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The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Prison, Princes, and Playgrounds
00:53:42
A woman sets off in search of transformation and ends up in a harem in Bandar Seri Begawan, a teacher discovers her playground has turned into a 3rd grade war zone, singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega debates whether to take the stage at The Glastonbury Mus...
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- [00:00]
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Meg Bowles
From PRX this is the Moth Radio Hour. Hi, I'm Meg Bolles, a member of the Moth's artistic team and I'll be your host this time. The Moth is all about storytelling. Funny stories, poignant stories, haunting stories. But at the heart is always the storyteller's own true personal life experience. At the Moth, we provide a microphone and invite people to take the stage and share those stories with all of us. In this hour we have four stories. A woman sets off in search of transformation and finds herself living in a harem in Bandar Seri Begawan. We'll hear of a woman who tries to take control of a band of third grade mercenaries. And the story of how a death threat almost silences the headlining act at the Glastonbury Music Festival. And finally, we hear from a man recently released from an Arkansas prison after spending 18 years on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Our first story is from Gillian Lauren. Jillian told this story at the Great hall of the Cooper Union in New York City. The theme of the night was Heart of Stories of Love and War. A word of warning. The story contains a frank description of life as a high end escort and may not be appropriate for all listeners. Here's Gillian Lauren live at the Moth.
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Gillian Lauren
So I was an 18 year old NYU dropout struggling to pay my rent in New York by dancing at the Kit Kat Club on 56 and Broadway when a friend of mine. You know it. Okay. A friend of mine approached me about a casting call. And this casting call was supposedly to go and entertain rich businessmen in Singapore. It didn't seem all that different from what I was already doing, so I went. But when I got the job, they told me that it wasn't in Singapore at all. In fact, I was being invited to be the personal guest of the Prince of Brunei. Now, Brunei is a sultanate in Southeast Asia. It was a country I had only recently even heard of. And at the time, the Sultan of Brunei was the richest man in the world. And I was being hired to work for his youngest brother, who is Prince Jeffrey Bolkia, also known in the media as the Playboy Prince. Now, my job description was elusive at best, but I fantasized that I might get to Brunei and find a wild adventure and a pile of money and an employer who was nothing less than Prince Charming. I suspected, more realistically, that I had signed on to be some sort of international quasi prostitute. But even that seemed. It seemed like a wild and exotic transformation for a Jewish girl from the burbs of Jersey. And honestly, I wanted nothing less than transformation. I wanted so badly for my life to be something more exceptional than just going to usually fruitless B movie auditions during the day and squeaking around a brass pole at night. And I thought maybe this was it. And it seemed like it would be worth the risk. So ever since I was 16 and I first heard Patti Smith's album Easter, I decided that Patti Smith was the absolute barometer of all things cool and right. And I would ask myself, when faced with tough decisions, what would Patti Smith do? So I weighed my options. Should I stay? Should I go? What would Patti Smith do? And I decided Patti Smith would go. She would get on a plane and go to exotic lands, and she would never once look back. And that's what I did. And when I arrived at the airport in Bandar Seri Begawan, I was greeted by two Secret Service agents who immediately took my passport, supposedly to update my visa or something. And I had the first flicker of a thought that maybe I had not completely understood the implications of the decision that I had made to go there. But all of these apprehensions were overshadowed when I saw the Royal Compound. It was immense. It looked like a resort in Fort Lauderdale if it had been imagined by Aladdin. There were gold domes and there were swimming pools and there were tennis courts. And I saw all of this, and my head raced with plans. And I thought, is it that far out of the realm of possibility? That maybe I could make a prince fall in love with me and my life will change in dazzling and unexpected ways. And inside, the palace was just as impressive. And it was cavernous. And in the entryway there was a big fountain. And the carpets glowed because they were actually woven through with real gold. And on the walls there were Picassos and there were Pollux. And this wasn't even where the prince lived. There were other palaces where he lived. There were still other palaces where his three wives lived. This was strictly his play palace. And at this palace, every night he threw parties. And at the parties there was alcohol, although, strictly speaking, it was illegal in Brunei. There was music, there was dancing. And above all, there were women, beautiful women from all over the world. There were women from Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong. A handful of us from the US and all of us were vying for. For the attention of the prince. It was like the original Bachelor. And we would go to these parties every night, and then we would stumble home drunkenly at