Convict Changes Life On The Run…Inside Prison Walls

 “I was out one day looking for some crack. And I was out of money and I was sitting in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and I was in a tug of war. One side was pulling one way, wanting to just leave it alone, and the other side was saying, ‘No, you know you want this,’” Bill remembers. “I was sitting there and I looked across the road and there was a bank, and I thought, ‘Well. I can get some money right there.’”

A ten –year journey of addiction had brought Bill to this moment. “I just wanted my drugs. At this point, I was addicted so bad, there wasn’t no stopping me.”

Bill was adopted by two loving Christian parents who raised him in church, but he could never overcome the feelings of rejection he felt from his birth mother. “She was 16 at the time, and my biological father was in the penitentiary when I was born,” Bill says. “I did always wonder why couldn't she tough it out, or find a way? I mean, I’m her son. It was a hard pill to swallow. There was always something nagging at me, just feeling kind of left out at school and stuff. I felt like a loner.”

Bill did find acceptance in one place. “I started hanging out with this one guy that smoked marijuana,” he recalls, “and I felt accepted in this group.” Along with smoking pot, he started stealing, and causing other problems.  

In high school, Bill was arrested for possession. Hoping to scare him straight, his parents let him spend the night in jail – but it had the opposite effect. “It took things to another level. It did get me attention,” he says. “It seems like people in my crowd looked up to me more. So it just kind of spurred me on to do even worse. “

For the next several years he served time in juvenile detention, and eventually jail, for crimes including breaking and entering, burglary, and car theft. Bill’s drug use escalated to crystal meth and cocaine, and more arrests followed. “That high was very short, so you just had to continuously chase that high, which leads to more expenses, which leads to more stealing,” he adds.  

Bill’s parents convinced him to go into rehab but it did no good. One day, after several years of addiction, Bill was desperate to get cash for his next fix.  “I’d heard about these note robbers, you know, where people write a note and go in and demand money,” he says. “So I thought, ‘this is easy enough. I don't even need a gun.’”

He pulled a baseball cap over his face, entered the bank, and handed the teller a note. “I was worried about alarms or a security guard acting funny or something. What would I do? I was such a nervous wreck from wanting the drugs. The first money she laid out on the counter, I just grabbed it and ran with it,” he recalls. “Come to find out, she was going to give me more, but I wasn’t hanging around to find out.”

Bill made a clean getaway--or so he thought. A week later, the FBI showed up at his door. “I actually told the FBI agents when they arrested me what a relief it was. Because I knew I was going to get enough time to try to get straightened out.”

But even in prison, the drugs were still available. Bill was later caught planning an escape and sent to a maximum-security prison, where hardcore gang members ruled the roost. There, Bill feared for his life. “The evil here was on a different level,” he says. “I knew I didn't want any part of this. These guys would kill other guys just because they got mad about something small. They would, what they call, ‘put ‘em on the list.’ And that meant they were to be hit. I knew if I stayed in the middle of this mix, I needed some kind of help.”

Alone in his cell, Bill remembered his Sunday school days as a child. “It just came over me that the only way out, was to cry out to God. That was it. There was no other way at this point,” he says. “I had tried rehab. I did prison time. None of this was working. I finally just reached out to God and said, ‘Look, I need help. I need you to come into my life and save me. I just want whatever it takes to get straight and put this behind me. I’m wiling to do whatever. I don't care what it is. And I felt like the Holy sprit came into me. I had chills when I was praying.”

Shortly after that, another inmate asked Bill to go running with him. He was a Christian, who talked to Bill about Jesus, and became his friend and mentor.  
 “I knew God was leading me in a different direction, and I needed to follow this running to the best of my ability,” Bill says.  

God protected Bill for the remainder of his sentence. He was released in 2014.
 “I haven’t even had a desire to smoke a cigarette, much less do drugs, and I know that God is the one who took that desire out of me,” he says. “He washed all that clean.”

Today, Bill is married and recently ran in the Boston Marathon. “I’ve been in Runners World Magazine, I’ve done a news special report before. I wrote a book, Behind the Wall to the Boston Marathon, and I make it clear as a bell in there that God is the one that changed my life,” Bill says. “I know for a fact that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. And my testimony, I’m hoping, will touch somebody in a profound way. I feel like no matter what you’ve done, if you cry out to God and ask for forgiveness, that anything can be washed away.”