overton, we always start with a classic story from Angola.Woody: This is a classic story. Not only about the person it's about, but we are going to bring it to you from what should be a story in its own.Jim: Yes.Woody: The Angolite.Jim: The start of the Angolite, which for those of you that are not familiar, that's a magazine that is released by the prison for inmates to read.Woody: Not only inmates. I had a subscription to it back in 1992 or 1993 and they used to mail it to my house.Jim: All we're doing is telling people how old we are. Woody: [chuckles] Okay, sure. Yeah.Jim: [crosstalk] -Pony Express back then. [laughs]Woody: Yeah, right. That was definitely snail mail. It always fascinates the shit out of me what the criminal mind does. This is after I worked in the prison system too. But it's a phenomenal award-winning magazine.Jim: It really is. The guy who started that magazine is who we're going to really be talking about today. The interesting deal with this gentleman is that he was the original editor and the guy who started the Angolite. But not only did he do that, he also, in addition, kept probably one of the best diaries of Angola. As a matter of fact, I'm going to go ahead and say the best diary of Angola you would ever come across. And he had a nickname. I'm going to tell you about that nickname first. They called him Old Wooden Ears.Woody: Wooden Ears.Jim: The reason they called this gentleman that is he was beat by a correctional officer at some point during his early years in Angola and actually went deaf in one ear. So, he was known by the prisoners as Old Wooden Ears. We're going to tell you about the diaries of William Sadler, and we're going to name this episode Old Wooden Ears.Woody: Wooden Ears.Jim: The interesting thing with this episode is that we're going to actually read you the diary because we can't do this justice without actually reading you the entry. We're just going to take these back and forth. Trust me, this is interesting, y'all. This is the real diary.Woody: Think about it. You don't have a whole lot to do in prison. At least this guy was keeping himself busy by keeping a diary.Jim: And didn't hold back.Woody: Right. He told the truth according to him.Jim: Mm-hmm. That's right. We're going to start with January 1st, 1936. This was New Year's Day on Angola, and it was celebrated by all hands out in the field with the exception of Camp E, most of whom are assigned to the refinery. Sugarcane cutting going on full blast with no Sundays or holidays off until grinding ends, which will be about the middle of the month. Red Hats out in the cane shed.Woody: Red Hats.Jim: If you listen to our Red Hats episode, you'll find out a little bit more about them. But he'salready mentioning the Red Hat.Woody: Yeah. On January 3rd, 1936, he writes, "There was hail on the Gola this day. The refinery has been making 100% white sugar and shipping it to the brokers in Chicago under the Pelican Refinery, Baton Rouge label, so consumers wouldn't get onto the fact that it was made by convict labor. The last month, some of those dudes loading freight cars at Camp B siphoned off sugar out of several sacks and filled holes with striped convict clothes. When the sacks hit Chicago in the retail market and a howl went up, this was heard way down here. The result? About 16 men caught the bat, anywhere from 30 to 45 lashes each. But those who were beaten weren't the guilty ones, strange to say. It seems their clothing had been stolen and shoved into the sacks. And since the dudes bore their laundry numbers, it made them automatically guilty. The actual perpetrators of the switch got off scot-free, which is often the case on this Angola."Jim: How about that?Woody: Right. Y'all, go back and listen to some of our other episodes. The bat was basically a big leather strap. That's what they're referring to. Now, that's pretty smart. Let me tell youthis real quick. When I was in basic training in the army, they had a guy on a cot across from me that snored every night, and I wouldn't get any sleep anyway, I've been on a light sleeper. So, before the lights went out, you had to line your shoes underneath the bunk, I stole one of his boots. When the lights went out, he started snoring, I reared back and I threw that boot, I hit him in his head as hard as I could. He jumped up and he was like, "You motherfuckers. I'm going to get you. I got your boot. When I turn on the lights in the morning, I'm going to find out who it is." But guess what? It was his. These prisoners were smart like that. They stole somebody else's clothes and other inmates' clothes and numbers and plugged the holes. They were hoping to get the uprising, which they got. But unfortunately, for the victims that they stole from, well, they got the bat.Jim: They got the bat. 30 to 45 lashes, y'all. You're starting to see the brutality with Angola and why they called it Bloody Angola. Another thing that I found interesting about that entry was the fact that they would switch the labels. The reason they would do that, back in the 30s, people weren't down with convict labor like that.Woody: They still do it. When I worked at DCI, they had the crawfish plant, and they ran 24 hours a day. They brought in two 18-wheeler loads of crawfish a day and they boiled them. The inmates had to peel 16 pounds of tail meat and they got to weigh it in their 12-hour shift. If they didn't peel the 16 pounds, they went to the hole. But guess what? They packaged it under Louisiana Crawfish Company and sold it. That's the shit you buy in the grocery store when you buy Louisiana Crawfish-- It used to be when you buy