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- [00:00]
Joshua Vaughn
Wondry subscribers can binge all episodes of Death County, Pennsylvania, early and ad free. Join Wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
- [00:16]
Lamont Jones
When you get to know Lamont Jones, you get the sense that he knows everybody. The contacts in his phone range from local politicians and business leaders to formerly incarcerated men and women he's worked with in the prison. He has deep roots in Harrisburg, too, so he's always checking in with family and old friends he's known since childhood. One of those childhood friends was a guy named Jamal Krummel.
- [00:46]
Jamal Krummel
Just a fun guy, man. I mean, middle school, we was into dancing. We're just about as old as hip hop, right? So when the breakdancing and the graffiti first came out, you know, this was the stuff that we did. We had basement parties. We would dance. I mean, it was just a fun time.
- [01:01]
Lamont Jones
Those were their teenage years. But then Lamont got arrested for dealing drugs when he was 18, and Jamal ran into legal trouble of his own. They were both in and out of jail, and they lost touch. One of the last times Lamont was at dcp, he was working as a barber.
- [01:21]
Jamal Krummel
So I could travel the blocks and go around and cut hair. And one time I came on a.
- [01:26]
Lamont Jones
Medical block, the medical block known in DCP as M Block. That was where inmates with special physical and mental needs were housed. M Block was just as dirty as the rest of the jail, but it was a little colder. It often smelled bad, and the noise was relentless.
- [01:46]
Jamal Krummel
Somebody could be banging on the door, hey, man, shut up. Be quiet. He could be having a medical crisis right now.
- [01:52]
Lamont Jones
When Lamont walked onto the block, he saw a familiar face, and he was.
- [01:56]
Jamal Krummel
Back there, and I was like, what the.
- [02:00]
Lamont Jones
It was Jamal. Lamont was horrified to see him there on en block.
- [02:05]
Jamal Krummel
I seen the condition that he was in, you know, and I knew something was wrong. The hair wasn't being taken care of. The weight was down. You could just see, like, you know, just. It just wasn't him.
- [02:18]
Lamont Jones
Lamont didn't know it at the time, but Jamal had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and ptsd. He struggled to get the care he needed. And when he struggled, he often ended up getting arrested. But even though it was tough to see Jamal in such rough shape, Lamont was still grateful to bump into him at dcp.
- [02:42]
Jamal Krummel
It was always a joy just to see him and talk with him, and he would always bring up something different. Remember this? You know, remember? I'm like, wow, man, this guy is a walking almanac. He never forgot anything, you know, off or on his man, he could remember everything.
- [03:00]
Lamont Jones
While Lamont would leave DCP behind and build a new life for himself. Jamal was stuck cycling in and out of the jail.
- [03:09]
Jamal Krummel
And where does he end up? Dauphin County Prison. Why is he in prison? That's where I say there's a difference between treatment and punishment. You stick him in a place that doesn't have the adequate resources to handle that level of illness.
- [03:28]
Lamont Jones
And Lamont worried that at some point something would go wrong. DCP had a reputation for a reason. People were dying. And Lamont didn't want Jamal to be the next Death. Foreign From Wondery and Penn Live, I'm Joshua Vaughn and this is Death County Pa. This is episode three, Hell Froze Over. Most nights, Lamont would put on the local news while he was winding down. That's what he was doing on a night in September 2021, when a crime segment caught his attention. The night before, a 45 year old man had been driving his Ford Escape through downtown Harrisburg when he saw a group of six pedestrians crossing the street. He had allegedly stopped his vehicle, then suddenly slammed the accelerator, zooming his car in the direction of the pedestrians. They all managed to jump out of the way. The pedestrians were state troopers out of uniform. The driver was arrested and charged with multiple counts of aggravated assault. His bail was set at $150,000. The reporter said the man's name, it was Jamal.
- [05:08]
Jamal Krummel
That's not him trying to run over people and stuff like that. This had to be a time where he wasn't on his medication.
