S2E10 Food, Glorious Food!

I hate to even call it food to tell you the truth. It was slop.

On my very first full day in prison, it was a Friday.

One of the Italians with whom I became very friendly, Pete Calibris, mentioned off-handedly that it's Friday that means it's fish day. And I responded by saying, "Oh, great. I love fish." And he said, "Oh, don't eat this fish."

We call it sewer trout. And it's not fit for human consumption. Well, he and I walked down to the chow hall together.

“And what I saw was something that I'll never forget.”

The guys in the chow line were slapping the slop onto your tray. But behind them were boxes, boxes of fish. And on the side of these boxes, every one of them, it was clearly marked a lasken cod product of China, feed use only, not for human consumption. And that's what they were putting on our plates.

And I looked at Pete, he said, "I told you."

And so I never, ever, ever ate the fish.

I've also talked about another incident that happened about halfway through my sentence, where every Wednesday night was so-called taco night. And excuse the filthy thing I'm going to say, "I once threw away the entire taco." And the warden saw me throw the whole thing away. And he said, "In the old days, you could get written up for that."

And I responded, "I've eaten ass that tasted better than this taco." What do you do? If you can't eat the food, if you won't eat the food, if you shouldn't eat the food, if the food is going to make you sick? I'm John Curriaco.

“Welcome to Dead Drop, what makes a spy tick?”

This is episode 10 in our series, "Doing Time like a spy." And as always, we thank you for listening. We thank you even more for liking, rating, reviewing, and commenting on the podcast on what ever platform you happen to be listening to it. Prison food is institutional food that other institutional food laughs at.

No, that's actually not true. It's sneer's at it. And with good reason, the prison authorities don't want to spend a single dollar more than they have to. Fold in a bunch of competing interests, plenty of corruption and greed, and the result is a

hellish jambalaya of gastronomic awfulness. There was one incident where, for Taco night, they accidentally fed us dog food. The reason we know that is that the warden months after the fact sent everybody a memo saying, "Hey, sorry, but a couple of months ago on Taco night, we accidentally fed you dog food.

It's not our fault. The packaging was mixed up at the meat plant. They labeled dog food as ground beef, and they labeled the ground beef as dog food. The shame is not even that we were fed dog food. The shame is that we were fed dog food, and we couldn't even tell the difference."

Right. So what did we do? We relied on people like our guest tonight, Joey Casalo. Joey Casalo was one of the finest, I'm going to call him chefs at FCI Loretto. A lot of guys cook, the Mexicans all cook, right? You have a trash can of water. You throw

in a live electrical wire called a stinger. It immediately brings the water to a boil. You put some food in a plastic bag. Next thing you know, you've got a gourmet meal. The Mexicans ate to survive.

We ate, and I say we, I'm including myself with the Italians. We ate as a culinary experience. Yes. We welcome. Good to have you.

Thank you, John.

Joey, walk us through this man when I first saw a stinger.

I unplugged it, because I said, "Oh my God, what a health hazard. This is a live electrical."

“And the Mexicans are like, "Are you out of your mind?”

We're making dinner." I didn't know what the act they were doing, but then when you cooked, when Mark Lance a lot he cooked, it was like being in a restaurant in Little Italy. How did you do that? Walk us through it.

Well, when I first came to the prison, I only say this real quick, I didn't know nothing about prison just like you. Sure. So I walked in, and this guy comes up to me. I forget his name, a black guy, and he says, "What's your name, sir?"

I said, "Joey." And I'm thinking to myself, "Wow, you know, nice people here." He's talking to me.

He says, "We'll tell you later, just keep talking to this guy."

So I'm talking to him. He says, "If there's anything you need, Joey, you let me know." And I said, "Okay." So then I go back to myself, "Three guys come in that we're laughing." And I said, "Can you tell me why were you laughing?"

He says, "The guy is gay." He wants to pick you up right away because you're new in the prison. Well, the word got out to Peter Colibrease. And he found out, he said, "Joey, stay away from them guys. If you find a Twinkie or a piece of gum or a lollipop on your bed, don't touch it."

Yep. I said, "Okay, Pete, I won't." So I was learning little things here and there. And with the cooking, I knew how to cook on the outside with the stove, but like John said, the stinger.

Hmm. What was that? So I bought one one day. Oh, you're kidding me. So you didn't know what a stinger was?

I was learning. Watching everybody cook. I said, "Okay." But the stuffed egg cooked was rice and the same thing. Yeah.

Yeah. But Pete says, "I cook, man of God, I cook spaghetti, meatballs." John, it was two o'clock in the morning, John sounded asleep. I said, "I'm hungry, I'm going to cook."

