[Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of Evolving Prisons with me, Kagan Kai. If you want to listen to monthly bonus episodes, you can subscribe for only £3 per month by hitting the link in the show notes. Before we jump into today's episode, I'd be really grateful if you please rate the podcast on whatever platform you listen, as more ratings mean more people will discover the show. My guest today is Jamie Morgan Kane. Jamie spent 35 years in prison in the USA after he walked into his home and found a man lying dead. Despite his wife being responsible for the murder, Jamie was the one who went to prison. Originally from the UK and taken to the USA illegally as a baby, Jamie and I talk about how he ended up in prison, what it was like being deported back to the UK after release from prison at age 64, as despite being born in the UK he hadn't been there since he was a baby, and how it felt to swim in the ocean again after 35 years in prison. I really hope you enjoy this conversation. [Music] So we'll probably get into how you ended up in America and things later, but to begin with, how much of your life did you spend in the United States and how much of it did you spend in prison? I spent a little over 64 years in the United States, arriving in the US when I was a year old, even though I was in Canada when I was six months old, and I came back to the UK when I was 64. I spent 34 and a half years in prison, half my life and two thirds of my adult life in prison. And do you consider yourself American or British? I've considered myself Manx. Two years ago, I finally actually got my Manx birth certificate. They finally registered my birth 68 years late on my actual 68th birthday, but I've basically always claimed to be Manx, and I even have that tattooed on my back arm and the island man, three legs on my other inside my arm and stuff. Yeah, so I've always considered myself Manx, and even though I spent all that time in America, I never felt like I belong over here. I've got the worst British accents since Dick Van Dyke did Mary Poppins. And how old were you when you went to prison? I actually got sent to prison on my 30th birthday, so I got just on my set about 64. And tell us what it was you went to prison for? The actual reason I went to prison was that I tried to cover up a person who was found dead at my house, my moving his body away from my house. And then as the police say, I lied to him because they'd asked me when was last time I saw the man alive, and I told him two weeks earlier, which was the truth, but they were meaning when was last time I saw him. So in their mind, I lied to him because I didn't say well, I just saw him the other day when I moved his dead body. The thing was that my wife had been charged with murder one with special circumstances, two counts, one for poisoning the man and the other for being involved with money being taken out of his bank account by a girl that I thought was my half sister and had been that guy's adopted daughter, but she was actually his niece. His brother was her dad, her dad had passed away. And that was the girl that turned state's witness against my sister. I mean, he gets my wife and said, you know, she's the one that did all this. She did this, and all he did was move the body and basically try to hide the crime, which if I was only charged and convicted of that, I would have served less than about six months because moving a body is not as bad as killing the person. So, yeah, it was, yes, it was hiding the crime, but my thing was I didn't know what had happened. I came home. I had dead men on my living floor. My wife wasn't home. My child wasn't home. And this was a man who I'd had altercations with previously. I rode with a motorcycle club at this time. I'm ex-military. And my first thought was I have to get this situation away from my home, away from my family. So that was my whole thing was just moving it away from my family. And that was kind of the deal because it's one of the problems that my wife came back just before while I was loading him into the back of my pickup truck. And she decided to go with me. And then she yelled at me for four hours because I didn't have a plan. And I explained to him. I didn't have a plan because I hadn't been involved in any of this to begin with. And I ended up leaving him on the side of the road by an agricultural field where I knew people would find him real quickly, which they did within about 20 minutes after I'd left. And then I also did, whether everybody has lovingly told me that was one of the stupidest things I could have done, which was he didn't have any identification on. So I actually wrote my name and phone number and said in case of emergency call and put it in his wall. Not realizing he had just gotten out of jail for assaulting the girl. I thought it was my half sister and her three-year-old son. He choked the son and beat on the girl. And that's what he was saying. He was in jail for that. He'd been in there for a couple of weeks. And I was unfortunately involved in my bike shop and stuff. I didn't realize my wife and the other girl and stuff had been in doing things, including the girl who gave my wife some medication to take to the guy in the county jail. And my wife tried to give it to him. Unfortunately, not everybody realized prisons and jails don't let you go to visit somebody and give them pills and medication. You know, they kind of frown on them. So they've turned my wife away. And that's what it was. The pills that my wife was given were tainted with cyanide poisoning when she gave them to him after he had a meal that night before I got home. He took one and he died. But at the time, nobody knew how he died. And the first coroner's report came back that he'd been strangled. And it wasn't until the other