Solitary Refinement Chapter 31

Dear Honourable Deborah Fletcher                                May 10 2018

    Good morning your honour and the jury. Sorry I’ve never been on webcam before and as I wish to be thorough I have written down my statement so I will be reading it in its entirety. I apologize if that seems rude but I don’t want to miss any details as I know they are important for the jury and their decision.

    The events of the night of April 28th 2018 as I experienced them are as follows. I had earlier in the day had the first visit from my wife that I had had in the entire time I had spent incarcerated. I was informed that she was having an affair with my best friend and was seeking a divorce.

    Later that night my cellmate Kal attempted to climb into my bunk to assault me. I know this because he had threatened me a week earlier saying he was going to assault me sexually and that I wouldn’t be able to escape him. I had tried to tell a guard once but he simply ignored my worries and told me to get in my cell before lights out.

    So on the night of April 28th when Kal made his approach I made a wide slash at his face with a broken knife I had obtained from the kitchen. When he grabbed my wrist and wrenched it free and continued his ascent I grabbed my second knife. This one also obtained from the kitchen that I took cooking classes in. I made a straight lunge into Kal’s throat while both his hands were gripped onto the bed frame ready to swing himself on top of me. He bled down all over his own bed and fell to the ground. I regret my actions and regard them as morally wrong. My actions were done in self defense. Between the jarring news I had received from my wife just hours before, and the threat of this assault made a week prior I was in a state of incredible anxiety and was not in control of my own actions. A guard by the name of Mark then took me to a room in the hospital wing where I would be looked over in the morning to see if I had sustained any injuries myself. I remember walking into the hospital wing, seeing Ziggy in one room, I think he hit his head outside slipping in some mud. I also saw Trevor in another room, I don’t know what was wrong with him or why he was there. I was led to a third room and left to spend the night there. There had been terrible weather, wind and rain that day. There was a brief power outage in the middle of the night for maybe ten minutes, I remember the lights in the hallway going off and it taking a while for them to come back on. In that time the lights were off I heard screaming and smashing in the next room and ran to see what had happened.

    In Trevor’s room I saw Ziggy on top of Trevor with his hands closed tightly around his throat, he may have struck him in the throat to start as he was coughing up blood and struggling for air. I ran over to try to pull Ziggy off but just as I grabbed Ziggy by the shoulders Trevor pulled a blade from his pocket and stabbed it through Ziggy’s temple. I got a lot of Ziggy’s blood on my hands and then I was left to watch Ziggy slump off dead and Trevor die shortly after gasping for breath through his shattered windpipe. I went yelling for help and soon people came and told me to go back to my room. Shortly after the lights came back on.

I was surprised at first to see Ziggy attacking Trevor the way he did. I then thought back on some of Ziggy’s past actions, and what I’ve learned about Trevor since and it started to make sense. Ziggy had previously made me an offer to commit violence to protect me from Kal before. Since Trevor’s death I have learned about his past crimes, those of being a serial rapist and pedophile. If Ziggy knew this it would only make it more likely that he would do what he did. His own crimes being ones of vengeance against sexual misconduct, if he learned the truth about Trevor he could have wanted to lay down justice as he saw fit. Trevor and I had up until recently had an agreement that I would do a portion of his chores and he would keep me safe from Kal. Having previously tried to offer me protection, if he learned about the fact that Trevor had retracted his own protection from me from a known sex predator, combined with the knowledge about Trevor’s own gross sexual misconduct I have very little doubt about why he may justify taking matters into his own hands the way he did.

    That is the extent of my knowledge concerning the events of the night of April 28th 2018. Thank you Judge Fletcher and the jury.

P.S. Drop me a line!