five in the morning, and we'd sleep all day. And the days tumbled into nights, tumbled into days, tumbled into nights. And after two weeks there, contrary to all my big plans, I had not made a prince fall in love with me. Rather, I had sat there and watched from across the room as all the other women flirted with him and he ignored me. And I wondered what they had that I didn't. And I figured I didn't know how to play that game. I just didn't rate. And I thought that was going to be it. I was going to be going home like that. But one morning I was spirited away from the palace and I was taken to an office building in the capital city. And I was locked in an office there. And it was freezing cold and it was stuffed with all this tacky furniture and what seemed seemed like a hundred pictures of the prince's three wives. And I tried one door and it was locked. I tried the other door. It was locked. There was no bathroom. I waited there for four hours until I was trembling from hunger, from cold, from nerves. I considered peeing in a trash can. And I hoped that I was waiting there for the prince and not for some other mysterious, unthinkable fate because they had taken my passport. And these were people who were way more powerful than me. And I thought very few people even knew where I really was. I could vanish at that moment and there would be no culpability. And there was nothing I could do about it. So I closed my eyes and I tried to imagine I was somewhere warm and I fell asleep. And when I woke up, it was to the sound of the door opening. And standing in front of me was the prince. And until that moment, I had only seen him in casual clothes. But he looked like that day, like a prince. He was dressed in this snazzy uniform and he had medals on his chest. And I sat up way too quickly. I wouldn't say what I felt for him at that minute was love exactly, but I felt this very deep sense of gratitude for the fact that he had rescued me from this freezing cold, locked room in the first place. But I also felt a profound desire to be valued by this person. And I think in extreme circumstances, the combination of this, these two things can look very much like love. And the prince kissed me. And that was how our romance started. And I got to know him a little bit. And as I did, I found out that the prince was not only handsome, he was also bright and he was educated. And yes, he was charming. And in spite of the totally bizarre circumstances, I liked him. And for whatever reason, he liked me too. And I rose very quickly through the ranks of the women and I became his second favorite girlfriend. I know, right?
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Mikayla Bly
Is that good?
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Gillian Lauren
His second favorite girlfriend? It was in the context, under the circumstances, it was good enough. And the prince at this time was looking for a fourth wife. Now, for a fourth wife, it would not be inconceivable for him to choose from amongst the women at the parties. And honestly, I thought about it, I did. I imagined what it would be like to marry him. I think what Disney brainwashed American girl would not think about it. But I really tried not to add self delusion to my growing list of character flaws at this point, because I realized that we were prostitutes. If you go to the same party every night, you wind up making out with the guy, throwing the parties, and you walk home with a handful of cash. You are a hooker. And at first this didn't really bother me. But eventually all of the locked doors and the constant surveillance we were under started to wear on my nerves. And. And so one day when I was with the prince on a business trip in Malaysia, a guard came to fetch me. And he told me to put on an evening gown in the middle of the afternoon. And this was not all that unusual. But what was unusual was when we got in the elevator, he did not press the button for the penthouse where the prince was staying. Rather, he pressed the button for the roof. And I panicked. And I thought, what could be on the roof? Oh my God, what Have I done? I know too much. And they're trying to get rid of me. They're going to pitch me off the edge. They're going to fabricate the headlines. They're going to say, american teenager dies in a drug deal gone wrong at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton. But when we got to the roof, there was a helicopter there, so that was a relief. I got in the helicopter, it hopped over to the next building, and I was escorted to a suite. And this suite looked like if a wedding cake was dipped in gold. And that was a hotel room. That is what it looked like. And at the other end of the suite, a football field away, it seemed, sat the Sultan of Brunei, the richest man in the world. And I recognized him because in Brunei, his face was everywhere. It was on the billboards, it was on the television, it was on the money. And the Sultan of Brunei asked me to come over and to sit down next to him. And I did. And I poured us a cup of tea. And he introduced himself as Martin. Now, all of the royal brothers had western nicknames from their school days in England, but I was a little disappointed by Martin. You know, it did not seem very sultany to me. It seemed more like one of my Jewish uncles, like my Uncle Mori. But Martin and I chatted and he was lovely. He was so different from the prince. The prince was moody and demanding and he was very hard to please. And the Sultan was cheerful and breezy and he was easy to please. He just wanted me to do a little dance, which by the way, is a terrifically awkward thing to do with no