girl said when they threatened her with 18 years for 4G checks to get money out of his bank account three days after he had been found dead. She threatened her with 18 years of prison for the cordry. She said, "Whoa, let's make a deal." And that's what she told my wife. I said, my wife had given this stuff. And then that's when the charges came. And so what ended up happening is they ran a trial for my wife while I was still sitting in jail pending because they kept changing charges just to hold me in. And it came back 11 to 1 to put my wife to death. And one man who held out said that he didn't mind if they put my wife in prison for the rest of her life and let her die naturally in prison. But he had a problem signing off on actually killing a woman. So that's when the DA came to me. And with my attorney and my wife's attorney and said, "You got 15 minutes to make this decision. I'm going to offer you a one-time, one-time deal only." If you plead guilty to being negligent as head of the household to all this stuff going on, I'll drop all pending charges on your wife. I'll release her and turn your son back to her. And he said that, "I will not oppose any parole. And if you do, if you work and stale trouble stuff, you'll be out for 13 years." And he said, "You've got five minutes. How are you going to tell your son that you could have saved his mom's life but chose not to? Oh, now you've got 90 seconds. So are you really the tough guy that you've portrayed to be or how you're going to let this go?" In 30 seconds, I walk out of this room, "What's your decision?" And my attorney and my wife's attorney said, "This is the best we'll ever get." He had said he would never oppose my parole, and all this stuff about my staying out of trouble and working stuff I'd get out in half-time. The fine print was that I was going to be sent to 27 to life, but I would get the half-time for working. And I would go to board, and if you stay out of trouble, the board finds you suitable and you go home. So the problem came in is that I signed the deal. My wife got released two weeks later out of jail. And two weeks after that, she ran off with a guy that was the brother of one of the girls she met in the jail and took my son and I never saw them ever again. We're heard from a mother again, other than when my son was killed by a drunk driver when we was nine, she had contacted the American Red Cross to tell me she wouldn't tell me herself that she was afraid I'd be a bit bitter at her. But four years after I went to prison, the California State Legislature, the parliament basically changed the law, and they took away all the good time work time. And they did an exposed fact, though, which means that they made a law that was going to affect people negatively and ran it retroactive. So it shouldn't have affected us, but it did. And so then I suddenly, as soon as that happened, the earliest I could have gotten out was 18 years, six months, which was been my first parole hearing. Then the following year, the legislature gave the governor the right to take any parole dates. And so for 18 years, we had governor Brown, I mean, Wilson and Davis, and for 18 years, only 11 life people got out of prison, as they took every date for 18 years. So the guys that were stacking up should have gone home. So when I first I got them sued over the first time, 2013, I was two days away from being released. And the governor took my date. And the reason he gave was that because he could, not that I'd done anything, but just because he could. And I had to wait four more years. And the same governor saw that my case went across his desk before the four years later, he didn't even bother to look at my cases. So I got, I got released. Now, it was kind of a funny point because prior to him getting it on his desk, the MP for Enfield in London had written a letter on my behalf asking that I'd be allowed to be deported and come home. And the thing is that in America, people are not really as brides as a lot of people think they didn't know who the who the prime minister was. And because California does deals a lot with Spanish and a lot of Spanish verbiage is done reverse, like Casa Blanca means your house white, but it means the White House. So when they saw MP, you know, they thought it was ministerial prime, and thought it was the prime minister right in the letter. And it came on Royal Mail and came, you know, from the house of common, you know, let me accept. And so if first they went to the governor's office and a copy game to prison, then I got dragged down by what we called the goon squad at security unit. And everyone know why I was having the prime minister of England write letters for me. And I told them, I'm not having anybody write letters, people in England, maybe, but I'm just on the recipient. So whether that affected and whether that made it any difference, I don't know. But that happened just a couple of weeks before the governor just decided to look, because he could look at it and deny it, look at it and approve it. We're not a look at it. He didn't look at it. So that was the same as being approved. And then I was turned over to immigration and customs, of course, which, of course, I was there for like two months. And when you were in prison, who did they think you were? Because we've not talked about this in the episode yet, but you got taken to America legally, and you were raised as somebody other than who you were born. So tell us a little bit about that. And who were you in prison? What name, who did they think you were? Well, because I did get taken to America illegally, I was I was 14 years old, though, I was really small 14. So I passed as a 12 year old. This family, Dr. Charles Wetmore and his wife, Alice, they had adopted a boy in a girl two years earlier. Something