Paradise Prison: Chapter 2 | MeatEater Podcasts

00:00:07
Speaker 1: A man is alone in a Caribbean prison. He hasn’t hurt anyone, He didn’t mean to break the law. He forgot some ammunition in his vacation luggage, and now he’s been in a foreign jail cell for four weeks. The US government has refused to intervene. He knows there’s no one to watch his back. He also knows that somewhere on his cell block there’s a man who’s threatened to kill him. So he puts his shoes on before he showers to be prepared for anything. What he doesn’t know is that today a guard is going to call his name and send him to the nurses station. But when he gets there, the nurse will be gone.

00:00:46
Speaker 2: So I walk into the nurses station, there’s nobody in there, and I’m like, like, am I about to get killed by somebody?

00:00:51
Speaker 1: That’s next? On Blood Trails. Ryan Watson, Brian Hagrich, and Tyler Wenrick were in trouble. The three American tourists had been arrested in the Caribbean archipelago of Turks and Caicos for possessing forgotten ammunition in their luggage. Ryan had been detained with his wife Valerie, but After two stressful weeks, she’d been allowed to return home. Now, the three husbands and fathers faced over a decade in the Grand Turk Prison, a facility that just one year previously had been deemed not fit for human habitation. If they were going to survive, they needed help from someone who’d already been down that road.

00:01:48
Speaker 3: We had come by a phone number of a guy named Michael Graham, And the way that we came about it is unexplainable.

00:01:54
Speaker 4: I mean, I’m confident that it’s divine intervention.

00:01:58
Speaker 1: As you heard in the last episod, Michael Grimm was the first American to be sentenced to prison for possessing ammunition in his carry on luggage. Ryan knew he needed to get in touch with Michael, but he didn’t know how. That’s when Ryan’s father in law sent out a prayer request to his family in Texas, which included one of Valerie’s cousins, a guy named.

00:02:18
Speaker 3: Ash Ash was training to be a firefighter in North Fort Worth. He had stopped to take his gear off. He pulls out his phone and he reads his phone in disbelief, says, my cousin and her husband were just arrested in Terse and Caicos because there was ammunition in their luggage.

00:02:35
Speaker 4: They’re trying to put him in prison.

00:02:37
Speaker 3: This guy who he doesn’t know standing behind him in this fire station in North Fort Worth, Texas like leans over and says, are you messing with me? Ash is like, why would I mess with you about this? And he goes, I’m from Indiana. My best friend is a guy named Michael Grimm. He was the first American to ever get sent to prison for having ammunition in his luggage.

00:03:00
Speaker 4: Let me put you in touch with him. He just got home two weeks ago.

00:03:03
Speaker 1: The contingent of Americans who’ve been arrested in Turks and Caicos is thankfully pretty small. The odds that the cousin of one of those Americans would be in the same fire station at the same time as the best friend of another are about as close to zero as you can get. You can see why Ryan thinks he was benefiting from some interdimensional assistance. But when Ryan finally got a chance to speak with Michael, the former inmate delivered a sobering message.

00:03:32
Speaker 3: He said, Hey, man, I heard about you. I was praying that you guys would somehow get in touch with me. He said, you’re in deep, deep shit, man. And I was like, crap, okay, And I said, man, is it money? I said, do I need to pay somebody off? Is that what this is about?

00:03:51
Speaker 4: And he said no, man, he said, this isn’t about money. He said this is about votes. I was like about votes, Like, what are you talking about.

00:03:58
Speaker 1: Michael explained that certain factions on the island, especially the influential families in government, had developed a potent anti American sentiment. Commercial development had forced residents inland and increased the cost of living, which created fertile ground for resentment to grow. That historic indignation, combined with the more recent perception that Americans were being given a slap on the wrist for violating the nation’s gun laws, created a perfect storm for the latest batch of American offenders. Here’s Michael.

00:04:30
Speaker 2: But the advice that I was given is that I got off easy, right. So like the sentiment when I got home from Oliver, like the attorney and other people on the island, was like, I only got six months, but the next guy is going to get devastated in turkic Caicos. As I learned, there are no rules. They say there are rules there’s no rules.

00:04:56
Speaker 1: Brian was already terrified of being separated from his family for over a decade. Now he had to confront the reality that local prosecutors would try to throw the book at him. He was more desperate than ever to learn what he could from Michael’s experience, how he was arrested and sentenced, how he survived his time in prison, and how he eventually escaped.

00:05:17
Speaker 3: Michael Graham was the first person to ever actually get sentenced to prison.

00:05:24
Speaker 4: He’s truly where this story.

00:05:26
Speaker 1: Starts, and the story he told was terrifying.

00:05:30
Speaker 2: I’m watching my back like I’m wearing shorts and my tennis shoes into the shower on the expectation that like I’m about to get jumped in the shower. People were trying to kill me. People were trying to fight me, people are trying to extort me. Like shit is going down. This is not good, Like I need you to call the embassy, like do something please. I’m kind of a one man showing here.

00:05:51
Speaker 1: I’m Jordan Sillers and this is Blood Trails Paradise Prison, Chapter two, Part one, Guilty. Michael Grimm is from southern Indiana. He works for a member of the US Congress, though he wouldn’t tell me exactly who. He’s also a big gun guy. He’s competed in three gun events and on the National Pistol Shooting Circuit. He was an officer at a gun range, and he’s trained with military and law enforcement personnel. In the US, a background in shooting and firearms training is often considered a marker of responsible ownership, but in Turks and Caicos, Michael’s background, much like Tyler’s concealed kerry permit, confirmed to local investigators that they were dealing with a potentially dangerous individual.

00:06:41
Speaker 2: So as far as Turks and Caicos was concerned, I may as well have just been a single military age male who was showing up with ammunition in their country, and that was their point of concern, and the prosecutor kind of reigned with.

00:06:54
Speaker 4: That as well.

00:06:56
Speaker 1: Michael was on vacation with his family and he told me he doesn’t remember how that nine millimeter glock magazine ended up in his bag. He normally uses a different bag for his gear and ammunition, and this backpack was dedicated to non gun related items. That’s the best system, but obviously it’s not fool proof. Somehow, that twenty round magazine still ended up in the wrong bag, despite his family’s best advice.

