I was just like you once. College educated, hard worker, upstanding citizen, loyal friend, loving daughter, adoring girlfriend, rescuer of animals and all around “good girl.” But one minor deviation from my good intentions and deeds led me down a rabbit hole to a hidden hell from which I feared I would never emerge. Of course, whether or not you consider my deviation minor depends on who you are. If you’re my ex-boyfriend, then the lingering traces of buckshot still embedded in your left buttock from your own 20 gauge shotgun likely feel anything but minor. If you’re a woman who has opened your bedroom door to find your boyfriend having sex with your younger, underage, sister, then buckshot buttock is a fate you might find a highly deserved one for your ex.
But this isn’t about me or my shameless and lead-filled ex-boyfriend. Our sad, sordid story is far less interesting than the ones I encountered during my two year stay at Los Angeles County Women’s Jail. The murderers of husbands, maimers of mistresses and torturers of children I came to know intimately were anything but typical. Forget your stereotypes of the female criminal. Forget what you’ve seen in movies and on two-bit “true” crime shows. The truth can only be seen by immersing yourself in their reality and observing their day-to-day lives without the filters of someone else’s agenda. My only agenda is to reveal everything I witnessed, to share the humanity I saw in one of the darkest places the heart and mind can go; to expose the truth about the motives and practices of the women who are most feared and despised in our society.
There was the extraordinarily-troubled and intensely-insecure Jeanette Harris, who shot her game warden husband to death while he was handcuffed naked to their bed; the petite, savvy and wealthy Taiwanese businesswoman Mia Ling, who stabbed her husband’s mistress and love child to death in a brutal attack; friendly but rageful prostitute Carrie Moreno, whose mother sold her for drugs when she was two and whose father then decapitated her mother; Sarah Gentry, arrested for bestiality after twice forcing sex upon her neighbor’s male dog; and the various repeat offender prostitutes who regularly fought over who would get to cut out and keep the saccharine “Love Is …” comic from the local paper that we received daily.
Many aspects of jail life were hellish, and the deprivation and isolation from family, friends, pets, loved-ones, nature and our own free will was overwhelming, disorienting and demoralizing. It was a place of deep misery, night terrors and bottomless grief. But amid the darkness was a lot of light; and alongside the pain and suffering was humor, love, laughter, ridiculousness and outright absurdity. The experience that I thought would crush me instead enlightened me and expanded my awareness and understanding of life and my fellow human travelers. More than anything, I witnessed the resilience of the human spirit, and learned that even in the deepest, darkest places of the most deviant soul, there is much good to be found. Love, humor, compassion and wishes for goodness and peace are not exclusive to the more financially-blessed and respected denizens of Los Angeles County; they also exist in the many miscreants the community keeps locked away in cold concrete rooms behind high walls at 450 Bauchet Street. This is their story.
Names have been changed to protect the innocent … and the guilty.
But this isn’t about me or my shameless and lead-filled ex-boyfriend. Our sad, sordid story is far less interesting than the ones I encountered during my two year stay at Los Angeles County Women’s Jail. The murderers of husbands, maimers of mistresses and torturers of children I came to know intimately were anything but typical. Forget your stereotypes of the female criminal. Forget what you’ve seen in movies and on two-bit “true” crime shows. The truth can only be seen by immersing yourself in their reality and observing their day-to-day lives without the filters of someone else’s agenda. My only agenda is to reveal everything I witnessed, to share the humanity I saw in one of the darkest places the heart and mind can go; to expose the truth about the motives and practices of the women who are most feared and despised in our society.
There was the extraordinarily-troubled and intensely-insecure Jeanette Harris, who shot her game warden husband to death while he was handcuffed naked to their bed; the petite, savvy and wealthy Taiwanese businesswoman Mia Ling, who stabbed her husband’s mistress and love child to death in a brutal attack; friendly but rageful prostitute Carrie Moreno, whose mother sold her for drugs when she was two and whose father then decapitated her mother; Sarah Gentry, arrested for bestiality after twice forcing sex upon her neighbor’s male dog; and the various repeat offender prostitutes who regularly fought over who would get to cut out and keep the saccharine “Love Is …” comic from the local paper that we received daily.
Many aspects of jail life were hellish, and the deprivation and isolation from family, friends, pets, loved-ones, nature and our own free will was overwhelming, disorienting and demoralizing. It was a place of deep misery, night terrors and bottomless grief. But amid the darkness was a lot of light; and alongside the pain and suffering was humor, love, laughter, ridiculousness and outright absurdity. The experience that I thought would crush me instead enlightened me and expanded my awareness and understanding of life and my fellow human travelers. More than anything, I witnessed the resilience of the human spirit, and learned that even in the deepest, darkest places of the most deviant soul, there is much good to be found. Love, humor, compassion and wishes for goodness and peace are not exclusive to the more financially-blessed and respected denizens of Los Angeles County; they also exist in the many miscreants the community keeps locked away in cold concrete rooms behind high walls at 450 Bauchet Street. This is their story.
Names have been changed to protect the innocent … and the guilty.
