Robert's story- in his words

[Jeni]

Ok all. This is it. I finally got 3 envelopes from Robert PACKED with his words about his life. (He's not even finished yet!) It is REALLY long, but SO worth the read!!! Thanks again to all of you who support me-what would I do without you? Here we go- Robert's words
Dear readers,
The following is a rough story of my life, and about prison. This turned out to be a lot longer then I thought. Unfortunately what I wasn't able to capture is the true unexplainable and fascinating drama at which I have lived it all. I also wanted to tell you much more about my life in Hollywood, but I guess I am not that patient of a writer. I dedicate this story to my girlfriend Jennifer, a woman who has taught me much more about life then she'll ever know.
I'd also like to thank Jennifer's family for believing in me, my parents for all the hell I have put them through, and all the fantastic, countless characters I have met along my journey.
And finally, believe it or not, I'd like to thank the Michigan Dept. of Corrections and God for giving me a place to focus and straighten out my life.
Most of all, thank's Jen.
"What a long strange trip it's been"-Jerry Garcia
My dearest viewers,
My name is Robert Todd Bogues, and I am writing you from inside Jackson state prison in Jackson, Michigan. For some time my girlfriend Jennifer has been bugging me to write my feelings about prison life so she could share it with you. I hate writing, I really despise it, but since Jennifer has taken the time and love to write me just about evey day since I got locked up, I thought it's the LEAST I could do. So then I started thinking how could I ever tell you why I was here, and what it's like without you knowing what led me here to begin with. So here it is, my life story, which I have always felt should be recorded in some way. In the following story, you will hear about how I became a drug kingpin by the age of 20, somewhat of a tv "star" in Hollywood, Ca, only to become homeless on the streets. You'll find out about Hollywood drug rings, prostitution, and then my return to Michigan, a broken drug addict whose only choice was to purposely put myself in prison to save my life. So here it is, my life, my struggle.
NOTE: Throughout this story, I will address the issue of racial prejudice, something I have always felt strongly about. If at any time you feel offended, please read on because more will be revealed about the truth of mankind.
CHAPTER 1- Growing up
My parents were divorced when I was 5. My father took custody of me and my sister Monique. We were living in Warren, Michigan. When I was 7, my father married my step mother Kathy. She had a son and a daughter of her own and we moved to Sterling Heights, Michigan, when I was 10. By now I was fascinated by music, guitar, and bands like The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and the Doors. They all had one common thread between them, drugs. I became fascinated by radio documentaries about the bands, their drug use and outrageous behavior. So naturally I wanted to be just like them. I got my first guitar at age 11. I started smoking pot when I was in the 6th grade. By 9th grade, smoking pot and jamming on my guitar were my favorite things. I started selling joints at school in 9th grade. I got busted, sort of. The school busdrivers saw me in the parking lot exchanging money. Well, the principal never found any drugs and my parents took me home. I was young and scared, so I admitted to it all. Right away they took me to see a child psychologist who told them it was all related to the music. They took away my guitar, rock posters and Tee shirts and I wasn't allowed to listen to rock and roll. I was cut down to 3 hours of school a day. My mom had to drive me to and from school while the principal would escort me to and from my classes. Then my father decided that city living was no way to grow up so he moved us to the country. I was 13 years old.
We moved to Lapeer, Michigan, and pretty soon I started working on farms. Somehow I got some pot from school, and I used to love to ride my bike down the street to watch the cows chew thier food while I was stoned. It was so funny to me. These were some of my fondest childhood memories, living in the country, and I loved my dad SO much.
Well, I was working on a farm for Ted Lindsay. He played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings at one time, but at this time he raised race horses. I worked on the farm with his son Tom, he was 27 and I was 15. Wouldn't you know it, Tom was growing weed. One day I was looking for some cows that had escaped from their paddock when WHAM! I was standing in the biggest marijuana crop imaginable. Of course I started picking.
Well since I was doing so well in school, and working on farms, gradually I was given back my guitar and one again, I was a wanna-be rock star, taking lessons in classical guitar. Life was great....guitar, weed, and a dream. The only thing was I always imagined myself on stage in front of thousands, singing, the front man who mesmorized his audience with every word.
