Speaker 1: Hello.
Speaker 2: This is a prepaid call from an inmate at a
Speaker 2: Florida Department of Corrections institution.
Speaker 3: To accept this call, press zero to refuse this call.
Speaker 3: This call is from a correction facility and is subject
Speaker 3: to monitoring and recording. Thank you for using Global Telling.
Speaker 1: Good morning, Leo, Hey Bud, how are you good.
Speaker 4: I'm sitting here with Kelsey.
Speaker 1: Oh really, hey Kelsey.
Speaker 5: Hey Leo. It's so nice to hear your voice.
Speaker 1: It's nice to hear you too. I ask about you
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 5: I know, I get the messages. I mean, I ask
Speaker 5: about you all the time too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. How are you?
Speaker 5: I'm good? How are you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Doing really well?
Speaker 4: Hey everyone, it's been a while since our last episode.
Speaker 4: Leo has been transferred to Everglade's Correctional Institution down in Miami,
Speaker 4: where he's been preparing for parole through what's called the
Speaker 4: Corrections Transition Program or CTP for short. Currently, he's one
Speaker 4: of seventy nine men who are preparing for life on
Speaker 4: the outside after spending decades in prison. Leo has spent
Speaker 4: the past seven months attending classes and workshops on resocialization skills,
Speaker 4: job interviews, and self esteem with help from program alumni.
Speaker 4: And students at Florida International University. He's even been teaching
Speaker 4: a few classes himself. I've been keeping up with Leo
Speaker 4: through weekly phone calls and emails. I even had dinner
Speaker 4: with him over the summer. At an end of semester banquet,
Speaker 4: Leo and I sat at a long table in the
Speaker 4: CTP cafeteria with Chrissy, former Judge Scott Kupp, and Senator
Speaker 4: Jonathan Martin, along with some of the other guys in
Speaker 4: the program and their families. Leo's classes just ended for
Speaker 4: this semester. He has some free time now and we
Speaker 4: wanted him to give an update on how he's been doing. Hey,
Speaker 4: we want to ask you a couple of questions because
Speaker 4: you know, the last that the listeners had heard from
Speaker 4: you was was right after the parole hearing back in May,
Speaker 4: and uh so we just wanted to, you know, ask
Speaker 4: a few questions about what it was like when you
Speaker 4: just left Hardy and made the transition down to Everglades.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god, Well for me, you know, I
Speaker 1: was I was at Haughty for so long and created
Speaker 1: a family, and of course my best friend Kevin's there,
Speaker 1: so you know that that made all the difference in
Speaker 1: the world as well, and we were there for a
Speaker 1: long time. But leaving that was really really difficult, and
Speaker 1: I had a lot of responsibilities there. I was involved
Speaker 1: in a lot of things that, you know, it was
Speaker 1: part of the functioning of that particular institution, and then
Speaker 1: coming here, I was essentially nobody and I lost those roles,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a fish out of water. Even
Speaker 1: though I knew this was a good move. I knew
Speaker 1: it was the right move at the time for me,
Speaker 1: for my bid for home, it was still really really tough.
Speaker 1: And then I missed my friends horribly. To be honest
Speaker 1: with you, I still miss them all right now. And
Speaker 1: sometimes I get lonely form and you know, I'll tell
Speaker 1: myself maybe I can go back, and you know that
Speaker 1: there's still going back.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what was that journey? Like, Leo, Like, I'm just
Speaker 6: imagining you get on a bus and off you go.
Speaker 1: What is it like? Yeah, you know when when the
Speaker 1: bus rides a notorious so back in the eighties and
Speaker 1: you know, I hate that I can say that, but
Speaker 1: way back in the eighties, they had these buses and
Speaker 1: they were old and they were rickety, and I mean
Speaker 1: it's essentially like a school bus would steal over the
Speaker 1: windows and stuff. It's hot, and it's it's a miserable ride. Uh,
Speaker 1: this last trip, and I hadn't been on one in
Speaker 1: you know, quite a few years, almost a decade and
Speaker 1: a half. But they've they've since then got new ones
Speaker 1: and so the new ones were much better. They were
Speaker 1: cleaner and not so dark on the inside. But you're
Speaker 1: still hand up and they're still shackled, and you take
Speaker 1: a ride and you don't come straight from one place
Speaker 1: to another. That would make it kind of okay. When
Speaker 1: you come in here from Hardy, you're going to leave
Speaker 1: Hardy and go to Central Florida Reception Center and you'll
Speaker 1: stay there until you get on the bus that's leaving
Speaker 1: from Central Florida to come to South Florida Reception Center.
