April 30, 2025 • 35 mins
Roger's greatest inspirations comes in the darkest of places...and starts with a bag of candy.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A campsite media. Roger was back at the Kingston Penitentiary
for the very simple reason that the wardens and directors
of the Canadian Penitentiary Service wanted out of the business
of worrying about Roger Kuran. He'd built a reputation for escaping,
(00:22):
for being a go boy, for striking fear in the
hearts of those tasked with keeping him behind bars. The
Kingston pen was the one place where they could definitively
say he wasn't going anywhere, even he knew it, and
the thought depressed him walking through KP. Now you're struck
by how every few paces there seems to be another
(00:45):
checkpoint with steel bars. One cannot simply move through the
indoor spaces freely. Guards and inmates alike are faced with
checkpoint after checkpoint. The only part of the prison that
allows for the dream of freedom to even cross your
mind is out in the recreational yard. But even it
(01:07):
is surrounded on all sides by a formidable concrete wall
with five guard towers, each occupied with armed men. In
this venue, they wouldn't even need to watch Roger especially close.
All they'd have to do is treat him like any
other inmate. That was the idea anyway. One night in
(01:30):
nineteen sixty two, at around midnight, an old jailor was
walking his rounds flashlight in hand, ensuring that everyone was
in their cells asleep. Everything appeared as it should until
he got to sell C two seven. The inmate was
in his bed, but as the guard squinted into the
(01:51):
darkness of the cell, he sensed that something wasn't right.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
He says, Cara. He says, are you all right?
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Karan?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
He called again, but Roger didn't respond. The guard got
right up against the bars and shone the light directly
on Roger's head. His hair looked messy, his skin paler
than it should, and he remained unresponsive. So the guard
speed walks to the nearest call station and calls the
hospital line to say, you better get down here.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So a lot of guys that slashed to visa at
night when he went to day, and the guard to
come in the morning. The only way he knew was
there just helsposed to blot out break from him.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
A nurse and some more guards rushed to sell C.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Two seven, got the other guard and got the nurse
in the arms, open the door, lift the leader swarm
the door over, Carl, Are you all right?
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Still no movement from Roger. So the guard reaches out
to nudge him awake. But when he did, Roger's head
rolled off the bed and fell on the floor, by
which I mean the mannequin head made by Roger Karan
fell to the floor.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Over fell on the floor. And the guys, they told
me the garden almost fell over. The radiote on the floor.
You don't have and he said, walks on wims.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
The police rushed to the prison and out on the lake.
A police boat putted back and forth on Lake Ontario
with its spotlight on the exterior wall. Guards were called
in the middle of the night. They brought in the dogs.
It was all hands on deck. And while all that
was going on, as the crowd and the sound of
sirens grew, Roger was cursing himself, huddled under the weather
(03:43):
tarp in the Kingston Pen sports shack, muttering to himself
that he should have spent one more day on the
mannequin head.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
So I had a hair from the barber shop, I
had blacks with parison, and I may have managed, and
I had turned his head into the wall, but I
didn't have time to this skinning was almost pale light.
I didn't have time to get the guy was going
to give me his artist kit, and he didn't have
time to.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Deliver it to me.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
He knew that it was going to be too pale,
and now his whole plan was foiled. He was not
a go boy this night, but merely a man under
a tarp with forty feet of rope and a grappling hook.
Oh yeah, he managed to procure a grappling hook somehow.
But even though the jig was up, he certainly wasn't
(04:28):
just going to step out with his hands up. Not
his style. If they were going to find him, he
was going to stubbornly make them find him.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
And they pound me a two dollard warning there. I
understand he found me. He was sports check. I got
my head in, hands on my hit and my rope
book is all kid knuckle in his shaw and they
got shot guns. And right, wasn't the gun towers or
counting squat by something that they get tacked? Thought was
very easy.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Once they had him, they marched him straight to the warden,
who had made his way down the hill in his
pajamas from his home across the street. He greeted Roger
with a sarcastic good evening. The warden was done worrying
about Roger, the most slippery inmate in his prison, so
to put him out of his mind, the warden sentenced
(05:15):
him on the spot to two years in the hole.
Roger knew that he was in trouble, but two years
he was shocked.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Two years ago, holds unheard of him. You go to
hold the twenty one days on bread and water, seven days,
thirty days I maginum.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
But Roger was led away to begin two years of solitary.
It was clear that the warden was trying to erase
Roger from his prison and bury him beneath the foundations,
and it would take everything Roger had to claw his
way back from iHeart podcasts and campsite media. I'm Sam
(05:56):
Mullens and this is Go Boy, episode four Jellybeans.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
So we're really going down at the base of the air.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
The hole in the Kingston Pen refers to a much
feared block of cells where inmates were sent for prescribed
amounts of solitary confinement as punishment. Parents have timeouts to
keep their children in line, teachers have detention, and the
guards at KP had the hole with which to threaten
their subjects. I'll give you the tour. Imagine a short,
(06:45):
well liit hallway with ten wooden doors on the right
and ten wooden doors on the left. Every time I
see the photo of the cell block when it was
still in use, and I see the brightness and cleanliness
and perfect symmetry of that cursed hallway, I'm struck by
how much it looks like a Stanley Kubrick set. Behind
all twenty doors lies a second steel door with a
(07:08):
food slot in it, and beyond that lies the cell itself.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
No sheet, no matrist, no nothing cover, all spots paper,
cup of toothbrust and a cement clock worn grew day.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
It was all as bare as bear could be, and
he couldn't bring anything with you.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
No personal effects.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
This is Bill Isaacs, a longtime guard at KP, who'd
seen it all.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
If themate wanted to read, he was entitled to a
Bible and that was the only source of reading material.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
The walls are solid, impenetrable concrete. There are no windows
or natural light in the hole, which is not to
say it's dark or gloomy.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
For two years and you didn't know what the darkness
like and no windows, nothing, just a two hundred ball
burn ninety day like being in the middle of Sahara desert.
He never turn the lights out.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
With the aspect of the whole that would drive men
literally out of their minds was the light bulb. To
hear Roger describe it, it was brighter than the Saharan sun.
And they kept that thing on twenty four hours a day.
The only way that you were allowed to dim the
brightness was with your eyelids. Anything beyond that was strictly prohibited.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
If I pull the lights over, nay, the darks Committee
take my minkets away from the trevells over the head,
they take my coveralls and probably even make it.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
Prisons are, in fact, the whole criminal justice system is
an analyst theaters of humiliation.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Grahame Stewart is a prison rights advocate and the former
executive director of the John Howard Society, a nonprofit focused
on prison reform. He's seeing what solitary can do to
a man.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Losing that kind of control in your life is humiliating,
and you don't get over that. You don't get over
I absolutely convinced that of all the pains of imprisonment.