Louisiana Crawfish tails.Jim: There it goes. The next time you buy, you think about that.Woody: [crosstalk] -crawfish season, they made them cut onions and they sold the cut-uponions like the Holy Trinity. But they damn sure didn't say it was done by prisoners.Jim: That's right. We continue on. And you're seeing that brutality take place. "January 5th, 1936. Narrowly missed the bat myself this day. Captain JH Row-" that's a good cager name, "-of Camp A missed credit for a carload of cane which had been sent to the mill. There's always been more confusion out in the yard when the cane cars are brought in by railroad crews at night. In this case, the weight ticket evidently became lost, not by fault, but close shave nevertheless."Woody: Wow, close shave-- [crosstalk] Jim: Yeah. And he narrowly missed that bat.Woody: I can't imagine there were a lot of lights and shit on the trains, they were rolling. I think about sugarcane, y'all, that's what he's talking about. Look, there's a certain time you got to cut it and get it out and get it to the mill to get it pressed. I know they were working sun up to sun down.Jim: Oh, yeah. And sugarcane was a huge commodity. Woody: Still is.Jim: It still is, yes.Woody: All right, y'all. So, the next one, his journal entry is on January 9th, 1936. He says, "It was cold and pouring down rain today. No slickers, no boots, no gloves. All camps that work in the fields, negro women cutting cane from on headland, white men from Camp G working toward them. John Henry on the turn row. Dinner served out in the open. Rain so hard, the whippoorwill peas bounce off your plate faster than you can spoon down. Menutoday, chicken, chopped grits, stove pipe gravy, soybean bread, and coffee made from horse beans for breakfast."Jim: I'm hungry already. [laughs] Woody: Right? I can't imagine. Jim: Out in the rain, y'all.Woody: Hey, it's raining so hard, you try to eat your shit before it gets any soggier, but the fat drops are hitting your plate so hard that your peas are bouncing off the plate? That's crazy. Hey, they didn't give a shit. They were getting that sugar cut.Jim: That's right. "14th January, 1936. The whistle blew today for the end of the 1935-36 grinding season. Tonnage figures showed one of the biggest years in Angola history, but no sugar on the table. They found over nine tons which had been hidden in various places around the refinery for use during the coming year by the refinery crew. The hideouts were tipped off by the Black Cat, who as a convict had helped plan it. Two weeks ago, he was paroled to the state for work in the refinery, so his first duty was to put the finger on the hidden sugar."Woody: Wow. Gave it up. Jim: Gave it up.Woody: You know that went on, man. Sugar is a commodity. Even the free people that worked in the mill, I guarantee the inmates kept some too make that homemade brew. All right, y'all, so we're going to January 20, 1936, again from Wooden Ears' diary. He says, "Camps all at work in the field hoeing stubbles. Rainy and wet today. Wet clothes worn into the camp dormitories, which are heated only by a wood-burning stove made out of a discarded 50-gallon oil drum. Clothes are wet when you put them on next morning. This kind of work cut in the weather bring a siege of pneumonia in the free world. The old saying on the Gola is, "You can't kill a convey that easy.'"Jim: You can't. [laughs]Woody: First of all, when we talk about the stubble, after you cut the sugarcane, you got basically the stumps of the roots, and they had to clear that so they could plant the next year's crop.Jim: Amazing.Woody: And wet ass clothes. I guess they slept naked.Jim: Yeah.Woody: I wonder if he got the-- I guess the big bull near the door and got to put his clothes closest to the wood. You know what I'm saying?Jim: Yeah. Shot caller. Woody: Yeah. The shot caller.Jim: "February 1st, 1936. Those alert characters at Camp B have rigged up a new wrinkle to beat the daily shakedown at the gate."Woody: Uh-oh.Jim: Uh-oh. "Where every bit of garden produce was confiscated. It often became a problem to smuggle a contraband article into the yard and into the dining room. So, the dudes trained one of the various mongrel dogs to fetch and carry. Now, the garlic and even pokes of sugar outside the fence. The pooch scrambles underneath the wire and the guards' noses and brings it into the plant." [chuckles]Woody: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, I'm going to figure out how to get everyone. But on my birthday on February 5th, 1936, Wooden Ears writes, "it was cold and raw this morning. Camp G is working over on Monkey Island, getting in the spinach and radish crops off the overflow land before the rise of Mississippi gets them. It is said the long line must wade the bayou waist deep, going to and coming from the camp. Then, working the water over a foot deep to harvest the crop. And this in winter."Jim: Crazy.Woody: It's crazy. Y'all know Monkey Island is located where Louisiana and Mississippi meet at the rear of the prison and was a notoriously miserable place to work. An area border in Mississippi river, it remained flooded and marshy most of the year and was infested with mosquitoes and snakes.Jim: Yeah, and that's a big problem with Angola that we're going to talk about in the future is the flooding. They've had to evacuate prisoners from Angola many times because the Mississippi river water was up. We're going to move on to February 8th, 1936. "Oscar Loki, the long line water boy, finished up this eight years day for day yesterday. A Yankee lad, he came out on Angola when he was 18. He made and sold out in