Well all was fine until one day....wham, dad found a couple of ounces under my bed. THAT's IT! No more rock and roll! Your going to live with your uncle Russ, an ex marine, he'll straighten you out! Well I told him- I'll just run away again and again dad, and I want to be a rock star. Well, if you want to be a star, then there's the door and your financially cut off he said. And so off I went. I went down the drive way, stuck out my thumb, and the first car to come along was two stoners smoking a joint. Kick ass! I was 15 and on my own.
I moved to Rochester, Michigan, and lived with my friend Todd and his father who was an alcoholic. We lived in a trailor, and right away I got myself enrolled at Rochester High School. We also drank and skipped school a lot, but somehow I got through school with good grades.
I met a guy at school who worked at a liquor warehouse and right away we started smuggling cases of hard liquor and imported beer. We probably stole about 100 cases of beer and 100 cases of hard liquor and they never caught us. We sold the booze at school along with weed, and mescaline. We used money to finance equipment for our band.
Finally one day, my buddy John got busted and I slipped away clean. I think this is when I started to believe that I was too smart for them. They couldn't get me, although the school police officer told me to my face he wanted me. This built my ego. I thought I was real slick.
Well it's now my final year in high school, and at night, I worked a job at Mr. B's bar in downtown Rochester. Next door was a place called "Olympic Coney Island". One day while I was on my break, I was standing out frong of the bar smoking, I looked over, and there sat a guy who kind of looked like John Belushi. His name was Kenny, and he was Albanian. Kenny had the look, and talked like a mobster. He was 26, and I was 17 or 18. We became good friends, and thats when we had both just watched the movie "ScarFace". We both set out to start our own mob, selling cocain. We started off by one of his cousins giving us an ounce of coke, we paid $2000 for it. Coke was expensive, but not for long. Soon we would pay as little as $700 an ounce, and between $15,000-$22,000 a kilo. The year was 1985.
We sold for his cousins for a while. The whole time I was working my way up the chain to meet a kid named Steve, aka The Skin Man. He was 26 years old and was a total geek. He had a degree in accounting. I figured Steve must have inherited the drug business from his dad who lived on their yacht somwhere. Steve himself owned two jewelry stores, a furniture store, and multiple real estate, at only 26 years old. Steve always carried several strains of marijuana, Columbian for around $600 a pound, high grade Green Indica for $2000 a pound, Black hash with the lebanese gold stamp, and the Tai sticks wrapped with a green thread. This was the real McCoy, a truly fascinating species of pot. If you were or are a smoker, you know what I am talking about. Steve would have boxes that refrigerators come in, just filled to the top with pounds of the shit. After a couple of years, his cocain trade took precidence over his marijuana operation, so it was just coke. By now Kenny and I were buying cocain by the kilo, traveling to New York many times to pick it up. We'd drive there, and sometimes Steve would fly out there and drive back with us once the deal was made.
To me, Steve was a genious at selling drugs. He taught me never mess around with counterfit money, or anything with serial numbers on it, or to mess with guns. Screwing around like that brought the Feds around, and if you only sold drugs there would be no fingerprints, unless you put them there.
Kenny had other ideas, he wanted to expand in anyway possible, which in turn got me involved because he was my partner. A sacred bond.
We were expanding to include a "stolen merchandise" ring. All the guys who wanted coke would go out and get us anything. Big screen TV's, lawn mowers by the dozen, motor cycles, construction equipment, they cleaned out a camera store at one point, they even stole 8 computers from the new courthouse they had built in Rochester. But even that was not enough.....Noooo! We even started our own chop shop for stolen cars. This is a whole other side of the story, but to tell the truth, I could go on and on.
Life was good. Every night I would take all my friends out to the best clubs, restaurants, strip clubs, etc. I blew my money like it was nothing. Of course by this time, I broke the cardinal rule-Don't get high on your own supply. I was snorting around 7 grams every time I went on a binge. If you know drugs, that was alot for one person. Kenny on the other hand had bought himself a 1987 yellow Corvette. We would cruise around like kings, smoking weed, traveling from restaurant to restaurant which were owned by his relatives. Getting stoned and running business.
