8. A Picture is Worth a 1000 Stamps

He wanted a picture of me. Not wanting to break any rules or laws, I telephoned the jail. I was directed to the mail room and spoke with the young lady responsible for opening and inspecting Inmate # 0622141's mail. She said photos were not allowed to be sent to inmates. Remembering that my mother was a commercial artist, I asked her if I could send a drawing. The mail room lady said a drawing would be acceptable as long as it wasn't explicit. Explicit? She didn't know me! I was already apprehensive about sending an inmate a picture of me and if I did, it certainly would not be an explicit one!

I sat down and my mother sketched my face. I wrote a note on the sketch and mailed it the next day. They wouldn't allow this inmate to have it. He wouldn't get to see this sketch until months later. This would lead to my first and only "crime". One I learned to do well. Smuggling contraband into a correctional facility.

I've got a stack of letters in all sorts of different types of envelopes in my office. They all have two things in common. They are all stamped "Return to Sender: Contains Contraband". They have been slit open by a letter opener, re-sealed with scotch tape, and mailed back to me. I must admit I was embarrassed the first time I received one. Thinking what Phyllis, my mail lady, must have thought as she dropped the envelopes in my mail box. I would eventually overcome that embarrassment. The other thing these letters have in common, is that 90% of them all contain tiny pictures of me.

When I got a letter back from Todd saying, "Thanks for the sketch, but they won't let me have it. It's in my property room and I'll get it when I'm released", I knew I'd have to be more crafty. I'd have to commit my first crime; smuggling contraband into a correctional facility.

I looked around but I didn't have any current pictures of me. Not finding any, I decided to ask for help from my best friend, Maureen. She made her living as a graphic artist and her home was full of cameras and equipment that could make a photo small enough to sneak into an envelope. In order to do that, however, I'd have to tell her what I had been up to and where the photo would be going. She would be the first to know about my secret.

Maureen is my best friend. We all have one. She's the kind of friend that you can call in the middle of the night when you can't sleep over a heartbreak. She's the kind you can always depend on to feed your dog when you are on vacation. The kind that never forgets birthdays or anniversaries, the kind that always shows up with chocolate ice cream when you've had a bad day.More importantly, she's the kind that you can safely tell your deepest darkest secrets. How was I going to tell her that I had been writing an inmate that I had never met in a Florida jail and that I needed her assistance in photographing me and making a picture small enough to smuggle into the jail? Surely she'd think I was nuts. But that's what best friends are for.

We were walking partners and met every morning at 5:30 a.m. to walk before our kids awoke. I decided to divulge my secret to Maureen the following day. It took me a few minutes to gather up courage to approach the subject. About 15 minutes into our routine, I took off my radio head phones and motioned to her to do the same. "I've got something to tell you" I sheepishly explained. Then I told her the whole story. Her mouth dropped wide open. She asked what he was in for and I rattled off his list of crimes. "Oh my God!" she said. "What if he comes here? What if he steals our cars?" I laughed as she said that and told her, "Oh Maureen! No one could steal your car without first putting in a quart of transmission fluid!".

It was true. A few nights back Maureen and I had a hair raising ride in her mini van. We attempted to drive up to a convenience store only the van wouldn't go into "park" and we wound up on the sidewalk, nearly crashing into the glass window. Then, when we tried to leave, her van wouldn't go into reverse. So she ran into the store and bought a quart of transmission fluid, popped the hood and poured it in. Worked like a charm, this time. Next time we may not be so lucky.

Being a really, really good friend, she reluctantly she agreed to help me. Later that day I went to her house for my "photo shoot". We scanned the picture onto computer paper, just as Todd had asked, placed it behind an address label onto a 9x12 manilla envelope and sent it on it's way.

That envelope would come back to me. Stamped "contains contraband". As would a few others. I tried to sneak it in anyway I could. It always came back. Once I was standing in the local post office, diligently trying to fold it up and stick it underneath a stamp, when I heard a man's voice behind me say hello. I recognized that voice and startled, I jumped. It was Tom. Our local police chief. Here I was trying to commit my first crime and the chief of police himself walks up behind me! Tom and I were old friends and had dated years ago. We made small talk and he left without ever knowing what I was doing.

It would take weeks but the picture would eventually make it into the jail facility, placed in the seams on the inside of an envelope. In the meantime, we wrote back and forth and the letters became more frequent.

(excerpts from his original letters from November, 2006)

......please excuse my handwriting at times. I don't have a table or a chair and I write on my legs as I'm sitting on my bed. I'm having a serious sugar rush from the candy you bought me - thanks for the canteen money. I also bought skin lotion, deodorant and paper to write on. I started reading the book that you sent me and couldn't put it down. Several stories brought tears to my eyes. Have you read the book "A Million Little Pieces" by Michael Fry? If you come across it, I'd really like to read it.