happened to the boy, and he had to go away. So they'd gone to the woman who had me, who was raising me, who I thought was my mom. Martha Boswell, but she was using my mom's name, Moya, and told her, look, you're really ill. We'll give him a good life. We'll adopt him all this stuff. And he says that he paid her a substantial amount of money. And he took custody of me. Well, he never adopted me, but he gave me the other child's identity. So from the time I was basically, then they backdated my birthday to that kid's date, which made me 12 years old. But I was better educated than the kids at school. So I actually bumped up two grades ahead of time. So I actually graduated properly, had stuff. But they had me under the name John Wetmore, W E T M all right. I was I used that name in my high school days. I used it in the military. And then after I got out in the military, I had gone through a really bad divorce for my first wife and lost custody of what I believe was my first son. And Dr. Wetmore and I had a big argument because he won at the time I had I had the boy, but they were getting ready to take me for a divorce court. So Dr. Wetmore had engaged with me about the idea of me signing my son over to him and stuff. And of course, because I didn't have a good relationship with him, I said that's not going to happen. So what we ended up doing was he got mad at me and he threw me an envelope and it had my baptism certificate from the aisle of man. And it had my mom's passport, but it had Martha taking my mom's picture out for the first end because my mom had given to the passport for me as a cookie crumb. And that was in 78. And so at that point, I started changing my name back to my name, which was Morgan James Kane. That's my legal birth name. Jamie is what I was called by Martha when I was a little kid. So that was I was doing it by what they call usage in California. You can change your name by usage. So I went down, I got my driver's license, changed stuff. So when all of this case came out, I was still half my identity was under Kane, half it was still under Wetmore. And when they arrested me, they originally arrested me under Wetmore. But then when I pointed out that my name was Kane, they ended up putting down on my abstract of judgment, which is the paper Ascension Prison. It said legal and true name, Morgan James Kane. Then it said also known as or name shown on indictment, John Raymond Wetmore. So that's where the problem came in is when I arrived at the reception center, there was a guard who had only been a guard for two weeks. And he was doing the reception. And he sees my paperwork and he goes to names. And he gets started to get in frustration. I go, it's real simple. That's my true. He says, don't tell me how to do my job. I'm wearing the badge. And because the other name said names shown on indictment, he put me in prison originally in John Raymond Wetmore. Well, Dr. Wetmore at that time thought I was going in under Morgan Kane, because they had listed as my true name. And it took me roughly eight years to get them to start letting me use the Kane name in prison. The moment they did that, they sent the papers to the federal government. Red flags came up and suddenly I had NCIS, FBI, immigration, everybody coming down wanting to know how I've been hiding all this time. And I explained to him, I hadn't been hiding. It was all because some deaf guard originally couldn't, got confused because there were two names and he couldn't read his own rules. So that's what happened on that. And how did you feel going to prison? Because obviously, as you see, you moved the body, but you didn't commit the crime. How did it feel for you getting, well, a long sentence, you ended up serving much longer, but how did you kind of process that in your head? Well, as a lot of people will tell you the thing with us at least in California, most of the people had really long sentences. It actually took you about five years to wake up in the morning going, damn, I'm doing this much time. And for me, it didn't hit me until after they took all my halftime a good time away. Because suddenly, I didn't have that 13 year into the race banner in front of me. Now it was pushed down the road. And I even told that to a parole board one time, they asked me if I was angry about how much time I was doing. I said, I'm not, I wasn't angry to what I got sentenced to what I was angry about. You guys keep moving the goalposts. That's what I get angry about. Because you know, you guys didn't keep your word, but you want me to do the right thing. But for me, my thing was that I was very focused on I was going to get do what I had to do to come home in the story. I wasn't a criminal before I went to prison. I wasn't planning to be a criminal in prison. So I didn't expect to be a criminal after. And even the parole board have always said they were very amazed that I never became institutionalized in prison. And I said, because I had no intention to stay in here. So the first roughly the first two years I was in prison, I pretty much ran my program. I didn't get involved with other people for most part. And I just let people know, look, you guys do whatever you do, just keep me out of your stuff. I don't want to know anything. But then what happened was I had been a Navy Corpsman. I'd been a medic. I'm the guy who runs your gunfire to help my wounded men. And I've always had that kind of thing. And I was a bike mechanic. So I always took your wounded and broken bikes. And there's always been that kind of nurture type thing in me. I'm a Pisces as well, which they tell you is the nurse of the astrological science. But anyway, I started seeing elderly people. And I started seeing young guys basically being victimized. It just didn't set right. Because they didn't deserve