During all this time, we would notice that we were being watched. But it didn't scare us, we'd just give 'em the slip. Then I started staying at hotels, selling my drugs, and scanning undercover police signals with the use of a pre-programmable hand scanner and a book you can buy at Radio Shack. I would just figure out their codes (ancient chinese secret) and wa La! I was listening to them watching me. Again I thought I was too smart for them. Then they started busting my customers one by one offering them a deal to set me up, but no one would. It must have been frustrating for them. My ego grew even bigger, I was feared by others in the drug game, and I thought I was slick as hell. They couldn't get me, but now my drug habit was out of control and I needed help. I had been smoking coke for about a year and my body was badly beaten up. I don't know how my body handled so much abuse. When I left home at 15, my dad told me "when the drugs get to be too much, call me and I'll get you help." So as you can see now, and later in my life, even though I thought I was too slick to get busted, I was a victim of my own addiction. Stay tuned cuz it gets worse.
So it was off to rehab for the first time. The only thing was I handled about 80% of the drug sales, while Kenny handled the merhandise ring and the chop shop. So when I went to rehab, I took all my phone numbers to customers with me because I feared that Kenny would take over everything. We had just bought a kilo, and Kenny didn't know who to sell it to, so he went looking for customers. Big mistake. I was in rehab for a month, and during that time, Kenny sold to a state narcotics cop...busted. Two accounts of direct delivery. Then they raided his house finding guns, stolen merchandise, etc. They were looking for the 8 computers that I told you about, but we had sent them on a truck to New York the same night we got them. Then they raided the chop shop finding an IROC Z-28, a Corvette, a Monte Carlo, and a couple other cars. Damn good thing we weren't there at the time, because they couldn't pin any of that on us, why? No fingerprints. They did nail the guy who's builing we were using. His name was Ron. But once again, I got away.
So I came out of rehab clean and fresh. With Kenny out of the picture, I was free to resume my drug dealing without the added heat Kenny brought about. He was too high profile.
One day, my connection Steve called me freaking out. He said that someone had broken into his house and stolen a kilo of coke, a bunch of money, and some coins that had been in his family for centuries. He said "I don't care about the coke or the money, but if my dad finds out about the coins, he'll kill me!" Well as it turned out, the coins were part his and part owned by a business associate of his from his jewelry stores. Steve was in deeper and bigger then I had ever known. Pretty soon he had to go to the police about the break in, it hit the newpapers and now the police turned their attention to Steve. Why was a kid os his age so wealthy? It didn't take long. The police busted Steve on a "reverse sting". That means they sold him ten pounds of high grade pot. Later they stopped him with 2 kilos of coke in his car. For Steve, the game was over. That was 1989. I never saw him again. He is still serving a 20 year prison term. As for Kenny, he never did any time, but it cost his family around a hundred thousand dollars to keep him out of prison in lawyers fees. Kenny had connections. Even before his case came up, he was on a boat fishing with his lawyer, the prosecuting attorney, and the judge in his case, and wouldn't you guess? They were all smoking weed together. Another associate of ours, we'll call him Steve S.-a different Steve all together, ended up doing 15 years for conspiracy to deliver 50 kilos of cocain! "50 kilos?? What the ? I never knew he had that kind of action going! Where was our cut?" That was my demented thinking at the time!!!
And as for yours truley, well there I am sitting in a jacuzzi with Kenny (out on bond) and two cute little blondes driking wine. One was named Vicky, and she asked me to go home with her. Of course I did, and you pretty much know what happened after that. The next day she was driving me home on I-75 freeway when all of a sudden, the hood on her car flew up in front of the windshield blocking our view. (the lock on the hood was damaged from a precious accident) She was driving, so I looked around and behind us was a huge semi, the kind with two trailors for hauling dirt. Acting as her eyes, I guided us off the road to the shoulder. But, we hit some gravel and that caused us to jet back across the freeway. The truck hit us broadside at about 70mph. Vickey was killed and I basically walked away with minor injuries. I went into the ambulence and watched as they put her in a body bag. Can you believe it? I walked away. That's when the way I veiwed life, and the way I treated people changed forever. Until that moment, I was a ruthless, not caring, greedy drug dealer who didn't care one bit about anyone but himself. Now I wanted out of the business, and away from the cops and the customers.
NOTE: If all this seems crazy, it has only just begun my friends. It's late and I've been writing for about 4 hours. Don't forget (as if you could) that I am writing you from prison. Good night-more tomorrow.

