Life: Life sentence

By Richard Houdershell

A German boy who emigrates to America at the age of three, experiences severe sexual and physical abuse, ultimately ending up in this spiral of violence himself. When he is 13, the father dies on Christmas Eve, which tears him and his mother into the abyss. Out of desperation, his mom dives into Church and college studies, leaving him to his own

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Houdershell
• Release date: Jan 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9783982159768

Richard Houdershell

Richard war ein 3-jähriger deutscher Junge, als er nach Amerika emigrierte. Das Aufwachsen in rassisch turbulenten Zeiten führte zu schweren Übergriffen von Banden und Gruppen. Pädophile nutzten seine Verletzlichkeit aus und missbrauchten ihn viele Jahre lang. Da er seine Situation verstand und mit 8 Jahren seinen ersten Kampfsportfilm sah, erkannte er seinen dringenden Bedarf an kämpferischen Fähigkeiten und stürzte sich kopfüber in sein Training. Mit 13 stirbt sein Stiefvater am Heiligabend bei einem Unfall, der ihn und seine Mutter in den Abgrund reißt. Aus Verzweiflung stürzt sich seine Mutter in das Kirchen- und Hochschulstudium und überlässt ihn sich selbst, wo er dann in Gewalt, Kriminalität, Drogen und Alkohol verfällt. Mit 18 Jahren begibt er sich mit seinem engsten Freund auf eine Raubzugtour und tötet dabei einen Mann. Richard erhält schließlich 2 x 15 Jahre im Staat Maryland für bewaffneten Raubüberfall und eine lebenslange Freiheitsstrafe in West Virginia für Mord ersten Grades, die 15 Jahre beträgt. Hier sind erstaunliche Geschichten über sein Leben hinter Gittern, vieles von dem, was er erlebt und überlebt hat, und die Lehren, die man aus dieser Zeit ziehen kann. Inspirierend, augenöffnend und faszinierend. Richard Houdershell ist ein aufstrebender Autor seiner autobiografischen Reihe LIFE. Dies ist das zweite Buch von Richard Houdershell. Das dritte, Episode III, ist auf dem Weg.

Book preview

Introduction

This book is not meant to take crime on a light shoulder, give excuses or place us in the victim role. I look back upon my crimes with a head hung low. It is not honorable to harm innocent people.

I hope this book will prevent one person from doing something stupid and destructive. I hope it will help one person in prison give up his life of crime and walk in the light.

I hope it will help people dealing with persons in prison or who have recently been released to understand them better and perhaps react more appropriately.

The strangeness of this mini-civilisation called prison is hard. After release it simply doesn’t disappear into thin air.

Like war, it leaves an indelible effect carried for life, like internal battle scars.

I shed tears writing this book. Writing allowed memories - some so painful they are as real today as then - to come over and sometimes overwhelm me. My emotions ran free when writing about lost brothers and time.

This book has been, and will continue to be, a cathartic process for me. I hope you enjoy and, more than anything else, I hope you learn something out of this book.

Step into our minds, lives and situations in Vol. 1 of this book and one of the most interesting peeks into another world you will have!

1

I Love You / I‘ll Kill You

Love is the most powerful force in the universe

they say.

---

It was my first week in a real prison - a complex holding almost 4000 prisoners. I had been in the county jail - in super max to be exact- precisely one year. In this year I saw only a few people and not a ray of sunlight at all.

I had been taken to a classification prison in Baltimore where it was decided to which prison I would be taken.

After my classification I boarded the Blue Bird - the prison transportation Bus - to get this strange journey under way. And here is where I had landed - Hagerstown, Maryland.

Now I was here in this cacophonous, violent new world constructed out of concrete, steel and bad feelings.

Thousands of men around me who were either just arriving, or who had already been there in the penal system 30 years or more and for every crime imaginable. All mixed into one volatile prison soup here.

