How I survived the “Big Bitch” (25-to-Life) and the death of my Angel.
I wasn’t a street thug. I was an engineer who operated on the wrong side of the law. I machined the serial numbers off my .25 Browning with a mill, not a file. I built custom nets to fish cash out of night drops. I wired police scanners into the powertrains of getaway cars.
I approached crime like a math problem. I thought I had solved the equation.
Then I got the answer I didn’t expect: 85C0177. That was my number at Wende Correctional Facility, the reception center for Attica.
I was facing “The Big Bitch”, the Habitual Criminal Act calling for 25 years to Life . But the real sentence came in the mail on the Ides of March, 1985. A letter from my mother.
Mary Ellen DeSantis, the love of my life, was dead. An overdose. While I was locked in a cage, unable to protect her, unable to save her.
I snapped. I beat the steel walls of my cell until my hands were hamburger. When the Cell Extraction Team, eight guards in full riot gear, came for me, I didn’t cower. I backed into the corner and asked them:
“WHO is going to be the FIRST Mother F*cker through that gate?”
They didn’t come in. That night, the criminal died. The survivor was born.
I turned that rage into discipline. I did 1,500 pushups a day. I sharpened my mind. I decided that if I ever walked out, I wouldn’t just survive; I would thrive.
I went from a maximum-security cell to a 35-year career as a Control Systems Engineer for major corporations. I went from breaking safes to building industrial systems.
To the story makers and booksellers: This isn’t a “mob memoir.” This is a survival manual. It’s about the mechanics of grief, the engineering of redemption, and the price of a life lived in the fast lane.