it because they weren't going out of their way to get involved in stuff. But people thought, well, they're skinny or they're old or they're crippled or whatever. So they might have things like money or packages coming in. So it's okay for us to take stuff. And one of the things I've had all my life, this is something I have talked with Sykes stuff, is that I've always felt other people were more valuable than I was. So the thing was that I'll put myself in situations I shouldn't do, but because I feel that the other people were more in danger. And so I stepped up. Now, of course, now I'm 70 years old. So I may not look that impressed to people now. But when I was like, I'm like 36, and I had almost 19 inch arms and a 54 inch chest. And stuff. Yeah, I could be quite imposing to people. And I had a way of saying things to make people wonder. They didn't know enough about me. They knew I had tattoos and I rode bikes. Most people thought I'd been in jail in prison. So I had. So nobody, I was an unknown fact, not always kind of spooked people to begin with. And then the fact that I would fight. I wasn't afraid to step up and fight. So the first five years, I wasn't a lot of fights. But at the same time, I built a bit of a reputation. So I was able to for the next 20 years, just go up to people and say, yeah, leave this guy alone. He's with me. And people go, Oh, okay, we're good with that. And so I and I did. And then I did things like, I started there were guys who were Hispanic or Black or Asian and part of their thing to get out of prison, they had to get their high school diplomacy and stuff. And I started tutoring. I started helping them get their GEDs and stuff like that. And I used to always tell people, it never bothered me. I told, I said, about somebody going home. I said, it breaks my heart when you come back because means you're letting them win. I said, but my way of thinking is you, if you all went out and none of you came back, I didn't mind being the last guy to go home. I'll shut the lights off when I leave. And I used to tell this guy so all the time. And there were some guys that if they came back and they got, they've been dealing with me and they come back, they'd hang their heads because they didn't want to face me because I knew I was going to go because I, I believe most people have potential. And I used to tell people what their potentials were. They were artists or they were skilled in certain things or aptitude. I would point this out to them and I tell them, God, there's so much going for you. You don't need this other stuff. And one of the things I used to do was fight to keep people from getting involved in the gang stuff. And I would tell young guys, I said, look, here's my theory on this. First off, somebody comes up and talks to you and they want you to join up with their, you know, with their little group, they're hanging out. First question you ask is, what are you going to do to help me get out of prison? I said, because even if they can't do anything else, but just encourage you to do right, encourage you to better yourself. If they can't even do that, you don't need to be around them. And then the other thing I used to tell them is that one of the things I learned, particularly about shot collars, they don't like people being smarter around them. That's why they get dumb skulls basically. So I tell guys, start reading, start learning. So go to library, get books, don't get comic books, get books, you know, on mechanics and physics and history and geography and whatever, take vocational training, get skills. Because if you got knowledge they don't have, they're going to be concerned that you might become the new guy. They don't want that. So they'll shun you, they'll want you to stay away from. And that really in a big way, didn't work for most people if they if they stuck to them. And then of course, the other thing I'd always tell the guys, don't go out and borrow, don't start getting yourself in debt, don't gamble and don't do all these things. And I used to actually set up fish packets on my own. I would put together toothpaste, toothbrush, and a few soups and some coffee and stuff for the guys coming in just to get them started. And I tell them you don't owe me nothing. But don't be going out and borrowing from these guys because they're going to hook you in. Don't do that. And then I just tell them, when you get better off, you give something to somebody who doesn't have it when they need it. Just pass it on. And that was my kind of my attitude. And of course, that also kind of guys go, man, you're messing up my hustle, da, da, da, da. So I'm not getting in any of your business. The guy came to me, I dealt with that. And that's and that's why saying for me, it's always been in that kind of a mindset. And I used to have people because I tell people about things like guys come back in and they would tell me how they they didn't do nothing wrong. And that the system was against them. So I'd always tell them, well, tell me, tell me what happened. And as soon as you get to that point where you did something wrong, I'll go and, you know, and I'll go, well, I got out of prison. I went over to my sister's house. I had to go get my driver's license. I did. She couldn't take me. So she asked me, I could borrow the car in the backyard. And so you don't have a license. You don't have insurance. You can't borrow a car. Yeah. And I would explain to them that these are how you made the mistakes they got you on a roll to get back in. And they'd always tell me, Oh, you're hard, Morgan, you're hard. So no, I'm just being honest with you. I'm gonna be straightforward. I said, I hate to tell you, but I'm not going to candy coating them. I'm not going to hold your hand. I'll give you some wisdom. I'll give you some