Marty was in our custody for almost two years before his case was finally decided. During that time he went from normal and chatty to solemn and quiet, from sane and rational to bizarre and unstable, from tearful to jovial and back around again. This was not all that unusual for an inmate with a mental health condition. I had seen it before; the emotional roller coaster of mentally ill people can be astonishing and Marty’s array of daily mood swings and activities were not really out of the norm. What was uncommon, in my opinion, was that those emotions, mood swings and bouts of insanity seemed to coincide with visits from his psychiatrist.

We had to house Marty in with the sex offenders and child molesters, although whenever he began hearing the voices he was relocated into the infirmary until the moment passed. It was a high profile case and the killing of his son put him in danger from other inmates, so it was deemed he would be safest living with the other Protective Custody inmates. He got along okay for the most part during his stay with us. He not only gained about eighty pounds but he also watched football and baseball on the TV with the other guys, went out to the recreation yard regularly, joked with the officers, enjoyed visits from friends and clergy and learned how to play gin rummy and chess with his cellmates.

He also learned how to gauge the dates his psychiatrist would be coming to visit. About two days before each impending court ordered visit, Marty would begin to report the voices were threatening him again. He would stop talking or involving himself with others, would sit on his bunk and stare at the wall and take on the appearance of someone deep in a catatonic trance.
The psychiatrist who came to deal with Marty must have been a truly amazing doctor. Actually there were several doctors and psychologists who were involved in the case and for the most part, the ones who visited Marty in jail were true miracle workers. Not two hours after they visited and Marty was returned, silent and staring, to his cell, his voices would vanish and he would be back watching Roadrunner cartoons with his cellmates. I was amazed. Never had I seen such medical miracles!

I am not a doctor. I am not even a licensed psychologist, but I am capable of watching a person go from mental illness to mental normalcy in a period of an hour or so and finding it a bit unusual. I had a lot of opportunity to talk with Marty and he was almost always quiet, polite and willing to chat but he virtually never said one word about his parents or son. He did not seem capable of harming them, or of harming anyone for that matter. On the other hand, he did not attempt to hide his crime or ever deny his involvement, and there was no good motive for him to have committed such a travesty. It was a puzzle that was never solved to my satisfaction. Was he lead by voices to slaughter his parents and son? This is rather uncommon for schizophrenics; they rarely harm anyone except themselves, but still…

Marty did not go to prison, he was sent to the state hospital for an indeterminate period of time. Whatever demons were plaguing him 14 years ago have evidently left for greener pastures because, to my knowledge, he has not been back in the jail system and I am fairly sure he has been released from the state hospital. I have never forgotten him, however, nor have I forgotten the bloody photos of his four-year-old son and the mystery that surrounded it all.

I mentioned Marty in this memoir only because it is true that the mind is a strange thing. Most people would say a man would have to be insane to kill his family that way, but the Marty I knew for almost two years in jail was as normal as anyone else behind those bars, except when the psychiatrist was due. So, who can say? Regardless of what caused him to “snap” on that awful day, the result is that he is now living the rest of his life without his parents or the love of his son. I suppose that is punishment enough for any crime, premeditated or driven by a demon. And we will never really know for sure.

"Marty"

For the average person it is difficult to know for sure if another person is truly mentally ill or, perhaps, just acting the part. Even professionals with walls full of PhD certificates can be fooled, and most of them will admit that. It is not an exact science, and there are so many levels of mental illness and personality disorders that overlap one another it becomes mind-boggling in and of itself.

Mental health professionals rely on self-reporting from their patients. There is no infallible blood test or x-ray that can tell if a person has schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or is antisocial. The only tests which psychologists and psychiatrists have all relied on are their patients answering of questions which are designed to provide insight into their mental condition.

In most cases this works well. The majority of people who are suffering from a mental or emotional disorder truly want to be helped and they do their best to interact with their doctor or counselor as candidly as they can. In these cases the doctor or counselor can generally make a pretty good diagnosis and is then able to treat the person with medications or counseling session or whatever is deemed necessary. It is the best system we have to date and it has helped countless thousands of people lead much better lives.

