18
After the incident with Dave C. and my brother, I began hanging around with Theresa C.. I brought her into partnership with me selling cocaine. Most everyone thought we were lovers, but I brought her in with me more as a business partner. I trusted her more than most of the people I knew. I lived with her for awhile and gradually we began drifting apart
Right around New Year 1982, I had a niece, Janet M., who had been married to one of my nephews, and was working as a lab assistant at a cancer research center. Once a month, she would forge her superintendent's name, and order a liter of proponal, which is used to make crystal, a form of speed, which I would sell to a local motorcycle gang that had been run out of Texas for killing a Federal Judge and a prosecutor. They would buy the proponol 3 for $5OO dollars a liter from me.
During the first week of January, 1982, I went to the lab to pick up the proponol. Janet told me that the superintendent must have found out about the order and shortstopped it.
"Well," I asked, "where would it go if not here to the lab?"
"They've got a pharmacy here," she stated. "That's the only other place that I can think of where it might be."
The other building, it turned out, was a hospital unit for terminal cancer patients. John F., who was with me at the time, decided to check out the pharmacy, on the chance that it might be possible to steal it somehow. It was snowing pretty hard, almost a blizzard, in fact.
John F. returned to the car we were in, highly excited. "Man John,you ought to see this place. There's just one old lady manning the pharmacy. Let's go get a gun and take this place off. All of the shelves are loaded with dilaudad and morphine, cases of it," he said. "I can go to my uncle's house and get a gun. It's only a sawed off .22 caliber single shot rifle. But it will work."
We picked up the piece at his uncle's house and returned to the research center.
John F. went into the pharmacy after the security guard made his appointed hourly tour of the building. He soon came running out of the building with two shopping bags full of all kinds and types of class 1 drugs. All I had to do was be the getaway driver.
We had got up on that morning with not even enough money to buy our eye opening bottle and barely enough gas to get where we were going, and in the space of an hour, we were in possession of tens of thousands dollars in drugs.
The motorcycle gang bought about $7000 dollars of my cut of the drugs I used about $5000 of that to buy up Janet's cut, and Archie L.'s cut, who had lent us the car. John F. wouldn't sell me any of his.
About two weeks after the pharmacy robbery on a Sunday morning, I was at Theresa's house. Various friends and acquaintances all seemed to come and visit at the same time. Theresa's house was a couple of houses down the block from my brother Joe's home. 3 of my nephews were there also.
A hotshot cop, Daryl C., happened to follow a couple who had come to visit. He pulled up in his cruiser just as these people were getting out of their car. This cop had a reputation as a supercop. He had been trying to nail me for several years. I had given some of the dilaudads to the people whose car he was searching right in front of the house, and he found a few pills. I came out of Theresa's house just at that time. He arrested me along with the two people in the car.
I couldn't figure how he expected to make a case against me. I hadn't even been in the car. The people he arrested me with must have told him I had given them the drugs to sell, or I would not have been arrested with them. I was released a couple of days later.
In the meantime, supercop called my parole officer and told him that I was sitting on a mountain of dope from the robbery of the research center. When I went for a weekly report to the parole officer, I was arrested for not reporting the week before. My parole was subsequently revoked and I was taken back to prison.
I wrote an appeal to the full Parole Board and was granted a re-hearing. When I met them, the entire Parole Board, one of the members admitted to the real reason for my revocation had been because of the supercop's phone call to my parole officer.
I told the Parole Board that the revocation of my parole had been illegal because I had not been advised about the real reason for revocation, an infraction of their by-laws. My parole was immediately reinstated, and I was released. Before I left the prison, a counselor said to me, "I don't know how you did that. You're the first parole violator get out of here like this."
"They make mistakes too," I answered. "They've done that a lot of times. I just happened to catch them at it."
When I got back to Denver, I heard that Dave C. was dying in the hospital of hepatitis I went to see him in intensive care. Though he was conscious, he looked very bad. He died a week later, only 26 years old.
I was more or less homeless. But a friend of mine, the eldest of the Pino brothers, let me stay at his place. To earn money, we bought junk cars, refurbished them, and sold them. We all knew the body and fender craft, and were mechanics too. Also, we cut down old trees and sold cords of wood during the winter. We made a living, barely.
