⚡MINI: Nick Yarris - I Should Not Be Alive..

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
My Heart podcasts, hear Moore Kids podcasts, playlists, and listen
live on the Free I had you shouldn't be alive,
Nick tell us.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Why other than being shot, stabbed, strangled, run over by
a car, hanging myself in a prison cell, and all.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Kinds of mayhem.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
I was sentenced to death at the age of twenty
one for the rape and murder of a woman I never.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Met in my life.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
I spent twenty three years on death Row in solitary confinement,
and I escaped from death row at one point in
nineteen eighty five. I was on the FBI's most wanted
list for twenty five days until I turned myself back in.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
And they put me on death row. Next it Ted
Bundy for the next eight months.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
So me and Ted became acquainted when he spit on
me when I played with him and taunted him.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
So and then I went back to death row.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
I got beaten severely contracted hepatitis C. I was dying
of the illness when I asked to be executed, and
in the twenty fifth hour they gave me the DNA
Finally that proved my innocence. Oh, oh my god, God, Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
I didn't think I've experienced forty seconds like that in
my life. Just hearing all of that. It's truth, Old
mighty nick.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
I took it easy on you.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
If we can go back to step one here, So
you are wrongly You are wrongly accused of ripe and
murder of someone you have never met before through.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
The folly of the following incidents. So, at the age
of twenty, I was driving the stolen car.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
I was a tear away.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I wasn't listening to my folks, I was high on drugs.
I got pulled over by a policeman who beat the
hell out of me.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
He pulled his gun out.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
We had a fight, and then he lied on me
and said that I tried to murder him and all.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
This crazy stuff. So I get thrown into prison, and
a guy.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
That was guilty of burglar rising the prosecutor's home said
that I confessed to him of the rape and murder
of a woman in the area right he could get
out of his charges. So I went to trial for
the first chargers and the jury found me not guilty
for that policeman lying on me. So then they started
seeking the death penalty out of vengeance, and he gave me.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
A three day murder trial.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
So they sentenced me to die after the jury went
out for dinner break, and they came back and gave
me to death.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
And so I was only twenty one years old.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
And the crazy thing was will the courthouse was struck
by light and the day I was.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Sentenced to death and knocked all the power up, whoa.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
And I swear to gosh, it's in the newspapers and everything.
I was taking upstairs, and I was looking at all
the people in the courtyard below and there was no
sound because no air conditioning or anything, and they were
all looking up at me, and they all started making
noises and stuff.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
But I heard this thing in my head said, looked
them in the eye. So when I went back in
the courtroom, and it's in the newspapers. The judge couldn't
look me in the eye.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
No one could look me in the eye, and he
sentenced me to death without ever looking me in the face.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Oh that's oh Na, that's horrible, man.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
If you think that's it's so deep that every member
of the jury that sentenced me to death is now dead.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Whoa, whoa.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Wow. You can't make it up. You can't, you can't
make any of this up.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
So, Nick, you had twenty two years in prison.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
What was that like in solitary confinement?

Speaker 2 (03:29):
In solitated A bit of it was inlid Yeah, man,
twenty three hours a day, twenty four hours a day,
all lockdown.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
How do you deal with that?

Speaker 3 (03:37):
What is I mean?

Speaker 1 (03:38):
I've got so many questions around. It's the first thing
that comes to me. You think of that time.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
I found out two things about myself. One, you can't
go against your nature. If you're a loving person, nothing
will change that. If you're a kind person, you'll be
a kind person no matter what. So I read over
nine four hundred books before I turned the journal over documentary.
Each book that I read to my lawyers. And then

(04:03):
I got other prisoners off of death row by doing
their legal work, and I helped men that were mentally
ill hang.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
On as best as they could.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
In total, I got three men off the death row
and four men out of the gallows themselves by my efforts.
I was the foremost knowledgeable person in DNA. I was
penthals with Sir Alec Jeffries from Leicester University, who invented
DNA testing. For twelve years. That man guided me through
the process of learning DNA. Oh my, I read all

(04:34):
of the world's religions. I can't tell you the name,
but I think you guys will be clever enough.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
If I made an avatar.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Of myself, maybe that person would be now accepting the
role to play me in a major motion picture coming soon. Whoa, whoa.

Speaker 4 (04:53):
If I were an avatar, I think I've put two
and two together.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
That is okay, Sorry, but I.

Speaker 4 (05:00):
Can actually say the likeness looking at your face as well,
which that is.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
That is awesome and.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
Sorry, right, and I can't say anything, but I just
found out, and it's amazing that I'm on the cusp
of going from an RV that was given to me
on the Native American preservation to go on and having
housing and.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Finally getting from the.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Devastation that I know I've been homeless the last four years.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
I'm just actually speaking of playing you. So you mentioned
this before, but Adrian Brody is currently starring as you
in this play called The Fear of It and he's
going to do.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
It again and yeah, and next spring he's going to
be bringing it to New York City.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Now, Writerrian, he's doing it because apparently someone sent him
the script and he said I couldn't get through this
script without crying.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
So for a crime. Yeah, I know. I hung out
with him in London. I ain't supposed to say this,
but he took no money for playing me for months
in London, and he gave me that money.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Oh wow, Wow, this is a general, This is a
genteel man.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Do you understand. Yeah, you know you don't get paid
a lot in.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
The theater anyway, But he said, Nick, I can't take
money from your hands.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
And I love you man.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Wow. I went up on stage and I read a
fictitional love letter to the woman that I was married
to in prison. I queued up the song hold Onto
Your Heart by Man Man, and I walked off the
stage with a beautiful woman, telling the audience that I
wanted to fulfill being the hero of my own story,

(06:28):
like in the many thousands of books that I read.
I wanted to have that panache, that ability to walk
out in that moment. I didn't want to sell books
and hang out afterwards and beat everybody.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
I went off to the Londoner in downtown London and
had made love to the woman I was in love with.
Man Oh, beautiful ne