April 3, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Bryan Dawson went from being a typical suburban high school football player to becoming such a notorious and dangerous fugitive that world-famous bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman refused to pursue him. Here's Bryan with his astonishing story of redemption.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
And this next story, well it's close to home. And
by the way, the best stories that we all have
are right near us. Folks in our neighborhood and our families,
in our churches, in our businesses, and here in our
American stories. We've gotten to know one of our workers,
(00:31):
an affiliate sales guy from Alabama and a great guy,
a great family. Well, he shared his story with me
and I was just well, it wasn't just me, it
was everybody in the room listening. It was as if
we were hearing a movie being told, a great movie,
a compelling movie. It was a heck of a story,
and so we asked him to tell it. And so,
(00:53):
without further ado, this is a story about everything folks, love, hate, family,
and redempation.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I had a pattern in my life with girls putting
me in the friend zone. The very first girl that
ever put me in the friend zone, I remember, was
in eighth grade. I was in Mister Dunnscience class and
I remember leaning over to my friend Ryan and saying,
who's that And neither of us knew who she was,
and I developed the courage to ask her to eighth
grade graduation dance, and I guess what I mean by
(01:24):
developed the courage. I asked one of her friends to
ask her if she would go to the eighth grade
graduation dance with me.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
And she said yes.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
After that, I told her how much I liked her,
wanted to be with her, professed my you know, undying
love for her, and she put me in the friend zone.
And that would be a pattern that we want for
the kind of the long haul, you know. Looking back
at my childhood, and there's a couple of key moments
that really stick out to me, you know, as far
(01:52):
as I can remember, you know, my mom and my
dad never really being together, like that's never a memory
that I can remember them actually being together, being married.
But I do remember, as it got to be about
my first grade year, my mother joined the army. She
would kind of bounced around from job to job and
couldn't find anything solid, and she really wanted to do
something to support us. And I have a brother, Brad,
(02:13):
who is he's two years older than me, but we
have different dads. She eventually got stationed in Germany and
that launched into a giant custody battle. My dad was
a very responsible, hard working, structured individual, and the obvious
best place for me would have been with my father,
But the court's tendency is to always place the child
(02:37):
with the mother unless there's just an absolute, you know,
crazy circumstance that would lead them to do otherwise. But
at that point, I was going to be with my dad,
and my mom had me go out to lunch right
before really they were going to make their decision, and
we had a lunch with my brother, and she basically said, well,
you don't want to leave your brother to you, and
(02:59):
you know there's ass in Germany, and basically said all
the things to you'd want to tell a kid to
make them want to go that way. And I just
remember the biggest feeling having is that I didn't want
to leave my brother. I didn't want to leave my
brother in that environment without me to be there with him.
And I was I think seven years old at that time.
And I went back and told the judge that I
(03:20):
didn't want to go with my dad, as I had
said previously, that I that I wanted to go with
my mom, and that was ended up being the ruling.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
After all the time and money and everything that.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Was spent in that custody battle, and I remember leaving
the courthouse that day at seven years old, six years old,
whatever it was, and my dad looking down at me
as we waited for the light to turn across the road.
He said, you know, I'm very disappointed in you. And
that kind of set a pattern really for the rest
of my life with my father that I was kind
of a disappointment. And then when we moved to Germany,
(03:51):
my mom was still with this abusive guy. He's the
one that convinced her to join the army. And when
we moved to Germany, we lived in what's called the econ,
so we didn't live on base. We lived in an
apartment above a pub, and the pub was called Klaus's Pub,
and my mom and her husband, Dave, would drink every night,
(04:12):
and they would fight every night, and sometimes it would
become abusive, and sometimes the screaming and all those things
got to be so bad. My brother and I would
always wonder if it was going to be us next,
And fortunately we were never physically abused.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
But you know, I.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Remember wanting to protect my mom, but only being you know,
eight years old and small and having this desire to
protect my mom and inability to do so, and it
kind of developed feelings of cowardice that I wasn't able.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
To protect my mom.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
That all came to an end when we started going
to church, and well she left Dave.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
We moved on Base.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
We started going to church, you know, Sunday morning, Sunday night,
and on Wednesdays, and every time the doors were open.
We got involved and really began to experience a sense
of belonging. And that went on for about a year,
and there was no drinking, and it was like this
stability in our lives. It was like the calm and
the storm of my life as I looked back on it.
I remember coming home from school one day. It was
(05:12):
one of my last days of fourth grade, and I
came home and my mom had been, you know, free
from drinking for a year, free from partying. Our life
was you know, so much better. I mean, I came
home and there was a beer sitting on the end
table beside the couch.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
And I looked at the.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Beer, and I looked at my mom, and I knew
that we were going back into that lifestyle and that
all that peace and calm was over. I was old
enough to equate beer with pain, and you know, my
mom drinking beer and alcohol with pain and suffering for
my brother and I and instability. And I remember being
(05:49):
fueled and filled with hatred and anger towards my mother,
and I remember screaming at her and telling her that
I hated her and I wanted nothing to do with her.
And then I wanted to move back to the States
and I wanted to move in with my dad. Then
when I moved in with my dad, I used to
go to church with my friend and his mom, and
we would go to church and it would be fun
(06:09):
and it would be fine, but then we'd get in
the car and his mom would gossip about everybody in
the church all the way home. And then she would
pick us up, and she actually gave us a ride
to school on the days that the weather was bad,
and she would just gossip about people in the church
the whole way to school and the whole way back,
and I'm like, you people are ridiculous. And so what
(06:29):
I did is I took a few Christians and I
labeled all Christians as these few, right, And so my mind,
I had this core belief that all Christians were these gossipy,
judgmental people, and so I hated them.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And when we come back, we continue with this really
raw and really real story, and it's Brian Dawson's story
here on our American Stories. Folks, if you love the
(07:27):
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(07:49):
and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot Com. And we're back here at
(08:14):
our American Stories and we continue this remarkable story again,
one that comes close to home as close as can
be right here on our own staff. Let's continue with
Brian Dawson's story.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
My mom moved back from Germany and she went to
Colorida Springs. So I went and spent a summer with
my mom in Colorado. Well, my brother was two years
older than me, and he had friends that were, you know,
drinking beer and drinking liquor and going camping and smoking
pot and doing all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
And I went out there.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I'd never been exposed to any of that stuff personally,
obviously seeing my mom drinking and things like that, but
never personally. And you know, I remember, you know, drinking
a beer and then you know, trying And the first
first liquor I ever tasted was Hot Damn one hundred.
And I was the little brother of not only my
big brother, but that whole group, and I fit in.
(09:09):
And the more I drank, the more I fit in,
and the more I drank, the more comfortable I was
in my own skin. You know, they call it liquid courage,
but it was so much more than liquid courage.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
For me.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It was liquid I can actually deal with life. Everything
in my life. I've always been very intense and very
all in whatever it was that I was doing. And
I began to drink heavily. I was drinking tequila, whiskey,
hot dam that whole summer and the following summer I
went back to Colorado and I started to smoke pot.
And as I smoked pot, it was the same thing.
(09:39):
You know, I just enjoyed not being who I guess
I thought I was. You know, I eventually made when
I was sixteen years old, I got my driver's license,
I made a fake ID on a computer, and I
got to the point where I could go and buy liquor.
And then I became very popular for that reason. So
there was a lot of it was fitting in and
all of those things. And I would go and I
was able to, you know, buy liquor for these parties,
(10:02):
which made me like the coolest person in the party.
And you know, I would drink to the point of
blacking out once or twice a week. And this is
his a sixteen year old. And meanwhile I was, you know,
working a job at Dylan's, which is a Kroger store,
and playing football, playing baseball, and somewhat maintaining my grades.
I went from a straight A student to probably about
(10:23):
a C student, and I just I stopped caring about school,
which is interesting because up to that point, when I started,
you know, drinking and doing drugs, all I cared about
was school. I got straight a's, I scored off the
charts on all these tests, the standardized tests, and I
didn't care about school anymore. All I cared about was
the social aspect. The partying the girls and being wasted. Basically,
(10:47):
the summer between my junior and senior year, I went
out to Colorado and my brother was a driver for
a I wouldn't say notorious, but a pretty big time
drug dealer in Colorado Springs.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
His name was Casey, and my brother had a driver's
license and a nice truck. So Casey would just.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Have him drive him around and you know, they'd be
dropping you know, mostly pop, but you know, whatever around
and the craziest things would happen.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Man.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
So I spent the whole summer riding around with them,
you know, just seeing him be this alpha male that
everyone looked up to and everyone respected, and he had money,
and he had girls, and he had all these things.