music. And then he wanted some oral sex. And then he very definitely wanted me to leave, which I did. And I had been in Brunei for long enough to know that I was not meant to be insulted by the fact that the prince had passed me off to his brother. I was meant to be honored that I had been this gift. But as I walked away from the Sultan that day, this trickle of truth started to work its way into my brain. And I thought I had come there really wanting an adventure. I had started out wanting to be free. And I wound up a piece of property. And I asked myself, what would Patti Smith do? And the answer was, she wouldn't be there. Really, she wouldn't. So when had that happened? And I would like to tell you that this stunning little gem of self knowledge instantly transformed me into a person who made wiser and more self loving choices. But that's not the case. Although eventually, I'd like to think that is what happened. But I stayed in Brunei for a while after that, until I really figured out that numbness is its own kind of misery and that freedom from caring what happens to you is not freedom. And when I figured that out, I walked away from the prince and I never went back. And so now when I ask myself, what would Patti Smith do? I can usually say that I think she would like where I wound up. I think she would stay here. Thank you.
- [17:29]
Meg Bowles
That was Jillian Lauren Gillian is author of the New York Times best selling memoir Some My Life in a Harem and the novel Pretty In a moment, we'll have a story from our New York Slam Stage from a woman who tries to take control of a band of third grade mercenaries.
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Suzanne Vega
I just don't know what to do tonight.
- [18:11]
Damien Echols
My head is aching as I the.
- [18:15]
Production Team
Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media and presented by the public radio exchange prx.org the moth is supported by Audible.
- [18:25]
Suzanne Vega
Audible content includes an unmatched selection of audio programs from leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers, and business information providers. Audible content is downloaded and played back on your smartphone, portable device, or your PC. The Moth listeners might enjoy An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe By Mike Massimino Get a free audiobook with a 30 day trial today by texting audible to 28325. It's that easy. Just text audible to 28325 to get started.
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Meg Bowles
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. Our next story is from Mikayla Bly. Mikayla is a Moth Grand Slam champion and she told this winning story at an evening entitled Fish out of Water.
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Mikayla Bly
A week into the school year teaching third grade, I already know that I'm in over my head. It's my first year at a new school. It's a progressive private school, but I am an experienced third grade teacher. I know third graders. They're adorable. They're cuddly, they love stuffed animals and so do I. And this class is different. The girls are great. They're actually running a stuffed animal hospital, so I can do that. But the boys have a war game, and it's not the kind of war game little boys always play war, that's clear. They don't have just a war game. They have an army. It has a hierarchy. It has a real enemy. The enemy is the homeschool kids who share the park with us at recess. And when they're not in battle, which we're desperately trying to stop at recess, they're preparing for battle. They're training in school. Seriously. It takes over our year when we line up for lunch. When you line up for lunch and you're in third grade and I'm a third grade teacher, I say we don't push, we don't talk. I have to say we don't shoot each other point blank in the forehead because that leads with these guys to strangulations and punching and I have to separate them. And then at free time, they tie each other to chairs with construction paper and practice interrogation techniques, which leads to strangling and punching and separation. They draw battle strategies and they use up all my red markers because the sprays of blood are so overwhelming. Now, that's one thing. Free time is one thing. But then it gets to class time. And I say, this is what we're going to do. And the girls go ahead and do it, and the boys say no. They're busy doing tactics, ground tactics, and they don't say no rebelliously. They say it like patronizing, like, why would we do third grade when there's a war on? I'm lost in all of this. I am a teddy bear kind of teacher and I'm not a drill sergeant. I don't know how to stop them from constantly punching each other. And the school is lost, too. It's a lovely school. We believe in cooperative discipline. We think that kids should do what they're interested in. Except in this case, what they're interested in is taking the homeschoolers hostage. The parents try to help. They have the kids play their game on the weekends so that it doesn't disrupt class, but it backfires. They show up on Monday and fatigues and the whole thing starts all over again. Now, this is not a draft. This is conscription. It's not involuntary. And they don't let everyone into the army. There are a couple of boys who aren't in the army. One of these boys is Robert. Robert is younger than everyone else and he has a baby face. And the other kids, the other guys talk about choke points and recon. And he wants to talk about the most useful aspect of the new Apple operating system, which I also kind of want to talk about. It's the space bar where you.