[lulu]

oh my,,thank you for sharing with us. i do enjoy reading and learning what these guys has to go through in there.

thank you

[Valerie]

Very interesting Jeni,can't wait for the next part.

[Jeni]

Good evening once again dear readers.
It's been 4 days since last I've written this story because I have been transferred to the other side of this prison to the notorious "7 block". The reason for my transfer, I believe, is because I filed a formal complaint regarding the prison not giving me access to my account so I could purchase store goods. So anyways, it's taken me a couple of days to settle in to (for what many consider) the most insane, coldest, scariest place on the face of the earth. I was laying on my bunk trying to find the inspiration to write when it dawned n me, what if I am released? If I get out, I'll never finish this story with as much focus! The story must be finished here, where my prison time all began, amongst the chaos and insanity because in the end this IS a story about prison life and mankind.
Now, when I last wrote, I had just been in an accident causing the death of my new girlfriend, Vickey. Miraculousy (sp), I pretty much walked away and it would change my life for some time. But what to do? Where to go? Well, as it turns out, I had run into an old high school friend, who said he and a buddy were moving to California to attend "Musicians Institute", in pursuit of a music career. How perfect was this? I could leave the state giving the cops the slip and REALLY change my life and go for my all time life long fantasy- to become a *Rock Star*. So at the last minute, I sold some drugs to come up with the money, sent in an entrance exam and audio tape, and was accepted into "Musicians Institue".
Now enter Chapter 2- The Hollywood Years
It was the three of us, Mike, Scott, and me, piled in a van and heading west, no more drugs, and drug dealing, except for ten hits of acid I brought on our way to Hollywood, Land of the dreamers, as they call it. Well of course on the way, we made the mistake of stopping in Vegas where I lost $1200 of my school tuition which was due the first day of school. The rest was paid by a student loan. Six thousand in all.
So we arrived in Hollywood with just enough money to sqeek by to pay for an apartment, begin school and we were forced to eat a lot of "no-brand rice" just to survive. That was ok though because we were going to be "Rock Stars". While attending music school, I would go to the Hollywood YMCA every morning to work out, and every day I would see the actor Jeff Goldbloom, he would always say hello or give me a nod and I would do the same as we worked out. Back then we were so star struck we would always go down to Hollywood Boulevard where they would be filming a movie, where we would stand in a crowd of tourists waiting for the director to notice us and pick us from the crowd to make us stars. No luck. Our biggest worry back then was what our hair looked like and how we were going to eat.
My first jot I took was at a night club on Hollywood Boulevard called "Hollywood live". I didn't know it then but soon I would meet, Little Richard, NWA, Primus, and SoundGarden just to name a few. I started as a bus boy then was a bartender, security, and finally started promoting my own nightclub out of this same building- "Rock-N-Robs Underground Lounge". The club had a good run and I tried like crazy to get laid, the young stud I was (Hee Hee) and then I met Shey. Her name was Sherron, and she was the most beautiful thing I ever saw back then. Shey was an aspiring model who worked at a bikini store down on the boulevard and I was falling in love with her. Now, back then, to me "being faithful" to any woman meant I was juggling no more then 5 at a time. That's JUST the way I was back then in my twenties.
Soon "Hollywood Live" nightclub closed, and myself and a friend would then buy a taxi cab. So there I was, driving the mean streets of Hollywood, me and my cab. Each night was an adventure packed with danger and fun. Don't let the Hollywood name fool you, the city is full of every pimp, hooker, gang member, and two bit hussler that LA can produce. They all come to Hollywood to thrive on the tourist industry. For my first two years of driving, I had what only could be described as a "sickness". Women!!! I had to have them. God, they were beautiful. Now you must believe me when I tell you that on more then one occasion, I had sex with three different women in the same night. It was crazy. Woman tourists from all over the world. Also, Hollywood being the center for modeling and actresses, I have had a few of them too! (Hee Hee) I'm not trying to brag, I just want you to know what a huge thing it was to experience such beauty as women are. Wow. Anyways, driving taxi's was such an intense job, I was mixing with tourists and becoming very close in friendship to all kinds of Hollywood pimps, hookers, gang members, and every slime ball from here to New York. I would drive the hookers to their dates, I would deliver gang members with their drugs to their dope houses, and so on. I would even take the hookers coffee and doughnuts in the early hours down on Sunset Boulevard. This got me in very tight with all of these people. I knew everything about every operation all over the city. It's as if I was backstage watching a puppet master operate his puppets all over the city. I had a very unusual view.
Sitting next to me, riding shotgun, was my best friend Dave. We would totally trip out on all these crazy freaks, every night, stoned on weed (the only drug we did druing these years) Just when we thought we had seen it all, something crazier would happen. By the end of the night we usually ended upu with a pocket full of money, at some party, or getting down with some chicks we met in the cab.
Well, Dave worked for Fox tv station the same time they came out with the tv show "cops". That's when we came up with the idea of a new show called "cabbies", the life of a taxi cab driver. What a great idea! To show what an outrageous job it was showing all the danger and outright insanity of Hollywood. So, thats what we set out to do, make a tv pilot, then Dave would take it to his boss at Fox and "pitch" the idea. We would give a realistic view of life on the streets, interviewing hookers, pimps, gang members. I guess you could say that all these people were my friends because they were all my regular cab customers. We would simply give them a disguise, such as sunglasses, etc, and interview them. It was all such a great idea. It all had an overlying theme, and that was the theme of tough love.