That's the one you can't get beyond.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
The guards would supervise the sory souls of the whole
through a barred sort of skylight. In the ceiling of
each unit. There was a catwalk that they would pace
above the cells on, so when an inmate would look up,
there would periodically be the face of a guard peering
down on them like a malevolent god.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
They were against the officers looking down at them because
it looked like they were in a lockage, like somebody
looking in a zoo cage looking at an animal. So
you'd get inappropriate comments and a lot of bad language
from the inmates, you know, like what the hell are
you looking at? But a lot stronger than that.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
According to Roger, the guards who were assigned to the
hole were some of the most sadistic in the prison.
Let me put it this way. If they were well
liked and charismatic in the eyes of the Brotherhood of
prison guards, they'd probably be working upstairs on a better assignment.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Well, guards are charged the whole, nice people. No decent
guard would ever ask the whole. Only said that as
keep it real.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Say, one could frame solitary confinement as quiet time. Perhaps
a break from having to watch your back.
Speaker 5 (10:09):
But solitary confinement is not private accommodation. Okay, it's a
lot worse than that.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Graham Stewart.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
Again, I've had many people say, well, i've ever had
to go to prison, I'd want to be in solitary
because basically it's the afraid of being in the population.
But solitary is deeply painful. It's such isolation from every stimulus.
You don't know if it's date or night, you don't
know what time it is, you have nothing to do.
(10:37):
It's just like being in a closet or or a
bathroom really for twenty three hours a day.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
We went into the hole during our reporting trip to
KP and I hated it in there. In the hole,
the walls are so close that you can hear your
breath echo, if that makes sense, like you've been bare alive,
and that feeling is psychologically dangerous.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
Longer they're there, the more damage they are, and it's
a damage that lasts the rest of their life. You
can't undo an experience.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Like that, which is all to say for Roger, there
was much more at stake than finding a way to
endure this punishment. This wasn't something he could white knuckle
like the paddle or shock therapy to get through this.
He'd need to stay vigilant just to keep his grip
on his sanity. But would you believe me if I
(11:36):
told you that inside this cell, this tomblike space, is
where Roger would eventually have his greatest breakthrough. One day,
(12:06):
Roger was in a cell when suddenly he heard a
tapping sound near his toilet. Could this be the first
sign of him starting to lose it?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It was not.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Themates way of communication. The ways that she used to talk,
especially in segregation, was you know, obviously, through the toilet system.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Even though great effort was put into keeping these men
in perfect isolation, something was overlooked. Like Jeff Goldbloom says
in Jurassic Park, Life finds a Way.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I had some niggers down there. I never seen it.
I knew there was a guy called Jocko and a
guy called George down there, and we could never see
each other. We discovered that the old plumbing system was
so old, sore, so primitive that it weaned very quietly,
took our paper cup and took the water on the toilet,
bowed it down. The state until there was no more
water in the toilet, and then we cleaned their toilet
(13:03):
old really well. And then after midnight in the gardens
would change shift, we'd stick our head in the toilet.
If I wanted to talk to Jocko and number five
cell I capped five times in the flour that meant
for Jocko Bale's toilet that would get on the phone.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
The only drawback to this clandestine phone line was that
sometimes it'd be too busy to work because the men
in the hole weren't the only ones on the line.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Kingston was infested with the biggest, fattest stewart rats you
ever seen, and then the ukating down every two centuries.
No bake along, yellow teeth creature. You're all running into.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Pikes that we're talking to do And for several months,
this is how Roger was able to keep it together.
The days of silence were more bearable knowing that that
night when the guards change shifts, that at least be
someone to talk to.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Oh nay long from midnight till six o'clock and guards
to come on duty next morning. I said, hey, Jocko,
say yeah, say what's happening.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Maybe one of the more iconic do you remember where
you were? Moments Roger learned that JFK was shot with
his head in the toilet, straining to hear the details
in disbelief. This period of nightly chatter definitely bought Roger
some time, a precious little engagement to keep his head clear,
(14:20):
but it wasn't to last. Guys were usually only put
down there for a few weeks here or a month there,
but sometimes there wouldn't be anyone staying in the hole
except for Roger. He put out the call on the phone,
but no one would answer. Time passed in an untraceable way,
and Roger started spending more and more time daydreaming, week dreaming,
(14:46):
month dreaming.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I'm going to escaped prison. You curl up on the
poor and get day dream I'm not in jail. I'm
not in jail. I'm in Hawaii. And all of a sudden,
you're in all white, And the gardener looked into the
people and said, you're not an all white take his cue.
(15:09):
It gets a place of guys with like a bomb
going off hisself.
Speaker 6 (15:11):
Like an he gets a whole screaming and red and
raving and shaving from now wrapper the garden will walk
down to the catwalk lacking go steth each other was
really funny.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Was shaking on, going crazy, literally crazy.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
When the guards would suddenly wrap the glass with their keys.
It would take him hours to recover from the shock
from this one single stimulus, the one sound in his life.
In Roger's brief moments of lucidity, he could see where
this was going, and he knew that if he didn't
do something, he could get lost forever. And it's here
(15:48):
that Roger got an idea. One day, when the guard
swung by to collect Roger's food tray, the guard was
surprised to see that the food remained untouched where he
had left it. When he asked Roger why he didn't
eat it, Roger said, I'm not hungry. The next meal
was the same, and the one after. Roger wrote about
(16:10):
his scheme to get out of the hole and into
the psychiatric ward and here's our actor reading it.
Speaker 7 (16:17):
My scheme was to put on a crazy act. By
no means an original idea, because cons in every prison
throughout the world have tried it. I was going to
have to put on a tremendous act to convince the guards,
doctor and warden that I was psychotic. They knew all
the tricks. I decided to be more cunning than the
average con and so instead of firing my food tray
at them and telling them that I was on hunger
(16:38):
strike because they were poisoning me, I'd let them advise
me that this was what was happening, sort of reverse psychology.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
But in the early going, they weren't buying what Roger
was selling. They knew who he was and what he
was capable of.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
The guards a genio or rigord meal, and they said, no,
old boss like the one, and the key just said,
well can I add it?
Speaker 1 (16:57):
So, right in front of Roger, as a stomach was
practically digesting itself, the guard would make Roger watch as
he slowly would eat his dinner in front of him.
By day eight, Roger didn't have to act like his
health was in jeopardy anymore. It literally was. It's a
testament to how sick Roger must have looked on that
(17:20):
day because the guards were concerned enough to call the doctor.
On day twelve, it was the psychiatrist who finally made
the call to transfer Roger to the psychiatric ward. His
wish was about to come true. Roger now had the
great honor of going to join the Regional Treatment Center,
which held some of the most criminally insane men.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
In the country if one flew over the propos nests team.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Compared to this, in all, the Regional Treatment Center or RTC,
was a separate building within the walls of the Kingston
Penitentiary campus, and it operated completely separate from the prison.