00:07:20
Speaker 2: Because even my family was like, hey, Michael, maybe double check your stuff to make sure you don’t have anything you’re not supposed to have. And I was like, haha, guys, very funny.

00:07:29
Speaker 1: Like Ryan and Brian. Michael was arrested at the airport and taken to the local police station.

00:07:34
Speaker 2: They were just like, well, we can hold you for a while until we charge you. And I was like, okay, so am I getting charged with the crime? We think we’re going to charge you with a crime, but we don’t really know yet, like we need to figure that out. Great, okay.

00:07:49
Speaker 1: Michael admitted to the officers that the nine millimeter cartridges were his, but reiterated that he didn’t bring them into the country on purpose.

00:07:56
Speaker 2: What became a problem was there was this kind of set of like apathy from the law enforcement, where again every cop I interacted with was very much like you really shouldn’t be here. Why is this our job? Like why do we have to deal with you? There was immediately followed by the police going yeah, but like somebody up high the rules say like we have to charge you with the crime.

00:08:21
Speaker 1: Michael had to wait around in a jail cell for three days while they figured it out. In the meantime, he secured the service of attorney Oliver Smith, who explained the seriousness of his situation. Still, Michael had reason to hope that he’d be allowed to leave in a few weeks after paying a fine.

00:08:37
Speaker 2: At the time of me going through all of this, they had not yet sentenced an American to prison on these charges, So there was no reason to believe that I would end up in prison, if that makes sense, because it was like, no, they’ve never like Americans have had firearms and ammunition and they haven’t gotten prison sentences. They’re not going to start with you.

00:08:59
Speaker 1: But that is he confidence started to fade at Michael’s first hearing.

00:09:04
Speaker 2: So we get to the plea in direction hearing and the wheels started to fall off of my case. In my interrogation with the police officers, they had asked me on the record, did you know that you had the ammunition with you? And I said no, and they said is this your ammunition? And I said yes, like that is my AMMO. I just didn’t know I had it in my back. And so the judge in my case immediately latched onto that as trying to force me into a not guilty plea. He refused. Initially, he refused to accept my guilty plea because he says, how can you plead guilty to a crime you didn’t know you were committing.

00:09:50
Speaker 1: This bit of jurisprudence should make all the attorneys out there raise a well compensated eyebrow. Well, it’s true that intent is a prerequisite for guilt. According to some statute, the Turks and Caicos Firearms Ordinance isn’t one of them. According to that law, a person is guilty merely by possessing ammunition, regardless of whether they possessed it intentionally or knowingly. Michael said his lawyer was just as surprised as he was at the judge’s contention.

00:10:17
Speaker 2: He calls me up and he’s like, in order for you to plead guilty, you have to change your statement on the stand and you have to admit that you knew you had the ammunition. It’s the only way I will plead guilty. And I was like, whatever, dude, Like okay, sure, Like I don’t think that’ll materially change the outcome, but I expect it probably will in some very negative and terrible way.

00:10:43
Speaker 1: Turns out it did. Michael was arrested on August first, twenty twenty three, and he had to wait until September eighteenth for his sentencing hearing.

00:10:53
Speaker 2: That weekend, everybody’s kind of on nerves because of me, especially because it’s like, I don’t claim to have like known or like have like divine inspiration, but I had a gut feeling where I was just like, this is not good. Something is not going to go according to plan. The judge is twenty minutes late to the hearing. He immediately gets into my sentence and comments and he says that, well, he does find exceptional circumstances in my case, and then he says the forever burned into my memory. He goes, but I still find that a custodial sentence is mandatory, so essentially saying you don’t have to do the twelve years, but you have to do something. And he says that because I retracted my statement on the stand to say that I knew I had knowledge of the ammunition, well that shows that he is irresponsible. He’s careless, right, Like he started going down the list of like adjectives for like my behavior, and as a result of all of this, we find that a custodial sentence in prison is good for him.

00:12:09
Speaker 1: At this point, Michael still had hope that the judge would give him a sentence equal to the number of days he’d already spent in jail, But when the judge started the sentence at five years, he knew that wouldn’t happen.

00:12:21
Speaker 2: Immediately, my heart sank and I remember, just like clear as day, turning and looking behind me and seeing like all of my family there, and their faces are just like a crazy like jaws wide open, people crying like they kind of believe that he just said, like, we’re starting at five years.

00:12:39
Speaker 1: The judge let that hang in the air for a moment and then began reducing Michael’s sentence a year or a month at a time. He cited Michael’s lack of criminal record, his good standing at his job, and the character references submitted by Michael’s friends and family.

00:12:53
Speaker 2: So he goes through all of this like we’re reducing a sentence by x amount because of why, and he settles on and as such, we are giving him a custodial sentence of one year in his Majesty’s prison and the court is taking off one third of his sentence because he’s like an upstanding citizen. We’re going to take off one third of a year. Which settled it like eight months and some change, and he’s like, okay, adjourned, like thanks for your time. See an eight months.

00:13:25
Speaker 1: Michael was obviously devastated, as were his parents and girlfriend, but at the same time, he told me, he also felt oddly relieved.

00:13:35
Speaker 2: All of the anxiety like disappeared. It was this, it was this feeling of like there’s no more guessing, there’s no more like not knowing, because it’s like, okay, they gave me eight months. Now it’s literally just a matter of me running the clock down right.

00:13:50
Speaker 1: After weeks of waiting and wondering, Michael could finally focus on what was right in front of him. He told me he was actually in a pretty good mood, all things considered, as he was taken back to jail to await his flight to Grand Turk Prison, but he soon realized that he wouldn’t be able to run out the clock by keeping his head down and minding his own business. As he was marched across the tarmac to the commercial jet that would take him to Grand Turk Island.

00:14:16
Speaker 2: I will never forget the look on the crew’s face and on the faces of all the people as I like walk shackled up like Hannibal lefter to the very back of the aircraft and find my seat.

00:14:30
Speaker 1: When later that day he walked up to the large yellow gates of the prison, that unwanted attention ramped up to level ten.

00:14:38
Speaker 2: Everybody knew everything about me. They knew my full name, my home address, what I did for work, who my girlfriend was, who my parents were, Like everybody did. The inmates, the guards, guys in the yard were like, hey, Michael Grimm is here. The white boys here like yeah, don’t you live it like blah blah blah. And I’m like, oh my god, Like this is not Like this is going off the r immediately, like this is not good.