You can feel the raw sense of animalism around you. The violence and tension in the air. It’s clear the law of the jungle rules here. The strong survive, the weak are eaten up in one form or another. A completely new world. Hard and raw. I was definitely not in Kansas anymore.

I sense everyone in there sizing me up and evaluating who and what I may be - not only as a potential opponent, but also partner. I am in really good shape and I walk tall and proud. Plus I am one of only 5 other whites on this tier. I am therefore a man to be noticed whether for good or for bad. I don’t blend in.

My celly is a black guy named Tyrone. Nice, clean-cut and well-spoken guy. We had some good conversations. He was sort of a pretty boy, always grooming himself. That’s one thing he vehemently told me: Take care of yourself while your in here. Brush your teeth, shower and such. Don’t become like so many in here who don’t care for themselves anymore.

I asked him a few days after coming to the cell how long he had been down until now. Six years. he answered.

I nearly hit the floor. I had slightly over one year in now. I could not fathom how anyone could survive and thrive so many years in prison! Just unbelievable!

In the years to come I too would understand more and more how this is possible. And I would live it.

It was day room time and most convicts, including my celly, were there gambling, arguing, talking and watching TV. Two times a day this was the case - afternoon and evening. Extremely loud and uninviting for me.

I’m reading in my cell when I hear screaming and arguing on the tier up above me. Not really loud at first but then it became louder, so that I went to the door to see if I could see anything.

Our doors are solid iron. They have a small window at about face level which is roughly as big as a college textbook. It has no glass. It only has a horizontal and vertical bar cross-sectioning it so larger items can’t be pushed through.

I had my face pressed as far as I could get it toward the bars to see if anything was visible of the argument outside. But the two were on the tier above me and the place they were arguing was also directly above me so I saw nothing. But I heard their tense conversation.

Then it became very loud upstairs, the door to the cell upstairs shook with harsh activity and I heard screams. It was a scream that sent chills down my back. Blood-curdling and desperate.

Certain noises that come out of the human body have the ability to awaken an ancient, primal fear within us. The painful, screaming rage of a parent who has just lost their child in a tragic accident or horrible crime, the scream of a man who is being stabbed for the 4th time and knows his life is leaving his body, or the incessant pounding of a blunt object on the body of a victim.

This was one of those occasions where the scream touched a primitive fear deep within me and left chills running down my spine. I felt suddenly cold inside, instinctively knowing something unholy was happening.

I still couldn’t see anyone. I could hear scuffling, struggling. The desperate screams came from directly above me: I love you!!! I hate you, you motherfucker!!! I love you! I love you, you bastard! It was just crazy. The emotions in the screams, the dichotomy of what was being said - it was all just unnerving and very surreal. It sent a sense of dread and fear through me because it was so distant from reality.

I kept looking to try and see what was happening. Then I saw as a young, dark-haired, rather thin guy of about 24 walk around the end of the tier above me all the way to the left.

He had a completely dazed look on his face, as if in shock, and walked like a man heavily drugged. He had blood all over his neck, shoulders, chest and right arm. I could also see numerous puncture wounds on the right side of his face and neck from which blood flowed generously. It was all very visible because he was wearing no shirt.

Mark had been standing at the cell door of Monty telling him of the great news - he had been granted parole!

If you are in prison long enough the outside world begins to fade. Nothing exists outside anymore except almost as a distant thought or daydream in your mind. Your world is in here - now. Nothing else mattered. And you adapt.

You adjust and adapt to this world as well. You establish your connections inside for food, better laundry, drugs, prison women, haircuts and so many other things. Stay inside long enough and you forget the outside world and all it once was for you.

Mark - the badly injured guy - had been in a homosexual relationship with Monty for the past 2 years of their incarceration. The human needs affection and this very human quality doesn’t stop when incarcerated. Everyone finds their own particular way of dealing with this need.

Monty didn’t find this parole information very positive. He couldn’t tolerate the thought of Mark leaving him behind in prison so he pleaded with him to commit some sort of violation of the rules, revoking his parole, so they could stay together. Mark declined saying he wanted to go home to his family.

