6: Mousey Is Dead

What a fucking idiot. So you didn't write that? No. This is Brian Nelson, former leader of the Simon City Royals, TJ's gang. That was his reaction when I showed him a bunch of emails defending TJ. They'd been written in Brian's name. I was very shocked when you called here that I knew your name from some other stuff you've written. Brian told me he's certain that the emails came from TJ himself. It took a while to convince him to sit down with me. When we first talked, I got very paranoid of my safety and hold it. What are they saying? I mean, can I get a case over this and somebody set me up for something? And I started panicking as soon as we got off the phone. I'm like, holy fuck. Man, am I going to get caught up in this stupid kid's shit? So this is really annoying to you. It is. When I first met Brian in person, he told me if we did an interview, we'd have to sit with a fair amount of distance between us. He also told me about the knives that he kept with them at all times for his protection. It's a giant understatement, but Brian's been through some stuff. He's been damaged in a way that's hard to imagine. I do everything to make sure I don't go back to jail. I've been out since June 29, 2010 and I did some very ugly stuff in my life. I spent 28 years in prison for a murder I was involved in. Brian went from prison gang leader to a prisoner rights activist. I am in contact with roughly 13,000 prisoners. He's got a full-time job at a nonprofit legal center in Chicago called the Uptown People's Law Center. I run around and help people. I bust my ass. It doesn't matter if you're a Latin King and the same dudes or what. It doesn't matter if you've shot me before. You're an ex-con, I'm an ex-con. We need to work together because we've already been down in that hole. Brian and his girlfriend have bought a house. He's got a car. He's got a dog. He pays his taxes. By all appearances, Brian's rehabilitated. I'm a convicted murderer. I spent most of my life in jail and I'd be the odds. In the 70s and 80s, gangs like the Simon City Royals were at their height. Brian grew up on the north side of Chicago just a couple blocks away from where the royals were founded. As a teenager, Brian was in and out of jail. You go to jail. No, it is what it is. If you're a gang member, you expect that. Brian could get out of tight places. One time he was put in a police car. Brian escaped to a crack in the window. The cops said, "Damn, he's like an itty bitty mouse." He got the nickname "Mousey." In 1982, Mousey was arrested from murder. He was 17. I was the only one to do or I didn't. I played guilty, we did it. And I hurt people and I hurt their families. It's not gonna be proud of. I was a stupid kid. Brian and TJ's stories are pretty similar. They both joined the royals around the same age, 11 or 12. They were both charged with murder. TJ was 13, Brian 17. And they were both sent to the same maximum security prison. So far in this show, we've looked at TJ when he started running around with a gang. We've covered the murder that he went down for and how he was convicted. We walked through his exoneration and his release. But the one thing we haven't talked about is prison. The place where TJ became an adult. Almost everyone we talked to said the reason TJ went so out of control was because he spent over a decade in some of the worst prisons in America. Now as much as I've tried, TJ refuses to sit down in person to talk. However, if you want to talk to somebody about gangs in prison and what imprisonment can do to a person, you really can't do any better than talking to Brian Nelson. Some prison 101 from a pretty good authority. From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Frank Maine and this is Motu. Mousey is dead. I got this little friggin dog and somebody else had it and they used to kick the dog around and it broke his friggin leg. His name's Oscar and I changed his name to Puppy. The first day in my friggin house, he shit everywhere. And he's hobbling around the house. Took me six months massage in his leg. That little dog has done more for me. Just sitting in my lap in the house alone, patting him. Do people still call you, Mousey? I don't like nobody calling him Mousey. That was my nickname when I was a gang member. Was Mousey a big name in Illinois Department of Corrections? Yes. I tell everybody, Mousey's dead. My name is Brian Nelson and there's one thing you can't call me. That's N-3-1-4-4-9. I don't answer to Mousey, I don't answer to that. I don't care, hey, asshole, I'll answer to that. Because I'm an asshole. When Brian became a gang leader, he focused on the other young royals walking into prison. And he tried to teach them how to survive inside