And I'm like, that's what I want to do. So
I went back to Kansas that summer.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
And here's the thing.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Up to that point, I was excelling in football, and
I did really well in baseball too, But I excelled
in football. And we had a great football team that year,
and I was really coming into my own as a
defensive end and a tight end on offense, and we
were expected to do really really well that year, and
I was so torn between really wanting to pour myself
(11:49):
into football or pour myself into this party life. And
I had tried cocaine when I was out there, so
I was really starting to do more serious drugs as
I'm going into my senior year and my senior year,
and I got about two weeks into it, and I
snuck out of the house and I went and tried
ecstasy with some of my friends, and a couple of
the guys were actually football players on the team, and
(12:11):
I remember trying to sneak back in and I got caught,
and he told me that I had to quit football
and go to rehab, or I could quit football and
go to Colorado, but I wasn't going to continue playing football.
This is really when the resentment with my dad hit
hits peak. So I decided to quit football and move
back to Colorado with my mom. And what that basically
meant is I was on my own, and I just
(12:31):
started partying full blown. And I started working for Casey
and started selling weed and got involved in that lifestyle.
And then I started doing cocaine on a pretty regular basis.
And as I did cocaine, I realized, hey, man, I
can't pay for cocaine selling weed. So I started selling cocaine,
and I just had this knack and this ability to
rise to the top in these in these I guess,
(12:53):
you know, drug dealer ladders of influence.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
I just had a knack for that life.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
And so I started selling a little bit of cocainex
you know, I was selling a lot of coke, and
I was doing a lot of coke, and it got
to the point it was so bad. I would have
to take Xanax to go to sleep, and then I
would wake up the next day, and really the next evening,
at like four or five in the evening, I'd wake up,
I'd blow my nose and snot and cocaine and blood
would come out. My nose would just be bleeding and
(13:19):
bleeding and bleeding. As soon as it would start to
kind of slow down a little bit, I would do
another line and start drinking.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And then that was what I did.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
And it got so bad to where I couldn't even
like breathe out of my nose anymore. My friend tried
to introduce me to crack, and I'm like, this isn't
for me. So then he he had me try crystal meth,
and that was it. And once I did crystal meth,
it was There was no having to take Xanax to
(13:46):
go to sleep, there was no drinking whiskey to mellow out.
It was just it was wide open. And already at
this point when I started doing meth, I already had
my first felony arrest. I was arrested with a half
ounce of cocaine and bonded out and got probation and
all those things, and didn't slow me down. I continue
to use drugs, continued to party, didn't go to my
(14:06):
probation appointments, didn't do any of those things. And I
got to a point where I was very well known
in Calver Springs for my ability to sell drugs and
do a number of other things. And I remember getting
a phone call from a girl named Camille, and she said,
I've got some pretty serious guys that I know that
want to talk to you about, you know, kind of
(14:28):
you partnering with them or working with them, And so
I came to.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Her apartment and I walked into her apartment. I remember it.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
It was kind of an uneasy feeling, and there was
some very mean looking, dark, nefarious looking individuals that were
Hispanic guys, Mexican guys, and they had handkerchiefs on over
their faces, but they were in suits. It was weird,
(14:57):
and I'm like, well, I'm either going to get killed
or this is going to go really well. And you know,
they sat out and just talked to me and asked
me a bunch of questions and asked me what I
could do for him. And I think they were kind
of new to coming into Colorado Springs to do what
they it was that they were wanting to do, and
they needed somebody to help them. So they asked me
to do that, and I did that, and not long
after that, I ended up getting in a high speed
(15:18):
chase with the cops and ran and I had a
briefcase with meth and a pistol, got pulled over with that,
got arrested, bent four and a half months in jail,
County jail on that, got probation again, got out, went
right back to it. I mean, by that time, a
lot of my connections had either gone back to Mexico
or had been arrested as well. And I got into basically,
(15:39):
I mean, I guess what it looked like was we
would steal four wheelers and motorcycles and things like that
and give them to Mexicans that were bringing back across
the border in New Mexico, and then they would pay
us some drugs. I was supposedly the ring leader of
that whole thing. I don't know how true that was,
but that's the way it was in the copsize and
they busted a house that had some of those motorcycles
(16:00):
in them, and they pressured the guy who was there,
and he told on me and said, you know it
was me. I was the one that was doing this.
I was ringing all these rings. So he and a
bunch of other people had told the cops that I
was responsible for, you know, all this crime that was
going on. And I eventually got arrested and I did
another four months in county jail and ended up bonding
(16:21):
out after those four months. And in that time I
got my discovery and it said that you know who
had told on me. I was out driving around up
to no good. I'd been up for four days, and
we drove by the guy's house who told on me,
who was the main informant in the case, and the
guy was with kept pumping me up. Oh no, we
have to go in there. You know, we can't let him,
(16:43):
you know, just let him tell on you and you're
not doing anything. And so we went, you know, went
up to the front door, knocked on the door, and
he opened the door and walked in the house and
asked him why I told on me, and he said,
you know told me, well, I didn't tell any Brian,
I would never tell on you, and I knew that
he had. He was the informant in my case. So
I began to beat him up really really bad. And
(17:05):
the guy was with hit him in the head with
a blunt force object. It was called a blackjack, and
it cracked his head open, and I thought he was
going to die. So, you know, we grabbed a few
objects out of his house and we left, and by
the time I got back to my house, I ended
up getting arrested and charged with attempted.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Murder, aggravated robbery, and extortion.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
And on top of all that, this was a guy
who was states evidence, so he was an informant that
I did all these things too, so that aggravated it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And my goodness, what a story. And when we come back,
you won't believe where it turns and where it goes.
Brian Dawson's story, one of our staffers here and our
American Stories more after these messages, and we returned to
(18:12):
Brian dawson story here on our American Stories, And let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
I was on the run.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
I bonded out again and I was out on like
I don't know, a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of bonds,
and I was supposed to go to a court date
and I ended up not going to that court date.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
So I became a fugitive.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And shortly after that, I became one of Colorado Springs
most wanted criminals, most wanted fugitives.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
And it was intense.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I mean they were raiding houses, they were setting up
perimeters all throughout Colora Springs as I don't know if
you've ever seen them, like they basically have roads blocked
off and they're showing pictures of meat every car that
stops and goes through there. If you ever followed Dog
the Bounty Hunter, Dog the Bounty Hunter did most of
his shows in Colorado Springs some and why, but most
of them were in Colorda Springs, and Dog the Bounty
(19:01):
Hunter was on a seventy two hours seventy two fugitive
sweep when I was on.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
The run, and.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
He said he wasn't going to go after me because
I was supposedly, you know, too threatening or menacing or
whatever for him to go after me. So it became
very real, and there was a couple of near misses
where they almost had me and I was able to
escape from him, and then they finally caught me and
I was in my safe I guess called a safe house.
It was the third story apartment in Colorado Springs, and
(19:30):
they finally closed in on me. And I remember sitting
in the apartment that day. I was watching the Chappelle Show.
It was my last day out, July nineteenth, two thousand
and seven. I'm watching the Chappelle show. Cook and brought
Worst in this apartment and I look out the window
and I'm on the third story and I see the
front end of a cop car and I know that
it's a cop car, and I.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Knew that was it. I just knew.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I knew, Okay, well, this is it. And there wasn't
much in the apartment, but there was a recliner that
was wider than the window was, so I'd taken a
nylon rope, a repelling rope, and I tied it to
the bottom of the recliner and I hear the door pounding.
Carter Springs police open up and they're kicking indoors making
their way down to me. So I kick out the
(20:10):
window and wrap my hand around the rope and I
jump out the window and the recliner sticks and wedges
right in the window, just like I wanted it to.