It does not, however, always work well within the criminal justice system. There are those in our society who commit crimes of every sort and then try to escape punishment for that crime by saying they are mentally ill and therefore not responsible for their actions. It comes down to whether or not the person knows, or knew, right from wrong. My opinion on that subject, though not professional, shall be reserved for the next chapter.

Marty came into the jail fresh from the emergency room at Yavapai Regional Medical Center. He had a glazed look on his face and his head was swathed with bandaging that seemed to cover some sort of protruding lump. It was not apparent if his zombie-like state was from medication or his current mental condition but he did attract a lot of attention from the jail staff. This, of course, was also due to the fact that he had just killed both his parents and his four-year-old son with a ball-peen hammer while his wife was out of town. Rumor had it that after slaughtering his immediate family, he then turned the hammer on himself and whacked himself in the head hard enough to necessitate a trip to the ER before taking him to jail. I might add, it was not hard enough to end his life, as it had his parents and son.

Marty was the first (and to my knowledge the only) inmate from which I ever took footprints as well as fingerprints. During and after the attack he had walked through the blood barefoot and left footprints at the scene so it was necessary to print his feet in ink. I’m not sure how necessary this was because Marty never denied committing the murders. His defense was insanity.

Before the killings he had driven himself to the ER that morning or afternoon, I do not recall which, and reported to the hospital staff he was hearing voices that were telling him to do terrible things, some of these were to kill his family. This was in order to “save” them from something even more horrendous, but I was never clear on what that might have been. The story began that the family contacted the local mental health facility and after a screening, Marty was given an antidepressant and then released. At that point he proceeded to drive home and kill his family, whose members were either demons themselves, or were going to be attacked by demons. This was a lot of years ago and I have forgotten some of the minute facts. The main point, which I remember well, were the photos I saw of his four-year-old son lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor...

Carl was a Vietnam Vet who had come home from the war living in another universe. He was in and out of Yavapai County jail a few times in my first years working there, typically for being a public nuisance. I don’t believe he ever harmed anyone but he was big, scruffy and dirty-looking and wandered around town in his battered, filthy Army fatigues while being very loud and opinionated.

Carl’s diagnosis was Paranoid Schizophrenia, which does not mean (contrary to what many believe) he had a split or dual personality. It means, in layman’s terms, he had a split with reality, and Carl’s split was a real doozey! It was a chasm, actually, something akin to the Grand Canyon.

It is no wonder to me that Schizophrenics become paranoid. They exist in a world we do not hear or see but one that is all too real to them. If I had to live my days with several unknown (and sometimes well-known) people shouting at me inside my head, or listen to a barrage of demons giving me orders to cut crosses on myself with a tuna can lid, I would be paranoid, too.

They also know people are plotting against them. These people might be Iraqi hit men, or KGB spies, or even our own CIA agents who are trying to force the terrified Schizophrenic to commit a drug deal for them. They know this because they hear the voices talking as plain as day. Voices we can’t hear but voices they can’t get rid of, twenty-four-seven three-sixty-five. They have very distinct memories about aliens and the well-known and dreaded rectal probe, not to mention sexual encounters with the infamous Bat Boy. It has to be a very scary thing. A good percentage of Schizophrenics wind up committing suicide and I’m not sure I blame them.

Some of the voices that entertain them are of a kinder, gentler nature, however. I remember one inmate who was scheduled to see the facility psychiatrist one afternoon but refused to attend the appointment because “the voices are really being funny today.” He was enjoying their company and did not want anything to interrupt the group.

Often the Schizophrenic has a really fascinating life and he will tell you all about it. I’ve known some inmates who (in their minds) were multimillion dollar record producers or financial investors to the President. I even met and got to know the man who invented Plutonium. Really! He told me so. I’ve met Harrison Ford’s brother (Bruce), Howard Hughes’ psychiatrist, and the man who embalmed Elvis. (Yes, alas, it appears Elvis truly is dead). I also met a twenty-year-old girl who kept digging up her dead cat and bringing it to bed with her because, “it got cold at night”. Her poor parents did not know what to do about this and so eventually charged her with criminal littering and had her put in jail where they knew she would get help for her mental health issues one way or another.

