Speaker 1: Hey, girlfriends, it's me Anna. I wanted to give your
Speaker 1: heads up. This episode takes place within Reiker's Island Jail,
Speaker 1: so we'll obviously be speaking a lot about.
Speaker 2: The prison system.
Speaker 1: Plusa's going to be talk about addiction, and there's lots
Speaker 1: of references to violence, including domestic abuse.
Speaker 2: But I'll also get.
Speaker 1: To introduce you to some incredible women who formed a
Speaker 1: sisterhood while locked up and who helped Kelly become the
Speaker 1: woman she is today. If you're affected by any of
Speaker 1: the themes around domestic and gendered violence in this show,
Speaker 1: reach out to our charity partner No More. There are
Speaker 1: domestic violence charity with a lot of great resources to
Speaker 1: help you or your loved ones. You can search No
Speaker 1: More dot org and we've put a link to their
Speaker 1: website in the episode description. There's also going to be
Speaker 1: some bad language, so let's go. It's a swelteringly hot
Speaker 1: day in early July twenty ten. Kelly Hannatt has just
Speaker 1: arrived at the infamous Riker's Island Jail. She's been taken
Speaker 1: into a unit called pretty Uninspiringly New Admissions.
Speaker 2: This is where you.
Speaker 1: Wait around while you and a busload of other detainees
Speaker 1: are processed. It's not a comfortable place to be even
Speaker 1: at the best of times, and this month temperatures are
Speaker 1: reaching as high as one hundred degrees fahrenheit For the
Speaker 1: non Americans in the room, that's nearly forty degrees celsius
Speaker 1: at the time. Rikers also doesn't have any air conditioning,
Speaker 1: so you're just cattle in a hot tin can.
Speaker 3: I couldn't take it. And this one piece paper suit
Speaker 3: covered my footing and I had no shoes on.
Speaker 1: Remember that bloodstained suit Kelly was wearing. She still got
Speaker 1: that on.
Speaker 3: It was so hot. I ripped the shoe part and
Speaker 3: rolled it up now on barefoot. In II Grews Island
Speaker 3: Inn Intake, which is the philbies place that I know
Speaker 3: of in the world.
Speaker 1: From Intake, where all new arrivals go, Kelly is taken
Speaker 1: through a series of invasive medical tests, blood tests, mental
Speaker 1: health assessments, drug checks. Then she's issued with a kind
Speaker 1: of jail starter pack, some clothes, two towels, two sheets, toothpaste,
Speaker 1: and a toothbrush, a single green cup, plus something called
Speaker 1: state soap, whatever the fuck that means. After getting her supplies,
Speaker 1: Kelly spat out into the general population a sixty person unit.
Speaker 1: As she walks through a communal area lined by cells,
Speaker 1: she can tell that everyone's looking her up and down.
Speaker 3: Oh, I stayed on me for two reasons. I was
Speaker 3: white and the paper suit. Now I know that African
Speaker 3: Americans are true. You did very unfairly in the justice system.
Speaker 3: So it made sense when I went in there and
Speaker 3: there are sixty cells, and fifty nine of them are
Speaker 3: African American and then there is me. So people started
Speaker 3: talking to me, you're blondie, your white girl, and I said, nah, no,
Speaker 3: we're not doing that. I have a name, I'm not
Speaker 3: a punk. You're not going to push me around in here.
Speaker 1: Other than rejecting some new unwanted nicknames. Kelly keeps her
Speaker 1: head down for the first couple of weeks. She's got
Speaker 1: a plan.
Speaker 3: Just watch and watch and watch, get a feel for
Speaker 3: absolutely everybody. But while I was watching, I was definitely sick.
Speaker 1: Kelly's been an opoid addict for a decade and it's
Speaker 1: been on and off methadone for most of that time.
Speaker 1: Right now, she's going through something called administrative detox. It's
Speaker 1: the fastest detox that you can put a person through legally.
Speaker 3: When they're called methodon. A few times I had to
Speaker 3: crawl on my hands and knees, and one captain when
Speaker 3: he saw me, he said, you see, I hope you
Speaker 3: remember this for the rest of your life. This is
Speaker 3: what drugs do you.