And as I'm hanging there around both sides of this
apartment building, these police come flooding and there's forty or
fifty cops made up of El Paso County Sheriff's deputies,
Carter Springs Police department. They come pouring around the side
with their guns pulled and drawn on me. You know,
(20:31):
get on the ground, Get on the ground, Get the
f on the ground. And I'm like, I don't know
where else I'm gonna go. And I look up and
there's cops, you know, cops above me, cops below me.
So I pulled up a little bit on the rope,
unwrapped the rope with my hand and dropped and I
dropped three stories and I landed. And it's a miracle
that I didn't get hurt there, but I landed and
rolled and then there was two canine units right there
(20:53):
with the dogs barking in my face. And I remember
laying there and I could feel the heat from the dogs.
I'm just like with these dogs, don't bite me. But
that was it, and an officer stuck his knee in
my back and cuffed me. They put me in the
back of the cop car. And the craziest thing is
I remember the relief that I had as I sat
in the back of that cop car because I knew
(21:13):
it was all over. I remember Rihanna's Umbrella song was
on in the cop car as we were heading, you know,
to County jail.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I just had a sense of peace for whatever reason, and.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I ended up getting into County jail, where I would
find out that I was facing three hundred and eighty
four years in prison. With facing that much time, I
started to get involved in with some rough groups in
the jail, thinking that I'm going away to prison for
the rest of my life.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
I have to make an aim for myself.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
I have to be tough. I have to be this guy,
this prison guy. So I get into a bunch of fights.
You know, I'm going up to these older kind of
gangster guys and they're saying, why I.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Need you to go beat this gup? And I need
you to go beat that gup.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
So I'm doing these things and I eventually end up
in administrative segregation, which is when you are in a
con crete cell. It's about eight foot by twelve foot
and there's a bunk in there. There's a metal bunk
with a fire retardant mattress and a fire retardant pillow
and a sink that is attached to a toilet. It's
(22:13):
a one piece toilet, sink and a desk and that's it.
That's all you have in there. And I was in
there for twenty three hours a day and I would
get one hour where I could go make a phone call,
take a shower, and I would go back in my cell.
And I was there for several months. And in that
timeframe that I was in administrative segregation, I had a revelation.
It was one of the it was an epiphany. It
(22:34):
was an AHA moment, and it seems silly, but it was.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
It was. It was huge.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
As I look back on it, it's the point as
I try and counsel people who have been through these
things before, or that are going through these things now
because people come to me because I've been through them before.
They asked me, you know, what would you tell them?
And this was the one thing that happened that I'm
sitting in the administrative segregation in this in this cell
by myself, been there for a couple months, and all
(23:03):
of a sudden, I realized.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
This is my fault. This is all my fault. And
I know that.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Seems sillier, it sounds, you know, stupid or whatever, but
really no, this is all my fault. Because up to
that point I blamed it on my mom. I blamed
it on my dad. I blamed it on the judges.
I blamed it on everyone but me. I blamed it
on corrupt system. You know, all these district attorneys. I mean,
you name it. I blamed everybody. But then all of
a sudden, I realized this is my fault. And it
(23:33):
was so liberating and it was so freeing because I
realized if my choices created this circumstances, certainly I could
make better choices that would create better circumstances. And I
came to this realization that my choices are what create
my circumstances, not the other way around. I wasn't a
victim that I'd created these circumstances through my choices. And
(23:55):
from that moment forward, I made a decision that I
was going to do things differently, and I did. And
it wasn't I had habits, I had, you know, thought patterns.
I had all these things that were wrong. But I
knew that I could make better choices than I was
responsible for my choices, and I started doing that. And
from that moment I got on the phone, I called
my grandma with tears in my eyes and told her
(24:16):
that I was going away forever. And she said, you know,
I can tell there's been a huge change in your life, Brian.
I can't put my finger on it. I don't know
what it is, but I can tell there's something very
different about you, because up to this point they all
cut me off.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I burn every bridge in my family. They were done
with me.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
She said, we're going to get you an attorney, and
she did, and the next day I went to court.
Someone that was supposed to show up to the court
date to be a witness in my trial if I
went to trial that day didn't show up.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
So they had to postpone it for two weeks. Total miracle.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
The attorney was able to take my case and get
me into what's called a mediation hearing. And what a
mediation hearing is is where you basically go into arbitration
with your sentence and it's like a used car's heels. Well,
i'll give you this, well, no we want that. Well
i'll give you this and no we want that. And
they started at thirty two years and I start it
eight years, and a mediator went back and forth between
the district attorney and my lawyer and I back and forth,
(25:05):
back and forth. They finally came down to a fifteen
year sentence with a crime of violence, sense and answer,
And I told him I don't want that sentence to answer.
I don't want to be labeled a violent criminal. I
don't want to go to some hardcore prison and end
up with swastkas all over my face and turn into
that guy. I want to change my life. I want
a chance at changing my life. I said, tell her,
I'll give her a year if she drops.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
That chrime of violence.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
So I ended up getting sentenced to sixteen years and
they dropped the crime of violence and I went back
to my cell after that mediation, and I knew that
God had moved in my life. So I got sentenced.
I got sentenced to sixteen years, and then I went
to the Denver Reception Diagnostic Center. This is a maximum
security prison, and you roll up in a van and
there's rolls upon rolls of razor wire. There's gun towers
(25:48):
with armed guards in the gun towers. They've got these
little mirrors that go under the vans that see if
there's bombs under the vans, and it's just it was
very sobering. It was very real that hey, I'm in prison,
that's happening now. And I went in there and I
was there for a little while, and they sent me
to my first facility in Warefenold County Correctional Center. It
(26:10):
was Wallsenburg, Colorado, and it was a private prison. And
there's a lot of bad things that surrounded the idea
of private prisons, but I had nothing but a very
positive experience there. It was very evident that everybody there
that was involved with the staff members there, from our
case managers to the teachers and things like that, that
they wanted criminals to be rehabilitated, and they had a
(26:32):
lot of programs, so I immediately started taking programs. I
got my GED while I was at Wallsenburg, and then
I started taking college classes. And then I became a
guy that helped other guys get their GED. And that's
what I did for working there, as I was a
tutor and I helped people get their GDS.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And when we come back the final installment of this
remarkable story, one that hits close to home, our own
Brian Dawson. His story continues here on our American Story.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Person.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
And we returned to Brian Dawson's story and what a
story it is, and again this one hits close to home.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
He's one of our people.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And by the way, it just shows you that anything
can happen in a person's life. Here he is in prison,
and he's already you can hear it. He's a changed
guy and he wants to just get through this and
come out on the other side. And so he's reoriented
himself and his life right there, you know what may
be the very worst place in America to be as
a young man. Let's return to Brian's story.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
I was there for about nine months, but the very
first person I met when I walked into Wolsenburg. Was
a guy with the named of Charles Frederick and he
comes up to me. He's this big guy, big burly guy,
and he says, hey, my name is Charles, and I'm
a Christian. And this is a faith pod. So in
these prisons they had these pods are called faith pods,
and it was basically pods or units made up of
(28:30):
about one hundred and twenty inmates, and it was dedicated
to discipleship.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
And I don't know how I landed in there, why
I landed in.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
There, but I was there, and Charles began to just
tell me about Christ, tell me about who Jesus was,
tell me about the Gospel.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I told him, Charles, I don't want to hear that stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
You know, I don't care, and you know, he just
said okay, and then he began to talk to me
about other things, and he met my physical needs. He
gave me coffee, he gave me shorts, he gave me,
you know, things that you know, you get in there.
You got nothing other than a couple of pairs of
underwear and a green suit. So he helped me was
some of those things and just became my friend. And
as conversation would permit, he would tell me about Christ
(29:05):
and that would go on for about nine months.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
He got shipped to another prison. I left that prison.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
They shut that prison down and my security level dropped
and I bounced around a little bit for a couple
of years, and then I ended up in Sterling Correctional
Facility in Sterling, Colorado. The first person I see there's
Charles again and he starts telling me about Jesus Christ again,
and I'm like, man, I don't want to hear this stuff.