the field and from his profits over the eight years saved a total of $74."Woody: Whoa.Jim: Hey, that's probably a lot of money to an inmate. "His best friend, Frenchie LeBlanc, was the last to tell him goodbye yesterday at the receiving center where he was dressed out. Oscar showed officials his role of hard-earned money, flipped off the rubber band under which was a dollar bill, and found the rest of the role was merely coffee coupons." Basically, this officer took all the money. "No one knows whether LeBlanc stole the money, but Loki said LeBlanc was the only one who knew where he kept it hidden." correction, LeBlanc, his friend, stole the money, put coffee coupons in there with a dollar on top of.Woody: Thought he's rolling out with $74-- [crosstalk] Jim: [laughs] But he's got plenty of free coffee, apparently.Woody: Crazy. "On February 9th, 1936, Bill Brazil, the guard at the finery, died today. He had only a few months to go to through a life sentence. A piece of metal, lead, the size of a fist had fallen from one of the beams and it struck Brazil square on the top of his head. Two characters who were working painting the steel structure three stories above Brazil were questioned to no avail. It is not clear how the lead, which had no business in the refinery anyway, happened to fall on Brazil like a bomb."Y'all, Angola death records listed no one named Brazil dying in 1930s, but a William B. Brazil, inmate number 20030, is listed as dying at Camp B where the sugar refinery was located on April 20th, 1935. His cause of death was listed as broken neck caused by fall from being in the top of refinery. Records have also shown that suspicious deaths were oftenlisted as accidents. He is buried at the original Point Lookout Road where they bury inmates. That's crazy.Jim: Yeah, it really is.Woody: You don't want to say it's an inmate-on-inmate murder. The pen is mightier than thesword, right?Jim: That's right.Woody: Whatever. He was there, I believe old Wooden Ears saw the lead.Jim: Y'all, Old Wooden Ears tells the truth. This is his personal diary. He didn't know that anyone was ever going to see this.Woody: He didn't know y'all were going to be listening to that.Jim: Guaranteed he didn't know that, Woody Overton.Woody: Almost 100 years later.Jim: Yeah, so find that interesting too, because we talked about in old episodes how records back in those days were altered or not kept.Woody: I even wonder, you've mentioned broken backs and shit. I'm like, "Oh, yeah. You break your back," you're not jumping out of a window.Jim: Yeah, get that bat.Woody: That's right.Jim: "February 12th, 1936. Sweet potato stew for dinner and supper these days. Usually, there's a piece of meat somewhere in the pan, but you have to be mighty quick with your fingers to find it. Thank goodness they have stopped making bread with soybean flour, but they are still serving boiled soybeans on the table." Now, mills were served to prisoners in those days with typically the cheapest ingredients you could possibly find in order to save money. When the food items of any real quality appeared, it was often skimmed or outright stolen from prisoners or employees looking to make a little money.Woody: Again, the soybeans shit is shit they grew. So, we're going to February 15th, 1936. "Vernon Hancock is a saddler, a wiser man at Camp E today. Vernon, who works in the Ice House, was a big shot gambler. He owned all the poker tables. So, two weisenheimers sent out and brought two decks of reader cards, marked, of course. They finagled Vernon into buying into the decks at a bargain price, seals unbroken. Then proceeded to sit into Vernon's game. This all began three weeks ago. Today, Vernon is broke and the pair has all his dough. The two friends who tipped the switch off to Vernon after it happened, he replied, 'Well, them cards wasn't marked. I broke the seals on the new decks myself.' Barely a fool and his money."Jim: [laughs] I mean, they're running a casino in Angola.Woody: Right. Gambling is a huge thing in prison, but it says no-- the entries, along with the entry in the opposite column are just more glaring examples of how good fortune, whether in saving for the future or perceived luck at the gambling table, often created problems for everyone involved.Jim: No doubt about it. Old Wooden Ears going to tell the truth, like we said. Woody: He got no reason to lie. He's writing for himself, not anybody else.Jim: That's right. Now, February 18th, 1936. "Well, these jailhouse swindles never cease. Mitchell Lafleur-", if you notice, a lot of these names are Cajun names, y'all, "-no-read-and-write cell room guard at Camp E also has been taken to the cleaners, financially speaking. Seems a dude had a catalog with some pictures. He induced Mitchell to pick out a dame who claimed to have $50,000 and was looking for a husband. The dude wrote in the letter for Mitchell. Of course, when the replies came, the dude read them to the guard. The love interests were hot. Finally, the dame said she would come see Mitchell and marry him. Only her $50,000 was tied up in a legal snarl. And as soon as they were married, she would sign over half to him. But right now, she said would Mitchell sent her $100 for the train fare. This is crazy. "He did." [chuckles] Now, this is a guard, y'all. He gave it to the dude to send for him, and that's the last he's heard or ever will hear. Even back in 1936, you had these hustlers, man, and they were, "Send me $100." Nowadays it's through email, back then, it was through a regular mail.Woody: The calls from Jamaica, saying, "Oh, you won a million dollars. Send us $10,000 for