“I made, I think I made a pizza or a man of God, he's something I made a time.”

So I crawled out, I walked to John's room, I said, "John." John, he goes, "Yeah, I'm sleeping, I said, John, I got Italian food. He says Italian food and he got right up." I did. I did.

Morning. And this went on consistently. We did it all the time. Yeah, have the the calzones used to make. Oh, let me talk about the calzones for a second.

So a lot of the Mexican guys used to cook and like you said, it was rice, rice, rice with this sazon sauce or not even sauce with an orange powder that had no flavor at all, but they sold it in the commissary and so they would sell these, they would call them calzones and Pete said to me one day, "Why do you buy those disgusting things?" And I said, "Oh, they're so filling and delicious, they got all kinds of stuff in them."

He goes, "It's not a calzone, it's a fucking burrito." He said, "Those guys wouldn't know calzone if it walked up and introduced itself to them." And so I said, "You're right. And then you started making calzones and I said, "Oh, my God. This is an actual calzone, like from an Italian restaurant, made it in a trash bucket

full of boiling water." But wait a minute, I don't know if you knew this.

I never got, I got some of the stuff from commissary, I used to get it from the guards

in the kitchen. Yes, I wanted to ask you about that. Yes. I had a good hookup right there, especially when I got with the, I don't, can we say names on here?

Sure. Why not? What would be my later if we have to? When I got with Nikki Corazzo, yes, I had to learn the whole nine yards.

“Yeah, because Nikki, Nikki was a very, very important person in a certain Italian-American”

sub-culture and very important person. And as his status demanded, he got the best of everything, including the best food. Our friend Mark Lanzalotti, who was an absolutely brilliant cook. I once told him, he fed me it was on my birthday, it was my 50th birthday, he had a big bash for me.

I remember. Remember that?

I told my wife that night, it was the first time I had smiled in nine months.

And, oh my god, how we laughed our heads off that night, but he made this gourmet meal and the very first thing he did, and he did this every time he cooked, is he would pull out all of his Tupperware, he would load the Tupperware with complete meals and send him to Nikki and to Pete and everybody else of that status. Yes.

They had a crooked, a crooked guard on payroll, who was bringing in everything that we needed. The enloves of Italian bread, white wine for the Marcella sauce, we got pork loin, we got beautiful chicken breasts, and fresh tomatoes and fresh mushrooms and onions and all kinds of stuff. But bags and bags of pasta and sauce.

It wasn't just crooked guards bringing it in from the inside, from the outside rather. It was guards working in the kitchen. They're supposed to be guarding the prisoners that are cooking the food. They're actually stealing most of the food, or stealing the good food, and then selling it to you.

“Well, yeah, that's how it works, and you know our money was books of stamps and macros.”

Right. But whatever, Nikki wanted, pass it at night, oh, with books of stamps, pull the guy aside and say, listen, we want this, we want this within 20 minutes, it was in my room.

So you got there just barely before I did, I got there February 28, 2013.

So when I first arrived, I was there maybe a week or two weeks, and one of the guards

in the kitchen was fired and escorted out, and Pete told me it was because he was allowing prisoners working in the cafeteria to steal food, and that was a very popular side hustle. They would just go from cell to cell to cell and food for bags of macros or books of stamps, but he would allow them to steal the food in exchange for a blow job. That they would, they would blow him, and then they could steal whatever food they wanted.

Yeah. They walked that guy out, and they allowed him to keep his pension, which was not cool at all. But then they tightened things up, and I remember they used to frisk us as we would walk

“out of the cafeteria, because God forbid you should have an apple in your pocket, or”

you know, a pad of butter that you want to take back to yourself. How did you get around all that? It was easy. It was just given to me all the time. I didn't have to walk out with nothing, all that had to do, they say, who was this for?

I said Nikki, go ahead, done, done, and when I brought it to Nikki's room, I was looking for him one day, right? He called Chris, you remember Chris? Yes, Chris came down and said Nikki wants you up there and out of cooking. It was kind of clocked in the morning. I said, okay, I'll go start cooking the pasta.

While I'm cooking, getting everything ready, the peppers, the onions, oil, everything. So Nikki says, all right, everybody out, I said, Nikki, you just call me up here to cook. I'm taking my hour nap, get out, and come back in an hour. So I had to put everything away, come back and cook. Oh my God.

And when you were cooking in Nikki's room, it was the same as cooking in your own room. We're talking about a garbage bucket full of hot water. Brand noodle, everything he had was brand noodle. The Mexican, they're dirty bucket. They're, yeah, at brand noodle.