It is not all that unusual, actually. Families are often at wit’s end when dealing with schizophrenic children or siblings. It is a frightening disease, which often takes on some violent and weird overtones. If help cannot be gotten from the world outside families will sometimes resort to having the family member arrested, hoping the taxpayers can lend support. We usually do, one way or another, but schizophrenia is a lifelong affliction that is treatable but not curable, and the likelihood of the jail system being there to keep that person safe and off the streets indefinitely is pretty slim.

Carl fell midway between the KGB agents and discovering Plutonium. He was never jovial but he did have times when he seemed to be able to hold a semi-realistic conversation about the voices coming from the TV, (which actually belonged to Walter Cronkite), or what he had had for lunch (sometimes laced with arsenic, but Carl was immune to that poison). He also had a lot of religious dementia. This holds true with a majority of schizophrenics. They almost all have had conversations with God or angels or both and in many cases they actually are God or Jesus or one of the prophets; incognito, of course.

In Carl’s case, when he was on the streets and not in jail, he had an open line to the Almighty, Himself. They discussed a multitude of problems here on earth and Carl was the “One” that God had chosen to help him solve all the tribulations of Mankind. The problem was when Carl was in jail his signal to God was interrupted and they lost contact. There was just too much metal and too many telephonic devices. This was when Carl became hardest to handle.
My father used to tell me, “You cannot have a battle of wits with an unarmed person”, which meant that wasting words on someone who was unable to comprehend them was self-defeating. The officers all tried to get Carl to abide by jail rules, calm down, stop threatening and throwing his meal trays around the room, but when Carl was not connected to God he got pretty irate. He even became dangerous to other inmates. No amount of reasoning or cajoling ever helped, but there was one very clever nurse who invented the cure.

Katie was her name. She had worked in the jail for a while before I got there so she knew the place fairly well. To say Katie was a warm, fuzzy kind of nurse would have been a huge fib. She was caustic, snide, impatient and sometimes close to mean, but she had a way of mind-melding with the mentally ill. I never really understood how, but she really seemed to know what to say to our wacko population at just the right time. (Remember, I told you earlier on that wacko is a medical term.)

At one point during Carl’s first or second visit, Katie grew weary of dealing with his ranting and decided to try and re-establish Carl’s connection to God. There was a large oval chip in the cinder block wall at the side of Carl’s cell that had been stained from someone at an earlier time with red punch. Katie pointed it out to Carl, in whispers of course, and told him that was the Hotline to God, put in only for Carl’s use, and that if Carl told anyone about it, the line would be removed.

“Put your elbow on the red spot,” Katie told him. Carl did that. “Now listen to your thumb,” Carl did that, too, by pressing his thumb into his ear. “Do you hear Him?” Katie asked with a hopeful expression.

I remember the big grin that spread across Carl’s weathered face. His eyes actually took on a glow, “Yeah! I do! I hear Him!” he exclaimed with the joy of a child.

For the next few weeks, and on every visit thereafter, Carl spent most of his days with his elbow pressed up to the hole in the wall and his thumb in his ear. His conversations with God were solemn and lengthy and when they weren’t conversing, Carl spent his time writing down God’s instructions in a commissary notebook. This was, no doubt, for use when he was released and could get back to saving Mankind.

Carl’s visits to the jail stopped rather suddenly and since the last time he was there I saw him around town, now and then, still wearing his Army fatigues and still scaring people with his warnings and prophecies. Evidently the local police decided it wasn’t worth dragging him into jail constantly and began ignoring his antics. Recently, though, he seems to have disappeared completely. Like many other inmates I worked with, I don’t know what happened to Carl. I hope he is all right but there’s no telling. He should be, as long as he keeps his Hotline to God open.