Speaker 1: During this time, Kelly's barely able to speak, throwing up
Speaker 1: and worse. Kelly's very religious, the Catholic girl through and through,
Speaker 1: and a dedicated disciple of Saint Terrez, whose signature token
Speaker 1: is a rose.
Speaker 2: Kelly's been praying to her since she was four years old, and.
Speaker 1: I imagine she spent these early weeks of detox doing
Speaker 1: the same. She's always relied on Saint Terrez to get
Speaker 1: her through the worst. But right now there's someone else
Speaker 1: by her side too. Kelly's being nursed by a woman,
Speaker 1: a fellow inmate, someone she's never met before.
Speaker 3: This lady, she was maybe a couple of years older
Speaker 3: than me. And when I was feeling a little bit
Speaker 3: better and I could speak, I said, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: She gives this woman a hug and I.
Speaker 3: Said, why do you smell like roses? She said, ah,
Speaker 3: these are my rosary beads. I got these from the Vatican.
Speaker 3: They made of rosewood.
Speaker 1: The woman takes the beads off and places them around
Speaker 1: Kelly's neck.
Speaker 3: I said, what is your name? She says Teresa, and
Speaker 3: I said, really, it's amazing. I feel that that was
Speaker 3: my guardian angel I feel that God sent Saint Terre's
Speaker 3: to tell me that everything was going to be okay.
Speaker 1: It's just as well, because Kelly's gonna need all the
Speaker 1: help she can get, divine or otherwise if she's going
Speaker 1: to survive here in Rikers, let's alone prove.
Speaker 2: That she's not a murderer. I'm Annisonfield and from the
Speaker 2: teams at.
Speaker 1: Novel and iHeart Podcasts, this is the Girlfriend's Gaolhouse.
Speaker 2: Lawyer, Episode four, The Shorties.
Speaker 1: At first, Kelly keeps her distance from the other inmates,
Speaker 1: but pretty soon it becomes clear that to get by
Speaker 1: and here, she's going to need some friends.
Speaker 2: Enter Angelica.
Speaker 4: Our sisterhood called ourselves the Sholdies.
Speaker 1: Angelica isn't actually her real name, but it's what we're
Speaker 1: going to call her.
Speaker 4: Going to Core, it is the time where men and
Speaker 4: women are brought back together, right because we're very very
Speaker 4: separate quarters, and so we don't see each other until
Speaker 4: it's time to go to court.
Speaker 3: The way the guys speak to you. They go you
Speaker 3: show it. You showed it with the blonde here, showed it,
Speaker 3: showed it with a gray shirt, or showed it with
Speaker 3: the black pants. You show, they give me your numbers.
Speaker 3: So we started this show. We started calling ourselves to
Speaker 3: show this and this is when I formed a family
Speaker 3: in Rikers.
Speaker 4: We're gonna find lightness and everything. I mean, I think
Speaker 4: it's part of the human condition. As terrible as an
Speaker 4: experience is, in order to survive it, you find some
Speaker 4: beauty somewhere. You find something amusing somewhere.
Speaker 1: Kelly finds her little pocket of joy at the same
Speaker 1: place she found it before. Present on the dance floor,
Speaker 1: drop the big kel.
Speaker 2: Mice for my.
Speaker 3: Walk and on and dance like in the open in
Speaker 3: the huge recreational room. I wanted to feel happiness, and
Speaker 3: that's what made me happy. So I danced and other
Speaker 3: people started dancing again. We started what they call a battle.
Speaker 3: One person will go and then the next person goes,
Speaker 3: and then by whatever you hear of the crowd scream
Speaker 3: like yo, she got sunned, that's who wins. Then the
Speaker 3: officers were calling other officers to come watch this, and
Speaker 3: they said, you gotta see the way this white girl
Speaker 3: is sunning everybody. Yeah, I won the battle. They were
Speaker 3: like yo, white girl could get down, and they took
Speaker 3: me in as their own.
Speaker 1: Which included sharing the most sacred secret recipe, DIY beauty tips.