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Gillian Lauren
So.
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Mikayla Bly
But he wants to be in the army. It's the only game in town. It's really. Most of the guys are doing this. So one day I overhear this conversation where Robert says to Greg, who's one of the generals, can I be in the army today at recess? And Greg says, sure, you can Be a suicide bomber. Robert says, why? And Greg says, because everyone wants you to die. I go straight over to Greg and I say, you do not talk like that. And he looks at me and it's like he's looking through me and he turns around and ignores me. I feel like I'm not spending my time with 9 year olds, I'm with mercenaries. And it's getting to me. I mean, when you spend eight hours a day, five days a week in something, you start to feel like it's your reality. I'm crying after school. I start my countdown calendar for the end of the year in March. I just want to be with kids. I understand again. Finally, it's April, it's recess. I'm on patrol. We have to patrol because even if the homeschoolers aren't there, they find hidden pockets in the park where the teachers can't see and just wail on each other. So we have to patrol the perimeter. So I'm doing that and I get to the sand pit, which is this deep pit you can't really see inside unless you're standing right there. And there's Robert, my apple kid, kneeling in the sand execution style, holding his own hands behind his back with his face in the sand. And three guys, high level military personnel, are starting to bury him head first in the sand. And I snap, I go hot and cold. And I jump in the sand pit and I haul out Robert. He's got sand in his hair, he looks kind of dazed. I mean, he thinks he's playing. And I tell the three guys, go. And I line them up against a fence out of sight of the other teachers. And I got a rage in me that I have not had before. I haven't seen anything like this from nine year olds before. And I say, when you misbehave as third graders, I act like a third grade teacher. I call your parents, I give you time out, but when you do something like what you were about to do, you're being cruel as people. And I don't feel like a teacher. I don't know where this is coming from, but I keep going and I say, and I don't know what I do when I'm this angry as a teacher. I don't feel like a teacher. And they look at me and I can see that they're really listening for the first time. And I start to get a little into character and I say, if I ever see that again, I don't know what I'll do. I just don't know. There's real fear. Now I don't feel like a teacher. I feel like a general. And then I say, and by the way, we never had this conversation. Now I am a general who has gone rogue. And they're looking at me like that, not like a teacher.
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Gillian Lauren
And.
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Mikayla Bly
And so for the first time, I can look at them. And they don't look like mercenaries, they look like little boys. I'm playing their game better than they do. And I know that from now on this game is going to change. My game is going to change. You can't be a teddy bear teacher when there is a war on. And so I can stand back and be myself. And I stand back and I say the thing that third grade teachers for time immemorial have said to kids to, to let them know after they get in trouble that it's okay that we still love them. And I stand back and I'm myself again, except different and dangerous. And I say, go play. Thank you.
- [27:15]
Meg Bowles
That was Mikayla Bly. Mikayla is a teacher, writer and PhD student studying educational theater. She told this story at one of our competitive story slams in New York. The Moth hosts slams around the country where we give people an opportunity to throw their name in a hat for a chance to take the stage and tell their story. To find out if we have a story slam in your area, go to themoth.org or if you want us to consider producing a slam in your city, send us an email and let us know. Our next story comes from singer songwriter Suzanne Vega. Suzanne told the story back in 2002 at the Players in New York for an evening of stories entitled Rock and Roll Saved My Life. Here's Suzanne Vega live at the Moss.
