Speaker 1: A campsite media. Roger was back at the Kingston Penitentiary
Speaker 1: for the very simple reason that the wardens and directors
Speaker 1: of the Canadian Penitentiary Service wanted out of the business
Speaker 1: of worrying about Roger Kuran. He'd built a reputation for escaping,
Speaker 1: for being a go boy, for striking fear in the
Speaker 1: hearts of those tasked with keeping him behind bars. The
Speaker 1: Kingston pen was the one place where they could definitively
Speaker 1: say he wasn't going anywhere, even he knew it, and
Speaker 1: the thought depressed him walking through KP. Now you're struck
Speaker 1: by how every few paces there seems to be another
Speaker 1: checkpoint with steel bars. One cannot simply move through the
Speaker 1: indoor spaces freely. Guards and inmates alike are faced with
Speaker 1: checkpoint after checkpoint. The only part of the prison that
Speaker 1: allows for the dream of freedom to even cross your
Speaker 1: mind is out in the recreational yard. But even it
Speaker 1: is surrounded on all sides by a formidable concrete wall
Speaker 1: with five guard towers, each occupied with armed men. In
Speaker 1: this venue, they wouldn't even need to watch Roger especially close.
Speaker 1: All they'd have to do is treat him like any
Speaker 1: other inmate. That was the idea anyway. One night in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, at around midnight, an old jailor was
Speaker 1: walking his rounds flashlight in hand, ensuring that everyone was
Speaker 1: in their cells asleep. Everything appeared as it should until
Speaker 1: he got to sell C two seven. The inmate was
Speaker 1: in his bed, but as the guard squinted into the
Speaker 1: darkness of the cell, he sensed that something wasn't right.
Speaker 2: He says, Cara. He says, are you all right?
Speaker 3: Karan?
Speaker 1: He called again, but Roger didn't respond. The guard got
Speaker 1: right up against the bars and shone the light directly
Speaker 1: on Roger's head. His hair looked messy, his skin paler
Speaker 1: than it should, and he remained unresponsive. So the guard
Speaker 1: speed walks to the nearest call station and calls the
Speaker 1: hospital line to say, you better get down here.
Speaker 2: So a lot of guys that slashed to visa at
Speaker 2: night when he went to day, and the guard to
Speaker 2: come in the morning. The only way he knew was
Speaker 2: there just helsposed to blot out break from him.
Speaker 1: A nurse and some more guards rushed to sell C.
Speaker 2: Two seven, got the other guard and got the nurse
Speaker 2: in the arms, open the door, lift the leader swarm
Speaker 2: the door over, Carl, Are you all right?
Speaker 1: Still no movement from Roger. So the guard reaches out
Speaker 1: to nudge him awake. But when he did, Roger's head
Speaker 1: rolled off the bed and fell on the floor, by
Speaker 1: which I mean the mannequin head made by Roger Karan
Speaker 1: fell to the floor.
Speaker 2: Over fell on the floor. And the guys, they told
Speaker 2: me the garden almost fell over. The radiote on the floor.
Speaker 2: You don't have and he said, walks on wims.
Speaker 1: The police rushed to the prison and out on the lake.
Speaker 1: A police boat putted back and forth on Lake Ontario
Speaker 1: with its spotlight on the exterior wall. Guards were called
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. They brought in the dogs.
Speaker 1: It was all hands on deck. And while all that
Speaker 1: was going on, as the crowd and the sound of
Speaker 1: sirens grew, Roger was cursing himself, huddled under the weather
Speaker 1: tarp in the Kingston Pen sports shack, muttering to himself
Speaker 1: that he should have spent one more day on the
Speaker 1: mannequin head.
Speaker 2: So I had a hair from the barber shop, I
Speaker 2: had blacks with parison, and I may have managed, and
Speaker 2: I had turned his head into the wall, but I
Speaker 2: didn't have time to this skinning was almost pale light.
Speaker 2: I didn't have time to get the guy was going
Speaker 2: to give me his artist kit, and he didn't have
Speaker 2: time to.
Speaker 3: Deliver it to me.
Speaker 1: He knew that it was going to be too pale,
Speaker 1: and now his whole plan was foiled. He was not
Speaker 1: a go boy this night, but merely a man under
Speaker 1: a tarp with forty feet of rope and a grappling hook.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he managed to procure a grappling hook somehow.
Speaker 1: But even though the jig was up, he certainly wasn't
Speaker 1: just going to step out with his hands up. Not
Speaker 1: his style. If they were going to find him, he
Speaker 1: was going to stubbornly make them find him.