Monty flipped out and began sticking Mark in the face, neck and wherever he could with a pen through the bars of the cell door, nearly slicing open his carotid artery and fatally wounding him. According to the prison information system he had been stuck 12 times, some deeper and some not so deep.

I found out later that Mark had had his right arm inside the cell window touching Monty as the argument ensued. The struggling was apparently Monty holding Mark\s right arm inside the window and sticking him all over his face, neck and arm with a pencil until Mark was finally able to break free.

I watched Mark on the upper tier, still walking slowly like a zombie - obviously in shock. When he was directly across from me he stumbled and fell down on the tier with a dull thud. He tried to get up but his strength was fading fast I could see. His face was one of anguish and total disbelief.

The sound of this life struggle above moved me on a very primitive level and signaled to me in no uncertain terms that life in prison was very different than that which I had known before. This was the real deal.

Hearing someone being killed or nearly killed with multiple strikes of any sort awakens a primitive fear inside. Hard to describe the feelings one has here. It brings very hard to the forefront that you are mortal. That this could be you. One hears but cannot intervene as it would be normal. One of many reminders over the years bringing home the fact that all I had ever known before this was now irrelevant.

Love in prison is a very dangerous thing. Men fight, kill and die for their partner in prison exactly or even more so than for their women outside of prison. Outside a man goes and gets himself drunk and suffers for a while. After a while he begins to mingle in the society again and perhaps finds another girlfriend.

Not so easy in prison. The women are very limited. And the conflict for and between them is often very serious and deadly.

A world within a world and all within adjust... No choice.

The time would come where I would understand this even more.

And adapt . . .

2

As Fate Would Have It

As was often the case sitting here in Center-Max of the holding facility in my home town facing the rest of my life in prison, my mind would drift to the days before I landed here.

I would look around this tiny cell - this double reinforced cave of a cell in the center of the main jail where no ray of sunlight ever reached - and my mind and heart would long for days gone by. The good of the past would come to mind.

The sunshine. The lake. My girlfriend. The crazy, absolutely intense relationship we had. The parties, people, drugs, danger and fun we had. The sun, laughter and carelessness.

In the beginning the mind fights against the reality of the circumstances, not wanting to accept. Even after sitting in here over five months now it was all very surreal to me. I expected to wake up some time and be completely blown away by this crazy dream I had had because this is so unreal it just cannot be real.

With the passing of months also passes the dream of a dream. With the passing of the months the nearly debilitating reality sets in more and more and you let go of a miracle.

Five months now . . .

____________

The sun was blistering down on this mid-summer day. I can't remember the exact date. But I had worked my shift in the supermarket where I was employed and was now driving home. The heat coming through the window of my brown mustang felt like a hair dryer blowing in my face. Hot and dry.

Couldn't wait to get home to my girlfriend of about two months. We were, like most who are fresh in a relationship and 18 years old, completely into each other. But we were sure this was different. And it was. It was very intense. We had found each other and everything just fit.

As I drove home all I could think about was this crazy, wild blonde who had entered my life and kicked everything into high gear in every way for me! Life was a whirlwind since I met her. But that's another story - Romeo & Juliet (Rick & Jo) - in this book.

JoAnn and I had been together for about two months. Two months of an absolute frenzy of a relationship. We were totally flipped out into each other. Living it up, going to parties and clubs and loving each other in every way possible. It was a really cool time for me, one of the only really cool times I had had in my entire life when I look back.

I walked into the living room of my girlfriend’s house (her mom’s actually). JoAnn and her mother were sitting on the couch and the newspaper was laid out on the table. I will never forget the open newspaper lying on the table. It made a permanent, life-long impression in my mind.

They were both staring at the big headlines and pictures so prominent. Again, I can't remember the headline myself anymore.

But the faces . . .

I can clearly remember the faces. They were printed bigger than postcards. One