Can you please find out what the statute of limitations are in the state of Florida for assault by a police officer and false arrest? I need to know the state limitations and the federal 1983 suit limitations.

He continued to ask for addresses too; Court TV, NBC Dateline, etc. Once he jokingly asked I go to Home Depot and purchase a package of hack saw blades and send those to him, but then he said he read their rule book and hack saw blades wern't allowed. "Figures" he wrote. I laughed. I was beginning to laugh more and more as I read those letters. Laughing was something I hadn't done in years. Struggling as a single mom to keep food on the table and the bills paid, going on one bad date after another, and watching my mom slowly drift into Alzheimers, I never had much reason to smile, much less laugh. Todd's letters gave me something to look foreword to each day. I was getting more and more involved with this mysterious inmate. And I was beginning to fall in love. Though I didn't see that at the time.

Some things Todd asked me to do were not connected to his case at all. He just wanted me to get to know him. Who he had been before all this.

(excerpts from his letter dated 10/30/06)

........If you have the time while you are on the internet, go to Charlotte County Sun .com in Florida. Go to the archives - I believe June 2002, and punch in my name. You have to be month specific on their site. Greg Martin was the reporter and he did a story about the phosphate industry. You can also go to the East Hampton Star . com in NY and go to their archives. I'm sure you will get several interesting and entertaining stories about me. I've been fighting "big people" and those that think they are better than others my entire life (most of it).

I absolutely promise you that I will compensate you for everything you have done. You are a God Send. This is no coincidence. Keep writing, I love reading your letters.

And I did write. Every day. I wrote about my childhood, my kids,my job, my dogs. Anything to give him something to read. I tried to make my stories light and humorous. I eventually told him my real name which until this point I hadn't done, and I sent him my phone number and hoped he would call. I wanted to hear his voice.

The man that bragged in the adjacent cell to Todd about shooting the girl with an AK-47, was taken to court for a hearing. As he was being escorted by Todd's cell on the way back he gave Todd a cold stare and held up his right hand; making a talking motion with his thumb and fingers. Todd knew they had told him that he had snitched. He never talked about the murder to Todd again. On February 19, 2007, he would take a plea deal, two counts of accessory after the fact. As of this writing he has yet to be sentenced. Todd would be moved again, for his own safety.

This killer's brother, also involved in the incident, would accept a deal by the State's Attorney's Office to just 3rd degree murder. He was sentenced in late September of this year to a mere 10 years.

In time, I would learn that prosecuting murderers in Polk County is not a swift process and the outcome is not always just.

5. Nature Versus Nurture

Encyclopedia defines the nature versus nurture debate as the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities and personal experiences in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits. Does a person's DNA determine who will succeed in life and who will become an addict and a criminal? Or rather is it the person's early childhood development and upbringing that determines that? I used to believe the latter. That is until I met an unusual inmate in the Polk County Jail.

In my second letter to Todd Jones, DC # 0622141, I thought it best to relate my childhood and upbringing. If I were going to be able to encourage and comfort him, and eventually convince him to turn away from his addictions and criminal ways, then I'd better get down to his level. Or so I thought.

"I grew up on a small farm in Mississippi", I wrote. I never knew my father and my mother was an abusive alcoholic. My childhood memories were all painful. I dropped out of school and left home at the age of fourteen. Thumbing my way to a small town in Texas. "No one came to look for me", I added. Except the perverts, drug dealers and pimps that prey on young girls traveling alone.

I overcame all that and managed to land a small job, lying about my age. I had always taken care of myself. When I was eighteen I married a man 13 years my senior. Like my mother before him, he too turned out to be an abusive alcoholic. By the age of thirty, I finally broke away from this union and found myself sleeping on a dirty mattress on the floor of a rundown shack on the wrong side of town with my now two children. Despite it all, I managed to get my GED and land a four year scholarship. I eventually found a better job, a better place to live and had raised my children on my own. "If I had done it, then you can too", I suggested. I ended the letter with one of my fumbled scriptures. "Again", I wrote, "I can't say exactly where it is in the bible, but it goes something like, suffering begets endurance, endurance begets perseverance, perseverance begets character and it's our character that makes us who we are".

His letter back to me wasn't exactly what I had expected. He had a childhood just the opposite. He came from a wealthy and loving family in East Hampton, Long Island, New York. He had grown up in a life of luxury. He graduated high school and went on to trade school where he studied his passion, automobile restoration. He was first introduced to cocaine at a party for a famous Sports Illustrated model (name withheld). In 1998, he moved with his common law wife and two children to Lakeland, Florida to be near her family. It wasn't until coming to Florida, did his life take a turn for the worst. "Oh and by the way", he wrote, "that scripture you mentioned is Romans, Chapter 5, verses 3-5".