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Suzanne Vega
Thank you. So it starts in 1989 and it's July and I'm on tour with my band and we're touring through Europe. And this is a very usual thing. I had been touring for years and years, seven or eight years by that point. So we had just come from Israel and we had landed in the uk, in England. So I had never been to Israel before. And the first time you go there, all the security is a bit daunting. You know, they search you and they search you again and they ask you questions. And I found it a little scary. So even though I really enjoyed my time there, I was looking forward to coming back to England, which was very familiar to me. So this was. We had just landed in England. We were staying at the Holiday Inn airport near Heathrow. Very glamorous. So I wake up that morning and that night, I'm going to play at the Glastonbury Festival in Glastonbury. So we have a journey to go to, and it's probably going to be the biggest audience I'm ever going to face, where there's supposed to be 75,000 or 80,000 people there. And I'm headlining that night. It's a Friday night, so I'm the last act on the show. And all this is okay. This is fine. I pack my stuff, I go downstairs to the front desk, and there's some kind of altercation at the desk. And I see my bass player, Mikey, and he's looking really unhappy. He's looking really pale. And he's like half Puerto Rican, half Italian, So pale is not his usual color. So I am concerned about this. And then I also see my tour manager also looking really upset. My manager. There's all this kind of buzzing going on. I'm like, what's going on? So we all knew that there had been some girl that had a crush on Mike, you know, and this happens from time to time. You know, girls fall in love with the guys in the band, and I try and stay out of it, you know, and they send things or whatever, and I try and lay down rules. You know, we don't want random girls on the bus, but you can have your girlfriend or you can have your wife. Random girls off the bus. But I kind of knew about this random girl because she. It started off with little gifts that were coming backstage from Mike, and we all thought that was really cute. And then after that, graduated to pictures of herself naked and, well, whatever. But then we all became worried because she had actually moved to Queens from London to be near him when we were not on tour. And we all felt that that was going too far. So now it turned out that now we're back in the UK and we are going to play Glastonbury. And she has called him in the middle of the night and made these threats and said to him that she and her friend, who is a male guy who was also calling the hotel, were going to show him if he went out on stage that night. So I'm like, oh, God, I hate. I hate that kind of day, because I just want to be in England where it's just nice, you know, and it was comfortable and it was, you know. And Glastonbury is a festival of hippies, basically. They have a big peace sign on the stage, so. And I'm thinking, is this really going to happen? But my manager feels that we should take it seriously. So we call Scotland Yard. So we're all waiting for Mr. Scotland Yard to show up. The detective shows up and he takes the trip with us on the bus. Mike is freaking out. Everybody's freaking out, so. And I'm like, okay. So he asks us some questions. He finds out some things about this girl. He finds out some things about the other man who was making the calls and this kind of thing. So the tension is kind of building. It's a long trip. And we finally get there and we wind our way through this crowd of people and we're trying to find our way backstage to where the bus is supposed to be. And it's kind of muddy. I think it had rained and then it had stopped raining. So now there's all this dust and stuff in the air and there's throngs of people and we're trying to find our way backstage. And once we get there, I feel that I need to go for a walk. I need a little privacy. And I try and go for a walk. I figure I'll check out some of the booths that are selling tie dyed things and military surplus. Mr. Scotland Yard wants to walk with me. And I'm like, no, no, it's okay, you know, you stay with Mike, I'll be fine. No, Ms. Bega, I feel I really should come with you. No, I don't want you to come with me. You can stay with Mike. I need to go off. And he said no. So I said, okay, fine, I'll stay here then. We were going to go on stage at about 11 o'clock, at about 9:30, suddenly four or five policemen show up and they come onto the bus and they want to have a little chat with me. And I'm like, why? You know, Mike will be fine. He's going to perform on the side of the stage. We have two bodyguards for Mike. He's going to perform in a bulletproof vest. He's got. The two bodyguards are there. One looks like Mr. Clean and one looks like GI Joe. And they're very handsome guys and they're going to defend mics. I'm like, great, what's