We actually used, there were four Mexicans in my first cell.

He actually used that bucket for trash. And then they would just pull the trash out, fill it with water, throw the stinger in and make food. Right. He was disgusting.

Yeah. Okay, so walk us through. How do you do this?

“You got the bucket, you fill it with water, and then what?”

You fill it with water. While you're preparing everything, you'll put the stinger in, tie it. And explain what a stinger is. A stinger is wires from an iron, or tb, whatever they can get, your amp, yeah. And it's square pieces of metal.

They would get it where the metal makers, they had like a shop in there. Yes. Or they'd steal the face plate. Yeah. So it was two pieces of metal with something in the middle, so you don't get

shops.

Well, I never got shops, but let me tell you, every time they

rated us, they took my stinger. And I said to the guy, and I said, I just want to tell you, you know, I cook for Nikki, everybody in the prison knows. Okay, we won't take your stinger's no more. So then other guards would come, they would take it, because they didn't

know.

“I had 26 singers, after they let me had stingers in my locker.”

And I had them on the shelf, wide open. Nobody touched nothing. The respect we got, because of Nikki. Yeah. And I would just like to go on, I want to say something before we

get into anything else. When I first came into prison, like I said, I didn't know nothing. I was sitting with the blacks, he and, you know, I had to black the black side. Right.

We should say, in the cafeteria, all African-American inmates sit on one side. Yeah. But every one of them, on the other side, it's divided. And we talked about this in the past.

The front table is what I call the good guys. That's white guys. Most of them are Aryans. White guys convicted of crimes that have nothing to do with child sex crimes.

And then the next table was Italians on one side and Native Americans on the other. And then behind them were all the pedophiles and the rats. They had to sit together. Yeah.

So go ahead. So I had colored guys when I first came to prison in myself. So they liked me, you know, joke around. And I was the only Italian or white person to say the end word to them.

You know how they all think? I was the only one to say that. Anybody else they would shank them. Yeah. They loved me.

Like I mean, and you bond it real quick.

Immediately. Yeah. So anyway, they said, you come sit with us. I said, OK, now I don't know nothing. I see all these people.

I'm there for like two weeks, three weeks. Eat in there all the time.

“So then finally, Nikki says, what are you doing sitting over there?”

I said, Nikki, I just got to-- I just got your eye. I don't know much. He says, friend, now on you're over here with the gambinos. You're with us. Yes.

I said, OK. So then I'm Pete Celi now. Come on. He says, Joey, no, no, no.

You're not with the gambinos.

You're with the bananas. Yeah. And I said, Pete, I don't know. What's way to go now? I don't know.

You know, Pete said the same thing to me. I was sitting with the Aryans, only because the Aryans told me to. And then Pete said to me one day, we were walking out. Our cells were directly across from each other. And we were walking out.

And he said, let me ask you something.

“Why do you sit with those Nazi retards in the cafeteria?”

Those were his exact words. And I said, I don't know, Pete, when I first arrived, they told me to sit with them. And then very dramatically, he puts his finger in the air. And he says, from today, you're with the Italians. And then I sat with the Italians, the whole rest of the time I was there.

When you first started sitting at the Italian tables with us, Nicky would always go, I know

he lives next door to you across the hall. Is he alright? You sure Joey's alright? I said, yeah, Nicky, he's good. I vouch for him.

He's good. You don't know the stuff. He asked me about him. I believe it. Because he asked Mark Lans a lot.

He exactly the same question. He was genuinely worried because the guy didn't know the difference between the CIA and the FBI. Right. He was afraid that I was a cop.

Yeah. Yeah. And Mark told him. He said, the FBI are cops and rats. The CIA protected us from the Muslims.

That's what he told him. And then I was okay after that.

“I said, he's a good guy, Nicky's a good guy.”

He says, all right, then he's with us. I said, all right. We're made men now, Johnny. Seriously, right? I felt like I was, yeah, I'll tell you, man, that was a community.

The Italians, I say all the time that the Italians in prison for stupid reasons are considered to be a gang. They even have their own suffix on the prisoner number, zero, four, seven. If you're zero, four, seven, that means your mob. And it's not fair, right?

But anyway, it's not a gang. Anyway, let's pretend for a moment that it is. Of all the prison gangs, and these are major gangs, you got the crypts and the bloods and the Latin kings and the Budachos and the Nortenios and the MS-13 and this one and not one and the other one.

The Italians were the smallest and the most highly respected. Yes. And that was hands down. There were no exceptions to that. The Italians were universally respected and another thing, too.