guidance. And I'll give you support. But you've got to make those steps on your own. And I even did. It's one guy. There was one guy I went up to him and I told him, you're coming back. No, I'm not. You're coming back. He was had a young wife, two babies out there and stuff. And I said, you'll, you'll be back. You'll be back in six months. You got out. It was just about six months time was Christmas. I get a, I get a Christmas card from him. He says, I've got two jobs. I'm going to college. I'm going to A&A. I'm going to church with my wife and her family. Says my parole officer is about ready to take me off parole. Come the first of the year. Ha, ha, ha. You know, I beat you. I sent him a card back going. Congratulations. And then I got the nicest card ever was from his wife. When the guy got his discharge from parole, she sent a copy of discharge papers. He said, yo, I really want to thank you. He's 100% different man today. He doesn't hang out with his old friends. We've moved out of the old neighborhood. And he's so proud to come home and spend time with the family rather than go out drink. And so my thing was, as I always felt, if I could just help one person change, I've done something good. And I tried every day I was in prison. I tried to do something positive that day. Can I just tell guys, if you don't do something positive, that's a day you can never get back in your life. And I said, I mean, I won't give away days that I, if I can help it. Because my whole thing was, I wanted to see the day go by and everybody go home safe. And I still regard to it. I said, I said, I have nothing against you guys. You chose this job. That's fine. I said, but I don't personally dislike you guys. I've told time, time people again. Unfortunately, prisons are unnecessary even. There are some people who definitely need to be in prison. And there are some people who definitely should never get out of prison. Now, the thing is that people always talk about rehabilitation. And I'm going to show you right now, you cannot rehabilitate anybody. What you do is you give the tools for somebody to rehabilitate themselves. But they have to want to change from whatever they were doing. You just have to make that decision. You know, I don't want this. I'm not going to keep doing this. It was, it was said that, you know, that the true definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, thinking you're going to get a different response. The same, same kind of difference with criminality. And so that's why I'm saying is you give guys tools and you can do it. There were a lot of guys that started understanding that and then started to practice. What was the most difficult part of prison for you? Because obviously, you spent time in San Quentin, which is, you know, an an notorious prison. What was the most difficult thing for you? I'll tell you, San Quentin wasn't as notorious for me as it was for other people. I was at Old Folsom. That was quite notorious. And I was there first. And that's where I first had my issues with, you know, Aryan Brotherhood and some of the white supremacist stuff and things like that. But one of the most dangerous places I actually was was actually called DVI, which was dual vocational institution. And it was known as Gladiator School. And I was on that yard when there was like, we had more than 500 men slinging weights and stabbing at people and stuff. But the idea that I knew I was going to get out loud, allowed me to be in a different mindset than people who just didn't think anything along that line. So I didn't, I didn't think, okay, today's I've got to do everything I can today because I don't have tomorrow. No, I kept thinking there wasn't tomorrow. So I would plan for future things. But for me, I think the hardest time for me was when I lost my very best friend, who's a club brother of mine called Dwarf. And when he was killed by a skinhead on the streets, I ran him and his wife off the road, because he didn't think my friend represented the white race properly, because he was short statured because he was technically a dwarf. That was a really hard thing. And it hit me so hard that I actually went out to the yard. And we had quite a few skinheads. And I knew they're shot collard. And I went up to him and I told him what had happened. And so he went out and got on all these guys that this is the kind of stuff that causes us problems when people on the streets do stupid stuff under our banner. But people have to know when certain things are wrong. And they can't just go, Oh, well, it was somebody else. No, they're using your banner. You need to accept responsibility in part of that. So for me, a lot of times, the hardest points for me was when people were doing things to people in prison, because they felt well, they've been done wrong. So I'm just going to do somebody else wrong. And again, you don't it's not the way to be. I mean, I know you I can't save the whole work. Trust me, I already know that. But like I said, my thing is it's doing one person at a time and have that person save one person at a time, have that person. But there is a certain amount of thing about loneliness. Now I read and I took courses and I did things occupy my time. I did a lot of hobby stuff. I mean, I I've done some videos showing where I made little guitars. I made little Dungeons and Dragons figures for guys that played that. I made buttons in prisons. I did things. But there is a loneliness when you don't get letters from people. You have nobody to call. But I'll tell you, it's the time I've been back has been harder probably than my time in prison, because like say, I'm 70 years old. And most men my age that I've come across in the UK have three hobbies. They smoke, they drink and they gamble. Sadly, I don't do any of them. So even though most