The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Redemption and Reinvention After a Life Sentence with Andy Dixon- Part 1

Andy Dixon’s life has been anything but conventional. Born into a life of crime, he grew up imprinted with the notion that violence translated to love. In this amazing story, Andy talks about a journey of redemption and reinvention after a life sentence.

Coming from a long line of people who lived outside the law
An early vision of possibility in Andy’s life
How Andy wound up shooting somebody at age 12
Why the “nerds” in high school became friends with Andy
Returning to a life of crime after finishing high school
What it’s like to be $700,000 in debt as a criminal
What it’s like to be an unconditional taker and never give
The meeting with a spiritual leader that changed Andy’s prison time
A pivotal moment that caused Andy to let go of violence
The AIDS epidemic in the prison system
How the prison system takes advantage of the individuals in it
The marriage case that found its way to the Tennessee Supreme court
The generational issue that exists in the prison system
A look how we deal with maternal loss as children
The transformation from violence to nonviolence

Andy Dixon spent 27 years in Tennessee prisons, and has since committed himself to altering the generational conviction cycle, particularly with America’s youth. Through an open dialogue and open heart, he has changed the lives of hundreds, facilitating rehabilitation and hope rather than continued violence and sigma.

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Duration:: 1h 24m
Broadcast on:: 26 May 2014
Audio Format:: other

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With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down, so to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month, new customers on first-three-month plan only, taxes and fees extra, speeds lower above 40 gigabytes of detail. Andy, welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks for taking the time to join us. Thank you. Glad to be here. I came across your story by way of one of our listeners who heard our interview with Joe Loya, and he said, "You've got to talk to Andy, he has a story that's just as insane, if not more insane." When I got the brief from him, I said, "Oh, yeah," I said, "I think this is a story we have to tell." Although the ongoing joke, I think with our listeners, is going to be that you have to either serve time or commit some sort of crime in order to get on this show since we've had a steady stream of them. Tell us a bit about yourself, your background, your story, and how that has led you to doing the work that you're doing today. Okay, be glad to. I guess the first thing that comes to my mind is what you just said about people saying that they have to do something illegal or have this crazy life to get on the show. I understand that in a way, but I think what they're really saying is that the people you have on your show, it would seem to me, are the people that they really don't get to hear about this kind of stuff because it's not being talked about. It's just you're covering things that should be covered that maybe aren't being covered. So I would say you're doing something right there. Anyway, with that said, I guess I don't know how far you want to go back. I actually want to go really far back. As far back as your childhood, everything that led up to everything that you're up to today. Well, I guess, for my story, it begins conception. I come from a long line of people who felt like living outside the law was the only way to live, my father, my grandfather, on pretty much both sides of my family were involved in crime and their perspective of themselves would be a lot different than what a lot of other people might think of people that are living that kind of life. I mean, it was like normal, you know, a normal normal, I guess is a good way of saying it. Some people, you know, get up in the morning, they take a shower, they put their suit on, they go to their law firm, well, in our family, they'd get up and they'd go out and run bars, take bars over, steal cars, rob banks, kidnap people. I mean, just, you know, whatever, you know, it was just a lot of criminal activity, but it was a family kind of thing, you know. So when I was born into this world, that's kind of where I landed and not everybody and my family was a crook. I mean, my grandmother and things like the women were always trying to fight against what the guys were doing, you know, but being women in that time and place, it was basically, you know, just push up, keep your opinions to yourself and we'll put the bread on the table and you'll keep the house clean and take care of the kid kind of thing, you know. And so my earliest memory, I guess, is my mother getting sick and she passed away when I was quite young and my father was in prison at the time and he was doing some time and I stayed with my grandmother, which would be his mother and she was the only person in my early life that gave me a vision of possibility of doing something different than what my father and uncles were doing in my grandfather. She gave me an early picture to look at of my future other than what was before me and unfortunately, that wouldn't take seed for quite a while. When my father got out of prison, I went to Chicago to live with him and that was in the late 1950s, I mean, early 60s and the first time I'd been to Chicago, my mother was still alive. She was in the late 50s and just going back up there, kind of felt familiar and good in a way but my father, he ran different nightclubs during the day and of course, he would go out and gather things together as we used to say it at night but I remember being very young and coming into the clubs and seeing the women and hearing the laughter and the talk and the cussing and the excitement of the nightclub and you know, that was pretty cool for a kid, you know, and I was like ganged up by the time I was 10 years old, I was running a little sturdy gang because at that age, I knew that to be recognized, you know, you pretty much ran with a neighborhood gang of some sort and I remember one summer coming to the nightclub with a bloody face and my uncle was out there and he asked me what had happened. I told him that a kid in another gang had knocked me down, he took my money, he picks up a rock and he gives it to me and I made a pretty big rock, it had a little hand, you know, at that age, he put that rock in my hand, he said I want you to go back out there at park and find that it's on a gun and when you come back, I want to see blood and hair on that rock or I'm going to put your ass worse than anybody else and I did, I went back to the park, I found that kid and I did attacking with the rock and there were other kids with me and ran back and the word got back even before I did that, you know, what I had done and these guys actually lifted me up on their shoulders and walked me through the club and were just, you know, celebrating that I just knocked some kids brains out with a rock that was like five years older than me, they thought that was just the greatest thing but what it did to me, it imprinted on me the importance of how violence got you this love and respect from your family and the friends that your family had and so that set within me a feeling that I could, you know, get this love and attention just by having the spark of violence within me and