Stoopid Twosday....the late edition. There's no crying in baseball and there is no Concierge in prison

I found this story over at Crime Scene Kansas City: " Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford has filed a motion to move to a different jail, citing “oppressive” conditions". Stanford is awaiting trial over a 7 billion dollar Ponzi scheme. He claims that he can't get a fair trial unless he is moved to another facility. This is in part because of electronic discovery that isn't available at the jail he is currently housed in. But here's the rub, he also sites cramped conditions, a dark cell, and 8 or 10 roommates. Oh, I almost forgot, no windows or a/c. Apparently the A/c is broken. This nimrod should have spent some of that 7 billion on a prison consultant, or better yet, he should have perused my Prison for Dummies series. As you all know, if you have been paying attention, I was passed around between the states and the Feds, so I've had a taste of both types of facilities. Some fed joints have a/c, few if any state run prisons have a/c. A trash can full of ice parked behind a fan will help keep you cool-ish, if you can afford a fan. Stanford can also rent a chick with a kickstand (prison drag queen) to fan him with a checkerboard, while wearing koolaid rouge and boot polish penciled in eyebrows. As for the cramped conditions, he ain't seen nothin yet. Shit gets worse.

Noise, constant, never ending, noise. If Stanford doesn't like the cramped conditions and lack of proper amenities, just wait until he makes it to the joint. The noise can drive you mad. It never gets totally quiet in prison. There will always be someone making noise, young black guys rapping back and forth from cell to cell, tier to tier. The insane inmates who hold screaming contests in the middle of the night, berating some antagonist that only they can see. Steel doors racking, slamming, the hacks keys clanging, the disembodied voice that comes on the loud speaker informing you of chow, or yard, or lights out. The noise never stops. The Stanfords and Madoffs will never see hard time as far as the facilities go. Even when they get sentences that are essentially life, they wont make it to a really hard place. But that doesn't mean prison wont be hard on them. After a life of swanky digs, and deep pockets, even the best of prisons are akin to hell on earth for these pampered rich crooks. High end white collar guys like Stanford and Madoff don't have street degrees. They never rubbed elbows or came in contact with the predatory sharks that swim through this nations prison systems. Small recompense for the countless people who were robbed of their life savings, but it beats nothin.

One guy that Madoff and Stanford wont meet in federal prison is Skip Sheppard. I wrote about Skip in this post. Skip was one of the 5 people convicted in the 1998 murders of 6 Kansas City firefighters. The Star did an in depth piece on the case. It was a good investigative piece of work, which focused on several jailhouse informants who were recanting their previous statements that helped win a conviction in the case. I personally believe that a couple of the defendants might have taken a free case, but Skip and his brother Frank, not so much. What I know to be fact about Skip is that he left a small trail of bodies along the path that led him to federal prison.
Kella Ward died in a car wreck on 150 highway and Botts road in Grandview. Skip was high and drunk, and behind the wheel. That is a fact. Gary Ward a cousin of Kella Ward, , went fishing with Skip, he turned up dead in lake Jacomo, with a nasty head wound. That is a fact. Troy McAdams, lived next door to me, a guy I knew fairly well, a small time pot and coke dealer, who lived with his mother, turned up dead in the woods off of Blue River road. Skip and a couple of degenerates were busted a few days later in Troys car. That is a fact. Skip was a sociopath, a mean spirited brutal bully. The worlds a better place without him. Death seemed to follow Skip wherever he went, in the end it caught up to him.