Speaker 4: How do we straighten hair without a flat iron? Well,
Speaker 4: we had a nice hot pot, which is kind of
Speaker 4: like a long tea kettle if you want, and we
Speaker 4: went unplug it and like wrap hair around it and
Speaker 4: brush it. Or in Kelly's skide, she liked her hair curly,
Speaker 4: so she would make rollers out of newspapers or tissue.
Speaker 4: She's kind of like roll her hair tied a little
Speaker 4: not go to sleep and there you go, curly soup.
Speaker 4: And for lipstick, for example, we had these little packs
Speaker 4: of almost like kool aid with the crystals, a little
Speaker 4: bit to your lips. There you go, No smuch, lipstick.
Speaker 2: What about foundation or eyeshadow or a scar? My scar
Speaker 2: must be hard.
Speaker 4: So mascara was made with toothpaste and the ink from
Speaker 4: a pen. Now, thinking back at it, probably not the
Speaker 4: best thing for your eyes, but don't get your eyes
Speaker 4: wet and you're fine, right, And it worked just like mscara,
Speaker 4: and it got to the point where officers were like,
Speaker 4: you guys have makeup in yourselves. Were like no, They're like, oh,
Speaker 4: here go these Building eight girls. You know, because we
Speaker 4: were always tipped up as.
Speaker 2: The shortiest bond.
Speaker 1: Over time, Kelly tells them about her case and everyone
Speaker 1: kind of shrugs it off.
Speaker 2: All of us were like, why are you here. Kelly's innocent.
Speaker 1: They can all tell and it's just a matter of
Speaker 1: time before a jury will see that too.
Speaker 4: We just knew, Oh, you're gonna go home, you know.
Speaker 4: This is just it's unfortunately it is taking this long.
Speaker 1: At one point early in Kelly's detention, her brother Ronnie
Speaker 1: comes to pay her a visit. The visitors area is
Speaker 1: one depressing room split into two by a row of
Speaker 1: booths that go down the middle. Glass separates the prisoners
Speaker 1: and the visitors.
Speaker 2: Over the two way telephones.
Speaker 1: Kelly and Ronnie are having a heated exchange. Kelly's been
Speaker 1: offered a plea deal ten years in prison. Her co defendant,
Speaker 1: an ex boyfriend, Tommy Donovan, the man Kelly says is
Speaker 1: solely responsible for Angel Vargas's murder, has already taken the
Speaker 1: deal he was offered.
Speaker 3: He'll take a plea from manslaughter for fifteen years, and
Speaker 3: the deal was as long as he states that I
Speaker 3: helped him. Those were the conditions.
Speaker 2: But Kelly's not budgeting.
Speaker 3: I'm not guilty. I'm not taking a plea. I plan
Speaker 3: on taking this to trial.
Speaker 5: Don't go to trial. Please, don't go to trial.
Speaker 3: Ronnie. I can't say the words that I did something
Speaker 3: I didn't do.
Speaker 2: I was getting so frustrated.
Speaker 3: Ronnie was so scared to lose me that he was
Speaker 3: telling me to take the plea. I screamed it out.
Speaker 2: Do you think that everybody that's shit? Do you think
Speaker 2: they all did it?
Speaker 3: And everybody that was there that was shaking their heads
Speaker 3: like he's right.
Speaker 1: Kelly's in a unit of sixty, but Ryker's Island houses
Speaker 1: around six hundred women in total. Their charges range from
Speaker 1: things like simple drug possession all the way up to murder.
Speaker 1: They come from different places, but there's one thing so
Speaker 1: many of them seem to have in common.
Speaker 4: Very few people wake up one morning you say I'm
Speaker 4: gonna hurt somebody today. Right, there's a whole story before
Speaker 4: you get.
Speaker 3: To that moment.
Speaker 1: One after another, those stories eventually blend in together.
Speaker 5: Is that a woman calls an ear for the messbality.
Speaker 3: I have a domestic violence.
Speaker 4: Case, domestic violence survivor fighting off their attacker, and things
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 5: He came up behind me and put me in an
Speaker 5: awful chocoal in trying to kill me the first time
Speaker 5: I fell.
Speaker 3: Back where I ended up killing him.
Speaker 5: Next thing I know, I was being arrested for a
Speaker 5: murder in a first degree.
Speaker 2: This isn't unique to Rikers.
