Chrissy (53:23)
A meatball? Yeah, that's my little sarcastic way of saying, we can handle this. We've been up against much, much bigger giants, and this is not. I really wanted her, rather than her see this as a hurdle to overcome. The parole commission has really changed that part of the narrative. For me, it's no longer a hurdle. This is. I think the message they were sending to us is that we care and we want you to succeed, and this is the way we think, that you succeed best. And so I told Chrissy, I said, all the hard things we've had to do in the 35 years we've been in here, this is a meatball. We got this. It's no problem at all. We're going to be able to do this. She was obviously little emotional, a lot emotional. It was hard for me to read her voice right away. You know, I'm pretty good at being able to detect in her voice whether something is good or bad. And, you know, she was so emotional yesterday that I wasn't really sure if it was good or bad. But she said to me, I want you to listen to the end. And that's always a warning that there's going to be something in between. Now, in the end, that I might not like, but I needed to get to the end before I could really weigh it. So I did. I just remained quiet. And she kind of broke it down to me, step by step, everything that happened and. And basically told me that, you know, we were going to end up going Everglades instead of the halfway house. My first inclination, because she was so emotional and I could hear the kids in the background. I knew that no matter what I was feeling at the time, I just. I had to make sure that everybody there was alright. Had to make sure my wife was all right. And so I wanted them to know that I'm okay, and I want everybody to know that I'm okay. When Mr. Orr was given an opportunity to speak, you know, for the state, there wasn't any more of this lambastic assassination of my character accusations that were, you know, flown around in previous hearings and basically, you know, telling the commission, we want you to treat them as you would any other inmate and stuff, I can live with that. And I can appreciate that, you know, because I cannot tell you what damage it does to my heart to hear that stuff. And even though, even knowing it's not true, even knowing the people who are on my, you know, support system know that it's not true. Just them having to suffer through that and hear that, the embarrassment of it, it's almost too much to take in. And I was so nervous about that part of it. I was just terribly fearful of what, you know, maybe Jerry Hill's gonna do, Avalon, whoever else they signed up there. And I just did not want to hear that, and I didn't want anybody else to have to hear that, because it's devastating. And, you know, that not happening yesterday to me personally was liberating in and of itself. It was kind of like a signal saying, you know what? We're going to give them an opportunity to get home. And then the musing of the commission itself, you know, where they start off with 24 months and end up at 12 with a comeback, and, you know, essentially nine. Nine months is not that far. Two years would have been too long. I think we came away from that just about as well as we could have had hoped. You know, aside from not want. Aside from wanting to go to the halfway house, and that would have been great. This is a really, really positive thing. You know, I've got a lot of people who've wrote to me over the last 24 hours. A lot of them are angry, A lot of them are expressing sorrow. And, you know, I totally appreciate that. But I want them to see the good in it. If it was not for the support, if it was not for the work of the podcast that you have done, Kelsey has done, you know, Team Leo, you know, we wouldn't be here. And this was a very big victory for me. And I want them to be able to see the sense of accomplishment that we've all been able to, you know, put together by believing in the truth, standing for the truth, praying for the truth, and coming together and convincing people of that same truth. We've been walking in a tunnel in utter darkness for 35 years. I mean, not being able to see two feet in front of our face, just putting one foot in front of the other. Going forward, hopefully we're going forward. Not really knowing, just believing and trusting. We have no. Never had a light at the end of this tunnel, ever. Yesterday, a big, bright light was lit. We can see it. It's at the end of nine months, and it's solid. And now without, you know, the real opposition from the state and me being able to go to this program in nine months, you know, there's no reason why we won't be paroled. And so that's a very positive thing. And nine months is going to go by really, really fast. Especially for me, this is really more for the parole commissioners. They are rightly wanting to be comfortable about their decision. And it's my job to go down there and make sure they know it's going to be okay. We're all going to be okay when this is over with. So, you know, nine months at an institution that's an incentivized camp, number one. So they have no troublemakers there at all. You get in any trouble at Everglades, you're on the next bus leaving. So you're going to be surrounded by men who are all like minded trying to do the same thing. They're all trying to get out of prison. And here's another caveat to this that I just realized. This is very important. Going through that program allows me immediate access back into the prisons for other inmates because that's part of their program. Part of the FIU program is to give back to the prison population. That is exactly what I would want to do. If the only way that could happen with me being a convicted felon on the other side with parole, the only way to get back in to help my brothers in here is to go through that program. I gladly go through nine months of that. So, you know, going down there for nine months and being able to do this program and getting the ability to come back and help others that are on the same path, that's very, very important to me. Really feeling good. And I'm very, very gratified by yesterday's results. And I want that to be conveyed to the many supporters that we have so they can feel good about it as well. Here's my fear that, you know, my story fades into the history books now, you know, the next new thing comes up and, you know, I begin fading away. I can do the nine months. What I'm asking from the supporters that I've got is that just help me get there, you know, when this journey hasn't ended yet. I got to get to March of next year. I got to do it at a prison where I've never been, you know, with people that I don't know, I don't know anymore. And I still want to fight for exoneration. I still want to fight for my freedom because I am innocent. Being paroled is just a means to an end. It's not the end. If it was not for you and the podcast and all the people who put that together and the millions of people that have supported it, you know, you became my watchdog and, you know, and that's tremendous. Jacob Orr, Brian Haas. These. These people weren't here when this story was created, back long ago. I'm talking about 1989 and, you know, the trial and all of that stuff. They weren't involved in that. So I like to think that maybe, maybe the podcast, maybe the exposure to this stuff gave them reason to maybe go back and look at it themselves. I'd like to think that they have heart and, you know, and give them some credit for it, because I think I told you this before. I want to make this to where everybody can come out feeling alright about who they are, you know, even Jeremy. And especially Jeremy, because at the end of the day, nothing we do or say is going to bring my wife back. And in her memory. I really want everybody to be alright with where we are and where we go from here. And so I want everybody, including the state, to be able to walk away from this and be okay, be okay with their part in it, knowing that they're better human beings for it. And that's my hope. It might be naive to think that way. I think that's possible now. It was impossible before Bone Valley. And that's just how profound this podcast has been. I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am to you, to Kelsey. Somehow she has a connection in my heart and I can't even talk to that girl without breaking down crying. But from, from the beginning, from the very beginning, the first time we met, I just could see it in her eyes that she connected to this in a real heartfelt way. And this meant everything to me. And so, you know, here we are, it's. It's four years and change later and I'm now nine months away from getting home. And to me, that's just amazing. I can't thank you enough for that. I want to make sure you thank her for it.
