Gangster Redemption

by Larry Lawton

  Daughter Ashley age 4

  Parents visting 2000

  Joe and Louie visiting 2002

  Wife & Daughter visit 2003

  Federal Prison ID’s

  Me at my sister’s pool 2007

  John Oliver Daily Show 20

  Doing RCP 2010

  Huckabee Show 2010

  Tommy Chong 2010

  Parenting Program 2011

  Governor Huckabee 2010

  Fox Anchor Keith Landry, Larry, Judge Babb and Lt. Governor Kottkamp Orlando Matters 2011

  Theresa and Me 2011

  Today

  CHAPTER 11

  Coleman and Jessup

  When Larry Lawton learned he was leaving Atlanta and heading to the federal correctional institution at Coleman, somewhere in the middle of Florida, he started questioning other inmates to find out what Coleman was like.

  “Oh lucky you,” said an inmate. “You’re going to a country club.”

  Lucky Lawton, indeed.

  He travelled by bus from Atlanta to Coleman. Surprisingly, he didn’t have to go on ConAir. Though he was handcuffed and shackled, this time he wasn’t black boxed, so he had a tiny bit more mobility during the trip.

  The bus looked like a Greyhound without the markings. The prisoners entered the bus from the back, and in the front in a cage sat the driver and next to him a lieutenant with a shotgun. In the back of the bus there was also a guard with a shotgun sitting in a caged area. The guards didn’t talk to the prisoners. Apparently they weren’t allowed to say a word.

  The prisoners were given a bag lunch consisting of an apple and an outdated packet of cheese and crackers. The bus stopped, but only for the guards, who went to eat at McDonald’s and Wendy’s. The bus had a toilet so the prisoners could pee, but because of the shackles that was all they could do.

  “I saw prisoners try, but inevitably they shit their pants,” said Lawton. “Thank God they didn’t sit next to me.”

  After about six hours the bus arrived at Coleman, the biggest federal prison in the country, home to 8,000 inmates. The first thing Lawton noticed was the tall barbed wire fence. When the bus stopped in front of the lobby, two trucks with armed guards pulled up in front of and behind the bus. The prisoners shuffled into the lobby and then went to receiving and discharge, where they did the usual routine of living their balls, squatting, changing their clothes, and going through the usual inspection routine. Most of the inmates were going to the compound. The others, including Lawton, went to the hole to undergo captain’s review.

  After a week Lawton was assigned a new dorm.

  “I had just come from a prison built in 1903, the worst of the worst,” said Lawton. “My housing unit at Coleman was built in 1995. It was beautiful. I was told it was a country club, and I felt like it was a country club.”

  Coleman, like most prisons, was forty percent black, forty percent Hispanic, and twenty percent white.

  “As a white man, you’re never in the majority,” said Lawton.

  Because Lawton came from Atlanta, he arrived with a bad-ass reputation.

  “When you tell them you come from Atlanta,” said Lawton, “they don’t want to fuck with you.”

  Once he settled in at Coleman, he was courted by the baddest of the white inmates to join their little group. As a result, he became buddies with an inmate by the name of Pinball, the leader of the Fort Lauderdale Outlaw motorcycle gang and another inmate by the name of Meaty, another Outlaw. He also became buddies with Tommy Farrisi, a mobster, and Frankie Turino, a gangster from the Bonanno family from the same area back in Brooklyn from where he came.

  “When you’re accepted into a group in prison, you feel okay,” said Lawton. “They introduce you to other guys. When you go to the chow hall, you sit with them. You’re a new guy coming in, and it’s good for them too.

  “Oh new guy, what’s going on? It’s like a fraternity rush.”

  Before long Lawton was living large. Because he had a small pension from the Coast Guard, he always had money, and Lawton spread his money around to make his stay as comfortable as possible. He paid one prisoner to clean his cell. He paid Frankie Turino fifty dollars a week to be his cook. Frankie, who was hyper and nervous, worked in the kitchen, and he would prepare Lawton’s meals and deliver them to his cell.