There is nothing amusing about mental illness. It typically strikes without warning, often lasts a lifetime, and can leave devastation in its wake. The jails and prisons in this country are gradually becoming mental health facilities, and over the past ten years it has not even been gradual. It is now more like a great Mental Health tsunami that is washing over the nation, taking with it all the pride, dignity and future of every soul caught in its churning flood. Jails and prisons, especially jails, are not prepared to take on this burden of mentally ill inmates. Jails are meant to house inmates for short periods of time, hence the term Detention. Jails detain and house people who are being held over for trials or for disposition of their cases, anywhere from twenty-four hours to, well, however long it takes. If a person has broken the law, he or she will remain in jail until they can bond out; are released by the courts; or have a disposition imposed upon them. Typically it is a few weeks or months and because of that the jail systems rarely have enough funding or staffing to provide the long-term care necessary for the mentally ill.

Sometimes mental illness is brought on by drug or alcohol abuse. This can be temporary, such as a person “coming down” from alcohol or any sort of drug; or permanent from damage caused by their substance abuse over very long periods of time. You see a lot of both within the jail system and it is never pleasant.

The first person I ever saw with the DT’s (delirium tremens) was a hardcore alcoholic who had been brought into jail for shoplifting. I had only been there a week or two and was fascinated by the man, who was being housed in the jail infirmary. As the alcohol wore off, he began to display a series of very distressing actions. His entire countenance changed and his face took on an expression of horror. He dug at the edges of the window in the cell door until his fingers were raw. He stood on his bunk, holding himself in terror as he watched something that I could not see, crawling about on the floor, crying for help from anyone who would listen.

Finally my nerves began to wear as thin as his were and I tried to talk to him, thinking I might be able to do what the nurses could not, which was to help the poor guy settle down. I tried to assure him there were no creatures in his cell and that no one was going to harm him. His response was to quote me passages from Revelations mixed with other assorted Bible verses and passages, which did not seem to have much to do with the demons nipping at his toes.
I finally asked him if he wanted me to get the chaplain for him. That was when he announced he had already talked to God and God told him if his eye offended him he should pluck it out. I was about to try to explain to him that this was not a literal order from God and that he would feel a lot better about it after getting some sleep, but he was not listening. In the time it took for me to say about six words the terrified inmate reached up with his thumb and plucked out his eyeball!

I was not prepared for that. Forty-two years of life had not prepared me to see someone pluck out his eyeball when standing eighteen inches in front of me. There was a window in the door between us but even if there had not been, I would not have had a clue as to what I should do. I believe I came close to passing out. I know I stumbled backwards into the wall I and must have made a sound of some sort because the nurse on duty leaped up from her desk and, thankfully, took over.

I do not remember that inmate’s name but I do remember he was my first introduction to the world of mental illness. During the following years I worked with hundreds of mentally ill inmates, some who acted out even worse than the man who plucked out his eye during a bout of DT’s, and some who were just mildly disturbed. Some made me cringe, some made me cry, some made me laugh. All were memorable.

Misty uncovered....

She went with Misty back into the dress-out room which used to be a small bathroom with a shower and sink and privacy for the changing of street attire into the orange jail uniform. It typically took about five minutes to do a proper and complete dress-out but it was only about sixty seconds before Lena came charging out of the door with a face as red as a stop light.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, her expression a mixture of surprise and annoyance, “That’s not a woman, you jerks! I suppose you think this is real funny, right?”

The idea that someone was playing a practical joke on Lena was really not that hard to believe, it was not at all unusual for officers to torment one another with embarrassing tricks and antics. But to my knowledge, nor that of the Sergeant or other officer on staff, no such practical joke was in process.

“Are you serious?” Sarge asked.

Lena was huffing with annoyance, “That’s a gawdam guy!” she spouted. “And if you think I’m gonna strip search him, you better think again! Real hard!”

Several looks were exchanged and then Rudy, the other male officer, walked over to the change-out room and peered in. His shoulders began to shake, not with fear or annoyance but with the hysterical laughter he was trying to hide. He was unable to contain himself very well though, and when he looked back around at Sarge his eyes were tearing with hilarity.