So much for the nature versus nurture debate. If anyone should have wound up a drug addict in jail in a small town in Florida, it should have been me, not him. I scrapped together 10 bucks for a money order and sent it back to him. I wanted to be sure he had plenty of stamps and envelopes so that he could write back to me. I had found his story fascinating and wanted to hear more. How does a rich guy from the uppity side of New York wind up a homeless drug addict in a Florida jail? The answer would shock me.

3. The Red Envelope

"A ship in port is safe, but this is not what ships are built for."

Grace Hopper

Now what happened next I would not want anyone else to ever even consider. What I did was very dangerous. It was only God's grace that protected me from a more serious outcome. It's kind of like those disclosures you see at the beginning of a stunt show, "don't try this at home".

After watching that tidbit of the Serrano trial on Court TV I went to my computer and googled Polk County Sheriff's Department. On their site I followed the link to jail information. I typed in the name Leslie Todd Jones and up came his file which included his picture and his Department of Corrections number. That number, #022141, would be just one of many I would learn to memorize. There was also instructions on writing an inmate on this site. I grabbed one of the kids' school notebooks, and began to write.

(excerpts from the actual letter)

10/4/6

Dear Leslie (or is it Todd) -

I hope this letter gets to you. I saw you on Court TV today. You are probably the most famous jailhouse "snitch" right now. I could see that you have quite a personality. You made me laugh out loud a couple of times when you were being cross examined. I also noticed how articulate you are - you're no dummy.

I feel kind of sorry for you being in isolation though I can understand why. I thought you might need a pen pal (and I just might need a little entertainment).

I live in a wonderful small town where everybody knows everybody. And everybody knows everything about everybody. I have to chuckle when I think about what my mail lady is going to say when she picks this letter up in the morning. I've never been the kind of person who worries what other people think anyway.

I hope this letter brings a smile to your face. Sometimes you have to create your own entertainment. And this is safer than robbing paint stores.

I've enclosed a self addressed stamped envelope and some paper if you'd like to return a letter. I was afraid to send you a pencil - thought maybe they wouldn't let you have it.

I'm Catholic, although I haven't been to mass in a couple of months. I have a deep belief in God and an all around love for humanity as well as all the creatures that inhabit this Earth. I have two Siberian Huskys named Vegas and Reno. (by the way, they're vicious)

There's a scripture in the Bible about visiting folks in prison so if there's anything I can do for you, or send you (within reason), drop me a note and let me know. Don't consider it a hand-out. Just think of it as a way for me to do my Christian duty.

Hope to hear from you, if not, hang in there and rest assured you are not alone in this world. There's people thinking of you.

God Be With You,

Norma

I threw the part about the dogs in the letter just in case he decided to pay me a visit. In reality, Vegas and Reno were about the most worthless watch dogs anyone could imagine. The only danger they would cause to an intruder was to jump up on them and lick them to death.

I had a friend who worked for Hallmark and kept me stocked with colorful envelopes. I picked out the biggest brightest envelope I could find, a red one, addressed it, sealed it and placed it in the mailbox. It was only then that I was able to lie down and sleep.

The next morning I was up at 5am as usual. I watched the news over coffee and then headed out for my early morning walk with my best friend, Maureen. I didn't mention the letter to her, nor anything about the trial on Court TV I had watched the day before. Afterwards, I got my son fed and dressed and off to school and got ready for work. -The thought about what was waiting in the mailbox outside for the mail lady was in the back of my mind. I locked up and went out and started my car. I sat there for what seemed like an eternity, staring at the mailbox. "It wasn't too late to take the letter out", I thought to myself, "The mail lady won't pick it up until 11:00". I just sat in the car with the motor running, just staring. Finally, I shifted the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway.

I had trouble concentrating the entire morning at work. I kept looking at the time on my watch. 9:15 then 9:30 etc. What was I thinking? He was a criminal for crying out loud! A convict. An inmate! He could be a killer! Oh my god, I've got to remove the letter!

I finally made up my mind that I'd skirt home on my lunch break and remove the letter before the mail lady had a chance to retrieve it. But, as a wise man once told me, you can not change God's will for your life. And as luck would have it, about 10:30 that morning, a wealthy client, Dr. Smith came in.

Dr. Smith was a general practitioner who bought a new house every six months it seemed. She loved my decorating expertise. She came in that morning to tell me she had bought yet another house and would need lots of new furniture. I worked with her till 12:30. After she left, I looked at my watch and raced home. I ran to the mailbox but it was empty. My big red letter was well on it's was to Polk County Florida. There was no stopping it. No way to get it back. I was doomed.