Now let me explain, since my car accident when I was 19 years old, I developed a concious.(sp) I was around 25 now and since my earlier years as a drug dealer, I began to develop the biggest feelings of regret for all the lives, I thought, I had ruined by dealing drugs. I was becoming the exact opposite of the ruthless drug dealer. I was becoming "the savior of the streets". I was so tired of seeing the steady decay of morals of everyone around me. There were SO MANY underage girls who were prostitutes and little boys becoming prostitutes. With the help of two Mexican brothers who were on the LA police force, Mel and Gary, We would place these kids in shelters where they could get the help that they needed. I can even remember stopping my taxi in the middle of traffic, to get out and help and old lady crossing the street with her walker. I swear to God thats true. How funny. But it was all to pay a debt that I felt I owed society for all the wrong I had done it. And most of all, it made me feel good. Now drugs and prostitution are crimes of choice, but every now and then I would run across some sickos doing something nasty to underage kids, or something related to murder. That's when I stepped in and tipped off my police friends, all in the name of justice. I was a real "Johnny Freedom Fighter". If it seems that Iam trying to paint myself lilly white, it's because I was just that. I felt the more I sacrificed for the betterment of man, the better off we all were. It became me against the city. An endless overflow of slime balls and scumbags. I was always talking tough love to street people, or buying some vagrant something to eat, constantly preaching the good morals my mom and dad had tried to raise me with.
So anyways, that was the "true" theme of all our interviews- telling hookers to "straighten up" and get off the drugs, or telling gangbangers to "get a job". I was only allowed to do these things cuz these people trusted me enough, and let me film them. We had compiled about 4 or 5 hours worth of interviews on tape, and we were about to take our idea to Fox tv, when on August 9th, the verdict had come out in the Rodney King beating trials of four LAPD cops. They were set free, and it ignited the largest riots in the history of the city.
Chapter 3- The LA Riots
The most fascinating day of my life. Dave Brown and I were driving when we heard about the outbreak of the riot over the radio. Quick! To the video camera! It was around noon on the first day of rioting. Off in the horizon, we could see smoke coming from downtown LA. As the day progressed, the entire city was on fire everywhere! Imagine having no law! Anything, anywhere that you wanted, all you had to do was break a window and take it. I watched as pick up trucks backed into windows and loaded furniture, big screen tvs, stereos, clothes, you name it. Store after store after store, for as far as you could see into the horizon. We filmed it all, Sears stores cracked wide open while a hundred police watched, scared as hell because thousands of people were looting. This was the scene all over the city. Police had orders not to take action until the National Guard arrived. They were on their way from Arizona driving military Hummers, wearing camoufloush (sp) and carrying machine guns. They didn't arrive for two days, that's when it all ended, but until then Dave and I filmed all of it. While smoking joints and drinking beer in the cab. My God, the fascination of it all when there is no law. Thousands of people doing what they want. Now all of this was broadcast live on TV, so people at home were watching and saying "hey, that's down the street, lets go". And that's how the riot grew. Now because the riot started with the beating of a "white" truck driver, most of the "white" people stayed indoors fearing for their lives. Dave and I just tripped out on it all, stoned and filming. Because of the morals my family tried to instill in me, Dave and I never stole anything. (I was past that) and later, as Karma would have it, we made more money off our video footage then we could have ever made stealing. WEll, because the realities of a riot situation were so frightening, I was carrying a 25. calibur semi automatic pistol. And so we drove on and on filming with my gun in my hand. One never knew if the violence would be turned on us. That's when Dave and I got into an argument. Dave said "Damn Robert, these people are all ruthless criminals" and I said "No Dave, they're no different from you and me, their just taking advantage of the riots for their personal gain". So there we sat, arguing, sitting across from a 7-11 store as it was being looted. That's when it came to me. All right then Dave, film this. I pulled up to the store, jumped out of the taxi with my own gun, and pointed it into the store. "Everyone out of my store!" I shouted. Right then, everyone dropped what they had and came out of the store with their hands up in the air. "Hmmm, I think we have something here Dave!" And so was born "The vigalante Cab Driver." We went from store to store, stopping the looting just long enough to film it, then on to the next location. One location was on Hollywood Blvd. There was a group of people getting ready to break into a souvaneer (sp) store. There was a guy with a metal bar, just about to break the window. I walked up to him and pointed my gun at him "Get away from my store" I said. He said "fuck you." I got closer to him, put my gun to his forehead and pushed him with my other hand- "Do you wanna get shot?" I said. The guy dropped the bar and took off. Across the street, at the Roosevelt Hotel, a group of watching tourists all started clapping. I raised my fist in the air and shouted "Vigalante Cabdriver!" We filmed all night and into the next day. We needed sleep, so we stopped. We had been filming for almost two days. When we woke up it was over. The National Guard had taken the city back. On every corner, people were selling stolen goods. Well, it's late and I need sleep. I'll write again tomorrow!