They had their own innate that didn't mix. They had
their own staff and guards that operated independently of the prison,
and it wasn't often that an inmate was transferred from
(18:09):
the pen to the RTC. The old guards and historians
we talked to say that of all the messed up
things that happened at KP, all of the worst stories,
the craziest, the most depraved, all come from the RTC,
and Roger was there by choice, and it wasn't just
to escape the hole either. The RTC building is unique
(18:33):
on the campus in that it's one of the tallest
buildings inside the prison wall, and it also happens to
be one of the closest to the wall. When we
climbed to the top floor of this extreme bad vibes building,
this building, this building is nuts this place that deserves
its own abandoned mental hospital Instagram account. It was easy
(18:57):
to see why Roger was willing to litter, really starve
himself to get here.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
What's your guys, best guess?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Is this like thirty feet yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Standing there eye level with the top of the wall.
It really is tauntingly close. It's easy to imagine Roger
sipping his soup, peering over the top of it, his
freedom staring him in the face. Once Roger got his
health back to a relatively robust state in between his
bi weekly electroshock therapy sessions, he got down to what
(19:34):
he does best. He worked quickly to procure a hacksaw
blade and was even able to get word to some
old friends in the shop that he was going to
need another grappling hook. Inside the RTC, Roger enjoyed a
sense of freedom he hadn't experienced in some time. There's
lots of free time to mingle, and it was easy
(19:55):
to elude the eyes of the staff as he would
work on the bars every chance he got. Everything seemed
to be coming together for Roger very quickly. He made
it through the bars on the window. He had his
grappling hook, safely hidden, and the autumn was giving way
to winter, which meant that all that was left for
his escape to become a reality was for the first
(20:18):
snowy night to arrive. There was only one guard tower
he needed to worry about on this side of the building.
Some snow could be enough of a screen for him
to throw his grappling hook over the top of the wall.
But with all of these things in place, Roger got
pulled into something he hadn't in a long time. He
(20:39):
got into a fight with the ward tough guy, a
dude named Punchy, But unlike most of his other prison fights,
this one didn't seem to arrive at a resolution. When
the fisticuffs were over. Afterward, Punchy was telling anyone who'd
listen that he was going to kill Roger at the
earliest opportunity, and had it snowed a day or two earlier,
(21:02):
maybe nothing would have happened. Maybe Roger would have made
it over the wall and all the way to Mexico,
never to be seen again. But that's not how it
went down. There was a party a few cell blocks over.
Roger could hear that everyone was lit up on prison
brew and pills. When Suddenly, this punchy guy appeared out
(21:24):
of nowhere. Roger didn't know what hit him. Before he
could even protect himself, the blade was in him. Punchy
withdrew the ship from Roger as he gasped for breath
and begged, kill me, just kill me, but he offered
no such mercy. Instead, Punchy just walked away, leaving Roger
(21:46):
slumped against a wall in the corridor, his blood pooling
on the floor.
Speaker 8 (21:51):
I was stad in the stomach. Gucks come over my
hand and my spleaming montred. I gotta put long star
on my stomach. Got two knights slaves and my.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Nose and oh nose, you know over.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
When he was discovered by two orderlies, they moved quickly
and rushed him to the civilian hospital.
Speaker 8 (22:11):
I was the fastest I ever got out the penitentiary
in Yami's eleven o'clock at night, going through the front gates,
and I got to my hand.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Blood's flying out everywhere.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
As Roger slushed around in the ambulance like a puddle
on the floor, everything around him was frantic and chaotic,
but inside he was certain that this would be his
final night on earth. He watched the paramedics as he
slipped in and out.
Speaker 9 (22:35):
By the time he got to hot I was just
going unconscious, you know, and all these keyboard ripping my
toes off, and you don't know me. And a priest
comes over to me and he says, you know, he
says he mind go to pray over it, and everything's
all blurred and on our member.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Saying, well help you south now, I just played you
say you're.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Shifting the day.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Meanwhile, one hundred and eighty miles away in Montreal, well,
we were at home.
Speaker 10 (22:56):
In the phone rings.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
This is Roger's niece, Diane, and my mother.
Speaker 10 (23:00):
Gets off the phone and she was really really upset
and she was crying and I said, Mom, what's wrong?
And she says, Roger's been stabbed all over and they
don't think he's going to live. And then so we prayed.
We all prayed, you know, because in those days, that's
what you did and that's how.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
You did it.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
So Roger's sister and mother rushed from Cornwall all the
way to Kingston. Here's Sue Roger's sister.
Speaker 11 (23:24):
They forewarned us that more than likely when we arrived,
he may not be alive. And we got there and
there were tubes coming out of him, and he had
a guard inside the room and a guard outside the
door of the room.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
As Sue stood at her brother's side, she held his hand,
urging him to hang on.
Speaker 11 (23:46):
I remember him squeezing my hand. He held my hand
so hard, actually heard me, you know, but he could
have broke it. I would not have moved my hand away,
so he recognized us, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
It had been a long time since she'd been able
to touch her brother, to breathe the same air as
him outside of prison.
Speaker 11 (24:03):
And I would explained to him, you know, the surgery
is what happened, because half his nose had been ripped away,
and he had been knifed in his stomach area, which
caused him to lose his spleen. They did surgery on
him and all kinds of transfusions and whatnot. And it
was only a few days later that we kept calling
(24:23):
the hospital to see how he was doing, and they said, oh,
he's been taken back to the penitentiary like a matter
of like two days, as soon as it looked like
he was going to live, as soon as it looked
like it, right back the penitentiary because he was go boy.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Roger was placed back in the hole by the warden
at the earliest possible opportunity. His whole fiasco in the
psychiatric hospit had only signaled to those keeping him in
solitary that they'd been making the right choice. It proved
what they'd suspected all along, that if they ever gave
Roger Kerran even the slightest of openings, he do everything
(25:14):
he could to slip through. So he was back where
he started. The only difference now was that he had
no spleen. His long term future would be spent in
this very room with this very light bulb and that
very guard and this very hopelessness. The months without human
(25:38):
contact began to accumulate. There was no peace. There was nothing,
literally nothing.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
And a person starts to turn on themselves.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
In that environment, Graham Stewart again.
Speaker 5 (25:53):
They get very depressed, or they get very angry, or
they get delusionble. You can't undo an experience like that.