a couple years later, mainly because of who my father and my uncles were, the gang on the north side of Chicago, north side, it kind of like let me be a little bit more involved than normal for a 12 year old and there was a big gang fight scheduled for the park and it was back then they had like rules, you know, they would get together and they would say, okay, we're going to have this fight in the park but here are the rules we're all agreeing that we're going to go fist, we're not going to have knives, we're not going to have chains, we're not going to have guns, we're going to meet out there and we're going to fight it out with fist. Of course, people always cheated so there would always be somebody designated to bring knives and guns just in case the other side did then that person could just distribute those knives and guns and fight it out and being 12, I was given this sack and I don't know if you still remember the old paper grocery sacks, that's what it was, there's no paper grocery sack and it had some pistols and some knives and it was kind of heavy for a kid my age and I was left at the back gate of the park and I was told to stay there and then if I got a signal and signals were these different pitch whistles that we used to do and I was to wait and if the whistle sounded and I was to come running and empty out the bag and people would grab off of the ground and get busy with it and so I'm standing there with a couple other young kids and we're all considered too young to go out and fist fight with these 17, 18 year olds you know, because like I said I was 12 and what no one counted on was this other gang coming around the back which is what they did, they didn't come in from their side of the street, we figured they'd come in from since, you know, they lived farther south than from where we were in Chicago, we was expecting them to come up from the south and not over from the west had nieced but that's the way they came in and the guy that was leading them, he steps up toward me and asked me what I have in the sack and I was scared to death and I thought it didn't matter what I had in sex and he started to walk toward me and I pulled a gun out of the sack and I shot him and he died and I was 12 years old and that happened and I remember my family gathering around me and the police were like, you know, really tearing up the neighborhood trying to find out, you know, who did it and causing a lot of problems and it was decided that I would turn myself in and have lawyers and whatnot and that, you know, I would take my pitch and so I went forward and went to juvenile court, pled guilty to the case and I was kind of got the court into my uncles and everybody else, they were really angry because they had actually thought they had this thing fixed where I would spend like a month or two in juvie and I'd be out but I went to the Audi home and it was during a time when they were kind of fed up with the violence up there and they were like saying, you know, gotta start doing something with these crazy kids and so they decided that I would be sent to reform school until I was 21 and of course it kind of angered a lot of people that went down that way but what happened was I did go to reform school but I didn't stay there. I mean, I kept running off, they really couldn't keep me there, I would just continually run off and I'd have friends that I could call and they'd come and meet me and pick me up and carry me back to the city and a lot of times my father would get me money and send me down to Miami, Florida where we had family down there or he had sent me to Tennessee, you know, different places to hide out but it seems like I'd always get into something wherever I went, I'd get into something, I would still cars and rob places and get caught and then they'd go, oh, you know, they need you back up in Illinois, you know, and I'd get sent back to Illinois and that was like, that went on for like five years and when I was 17, they had created a program and it was called something zero, I forgot, now what was it, something the idea was is that you'd start ground zero, that's what it was. That was before they used ground zero as a term for nuclear explosions or whatever, this was supposed to be like you start over at zero, like you don't have a bad record, no one's to know what you did and you get a fresh start and so I was looking forward to that because that was sick of a former school life, that's a violent life too, you know, for kids, you had administrators there that were just sadist, you know, I mean these people, they got off on beating kids, some of them got off on raping kids, you know, they just get different kind of people there, man, they were just crazy and then kids, you know, would beat up each other because that's just the way it was and I remember when I first got to a former school, I took some soda pops and put them in a bag and beat a kid half the death with it because he got out of pocket with me up in there, but you know, that's how you build your rep in these places and people leave you alone, you know, so you learn that early on, but I was excited about this ground zero thing, you know, and so I got out of reform school legally and I was going to go to high school, I'd never been to high school, I'd always, you know, been in reform school, so I was excited about going to high school and I was told that nobody there, nobody, not even the principal would know in my past and I would just get a fresh start and I was real excited about that and I was staying with my father, he had a girlfriend and she, you know, was going to help me, you know, get all together and everything, we went out shopping, got some nice clothes, you know, got all together for high school, you know, I remember my first day, of course, at that age, I went in, it was going to be my last, my first and last year of high school, so I remember going in and started walking down the hallway to find my locker and it was like Moses parted the Red Sea, all these kids like moved out of my way, you know, and I knew right then and there that I was someone right and went to my locker and everybody was just like, you know, they were afraid of me, I went to the dining room and sit down, this little nerdy kid, I'll never forget him, his book tooth, more glasses and he come over, he asked me if he could sit down with me, I said sure, go ahead and grab a seat and so he sat there real quiet for the longest and then finally he said, "Can I ask you a question?" I said, "Yeah, sure." "Why did you kill your whole family?" I said, "What?" He said, "Why did you kill your whole family?" I said, "I told you that." He said, "That's what I'm saying around here." They said, "You just come from a kid prison in it, you were there for like killing your whole family in the middle of the night, that's not crazy, I didn't do that." And they said, "Well, man, that's what they're telling us, that you're a nut." So, this kid was like my first friend, you know, and it seemed like these nerdy kids around there were like my friends and I kind of, in a way looked after them, you know, I think they sensed that or something because they hung out with me and no one bothered them anymore and when I heard their stories they had been like, humiliated through high school. So, I kind of had a kinship toward them because, you know, I knew what it was like to be treated terribly, you know, so I had in mind sticking up for