 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live. There was a point in time in the course of my incarceration when I was extremely violent. I've been involved in many knife fights. I've been shot many times. He said, young Mike, he says, you're either with us or you're against us. And I said, well, then I'm against you. And he said, well, all right, young Mike, then you go ahead and you go on in and you make yourself a knife and I'll meet you out here in the morning. That was my introduction to the three inch cockroaches at Old Folsom. I was in a strip cell and it only had a hole in the floor. That's all I had. And the cockroaches would come up through that hole in the floor and they would come up my body and I couldn't lift my arms so they would come up and eat the food off my face. And being confronted with that, I just simply named him. I have no appreciation whatsoever for violence but the fact of the matter is I'm very good at it. I was shot five times once with a shotgun and that was, the gunner was only eight feet off the floor. He was up in a tower just above the fence and so all he did was lean over the tower and what I referred to as point blank range. So I took five rounds in the back and the doctor told me if I didn't have the mass on me of muscle that it would have penetrated my heart and my lungs. But I took the knife away from him and when I put him down he begged for his life. So I tattooed, I choked up on the knife and I tattooed a series of wounds around his heart to remind him that I had given him his life. That's a process and then of course I was engaged in combat with the enemy. At this time it was the Black Panthers and the Black Garela family and the U.S. and the Texas syndicate. And an ally was the Mexican Mafia and the Hells Angels. And of course I've observed numerous knife fights and killings both at the hands of prisoners and guards. He sent two shooters up there. They went into the side door. They shot Gary who was on the couch. They went into the bedroom. They took Margo's two six year old twin daughters. They laid them on the bed, wrapped their arms around their teddy bears. They held Margo and then they shot the little girls in the head while they made her watch and then they shot her in the head. Boom, we're on. And today's guests we've got Michael Thompson. First of all, Michael, just want to say thanks for coming on the show. My pleasure, James. Very fascinating story, Michael. You've just spent over 45 years in prison for a double murder that you've always said you were innocent with. And you just got released last year. While you were in prison, you were one of the leading members of the Ereem Brotherhood. Yes. One of the biggest gangs in America. Unbelievable story. I've watched a few of your documentaries. You seem a very humble, you seem a very cool man as well, but obviously not a man to be messed with back in the day. But like I say, first of all, just want to say thanks for coming on the show. My pleasure. I'll always go back to the start with my guests, Michael, where you grew up and how it all began. Hmm. Well, I grew up on and off the reservation, Big Pine Reservation. It was in, it's at the base of Mount Whitney. It's on the eastern side of the high seers here in California. And then when I was 12 years old, I went to live with my older, he who walks on top of the wind. I just called him walks on top. He had an Arabian horse ranch, ran blacking his cattle. And I spent, I guess, six, seven years with him. And not too long after that, I found myself charged with two counts of murder. And went through the trial, was convicted, and ended up in prison, started at Chino. That's a California institution for men, Chino, California. And I remember it was a rude awakening. How old were you, Michael? Hmm. How old were you? I was 20, I just turned 22. And what was your life like before that? Did you go to school? Yeah, I went to school. The problem was that I couldn't read or write. The school on the reservation, you just showed up for roll call and then you left. But I'm dyslexic and not much was known about dyslexia back then. So I played sports and sports kind of carried me through. I managed as a result of playing sports to get these and most of my classes, but then I got an A in physical education class and then an A in wood shop. And the things that didn't really require me to study, or for that matter, think. And so I graduated high school. And my life was working with horses. And I rode the rodeo circuit. I was a bull rider and hurting cattle. So everything that goes typically along with ranch life, you know, you have your spring roundup so that you care for your cattle and dehorn them, castrate them, give them their shots and call those that are going to go to market. But my joy, I suppose, was working with the horses. I've always loved horses and particularly Arabians. I do have a bias there. And so in addition to riding horses and taking care of the ranch, riding rodeo circuit, that was about it up until the time. As a matter of fact, I had just come off the rodeo circuit prior to being arrested and getting involved in this entire case. So I think within 90 days, something like that didn't take too long. So your life kind of turned upside down. Were you loving life before that, Michael? Were you violent? Were you in prison before? Were you causing trouble? No, I've never been in trouble, never been arrested. And I mean, you know, when you ride the rodeo circuit, you get in fights. Usually when you best, in my case, I was a youngster. So if I had bested the older bull riders in the bull ring, that night we would camp around the rodeo ring. Usually there's an olive grove that surrounds the rodeo rings. And we'd camp out there and more times than not, the older cowboys would get liquored up and come looking for me because I'd bested them in the bull ride. So you had those type of altercations where you squared up and, you know, you would fight, but it wasn't anything like fighting in prison. You know, I was fortunate in that my elder walks on top. It taught me martial arts over the six years that I was with him. And so that helped me a lot. And I was a big kid, you know, by, well, let's see. When I was 12 years old, I was already over six feet and weighed 220. And by the time I was 18, I was 6'4 and weighed 280. So you couple that with the inability to fight and the core strength that comes from doing ranch work. And you can be a force to be reckoned with. What was family life like? Did you have a big family? No, I mean, I have a large family, but my mother wasn't able to take care of all the kids. That's how I ended up on the reservation. And then ultimately with my elder, I was placed with him actually through foster care in California. And that was a blessing. I mean, imagine for a 12-year-old boy to be settled, housed with a rancher, hundreds of acres up in the mountains, Cleveland National Forest, you know, working with horses, working with cattle, everything that comes with ranch life, fishing, hunting. So it was a blessing. Yeah, nature. Yes. So a kid, 12 years old, dyslexic, feels as if he's abandoned. Was working with the horses, nature. Was that your getaway, Michael? Was that your freedom? Were you felt alive? It was. Well, yeah. My elder taught me my ways. We call it the Red Road, so I was raised native. And so we would go to gatherings and we'd attend sweat lodges and ceremonies, and I would dance and sing and participate in the gatherings. And so we traveled really all over doing just that and would travel by horseback sometimes from the ranch down into Mexico to the villages. And we'd have ceremony down there. So my life was pretty much consumed with my spirituality, horses, cattle, fishing, hunting, as you say, nature. Yeah, that's what I believe life is at. And I see your dream catchers in the back there and your feathers. I dream catchers and feathers. And I love nature. I love the native's beliefs as well. How hard was it being a native, though, in the 60s and 70s in America? Was a lot of things calmed down then? Was there still a lot of violence against the natives? Yeah, there was. I mean, you have to remember that, well, I'll just give you by way of example, James, that when I went to prison, it was against the law to practice our ways. So we weren't even allowed to speak our language because if they couldn't understand your language, they didn't know what you were saying, so they wouldn't allow you to speak it. But more than that, you had the three dominant religions, Christianity and Islam and Judaism. And other than that, no other religions were really recognized. So to practice my ways in prison was actually forbidden. But I was blessed in that the first job that I had in prison was for the chaplain. It was a Protestant chaplain. And we had an agreement that if I took care of the chaples, he would allow me to use the garden to practice my ways, and I did. So I was able to go out there and dance and sing and commune, if you will, with nature to the extent that you can behind the iron gates. It can be difficult. Years later, with the passage in 1978 of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, we were allowed to bring sweat lodges behind the iron gates and did. So we built sweat lodges and we would conduct sweats and ceremonies. And so we were able to participate in our way of life even behind the iron gates. And that made a huge difference in my incarceration. But... Before we get into the deep stuff, Michael, I know that natives are very intrigued by the natives' beliefs but why is the eagle so important to the natives? Well, it depends. You'll see an eagle fan over my shoulder here and then there's eagle feathers that are beaded hanging from the eagle portrait that I have there. That particular painting took first place here in California in 1991-92. It's called American Majesty. But the eagle has different meanings for different nations. But the common thread that runs through that is vision. And you see that in nature. You see the eagle has extraordinary vision. They can see a fish in the water a mile up and then come down and take that fish. The American eagle is a fisher eagle. So it primarily fishes. But it's the division. And it is said among some of the nations, for instance, that the eagle carries our prayers under its wing to great mystery. And, you know, there's... Like I said, it depends on the nation that you're talking about. But typically it has to do with vision. You'll find some people that will take the eagle as a totem. But we use it in the context of a grandfather. And the feathers that you see behind me are part of my regalia. So I not only dance with them, but I smudge with them. And it's a cleansing ceremony. And so the grandfather eagle serves us in that capacity. And there are a multitude of reasons that various nations have for using the eagle as a totem. I should perhaps clarify that, you know, when we pray as natives, we don't pray to the eagle, for instance. We pray to great mystery. And oftentimes the eagle is our guide in that. So that, as I said, when I smudge myself, when I smoke the pipe and I send my prayers, oftentimes I'll call upon the eagle to carry those prayers under its wing to great mystery. And... But it's primarily the visionary aspects associated with the eagle itself. What's that in the pipe, Michael? Well, it depends. If you're using the long pipe, which is the people's pipe, then you have ceremony. You have typically seven different ceremonies associated with that. So I had the privilege of holding the people's pipe behind the iron gates for 25 years and conducted hundreds of ceremonies with it. But it depends on the ceremony that you're conducting. So if you're doing a healing ceremony, for instance, then you would take your medicines, which are herbs, but first and foremost amongst them would be tobacco. Tobacco is our first medicine. So we use tobacco as a gift from great mystery and the mother, as our first medicine to call spirit and to send spirit. So you would take tobacco and you would mix that, say, with... Oftentimes it's referred to as a konikinik. So a konikinik is a mixture of medicines for a specific ceremony. So that if I was doing a healing ceremony, then I would start with tobacco, then I might take deer tongue and sage and other medicines and mix those, and then I combine it. And then I load the pipe with a pipe loading song and then have ceremony with that. Then when you light the pipe, you light it from the coals of the spirit fire and then you open the pipe with four breaths of smoke down the pipe stem and then you begin your ceremony. And like I said, there are typically seven different ceremonies associated with the people's pipe. Now, if you have a personal pipe and I have a number of those also, you'll see one over my left shoulder. That's a personal pipe. And so I might use that just in personal ceremony. Oftentimes when I take my regalia out in the morning here, I have a lake that's just to the east of me and that I can see from here. And I'll do my morning ceremony, smudge myself off, load my pipe, say my prayers. And so it's used in a personal context there. Typically the people's pipe is used in ceremony for the people. There are so many religions now, there are so many different beliefs, what's the net of beliefs, Michael? What's the true core beliefs in life? Yeah, there's a commonality that runs between most native cultures and their beliefs, excuse me, vary, but they're nature based. So what we find is we have, of course, reverence for great mystery. There are many names for it. There's the Buddha amongst the Lakota. You know, Gatichi Manitou amongst the Anishinaabe. But it all translates to great spirit or great mystery. And I typically use great mystery in reference to mine, but we use a relationship to all of nature. So the tree people, we don't refer to trees as just trees, but they're people. The rock people is that. The four-legged, the winged ones, the finned ones. I'm water clan, so we believe that everything comes from the water and that everything has a voice is, I suppose, one of the key characteristics that by saying that everything has a voice, that as my elder used to tell me that if you open your heart to the spirit of whatever that is, it will speak to you. And so it's about relationships. So I have a relationship with the tree people. I live here amongst the great redwoods, and they, of course, have a voice, and they communicate with each other. And so it's understanding that intimacy that exists in nature and the opportunity that I have as a human being, a two-legged, to have a relationship with all my relations. So amongst the Lakota again, you know, it would be Mohamed Akiyase, that would mean essentially that you're giving thanks to great mystery and I wish to live amongst all my relations, all my relatives. So it