Speaker 1: And then you go through that. And every time you
Speaker 1: go through one of those places, you got to check
Speaker 1: your property in, you gotta go through the script search
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. You know, it's just part of
Speaker 1: the the journey and it's very tiring.
Speaker 6: Yeah, did you did you drive through Polk County?
Speaker 1: We did. We did have to go through Pope County
Speaker 1: that you got to go through the able to get
Speaker 1: to Orlando, and there were some places that I did recognize.
Speaker 1: The it looks so different out there. I mean, even
Speaker 1: the names of stores. There was one name of a
Speaker 1: comedian store. I don't even remember what it is now.
Speaker 1: I just I didn't even know that was a word,
Speaker 1: but apparently that's a that's the thing. And then the
Speaker 1: way people dress, you know, I'm like, you know, I
Speaker 1: know it's hot, but you know, you should try to
Speaker 1: put some clothes on, you know. But it was it
Speaker 1: was just very very strange for me.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 1: And that had been the first time I've been outside
Speaker 1: of of you know, Haughty in sixteen years, and a
Speaker 1: lot had changed. Yeah, yeah, it was a lot.
Speaker 6: What is it like when you get down to a CTP.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wish you could see it. You got
Speaker 1: to understand, in prison, the doms are painted in stark
Speaker 1: colors for a reason, and they're very bland, and you
Speaker 1: know that's the way that they are everywhere here. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you can just envision it, the main color here
Speaker 1: is purple colored Seaton fear purple and yellow, really bright
Speaker 1: and vibrant. So you come in it's like, you know
Speaker 1: it's different. You immediately know it's different. It took a
Speaker 1: little getting used to. I mean, purple is not a
Speaker 1: color I associate with prison. It is royal purple. It's
Speaker 1: very very purple. I wish you could see it.
Speaker 5: I know I wish I could see it too. I
Speaker 5: Gilbert mentioned to me that there's a place there that
Speaker 5: maybe it's like a room where there's photos of men
Speaker 5: who have gone through the program.
Speaker 1: It's called the Learning Center. I think I told Gilbert
Speaker 1: this before, aside from the war room over at Haughty
Speaker 1: and I think it's the most profound room I've ever
Speaker 1: been in the prison. And the room is yellow and
Speaker 1: purple like the dawn. There's a lot of symbolism around.
Speaker 1: And you look around, so at the top of the
Speaker 1: wall right with the wall and ceiling meat all the
Speaker 1: way around from one one end of the room all
Speaker 1: the way around to the other on three walls. These
Speaker 1: posters that were handmade from each class. But the year
Speaker 1: of the class that exists, like I'm in twenty seven,
Speaker 1: and the CTP is as if it's for twenty seven years,
Speaker 1: and I'm in the number twenty seven class. It's called
Speaker 1: Restoring Away. That's the overall name of the class at
Speaker 1: twenty seven and there's a representation poster for each class
Speaker 1: all the way around, and when you get from like
Speaker 1: one to sixteen, all the names are in yellow and
Speaker 1: there's a one hundred percent sticker on all those posters.