  Lawton discovered that Coleman had a lot of amenities. It had a music room, an aerobics room, a beautiful track, and a softball field. Coleman even had a six a.m. step aerobics class. Doing aerobics Lawton got his weight down to 185.

  What a difference from Atlanta!

  Lawton should have kept his nose clean, but after spending time at Atlanta, he had learned to become a convict, and it had become a way of life. To keep himself in action, Lawton started running a small bookmaking operation as he had once done on the streets of Brooklyn. He printed up pro football betting tickets, and he had runners who sold them go to every unit. Instead of money, the inmates bet with stamps.

  At Coleman Lawton met inmates who had been jailed for stock fraud. He would sit with them in front of the TV watching the stock ticker. One of the inmates advised Lawton to buy a company called Advanced Radio. Lawton made a phone call to a friend on the outside and bought 1,000 shares at $11 dollars a share. As it started to climb in value, Lawton was sure Advanced Radio was going to be the next Microsoft.

  “If you had bought 1,000 shares of Microsoft in 1975, you’d be worth $10 million today,” said Lawton. “This was 1999 when the market was going crazy, and everyone thought they were geniuses.”

  At Coleman Lawton also began to study law in earnest. Lawton’s study of the law began when he beat the gun charge against him. The Coleman prison had a law library, and Lawton was an avid reader, and the more he read, the more knowledgeable he became. Other inmates started coming to him with their grievances, and Lawton would research the casebooks to see whether or not they had the law on their side.

  Lawton never once took a dime for researching their cases. It was a matter of principle. He saw that there were other prisoners, jailhouse lawyers they were called, who took money and didn’t know what they were doing.

  “These people were grasping for their lives,” said Lawton. “They wanted to get out. Their freedom was at stake.” He didn’t want to be like the “scumbag lawyers,” as he called them, who charged a lot of money and lost the case.

  Though Coleman may have been a country club, Lawton never let his guard down. Violence could still erupt at any moment.

  One time Lawton was out on the yard when one of the older mobsters, an inmate named Georgie Matorano, took a chair a smashed it over the head of another mobster.

  “They were looking at each other funny,” said Lawton.

  The other difference between Atlanta and Coleman was that at Atlanta the guards only cared about two things: not getting killed and not letting anyone escape. At Coleman, where the guards had more control, the rules were stricter. The rules against such things as tattoos and stealing food were enforced more rigorously.

  “The inmates had more respect from the guards at Atlanta,” said Lawton. “Although the guards at Atlanta would beat you, the guards knew who ran the prison and let them be. In Coleman the guards had big balls. I considered Coleman to be a petty joint. We’d get in trouble for the pettiest of infractions.”

  Lawton’s fifteen months at Coleman abruptly came to an end as a result of his breaking one of those infractions. The SIS, which is like the FBI of prisons, investigates drug deals, sex, and other illicit activity within the prisons. The SIS also investigates activity by the prison staff.

  “SIS officers were about as popular as typhoid,” said Lawton.

  An SIS lieutenant by the name of Figeroa became aware that Lawton was sending his chief cook and bottlewasher, Frankie Turino, fifty dollars a week. Figueroa w
as sure it was to pay off gambling debts. He called Lawton in for an interview.

  “You’re sending money to Turino,” said Lieutenant Figueroa.

  “Yeah,” admitted Lawton.

  “What do you owe him?” asked Figueroa.

  “I don’t owe him anything,” said Lawton truthfully. “He helps me out in the kitchen.”

  “No, this is gambling,” insisted Figueroa.

  “Frankie doesn’t gamble,” said Lawton. And Frankie didn’t.

  But Lawton wasn’t trusted or believed because he had come from Atlanta, the worst of the worst. His reputation had preceded him, and some guards, including Figueroa apparently, were suspicious of him.

  “Throw him in the hole,” ordered Figueroa.

  Before he knew it, Lawton was being transferred.