[Cameo]

O.K....I'm printing this one out!

I'll be back later to reply!! Whew! This is great, thanks Jeni and Robert!

Pammie

[lulu]

oh man,i cant wait to read the next one.

[Jeni]

Hi all. I have a few more pages to type, but I have to go to my parents house. So, when I get home tonight, I will type the rest of what I have. He is not even done with it yet, he just sent me what he has finished so far. Thanks again all! I'll see ya tonight!!!

[Valerie]

Now I have to buy ink for my printer so I can print this,Ihope you don't mind.

[Ken]

Jeni - this is fantastic! I cannot wait for the next chapter!

I hope that your typing fingers hold out to finish it!

Thanks please to Robert for this!

[danielle]

This is really good. It seems almost too good to be true!

Tell Robert thanks for sharing this!! I can't wait to read more!!

[Jeni]

2 days later-----> It's been two days since I've last written. The reason is because I've been transferred yet again to Adrian, Michigan. Son of a bitch. This place is about 90% csc. How the f*#k did I end up here? In case your wondering, my original crime was carjacking and armed robbery. More on that later. You can look me up on the MDOC website. I have a strong believe in being a positive role model for kids, not taking advantage of them. That's all on that. Now, back to our story.
So anyways, we compiled all of this video footage of the riots and our interviews with the different husslers of Hollywood. Well, we first took our riot footage to channel 7 news. We concocted the story that we were driving around watching the looting when we had seen store owners crying, watching their stores being looted. Out of compassion, I had to do something to help them, and thats when I stepped in and used my gun to take control once again giving the owners a chance at saving their stores. Ya know, pushing the whole "Vigilante Cabdriver" theme. (Hee Hee) Well, ABC bought it for $700 and put it on their evening news. Then we took it to an NBC show called "Eyewitness Video". They loved it, this time we asked for $2500. They paid it. WE couldn't believe it. That was a lot of money to us. Now nothing I have ever done has ever made my parents proud, rightfully so, but once I was on tv, they sure were bragging.
Now the next place we went to to sell our footage was at "Hardcopy" inside the Paramount studios. We had made an appointment with the shows producer. We were running late that day and at the last minute when we left my house, I grabbed the riot footage, and our "street people" interview footage. I grabbed both because neither tape had labels on them and I didn't know which was which. When we got to the Hardcopy's offices, I put in a video and it was the riot footage, including "Vigilante Cabdriver" scenes. They liked it, and asked if we had anything else. Dave and I looked at one another, well.........there was this other thing we were working on, and so we put in the footage of interviews with pimps, hookers, and drug dealers. Holy shit! This is fantastic! And that's when it really started to happen. They gave us $5000 for our riot footage and told us to go film more interviews. When our first show aired on Hardcopy, their ratings went way up. We were a hit. Right around this time is when I started using heroin. It happened this way. Through a friend of Dave's, we were introduced to Chris Robinson, the singer of the "Black Crows". I was getting him ounces of some high grade weed. I hung out with him and his band everyday for about two weeks. One day when I came over, he asked me if I could get any opium which they tried somewhere in another country. I said "why don't you just smoke tar?" (tar is the street name for Mexican Heroin, which is actually opium that has been refined and concentrated) Chris Robinson said "oh tar, that's the stuff that my roadies put in a dristan nasel spray bottle and squirt up their nose." A light bulb had gone off in my head, what a great idea. So I went downtown and bought Chris some dope and showed him how to smoke it.
So there I was, driving my cab around Hollywood, high on heroin, and filming for "Hardcopy". Dave and I really got off on the fact that I could be on national tv, and nodding on heroin, and only we knew.
Now at this time, I was starting to become a little well known around Hollywood. Over the next year, there were four episodes in which I appeared. Each episode had two re-runs, that's 12 times that I was on Hardcopy. People were saying "hey, that's the guy from Hardcopy". I even had a couple of tourists take my picture and ask for my autograph. And of course, this got me in real good with the ladies. Whenever I was going to be on tv, I would go to my favorite club, and give the bartender $20 to put it on the big screen tv next to the stage. The girls would gather around me saying "hey, that's you on tv!" "Yea baby, that's me"
And they really loved it, thinking I was becoming someone big, and maybe I could have been............but heroin. So now I am dating as many girls as possible. I discovered heroin's effects as an afrodesiac (SP).There were many girls, I can't even remember half of their names. Isn't that sad? But the whole time all I ever wanted was Shey. Remember me telling you about her? So the whole time she was playing around like a yo-yo, she was out using heroin too, but I didn't know.
So, by now I wasn't even working the streets anymore. I had what can only be described as "shellshock". That is, I was so sick and tired of all the negativity, the little boy and girl prostitutes, the shootings, the husslers and scumbags, that I would only go out in my cab when I was filming for Hardcopy. I had a heavy heroin habit, and was developing quite a crystal meth habit too. One to bring me up, one to bring me down. So most of my Hardcopy money went for drugs and band equipment for the band we had called "Till I die".