Well we're there for a little bit, and he goes, hey,
you know you got parole coming up in a couple
of years. It would be good for you to have
(29:30):
some certificates to, you know, show the parole board. I'm
like okay, and he goes, well, i'm the chaplain's assistant.
I can get you in some programs. I'm like, oka, yeah,
go ahead, sign me up. So he signs me up
and they end up being faith based programs and I'm like, oh,
I hate you, Charles. But the very first program I
went into was a come as you are. We love everybody,
you know, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, whatever, just come as you are.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
And I went there and.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
It was it was okay, but I experienced fellowship and
I met other Christians that were like Charles, who are true,
genuine Christian who lived this out. They didn't just say
they were Christians with their mouth. They lived it and
you could see the wisdom and things that they had
and I was attracted to that. And that went on
for about thirteen weeks. That class was over, and then
Charles got me into another program called The Truth Project,
(30:15):
which is put out by Focus on the Family and
doctor del Tacket. Amazing program, but when I got in there,
it was not come as you are. It was this
is what the Bible says. And I didn't like that.
And I would sit we would watch a video for
an hour, and then we would have table discussion. At
the table discussion, I would argue with everyone there and
tell them how stupid they were for believing what they
you know, that they believe these things, and I almost
(30:36):
got into a couple of fights with those guys. And
about three weeks into it, we were walking back to
the unit and Charles just asked me. He says, Brian,
why don't you just give him a chance. And I'd
been asked that question before and fought it and fought
it and fought it, and for whatever reason, I said, okay, Charles.
So I went back to my cell that night and
(30:57):
I prayed, okay, God, to believe these things, to have
a relationship with you, give me some kind of a sign.
And I went to bed that night. I remember being
in a really deep sleep and I had a nightmare.
And in that nightmare, I fell off of a cliff
and I woke up, startled out of a nightmare and
kind of and I looked, and it's really dark in
the cells, and we had we're allowed to have digital
(31:18):
clocks in there, and the digital clock with the red
numbers in the cell said three sixteen. The only Bible
verse I'd ever known as a kid at all was
John three sixteen. And if you know John three sixteen,
it answers the question that I asked him. That's exactly right. Yes,
you do need to believe those things. And I tried
to go back to sleep and just brush it off.
(31:39):
But I looked back at the clock and I felt
like it was three sixteen for like thirty minutes, and
I'm like, okay, maybe there's something to this. And it
was a Sunday morning at three sixteen. So I got
up and I went to went to the church services
that they offered in the prison, and I went and
found my friend Ramon.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
I always had this idea.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
In my head that Christians were weak, and my friend
Ramone was a big black former gang bang that had
become a Christian. And there was nothing softer week about
this guy. So I'm like, Okay, I'll go with him.
And I'm sitting in the very back row, in the
very far aside as he goes through the sermon, and
at the end of the sermon, the pastor does what
he calls an invitation. I look at Ramon and I say,
(32:15):
what's an invitation? And he goes He can say, oh,
it's where you go make a decision for Christ, or
you invite Jesus in your hearty and say any of
that stuff. He said, if you've got something in your
life it's hindering your relationship with God, you can go
up there and pray with that man about it. So
I went up there and I prayed with Chaplain Davis.
And to tell you a little about him, he's a
(32:37):
hard man, a callous man, a cowboy. He's a man's man.
He's a prison chaplain and he doesn't do hugs, he
doesn't do any of those kind of things. And he
grabbed my hand to pray, and I could feel a
callous is on his hands, and he slaps me on
the shoulder with his other hand, and he says, how
can I pray for you? And I told him, I said, look,
you know I don't. I'm not here to make any decisions.
(32:57):
I just I need you to pray that God would
move this callous from my heart, because it's hardened and
it's angry, and it's angry towards Christians. So I want
him to soften my heart so that the truth can
come in. And Chaplain Davis prayed that, and I remember
looking up after we were done praying, and he's in
front of one hundred and thirty inmates with tears pouring
down his face. And I knew something was very real
(33:20):
about this, and I didn't know how to describe it,
but it was very real. And I would later find
out that Chaplain Davis and Charles had been praying for
me for about a year and a half that I
would get saved. And from that moment forward, I began
to read my Bible. I read my Bible every single day.
I would get up and read my Bible, read my Bible.
I was at every single church service that they offered,
(33:41):
any faith based program they had.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
In that prison I was there. There was a huge change.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I went from telling these people they were stupid for
believing what they did to absolutely believing it, basically overnight.
That went on for about a year. And my friends
all had pinpals that they were writing when they were
in prison. So I prayed and said, all right, God,
I'd like to have a pinpound. I got on the
phone with my mom and she was running a Facebook
page for me. She says, you got a friend request
(34:07):
from a girl. I'm like, okay, cool, who is it?
And she goes, do you know a girl named Christina Ewen.
I'm like, yeah, I know Christina Ewan.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Why. She goes, well, she sent you a friend request.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
She remembered you, and that she's been trying to find
you for, you know, on and.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Off for the last ten years. Said did you tell
her I was in prison?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Ye?
Speaker 3 (34:26):
I told her you in prison. She doesn't care. She
wants to write you. I'm like, well that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
So I got her address, and everything we did, all
of our correspondence was based on christ and what God
was doing in our lives, and that was it. And
that went on for several months, and I just knew
that this was too crazy for it not to be
godlining this up for something bigger. But I was scared
to death because she's rejected me so many times in
the past.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
And I had to write a letter.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And I sat down and wrote this letter and said, look,
you know, I just I feel like, you know this
is kind of something that may be meant to be,
and that you know, I know it's asking a lot
of you, but you know this this is.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Meant for something more.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I get the letter back, and I remember hearing it
at mail call and seeing that the letter was from Christina,
knowing that the answer was going to be inside of
that envelope. And I opened the envelope and pulled out
the letter and began to read it, and in the
very first paragraph, she said, Brian, I've been thinking the
exact same things, and I know God wants me to
be with you, and that I'm supposed to be here
(35:23):
for you through this time, and that you know that
we're meant to be together and I remember reading that
sitting in prison, and I mean I could have floated
up the steps to go back to my cell.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
It was. It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
So but I put in for a halfway house about
six months after that, so I ended up getting accepted
to that program, my very first time putting in for
a halfway house, which almost never happens with the severity
of my sentence and the size and scope of my sentence.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
So it was.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
It was a very, very tough two years. But I
graduated and Christina was there for the graduation.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
And the first visit I was allowed to go on.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Actually before I graduated, Christina and I got married. We eloped,
I guess you could say we got married at my
grandma's house. So my wife and I now have three daughters,
plus my step son Brennan, who's an absolute stud, brilliant,
smart kid, does very well in sports. And my girls
are three years old is Gracie, two year old is Reagan,
(36:20):
and our one year old is Abigail, and we have
another one on the way. So not only do I
have and this is kind of a cool caveat to
the story, I've got a little piece of property with
a little house and you know, the wife of my
dreams and beautiful children, four beautiful children about to be five.
But I just moved my mom's She has a camper,
(36:42):
and I just moved her camper onto my property. And
my mom, who I had obviously all that resenting animosity
towards she now lives on my property and she's me
MO to the kids, and she got saved about two
years ago and she's a completely different person. So again,
like I could not have sat in jail five, six,
seven years ago, whatever it was and said, Okay, in
(37:03):
five or ten years, this is what I want and
ever thought it would be what it is now.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
And what a story, folks. And I'm tearing up here
because I know Brian and to imagine that that can
happen in people's lives anyone listening, having someone in prison
someplace that you just don't think they can come back from,
My goodness, it's possible. And we do faith based stories here, folks.
We don't shy away from it. There are all kinds
(37:31):
of things that can get people out of a jam,
and sometimes it's God and sometimes it's a secular counselor.
But we don't shy away from the religious aspect of
people's lives. Here on this show, we don't preach, we
don't proselytize.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
But we don't remove it.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
And my goodness, Brian Dawson's story is unimaginable without God.
And send your stories, by the way, if you have
a story like this, and I know you do, because
my goodness is, country's filled with stories like this. We're
we're tired of the negative stories. We want to hear
stories of real hope, not the silly kind. Brian Dawson's
story a beautiful family, a beautiful story of love and redemption.