00:15:01
Speaker 1: The unfortunate fact was that Michael’s story had been widely circulated in local media outlets. One headline from a reporter named Wilkie Arthur read quote, Judge stunts sentences irresponsible Indiana tourist to eight months in prison for AMMO possession. Another read quote, Judge sends strong message to those who bring guns to Turks and Caicos Islands. Some on those islands admitted that the punishment didn’t fit the crime, but others celebrated the fact that an American was finally going to prison. Here’s Ryan explaining what happened in the aftermath of Michael’s sentencing.

00:15:37
Speaker 4: The local families all celebrate.

00:15:39
Speaker 3: Finally American exceptionalism has ended today, is what the newspaper read. So they are finally scratching this just burning itch that they’ve had. Oh that’s accumulated over the last five decades, with all the American development, the colonial rule that they’ve been under, to finally be able to stick it to the Americans. Their premier, which is the equivalent of their president’s guy, named Charles Nissik, seized this public outcry and he at that point goes to the appellate court and says, I want to make this a twelve year minimum mandatory prison sentence.

00:16:14
Speaker 4: I’m going to give my people what they want.

00:16:16
Speaker 1: We reached out to the Turks and Kkos government for comment on this story, but as of this recording, have not received a response. But whatever their motivation, as you heard in the previous episode, the appellate court did rule that some prison time was required for possessing ammunition, even in exceptional circumstances. This is why Michael’s case was so relevant to the other Americans, and it’s also why these incidents caught the attention not only of local Turks and Caicos media, but of the United States government. If American citizens were being arrested and jailed for what most would consider innocent mistakes, it was the job of the State Department to step in and help. But when that help finally came, those citizens could hardly believe what they were hearing. That’s next after the break Part two, Uncle Sam. One of the benefits of being an American citizen is that, theoretically, at least, you have the backing of the world’s most powerful nation when you find yourself in trouble in a foreign country. We’ve all heard stories of State Department diplomats negotiating the release of American hostages, and if that doesn’t work, dramatic rescue operations by special forces. If you’re an American and you ever find yourself in trouble overseas, you’re advised to call the local embassy as soon as possible. One of Michael’s first calls after his arrest was to the closest US embassy in Nassau, Bahamas.

00:17:52
Speaker 2: I call the State Department, and the State Department is immediately unhelpful.

00:17:58
Speaker 1: The man on the phone explained that while Michael impending conviction wouldn’t go on his criminal record in the US, there wasn’t anything he could do to intervene.

00:18:06
Speaker 5: Their UK territory. Like they have real courts and like real prosecutors.

00:18:12
Speaker 2: Right.

00:18:12
Speaker 5: This isn’t Iran or like Russia where they’re just going to make stuff up and like throw you a jail and you’ll never be seen again. This is a UK territory they have like a working system of law and order. You broke the law, you’re on your own, like good luck, bye.

00:18:29
Speaker 2: And like hung on.

00:18:32
Speaker 1: While the State Department insisted on the integrity of the local legal system, navigating it would prove bewildering. What’s more, for these families, the shock wasn’t just the severity of the charges. It was the realization of how little leverage the American government was willing to exert when a citizen violated a foreign law. Here’s Brian, you know, I.

00:18:52
Speaker 6: Didn’t hear from the State departments. I think It was seventy three days until I was into to my detention, but the answers were mostly the same. Here in a foreign country, there’s nothing we can do, and I just felt like, Hey, this is just it’s falling on deaf years.

00:19:08
Speaker 1: The embassy was more communicative with Tyler, likely because he was arrested after Ryan and Bryan, but they fed him the same line they told Michael.

00:19:17
Speaker 7: They weren’t very helpful. I mean they basically said that unless they’re mistreating Americans or not giving you the accommodations for your health, they can’t do anything. Like they have their own laws, we can’t intervene or do anything about this.

00:19:37
Speaker 1: There’s no doubt that this situation put the American government in a tough position. Turks and Caicos is a British overseas territory, so any action against the islands could impact our relationship with one of our closest allies. It’s also true that Turks and Caicos manages its own affairs. They instituted a law against possessing even a single round of ammunition, and the Americans broke it. If Turks and Caicos officials felt like the US government wasn’t respecting their sovereignty. They could make things even worse for the jailed Americans. Those are reasonable arguments, but they’re tough to hear from a cockroach infested jail cell. What’s more, the law may have been duly passed, but to these Americans, the penalty felt profoundly unjust that they thought should have warranted some kind of action by Uncle Sam. And despite the State Department’s claims, they weren’t powerless. The Turks and Caicos economy is largely funded by American tourism. If American officials issued a travel advisory warning against vacationing on the islands, the economy would collapse in a matter of months, if not sooner. Even a threat of a travel advisory would likely be enough to get the ball rolling, but much to Ryan’s horror, the State Department maintained its hands off position.

00:20:53
Speaker 3: The State Department under that administration was pushing back on us hard. Nope, we’re getting involved. We don’t like those Americans are a black eye on our image. We don’t want to be associated with that, And so they had completely distanced themselves from US.

00:21:09
Speaker 1: Ryan didn’t cite any specific action State Department officials took that made their situation worse. But among the very limited interactions they had with embassy officials was one that backed up the Americans claims we.

00:21:21
Speaker 3: Have a consular show up. She requests to meet us at this random deli next to the airport. Brian and I go meet her and we sit down with her, and she kinda starts laughing under her breath, and she stops, and then she starts laughing.

00:21:40
Speaker 4: Again, and Brian and I are looking at each other like what’s going on? This is Madden.

00:21:44
Speaker 3: We’re both like fighting for our lives here and this lady’s laughing.

00:21:50
Speaker 4: And I said, what are you laughing about?

00:21:52
Speaker 3: She said, well, I’ve been debating on whether or I should tell you this, but we’re all joking. The big joke back in the office this is why did you? Why don’t you to just get on a boat and make everybody’s lives easier? And I was like, done, Can I get on a boat? Like You’re like, this is like I’ll get on a boat, And she said, no, you can’t get on a boat. She’s like it’s not a serious option for you guys. She’s like, it’s just would everybody’s it would make everybody’s life easier. And I was like, because my life had joked to you right now, and she backed off a bit, so I’m not saying that. She’s like, it’s just we we it’s just how.