would be one aspect with the Anishinaabe, it would be different, it would be in their language, it would be compared to Waibonung, which is a spirit that dwells in the east, and the one that we rely upon heavily towards guiding us. Mughlajanini would be another one, but we have names and creation stories for all the things that I'm talking about. It depends on what nation that we're making reference to and what they're using. For instance, with the Lakota has 30 different aspects. There's a cosmology associated with that. I won't get too deep into that because that's something that all nations hold dear to themselves and privately. So typically to discuss these things, it requires permission. But I can speak about them in generalities without going too deep into the creation stories themselves or the significance to the people. But to answer your question, the significance of all native life is its relationship to great mystery, the skyfather, which is the sun, and grandmother moon, relationship to the rest of the planets and the star people. It is the star people where we make our dream journeys to. For instance, when we put the bear to sleep, some nations don't do that, but most nations will put the bear to sleep in the fall. And so then when the great medicine bear makes its dream journey to the star people, we also have that opportunity to do the same thing. The reason why I'm trying to get so deep into this, Michael, I wonder what the connections are like in through life. You talk about the mystery of life. When you get 45 years, you say you're innocent. Obviously, we'll get deeper into the conversation, but I want to feel how you connected that to your native ways to then everything that happened in your life and how everything's connected and how you see it. Obviously, your life changed at 22 years old when there was a double murder. You spent over 45 years in prison. How did that happen? What had happened was that two individuals, they were drug dealers and they had a plan apparently to kidnap two little girls of one of the individuals that was running a cartel, drug cartel here in California. And so my wife at the time, her cousin, was working with him and he had let me know one evening during a phone call that this kidnap was going to occur and I told him that he needed to call the father of those children to know that this was going to happen. He wouldn't do it, so I got the phone number and I called him and let him know. And that was really the extent of my participation in this whole affair, was letting this man know that his children were going to be kidnapped. But what happened was that subsequently when these two individuals attempted to kidnap the girls, of course the father was now aware and both individuals were killed during their attempt to kidnap these little girls. And they were killed with their own weapons. Their weapons were taken away from them and they were killed and they were buried. Like I said, that was the extent of my participation. You know, when I went to trial and they arrested me and my defense was that I knew nothing about this other than what I just told you and that's of course what I told the jury. But there were other people, my co-defendants, that were testifying against me saying that I concocted this plot about a kidnap plot and the reason I did was to steal away with one of the victim's wives and none of that was true. So my only resort at that point was to take polygraph tests. That's a lie detector test. So I did that, I took two of them. I took one from the FBI and I took one from the Department of Justice. I passed both but they were not admissible in court. In any rate, I was convicted. The interesting thing about that, James, is that I'm now back in court and just received a ruling from the Appellate Court here in California Fourth District that set aside one of those murder convictions. Well, let me clarify that. It's not set aside yet. I filed a petition. The court denied it. I appealed it. The Appellate Court granted it and sent me back to court. So now I'm back in court on the merits and I have every reason to believe that one of the convictions will be set aside. Now we're having to go on to the California Supreme Court with the other conviction. But ultimately what I'm after here is exoneration and I believe I will arrive at that exoneration at some point in the near future. It's taken a long time. It's been almost 50 years. That's how late people are, some people. It is. But I was steadfast in my innocence at the time of trial and maintained my innocence the whole time that I was incarcerated. So I went to the Board of Parole Hearings 18 times, the 19th time they released me. But each one of those 18 times they wanted me to admit to the crime and I wouldn't do that. So not only because I was innocent but unprincipled. So I probably could have been released had I admitted to the crime but I just simply was not going to do that unprincipled. I'm not going to admit to something that I didn't do. So hopefully that's all being rectified now but in the meantime I was sent off to prison. What evidence did they have against you, Michael? Was it a setup or was it racism? What they essentially had was a testimony of my co-defendants. They never said that I killed anybody but one of the co-defendants said that I did assault one of the victims and that in that assault under the felony murder rule here in California based on his testimony and his testimony alone saying that I was present and that I assaulted one of the victims that by virtue of lying and wait to assault this individual that based on what's called the felony murder rule in other words if you commit a felony in this case an assault and the person dies subsequently to that then you're guilty of whatever that crime is in this case murder. So the co-defendant admitted killing both victims but because he said that I had assaulted one of them that under the felony murder rule I was convicted of both murders. Now last year the California legislature threw out the felony murder rule and revised it and so that if you were just an eater and a better which was the case with me based on the assault then whereas I was found guilty now the new law says you can't be found guilty so that allowed me to go back into court and have these murder charges removed and that's where I'm at right now with it so it was just simply his testimony saying that I was present and again this was based on he and my other co-defendant who was the father of these children testifying that I concocted this kidnap plot well when the co-defendant went before the board he acknowledged that the two victims had approached him about the kidnap plot and wanted him to help them kidnap the children now that was evidence that didn't come out in court but he had to testify under oath before the board and now we have that testimony and that helps me of course because it's completely contrary to his original testimony would you they had made cool when the two kids get murdered two boys get murdered? no I wasn't like I said my only involvement in this was to call the father and tell him of this what was going to be an attempt to kidnap his children I felt that as a father he had a right to know that I didn't care about his business I didn't care about him actually but I did care about the two children and the potential for them to be kidnapped for ransom and so I made the call to him and I acknowledged that I did that and if I had it to do over again I would do the same thing that is what was important to me was that the father know that his children were going to be kidnapped and like I said when that attempt was made the two individuals that were making the attempt were killed so at 22 years old your whole life ahead of you spiritual guy, love horses, love and nature try to do the right thing and help save girls it then backfires to be then doing life in prison on the day of sentencing Meiko did you know that you were going to get a guilty? well I really didn't know anything you know I was a fish and like I said I'd never been arrested never been in trouble and so I didn't we referred to somebody that's new to the prison system as a fish and I was definitely a fish I didn't know anything about it so there was a huge learning curve as it relates to that but the biggest thing that I had to contend with almost immediately was the idea of being housed in a cage you know I hold to this day that the the absolutely worst thing that you can do to a human being is put them in a cage and that's what they did with me they put me in a cage now I'd been living in the mountains running the mountains and had no idea what it was like to be caged but that was the only time in my life James that I ever contemplated suicide because I was standing in a cell and I looked around me and I thought hmm I can't do this I cannot do this but there was a rock person that was sticking protruding out from the side of the wall high up on the cell wall and I saw it and I went up and I put my hand on it and it's just like this rock that I wear around my neck and that's why I wear this rock around my neck just like that and I went up and I put my hand on it and it spoke to me and all it said was it's going to be alright little one and that's all I needed my spirituality was there for me the spirit of the rock person spoke to me and from then on I was good it didn't make it any easier to live in that cage but I did have my spirituality and even though I wasn't allowed to have my regalia I would make things I would save the you know you have stone fruit like peaches and nectarines and that and so that if we got those which was rare but we did get them you know I would save those in my cell because that gave me a connection to nature if we were given for instance grapefruit you get a half of grapefruit so I would take the pith out of that grapefruit half and I would put it up in the air vent and I would dry it and then I'd wait for another half to come and I'd put that up in the vent and dry it then I'd wait for an apple and when an apple would come I would dry the seed excuse me dry the seeds then I would take the lining out of my boxer shorts and I would sew the two halves of the grapefruit together with the apple seeds inside and I'd take paper and I'd burnish it and I'd braid it around the sewed together grapefruit grapefruit halves and that was my rattle so now I had a rattle and in my culture the rattle represents the first sound heard in the universe so we use our rattles to call spirit and sense spirit so you'll see that I'm surrounded by rattles here I have a turtle rattle up here I have a gourd rattle up over here and I use those every day to call spirit well I did the same thing with those grapefruit halves so that allowed me to connect with nature with my spirituality even in the dungeon I spent a lot of time in the dungeon so I always found a way I would have mice come into my cell so those became my relatives I would have scorpions and snakes and spiders and those became my relatives so when I was in solitary confinement and I spent many years in solitary confinement I would connect with these relatives and that made it easier for me but as I advanced in my pursuit of education I eventually became a biologist and I did so because of my spirituality I thought that because of my spirituality the biology, the study of life would be a good field to enter it didn't quite work out that way because science is much different but it allowed me to further my knowledge as it relates to my spirituality and I did that and continue to do that to this day so while I had those things available to me while I was pursuing my education and learning to read and learning to write because I couldn't read or write when I went to prison but eventually I taught myself how to read and write Chaplain England the chaplain I first worked for he started me on the path to that and he was the first one to realize that I was dyslexic so he would bring me magazines and different things on fishing and hunting horsemanship things that I would identify with and that helped me learn to comprehend what I was reading and then later in Old Folsom the Black Garella family and the Black Panthers I had a book on the tier and I would get a copy of it and I would follow along so I improved my reading skills by doing things like that but where I was going with that the worst thing you can do with the human being is put him in a cage when I became a biologist I came across a piece in zoology that dealt with what was called zucosis and zucosis is when they capture a wild animal in nature and they bring it in and they put it in a cage and the animal cannot stand it so it either kills itself or it dies of natural causes from the stress of being caged and so I use that by way of analogy to term to coin the term and zucosis so pancosis is when you take a human being and you put them in a cage and I've seen many many people perish die, commit suicide or just simply die as a result of being in a cage and that is I think perhaps the greatest struggle that any prisoner anywhere in the world as a human being has being in a cage is surviving that and what you have to do to maintain your sanity and your spirituality if you have it and your health, your physical health because it breaks all those things down you deteriorate your mind deteriorates, your body deteriorates and you perish but the most important one maker I'd imagine it kills your soul but that's why it's so good to touch on your beliefs at the start like your spirituality because I wanted to know if you would maybe turned against your beliefs because you've just been sentenced to life for a double murder you never done a lot of people would have turned their back on their beliefs but you didn't you kind of focus more on those beliefs and started to that's what saved your life basically well I agree with you James it is what saved my life that connection but I want to emphasize that in my pursuit of survival that I compromised my spirituality by being so violent there was a point in time in the course of my incarceration when I was extremely violent I've been involved in many knife fights I've been shot many times there's been a lot of bloodletting and in my culture we call it having blood on your hands so it even became an issue when the elders brought people's pipe to me there was objection by many people because I had so much blood on my hands but what they don't understand about a pipe holder in that context is that is responsibility is to serve the people and in serving the people is to sue for peace whenever possible but if that's not possible then more times than not it will lead into warfare so he is a warrior in addition to being a pipe holder but in my case I compromised my spirituality by becoming involved with the Aryan Brotherhood which was a prison gang and