Imagine what it's like going day after day. So it's
a deep trauma.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Roger would pace his cage like an animal for an
entire day or was it an entire night, He couldn't tell,
and the guards certainly weren't going to help him get
a grip on what day or time it was. The
guards he'd tricked into committing him to the psychiatric ward
were pissed that they'd been fooled, so they'd take special
(26:24):
care to torment him like it was their job, and
if they ever saw him finally drift off, it'd smash
the glass and laugh as he shot up, confused, as
he visibly was beginning to show signs that he was
losing his sanity. One of the first things that was
concerning to Roger was when one day he could hear
(26:46):
a very clear crackle.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
And my hearing was so acute. I to sometimes say
street slice of ripped of my supper trade. And it
got so quiet around midnight that I started hearing this
cracking sun. Where's it come from? I got here my grit,
I put my ear there, and might I could hear
my grit drying up?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Around this time, Roger started to hear other things down
there too, and down in.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
All almost two years, hallucinating.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
That your voice all Roger would be laying on his bed,
basking in the Saharan sun when he'd hear a whimper and.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Here I hear a female voice cry every night at
eleven o'clock when the guards cheeks shift, and she was
so lonely, so distressed, and I was so lonely and
so distressed.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Every night the sobbing became a little clearer, like she
was right there in the cell with him. So he'd
murmur things to her, tell her that they were going
to be okay, that they were both going to find
a way to survive this.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
And she I could hear a crying. Her tears were
coming out of all fourst of my cellar. A voice
was like a fallowist and rocky home crazy or lucinating.
I'm nervous, I'm bouncing off all the walls.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Roger started to slip into the space he was afraid
of where he was entering into a dangerous forest that
he might never make it out of.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
I was so nervous that one night I fell a spigure.
Must have been after midnight, like I armed behind my
I had a real bad dream. I woke up from
these bad dreams, and all of a sudden, I felt
this presence behind me, and I turned my head and
rooting roll and I spotted these five fingers. Well, I
had jumped so high they all took.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And it was around this time when Roger started to
become frightened of his own limbs. When it happened a
bonafide Christmas miracle. On Christmas Eve, suddenly a vision came
to visit Roger in his solitary cell. But this time,
for once, it wasn't a vision at all. It was real.
(28:49):
A tall man in a navy blue uniform entered his
cell and regarded Roger with a warm look on his face.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Christmas Eve around a state of populdn't you go?
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Open?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
And then he walked a captain in the Salvation Army guy.
And first time I had ever seen one of these
guys in a hole, like for two years they lived
in a hole, never seen anything.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Salvation Army offers the true spirit of Christmas. The man
from the Salvation Army firmly shook Roger's hand and gave
him a gift.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
They gave you a personalized Christmas card. And then he
gave me a bag of candies and Mike Candy Shop
with Mormon of jelly beans, all kinds of carsn't it.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Roger looked down at the jelly beans and card in disbelief.
As the man tipped his hat, said Merry Christmas and
was gone.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
They closed the door. I sick crossed lady on the floor.
So I got these jelly beans. I want to eat
them all right away, I said, no, six hours, it's
going to be Christmas eve. I'm going to wait until
a shift changes, when the guards come, and I'll know
it's midnight and it's it's a Merry Christmas, Roger, and
then eat on my tige beans.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
But as midnight approached, Roger kept staring at his jelly beans.
They were the first objects that weren't prison food or
an army blanket or a book that he'd been allowed
in the hole. And they were so beautiful, so perfect.
Some of them were colors he quite literally hadn't seen
in years. It seemed a waste to chew them up
(30:26):
and swallow them, so he thought about what else he
could use them for. He saw his least favorite guard
glaring at him through the skylight, and then this.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Suddenly came to me as a Christmas heat. But I
only tell him what I think of is is that
you know, I saw a writing word on the floor,
a real nasty word on the floor. Then he came
with it being malicious as directed him not playing the game,
and a good king of nasty word to only three
or four of them as well.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
So as the clock turned over to Christmas, Roger spelled
out the word pig on the floor with his jelly
beans and looked up at the skylight expectantly. When the
guard appeared in the window, pull.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
My hands back. I looked up at him. He looks
at the word. All of a sudden, he became livid.
Just show me with rage, you know, Please start banging
and saying this and that. I look at it like
he's crazy. You know, what's the matter with you? Boston.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Roger had tried many things to intentionally enrage the guard
since he'd been down there, but nothing had got a
reaction like this. It was beautiful when.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
He's shaking his fast like you know what's happening, you know.
Speaker 12 (31:35):
Then he walked away mumbling to himself, and I sat
there and on I says, my god, the power of
the written word is incredible.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
The next guard got the word dog, the one after
that jerk. For two days, Roger racked his brain to
spell the worst three and four letter words he could
think of.
Speaker 12 (31:55):
Four days after I was expressing myself, I found a
goon squad come charging myself with clubs and as masks,
pinned me up against the wall, and he confiscated my
jelly beans. I was using my fist, I was using
my stupidity all these years, and I wasn't getting nowhere.
All of a sudden, I just reverted to a few words,
and I got a terrific reaction of it.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
And this was it.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Roger had only written a few monosyllabic words out of
jelly beans. But even in the moment, he knew that something,
a much bigger shift was happening.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Are knew something happened in my life.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
He needed to write more words. He needed to But
how when he remembered that all inmates were granted upon request,
something he never thought to ask for.
Speaker 13 (32:43):
Suddenly I found myself asking the school teacher if he
would send me down some pencils in a scribber, not
knowing why or what, except that this compulsion in need
his urge to express my inner aguage, my turmoil.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
As the stationary and pencils make their way down to
the hole, it's worth pausing to point out the unlikelihood
of what happened next. This man had almost no education,
he had no voice. He was the bottom of the
bottom of the bottom of the prison and society. And
(33:18):
against all of this, his words were about to change everything.
Go Boy is a production from Campside Media in partnership
(33:41):
with iHeart Podcasts. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Go Boy was written
and hosted by me Sam LLINs. Our producer is Rob
Lindsay of Paradox Pictures. Laine Rose is our senior producer.
Sound design, mix and engineering by Garrett Tiedeman. Original music
(34:05):
by Garrett Tiedemant, fact checking by Michael Kenyon Meyer. Selected
archival clips are from CBC Licensing. The book Go Boy
was written by Roger Kuran. iHeart Podcasts Executive producers are
Lindsay Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett. Excerpts from Roger Koran's book
(34:25):
Go Boy, read by Jamie Cavanaugh. Special thanks to Kingston
Pantentry Tours and Greg Guthrow from Saint Lawrence Parks Commission.
Thanks also to Canada's Penitentiary Museum, Mike Schreider, Dave Saint
Ounge and Correctional Service Canada. Campside Media's executive producers are
Josh Dean, Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Cher. A
(34:50):
special thanks to our operations team Doug Slaywyn, Ashley Warren,
Sabina Marra and Destiny Dingle. If you enjoyed Go Boy,
please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening.