Speaker 1: Studies showed that more than seventy percent of incarcerated women
Speaker 1: say there've been victims of domestic abuse, and obviously this
Speaker 1: is in addition to the poverty and racial abuse many
Speaker 1: have experienced. When Kelly looked around the visiting room that
Speaker 1: day and looked around the jailhouse in the days after,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't have just seen a room full of potential criminals,
Speaker 1: but a room full of women like her. All Kelly
Speaker 1: can hope is that the next chapter of her life
Speaker 1: includes a not guilty verdict. But it's a not hill battle,
Speaker 1: and the odds are seriously stacked against her. Because that
Speaker 1: plea deal that her ex boyfriend Tommy took, the one
Speaker 1: where he agreed to testify against her. It means that
Speaker 1: now she's facing even greater charges than him, and if
Speaker 1: Kelly can't convince a jury that she's a victim too,
Speaker 1: she could spend the rest of her life in prison.
Speaker 1: About three weeks after arriving at Riker's, Kelly is still
Speaker 1: getting her daily dose of Methadone. One day she gets
Speaker 1: talking to the woman in charge of the detox program,
Speaker 1: Miss Cruise.
Speaker 3: She goes, Harnett, you need to start it with this
Speaker 3: methodone shit. You need to get the hell off of it,
Speaker 3: and you need to get your ast to that law library.
Speaker 3: That's what you need to do. You need to get
Speaker 3: your head in those books, seriously, Kelly. And when she
Speaker 3: got me, Kelly, it was like humanizing me. She said,
Speaker 3: you gotta start finding your case. So I said to myself,
Speaker 3: all right, she go to the law library. See what happens.
Speaker 1: The next day at twelve thirty pm sharp, Kelly's outside
Speaker 1: the law library. She's waiting at the locked blue door,
Speaker 1: peering in through the window, and.
Speaker 3: The officer opens the door, checks the list. They're very
Speaker 3: used to nobody's showing up. They're still used to getting
Speaker 3: those hours free and they could just go and hang
Speaker 3: out with their friends. So I was cramping their style.
Speaker 1: The law library is divided into two main sections, separated
Speaker 1: by a big divider with windows. As you walk through,
Speaker 1: you'll see a load of computers and then row after
Speaker 1: row of bookcases. But to get to that part, you
Speaker 1: first have to pass the officer's desk, which sits directly
Speaker 1: across from a bunch of old typewriters and some of
Speaker 1: the dustiest, oldest law books in the library.
Speaker 3: He was really pissed off the guard that somebody was
Speaker 3: coming in. He said to me, anytime you want to leave,
Speaker 3: you leave early. And I was like, there's no way
Speaker 3: I'm moving early. What am I going back to? Really?
Speaker 3: What am I going back to?
Speaker 1: There is one person happy to see Kelly in the
Speaker 1: law library.
Speaker 3: The paralegal that was there, an older man. His name
Speaker 3: was Fernando Contreras. What an amazing man. I mean, he
Speaker 3: was so great with me. He gave me so much hope.
Speaker 2: Kelly picks up her first book.
Speaker 3: McKinney's Consolidated Law, that's the binding authority for New York State.
Speaker 3: I started reading it and nothing made sense to me. Literally,
Speaker 3: at first, they look like hieroglyphics. It was like a
Speaker 3: complete foreign language, and I didn't understand how people could
Speaker 3: possibly go in there and understand anything. And I said, Okay, Kelly,
Speaker 3: the only way that you could learn to love this
Speaker 3: is if you're good at it. Everyone loves something that
Speaker 3: they're good at. So start reading things over and over
Speaker 3: and over until you practically memorize them. When you practically
Speaker 3: memorize them, you're going to become good at it. When
Speaker 3: you're good at it and you master it, you're going
Speaker 3: to love it. I was studying for sixteen hours a day.
Speaker 3: I was reading CPL seven ten, twenty thirty seven, forty
Speaker 3: and so forth, Brady violations, Rosario violations.
Speaker 1: One day, during one of Kelly's hieroglyphic translations, another inmate
Speaker 1: comes to join her.
Speaker 2: Her name is Peaches.