a faction of organized crime and those things actually went contrary to my spirituality and the idea that my goal, my purpose in life is to serve my way of life and to help people and being a member of the Aryan Brotherhood went totally contrary to that so it was four or five, six years into that that I received a visit from a number of elders who were attending a gathering in the Pacific Northwest and they simply told me they came in and they told me you're serving two truths you're serving two fires and you cannot serve two fires, you must choose and so I did I chose my way of life and my spirituality and there were a number of things that went along with that there were things happening that I did not agree with that were contrary to my belief system and so I reached a point where I did have to choose was I going to condone the activities that I was involved in the violence toward innocent people was I going to step back on the road, the Good Red Road and acknowledge my purpose in life and I made that decision and but you're absolutely correct in your thinking James about the idea that it was my spirituality that was my salvation and it was my spirituality that brought me back to step back on the Good Red Road and to reconnect with my humanity because there was a number of years there when I was not a very good human being I certainly was an example to the younger men and women in my culture that would otherwise have looked up to a pipe holder or a lodge leader or somebody that professed to be spiritual so what was your first day in prison like Michael it was culture shock I guess is the best way to explain it because you're dealing with a subculture of society that has its own roles and then of course the prison administration roles but that's an entirely different thing the ones that govern prison are those that are established they called it the convict code so that's the dos and don'ts of prison and so you just kind of feel your way through my first day in prison was kind of finding my way through the ins and outs of where you go you know you're given a sale you go through a series of tests psychological evaluations you see a psych they test your IQ and then you're mingling if you will with other prisoners so you kind of get a sense of your environment you take that in where your place might be in that environment so you know prison is about hustle so everybody's got a hustle and so you learn these things and there's an enormous learning curve as it relates to that but the key thing for me was to maintain my integrity one is a man as a human being and to be my own man and so that was my focus because there's an onslaught of influences that's from drugs to alcohol to gangs I mean it's just a multitude of different things as a youngster that you're looking at and that you have choices to make and so those choices determine your place or your standing within the environment in which you live and that can be very stressful it and can take a minute it can take a minute how many gangs were in those prisons in the 70's may call that did you get approached every day with different gangs or was it just Derry and Brotherhood straight away what was the process at the reception center you don't typically have gangs organized you have a permanent work crew and it isn't to say that there aren't gang members associated with that but you have no recruitment process so the reception center is just where you go through these battery of tests and then you're shipped off to another prison like San Quentin or Folsom, Tracy Solidad and so on and then that's where your gangs have standing that's where they have their strongholds so an old Folsom in San Quentin that was a stronghold for Brotherhood in the Mexican Mafia and then you had other groups like the Black Panthers Black Guerrilla family, Texas Centigate and the Western Familia the Western Familia stronghold was in Tracy and that's where I was sent to so that's where the recruitment process begins now I got into a wreck with the the Western Familia Tracy and ended up being shipped out as a result of my violence to Old Folsom so when I arrived in Old Folsom that's really what they called the Big House that's where the big boys are at so all your leaders of those groups I just mentioned were there in addition to Charlie Manson and his group and Joe Romero and the Sibonese Liberation Army and other groups and these were all men that were older than I was I was the youngest person there and so again it was an educated process so the first group that attempted to recruit me because they knew that I was raised native was the Black Panthers and that was Hugo Yogi Pinal he was their leader and he attempted to recruit me and I declined so the next day we went head up in a knife fight and he ended up losing a knife fight but I ended up being shot and so there was this succession of events all violent that followed that then the Aryan Brotherhood attempted to recruit me and I declined them ultimately at one point four members of the Aryan Brotherhood were also native approached me and essentially what they told me was that they lived better in prison that they ever did on the res and they knew I was an old res dog and the res I grew up on was dirt floors they had a few 12 foot tear drop travel trailers but you know the time I spent on the res I slept underneath the trailer I never slept inside and it was abject poverty so when these four individuals with the Aryan Brotherhood natives told me that they lived better in prison than they ever did on the res that resonated with me I understood that so they began to explain to me how they controlled their resources as members of the Aryan Brotherhood and that's really what all the gangs were about back then was controlling the resources and you had a population that ran from 3,000 to 6,000 depending on where you're talking about it old Folsom or Sanquen and a lot of money available there by way of revenues for drug trafficking, alcohol, prostitution loan sharking commodities in general jobs the gangs controlled all the jobs positions of those jobs the pay numbers associated with those jobs and so on so that appealed to me that's the reason I actually decided to join the Aryan Brotherhood do you think you maybe manipulated to join them as well at a young age well you know it's easy enough to say that no man likes to think that he's vulnerable to manipulation but certainly I was and as I said you know what these natives 3 were Pit River and 1 was my due and you know it actually made sense to me logically it made sense to me that if I was going to live in this kind of environment then I wanted to control that environment I didn't want to be controlled by it so you know I was persuaded certainly manipulated I don't think so but I was persuaded and it just made good sense to me you know before I before I was 30 I stepped away from the brand so it didn't take that long to realize that I was caught up in something that was certainly much bigger than I was and that it was involved in activities that just absolutely went contrary to everything I believed as I said as the elders told me I was living too truest and I had to make a decision and I did so say when you have like a knife off like why was it not just a fight like who comes up with the idea okay get a knife and then we'll meet you the next day like how is that possible why not just have a fight with your fists this fighting really isn't very effective in prison and typically isn't condoned because if you're in a fist fight you usually want to fight a curse they're going to lock down the prison and if you're in a fight then you're confined quarters for 10 days depending on if you were shot or stabbed and you know your wounds are healed and then they do a risk assessment and what it does is it disrupts business so fist fighting is not condoned and knife fighting on the other hand is a matter of principle in this case you know when Yogi attempted to recruit me you know he essentially he expressed their communist manifesto and I'm not going to embrace communism I didn't really understand I was too young and really too stupid to understand what communism was but I knew that I was an American and that I wasn't going to embrace communism so when I denied him what he said to me was that he called me young Mike he said young Mike he says you're either with us or you're against us and I said well then I'm against you and he said well all right young Mike then you go ahead and you go on in and you make yourself a knife and I'll meet you out here in the morning so it was a matter of face in other words you could not deny and that's the politic of gangs in prison and so I did I went in that night and I made a knife and I came out the next morning and he had a knife and we engaged in a knife fight and we were being shot at the whole time and ultimately he ran when he started to lose and I chased him and he had two body guards that attempted to intercede and I got into a knife fight with them and during that with them I was shot I was shot in the back and so that put me down but it was the same way I mean you know when I was approached to join the Aryan Brotherhood same thing I declined and I didn't know that was unheard of you didn't decline membership in the Aryan Brotherhood there were many people who were trying to get in and it was a very elite and exclusive organization very few people were members and that was based on the requirements that they had to meet physical prowess first and foremost and the ability to control your environment by yourself now there was nobody else that you could walk into any prison and take over that prison and you had to have that capacity physically first and foremost but also intellectually to control your environment what was it like getting shot Michael hmm well it was interesting it it dropped me of course and it takes your wind and in this case I was shot with an M14 which is a 223 round fairly hot round it was developed during World War 2 as a sniper rifle and the idea was is that the round was so hot that it would pass through the victim that the sniper was shooting at and the purpose was is that when that victim would fall others would come out to help them and the sniper would have more victims so in this case when I was shot the gunner was 50 feet up on a wall and so the trajectory of the projectile was such that it came down in such a way that it struck me in the back and it lodged next to my spine instead of passing through me with the guts with it but it didn't and apparently the spin on it was such that it lodged next to my spine and that's where it stayed but it dropped me like a sack of potatoes and took my wind and so I was taken to the hospital and they probed it and the doctor decided that because of where it was at next to my spine to leave it he wasn't going to do surgery so he left it but paralysis set in and they would slide a food tray up underneath the door and it would take me about an hour because of the paralysis to roll over and I would just stick my face in the tray and eat what I could and it would take me about another hour to roll back over and that was my introduction to the three inch cockroaches at Old Folsom I was in a strip cell that's all I had and the cockroaches would come up through that hole in the floor and they would come up my body and I couldn't lift my arms so they would come up and eat the food off my face and being confronted with that I just simply named them and so every time I ate then they would come up and they would eat and by then I knew them by name so eventually I went back out to the yard but I still couldn't it was only ten days later I couldn't lift my arms and I could only shuffle step and I went back out to the yard and four blacks took me to the ground and stabbed me and I couldn't defend myself and so then I had to recover from that also so it was a succession of events that were all violent and either I was being shot or stabbed in my altercations and the blessing in that the opportunity if you will has a bias in that was that I had been trained by my elder and so that training prepared me for this level of violence and I told David Gran with New Yorker magazine one time that because he was asking about the violence and um I told him that I deplore violence and I do I have no appreciation whatsoever for violence but the fact of the matter is I'm very good at it and so with that said it was that that actually was my salvation my training and so I maintained that training even to this day how hard is that then Michael to be in prison for two murders that he didn't do to then stabbing people to then being shot was that when you had to just register in your mind that okay it's killer be killed mentality yes it is a matter of survival and it is killer be killed I never actually took life I didn't have to my skill set was sufficient enough that I could defeat my opponents um without having to kill them unfortunately I was shot a number of times but you know I survived that and lived through that the key to a knife fight in the joint as you keep moving and because you're moving it makes you a difficult target so you know you may take most well I was shot five times once with a shotgun and that was the gunner was only eight feet off the floor he was up in a tower just above the fence and so all he did was lean over the tower and what I referred to as point blank range so I took five rounds in the back and the doctor told me if I didn't have the mass on me a muscle that it would have penetrated my heart and my lungs but because of the mass I had the shot um I still have hundreds of shot in me um from that but um that was probably the most difficult time other than that being shot is it either passes through it knocks you down as long as it doesn't hit anything vital um you know they probe it if they need to sew it up they sew it up they put a plug in it um and um you heal so um I was never stabbed sufficiently to where um it required anything um I mean I've sutured myself up I've set my own bones I've broken bones and um you do most of that yourself um so again that those are things that my elder actually prepared me for um I grew up I think exposed to catastrophic events fire flood you know dealing with animals hunting particularly when you hunt bear um so that when situations would occur that others would consider catastrophic I developed a way to contend with those and so when I went to prison I had that um experience with me so that when confronted with the catastrophic event I didn't panic and I will say that the first time I went out to the yard and engaged in a knife fight that everything happened very very quick it was hard to keep everything that was going on but by the fourth time I went out everything slowed down to almost slow motion and that's because our brain has what's called a virtual reality