Has anyone ever called you a murderer?
Yes.
I was an addict for most of my life.
And I couldn't afford to pay for my drug habit
from what I worked and still pay the bills and that.
I wasn't a big time drug dealer.
There were a few pollens here and there.
A girl came to me and said she wanted me to meet her brother-in-law
and he needed some connections.
He was from Chicago and he wanted some connections in the Minneapolis area.
I agreed to do this, set up this drug connection.
What were your details for your number?
Well, I slept part of the way. It was a 300-mile drive.
When we got to the house, I had to go in and check things out
to make sure it was a safe place to go into.
So I went into the house. I talked with the guy.
He showed me a pound.
I just looked at it. I didn't say nothing to him.
I went back out to the car and I told the other guy
it wasn't what it was supposed to be.
He seemed to get a little upset about that.
He handed me the gun. We went into the house.
I was walking with the guy that actually owned the house where we were at.
I was walking into the kitchen with him
where the product was still on the kitchen table.
That's when my co-defendants hit the guy that brought us there with the gun butt.
He was bleeding pretty good from the back of the head.
I thought he had actually busted a skull open from the way it looked
because I could see a grain of us.
My co-defendant cut the telephone cords and tied them both up on the floor.
And why didn't you feel the need to just leave?
Why didn't I feel the need to leave?
I should have left, but it was too late to leave because you're in the middle of a deal.
And once something like this starts, you just don't walk away from it.
I went upstairs and I found a girl.
There wasn't supposed to be anybody else who was supposed to be there.
She was passed out.
I really had a hard time getting her awake.
It took several minutes to wake her up.
To get her back to where she understood what I was saying.
It was St. Patrick's Day and they had been out partying all night.
She was so wobbly I had to actually hold on to her arm to start with.
I finally got her up on her feet.
That's when she reached out and she grabbed a hold of the barrel of a gun.
And I pulled back to pull the gun out of her hand and the gun went off.
And she was shot.
She struggles with the gun and gets shot in the temple.
And you saw no blood?
No, I didn't see any blood at all.
There was just a little dark hole inside of her head.
I don't know how to describe it any more than that.
Do you feel like it was her fault that she was shot?
No, of course not.
It was my fault.
It wasn't her fault at all.
It was my fault for being there and for doing this.
That's one thing that sticks with you forever.
Even though it's been decades, it's the pictures of the girl,
of the bedroom, the other bedroom, of the guys laying on the floor.
It's like pulling out a photo album.
It never ever goes away, it's there, constantly.