Speaker 3: Peaches became a really good friend of mine. She had
Speaker 3: such an amazing personality. She was such a good person.
Speaker 3: She was just so genuine, and I would help her
Speaker 3: a little bit with her reading. And then it became
Speaker 3: like a potential assistance for legal work. Because I'm just
Speaker 3: getting started, so I didn't know if I would ever
Speaker 3: have the capability to help myself or anyone else.
Speaker 1: But the more Kelly reads and then rereads, the more
Speaker 1: things start to fall into place.
Speaker 3: By the third time I read it, I couldn't believe that.
Speaker 3: I felt like they look like hieroglyphics because I'm totally
Speaker 3: understanding this now, and I'm picking up the wording even
Speaker 3: if a case is unfavorable. I'm learning how to write
Speaker 3: the way that they write.
Speaker 1: She's not just regurgitating a bunch of jargon. Kelly starts
Speaker 1: crafting legally sound arguments.
Speaker 3: They became the love of my life. I started filing
Speaker 3: dismissals and a dateming for people at Rikers Island.
Speaker 1: Kelly's not only helping individuals with their own cases, She's
Speaker 1: fighting for all of her Rikers Island sisters.
Speaker 3: We took them to court for taking our flip flops away.
Speaker 3: We took them to court for searches like they were
Speaker 3: doing excessive searches on a specific unit because it was
Speaker 3: so small, and we took them to court for that.
Speaker 3: They stayed away for about eight months.
Speaker 1: After that, Kelly's reputation eventually starts spreading around the prison.
Speaker 1: It even reaches a recently arrived inmate who will call Tash.
Speaker 1: She's been jailed in Rikers following a lifetime of abuse
Speaker 1: after witnessing her boyfriend murder someone everyone who makes Tasha
Speaker 1: tells her the same thing.
Speaker 5: You need to go toward the Kelly. So I'm like, well,
Speaker 5: who's Kelly? But she works in a lot of library.
Speaker 1: By this point, Kelly's in high demand. There's a long
Speaker 1: line of women who want her services. Tasha comes back
Speaker 1: again and again.
Speaker 5: Eventually I asked her one day, I said, excuse me,
Speaker 5: your name Kelly. She looked at me, she smiled with
Speaker 5: the most beautiful and smiler ever gotten. Then she said yes.
Speaker 5: I said, can you please help me? And I just
Speaker 5: started crying. I sat down and she was like, well,
Speaker 5: tell me what's going on. So I told her a
Speaker 5: little bit about the case. And she went and she
Speaker 5: found this paperworking that pertment. She put it out and
Speaker 5: she gave it to me. She was like, I want
Speaker 5: you to read this and write down whatever you feel
Speaker 5: fits in your crown. Eventually, no, I will continue to
Speaker 5: go back.
Speaker 3: I was giving a lot of people hope, and they
Speaker 3: were telling me that thank you so much for you
Speaker 3: giving us so much shop. All of a sudden, the
Speaker 3: little library started getting packed and like mister Brown wasn't
Speaker 3: happy about that. Mister Brown was the officer. He goes,
Speaker 3: oh god, her net Jahau lawyer.
Speaker 1: Of course, life isn't all roses for Kelly inside, even
Speaker 1: with Saint Z watching over her. Kelly spent the last
Speaker 1: few months fighting for her fellow inmates, but her trial
Speaker 1: is coming up she needs to go back to fighting
Speaker 1: her own corner. Unfortunately for Kelly, though, that's not the
Speaker 1: only fight she needs to be prepared for, because while
Speaker 1: the Shortys have her back, Kelly's also.
Speaker 2: Made some dangerous enemies.
Speaker 1: It's always an uncomfortable experience running into your ex's x.
Speaker 2: Now imagine running into them in jail when.
Speaker 1: Neither of you can get away, which is exactly what
Speaker 1: happens to Kelly. She's trapped in Rikers with Tommy Donovan's
Speaker 1: ex girlfriend, who Kelly says is inside for selling drugs.
Speaker 1: And the worst part of all of this is that
Speaker 1: Tommy's ex she has serious beef with Kelly.
Speaker 3: I asked her why she's like you stole my men.