Thats when the Hardcopy boys called me and wanted to try sending me to NewYork to film. No taxi cab, just me interviewing people. Hell yea! When do I leave? Well of course I had to bring along enough heroin to keep me going for the three days I would be there. So the night before I left, I swallowed about $300 in heroin that I tied off in a plastic baggy. Now before boarding the plane, I swallowed a double dose of x-lax so I would be sure to pass it when I arrived in NY. I got off the plane in NY, and there was a limo driver standing there with my name on a sign. WOW! My name! I was really going somewhere, maybe the next Tom Crusie, or so I thought. So, we're in the limo on the way to our hotel when wham! The x-lax was working. I've gotta shit. We got to the Radisson Empire West hotel, and I ran into the lobby bathroom. Kaboom! My ass just about exploded. So now here I am on my hands and knees, fishing around in the toilet with my bare hands, looking for my dope. In my own shit. Typical drug addict behavior. Well, to make a long story a little shorter, we filmed for three days, and came back to LA.
A month later I was fired from Hardcopy. They said that we had burned out the idea of the story, but I believe they knew I was on drugs. So now here I am about 25 years old, all the bills are due, everything I own, many thousands of dollars of the bands equipment, was all in the pawn shop. Then my land lord kicks me out of the house for not paying rent, and I lost it all. The band, the equipment, a place to live and now had a very very heavy drug habit. And oh yea, my cab took a shit on me so now I have no income.
Hollywood Drug Rings- Well now I was living with a friend of mine named Ervin. He was a limo driver. I started selling heroin. I bought my heroin from two guys from Mexico. I had known them for a year. When I met them, they had just started selling dope. A year later, Renee, the older of the two, was in school to get his aviation license because his father was getting too old to fly the drugs into the country. They were part of a "family" operation that grew the poppy plants, refined and processed the heroin, smuggled it into the country, and finally distributed it on the streets. I was paying $250 for 3 1/2 grams of pure heroin. Here in Michigan, that same amount sells for $1500. Because the Mexican border is right there next to California, there's tons of Mexicans competing for customers on the street. The purity is going up, the price is going down.
One day I got a call from my friend named "Black". He was a tattoo artist who did all my ink. He wanted to introduce me to a new customer, "Jet Lag". Now Jet lag lived in the old "Bruce Lee" karate studios right off Hollywood Blvd. Jet Lag and I became instant friends. He was the most genius musician I have ever seen, and he also was a speed dealer. Jet Lag was one of many supporting members in a large crystal meth ring. After a while, I too became involved in this ring. We handled it like a newspaper route. Jet Lag would fly to NY to do some recording in a recording studio that he was part owner of. He would hand his portion of the "ring" to me. I would take it over and deliver speed and heroin just like newpapers. Then when I felt I was becoming hot, I would hand it all back to him. The money we made paid for the recording of our cd for our new band "fucking contagious". All we did was sit around, get high, write music, and sell drugs. I can't begin to explain all the adventure's we would go on, trampling around the streets of LA. It was all so fascinating.
Now I really don't need to go into how deep we got involved. I personally have seen 50 lbs of crystal meth sitting in front of me. I've run pounds of crystal from LA to Las Vegas, blah blah blah. Big deal. Who hasn't?
Because of my huge drug habit, I was starting to go crazy. From using crystal, I was developing something called "speed psychosis". A severe amount of paranoia. Soon it got to the point where I didn't sell the drugs anymore, I just used them. I drove me to the streets. By that I mean I ran myself out of business and was sleeping on the streets literally. I slept in the dirt behind a dumpster. I didn't shower for months at a time. I remember once waking up on the side of the freeway, the dirt build up on my arm was so heavy that I had to spit on it so I could rub off the dirt just to inject more drugs. I did this for about a year, living on the streets. I begged for change to eat and to support my drug habit. All my life I have had people judging me, what I was or wasn't. Being a bum on the streets made everything easy. It's like you become invisible, no one WANTS to see you. You don't matter to anyone, it was a comfortable place for me. Looking back, being homeless didn't scare me too much because I knew I wouldn't be there forever. I was to smart for that-or so I thought. Maybe also I was still living out some massocistic (sp) way of payback for the things I had done wrong against others. Early in 1998, I decided it was time to go home and clean up. I had experienced all I could, I had partied with the best and the worst. I had survived two suicide attempts and the only woman I loved was gone. Shey was somewhere out there turning tricks. What happened to us was a crying shame. We had both come to Hollywood, young and dreaming, and now I was leaving a broken spirit.
SIDE NOTE: Dear viewers, I really wanted to tell you much more about the 8 years I spent in Hollywood, but this is supposed to be a story on prison life and so I am going to try and speed it up some.

[Charley'smom]

This is unbelievable! Better than the book I just finished
Can't wait for the next chapter!