00:22:29
Speaker 4: We joke around the office.

00:22:30
Speaker 3: I was like, you were joking about us going to prison for the next twelve years.

00:22:35
Speaker 4: You’ve got to be kidding me. It pissed me off.

00:22:39
Speaker 5: To no end.

00:22:40
Speaker 3: I had a photo of my wife and kids that I’d been keep annoying me at all times, and I pulled it out and I slammed it on the table in front of her, and I was like, I want you to look at those kids and look at my wife.

00:22:52
Speaker 4: And she.

00:22:55
Speaker 3: Cut the conversation to a different direction. She’s well, I’m just here to do a welfare check. Need medication and I was like, nope. Brian shook his head no, and she said, all right, looks like you guys are healthy, got up and walked out, and I was like wow.

00:23:12
Speaker 1: I asked Brian about this interaction and he confirmed it at.

00:23:16
Speaker 2: Least in our cases.

00:23:17
Speaker 6: I can’t speak for others, but clearly working against us and not with us, and that’s very difficult to swallows a proud American.

00:23:25
Speaker 1: Michael had been in touch with the American embassy, but no government official had visited him during his eight weeks on the island.

00:23:32
Speaker 2: But after his sentencing, while I’m in jail awaiting transport, the State Department shows up. She kind of sat there, like she introduced herself, and then I think like she was like waiting for something, and I was like, can I help you, Like do you need something? Like where were you guys for the last sixty days? Right? And she’s like, well, how are you feeling? And I was like, I will never forget because I said. I looked at her and I said, I’m going to fucking prison in a foreign country. I’m okay, I guess I have all my fingers and toes like I don’t know. And she goes, he goes, do you think this is funny? And I said, you’re asking me if I think this is funny? Like you guys left me behind? What are you talking about? Like you straight up left me behind, like the whole note no man left behind, Like you left me behind? And you’re asking me do I think this is funny?

00:24:28
Speaker 3: No?

00:24:29
Speaker 1: To Michael, the timing of this visit was troubling to say the least. The official had traveled to the territory from the US Embassy in the Bahamas, yet she was nowhere to be seen during the critical hours of his formal sentencing, hearing you.

00:24:43
Speaker 2: Happen to be here coincidentally the same day that you knew I was being sentenced, and you didn’t come to my sentencing. But I got sentenced and you showed up like two hours after I get to jail. And she goes, well, we were doing some like American Citizens Services, like we’re helping some people with their passports and paperwork, and I figured i’d dropped by to check on you, and so I was like, are you here to like advocate for my release? And she goes, well, no, you broke the law. You pled guilty. And I said, okay, in your little notebook, write down whatever you want. I’m going to prison for eight months. And you fucking left me behind, Like, don’t ever forget that. I hope you remember this when I come home in a box because I get killed in a foreign prison. And so I was a little heated, like, yeah, unless you’re here with some magical paperwork that’s going to put me on the next flight to Miami. I’m not interested in these pleasantries that were doing. So she leaves and that was like the last I heard from the State Department.

00:25:38
Speaker 1: With that, Michael lost his last hope of avoiding what was about to come. Next, he said goodbye to his family, boarded the flight from Provo to Grand Turk, and entered the most surreal and terrifying period of his life. Part three through the Looking Last.

00:26:01
Speaker 2: I’ll never forget, because he goes couple things. In this prison. You will have to fight, So get ready because you’re the only white guy, You’re the only American. They know who you are and they know you’re coming.

00:26:18
Speaker 1: This was one of the first things Michael was told by the chief deputy of the prison upon his arrival.

00:26:24
Speaker 2: His name is Crooks. Very ironic. It was not lost on me. Crooks was cool. I got along with Crooks. He was nice.

00:26:32
Speaker 1: As they sat at the picnic tables that served as a visitation and intake area, Crooks searched through the minimal possessions Michael had brought.

00:26:40
Speaker 2: Had like a draw string backpack or something that was in there, and he holds it up and he’s like, you can’t have this, but I’ll just keep it in the office until you’re released. And I said, Okay, I guess there’s no rules, Like I guess I just have that waiting in the office for me. Whatever.

00:26:55
Speaker 1: Satisfied that the American hadn’t tried to smuggle in any weapons or a munition, Crooks began giving Michael the lay of the land, and.

00:27:03
Speaker 2: He’s like, all right, so sorry you’re here. Kind of a pain in the ass that you’re here, because again, the guards knew, like if I get killed, how fire is going to rain down on these guards.

00:27:18
Speaker 1: Crooks acknowledged that Michael might be receiving some unwonted attention and it was up to Michael to handle it. But Crooks also said that as long as Michael didn’t start the trouble, they’d tried to intervene. If something began to spiral out of control, serious people would be asking serious questions if the American actually ended up dead. This wasn’t as reassuring as Michael may have hoped, but Crooks did offer one piece of encouragement on a topic you may have already wondered about.

00:27:48
Speaker 2: He goes here, he like puts his finger on the table. He goes here. In turks of Caicos, he holds up his hands. He goes, we like women. Okay, that thing you guys do in American prisons. He throws his hands up and he goes, we don’t do that here. In my mind, I was like, oh, fake god.

00:28:04
Speaker 1: Michael was twenty six years old in twenty twenty three. He stood five feet eleven inches tall, but he only weighed one hundred and twenty eight pounds. He’d had some jiu jitsu and boxing training, but he admits he wasn’t an expert. If a larger inmate wanted to hurt him, there wasn’t a whole lot he’d be able to do about it. But if Crooks was to be believed, he could at least take one kind of assault off the table. Crooks handed Michael a thin mattress which looked more like a yoga mat, and a plastic plate cup and disposable.

00:28:34
Speaker 2: Fork, and he leans in and he goes, do not lose the fork. And I said, okay, Roger, that message received, Dude.

00:28:44
Speaker 1: What a just a surreal experience that must have been.

00:28:47
Speaker 2: Like the entire thing. I was like, yeah, it sucks ass, I’m in prison, but the entire time, like I couldn’t I couldn’t help but be like this is ridiculous, Like this is just a giant joke. Okay, Like at some point somebody’s gonna be like, ah, we gotcha, You’ve been on the Truman Show. The whole line.

