My Story of Redemption

I will begin my story when I was 12 years old and I started experimenting with drugs and alcohol. That is when I started smoking marijuana and drinking beer to get drunk.

The Beginning

I did this in defiance towards my father. He was a functioning alcoholic and a good provider towards my mom and us four kids. I'm the oldest boy and I have an older sister and two younger brothers. When My Dad drank and got drunk, he became mean, verbally and physically abusive towards my mom and us kids.

If my mom complained about my dad coming home drunk my dad would yell at her and a few times beat her up. Any little thing we did wrong or annoying to him, we got yelled at, grounded, spanked or beat with a belt. That is why I started drinking beer and smoking pot.

It seemed like we could never do anything that pleased my dad or made him proud of us. In fact, I thought he hated us because he was so mean and strict about everything.

By the time I started High School I was getting high almost everyday and drinking beer to get drunk. In grade school I was the second smartest kid 1st-8th grade, but in High School I was just an average student. I didn't care much about my grades or classes that I picked. I just had to pass everything for four more years and graduate. I graduated High School in 1982.

Addiction, Loss, and Despair

I was a welder fabricator back then 17-21 years old. Tat was my first real job making deceit money. I also tried cocaine for the first time at 17 years old and was taking LSD and popping pills, mostly downers, occasionally speed. After High School I started staying out all night until at least 2 am getting wasted and having a good time; carefree and reckless living like a rock star. I always thought I would be dead by 30 years old by overdosing on pills or cocaine. I was alright with that because that's what a lot of rock stars died from and they were my idols and heroes. I wanted to go out like them. That's cool so I thought.

From 21 years old until 39 years old I became a carpenter and learned how to build houses. I also loved working on cars and motorcycles; Harley's only! But then while living in Florida I got a call from my brother-in-law who told me that my mom had cancer and that it is aggressive and worse than what everyone thinks. It was 1986 and I was 22 years old. I moved back to Illinois 3 weeks later and saw my mom frail, weak, bald headed and was less than 100 pounds. I cried right there by her bedside and begged her not to die.

I couldn't cope or handle the fact that my mom was dying. She was only 40 years old in 1986. She never smoked a cigarette ever, didn't drink alcohol, didn't swear, and was an all-around Christian and the best mother ever in my eyes. The best in the world.

I ran into an old friend a couple of months after moving back to Illinois who was moving large amounts of cocaine for a Kingpin who was making a million dollars a month, or so the government said when this Kingpin got busted a few years later. So, I started selling cocaine and snorting cocaine regularly. Coke took my mind off my mom dying. I also started hanging out with a motorcycle club.

So now I thought I was this big-time dealer and tough guy as I got into some fights here and there, was in the bars every night after work and closing them down. In 1988 my mom died of cancer at 42 years old. I was devastated and addicted to cocaine. I thought about suicide many times after my mom died. I lost everything, my condo that I was renting, my brand-new Monte Carlo that I bought new in 1986 got repossessed for one day, and I lost my union residential carpenter's job all within a two-month span about six months after my mom's death.

My brother loaned me the money to get my car back from repos hired by the car dealership and I also moved in with him. I quit doing coke cold turkey and got another union job building houses and was also working as an independent contractor on the weekends doing side jobs.

A Tragic Turning Point

For five years everything was going smoothly until my relationship with my girlfriend started going downhill. Her son was like a son to me. I helped raise him when he was three years old. The next five years of our relationship was that she did her own thing, and I did my own thing. Long story short is that I was snorting coke again on a regular basis, still hanging out with the motorcycle club. I tried to commit suicide twice, once in 1994 and then in 1997. In 1997 the doctors told me my liver was failing after I overdosed on Tylenol 4's with codeine and that I was going to die within a few weeks. God intervened and saved my life. This happened right after my girlfriend, and I broke up in 1997.

Then in 2000 I met the mother of my only son and child. She was a chronic alcoholic and bi-polar woman that I met through the guy that three years later I caught my case on that led to my life with parole sentence. This relationship was a rock one from the start. After my son was born, she started having more bi-polar episodes and then weaponized my son against me. She would tell me that she was going to move out of state with my son, change their names so that I would never see my son again. Then in 2003 she told me she was moving out of our house after yet again another bi-polar episode. One of my best friends who introduced me to her was secretly behind my back having this on-and-off relationship with my girlfriend and now they were planning to make it official. I found a love letter and poem from him to her while he was in prison. She had a secret P.O. Box while she lived with me and even two of her best friends told me that she was having an affair with him. Then on May 2nd to May 5th, I went on a three-day coke, alcohol and pot binge and was going to kill myself in front of her after an argument on the phone. On the way to her house, I had to pass his apartment and as I was coming up on where he lived. I thought maybe she was there. So, I pulled into the back parking lot and walked around front and knocked on the patio door. When no one answered I threw a large landscaping rock through the patio door shattering the glass. As I was walking through the broken patio door my once good friend came running up toward me. We fought and I stabbed him multiple times and he ended up dying in the hospital.