them and running people off that were trying to mess with them. And so, that was my high school experience and I kind of felt a little betrayed, you know, and after high school I went into the military for a while and then after that I kind of drifted around a little bit trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and I couldn't find anything that made me feel good like it did when I was working with my family. So, I got really deeply involved in the auto parts business, I guess you could call it, we would take cars out of the south and bring them north and cars out of the north and take them south and I had a unique position at that time because I had the very strong ties with people that were members of the Irish mob and the Italian mob but also I had strong ties with people in the south that were members of a thing called Dixieland Mafia. So, I knew all these guys. I was probably one of the only guys around at that time that had this connection to all three groups and so it was very hard for me when they started fighting each other over control of this large business and that was called a war and that war broke out in the 70s and a lot of people got hurt. Well, they got killed, a lot of people got killed, a lot of Italians, a lot of Irish and a lot of hillbillies. People that were members of the Dixieland Mafia a lot of times up north just straight out referred to as hillbillies. So, it got ugly and I had an uncle who realized my situation of being kind of tight with everybody also put me at the crosshairs of everybody and everybody was everybody liked me but at the same time everybody wanted me kind of dead too. So, it was decided that I was going to be like a bad guy for a while and run around the country and collect money from dirty bookstores and dance halls and strip clubs that were owned by my uncle's people and that was my job for a couple years there. I'd go down to Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, California even out in places like Nebraska, Tennessee, Arkansas. I just went all over the country to where these places were located and just go in and make collections and bring all that cash back to Chicago. And I did that and it was fun. I enjoyed doing it and there was no violence and Bob, everybody always paid. No one ever said no. When you went there they already had it ready and just gave it to you and you would go buy twice a year to these places but there were so many of them that you just kept rolling and that all came to an end down in Texas when I had probably about $750,000 I guess it was and I was told to hang tight because the fighting was so bad in Chicago that the FBI and all the big heavy law enforcement agencies were like snooping right up everybody's butt man and giving everybody trouble. So I was told just to hang out where I was, take care of the money and they would call me and tell me when to bring it in. And the most unfortunate thing happened, I went to a friend and I told him I was going to bury it out there on his land just for a while you know a big cooler and his stepson and his stepson's friend saw us bury it and right after we buried it they dug it up and went out and bought cars and went on a spending spree and got caught by the cops and the cops confiscated the money and there I am a one 700 plus and because of my uncle and everybody else they gave me a year to pay it back and so I got busy I was like a crazy person I was running around robbing everything it wouldn't nail down trying to get that money up and I did raise quite a bit but I was still like 280 close to 300 shy and so we went down to Tennessee and did this kidnapping and tried to raise about that much money somewhere between 250,000 to 300,000 and I already had a good lead on another hundred grand so we were trying to put all the money together and I got caught and went to court and got sentenced to prison and that was in 1978 and entered prison 1978 not a changed person at all I mean you know I still seen crazy person I'd always been and I got in prison and quickly developed you know my reputation you know by attacking other prisoners stabbing them whatever it took you know got in there and started my own little thing there with different guys you know little games and stuff to run some drugs and other stuff inside and that was my life and one of the things that always stuck out in my mind was when I was out stealing and robbing and doing all the things I did and I mean there were just so many things I did that you just came even I mean you'd take a hundred shows to tell it all you know but there's just so many things I mean every day was something you know so but I can remember different times you know seeing a guy about my own age which at that time would have been around 26, 27 and I could see these guys with their girlfriends or their wives and I used to think man they don't have a clue how lucky they are to be living that kind of life you know basically you know daydreaming about what it would be like to be square you know and of course you quickly push out of your mind and you go and do the job that you're there to do and so you know and I never I never did uh never did anything for humanity here for myself you know I just was a taper and of course you know it's all wrapped up in a nice package that you're that you believe you know like the biggest mob is the government you know they're they're they're a big mob you don't ever go against them because you can't beat them they kill better than you kill they still better than you still so you can't you can't go up against the government they're just too mean you know so I bought into all that and believed it and so in prison you know I was just you know why change right I'm just still crazy and wild and spark something uncommon this holiday with just the right gift from uncommon goods the busy holiday season is here and 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just 20 minutes from advanced to beginner hydro has over 500 classes shot worldwide and taught by olympians and world-class athletes for a 30-day risk-free trial go to hydro dot com and use code row 450 to save 450 dollars on a hydro pro rower that's h y d r o w dot com code row 450 forging ahead together drives colorado's pioneering spirit at chevron we donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the communities we call home we also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer all to help improve lives in our shared backyard that's energy and progress visit colorado dot chevron dot com i met this uh brother who was uh Dominican and i was raised guess you can say catholic i mean the belief that we had i guess we'd go to mass on sunday and go out and do what god knows what on monday right but um as a young fellow and growing up that's the only religion i ever knew other than when i was with my grandmother she went to this little church but uh this guy that i met in prison he would come in twice a week and he was uh he was a good guy you know he was a Dominican and uh he always used to come and ask us to go to uh eucharistic service on friday and he always tried to get us to go to mass on sunday because there would be a priest come up from Memphis, Tennessee of course we'll always turn him down and uh one time he come out on the yard was out there drinking hooch he come out there and he wanted to talk for a bit because he'd always come and talk to us and um he wanted to know what that stuff