Speaker 3: I had a fistfight with her literally every single solitary day,
Speaker 3: every day, to the point where one day I said
Speaker 3: I want to have a peaceful day today. So I
Speaker 3: was five point thirty, it was breakfast time. I pounded
Speaker 3: on her door and She's like what who's there? And
Speaker 3: I was like, it's Kelly. Get up, let's go. So
Speaker 3: we get it out of the way. So she comes
Speaker 3: out like hair all crazy.
Speaker 2: I said, come on, She said, where are we going?
Speaker 3: I said, to the staircase where there's no cameras and listen.
Speaker 3: My brother told me to fight. And you know, for
Speaker 3: a white blonde girl like people get shocked at my strength.
Speaker 3: It's not something I'm proud of. I'm a lady. However,
Speaker 3: if you're going to touch me, you are going to
Speaker 3: get a receipt. So yeah, I kind of beat the
Speaker 3: hell out of her on the staircase, but I didn't
Speaker 3: start the fight. She kept hitting me first every day.
Speaker 3: This went on for forty five to sixty days, so
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, so it's a one to day thing,
Speaker 3: so I'm just going to get her first. But I
Speaker 3: would never be like a dirty person and like hit
Speaker 3: her when she's not looking like she would to me.
Speaker 2: This isn't the only fight Kelly was getting in.
Speaker 3: They have these girls that we call bubble now. Bubble
Speaker 3: leuts are the girls that hang around the officer's bubble
Speaker 3: and flirt with them all day long, and you get
Speaker 3: really pissed off because you're like, you can't get your
Speaker 3: door open, you can't do this, you can't do that.
Speaker 3: You need toilet paper, and they're just flirting and flirting,
Speaker 3: and for I want to just say, listen, just put
Speaker 3: the floating on hold. Can you just give me some
Speaker 3: toilet paper? Please? I just use the bathroom and you
Speaker 3: have to wait. Flirting, flirting, flirting.
Speaker 1: Kelly asks if she can get past to use the
Speaker 1: shower because one of the bubblets is standing in her way.
Speaker 3: She told me I couldn't use the shower, and I said,
Speaker 3: ex use me. The last time I checked. You're an
Speaker 3: inmate here, just like me. And she said you can't
Speaker 3: use it, and I said, I'm using it.
Speaker 1: Kelly breezes passed and steps into the shower.
Speaker 3: Bad move. I feel someone rebb meat and yank, like
Speaker 3: instant whiplish. Right now. I see people running in one
Speaker 3: held one arm in back of me. When I went
Speaker 3: to hit her, the girl cault my hand and hold
Speaker 3: it back. They pull it like a crucifixion because it's
Speaker 3: like one arm here, one arm here, you can't use it.
Speaker 3: And then the girl who was flirting, she just starts
Speaker 3: punching me in the face. Punch, punch, punch, punch, punch.
Speaker 3: Now I'm trying to kick her. Somebody else spares my leg.
Speaker 3: Now each person has a limb. I'm up in the
Speaker 3: air with the girl punching me over and over and
Speaker 3: over repeatedly. Right the girl who was holding my right arm,
Speaker 3: she said, stop, you're gonna cure. That's when I got scared.
Speaker 3: If her co conspirator is telling her to stop, this
Speaker 3: must look really bad. And then Peaches comes running in.
Speaker 1: In addition to being Kelly's on a official law library assistant,
Speaker 1: Peaches is a big, friendly, giant type of woman.
Speaker 2: She's also not someone you fuck with.
Speaker 3: She said, you FM bitches, put her the f down
Speaker 3: before I f and kill all of you. And she
Speaker 3: put me down, all right. She actually threw me down
Speaker 3: into another shower. Pes Kels, get up, now, get a
Speaker 3: few shots in, and I did. I just started willing boom.
Speaker 2: Boom boom, boom boom.
Speaker 3: This is not something I'm proud of. I just want
Speaker 3: to put on the record. However, this was the survival
Speaker 3: of the fittest, and like only the strong survive, so
Speaker 3: if it got out there that I took this, it
Speaker 3: would never stop so I knew I had to do
Speaker 3: some type of damage to make it visible to other people.