(38:11):
Here on all American stories here
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
And this next story, well it's close to home. And
by the way, the best stories that we all have
are right near us. Folks in our neighborhood and our families,
in our churches, in our businesses, and here in our
American stories. We've gotten to know one of our workers,
(00:31):
an affiliate sales guy from Alabama and a great guy,
a great family. Well, he shared his story with me
and I was just well, it wasn't just me, it
was everybody in the room listening. It was as if
we were hearing a movie being told, a great movie,
a compelling movie. It was a heck of a story,
and so we asked him to tell it. And so,
(00:53):
without further ado, this is a story about everything folks, love, hate, family,
and redempation.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I had a pattern in my life with girls putting
me in the friend zone. The very first girl that
ever put me in the friend zone, I remember, was
in eighth grade. I was in Mister Dunnscience class and
I remember leaning over to my friend Ryan and saying,
who's that And neither of us knew who she was,
and I developed the courage to ask her to eighth
grade graduation dance, and I guess what I mean by
(01:24):
developed the courage. I asked one of her friends to
ask her if she would go to the eighth grade
graduation dance with me.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
And she said yes.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
After that, I told her how much I liked her,
wanted to be with her, professed my you know, undying
love for her, and she put me in the friend zone.
And that would be a pattern that we want for
the kind of the long haul, you know. Looking back
at my childhood, and there's a couple of key moments
that really stick out to me, you know, as far
(01:52):
as I can remember, you know, my mom and my
dad never really being together, like that's never a memory
that I can remember them actually being together, being married.
But I do remember, as it got to be about
my first grade year, my mother joined the army. She
would kind of bounced around from job to job and
couldn't find anything solid, and she really wanted to do
something to support us. And I have a brother, Brad,
(02:13):
who is he's two years older than me, but we
have different dads. She eventually got stationed in Germany and
that launched into a giant custody battle. My dad was
a very responsible, hard working, structured individual, and the obvious
best place for me would have been with my father,
But the court's tendency is to always place the child
(02:37):
with the mother unless there's just an absolute, you know,
crazy circumstance that would lead them to do otherwise. But
at that point, I was going to be with my dad,
and my mom had me go out to lunch right
before really they were going to make their decision, and
we had a lunch with my brother, and she basically said, well,
you don't want to leave your brother to you, and
(02:59):
you know there's ass in Germany, and basically said all
the things to you'd want to tell a kid to
make them want to go that way. And I just
remember the biggest feeling having is that I didn't want
to leave my brother. I didn't want to leave my
brother in that environment without me to be there with him.
And I was I think seven years old at that time.
And I went back and told the judge that I
(03:20):
didn't want to go with my dad, as I had
said previously, that I that I wanted to go with
my mom, and that was ended up being the ruling.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
After all the time and money and everything that.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Was spent in that custody battle, and I remember leaving
the courthouse that day at seven years old, six years old,
whatever it was, and my dad looking down at me
as we waited for the light to turn across the road.
He said, you know, I'm very disappointed in you. And
that kind of set a pattern really for the rest
of my life with my father that I was kind
of a disappointment. And then when we moved to Germany,
(03:51):
my mom was still with this abusive guy. He's the
one that convinced her to join the army. And when
we moved to Germany, we lived in what's called the econ,
so we didn't live on base. We lived in an
apartment above a pub, and the pub was called Klaus's Pub,
and my mom and her husband, Dave, would drink every night,
(04:12):
and they would fight every night, and sometimes it would
become abusive, and sometimes the screaming and all those things
got to be so bad. My brother and I would
always wonder if it was going to be us next,
And fortunately we were never physically abused.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
But you know, I.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Remember wanting to protect my mom, but only being you know,
eight years old and small and having this desire to
protect my mom and inability to do so, and it
kind of developed feelings of cowardice that I wasn't able.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
To protect my mom.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
That all came to an end when we started going
to church, and well she left Dave.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
We moved on Base.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
We started going to church, you know, Sunday morning, Sunday night,
and on Wednesdays, and every time the doors were open.
We got involved and really began to experience a sense
of belonging. And that went on for about a year,
and there was no drinking, and it was like this
stability in our lives. It was like the calm and
the storm of my life as I looked back on it.
I remember coming home from school one day. It was
(05:12):
one of my last days of fourth grade, and I
came home and my mom had been, you know, free
from drinking for a year, free from partying. Our life
was you know, so much better. I mean, I came
home and there was a beer sitting on the end
table beside the couch.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
And I looked at the.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Beer, and I looked at my mom, and I knew
that we were going back into that lifestyle and that
all that peace and calm was over. I was old
enough to equate beer with pain, and you know, my
mom drinking beer and alcohol with pain and suffering for
my brother and I and instability. And I remember being
(05:49):
fueled and filled with hatred and anger towards my mother,
and I remember screaming at her and telling her that
I hated her and I wanted nothing to do with her.
And then I wanted to move back to the States
and I wanted to move in with my dad. Then
when I moved in with my dad, I used to
go to church with my friend and his mom, and
we would go to church and it would be fun
(06:09):
and it would be fine, but then we'd get in
the car and his mom would gossip about everybody in
the church all the way home. And then she would
pick us up, and she actually gave us a ride
to school on the days that the weather was bad,
and she would just gossip about people in the church
the whole way to school and the whole way back,
and I'm like, you people are ridiculous. And so what
(06:29):
I did is I took a few Christians and I
labeled all Christians as these few, right, And so my mind,
I had this core belief that all Christians were these gossipy,
judgmental people, and so I hated them.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And when we come back, we continue with this really
raw and really real story, and it's Brian Dawson's story
here on our American Stories. Folks, if you love the
(07:27):
great American stories we tell and love America like we do,
we're asking you to become a part of the Our
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becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to our American
Stories dot com now and go to the donate button
(07:49):
and help us keep the great American stories coming. That's
our American Stories dot Com. And we're back here at
(08:14):
our American Stories and we continue this remarkable story again,
one that comes close to home as close as can
be right here on our own staff. Let's continue with
Brian Dawson's story.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
My mom moved back from Germany and she went to
Colorida Springs. So I went and spent a summer with
my mom in Colorado. Well, my brother was two years
older than me, and he had friends that were, you know,
drinking beer and drinking liquor and going camping and smoking
pot and doing all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
And I went out there.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I'd never been exposed to any of that stuff personally,
obviously seeing my mom drinking and things like that, but
never personally. And you know, I remember, you know, drinking
a beer and then you know, trying And the first
first liquor I ever tasted was Hot Damn one hundred.
And I was the little brother of not only my
big brother, but that whole group, and I fit in.
(09:09):
And the more I drank, the more I fit in,
and the more I drank, the more comfortable I was
in my own skin. You know, they call it liquid courage,
but it was so much more than liquid courage.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
For me.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
It was liquid I can actually deal with life. Everything
in my life. I've always been very intense and very
all in whatever it was that I was doing. And
I began to drink heavily. I was drinking tequila, whiskey,
hot dam that whole summer and the following summer I
went back to Colorado and I started to smoke pot.
And as I smoked pot, it was the same thing.
(09:39):
You know, I just enjoyed not being who I guess
I thought I was. You know, I eventually made when
I was sixteen years old, I got my driver's license,
I made a fake ID on a computer, and I
got to the point where I could go and buy liquor.
And then I became very popular for that reason. So
there was a lot of it was fitting in and
all of those things. And I would go and I
was able to, you know, buy liquor for these parties,
(10:02):
which made me like the coolest person in the party.
And you know, I would drink to the point of
blacking out once or twice a week. And this is
his a sixteen year old. And meanwhile I was, you know,
working a job at Dylan's, which is a Kroger store,
and playing football, playing baseball, and somewhat maintaining my grades.
I went from a straight A student to probably about
(10:23):
a C student, and I just I stopped caring about school,
which is interesting because up to that point, when I started,
you know, drinking and doing drugs, all I cared about
was school. I got straight a's, I scored off the
charts on all these tests, the standardized tests, and I
didn't care about school anymore. All I cared about was
the social aspect. The partying the girls and being wasted. Basically,
(10:47):
the summer between my junior and senior year, I went
out to Colorado and my brother was a driver for
a I wouldn't say notorious, but a pretty big time
drug dealer in Colorado Springs.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
His name was Casey, and my brother had a driver's
license and a nice truck. So Casey would just.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Have him drive him around and you know, they'd be
dropping you know, mostly pop, but you know, whatever around
and the craziest things would happen.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Man.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
So I spent the whole summer riding around with them,
you know, just seeing him be this alpha male that
everyone looked up to and everyone respected, and he had money,
and he had girls, and he had all these things.