the problem? So the policemen sit me down and they said, well, we didn't want to tell you this because we were. We didn't want to upset you, but your life was also threatened. They also said, Ms. Bega, if you go out on stage, you will also get it. So being that we have tracked down the woman, but we haven't tracked down her accomplice, we feel that we need to inform you legally that you should not do this show tonight. We feel that you should not perform on stage tonight. So I'm like, what, are you kidding? Like, this is Friday night. I'm headlining the Glastonbury festival. There's like 100,000 people. What do you mean I'm not going to do the show? Of course I'm going to do the show. You know, the show must go on. What are you talking about? No one's going to, like, shoot me on the Glastonbury stage under the peace sign. So. And then I'm thinking, well, anyway, you don't want to know what I was thinking. So I said, no, no. I said, I really have to do the show. I feel that I really must. And my keyboard player, who's also my boyfriend, is looking at me with tears in his eyes, and he's like, no, no, I don't think you should do it. I'm like, I'm sorry, we have to do it. How can we possibly come back to England if we don't do this show? You know, any crazy person can call up on the phone and say, you know, whatever they're going to say, and then everybody would know that we canceled. So they said, okay, well, you'll have to wear the bulletproof vest as well. So I said, okay. The only one they had was his. And this policeman was about £250, and I'm like, half that size. So they put it on me, and it's enormous. And they strapped me in, and the gaffer's tape had closed, so I'm like, okay. And I'm like, can. Can I still play the guitar? I think so. And then I have a. They put a huge denim jacket on over that, so no one sees the bulletproof vest. So now I'm all decked out like a turtle like this, and my arms are kind of like this. I'm like, okay. But, you know, I felt really strongly that we should go on. We should risk our lives. You know, this is rock and roll. This is what we do. So I remember that moment as I was walking out on the stage, and I see the microphone there, and I'm in my denim jacket and my gaffer's tape and my bulletproof vest, and things start to feel like I'm going underwater. And as I'm heading for the microphone, the thought suddenly occurs to me that they could shoot me in the head. And I'm like, oh, I wish I hadn't thought that right now. But I'm not thinking about that anymore. I'm just heading for the microphone and then I pick up the guitar and I start singing. And the other thing that happened was that now this whole situation has escalated to the point where there's 20 policemen in front of the stage. There's 100,000 people behind them. There's people as far as the eye can see from the stage all the way to the horizon. This is like several villages or something. Not only that, but there's helicopters overhead. And they've decided to train the lights not on the stage, which they usually do, but from time to time, they swivel the lights onto the audience to search them to see if they see anyone with a weapon. So I'm singing. Every song feels like it's taking 20 minutes long. Small blue thing just seems to go on forever. And I'm looking at every so often, they swivel the lights onto the audience and I'm like, you know, And I continue to play. And every so often I turn around to look at Mike. Of course he's not there. You know, Mike is over there with Mr. Clean and GI Joe, and there's his amplifier on the floor. So it's like, where's Mike? Oh, there's his amp. So, blah, blah. I'm playing. It's all going pretty well. I'm thinking, wow, this is great that we're alive. And suddenly my keyboard player approaches me and he says, sing, Luca, and get off stage. And I'm like, why? And he goes, I can't tell you right now, but we have to get off stage by 12:30. And I'm like, okay. And then I start thinking, well, why did they want me to get off stage? Did they find some. Did they find the weapon? Did they find the girl? Did they find her accomplice? Maybe I should just get off stage and not sing Luca. Luca was my big hit at that point. And it was. And I decided, no, we're going to stay. We're going to sing Luca. We're going to entertain everybody. They've come to be entertained. We have to do this. So I sing Luca. Everybody's cheering, and I come off stage. It all feels like it's going in slow motion. And I said, what happened? Did they find the girl? No. Did they find her accomplice? No. Did they find somebody with a weapon? No. Well, why did we have to get off stage at 12:30? And then the promoter of the festival comes over to me and says, Ms. Bega, we didn't get a chance to explain this to you before, but the festival has a curfew because the farmers in the next field have the cows and the cows get disturbed if you sing past 12:30 and it makes them less productive. And that's my story. And that's it. Thank you.