tasted like so he gave my taste and he was like oh wow this is stronger than i could even imagine he said this is this insane how do y'all make this and kind of gave him my recipe and uh again he kept asking and finally one day you know i just started hanging out over there with him a little bit and he's going to those services and uh he asked me what i'd been reading i said i don't know the usual you know this junk you know cowboy books and stuff like that he said well let's try reading this one he said i've heard you talk about your years and crime and all the wars and stuff with the crime and your time in the army and all that he said you might relate to this so i took this book and it was uh a book about St. Francis of Assisi's and um it was pretty good it was a good book actually and um remember after reading that he uh turned me on a couple more books and i read those uh before you know i just got he had me reading Martin Luther King he had me reading Gandhi and uh i was just reading all those different books and these guys and i guess the one that really got me more than anybody was uh a little guy named Techno Han you know if you're familiar with him or not but uh it's a little Buddhist guy from Vietnam and uh i was reading his book and um i just sort of got the wondering you know could i you know could i make those kind of changes in my life you know and um of course in the bible you have all these great inspirational stories that Jesus talks about you know if you leave out all the other stuff that everybody else wrote stick to what he had to say he had a lot of good stuff to say and so uh one day uh Brother Kerwin who later on became a priest he's now a father Kerwin down in Texas and um he asked me you know he said um you know one thing i've always wondered about you and hope you don't mind if i ask i don't know you know by now we're i concern my friend you know i said oh boy what's up he said you know you told me those stories about looking at other people and wishing you could be square and all that he said how come you never made the change i said well i didn't make change because uh i can't he says oh okay that makes sense then you can't right i said yeah that's right he said well you're right you can't you're always going to be a crazy person or around hurting people when you feel like it i guess because you really can't change and that was that you know i went back to my cell and you know they don't mean for weeks you know i laid around thinking about that you can't change you know if you can't you can't and just kept bugging me you know and finally it bugged me so much i started getting angry and i was like you know what the hell does you mean i can't you know i can do pretty much any damn thing i want to do what the hell do you mean i can't and then um i just kept reading you know fill in my mind with this ideal piece inner piece of something outside of yourself and inside yourself all at the same time you know and i just kept thinking about it and um there's been this real bad killing up and brushing mountain uh couple guys that sawed out of their rooms and uh there was a turf war between black inmates and white inmates over drug trade and these guys uh white guys they'd all got pistols and they cut out of their cells and uh they uh shot and killed like five black guys while they were still in their cell and um they shipped a lot of people down to four pill and four pill was like ninety percent black and ten percent white and i'm a white guy so it wouldn't firm well for us down there so we had decided on the yard that if we were going to go down we'd go down on our feet anyway so we started getting our weapons together and and i just had this thought you know that you know i'm going to die pretty pretty much today is my last day and i thought well you know what if i am going to die today i'd like to die having just for a few hours if not at all being a nice guy being a good person so i just made a decision that uh kind of like chief joseph you know i i'll fight no more i'm not going to i'm not going to be a violent person ever again i'm i'm done but die in an hour i die if i live an hour i live whatever the case may be i'm not gonna i'm not gonna fight anymore i'm done i'm through and um i went and told my guys i said uh hope you don't feel like i'm gonna abandon you guys or anything but i'm done i'm not fighting no more and um thanks i was nuts you know and uh but i didn't i threw my weapons away i didn't even carry a knife i didn't even wear a vest you know you can make a prison you can take magazines and create little pockets where you can like put these magazines and make like a breast plate and a back plate and a underarm plate where if somebody comes up and sticks you you got something to kind of hold that knife back a little bit i even got rid of that i just was done and um i didn't die that day i didn't die that week y'all i didn't die that month i didn't even die that year it was like i was i don't know protected by something that i couldn't even see and uh nobody even spoke ill to i mean no one would come at me and it was just great i spent all my time reading and in the meantime all my friends are like thinking what's this guy doing and they were all going oh he's we got to stick close to him he's got some hell of a scam going here he's up to something let's stick to him find out what he's up to being a dumb he's up to something so i you know i just started getting him to read what i was reading and uh we started holding meetings out on the yard where we would discuss uh meditation and uh ideals of uh loving people instead of hating people and helping people instead of hurting people and uh the thing that i like most i shared with guys is uh technohons vision of being a flower growing where you're planning you know you don't have to be a prisoner unless you choose to be a prisoner no matter what your confinement you can be free wherever you are and uh he was right about that and i was beginning to experience a freedom inside that i'd never experienced outside and i was uh nine years in to my sentence at that time when i made this change of my life and i just kept looking around to see who i could help or how i could help and um i remember about that time the AIDS epidemic had broken out and people were scared they didn't have information they were trying to figure out you know what was going on was the government trying to kill everybody you know what because it seemed like it was going after uh drug use gay people and anybody living on the fringe you know it was like after them or something and so there was this huge lack of information and uh guys in prison were getting sick they were dying some of them were gay most of them were gay but some of them weren't you know and we no one could figure out what the hell was going on and so we reached out we got information from the health department we bugged the crap out of them until finally they came in and gave us all the information they had and then we started teaching classes we tried to get condoms in prison but that was like asking for uh a million dollars from a poor person they they ain't coming off of that and uh they said i'll just have to stop doing what they're doing so man these people can't even control you know any basic behavior they have they're they're they just don't have that ability you know they need something more until they can grow up enough to to be more responsible