And I'm like, that's what I want to do. So
I went back to Kansas that summer.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
And here's the thing.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Up to that point, I was excelling in football, and
I did really well in baseball too, But I excelled
in football. And we had a great football team that year,
and I was really coming into my own as a
defensive end and a tight end on offense, and we
were expected to do really really well that year, and
I was so torn between really wanting to pour myself
(11:49):
into football or pour myself into this party life. And
I had tried cocaine when I was out there, so
I was really starting to do more serious drugs as
I'm going into my senior year and my senior year,
and I got about two weeks into it, and I
snuck out of the house and I went and tried
ecstasy with some of my friends, and a couple of
the guys were actually football players on the team, and
(12:11):
I remember trying to sneak back in and I got caught,
and he told me that I had to quit football
and go to rehab, or I could quit football and
go to Colorado, but I wasn't going to continue playing football.
This is really when the resentment with my dad hit
hits peak. So I decided to quit football and move
back to Colorado with my mom. And what that basically
meant is I was on my own, and I just
(12:31):
started partying full blown. And I started working for Casey
and started selling weed and got involved in that lifestyle.
And then I started doing cocaine on a pretty regular basis.
And as I did cocaine, I realized, hey, man, I
can't pay for cocaine selling weed. So I started selling cocaine,
and I just had this knack and this ability to
rise to the top in these in these I guess,
(12:53):
you know, drug dealer ladders of influence.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
I just had a knack for that life.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
And so I started selling a little bit of cocainex
you know, I was selling a lot of coke, and
I was doing a lot of coke, and it got
to the point it was so bad. I would have
to take Xanax to go to sleep, and then I
would wake up the next day, and really the next evening,
at like four or five in the evening, I'd wake up,
I'd blow my nose and snot and cocaine and blood
would come out. My nose would just be bleeding and
(13:19):
bleeding and bleeding. As soon as it would start to
kind of slow down a little bit, I would do
another line and start drinking.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And then that was what I did.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
And it got so bad to where I couldn't even
like breathe out of my nose anymore. My friend tried
to introduce me to crack, and I'm like, this isn't
for me. So then he he had me try crystal meth,
and that was it. And once I did crystal meth,
it was There was no having to take Xanax to
(13:46):
go to sleep, there was no drinking whiskey to mellow out.
It was just it was wide open. And already at
this point when I started doing meth, I already had
my first felony arrest. I was arrested with a half
ounce of cocaine and bonded out and got probation and
all those things, and didn't slow me down. I continue
to use drugs, continued to party, didn't go to my
(14:06):
probation appointments, didn't do any of those things. And I
got to a point where I was very well known
in Calver Springs for my ability to sell drugs and
do a number of other things. And I remember getting
a phone call from a girl named Camille, and she said,
I've got some pretty serious guys that I know that
want to talk to you about, you know, kind of
(14:28):
you partnering with them or working with them, And so
I came to.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Her apartment and I walked into her apartment. I remember it.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
It was kind of an uneasy feeling, and there was
some very mean looking, dark, nefarious looking individuals that were
Hispanic guys, Mexican guys, and they had handkerchiefs on over
their faces, but they were in suits. It was weird,
(14:57):
and I'm like, well, I'm either going to get killed
or this is going to go really well. And you know,
they sat out and just talked to me and asked
me a bunch of questions and asked me what I
could do for him. And I think they were kind
of new to coming into Colorado Springs to do what
they it was that they were wanting to do, and
they needed somebody to help them. So they asked me
to do that, and I did that, and not long
after that, I ended up getting in a high speed
(15:18):
chase with the cops and ran and I had a
briefcase with meth and a pistol, got pulled over with that,
got arrested, bent four and a half months in jail,
County jail on that, got probation again, got out, went
right back to it. I mean, by that time, a
lot of my connections had either gone back to Mexico
or had been arrested as well. And I got into basically,
(15:39):
I mean, I guess what it looked like was we
would steal four wheelers and motorcycles and things like that
and give them to Mexicans that were bringing back across
the border in New Mexico, and then they would pay
us some drugs. I was supposedly the ring leader of
that whole thing. I don't know how true that was,
but that's the way it was in the copsize and
they busted a house that had some of those motorcycles
(16:00):
in them, and they pressured the guy who was there,
and he told on me and said, you know it
was me. I was the one that was doing this.
I was ringing all these rings. So he and a
bunch of other people had told the cops that I
was responsible for, you know, all this crime that was
going on. And I eventually got arrested and I did
another four months in county jail and ended up bonding
(16:21):
out after those four months. And in that time I
got my discovery and it said that you know who
had told on me. I was out driving around up
to no good. I'd been up for four days, and
we drove by the guy's house who told on me,
who was the main informant in the case, and the
guy was with kept pumping me up. Oh no, we
have to go in there. You know, we can't let him,
(16:43):
you know, just let him tell on you and you're
not doing anything. And so we went, you know, went
up to the front door, knocked on the door, and
he opened the door and walked in the house and
asked him why I told on me, and he said,
you know told me, well, I didn't tell any Brian,
I would never tell on you, and I knew that
he had. He was the informant in my case. So
I began to beat him up really really bad. And
(17:05):
the guy was with hit him in the head with
a blunt force object. It was called a blackjack, and
it cracked his head open, and I thought he was
going to die. So, you know, we grabbed a few
objects out of his house and we left, and by
the time I got back to my house, I ended
up getting arrested and charged with attempted.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Murder, aggravated robbery, and extortion.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
And on top of all that, this was a guy
who was states evidence, so he was an informant that
I did all these things too, so that aggravated it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
And my goodness, what a story. And when we come back,
you won't believe where it turns and where it goes.
Brian Dawson's story, one of our staffers here and our
American Stories more after these messages, and we returned to
(18:12):
Brian dawson story here on our American Stories, And let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
I was on the run.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
I bonded out again and I was out on like
I don't know, a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of bonds,
and I was supposed to go to a court date
and I ended up not going to that court date.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
So I became a fugitive.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And shortly after that, I became one of Colorado Springs
most wanted criminals, most wanted fugitives.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
And it was intense.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
I mean they were raiding houses, they were setting up
perimeters all throughout Colora Springs as I don't know if
you've ever seen them, like they basically have roads blocked
off and they're showing pictures of meat every car that
stops and goes through there. If you ever followed Dog
the Bounty Hunter, Dog the Bounty Hunter did most of
his shows in Colorado Springs some and why, but most
of them were in Colorda Springs, and Dog the Bounty
(19:01):
Hunter was on a seventy two hours seventy two fugitive
sweep when I was on.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
The run, and.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
He said he wasn't going to go after me because
I was supposedly, you know, too threatening or menacing or
whatever for him to go after me. So it became
very real, and there was a couple of near misses
where they almost had me and I was able to
escape from him, and then they finally caught me and
I was in my safe I guess called a safe house.
It was the third story apartment in Colorado Springs, and
(19:30):
they finally closed in on me. And I remember sitting
in the apartment that day. I was watching the Chappelle Show.
It was my last day out, July nineteenth, two thousand
and seven. I'm watching the Chappelle show. Cook and brought
Worst in this apartment and I look out the window
and I'm on the third story and I see the
front end of a cop car and I know that
it's a cop car, and I.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Knew that was it. I just knew.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I knew, Okay, well, this is it. And there wasn't
much in the apartment, but there was a recliner that
was wider than the window was, so I'd taken a
nylon rope, a repelling rope, and I tied it to
the bottom of the recliner and I hear the door pounding.
Carter Springs police open up and they're kicking indoors making
their way down to me. So I kick out the
(20:10):
window and wrap my hand around the rope and I
jump out the window and the recliner sticks and wedges
right in the window, just like I wanted it to.