- [38:11]
Meg Bowles
That was Suzanne Vega back in 1989. Suzanne was the first female headliner to play on the Pyramid Stage at the Glastonbury Festival. We always say everyone has a story and we'd love to hear yours. Go to themoth.org, click on tell a Story and it'll take you on a step by step how to so you can pitch us your story. When we come back, we'll hear a story from Damien Echols, one of the West Memphis Three who shared his story at the Moth just 10 months after being released from death row in Arkansas.
- [38:48]
Production Team
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media and presented by the public radio exchange prx.org.
- [39:00]
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- [39:52]
Meg Bowles
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles from the Moth. Our last story is from Damien Echols. Damien was released from an Arkansas prison on August 19, 2011 after serving 18 years on death row for a crime he did not commit. Damien spent close to 10 years in solitary confinement. 10 years barely ever seeing the sun. The damage to his eyes has left him almost completely blind. When he took the stage, he was wearing a pair of dark blue sunglasses, which he wears regularly to protect his eyes from the light. A word of caution, this story gives a very real portrait of life on Death Row and may not be appropriate for children. Here's Damien Echols at an evening of stories we called Stories from the Front.
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Damien Echols
When I first arrived on death row. The guards decided they were going to welcome me to the neighborhood. So they took me to the part of the prison they call the hole. It's a very small, very dark, filthy part of the prison that's in complete isolation. And for the next 18 days, they beat the hell out of me. They used to come in at about 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock in the morning, and they would chain me to the bars of the cell and beat me with nightsticks. They beat me so bad at one point that I started to blood. And I still wake up at night sometimes now, dreaming that I'm p S ing blood again. They starved me. They tortured me. Eventually, word of what they were doing started to leak out into the rest of the prison. Other prisoners started to hear about it. So they went to a deacon from the Catholic church who used to come to the prison to bring Catholic inmates communion. And they told him what was going on. And he went to the warden's office and he told the warden, I know what you're doing to this guy. I know you're killing him. And if it doesn't stop, I'm going to go public. So that night they took me out of the hole and put me back in a regular prison cell. The other prisoners told me later that they had expected to see me carried out in a body bag any day. And I think the only reason they didn't murder me is because they realized they were being watched. When I was a kid, my family was incredibly poor, beyond dirt poor. When we did finally move into a trailer park with running water and electricity, we thought we were really moving up in the world. I used to take refuge in books and music. It became like a sanctuary for me and allowed me to escape the world I lived in for a little while. I'd read Stephen King novels over and over, listen to music like iron maiden. I started dressing in black all the time because it was like a security blanket for me. It made me feel a little safer in an unsafe and scary world. I didn't have many friends. In fact, my only real friend was this skinny blonde kid with a mullet named Jason Baldwin. And Jason was with me the night I was arrested. It was me, Jason, my sister, and my girlfriend sitting in the house, in the living room, watching movies. Whenever the cops started beating on the door, hammering on it. When I opened the door, they were pointing guns at me. They swarmed into the house like ants. They stampeded over everything and pawed through every single possession. My father, family, owned they put me and Jason in handcuffs, threw us into the back of cop cars, and took us to jail. I spent all night in a cell about the size of a closet. I wasn't allowed to go to the bathroom or not given so much as a drink of water. Every so often, a cop would come in and ask me if I had anything to tell him or if I was ready to make my confession. Yet this went on all night until the next day when we were given an arraignment hearing. At this hearing, the judge tells me that I'm being charged with three counts of capital murder, that I'm being accused of killing three children as part of a satanic sacrifice. He said someone had confessed, but he refused to read the confession in the courtroom. Instead, I was put in a broom closet somewhere in the back of the jail and given a transcript of this confession. I'm only 18 years old, and I'm in complete and absolute shock and trauma. I'm suffering from sleep deprivation. My life has just been destroyed. But even reading this thing, I could see that there was something wrong with it. It made no sense. It was like some sort of bizarre patchwork Frankenstein thing that they had stitched together. Turns out that they had picked up a mentally handicapped kid in our neighborhood and coerced him into making a confession. And then he was led to implicate Jason and I. Nothing in this confession made any sense whatsoever, but it didn't matter to him. I was put in a cell, and I kept thinking, surely someone's going to step in and put a stop to this. Surely