00:00:00
Neil White: I mean, we weren't driving
$100,000 sports cars and snorting cocaine,
00:00:06
which was the drug of the day, but we had
a boat, we had three cars, we had a 4,000
00:00:13
square foot house. I mean, we were leading what
I would consider an upper middle class life.
00:00:19
Phoebe Judge: In the early '90s, Neil White
owned Coast Magazine Corporate, a magazine
00:00:24
publishing company in Gulfport, Mississippi.
Neil White: We had lots of perks from the
00:00:29
magazine that don't really go into any account.
It's, "Oh, we'd love for you to wear our suits,
00:00:37
because people pay attention to what you wear."
And, "Oh, we'd love for you to drive our cars,
00:00:42
and we'd love for you to come eat at our
restaurant, it's on us." And so there are
00:00:45
all these benefits. Business people would
say, "We're flying to Jackson, or Memphis,
00:00:52
or whatever. If you need a ride, let us know,
you're welcome on our plane anytime." And so we
00:00:57
led a lifestyle that we didn't even have to spend
money for because we owned these media companies,
00:01:03
and nobody really was paying attention.
Phoebe Judge: No one was paying attention,
00:01:06
and so for a few years, no one noticed that Neil
White was kiting checks. He had two corporate
00:01:13
bank accounts, and he'd transfer large sums
of money back and forth constantly, so that
00:01:19
both accounts always appeared flush with cash
Neil White: Because the way it used to work is you
00:01:24
could write a check from yourself to yourself
from one bank, deposit it in another bank,
00:01:29
and that money would be there. But the next
day the check would bounce because there was
00:01:33
a 24-hour float. So you would write a check to
yourself from yourself, from a secondary account,
00:01:39
and deposit it in the original bank to cover it.
Phoebe Judge: So you're just buying time.
00:01:43
Neil White: Yeah, I was cheating
time, is what I was doing. Phoebe Judge: It's sometimes called circular
kiting, and you can't do it that easily anymore.
00:01:51
Banks have changed the way they operate. Checks
are now cleared with electronic imaging that
00:01:56
takes much less time to process. But back in
the early '90s, Neil was able to pull it off,
00:02:02
and he wasn't even that stressed about it.
Neil White: I remember that I was doing this
00:02:06
during a period before Christmas, and our
family was planning this five-day vacation,
00:02:10
and you can't leave town if you're doing this
unless you have somebody who's going to make
00:02:14
these transfers for you. And I was $200,000 in
the hole on December 21st, and on December 23rd,
00:02:21
we were leaving town for five days, and I was in
a panic, but the money came in, a guy came through
00:02:27
with the loan that we had been talking to. I made
the $200,000 deposit on the 23rd and left town.
00:02:32
Phoebe Judge: How did you get caught?
Neil White: The FDIC came in and did an audit,
00:02:36
and pointed it out to both banks, and
they called me to the bank and said, "We will not accept any deposits that aren't cash
or money orders, we're closing your accounts,
00:02:49
I sure hope you have money to cover this."
[Music.] I called my dad and said, "Dad, I just
need to let you know, because you'll hear
00:02:59
through the grapevine, I've been caught
short, I was kiting checks." And he said,
00:03:03
"Well, the first thing we need to do is
cover it. How much do you need?" He was
00:03:06
ready to write the check. And I said,
"Dad, you can't cover this." He said, "No." I mean, my dad's a judge and a lawyer,
he's middle-class. I think he was thinking 30,
00:03:15
$40,000, we'll mortgage the house, we'll take care
of it. I said "$750,000." And he said, "Oh, well,
00:03:24
we need to get you a lawyer."
Phoebe Judge: And the lawyer couldn't get you out of it?
Neil White:
00:03:31
Oh God, no. I mean, the only way you can get out
of it is if you cover the loss, and then it's
00:03:37
still a crime, you just, the federal government
sentences you based on how much — in bank fraud
00:03:43
anyway — how much a financial institution lost. So
had I been able to cover it, I probably would've
00:03:48
gotten home confinement, or probation, or a fine,
or something like that. But because I couldn't
00:03:54
cover the amount, and ultimately they lost that
money, the sentencing guidelines said I should
00:04:00
be sentenced to between 18 months and 24 months.
And the judge took the lower recommendation and
00:04:05
gave me an 18 month sentence.
Phoebe Judge: On May 3rd, 1993, Neil White self-surrendered at a minimum security
prison in Carville, Louisiana. His wife, Linda,
00:04:15
dropped him there 45 minutes early.
Neil White: Well first of all, I took my children to school that morning, to first grade
and to preschool, and hugged them and reminded
00:04:26
them that, as the psychologist suggested, that
daddy was going to camp, and that I would see them
00:04:30
in a week when they could come visit. And
Linda and I got in our blue Ford Explorer
00:04:36
and drove the hour and 10 minute drive to
Carville, and it was deafening silence.
00:04:44
Phoebe Judge: Was she mad at you?