00:29:03
Speaker 1: Crooks explained that Michael would have to be in solitary confinement for the first two weeks of his stay. This was ostensibly a COVID measure to quarantine potentially sick inmates, but Michael thinks it also served as a conditioning technique. If inmates spent their first two weeks in solitary, they’d be less likely to misbehave in ways that landed them back in that section of the prison.

00:29:24
Speaker 2: So they kind of lead me through the prison yard kind of around all the wings, and so people that are out in the yard are like on the fence like hey, white boy, Like what’s up. Welcome to the jungle, white boy, like call me names and shit, And I was just like, what’s up, guys, Like I couldn’t think of anything to say, So I was like what’s up? Everybody like thinking I would be funny, and everybody was like, hey, you just wait till you get in here with me, Like I’m at and I was like, okay, great, Like nothing I do is gonna change what’s about to happen.

00:29:56
Speaker 1: Tyler Wendrick painted the same picture when he told me about being led back to matt which is what they called the solitary confinement area. Remember, Tyler had opted to go straight to prison instead of trying to make bail. While being held in jail, Tyler walked the same gauntlet Michael did. Just a few months after Michael’s release.

00:30:13
Speaker 7: There was a lot of taunting walking up to that right area of building where I was going to be at, you know, the whole because it was mostly African American people likes you know, oh white boy, and you know all that kind of taunting, which I mean I wasn’t used to. I mean, that’s not something that you’re used to on a daily basis, So I didn’t really know what to think. I was just trying to ignore them and stay out of the way.

00:30:34
Speaker 1: Michael isn’t sure if he and Tyler stayed in the same cell, but all the cells in the prison shared similar dimensions and layout. Michael estimates that it was five feet wide and nine or ten feet deep. He obviously didn’t have a tape measure, but in another ironic coincidence, he did have Alexander Solzenitson’s famous text Goolag Archipelago.

00:30:55
Speaker 2: To pass time. I was like, let’s measure the cell. And I was like, okay, it’s like it’s like fifteen Goolag Archipela goes long like whatever, and so yeah, I was like, I don’t know what that translates to.

00:31:05
Speaker 1: Unlike American prisons, which benefit from central heating and cooling, the cells in Grand Turk Prison are about two stories tall. This is theoretically designed to keep the air circulating and control the temperature, but Michael says it was still unbearably hot.

00:31:20
Speaker 2: It’s a metal and concrete building that is suffocatingly dense. It just sits and bakes in the one hundred and ten degree heat all day. It’s hotter in the building than it is outside. And there’s one window up on the corner of the wall of the cell, and it’s probably like two feet by two feet, and it’s just got like literally like iron bars in the middle of it, and so you can literally climb up on your toilet and you can sit there if you want to, like Jack’s barrow, with your face out the window.

00:31:51
Speaker 7: It was hot, so you know, you have the choice of either shutting that shutter and burning up, or keeping it open to let.

00:31:57
Speaker 1: Some air through and getting eaten up by mosquitoes. There was a water spigot in each cell along with a toilet, but the water wasn’t for drinking. Instead, inmates had to fill up a five gallon bucket and dump it in the back of the toilet so it would flush. Those buckets also served as storage containers, and according to michael status symbols, I.

00:32:17
Speaker 2: Always like laugh when I tell the story because it’s like a man is nothing without his five gallon bucket at HMP Grand Turk, right, Like the measure of a man is like how many buckets does he have? Because there was no storage either, and so we were allowed to have five gallon buckets to like keep clothes and stuff in.

00:32:37
Speaker 1: Completing the bizarre nightmare of Michael’s first prison cell, was a giant mural on one of the walls, and it.

00:32:43
Speaker 2: Was a massive mural of a woman with her legs spread wide open, and then there were like messages that like people had like written like all around it on the wall. And so I’m sitting there and I’m like great, this is so like I’m this is like crazy again surreal, like okay, I guess this is my cell.

00:33:08
Speaker 1: He had plenty of time to get to know his new surroundings. His schedule those first two weeks consisted of twenty three hours in his cell and one hour out in the yard. In that one hour, Michael had to wash and dry his clothes as well as the dishes he used to eat. This was also his first chance to interact with the other inmates in MAX, who in this case were exclusively Haitians.

00:33:29
Speaker 2: Would just like hang out in the yard. The guards and the Haitians that were in there with me would go out and they would play dominoes on the picnic table. And so the Haitians who did not speak English, they taught me how to play dominoes because they’d be like no, no, no, no, like let me show you, right, And so they taught me how to play dominoes.

00:33:48
Speaker 1: Tyler’s first interaction with his fellow inmates was somewhat more frightening.

00:33:53
Speaker 7: I got threatened by one prisoner right off the bat. Basically the first night he was like, you know, wait till tomorrow morning, you know, you know, beat you up. And you know, just talking about, you know, the white guy that’s in here going to beat the crap out of you.

00:34:08
Speaker 1: Those threats turned out to be empty, and Tyler says one of the other inmates, a guy named Louis, was kind and helpful. But it didn’t take many days in his Majesty’s prison for bail to start looking a lot more attractive.

00:34:20
Speaker 7: The first day and Dad was actually able to visit me that day, and he had already started talking to some people, and he said that I needed to get out and start trying to fight for myself. You know, staying in the prison was not the best option because there was people doing things to try to.

00:34:43
Speaker 1: Help, Tyler says. The judge initially tried to raise the bail amount, which delayed his release, but eventually they were able to wire the funds to the island and Tyler was allowed to leave.

00:34:54
Speaker 7: Finally, it went through intension of wanting to get out because you’re just miserable and you just want that piece of and you’re still stuck here, but at least you’re not in this confined, terrible place.

00:35:04
Speaker 1: Tyler didn’t know if he’d be returning, but at least he was able to reconnect with his family. Michael wasn’t so lucky. He knew he’d have to eventually leave solitary and join the general prison population. That transition opened up a whole new set of threats for the only American in Grand Turk Prison. Part four, Daily Insanity.

00:35:31
Speaker 2: They took me to gen Pop. I was in Gen Pop. They put me in the cell with literally the biggest guy in the prison, So that was awesome.