A campsite media. Roger was back at the Kingston Penitentiary
for the very simple reason that the wardens and directors
of the Canadian Penitentiary Service wanted out of the business
of worrying about Roger Kuran. He'd built a reputation for escaping,
(00:22):
for being a go boy, for striking fear in the
hearts of those tasked with keeping him behind bars. The
Kingston pen was the one place where they could definitively
say he wasn't going anywhere, even he knew it, and
the thought depressed him walking through KP. Now you're struck
by how every few paces there seems to be another
(00:45):
checkpoint with steel bars. One cannot simply move through the
indoor spaces freely. Guards and inmates alike are faced with
checkpoint after checkpoint. The only part of the prison that
allows for the dream of freedom to even cross your
mind is out in the recreational yard. But even it
(01:07):
is surrounded on all sides by a formidable concrete wall
with five guard towers, each occupied with armed men. In
this venue, they wouldn't even need to watch Roger especially close.
All they'd have to do is treat him like any
other inmate. That was the idea anyway. One night in
(01:30):
nineteen sixty two, at around midnight, an old jailor was
walking his rounds flashlight in hand, ensuring that everyone was
in their cells asleep. Everything appeared as it should until
he got to sell C two seven. The inmate was
in his bed, but as the guard squinted into the
(01:51):
darkness of the cell, he sensed that something wasn't right.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
He says, Cara. He says, are you all right?
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Karan?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
He called again, but Roger didn't respond. The guard got
right up against the bars and shone the light directly
on Roger's head. His hair looked messy, his skin paler
than it should, and he remained unresponsive. So the guard
speed walks to the nearest call station and calls the
hospital line to say, you better get down here.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So a lot of guys that slashed to visa at
night when he went to day, and the guard to
come in the morning. The only way he knew was
there just helsposed to blot out break from him.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
A nurse and some more guards rushed to sell C.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Two seven, got the other guard and got the nurse
in the arms, open the door, lift the leader swarm
the door over, Carl, Are you all right?
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Still no movement from Roger. So the guard reaches out
to nudge him awake. But when he did, Roger's head
rolled off the bed and fell on the floor, by
which I mean the mannequin head made by Roger Karan
fell to the floor.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Over fell on the floor. And the guys, they told
me the garden almost fell over. The radiote on the floor.
You don't have and he said, walks on wims.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
The police rushed to the prison and out on the lake.
A police boat putted back and forth on Lake Ontario
with its spotlight on the exterior wall. Guards were called
in the middle of the night. They brought in the dogs.
It was all hands on deck. And while all that
was going on, as the crowd and the sound of
sirens grew, Roger was cursing himself, huddled under the weather
(03:43):
tarp in the Kingston Pen sports shack, muttering to himself
that he should have spent one more day on the
mannequin head.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
So I had a hair from the barber shop, I
had blacks with parison, and I may have managed, and
I had turned his head into the wall, but I
didn't have time to this skinning was almost pale light.
I didn't have time to get the guy was going
to give me his artist kit, and he didn't have
time to.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Deliver it to me.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
He knew that it was going to be too pale,
and now his whole plan was foiled. He was not
a go boy this night, but merely a man under
a tarp with forty feet of rope and a grappling hook.
Oh yeah, he managed to procure a grappling hook somehow.
But even though the jig was up, he certainly wasn't
(04:28):
just going to step out with his hands up. Not
his style. If they were going to find him, he
was going to stubbornly make them find him.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
And they pound me a two dollard warning there. I
understand he found me. He was sports check. I got
my head in, hands on my hit and my rope
book is all kid knuckle in his shaw and they
got shot guns. And right, wasn't the gun towers or
counting squat by something that they get tacked? Thought was
very easy.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Once they had him, they marched him straight to the warden,
who had made his way down the hill in his
pajamas from his home across the street. He greeted Roger
with a sarcastic good evening. The warden was done worrying
about Roger, the most slippery inmate in his prison, so
to put him out of his mind, the warden sentenced
(05:15):
him on the spot to two years in the hole.
Roger knew that he was in trouble, but two years
he was shocked.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Two years ago, holds unheard of him. You go to
hold the twenty one days on bread and water, seven days,
thirty days I maginum.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
But Roger was led away to begin two years of solitary.
It was clear that the warden was trying to erase
Roger from his prison and bury him beneath the foundations,
and it would take everything Roger had to claw his
way back from iHeart podcasts and campsite media. I'm Sam
(05:56):
Mullens and this is Go Boy, episode four Jellybeans.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
So we're really going down at the base of the air.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
The hole in the Kingston Pen refers to a much
feared block of cells where inmates were sent for prescribed
amounts of solitary confinement as punishment. Parents have timeouts to
keep their children in line, teachers have detention, and the
guards at KP had the hole with which to threaten
their subjects. I'll give you the tour. Imagine a short,
(06:45):
well liit hallway with ten wooden doors on the right
and ten wooden doors on the left. Every time I
see the photo of the cell block when it was
still in use, and I see the brightness and cleanliness
and perfect symmetry of that cursed hallway, I'm struck by
how much it looks like a Stanley Kubrick set. Behind
all twenty doors lies a second steel door with a
(07:08):
food slot in it, and beyond that lies the cell itself.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
No sheet, no matrist, no nothing cover, all spots paper,
cup of toothbrust and a cement clock worn grew day.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
It was all as bare as bear could be, and
he couldn't bring anything with you.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
No personal effects.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
This is Bill Isaacs, a longtime guard at KP, who'd
seen it all.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
If themate wanted to read, he was entitled to a
Bible and that was the only source of reading material.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
The walls are solid, impenetrable concrete. There are no windows
or natural light in the hole, which is not to
say it's dark or gloomy.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
For two years and you didn't know what the darkness
like and no windows, nothing, just a two hundred ball
burn ninety day like being in the middle of Sahara desert.
He never turn the lights out.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
With the aspect of the whole that would drive men
literally out of their minds was the light bulb. To
hear Roger describe it, it was brighter than the Saharan sun.
And they kept that thing on twenty four hours a day.
The only way that you were allowed to dim the
brightness was with your eyelids. Anything beyond that was strictly prohibited.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
If I pull the lights over, nay, the darks Committee
take my minkets away from the trevells over the head,
they take my coveralls and probably even make it.
Speaker 5 (08:30):
Prisons are, in fact, the whole criminal justice system is
an analyst theaters of humiliation.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Grahame Stewart is a prison rights advocate and the former
executive director of the John Howard Society, a nonprofit focused
on prison reform. He's seeing what solitary can do to
a man.
Speaker 5 (08:46):
Losing that kind of control in your life is humiliating,
and you don't get over that. You don't get over
I absolutely convinced that of all the pains of imprisonment.