Speaker 2: And they pound me a two dollard warning there. I
Speaker 2: understand he found me. He was sports check. I got
Speaker 2: my head in, hands on my hit and my rope
Speaker 2: book is all kid knuckle in his shaw and they
Speaker 2: got shot guns. And right, wasn't the gun towers or
Speaker 2: counting squat by something that they get tacked? Thought was
Speaker 2: very easy.
Speaker 1: Once they had him, they marched him straight to the warden,
Speaker 1: who had made his way down the hill in his
Speaker 1: pajamas from his home across the street. He greeted Roger
Speaker 1: with a sarcastic good evening. The warden was done worrying
Speaker 1: about Roger, the most slippery inmate in his prison, so
Speaker 1: to put him out of his mind, the warden sentenced
Speaker 1: him on the spot to two years in the hole.
Speaker 1: Roger knew that he was in trouble, but two years
Speaker 1: he was shocked.
Speaker 2: Two years ago, holds unheard of him. You go to
Speaker 2: hold the twenty one days on bread and water, seven days,
Speaker 2: thirty days I maginum.
Speaker 1: But Roger was led away to begin two years of solitary.
Speaker 1: It was clear that the warden was trying to erase
Speaker 1: Roger from his prison and bury him beneath the foundations,
Speaker 1: and it would take everything Roger had to claw his
Speaker 1: way back from iHeart podcasts and campsite media. I'm Sam
Speaker 1: Mullens and this is Go Boy, episode four Jellybeans.
Speaker 3: So we're really going down at the base of the air.
Speaker 1: The hole in the Kingston Pen refers to a much
Speaker 1: feared block of cells where inmates were sent for prescribed
Speaker 1: amounts of solitary confinement as punishment. Parents have timeouts to
Speaker 1: keep their children in line, teachers have detention, and the
Speaker 1: guards at KP had the hole with which to threaten
Speaker 1: their subjects. I'll give you the tour. Imagine a short,
Speaker 1: well liit hallway with ten wooden doors on the right
Speaker 1: and ten wooden doors on the left. Every time I
Speaker 1: see the photo of the cell block when it was
Speaker 1: still in use, and I see the brightness and cleanliness
Speaker 1: and perfect symmetry of that cursed hallway, I'm struck by
Speaker 1: how much it looks like a Stanley Kubrick set. Behind
Speaker 1: all twenty doors lies a second steel door with a
Speaker 1: food slot in it, and beyond that lies the cell itself.
Speaker 2: No sheet, no matrist, no nothing cover, all spots paper,
Speaker 2: cup of toothbrust and a cement clock worn grew day.
Speaker 1: It was all as bare as bear could be, and
Speaker 1: he couldn't bring anything with you.
Speaker 4: No personal effects.
Speaker 1: This is Bill Isaacs, a longtime guard at KP, who'd
Speaker 1: seen it all.
Speaker 4: If themate wanted to read, he was entitled to a
Speaker 4: Bible and that was the only source of reading material.
Speaker 1: The walls are solid, impenetrable concrete. There are no windows
Speaker 1: or natural light in the hole, which is not to
Speaker 1: say it's dark or gloomy.
Speaker 2: For two years and you didn't know what the darkness
Speaker 2: like and no windows, nothing, just a two hundred ball
Speaker 2: burn ninety day like being in the middle of Sahara desert.
Speaker 2: He never turn the lights out.
Speaker 1: With the aspect of the whole that would drive men
Speaker 1: literally out of their minds was the light bulb. To
Speaker 1: hear Roger describe it, it was brighter than the Saharan sun.
Speaker 1: And they kept that thing on twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 1: The only way that you were allowed to dim the
Speaker 1: brightness was with your eyelids. Anything beyond that was strictly prohibited.
Speaker 2: If I pull the lights over, nay, the darks Committee
Speaker 2: take my minkets away from the trevells over the head,
Speaker 2: they take my coveralls and probably even make it.
Speaker 5: Prisons are, in fact, the whole criminal justice system is
Speaker 5: an analyst theaters of humiliation.
Speaker 1: Grahame Stewart is a prison rights advocate and the former
Speaker 1: executive director of the John Howard Society, a nonprofit focused
Speaker 1: on prison reform. He's seeing what solitary can do to
Speaker 1: a man.
Speaker 5: Losing that kind of control in your life is humiliating,
Speaker 5: and you don't get over that. You don't get over
Speaker 5: I absolutely convinced that of all the pains of imprisonment.