someone is going to rectify this situation. They can't put you on trial and prove you've done something you haven't done. It seemed to me that science would say that's impossible. But they did. They took us to trial. And the evidence was things like the Stephen King novels that I read, the music I listened to, the clothes that I wore, and they found us guilty. I was sentenced to death not once, not twice, but three times. The whole time the judge is reading these death sentences, he's doing it in this really bored monotone voice, like it's just another day at the office for him. People have always asked me later, what were you thinking? Or what were you feeling whenever he was sentencing you to die? And it's almost impossible to articulate if you've ever been beaten. A lot of times, you know, when you're punched in the head, you don't register pain. You see a bright flash, flash of light, hear a loud noise, and you're completely disoriented, have no idea where you even are for a few minutes. That's what it was like when he was reading these death sentences. It was like being repeatedly punched in the head. They sent me to death row. I was in the cell for about a week before I noticed a shadow on the wall. It was from the man who had been executed that was in the cell. Before I got there, he had stood against the wall and traced around himself with a pencil really, really lightly and then very subtly shaded it in. I mean, it was so subtle, I didn't even see it for about the first week. And then after I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. So I used to sleep on a dead man's mattress and stare at a dead man's shadow and live in the cell with ghosts for years. They filed appeal after appeal on my behalf, all before the same judge who sentenced me to death. He denied them all. Even whenever new DNA evidence came in that excluded me and the other two guys from the crime scene, and instead pointed the finger at one of the victim's stepfather and the man who was providing the stepfather with an alibi. The judge still said, this is not enough. Then we were allowed to appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court. And by this time, awareness of what's going on, public interest in the case has been building. There's been documentaries, there's been books. There's been countless newspaper articles and magazine stories and TV shows, shows. So the Arkansas Supreme Court knows they're being watched. And in the end, that's the only thing they really care about, is winning the next election. So they ruled that all of this new evidence would be heard. And the prosecutors realized that meant there was going to be another trial. So a deal was hammered out. It's called an Alford plea. What an Alford plea means is that I plead guilty and I walk out of the courtroom and I can still publicly maintain my innocence, but that I can't sue the state. And people ask me what I was thinking about the day that I went into court, knowing that I could very well go home that day. And the truth is, I wasn't thinking anything. By that time, I was so tired and beat down that all I wanted to do was rest. I was dying. My health was deteriorating very rapidly. I was losing my eyesight. I knew I wasn't going to make it much longer. The prosecutor also said that one of the factors for him making this deal was the fact that the three of us together could have collectively sued the state for $60 million. I knew they could have had me stabbed to death for $50 any day of the week. Happens in prison all the time. So I knew if I didn't take that deal one way or another, I would never live to see the outside of those prison walls. So I took it. I've been out of prison now for a little over 10 months and I live in terror every single day. I'm scared of everything all the time, but I'm trying to fight my way through it. I have to force myself to every day that I get up. And I know that I will eventually I'll do it and I'll be free of it. Because if there's one thing that I learned from 18 years in prison, it was how to fight. Thank you.
- [51:16]
Meg Bowles
That was Damian Echols, author of the book Life After Death. Damian said the experience of telling his story at the Moth felt like letting go of a piece of the trauma he endured. Telling his story allowed him to leave part of that trauma behind on the stage. You can read more about Damian and listen to other interviews with him by visiting themoth.org you can find all the stories in this hour at the iTunes store or on our website, themoth.org where you'll also find a selection of radio extras About Our Storytellers One of the best parts of the Moth is our audience. The most supportive and generous audience ever. Thanks so much for being part of that audience. We hope you'll join us again next time for the Moth Radio Hour.
- [52:12]
Production Team
Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show along with Leah Tao. The rest of the Moss directorial staff includes Kathryn Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin, Janess and Jennifer Hickson. Production support from Laura Haddon and Whitney Jones. Moth Stories Are True is remembered and affirmed by the Storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City, supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Patti Smith, Suzanne Vega and Iron Maiden. Links to all the music we use are at our website. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange prx.org for more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website themoth.org.