- [05:16]
Lamont Jones
Jamal's family thought he was probably texting while driving, that he hadn't intentionally tried to hurt anyone, regardless of the state he was in. But he was going back to dcp and Lamont was terrified about what that could mean for his friends. Lamont remembered just how violent things could be inside dcp, especially if an inmate was hard to control.
- [05:41]
Jamal Krummel
You had some good officers and then you had some of the ones that were just horrible. And there was a culture there. If you did something on one shift, the next shift could come in and it could get physical quick. When I got disrespectful to a guard, they would come in with man beaters. Those are the gloves, the black gloves. They would put on and take us in the gym and it would get real physical there. They would put hands on us basically.
- [06:07]
Lamont Jones
And things could get a lot worse than that. Lamont was still reeling from seeing the bruises and cuts on Tyreek's body. He hadn't been able to do anything to protect his cousin back then. Now maybe he had the opportunity to protect his friend Jamal. So Lamont jumped into action. He knew the chief of police in Harrisburg from helping former prisoners get jobs after their release. Now he gave the chief a call.
- [06:36]
Jamal Krummel
I said, hey, you know, he has mental health issues. He may not be on his medication, so just make sure that the prison is aware of that.
- [06:45]
Lamont Jones
Lamont thought the police chief would be able to get his message to leadership at dcp.
- [06:51]
Jamal Krummel
And, you know, he was like, okay, thanks.
- [06:54]
Lamont Jones
Lamont was mostly worried about the corrections officers, about what they could do to Jamal. But it would turn out Jamal's biggest threat wasn't being beaten up. It was being ignored by the people whose help he needed the most.
- [07:12]
Samantha
I definitely dealt with Jamal Krimel many times.
- [07:16]
Lamont Jones
This is a woman I'm calling Samantha. She doesn't want her real name used because she's afraid of retaliation from Dolphin county officials. She was a corrections officer at DCP for nearly 20 years. Jambal was at DCP a lot. Sometimes for new criminal charges, sometimes for breaking probation or parole violations. Samantha felt like she got to know him.
- [07:41]
Samantha
We joked around. He always would call me his baby mom and always talked about the sneakers that I used to wear.
- [07:48]
Lamont Jones
But Samantha also saw how erratic Jamal could be during bad mental health episodes. He needed support that Samantha and the other COs couldn't provide.
- [07:58]
Samantha
His mental health is severely deteriorating and we are not equipped to handle it. He was on a block where it was a lot of severe mentally ill people that shouldn't be incarcerated there, that should be going to get further medical attention but have such a long waiting list to get help.
- [08:15]
Lamont Jones
The nearest state mental health facility was a three hour drive from Harrisburg with a long waiting list, which meant DCP was pretty much the only place Jamal could go. After his arrest in September 2021. He seemed to be struggling even more than usual. Fewer jokes, less sneaker talk.
- [08:36]
Samantha
I had gotten a call from one of my sergeants, and they were very concerned when he had walked the block. And Jamal was not himself. He was just laying on his mattress, and he was just not responding to staff when they were talking to him.
- [08:52]
Lamont Jones
But overnight, Jamal went from listless to amped up. He started yelling and banging on his cell door. Then at some point, he turned on the metal sink in the corner of his cell and stopped up the train. Soon water was pouring onto the floor, pulling under the small desk and metal toilet and spreading out towards the hall.
- [09:17]
Samantha
You want to be like, come on, Jamal, stop. Like, what are you doing?
- [09:20]
Thomas
It was one of those things where you Clean yourself every shift. And the next shift, it's going to be right back, an inch of water, inch of urine later, because he wasn't getting up to use the bathroom.
- [09:29]
Lamont Jones
Thomas was another officer at dcp. He also asked that his name be changed. He had worked at the jail for a little over a decade and had also gotten to know Jamal. Thomas made it a point to say hi whenever he made his rounds. Still, every time Jamal came to dcp, Thomas worried.
- [09:50]
Thomas
We saw him coming to the bulking center. He always kind of sighed because it had potential to be a use of force only because he was so unpredictable. You kind of look at it as a challenge to get him processed through the whole intake process or get him from point A to point B without a use of force. He'd take a deep breath and say, all right, let's get him through this.