legal fees."Jim: Went on in 1936.Woody: It only takes 1 out of 100 if you do it. If you're successful 1 out of 100, then you'resuccessful. Jim: Yeah.Woody: All right. On February 21st, 1936, Wooden Ears writes, "Getting so they put the bat in action three times a day nowadays. During breakfast, after dinner, and after supper. Foreman calls out the unlucky ones and tells the captain they are lazy or insubordinate, and the poor devils usually catch from 20 to 30 lashes apiece. One yesterday had his third beating in 10 days. How long, O Lord?" I mean, he's just--[crosstalk]Jim: Third beating in 10 days.Woody: Probably, the correctional officers were-- to the inmates who are pushing the lines, what they call them the inmate guards, were like, "Hey, we're going to make an example out of somebody." Now, they're doing it three times a day. It helps keep the other people in line.Jim: I wonder if it was the same guard that lost that $100, Woody Overton, [chuckles] taking it out on people. February 26th, 1936. "Little Doc Goodman at Camp E was strung up naked by his wrist to a beam in the ceilings in the camp lobby today and whipped with at least 50 lashes. Those who had listened said they lost count. Doc has been accused of laziness and insubordination many times in the past. His body is a mass of scar tissue from burns suffered outside. So, he seems to be immune to ordinary punishment. So, the idea of stringing him up naked was devised. He's supposed to hang there 72 hours without food or water."Woody: Wow. Crazy.Jim: Y'all, wrap your mind around that. When we tell you Bloody Angola back in the day wasn't no joke, it wasn't a joke. Now, the lengths that the prison or guard would go through to punish people apparently knew no bounds. Despite the dangers of whipping someone asmuch as they whipped Goodman, hanging him by his wrist for 72 hours was infinitely more dangerous. Such punishments, with a body position aching to crucifixion, could easily cause suffocation by the pressure exerted on the lungs and the diaphragm by three days of such torture.Woody: Not only that, three days, that's the maximum you can go without the water, right? Jim: We can never confirm or deny that that existed, but Old Wooden Ears says it did.Woody: Yeah. [crosstalk] -again, it's all, I would say, to control the population. This guy being a repeat offender, insubordination, etc., like, "We'll show you." But anyway, let's go to February 28th, 1936. Wooden Ears writes, "Safe burglars intent on plying their trade even on Angola. Last night, burrowed through the tag plant wall into the general warehouse and broke into the safe there. They say over $1,000 is missing. Or is this a red herring to cover a cash shortage? How could those guys get out of the cell room building last night to do their burglarizing?"Jim: That's freaking crazy. [laughs]Woody: Well, he had a good point.Jim: He had a good point [crosstalk] guard.Woody: [crosstalk] -missing, and you've got to blame it on a convict, right? Jim: Yeah. $1,000. And they tried to say they burglarize-- [crosstalk] Woody: [crosstalk] -accused of $1,000 in '36, that's like $100,000 now.Jim: Okay, so we move on to the next. March 1st, 1936. "Heard today Angola was going to have a doctor. Not like the one present joker who comes up from Baton Rouge once a week, but a full-time medical man. Maybe now they will start examining and classifying fresh fish so they won't be dying out in the fields of such things as exposure and exhaustion. Is this progress?" That's a good point that Old Wooden Ears brings up, Woody. That is when you're new to Angola, they put you out in the fields and bodies have to acclimate. So, these fresh fish, as he calls them, they go out in that field and they're not used to the sun 12-15 hours a day.Woody: The episode we did with Kelly Jennings talked to one guy whose first job he ever had in his entire.Jim: His entire life. Woody: Yeah. Jim: That's crazy.Woody: Them bringing a doctor in wasn't because they gave a damn about the convicts. They just wanted to keep them alive. They cared about keeping them alive so they can keep them working.Jim: That's right.Woody: All right, let's go to March 3rd, 1936. He writes, "Pursuant to an edict from the pen of the warden, there are neither dogs nor cats on Angola today. His letter to all captains said,'Dogs and cats are taking the place. I want them gotten rid of.' So, there was a general roundup and many of pet went to the river via croaker sack. They tipped me off that if farm superintendent, GAG, ever comes in to weigh on my scales, to be sure to tell him 20 to 30 pounds less than its actual weight. He's very myopic. When I wanted to know why, they said, If you don't, he'll beat the hell out of you with his stick."' Vanity. All these are interesting. Shit, this guy was very articulate for a convict in 1936.Jim: April 27th, 1936. "The count at Camp E came up one man short last night." Woody: Uh-oh. [crosstalk]Jim: "Dewey Brian, ice plant worker, was missing. He was found in the cold storage room dead drunk. The discovery touched off a smelling of breaths of having--"[laughter]Jim: This is so crazy. "The discovery touched off a smelling of breaths of having taken a covet nip of the local joy juice and everyone was pulled out and whipped." So, basically, if they had alcohol on their breath, they pulled them out and whipped them with the bat. "Brian was given 85 lashes for being dead drunk. Felt no pain." [laughs] "This morning, they had to cut him loose from his mattress where the blood on his back had dried and stuck into it. He is not the first, nor will he be the last."Woody: Wow. Crazy. Jim: I mean, wow, y'all.Woody: Yeah. [unintelligible 00:28:54] know some bad shit, but it ain't worth 80 licks, I can tell you that.Jim: Stuck to the mattress.Woody: Yeah, that's going to suck. And your whole back with scab. All right, on April 28th, 1936, he writes, "Despite a workday, which now begins at 05:15 AM and ends at 6:30 at night, the menu remains the same. For breakfast, grits, gravy and bread."Jim: "29th April 1936, Gerald Red Kramer, who was shot four times by a convict guard in the okra patch near E, got a visit from his mother today." [crosstalk] "Kramer's bed is his coffin because he is expected to die. His mother talked to him across the coffin." And there's a note underneath, it says, "Camps where a prisoner died often pooled money to purchase materials for his coffin. Generally, the camp store kicked in also."Woody: It's crazy. April 30th, 1936. "Pollywog Jones- Jim: Oh.Woody: -who was shot in the arm and leg in the okra patch at the same time as Gerald Kramer has gone to work. The foreman drove him out of the Red Hat cells this morning with a stick."[laughter]Woody: He [unintelligible [00:30:18] beat him on.Jim: Yeah, Pollywog going to learn his lesson eventually.Woody: Pollywog got the stick.Jim: I love this. "May 1st, 1936. A buyer of potatoes complained today his tubers were arriving skinned up. He was taken into the field where a long line of negroes were harvesting potatoes on their hands and knees. The buyer inspected box after box and the negro who had been skinning his potatoes was whipped. Several offenders caught the bat, they say."Woody: Crazy.Jim: Y'all, this is life back then in '36 in Angola.Woody: Day in and day out. And he goes to May 2nd, 1936, "John Francis Carney died last week in the Camp E hospital. He had complained for weeks of stomach ulcers. Pleaded for milk since he could not digest his regular fare. Dr. Gwynn, the new LSP physician, had this to say about Carney in his report to the warden. 'I find nothing wrong with this man. He is faking and fully able to do fieldwork.' The autopsy showed the cause of Carney's death, stomach ulcers and peritonitis." That's crazy. There's a note underneath says, "Angola death records listed James Francis Carney's death as August 22, 1938. The official cause recorded was peptic ulcer, chronic malignant degradation, carcinoma stomach, etc. LSP records indicate he was buried at the prison. So, he resides at one of the graves with the illegible markers or perhaps in the communal grave where the remains from the various cemeteries located near defuncts camps were consolidated." Crazy.Jim: "May 3rd, 1936. The orders gone out to all foreman in the field that they must carry a fever thermometer. When an inmate gets overheated, the foreman is supposed to take his temperature and give him a blow in the shade--" [laughs] "But most of these foremen can neither read or write. How will they take a temperature and read a thermometer?" That's a good point, Old Wooden Ears.Woody: [unintelligible [00:32:35] what a blow in the shade means.Jim: Yeah.Woody: I'm assuming, y'all, that it meant a rest.Jim: I assume as well. But he had some interesting [unintelligible 00:32:45] for that one.Woody: May 4th, 1936, he writes, "Skinned-up potatoes brought an application of the bat to harvesters at Camp C today. 15 were given from 20 to 25 lashes each. 'Can't harvest a crop without leather,' the general manager says." I guess he means, you can't push the line without a beating.Jim: That's right. "May 5th, 1936. The new issue of coffee from the warehouse today is half horse beans, parched and half peaberry." But that's good because it has been all horse beans before. There's a letter underneath that says, "Creative efforts were constantly made to enhance the poor quality of coffee available to the inmates. Any manner of items such as chicory or walnuts would be added to create a more palatable brew. But it rarely worked."Woody: Shit. For sure, they thought it was a big thing in prison. All right. We go into May 6th, 1936, he writes, "Sundays will be worked until the potato crop is harvested according to the order issued to all camps today."Jim: Now, that's the Lord's Day, Woody Overton.Woody: Right. The Lord's Day, but that's also-Jim: Workday.Woody: They didn't want the potatoes rotting in the ground. Then on the next day, on May 7th, 1936, he writes, "Milton Good, New Orleans sex fiend, got a dollar watch from the free world, thinking to make suction with the foreman. He gave it to the man today so he could tell knocking-off time. The man beat him over the head with the watch and chain, breaking the watch because he can't tell time."[laughter]Jim: That is so great. Woody: [crosstalk]Jim: I mean, ruined a perfectly good watch. Now, "May 8th, 1936. George Buckley was awarded the line pusher to job today for his diligence in keeping the man informed on who was leaving potatoes on his row unpicked." So, he's a rat, basically, and got him a job based on telling on his boys. And then May 9th, he continues, and he says, "Mosquitoes in the cell room are making the night a veritable hell at Camp E. No screens on the windows. Oil lamps after 8:30 at night. Shower bath is a pipe 6 feet long with holes punched in it."Woody: Wow.Jim: Yeah. That's just a good look into their everyday life.Woody: Mosquitoes on Angola are more like sabretooth rock breakers [crosstalk] fuckers down there on the river. On May 10th, the next day, 1936, he writes, "Shipments of potatoes to date total 253 carloads. All have gone to buyers in Chicago. Coals are being served on the lines tables at camps. It is said the tomato harvest