people say I don't look 70, I certainly don't act or sound 70. Younger people don't really want to be around because it's like taking granddad to the pub day type thing, you know, and I'll go there and have a Pepsi max or eliminate their trip. You know, but I mean, I make a good designated driver. That's one thing I do. So in some ways, I I'm still finding my feet over here. And Martha, she was part of the Boswell Gypsy plan. They used to visit the aisle. And when I was the other week after I was baptized, she'd take me down to Douglas Bay. And she'd taken a piece of sand, put it in my mouth, put a drop of seawater in my mouth, and held me up into the mist, which is known as Mahonin's cloak, sit to bind me to the aisle. And then when I was little, whenever she wanted me to hold on to something, remember, she'd always say, remember, remember, remember. And then she'd tell me something. One of the things that she told me, it's your man of the aisle, son of the sea and a brother of the storm. And she'd tell me, throughout your life, you'll go across a lot of conflicts, you know, and tragedies. But you don't have to worry, because when all that comes in, your brother's the storm. So he's going to help you weather. So right wrong or indifferent, when you're a little kid, you don't have an identity. And you know, you come from this magical mystical aisle that sits in the eye receipt and has all these fantastical creatures there. And it's guarded by the sea god. And it sounds kind of cool. It's not, you know, you're not Superman, not Batman, but you know, you are makes. And that was the thing you said. And so, I mean, last summer, I actually went to swim in the eye receipt for the first time. I hadn't been swimming in over 40 years. And it just felt good. So what was the experience like for you flying back to the UK? So how did they bring you back to the UK? When I got told I was going to go, I get taken from the jail. They strip me out, they search me and they do all that. They take me down the immigration office, they fill out the rest of the paperwork. They give me the my clothes that I'm going to wear back on the plane. I was only allowed to have one set of clothes and one small bag to carry anything else I have. And initially, they were going to try to get me on a straight through flight on British Airways. But British Airways won't let me be cuffed and chained on the plane, which technically were supposed to come off when I crossed the international waters. Once I left US airspace, I'm supposed to be a free man. So anyway, they take me down to the airport and they've got me waste chained and they got my hands cuffed together. They're telling me now, don't look, don't draw attention to yourself, don't look suspicious. And they take a sweatshirt and they cover my handcuffs. I've got two men in suits, each one holding my elbows as they're walking me through the airport. Now, I personally don't think I'm drawing attention to us. The two guys holding my arms and the sweatshirt around my hands, I think is drawing attention. So they take us into an area to normal pastors have to go through the security check. So they bring me into this room. So there's the airport security people. And they take my cuffs and they're off. And the guy goes, well, I need to check, make sure you're not carrying contraband. I looked into the ice ash, well, you know, the jail did it. You did it. Now this guy's going to do it. Okay. So the guy turns around. He says, okay. So let's get to this. By the time he turned around, I strictly totally naked. Anyway, whoa, wait a minute, wait. So look, man, I've been doing this for 30 odd years. Yeah, if you guys want to see, I've got nothing on me. He goes, no, I'm just going to run my hand inside your waistband and down your legs. Okay, we get back, we land a Heathrow and everybody gets off. And as we walk up to the front, pilot tells him, you better take all those chains and handcuffs off it before you walk up to the border, control people, says they don't appreciate their citizens coming back. Well, these two officers had never come to the Western Europe side. They always went Eastern Asia. They were expecting police or military to pick me up. And I had a full passport, but we chose not to have that sent to the US just in case it got lost. So constantly had given me an emergency passport. So we come up and the guys go, he's been deported, hence my passport term. And she looks at and she goes, Oh, okay. She says, how long you've been gone? I said 64 years and she goes, Oh, why are you back? I said, because this is, oh, she goes, Oh, okay, well, welcome home. And she gets up and she walks into this room, she comes back out. And she's got a lockbox. And she does a comedy, opens it up, tells them to put their weapons in the box. And the only one that actually had a weapon was the air marshal. He's like, well, I'm leaving tomorrow. She says, and tomorrow you can have it back. But tonight it's going in this box. And so they took his weapon, put it in the lock back, gave it to another officer, first to take it. And then up comes his customs guy. And he very nice guy. And he goes, about same thing. You're being deported. See how he says, how long you've been gone, told him 64 years, why are you back? He said, so he goes, well, congratulations, welcome home. Now just walk right down there and get your bag off the carousel and head on out to the people mover. I've never seen a people mover before. That was kind of an interesting thing to begin with. As I'm walking away, I can hear the officers going, but he's been deported. And the guy goes, yeah, and he's home. And they're like, but there's nobody here to take him. He says, no, because he's, he's home. So let's talk because earlier mentioned about the first time you went swimming again