or something and uh they of course they wouldn't do it so we just started teaching classes and trying to teach people how to be proactive in uh their health uh the main thing that we were concerned about after getting information out to the gay prisoners was to get information out to people that were using tattoos and doing drugs plus a lot of the people that were doing intravenous drugs and uh making tattoos we're getting sick and a lot of them were getting sick with hepatitis uh c and um and aids also so it hit prison pretty hard and uh so i was able to be on the forefront of that and try to help save lives and i believe we did i believe we were able to save some lives in there and uh i felt that need to take that little father so i transferred from where i was to prison in west Tennessee and i went to uh Nashville where they'd build a brand new medical facility up there for people with physical ailments and mental health issues and i went up there on staff and being up there it was great because i was able to uh help the sick and work with people and it really felt great after all those years of being such a asshole to finally be able to help people and um that's what i did i would uh spend my time helping the the other prisoners i was a and made advisor uh helping when they got disciplinary problems and pretty much had to run to the prison you know go for much anywhere by then i had like uh 19 years in and uh remember one day uh after about 21 years in i was in the band room and uh i saw this uh you always notice anything out of the normal or new and i saw this woman walk by with a unit manager i thought was probably about the most beautiful woman i believe i've ever seen and uh i didn't know it at the time but uh i was gonna i wound up marrying that woman and she was something else she was in there for a uh uh doing a practicum she was already a master's degree in uh education and she went back to school to get a master's degree in uh social work because she wanted to be a counselor and uh she'd gone through a lot of her own uh healing and uh from codependency issues and you know a couple bad marriages and of course i didn't know all this at the time but i met her inside and we became really friends you know just really enjoyed talking to each other in each other's company and uh head of the psychology department there actually introduced us because he and i had become friends and the way he and i became friends was he had these ideals for programs and he wanted me to come with him and and help him run these programs to sort of give him legitimacy with the guys that he was trying to help and i like the ideal of the programs that he was putting together because they were teaching guys how to dig deep and find some human light within themselves you know and and let that light kind of grow on out and try to forgive themselves for things that they've done and and learned to be better people and uh it all centered around a therapy something i think like called the cognitive therapy you know getting people really think about things because so many people just you know they're always on automatic they don't they don't think things through they just react or act and so i was glad to help them with those programs and um they were good and a lot of a lot of men got a lot of help out of that and um so he introduced me to uh Linda and excuse me and um i've been working under the assumption for quite a while that i had life with parole and i was working toward that goal of getting out in 1998 and um about that time i noticed it because of Linda and my friendship uh prison is like the huge gossip meal and all this gossip was going and it wasn't true but it was still pretty ugly and um i was telling Linda this is getting uglier by the minute you know we're gonna have to you know if you you know want to get your practical and not get kicked out of your school you might want to consider wrapping this thing up as quick as you can't leave them because these people in here will try to set you up and they really will the administration and the uh prisoners too they get this jealousy thing going up they'll try to you know really uh set you up and and and make make you look like a bad person and you know really run you through the ringer and uh so uh she decided that that was a good course and so she left but before she left you know we really had a great time you know we would uh she would go up to the medical wards with me and uh just give comfort you know to the guys that were up there that were dying a lot of guys up there had cancers and a lot of them had liver problems and one of the guys that I knew uh James Earl Ray I don't know if you know who that is well if you probably did you're into radio and everything this guy was accused of killing Martin Luther King uh he was up there and I took window over to meet him and uh he was dying at the time and you know remember Linda asked me did I think that he did it and I was you know you know positive and in my pocket that he did not do it you know I'd known the guy for a long time and you know the story never changed he was always right on where he was at and I remember pushing him in his wheelchair and up into a meeting where uh talk show host brought Dexter King and the mate James Earl Ray and Dexter King looked at him and he says uh did uh did you kill my father James looking right in the eye and said no sir I did not kill your father and I wasn't involved in the killing of your father and Dexter King told him he said you know I believe you and my family believes you and uh we're going to try to find out you know who actually did this and James was like well I hope you do you know and I remember pushing that guy back to his cell helping me get in his bed and I'd known that guy for years and I've never seen him crack and he just started crying and I'm like are you all right James and he's like I am now so I'm glad the reason he was crying was he was happy you know he he knew that even though he was dying that he felt that he knew that uh people wouldn't going to just let that go that they keep digging until they eventually found out you know who really killed Dr. King and you know to me that's not the actions of a guilty man and not long after that he did die passed away and you know you made a lot of characters in there you know and I guess James Earl Ray was one of those characters and you know people have their opinions you know and I've seen some one documentary where this guy was trying to it was like he was speaking for James Earl Ray or something you know about his thoughts and motivations and that guy clearly didn't know the guy but uh I guess people do what they got to do to get their dollar in you know what I mean but uh that's another story I guess they say but uh my wife um she left then went and finished her education and I was getting ready to come up for a pro in uh 98 and there was this guy there that had a uh I guess a crush or something on my wife you know and she never gave him time in the day and when he found out I was going up for parole he contacted the judge this is one of the people within the administration and he was complaining and saying you know this guy doesn't need to get parole you know he's a he's a bad guy he's a con all that and the judge says well he ain't supposed to get out on parole I sentenced him to life without parole so just like that you know they canceled my parole date and they