  “I think they got scared of me in that prison,” said Lawton. “They thought I was trying to take over the place. But really I wasn’t a bad guy there. I gambled a little bit, but I passed the time. I was really good in there. I got into a groove. I had survived Atlanta, and now I was in Lalaland, and all of a sudden I get locked up by Figueroa for sending money. He thought it was a gambling debt. And he wanted to make a big deal out of it.

  “I told the guy, ‘You’re fucking nuts.’

  “But into the hole I went.” For four months.

  Inmates in the hole at Coleman were locked up 24/7 with one or two cellies with an hour of rec five days a week – unless the administration decided to withhold it.

  “You never get out,” said Lawton. “The hole at Coleman wasn’t that bad, but don’t let anyone kid you: the hole is the hole is the hole.”

  First he was put in the hole during the investigation, which lasted forty days. Then once the administration determined that Lawton was to be transferred, it took another two months for them to actually move him. Lawton spent that whole time in the hole.

  “They don’t put you back on the yard,” said Lawton. “Oh no. Once you’re in the hole, you’re there. People ask me, ‘Don’t you have an appeal?’ I love that question. No, there’s no appeal.”

  During his time in the hole, a time when Lawton didn’t have access to a telephone, his stock in Advanced Radio fell back to under what he paid for it. Lawton was able to read USA Today in the hole, and he watched helplessly as the price of the stock took a nose dive.

  “I didn’t know enough about stocks to put in a stop-loss order,” said Lawton. “I ended up losing money. What a fucking idiot I was!”

  *

  Lawton was transferred to a medium security prison in Jesup, Georgia, about a five-hour bus ride from Coleman. But a simple bus ride would have been too easy. Instead Lawton was taken by bus to Jacksonville where he was put on ConAir to Oklahoma City. After sitting in a cell in Oklahoma City for a month, Lawton was put on a plane back to Jacksonville, and he then was bussed to Jesup, which was just outside Brunswick, Georgia, just an hour north of Jacksonville.

  “Idiots,” said Lawton.

  For Lawton the prison at Jesup turned out to be an even cushier place than Coleman.

  “Jesup was a prison manned by white, redneck guards,” said Lawton.

  “Sometimes the redneck guards didn’t like New Yorkers, but they still treated me better than any of the black guards.”

  Jesup wasn’t as new as Coleman, but it had amenities Coleman didn’t have. The cells in Jesup had electrical outlets, a rarity in prison. Most new prisons don’t even have on-off light switches. Guards turn the lights on and off in the newer prisons.

  Lawton made friends quickly at Jesup, and before long on Friday nights he was cooking pasta for a dozen of his best friends.

  “All good convicts,” said Lawton. “There was Carlo Martino, Barry Meely, a couple of Outlaw gang members by the names of Steve O and Jack. They’d come to my unit, and I’d feed everybody. I’d keep forty pounds of spaghetti stolen from the kitchen hidden in different cells. I made a pasta dish called aglio e olio, garlic and oil. I had people steal the parmesan cheese, the oil, and of course, the pasta. The cops knew about it, and they’d ask me for a bowl.

  “Some of the guards wanted my food so badly that they would look at the paperwork of the incoming prisoners and tell us the names of the rats. Cops like stand up guys too.

  “One night I blew a fuse, and the whole unit went black. I had two pots going, big bowls of pasta. I cut up the garlic with a stolen razor blade. I put the garlic in the oil, put the oil in a microwave that I borrowed, and the whole unit smelled like an Italian restaurant.

  “The day I blew the fuse, I went to the cop – what we called the guards in prison

  -- and told him to get someone from the maintenance department to trip the breaker. He called down, and he was able to get the power back up before anyone was the wiser.”

  Lawton was at Jesup when the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York on September 11th occurred. He was laying down in his cell when Barry Meely, a buddy from New York, came over and said, “Larry, come out here. A plane hit the World Trade Center.”

  Lawton though, Oh big deal, a little plane hit the World Trade Center. Ten minutes later Barry came back to his cell and said, “Larry, you have to see this.”

  Lawton strolled over to the TV just as a plane hit the second tower.