- [10:08]
Lamont Jones
But getting through this was going to take a different level of care than Samantha and Thomas could provide. And as Jamal's condition worsened, the medical staff at DCP was going to find itself stretched thin and in short supply.
- [10:32]
Joshua Vaughn
In Death County, Pennsylvania, Lamont Jones is fighting to uncover the truth about his cousin's death in Dolphin County Prison. But standing in his way is a reality TV corner and a system built on secrets. If you're captivated by stories of betrayal and cover ups, you should check out Wondry's podcast, Exposed. This series reveals the horrifying crimes of Dr. Robert Haddon, an Ivy League OB GYN who assaulted hundreds of patients while the system protected him. From the prestigious halls of Columbia University to the courtrooms where survivors finally got their day in court, this is a story of power, accountability, and the courage it takes to fight back. Follow Exposed on the Wonder app or wherever you get your podcast. You can binge all episodes of Exposed exclusively and ad free right now on Wondry. Start your free trial in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
- [11:40]
Lamont Jones
Nearly everyone recognized DCP was not the right place for Jamal. Lamont Jones knew it. So did Samantha and Thomas, the two corrections officers. And according to Jamal's family, county prosecutors knew it, too. They remembered that at the preliminary hearing on Jamal's aggravated assault charges, all the lawyers seemed to agree that Jamal belonged in a mental health facility. To Jamal's family, it seemed it was only District Attorney Fran Chardo who disagreed. He continued to pursue the case against Jamal for aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and driving under the influence. And as the months went on, fall became winter. It was getting cold in central Pennsylvania. All the public areas inside DCP were heated, but the individual cells on En Bloc didn't have heating vents of their own. It was so cold on the blocks that cos like Thomas were issued parkas to wear while they made their rounds. But the inmates had no such luck. They could buy extra clothing at commissary, socks and thermal shirts, but if they didn't have the money in their accounts, then they just had their regular uniforms, short sleeved shirts and pants made out of thin cotton like material. Jamal was even worse off.
- [13:11]
Thomas
I had walked back to En Bloc for a pill call or something to help out and I noticed he was in his cell on the floor and.
- [13:19]
Lamont Jones
The floor was flooded with an inch of standing water.
- [13:23]
Thomas
His uniform was soaked.
- [13:24]
Lamont Jones
Jamal was just wearing the basic uniform and socks and his cell was ice cold. The temperatures in Harrisburg had been below freezing the night before. Jamal was not moving.
- [13:37]
Thomas
He would not respond to anyone. And I went back to the medical department, I said, something's wrong with cromo. Doesn't take a doctor or any medical professional to see this.
- [13:47]
Lamont Jones
But Thomas knew the medical care at DCP was woefully lacking. Medical services are provided by a third party company called Primecare. And when Jamal was booked in DCP in September 2021, their daily team largely consisted of just a handful of nurses and medical assistants. The prison population hovered around 1,000 men and women. And Prime Care's mental health services were even worse. Their staff only worked during weekdays. There were no mental health providers working nights or weekend shifts, which of course was when most of the urgent problems happened.
- [14:26]
Samantha
We only have mental health issues Monday through Friday, 8 to 4. Outside of that, good luck. Better not happen at 3:30 because they're not gonna come talk to you. They're going to say, just put them on a watch.
- [14:41]
Thomas
That's like calling the police department and saying, well, It's Friday at 8:00 at night, we'll have cops back on duty Monday morning. Just hang out there for the weekend. And that's the best analogy I can make with the mental health inside the facilities.
- [14:55]
Lamont Jones
So after Thomas told the Prime Care staff that something was wrong with Jamal, he basically just had to hope that a nurse or medical assistant would go and check on him, clean him up, dry him off and make sure he wasn't sick.
- [15:11]
Thomas
I would come into work Sunday at 2:00. We need to go back, take the medical staff with us that we trust and get him sent to the hospital. If he's not already there by the time I come in, I don't care what the Prime Care provider says what on call says we need to send him out if he's still in as rough shape as he was yesterday.