And as I'm hanging there around both sides of this
apartment building, these police come flooding and there's forty or
fifty cops made up of El Paso County Sheriff's deputies,
Carter Springs Police department. They come pouring around the side
with their guns pulled and drawn on me. You know,
(20:31):
get on the ground, Get on the ground, Get the
f on the ground. And I'm like, I don't know
where else I'm gonna go. And I look up and
there's cops, you know, cops above me, cops below me.
So I pulled up a little bit on the rope,
unwrapped the rope with my hand and dropped and I
dropped three stories and I landed. And it's a miracle
that I didn't get hurt there, but I landed and
rolled and then there was two canine units right there
(20:53):
with the dogs barking in my face. And I remember
laying there and I could feel the heat from the dogs.
I'm just like with these dogs, don't bite me. But
that was it, and an officer stuck his knee in
my back and cuffed me. They put me in the
back of the cop car. And the craziest thing is
I remember the relief that I had as I sat
in the back of that cop car because I knew
(21:13):
it was all over. I remember Rihanna's Umbrella song was
on in the cop car as we were heading, you know,
to County jail.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I just had a sense of peace for whatever reason, and.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
I ended up getting into County jail, where I would
find out that I was facing three hundred and eighty
four years in prison. With facing that much time, I
started to get involved in with some rough groups in
the jail, thinking that I'm going away to prison for
the rest of my life.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
I have to make an aim for myself.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
I have to be tough. I have to be this guy,
this prison guy. So I get into a bunch of fights.
You know, I'm going up to these older kind of
gangster guys and they're saying, why I.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Need you to go beat this gup? And I need
you to go beat that gup.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
So I'm doing these things and I eventually end up
in administrative segregation, which is when you are in a
con crete cell. It's about eight foot by twelve foot
and there's a bunk in there. There's a metal bunk
with a fire retardant mattress and a fire retardant pillow
and a sink that is attached to a toilet. It's
(22:13):
a one piece toilet, sink and a desk and that's it.
That's all you have in there. And I was in
there for twenty three hours a day and I would
get one hour where I could go make a phone call,
take a shower, and I would go back in my cell.
And I was there for several months. And in that
timeframe that I was in administrative segregation, I had a revelation.
It was one of the it was an epiphany. It
(22:34):
was an AHA moment, and it seems silly, but it was.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
It was. It was huge.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
As I look back on it, it's the point as
I try and counsel people who have been through these
things before, or that are going through these things now
because people come to me because I've been through them before.
They asked me, you know, what would you tell them?
And this was the one thing that happened that I'm
sitting in the administrative segregation in this in this cell
by myself, been there for a couple months, and all
(23:03):
of a sudden, I realized.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
This is my fault. This is all my fault. And
I know that.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Seems sillier, it sounds, you know, stupid or whatever, but
really no, this is all my fault. Because up to
that point I blamed it on my mom. I blamed
it on my dad. I blamed it on the judges.
I blamed it on everyone but me. I blamed it
on corrupt system. You know, all these district attorneys. I mean,
you name it. I blamed everybody. But then all of
a sudden, I realized this is my fault. And it
(23:33):
was so liberating and it was so freeing because I
realized if my choices created this circumstances, certainly I could
make better choices that would create better circumstances. And I
came to this realization that my choices are what create
my circumstances, not the other way around. I wasn't a
victim that I'd created these circumstances through my choices. And
(23:55):
from that moment forward, I made a decision that I
was going to do things differently, and I did. And
it wasn't I had habits, I had, you know, thought patterns.
I had all these things that were wrong. But I
knew that I could make better choices than I was
responsible for my choices, and I started doing that. And
from that moment I got on the phone, I called
my grandma with tears in my eyes and told her
(24:16):
that I was going away forever. And she said, you know,
I can tell there's been a huge change in your life, Brian.
I can't put my finger on it. I don't know
what it is, but I can tell there's something very
different about you, because up to this point they all
cut me off.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
I burn every bridge in my family. They were done
with me.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
She said, we're going to get you an attorney, and
she did, and the next day I went to court.
Someone that was supposed to show up to the court
date to be a witness in my trial if I
went to trial that day didn't show up.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
So they had to postpone it for two weeks. Total miracle.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
The attorney was able to take my case and get
me into what's called a mediation hearing. And what a
mediation hearing is is where you basically go into arbitration
with your sentence and it's like a used car's heels. Well,
i'll give you this, well, no we want that. Well
i'll give you this and no we want that. And
they started at thirty two years and I start it
eight years, and a mediator went back and forth between
the district attorney and my lawyer and I back and forth,
(25:05):
back and forth. They finally came down to a fifteen
year sentence with a crime of violence, sense and answer,
And I told him I don't want that sentence to answer.
I don't want to be labeled a violent criminal. I
don't want to go to some hardcore prison and end
up with swastkas all over my face and turn into
that guy. I want to change my life. I want
a chance at changing my life. I said, tell her,
I'll give her a year if she drops.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
That chrime of violence.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
So I ended up getting sentenced to sixteen years and
they dropped the crime of violence and I went back
to my cell after that mediation, and I knew that
God had moved in my life. So I got sentenced.
I got sentenced to sixteen years, and then I went
to the Denver Reception Diagnostic Center. This is a maximum
security prison, and you roll up in a van and
there's rolls upon rolls of razor wire. There's gun towers
(25:48):
with armed guards in the gun towers. They've got these
little mirrors that go under the vans that see if
there's bombs under the vans, and it's just it was
very sobering. It was very real that hey, I'm in prison,
that's happening now. And I went in there and I
was there for a little while, and they sent me
to my first facility in Warefenold County Correctional Center. It
(26:10):
was Wallsenburg, Colorado, and it was a private prison. And
there's a lot of bad things that surrounded the idea
of private prisons, but I had nothing but a very
positive experience there. It was very evident that everybody there
that was involved with the staff members there, from our
case managers to the teachers and things like that, that
they wanted criminals to be rehabilitated, and they had a
(26:32):
lot of programs, so I immediately started taking programs. I
got my GED while I was at Wallsenburg, and then
I started taking college classes. And then I became a
guy that helped other guys get their GED. And that's
what I did for working there, as I was a
tutor and I helped people get their GDS.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And when we come back the final installment of this
remarkable story, one that hits close to home, our own
Brian Dawson. His story continues here on our American Story.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Person.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
And we returned to Brian Dawson's story and what a
story it is, and again this one hits close to home.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
He's one of our people.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And by the way, it just shows you that anything
can happen in a person's life. Here he is in prison,
and he's already you can hear it. He's a changed
guy and he wants to just get through this and
come out on the other side. And so he's reoriented
himself and his life right there, you know what may
be the very worst place in America to be as
a young man. Let's return to Brian's story.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
I was there for about nine months, but the very
first person I met when I walked into Wolsenburg. Was
a guy with the named of Charles Frederick and he
comes up to me. He's this big guy, big burly guy,
and he says, hey, my name is Charles, and I'm
a Christian. And this is a faith pod. So in
these prisons they had these pods are called faith pods,
and it was basically pods or units made up of
(28:30):
about one hundred and twenty inmates, and it was dedicated
to discipleship.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
And I don't know how I landed in there, why
I landed in.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
There, but I was there, and Charles began to just
tell me about Christ, tell me about who Jesus was,
tell me about the Gospel.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I told him, Charles, I don't want to hear that stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
You know, I don't care, and you know, he just
said okay, and then he began to talk to me
about other things, and he met my physical needs. He
gave me coffee, he gave me shorts, he gave me,
you know, things that you know, you get in there.
You got nothing other than a couple of pairs of
underwear and a green suit. So he helped me was
some of those things and just became my friend. And
as conversation would permit, he would tell me about Christ
(29:05):
and that would go on for about nine months.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
He got shipped to another prison. I left that prison.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
They shut that prison down and my security level dropped
and I bounced around a little bit for a couple
of years, and then I ended up in Sterling Correctional
Facility in Sterling, Colorado. The first person I see there's
Charles again and he starts telling me about Jesus Christ again,
and I'm like, man, I don't want to hear this stuff.
Well we're there for a little bit, and he goes, hey,
you know you got parole coming up in a couple
of years. It would be good for you to have
(29:30):
some certificates to, you know, show the parole board. I'm
like okay, and he goes, well, i'm the chaplain's assistant.