Speaker 3: I did a lot more than I intended I'm doing.
Speaker 3: I put her on a wheelchair so permanently. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I think she was really trying to milk it. Honestly,
Speaker 3: she told everyone, Yo, that white bitch is crazy. Say
Speaker 3: the fuck away from her.
Speaker 1: Like the other times Kelly's told me she's gotten into scraps,
Speaker 1: Kelly was quick to add that she's not proud of
Speaker 1: how this bust up went down, but she's also kind
Speaker 1: of laughing it off. And while she might not have
Speaker 1: started this fight, she sure finished it. I know my
Speaker 1: discomfort has showed me up as a real soft handed
Speaker 1: Lily Liver journalist, and believe me, I am trying my
Speaker 1: best not to be. But here's the thing. Firstly, I'm
Speaker 1: still shaking off my preconceived notions of how I would
Speaker 1: expect a victim like Kelly to behave. And also because
Speaker 1: I reckon if I was facing an accusation of murder,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be so open about sharing a story where
Speaker 1: I kick the shit out of someone to the point
Speaker 1: of them needing a wheelchair temporarily or not. I care
Speaker 1: about Kelly, and I kind of want to tell her
Speaker 1: to edit herself in these moments because it doesn't look good.
Speaker 1: But I actually think, in a weird way, Kelly telling
Speaker 1: me this shows that she's not holding back or shying
Speaker 1: away from some of the less sympathetic parts of her story.
Speaker 1: The bottom line is, jail is a rough place, and,
Speaker 1: like Kelly says, only the strong survive. Whenever she's not
Speaker 1: fighting her exes X in the stairwell or a few
Speaker 1: pissed off bubblettes in the shower, Kelly's in the law library,
Speaker 1: fighting her case, maybe a few dance battles in between.
Speaker 1: Her life goes on like this for some time, which
Speaker 1: won't be a surprise to anyone who has experience of
Speaker 1: the justice system. It moves very slowly. It's May twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: Kelly's trial date, after years of delays, is set to
Speaker 1: begin in the next few months.
Speaker 2: Kelly's been poring over all the.
Speaker 1: Documents from her case, arming herself as best she can
Speaker 1: for the fight ahead.
Speaker 2: When she gets some news.
Speaker 1: Her lawyer has received a letter, a letter that could
Speaker 1: change everything, A letter from her ex boyfriend Tommy Donovan.
Speaker 3: Dear mister Ebstein, as you're already acquainted with me, I
Speaker 3: will get to the point my memory is clear and
Speaker 3: my intentions now true.
Speaker 1: On the next episode of The Girlfriend's Geilhouse Lawyer, Kelly's
Speaker 1: case goes to trial.
Speaker 3: The trial was awful. They called Judge Lasak mister murder.
Speaker 3: They got into an altercation with mister Vargas. Hi, I'm
Speaker 3: the killer. That's the likely motive for what happened. Did
Speaker 3: I pull that out of the air. No, I've pulled
Speaker 3: that out of the evidence. They came back with the
Speaker 3: unanimous verdict. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: The Girlfriend's Jailhouse Lawyer is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The show
Speaker 1: is hosted by me Anna Sinfield and is written and
Speaker 1: produced by me and Lee Meyer, with additional production from
Speaker 1: Jako Taivich and Michael Jinno.
Speaker 2: Our assistant producer is Madeline Park. The editors are Georgia
Speaker 2: Moody and me Anason.
Speaker 1: Production management from Serie Houston, Joe Savage and Charlotte Wolfe.
Speaker 2: Our fact checker is Daniel Suleiman.
Speaker 1: Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander.
Speaker 1: Music supervision by me Alis Infield, Lee Meyer and Nicholas Alexander.
Speaker 1: Original music composed by Nicholas Alexander, Daniel Kempson and Louisa Gerstein.
Speaker 1: Story development by Nell Gray Andrews and Willard Foxton. Creative
Speaker 1: director of Novel, Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are executive
Speaker 1: producers for novel, and Katrina Norvell and Nicki Eator are
Speaker 1: the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing lead
Speaker 1: is Alison Cantor. Thanks also to Carrie Lieberman and the
Speaker 1: whole team at WME