said that I was doing life without parole and then on top of all of that they said that uh my wife and I couldn't get married that uh because I had life now without parole there was no sense in granting me the right to get married and it was just a crazy time you know if it hadn't been for my inner peace I think I would have just went nuts because the inner peace I had allowed me to just to say you know that's what they say but you know I have this this knowing this sense that you know I'm I'm getting out I don't know how it's going to happen but I'm going to get out and you know it's going to be interesting to see how the universe unfolds this for me because I knew it would happen and uh this lawyer came into our lives and Linda made arrangements went into to uh pay him you know at a very good discount rate and he was a great guy and he got in there and fought like a champion and the first thing he did was he was able to get get it okay for Linda and I to be able to see each other and to finally get married but for two years we were not even able to couldn't even see each other we had to rely on these very very very very very expensive phone calls to stay in touch with each other and in those phone calls my goodness we talked about ripping off families of prisoners these things are outrageous you know you could spend as much as a hundred bucks for a 30-minute phone call you know what I mean can you imagine that so it was just nuts and but we finally won the right to get married and they transferred me out to Brushing Mountain East Tennessee to the Morgan County Annex and um Linda and I got married and that was a great day in the meantime my legal case was going through the courts seems like every time we went to court we would lose and we finally wound up in the Tennessee Supreme Court they agreed to hear the case and uh remember one day I got a message uh your lawyer wants you to call him and I knew we were waiting for the decision to come down because they'd already had the oral argument before the before the Tennessee Supreme Court and I asked I called my lawyer and he said how are you doing today I said well you're doing okay another day in prison everything's all right he says well are you sitting down I said no I can't the court on the phone won't reach to the floor he said well you might want to think about trying to get you a seat I said well there's a wall here I'll lean against the wall how's that he said well the decision's in it was a unanimous decision I said wow I said well how did it go I said you're coming home son they agreed unanimously that you had a no legal sentence so I mean that was like whoa talking about taking bricks off your back you know what I mean so the Tennessee Supreme Court by unanimous decision decided that I had a new legal sentence I'd like to say I came home the next day but courts been what they are took two more years before I finally got out wow yeah I know it's it's nuts but uh in 2005 I got out after 27 years and um when I got out it was like a mad rush kind of like to catch up you know my wife was teaching school and I started driving for a living I started out driving the van hall and transmission parts and then I started uh driving trucks and then I bought a couple of trucks and had a little truck in business and it would you know it was like chicken today feathers tomorrow you know one week you do really good next week you wouldn't do so good and but you know we were paying bills and um I remember Linda and I we spend a lot of time working hard during the day but we'd always lay down at night and we would you know discuss our day you know I'd say how was your day and what happened and she would tell me and she'd ask about my day and I'd tell her how it went and we'd just have that ever you know that was our conversation every night just uh talking about our day and just letting everything kind of slide off you know and during these conversations it we kept thinking about these uh children of uh people in prison you know I mean the all the years that I was in there I'd see these little kids seven eight years old come to visit their moms or their dads rather and I'm sure they were going to visit their moms too because there's a lot of women locked up but you know these kids 10 years later they'd be walking the yard there you know and they'd have an uncle and a cousin on the same cell block and I just realized you know how generational this thing was I mean it was generational for me my family had all been in prison and I just thought you know this is insane that kids are growing up falling parched cruising and the incarceration rate is like maddening it's you know it hit hit two million people at that time and I'm like Christ and that's just a number of people that were in that went in counting the ones that had been in and got out and it were on parole I mean you know the numbers are just staggering how many people have been locked up or have come in contact with this system and then we got the figuring out you know things like uh in some states they were actually planning prison beds based on the number of children that the currently incarcerated had because they knew that was a good indicator of how many prison beds they would need in the future because they knew these kids were going to grow up commit crimes and come to prison and so my question was what the fuck I mean if we know this why aren't we doing something why aren't we sitting back on our freaking hands you know why is somebody not doing something and so it was just driving me crazy and I was on a run and I went out to San Francisco and this Halloween ghoul all out with Instacart whether you're hunting for the perfect costume eyeing that giant bag of candy or casting spells with eerie decor we've got it all in one place download the Instacart app and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes plus enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders offer valid for a limited time minimum ten dollars per order service fees other fees and additional terms apply Instacart bringing the store to your door this Halloween how did you actually sleep last night if it didn't feel like your very best rest then you need to upgrade to the softest most luxurious bedding from bowl and branch their signature sheets are made from the finest 100% 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to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer all to help improve lives in our shared backyard that's energy in progress visit colorado dot chevron dot com it was a long drive out there and I thought you know it'd be great to have somebody to talk through on the way back so I got on ride share and I offered a ride to anybody that wanted to go back east and this guy calls up he's a he's a documentary filmmaker and kind of an eccentric kind of guy and he doesn't like to fly and he was out on the west coast for a conference and the conference was over and he didn't want to drive a ride a Greyhound bus back to New York City and he was trying to get or used to as he could go I told him I was going to Tennessee he could you know give him a ride that far so I meet this guy and we're going down the road and we're talking a lot and he gets to talking about the Kennedy assassination and his fascination with this stuff and before I know it I'm talking about James O'Rae and and this guy is like well wait a minute you know he says how do you know all this and