But again I went back to prison on a parole violation. I had caught a couple Of D.U.I.s in quick succession. My parole officer ordered me to get on antabuse, because of the D.U.I.s I had. But I adamantly refused.
"It wasn't even on the parole agreement," I told the parole agent. "You can't order me to get on antabuse. The Court didn't order it. You can't supercede a court order."
He said,"If you are not on antabuse by the next reporting date, I'm sending you back to prison."
I said, "But it isn't on my parole agreement. Your threat is an empty one. You can't add that condition to my parole."
I really didn't consider myself an alcoholic. The reason I had been drinking a lot was that I had been severely injured in an auto accident and my doctor had kept me on the pain killing drug, percodan, for the last 6 months. I had sustained two broken ribs which perforated my lung and I suffered a lot of pain. When he cut me off of that drug I went through withdrawal.
I didn't want to get on heroin again, so I drank a lot. During the 30 days or so that it took me to withdraw, I couldn't sleep or eat. Alcohol and nyquil helped me through the crisis.
When I was released from the hospital a friend of mine who I had done time with in the mid '70s, let me stay at his house. When we were driving to his place he asked me how I had been injured. I told Ty J. that I had been drinking with Jimmy H., heavily. We had all done time together in the '70s.
Jimmy and I got into a fight because he called me an old man. He was in his early 30s, I in my early 40s. Anyway, it was just a drunken brawl between friends. We fought in a park, just prior to the accident. He had beat me fair and square in the fight. We shook hands afterward.
We were driving down 8th avenue and he hit a car slightly. But instead of stopping to settle the fender bender, he began to speed away. We were crossing the bridge that spans the Platte river, when suddenly, he veered hard right and crashed into the railing of the bridge.
His intent had been to crash through the railing of the bridge and go into the river. But the bridge railing held and he failed to breech it. He was slightly dazed, but managed to jump from the car and run away.
On top of being drunk, I received a couple of broken ribs and a broken nose. I managed to stagger from the car to a nearby phone booth to call my brother Richard to come and pick me up.
The cops arrived and some witnesses informed them that I had been in the crashed vehicle. The police ran over to where I was awaiting my brother. The cops roughed me up and cuffed me. Luckily, a witness told the cops that I was not the driver, but a passenger. The police asked me who had been driving the car. I told them I didn't know, so they let me go.
Richard arrived and took me to his house. I could not lie down for the broken ribs. During the night, my brother realized I was probably dying, and took me to the hospital. When I was released, Ty J. drove me home, andon the way I explained what happened.
I happened to turn on his car radio. The news was coming on the air. The newscaster was relating an incident which had happened the night before. He was saying that a man had been killed by police officers after someone had called in a 911 and reported a shirtless man running through the neighborhood carrying a military carbine. The Denver P.D. sent a cruiser with two police officers in response to the call. When the police spotted the shirtless man with the carbine, the man fired on the officers, wounding one of the officers slightly.
The cops had an Uzi with a laser infra-red scope on it. The man was behind some bushes, crouched down, firing sporadically at the cops. The cops fired one burst from the Uzi, killing the man instantly.
I said to Ty after listening to the news report, "That sure sounds like Jimmy R.. He has a carbine, and he lives in the neighborhood where that occurred."
Ty said, "That sure sounds like that crazy motherfucker."
The next day I went to see Jimmy's brother, Robert. He told me that he had had to go to the coroner's office to identify Robert's remains. The one blast from the Uzi the cops had used to kill him had put 10 9 millimeter bullets in his chest. There was nothing left of his chest.
Robert said, "It looked like hamburger with bone splinters in it."
"I'm sorry to hear about your brother, Scrap," I said. Robert's nickname was Scrap Iron. "I was with him when he wrecked his car onthe bridge about a week ago."
"He had a deathwish," Scrap said. "He was trying to commit suicide when he wrecked his car. About a year ago when he was in Cañon City, he was chasing this other con in the yard with a knife in cellhouse 3. The guard in the tower fired a couple of warning shots at him with his carbine. But Jimmy wouldn't stop. So the guard shot him in the chest. He survived, and when he got out, Jimmy bought a carbine and swore to me that he was going to kill as many cops with it as he could." Ty laughed as he drove, "He sure wasn't bullshitting."
