Still, the long sentence has weighed heavily on him. It was like Joe Frazier hitting Muhammad Ali with one of those left hooks to his body, right? He will be 68 then. It was kind of funny. Over the years, FCI Englewood has housed its fair share of high-profile inmates. In the mids, when the facility was medium-security, Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were held there during their trials in Denver.
Blagojevich has overlapped with several notorious offenders. Also at FCI Englewood for a spell: Mike Carona, the former sheriff of Orange County, California, who was convicted of ordering witnesses to lie during a corruption probe.
His soon-to-be fellow inmates watched his arrival live on CNN. During his first few weeks, his ID card kept getting stolen. One day, he went to work out at the gym. He put his ID in his shoe but accidentally dropped it. A prisoner nicknamed Grinch found it and kept it, he says.
In April , the National Enquirer published several photos of Blagojevich taken by an inmate using a smuggled cell phone. The first pictures of him in FCI Englewood to surface, the fuzzy images call to mind Bigfoot sightings. The room had a metal bunk bed and a single small window that offered a slivered glimpse of the sky and little else.
Inmates with less than 10 years on their sentences and who are considered low risk for escape are eligible. Converted from a motel that served those visiting FCI Englewood prisoners, the camp is a boomerang-shaped building with about 50 rooms.
Those rooms, which sleep five, are carpeted and have bathrooms with tubs, which Blagojevich likes to use after long runs. Inmates are given much more freedom, and there is only one guard on duty each shift.
At night, after the final count, inmates have been known to venture off to Walmart to buy cigarettes. Some have even headed out to the golf course for trysts with girlfriends. The looser vibe took Patti by surprise initially. She recalls the first time she and her daughters visited her husband at the camp.
As they were driving off, they noticed Blagojevich by the side of the road, waving to them. For Blagojevich, a man who rose to political heights from modest roots he is the son of a Serbian-born steelworker and a CTA ticket clerk , prison has been a humbling experience, full of little indignities.
As at most correctional facilities, inmates are assigned menial jobs, such as washing dishes, mopping floors, and scrubbing toilets.
At the low-security facility, Blagojevich did a three-month stint in the kitchen, one of the toughest tasks, but primarily worked in the law library and taught classes on the Civil War and World War II.
Get out of here! Blagojevich is a die-hard Cubs fan, and the team had long been something he and his older daughter, Amy, bonded over. So Patti bought Amy a ticket to Denver so she could watch game 3 with her dad. Not gonna turn the TV on.
Blagojevich has come to savor the small acts of kindness. On his first day, he tells me, a group of inmates presented him with the big-house version of a welcome basket. You know, these are big, tough guys, drug dealers and gangbangers and bank robbers—they have so little, right?
Which calls to mind his last public interview, in , right before he was due to surrender to FCI Englewood authorities. For mental and emotional fortitude behind bars, he has turned to religion. In prison, nearly everyone has a nickname. B, and Boo. Gov, naturally.
Nonetheless, he hardly runs the joint. Once a gifted glad-hander as a politician, Blagojevich is largely a loner as an inmate. They called themselves the White-Collar Roundtable. But Blagojevich rarely took part. Yet Blagojevich has made several close friends. There have been other inmates Blagojevich befriended who have since been released. I ask Blagojevich about that. They come from rougher backgrounds. Some of these white-collar guys, boy, they tell tall tales.
More than a week later, I receive a lengthy follow-up email from Blagojevich. He wants to elaborate. All alone, except for the loneliness that never leaves you alone.
It is always with you; a constant companion. That place would appear differently in each of the dreams. I dreamed I was facing criminal charges and the threat of prison. It is only a dream.
The sharpness of the pain that was so intense at the beginning—where sometimes you felt you would never feel anything but that pain—has with the passing of all these years, slowly and imperceptibly aged into a sadness that has found a home inside of me. At the smallest prompting it can be activated. Where a moment before you might be laughing at a funny story, suddenly something happens or a thought crosses your mind and—boom!
Real life intrudes. Like most prisons, FCI Englewood is a collection of isolated societies. The black inmates sit together. Hispanics dine in another area. White-collar prisoners have their own corner. Sex offenders are shunned by nearly everyone. It was then that I realized they were white supremacists and politely declined their offer of protection.
Blagojevich tells me about one inmate he befriended at the low-security facility: Mr. Tall, thin, and black, with white hair, a white mustache, and a fatherly way about him, Mr. B reminded Blagojevich of Morgan Freeman. The inmate, who was in his late 60s, was on the last leg of a year sentence when the two men became close. At night, before lights out, Blagojevich would stop by Mr.
B for lunch at one of the tables designated for blacks. It turned out to be no big deal. No one really cared. No one complained. The days came and went, and I would sit with Mr. B every day at lunch. While governor, Blagojevich was notoriously fanatical about following his own press. His staff would clip every story that mentioned him, and he would get irate if they missed one.
The campaign was another story. That October, seven months after Blagojevich arrived at FCI Englewood, the first presidential debate was held at the University of Denver, just 10 miles away.
An inmate named Ernie, a professional musician who had gotten busted for smuggling drugs from Mexico, had been teaching Blagojevich to play the guitar.
And when Obama got done with that debate, he was able to get on Air Force One and fly home and sleep that night in his bed in the White House. I had to go back in my bunk and spend the night in the shithouse. It was almost more amusing to me than devastating. As for his guitar playing, Ernie thought Blagojevich would make a better frontman.
He invited the ex-governor to join his band, the Jailhouse Rockers, on vocals. Blagojevich practiced every day. We did six songs. Blagojevich largely avoids the TV rooms, where convicts like to gather. Have fun with Olivia on the race track or download the app for the full play experience. Create vehicles from the movie and watch them do battle as both Resistance and First Order try to seize control. Can you tell Bit what to do? Play as Emmet, Lucy, Benny and Unikitty in this fast paced, scrolling, target shooting game.
Final goal is to get all of our four heroes to safety. Help Jay to overcome obstacles and fight off enemies in the dangerous world of Prime Empire video game. Can you make it to the last level?
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