Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [133]
I exercised five days a week, lifting weights in the weight room from 9:30 to 10:45 A.M., and on weekends I’d work out with the pull-up bar outside. At night, at six, I’d run on the treadmill for an hour, seven nights a week. And the rest of the time I’d read. Basically, my four years and five months at Allenwood were uneventful. I just read a lot, worked out, and ran.
Time passed pretty quickly as long as you stayed busy. The only thing about being in these WITSEC units was that they didn’t have the facilities other prisons had. All they had was a very small yard and no outdoor activities to speak of. There wasn’t much for the inmates to do besides reading, working out, and watching TV. No education was available, except for the inmates who were required to get their GED. Since it was too great a security risk to bring in teachers, there were no college courses, no computer classes, no teachers whatsoever. Any time anyone from outside came in to do work, they would put us back in the unit and lock us down. The one big thing that you did have in the WITSEC unit, and which compensated for everything you didn’t have, was that eventually, based on seniority, you got a single cell. It took me two and a half years, but I did get my own cell, along with a TV.
We were allowed three hundred minutes a month of phone calls, which was equivalent to twenty fifteen-minute phone calls. In any prison, no one can call you, so you make all the calls. Basically, in WITSEC, you are isolated from everybody. They allow a small list of visitors who have to get clearance from Washington to be on your visiting list. At the beginning, I had visitors, but then I told people not to come. Even my lawyer never came up. I felt it was too long a trip for my family to drive more than seven hours each way just for a visit, but I talked to family and friends once a week. I kept in touch with some good friends on the street who stayed loyal to me, including some people I was involved with when I was out there. They all understood that after it came out that Jimmy and Stevie were informants, nobody would blame me or anyone else involved in the case for cooperating.
There were two staff members who would go out of their way to help inmates out. Mr. Stork would help an inmate with whatever job he had, while Mr. Fink was the type of guy who would joke with the inmates all day to keep it lighthearted. As long as everything ran smoothly, the unit manager, Mr. Moyer, didn’t go out of his way to hassle the inmates. There were a few guards, but not many, who would go out of their way to give you a hard time.
One of my two workout partners and closest friends is still in there. He received a thirteen-year sentence and still has six more to do. My other workout partner was getting out a month or two after me. After my release, there were restrictions on my associations and travel. I have five years of supervised release, which means I can’t travel outside the district without permission or associate with any known felons.
Now that I am out, my life is very quiet, with no stress. Coming back, it was strange being around people and adjusting to the freedom of walking into a store and buying something to eat or some clothes for myself. In prison, you’re wearing khakis, prison-issued clothes, all the time. When I first got out and came back, I saw that a lot had changed, including the whole dynamics of the city. I don’t live in Boston anymore, but I did go back to South Boston and saw family and friends and the people I was involved with. They all understood that I hadn’t hurt anyone on the street. To the person, they all came up to me, shook hands, hugged me, and said, “Whatever we can help you with, we will.”
The government never gave me any money