when you came out of prison. And I think that's really interesting to talk about, you know, when people leave prison, it's a really big transition for them. Even when they're doing shorter sentences, whereas for you, you spent so much of your life in prison. So tell me a little bit about your first time doing things you love to get in. So the first time you went swimming, for example, how, what were you thinking before you did it? And how did it feel? Well, the thing was that was one of my, there were some things I had skipped land that I wanted to do when I first got back to the UK. But I really wanted to swim. And during all the time, the like first five years I was here in the UK, down in London for four years there, every time I'd say, I want to go swimming somewhere, they'd go, oh, no, no, no, no. And I didn't really want to go to a pool as I wanted the, I was used to swimming in the oceans in California and rivers and lakes and stuff. And when I kept going to the Isle of Man, I would look out at the Irish Sea and I kept thinking, I want to go swimming there. I want to go swimming. And people with me go, no, no, no, you know, you haven't swam in, and that's, you know, it's the ocean, you know. So last September, when I first got, when I went over there, I told them, look, I'm going in the, I'm going in. I need to. I really need to do this. So I did, and I had somebody filming, and it was amazing. It was more than I expected it to be. And in a big way, it was almost like a spiritual moment for me, because like I said, I've always been drawn to the sea. Now, whether that was because I was born in the Isle, or that I've always enjoyed the sea. And it just felt so wonderful to be out there swimming. And I mean, people had to keep calling me back in, but you're going out too far, come back, come back. I hadn't swam in over 40 years. So, you know, yeah, what else have you done then? What other firsts have you had since coming out of prison? The very first was getting on the tube, which I'd never been on any kind of transportation like that. And the people who never been on those, those were kind of an odd thing. But probably the most mystifying of all the stuff I did first was when I went to go shopping. The person took me to Morrison's, and it was a really large Morrison's. And we went in and they said, buy anything you want that you might want to eat. This is when I really realized how far out of sync I was with things, because in America, last time I'd gone to a shop to buy anything, you might have had maybe a dozen choices in like jeez. And in Morrison's, you had like 400 choices in the States. Yeah, cereal. There were certain things that I was looking for that they don't have in the UK or they call them different things. Of course. I wanted to get cream a week. Well, they don't actually have cream a week. And then like, I would look for certain kinds of crisps that you guys didn't have. You didn't have a, I couldn't find Cheetos, which was a big thing I liked. And I couldn't find Frito's corn chips and things like that. So I was like, look at all this stuff, try and figure out what things were. And of course, everybody kept going, oh, you got to try Marmite. And I have tried it three times. So I did give it an honest try. Don't like it. But it was just really funny because it probably took me honestly about two and a half hours to shop at Morrison's that day. Because I mean, I went up and down the aisles and was looking and looking and not knowing what so much of the stuff was. I mean, I tried to find pickle relish. But I mean, it was all right. And I've gotten much better. And I have gotten to where there's a lot of things that are more British or continental that I do enjoy that I had never tried or never even had opportunity try. Most of the American products, of course, are much more expensive because they have to be shipped over. And what do you think? Can you think of anything that people like me or the listeners who have never been incarcerated? Can you think of anything that we take for granted that after you came out of prison, you've realized is America or something to be so grateful for. For me, thing was getting out and just being able to go low places because I was always a traveling person before I went into prison. So I like doing that. And I see so many people who become really stagnated and just settled into like one little thing. They don't really try to go out and experience things. So that was that was a big thing there. But I'll tell you, when COVID came in and they had the lockdowns, I kind of found that humorous because I was used to being locked down and four by eight foot self for months on end with maybe only once a week showering outside the cell. So we had the birdbath inside and stuff. And here they were saying, well, you could stay in your own garden and you have the whole house. And then if you got a dog, you could go out and that people did get dogs and went out walking. But I'd hear all these people going, Oh, my God, we're on lockdown. And I kind of joked about having to make a lockdown box because in prison, it was a standard thing. When soon as you got into prison, you'd get a box and you would put coffee and soups and biscuits and a bunch of things like that in the box under the bed. And you wouldn't touch it till you went on lockdown. And it was kind of like your backups, supplemental foods and stuff like that. So for the preparations for things like that, and then like say, as you as you know, I I did a lot of craft work drawing embroidery, woodworking, things like that. So even on lockdowns, I was always I get I never changed my program. I got up at the same time in the morning. I do hobby stuff and things like that, you know, read. And yeah, so for me, I always had I had a very full life in