I can get you in some programs. I'm like, oka, yeah,
go ahead, sign me up. So he signs me up
and they end up being faith based programs and I'm like, oh,
I hate you, Charles. But the very first program I
went into was a come as you are. We love everybody,
you know, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, whatever, just come as you are.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
And I went there and.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
It was it was okay, but I experienced fellowship and
I met other Christians that were like Charles, who are true,
genuine Christian who lived this out. They didn't just say
they were Christians with their mouth. They lived it and
you could see the wisdom and things that they had
and I was attracted to that. And that went on
for about thirteen weeks. That class was over, and then
Charles got me into another program called The Truth Project,
(30:15):
which is put out by Focus on the Family and
doctor del Tacket. Amazing program, but when I got in there,
it was not come as you are. It was this
is what the Bible says. And I didn't like that.
And I would sit we would watch a video for
an hour, and then we would have table discussion. At
the table discussion, I would argue with everyone there and
tell them how stupid they were for believing what they
you know, that they believe these things, and I almost
(30:36):
got into a couple of fights with those guys. And
about three weeks into it, we were walking back to
the unit and Charles just asked me. He says, Brian,
why don't you just give him a chance. And I'd
been asked that question before and fought it and fought
it and fought it, and for whatever reason, I said, okay, Charles.
So I went back to my cell that night and
(30:57):
I prayed, okay, God, to believe these things, to have
a relationship with you, give me some kind of a sign.
And I went to bed that night. I remember being
in a really deep sleep and I had a nightmare.
And in that nightmare, I fell off of a cliff
and I woke up, startled out of a nightmare and
kind of and I looked, and it's really dark in
the cells, and we had we're allowed to have digital
(31:18):
clocks in there, and the digital clock with the red
numbers in the cell said three sixteen. The only Bible
verse I'd ever known as a kid at all was
John three sixteen. And if you know John three sixteen,
it answers the question that I asked him. That's exactly right. Yes,
you do need to believe those things. And I tried
to go back to sleep and just brush it off.
(31:39):
But I looked back at the clock and I felt
like it was three sixteen for like thirty minutes, and
I'm like, okay, maybe there's something to this. And it
was a Sunday morning at three sixteen. So I got
up and I went to went to the church services
that they offered in the prison, and I went and
found my friend Ramon.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
I always had this idea.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
In my head that Christians were weak, and my friend
Ramone was a big black former gang bang that had
become a Christian. And there was nothing softer week about
this guy. So I'm like, Okay, I'll go with him.
And I'm sitting in the very back row, in the
very far aside as he goes through the sermon, and
at the end of the sermon, the pastor does what
he calls an invitation. I look at Ramon and I say,
(32:15):
what's an invitation? And he goes He can say, oh,
it's where you go make a decision for Christ, or
you invite Jesus in your hearty and say any of
that stuff. He said, if you've got something in your
life it's hindering your relationship with God, you can go
up there and pray with that man about it. So
I went up there and I prayed with Chaplain Davis.
And to tell you a little about him, he's a
(32:37):
hard man, a callous man, a cowboy. He's a man's man.
He's a prison chaplain and he doesn't do hugs, he
doesn't do any of those kind of things. And he
grabbed my hand to pray, and I could feel a
callous is on his hands, and he slaps me on
the shoulder with his other hand, and he says, how
can I pray for you? And I told him, I said, look,
you know I don't. I'm not here to make any decisions.
(32:57):
I just I need you to pray that God would
move this callous from my heart, because it's hardened and
it's angry, and it's angry towards Christians. So I want
him to soften my heart so that the truth can
come in. And Chaplain Davis prayed that, and I remember
looking up after we were done praying, and he's in
front of one hundred and thirty inmates with tears pouring
down his face. And I knew something was very real
(33:20):
about this, and I didn't know how to describe it,
but it was very real. And I would later find
out that Chaplain Davis and Charles had been praying for
me for about a year and a half that I
would get saved. And from that moment forward, I began
to read my Bible. I read my Bible every single day.
I would get up and read my Bible, read my Bible.
I was at every single church service that they offered,
(33:41):
any faith based program they had.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
In that prison I was there. There was a huge change.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I went from telling these people they were stupid for
believing what they did to absolutely believing it, basically overnight.
That went on for about a year. And my friends
all had pinpals that they were writing when they were
in prison. So I prayed and said, all right, God,
I'd like to have a pinpound. I got on the
phone with my mom and she was running a Facebook
page for me. She says, you got a friend request
(34:07):
from a girl. I'm like, okay, cool, who is it?
And she goes, do you know a girl named Christina Ewen.
I'm like, yeah, I know Christina Ewan.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Why. She goes, well, she sent you a friend request.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
She remembered you, and that she's been trying to find
you for, you know, on and.
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Off for the last ten years. Said did you tell
her I was in prison?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
Ye?
Speaker 3 (34:26):
I told her you in prison. She doesn't care. She
wants to write you. I'm like, well that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
So I got her address, and everything we did, all
of our correspondence was based on christ and what God
was doing in our lives, and that was it. And
that went on for several months, and I just knew
that this was too crazy for it not to be
godlining this up for something bigger. But I was scared
to death because she's rejected me so many times in
the past.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
And I had to write a letter.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And I sat down and wrote this letter and said, look,
you know, I just I feel like, you know this
is kind of something that may be meant to be,
and that you know, I know it's asking a lot
of you, but you know this this is.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Meant for something more.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I get the letter back, and I remember hearing it
at mail call and seeing that the letter was from Christina,
knowing that the answer was going to be inside of
that envelope. And I opened the envelope and pulled out
the letter and began to read it, and in the
very first paragraph, she said, Brian, I've been thinking the
exact same things, and I know God wants me to
be with you, and that I'm supposed to be here
(35:23):
for you through this time, and that you know that
we're meant to be together and I remember reading that
sitting in prison, and I mean I could have floated
up the steps to go back to my cell.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
It was. It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
So but I put in for a halfway house about
six months after that, so I ended up getting accepted
to that program, my very first time putting in for
a halfway house, which almost never happens with the severity
of my sentence and the size and scope of my sentence.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
So it was.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
It was a very, very tough two years. But I
graduated and Christina was there for the graduation.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
And the first visit I was allowed to go on.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Actually before I graduated, Christina and I got married. We eloped,
I guess you could say we got married at my
grandma's house. So my wife and I now have three daughters,
plus my step son Brennan, who's an absolute stud, brilliant,
smart kid, does very well in sports. And my girls
are three years old is Gracie, two year old is Reagan,
(36:20):
and our one year old is Abigail, and we have
another one on the way. So not only do I
have and this is kind of a cool caveat to
the story, I've got a little piece of property with
a little house and you know, the wife of my
dreams and beautiful children, four beautiful children about to be five.
But I just moved my mom's She has a camper,
(36:42):
and I just moved her camper onto my property. And
my mom, who I had obviously all that resenting animosity
towards she now lives on my property and she's me
MO to the kids, and she got saved about two
years ago and she's a completely different person. So again,
like I could not have sat in jail five, six,
seven years ago, whatever it was and said, Okay, in
(37:03):
five or ten years, this is what I want and
ever thought it would be what it is now.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
And what a story, folks. And I'm tearing up here
because I know Brian and to imagine that that can
happen in people's lives anyone listening, having someone in prison
someplace that you just don't think they can come back from,
My goodness, it's possible. And we do faith based stories here, folks.
We don't shy away from it. There are all kinds
(37:31):
of things that can get people out of a jam,
and sometimes it's God and sometimes it's a secular counselor.
But we don't shy away from the religious aspect of
people's lives. Here on this show, we don't preach, we
don't proselytize.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
But we don't remove it.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
And my goodness, Brian Dawson's story is unimaginable without God.
And send your stories, by the way, if you have
a story like this, and I know you do, because
my goodness is, country's filled with stories like this. We're
we're tired of the negative stories. We want to hear
stories of real hope, not the silly kind. Brian Dawson's
story a beautiful family, a beautiful story of love and redemption.
(38:11):
Here on all American stories here
Host
Lee Habeeb
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