Episode Transcript
Producer: Before we start, just wanted to give you a heads up that this episode includes descriptions of violence and references a homicide. If you or someone you know needs support, we’ve got links to resources in the episode description.
Sukey Lewis: Oh, is it powered on? Can you hear it going?
It’s the day after Julie and I met with our confidential source, and we’re back in the office with our editor, Victoria.
Victoria Mauléon: It’s not, it’s not reading it.
Sukey Lewis: We’re absolutely reeling from what we’ve been given: memos, internal prison emails, and these video CDs that have Sergeant Kevin Steele’s own handwriting on them. It’s key evidence that Steele had saved, according to our source, both to protect himself and because he’d become so concerned that his own law enforcement agency might try to destroy it.
Julie Small: But wait, did you put a disc in it?
Victoria Mauléon: No. No.
Julie Small: Try putting a disc in it.
Victoria Mauléon: I tried.
Julie Small: It wouldn’t do anything?
Sukey Lewis: No, it was just dead. Right?
But at first, the most important videos won’t play. It turns out to watch the practice run and the homicide, we need some special software. So, Julie, Victoria and I huddle in front of Julie’s computer and we try another disc: the one labeled “Taylor.”
Sukey Lewis: Okay. So let’s try-
Julie Small: It is reading it.
Sukey Lewis: Let’s try Taylor.
Julie Small: I mean, it’s-
Victoria Mauléon: Okay. Wait, hold on.
Sukey Lewis: Okay.
Victoria Mauléon: Oh Lord.
Julie Small: Looks like it’s gonna-
Sukey Lewis: And we find out that Cody Taylor, the guy who was so afraid of having this interview come out, is the one who started almost everything.
Looks like it’s gonna play.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: All right. This is Sergeant Steele in the room. It is now about almost 8:30 on Friday, July the third. I’m also in the room with inmate Taylor. Is that your name?
Cody Taylor: Yes.
Sukey Lewis: The video opens with a familiar scene: Steele holding up his black military watch to the camera to record the time. At this point, it’s been almost seven months since the homicide of Luis Giovanny Aguilar. Taylor has already pled guilty to the murder and taken his 102 year sentence.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: When I came in here, I told you what we were gonna talk about.
Cody Taylor: Yes.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Let me itemize that. We’re gonna talk about a letter that you sent. We’re gonna talk about some things that you know, and we’re also gonna talk about some things that you’ve noticed.
Cody Taylor: Yes, correct.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: And, and also you asked me before I started recording, you said, “Hey, I wanna tell you the real reason why I’m here.” Did you not say that?
Cody Taylor: Yes, sir.
Sukey Lewis: Steele reads Taylor his rights as he sits in a cage about the size of a phone booth. He’s a white guy wearing a sleeveless undershirt. You can see a large tattoo of a woman’s face in the center of his upper chest, and another tattoo that’s harder to make out snaking down the left side of his face. Steele holds up a handwritten document to the camera.
[Music]
Sgt. Kevin Steele: This is the letter.
Cody Taylor: And my signature.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: And it’s undated.
Sukey Lewis: Steele has been asked by his boss, a lieutenant in the ISU, to find out more about this letter — this letter that Cody Taylor sent to the warden of New Folsom Prison, making some pretty big allegations. Allegations that up until now, Taylor says he’s kept quiet about.
Cody Taylor: …speculations. I just never, you know, I’ve never admitted it.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: You just used the word “admitted it.”
Cody Taylor: Yes.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Like that you’ve always known that there are things that are unknown-
Cody Taylor: Unknown.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: … or in the shadows.
Cody Taylor: Oh, of course. Of course.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: And so what you’re saying is, you know that you have direct information to validate those- that speculation.
Cody Taylor: I have direct information. If, if the video evidence is still there, that’s more than enough on both occasions.
[Theme music]
Sukey Lewis: In this episode, we go back inside the day room one final time. To look at what this video evidence shows about the claims of each of the murderers. To find out how Steele had looked at this case, and if his obsession had gone too far. And to ask who should answer for the death of Luis Giovanny Aguilar. I’m Sukey Lewis. This is On Our Watch Season Two: New Folsom.
[Musical break]
Before we get further into this evidence, I just wanted to let you know that KQED agreed to pay some costs so the confidential source could bring us these materials. It’s not something we usually do, but in this case, we decided it was appropriate. We needed to safeguard the evidence, protect our source, and finish our investigation in time. Now let’s get back to Steele’s interview with Cody Taylor about the letter he sent, which was addressed to Warden Jeff Lynch.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: … or do you need to look at it again to review it?
Cody Taylor: No, I, I, I pretty much know what it’s about. Um, would you like me to summarize it?
Sukey Lewis: Taylor tells Steele he sent this letter because he’s fed up with how he’s been treated since the murder.
Cody Taylor: Cell search daily, which isn’t policy. Um, you know, the little bit of property I do have, you know, um, destroyed on a daily basis. Uh, personal, uh, hygiene and, and food items spread out sometimes — it’s happened twice. Um, shoe prints on my bed, the list goes on.
Sukey Lewis: Taylor says he thinks it’s retaliation — that the murder made the prison look bad. And he says there’s been a lot of speculation about officers lending them a helping hand, which he is now ready to talk about.
Cody Taylor: I’ll be willing to take a lie detector test. Um, ’cause everything that I’m saying and have said in that letter is 1000% honest.
Sukey Lewis: Taylor explains, going back to the assault on Michael Britt two months before the murder, they had an understanding with the officers in the unit. Britt, if you remember, was Dion Green’s enemy, who he’d already tried to kill at a different prison once before. Yet prison officials put Britt and Green in the same housing section and let them all have day room together
Cody Taylor: While walking out, the sergeant and the lieutenant said, “Hey man, you’re on your own, cuz. Have fun with these guys.”
Sgt. Kevin Steele: They said that to Britt.
Cody Taylor: Said that to Britt.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: And by them saying that, are you, is your inference that they knew what was about to happen?
Cody Taylor: Oh, yeah, because the sergeant asked me if this could not happen today because he’s trying to go home.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: The sergeant said, could this not happen today because he’s going home?
[Music]
Cody Taylor: Yeah. And I said, it’s only business, big dog.
Sukey Lewis: Taylor says the officers let them carry on with their business: attacking Michael Britt. Just a side note, we didn’t get a video of the Britt incident, so it’s the one that’s the hardest to analyze, but we were leaked some still images that show Taylor and Rodriguez stabbing Britt as Green looks on from a nearby chair. A still image taken a minute and a half later shows the two attackers standing in the middle of the day room.
Reports say the control booth officer shot those foam batons, but he didn’t use lethal force. Then about eight weeks after they tried to kill Britt, there was the practice run.