- [15:29]
Lamont Jones
But the next morning when Thomas came into work, Jamal was in his cell on the floor, still soaking wet. Nothing had been done, so Thomas cleaned up Jamal himself. Then he called Samantha. She'd known Jamal for a long time. Maybe she'd be able to figure out why Jamal was acting the way he was. Samantha went down to en block and walked over to the door of Jamal's cell.
- [15:59]
Samantha
He was laying on his mattress right in front of the door. I got down and was talking to him and he just was not in good shape. Jamal was not himself.
- [16:09]
Lamont Jones
Thomas and Samantha went back to the prime care team. This time a supervising nurse came down to enblock right away.
- [16:17]
Thomas
She was alarmed, so she called an ambulance. We very carefully got him up, I think in a wheelchair off his urine and water soaked forearm. He was wearing a full uniform, but the uniform was also saturated, like it was just dripping. At this point, we know he's going out, the ambulance is on the way. And we put him in the shower area where it's off camera where you can get him naked. I sat him down in a green chair and tried asking him. I said, jamal, dude, we need to change. You're going out to the hospital to get help. We need to get you out of this soaking wet uniform. I think you'll feel better, you'll warm up. And I asked him, I said, can I help you get undressed? I said, I've known you for a while. I know this might be awkward, but I need to help you get this uniform off. And he gave me a little head nod.
- [16:59]
Lamont Jones
Thomas sat Jamal down in a chair and started to take off his uniform. Only that wasn't all that was coming off.
- [17:06]
Thomas
Just layers of skin came off with his wet uniform. His skin was like pruny and wrinkled up like you were in the bathtub or the pool all day. And his skin just came off, almost like tissue paper. I had gloves on my hands, but my hands are just cold from handling the wet uniform and the skin on top of it.
- [17:25]
Lamont Jones
Jamal wasn't unconscious, but Thomas couldn't get him to talk.
- [17:29]
Thomas
He wanted nothing to do with communicating. I don't know if he didn't have energy to or he was in a mental state, I'm not sure. But he wanted nothing to do with talking or, or moving or even helping us. He was conscious, but it's almost like he was just like a zombie. And the paramedics put him on the gurney and took him to the hospital. After we got him out of the building, we all just were like, whoa. Afterwards, you're like, oh, my God. How does. Like, how does it get like that?
- [17:53]
Lamont Jones
Doctors in the ICU found Jamal's core body temperature had dropped to 85 degrees. He had severe hypothermia. Jamal arrived at the ICU and they slowly warmed him up. Doctors diagnosed the sores and scaling on his skin as a life threatening condition called toxic epidermal necrolysis. They wanted to send him to a burn unit in Pittsburgh for treatment. But Jamal was still in DCP custody and jail officials chose not to transfer him. Sending him out to Pittsburgh over three hours away would mean DCP would have to pull around eight correctional officers from the jail to watch him 24, seven in shifts. Or they could get the D A to agree to reduce Jamal's bail and effectively release him from custody. Either way, it wasn't happening. The jail kept Jamal at the hospital in Harrisburg. Jamal's family was notified he had been hospitalized, but they were also informed they couldn't visit. Jamal was still a prisoner. And after a month, doctors determined Jamal's condition had become stable and he was sent back to dcp. Neither Samantha nor Thomas thought that made any sense.
- [19:10]
Samantha
Should he have even been brought back to the prison? He clearly should not have been.
- [19:14]
Thomas
We tried everything that was in our power. We aren't doctors. We don't work at the hospital. We can't say he's okay to come back. Like at some point. It's just out of the scope of our job and out of our control.
- [19:25]
Lamont Jones
What made matters worse was it was now mid January. Now deep winter had set in. The nighttime temperatures were well below freezing. Jamal's cell still didn't have heating. He'd already survived severe hypothermia. And yet the jail wouldn't provide Jamal with additional clothes or blankets. One week after Jamal was released from the hospital and returned to the jail, A guard doing his morning rounds looked in and saw Jamal lying down on his bed. The guard called out to him, and Jamal didn't respond. The guard noticed a pile of unopened brown bag meals in Jamal's cell. Other COs should have seen them and had them cleaned up. It was a red flag that something was off. The guard unlocked the door, walked over to where Jamal was lying, and tapped Jamal on his shoulder. His skin felt cold to the touch. Jamal still didn't move.