I'm thinking wait a minute now how am I going to tell this guy that I just you know that I spent 27 years in prison here we are out on the road this guy is going to freak bum the fuck out you know I mean can you imagine being in a car with somebody like that right and so I just told him I said look you've been riding with me for about nine hours now so I guess you feel like you kind of know me and you know I'm a good person I'm not going to do anything crazy but you know I know this because I was in prison for 27 years and I knew this guy well his reaction blew me away because he starts breaking out all this record equipment and he's like man I got to get this I got to get this you know he's like you know he had a thousand questions I guess you could say he was my first interviewer and but he's a great guy his name is Geo Geller and so to meeting him I get a phone call probably about six months later and he's wanting me to come to New York and he says I got this friend that has this thing it's called a 140 conference and I'd love for you to come up here and he'd like he'd like to meet you I'm like oh okay that sounds interesting so I says to Linda says you know should I do this and she's like well what do you feel I said well he seems to think it's a good place to get the story out maybe we could talk about these kids and get people interested in trying to help them he said well you know that's she said well you know if he felt that way you need to go so I packed my old car up and I drove up to New York and met Geo again and he has an apartment over in Manhattan and over on 9th Avenue there and so I stayed with him and the next day he took me to a 140 meeting and there were a lot of people there I mean places like Pack and at that time I've been out of prison probably about five years I guess five or six years and so I was still and even today you know a bit large crowds you know I tend to try to find a wall you know it's just habit I guess you'd say you know you want to kind of stick to walls or whatever but I said all the way in the back you know I'm a back row set or even church I like to grab the back pew so anyway I'm sitting all way in the back and I'm hearing all these interesting people talk about all this interesting technology that I don't know anything about I mean I got like a phone you know the simple phone that's me I got the simple phone I and the computer was very intimidating to me when I got out I told my wife I said you know I thought a computer was like a typewriter hooked up to a TV you know I just that's how it looked you know and I'm like and she was very lovingly just stuck with me and showed me all these things about the computer and I was just you know it was a lot to take in because I just had not seen one cell phones I mean these things were so weird it was like Star Trek had come alive or something you know with the flip phone and all that it's just really weird getting used to this technology and GEO had already told me about this thing called Twitter and so Twitter was kind of new at the time and it was really hot and sexy I guess and a lot of people were into it and so he showed me how to start a Twitter account and I had like five friends or something like that or or you know five followers I guess you call it and so it was kind of kind of strange you know this technology and so anyway I met this 140 conference and I'm hearing all these interesting people talk and this guy named Jeff Paulberg was kind of like leading the discussion and GEO had already told me that you know that was his friend and so things are about to wrap up and Jeff gets up on the stage and he says for all you people at state he said I think he's going to have a treat tonight he says there's a guy in the audience that's got this really incredible story that I'd like to share with y'all if we can get him to come up here he said I'm gonna go over and see if I can get him come up here and tell this great story I'm thinking wow this is gonna be cool we got somebody who's gonna tell a cool story and he starts walking toward me and I'm like holy shit he's coming toward me no no no no no no no no no fuck no fuck no no no no no not me not me not me and he comes on he goes hey Andrew you want to tell your story and I'm like on the spot now you know I'm like I don't know you know I've just had never spoken in front of people and I was like nervous and I'm like well yeah sure why not you know and so I get up and I go up on the stage and Geo's there so he helps out a lot he kind of breaks the ice and tells the crowd how we met and we get to talk and so I'm talking with all these people and I'm telling them about my life and I start telling about these kids and how important I think it is to try to help them and somebody asked me a question you know I said well what do you think about this new technology and especially Twitter and I told him I said well you know I've been kind of looking at Twitter for a while uh I don't know week or two three weeks a month whatever it was at that time and the thing that stuck out to me was like it seemed like the whole thing was about getting followers and about having friends that you hang out with kind of like in this computer space you know so I told him I said you know when I look at that I kind of look at it as like the prison yard you know if your word is good and everybody knows that your word is good then a lot of people will want to be around you they'll want to follow you and be a part of your click but if your word is not any good and you're kind of going to wind up over here in uh Twitter jail or whatever you know and they they seem to resonate with that description of Twitter I guess so I remember after that I had like 300 friends and then I had like uh people quoting me all over Twitter saying you know ex-con says Twitter is like prison yard you want to succeed your words got to be good or something like that kind of took off there you know but I met a lot of people there people that I still know today and still communicate with that are you know supporters of anything that I want to try to do and so that was a great experience meeting Jeff Culver was a great experience and to Jeff I got to meet a lot of great people and that night I met Melissa and AJ you know you know them right yeah I got to meet them too incredibly people I mean these people are just incredible the thing that they do I mean they inspired me you know just hearing them hearing their story was just so inspiring and so I just met a lot of great people and like I said these people they all inspired me with what they were trying to do it seems like no matter what the genre of all these different people were it seems like a lot of them were marketing people but they all wanted to do something good you know they didn't they didn't just want to make a dollar they wanted to make a change you know and I thought that was wonderful and so after meeting all these people it's just like I kept getting invited back to New York to speak and then I wound up speaking at South by Southwest down in Austin, Texas and just seems like everybody's wanting me to come up and you know talk and so it was good and just kept rolling along like that and eventually I got a contact from a lady named Jessica Murray and she said that she had met Jeff Culver at an event and I went with South by Southwest it was the first one that I was going to go to but I didn't wind up going to the first one