“She’s right, Sarge, it’s a guy.” He said between gulps of air. “You want me to finish dressing him out?”

Sarge was grinning, not at Misty’s disclosure, but at the furious annoyance on Lena’s face. “I guess you better,” he replied in his typically Former-Marine tone of voice. “Can’t have our little Lena writing us up for harassment.”

The next five minutes was just a back and forth continuum of snide remarks between Sarge and Lena. I was standing by, wondering how poor Misty was faring through it all and also wondering why he did not say something when he was taken back into the bathroom to dress out. Later, after I had gotten to know him, I understood why, but on that summer evening I had not yet come to figure out the workings of the transvestite’s mind.

Rudy immerged in a few minutes with Misty in front of him, now wearing the orange jail uniform and looking somewhat abashed but not really upset. Rudy tossed something to Lena, which she caught in both hands. It was a rather large roll of money.

“Found this on him,” Rudy said, “Better put it on his books.”

“How’d they miss that on the pat down?” Sarge inquired.

Meanwhile, Lena was looking at the roll of bills with a wrinkled nose, “Geeeze, it’s wet...” she murmured, and then her green eyes shot open like ping-pong balls and with a shriek and an audible gag, she flung the money across the booking area and began doing the yucky-bug dance and rubbing her hands against her thighs like she wanted to peel the skin off.

“Ahhh, crap, Rudy! Ah, dammit!” she shouted fiercely. “That’s not funny, you chicken-lips!”
Rudy, Sarge, and even I were laughing in unison by then. Sarge took several moments to catch his breath and then finally asked Rudy where he found the roll of cash. Rudy explained that Misty had his genitals secured back out of sight with a wire bread tie and that the cash had been fastened there along with the package. Further examination proved there was nothing more hidden within.

Once the hilarity ebbed, I began to wonder how on earth Misty, whose real name was Mitchell, ever managed to secure himself so well that he could have worn those spandex pants without a hint of his gender being evident, even through a surface pat-down. Wire bread ties must be amazing things! The discomfort it certainly caused him made me shudder.

Misty, all the while, was taking everything pretty much in stride. I got the impression this was not the first time he had experienced such a situation and if he was embarrassed by it he did not let on. It was also not his first time in jail. He seemed accepting of the whole ordeal.
Typical of the gay community, Misty had one of the keenest senses of humor I have ever known. He had practically invented the word “campy”. He was housed with the sex offenders and child molesters, not because he had even one single trait that earned him that status, but because he was one of those “lost inmates” who could not be placed in the general population for his own safety. That dormitory area was at the far end of the long, echoing hallway, and so every time I went in back to talk with an inmate in one of the other dorms, Misty would pick up on my voice and shout from the back in his very best falsetto, “Hey, Girlfriend!”

You always knew when Misty was being moved, too. As he would pass along by the other dorms, escorted by officers to wherever he was supposed to be, there resounded a flood of hoots, wolf whistles and catcalls that was almost deafening. And not being one to let the others down, Misty would offer up his best hip-wiggle as he passed.

He was in our jail for several months, during which time we grew to be pretty good friends. He invited me to “do lunch” with him some day after he was out and I told him I would love to. I learned that he shaved his entire body every day, which, considering the cheap, plastic razors the jail issues to it’s inmates, would have been enough to dissuade most people from his particular lifestyle. He used red punch to color his fingernails, lips and cheeks, and the women’s buttery pencil shaving concoction for mascara. He never looked quite as feminine as the evening we booked him in but he always turned heads as he walked by, and he had mastered the same walk that made Marilyn Monroe a superstar.

He was also a twenty-three-year-old kid, in my eyes, and well educated at that. During his time in the Yavapai County jail we spent quite a few hours talking about life and all its intricacies. He eventually dropped the falsetto and gay camp and began to expose himself in emotional ways to me.

He was from the Midwest, had left home a couple of years before and was prostituting himself to earn the money for a sex change. He told me his family, good Bible-Belt farm stock, had no idea where he was nor that he was transsexual. “It would kill them,” he told me sadly. I asked him if he didn’t think it was already killing them, not knowing what had become of their son, and he replied that if I knew his family I would understand. They would rather think him dead than know he was transsexual.