Speaker 5: That's the one you can't get beyond.
Speaker 1: The guards would supervise the sory souls of the whole
Speaker 1: through a barred sort of skylight. In the ceiling of
Speaker 1: each unit. There was a catwalk that they would pace
Speaker 1: above the cells on, so when an inmate would look up,
Speaker 1: there would periodically be the face of a guard peering
Speaker 1: down on them like a malevolent god.
Speaker 4: They were against the officers looking down at them because
Speaker 4: it looked like they were in a lockage, like somebody
Speaker 4: looking in a zoo cage looking at an animal. So
Speaker 4: you'd get inappropriate comments and a lot of bad language
Speaker 4: from the inmates, you know, like what the hell are
Speaker 4: you looking at? But a lot stronger than that.
Speaker 1: According to Roger, the guards who were assigned to the
Speaker 1: hole were some of the most sadistic in the prison.
Speaker 1: Let me put it this way. If they were well
Speaker 1: liked and charismatic in the eyes of the Brotherhood of
Speaker 1: prison guards, they'd probably be working upstairs on a better assignment.
Speaker 2: Well, guards are charged the whole, nice people. No decent
Speaker 2: guard would ever ask the whole. Only said that as
Speaker 2: keep it real.
Speaker 1: Say, one could frame solitary confinement as quiet time. Perhaps
Speaker 1: a break from having to watch your back.
Speaker 5: But solitary confinement is not private accommodation. Okay, it's a
Speaker 5: lot worse than that.
Speaker 1: Graham Stewart.
Speaker 5: Again, I've had many people say, well, i've ever had
Speaker 5: to go to prison, I'd want to be in solitary
Speaker 5: because basically it's the afraid of being in the population.
Speaker 5: But solitary is deeply painful. It's such isolation from every stimulus.
Speaker 5: You don't know if it's date or night, you don't
Speaker 5: know what time it is, you have nothing to do.
Speaker 5: It's just like being in a closet or or a
Speaker 5: bathroom really for twenty three hours a day.
Speaker 1: We went into the hole during our reporting trip to
Speaker 1: KP and I hated it in there. In the hole,
Speaker 1: the walls are so close that you can hear your
Speaker 1: breath echo, if that makes sense, like you've been bare alive,
Speaker 1: and that feeling is psychologically dangerous.
Speaker 5: Longer they're there, the more damage they are, and it's
Speaker 5: a damage that lasts the rest of their life. You
Speaker 5: can't undo an experience.
Speaker 1: Like that, which is all to say for Roger, there
Speaker 1: was much more at stake than finding a way to
Speaker 1: endure this punishment. This wasn't something he could white knuckle
Speaker 1: like the paddle or shock therapy to get through this.
Speaker 1: He'd need to stay vigilant just to keep his grip
Speaker 1: on his sanity. But would you believe me if I
Speaker 1: told you that inside this cell, this tomblike space, is
Speaker 1: where Roger would eventually have his greatest breakthrough. One day,
Speaker 1: Roger was in a cell when suddenly he heard a
Speaker 1: tapping sound near his toilet. Could this be the first
Speaker 1: sign of him starting to lose it?
Speaker 3: It was not.
Speaker 4: Themates way of communication. The ways that she used to talk,
Speaker 4: especially in segregation, was you know, obviously, through the toilet system.
Speaker 1: Even though great effort was put into keeping these men
Speaker 1: in perfect isolation, something was overlooked. Like Jeff Goldbloom says
Speaker 1: in Jurassic Park, Life finds a Way.
Speaker 2: I had some niggers down there. I never seen it.
Speaker 2: I knew there was a guy called Jocko and a
Speaker 2: guy called George down there, and we could never see
Speaker 2: each other. We discovered that the old plumbing system was
Speaker 2: so old, sore, so primitive that it weaned very quietly,
Speaker 2: took our paper cup and took the water on the toilet,
Speaker 2: bowed it down. The state until there was no more
Speaker 2: water in the toilet, and then we cleaned their toilet
Speaker 2: old really well. And then after midnight in the gardens
Speaker 2: would change shift, we'd stick our head in the toilet.
Speaker 2: If I wanted to talk to Jocko and number five
Speaker 2: cell I capped five times in the flour that meant
Speaker 2: for Jocko Bale's toilet that would get on the phone.
Speaker 1: The only drawback to this clandestine phone line was that
Speaker 1: sometimes it'd be too busy to work because the men
Speaker 1: in the hole weren't the only ones on the line.
