The Fear of 13 Page #2

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and he ran down and he ran down

and he said, "Hold it. " Like that.

And even Wesley stopped cos

we know, when Lieutenant Norris

raised his hand, that was it.

He said, "I leave in 20 minutes.

"If there is a noise on this block, from anyone, when

I leave this unit, we will beat every man's head in.

"Do you understand me?" Silence.

"Finish that song, inmate.

Let's go. "

The guards looked at him

like he had lost his frigging mind.

They were stunned.

"Let's go. You.

You've got 20 minutes. "

And walked off the block.

HE MIMICS KEYS SHAKING

He even had an argument on the way

out of the door.

When the gates shut...

GATE SLAMS:

.. that big wide B block gate -

when they left the block alone,

we were like...

"Oh, my God! We are totally

and utterly unsupervised. "

And he came back right in mid-lyric

like he had never stopped singing.

# You said, "I love you, baby

# I love you for just

being a common man... #

SINGER JOINS ON BASS NOTE

And like you could hear them,

here they come,

the other members that had a little

bit of guts, yeah?

They were blowing, you know?

They were giving bass,

and it was wonderful.

These voices, yeah?

# I thank you, baby, yeah,

for respecting me, yeah

# I want to thank you, baby

# For telling me

# I want thank you for respecting me

# In a time of worry

# Thank you for calming my

troubles... #

GOSPEL-TYPE VOICES CONTINUE

FINGER-CLICKS KEEP BEA Then, out of nowhere...

# Ooh... #

.. we heard this woman's voice.

Dorothy Moore's Misty Blue.

# Ah... #

I thought, I swear to God, somebody

had gotten a radio in on B Block.

# Ah

# Looks like I'd get you... #

No-one really knew who it was that

was singing and then I figured it out.

Butch was six foot four and 240lbs.

He had a big jagged scar that ran

down the side of his face,

like from someone trying to cut his

head open.

I was terrified of this man.

# Oh, honey

# Just the mention of your name... #

To hear him sing in this beautiful

voice...

# Turns the flicker to a flame... #

.. as his way of showing love for someone

who was being taken from him the next morning

made me want someone to care for me

in that place so much

that they would sing, knowing that singing

would have gotten their head beat in.

They shipped Wesley that morning

at 3:
55am.

But the next day,

like a few guys were talking outside

of their cells to each other,

like a normal conversation,

and when the guard went by

he didn't tell them that they was going to

beat their brains in, he just simply said,

"Keep that down, the lieutenant

doesn't like it.

They weren't going to torture us

with silence any more.

CELL DOOR OPENS:

BUZZER:

Joe Bullen, my first appellate

attorney, God bless him,

got the attention

of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

He didn't like me,

but he filed the appeal nonetheless

and got us the hearing

scheduled for February 20th.

I was excited to go to court,

you know.

Two Delaware County sheriffs

were waiting for me.

They come up,

they put the handcuffs on me.

Both men were in their 60s.

Two sweetheart guys who were already

bullshitting about basketball

and football and all this stuff

in Philadelphia.

They're giving me

updates on some things that

I haven't caught up on and people

back down in the county jail

who was going up

to the state prison.

We're talking about how damn

cold it is. It was bitterly cold.

In fact, it was the coldest

day of the year that year.

I'm sitting in the back

and we're driving along.

And we get down there

four-and-a-half hours later.

It's now about 4:30pm, almost

5:
00pm, and nearly pitch dark.

We pull in to go to the bathroom.

The driver drives past it

by like 25 yards.

We get out of the car and we're

hit with that blast of cold.

We run right over, the three of us,

to the cubicle and I go in

and the door is being held

open by the taller officer.

And he stands there

while I urinate and watches me.

I'm peeing,

I'm minding my own business,

I'm thinking about getting

back into that warm-ass car.

It's freezing, I turn, I look up,

he's got his hand up,

I put my head under his arm

and I make a left turn

to go back to the car.

What I did not know is that the

officer who was driving

went back to the car and waited.

I came out of the cubicle

and started trotting towards him.

He looked past me

and he didn't see his partner.

He doesn't know

if I've killed his partner or not.

He just knew he was seeing

a death row prisoner

running at him unescorted.

That's when he pulled his gun.

When he did that motion of sticking

his hand on his hip and pulling

the weapon from the holster,

I just turned and started running.

He fired that weapon and it was

like this huge percussion.

GUNSHO At 2,700 feet per second,

that bullet went past my ear

and so did anything else that

I was looking behind me for.

I went down and I hit the ground

and ripped all of the skin on my

hands and it's just like... Oooh!

Then they started

this attitude, you know,

"That's it.

I'm going to do what I got to do. "

So I just got up and I ran towards

the big plate-glass window

of the restaurant next door.

I figured if I'm running directly

at the window, he can't shoot me.

I ran about 100 yards

across the road and I circled back.

And I came right back

to where I had escaped.

Now, I'm looking at them as

they're yelling at each other

who was the bigger idiot for letting

this happen and then I hear them.

POLICE SIRENS:

All the sirens

in the world are coming.

There was cars

coming from everywhere.

They had an escaped

death row prisoner alert.

They pulled out all the stops.

So I took my eye glasses off,

pulled the plastic off the end

of the eyeglasses and I stuck

the eyeglass pin into the handcuffs

and I picked the handcuffs.

I could see the buildings off to

my right and one of them had a flag.

That's a police station.

I said, man, I'm going

to hide behind the police station.

So I navigated down

behind this alleyway

and I got down in this recessed

area and I just huddle

and I just waited.

I was so cold.

When I lost my core temperature

like an hour later, I was shivering.

I was like, oh my God,

this is killing me.

I was going into these bends.

It was hurting.

My ribs were aching from going into

these convulsions like that.

So I was hurting so bad.

I'm going to get up

and get out of here.

I came flying out of that

parking lot and they saw me.

HELICOPTER ROTOR BLADES

This guy came out of nowhere,

just hovered above me.

And the blinding candlelight of this

magnitude, I can't even describe.

And he circled

and he had the whole area lit.

He came back, he lit me up

and lit me up.

This guy chased me for literally

three hours with this helicopter.

My feet split open, my calves

erupted, my hamstrings were pulled.

But I got lucky, didn't I?

The helicopter had a FLIR -

forward-looking infrared camera

and it wasn't working because

it was so cold it malfunctioned.

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