It eventually occurred to me that the urge for any human being to want to change his or her sex must be incredible. It was far more than an impulse or a sexual fantasy. To endure the verbal slings and arrows and actual physical discomfort they subjected themselves to, it had to be an incredible psychological obsession or need. Why would anyone choose to be Gay or Lesbian or Transsexual or even a Cross-Dresser? It seems to be the loneliest and most emotionally painful lifestyle one could ever imagine. The desire, the need for that life must be terribly intense, certainly not a life anyone would want to choose capriciously.

Misty could never explain it to me, at least not so that I understood. It was just who he was. He explained he had never felt like “Mitchell”. Ever. His early years had been a series of bad jokes, fights, verbal attacks and lectures from his parents, and his delight in playing with Barbie Dolls. He admitted to me that wanting to change one’s sex, or living a Gay lifestyle, was not natural and probably could be considered sinful if one looked at life that way. He also told me he simply could not live as “Mitchell” anymore - that the thoughts he had of suicide were far scarier than the process he was trying to undertake to become Misty.

I remember thinking that Misty was more like a caricature of women than how real women act or speak. So often that seems to be the case with Gay men - their assumed idiosyncrasies are far more feminine than most of us females truly are. It’s as if they see the ideal woman as a combination of Betty Boop and Mae West, and they strive to identify with that. It’s an impossible journey.

Misty finished his case in our county and eventually was extradited down to Maricopa County to face charges there. I never knew what exactly became of him but I assume he did a little prison time. I have thought about him on and off over the years, hoping he might have gone home to the farm and reconnected with his family, knowing he probably did not. He could be a woman by now, or maybe he is still prostituting himself to try and earn the fee for that change. Or maybe he is dead. I hope not. I probably will never know but I’d like to keep that lunch date one day.

"Misty"

I want to get into an extremely touchy subject within the world of law enforcement now: Homophobia. Within the large circle of deputies I knew and worked with in the jail, the term Homo meant Homosexual, Transvestite, Transsexual, Cross-Dresser, and Female Impersonator. In their minds there was no real distinction between these types; they were all just Homos. There was such a stigma to the term that most of the deputies sort of spat it out as if the word tasted nasty and simply could not be tolerated.

I suppose I shouldn’t limit this response to deputies alone. Most of the straight men I know feel the same way and have no tolerance or understanding for any life style that doesn’t include locker rooms, girl watching, and deep-fried pork rinds. If a man has a speech impediment or walks just slightly too gracefully he is a definite threat. God forbid he might wear a pink flowered shirt or happen to enjoy Broadway musicals.

This is okay. Really, it is. I love these guys and I understand their phobias. I’m not sure they understand why they are so threatened by effeminate men, but that’s beside the point. It’s the way it has always been, is now, and forever will be. Real men are manly. Real men like to make jokes about big bosoms, eat melt-down-spicy hot wings, watch women wrestle in tubs of mud, attend movies starring Clint Eastwood and John Wayne, and drink cold beer for breakfast. Real men simply do not eat snow-cones; listen to Broadway Sound tracks; watch movies like Steel Magnolias; enjoy a good talk about personal issues, or dance (except western two-steps).
In the world of inmates the feelings seem to be pretty much the same. All jails and prisons in America keep their child molesters, sex offenders and known homosexuals and transsexuals separate from the general population because of the harm they would no doubt come to at the hands of the other inmates. It is okay to rob, cheat, steal, sell drugs (even to kids) and to kill people, but it is not okay to molest a child or rape a woman. The old expression “There is honor among thieves” does have its limits.

