The Fear of 13 Page #4

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from the nurse's station

stopped by this cell

and he said "Go in there

and get them books. "

So this guard,

nice guy too turned out to be,

he lets me go in to the cell

and I get these books.

And some of them were just too

hard to read, you know.

You see, by the time I reached the

eighth grade at the age of 13,

school was just an area

to meet up with your friends

to go swimming or fighting,

you know.

So my reading comprehension level

was basic, to say the least.

But patience

and I had all the time in the world.

So I started working

with these books.

In the front of the General

Education Development booklet

was a note, 'Tips Of Learning'.

And it said, "If you take a word

"and write out its spelling 10 times

while covering each previous one

"and then apply each of those

to 10 sentences using that word,

"you will not forget that word. "

The 10 times rule.

So I sat there with a pen and

every word I didn't understand

I did the 10 times rule to it.

I remember I would go

through a day

where I would have 50 word days,

40 word days,

I counted days sometimes

on the accomplishments

of being able to sit down

and to orally go and say,

Robert is a triskaidekaphobic.

Robert is afraid of the number 13.

Robert does not understand

that it's just an illusion

that 13 can harm him.

And I would just talk to myself

until I had that one down.

Then I would move on

to phantasmagoria

and I would understand

that phantasmagoria

was the fear of ghosts

and I'd like, boo!

You know, so I just played with it

and it just became this stupid

image of this kid

sitting in a room by himself

entertaining himself with words.

And it was quiet because I was

in the back of the B block

and I was quietly just doing it.

Triskaidekaphobia.

The fear of 13.

And like, it worked.

For some reason, that small

gesture of humanity by that guard

just changed everything for me.

I loved it. I was hooked

on dime store novels.

Series. Detective series.

Jack Higgins, Robert Ludlum,

Elmore Leonard.

The first 1,000 books,

I remember I was so proud

of the accomplishment.

I had written down 1,000 titles

of 1,000 different books

that I had personally read.

It took me three years.

I loved Rudyard Kipling.

I loved tales.

I loved storytelling of tales

like Sinbad and Homer.

Like, true story telling

is the telling of life.

Isn't it?

I loved it. I loved it.

I'm so glad I was a

drug addict in one way.

I was addicted to books and I got

hooked on them in the worst way.

Meanwhile, I was reading law books

and studying serology.

I went to college.

I really opened up all this time

and structure for reading.

And with every new book I found

something wonderful about myself.

I found...

I found myself.

Like, it was wonderful.

I was happy on death row at times

when I shouldn't have been

and it was only because

I became comfortable

with being who I was,

finally, in life.

CELL DOOR OPENS:

BUZZER:

And that's when I met Jackie.

Jackie Schaefer was

a 31-year-old woman

living in Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania

who was going to visit

some death row prisoners

with her friend Pamela Tucker,

who was the organiser

of an abolitionist group

from Pennsylvania.

They went monthly to

prisons around Pennsylvania

and visited death row prisoners

to check on their mental state,

to see if there were issues

they could get involved with to help

the better treatment of the overall

population of death row prisoners.

They came to the prison

and they visited five men.

I was the fifth one.

The other preceding prisoners

all went out there

and lamented how terrible it was,

the things they were encountering,

the conditions and all that.

I walked in, I sat down

and said hello to my friend Pam.

I asked her about her daughters.

We interacted about a few things

and I turned to Jackie

and I started flirting with her.

I started being gregarious and open.

It was completely unlike all

the other men who came out

with little lists of things to talk

about, while I simply was myself.

She came back the next

week by herself.

Scared to death.

So in this four foot by literally

five and a half foot walled room,

she would walk in and sit down

with a notepad and we'd talk.

Week after week.

She drove 275 miles from Pittsburgh

to Huntington,

through these mountains,

each way, and we'd start talking.

And it was weird.

I started to find out one

true thing about myself

and I think this is true for every

prisoner who goes into prison

at the age of 20 and is ready

to exit in his 30s or 40s.

You can only grow so far as a man

until a woman teaches you

enough about yourself

that you can further develop.

And it's only through the eyes

of that person that you give

yourself openly to

that they teach you

so many things about yourself

that are qualities

that you rely upon and like

and respect

because you've been shown from afar

something no mirror,

and believe me I didn't have

a mirror, could show you.

But at the heart of it,

I kept feeling dirty.

I did not want to be that prisoner

who is serving life

who lets a woman

fall in love with him,

knowing he's going

to suck the life out of her.

I had the death penalty plus 105

years. I wasn't going anywhere.

And then I get a newspaper.

And it's funny how my whole story

and life and this journey

has all been changed by either

photographs or newspapers.

But there it was. Five months

after I'd met Jackie, four months.

Newly developed DNA science makes

a big splash in the crime world.

Criminal convictions being reversed.

People were walking out, left

and right and left and right.

Whoa.

I write a letter to Jackie, I cut

the article, I sent it to her.

She came back on that visit.

As soon as the doors closed, I said,

"I didn't kill that woman. "

That was the first thing I shouted.

I was, like... That was the first

time I'd told her.

And I was, like,

"I've got two things to tell you.

"One - I didn't kill Mrs Craig.

"And, two - I think

I'm in love with you, too. "

She was, like, "Let's handle

the first one, first. "

You know what I mean? Let's deal

with the difficult one first.

I was, like, "Oh, man. "

CAR DOOR SLAMS:

KID SHOUTS, ENGINE STARTS

ENGINE REVS:

In the 1970s, a lot of the vehicles

still didn't have locks

on the steering column,

so you could just stick

a screwdriver into the key slot

and literally just turn

the ignition.

So, my friend Eddie and I

used to steal the early Fords,

and we would joyride them.

This man knew we were

15-year-old kids,

and knew that we didn't own the car,

and knew that it was stolen.

He was, like, "Come here, I'll give

you $200 for the car. "

We looked at each other, and $200

was, like, an enormous

amount of money. We figured

we just hit the jackpot.

We knew he owned a collision centre

that fixed and repaired cars.

So we said,

"Can we get you another car?"

And he told us what one

he would need, when he needed it,

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