The Italians were the only gang in air quotes that didn't have a shot color. And they didn't have a shot color because they didn't need a shot color. You had made men at any given time. They were six, seven, eight of them and they did everything by consensus. And we would all have to sit with them with the made men.

And if something was to go on, if somebody wanted to beat somebody up, or everybody would agree, that's how it worked in there. That's right. That's exactly right. I genuinely liked and respected them.

Yeah. I'll tell you a funny thing, too. I was an expert witness in a trial last week. I was an expert witness for the defense and this poor guy was charged with six felonies. All six of which carried a mandatory sentence of life without parole.

And I testified on his behalf. He had a public defender and in the cross examination, all the U.S. attorney wanted to ask me about and he was mean about it and aggressive. All he wanted to ask me about was the Italians at Loretto and that was I with the Italians. I said, you bet I was and you said that they were honorable and I said, and they were honorable.

They're all convicted murderers. I said, I don't know what they were convicted of. It was none of my business. I can tell you that in my dealings with them, they were all honorable to a man. Every single one of them.

In fact, I'm still friends with a lot of them because they were honorable. And so in the end, I'm very, very proud to say this. The guy was found not guilty on all six counts last year.

That doesn't happen very often.

But anyway, I want to get back to cooking. You've got this pipeline of real food, actual food. Well, it's not like you're sitting in your in your bunk, read out of a cookbook. So how did you know what to make? How did you know how to plan what to make?

And what do you do if you're halfway through a meal, and you're like, oh, crap, I don't have any tomatoes or mushrooms or chicken, braster, whatever. What do you do? I always had it. We always had it.

I never was out nothing. I don't know what to say. It was there. It was there. Whatever we need it.

“Just like the movie Good Fellows, that's how we, I say that all the time, Joe, that scene”

and Good Fellows was 1,000% true. We gave the Gavario as even the garlic and that it liquefies in the oil. They ran that scene because it was true. And that's how we cooked every single day. And I'll tell you what, the Mexicans would use their ID cards to cut.

We had racer blades. Yeah. I remember us. I remember you every month for the prisoners who were too poor to afford a commissary, they would give you a, what did they call it, the bag, to keep yourself clean.

What did they, they had a name for it? Yeah. Anyway, it included a disposable single-edged razor. And I remember you breaking, you're very strong, I should add. I mean, we're all 10 years older now, but yeah.

But you're very strong. And I remember you breaking open the single-blade razor and taking the blade out. And then using the blade to cut the garlic. That's how I started with the blade. I don't know this guy's name.

I forget his name. White guy. He had long hair. Oh. I remember him.

Oh, he was a cool guy. I like him. I remember him. I remember him.

“I heard the keys and the chains, I said, "Hi, my singer."”

He says, "No, Joe, it's just me. You don't have to hide it." So he saw me with a little blade, you know, a little single-blade cut yourself with it. Yeah. He says, "Wait until tomorrow."

I had packages of big razor blades. Fine, Bill. Well, I thought, are you telling me to go go, "Wack somebody or something?" Oh, you cooked with this. I liked him.

So what's booking? It just comes to my mind. I can't even explain it. I mean, if I wake up in a Nikki wanted pasta or whatever, I would make the whole made sauce.

I mean, they would bring me scratch.

Yeah, cans of tomatoes, the paste, olive oil, it was amazing.

And I'll tell you what. If I didn't have nowhere to live like these bombs that love prison, I would have stayed in there. I'll tell you the truth. Because if you ever go to prison, I know you don't want to go to prison, but if you ever

do anybody, federal prison, go to federal prison. Yeah, good if federal prison.

“I remember, I've said this, I'm going to say another, not very nice word.”

But I remember three guys sitting in the TV room, playing cards one day. It was a middle of the day, so everybody was a way it worked call. I had a no show job. Yeah, me. Thanks to these talents.

I had a no show job. I walked in there for some reason, and they were playing cards, and they were in between hands. So the dealer was shuffling the cards. And one guy put his hands behind his head, he kind of kicks back and stretches.

He looks around and he says, I got a warm bed. I got free medical care. I got a TV. I got three meals a day. No bills.

He said, if we had pussy, this would be paradise. And I remember thinking, oh man, you've been inside too long, buddy. But they weren't even eating like the Italians were eating. We got to the point, Joey, and I'm sure you remember this. My sentence was short.

I was in 23 months.

The last six or eight months that I was in, I never went to the cafeteria.

Yeah, I never did either. There was no reason to. Only on certain things like a pizza's worth. He says, whatever, one night a week was pizza. One night a month was pizza night.

Yeah. And let me tell you, we had trays and trays of pizza trays. They brought out. When Nikki was there, they brought out a whole big, it was like a pizza tray with pizza stacked.