Speaker 2: Kingston was infested with the biggest, fattest stewart rats you
Speaker 2: ever seen, and then the ukating down every two centuries.
Speaker 2: No bake along, yellow teeth creature. You're all running into.
Speaker 1: Pikes that we're talking to do And for several months,
Speaker 1: this is how Roger was able to keep it together.
Speaker 1: The days of silence were more bearable knowing that that
Speaker 1: night when the guards change shifts, that at least be
Speaker 1: someone to talk to.
Speaker 2: Oh nay long from midnight till six o'clock and guards
Speaker 2: to come on duty next morning. I said, hey, Jocko,
Speaker 2: say yeah, say what's happening.
Speaker 1: Maybe one of the more iconic do you remember where
Speaker 1: you were? Moments Roger learned that JFK was shot with
Speaker 1: his head in the toilet, straining to hear the details
Speaker 1: in disbelief. This period of nightly chatter definitely bought Roger
Speaker 1: some time, a precious little engagement to keep his head clear,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't to last. Guys were usually only put
Speaker 1: down there for a few weeks here or a month there,
Speaker 1: but sometimes there wouldn't be anyone staying in the hole
Speaker 1: except for Roger. He put out the call on the phone,
Speaker 1: but no one would answer. Time passed in an untraceable way,
Speaker 1: and Roger started spending more and more time daydreaming, week dreaming,
Speaker 1: month dreaming.
Speaker 2: I'm going to escaped prison. You curl up on the
Speaker 2: poor and get day dream I'm not in jail. I'm
Speaker 2: not in jail. I'm in Hawaii. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: you're in all white, And the gardener looked into the
Speaker 2: people and said, you're not an all white take his cue.
Speaker 2: It gets a place of guys with like a bomb
Speaker 2: going off hisself.
Speaker 6: Like an he gets a whole screaming and red and
Speaker 6: raving and shaving from now wrapper the garden will walk
Speaker 6: down to the catwalk lacking go steth each other was
Speaker 6: really funny.
Speaker 2: Was shaking on, going crazy, literally crazy.
Speaker 1: When the guards would suddenly wrap the glass with their keys.
Speaker 1: It would take him hours to recover from the shock
Speaker 1: from this one single stimulus, the one sound in his life.
Speaker 1: In Roger's brief moments of lucidity, he could see where
Speaker 1: this was going, and he knew that if he didn't
Speaker 1: do something, he could get lost forever. And it's here
Speaker 1: that Roger got an idea. One day, when the guard
Speaker 1: swung by to collect Roger's food tray, the guard was
Speaker 1: surprised to see that the food remained untouched where he
Speaker 1: had left it. When he asked Roger why he didn't
Speaker 1: eat it, Roger said, I'm not hungry. The next meal
Speaker 1: was the same, and the one after. Roger wrote about
Speaker 1: his scheme to get out of the hole and into
Speaker 1: the psychiatric ward and here's our actor reading it.
Speaker 7: My scheme was to put on a crazy act. By
Speaker 7: no means an original idea, because cons in every prison
Speaker 7: throughout the world have tried it. I was going to
Speaker 7: have to put on a tremendous act to convince the guards,
Speaker 7: doctor and warden that I was psychotic. They knew all
Speaker 7: the tricks. I decided to be more cunning than the
Speaker 7: average con and so instead of firing my food tray
Speaker 7: at them and telling them that I was on hunger
Speaker 7: strike because they were poisoning me, I'd let them advise
Speaker 7: me that this was what was happening, sort of reverse psychology.
Speaker 1: But in the early going, they weren't buying what Roger
Speaker 1: was selling. They knew who he was and what he
Speaker 1: was capable of.
Speaker 2: The guards a genio or rigord meal, and they said, no,
Speaker 2: old boss like the one, and the key just said,
Speaker 2: well can I add it?
Speaker 1: So, right in front of Roger, as a stomach was
Speaker 1: practically digesting itself, the guard would make Roger watch as
Speaker 1: he slowly would eat his dinner in front of him.
Speaker 1: By day eight, Roger didn't have to act like his
Speaker 1: health was in jeopardy anymore. It literally was. It's a
Speaker 1: testament to how sick Roger must have looked on that
Speaker 1: day because the guards were concerned enough to call the doctor.
Speaker 1: On day twelve, it was the psychiatrist who finally made
Speaker 1: the call to transfer Roger to the psychiatric ward. His
Speaker 1: wish was about to come true. Roger now had the
Speaker 1: great honor of going to join the Regional Treatment Center,
Speaker 1: which held some of the most criminally insane men.