- [20:28]
Jamal Krummel
Friend contacted me on Facebook and said, your son died.
- [20:32]
Lamont Jones
Jamal's father couldn't believe It I said.
- [20:35]
Jamal Krummel
No, my son's at the county. So I went out to the county and inquired about my son. And no one would talk to me. They said that they would call me later. I went home three or four hours later. They called me and asked me to come to the county. When I come out there, they said my son passed away. And I said, from what? They said, we don't know.
- [20:57]
Lamont Jones
And that answer wouldn't come anytime soon. Jamal's family would have to wait several months to find out why he died. They had to sit with that uncertainty, wondering what happened. The person they had to wait for, the person releasing that info was the coroner, Graham Hetrick. When he finally put out his findings, there were more questions than answers. For Jamal's family and for me. It was more than a year after the death of Jamal Crummell. And I was sitting in Coroner Graham Hetrick's office. It looked institutional. An L shaped desk with a desktop computer. Filing cabinet in the corner, generic office chairs. But then you looked more closely and Graham's macabre flair came out. There was a human skull on a shelf, a skeleton off in a corner. Various bones arranged on his desk. My editor, Christine, was there with me.
- [22:12]
Graham Hetrick
There were some things that weren't adding up about the coroner records. I went with you because I had had pretty good luck dealing with him previously. I was a familiar face who had dealt with him before. So that was the approach.
- [22:27]
Lamont Jones
I'd had much less luck dealing with Graham. He'd seemed to be getting more and more annoyed with me as I kept digging into the desks at dcp. Graham's report on Jamal concluded that his official cause of death was cardiac fibrosis, heart disease. This was the same person who had gotten hypothermia twice at dcp. Graham did acknowledge that the hypothermia was a, quote, significant contributing factor. But it felt to me like Graham was saying the same thing he had in Tyreek Riley's case. That an underlying health condition, not brutal or negligent treatment at dcp, had been responsible for an inmate's death. So I asked Graham about his report.
- [23:14]
Graham Hetrick
I felt the temperature starting to rise in the room, so I think I tried to change the topic or at least let him talk about something he wanted to talk about to bring the temperature down.
- [23:24]
Lamont Jones
But I felt I needed to continue. I asked Graham what the holdup was in releasing his report on Jamal. And whose fault was it that it took so long. Three months passed from when all the forensic testing was done to when the report finally came out. Graham said the pathologist must have been busy. Busy for three full months. I wanted to know why Jamal's family had to wait. So I pressed him more and Graham simply responded, it is what it is.
- [23:57]
Graham Hetrick
I did feel like the tension is him feeling like that additional clarification or the additional specificity was somehow challenging his authority or somehow accusing him of lying or not being forthcoming for some nefarious purpose when that was not it at all.
- [24:16]
Lamont Jones
Graham is an elected official. He's dealt with reporters plenty of times before. So Christine and I were thrown off by his reaction.
- [24:24]
Graham Hetrick
I've been in some hostile interviews where you kind of expect it. I didn't expect it here because I thought these are very common sense questions. Why can't he answer?
- [24:32]
Lamont Jones
The Krummel family had told me that they hadn't been notified about Jamal's death in a timely manner. So I asked Graham to confirm what his record showed.
- [24:41]
Graham Hetrick
And his record showed a gap. His response was, you know, we don't always log everything, you know, sometimes we do, sometimes we don't.
- [24:49]
Lamont Jones
But in every other case of an inmate death that I've been able to find, Graham's office had logged when they notified the family.
- [24:58]
Graham Hetrick
So this was an aberration and you were pointing it out to find out why would it be different in this case? And that's when he snapped. And I still. I was expecting him to come back with an answer. And instead he stood up, you know, his chair got pushed back. And I believe it was get the F out.
