Among Murderers. Sabine Heinlein
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has long been neglected. By giving a voice to three individuals, marginalized from society by their crimes and prison sentences, and by exploring their discomfiting, jarring realities, I hope to illuminate a much-neglected epidemic.
Naturally, it is not only their narrative anymore; it has also become mine. More important, though, their stories point to our society at large. For the longest time we have tried to hide from view this significant part of our population. Now that these former criminals are returning to our society, we need to redefine our stance. Do we allow for the reintegration of murderers, assailants, robbers, and rapists, men and women who have been convicted of dreadful crimes? What do we need to take into consideration as we craft policies that seek to reform and redeem former prisoners—and ourselves? I believe that the most trivial details can expose the most complex psychological circumstances and mysteries of human life. By featuring my observations, conversations, and boundary points, I hope to open up an honest dialogue about crime, rehabilitation, and reentry.
CHAPTER ONE
Freedom Day
And just like that, that was that. No sense of being at all, Angel wrote in the spidery script of a nine-year-old. He titled the new page in his diary Freedom Day, March 29th 2007. He was dazed by the abrupt shock of having dropped from one sphere into another in a matter of seconds. The course that had taken three decades to unfold had suddenly advanced with blinding speed: Attica’s prison gates closed behind him. Freedom.
The prison van took him to a gas station, where he boarded the public bus to New York. Freedom? He looked around. Some of the guys on the bus reminded him of the loser mind-sets he had just left behind in Attica. Loser mind-sets who told the same street stories over and over. Tales of how they robbed old women and dealt drugs, how much money they once had, and what cars they used to own.
“Tell me you own a business,” Angel would tell them. “That would impress me.”
The people on the bus all struck him as surprisingly young, and it was then that Angel realized that somehow, somewhere along the line, he had gotten old. More than half of his life had passed. He had spent twenty-nine years behind bars for committing one murder and attempting another. He was forty-seven now.
As more people got on the bus Angel nervously scooted over on his seat, removing his bags to make space. He could see the Manhattan skyline on the horizon. Looks goooood! he wrote as the bus entered the Lincoln Tunnel.
When the bus pulled into Penn Station, Angel was tempted to ask the driver for permission to get off. Even the tiniest decision—such as moving without someone else’s approval or order—made him feel uneasy. This is taking some getting used to, he meticulously jotted down in his diary.
And just like that, that was that. When Angel got off the bus at Penn Station, he had No sense of being at all. He had no idea who he was or what he had become.
Angel had secured a bed at the Castle, a halfway house in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, that houses sixty former prisoners. The Castle is one of three New York locations operated by the Fortune Society. Apart from residential services, the Fortune Society offers its formerly incarcerated clients job-readiness and cooking classes, computer tutoring, substance-abuse treatment, and father- and motherhood programs.
Located at the corner of Riverside Drive and 140th Street, the Castle stands out in the neighborhood. It was built from large schist rocks excavated when the first subway line in New York City was constructed, and its facade sparkles with the rocks’ characteristic jagged but glittering surface. With its miniature lookout towers, its arched windows, and the bright crenellations that top some of its walls, the Castle resembles a Gothic bastion. It overlooks Riverbank State Park and the Hudson River, which adds to its charm. One could easily imagine the Castle being surrounded by a muddy moat.
A piece of wood bearing the number 630 dangled near the gigantic wooden entrance door on Riverside Drive. Whenever new residents tried to straighten the crooked sign—which was frequently—it always slid right back. The heavy wrought-iron hinges screeched as Angel opened the door.
Angel was carrying his duffel bag in one hand and a music keyboard in the other. He was worried about his keyboard being stolen. After all, he didn’t have his own cell anymore; he would be sharing his room with five other ex-cons.
Angel went to his new room to take a hot shower. When he stepped out of the bathroom, he noticed a full-length mirror. All he’d had in his prison cell was a ten-inch mirror. This was the first time in almost thirty years that he saw himself fully naked, that he saw his body in one piece. He turned around slowly to inspect himself.
Angel Ramos has narrow, warm eyes; a wide, knobby nose; and potter’s-clay skin, tinged with copper. Thin strands of gray make his dense, black hair sparkle. His unkempt mustache looks like weeds. In some spots it overlaps his ample lips; in others it is sparse, revealing the skin underneath. Angel is short—just about five feet tall—and he has become stocky. His neck has gotten meatier, and he has grown love handles.
“Oh my God,” Angel said to himself. “I got fat.” He promptly decided to “eat less, move more.”
Angel’s resolution proved unnecessary. A few weeks after his release, he had already lost ten pounds. He had shed weight just by walking and worrying about everyday decisions. He felt time slipping and desperately tried to keep up. Each day presented him with a flood of entirely new experiences.
When Angel walked around New York during his first months of freedom, he trudged up and down sidewalks and went in and out of subway stations. He tripped over potholes, stumbled over trash, strolled on grass, and hiked up and down the hills of Harlem. This was an entirely new experience. He was walking on uneven terrain. In prison the ground was flat, and his feet had grown accustomed to his state-issued work boots. But outside he didn’t seem able to break in his new Timberland boots, let alone the dress shoes he bought. His feet were killing him.
In his first weeks of freedom Angel went to the Welfare Department, the Salvation Army, and the Division of Parole, where he had to report on a weekly basis. On Sundays he walked to Riverside Church to attend his Quaker meetings. Once he ventured east on 115th Street to visit the site of the house where he spent the first few years of his life. It was gone. But the house in which he had killed his victim was still there. The Castle was only a half-hour walk from the house where an outburst of anger had changed his life forever. Two minutes—thirty years—half an hour! Did time fly, or did it stand still?
Surely, Harlem had changed for the better, but parts of it remained gritty. Many of its residents were now locked up. Both East and West Harlem now held several “Million Dollar Blocks,” city blocks in which the concentration of currently imprisoned residents is so dense that states are spending an excess of a million dollars a year in incarceration costs.1
Young men with pit bulls were hanging out in front of bodegas. Trash spilled from black plastic bags piled up on the curb. Teenagers sat idly on garbage cans alongside the multilane roads that cut through the neighborhood. On Broadway, just around the corner from the Castle, Elvira M.’s Barbershop stood across from Jendy’s Beauty Salon, mere steps from Odri’s Beauty Salon. With the same repetitive frequency there were Chinese takeout joints, discount stores, and signs that prohibited littering, loitering, ball playing, and spitting—to no avail. On the corner of 137th Street a pediatrician shared a building with McDonald’s, the royal blue lettering of the doctor’s sign trumped by a large spinning cheeseburger. Single-room occupancies offered dingy accommodations to down-and-out men, and lonesome signs and banners proclaimed enigmatic messages of the past: Phase Piggy Back, O’Jay’s Telephone Answering Service, and No Service Available. The tenor was interrupted here and there by tree-lined blocks and nicely renovated brown-stones with flowering boxes.
Angel and I first met in May 2007 on the bus that took us from the Albany advocacy day back to New York City. I had come to report on the event and on the proposed revisions in health care, housing, work, and voting rights. He was one of dozens of ex-cons campaigning for legislative changes for those with criminal records. There were then five million Americans on parole and probation, and in excess of seven hundred thousand people were being released from prison each year.2