Meet the Prisoners

Click on their names or the hyperlinks for blogs about them. Most of these prisoners feature in my book, Prison Time. 

Two Tonys - A Mafia mass murderer who was serving 141 years. Left the corpses of rival gangsters from Tucson to Alaska, but claimed they all "had it coming." Had his own brand of philosophy. Two Tonys died from liver cancer on September 8th, 2010.

Warrior - Serving 14 years for kidnapping and aggravated assault. Half Hispanic and Scottish-Irish with family still in Mexico. Brought up by a family steeped in drug commerce. He writes some of the best prison-fight stories on the Internet.

Xena - A 6 1/2 foot transsexual and Wiccan priestess. The charismatic leader of Cult Of Xena (COX). Tattoos include a wasp on Xena's penis and ant trails running up "her" legs. Cut off a testicle and almost bled to death.

T-Bone - Radiating power and strength, this deeply-spiritual massively-built African-American towers over most inmates. He uses formidable fighting skills acquired as a US Marine to stop prison rape. He is a prison gladiator with more stab wounds than Julius Caesar. A good man to have on your side.



Frankie - A Mexican Mafia hitman, chess champion and leader of prison "booty bandits" who has been proposing our gay marriage ever since he saw me applying antifungal ointment to the bedsores on my buttocks at the Madison Street jail. He was there on murder charges he subsequently beat.

Wild Man - My large and fearless raving partner from my hometown. He looked out for me after we were arrested, and is one of the main characters in my jail memoir. His first day at Buckeye prison, he knocked out the head of the whites in his dorm, so the Aryan Brotherhood put him in charge.

Claudia - My girlfriend at the time of my arrest. Pic and update here.

Polish Avenger - A software-engineering undergraduate sentenced to 25 years because his friend was shot dead during a burglary they were both committing. Author of the classic "Shit Slinger" series.

Dr. O - A brilliant prison psychologist whose sessions really helped my personal development.

Renee - As a teenager, Renee received a 60-year sentence from a judge in Pima County. Fourteen years into her sentence, she's writing from Perryville prison in Goodyear, Arizona, providing a rare and unique insight into a women's prison.

Slingblade - A sumo-sized schizophrenic Vietnam vet who looks as if he could suffer a flashback and snap your neck at any moment. No guard or prisoner with a modicum of sanity would ever get between this murderer and a tray of chow.

Occult Killer - Dubbed the Occult Killer by the media, he's serving 6 to 12 years in Pennsylvania. He killed his best friend in a drunk-driving accident. Police investigators discovered Gothic paraphrenalia in his bedroom, and naturally assumed the death was a sacrificial murder for the benefit of Satan.

Andrea - A 28-year-old Scottish woman who was writing from a maximum-security prison in England. She suffered years of domestic violence, and was arrested for the attempted murder of her most recent boyfriend after he punched her in the face. She pled guilty to wounding, and was released in 2010.

Ogre - A burly biker from California who accidentally stabbed his wife in the knee, and seems to be a classic case of prison pharmacology gone wrong. He claims to have seduced Jenny McCarthy and got high with Pamela Anderson. An enemy of Two Tonys. 

Weird Al - The most unlikely bank robber you are ever likely to meet. His true story of suicide by cop gives new meaning to the power of unchecked depression. He was released in 2008.

Shane - After being denied psychiatric medication by ValueOptions, Shane turned to illegal drugs he financed with burglaries. The medication in prison caused him to suffer a period of spontaneous ejaculations.

Jack - A lifer in for murders who encourged and helped shape my writing. One of the brightest men I've ever met.

Repo - This giant's bald head is emblazoned with flames, skulls, and other satanic insignia. He makes the villian in The Hills Have Eyes seem as scary as Pee-wee Herman. As part of an investigation into the recent murder of a prisoner, he was sent to the hole and is facing the death penalty.

Max - A car-jacking Chukchansi Indian who went home to Las Vegas in 2007. For commissary items, he traded his semen to an old-timer. Some of his prison sexploits were posted under the "Zucchini" series.

Midnight - A car-crash sufferer whose consequent addiction to pain killers, crack, and crystal meth lost him his home and family. Regularly bleeding from the rectum, he is dying from cancer.

Slope - A hillbilly biker with militiaman tendencies who's been serving a sentence for double murder since Wham topped the charts. Born and raised in a dodgy part of Sunnyslope, a Phoenix neighbourhood.

Kat - A Navajo transsexual who crashed while drunk driving, killing two people. A talented artist specializing in Native American and southwestern designs.

Iron Man - A martial-arts expert and personal trainer whose crimes include smashing someone's door down: "I didn't hurt anyone. I just wanted my fuckin' money." His burpie-intensive workouts are brutal. "I'll have you in the best shape of your life by the time you get out," he told me - and he did. Released in 2010.

Gina - Using a razor blade, this transsexual detached "her" testes, cauterized the wound with a cigarette lighter, and ended up in hospital. Minus the testosterone, plus makeup tattooed on, soft-spoken Gina resembles a woman.

Long Island - Promising young cellmate I taught to trade the financial markets. Released on the 11th of December '05 and recently rearrested. Alleged to have committed forgery and hit an officer with a car. He is writing from Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Lower Buckeye jail.

Bones - A South Side Posse Blood serving sixteen years for leading a gang, assisting a crime syndicate, kidnapping and aggravated assault.

Royo Girl - An intelligent and attractive criminology graduate who used to visit me in prison. Whether her interest was based on love or she was writing a thesis on my criminality is an open question.

Hammy - Best friend I grew up with in my hometown. Fond of alcohol, especially Stella Artois.

Las Cucarachas - Kept me company throughout many a lonely night.
 
Click here for questions that I answered about my Locked Up/Banged Up Abroad episode for National Geographic

The books my Locked Up/Banged Up Abroad episode was based on are all available here - Party Time, Hard Time and Prison Time - and on Amazon here.  

My full Locked-Up/Banged-Up episode is here:

Click here to read the first skinhead scene from the episode in more detail.

Click here to read the second skinhead scene from the episode in more detail.

Click here to read the Ecstasy club scene in more detail.

Click here to read about spider bites in the jail.

In this video, I describe in much more hard-hitting detail the jail conditions:
  
If you have any questions, please Tweet me here, or post them to my Facebook here 

Shaun Attwood