- [25:15]
Lamont Jones
I was taken aback. It was just so intense and so aggressive. I was kind of fumbling for what to do next. Not really able to form a coherent thought, much less a sentence. But Christine stayed cool.
- [25:29]
Graham Hetrick
I remember like I'm standing up and I'm still scribbling on my notepad, trying to remember each thing he was saying because there were multiple F bombs. And I thought, this is unheard of. I can't believe he's doing this in front of two reporters. And I was trying to document as much as I could, you know. Do you think you know more than I do? Take your own effing forensic investigator class then. How dare you come in here and challenge me.
- [25:53]
Lamont Jones
I actually did take a forensic investigator course. It cost 750 bucks. Consisted of three months of part time classes about things like scene management, identification and notification to families. Which is all to say, I left that interview feeling like I had learned a lot about Graham, but I still hadn't gotten answers about Jamal. Around that time, Lamont Jones was trying to get answers to some of the same questions I had. He wasn't going to march into Graham's office. He had a better venue for asking official questions. Just a month before Jamal died, Lamont had been invited to join the Dolphin County Prison Community Advisory Committee. It was a new group created in the wake of Tyreek Reilly's death, and its purpose was to provide a bridge between DCP and the Harrisburg community, especially the families and friends of inmates there. The other committee members wanted Lamont because he had been on the inside of dcp. He would be able to call BS when prison officials weren't telling the whole truth.
- [27:03]
Jamal Krummel
You couldn't tell someone that's done time there that these things weren't happening. It was purposely for me to be there. Everybody else didn't have that experience. I came in with plenty of vigor. I wanted answers, you know, and I wanted the conditions to change.
- [27:18]
Lamont Jones
After Jamal's death, Lamont felt like he had a particularly urgent mission. When Jamal died, it hit him hard.
- [27:26]
Jamal Krummel
It was just a total reaction, like, oh, my goodness, what in the world? Now, maybe three or four people may have passed in the shorts period of time. So I'm like, what is going on in this prison, you know, that so many people are passing away here?
- [27:43]
Lamont Jones
And now he wanted to force county officials to give him real detailed information. In one of those earlier meetings, he was sitting across from the warden and three county commissioners. In Dolphin county, the county commissioners run the show. They make the big decisions. They manage the budget, and they are in charge of Dauphin County Prison. They are the three people who can actually change things at dcp. And Lamont now had a direct line to them. Lamont had been carefully following Jamal's case.
- [28:18]
Jamal Krummel
So what really helped is the reporting, the investigative reporting that you were doing. I was just sharing every article, and I was like, look, y'all, this is much deeper because they. We couldn't find out some of the things that you could.
- [28:30]
Lamont Jones
He'd read a story I'd written about Jamal and Penn Live, which had some details, but still plenty of holes. When Jamal's name came up at the meeting, Lamont pounced.
- [28:41]
Jamal Krummel
What happened? What happened? Well, we. We can't really say. Well, the paper seems to know more than you guys or you guys aren't willing to tell. You know, how did he get the hypothermia? And, of course, they couldn't go into it, or they wouldn't go into it.
- [28:57]
Lamont Jones
Lamont wanted to know if there was a real investigation going on, if anyone was going to be Held accountable. The county officials repeated they couldn't say more, which pissed off Lamont.
- [29:09]
Jamal Krummel
You're the ward. You're the commissioner over the prison. I want to know why aren't things changing? You guys have power to make some of these changes. What are you doing to correct this? When we confront you, the first thing you do is deny. You know? And again, I'm like, either you're naive, or you're just a part of covering this up.
- [29:30]
Lamont Jones
Around this time, the prison board started allowing members of the community advisory committee to go on walkthroughs of dcp. Lamont hadn't been on M Block since his days as a jailhouse barber. It had been nearly a decade. He wanted to see the place where his friend had spent the last months of his life. It was February. When Lamont got there. The first thing he noticed was the cold. He remembered feeling that same cold during his years at dcp.