there. The thing is that I noticed that people outside, they don't seem to have, you know, as much interest in doing things that would just add to their life experiences. And I've always tried to gather something from every life experience I've had. But that's why one of the things I did in when I got out of prison is I went to volunteer at a wildlife rescue center in Trent Park. And I did maintenance work. But I got to be around the animals because I love animals. And for the most part, they seem to like things. Oh, good. And what is one lesson that you think being in prison has taught you about life? To take time before you make rash decisions, think through. And I used to tell this to guys when I run across guys that would like they would say, well, I was just out there trying to get a little bit of money. So I tried to take something for somebody. And yes, I had a knife, but I hadn't planned to use or I had a gun, I hadn't planned to use it. And I would tell them, the moment you picked up those weapons and tried to do something you shouldn't have been doing, all it takes is a split second. And everybody's life's changed. The victims' life changed, your life changed, your family's changed, their family, their friends, everybody's life changed, including any rescue people have to come up, any police officers. Everybody gets affected by your actions, even if you quote, didn't mean it. And so I really tried to tell people to be feeling, stop for a minute, run a scenario through your head of all the possible things that could go wrong. And then do just the opposite. Oh, that's powerful. And what does surprise you the most about British culture? Do you think after living in America for pretty much all of your life? Well, the fact that I kept getting called love and darling by women in the shops, the first time that happened, I was quite sure how to respond to it. But that's one of the things that was very interesting. I did seem to feel that the UK seems to be a little more accepting of diversity of race, culture, religions, things like that than the US is. Even though the US square is just a melding pot and we want all your tired porn and all that. No, they don't. I've been around too much of that. It's a good slogan, but it doesn't work if you're not practicing. But one of the things I've done since I've been over here is that I always thank people that serve me in whether it be in a shop or in a restaurant. And I've also have a habit of the thanking the bus drivers and even the street sweepers. I go down the street and I see people sweeping the stuff. And I would stop them and I tell them, you know, you probably haven't heard this today or may not hear it. But I want to let you know that I appreciate what you're doing. And I just want to thank you for it. And my thought was that by putting forth that kind of thought or saying to somebody could help them if they were having a bad day, have that day be a little bit brighter. And who knows, they may have gone home and told somebody, hey, you know, there was this guy stopped and said, thank you. But I really do. I do appreciate people. I always thank all the NHS people that I've had to deal with. Funny enough, I've actually even a couple of times when I've seen police officers, I've walked up and told them, you know, I realize you guys have a really difficult job. And I just want to let you know that I appreciate that you're out here doing that job. And the number of them that have had this shocked look on their face and said, you know, thanks, that means a lot. Yeah. And my final question is, what is one major thing you hope will change in the prison space that will in turn make people commit less crime? What really needs to happen in the prison that I think there's actually it's like a multi-fold thing. I think one, I think that staff needs to be better trained because there are a lot of inmates who are not necessarily criminal, but they do have like mental health or emotional health issues. So they need to have a little bit better training in that. Two, I think that inmates need to have programs put in that will be more positive, of course, like the idea of hobby, creative writing, music program stuff, because when an inmate just sits around thinks of things for himself, they're almost always negative. So I think that's a big thing. I think having a better when you release an inmate, having a better community support thing to help them get out there, because I do know if you have a criminal record, it could be hard to get housing and get jobs and there and that still be. But I don't know if you know Frederick Douglas, he was a black breed slave, but he was an author and stuff, but he said it's far easier to raise healthy children than fixed broken men. And I think that one of the problems that Britain has now, which America has, is there used to be a time when there were youth clubs for boys and girls to go to to spend their off time with their, there were people who talked to even elderly people, came in and were like pseudo grandparents helping with homework. They could talk to them about problems and discussions up. And I think there needs to be more social involvement with the children to prevent them from getting caught up in these county gang drug things and all that kind of stuff. Because of the fact is that, you know, our children are the seeds of our nation. They're going to be the ones we're expecting to run the country in the future and they need to be valued now before it gets that point. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. I'm so grateful for you coming on and sharing your experiences with us. It's such a pleasure to speak with you. Yeah, not a problem. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. 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