will start about two weeks earlier this year."Jim: That was obviously a big deal for them were-- crops. That was their life--[crosstalk] Woody: [crosstalk] -everything going in Chicago. There's no gangsters in Chicago, right?Jim: [chuckles] Nah. That's it. "May 11th, 1936. I have been transferred to Camp B for the duration of the shipping season so that my job as a clerk for the packing shed will be handier. At B are about 150 teenagers who all should be either in school or at home with their mothers." Then, he continues on the 12th of May, he says, "Called camp B today over the phone and asked him for two refrigerator cars to be sent via the prison railroad. Henry von Schumer, who answered the phone, told me a fresh fish had grabbed the man's hickory stick and broken after the man struck him with it. The poor devil didn't know he had a session with the back coming when he got back to the camp. But it was poetic justice and I said, 'I'd have given $10 to see the melee.' Carried to Camp E this night where Henry, the butcher boy of New Orleans, and I painted signs until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning for Governor Elect Leche's Inaugural Ball which is to be held May 14th in Baton Rouge."Woody: Wow. That's just crazy unreal.Jim: And you can see, they used them for all kinds of things.Woody: First, they hit them with the stick, like FU, took a stick from them and broke it. And now he's going to get away with it. That's the entertainment other than me saying you that shit was coming.Jim: Oh, yeah.Woody: And then writing signs for the governor? That's not illegal. Jim: [laughs]Woody: He writes the next day, May 13th, 1936, "After 3 hours sleep, I awoke with the rest of the camp. Was taken into custody to the camp kitchen where Old Tangle Eye, the captain, was waiting for me. He asked if I had ever been whipped yet. When I told him I hadn't, he told me to remove my clothes, for I was about to catch a dose of red heffer for wisecracking over the phone the day before. The captain then called in four men to hold my arms and legs, spreadeagling me so as I couldn't move. The first blow was liquid fire. It was as though I had been seared with a white, heated iron poker. I yelled and begged for mercy because if I hadn't, he would have beaten me until he could no longer wield the bat. Those trying to eat breakfast, as this was going on, told me later I caught 35 lashes. My back and up and down my thighs are all bloody where the skin has broken. I can't lie down. May God curse me if I ever forget this day, May the 13th." Note: Old Tangle Eye was Captain J. L. Carmichael, one of the more prolific applicators of flogging."Jim: Holy crap.Woody: [crosstalk] -with his first bat.Jim: Yeah. 35 lashes.Woody: You get lashed like that, I imagine you shit yourself, you piss yourself, if you don't throw up, everything from the pain. Can you imagine?Jim: They make you strip. They have you take it all off. Woody: They don't want to rip up prison clothes.Jim: Yeah, that's a good point.Woody: [crosstalk] -state property.[laughter]Jim: It is indeed. "May 14th, 1936. Back at work at the packing shed today despite my sore back, which keeps me from sleeping. A grapevine kike today tells me that Henry von Schumer received 25 lashes for telling me the incident of the stick and the man over the phone." They beat him just for talking about it. "The charge was for broadcasting camp business over the phone."Woody: What?Jim: Dang. I don't remember seeing that in the rulebook.[laughter]Woody: There are probably not the operators there anymore listening either, right?Jim: Yeah.Woody: May 15th, 1936. He writes, "Old timers at work at the packing shed after looking at my back, tell me I got only a dusting. Where whippings are concerned, 35, it is said, is light. God Almighty, what is heavy?"Jim: [laughs] This is nuts.Woody: Next day, May 16th, 1936, he writes, "The captain of Camp B told me today he needs a good office man. I said, 'I was the best.' He said I'd get better food and private sleeping quarters if I took the job at his camp. But he added a sticker. He said, 'I want you to go over in the yard and find out what the men are plotting and tell me.' I said, 'Captain, any man who tells you about someone else will tell someone else about you.' I didn't get the job."[laughter]Woody: Surprising he didn't get another bat.Jim: I'm telling you. Old Wooden Ears, turning down the job. Woody: Turning down the job.Jim: "May 17th, 1936. My back and thighs are blue, black and still swollen. Well-wishers have given salve to keep my clothes from sticking to me. May the good Lord let me meet the man who beat me somewhere in the free world."Woody: Yeah, right.Jim: Look, he's praying for vengeance on that one.Woody: He's still in the pain.Jim: And all joking aside, y'all, I mean, beating them so bad that the clothes were sticking--[crosstalk]Woody: Yeah. Your body can never fully heal because it's trying to scab over, your clothes are sticking to you, you have to rip that off and it makes it fresh every day.Jim: [sighs] Jesus.Woody: Crazy. May 17th, 1936, he writes, "Called back to the warehouse at Camp E today to check the LSP cattle inventory. This is a yearly affair. At the slaughter pins where the count was made, the tally came up 245 heads short. The cattle foreman, a free man, explained, 'The rest of them steers is up in the hills. Can't get them today.' They say the shorts has been stolen and sold to farmers over the Mississippi line." Now, you know this shit won't--[crosstalk]Jim: Likely story.Woody: I heard stories in 1990s about one calf went to the state, one calf dropped, went