You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Sitting in a jail cell with a prisoner and letting him lie to your face.
That’s what I did today.
It’s like eating cold poridge and telling momma bear it tastes great.
Take you peas poridge cold and shove it where the sun don’t shine momma bear.
I don’t even know what that means.
anyway…
I was covering a story about a family of three arrested in connection with the theft of 16 storage lockers.
you know what they say: the family that thieves together believes together. I don’t really know who says that.
I interview the police chief and show all the stolen merchandise recovered. He describes the theft as extensive, absurd, criminal.
I call the jail and ask if the father of this den of thieves will talk.
“He will? “I’ll be right there,” I laugh.
What’s in the water? Why would anyone do a jail house interview.
Moron!
I show up at the jail.
There is an intercom on the wall.
I push a button.
“Can I help you?”
“Andy with the news.”
“pull the door.”
I walk into the first chamber and the thick door slams shut.
CLINK!
It is a little disconcerting. I am in a corridor that is hot. I am closed in. It is a little unsettling as they keep me here a few minutes. I feel like a gerbil in a mason jar with no wheel.
Finally the second door opens and a guard leads me to the central area. The floors are concrete. The walls mirrored. The seats hard plastic. I guess it’s easier to hose the insanity down the drain this way.
There is the suspect in an orange prison jump suit.
He is one gigantic tattoo. His neck, his arms, he looks like an Atlas road map of trouble.
I shake his hand.
He knows why we are here. I fire up the camera and jump in.
“I gotta ask you. Did you steal that stuff?”
“No,” he says.
And so it will go for the next 10 minutes.
Question. Lie. Question. Lie.
Lies….Only if the entire police force is to be believed.
The suspect begins to tell me that he is being set up. He says the cops bullied him and that all the merchandise they confiscated, that they showed me, thousands and thousands of dollars of furniture and bikes and washers and dryers and computers and power tools, all of it, he says is his.
“They say you went in and out of the storage facility 9 times the day the burglary took place,” I ask.
“No i didn’t,” he says.
“They have your pass key code. Why would they say that?”
“I don’t know,” he says, adding. “Neither me or my wife or my son is guilty. Innocent till proven guilty,” he says.
The chief will tell me that all three are out of jail on probation for similar charges.
The cops say they have this guy on tape coming and going. They say they found all this stolen stuff crammed in his trailer.
The chief describes the entire home crammed with stolen loot, like a furniture sausage.
Police show me the surveillance photo prior to the arrest. There is so much stolen merchandise, the family has placed tarps over the goods on the front lawn.
It’s like an illegal yard sale.
I tell the man about this and he says the stuff on the front lawn is his.
“The cops took all my stuff,” he says.
This guy should play in the jail house world series of poker. He is one convincing liar.
I finish asking him questions and listening to him lie.
I walk to his single seat chair.
“Scoot over,” i say.
He is surprised by my aggressiveness. It is a strange request. I am surprised by my request.
I want to be on camera with him and it is the only chair.
I want to look into the camera and do what we call a topper, a tease of what is coming up.
He slides over with an uneasy smile.
It’s the first time all day he has seemed unsure of himself.
Get use to it tattoo man. This is the glass house. You’re gonna have a lotta close friends.
I stare into the camera. “This guy says he’s no thief.”
He laughs. I laugh.
I shake his hand and we thank each other. He thanks me for hearing his story. I thank him for being such a convincing liar.
It’s an interesting day with a thief.
For some reason, I find this day invigorating.
What did you do today?
Life’s Crazy™