That's the one you can't get beyond.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
The guards would supervise the sory souls of the whole
through a barred sort of skylight. In the ceiling of
each unit. There was a catwalk that they would pace
above the cells on, so when an inmate would look up,
there would periodically be the face of a guard peering
down on them like a malevolent god.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
They were against the officers looking down at them because
it looked like they were in a lockage, like somebody
looking in a zoo cage looking at an animal. So
you'd get inappropriate comments and a lot of bad language
from the inmates, you know, like what the hell are
you looking at? But a lot stronger than that.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
According to Roger, the guards who were assigned to the
hole were some of the most sadistic in the prison.
Let me put it this way. If they were well
liked and charismatic in the eyes of the Brotherhood of
prison guards, they'd probably be working upstairs on a better assignment.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Well, guards are charged the whole, nice people. No decent
guard would ever ask the whole. Only said that as
keep it real.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Say, one could frame solitary confinement as quiet time. Perhaps
a break from having to watch your back.
Speaker 5 (10:09):
But solitary confinement is not private accommodation. Okay, it's a
lot worse than that.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Graham Stewart.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
Again, I've had many people say, well, i've ever had
to go to prison, I'd want to be in solitary
because basically it's the afraid of being in the population.
But solitary is deeply painful. It's such isolation from every stimulus.
You don't know if it's date or night, you don't
know what time it is, you have nothing to do.
(10:37):
It's just like being in a closet or or a
bathroom really for twenty three hours a day.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
We went into the hole during our reporting trip to
KP and I hated it in there. In the hole,
the walls are so close that you can hear your
breath echo, if that makes sense, like you've been bare alive,
and that feeling is psychologically dangerous.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
Longer they're there, the more damage they are, and it's
a damage that lasts the rest of their life. You
can't undo an experience.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Like that, which is all to say for Roger, there
was much more at stake than finding a way to
endure this punishment. This wasn't something he could white knuckle
like the paddle or shock therapy to get through this.
He'd need to stay vigilant just to keep his grip
on his sanity. But would you believe me if I
(11:36):
told you that inside this cell, this tomblike space, is
where Roger would eventually have his greatest breakthrough. One day,
(12:06):
Roger was in a cell when suddenly he heard a
tapping sound near his toilet. Could this be the first
sign of him starting to lose it?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
It was not.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Themates way of communication. The ways that she used to talk,
especially in segregation, was you know, obviously, through the toilet system.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Even though great effort was put into keeping these men
in perfect isolation, something was overlooked. Like Jeff Goldbloom says
in Jurassic Park, Life finds a Way.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I had some niggers down there. I never seen it.
I knew there was a guy called Jocko and a
guy called George down there, and we could never see
each other. We discovered that the old plumbing system was
so old, sore, so primitive that it weaned very quietly,
took our paper cup and took the water on the toilet,
bowed it down. The state until there was no more
water in the toilet, and then we cleaned their toilet
(13:03):
old really well. And then after midnight in the gardens
would change shift, we'd stick our head in the toilet.
If I wanted to talk to Jocko and number five
cell I capped five times in the flour that meant
for Jocko Bale's toilet that would get on the phone.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
The only drawback to this clandestine phone line was that
sometimes it'd be too busy to work because the men
in the hole weren't the only ones on the line.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Kingston was infested with the biggest, fattest stewart rats you
ever seen, and then the ukating down every two centuries.
No bake along, yellow teeth creature. You're all running into.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Pikes that we're talking to do And for several months,
this is how Roger was able to keep it together.
The days of silence were more bearable knowing that that
night when the guards change shifts, that at least be
someone to talk to.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Oh nay long from midnight till six o'clock and guards
to come on duty next morning. I said, hey, Jocko,
say yeah, say what's happening.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Maybe one of the more iconic do you remember where
you were? Moments Roger learned that JFK was shot with
his head in the toilet, straining to hear the details
in disbelief. This period of nightly chatter definitely bought Roger
some time, a precious little engagement to keep his head clear,
(14:20):
but it wasn't to last. Guys were usually only put
down there for a few weeks here or a month there,
but sometimes there wouldn't be anyone staying in the hole
except for Roger. He put out the call on the phone,
but no one would answer. Time passed in an untraceable way,
and Roger started spending more and more time daydreaming, week dreaming,
(14:46):
month dreaming.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
I'm going to escaped prison. You curl up on the
poor and get day dream I'm not in jail. I'm
not in jail. I'm in Hawaii. And all of a sudden,
you're in all white, And the gardener looked into the
people and said, you're not an all white take his cue.
(15:09):
It gets a place of guys with like a bomb
going off hisself.
Speaker 6 (15:11):
Like an he gets a whole screaming and red and
raving and shaving from now wrapper the garden will walk
down to the catwalk lacking go steth each other was
really funny.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Was shaking on, going crazy, literally crazy.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
When the guards would suddenly wrap the glass with their keys.
It would take him hours to recover from the shock
from this one single stimulus, the one sound in his life.
In Roger's brief moments of lucidity, he could see where
this was going, and he knew that if he didn't
do something, he could get lost forever. And it's here
(15:48):
that Roger got an idea. One day, when the guard
swung by to collect Roger's food tray, the guard was
surprised to see that the food remained untouched where he
had left it. When he asked Roger why he didn't
eat it, Roger said, I'm not hungry. The next meal
was the same, and the one after. Roger wrote about
(16:10):
his scheme to get out of the hole and into
the psychiatric ward and here's our actor reading it.
Speaker 7 (16:17):
My scheme was to put on a crazy act. By
no means an original idea, because cons in every prison
throughout the world have tried it. I was going to
have to put on a tremendous act to convince the guards,
doctor and warden that I was psychotic. They knew all
the tricks. I decided to be more cunning than the
average con and so instead of firing my food tray
at them and telling them that I was on hunger
(16:38):
strike because they were poisoning me, I'd let them advise
me that this was what was happening, sort of reverse psychology.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
But in the early going, they weren't buying what Roger
was selling. They knew who he was and what he
was capable of.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
The guards a genio or rigord meal, and they said, no,
old boss like the one, and the key just said,
well can I add it?
Speaker 1 (16:57):
So, right in front of Roger, as a stomach was
practically digesting itself, the guard would make Roger watch as
he slowly would eat his dinner in front of him.
By day eight, Roger didn't have to act like his
health was in jeopardy anymore. It literally was. It's a
testament to how sick Roger must have looked on that
(17:20):
day because the guards were concerned enough to call the doctor.
On day twelve, it was the psychiatrist who finally made
the call to transfer Roger to the psychiatric ward. His
wish was about to come true. Roger now had the
great honor of going to join the Regional Treatment Center,
which held some of the most criminally insane men.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
In the country if one flew over the propos nests team.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Compared to this, in all, the Regional Treatment Center or RTC,
was a separate building within the walls of the Kingston
Penitentiary campus, and it operated completely separate from the prison.