Speaker 1: And what that means is that everybody in that class
Speaker 1: has pearled. And so you got to get you've got
Speaker 1: to get to like sixteen before if you start seeing
Speaker 1: they're not all in yellow anymore, they're sporadic throughout. And
Speaker 1: get to my class and there's now a couple of
Speaker 1: people from my class that have prolled recently be colored
Speaker 1: in and so that it just shows you and that,
Speaker 1: I mean, you see them one hundred percent stickers, a
Speaker 1: little ribbon on them, and you realize that everybody in
Speaker 1: that class parole. That's that's pretty amazing. And then on
Speaker 1: the back wall you have all this giant bulletin board
Speaker 1: with all these photos of of inmates that have gotten out,
Speaker 1: people that are out in the street, and the street
Speaker 1: clothes and in fact our pictures on there. Gilbert, there's
Speaker 1: a picture of us with Senator Martin that's right in
Speaker 1: the middle of the bulleting board. And then on the
Speaker 1: front wall is the most important part because on the
Speaker 1: front wall, there is a giant blown up official paper.
Speaker 1: It's the form that you get from the Parole Commission
Speaker 1: that it's a termination of prole form. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it would be eight and half by eleven piece of paper,
Speaker 1: but it's blown up on poster size. And underneath that
Speaker 1: is and it's called the Hall of Fame Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: And underneath that are all these little yellow stickers with
Speaker 1: names on it of the hundred or so people that
Speaker 1: have been terminated from parole. That's the goal, you know,
Speaker 1: to finally they're not just parole now they've been terminated
Speaker 1: from parole. They're no longer on parole. They successfully made
Speaker 1: it through the program and through the parole and made
Speaker 1: it off. And that's where I want my name to be.
Speaker 6: Hey, Leo, can you talk a little bit about the
Speaker 6: program and what your days are like there at Everglades.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thankfully we're in a break right now. We're
Speaker 1: in between semesters because I took thirteen classes last semester
Speaker 1: and that was an idiotic move in my books. We
Speaker 1: have to take five, yeah, because I facilitated three of them.
Speaker 1: One of them I do twice a week, So literally
Speaker 1: four classes a week I'm facilitating plus the thirteen that
Speaker 1: I'm already doing, and I'm running the Messianic community here
Speaker 1: again as well. So I got a lot on the
Speaker 1: plate and taking them thirteen classes was a pair cycle
Speaker 1: of addiction. That was one of the mandatory classes. You know,
Speaker 1: we all need work in that area. You know, there's
Speaker 1: various types of addictions, not just drugs, and so we
Speaker 1: learn through a curriculum how to deal with certain addictions,
Speaker 1: how to overcome those, and you know, those classes extremely important.
Speaker 1: There's also parole planning, which is also mandatory every semester
Speaker 1: because we're always That was a very important class for me.
Speaker 1: The parole planning class was important, and I'm so glad
Speaker 1: I was here because there are so many things aspects
Speaker 1: of parole that I just didn't even know. I just
Speaker 1: took for granted. You parole, you go out, you obay
Speaker 1: the law, and you you live peaceably in the land
Speaker 1: you find and for the most part, that's okay. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of responsibility that you that we have to,
Speaker 1: you know, be concerned with being out on parole that
Speaker 1: I didn't even know. One of them is I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that we don't have freedom of speech. I'm still
Speaker 1: under the conviction and so I don't have freedom of speed.
Speaker 1: You can't say just anything you want. There's a perfect
Speaker 1: example of a guy that he get out on parole.
Speaker 1: He was out, he was working in a job, and
Speaker 1: you know, there's some somebody was precious against him being
Speaker 1: in a former convict, and they went out and kept
Speaker 1: his car, and you know, that was pretty hard and
Speaker 1: he got really upset about it. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: and in a fit of his anger, he had said,
Speaker 1: if I find out who did this, I'm going to
Speaker 1: kill you. Well guess what he got. He got violated
Speaker 1: for that, and he's been in prison over twenty years
Speaker 1: over it. You know, you can't just go out and
Speaker 1: say what you want to say human if you're angry,
Speaker 1: you've got to be careful. You got to be careful
Speaker 1: of those things. There's a lot of things that you know,
Speaker 1: I needed to learn. And Monday Night where the FIU
Speaker 1: students come in to share with us. As part of
Speaker 1: their curriculum, they have to come in on Monday nights
Speaker 1: to one of them will give a presentation on some
Speaker 1: element of you know, being out in the free world,
Speaker 1: such as maybe like the use of a cell phone.