um and it creates this virtual reality of the yard what's in the yard and so you no longer have to assess that in your brain because your brain has already done it and so you acquire that by way of a skill set and I won't say that it becomes easier but it doesn't but uh it's less difficult to contend with so you develop a new skill set as it relates to knife fighting and violence avoid being shot at least being shot in the head you know as I've taken shots in the leg and um other areas of the body but I've never had a vital organ hit so that's as a result of um writing what's the difference from hunting a bear to then well stabbing a bear or stabbing a human do you find it the same or is it totally different when you become so immune to it like like you say life or death do you feel it the same or was it it's a great question yeah I actually use the analogy in my writings um the bear hunt itself you know when I hunted bear I hunted bear with bow and arrow and so um typically if you're hunting bear the bear is one of the few animals it and the tiger that'll turn around and hunt you and so when you're hunting a bear with bow and arrow if that bear charges and often times they do um you have to take their shoulders out first so that means that you're while the bear is charging you you have to knock your arrow and um fire and hit the bear in the shoulder um and incapacitate that shoulder and usually it takes both shoulders and then you take a vital so and then you can go up with your knife afterwards and you can cut its throat um so you know for those who have been charged by a bear know how that feels um you have to stand your ground so you have to stay calm under that kind of pressure uh when you're dealing with a human being in a knife fight that's a matter of skill um with that knife and knowing what you're doing with it you know I'd been taught not only how to make knives but how to use it and so I had that skill set um but there's nothing um I take no satisfaction in in stabbing another person I've done so on a number of occasions um in my knife fights particularly the older knife fights where you actually had the opportunity to engage in uh what's called long-term combat you can bleed your opponent as opposed to stabbing your opponent so if you bleed your opponent then they grow weak and you typically have them so then the choice is then you're to take their life or not take their life I always chose not to take their life I never saw any value in that he was defeated he was defeated I got a criticism for that because people would say I left him alive to come back and get me another day but that never happened I did have instances where an individual tried to stab me uh where I didn't have a knife and um essentially that was an attempt at assassination but I took the knife away from him and when I put him down he begged for his life so I tattooed I choked up on the knife and there was a series of wounds around his heart to remind him that I had given him his life um but uh fortunately as I say I've never had to take life as a result of my skill set and um I'm grateful for that actually um the violence it does impact upon you um I'm not a sociopath I'm not a psychopath even though I was trained to contend with violence and even though I had a skill set uh that enabled me to defeat my opponents violence still impacts upon you and did me and uh does to this day you know as I tell these stories that I'm telling right now you know I'm reliving those in my head in order to tell the story I have to see it in my head um it's not just something off the cuff and so you know even right now I'm telling you about my first bear hunt um you know and and what occurs there but also my first knife fight you know I can see that very vividly you know I can where there's fear involved and I've been engaged with individuals who have become quite fearful in the course of that fight you can smell that fear and um you know when I retell these stories you know that scent comes to me you can smell the blood the copper scent blood and that comes to me in telling these stories so what it forms is is a kind of PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder and my biggest problem in being released from prison was PTSD uh um sensory overload it was just too much after being living in a cage for 45 years and then just it dropped me in the middle of Los Angeles and um it was too much you seem a very cool collective like character like you're so like you say it's very calculated from what I see to your moves if you were a chess player I believe you'd be checkmate on every single person because of the calculated mindset but when you're getting asked to join gangs a man like yourself is 6 feet 4 over 200 pounds very strong very powerful like why didn't you choose to fly solo Michael well because I think you see the advantage in survival you know you understand what you're dealing with you take you take in you assess if you will your environment and you see who's in control so you're not going to be able to do your own time that's what they call it in some capacity you're going to have to serve the gangs um in some way everybody does you know this idea that I'm just going to do my own time doesn't work so you realize that so my thinking was is that um I'm not going to serve the gang by doing my own time so if I become a member of the gang then I'm going to take control and I'm going to control my environment you know I'm going to control the gang and I did that within a year I became a leader within a year and um so and that came about organically I mean I don't mean to make this sound like that was calculated um I was actually too young to have that kind of mindset but um I was properly schooled in how to assess my situation to know my terrain to know my enemy to infiltrate that you see it's a sun suing characteristic to infiltrate your enemy that's right mm-hmm yeah so I mean in and um in my elder was an advocate of um that type of philosophy and we want to remember that philosophy is really nothing more than the human condition, not human nature so the human condition was what I was learning about and it was a huge learning curve and so I had decisions made and choices to make and I made them and um many of those decisions and choices were wrong and um but even in that you know when people say well do you regret it no I don't because I did but I thought I needed to do at the time to survive now as I evolved in my humanity and in my perspectives as it relates to the environment I was in I realized that it was not for me and that I couldn't condone it and so I stepped away um but in doing that you know I also had to assume responsibility for that which I had um to hold by way of infrastructure um in my leadership role so again that was another decision I had to make another choice I had to make and I made that choice what was the decision when was the decision to join the Errin Brotherhood it was in uh 77 78 and um so um I stepped away in 83 so you got a good four or five years there where I was heavily involved and um serving as a leader and um involved in a lot of activities that had to do with controlling my environment how many people were in the Errin Brotherhood in the 70s may or well you didn't have more than a dozen at the time you know like I said it was a very small organization you know it could have reached as many as 20 at one time but um you know by comparison to the other gangs who had hundreds uh like I said the format for um membership in the brand was not only your physical prowess but your ability to control your environment on your own by yourself what does it take to get in the Errin Brotherhood well I've heard a lot of talk about bloody and blood out I never experienced that I was engaged in knife fights and a lot of blood and a lot of violence prior to even being asked to join so there was no um stipulation or otherwise a requirement on um on my part nor did I ever require it of anyone else you know one of the first things I did um in developing the infrastructure of the Errin Brotherhood was to do away with this idea that you put a knife in the hand of an individual that doesn't have that skill set you're setting him up for failure so what was more important to me was to understand and discern what that person's talents were so he might be good at dealing drugs he might be good at prostitution whatever it might be moving commodities whatever it might be running a steel working the kitchen food stuffs and so then you as an associate you cultivate that so the idea was to cultivate associates that weren't actual members and that required creating a buffer system almost a cadre system if you will and um providing an infrastructure and that's one of the things that I did in developing the infrastructure so um I never required of anybody um well you know all the time that I was a member there was only one person that ever came up for a vote for membership and I declined I wouldn't let him in I didn't think he was worthy um simply stated other than um um a reasonable intelligence but um a whole lot of bravado um and bravado doesn't get you there um and arrogance and uh I don't think that a warrior needs to be arrogant I don't think um that's a requirement of a skill set um I think a warrior is a human being and as such in my teaching is that a warrior's place is to protect and to provide and so that if you're in a homeland setting then it's to protect your family it's to protect your community that's a warrior's role um but if you arrogantly think that it's about um violence and all that and you're a bag of chips and you dominate people and um um you hurt people unnecessarily and this is what I saw in this person and so I refused to let him in what was it like then when you when it started bolding there in brotherhood is that the first time you you felt you had a family meiko no the first time I felt I had a family it was with my elder and you know I had a I had an incident when I was a young boy um I was beaten by Native men and um they hurt me pretty bad and I was able to get away from them and uh I ran off into the wilderness really and I climbed up on these rocks mostly for my own safety um because they were liquored up and I I think I thought that uh they wouldn't be able to climb the rocks but at any rate I was up on these rocks and I was a very young boy and um I had I guess what most folks would refer to as an epiphany um or a revelation but what happened was is that I was looking through the trees huge magnificent trees and I had all these rock people around me and and um it occurred to me that just as I was aware of my environment it was aware of me that was the mother and I heard the wind in the trees I heard the tree people I heard the rock people and um I realized I had a family and that was my relationship to the mother and that's actually where my family ties, my relationships began as a young boy and my love for nature continued and so I was never very sociable I mean only because I didn't have the opportunity I mean I lived on a ranch up in the mountains so you know when I went to rodeos I would I would interact with other bull riders and the like but you know I never drank I never used drugs I never saw the need um so you know I didn't date um in high school because I had chores to do you know I had horses to look after and so um you know becoming a member of the Aryan Brotherhood I think like any gang for any person joining any gang it does become a family and the gangs actually use that the um the leadership will encourage that to um manipulate youngsters um to join the gang but the key thing to that is the reason they do that is to make them expendable to use them and that's what they do bar none every gang does it they bring in individuals they're considered expendables they're used and then they're discarded and um I know a lot of individuals that I've worked with over the years since I stepped away and I think to that and it's very very traumatic because they believed that they'd finally found a family you know they grew up without a family or they grew up without a father they grew up um you know in the hood or the body hole um and uh didn't have a family and so the gang to them represented for the first time in their life that family and um that's what motivated them to to join their dismay um complete dismay um they were discarded and it crushed them and uh traumatized them and uh so it's one of the reasons I started the group that I live, learn and prosper it's a non-profit that I started in prison with my wife and uh we started it specifically for individuals who had dropped out of gangs they helped them cope with the very thing that I'm talking about right now the post-traumatic stress disorder associated with being an expendable of that gang having been violated, having their humanity literally violated and I still do that work to this day and um it's important so part of what I do is to educate and uh I do that by coming on shows like yours and talking about these things openly about uh you know because you James you asked a great question you know did it feel like the first time I was a part of a family in my particular case no but for the most part yes that is the case um you know I guess I'm the exception there See when you're hotting people Michael and how much did you use your spirit Charlie as a I wouldn't say as an excuse but we can use that to try and justify the bad shit that we do like a caged animal and feeling as if you what you were doing at that time was worthwhile like it's killer be killed mentality but how much did you use your spirit Charlie as to justify what you were doing because like you said earlier you can't do both you can't be spiritual but yet hurt another human but you've still got to defend yourself I don't believe that you can yeah James I don't believe that you can and I don't think that I did that's where I made reference to the fact that I actually stepped off the red road and realized that I had particularly when the elders came to see me and told me that I was serving two fires so I wasn't using my spirituality to justify my violence or my activities in fact I had let my spirituality wane um as a result um and that that was the terrible thing about it is realizing that I had done that you know when when the elders brought me the people's pipe it was it was with a pipe bag medicine bag huge bag the medicine bundle is what it's called and it was absolutely gorgeous it was um you know three and a half feet long and um a good 18 inches across and it had eagle feathers and bear medicine and elk medicine and my goodness it was just gorgeous and the strap there was attached to it it was a like a two inch strap was beaded and um you know beadwork there's a story so I had asked one of the elders to tell me the story of the beadwork when they presented me with