I was invited to because I had a family issue I had to break away and go take care of my father was really sick and so I didn't get to go to the first one I was invited to but I did make it to the second one but Jeff introduced me to Jessica Murray who was out of Nashville at that time she's in Chicago now but at that time she was out of Nashville and I met her and a guy named Ian Rhett and let them in a restaurant down in Nashville and told them what it was I was trying to do they said well dude you need a you guys need a website I'm like okay and so they put together this thing called a designathon and they brought together this group of geeks man that in 24 hours they created branding and helped design a name and put a website together that's how I met Brett met Brett Henley there he was a writer and he wrote content and did all kind of great stuff for the designing of the website it was just terrific and that's how youth turns was birthed it was birthed right there and so youthturns.org they helped put that together or help they did put it together and it was just wonderful you know all this young raw talent coming together to you know help the kids of the incarcerated but what I found out unfortunately was that there's not a lot of dollars available for you know helping these kinds of kids you know if you want to go help some puppies or you know stop abusive animals there's tons of dollars I guess but when it comes to helping keep kids out of prison there's just not a lot of funds available for that kind of stuff especially if you're you know a guy that just got out of jail and you're you know and you want to start an organization and then get funding a lot of people aren't no big hurry to help that out so my wife and I decided what we would do is we just you know we'll go back out on the road we'll put together a trucking company and we'll make money from that and we'll spend our own money on it we'll try to fund it ourselves and we won't ask anybody for anything you know we just people later on catch on and catch up to what we're doing and they want to donate they can but for right now we'll just we'll make our own money and we'll fund it ourselves and so we said about to do that and then Brett Henley called me in I guess it was a couple years ago he called calls me up and say like touch base and you know hadn't seen us in a while and see how things are going and so I met him in a coffee house over in the village in Nashville and a place called Fido's we went over there and had coffee and breakfast and from that meeting Brett decided he would like to write a novel about my life and lenders and how we met and you know it's a story of reinvention and redemption and forgiveness and love and to love story and everything else combined you know it's just a life of wanting to get back for all the damage that I'd caused earlier in my life and that's kind of where it is. Wow amazing really really truly just an amazing story. Make sure you tune back in Wednesday for part two of the episode where Andy talks to me all about his insights and lessons learned from the journey of his life. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Unmistakable Creative Podcast. While you're listening are there any moments you found fascinating, inspiring, instructive, maybe even heartwarming? Can you think of anyone a friend or a family member who would appreciate this moment? If so take a second and share today's episode with that one person because good ideas and messages are meant to be shared. How did you actually sleep last night? If it didn't feel like your very best rest then you need to upgrade to the softest most luxurious bedding from bowl and branch. Their signature sheets are made from the finest 100% organic cotton and get softer with every wash. Millions of sleepers love their sheets and right now you can feel the difference for yourself during their biggest sales of the entire year. Hurry to bowlandbranch.com to shop their best offers. Limited time only, exclusions apply, see site for details. Expand the way you work and think with Clod by Anthropic. Whether brainstorming solo or working with a team, Clod is AI built for you. It's perfect for analyzing images and graphs, generating code, processing multiple languages, and solving complex problems. Plus, Clod is incredibly secure, trustworthy, and reliable so you can focus on what matters. Curious? Visit clod.ai and see how Clod can elevate your work. Discover Hydro, the best kept secret in fitness. Hydro is the state-of-the-art at-home rower that engages 86% of your muscles, delivering the ultimate full-body workout in just 20 minutes. From advanced to beginner, Hydro has over 500 classes shot worldwide and taught by Olympians and world-class athletes. For a 30-day risk-free trial, go to hydro.com and use code ROW450 to save $450 on a Hydro Pro Rower. That's H-Y-D-R-O-W dot com code ROW450. Forging ahead together drives Colorado's pioneering spirit at Chevron, we donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the community's we call home. We also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer. All to help improve lives in our shared backyard. That's Energy in Progress. Visit Colorado dot chefron.com. Hear that? It could be the sound of your phone dinging every time you sell a product with TikTok ads this holiday season. If you've ever thought about advertising your business on TikTok, now is the time to do it. You can drive more customers to your website, sell products right in the app, and you can even use TikTok's creative tools to easily make content and find creators to help sell your products for you. But you have to start now, so head over to getstarted.tiktok.com/holiday24 and drive more holiday sales today. When you need meal time inspiration, it's worth shopping king supers for thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouth-watering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices. Plus extra ways to save, like digital coupons worth over $600 each week, and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points so you can get big flavors and big savings, king supers, fresh for everyone, fuel restrictions apply. Have you ever felt a twinge of worry about AI taking over your job or diluting your creativity? Well, what if you could turn that fear into creative fuel? We've just published an amazing new ebook called The Four Keys to Success in an AI world, and this is more than just a guide. It's a deep exploration into the human skills that AI can't touch. 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Coming from a long line of people who lived outside the law
An early vision of possibility in Andy’s life
How Andy wound up shooting somebody at age 12
Why the “nerds” in high school became friends with Andy
Returning to a life of crime after finishing high school
What it’s like to be $700,000 in debt as a criminal
What it’s like to be an unconditional taker and never give
The meeting with a spiritual leader that changed Andy’s prison time
A pivotal moment that caused Andy to let go of violence
The AIDS epidemic in the prison system
How the prison system takes advantage of the individuals in it
The marriage case that found its way to the Tennessee Supreme court
The generational issue that exists in the prison system
A look how we deal with maternal loss as children
The transformation from violence to nonviolence

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