July 28, 2005

Dear Sis

It's Thursday morning & canteen has just been passed out. Everyone is up and a faint buzz of excitement permeates the celllblock as each of us paws through our bags of goodies. Of course, the food items are mostly junk - moon pies, honey buns, cookies, candy bars - typical of jails and prisons everywhere. I indulge in the junk occasionally but my taste runs more toward the few nutritious items available: peanuts, tuna fish, sardines, beef jerky, chicken (comes in a plastic/vinyl bag).When your entire life is restricted to a cell and the things you can do or enjoy are compressed to a few meager activities (yard, showers, canteen, mail call and meals) and each thing takes on an over-sized importance and you find yourself anticipating each event with a disproportionate enthusiasm that would probably appear comical to an objective observer. That's how it is when your whole world is contained in a 6' x 8' box (actually, these Virginia D/R cells are about 7' x 12', which is very roomy by prison standards).

Tomorrow morning is one of our regular yard days (if it doesn't get cancelled for some reason or another, which often happens). I'll go out and pace for 2 hours, soaking up the sun and talking with my neighbor, Bill (the ex-U.S. Army Military Intelligence Colonel). He's a very sharp, astute guy and we have many extensive & fascinating conversations. He was stationed in Europe (mostly Germany) for many years, as well as in South Korea. Stateside he worked in the Pentagon and with security details from the U.S. Capitol Building (mostly the U.S. Senate) on electronic countermeasures (i.e., looking for bugs, his specialty). You may recall that I wrote to you about him & his case once before. I've been living next door to him for about 2 years & I'm privy to all his legal filings & his case in general, and I have to tell you that I'm about 90% certain that Bill is totally innocent, and that he was flat out framed. I don't say this lightly; in my 17 years on the row & 30+ years in prison doing legal work & working on guys' cases I've only encountered a few death row cases where I was convinced that the guy was totally innocent. Bill's case is one that deserves to be profiled on 20/20 or 24 hours because it's got everything: sex (a love triangle) crooked cops, crooked prosecutors, fabricated (and destroyed) evidence, all converging to put a well-respected military intelligence officer on death row. I believe the truth will come out (it already is coming out), mainly because he's fortunate enough to have a top-flight legal firm out of Seattle on his case (Bill Gates' father's law firm) and they're digging up all the dirt. There is insufficient space here (and this isn't the place, really) for me to spell out all the sordid details, but you mark my words, you'll be hearing about this case down the line, and if there's any justice a couple of detectives & prosecutors will go to jail (that's hoping for too much, though).

Anyway, tomorrow when I go to the yard I'll take about 10 slices of bread with me (I save it up) to feed the birds. I've got a flock of them that wait for me to show up. I whistle a certain tune and they all fly over (they know that whistle means FOOD!.) If I'm late to the yard they're often there waiting for me, chirping angrily as if to say "Where the Hell have you been with our food?!" Sometimes I feed them pancakes, waffles of French Toast, but they like the straight bread the most. They're mostly little sparrows, with an occasional odd bird, but when the local crows (there's 4 or 5 huge ones that hang around here) show up on the scene, the little birds haul ass. Those crows land on the ground and strut; they know they're the top dog in the yard. I like to caw at them, cuz' often they'll caw back at me (too bad I don't know what I'm saying in crow talk!)

Alright, Sis, lunch is here (probably baloney today) so I'm going to wrap this up. Keep your chin up! I'll be calling you this weekend.

Love & Peace,
Bill