this medicine bundle and she said um she said well you see those arrows there that are going up the strap towards grandfather's eye and I said yes she said that's your path that's the good red road I said oh and I saw these wavy lines next to it and I said well what are the wavy lines elder she said ah she said that's life you see life takes us off the good red road because we're human beings and that's what those wavy lines represent the key is is to understand that you stepped off the road and stepped back on those straight arrows towards great mystery and so I never forgot that experience with that and so stepping back on the good red road provided me with an opportunity to be a servant again um and I didn't get caught up in those things that I had done by way of justification or rationalization there is no justification there is no rationalization it simply is a matter of survival and that's what I thought I was engaged in um and I still believe that could I have done things differently of course I could have you know what that would have been you know who knows that's a hindsight characteristic but in a moment you know you have a choice to make and you make that choice and you go with it and you live with it as best you can in my particular case I was confronted with circumstances that made me reevaluate what I was doing and how I was doing it and I did that and then I made another choice and I was to step away um because it was not in keeping with um who I believe myself to be what was the daily routine like was it everyday survival mode Michael especially in the area in brotherhood was everyday I had a new life or was there some days you felt safe I was everyday on edge no it's uh survival is such that um there is no rest from it none um you know there are those many of those that use drugs and that was their escape they would get loaded or they would get drunk um I never did you know my escape um was education was books um you know I wanted to educate myself and I wanted to learn to read and I wanted to learn to write and I did and once I did that I put myself through college and um I started that even while I was a member of the area in brotherhood but I had an organization to run also I had to go out and work out everyday um back then I was lifting a lot of iron and um I would teach others how to fight um those um who read would read uh philosophies like um Sun Tzu The Art of War Nici Beyond Good and Evil um the other side of that is thus Spake Zarathustra um Machiavelli Carl von Klauswitz and then a dialogue would result as a result of that reading by way of what people got out of that and the idea was was not to mirror what you were reading but to make it your own so you know years later I understood that to be self-efficacy and um I did that as a result of my association with a um brilliant man named um um Albert Bandura who developed the the theory of self-efficacy um through um a social philosophy is really what it is but at any rate um my everyday activities were engaged in um advancing the structure of the Aryan Brotherhood and those who were members and those who were associates so through um relationship through um training um through education and through deeds actually you know following through with things that needed to be done making those decisions, command decisions um developing uh counter measures to law enforcement's approach to uh the gangs uh counter intelligence if you will so I developed that um and um developed uh smuggling weapons into the prison as opposed to cutting knives out of steel that was already in the prison um I learned as a result of uh physics how to beat metal detectors and so once I learned how to beat metal detectors then I had a group of individuals on the street smuggle knives into the prison so I was using um buck knives you know folding buck knives that when you unfold them are almost nine inches long and very very sharp yet um I smuggled uh they didn't have cell phones back then but I smuggled CB radios in so I was in contact with uh all my members that lived in different buildings within the prison uh through CB radium I smuggled in guns um so um that's a process and then of course I was engaged in combat with the enemy at this time it was the black panthers and black gorilla family and the west of famigian the texas syndicate and an ally was the mexican mafia and the hell's angels and so it was a matter of um um interacting with those groups uh creating the infrastructure for the arian brotherhood itself and how that fit with the other groups the development of resources mastering those resources the effective utilization of those resources um like a business and uh so that's that was my daily routine so obviously when you've got rivals but then you're making a business you're smuggling guns you're smuggling drugs could nobody get the heads of all the rival gangs make a piece while everybody can still make money or was everybody trying to be the head of the prison and try to take control of the drugs and the money yeah that actually did occur it was um that old fulsome and um we had paired off with uh the black panthers and black gorilla family numerous times and um it was actually by agreement because of the way the place was set up so um they would go down to the lower end of the yard and we would amass it the upper end of the yard and then upon an agreed uh time we would merge and um so one of these times where we were merging as groups to fight um I noticed that the regards up on the second tier looking out the window taking book betting as people paired off with their knives they were taking book on them and I stopped everybody I just yelled I stopped everybody everybody stopped and I said look we're there entertainment so we need to stop this right now and let's come together and we did we stopped it we came together uh we called the truce and we started talking about um you know how we might improve our environment and how we might facilitate that improvement in other words what we needed to do in cooperation with each other as opposed to competing and cooperation is very very difficult in prison it's difficult to get cooperation amongst groups even within your own group it can be difficult to get to cooperation but cooperation amongst the guards and so on and oftentimes that's um of necessity extremely manipulative um you know I've been referred to as a master manipulator and in that context I am um like everything else in my life I've turned that around I've taken all the skills that I acquired as a leader of the area in brotherhood and applied them to legitimate practices because they're the same you see the difference here is that you're doing legitimate work you're doing it without infringing upon anybody else's rights you know even with a non-profit I'm attempting to persuade people to volunteer to help but you see I'm not infringing upon anybody's rights and that makes the difference plus you get a clean heart with it as well there's truth in that James well said thank you brother so how much drugs were you smuggling in each week I tell the story about how the FBI once I stepped away told me that they estimated that an old Folsom alone in 1978 that the area in brotherhood took 3.5 million dollars in drugs out um let me get this thing off the um so that'll give you an idea I mean it's very lucrative um the problem was at that time was that the vast majority of the members were drug users drug addicts and so the vast majority of any revenues that were being generated as a result of the sale of drugs uh was going into the arms of the members and their associates um so that's not good business so the idea was is to stop the drug use and to use those resources towards uh um essentially what came down to was organized crime activities and um the um group the faction of organized crime that I think we most emulated was the Italian Mafia and what they'd done with their organization by way of infrastructure and so that was the goal yeah the mafia are very well run but that's why they've run America for many years it's unbelievable that the way the five families have operated that they talk about the skill set and the it's just master mean and some things how they've still I don't know how big they are now I interviewed Michael Francesi not so long ago and he was he was pulling in like 8 to 10 million pounds a week unbelievable what the mindset can do and where you can take it with the right skills that when did the when did the Aryan brotherhood then become because obviously the Nazi signs that and the 70s as well what was that later on the swastikas didn't occur until later on you had the shamrock you know which I have on my ring finger right there but um 666 was an application by some members and it was to represent really the antichrist in the sense that anti-establishment so you know the story goes St. Patrick taught the trilogy in Ireland using the shamrock so the 666 was a shout out contrary to that anti-establishment so but the swastika didn't come until years later you know many of my battles in the beginning were with neo-nazis I'm not a fan never have been don't like anything that they stand for I'm quite familiar with Hitler and his organization and I refer to Hitler as the original Jaw Jacker you know his use of methamphetamine and his stormtroopers use of methamphetamine you know explains a lot of the atrocities that they committed because methamphetamine affects the brain literally it's not just an addiction but I have no no regard whatsoever or that group or those which have followed contemporarily so see at the height of it, 5 years, how many stabs do you think you've done Michael? well I was involved in 22 knife fights that I know because I was shot 22 times you get shot every time? every time, in one case I was shot 5 times in the same fight but not every knife fight was documented so I was in other knife fights that weren't documented but a lot of violence an extraordinary amount of violence but that's what gives you your reputation and your standing within the present environment and of course I've observed numerous knife fights and killings both at the hands of prisoners and guards what was it like to see your first killing in prison, Michael? you know I think about these things James and what I realized that I did toward my own survival was that I engaged in what's called stoicism, I stuffed it you don't allow yourself I did not allow myself to be impacted by what I was observing it's brutal it's gory it's inhumane and even though I may have known that at the time I did not allow myself to think about that I simply stuffed it and that stoicism stayed with me for many years because it was really I mean even at those times when I suffered beatings at the hands of guards you know I did not allow myself to engage during or after the fact I just simply stuffed it and you know it has long term consequences because you know again and you just asking the question my mind has a real that it plays of everything that I've seen it's like you know people talk about their life flashing before that happens so you see that so now as I sit here I'm required to explain to you my sense of stoicism and how I stuffed it and didn't deal with it at the time but as I'm sitting here right now I have to deal with it and it's gruesome it hurts you know there's nothing else like it you know people say well you know he's he talks about these things very calmly which does not explain what's going on inside and what you don't allow others to see and so the value in having this discussion is that it does give me an opportunity to talk about the brutality the inhumanity associated with it and the impact that it has upon my sensibilities as a human being and it's extreme it makes me question my humanity you know and my goal in life right now is to be the best human being I can possibly be so to to manifest these images as a result of this discussion or my writings or otherwise it requires on my part that I process that and so I engage in that you know I engage in therapy this is therapy for both of us it's dark ask a lot of personal deep questions but understand it's to try and get a releasing for people to understand that you're not shying away from the questions that's why you're a strong character but like you say you relive that pain every day no matter how much you can educate yourself the pain is there until the day we die like I've lost so many family members and friends to murder, suicide overdose I've been an addict myself Michael I've been in prison like I've done a lot of bad in life I'm four years clean on that path when you talk about congratulations that's huge man yeah when you talk about the lines and stuff understand that that was just a ripple but I'm back on that red road like what you say or the path like and I'm trying to do good and get a deep understanding of human beings because I believe we're all sensitive no matter if you're a top boy in the Aryan brotherhood you still feel pain just because you've been shot over 20 times like you talking about that and reliving the past we'll still bring back all that emotions like any other kid standing in the corner working in McDonald's like we all feel we're all human we're all connected no matter the skin color no matter the job no matter the income we're all fucking connected man and that's the mad thing about life is right now I feel as if a lot of people are disconnected because we all see the world definitely a divided religion race power, money, income whatever it is well the hatred brother the hatred that's the biggest thing right now and how do you contend with that well you contend with it through love you see and I take that position and we'll take that position for the rest of my life because that's really what you're talking about the only way that you're going to heal and help others heal is through love you see it's real simple we don't talk about it enough we talk about a whole lot of hate but we very rarely talk about the solution to that why people hate there's a piece on my website that haters need to hate and it goes to the heart of this but what it really comes down to is the capacity with each and every one of us as a human being you see to call upon our nature not the human condition is what gets us in the way but our human nature and that's the capacity that was given to us it's an innate capacity for each and every one of us you know to tap into that regardless of what we've been through you know there's a saying my wife tells me at all the time that once you've heard someone's story you can't help but love them the key to that is your heart open to that and that's the real issue here you see my ego strength is intact I'm not concerned about that see what I am concerned about is my humanity and how I might use the rest of my years on this earth you see to facilitate the