Speaker 2: In the country if one flew over the propos nests team.
Speaker 1: Compared to this, in all, the Regional Treatment Center or RTC,
Speaker 1: was a separate building within the walls of the Kingston
Speaker 1: Penitentiary campus, and it operated completely separate from the prison.
Speaker 1: They had their own innate that didn't mix. They had
Speaker 1: their own staff and guards that operated independently of the prison,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't often that an inmate was transferred from
Speaker 1: the pen to the RTC. The old guards and historians
Speaker 1: we talked to say that of all the messed up
Speaker 1: things that happened at KP, all of the worst stories,
Speaker 1: the craziest, the most depraved, all come from the RTC,
Speaker 1: and Roger was there by choice, and it wasn't just
Speaker 1: to escape the hole either. The RTC building is unique
Speaker 1: on the campus in that it's one of the tallest
Speaker 1: buildings inside the prison wall, and it also happens to
Speaker 1: be one of the closest to the wall. When we
Speaker 1: climbed to the top floor of this extreme bad vibes building,
Speaker 1: this building, this building is nuts this place that deserves
Speaker 1: its own abandoned mental hospital Instagram account. It was easy
Speaker 1: to see why Roger was willing to litter, really starve
Speaker 1: himself to get here.
Speaker 3: What's your guys, best guess?
Speaker 2: Is this like thirty feet yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: Standing there eye level with the top of the wall.
Speaker 1: It really is tauntingly close. It's easy to imagine Roger
Speaker 1: sipping his soup, peering over the top of it, his
Speaker 1: freedom staring him in the face. Once Roger got his
Speaker 1: health back to a relatively robust state in between his
Speaker 1: bi weekly electroshock therapy sessions, he got down to what
Speaker 1: he does best. He worked quickly to procure a hacksaw
Speaker 1: blade and was even able to get word to some
Speaker 1: old friends in the shop that he was going to
Speaker 1: need another grappling hook. Inside the RTC, Roger enjoyed a
Speaker 1: sense of freedom he hadn't experienced in some time. There's
Speaker 1: lots of free time to mingle, and it was easy
Speaker 1: to elude the eyes of the staff as he would
Speaker 1: work on the bars every chance he got. Everything seemed
Speaker 1: to be coming together for Roger very quickly. He made
Speaker 1: it through the bars on the window. He had his
Speaker 1: grappling hook, safely hidden, and the autumn was giving way
Speaker 1: to winter, which meant that all that was left for
Speaker 1: his escape to become a reality was for the first
Speaker 1: snowy night to arrive. There was only one guard tower
Speaker 1: he needed to worry about on this side of the building.
Speaker 1: Some snow could be enough of a screen for him
Speaker 1: to throw his grappling hook over the top of the wall.
Speaker 1: But with all of these things in place, Roger got
Speaker 1: pulled into something he hadn't in a long time. He
Speaker 1: got into a fight with the ward tough guy, a
Speaker 1: dude named Punchy, But unlike most of his other prison fights,
Speaker 1: this one didn't seem to arrive at a resolution. When
Speaker 1: the fisticuffs were over. Afterward, Punchy was telling anyone who'd
Speaker 1: listen that he was going to kill Roger at the
Speaker 1: earliest opportunity, and had it snowed a day or two earlier,
Speaker 1: maybe nothing would have happened. Maybe Roger would have made
Speaker 1: it over the wall and all the way to Mexico,
Speaker 1: never to be seen again. But that's not how it
Speaker 1: went down. There was a party a few cell blocks over.
Speaker 1: Roger could hear that everyone was lit up on prison
Speaker 1: brew and pills. When Suddenly, this punchy guy appeared out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. Roger didn't know what hit him. Before he
Speaker 1: could even protect himself, the blade was in him. Punchy
Speaker 1: withdrew the ship from Roger as he gasped for breath
Speaker 1: and begged, kill me, just kill me, but he offered
Speaker 1: no such mercy. Instead, Punchy just walked away, leaving Roger
Speaker 1: slumped against a wall in the corridor, his blood pooling
Speaker 1: on the floor.
Speaker 8: I was stad in the stomach. Gucks come over my
Speaker 8: hand and my spleaming montred. I gotta put long star
Speaker 8: on my stomach. Got two knights slaves and my.
Speaker 2: Nose and oh nose, you know over.
Speaker 1: When he was discovered by two orderlies, they moved quickly
Speaker 1: and rushed him to the civilian hospital.