00:35:39
Speaker 1: Michael estimates that this guy was about six foot seven and just shy of three hundred pounds.

00:35:44
Speaker 2: If he wants to kill me, he’s just gonna pick me up in the middle of the night and smashed me against the wall and I’m gonna die. He was known for having anger issues, and so I was like, I think they’re trying to get me killed.

00:35:55
Speaker 1: Fortunately, Michael said he never had a problem with his first cellmate. He even had a chance to be helpful.

00:36:00
Speaker 2: He had a business plan for a septic tank truck, and he was like, well, you went to college, right, And I was like yeah, and he’s like, well, can you take a look at my business plan. I saw it as an opportunity to be like yeah, I was thinking, oh, your business plan, how about you don’t beat me to death in my sleep, and he’s like, yeah, dude, I got you back. Like, if you take a look at this, I was like cool.

00:36:20
Speaker 5: Great.

00:36:20
Speaker 1: Michael says he expected some of these requests. I’ll uh Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption, but he didn’t survive by doing everyone’s taxes. Instead, he acted as a kind of Switzerland in the prison’s larger racial and gang based dynamics.

00:36:35
Speaker 2: About fifty percent hait. The other fifty percent was kind of like all the other islands in the Caribbean, predominantly Jamaicans, Bohemians, Turks Islanders, and then a handful of Dominicans, and then I rounded out the bell curve as like the white guy. So it wasn’t a problem because I wasn’t associated with any gangs like in America our prisons are, like we have racial gangs right down there. I’m the only white dude. I took a very neutral stance to everybody where. I was like, I’m here to do my time. I’m not here to get involved in your bullshit or whatever you got going on in your cell. Like I was very like Swiss in how I did it. Like I just was like I am. I have no problems with anybody.

00:37:19
Speaker 1: Now, this doesn’t mean he escaped all conflict, and we’ll get to a serious example of that in a minute. But he also had to deal with a kind of daily absurdity that made him wonder whether he should laugh or despair. For example, the beds in the cells were nothing more than concrete slabs sticking out of the walls. The beds protruded in a kind of bunk style, with a higher and lower slab in each cell. The top bunk was usually cooler at night, but it was also about seven feet off the ground and only a couple feet wide.

00:37:51
Speaker 2: And so while I was in a dude actually had a seizure on the top bunk and he rolled out of the bed and he broke both of his arms and one of his collar bones, and like had to be taking the hospital and stuff, and like the guards wouldn’t come get him in the middle of the night and all this other bullshit. That was just like kind of the daily insanity of like being in the prison, right, Like, that’s just like the shit that went down.

00:38:19
Speaker 1: Michael says the food was edible. Eight months of sitting around actually allowed him to gain some weight. But while some dishes were enjoyable, others were so bad that the inmates skipped the meal entirely.

00:38:32
Speaker 2: Wednesday was Vienna sausages in red sauce, and the red sauce had the consistency of like grease, like it was like a red grease, like I don’t know what kind of sauce it was, because it wasn’t tomato sauce. It had the consistency of like pancake syrup, but it was red, and it had no flavor. And when you got it on your hands, it was like it was like motor oil, like you couldn’t get it off.

00:39:03
Speaker 1: Not every meal was this bad. Saturday they served chicken that the inmates referred to as jail fried chicken or JFC.

00:39:10
Speaker 2: Wanda, one of the cooks, one of the civilian cooks, would come in and she I’ll never forget because I heard her in the kitchen loudly saying I’m seasoning until the spirits tell me to stop. And I was like, Wanda, you’re after my own heart.

00:39:28
Speaker 1: The fried chicken was pretty good, but Michael says some of the inmates still tried to supplement their calorie intake in other ways. Content warning here for all the cat people out there.

00:39:38
Speaker 2: There were a bunch of feral cats that roamed the prison. You want to talk about hunting. So the Haitians would catch the cats and then they would use the lids of like soup cans to skin like field dress the cat like skin cat feel dress it real quick. I never saw it that I heard them doing it, and then I asked one of them, because again I’m bored. I asked one of the Haitians like, hey, like, how do you feel dressed a cat? And so it’s he demonstrated it. He just kind of like showed me the hand motion, and it’s like feel dressing a rabbit. And then what they would do is they would try to find all sorts of weird ingenious ways to cook the cats. And so one time what they tried to do was to take the wiring off of the wall, strip it down, and then basically like broil the cat like it’s a car battery, and it like stunk up the whole place. This was not my take it a way a grain of salt, because this is not my wing. But I heard, like one of the guards was talking about it, and I’m like, you gotta be kidding me, because we could all smell it and we could hear it going down, and we were like, what the fuck is going on over there? And it’s like, oh, yeah, they caught a cat and they’ll try to like broil it alive. It’s kind of like the daily picture of like the daily insanity that was just like every single day something is happening like that.

00:40:58
Speaker 1: Michael was able to stay away from much of this insanity in Gen Pop, but not all of it. And this is where things started to get serious.

00:41:06
Speaker 2: So I had been in Gen Pop, they moved me out of the big Dude’s cell into someone else’s cell.

00:41:13
Speaker 1: Michael’s new cell mate was a guy named Smiley, which isn’t really important to the story, but obviously something I wanted to mention. Michael had been in the prison for about four weeks and he’d been in Smiley’s cell for about five days when another inmate walked in. This guy’s name was Middle, which was shortened from Middle East, though Michael isn’t sure why they called him that either.

00:41:34
Speaker 2: And Middle was kind of like the muscle on the block. But he was also like I was already small, right, he was smaller than I was but he had a really big head for like not a lot of a body. He was a very like he’s very sinewy guy. Right, he’s very stringy dude. And so Middle came in and he said, here’s what you’re gonna do. We’re gonna bring you the phone, you’re gonna call your family. You’re gonna give us twenty thousand dollars, or we’re gonna kill you in the shower.

00:42:02
Speaker 1: In this moment, Michael had to make a choice, and he didn’t have much time. He wasn’t sure how seriously to take Middle’s threat. The other inmate was clearly high and again not a large person, but he was also in prison on a murder charge. Even more concerning, Michael didn’t know whether Middle was acting alone or on behalf of other scarier people. It would have been safer in the moment to mollify the man, but if he allowed himself to be extorted once, who knows where it would end.