very thing that you were talking about to understand that we all hurt that we all feel pain that we're all human regardless of skin color ethnicity it doesn't matter we're all human beings and that's what's so important here you see and for people to be able to talk about their pain is also important you know the atrocities that occur behind the iron gates from caging human beings are absolutely terrible and we need more discussion about that what a person goes through what they have to do to prepare to come out I mean can you imagine what it's like being 45 years in a cage and then coming out into this most people can't see I thought I was prepared but I wasn't I wasn't you see that was arrogance on my part I not only hurt myself but I hurt my wife you see that which is most dear to me so the idea behind doing the things you're doing is to educate people is to ask them to open their heart to the spirit of what we're talking about and just think about it just consider it and if you have a story to tell please tell it find a way write it do a podcast do a blog come online go to a website I mean in this day of technology in a multitude of ways in which you can do that the key is to feel safe in doing it when you see them because most people don't feel safe those people that have been traumatized and you'll find that the vast majority of people that have served time behind the iron gate have been traumatized and so that if we can figure out a way to deal with that trauma while they're still incarcerated while they're doing their time so that when they are released they're not repeating that pattern and that's critical absolutely critical so we approach that in a four fold way when I say we I'm talking about live learn and prosper we approach it in a four fold way biopsychosocial spiritual now spiritual is my foundation for everything everything including my marriage you see but I have to take a look at the biological what's going on with me physiologically am I taking care of myself am I healthy you see sociologically am I socially interacting you see do I have a life psychologically you know what is my mental state what is the state of that mental state then how do I arrive how do I discern whether I'm healthy or not I mean they're just James are a number of things that we have available to us as human beings as families as communities as a society as a global community if you will you know I got a call from a policymaker in the Netherlands who works at The Hague and he wanted my advice on the jihad unit that they're running there and I was only too happy to be able to weigh in with what I think and the issue was would the elders there influence the youngsters if they put them in the same unit well my goodness of course they would you would think that that would be a foregone conclusion but there are a number of factors that come into effect there and so it's looking at those things it's generating a dialogue creating a dialogue you know that's the very thing you do by this podcast you generate a dialogue you ferret out the anxiety the stress the story the love all of it and what it allows the viewer to do is to holistically take that in and determine if it has value for them and perhaps even to emulate something that they see that's what self efficacy is that self mastery is to take that in and see if it fits you and then evolve from there how hard was it for you Michael to be in for a double murder that you said you never done to then people may be believing you at the start to then becoming the most violent men in prison to then being one of the leaders of the Ereem Brotherhood then nobody would be thinking you ever told the truth about the two murders at the start how hard was that well I think it's a natural thing that people are going to be suspicious of that because they want to understand particularly when I'm asked questions and I don't give the answers that they want how could you look at that how could you do this how could you do that and not have an impact upon you what they're doing is they're relying upon their own experiences see and those experiences are limited that's why it's so important to talk about these things because you can't imagine what it's like to live behind the iron gates to be in this type of situation so that when you're faced with a decision like how could you be engaged in that kind of violence you know the simple answer is to say well you weren't there you see and essentially you have to be there you see is really what it comes down to people want to confine what they're hearing within the structure of their own experience and that experience usually is limited so what they do is they dismiss it or they say you're lying or you're this or you're that and that's their prerogative it's not a judgment on my part what that requires of me is to find a way to better express myself to explain myself you see that my empathy is there where that compassion is there to bring that out you know where that pain and that suffering and that affront to my own humanity as a result of the things that I did comes to the surface is to express that in other words what it is James is allowing people to see you and most people aren't willing to do that you see but it takes courage nobody wants to show vulnerability a lot of people in the world are scared and they're vulnerable that's the sad thing about it we don't want people to see through us because having that vulnerability a lot of people see as a weakness when you're in prison you're the leader of the brotherhood you've got power you've got control you've got people who would kill for you how hard was the decision then and then put your own life in jeopardy well it wasn't difficult to leave it people ask me about that all the time how difficult was the choice it wasn't a difficult choice once I knew what I was looking at and I knew that that was contrary to who I was as a human being and the way that I was raised it was a very easy choice what followed I never could have anticipated the way of more violence and corruption and just an entirely different you know by way of example the scenarios are so extreme by way of being opposite but similar nonetheless and my time with the Aryan Brotherhood is the first 10 chapters of my book by growing up time in the Aryan Brotherhood and that's 10 chapters and part two is once I stepped away working with law enforcement testifying in court threats on my life you know snipers on the roof bombs on the transportation car I mean it's just corrupt administration that's an entirely different scenario so you know I'm really at odds here right now I may just go ahead and publish the first 10 chapters and let that be out there because that says one thing and then continue working on the second 10 chapters and put that out there because it says something entirely different we'll see what was the reason for leaving my court well it's those two truths you know there was individuals that were going to be executed and were executed as a matter of fact of course there was a visit by the elders that was huge so far telling me you can't serve two fires and then there was the idea of there was a case up in Oregon and it was a Hell's Angel case and it wasn't something that was condoned by Sunny Barger I want to make that clear because he was the leader of the Hell's Angels he just recently passed over again I'll say it rest in peace you know Sunny was a friend and but Margo Compton and her two six year old twin daughters and her boyfriend were executed by two shooters now Margo was a witness against Buck Garrett who was the second in command of the Hell's Angels time she testified for the Feds against him for pimping and pandering he got four years but when he found out where she was at and he did he sent two shooters up there they went into the side door they shot Gary who was on the couch they went into the bedroom they took Margo's two six year old twin daughters they laid them on the bed, wrapped their arms around their teddy bears they held Margo and then they shot the little girls in the head while they made her watch and then they shot her in the head I cannot ever under any circumstances seeing myself condoning that being a part of that, being associated with anybody who would be a part of that so that was one of the factors and I went up and I testified against the Hell's Angels in that case and the courtroom was filled with Hell's Angels there was threats on my life and everything else and I would do it again without hesitation there was a situation where an individual was testifying against members of the Aryan Brotherhood so the subject was broached insofar as to kill this individual's wife and daughter and then his parents and it took everything I had in me to move them away from the wife and daughter and the mother and it left the father and I still bear the responsibility for that father having been assassinated because I didn't stop it I stepped away from the brand but I didn't stop it you see I had an opportunity to stop two guards from being killed in the federal prison by AB members and so I went to law enforcement with that and told them that guards are going to be killed and they laughed at me because the Aryan Brotherhood had never taken a violent position against guards before but now that it shifted it had changed just like perpetrating violence against innocent people had changed and so with these changes staring me directly in the face I had another choice to make was I going to be a part of this and I was not, could not would not so I made the decision to step away and with that came a responsibility I had helped build this group this group that was now going to perpetrate violence against innocent people so I had a responsibility to bring that group down so I've done training films for law enforcement and I went on a lecture circuit speaking strictly to law enforcement to put them up on that game you see and it continues to this day I'll still work with law enforcement toward their understanding of what they're dealing with whether it's drive-by shootings, people that shoot into a house where children are killed, are you serious that's a warrior I don't think so how hard does that deliver that pain Mike? well obviously you can see you're getting quite emotional with like how do you you cope you deal with that you know you know the old promo faction over there in Ireland there was a time when I supported that by way of running guns and otherwise well when they hooked up with the PLO and they started bombing civilians then I removed myself from it you see man to man I don't have a problem with that if as men we're going out on a battlefield and we're going to do battle because we believe in some principle whatever it may be even if that's just controlling your resources to this day I don't have a problem with that what I do have a problem with is when you victimize innocent people and people call that collateral damage I don't think so it doesn't work like that these are people who have no idea what the game is if you're in the game then you know what the rules are so that if it comes to violence you know why but if you can't get to an individual for whatever reason and you turn around and you blow up his house and destroy his family or kill his children or his wife that's not a warrior that's not a human being now I know it happens all over the world but in this context I'm talking about gangs then there needs to be a lot more discussion about it I hear too much talk about he's a snitch, he's a rat that's the language the gangs develop so that it won't come back on him they want to shame you so that you won't give up their game I mean my goodness you can go back years where maybe your parents told you don't be a tattletale well I understand that in that context but that's not what we're talking about here we're talking about victims we're talking about innocent people and that's important, very very important and there needs to be a dialogue about it what is it, they say see something say something you see in this day and age that becomes critical if you see something and it doesn't look right say something how hard was that made for then to then sit at court, give testimonies what was your life like then were you just down solitary confinement every day or was there still hits out in your life how have you managed to survive there have been numerous attempts on my life the last assassination attempt was in 2015 just before the release yeah it's about four years before I was released but I had taken a vow of non-violence many years before and so unfortunately I was a clerk at the time, captain's clerk and I was helping people with their work and one guy was going to the board the next morning so I just finished a double shift and he asked if I would help him with his paperwork and I said yeah I would so we sat down on a bench out in the day room and I let this guy get behind me he was a Mexican mafia hit man and I let him get behind me and I was tired so I was not paying attention and he did a roundhouse kick and took me over the back of the head over heels backwards I went semi unconscious and he straddled me and grabbed me by the hair and he reached in he had a box cutter and he was going to cut my throat I couldn't see but I could hear so I heard his hand come by me and as he reached in he cut my throat I blocked it and he cut my ear in half and a doctor fortunately developed a new technique and was able to sew my ear back on which was nice I like my ears but he reached in again he choked up on my hair I still couldn't see and he reached in again and he went deeper I guess he was going for the windpipe too and like I said I could hear his movements and I could feel his body language through his hand on my hair and so I blocked it again this time he cut the back of my throat and he missed my anterior artery by one millimeter and so then he choked up again this is being observed by staff I mean I just I recently read the write-up on the air so people would understand that staff were observing this and this third time when he choked up and he reached in I got my sight back so I saw the weapon and I took the weapon away from him and in truth there was an opportunity to break his neck and I ran that through my head but I heard my wife's voice and my native name is Sky old man Sky and she said Sky no and I heard that and so I just took the weapon and I put it up underneath me and I laid down on top of it and I waited for staff to arrive now I was working with 600 other prisoners at the time in 15 different groups through my my Living and Prosper organization in the prison, that prison and I'd been essentially preaching to them non-violence a lot of these were old dropout gang members and I was telling them you don't need to resort to violence you know communication there's a number of ways depending on