the walls. I always think of Graham, Bam Bam. He was a royal for one day and caught a murder. And he tried to tell me he was a royal for my neighborhood. I beat him every fucking day. Till one day when I walked in the cell and I was ready to start again, I was listening. You touched me and then I'm going to kill you motherfucker. He had been sneaking, making his life. I knew he was. And I hugged him. I said, "That's all I want." He was like, "What? I said, "Dude, you don't stand up. You don't trouble." And it's just that fucked up. Me and him still talk to this day. And he thanks me for this. I listened to Mousey. Brian was sent to Stateville Correctional Center, about 40 miles away from Chicago. It's the same prison that TG was for his sent to. Stateville has been around since the 20s, and it's tall as some of Chicago's most notorious criminals. And Stave Up The Time was huge. I've never forget I walked in front door and I meet this guy named Bo Diddley in skull. And Bolton got to be like six, five, three hundred pounds. What'd you be, white boy? I'm a holy shit. Gangs are often divided along racial lines. But the royals, according to Brian, were never a strictly white gang. They were mixed. Everybody looks at the royals like the other white gangs. There was black Puerto Rican and Korean royals. That is a man, he's Hispanic. Mike 50/50 math from South Puerto Fulton. They were black. The names of some white gangs were racist acronyms. You have the C-notes. Chicago neighborhood organization to eliminate spits. Pure racist organization. Most of their fathers were cops. Then you had the daylords. Great American youth love our race, destroy spits. And same poaps protect our people, eliminate spits. In prison, your gang membership is your protection. Brian says it because the royals weren't aligned with the white racist gangs. They had it especially rough in Staveville. We were basically priors. Nobody accepted us. Nobody respected us. I asked Brian about how he stayed alive. He began pointing around the room. You have a stapler, you have a clipboard. That's all nice to us. I walk in a room when I'm in prison. If you snooze, I'm walking out with your clipboard. Look at the clipboard. Look at the top part of that. A stainless steel thing that goes back and forth. You give me a staple. I'll make you 13 nice out of it. You give me a steel mop bucket. I will make you 20 beautiful nice out of it. I mean, I was good. It's my survival. I carried a hexaw blade around for 10 years in my mouth. Homemade knives might be enough in some places, but this was back in the day. In no ordinary prison. The biggest eye opener that I got in Staveville, they caught these guys with 11 guns in the cell house. The guy had a sawdoth single shot shotgun underneath his pillow. And this wasn't a broken smother guy. The first time I saw an oozy was in Staveville. At that time, the most powerful gang leader in Staveville was a man named Larry Hoover. Hoover is the founder of the biggest street gang in Chicago, the gangster disciples. At their peak, the GDs had more than 30,000 members, most of them African-American. For 14 years, Hoover ran the GDs from inside the walls of Staveville. I'd heard the name Larry Hoover or all this stuff. I'm sitting in the child hoe and he came and sat down and talked to us. Hoover gave Brian a book. He said, "Read it and tell me what you think." And I come in from yards one day and goes, "How's the book?" I'm like, "Huh?" And I didn't think nothing else of it. I go back to myself. I TV and radio are gone. Larry had my TV and radio taken. And I had a choice. Brian could either read the book or Hoover would put him to work for the gang on shower security. No problem. I read the book that night that is a friggin' book report. And I've never stopped reading. I hear somebody that didn't have to talk to me. Didn't know nothing about me or anything. And he made me look at myself. Hoover became a mentor to Brian when he was just a teenager. Brian even ended up being a kid. being one of Hoover's bodyguards. - I would carry two knives. And Larry asked me why, too. I said, well, if something happens and you tell me to give it to you, I got to give it to you, then how am I supposed to watch your back? And he goes, you're learning. - With Hoover's support, Brian quickly became the leader of the Simon City Royals in Stateville. - I never asked to be a leader. I never wanted to be a leader. I'm not gonna let her. Nobody hurt my guys. - Larry Hoover had helped to create a alliance of different gangs called the Folk Nation. African-American gangs like the GDs became allies with Latino gangs like the Spanish cobras. They banded together to protect themselves from rivals. - It was set up to stop