somewhere else. I'm not saying any names, I'm going to get [Jim laughs] [crosstalk] about it. I bet you, 235 heads? In the Tunica Hills? [unintelligible [00:42:35] -cows ain't in the Tunica Hills.Jim: Nope. They're in somebody's belly. Woody: Right.Jim: May 18th, 1936, "Preacher Doc Careway of Shreveport, a recent arrival, has laid his bible down today in the long line at Camp B. He raised his arms to the skies and discovered his belief in divinity. Said Doc, 'There can't be a god who would allow a place like Angola to exist.'"Woody: May 19th, 1936, he writes, "The potato harvest is over for this year. More than 300 cars have been shipped at an average price of $286 per car. No account has been made of the cost in blood from Angola's 300 slaves, however. I have been transferred back to Camp E to work in the general warehouse this date." There you go. The next day, he writes on May 20th, he says, "Machinery at the Pelican Cannery here is being readied for the tomato harvest. The plant will be under the supervision of Captain JNW who is head man at the woman's camp. The canned products will be labeled Pelican Cannery, Baton Rouge, and will be sold in the open market, it is said." That's crazy. In the note, it says that, "Captain JNW referred to was captain J. N. Willis. In March 1940, the cannery was the subject of controversy following complaints about the labeling and pricing of the canned goods process there. The cannery was later destroyed by fire in October 1940."Jim: "May 21st, 1936. My back is slowly healing from the beating I received last week-" Man, he started-- [crosstalk] I'm telling you, "-will leave only faint scars, I am told. But the mental scars will never heal. Today, Ray Carroll, Camp E office clerk, told me the record showed only 16 lashes. If Captain Tangle Eye had gotten his head all over the 16 he put on me, it would have killed him." We got to look up Tangle Eye.Woody: I bet there's stories on him, yeah.Jim: "May 26th, 1936. The women are to be worked alongside the Camp E long line in the cannery next week according to informed sources. The LSP policy on tomatoes is to eat what can't be canned, and can all you can't eat."Woody: Informed sources. I love that. This is how he's writing, a convict in 1936. May the 23rd, 1936, writes, "Jack Dorset and Tom Abbottsford, the former having enacted for over a year as physician here and who was responsible for many an ill man being placed in the fields were brought back from furlough violations. Both have been nabbed while passing bad checks in New Orleans and each blame the other. They were soundly whipped and later engaged in an old-fashioned bareknuckle fight. Each continued to blame the other for their arrests. It's laughable because each was only too eager to run the water on the other. Where is that honor among thieves business you hear about? Both also were busted to the field detail."[chuckles]Jim: May 24th, 1936, "Artie "Gold Brick" Joiner-" man, they got some great nicknames, "-who slept adjoining me for 11 months and who shared my tobacco and coffee all during that time was last week turned out convict guard. Today, I inadvertently passed his guard post. He racked down on me with his double-barreled flat back and was all fixed to blow my head off. Our friendship, it seems, has now ended." [laughs]Woody: Oh, my God. Jim: I love that one.Woody: He's talking about convict guards. That's what they did to keep the cost down of securing the prison. Think that, his old--[crosstalk]Jim: Cellmate for a year.Woody: His own bunkie for a year almost, and they gave him a shotgun and he almost blewhis head off.Jim: That's cold blooded of Old Gold Brick to do that.Woody: Old Gold Brick'll have to eat some soggy potatoes or whatever.Jim: I'm telling you. "May 25th, 1936. The warden put on a new sign at the Peckerwood Hill graveyard today." What a great name. "It straddles the entrance way and is a foot high in letters of old English font. It says, 'Through the sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.' But since the sign facing the roadway, the convicts buried behind it can't read it, whose sign does it refer to?" It says underneath, "Note: Peckerwood Hill was a nickname for Point Lookout, the prison cemetery. The first recorded reference to Point Lookout was in 1935 for Jesse Anderson, who was buried on Row 2, Grave 11. His death was caused by cerebral hemorrhage and syphilis."Woody: Oh, shit. We're definitely going to do an episode on Point Lookout. Jim: I can't believe they called it Peckerwood Hill. [laughs]Woody: I'm not sure of this, but I'm pretty sure that they didn't bury blacks and whites together. Maybe they called it Peckerwoods for that, that being a derogatory term for whites. All right. May 26, 1936, writes, "There were several fallouts in the Camp B long line out in the field. Heat stroke. Foreman is supposed to let them blow in the shade [Jim chuckles] if they're [chuckles] overheated. The water boy carries the fever thermometer, but the bulb is broken off the end." It says, "Note: Comments about the lack of attention given to overheated inmates were common, as supervisors seemed to feel that overheating was an excuse for inmates to rest. Despite their excuses, in 1936, at least five inmates died of heat-related causes."Jim: Wow.Woody: Crazy.Jim: Broke the [unintelligible 00:49:08].Woody: Give them that blow in the shade there, boys. Jim: Yeah, give them a blow in a shade.Woody: I want to get me a blow in the shade-- [laughter]Jim: "May 27th, 1936. George Basil Weisenheimer, a lifer, was instructed this morning to sweep off the cannery steps and porch. He did. He