Cody Taylor: We tested everything out a week prior.
Sukey Lewis: Taylor tells Steele how he was in the day room, got out of his cuffs, slipped the black boxes, ran up the stairs, got the knives from Dion Green’s cell, and came back down. All of which the tower officer saw, but didn’t do anything about.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: So how do you know that they knew that you had weapons? How would you know that?
Cody Taylor: Look, not necessarily weapons, but he asked me what I went up there and grabbed. When he opened up the thing, he’s like, “Why’d you do that? Why’d you go up there and grab it?”
Sgt. Kevin Steele: What’d you tell him?
Cody Taylor: I said, “Man, just relax. It’s all good.”
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Mm-hmm.
Cody Taylor: He goes-
Sukey Lewis: Initially, Taylor says the plan was to murder Aguilar that day — the day of the practice run. They knew he’d have to walk through the day room on his way back from a morning group, but ultimately he and Anthony Rodriguez decided to wait until a later day — a day when they could get him in the day room alone, not under an officer escort.
Cody Taylor: You know, just outta respect for the staff because they were, you know, looking out for us.
Sukey Lewis: Steele asks Taylor about one of those ways that staff was supposedly looking out for them, that Taylor talked about in his letter.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: You said, and I I’m gonna quote you.
Cody Taylor: Quote.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: It says, “Keys were given to us.”
Cody Taylor: Yes.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Keys were given to you by who?
Cody Taylor: Yeah. Real keys.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Real cuff. Cuff keys.
Cody Taylor: Real long cuff keys.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Not homemade, not manufacturer keys. They’re the real deal.
Cody Taylor: Broken off handcuff keys.
Sukey Lewis: Steele later interviewed a different man who’d been in the B8 unit. This guy told him that, “Everyone knew the cops were working with those guys, they could run around without getting shot.” And he told Steele that cops had given Green a real cuff key and that it was being used to make copies. In the video with Steele, Taylor says, the day of the murder where they went after Luis Giovanny Aguilar, staff once again, knew what was gonna happen.
Cody Taylor: And I’m not exaggerating when I tell you this. Not only all staff knew, but cer- I believe certain staff left the buildings ’cause they didn’t want to be involved, I believe. Because they were transferring to another institution and they were like, “Hey man, we’re I’m this, this my up my transfer. I’m not trying to be involved.”
Sgt. Kevin Steele: And when you say transfer, ’cause they’re trying to transfer to Mule Creek?
Cody Taylor: Mule Creek Prison.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Yeah.
Cody Taylor: Yeah.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: You had told me that just right before this today.
Cody Taylor: Right before. And he goes, “I’m not gonna be involved because,” um… Or no, “I couldn’t be involved in the fun because I’m trying to get a transfer.”
[Music]
Sukey Lewis: This is one of those details in Taylor’s story that to me has the granularity and messiness of truth. It’s such an odd thing to make up, and it’s something that Steele was later able to confirm. Two officers in the unit had transferred to Mule Creek State Prison shortly after. Steele continues going over the letter and Taylor explains how they’d also made this agreement with officers not to double lock their cuffs so that they could get out of the black boxes.
Taylor tells Steele to go back and look at the video of the murder. While he says he hasn’t seen it himself, he thinks a moment was caught on tape that will prove his point. As they were going through the security protocol at his cell door, the officer who was cuffing him made a mistake.
Cody Taylor: I’m coming outta my door and he accidentally double locks my right foot. That being said, my left lock is p- is still not double locked. Um, but my right one is. I look, I look to the right and I tell him, “Hey, you fucked up. That shit is double locked.”
Sukey Lewis: Taylor claims the officer kneeled down outside his door and undid the double lock on his right ankle cuff. But Taylor says the day of the murder, they did have one new factor to worry about. They didn’t know the guy in the control booth or tower.
Cody Taylor: We’ve already had these conversations with the previous tower with Britt. Everything was good. He wasn’t gonna kill us. Right? But there was a new cop in there. So I made sure I said, look man, you know, we’re half-ass doing you guys a favor. You know, this guy assaulted you and shit. You know, we have our own- word for word.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Mm-hmm.
Cody Taylor: We have our own reasons too, but can you make sure, uh, your tower doesn’t kill us? He goes, um, I don’t really know him, but I’m gonna talk to him right now. You should be good.
Sukey Lewis: Taylor had told me a lot of the same things that he told Steele. Some of these details I didn’t include in the last episode because I couldn’t verify them. Like the officers trying to transfer, or the supposed footage of an officer kneeling down at his door. But now that we had these memos and videos, these were things we could check. Near the end of the tape, Steele brings the conversation back to Taylor’s motivation for sending his letter to the warden. What does he hope to get out of this?
Sgt. Kevin Steele: The real reason, the impetus, the reason that you wrote this is, again, about your housing placement, the treatment, and the fact that you, your, your real longing is to go to Salinas Valley unencumbered with anything from here.
Cody Taylor: I just want to move on. I just, you know, I feel that I took one on the chin. You know, I-
Sukey Lewis: This appears to be what he’s proposing. He’ll continue to keep quiet about officers’ involvement in the murder in exchange for suspending his solitary confinement, or SHU term, and transferring him to Salinas Valley State Prison where he says he’ll be safer with members of his own gang.
Cody Taylor: I want to move all this behind me-
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Mm-hmm.
Cody Taylor: … and start over right there. Um, but I feel that I shouldn’t remain in the SHU, be treated as I’m being treated. And, and after, you know what? Initially, hey, I, I didn’t say shit, man. I didn’t say shit to nobody. And, and I’m, if anything, I should be treated like a king for me remaining silent.
Sukey Lewis: Taylor says he doesn’t want anything, money or anything else, and he says he’ll even sign a non-disclosure agreement if that would help. Because his point is not to get staff in trouble. If he wanted to do that, he’d have gone about this in a totally different way. He’d have filed a formal complaint, told his family who worked in law enforcement or called the press. But he wanted to see if he could work this out directly with the warden. So he sent that letter.
Cody Taylor: My co-defendants don’t even know about that letter. Nobody knows about that letter besides me. My co-defendants- I don’t speak to Mr. Green no more, but Rodriguez doesn’t even know about that letter. Nobody-
Sukey Lewis: But now Taylor says he’s at a boiling point.
Cody Taylor: And you fools didn’t even do an investigat- Excuse me, I don’t know that, but I’m just assuming you guys didn’t even do an investigation into your officers. They might have been redirected, but I’m sure nobody’s gotten fired.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Mm-hmm.
Cody Taylor: So, you know, that’s, that’s a, that’s a coverup in itself.
[Music]
Sukey Lewis: Taylor is right about one thing, at the time of this interview. From what we can see, Internal Affairs hasn’t started investigating this incident and no one has been fired.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Who do you want to see this video?
Cody Taylor: Just the warden. Just the warden.
Sukey Lewis: Just the warden.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: All right. I’m gonna go ahead and conclude.
Sukey Lewis: It’s not totally clear to me what to make of Taylor’s motives here. Okay, so he’s not trying to get out of criminal charges, but does he really believe he’s going to strike a deal with the warden? And if so, why turn to Kevin Steele — a rule follower — to be his blackmail delivery guy? On the other hand, if he’s just lying to stir up shit for officers, what does he hope to get out of it? An investigation that’s only gonna bring a whole bunch more scrutiny and danger down on him?
But I have another question about this interview from the prison’s side of things. Why was Steele the one assigned to do it in the first place? There were clearly already rumors going around about this murder among witnesses in the unit. A different letter alleging it was a setup had already been mailed to the District Attorney’s office within weeks of the murder.
So if you’re the warden, why assign this to someone in-house? For simple optics reasons, it seems like getting headquarters to review would be the cleanest course of action. CDCR says they cannot comment on this case, and that it’s part of an ongoing investigation involving outside law enforcement. But whatever the warden thought he was doing by sending Steele in to do this interview, and whatever Taylor thought he was doing walking into this interview, those choices start a chain reaction that likely neither prison officials nor Cody Taylor wanted. An investigation that winds up in the lap of the FBI and a lawsuit brought against prison officials by the mother of Luis Giovanny Aguilar.
[Music break]
What happens next in the chain reaction set off by Taylor’s letter is that Steele wants to find corroboration. After that first interview with Taylor, in emails to his bosses, including the warden, Steele shares what he’s uncovering. He sounds activated and eager to move on Taylor’s claims. He says he’s already talked to Green about some of these issues with the murder, and he asks permission to try and talk to Anthony Rodriguez, the third murder suspect who took part in the stabbing with Taylor. It doesn’t appear that Anthony Rodriguez ever agreed to that, but someone else did agree to go on tape with Steele.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Go ahead and introduce yourself please.
Dion Green: My name is Green J22161.
Sukey Lewis: In this video, Dion Green is now the one in the cage and Steele starts off the same as he did with Taylor by noting the time and date. It’s July 17th, 2020, and reading him his rights. This is Steele’s first recorded interview with Green, but he acknowledges that they have talked about the murder before while handling stuff for court.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: And in a roundabout way, you told me that it would’ve never happened had staff not participated in that.
Dion Green: Yes, sir.
Sukey Lewis: As we listened in on this interview, hoping to understand this next phase of Steele’s investigation, and what Green had said to Steele that had convinced him that officers had a hand in the murder, we realized that many of those conversations had already happened off camera, and this set up a very odd dynamic in this interview. For example, Steele brings out a pair of handcuffs to get Green to demonstrate the double locking mechanism, but it’s clear this is a replay for the camera.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: I brought these very same cuffs down last week and I asked you a simple question.
Dion Green: Yes sir.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Do you remember that question?
Dion Green: Yes sir.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: I asked you whether I can get these cuffs open if they’re double locked.
Sukey Lewis: Steele double locks the cuffs and hands Green, a flat metal shim.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Can you get those open with that shim?
Dion Green: I already know that I can’t.
Sukey Lewis: In case you missed that, he says, “I already know that I can’t.”
[Music]
Green is very soft spoken throughout this interview. He says he sometimes hesitates because he has Parkinson’s and because going on the record is dangerous. Steele, meanwhile, is a man in constant motion. A man now animated by this mission to find the truth about this murder. And what these two very different styles lead to are these exchanges where Green hesitates, and instead of waiting for him to respond, Steele jumps in — helping him and clearly leading him.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: I would think that you guys making the weapons and cutting the- the desks, it would seem to me that that would require a lot of effort on your part. It would make a lot of noise. And possibly it would require some extra stuff that maybe you don’t have access to. What do you think on that?
Dion Green: I mean, of course, I mean-
Sukey Lewis: Steele brings up the noise of making the weapons and Green picks up on it.
Dion Green: You have to be able to hear that.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: The scraping, you mean the grinding or-
Dion Green: You know the [Verbal scraping noise] you know, the, you know, you’ve seen the weapons that was used.
Sukey Lewis: By the way I ran this by an officer who said that on its own, this isn’t a credible piece of evidence. A lot of these units are really loud and the sound of making the weapons could easily be missed by officers. But Steele doesn’t push back or point out how noisy the unit is. It seems like he just accepts what Green’s saying and moves on.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Was there any, any um, extra things that were provided to enable you to cut the, the Steele from the desk?
Dion Green: Well, only way when we can get or use… they provided, and that was the clipper heads and stuff.
Sukey Lewis: They’re talking about the tool used to make the knives the head of a hair clipper.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: When you say they, who are you talking about?
Dion Green: You know, staff.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Staff brought you clipper heads?
Dion Green: Yeah. You know.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: To your cell?
Dion Green: Yeah.
Sukey Lewis: Again, it’s like Steele already knows the answers he’s looking for. Clearly they have talked about this before. Now that’s likely part of why Steele is asking these questions like this: to prompt a reluctant witness to share things he’s said before, but now to do it for the record. But the end result is that there are these huge moments where it feels like Steele is testifying himself rather than eliciting answers from Green.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: So if I’m understanding you, you’re saying if it can happen to Aguilar, it can happen to you?
Dion Green: Of course. Absolutely. Absolutely. At any time.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Taken a step further, you’re saying that staff could facilitate you being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Dion Green: Absolutely. Mm-hmm.
[Music]
Sukey Lewis: As we watched this recording, I was also listening for things that Green had told me, which you heard about last episode. But Green does not mention Aguilar being a child molester or that the killing was ordered by the lieutenant of the B8 housing unit, Eric Baker. He doesn’t say anything about the drugs he told me that an officer brought to his cell to give to Taylor and Rodriguez’s payment.
The story that Green tells Steele first is actually the closest to how Taylor and Rodriguez have described the incident. Not a hit ordered by the officers, but an assault that they facilitated.
Dion Green: We could not have killed this man. He would be alive today if it wasn’t for the, the assistance and the help of your staff.
Sukey Lewis: He tells Steele that officers agreed to make Aguilar — who was associated with an enemy gang, who was known to be disrespectful and assault staff — available to them in the ways we’ve talked about before. There’d be no kill shot and no double locking the cuffs.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Do you think there’s a possibility that the officer made a mistake twice when he, when he didn’t double lock those cuffs?
Dion Green: That’s not no damn mistake.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: It’s not a mistake. Not twice in a row?
Dion Green: It’s not. You, you are a professional.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Mm-hmm.
Dion Green: Your job-
Sgt. Kevin Steele: So you don’t think it’s a mistake or an oversight?
Dion Green: With, with with, with us… the caliber of men that we are… I go back to this: the caliber men- of who I am and my two brothers, and the hits that we have put down…
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Mm-hmm.
Dion Green: We are the number one security threat in B8. We are. So to not secure us… to not secure us?
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Mm-hmm.
Dion Green: … is a problem.
Sukey Lewis: Finally, Steele asks Green if there’s anything he’d like to say to the people who this video is for: the warden and the chief deputy warden.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: What would you wanna say to them? If anything.
Sukey Lewis: Green rocks forward in his seat slightly. There’s a little open slot in the side of the cage that he peers through to look into the camera.
Dion Green: You know, um, I’m asking for my safety. My livelihood is, you know, I’m asking for, you know, to be placed nowhere in the state of California. Nowhere.
[Music]
Sukey Lewis: After this interview, Steele and Green will record at least three more interviews. Unfortunately, we don’t have all those recordings, but we do know that Steele came to believe much of Green’s story. And I think part of that is because he began to feel responsible for him. At the very, very beginning of this first video, Steele starts the tape rolling while Green is in the middle of saying something.
Dion Green: You just want me just to take your word?
Sgt. Kevin Steele: I do. I know.
Sukey Lewis: Steele puts his word on the line to convince Green to put his life on the line. And even if Green’s motives aren’t pure, that danger is real. In the months to come, confidential information about Green’s testimony and Taylor’s letter is leaked out to officers and word spreads that he talked.
Dion Green: That I’m a whistleblower rat for ex- exposing this ongoing corruption of staff and that I need to be taken out.
Sukey Lewis: This is a clip from one of those later interviews that we did get.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: When you say calling you a whistleblower, when, what does that term mean to you? Whistleblower?
Dion Green: Well, whistleblower to me means- okay in terms of, you know, uh, Snowden, you know Snowden?
Sgt. Kevin Steele: Mm-hmm. Yes.
Sukey Lewis: Edward Snowden who leaked secrets about the NSA.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: But it can take on a bad connotation sometimes.
Dion Green: Absolutely.
Sgt. Kevin Steele: But it is again, a government program intended to expose corruption. That’s what it’s designed for.
Sukey Lewis: But Green says he’s being called this for a different reason.
Dion Green: The purpose is only one purpose. That purpose is to get me hurt very badly. To get me killed.
[Music]
Sukey Lewis: Coming across this exchange was such a meta moment for me. These two men discussing the meaning of the term “whistleblower,” the term that came to define Sergeant Kevin Steele, but did not protect him. And the term that has marked Dion Green as well. While it’s possible that Steele got too close to Green to see him clearly, Green’s testimony is not the only evidence Steele had to go on. Now it is not the only evidence that we have to go on either. We finally did figure out how to play the surveillance videos of Luis Giovanny Aguilar’s murder and the practice run, and we found an expert to help us decode them.
[Ad break]
Sukey Lewis: I wanted to start by having Julie show you the video of what has been called the Practice Run.
A couple weeks after we got these videos and memos about the Aguilar homicide, we met up with another confidential source. I was on Zoom and Julie was in the studio. This man is a retired sergeant who knows a lot about internal affairs.
This is just- Yeah, the practice run.
Julie Small: And there’s no sound. You know that.
Sukey Lewis: He watches it play. The video leaked to us is pretty short. Four minutes and 22 seconds. When it starts, Taylor and Rodriguez are already sitting at the individual desks in the day room. Rodriguez is on the left and Taylor is on the right. You don’t see how Taylor escapes his restraints because when the video starts, he’s clearly already gotten out of the handcuffs, which are supposed to be attached to a chain around his waist, and the ankle shackles that are supposed to be fixing him to the chair.
[Music]
Taylor sweeps his right leg out to shake off the ankle chain and then runs around the desk and up the stairs leading to Green’s cell. He kind of trips at the top of the stairs, recovers, and then grabs something — the knives — from under the door. He tucks them into the open front of his white prison jumpsuit. As he runs back down the stairs, he adjusts the knives in his waistband and then sits back down in his chair. Anthony Rodriguez gives him a big smile and kind of bounces up and down in his seat.
Taylor starts putting his restraints back on. The first time watching it through, the sergeant is pretty unconvinced that staff would’ve necessarily noticed the action in the unit. Just a note, this sergeant didn’t want us to use his voice. So the voice you’re gonna hear is actually one of our colleagues repeating exactly what the confidential source said.
Anonymous Sergeant: If you watch the inmates, one of them is clearly the lookout. So if staff are involved, why is he so intent on identifying whether or not staff are in the picture, whether or not staff are coming?
Sukey Lewis: The sergeant says if the control booth officer was paying attention the way they were supposed to, these guys shouldn’t have been able to do this. But he said that complicity is not the only explanation for the security failure. It could also be laziness or incompetence, but he wants to see it again.
[Music]
This time we ask him to check out these two moments that happen at the very edge of what the camera captures.
These are the moments where you can see staff interacting with Taylor and Rodriguez. Taylor has just sat back down in his chair and he’s starting to get his restraints back on.
Sukey Lewis: Then there’s somebody that comes to the window of the rotunda, which you can also see in the video. Let’s see.
Julie plays the first clip where an officer appears at the window of the rotunda. That’s the central area outside the housing section.
Anonymous Sergeant: So what it looks like to me, if I wanna be skeptical, it looks like he’s- so, he’s got his hands on the window and then he goes like this, which is like cuffs, right?
Sukey Lewis: Julie zooms in so the sergeant can see the officer in the rotunda who looks like he’s holding up two fists next to each other, kind of pantomiming the gesture for cuffs. And Rodriguez holds up his hands showing, yeah, he’s still in restraints.
Yeah. Yeah. He is like, “Look, yeah, I’m good.”
Anonymous Sergeant: Mmhmm.
Sukey Lewis: The officer disappears from the window. So maybe he had a question about whether they were in their cuffs or not, but he’s satisfied by what he sees. Then almost as soon as he disappears, another officer steps into view in the control booth. The sergeant starts manipulating the video himself.
Julie Small: You just zoomed in on the tower.
Sukey Lewis: He pushes play.
Anonymous Sergeant: Oh shit, he’s giving hand signals. Do you see his hands? He’s giving hand signals. That’s weird.
Sukey Lewis: The officer in the control booth is clearly doing something with his hands. It could be that this guy just talks with his hands a lot. But the sergeant says what’s giving him pause is that hand signals are a common way for incarcerated people to talk to each other on the yard.
Anonymous Sergeant: The problem I have is that there’s clearly a control booth cop up there, somebody up there. And what I really don’t like is how he’s communicating with the inmates. There’s something very familiar about what he’s doing with those inmates.
Sukey Lewis: At the tail end of this back and forth, as the control booth officer disappears from view, Taylor adjusts the front of his jumpsuit and then he draws the waist chain of the shackles back over his head. Then he pulls the objects out of his waistband, bends over and slips them in his left sock. In all it takes three and a half minutes for him to put his ankle shackles and his handcuffs back on. The sergeant rewinds the video and watches it again.
Julie Small: He’s running up the stairs.
Anonymous Sergeant: There’s no way he should have been up the stairs. There’s no way he should have been able to do what he did.
Sukey Lewis: The sergeant says this video is not the full picture. He wishes he could see what happened in the minutes before it starts and in the minutes after. But he says, bottom line, the video is proof officers did not do what they were supposed to.
Anonymous Sergeant: What should have happened? There should have been a button press. There should have been alarm, there should have been people coming in. They should have been extracted from there. There should be, there’s all kinds of things that should have happened. So do I think he saw the dude was unshackled? A hundred percent.
Sukey Lewis: This matches Taylor’s version of events: that an officer saw he’d gotten something from Green’s cell, asked him what he was doing, and Taylor told him not to worry about it.
[Music]
And here’s what stands out to me. If officers had gone in and checked if they’d found the weapons concealed on Taylor’s body and confiscated them, Taylor and Rodriguez would not have had those knives a week later and so may not have been able to go forward with the attack at all.
Anonymous Sergeant: So yeah, it’s pretty ugly. It’s supposed to be the most secured housing unit in the entire state of California. This is terrible. This is such a disgrace.
[Music break]
Julie Small: Should I do one camera angle at a time or is it better to do it this way?
Sukey Lewis: So do the one, the left hand view where you can see Taylor coming out of his cell first.
Next we showed the sergeant the video of the murder itself. When it starts, Luis Giovanny Aguilar is already in the day room. This is something that Taylor, Green and Rodriguez all say was prearranged with officers. A group of three officers approach Taylor cell on the second tier of the housing unit. The officers wave at the control booth to open the cell door and you can see Taylor from behind. He’s in a white prison jumpsuit kneeling with his back to the doorway.
Julie Small: Should we zoom in?
Sukey Lewis: Yeah, if you can.
An officer named Demond Sykes gets down to secure Taylor’s ankle shackles. Sykes reaches for something in his belt and the sergeant explains that’s him going for his keys.
Anonymous Sergeant: So the only reason he’d be pulling his cuff key is to use the end of the cuff key as the double lock.
Sukey Lewis: The cuffs automatically single lock when you ratchet them closed. To engage the double lock, you have to do one more step: use the end of the cuff key to push this little pin into the side of the cuffs.
Anonymous Sergeant: I was like, he’s just double locked him ’cause you see him go to his belt and then come back.
Sukey Lewis: Then, as they step out of the cell, Taylor turns to his right and says something to Sykes, the officer who just secured his cuffs. Then Taylor kneels down again this time outside the cell on the tier. I tell the sergeant that this is a moment that Taylor told Steele was evidence that staff were involved.
He says this moment shows they- that accidentally Sykes double locked his right cuff and he came out of his cell and he goes to Sykes, “Are we double locking today?” Because if he’s double locked he can’t get out.
Anonymous Sergeant: Mmmm.
Sukey Lewis: And Sykes gets back down on his knees and goes, “Oops, my bad.” And un-double-locks just the right hand cuffed — the left hand one was not double locked already — and then they proceed with the rest of the escort.
Anonymous Sergeant: Mmm.
Sukey Lewis: The sergeant rewinds and zooms in comparing the first time Officer Sykes locks the ankle cuffs with the second time he goes down to adjust them. The innocent explanation is that Taylor said the cuffs were too tight and Sykes loosened them. But even so, the cuffs should still have been double locked after loosening them.
Anonymous Sergeant: So, you know, it lends more credence and more credit to the fact that he was taking off the double lock.
Sukey Lewis: They bring Taylor down the stairs and have him kneel on this chair that’s in the middle of the day room.
Julie Small: Why is he on the chair?
Sukey Lewis: That’s the black boxes.
The officers are putting those black boxes on that cover the keyhole of his ankle cuffs. Then they chain him to one of the fixed day room chairs. Next they go through the whole security protocol with Anthony Rodriguez. Put the black boxes on him and chain him to a seat two desks away from Taylor. Then the officers file out.
And then just, yeah, like watch, watch through for- from there, like them getting out and the kind of choreography of everything.
Immediately Rodriguez and Taylor start messing with their restraints.
[Music]
Anonymous Sergeant: They’re, they’re looking at the control booth an awful lot. Like, to me they’re looking to see if anybody’s coming.
Sukey Lewis: It takes almost two minutes for them to get out of their restraints. But again, if someone in the control booth was paying attention, that’s quite a bit of time to miss that these guys are up to something. Then both Taylor and Rodriguez are out. The next moment looks synchronized from the motion of them placing their right hands on the desks, standing up, running up the stairs. This time, Rodriguez is the one who gets something from Green’s cell. Rodriguez comes back down. They both hit the bottom of the staircase with Taylor in front. He kind of steps toward the control booth and the door with this big grin on his face.
Anonymous Sergeant: Who’s he smiling at?
Sukey Lewis: There was someone at the door. They, the, the control booth officer began to open the door as he’s coming down the stairs. So Taylor kind of goes before he has a knife or anything, kind of makes that motion towards the door.
It’s a key moment that passes in a flash. But it’s important because it’s another opportunity for officers to step in before anything happens. But then, almost as quickly as it opens, the door closes again. Officers do not rush in. Rodriguez hands something to Taylor and they run over and begin stabbing Aguilar. At this point, policy requires that officers act immediately to stop a deadly threat. But they still have to decide how to act based on the situation. What the control booth officer does is fire the first of those foam or rubber projectiles.
Anonymous Sergeant: Oh gosh, a rubber round just came out.
Sukey Lewis: I asked the sergeant if this seems late to him, he goes back in and looks at the timestamps.
Anonymous Sergeant: So six seconds between the time the rubber round comes out and do I think that’s late? No. Here’s part of the problem. Part of the problem is that up until they get to him, they’re just out of restraints. And I can promise you that every control cop in the world is gonna sit there and second guess using any sort of force at that point. Because they’re gonna say to you, this is what the department’s gonna say to me. “Where was the threat?” And you’re gonna go, well, they were outta their handcuffs. They were running around the building. “Okay, where was the threat?”
Sukey Lewis: He says six seconds as a response time is understandable, but what is less understandable is what happens from this point on. The sergeant says even if this officer didn’t have the mini 14 rifle — the deadly force option — slung on his body, which they’re supposed to, it would’ve been close by.
Anonymous Sergeant: He could have very easily grabbed the mini. You can’t make that decision for him. That’s the challenge. You know, if he, I, if I had almost, you know, 20 years in the department, I’d have picked up the mini and unloaded it on those guys.
Sukey Lewis: But he says that’s him with his experience.
Anonymous Sergeant: I don’t know what he would’ve done. And the same thing for the sergeant standing at the door and the sergeant standing at the door. I saw him making radio calls pretty much immediat- well, immediately while he was there I would’ve gone in a lot sooner than he did. But that’s me.
Sukey Lewis: The sergeant says the officers should have gone in as soon as they had the numbers to go in — at least four officers at the door. On the video, the two men continue to rapidly and repeatedly stab Aguilar.
[Music]
Anonymous Sergeant: Like there’s multiple opportunities, you know, to do it. See this guy’s just stabbing him. I put a bullet in him already. I mean he’s clearly making stabbing motions.
Sukey Lewis: At one point they even stop stabbing him, kind of hiding behind the desks and then Taylor eggs on Rodriguez and Rodriguez goes back and continues.
Julie Small: And then he goes back.
Sukey Lewis: It seems like Rodriguez finishes stabbing Aguilar. He stands up with his back to the control booth and Taylor steps forward and lands a last kick on Aguilar.
When he gets up to kick him. Yeah, he, he gets shot.
You can see Taylor recoil as he gets hit by one of those foam rounds. Aguilar doesn’t appear to be moving anymore. Rodriguez throws the knife toward the door and lies down on his stomach.
If they don’t have an agreement with the officer to not shoot them dead. They have reason to believe that, that at some point during this he likely could
Anonymous Sergeant: Yeah.
Sukey Lewis: And should, I mean all things…
Anonymous Sergeant: Oh yeah, they should be dead.
[Music]
Sukey Lewis: Watching it, it feels like a long time. As second after second it moves forward to its awful conclusion. But looking at the timestamp from the moment the stabbing itself began until they stopped, it was little more than a minute. After we watch the videos, I ask the sergeant about Taylor’s testimony to Steele. To me, those details he offered are the most compelling evidence I’ve seen so far that officers knew the attack was going to happen, and I wanted to see what he made of Taylor’s motive for coming forward — the deal he was trying to strike with the warden.
Anonymous Sergeant: The only, the only person that would think they could get that is someone who’s already worked with dirty staff. That’s the only, that’s the only reason, ’cause he knows it’s gotta be strings pulled. Like, hey, like if he honestly thinks that he did what he did then, then he honestly thinks that he can get that too. So, you know, just, it just leds a whole lot of credibility to his story.
[Music]
Sukey Lewis: Taylor, Rodriguez and Green all say that staff knew an attack was going to happen on December 12th, 2019. I’ve spoken to additional witnesses who were incarcerated in the unit who also say that staff knew it was going to happen. The sergeant says he still has a hard time believing that officers ordered the hit. And he says they may not have even known it was gonna be deadly. But-
Anonymous Sergeant: There’s no doubt in my mind staff knew it was going to happen. I mean, I’ve been on the yard, okay? And I’ve had what happens is staff start to develop rapport with inmates and inmates will tell, um, the staff like, “Hey, you probably don’t wanna come to work tomorrow.” It happens all the time. All the time.
Tinkerbell: So in law enforcement, yeah, we, we don’t do coincidence. And certainly if there is a coincidence, it’s not a whole whole entire scenario. So the fact that you have not once, not twice, but three times, these two guys got out of their cell and were able to do the same thing with weapons is not a coincidence.
Sukey Lewis: This is Tinkerbell again, the retired correctional officer who you heard from last episode. She says, at the very least, this pattern, the Britt incident, the practice run, and the homicide points to negligence on the part of officers. She says higher ups knew there were issues even running a day room in this high security unit. And there were issues with these three guys in particular.
Tinkerbell: Whether you have any humanity or not, we are paid to do a job. And if you don’t do their job and somebody gets killed, you should not sleep well at night. And if you say and do shit to instigate that, or further it, or fail to stop it when you knew or had prior knowledge, then shame on you. You are no better than the people that you are earning your retirement from.
[Music]
Sukey Lewis: Tinkerbell says she knew Steele was looking into things, talking to the suspects.
Tinkerbell: He was conducting an internal investigation that Internal Affairs refused to do. And when Internal Affairs had it, they covered it up or closed it out because they did not want any part of this.
Sukey Lewis: I tell Tinkerbell that internal affairs did eventually look into the murder and some of the officers who were on duty that day did get disciplined, but there were some serious problems with that investigation.
[Ad break]
Before we’d gotten a chance to see the videos and the other evidence we were leaked. I had started trying to make contact with the officers named in the lawsuit, brought by Aguilar’s mom. The Attorney General’s office that’s representing them declined my request for an interview and referred me back to CDCR. CDCR has declined to comment on the case. But I also started emailing and calling some officers individually. I left a message for Demond Sykes, the guy who Taylor says didn’t double lock him, but he didn’t get back to me.
I also reached out to a number of officers on Facebook, including Eric Baker, the man who was the lieutenant of the B8 housing unit in 2019 when the murder happened, and the guy who Dion Green says was behind everything. Surprisingly Baker responded by calling me up.
All right, would you mind if I record it or does that make you uncomfortable?
He didn’t want me to record the call, but he did agree to speak to me on the record, and I recorded my side of the phone call.
I have talked to other officers, other law enforcement, other investigators who say that the pattern of these three guys working together, getting outta their cuffs multiple times in the same unit in the space of a couple months, like how does that happen?
Baker asked, how do people do these kinds of things all the time in prison? Criminal, he said, is a word that comes to mind, along with time and ingenuity.
Okay. What is your take on why they weren’t disciplined when they got outta their cuffs for the practice run?
He said he was unaware of any practice run and that if staff had seen Rodriguez and Taylor out of their cuffs, there would have been a report. There was no report, so it couldn’t have happened the way I’d heard it did. Now, Anthony Rodriguez said Baker didn’t know anything about the murder ahead of time, but Green had told me Baker had orchestrated things. So I felt like I had to ask Baker about Green’s allegations directly.
Like I don’t, I just doesn’t need to be like super confrontational. I just wanna get your take on it. Um, but you know, the “shot caller” Dion Green, you know, said that you were, you know, basically behind this whole thing that you participated with him and ordered him to do this. Can you speak to that?
Baker did not directly respond to this question, and I was a bit flustered, but he kind of scoffed at the idea I was even asking it.
I am asking you as a person to say, did you have anything to do with it, and did you work with Dion Green to- so I just want a straightforward answer from you.
Baker said, I should already have my answer. He says the Office of Internal Affairs did a 19 month investigation and that they didn’t find he’d done anything wrong. But again, he didn’t directly respond to the allegation.
Okay, so are you, are you refusing to deny that you had anything to do with it?
He said he couldn’t answer my question because the case was in active litigation.
So I understand why you can’t answer. I am just also wanted to give you the opportunity to answer if you so choose.
Finally, he told me he didn’t need to clear the air, saying that him talking to me doesn’t determine the future of his career, his past or his present. And he pointed out that in the years since the murder, he’s actually been promoted. He’s a captain now. That, he said, should tell me something.
[Music]
During my conversation with him, Baker did bring up one concrete piece of evidence — his proof that officers had nothing to do with the murder. It’s a phone call made by Anthony Rodriguez on a recorded line to a loved one in which Rodriguez said officers weren’t a part of the murder and he wasn’t gonna get somebody fired over something that wasn’t true. Baker’s point was if staff had put him up to it, why would Rodriguez deny it in this casual call? So I asked Anthony Rodriguez about it.
Anthony Rodriguez: I said those words before, yes, I most definitely have said those words before.
Sukey Lewis: I asked why he’d say that. If officers really did help facilitate the murder the way he told me they did, why not say so?
Anthony Rodriguez: I wasn’t willing, willing to review all that stuff because at the time I had been there for a long time and I never had problems with these officers and I didn’t, I didn’t feel that I should, I should, uh, you know, be the reason to get them in trouble. You know what I mean?
Sukey Lewis: But Rodriguez said the story that he told me was the truth. And that that is the same thing he said under oath when he gave his deposition and the lawsuit brought by Luis Giovanny Aguilar’s mother Ma Rosario. He says he killed Aguilar over a slight on the yard. And that officers, while they didn’t order it or even know how serious the attack was going to be, did help him and Taylor carry it out. Rodriguez maintained that officers didn’t double lock the cuffs and that they agreed not to shoot them dead.
[Music]
What strikes me is that regardless of which version of events you believe, there are just so many moments where this whole thing could have gone another way… and Aguilar would still be alive. If prison leaders had separated Taylor Rodriguez and Green following their attempted murder of Michael Britt. If officers had responded the day of the practice run and searched Taylor for weapons. If officers had double locked their cuffs. If officers had run through the doors before Rodriguez and Taylor got to Aguilar. If the control booth cop had fired his mini 14 to stop the attack.
[Music break]
Back in September of 2022, when I spoke to Aguilar’s mother Ma Rosario over Zoom, she said something that really stuck with me. She said, it didn’t matter if officers ordered the hit or just looked the other way.
Ma Rosario: Hay un dicho que dice, que dice “tanto peca el que mata la vaca como el que le agarra la pata.”
Sukey Lewis: Ma Rosario says, there’s this saying in Mexico that translates to, “He who kills the cow sins as much as he who grabs its leg.” Even though the officers did not hold the knives that killed her son, she holds them responsible for his death. The bottom line for her is that this happened, on their watch, and they did nothing to stop it.
Ma Rosario: Yo sé que no soy la única madre que tiene un hijo precio.
Sukey Lewis: “I know I’m not the only mother that had a son in prison,” she says. “There are other mothers like me who hope to see their sons again one day only to find out that they’ve been unjustly killed.”
Ma Rosario: Y que este memento le digamos que se lo mataron injustamente.
[Music]
Sukey Lewis: Ma Rosario’s lawsuit against prison officials is ongoing. As far as we know the FBI are still investigating too. So those cases may provide more answers. But among the remaining mysteries of this case is one central to our story that we wanted to try and unravel. What happened to the investigative report that Officer Valentino Rodriguez wrote about the murder just before he left New Folsom Prison on stress leave. The report that his father, Val Sr., had so many questions about. In response to our requests for any reports on the murder written by Valentino, CDCR said, “We can’t locate any written reports by Valentino Rodriguez.”
This is very puzzling. Text messages on Valentino’s phone show he was actually working on two reports about the murder. One was an investigative memo explaining how the murder was related to gang activity. The other was a supplemental report to go with the disciplinary reports that were issued to each of the three suspects. We simply don’t know what happened to the investigative memo. It’s possible that Valentino didn’t complete it, but the other report, the supplemental, was actually leaked to us by a confidential source.
That report is also referenced in Dion Green’s public court documents. So we know that report was submitted and was in CDCR’s files in December of 2020. Why the agency’s public records team can’t find it now is a mystery. Tinkerbell says she looked at Valentino’s report and it was really well written, but-
Tinkerbell: If you knew what you were reading, it didn’t, something just wasn’t connecting. It was like, this doesn’t make sense.
Sukey Lewis: Valentino’s supplemental report suggests that Aguilar’s killing was motivated by a dispute between two rival prison gangs: the independent riders, or IR, and the 2-5ers. Just a side note, these are smaller, less organized gangs that more recently have been trying to get power and notoriety in California prisons. Killing can be one of the ways to do that. The report notes that the weapons that were retrieved from the scene had markings on them: 666, along with the initials IR on one, and G Satan — Green’s moniker — written on the handle of the other.
It also said that Taylor participated in the killing as an initiation into the IR gang.
Tinkerbell: I don’t believe any of this was for initiation. Um, I believe that they had said some shit on the tier about Aguilar and they didn’t like him and they wanted to murder someone.
Sukey Lewis: When I talked to Taylor, he also said it had nothing to do with an initiation. Tinkerbell says Steele came to believe that that supplemental report didn’t totally make sense because it was written to serve another purpose.
Tinkerbell: And so Kevin said the reason that is because they told him what to write and to make sure it had a gang nexus. And I’m like, “Why would they do that?” And then he said, “To take pressure off of staff.” And I was like, okay. So staff involvement for this? Okay, I don’t know, it’s, that’s a, it’s a big bag of worms to open up.
Sukey Lewis: We don’t know if Valentino ever spoke with the warden about the murder of Luis Giovanny Aguilar or about his reports. But there were those cryptic text messages with Steele on the last day of Valentino’s life — about the two sides of New Folsom — in which Steele talked about running the race, and Valentino said he wanted his name left out of “everything.” And that it “took a lot out of me to relive the truth.” Tinkerbell says Steele felt like he should have walked with Valentino into that meeting with the warden.
Tinkerbell: He was feeling, taking on responsibility that he should have done more to help Rodriguez. So he felt responsible. He took on responsibility that wasn’t his.
[Music]
Sukey Lewis: Steele also felt responsible for the investigation into the murder of Luis Giovanny Aguilar. But that was another responsibility that wasn’t his to bear. He was not an internal affairs investigator. He didn’t have the authority to interview officers or track down every lead. It was his job and his explicit obligation to pass on any allegations or evidence of misconduct to higher ups. The Chief Deputy Warden, Gina Jones and the Warden Jeff Lynch. And from all the evidence we have been able to review, it appears that this is what he did.
So what happened to the case after it got handed up the chain? While that internal investigation was not released to us, we have been able to get a peek around the edges, and what we can see raises serious questions. First of all, what took so long? Internal emails that we got show that New Folsom officials delayed asking internal affairs to investigate, then the special agent assigned to the case also stalled conducting the investigation.
An oversight agency did not conclude that that delay was intentional, but said the special agent also “failed to conduct effective interviews and didn’t talk to a crucial witness.” It’s not clear which witness they are talking about. But we do know they never got that final interview with Kevin Steele. The interview that a special agent called him about on the last day of his life.
I tell Tinkerbell that internal affairs investigation did result in the discipline of three officers.
The guy who didn’t fire his mini 14 or didn’t- said he didn’t have his mini 14 on him — who was the Tower guard — he got a 5% salary reduction for three months.
Tinkerbell: This incident was over 60 seconds long. I don’t wanna hear that. That’s such bullshit. He failed to act: violation. I cannot wrap my head around it. What else happened to the other officers?
Sukey Lewis: I tell her there was one officer who failed to respond to alarms both during the stabbing of Michael Britt and then again during the Aguilar homicide.
And he got a 5% salary reduction for 12 months. Um, the third person who was disciplined, who got the highest discipline, was the one who took a video of the video.
There was an officer who’d used his phone to take a video of the surveillance footage of the homicide, and then he’d shared it.
That’s what he got disciplined for — not for failing to protect the inmates or failing to respond or, you know, letting people outta their cuffs or any of that. It was for the video, um, for sharing the video.
Tinkerbell: Oh my God, like, I just don’t understand how, I don’t understand how they haven’t been prosecuted.
Sukey Lewis: Well also like, we just kind of found out, like through our investigation that they were not like- none of the officers were interviewed about this, um, by OIA until after Kevin was dead.
Tinkerbell: Are fucking kidding me?
[Driving music]
There was a murder in the institution where all of these people failed to fucking respond. There was two, two for sure incidents and then a fucking dry run. There was videos of all of this that Kevin gave and that they didn’t fuck-ing interview anybody? Oh, Jesus Christ. Wow.
Sukey Lewis: She has to pause for a moment to collect herself. She looks through her phone and reads out a message from Steele.
Tinkerbell: “How to kill a cop. I know. Alone, betrayed, enveloped in corruption.” These are like some of the, the texts that Steele sent me, like he was just… “Broken, betrayal, double crossed and sold out.” These are things that Kevin sent me.
Sukey Lewis: Tinkerbell says, what Steele did — coming forward — was incredibly hard to do.
Tinkerbell: Do you know how much courage it must have taken Kevin and Val to go to them and try to expose the wrongdoing? Do you know how much courage that must have taken?
Sukey Lewis: Over the years, she says she’s witnessed and heard about a lot of things that troubled her, but she was afraid to come forward.
[Music]
Tinkerbell: There’s so many people that want to say something, but the fear… As a parent, right? What are some of our biggest fears? Our kids going to prison, us getting a call that something happened to them, finding out they have a medical issue that’s not curable. That fear has got nothing on the daily fear that you, you deal with walking into an institution if you’re viewed in a bad light.
Sukey Lewis: She said she’s talking to us now because she doesn’t want what happened to Steele and what happened to Valentino to happen to anyone else. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t still afraid. She is.
Tinkerbell: I am, you know, willing to subject myself, when people find out or if people find out — I know it’s not if I know it’s a matter of when — that I’m just a two-faced inmate-loving rat piece of shit who’s trying to get good officers in trouble. And my view is that if they were good officers, they wouldn’t have done criminal activity. So don’t you put that on me. I didn’t make those decisions. I made the decision to not come forward with a lot of the information that I had because I was so afraid for my safety, my family’s safety, and my livelihood after.
Sukey Lewis: Since we aired her voice in that last episode three weeks ago, Tinkerbell has gotten a lot of calls and texts from people who recognized her voice. She’s also been called a dirty cop, publicly, by someone she doesn’t even know. But she still said we could use her voice in this episode. And she said she hopes other people can find the courage to do the right thing and come forward.
Tinkerbell: But my journey is the exact sames as Kevin’s in regards to we want people held accountable. And at the time, Val, Val was still’s motivation. Okay? Val and Kevin are a part of my motivation, but they’re not my sole motivation. My motivation is I want this to stop.
[Theme music]
Sukey Lewis: Coming up next time in our final episode, Julie and I walk through the gates of New Folsom prison.
Julie Small: I don’t usually stress out, but I haven’t been in a prison for a while.
Sukey Lewis: Oh here we go, CSP-Sac.
You feeling it?
Julie Small: I’m feeling it.
Sukey Lewis: And we speak to two correctional officers who did wanna go on the record with us, because like Tinkerbell, they’ve seen too many of their fellow officers pay a price.
Annette Eichorn: Now, two of them that are dead. Because to find the truth. That should shock the shit out of everybody that’s still there. And I don’t understand how it’s not.
[Credits music]
Sukey Lewis: You’re listening to On Our Watch Season Two: New Folsom, from KQED. If you have any tips or feedback about the series, you can email us at onourwatch@kqed.org. You can also leave us a review in Apple Podcasts.
The series is reported by me, Sukey Lewis, and Julie Small. It’s edited by Victoria Mauléon. It’s produced and scored by Steven Rascón and Chris Egusa. Sound design and mixing by Tarek Fuda. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts and she executive produced the series. Meticulous fact checking by Mark Betancourt. Additional research for this episode by Kathleen Quinn and Laura Fitzgerald, students in the investigative reporting program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, whose chair David Barstow provided valuable support for the whole series.
Special thanks to Rahsaan Thomas of Ear Hustle, Sandhya Dirks of NPR and KQED’s Ted Goldberg. And thank you to Alan Lurie of BOA Security who walked me through the mechanics of the transport boxes and the handcuffs.
Original music by Ramtin Arablouei, including our theme song. Additional Music from APM Music and Audio Network. Funding for On Our Watch is provided in part by Arnold Ventures and the California Endowment. And thanks to KQED’s Otis R. Taylor Jr, Managing Editor of News and Enterprise, Ethan Toven-Lindsey, our Vice President of News, and Chief Content Officer Holly Kernan.
Thanks for listening.