Speaker 8: I was the fastest I ever got out the penitentiary
Speaker 8: in Yami's eleven o'clock at night, going through the front gates,
Speaker 8: and I got to my hand.
Speaker 2: Blood's flying out everywhere.
Speaker 1: As Roger slushed around in the ambulance like a puddle
Speaker 1: on the floor, everything around him was frantic and chaotic,
Speaker 1: but inside he was certain that this would be his
Speaker 1: final night on earth. He watched the paramedics as he
Speaker 1: slipped in and out.
Speaker 9: By the time he got to hot I was just
Speaker 9: going unconscious, you know, and all these keyboard ripping my
Speaker 9: toes off, and you don't know me. And a priest
Speaker 9: comes over to me and he says, you know, he
Speaker 9: says he mind go to pray over it, and everything's
Speaker 9: all blurred and on our member.
Speaker 2: Saying, well help you south now, I just played you
Speaker 2: say you're.
Speaker 3: Shifting the day.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, one hundred and eighty miles away in Montreal, well,
Speaker 1: we were at home.
Speaker 10: In the phone rings.
Speaker 1: This is Roger's niece, Diane, and my mother.
Speaker 10: Gets off the phone and she was really really upset
Speaker 10: and she was crying and I said, Mom, what's wrong?
Speaker 10: And she says, Roger's been stabbed all over and they
Speaker 10: don't think he's going to live. And then so we prayed.
Speaker 10: We all prayed, you know, because in those days, that's
Speaker 10: what you did and that's how.
Speaker 2: You did it.
Speaker 1: So Roger's sister and mother rushed from Cornwall all the
Speaker 1: way to Kingston. Here's Sue Roger's sister.
Speaker 11: They forewarned us that more than likely when we arrived,
Speaker 11: he may not be alive. And we got there and
Speaker 11: there were tubes coming out of him, and he had
Speaker 11: a guard inside the room and a guard outside the
Speaker 11: door of the room.
Speaker 1: As Sue stood at her brother's side, she held his hand,
Speaker 1: urging him to hang on.
Speaker 11: I remember him squeezing my hand. He held my hand
Speaker 11: so hard, actually heard me, you know, but he could
Speaker 11: have broke it. I would not have moved my hand away,
Speaker 11: so he recognized us, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: It had been a long time since she'd been able
Speaker 1: to touch her brother, to breathe the same air as
Speaker 1: him outside of prison.
Speaker 11: And I would explained to him, you know, the surgery
Speaker 11: is what happened, because half his nose had been ripped away,
Speaker 11: and he had been knifed in his stomach area, which
Speaker 11: caused him to lose his spleen. They did surgery on
Speaker 11: him and all kinds of transfusions and whatnot. And it
Speaker 11: was only a few days later that we kept calling
Speaker 11: the hospital to see how he was doing, and they said, oh,
Speaker 11: he's been taken back to the penitentiary like a matter
Speaker 11: of like two days, as soon as it looked like
Speaker 11: he was going to live, as soon as it looked
Speaker 11: like it, right back the penitentiary because he was go boy.
Speaker 1: Roger was placed back in the hole by the warden
Speaker 1: at the earliest possible opportunity. His whole fiasco in the
Speaker 1: psychiatric hospit had only signaled to those keeping him in
Speaker 1: solitary that they'd been making the right choice. It proved
Speaker 1: what they'd suspected all along, that if they ever gave
Speaker 1: Roger Kerran even the slightest of openings, he do everything
Speaker 1: he could to slip through. So he was back where
Speaker 1: he started. The only difference now was that he had
Speaker 1: no spleen. His long term future would be spent in
Speaker 1: this very room with this very light bulb and that
Speaker 1: very guard and this very hopelessness. The months without human
Speaker 1: contact began to accumulate. There was no peace. There was nothing,
Speaker 1: literally nothing.
Speaker 5: And a person starts to turn on themselves.
Speaker 1: In that environment, Graham Stewart again.
Speaker 5: They get very depressed, or they get very angry, or
Speaker 5: they get delusionble. You can't undo an experience like that.
Speaker 5: Imagine what it's like going day after day. So it's
Speaker 5: a deep trauma.