They had their own innate that didn't mix. They had
their own staff and guards that operated independently of the prison,
and it wasn't often that an inmate was transferred from
(18:09):
the pen to the RTC. The old guards and historians
we talked to say that of all the messed up
things that happened at KP, all of the worst stories,
the craziest, the most depraved, all come from the RTC,
and Roger was there by choice, and it wasn't just
to escape the hole either. The RTC building is unique
(18:33):
on the campus in that it's one of the tallest
buildings inside the prison wall, and it also happens to
be one of the closest to the wall. When we
climbed to the top floor of this extreme bad vibes building,
this building, this building is nuts this place that deserves
its own abandoned mental hospital Instagram account. It was easy
(18:57):
to see why Roger was willing to litter, really starve
himself to get here.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
What's your guys, best guess?
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Is this like thirty feet yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:08):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Standing there eye level with the top of the wall.
It really is tauntingly close. It's easy to imagine Roger
sipping his soup, peering over the top of it, his
freedom staring him in the face. Once Roger got his
health back to a relatively robust state in between his
bi weekly electroshock therapy sessions, he got down to what
(19:34):
he does best. He worked quickly to procure a hacksaw
blade and was even able to get word to some
old friends in the shop that he was going to
need another grappling hook. Inside the RTC, Roger enjoyed a
sense of freedom he hadn't experienced in some time. There's
lots of free time to mingle, and it was easy
(19:55):
to elude the eyes of the staff as he would
work on the bars every chance he got. Everything seemed
to be coming together for Roger very quickly. He made
it through the bars on the window. He had his
grappling hook, safely hidden, and the autumn was giving way
to winter, which meant that all that was left for
his escape to become a reality was for the first
(20:18):
snowy night to arrive. There was only one guard tower
he needed to worry about on this side of the building.
Some snow could be enough of a screen for him
to throw his grappling hook over the top of the wall.
But with all of these things in place, Roger got
pulled into something he hadn't in a long time. He
(20:39):
got into a fight with the ward tough guy, a
dude named Punchy, But unlike most of his other prison fights,
this one didn't seem to arrive at a resolution. When
the fisticuffs were over. Afterward, Punchy was telling anyone who'd
listen that he was going to kill Roger at the
earliest opportunity, and had it snowed a day or two earlier,
(21:02):
maybe nothing would have happened. Maybe Roger would have made
it over the wall and all the way to Mexico,
never to be seen again. But that's not how it
went down. There was a party a few cell blocks over.
Roger could hear that everyone was lit up on prison
brew and pills. When Suddenly, this punchy guy appeared out
(21:24):
of nowhere. Roger didn't know what hit him. Before he
could even protect himself, the blade was in him. Punchy
withdrew the ship from Roger as he gasped for breath
and begged, kill me, just kill me, but he offered
no such mercy. Instead, Punchy just walked away, leaving Roger
(21:46):
slumped against a wall in the corridor, his blood pooling
on the floor.
Speaker 8 (21:51):
I was stad in the stomach. Gucks come over my
hand and my spleaming montred. I gotta put long star
on my stomach. Got two knights slaves and my.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Nose and oh nose, you know over.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
When he was discovered by two orderlies, they moved quickly
and rushed him to the civilian hospital.
Speaker 8 (22:11):
I was the fastest I ever got out the penitentiary
in Yami's eleven o'clock at night, going through the front gates,
and I got to my hand.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Blood's flying out everywhere.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
As Roger slushed around in the ambulance like a puddle
on the floor, everything around him was frantic and chaotic,
but inside he was certain that this would be his
final night on earth. He watched the paramedics as he
slipped in and out.
Speaker 9 (22:35):
By the time he got to hot I was just
going unconscious, you know, and all these keyboard ripping my
toes off, and you don't know me. And a priest
comes over to me and he says, you know, he
says he mind go to pray over it, and everything's
all blurred and on our member.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Saying, well help you south now, I just played you
say you're.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
Shifting the day.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Meanwhile, one hundred and eighty miles away in Montreal, well,
we were at home.
Speaker 10 (22:56):
In the phone rings.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
This is Roger's niece, Diane, and my mother.
Speaker 10 (23:00):
Gets off the phone and she was really really upset
and she was crying and I said, Mom, what's wrong?
And she says, Roger's been stabbed all over and they
don't think he's going to live. And then so we prayed.
We all prayed, you know, because in those days, that's
what you did and that's how.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
You did it.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
So Roger's sister and mother rushed from Cornwall all the
way to Kingston. Here's Sue Roger's sister.
Speaker 11 (23:24):
They forewarned us that more than likely when we arrived,
he may not be alive. And we got there and
there were tubes coming out of him, and he had
a guard inside the room and a guard outside the
door of the room.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
As Sue stood at her brother's side, she held his hand,
urging him to hang on.
Speaker 11 (23:46):
I remember him squeezing my hand. He held my hand
so hard, actually heard me, you know, but he could
have broke it. I would not have moved my hand away,
so he recognized us, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
It had been a long time since she'd been able
to touch her brother, to breathe the same air as
him outside of prison.
Speaker 11 (24:03):
And I would explained to him, you know, the surgery
is what happened, because half his nose had been ripped away,
and he had been knifed in his stomach area, which
caused him to lose his spleen. They did surgery on
him and all kinds of transfusions and whatnot. And it
was only a few days later that we kept calling
(24:23):
the hospital to see how he was doing, and they said, oh,
he's been taken back to the penitentiary like a matter
of like two days, as soon as it looked like
he was going to live, as soon as it looked
like it, right back the penitentiary because he was go boy.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Roger was placed back in the hole by the warden
at the earliest possible opportunity. His whole fiasco in the
psychiatric hospit had only signaled to those keeping him in
solitary that they'd been making the right choice. It proved
what they'd suspected all along, that if they ever gave
Roger Kerran even the slightest of openings, he do everything
(25:14):
he could to slip through. So he was back where
he started. The only difference now was that he had
no spleen. His long term future would be spent in
this very room with this very light bulb and that
very guard and this very hopelessness. The months without human
(25:38):
contact began to accumulate. There was no peace. There was nothing,
literally nothing.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
And a person starts to turn on themselves.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
In that environment, Graham Stewart again.
Speaker 5 (25:53):
They get very depressed, or they get very angry, or
they get delusionble. You can't undo an experience like that.