all game violence. - Mousy brought the Simon City Royals into the Folk Nation. The Royals now had a lot more backup in prison. And if anyone mess with them, they had to answer to Mousy. - And I made a statement to guys, if you touch my brothers, I will get you. - Brian also made sure that his members followed the rules. - First thing anybody knew of you were wrong, you had a rape case. I'm gonna get you. You shit on our name. If you steal, we put your hands in them doors. And I had to do this. Kick the fucking door, shut on your hands. Because you could have got all of us killed by stealing from somebody. - According to Brian, he was accountable for his guys. And for Royals was a rapist or a stool pigeon. And they got admitted into the folks. Brian was the one who would have to answer for it. - When I made that a cream or Larry, I knew what I was doing. I forfeited my life. I knew somebody was gonna slip through. And they didn't. - Back then, the gangs in Staple were powerful. Almost all of the inmates were members. Drugs and homemade booze were easy to get. Larry Hoover said they even had the keys to every door in the prison, except the doors to leave. We didn't run them prisons ever. The war didn't ran, the director ran them. - But we were allowed to do things more so than now. - A lot more so than now. - So that was a state field of Brian Nelson experienced. But by the time TJ got there in the mid 90s, there had been a tectonic shift in the balance of power between gangs and the prison administration. And a big part of why that happened had to do with one particular inmate. - Richard Speck. - Oh God. I had no idea who he was. And I was telling my mom what I do every day. And I'm like, well, I work with lawns or this guy, shaky, this guy, this guy, and then there's this guy, Richard Speck who does all the painting in my mom's and what you just say. Do you know what a fuck he is? - Richard Speck was one of America's most infamous murderers. He had the words born to raise hell, tattooed on his arm. One summer day in Chicago in 1966, Speck drunkenly broke into a dormitory for student nurses. He killed eight young women, one by one. - Richard was the main painter for Stavelle. - As a painter, Speck had access to the whole prison. - His cell door was never locked, unless the prison was unlocked now. And there was just a select group of us. - The painting crew could move contraband anywhere they wanted in their carts. They also made their own booze and paint buckets. The recipe, five gallons of water, five pounds of raisins, five pounds of sugar and a pinch of yeast. - You drink your first little bottle like that, you don't feel it. In the middle of the second one is like, holy fuck. Then we learn how to distill it, making it to moonshine. Me and Richard became friends in there. Richard had anything he wanted in that joint. - Why did he have everything he wanted? - Richard did paintings. - Besides painting the walls, Speck was also an amateur artist with a fan base outside the prison. - Painting sold for a lot. - You know, he had these weirdo followers. - Those paintings were currency for a spec. - Now could you imagine, and this was an eye opener to me. Richard Speck could walk up and get an ounce of cocaine on his name in prison. And so I have you the money by the end of the month. An ounce of cocaine was going for 1500 in 1980, 485 in stateville. No problem. - That's how wide open stateville was back then? - Yeah. - This openness inside Illinois prisons was not widely known, but then somehow in 1988, somebody made a tape of Speck inside stateville. In the video, Speck is snorting a pile of white powder that looks like cocaine. He has sex with another inmate on camera. It's tough to hear, but Speck said, quote, "If they only knew how much fun I was having, they'd turn me loose." But eight years later, TV journals Bill Curtis got the footage. - How can this happen? The good life Richard Speck enjoyed is merely a symptom of a far larger problem. The tape created a firestorm. - Tonight on 2 News at 10, the Richard Speck tapes. First they made headlines, then they forced a state investigation in Springfield. - That shamed everybody in the Department of Corrections when that spectate was leaked to the news. Everybody that worked in the Department of Corrections in Springfield looked like complete idiots. - The gangs are out of control, but the idea of a mass murderer having a good time in prison was too much for the public to stomach. The state of Illinois was already looking into performing its overcrowded prison system, but the release of the spectate kicked it into overdrive. The state of Illinois officials were shocked by the tapes and launched an investigation. Many