  “I was mesmerized watching it,” said Lawton. “I didn’t leave the TV for two days. After it became known that Osama Bin Laden was responsible, a lot of the Muslim prisoners began talking bad about the United States and started cheering the bad guys. This happened in prisons all over the country.

  “After that happened, Muslim inmates were stabbed and had to be transferred for their safety. I saw one inmate smash a Muslim inmate with a steel mop ringer, and I heard of another fight in the yard where a Muslim was beaten up.

  “They had to lock these guys up in protective custody throughout the American prison system because these guys were cheering. You don’t do that. We’re Americans. We may be fuck ups, but we’re American fuck ups.”

  *

  Lawton spent eight months of his time at Jesup in the hole. The event that put him in the hole for six months came just before Christmas 2002 when he was caught stealing pork chops from the kitchen. Lawton had ten minutes to make it back to his cell, and on the way guards patted him down and discovered the contraband under his shirt.

  They threw him in the hole for two weeks. He got out of the hole, and when he came out he learned that Jeremy Poe, his cellie, was given a shot – an infraction – for having pasta in the cell.

  They interrogated Poe, asking him, “Who belongs to the pasta?” Poe refused to rat Lawton out, and he was scheduled to go in front of the disciplinary committee.

  Lawton was incensed that Poe, his cellie, should be punished for something he didn’t do, and so Lawton stood up for him, telling his unit manager, a black woman named Mrs. Tubb, “That’s my pasta. Not his. Give me the punishment. Put me back in the hole.”

  Mrs. Tubbs wasn’t persuaded to forgive Jeremy Poe.

  She said, “He had the opportunity to tell us whose pasta it was.”

  “Listen,” said Lawton as he became more and more agitated, “He didn’t tell on me. He couldn’t have, because I don’t hang around with snitches.”

  The woman made a circular motion with her hand, as if to say, Don’t go there, and when she did that, the sense of unfairness washed over him, and so did a strong feeling of helplessness, and Lawton snapped.

  He went berserk, ripping the telephone off the wall. He picked up the paper shredder off Mrs. Tubbs’ desk and threw it at her. She ducked, and the shredder smashed into a computer. Lawton, out of his mind with rage, punched a hole in the wall and on the way out of her office smashed the glass door. In all he caused $2,000 in damage to her office.

  As a phalanx of officers came running, La
wton ripped his shirt off,

  “Let’s get it on, motherfuckers,” he screamed.

  The guards surrounded him. Lawton was ready to fight them all. The guards saw a psychopath, and it could have ended badly for Lawton had not one of the guards, whose name was Spells, talked him down.

  “Lawton, I have to lock you up,” Spells said. Meaning it was his job to handcuff him and take him to the hole.

  Lawton, shirtless and surrounded by guards, felt chilly. His anger cooled as well.

  “All right,” he said, “you can lock me up.” And he allowed Spells to handcuff him and lead him to the hole. For Lawton it was back to maximum security.

  One of the inmates Lawton met in the hole was Jose Linares, who was working for Unicor, the company that hires prisoners. Unicor pays forty cents an hour to prisoners who make mail bags, battle dress uniforms for the military, furniture, and other useful items.

  “What they do,” said Lawton, “is take real jobs away from people on the street. It’s a real scumbag outfit. Who can compete with them when they pay slave wages?”

  Linares worked as a clerk for the company, and he told Lawton he had uncovered the code to get into the authorized payment for procurements. The associate warden who ran the company was Bill Young, and Linares started a company cleverly called TYBY – it stood for Thank you, Bill Young.

  “Jose figured out a way for the government to pay TYBY $135,000 for material that never existed,” said Lawton. “He was caught because one of his people on the street stupidly sent $30,000 to his prison account. That raised red flags. He only got eighteen months, but he had to return his Ford Explorer.

  “The hole was wild and crazy, and things happened in there all the time. Gay orderlies giving blow jobs through the chute door. A guy would stick his dick through the chute door, and get blown. Guys would also jerk off in front of the guards. The women guards like it, and so did some of the guys. It would look like the woman guard was talking to the inmate, but the inmate would be jerking off to her.