the situation in this situation once I took the weapon away there was no need for violence even though I could have used it against them so because I took the actions that I did this resonated through that entire community it had an enormous positive impact and I'm deeply grateful for that the fact that I didn't resort to violence when I could have said something to them that what I was attempting to explain to them was honest because if you do then make or then everything you say then it's full of shit basically because then people it just doesn't mean anything you have no credibility you're just talking out the side of your neck you're another jaw jacker so that was a pivotal point it was a milestone in my life realizing that I could actually practice that and that I had to wherewithal to know that the threat was over so it had an enormous impact on the community and I'm grateful for that that was the last attempt that's just one example of a number of attempts over the years when I stepped away you know some of them while I was under escort by what they referred to as my handlers you know when I was going out to court and testifying so you know that included bombs on the transportation card included snipers in one case I was held in a substation and the guy had keistered a 25 automatic weapon they found out where I was at and he got picked up for drunk driving in the area and they brought him into that substation well his mission was to shoot me with this little 25 auto that he had keistered in his rectum and one of the officers that was part of my security team just didn't feel right so he took a picture of this guy and brought it into me and I recognized him so they x-rated him and found the 25 automatic so it's just little things like that you know that you have to go through I was subjected to beatings by the guards that it was called the green wall and they were sharks that was their name for themselves and they thought that I was going to testify against other guards in a killing where they shot a man in the head and they murdered him but they thought I was going to testify in that case I didn't have to I would have they asked me but because they thought they I was going out the court in Oregon at the time they called me out of my cell and they chained me up I had a lot of chains on me and coughs so I thought I was going out the court well in fact I wasn't going out the court it took me into a room and to the point where for the first time in my life I thought I was going to die and the only thing that saved me was that I was choking on my own blood and I was able to bring it up and spit it at him and when I spit it at him I told him that's all you got and it was bravado of course on my part because I was just about done and for whatever reason that stopped him but that was just one of a number of beatings that was administered to me by guards because I was testifying in cases in which they were involved so you know it was investigated by the department of justice the FBI there was a hearing before the senate select committee legislature in California like I said that's that's the second half of the book because it's a different story how many convictions did you get made cool in the cases I've testified in there have been convictions in every case except one and like I said I don't go into those with the idea that I'm a prosecution witness or that I'm seeking conviction I simply go in and tell what I know the truth and what the jury does with that is their business if they believe it or don't believe it you know it is not my business I simply say what I know and let them decide for themselves so in every case but one there were convictions and I think in one case it was just a matter of one convict just to find against another convict and you know like I said I don't get into the analysis and it's not my place see what the stabbing you've done in the violence did you never get any more time at it on Michael or was when you turned evidence that you get time reduced how did it work no I picked up other sentences as a result of stabbing three that I can think of right now down in Chino I got seven years on each one of those but no I never received any favors or anything else when I stepped away from the brand I did an additional 35 years I never allowed any of my cooperation with law enforcement to be discussed before the board or otherwise I didn't do it for that reason I did it because I believed it was a good thing to do and you know some people take issue with that they can I don't mind take issue with it but you know everything that I'm talking about and everything I've ever done is well documented it's all a matter of public record so you know if I'd received some kind of favor it would be public record believe me and there'd be people screaming about it but no I didn't do it for that reason law enforcement in so far as educating them for anything and all my work with addicts and otherwise is pro bono I don't charge this is about helping people this is about educating people and if we can if we can do that as a community that's great if we can do that as an individual as we come together however we do it but it needs to be done it needs to be talked about look at your own experiences look what you're doing is the result of that that has extraordinary value if you're anything like me you wake up every morning grateful because I do every morning yeah you've got two man lives a beautiful thing it's a journey like you say Michael but it is a scary journey because sometimes you question I still question things that I'm doing and sometimes I think about the past where it can bring you down a bit I still have so many levels to go on this life to try and not just help myself but help others around me by learning from my mistakes I don't shy away but I'm still learning because I still fuck up daily I still make mistakes but I don't ah you're human so when you leave then Michael obviously you're 35 years again after it like what was the worst day you ever had in prison well you know it always comes back to being in that cage you know like I said I didn't receive any special treatment or get special housing or anything I was still in a cage and a lot of that cage time was in solitary confinement supposedly for my own safety um but eventually I was able to convince them to let me back out on the main line and I went back out on the main line and um you know I continued my education I got my first doctorate in 1988 I got my second doctorate in 2000 and then I became a drug and alcohol counselor while I was still incarcerated and I went through their program and became certified and then started working for the department of corrections as a alcohol and drug counselor and I did that right up until the time I I paroled um plus I started to live there in a prosper in 2014 you know that went on for five years and it's still going on there are a lot of people that you know are trying to shut me up and close it down um you know mostly gangs corrupt law enforcement um you know the other side of what I'm trying to do um and so far as helping people and so you know that's the battle that we have really is you know having to contend with that but you know I don't get caught up people say well do you read the reviews and no I don't I don't you know you got a lot of people hating on you and I said well you know that's their problem you know I'm sad for them like I said haters need to hate and um that's a reality unfortunately yeah but you know one of the things I'm concerned about right now is domestic terrorism um I think it's huge um I think it's it's going somewhere and I don't like what's where it's going you know these these kids that are being recruited into these organizations they're expendable and just like the jihadists they're being sent into these areas and executing all these people and for what for what because somebody else is hating you know these kids don't know what they're doing they're being manipulated the vast majority of them come from broken families they're looking for family like you pointed out a little earlier about prisons prison gangs the same thing now is happening on the streets they're recruiting these kids and they're using them to hurt other people to facilitate their hate interestingly enough they call them hate groups because of the type of crimes that they're committing and they're atrocious crimes and we need to generate a dialogue about that what's happening with these kids what might we do to turn them away from that you see I'm not against these groups I'm for these kids and bringing them away from that preventing them from even becoming involved in that and how do you do that James speaking out you do it with love man you do it with love that's all these kids want that's why they join these organizations they want to be loved truly that simple don't need to put a lot of ha ha on it they just want to be a part of something they want to be loved they want to be needed and as a global community that's our responsibility there's tribalism people just want to feel part of some sort of shit no matter if it's good or bad in life what was John Gotti like Michael I watched something about the Aryan brotherhood he was given protection he was given protection he was given protection the whole idea there is like anything else resources whether we were using Charlie Manson's resources or Gotti's resources there's an opportunity there with Gotti and the mob it was about picking up contracts a lot of money the mob knows what it's doing they're money makers and so it was about picking up contracts and then providing protection to those individuals that were behind the iron gates like Gotti and it doesn't matter who you are on the street in the joint you're going to conform to the convict code the structure in other words if the gang's running the joint you're going to do what the gang says no matter who you are on the street what was Charles Manson like well you know I just did a piece here recently on Charlie and the last thing I want to do is perpetuate the myth of Charlie Manson but you know I've referred to him in the past as a punk he was a punk and a pedophile and he was a two bit crook that had the ability to con manipulate younger girls and some guys and he did that effectively he used lysergic acid that he used the times essentially you know 60's what was going on in this country by way of you know the hippies and the drop out scene against the Vietnam war and everything else he used all that to his advantage but he was an opportunist and was not very intelligent I don't know why people ascribe intelligence to him he had choreographed routines that he used and practiced for his interviews you know it was like he just took him off the shelf he couldn't have a conversation but he could choreograph these routines like a song he was a songwriter so he would choreograph these routines like a song and then when the time came he would run through that routine and that's all he had to say other than making stupid faces but you know I I tried to help him I did ceremony with him you know I tried to set up an organization for him that was environmentally sound you see but none of us should ever be stopped from attempting to try to help somebody regardless of the circumstances the choice as to whether or not they come to that of their own volition is their choice there's nothing we can do about that that's true even in addiction I can talk until I'm blue in the face in trying to help somebody with addiction but until they come to that of their own volition and realize that they have an addiction nothing's going to happen and that's the problem with addiction it's the disease of the brain it's not moral turpitude we used to think that you know we used to think that the brain wasn't plastic but we now know that the brain is plastic and that we have the ability as human beings physiologically to manifest new dendrites in the brain to create a new memory that takes us away from that fragmented memory of trauma epigenetics you know it's up and coming it's going to be a huge field and it needs to be a huge field toward our understanding of how the impact of the environment the environment's impact upon our cellular regeneration at an epigenetic level then it's huge it shows you your character though Michael even though the crimes that some people have done you're still willing to help them like how did you manage to see the world that way especially the life that you led for a while you had the pure life to clean life to then prison to then changing again and getting back on that road like how did you see people as human and not the the scary things that they've done greatest influence in my life is my wife and what she did was she loved me unconditionally but she's a task master I call her dragon lady because she takes me to issues she does not let me get away with anything it's like you said on your day-to-day basis you're a human being so you constantly getting caught up in this and caught up in that and I do the same thing because I'm still not prepared to be out here I'm still working on that so much of this is new to me and overwhelms me but this woman Ariel Tomioka is her name has loved me unconditionally and has guided me and directed me toward my understanding of myself you see what happens James when you are arrested at the age of 22 is that your emotional development is arrested there is no more emotional development because everything is about survival like the stoicism I talked about so you don't have the regular experiences that people have as they're growing older to learn how to discern and make decisions in the trust and so on I had none of that I went into a prison environment where it's one way in only one way so my emotional intelligence was arrested and so since I've been out for a short time I'm developing my emotional intelligence and I'm doing that with the help of my wife who is brilliant she's a mitigation specialist she works with death row prisoners and her families she's been doing this for 20 years but I also have a friend Kevin who is a therapist but he's also a damn good friend my best friend he keeps it real with me he talks to me we talk about PTSD as a matter of fact we're going to do a podcast together because we think the conversation that we're going to have might help somebody and that's what this is about so my intent here is to get my wife to continue writing she's a great writer and she won't come on camera with me but she will do a podcast with me so I want to get her to start talking you know because just the same way that she's helped me I know that she can help others how did you meet well like I said she's a mitigation specialist that works with people who are facing the death penalty so she had a client who was Aryan Brotherhood and it was a recall prosecution