Conviction and a Life Sentence

I was charged with and convicted of home invasion, murder and sentenced to natural life with no possibility of parole plus thirty years. I could have gotten the death penalty, but my mitigation far outweighed my aggravation in my sentencing second hearing for the death penalty. I had a thirty-year cop out offer a year and a half earlier if I plead guilty to one count of home invasion and one count first degree murder and no deal was met.

Within the first couple of days at Cook County jail a asked me if I wanted to read the Bible with him. To have a little Bible Study and I accepted the offer. I just lost everything that I worked for over my 39-year life span, and I thought my life was over.

Faith in Cook County

From May to December 2003, I was reading my Bible and having Bible Studies with a group of guys on the deck. Then in December 2003 I was accepted in the Christian Based Life Learning Program in Division 9 of Cook County jail. My life was moving forward, and I was making progress in my rebirth as a Christian man. I volunteered to oversee the Christian History lessons that we had to do and turn in, which I read to make sure they weren't plagiarized and were on topic when they were turned in. I was also doing three different outside correspondence Bible courses in addition to our 7 day a week program in the Life Learning Program. Eventually the chaplain made me a group servant over a table of eight participants. There were six group servants with one overseer over all of us.

Growth Behind the Walls

I was sent to Menard C. C. after my sentencing in June of 2006 where I continued in my Bible reading and outside Bible correspondence courses throughout my thirteen years there. I even attended a Kairos three-day retreat which was an awesome experience and Christian oriented.

While in Menard I was also in the Mental Health Program from 2011 to 2016 taking four different program classes: Life Skills for Long Term Incarceration, Healing for Damaged Emotions, Anger Management and Thinking for Change. I also took Inside/Outside Dads, an art class in acrylic painting and a fatherhood class in the chapel.

Then I was transferred to Western C. C. in 2019. I started going to Chapel Services and Bible Studies four times a week. They have the best Chapel Services programs in the entire state. The Chaplain there was awesome and fully dedicated to God's service and the church, the body of believers. I got baptized at Western C. C. days before my birthday. I also attended another Kairos three-day retreat and a Residents Encountering Christ (R.E.C.) three-day retreat. Both of thee had a reunion day once a month for participants who completed the retreat.

Also, while at Western C. C. I attended Mental Health Fitness group discussion every 6-8 weeks where I stepped up and shared my testimony and experiences with the group and related with others better than the B.H.T. Behavior Health Technician because I shared a lot of the same struggles, failures, faults, trauma, hurts and hangups; something you can't experience out of a book. You have to had lived it, not read it!

Mentorship and T.R.I.P.

When I transferred to Illinois River C. C. in July 2023 things didn't start out well for me, but I stayed focused on my dreams and goals of personal growth, purpose and my spiritual journey with Christ my Lord and Savior.

The payoff came and prayers answered when I finally started working on my clemency. Friends and family all supported my goal of asking for clemency with over fifty letters of support, some coming from friends that I went to grade school and high school with. I thank God for touching the hearts, minds and souls of my old friends. I knew my family was already with me on this endeavor.

Then Illinois River C. C. was about to launch its inaugural (T.R.I.P.) The Resident Investment Program for Lifers (Living Intentionally for Earned Release and I filled out an application to be a part of this important program. It is seven days a week of programs and group discussion focused on seven core values: purpose, growth, accountability, service, hope, leadership and community.

The main facilitator is a great mentor and teacher. I met him previously in the Peacekeeper Circle training for leadership a four-day program and at the Leadership Summit training three-day event. This guy is dedicated and devoted in his role of making change From Conflict 2 Clarity to all the other programs he is involved in.

Hope, Clemency, and Purpose

After four months in T.R.I.P. I became a mentor which was a dream and a goal of mine for the past 23 years of my incarceration. I also regularly attend AA and NA meeting in which I try to co-chair along with the volunteer chairperson of each of these, not with something I read but with what I lived through, and with Mental Health Counseling over my entire incarceration. I am becoming the man my parents raised me to be and surrendering my will over to the will of God for my life and for His purpose. My story of redemption is coming true! With the Power of God and His presence in my life, my hope and prayer is to get a full clemency, to be released back into society to become once again be a useful and productive man, become a volunteer in my community in any capacity including mentoring and counseling others. This is my Story of Redemption and God's will for me!