00:42:32
Speaker 2: So I stand up and he like, we’re kind of facing each other, and I said, I looked him in the eye and I said, no, I’m not doing that. And so he I think because he was moving in slow motion because he had just smoked a lot, right, he takes the world’s most telegraphed swing and it was like almost in slow motion, and so I immediately just like came up and just jabbed him right in the side of the neck. I’m not a professional fighter. I’m just a dude who’s like taking some boxing glasses.

00:43:08
Speaker 4: That’s it.

00:43:09
Speaker 2: And so I immediately just jabbed him right in the throat as hard as I could. When I hit him, I felt this like pain shoot up my arm, and I was like, oh my god, Like I just I’m a scrawny dude. I like there’s not a lot of power in my fight. But I had to have thrown like the hardest punch I have ever thrown, and it slumped him, like it just took the fight out of him, and he just went down and he like fell to his knees, rolled over, and he on all fours scurried out of the cell.

00:43:41
Speaker 1: This interaction went about as well as Michael could have hoped, but now he had a new problem. So the next day he called his attorney.

00:43:49
Speaker 2: And I’m like, I gotta watch my fucking back because I middles the muscle in the cell and I’m screwed, Like it’s over for me. I’m gonna get killed, like I have started a chaine of events that I is no longer in my control.

00:44:01
Speaker 1: Oliver said he’d tried to take care of things, but it would take some time time that Michael wasn’t sure he had.

00:44:08
Speaker 2: I’m watching my back like I’m wearing shorts and my tennis shoes into the shower on the expectation that like I’m about to get jumped in the shower, like that was the joke. Do not talk to the dude with the shoes in the shower because he’s there for business, right like he’s there to fight.

00:44:25
Speaker 1: The very next day, Michael’s family came for their first visit.

00:44:29
Speaker 2: And I’m like shaking and I’m explaining to them like people are trying to kill me. People were trying to fight me, people are trying to extort me, Like shit is going down? This is it not good? Like I need you to call the embassy, like do something please, I’m kind of a one man showing here. Nobody’s really like helping me whatever.

00:44:43
Speaker 1: They also said they’d tried to help, but given the State Department’s handling of the situation so far, Michael didn’t have much confidence. He spent another stressful twenty four hours hiding out in his cell until the next morning when the guards called him up to the front of the wing.

00:44:58
Speaker 2: So they shout for me, like hey, like Michael, like get the get the white boy, Get the white boy. So I come in. I’m like hey, what’s up. And they’re like, yeah, the nurse needs you. And I was like fuck, Like what now, Like what do you mean the nurse needs Like okay, whatever. So they’re like, yeah, get a shirt on, like the nurse needs you. Let’s go.

00:45:16
Speaker 1: The problem was Michael hadn’t asked to see the nurse. He hadn’t been injured in the fight, so he couldn’t help. But wonder if this was a pretext for something on the opposite end of the spectrum for medical care.

00:45:28
Speaker 2: And so I walk in, there’s nobody in there, and I’m like, am I about? Like am I about to get killed by somebody? Like I’m expecting like The Godfather where he walks into the room and he’s like, oh, where is everybody to shoot him in the back of the head. So I walk in and I’m like, shit, like where is everybody?

00:45:47
Speaker 1: What Michael found in the supply closet of the nurses room is after the break Stay with Us Part five Read good story. As Michael looked around the empty nurses room, stealing himself for what was about to happen, he saw something move out of the corner of his eye.

00:46:09
Speaker 2: The door to the supply closet opens and Crooks steps out, and he goes, hey, come here real quick, don’t let anybody see you. And so I’m like, oh fuck, So I like run in the supply closet. So Kurks like pulls me in and he shuts the door. He like leans and he’s all right, here’s the deal. We heard about your little altercation. You stood up for yourself. It’s fine, Like that’s no problems, but we’re gonna have to transfer you to like a different wing. And he’s like, we can’t let people know that because you got in a fight. We’re moving you because otherwise people will start fighting each other thinking they’re going to get moved.

00:46:43
Speaker 1: Right, the other inmates might want to be moved, Crooks explained, because Michael was about to get an upgrade. This was the reason for the cloak and dagger routine. Crooks had decided to quietly transfer Michael to a maximum security wing of the prison, but he didn’t want anyone else to know. This section housed the prison’s worst offenders, murderers, violent thieves, and anyone else serving serious time in His Majesty’s prison. This might not sound like the recipe for a positive living environment, but as Michael explained, it was.

00:47:16
Speaker 2: The attitude was different. So they were like, they were all like, this is just my apartment, Like I just live here, Like I want to keep it clean. I want to like take care of it. You’re kind of in my house right now. The general attitude like they were a little bit more well behaved, and they were just generally like they were easier to get along with. They were more reasonable people.

00:47:35
Speaker 1: Michael had been hoping to get moved to this long term tier, and now it looked like his fight with Middle had unintentionally accomplished what he was hoping for.

00:47:44
Speaker 2: So they were like, congratulations on beating like the wing boss. You get like an upgrade in your living editions. I was like sick.

00:47:50
Speaker 1: Michael told me his transfer to this block was the turning point in his time at the Grand Turk Prison.

00:47:56
Speaker 2: Once I got settled, every day was pretty much the same. It was like groundhog Day, but like the food changed, the weather sucked, the mosquitoes ate you alive.

00:48:06
Speaker 1: But that drudgery also came with a certain level of peace he hadn’t experienced in the other wings of the prison.

00:48:13
Speaker 2: The people problem started to go away. I started to make friends, Guys started to know they can like Michael’s not a snitch, Like I’m not worried about somebody running up and like stabbing me in the back or whatever. I was more worried that the prison or the government of Turks and Caicos were going to start playing games with me as I was getting closer and closer to my release date.

00:48:38
Speaker 1: Michael was scheduled to be released in February of twenty twenty four, just a few weeks after Brian was arrested. There was a mix up with his passport and he spent a good deal of time and mental anxiety trying to confirm that the Turks and Keikos government still had it and was willing to give it back to him. He eventually got that sorted out, only to be confronted with a new problem.

00:48:58
Speaker 2: But a week before my release was when everything started to rapidly fall apart.

