Gangster Redemption by Larry Lawton & Peter Golenbock

Author:Larry Lawton & Peter Golenbock
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780985408206
Publisher: LL Research & Consulting
Published: 2012-05-10T04:00:00+00:00

Serving a long term in a place like Atlanta can make a person go crazy. This happened to Dave Collingsworth, Lawton’s cellie during his last six months at Atlanta.

One day Collingsworth told him, “Larry, I just won my appeal. I’m getting out.” Collingsworth had been convicted of robbing a bank.

“I was excited for him,” said Lawton, “but he was freaked. He started putting laundry detergent in a bag.

“I have to bring it home,” Collingsworth said.

“What are you doing?” asked Lawton. “Leave this shit and get out of here.”

“Maybe my mother doesn’t have laundry detergent,” Collingsworth said.

“He was really freaked out by the thought of returning to civilian life.”

“Dave,” said Lawton, “just get the fuck out of here.”

After beating the bank robbery charge, a year and a half later Collingsworth was back in Atlanta. He had robbed another bank and had gotten caught.

*

After being incarcerated for eighteen months at Atlanta, Lawton’s counselor suddenly “discovered” that he didn’t have enough points to be housed in a maximum security prison.

“Just like that,” said Lawton, “I went to a meeting with my counselor, and he said to me, ‘You have low enough points to go to a medium.’ And they transferred me to the Coleman Correctional Institution in Coleman, Florida, which to me was a country club in comparison.”

But in order to transfer, Lawton had to survive his last few weeks at Atlanta. There was no guarantee. Every day at Atlanta Lawton faced potential danger. Ten days before Lawton’s scheduled transfer, he had a beef with an Indian inmate called Bonnie. Their set-to could well have ended up with Lawton committing murder, or getting killed. That it didn’t happen was as much a matter of good fortune as anything else.

“On our unit we had TV rooms,” said Lawton. “For a hundred and sixty inmates there were four TV rooms -- a black TV room, a Spanish TV room, a white TV room, and a sports TV room.

“We were in the white TV room around six thirty in the evening,” said Lawton. “I had brought a chair in there. You have a chair in your cell, and you can bring it to the TV room. I always put my chair up against the wall, because you don’t want anyone behind you. And Bonnie walked over and sat in my chair.

“Bonnie,” I said, “That’s my fucking chair.”

“He grumbled, but he got up.

“I walked away, and I came back, and Bonnie again was sitting in my chair. He obviously was trying to pick a fight with me.

“Bonnie,” I said, “What the fuck?”

He said, ‘You fucking guys,’ meaning the Italians, ‘think you own the place.’

“Before he could move, I hit him with an uppercut, boom. He fell against the wall, and I grabbed his long hair and I kept smashing him. I must have hit him fifty fucking times. Each time he tried to slide down the wall, I pulled him back up and hit him again.

“The leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, one of the most notorious groups in the prison, tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Enough, Larry.

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