Speaker 1: Roger would pace his cage like an animal for an
Speaker 1: entire day or was it an entire night, He couldn't tell,
Speaker 1: and the guards certainly weren't going to help him get
Speaker 1: a grip on what day or time it was. The
Speaker 1: guards he'd tricked into committing him to the psychiatric ward
Speaker 1: were pissed that they'd been fooled, so they'd take special
Speaker 1: care to torment him like it was their job, and
Speaker 1: if they ever saw him finally drift off, it'd smash
Speaker 1: the glass and laugh as he shot up, confused, as
Speaker 1: he visibly was beginning to show signs that he was
Speaker 1: losing his sanity. One of the first things that was
Speaker 1: concerning to Roger was when one day he could hear
Speaker 1: a very clear crackle.
Speaker 2: And my hearing was so acute. I to sometimes say
Speaker 2: street slice of ripped of my supper trade. And it
Speaker 2: got so quiet around midnight that I started hearing this
Speaker 2: cracking sun. Where's it come from? I got here my grit,
Speaker 2: I put my ear there, and might I could hear
Speaker 2: my grit drying up?
Speaker 1: Around this time, Roger started to hear other things down
Speaker 1: there too, and down in.
Speaker 2: All almost two years, hallucinating.
Speaker 1: That your voice all Roger would be laying on his bed,
Speaker 1: basking in the Saharan sun when he'd hear a whimper and.
Speaker 2: Here I hear a female voice cry every night at
Speaker 2: eleven o'clock when the guards cheeks shift, and she was
Speaker 2: so lonely, so distressed, and I was so lonely and
Speaker 2: so distressed.
Speaker 1: Every night the sobbing became a little clearer, like she
Speaker 1: was right there in the cell with him. So he'd
Speaker 1: murmur things to her, tell her that they were going
Speaker 1: to be okay, that they were both going to find
Speaker 1: a way to survive this.
Speaker 2: And she I could hear a crying. Her tears were
Speaker 2: coming out of all fourst of my cellar. A voice
Speaker 2: was like a fallowist and rocky home crazy or lucinating.
Speaker 2: I'm nervous, I'm bouncing off all the walls.
Speaker 1: Roger started to slip into the space he was afraid
Speaker 1: of where he was entering into a dangerous forest that
Speaker 1: he might never make it out of.
Speaker 2: I was so nervous that one night I fell a spigure.
Speaker 2: Must have been after midnight, like I armed behind my
Speaker 2: I had a real bad dream. I woke up from
Speaker 2: these bad dreams, and all of a sudden, I felt
Speaker 2: this presence behind me, and I turned my head and
Speaker 2: rooting roll and I spotted these five fingers. Well, I
Speaker 2: had jumped so high they all took.
Speaker 1: And it was around this time when Roger started to
Speaker 1: become frightened of his own limbs. When it happened a
Speaker 1: bonafide Christmas miracle. On Christmas Eve, suddenly a vision came
Speaker 1: to visit Roger in his solitary cell. But this time,
Speaker 1: for once, it wasn't a vision at all. It was real.
Speaker 1: A tall man in a navy blue uniform entered his
Speaker 1: cell and regarded Roger with a warm look on his face.
Speaker 2: Christmas Eve around a state of populdn't you go?
Speaker 3: Open?
Speaker 2: And then he walked a captain in the Salvation Army guy.
Speaker 2: And first time I had ever seen one of these
Speaker 2: guys in a hole, like for two years they lived
Speaker 2: in a hole, never seen anything.
Speaker 1: Salvation Army offers the true spirit of Christmas. The man
Speaker 1: from the Salvation Army firmly shook Roger's hand and gave
Speaker 1: him a gift.
Speaker 2: They gave you a personalized Christmas card. And then he
Speaker 2: gave me a bag of candies and Mike Candy Shop
Speaker 2: with Mormon of jelly beans, all kinds of carsn't it.
Speaker 1: Roger looked down at the jelly beans and card in disbelief.
Speaker 1: As the man tipped his hat, said Merry Christmas and
Speaker 1: was gone.
Speaker 2: They closed the door. I sick crossed lady on the floor.
Speaker 2: So I got these jelly beans. I want to eat
Speaker 2: them all right away, I said, no, six hours, it's
Speaker 2: going to be Christmas eve. I'm going to wait until
Speaker 2: a shift changes, when the guards come, and I'll know
Speaker 2: it's midnight and it's it's a Merry Christmas, Roger, and
Speaker 2: then eat on my tige beans.
Speaker 1: But as midnight approached, Roger kept staring at his jelly beans.
Speaker 1: They were the first objects that weren't prison food or
Speaker 1: an army blanket or a book that he'd been allowed
Speaker 1: in the hole. And they were so beautiful, so perfect.