Everybody's looking at us like, wow.

We didn't have dough.

That's the only thing we didn't have.

Pizza dough. Yeah.

“I used the wraps, you know, the big wraps, the Mexicans would use.”

So I said, let me think of something here. These wraps are kind of small. Maybe it looks like a single pizza. So I would lay four or five of them down. And it would come out to a big pizza, a large pizza.

So with the garlic, I would chop the garlic like on good fellows. Yeah. And I had a piece of metal, and you would put olive oil on the metal. It was like a little cup. And it would heat up, and you would put the garlic in it, and it would cook it.

It would saute it.

And the sauce, I did the same.

I used the cans of tomatoes. I heated it up. You put it in a plastic bag. You put it in the water, you tie the bag, close the bag, and it steams. And let me tell you the smell from my food.

Everybody would come to myself. If I was going to sell it in there for cash, I'd either been rich today. Yes. I don't. Yeah.

Prison smell like it. Joey's cooking. Joey's cooking. Well, let me tell you. Sometimes I did sell stuff.

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Who knows, your next favorite podcast might be just a click away. Now back to Dead Drop. I was next to a cell, if you come out of your cell and your back is your cell is to your back and I'm on the right in front of you, the guys on the left in front of you. They were mostly Mexicans and their hustle, their hustle was to steal meat from the

cafeteria, they mostly stole chicken and then they would go sell the cell every day, selling chicken or selling eggs. They sold a lot of eggs, right back, they would put it exactly, exactly, they would put it in plastic bags. So is that how you got your meat, too, was it just from the cops in the kitchen or were

you getting the outside meat as well? I was again, I wasn't getting it from any from the guys in there, I was getting it from either the guards are the prisoners that worked for the guards, so they have good stuff. We had that's what I thought. East Turkey, as soon as I got out, put it on ice.

So it was good.

“I remember a lot of guys buying those scrawny, bony chickens from the chow haul and just”

keeping it on ice and then cooking it in the afternoons, we didn't eat those bony, I mean, they would get it right up and make something, I don't know what they mean. I used to sell my chicken, we got chicken every Tuesday at lunch or whatever it was, and used to sell my chicken for a bag of tuna to some guy that was on this protein-only diet, he was trying to work out and build muscle wherever he would buy my nasty chicken every

Buy the tray.

Yeah, buy the tray, exactly, and then I'd go back to my place and eat your food or go to

Marx and eat his food. Yeah, we had some big bowls of food, I remember the parties, everybody bring your bowl. Joey, I used to say, I gained 35 pounds in prison. Oh, did I?

35 pounds, I remember you and I talking about it because you showed me a picture of yourself one time. Yeah. And it was like, you know, Mr. Olympus, Mr. America competition, and then all of a sudden we got these bellies from all pasto-readen.

Yeah. And the warden said to me one time, he said, you're sure putting on a lot of weight. I said, what do you, my tailor or my warden? Yeah. And then he walked away.

Yeah.

“The only thing I didn't want to make in there was the hooch.”

No, I never messed with it.

No, I wasn't smoking cigarettes, I wasn't doing nothing. You'd go to a hole for three months for that some stupid. Not worth it. And remember, the hooch, it was mostly the Native Americans, would make it. They would steal fruit from the cafeteria and then ferment the fruit and make moonshine

out of it. Yeah. A couple of the black guys did, too. They would hide it in the drop ceiling of the TV room so that it wasn't tied to anyone person.

But you remember, they found hooch in the drop ceiling during the NBA playoffs. Yeah. We shut the TV's off, that was the punishment. Everybody got punished. Nobody was allowed to watch basketball for the week.

Well, I don't know if you remember this. Somebody hid the hooch somewhere and it was the bag popped. And I don't know if it was the warden's office or somebody's office. That worked there. That was high ranked.

“All the hooch went down in that person's office.”

Oh, my God. I don't remember that. They locked down, might have been before you came to hold the whole place got locked down. But they found out who did it.

But imagine that person was to put it over. Yeah, that's really stupid. And the people who made the hooch are the people who had long sentences because what they didn't hear. Yeah.

They didn't care. And it was like the guys that just had to have a cigarette. I know I'm getting off the subject of food, but the guards in violation of, you know, all the rules would chew tobacco. And then they would just dig into their lip and fling the tobacco onto the ground.

And guys, yeah, guys would collect the chewed tobacco, dry it out and oil it in toilet paper, and then sell it for a Mac. Yeah. People would smoke previously chewed chewing tobacco rolled in toilet paper because they so desperately had to have a cigarette.