00:49:04
Speaker 1: The Turks and Caicos immigration authority showed up at the prison and gave Michael a deportation order. This might sound like a good thing for someone who really wanted to get off the islands, but it wasn’t.

00:49:16
Speaker 2: The problem, as it was explained to me, is that they wouldn’t just let me take that paper and go board a flight home. They would have to take me to a deportation center on a different island, where they would then keep me for an indefinite period of time until they arranged my travel back to the United States. And so that was a major issue. I feel like my head is just getting wrung out trying to keep myself saying in here and now you’re telling me we may have to possibly keep you another six months, but we really don’t know. We’ll have to see what happens when you walk out the front gate. Like we can’t give you a definitive answer.

00:49:58
Speaker 1: I don’t know if you’ve been able to tell. But Michael is the kind of guy who tries to make the best of a bad situation. He approached his time in prison with a kind of dry humor that I don’t think many people would have been able to pull off. But this news just a week before his release was a bridge too far, even for him.

00:50:17
Speaker 2: I remember going back to my cell and I like kind of crouched down and I just was like, God, if you are out there, I’m just lodging a complaint, Okay, Like I’ve kind of had enough, So like, if you’re listening, just lodging a complaint with the big man upstairs, Like throw me a bone here.

00:50:41
Speaker 1: The big man apparently got the message, because about five hours later, the Immigration Office issued a new letter reversing the previous order and giving Michael what’s called an unconditional release. After what Michael describes as the single longest week of his life, that day finally came on February twenty second, twenty twenty four. He didn’t eat breakfast, as per prison tradition for those being released. He also took his spoon and fork with him, because, as per another prison tradition, if he left them there, he might be back for them. When nine am finally rolled around, Crooks and the other prison guards couldn’t help reviving a long standing joke with their first American tourist inmate.

00:51:21
Speaker 2: You know, the kind of sick joke that all the excuse me that all the police officers and even the courts and the prison guards were saying the entire time, from when I initially got brought into the police station all the way through the day, literally the morning of my release. The joke was like, Okay, well we’ll see you next year, like sorry for the inconvenience, but like we’ll see you when you come back next year, like hope you cash in your sandals rewards or whatever.

00:51:47
Speaker 1: Michael’s family was there to meet him as he walked back through those giant yellow gates, but even in this joyous moment, he says, the weirdness didn’t stop.

00:51:56
Speaker 2: The immigration guy. He looks at all of us and he’s like, is there anything you got want to do before you leave? And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like I remember feeling I felt like I was just like a madman. I felt like I was just like wide eyed like Doc Brown, where I was like what are you talking? Like what do you mean? Is there anything I want to do? Like I want to go I want to go home. And he goes he’s like, well, like do you want to go get breakfast? Like do you want to go down to the beach for a little bit, like I have to escort you. This is all I’m doing today, Like we can you know, I just have to go with you. And I was like no, no, no, I want to get on the fucking plane, Like I want to go on a fucking plane, Like take me to the airport, please, for the love of God, take me to the airport.

00:52:36
Speaker 1: They arrived at the airport and made it through security, where, believe it or not, airport officials confiscated Michael’s water bottle, but he eventually made his way onto the plane.

00:52:46
Speaker 2: We get on the plane, the pilots are like, once we shut the door, we cannot open it and we have to go to the United States. Great, so we have a very quiet flight home. I remember I cried on the plane.

00:53:01
Speaker 1: Once he arrived on US soil and passed through customs and border patrol, he knew he was finally safe.

00:53:07
Speaker 2: So I got down on my knees and I like kissed the ground and I was like I’m back in America, Like yeah, let’s go, let’s go, like we’re back in America. From there, flew back to Indiana. By two pm that day, I was at home on the ground, so it was just a wild It was just a wild day of like I woke up in prison in a foreign country. By lunchtime, I’m home.

00:53:30
Speaker 1: You might be wondering if Michael experienced any negative mental health effects from his time in prison. Michael says his family fully expected to be helping him work through some level of PTSD, but they were happily surprised to find that he’d coped with his incarceration better than anyone could have hoped. I asked Michael why that was, and here’s what he said.

00:53:50
Speaker 2: I talked to several professionals about it, and they and it was like it was an agency thing. Like even when it was like my passport doesn’t exist, the US govern has literally left me behind. My family’s sixteen hundred miles away back in Indiana. I’m still in control of me, Like I’m still in control of how I feel every single day, Like even sitting in a ford in prison, I’m like, we’re gonna go have some fun today. You know what, The sun’s not out today. It’s kind of cloudy. Like that’s kind of nice. Like it was hot as fuck yesterday, Like it’s kind of nice. Some people say that’s like you’re diluting yourself. It’s like, no, I am in control at all times of how I feel. I have a mentor, a gentleman very close to me who I look up to, I respect deeply, and he always would say, every good story sucks to make. Right, So I kind of said that to myself as I was going through this experience, where I was like, hey, man, every good story sucks to make. One day, this is gonna be a really good story.

00:55:00
Speaker 1: In the end, Michael served one hundred and fifty six days in prison, a shorter term than the judge ruled thanks to Michael’s good behavior. But what if he’d been forced to stay in the prison for years instead of months. What if he hadn’t gotten moved to the privileged wing and been forced to fight every day of his life for the other Americans. That was a real possibility. Brian was scheduled to be sentenced before Ryan and Tyler, and he told me, given the sentiment on the island, he fully expected his fate to be worse than Michael’s.

00:55:31
Speaker 6: My case was never made public there. I’m not sure how or why, never published in their local media, but Michael found out, and you know, I would constantly just pick his brain just I mean, I was prepared to go to prison. He was the last one that was there. He went to prison. I mean, I kind of thought my fate would follow his, or be potentially worse.

00:55:50
Speaker 1: At that point, Michael was a great resource for all the Americans still on the islands, but he was going home. If Brian, Ryan and Tyler wanted to escape Grand Turk prison, they would need to take drastic action, which is exactly what they did.

00:56:06
Speaker 3: And it was late at night and he finally agreed. We all put our hands in the middle and we were like, all right, we’re gonna do this, and we choke and said let’s go to war.

00:56:15
Speaker 1: That’s next week on Blood Trails.