Speaker 1: Let me think about you. Guys use a cell phone
Speaker 1: all the time. I've never ever been on a cell phone.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even know that. I mean, it looks like
Speaker 1: a little square thing to me, and I wouldn't know
Speaker 1: how your answered. Whereas the speaker, how do you hear it?
Speaker 1: You know, none of that stuff. That's a really big
Speaker 1: deal for us in here. Some of these guys have
Speaker 1: been in longer than I have. Forty fifty years and
Speaker 1: they're sixty seventy years old, and so you know, those
Speaker 1: are important elements of learning. So the classes may be great,
Speaker 1: and they are, and they teach you a lot of
Speaker 1: good information. But the FIU students come in and they
Speaker 1: show us how to live it, and they live with
Speaker 1: us in it, and they're absolutely And then on Tuesday night,
Speaker 1: you have.
Speaker 3: You have one minute remaining.
Speaker 6: LEO, would it would it be possible? You said you
Speaker 6: had to wait a half hour before you call back,
Speaker 6: would you be Would you be able to do that today?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I should be able to call it eleven. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we can get another one in. Yeah. They usually call
Speaker 1: call count around eleven, twenty eleven, thirty somewhere on there.
Speaker 6: Okay, okay, yeah, but we would love to talk to
Speaker 6: you if you can, if you can swing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't get a chance to talk
Speaker 1: to you. I elsie all the time, so I take
Speaker 1: advantage of it.
Speaker 2: Hello, this is a prepaid call from an inmate at
Speaker 2: a Florida Department of Corrections.
Speaker 3: Institutions to accept this call press zero.
Speaker 4: Hey, thanks for calling us back, Leo Gil.
Speaker 1: But well, the one thing I couldn't count for was
Speaker 1: people being on the phone when I came to get it.
Speaker 1: So we're probably going to get cut off with COUNT,
Speaker 1: you know, But I want the phone, hope, and I
Speaker 1: want to let you know that, you know.
Speaker 6: Oh no, that's fine. We totally we totally understand. It's
Speaker 6: no problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So here I am. We can go to
Speaker 1: they call COUNT anyway about a minute or so.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, let's okay. One of the questions I wanted
Speaker 5: to ask you is I know it Hardy. By the
Speaker 5: time you left, your claim of innocence was like very
Speaker 5: well known and accepted by a lot of people there,
Speaker 5: And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit
Speaker 5: about what that's been like at CTP at Everglades. How
Speaker 5: has that been received.
Speaker 1: You know, that's an interesting question. CTP is not full
Speaker 1: of guys who are in here innocently. You know that
Speaker 1: A big factor, a big element of CPP is taking
Speaker 1: responsibility for your wronggoing and being accountable for it. That
Speaker 1: is a huge, huge thing, and rightly so so when
Speaker 1: I first got here, my very first week here, when
Speaker 1: I was going through the orientation process, the orientating inmate
Speaker 1: that was talking to me about that, he didn't know
Speaker 1: me from Adam, and you know, he was taking me
Speaker 1: through the orientation process and he, you know, made a
Speaker 1: big thing about that part of it, about being accountable,
Speaker 1: about you know, being able to admit your guilt and
Speaker 1: being able to talk about it openly, especially you know,
Speaker 1: during any time your questions and things like that. They
Speaker 1: want to know you're being accountable. And like I said,
Speaker 1: that's that's the right thing. My problem was I can't
Speaker 1: be accountable for a crime I didn't commit, and so
Speaker 1: I began explaining that to you know, this individual, and
Speaker 1: he was a little bit you know, you know, that's
Speaker 1: not going to work really well, you know, And it
Speaker 1: was interesting because coming from an inmate is different. You know,
Speaker 1: I expect Free world people to be a little skeptical.
Speaker 1: You know, it makes it makes kind of know better.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't we don't just say those kinds
Speaker 1: of things. And so when he was giving me a
Speaker 1: little bit of a resistance to that, it was, it
Speaker 1: was it was difficult because he's wanting to get me
Speaker 1: in the place where I'm being accountable, which he's supposed
Speaker 1: to do, and I just can't do it. And so
Speaker 1: it was a struggle for me in the beginning, you know.