Yeah. Gross. Yeah. I was a heavy smoker with cigarettes. I didn't smoke nothing in there.

No. What the minute I got out? I don't know. I bought a pack. So how, you've got a successful restaurant right now, a successful pizzeria.

You post on Facebook pictures of your beautiful food. Yeah. How different is it now from when it was in there? Well, different is I can walk out to the refrigerator and ask nobody except my wife she's the boss too.

But it's just, it was a, a really experienced in there. Yeah. I mean, me and you and arrested the guys, we had a good, we had a good in there. Yeah. I hate to say that.

You know, people ask me every once in a while if I miss it. And I say absolutely not. I don't miss anything about it at all. Nothing. Yeah.

But then, you know, when I'm sitting here with Joey or I'm sitting with Mark Lansaladi at the time. Or Grant. Yeah. We actually, we made it okay for each other.

Yeah. Yeah. I used to go down to Mark's cell almost every night because he was cooking every single night. Of course, he would give me just like you did like two or three times more food

than I could possibly eat. Yeah.

And so I'd eat until I was full and then I'd, you know, go for the second seeding

two hours later and eat again and put on those 35 pounds. But the food was so good. I told you this and I told Mark that I would, I would spend $35 for this in an Italian restaurant outside. That's how good it was.

You, more than Mark, made desserts. Yeah. Look at it.

“How in the world did you make dessert and what desserts did you make?”

I made can only one time for me.

Where'd you get these from?

The outside. I said, no. Nikki. They had these little cookies and common-series. But they looked like a shelf and it looked like an Italian pastry.

Yeah. So I said, let me see what I need for this now. I'm going to ask the guard. So I need a heavy whipping cream, some kind of cheese and I don't know something else. Within, I say, they are too, he brought it to me and I just, I couldn't, there I would taste

it and I'd just taste like canoli. It's so amazing. Makes. Remember the cakes we made? The cakes?

I remember that. The cakes we made. They were like store-bought cakes. They were like store-bought cakes. But you made a flourless cake one time.

Yeah. It was like a lemon cake or something like that. That was ridiculous. I was like, dude, you made this in a garbage pale. We even got lemons.

Yeah. You made lemon cake from scratch.

“Have you adapted any of those crazy recipes to what you're doing now?”

Not really, no. It wouldn't make sense. It would be kind of depressing. I tell you, I go on TikTok sometimes and I see these people that just got out of prison. And they're showing their family, this is how we, and they're cooking just like they,

he would have a finger and everything. I would never do that. Bring that outside and do that. You know what I mean? He would.

It's in that home with a finger and a plastic bag in the garbage pale. Yeah. I don't want to go that. No, no. That's nuts.

You know. Yeah. You don't want to do that.

But not to change the subject, but I just got to say again when I first walked in the prison.

Two guys came to my room when was Chris and I don't know who the other one was. Nikki wants to see you. I said, okay. Though I walked up to Nikki's room, there was like four or five guys. I said, oh, man, to myself.

What's going on? Well, Nikki says sit down on this chair. I sat down. Now the guys are standing here. Nikki's behind me.

All of a sudden he puts his hand on my head and he goes like this. He goes, I sit to myself. That's it.

“I think I'm going to get something to shank or something's wrong.”

Should I run or what should I do? He goes, you're lucky. I like you, Joe. You're lucky. I like you.

I said, Nikki. Yeah. It was crazy stuff that went on there. Yeah. He was, he was a very important and very scary guy.

Yeah.

One of the things that I learned really quickly hanging out with the Italians is you never

ever wanted somebody to say about you. You believe this fucking guy. Then you knew you were on the list. Yeah. Yeah.

No. You never wanted to be this fucking guy. Who was Nikki's cellmate, the old guy? Yeah. I remember it was, I can't really.

I just, I don't know. I can't remember it. Ketana was his name. He went by gate. The old guy.

Yeah. The old guy. Hey, remember Jake? Sure.

“The old man, let me tell you a quick story.”

He was going back, he had life. Yes. He was a high rank monster too. Upstate New York. Yep.

Got life. So one day we're all in a roomie and he says, guys, I'm going back to court. I'm going to overturn my life. We're like, now he's a 72 years old saying this. Okay.

We're so proud of you. All right. Let us know what happens. So he goes to court. Comes back.

He goes, I did it. They overturned my life. They gave me 50 years. I remember that. We all, we all, we all.

Yeah. All my 50 years. Hey, there was one guy from upstate. I won't say his name. He asked me if I would write his appeal.

He had 30 years. Yeah. I said, sure, let me see your case papers and we'll figure some out. I'll write your appeal. Listen, I did what they convicted me of doing.