Speaker 1: Some of them were colors he quite literally hadn't seen
Speaker 1: in years. It seemed a waste to chew them up
Speaker 1: and swallow them, so he thought about what else he
Speaker 1: could use them for. He saw his least favorite guard
Speaker 1: glaring at him through the skylight, and then this.
Speaker 2: Suddenly came to me as a Christmas heat. But I
Speaker 2: only tell him what I think of is is that
Speaker 2: you know, I saw a writing word on the floor,
Speaker 2: a real nasty word on the floor. Then he came
Speaker 2: with it being malicious as directed him not playing the game,
Speaker 2: and a good king of nasty word to only three
Speaker 2: or four of them as well.
Speaker 1: So as the clock turned over to Christmas, Roger spelled
Speaker 1: out the word pig on the floor with his jelly
Speaker 1: beans and looked up at the skylight expectantly. When the
Speaker 1: guard appeared in the window, pull.
Speaker 2: My hands back. I looked up at him. He looks
Speaker 2: at the word. All of a sudden, he became livid.
Speaker 2: Just show me with rage, you know, Please start banging
Speaker 2: and saying this and that. I look at it like
Speaker 2: he's crazy. You know, what's the matter with you? Boston.
Speaker 1: Roger had tried many things to intentionally enrage the guard
Speaker 1: since he'd been down there, but nothing had got a
Speaker 1: reaction like this. It was beautiful when.
Speaker 2: He's shaking his fast like you know what's happening, you know.
Speaker 12: Then he walked away mumbling to himself, and I sat
Speaker 12: there and on I says, my god, the power of
Speaker 12: the written word is incredible.
Speaker 1: The next guard got the word dog, the one after
Speaker 1: that jerk. For two days, Roger racked his brain to
Speaker 1: spell the worst three and four letter words he could
Speaker 1: think of.
Speaker 12: Four days after I was expressing myself, I found a
Speaker 12: goon squad come charging myself with clubs and as masks,
Speaker 12: pinned me up against the wall, and he confiscated my
Speaker 12: jelly beans. I was using my fist, I was using
Speaker 12: my stupidity all these years, and I wasn't getting nowhere.
Speaker 12: All of a sudden, I just reverted to a few words,
Speaker 12: and I got a terrific reaction of it.
Speaker 3: And this was it.
Speaker 1: Roger had only written a few monosyllabic words out of
Speaker 1: jelly beans. But even in the moment, he knew that something,
Speaker 1: a much bigger shift was happening.
Speaker 2: Are knew something happened in my life.
Speaker 1: He needed to write more words. He needed to But
Speaker 1: how when he remembered that all inmates were granted upon request,
Speaker 1: something he never thought to ask for.
Speaker 13: Suddenly I found myself asking the school teacher if he
Speaker 13: would send me down some pencils in a scribber, not
Speaker 13: knowing why or what, except that this compulsion in need
Speaker 13: his urge to express my inner aguage, my turmoil.
Speaker 1: As the stationary and pencils make their way down to
Speaker 1: the hole, it's worth pausing to point out the unlikelihood
Speaker 1: of what happened next. This man had almost no education,
Speaker 1: he had no voice. He was the bottom of the
Speaker 1: bottom of the bottom of the prison and society. And
Speaker 1: against all of this, his words were about to change everything.
Speaker 1: Go Boy is a production from Campside Media in partnership
Speaker 1: with iHeart Podcasts. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Go Boy was written
Speaker 1: and hosted by me Sam LLINs. Our producer is Rob
Speaker 1: Lindsay of Paradox Pictures. Laine Rose is our senior producer.
Speaker 1: Sound design, mix and engineering by Garrett Tiedeman. Original music
Speaker 1: by Garrett Tiedemant, fact checking by Michael Kenyon Meyer. Selected
Speaker 1: archival clips are from CBC Licensing. The book Go Boy
Speaker 1: was written by Roger Kuran. iHeart Podcasts Executive producers are
Speaker 1: Lindsay Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett. Excerpts from Roger Koran's book
Speaker 1: Go Boy, read by Jamie Cavanaugh. Special thanks to Kingston
Speaker 1: Pantentry Tours and Greg Guthrow from Saint Lawrence Parks Commission.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to Canada's Penitentiary Museum, Mike Schreider, Dave Saint
Speaker 1: Ounge and Correctional Service Canada. Campside Media's executive producers are
Speaker 1: Josh Dean, Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Cher. A
Speaker 1: special thanks to our operations team Doug Slaywyn, Ashley Warren,
Speaker 1: Sabina Marra and Destiny Dingle. If you enjoyed Go Boy,
Speaker 1: please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.