[Jeni]

Well, I left Hollywood on a Greyhound bus. I was crushed to say the least. I left behind my dreams, everything I ever wanted in life, everything I had ever dreamed of at night in bed. All my success was tangled up and dissolved by drugs. The last I heard about Shey (the only woman I had ever really loved up to this point) was that she was walking Sunset Blvd. turning tricks. The trip home lasted 4 days, and for 4 days I didn't eat. I arrived starving, extremely sick, and with a severe case of depression. It didn't take long before I got back on heroin traveling to Detroit to get it. I had a new girlfriend named Natasha. Natasha had just come back from Amsterdam where she was living with her parents. They were an upper class family who loved their daughter very much. Well, it wasn't long before Natasha was hooked on heroin too. But, she had a history of using drugs, although she never used heroin until she met me. Deep in my heart, I knew it was totally my fault what happened to her. Without going into detail, soon she somewhat tricked me into letting her use heroin. That was something I tried very hard to prevent because I knew where it would lead her, whether I was there or not. Well Natasha started dancing at topless bars, then it led to her prostituting herself. It was very sad. I was a very sad person for ever letting it happen, but when someone starts to use hard drugs like that, it's only a matter of time. Soon her parents found out that I was an addict when I overdosed at their house, and the peramedics had to be called to bring me back. It was my 3rd overdose where I almost died.
Now in the time I was back from California, I went to several rehabs trying to get off heroin. And then once again, I started to consider suicide. This time I was going to do it with a gun instead of overdosing from drugs. All the regret from giving up my dreams in Hollywood and all the thoughts of guilt about what had happened to Natasha were weighing heavy on my mind. Then one night as I lay in bed, an idea crept into my mind. The thought was that I have never been to prison. As I said before, I was always too smart of a drug dealer to get busted, but in the end I was a victim of myself. A victim of my own addiction. I realized that I needed to be locked up long enough so that my brain would forget the addictive grip that heroin had on me. The very thought of being in prison scared the hell out of me, but you have to realize, I was desperate. I owed it to the people I loved, and the people who loved me, to try and cure this problem once and for all. Most of all, I owed it to myself before I made such a final decision as suicide. I thought about going to prison every night for about a month. It was a very conscious decision I was making to go out and commit a crime to get locked up. But what crime?
Well, on November 3 at 11am, I took a toy gun that I had previously stolen from Myers. I decided I would simply walk up to someone and demand their car, money, and whatever else. If I got away with it, then I would go get dope and I wouldn't stop until I got busted. That was my addiction talking. "Hello dumbass! What your doing is called carjacking", but I never stopped to think about it. So, I went up to a lady at K-Mart. She was getting in her car. I walked up and stopped her from closing her car door. I showed her the toy gun, I said "I am not going to hurt you, but step out of the car and leave your purse." She did. She gave me the keys when I told her to. I got in and drove off. I got about 3 miles away when the police pulled me over. As I watched the police officer through the rear view mirror, I wondered if he knew I had taken the car. Did she call the cops to respond so quickly? Then I saw him pull out his gun. A million things were rushing through my head. I thought "I have seen this on tv a hundred times, and it's not supposed to end like this." So I guess you could say just for the hell of it, I took off. What happened next was a high speed car chase through two cities. I had run through 3 red lights at over 100mph. I just didn't care. Now I thank God that no one was hurt. I couldn't live with that and I'd never get out of prison....never. Finally about 10 miles away, I was surrounded by police and gave myself up. After the police beat me up, they recovered the toy gun from the car. This was a major factor in court because I begged the judge to lock me up so I could get off drugs for good. The judge-Honorable Wendy Potts, saw the case for exactly what it was. A desperate act by a desperate person. She could have really slammed me, but she didn't. I didn't have a record. I had statements from police in California about how I used to help homeless kids get off the streets, and how I was a member of Greenpeace. Anything positive about me I included in my case. I was sentenced to 2 1/2 to 20 years for carjacking, 2 1/2 to 20 years for armed robbery, 1-2 years for fleeing from police, and 6 months for larceny from a vehicle. All my sentences ran concurrent, meaning I would be out on my minimum of 2 1/2 years with good behavior. As she sentenced me, my legs got weak. I was now on my way to a permanent change in my life. At this time I believed in people, the equality of all men, I was STRICTLY against racism, and I believed in the system. I trusted the system, that things would be fair as far as police are concerned. I, Robert Bogues, was on my way to prison.
NEXT- JACKSON STATE PRISON

[Jeni]

Well folks, that's all I have for right now. I am hoping to get the rest of it sometime this week. I know this story sounds almost fake, but honestly, this was Robert's life. It's hard to imagine the person I know now doing the things that he did then. But, he did them. It is amazing what drugs WILL do to your life.
So, hopefully I will have more soon. Love you all!

[emme]

my head is just spinning...