I killed a guy. Don't get me wrong, he says. If I could, I'd dig him up and kill him again. But 30 years, it's not reasonable. I was like, oh, man, that's not the right attitude.

Yeah. Yeah. What's next for you? You, um, you've got the pizza rea.

You lived in, uh, in Connecticut.

Yeah, Connecticut. You moved, but down in North Carolina. So, so what's next? I'm older now. 58 years old.

I just turned that June 27th. I'm going to stay here. I, I, I have a wonderful wife. I'm going to. I'm going to stay here.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I lived here.

“So that's why I came down because she, someone's wrong.”

What if we didn't know what it was? Then I came down and found out she had dementia. Yeah. Book her in with me. I will not put her in a home, John.

No, you're, you're, you're a good son. And we live here now. I do my very best. I'm the only child.

So she took care of me all the years.

That's right. That's right. I forgot you were an only child. And I was my turn. Yeah.

Yep. But I'm happy to be out. I'm happy to be at in New York. Connecticut. Here is so peaceful.

North Carolina is nice. Very nice. Oh, wait a minute, John. You know what we forgot? You're silly.

I don't know. We could bring that up. Which one? Oh, that crazy guy. The Afghan?

John. Oh, my God. You got to do something with this guy. So John just go up to the yard. His name was Cher.

He had his arm blown off by an IED in Afghanistan. This guy was sort of folly insane. Any psychiatrist in America would have certified him as insane. Yeah. Because we knew he was insane.

We plotted to push him over the edge. Just to get him transferred to another prison and be rid of him. You were a major part of that operation. My bunkie was Frank Russo. He was the auditor general of Kaya Hoga County, Ohio.

And he was actually arrested while he was running for governor of Ohio. Yeah. He would have won. Frank was a natural politician. But Frank said something.

When you and I finally pushed him over the edge.

And he lost his mind. They took him to solitary. The prison. Frank said, thank God. We finally got him into solitary because I was going to take a poop in his boots. Yeah.

And he meant it literally. He was literally going to poop in the guy's boots. You did something to him. That was so funny that 11 years later.

“I still laugh about it when I think about it.”

Now the story, John. You say it better. Oh my God. So this guy was nothing but trouble. He had no respect for anybody's property.

He had no respect for anybody's space or time. You remember how hot it was in our housing unit because we had no windows. Yes. And so they had these gigantic fans. And he would just like pull his pants down and air out his balls in the front of the giant fan.

And we're like, dude, you're going to get shanked doing that. Right. Immunity is unacceptable in prison. And you're just standing there, airing out your balls. So we started doing things just messing with him.

And making a long story short, what you came up with was so frigging hilarious. He was a very, very pious shea Muslim. I mean, it's kind of a disconnect being very, very religious. And being very, very child molester. Right.

So yeah, it's incongruous who could explain it. So anyway, he had this prayer rug that was his pride and joy. It was like the only possession that he cared about. John, I used to get sick of him seeing him kneeling on that rug. Choke him every day, John.

John. And you were so upset.

“I said, we got to do something to this guy.”

I said, go clearly, yard. I'll take care of this, John. You should okay. You did. You took care of it.

You made me look completely innocent because it was out of the yard. Right. I thought that I was the one doing this stuff. And I was doing a lot of it. But what really pushed him over the edge was you.

So the guards were watching me. Yes. They were going to catch me, torture this guy. Yep. They were going to be speaking.

I went out to the yard to kill time and walk around and you. Locker first. Yeah, you stole everything out of his locker. All of his candies, all of his food, his diet cogs. You stole everything.

So he opened the locker and it's just empty. He lost his mind. Number one. Then you wrote a giant. You wrote a giant.

Yeah. Sharpie. And so he tore the bottom. It was on the bottom was just plain. It was like a non-slip surface.

He tore it off and threw it away.

“And then he said something that was so odd to me.”

He said, at least they didn't draw an asshole. Nothing is filthier than the human asshole. Well, that's all he had to say. So I told you. And then the next time he went out to play soccer.

You wrote on it asshole. You are. And then you wrote underneath Yoda. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. Before we killed him. We were going to kill him.

And then he finally lost his mind.

Yeah. I ran down to the unit manager's office. And I said, "Share's having a mental breakdown." So he called. Well, the cops, S.I.S.

They ran up. You could hear the keys jingling from a quarter mile away, practically. And somebody from medical. And they cuffed him. He was screaming, swearing.

Yeah. He was going to fuck our mothers. He was going to fuck our sisters. He was going to fuck us up the ass. He's going to shove his fist up our asses.