Speaker 1: And you know, we talked about it, and eventually Senior
Speaker 1: counselor got involved in it CPP and he knew me
Speaker 1: from haughty and explained to him, you know, who I
Speaker 1: was and where I was coming from, and so it
Speaker 1: got it got a little better after that, but there
Speaker 1: was a couple of weeks in the beginning where it
Speaker 1: was a struggle. And you know, when I do get
Speaker 1: the opportunity to speak and and uh and talk as
Speaker 1: we do make presentations with each other, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a little it's a little different for me because everybody
Speaker 1: here is able to stand up and say, you know,
Speaker 1: how sorry they are, and they pray for their victims
Speaker 1: and they you know, they say all these you know,
Speaker 1: things that show them being accountable, and you know, I'm
Speaker 1: proud of them for doing it, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't have the ability to do that. You know,
Speaker 1: of course I pray from Michelle's family and Michelle and
Speaker 1: all that, but I can't stand up and give an
Speaker 1: account of, you know, a crime I didn't commit, And
Speaker 1: so it puts me at a different place and one
Speaker 1: that I am not always comfortable with. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying I wish I was guilty, but you know, being
Speaker 1: in a program that is designed to bring accountability and
Speaker 1: not being guilty of the crime, it's difficult. Now. Having
Speaker 1: said that, I will say that what CTP has helped me,
Speaker 1: what my brothers have helped me with here that was
Speaker 1: different than any place else before, is that I've been
Speaker 1: able to take a really strong moral inventory of my
Speaker 1: own life and the reason why I'm here. And I'm
Speaker 1: very careful about how I word this, because I'm not guilty.
Speaker 1: Having said that, my life before this crime had taken
Speaker 1: place was pretty rocky because of my personality issues and
Speaker 1: growing up and just the attitude that I had, and
Speaker 1: that played as much a part in allowing people like
Speaker 1: on the jury to believe that I was guilty as
Speaker 1: anything else, and so I had to take out for
Speaker 1: my own actions and that was really hard for me.
Speaker 1: It was it because I've been on the defense for
Speaker 1: my life with this case from the very beginning, and
Speaker 1: you know, you don't get to take morel inventories while
Speaker 1: you're defending yourself against the crimean commit. And when you're
Speaker 1: doing that for so many years and you're claiming your
Speaker 1: innocence for so many years, you kind of get in
Speaker 1: this victim role. And here I was able to get
Speaker 1: outside of that for a minute and look and see
Speaker 1: my own responsibility in it. And that has allowed me
Speaker 1: really to not be so angry with Jerry Hill and
Speaker 1: people who have accused me of something that I didn't do,
Speaker 1: you know, to be able to see their perspective in it.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you something that's that's really difficult. That
Speaker 1: is extremely difficult. And it was hard for me because
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a bad person. I don't
Speaker 1: think I was a bad person. I just think I
Speaker 1: was an immature person and I didn't really have the
Speaker 1: chance to grow up and become who I would be
Speaker 1: until I got here. And so yeah, that part was
Speaker 1: har Kelsey. It was. It was really difficult and still
Speaker 1: is a little bit now, you know, seventy eight months
Speaker 1: in it, and you know, these guys have known me
Speaker 1: really really well. They've they've they've gotten close to me,
Speaker 1: like they did it haughty, and you know, we've worked
Speaker 1: together and they've accepted that. You know, this guy's the
Speaker 1: real deal. He really didn't do it. And but yeah,
Speaker 1: to directly answer your question, it was difficult. It was
Speaker 1: a difficult transition, and I think I'm full circle with
Speaker 1: that now. Yeah. But hey, listen, they just called County,
Speaker 1: so well, listen, guys, thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Thanks for thanks for calling le I really appreciate and
Speaker 6: we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 3: Take care of it.
Speaker 2: Bye, Thank you for using global cool.
Speaker 1: I got that off.
Speaker 5: I should left it. I think we got it the
Speaker 5: first time. Probably, Yeah, thing think