Transcript
WCI Tom Kropp [ID] PO Box 351 Waupun, WI 53963 True Story Bail Jumping I knew it was a bad idea to go get K, but I did it anyway. We'd been together two years at that point. When we first hooked up she'd had a lot of desirable qualities. But the longer we were together the more she became addicted to painkillers. When we first met she was on some painkillers due to a car accident that required extensive leg surgery and doctors said she would always likely suffer from chronic pain. But as time passed her tolerance grew and she needed more and more painkillers. It reached the point where I had to go to the doctors complaining of pain to get drugs and then give the painkillers to her. She was spiraling downhill and I was stupid to let her drag me down with her. She'd called me from a ghetto neighborhood asking I come pick her up because she needed help. When I arrived a tall, mean looking black dude was arguing with her and grabbing at her sleeve as she tried to leave. I'd later learn she'd burned him on a deal and he was pissed. But at the time I just parked and hit the horn before getting out. They both looked at me. "K, get in." I stated simply with a stern glance at the rude dude giving her drama. "Stay out of this or get hurt white boy," the dude told me while mean mugging me. "Back off asshole," I informed him and told K again, "get in." The guy quickly stepped over at me aggressively. I snap kicked his stomach. That stomp shoved the thug several steps back gasping. He hunched up hurt, briefly. But he was game and rose up, grabbing at something in his coat. A gun fell on the sidewalk. Before he could reach for it I swatted his skull with a right hook. He hammered my head back. I snatched him in a side headlock and socked his skull a couple of times before he tripped me and we sprawled on the street. I had him in a side headlock while trying to turn the choke hold into an anaconda. But he thrashed his mass, flailing his limbs trying to flop free of me. As we grappled on the ground I heard sirens and then K was yelling, "Let him go! Cops are coming!" I realized she was right and released him. Doing so gave him a free fist at my face. He tagged me. I drilled him back, sending him stumbling from this strike further in the street. I could see the cop car coming and K was behind the wheel of my ride. "Come on!" she shouted again. I jumped in the passenger seat. She gunned the gas and we zipped down an alley as the cops stopped with their lights on the gangster in the street with his gun laying nearby. There was other people watching it all and I was lucky no one got my plate as we escaped. "What the hell was that?" I asked upset. "He was trying to get my pills. I traded some for dope and he wanted more." K slurred and I realized she was wasted. "Please don't crash us. Pull up in the graveyard and I'll drive." I suggested. "Ok," she agreed. It's a good thing we pulled in the graveyard. K had occasional seizures and she had one then. Her foot jammed the gas pedal to the floor and jammed it there as her upper body started convulsing. My truck engine roared like a monster and rocketed towards a group of trees in the graveyard. In the movies when people lose their brakes or their gas pedal is stuck I always wondered why they didn't just shift into neutral and turn off the car. Before we rammed the trees I leaned over shifting into neutral and turned off the key. My truck made some choking sounds and died out. Meanwhile K was spasming wildly in a seizure. I got her out of the truck and held her until the seizure stopped. "What happened?" She asked as she became coherent again. "You had another seizure. How many pills did you take?" I asked. "Don't start with that shit!" She barked back defensively. I didn't want to fight the issue. I got her back in the truck, I drove. But within an hour of being with her I could see she was really in dangerous condition. She had another seizure and I took her to the hospital. At the hospital she had another seizure and they realized she had taken an overdose of pills. When they searched her possessions they found a bottle of pills hidden that had my name on. The next thing I knew cops showed up trying to interrogate me and I asked for a lawyer. I was arrested and charged with prescription drug fraud and drug trafficking because I had given K my pills and she overdosed on them. I was facing two felonies. I bailed out. K and I stayed together, but our fights grew worse because I was facing two felonies for helping her with her addiction to painkillers. With my prior record it would be very hard to resolve those charges without me being sent back to prison. I was sick every day facing that fact and looking at her, realizing I'd let her drag me down. Any hopes I had of avoiding prison on those charges ended one day with a bail jumping charge. Part of my bail was that I receive no more criminal charges while on bond. Any new criminal charges would not only revoke my bond, it would also become a new felony bail jumping charge. We were in my little Ford Escort car when a big truck cut us off, almost side swiping us. I swerved and almost plowed into the median wall running alongside us. I yelled and flipped the truck driver off. He stuck his hand out the window returning the gesture. By bad luck both of us got off at the next exit and got stuck at a red light. He jumped out of his truck and grabbed a metal pipe out of his truck bed. He was a tall, well built, young, white dude looking lean and mean with the bludgeon in his hands. I realized he was likely gonna hit my car, I jumped out to defend it. We yelled at each other. In memory it's a blur of words with us briefly arguing, insulting, threatening each other. He stepped close with his club, I made a long leaping snap kick that thumped his thigh with an audible thud. His pipe swiped near my ear, almost braining me. I bobbed back from the blow. He was enraged over his hurt leg and hopped closer with his pipe swooping short of my skull as I dodged then snap kicked his leg again. This time the limb went dead under him. He was hobbling hurt. He cussed a blue streak while waving his weapon. But he didn't come any closer. I used the moments to get back to my car and drive off. Much to my shock he went to the police and showed them his bruised and bloody leg. He admitted that he did try hitting me with a pipe and claimed he did so in self defense. He pressed battery charges on me and the cops didn't charge him with anything. He even had a prior criminal record for more fights. But he wasn't charged for nearly splitting my skull. I was charged with battery for kicking him. That misdemeanor charge became a felony bail jumping due to my pending charges over K having my painkillers. After this new charge I didn't go back to court because it would have become a surrender to jail. Missing court became another bail jumping. I found myself facing two felony bail jumpings on top of the other two felonies I was already facing. At that point I knew when the cops caught up to me I would be going to prison for a few years at a minimum. Living with that fear and stress made K and I fight even more. We split up. It left me on my own facing about forty years on the four felonies because each felony carried ten years for me as a repeater enhancer because I'd had a felony conviction less than five years before that. The knowledge made my bipolar condition greatly worsen. I started thinking about suicide. I pressed a gun to my head a few times over that period seriously ready to pull the trigger. Death was greatly preferable to me over getting another long prison sentence. In my opinion, life free was hard enough. Rotting in prison was a fate worse than death. The only thing that really stopped me pulling the trigger was a part of me that believes that we all possess souls of astral energy. That there is a God and alternate dimension where our souls go when we die. I believe we live many lives reincarnated on Earth as infants so the experiences in those lives make us more evolved and educated entities on the other side. I was an avid reader and watcher of Sylvia Brown and Jon Edwards because their claims made sense to me. I also feared that if I did kill myself it might damn my soul or create a karma that would force me to endure an even worse fate in some future life. But even my religious beliefs were sorely tested. During most of my young life I went undiagnosed with manic depression. I was prone to periods of intense depression with nearly overwhelming desire to kill myself. I had little self esteem. Those dark depression moods were interspersed with sudden manic highs where I did stupid, risky things and later looked back wondering, "Why the hell did I do that?" It made matters worse when I drank. I had a huge tolerance of alcohol and would often drink so much I would black out and sometimes wake up in jail wondering what I had done wrong. It was terrifying endings of my freedom again and again. Now I found myself facing eternity in prison. If I'd known then what my future fate would be, I would have pulled the trigger when I had the chance and spared myself the misery coming my way.