- [30:03]
Jamal Krummel
We would take, like, newspaper, wet the newspaper, and seal around the windows to try to keep it warm inside.
- [30:10]
Lamont Jones
Lamont, the community advisory member, was thinking about systemic fixes. But Lamont, Jamal's friend Tyreek's cousin, was having a different experience in our professions.
- [30:23]
Jamal Krummel
Right, you're gonna have to become a human being or become a parent or a father or, you know, or whatever. So that's the space that I'm looking. Not that, hey, I'm Lamont from the advisory board. Even if I wasn't in this space, I would still want to know what happened to him. So that was natural.
- [30:40]
Lamont Jones
When he got to Jamal's old cell, he stopped. He looked inside. In his mind, he could see his friend there. The guy he knew who struggled, yes, but who was also fun, vibrant, so alive. Lamont gave a silent prayer to Jamal's memory.
- [31:01]
Jamal Krummel
A somber feeling. Man, because this is someone that I knew, and it's almost that feeling like this is where it happened, you know? And that's one of the greatest fears that I've ever had myself, is dying in prison alone.
- [31:19]
Lamont Jones
When Lamont looked around, he was struck by something else. He was standing there in the middle of M block, the medical block. And he only saw a medical staffer once.
- [31:31]
Jamal Krummel
And you have a regular guard back there watching those individuals. I'm like, okay, I get that these people are being housed here, and they may have pending charges against them. However, they have conditions where, you know, they're taking strong medication and things of that nature. What would this officer do if something goes wrong? Is this correctional officer equipped to handle what's happening back there on that medical block, mental health block. So it raises a lot of questions. Again, you have to look at the system.
- [32:04]
Lamont Jones
When Lamont left that day, he was still thinking about all the ways the system had failed, the people who ended up at dcp. But the closer he got to the people who held the power, the harder it seemed it would be to change that system. He could shine a light on dcp. He could bear witness. But at the end of the day, other people made the decisions. An idea was growing inside Lamont. Maybe Dolphin county was ready for something new, a new kind of leadership. And it turned out Lamont wasn't the only one having that thought. You can't run on prison reform. No one will vote for you. And so we just were like, we're gonna do what we're gonna do. That's on the next episode of Death County, Pennsylvania.
- [33:00]
Joshua Vaughn
Follow Death County, Pennsylvania on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Death County, Pennsylvania early and ad free by joining Wondry plus in the Wondry App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondry.com survey if you have a tip about a story you think we should investigate, please write to us@wondry.com Tips.
- [33:33]
Lamont Jones
From Wondry and PennLive this is episode three of six of Death County, Pa. Death County, Pennsylvania is written and reported by me, Joshua Vaughn. Producer is Rachel Yong. Senior producers are Eric Benson and Chris Siegel. Story editor is Michael May. Associate producer is Emily Locke. Fact checking by Annika Robbins Sound design and mixing by Jeff Schmidt Audio assistance by Daniel William Gonzalez Sound supervisor is Marcelino Villalpando Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez. For freesun Sync Senior managing producer is Lata Pandya. Managing producers are Heather Baloga and Matt Gant. Senior development editor is Rachel B. Doyle Development producer is Olivia Weber. Executive producers for Advanced Local are Richard diamond and Selena Roberts. Executive producers are n'jeri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall, Louie and Jen Sargent. For Wonder.
- [34:43]
Joshua Vaughn
When Lamont Jones walked out of Dolphin County Prison, he thought he was leaving the darkness behind. But when his cousin dies behind bars under suspicious circumstances, Lamont is pulled back into a world of secrets, lies, and a reality TV coroner who seems more interested in fame than justice. Now he's fighting to uncover the truth, and what he finds could bring down the powerful forces running dcp. If you're inspired by stories of resilience and resistance, you'll love Black History for real. This series introduces you to the most overlooked black history makers you should already know about. It's a no nonsense, unwhitewashed account of history's most overlooked moments with a mix of storytelling and candid conversation. Follow Black History for Real on the wonjury app or wherever you get your podcast. You can listen to episodes of Black History for Real early and ad free right now on Wondry.