of a number of Aryan Brotherhood members and it was a death penalty case so she was hired to mitigate his circumstances relative to convincing the jury not to put him to death so he sent her to see me to get me to recant everything I'd ever said about the Aryan Brotherhood they were portraying the Aryan Brotherhood as just a social club which is absurd really if you think about it but that's what they were trying to tell members of a jury that they were a social club now if a jury doesn't know I imagine they could think well maybe they are just a social club maybe they just sit around playing dominoes but at any rate she was sent to see me so she came up to see me and we met and started talking we spent about 15 minutes dealing with the issue that I was not going to change my testimony or the intelligence that I had provided so we set that aside and we just had a conversation it was two human beings and so for 10 years we were just friends and she come to visit me every weekend and even when I was up in Susanville 10 miles one way spent a weekend visiting me and drive 10 miles I mean 10 hours and drive 10 hours back no matter where I was at she came to visit me so after 10 years we realized that there was something more to our relationship than just a platonic friendship so we got married congratulations thank you and so we've been together coming up on 18 years and she was with me in prison through a lot of that madness she stood by me she fought for me when administrators were trying to kill me and set me up she stepped right into it and pointed him out and we pulled her covers really is what she did and so she became public enemy number two I remain public enemy number one but she became public enemy number two and you know we don't live together we're not together can't be the threat you see how old is that Michael it's difficult I use every opportunity I can to go be with her and they allow me to do that I'm still on parole and I'm on probation you see so I have to ask permission to get a travel pass and then I get travel down and we spend time together and then I come back here so we're 500 miles apart what was your first day really like Michael after 45 years inside the cage it was actually pretty simple I mean they they put me in a cage and let me dress and I dressed out and they put me in a van and they drove me over to a parking lot train station and they let me out of the van and said see ya I said okay and out from behind the car walked my wife ah you see I've always been free in my mind but now I've been liberated and I embraced my wife of course and then and then we went and had sushi so you know I had a friend come by and he says I'm water client so he says I know you want to go to the beach and pay your respects to the mother and I said I do he said well let me take you because I had to go into a six month program immediately for transitional housing so I checked in with my parole officer and then I had to check into this transitional housing and I had to get permission for him to take me down to the beach so we drove down to the beach and we couldn't get to the water there were so many people we could not get to the water so we had to walk out in a pier and you know I wanted to touch the water but I got to look at the ocean I got to look at the mother and I turned around on the pier and I looked back towards the shore my goodness it looked like an ant colony just nothing but houses and people and I said okay I've seen enough let's go and so I went through that six month program and you know I tried to see my wife as much as possible as I could while I was in that program I had to work while I was in the program and you have to go through all their classes and everything also and even though I taught those classes I still had to go through them but that was my immediate release the first week I was out three men were shot in the head just around the corner from where I was staying gangers, gang bangers just drove right up and shot them in the head and it wasn't that much later that a man was stabbed to death out in front of the house so the violence was really no different than in prison so what's your life like now Michael is there still a hat on your life is there still a price over it there's still all that I don't dwell on it I live my life this morning before we did this I'm splitting up 20 rounds 20 cords of wood and I cut and stacked 4 cords this morning before we did this I work out every day I've got an 18 and a half foot canoe that I go out on the lake on I engage with a dojo in a sensei in aikido twice a week and enjoy that so it's just you know I I do a lot of manual labor I'm denied access to the internet right now so I can't even go on my website to talk to people on my website you know I'm doing this today because I have a studio engineer like you do that has set this up you know he can have access to the internet but I can't so the court allows me to do this but I can't access the internet otherwise I can make calls and make in text but I can't have any data I can't go on the internet and it makes life very difficult so we're actually going into court on that because it's the supreme court in this country ruled that it's unconstitutional so unfortunately I have to fight for it people may be of the opinion that based on my cooperation with law enforcement that everything is just laid out for me it's not I'm still public enemy number one to a lot of law enforcement they see me as a trophy and if they can put me back in prison they will and that's what they're trying to do right now you seem very in tune with the universe maker but very calm you've got a great order about you even know the shit that you've been involved in and the shit that you've done like I still see a good person and a good energy like what's your plans I feel as if you maybe see the future but what is your plans for the future well my to be a servant you know simply put it's my life purpose it's my wife's life life purpose and we're going to do that together we're going to continue working with Live, Learn and Prosper we're going to continue working with people we're going to continue writing I'm going to continue lecturing on the lecture tour I've been asked to do a TED Talk so I'll probably do that and I'm going to start my own podcast and I'm going to continue going on podcasts like yours just to interact with people such as yourself that have the experience that know what I'm talking about they can weigh in with their own experiences and that are there too to help to enlighten to educate and I admire you and I'm grateful for you and what you're doing just before we finish up you don't see my man who gets very emotional but can ask you a question it's quite personal but when was the last time you cried Michael oh yesterday yeah yeah it's almost a daily occurrence I was talking to Kevin and you know when I talk to my wife and you know my wife makes me watch movies now and I never watch TV so now I watch TV and I watch movies and I cry watching the movies and the TV and she she doesn't I said what's the matter with you how can you not cry at this and she says I you're just an old broad I said I'll take that because I enjoy being human but yeah I'm deeply touched by a lot that's happening in our world and you know when I hear these things happening they do bring tears to me how can they not because I allow myself now to feel you know I no longer have to engage in that stoicism that I did in prison and you know I regulate my emotions but not to the point of stoicism and I enjoy being human it's a great great feeling why do you think you're still alive Michael well because I think it has to do with my purpose my purpose as a servant to help others you know many times as I've been shot many things that have happened to me over the years and then I'm still here you know that I was released from prison when I was never supposed to be released no one thought I was ever going to get out because I wouldn't admit to crime but that happened you see now I'm in court maybe looking toward exoneration wow you see is time relative yeah who knows 30 years ahead of me I'll make it to 100 easy I think so so just think about it I got 30 good years to do some good work to enjoy life to love and be loved to nurture and be nurtured it's amazing I love my life I do that's a beautiful thing though especially everything that you've been through in life but you can't change lives unless you're feeling fucking unhappy you've got to enjoy it to then help others you like to engage others out in the darkness a lot of people might not agree with what you've done but a lot of people will agree with what you're doing now which is a beautiful thing and like you talk about the road and getting back on the road everybody's on it and off it it's called life like you say I'm a big believer in spirit guys and I believe you're very well connected and protected also look at the hits that you've had out in your life and you're still here to tell the tale for a reason, you have a purpose you'll be changing life daily and no doubt the lives that you're changing now helps with the pain of the past as well because no matter how much we can educate on myself, on the brain and energies and whatever it is the pain's still there the brain's a powerful thing, it absorbs everything but you're trying to live in the present moment to then create your better future which is difficult because there's so many there's so many distractions now with internet TV and probably that could be a good thing in your life right now that you've not got internet because you can really get connected with it where it disconnects you from life Michael because there's so many distractions like being in nature is where I feel alive being in the mountains or in whole walks I do a lot of cold water therapy here where I'm in the cold water because it numbs the screams up here don't seem as loud when I'm in nature the voices are still there, the pain's still there but I still push through them with doing the natural things in life and it can be difficult because I'm trying to create one of the biggest podcasts in the world I'm trying to create the biggest conversations that people have ever seen and with that comes an enormous amount of pressure but again I just noticed the right part because I won't fall sometimes I hit speed bumps but I don't break I've never broke, I've never been over a lay down for anyone in life Michael and I fucking never will I have morals maybe back in the day I didn't but I was lost, I was confused that I took much drinking drugs to try and heal and I'm the pain not realising it made the pain worse but I'm on a great path now, I'm learning I'm open to just learning from my own mistakes and try to love again the main thing is as well try to accept love Michael because it's scary but you become vulnerable and become to someone to accept the love you feel that you can get hurt which is a fucking scary thing because nobody wants to feel pain and a woman's pain is harder than anything, all the shit you've been through you've been away from your wife it's probably the hardest thing you ever have to deal with even though you've dealt with so much shit it is, you're right but what you're doing takes enormous courage it really does and I'll say it again, I so admire you for that and the thing here is I don't know what the future holds for you I can see the path that you're on and it's a good path so I'd like you to bear one thing in mind as you continue down that path you keep me in mind and if you come across anything that you think that I can assist you with or help you with or we can just have a conversation about or if you just want to have a phone call you hear what I'm saying? yeah, I appreciate that brother yeah, I mean that's what it's about it's about relationship and likewise though thank you, I will do that I will do that just before we finish up where can people get ahold of your stuff your website, books, whatever yeah, we'll have the book coming out here in the next couple of months Synchrony Press will release at Ron Turner's the owner and operator of Synchrony Press and he'll be coming out with there may be other things happening also there's some things in the works completely about in the hands of other people is what I'm saying so when that comes out I'll let you know that the book's out and maybe you can let your viewers know but other than that the website is livelearneprosper.org and I'm going to be putting up my own podcast so at some point I'll send you the link for that and I'd like to do this again definitely, I feel as if a friendship will be getting started from today moving forward Michael I got in contact with The Damaged Done podcast for a senior on Nehrmann I was blown away by your story it's unbelievable what you're trying to do in life it takes enormous amount of courage especially having a hit out on your life but again with your visualisation and your belief in that ego behind you is where I believe you're connected to something whether it's flying solo or seeing you pray from a distance I believe you're very in tune with this stuff but you know what I'm talking about yes I do but for coming on to then telling your story mate it's been unbelievable for anybody that's watching Michael that's maybe struggling what advice would you have for them I guess the same advice my other gave me you know that everything has a voice no matter what it is and that if you'll just simply open your heart to the spirit of that voice it will speak to you you know and in your darkest moments you see the light in that is love love yourself first and foremost see that enables us to love others and that's what relationship is about is the ability and the capacity to love you know it's the greatest gift we were ever given as human beings it's just that you know it's at the root of life and you know if somebody needs help I don't have access like I said to the internet but if they think I can help them get on my website and leave a message and my great niece manages it for me she'll get the message to me and I won't be able to go on the internet or anything like that but I can call them and I will I'll call them but on any level doesn't matter because that's what it's about yeah that's amazing brother again Michael for coming on the day and telling your story it's been amazing a lot of people get a lot of positives from this you're the man that doesn't shy away from his past and for being in prison for 45 years for something you've never done I'm glad you're getting some light shed on that and eventually getting the right verdict but again amazing story many more conversations with you anything I can ever help with I'm only a phone call away brother but again thank you God bless you and keep doing the right thing in life thank you brother take care take care