Anyway, I damn near became an alcoholic coming down off the percodan, which explains how I caught two D.U.I.s in a short period of time. My partner, Theresa, stopped by my apartment on the day on which I had to report. But on the way to the Parole Office, we went to a bar and had a few beers.
I walked to my parole agent's office and sat down. The first thing he asked me was if I had got on an antabuse program.
"No," I answered. "The Parole Board didn't put it on my parole agreement. The Court didn't order it. So I'm not going to take antabuse."
When I said that, the parole agent stood, took a set of handcuffs from his belt and cuffed me. I met a Parole Board member at the County Jail a few weeks later. My parole was revoked again.
While I was in the County Jail, before being transferred to prison, I wrote an appeal and mailed it to the Parole Board. There were a couple of other parolees in there with me, whose parole had also been revoked. I wrote appeals for them also.
About two months later, I met the entire Parole Board to argue my appeal. I started my defense by explaining to the Parole Board about the auto accident with Jimmy R..
A Parole Board member iterated, "Just you being with Jimmy R. is a parole violation."
"True," I countered, "but association with Jimmy R. was not even on the parole revocation complaint. Whatever reason is used against me as evidence to revoke my parole must be written in the parole revocation complaint. Otherwise, it can't be grounds for revocation."
That silenced the Parole Board member. I went on explaining to the Board about having to withdraw from percodan, and using alcohol and nyquil to cushion my withdrawl.
"As the board is well aware, I have been addicted to heroin throughout my past. I could have very well used heroin to relive my withdrawl," I said. "That fact should make it apparent that I am on a positive note in regards to my rehabilitation. After withdrawing from percodan by using alcohol, I quit drinking and returned to work," I added. "The parole agent I was assigned to seemed to have a deep resentment towards me. I can only guess at what reason he may have had such animosity. His resentment was quite obvious to me. Maybe it was because I had successfully appealed a previous parole revocation. Whatever the reason, it lead to a personality conflict."
One of the Parole Board, a woman, the only female in the room, asked, "Mr. Gallegos, don't you agree that it's wrong to drink, and to run around with another parolee? You know either one of those is grounds for parole revocation in itself. It is stated in your parole agreement that you can not associate with another parolee."
"Yes Mrs. K., I agree with what you say. It is wrong to drink, and to associate with any person on parole, or even any person with a police record. But that is not the issue. The rules and by-laws of the Parole Board clearly state that a parolee facing revocation of parole must be made aware of all the charges and or reasons being used for revocation so that he can fairly defend himself against his parole being revoked."
The Board watched me as I continued. "Now I understand that a parole officer can amend or add other conditions on the parole agreement. But the officer must petition the Parole Board to add further conditions and the parolee must sign and agree to such amendments. My parole officer failed to do that. Therefore, my parole should be reinstated."
I sat back in my chair. Mr. Z. and Mr. G., the chairman and co-chairman, were staring at me intensely. After a few moments of silence, Mr. Z. said, "Mr. Gallegos, you missed your calling in life. You should have been a lawyer. Each member of the Board will consider your appeal. By law, we have to render our decision within 30 days. You will be notified within that time."
I was working at the Skyline Facility, a 120 man minimum security unit, as a cook. About one week after arguing my appeal, a parole counselor came into the kitchen while I was working and advised me thus: "John, I've got some good news, and bad news. I'll give you the good news first. Your parole has been reinstated. The bad news is that you won't be released until 5pm today."
But less than 20 minutes later he came back and told me that I had about 5 minutes to pack my belongings and go. The guard that was assigned to transport me, drove me all the way to Pueblo, where I caught the one o'clock bus to Denver.
On the way to Pueblo, the guard said, "Who the hell are you, Gallegos? You were supposed to be released at 5pm. Then the State Attorney General of Colorado called and ordered the warden to get you out of there immediately."
"I'm just me," I answered. "Maybe the Governor thought I had grounds to sue the State or something. I don't know."
VATO MALDITO: My Life of Crime, by John "Bubbles" Gallegos
Now Available!!! from Enlightened Pyramid
A notorious Denver professional criminal tell his story in his own words. Armed robbery, addiction and hard time are just the tip of the ice berg in this career thief's autobio.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/hide comment form