Imagine what it's like going day after day. So it's
a deep trauma.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Roger would pace his cage like an animal for an
entire day or was it an entire night, He couldn't tell,
and the guards certainly weren't going to help him get
a grip on what day or time it was. The
guards he'd tricked into committing him to the psychiatric ward
were pissed that they'd been fooled, so they'd take special
(26:24):
care to torment him like it was their job, and
if they ever saw him finally drift off, it'd smash
the glass and laugh as he shot up, confused, as
he visibly was beginning to show signs that he was
losing his sanity. One of the first things that was
concerning to Roger was when one day he could hear
(26:46):
a very clear crackle.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
And my hearing was so acute. I to sometimes say
street slice of ripped of my supper trade. And it
got so quiet around midnight that I started hearing this
cracking sun. Where's it come from? I got here my grit,
I put my ear there, and might I could hear
my grit drying up?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Around this time, Roger started to hear other things down
there too, and down in.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
All almost two years, hallucinating.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
That your voice all Roger would be laying on his bed,
basking in the Saharan sun when he'd hear a whimper and.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Here I hear a female voice cry every night at
eleven o'clock when the guards cheeks shift, and she was
so lonely, so distressed, and I was so lonely and
so distressed.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Every night the sobbing became a little clearer, like she
was right there in the cell with him. So he'd
murmur things to her, tell her that they were going
to be okay, that they were both going to find
a way to survive this.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
And she I could hear a crying. Her tears were
coming out of all fourst of my cellar. A voice
was like a fallowist and rocky home crazy or lucinating.
I'm nervous, I'm bouncing off all the walls.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Roger started to slip into the space he was afraid
of where he was entering into a dangerous forest that
he might never make it out of.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
I was so nervous that one night I fell a spigure.
Must have been after midnight, like I armed behind my
I had a real bad dream. I woke up from
these bad dreams, and all of a sudden, I felt
this presence behind me, and I turned my head and
rooting roll and I spotted these five fingers. Well, I
had jumped so high they all took.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
And it was around this time when Roger started to
become frightened of his own limbs. When it happened a
bonafide Christmas miracle. On Christmas Eve, suddenly a vision came
to visit Roger in his solitary cell. But this time,
for once, it wasn't a vision at all. It was real.
(28:49):
A tall man in a navy blue uniform entered his
cell and regarded Roger with a warm look on his face.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Christmas Eve around a state of populdn't you go?
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Open?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
And then he walked a captain in the Salvation Army guy.
And first time I had ever seen one of these
guys in a hole, like for two years they lived
in a hole, never seen anything.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Salvation Army offers the true spirit of Christmas. The man
from the Salvation Army firmly shook Roger's hand and gave
him a gift.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
They gave you a personalized Christmas card. And then he
gave me a bag of candies and Mike Candy Shop
with Mormon of jelly beans, all kinds of carsn't it.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Roger looked down at the jelly beans and card in disbelief.
As the man tipped his hat, said Merry Christmas and
was gone.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
They closed the door. I sick crossed lady on the floor.
So I got these jelly beans. I want to eat
them all right away, I said, no, six hours, it's
going to be Christmas eve. I'm going to wait until
a shift changes, when the guards come, and I'll know
it's midnight and it's it's a Merry Christmas, Roger, and
then eat on my tige beans.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
But as midnight approached, Roger kept staring at his jelly beans.
They were the first objects that weren't prison food or
an army blanket or a book that he'd been allowed
in the hole. And they were so beautiful, so perfect.
Some of them were colors he quite literally hadn't seen
in years. It seemed a waste to chew them up
(30:26):
and swallow them, so he thought about what else he
could use them for. He saw his least favorite guard
glaring at him through the skylight, and then this.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Suddenly came to me as a Christmas heat. But I
only tell him what I think of is is that
you know, I saw a writing word on the floor,
a real nasty word on the floor. Then he came
with it being malicious as directed him not playing the game,
and a good king of nasty word to only three
or four of them as well.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
So as the clock turned over to Christmas, Roger spelled
out the word pig on the floor with his jelly
beans and looked up at the skylight expectantly. When the
guard appeared in the window, pull.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
My hands back. I looked up at him. He looks
at the word. All of a sudden, he became livid.
Just show me with rage, you know, Please start banging
and saying this and that. I look at it like
he's crazy. You know, what's the matter with you? Boston.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Roger had tried many things to intentionally enrage the guard
since he'd been down there, but nothing had got a
reaction like this. It was beautiful when.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
He's shaking his fast like you know what's happening, you know.
Speaker 12 (31:35):
Then he walked away mumbling to himself, and I sat
there and on I says, my god, the power of
the written word is incredible.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
The next guard got the word dog, the one after
that jerk. For two days, Roger racked his brain to
spell the worst three and four letter words he could
think of.
Speaker 12 (31:55):
Four days after I was expressing myself, I found a
goon squad come charging myself with clubs and as masks,
pinned me up against the wall, and he confiscated my
jelly beans. I was using my fist, I was using
my stupidity all these years, and I wasn't getting nowhere.
All of a sudden, I just reverted to a few words,
and I got a terrific reaction of it.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
And this was it.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Roger had only written a few monosyllabic words out of
jelly beans. But even in the moment, he knew that something,
a much bigger shift was happening.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Are knew something happened in my life.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
He needed to write more words. He needed to But
how when he remembered that all inmates were granted upon request,
something he never thought to ask for.
Speaker 13 (32:43):
Suddenly I found myself asking the school teacher if he
would send me down some pencils in a scribber, not
knowing why or what, except that this compulsion in need
his urge to express my inner aguage, my turmoil.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
As the stationary and pencils make their way down to
the hole, it's worth pausing to point out the unlikelihood
of what happened next. This man had almost no education,
he had no voice. He was the bottom of the
bottom of the bottom of the prison and society. And
(33:18):
against all of this, his words were about to change everything.
Go Boy is a production from Campside Media in partnership
(33:41):
with iHeart Podcasts. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Go Boy was written
and hosted by me Sam LLINs. Our producer is Rob
Lindsay of Paradox Pictures. Laine Rose is our senior producer.
Sound design, mix and engineering by Garrett Tiedeman. Original music
(34:05):
by Garrett Tiedemant, fact checking by Michael Kenyon Meyer. Selected
archival clips are from CBC Licensing. The book Go Boy
was written by Roger Kuran. iHeart Podcasts Executive producers are
Lindsay Hoffman and Jennifer Bassett. Excerpts from Roger Koran's book
(34:25):
Go Boy, read by Jamie Cavanaugh. Special thanks to Kingston
Pantentry Tours and Greg Guthrow from Saint Lawrence Parks Commission.
Thanks also to Canada's Penitentiary Museum, Mike Schreider, Dave Saint
Ounge and Correctional Service Canada. Campside Media's executive producers are
Josh Dean, Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Cher. A
(34:50):
special thanks to our operations team Doug Slaywyn, Ashley Warren,
Sabina Marra and Destiny Dingle. If you enjoyed Go Boy,
please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening.
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