experts, however, feel the complete breakdown of our nation's prison system is not a matter of if, but when. - All of that public outrage set the stage for the opening of Illinois's only super max prison. It was a place to isolate gang leaders and other dangerous prisoners, the quote, worst of the worst. The prison was called Tams. It's closed now, but Tams is where Mousy has been over 12 years in solitary confinement. - I got to the point where there's nothing you could take from me no more. - When you become a monthly donor to WBEZ, you're doing more than just giving. You ensure everyone has access to trusted news. So keep WBEZ 100% community funded. Give now at WBEZ.org/donate. - I'm the highest escape person in the state of Illinois. - Why? - 'Cause I built a ladder and a escape from a state bill. I climbed out of there, prison. - Brian Nelson, then Mousy, got over the 33-foot wall in 1984. He was quickly caught and sent back to state bill, and he was now considered a major escape risk. That, and the fact that he was a gang leader, made him a prime target for the state's prison crackdown. - They said anybody that stands up for himself has got up in that shit out. - Didn't know nothing wrong. There was a game with goodbye. Brian was placed on what's known as the circuit. - I was transferred from prison to prison. I was beat horrifically at every prison I went to. They have to take me outside for one hour a week. So you put two pairs of leg arms on me. Two ways change, a dog leash, a collar around my neck that goes down under my testicles. And if I move, they pull that. And I ball up and I face first into the concrete. And there's a guy on each side of me with a mini-14. And I'm allowed to take 10 steps that way and 10 steps back this way for 45 minutes a week. This went on for five years. (gentle music) - The ways that Brian and TJ ended up in prison are pretty similar. They both joined the royals around the same young age. They both ended up in maximum security prison. There is of course one big difference. - I was killed in my crimes. I did my crime. What? Can you imagine being innocent and all of this? - One day in 1998, federal marshals came to get Brian. They didn't tell him where he was going or why. Brian was transported and shackles to Illinois's new super maximum security prison. Tams. - I spent 12 years in Tams and I cannot tell you what Tams did to me. - At the Tams Correctional Center, Brian was placed in solitary confinement in an eight by 10 foot cell. He spent 23 hours a day alone. He had no contact with the other inmates. So this is it for us in my life in this box. And the things they were doing to me, TJ didn't go to none of that. I did 42 days in blackout, no light at all. And I got out because I became an animal trying to bite this guy's arm that's sliding this tray into this cage. - Brian says in Tams, he went from 176 pounds to 108. He spent days scrubbing his cell with a toothbrush. He tried to hang himself. - I paced 16 to 18 hours a day in Tams. They literally were sweeping the bottom of my shoes off the floor. They had to cut my feet every other week from the blood blisters. I just walked back and forth, back and forth for 12 years. (cars thudding) Brian would catch spiders and keep them as companions. He became a devout Catholic and prayed for seven hours a day. I copied the Bible word for word. One year, two months and nine days it took me, but it kept me going. Yeah. That box did something I can't explain. I was writing a book about it and when that went back and read what I wrote the night before and I was talking to the cell as if it was a person talking about how long it has to be without me there. And I read that and I'm like, "Fuck, I'm talking to a fucking wall as if it's a person." TJ was never locked away in a super max prison for years and years like Brian, but he was often placed in segregation cells. He kept insisting he was innocent and didn't belong in prison. He'd break the rules and get 22 hours in the cell alone. TJ would also paste the cage like an animal. Other prisoners around him went insane. Some wrote on the walls with their own feces. In court testimony, TJ said he reached the "bottom of the barrel." That part is seen when I went through. I don't know everything TJ's want to do. Me and TJ sort of went through a lot of shit where kids got locked up. We spent most of our life in a box fighting to survive, fighting to get out. I never expected to get out of prison. Brian was paroled in 2010. He was one of the first prisoners released after an extended stay at TAMS. The guys on the street didn't even know about me until I got out and then it's like, "Nope, nope, nope, I'm done. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye." The Simon City Royals, including TJ, tried to contact Brian after his release. They wanted "Mousey." You're always going to hold "Mousey" over my head. Half them up for us. I don't give a fuck about them. Mother fuck all of them. I gave you 28 years of my life. No one thing they want me to do is come out here and be chief. I could have came out here and made a drug barren or whatever they think I could have been. I've had tattoos taken off my face. I've had a gang emblem that was on my back covered up. I walked away when I got out. I'm not going back. You can't offer me enough money. "Mousey" may be dead. Living on the outside, after nearly three decades in prison, has been far from easy for Brian. I tried to open a bank account. I didn't exist. I was nothing. Who are you? We can't find anything. I had never driven a car. They say you don't forget how to ride a bicycle. Yes, you do. It's been tough for Brian to be around, quote, "normal people." I went to Hawaii last year and we're in the hotel in Waikakee and this lady stops and blocks our way and she's talking on her cell phone. I said, "Excuse me. Excuse me." Bitch move. And everybody stopped. I said, "You arrogant motherfucker. You think you're just stopping block everything? You don't give a fuck about nobody around you?" If I did that to someone in jail that could cost me my life, in prison, you have manners. Out here, even on give a fuck. They got two airbugs in and if you're in their way, they're going to push you out the way. Brian's got a job. He's got a girlfriend. He's able to take vacations. But prison's always there. We'll accept for this one time in Colorado. I jumped in a glacier lake. My nuts were up here and I just jumped in. Yeah. 11,000 feet up in this campground and it's beautiful. No police, no sirens, no gangbangers, nothing. Sitting in front of a fire. You know, I felt free. I knew what it was like to be you guys. No for the first time in my life. There are around 80,000 inmates in solitary confinement in America, more than anywhere else in the world. Most studies say that solitary almost uniformly causes psychological damage. Pristers become sicker, angrier, and more violent than when they went in. Solitary confinement is also really expensive. That was one reason why TAMS Illinois' only supermax prison was shut down in 2012. There's not one day that TAMS does not come in my head. My aunt at the first family reunion when I was out, she stopped me. She was like, "I have a question." She was, "Do you think God did all this to you so you could do what you're doing?" And I go, "What do you mean?" She was, "You talked to people about what you went through and you're affected because you bear your soul." And I looked at her and said, "I hope you didn't. I didn't deserve this." And I said, "That question's always been there. And deserved this." "I'm more fucked up now than when I first got out." A couple years after his release, Brian began talking a lot more about prison. He's spoken at universities and conferences. Brian wants to educate people about the horrors of solitary confinement, but talking about it hasn't been liberating. It's led to Brian's self-destructing. I would be found in the closet, in the dark, in coherent, just staring off in space. And I went through 13 different psychiatrists. One of them, I broke his jaw because he kept talking about, "It ain't that bad. I know what you went through." And I said, "You need to stop saying that to me. I need to leave here if I hurt you." He was, "Oh, you're just being over-dramatic. It's not that bad. We just need to talk about it." And I can see him. When I first got home, I was talking and walking around Anglewood 3, 4 in the morning with $10,000 on me. I was trying to get kids. The next time they caught me out for 200 miles an hour, I don't lay short drive on a motorcycle. And the police stopped me. And I'm like, "I'm looking at him." I'm like, "Well, what'd you go through about it?" He was, "What are you trying to do to kill yourself?" And I said, "Yeah." He goes, "What?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "Why else would I be going this fast?" Imagine what would have happened if Brian had $25 million. Next time on Motive. I go through the car and I really hit you in there. And he goes, "Oh, yeah, they kicked our ass." And he was like, "What's the problem?" And he was like, "What's the problem?" [MUSIC PLAYING] Motive is a production of WBZ Chicago based on original reporting from the Chicago Sun Times. I'm Frank Mayn, the producer's column "Magnulty." The executive producer is Kevin Dawson, her engineer is Shelley Stephens, special thanks to the listeners whose financial support of WBZ made this podcast possible. [MUSIC PLAYING]