Well, sort of. I say this because it has been my experience that these manly men, who will kill a child molester or beat a gay man to death if there is one in the vicinity, will often be involved in raping and/or sodomizing another helpless inmate. It goes on all the time but is usually never reported because the victim is too terrified to say anything.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am in no way condoning child molestation or abuse. It is the most heinous crime I can imagine and I cannot think of a punishment suitable enough for the men who do it. Statistics show most child molesters are Caucasian men while child abusers are men & women of all races, but the fact of the matter is that child molesters are virtually never gay men. Homosexuals, transvestites and transsexuals are typically gentle, inoffensive people who would not harm a child if their very lives depended on it. The hatred and violence enacted upon them by other inmates, and by some of society in general, is directed at their lifestyle and their personalities, not any harmful actions on their parts.

Unfortunately, in the jails and prisons they are often lumped together with the child molesters because no one knows where to place them for their own safety. Their crimes are rarely violent; usually drug or alcohol related or having to do with prostitution or theft. If left alone, they seldom cause trouble, initiate fights or break the facility rules. Violence is not a part of their makeup.

“Misty” came into the booking area on one summer evening in 1992 if memory serves me. She had long, flowing blond hair, was tall and lithe, wearing black spandex pants which left nothing to the imagination, and a lacey crop top which showed her trim midriff quite nicely. She had been arrested for prostitution and also had a warrant out of Phoenix for the same offense so we knew she would be with us for awhile.

Male officers do not generally frisk female prisoners as thoroughly as they would a male prisoner for obvious reasons. The exception to this is if the female is suspected of drugs or weapons but Misty had none of those types of charges. This being the case they left the strip search to one of the female detention officers. Not myself as I was working at the booking desk. The privilege went to Lena, a young officer who had done a lot of Reserve Deputy work for the Sheriff’s Office but had not been working in Detention for very long. Lena was pretty well-versed in the world of criminals and jails and most anything to do with law enforcement, but she was not prepared for what she was about to encounter....

Lorna and God

One of our chaplains, a really amazing man with a wicked sense of humor, used to say that he was absolutely sure God lived in the Yavapai County jail. He knew this because every inmate who came into the jail eventually found God, and every inmate who was released seemed to leave God there. Made sense to me.

Lorna seemed to have had an on-again-off-again relationship with God which was directly related to her consumption of alcohol. The more sober she was, the more she believed. After she had been in jail for a couple of weeks and had dried out sufficiently to understand how much trouble she was in, she proceeded to find her way back to religion.

Please do not misunderstand. I believe any course that leads away from lives of drugs, alcohol and crime is a good one, and if that course involves the use of religion and faith, so much the better. It’s just that I worked in the jail long enough to know that in 99 percent of all the cases, the love of drugs and alcohol, and the lifestyle that accompanies it, is just too strong to relinquish to God. We come back to that bad choices thing again, I suppose.

And now I have to eat my words and tell you that Lorna was that one percent inmate. Not in the beginning, mind you. In the beginning she was the Queen of Lip Service, and all the other, much younger inmates would gather around her looking for leadership and guidance. And a new and better way to style their hair at night with toilet paper rollers.

Gradually, over the course of the year and a half she was in jail waiting for trial, her entire being changed. The homemade makeup grew fainter and the audacious attitude mellowed. It was in good part due to the drying-out process, allowing her head to clear and the realization of what had happened to set in. She began keeping a journal and on several occasions showed me letters she had written and received from her family, all of whom had basically written her off as a lost cause and a point of embarrassment.

By the time her trial came around she was just “Mom” to the other girls in the dorm, and no longer the flamboyant, muddle-brained creature that had first thrust herself into the world of incarceration. She had even stopped preaching to the others. Instead she was the one who greeted the new ones and took time to listen to their worries, angers and fears. She had found her place so to speak, in the most unlikely of circumstances.

I still hear from Lorna occasionally. She writes from prison where she is serving a sentence of seventeen to twenty-five years. She teaches reading to the illiterate prisoners, works in the warden’s garden and leads Bible studies. Her letters are clear, introspective and well written. She is hopeful and even has a plan for her release. She will be seventy-two years old by then, if she is in there for 17 years, but feels she will still have something good to offer.

I agree. I’m sure she will. I hope I run into her somehow when that day comes because I would like to sit and talk with her, to have coffee and discuss the world and what has occurred in it, and to tell her I was wrong about her. She was the one percent.