also swept everything in the yard and into the porch. When asked who told him to give the yard a sweep, he said, 'God told me to.' They put 30 lashes on him. He was only recently released from an insane asylum and is definitely not right."Woody: Nice. [chuckles]Jim: "May 28th, 1936. Tomatoes are on the table, stewed in water. No seasoning. Meat ration for Camp E's 375 men is 135 pounds of forequarter beef per week." Per week.Woody: Probably, one of those cows from up in the hill.Jim: Yeah. "By the time the cooks and their friends get through with it, the long line gets achunk about as big as a thumb in the stew once weekly, if they're lucky."Woody: Wow. Crazy. Yeah. The inmate guards were probably having t-bones. All right. May 19th, 1936, he writes, "They say the deducts are beginning to fly on Angola. Each employee from Captain down to Foreman must kick in from 10% to 25% of his monthly paycheck. It's either that or quit. They all pay off at the Camp E general warehouse to Nelson Beauregard, the Superintendent. The cash goes in the Governor Leche's campaign kitty, I'm told. No one knows for sure." It says, "Note: It was not unusual for politicians to apply suggestive pressure on employees and even inmates who were often conscripted as evidenced by [unintelligible 00:50:57] until 5/12/36.Jim: "May 30th, 1936. Today, up in Yankeeland, it is Decoration Day and a holiday, but it is just another workday here on the field. By 4:30, we're in for supper, and at 7:15, to bed. And early to rise sure as hell don't make anyone on the Gola half healthy, wealthy, or wise." On the Gola. "May 31st, 1936. Today I saw the corpse of five babies in the doctor's office at Camp E General Hospital. They are preserved in bell jars and alcohol. The talk is they were born to women at Camp D. No one knows for sure."Woody: Wow.Jim: That's crazy. And there's a note underneath. "Rumors persist to this day about children born to women at Camp D. Few records are available. Yet according to a 1951 article in The Times-Picayune, a child was born to a newly incarcerated woman in February of that year."Woody: I bet you some were born after they were incarcerated, the guards having a poke or whoever, right?Jim: Yeah.Woody: Remember in the first episode, it wasn't a crime for the women to be raped in prison. And if they had the baby-- now, this is 1936, a long time after slavery. If they had the baby while they were locked up, it became property of the state as a slave.Jim: That's right. Woody: Fucking crazy.Jim: Y'all, we hope you enjoyed that. That's just a little taste of his diary. What they did was they produced this in the Angolite last year and they had several issues they put out. We just read from a couple of those issues. But I'll tell you what, I enjoyed this episode.Woody: I love the history, I love the insight. This dude is writing this daily, almost daily, the shit he saw, his perspective.Jim: Yeah. I can only imagine-Woody: [crosstalk] -Angola.Jim: -years and years of that book, I'm a reader--Woody: I wish he was alive so we could interview him.Jim: Old Wooden Ears in studio.Woody: Yes, indeed. Well, we told y'all it would always be different. This is another fine example, something that Jim dug up which I think is fire and we hope you enjoyed it.Jim: Yeah. We thank y'all for allowing us to have a Season 3, all of our Patreon members. Of course, if you can't be a Patreon member, we totally get it and we hope you enjoy the episodes. If you are a Patreon member, thank you so very much. We couldn't do it without them.Woody: Absolutely. Y'all, please, if you would be so inclined, go leave us a review on iTunes or wherever. Like and subscribe to Bloody Angola. Check out all our social media. Y'all want something really cool? Now, we have our own Bloody Angola wine.Jim: Yes.Woody: [crosstalk] -$25 a bottle. We'll sign it for you and send it to you. Tell them about it.Jim: That's right. We have a white wine, a red wine, and we have a rosé, I guess is what they call it, wine. If you're one of the people that are going to the live at the Southeastern Livingston Center here in Livingston Parish, we'll have it there for purchase if you're interested in purchasing bottles. Otherwise, just message us on Facebook and we'll give you.Woody: Yeah. And we're going to announce it for the first time today. If you're a Patreon member, you get $5 off a bottle.Jim: Yes.Woody: So, instead of $25, it'd be $20.Jim: There you go. Always trying to give you more perks out there when you're a Patreon member and support what we do here at Bloody Angola.Woody: And y'all check out on our social media, the new tiers levels, that we have for Patreon members, the different benefits that you get underneath that. If you're kind enough to support us by subscribing through Patreon, we'll give back to you as much as we can.Jim: Amen. And we got transcripts available now, which is a big deal. That's something that y'all have really been asking for. Hey, we listen when y'all ask. We do have transcripts available now that we'll be uploading of each of our new episodes going forward. So, you can read along as you listen along.Woody: Yeah, absolutely. And then next week, you'll be getting three Bloody Angolas.Jim: Three Bloody Angolas a week. They're all going to be entertaining and good, and we're looking forward to bringing that to y'all. So, until next time, I'm Jim Chapman.Woody: And I'm Woody Overton.Jim: Your host of Bloody-Woody: -Angola.Jim: And a podcast 142 years in a making.Woody: A Complete Story of America's Bloodiest Prison. Jim: Peace. [laughter]Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy