True Crime Stories: Blanket Party

True Crime Stories*: Blanket Party

Ernesto Sanchez had been in and out of prison in Mexico all of his adult life. He killed two people there. When he got arrested again the Mexican authorities took advantage of their proximity to the U.S. border. Ernesto was not a huge guy. He was only 5'6" and though he weighed a hefty 180 lbs three members of the Mexican gendarme were able to pick him up easily. They crossed an umonitored section of the Rio Grande and literally dumped Ernesto on the American side where he joined that endless stream of others who came to these shores yearning to breathe free.

Ernesto moved north and settled in this city. He promptly got arrested and kept getting arrested. Then he killed another person. He was sentenced to life in prison.

There are social strata in prison. Everyone knows that child predators are targeted for special attention by other prisoners. At the upper strata are those with particularly impressive criminal resumes. Sometimes these elites will advertise their credentials. A teardrop tattooed under the eye means you've killed a person. That's helpful if you're in for something petty like armed robbery. Some guys get their eyelids tattooed because...that must really hurt, and it's dangerous.

Ernesto was not the ostentatious type. His resume spoke for itself. Plus he was a killer from the big city. How bad are the bad guys in Springfield? Try being a bad guy in Chicago.

So Ernesto had a swagger to his walk when he entered his new home. He was housed in typical fashion, in a big cell--it's called a "pod"--with eleven other inmates. He and the others introduced themselves.

That night after Ernesto was asleep his brethren through him a blanket party. A couple of them put a blanket over his head and pinned him down while some others...made love to him. After each of Ernesto's partners had finished they crawled back in their own beds and pretended to be asleep. Their facilitators removed the blanket and did the same before Ernesto could see any of them.

Ernesto had never been so mad. Truly yearning to breathe free now that the suffocating blanket had been removed, Ernesto immediately jumped out of bed, pulled his pants up and looked around but everyone was in his own cot. Between breaths, Ernesto loudly demanded to know who his abusers were but got only faux groggy responses. He couldn't kill all eleven but the honor of the Sanchez name demanded a riposte. He had to identify the culprits somehow.

Ernesto eschewed the certain penis-smell test as unbecoming to himself and turned to someone he could trust to solve a crime and correctly identify the perpetrator. He called the detective who had arrested him. He told Mike that he had information on another homicide. Mike flew upstate to Ernesto's facility to interview him.

Ernesto told Mike of the ignominy he had suffered and told him he wanted Mike to investigate and find out who his tormentors were so he could kill them. Mike had no intention of carrying out this investigative assignment but kept that to himself and told Ernesto to tell him about the murder he knew about and he'd check that out and depending on the quality of the information he'd see what he could do. Ernesto told Mike the details of the crime and said that HE had done it.

The whole episode turned out badly for everyone. Mike investigated the murder and determined that Ernesto was not the perpetrator; he had an iron-clad alibi in a Mexican prison; Ernesto had confessed to a murder he didn't do in a desperate attempt to get the names of his rapists. Mike wasted investigative time, did not get a chance to put Ernesto on death row. Ernesto lost the opportunity to be moved to the safer confines of the one-man cells on death row and didn't get to avenge his dishonor. This is Public Occurrences.

*No real names used.