And that was the last I heard of him. He was just screaming, screaming these obscenities. Oh, they transferred him, right? They got him at it. Yeah.

Yeah. They got him. They transferred him out before I left. Yeah. And what really pissed.

He had these.

There were these two cousins.

Or a cousin and a brother and law. They would come like every week in visit him. Uh-huh. And nobody told them that he wasn't in the prison anymore. Right.

Guys, these guys drove up and came all the way to the prison from Washington. And they were like, yeah, he, he, he doesn't live here. Right. Where is he? Well, I don't know.

New Jersey, maybe. I don't know. Oh, those guys were so mad. That's in the book, too, isn't it? Yeah.

The book, right? Yeah. Oh, man. We made his life miserable. Yeah.

I couldn't take that guy no more. We had to get him out. We had to for our own mental health. We had to get him out. Even the Muslims would not allow him to pray with them.

Right. He was nuts. Yeah. And he was, he was judgmental. And he was cruel.

And he would call, he would call, because most of the Muslims are, our black Muslims, their converts. And he would call them fake Muslims. Yeah. Yeah.

Remember. Yeah. We're going to tell these, these totally ripped stacked giant black guys, Yeah. That they're fake Muslims.

And they don't know what they're doing. And they're going to, they're going to destroy him.

“And do you remember what we finally did?”

You did. You put pork salami under his pillow. Oh, yeah. Yes. Wait, but it.

You cut it. I remember. I did. I cut it. I cut it into slices.

And we laid it out under his pillow. And it was there all day. And it was so hot. And the summer we didn't have air conditioning. So it's like 90 degrees in there.

We used to soak our bath towels in water. Yeah. Lay on our beds with a wet bath towel just to try to cool off. So that salami was, you know, cooking for mending all day under his pillow.

And I remember after he freaked out and they took him to solitary. These black Muslims came to the cell. And they stood at the entrance. Yeah. And the stain from the salami was on the pillow and the sheets.

And one of them said they'd done them in with the swine. Yeah. Yeah. On us to God, if it wasn't for Joey and Mark and Pete, I'm not sure how I could have gotten through it.

Yeah. Because when you came in, everybody was like, Oh, the CIA, the cops don't, don't go near that guy.

The first, like, four weeks.

I kept my distance. I kept my mouth shut. Yeah. I went to get a haircut. And Pete was in there getting a haircut.

Yep. And I just started making small talk with him. And he said to me, listen, I got to tell you, I know who you are. And you carry yourself far better than I expected you would.

And I said, I appreciate that. I was trying to be as tough as I could. I said truth be told. I'm not afraid of anybody. Right.

Which was bullshit, of course. But I said, I'm not afraid of anybody. And he said, good. Keep that up. Yep.

And we were friends from then on. I still talk to Nicky's main guy there. George. I don't know if you remember George well. But that raspy voice.

I talked to him all the time. Excellent. And I'm in constant touch with Mark and with Brett. Which came up in that trial the other day.

“Well, are you brag that you're still in touch with members of organized crime?”

And I say, I said, yes, I am. And they're good and honorable men. Yeah. Which was not the response they expected.

I like to me to say, no, no, no.

That was a lifetime ago.

“I said, yeah, I talked to them all the time.”

And they're dear friends. And then I turned to the jury. Oh, I'm so proud of myself. I turned to the jury.

And I said, there was a crooked congressman from Ohio named Nye.

And why he was in prison in Ohio. Federal prison on a corruption charge. It did 23 months, just like I did.

“When he got out of prison, he said, nobody goes to prison to make friends.”

But the friends that I made in prison are lifelong friends. That was true.

There are a lot of people in prison who are innocent.

There are a lot of people in prison who are guilty. But who don't deserve to be in prison. And there are a lot of people in prison who are good and decent people. And those my friends.

“And as I hope you now agree, one of those very good and decent people is my friend, Joey.”

Thank you again for sitting in with me, Joey. I think I owe you dinner. A really good one. In our next episode, we'll get back to the prison grind as my outdated approaches. I've got more reason than ever to keep my head down.

But, you know, it's still prison. Prison rules still applied. And I had unfinished business that needed attending to. A whistle blowing federal prisoners got to do. What a whistle blowing federal prisoners got to do.

Until then, please don't forget to like, rate, review, or comment on the podcast. It really does help. Until next time, I'm John Kiryaku. Dead drop is written by John Kiryaku and Alan Katz. Costart and touched on productions produces the podcast.

And John Kiryaku, Alan Katz, and Nick McKanick are its executive producers. This podcast, it's a castred and touched on production.