Neil White: She was mad at me, but more than that,
00:04:48
she was hurt. She lost everything, too. She had
believed my story, that I was going to take care
00:04:54
of everything, and so in the overall scheme of
life, what these things I'm about to say are not
00:05:01
awful, because there are people who are homeless
and can't afford food, but we were members of
00:05:07
all these country clubs and yacht clubs, and we
got banished from there, and all of her places
00:05:12
that she shopped and had charge accounts, they
closed them, and her friends who were still in
00:05:16
this elite social area with very few exceptions
were shunning, at some level. I mean, she was
00:05:25
humiliated and mortified at all sorts of levels,
and the father of her children, who were 6 and 3,
00:05:32
were about to be away for a year. They would
miss every significant event in their life,
00:05:36
and if she wanted to keep us all in touch, she was
faced with driving that distance every weekend,
00:05:44
spending her weekends in a prison visiting room.
Phoebe Judge: Here's the thing. It wasn't just a
00:05:50
prison visiting room she'd be bringing her
kids to. White collar criminals weren't
00:05:55
the only ones who'd been locked up in the
enormous old facility in Carville, Louisiana.
00:06:00
And the other people living there, they were
all but forgotten by the outside world.
00:06:04
I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal.
Neil White: I showed up with my leather bag with books and
racquetball rackets and tennis shoes and shorts
00:06:23
like I was going to camp, and as I waited for the
guard to come collect me, I saw a man limping down
00:06:28
the hallway. And when he got to the window closest
to me, he waved and had no fingers, and that
00:06:33
was the first time I knew anything was awry.
Phoebe Judge: Neil went inside and checked in,
00:06:38
and immediately asked the prison
guard about the man with no fingers. Neil White: And he said, "That's a patient."
And I said, "What kind of patient?" And he said,
00:06:45
"A Hansen's disease patient." And I said,
"What is Hansen's disease?" And he said,
00:06:50
"It used to be called leprosy."
Phoebe Judge: What was your thought? Neil White: And that's when I began to
panic. I knew that I could survive a
00:06:58
one-year prison sentence, but I thought if
I contracted a disease that disfigured me,
00:07:02
that I would never be able to touch my children
again. I thought, my life will be over.
00:07:06
Phoebe Judge: Neil White was to serve his sentence
at a minimum security prison located inside the
00:07:14
last remaining leprosy colony in the continental
United States. An LA Times article from 1993 said
00:07:21
prisoners are being brought in to, "Use the
spaces left empty when older patients die."
00:07:26
Everyone we asked credited the idea of putting the
prison inside the leprosy colony back to one man,
00:07:33
Dr. John Duffy. He was the Director of
Carville at the time, but he was also the
00:07:39
former director of the Bureau of Prisons. He knew
that Carville's patient population was dwindling,
00:07:44
and he saw a business opportunity.
Neil White: There were all these empty rooms,
00:07:48
and he was fiscally responsible and said,
instead of spending money building a new
00:07:53
prison, let's put invalid inmates,
people who need healthcare, here, because there was a hospital for the leprosy
patients, and non-violent offenders who can
00:08:03
maintain the grounds. It sounded like a decent
financial decision, but what he didn't realize
00:08:10
is you would have the last 130 Americans who are
in prison for a disease, 500 federal inmates,
00:08:16
including Jimmy Hoffa's lawyer and the man who
gave Arnold Schwarzenegger his first steroids,
00:08:21
100 prison guards, all thrown together
in this colony, a convergence of cultures
00:08:25
like there's never been before or after.
Phoebe Judge: When Neil White says that the
00:08:29
leprosy patients were imprisoned, he's not
kidding. The facility opened in 1894 as the
00:08:35
Louisiana Leper Home. By 1921, leprosy was
thought to be so contagious that the federal
00:08:42
government began moving patients to Carville from
all over the country. If people refused to go,
00:08:47
the police, or bounty hunters, would put them
in shackles and bring them against their will.
00:08:53
Mr. Pete: See this here, this is the shackle.
Phoebe Judge: Shackles, what were they used for?
00:09:01
Mr. Pete: When the patient here,
if you don't come voluntary, then they put the shackle and bring you here.
Phoebe Judge: This is Mr. Pete. He was
00:09:14
the first person I met when I flew to
Louisiana to see Carville for myself, and he told me to call him Mr. Pete. He's
a short man with glasses that seem just a
00:09:23
little too big for his face. He was dressed in a
flannel shirt with suspenders and a khaki jacket.
00:09:30
It wasn't until he reached out to shake my
hand that I realized he was missing fingers,
00:09:34
part of his ear. He's the guy who waved at Neil
White. He showed me the shackles that are now
00:09:41
part of a small museum at Carville, and he also
showed me a collection of former patients' shoes,
00:09:46
specially made because the loss of toes is one of
the biggest challenges leprosy patients deal with.
00:09:53
Mr. Pete told me he was born in the Virgin
Islands, and when he was 6 he was diagnosed
00:09:58
with leprosy and quarantined in a hospital
there. He had no idea what was happening.
00:10:02
Mr. Pete: They never tell me anything. They
just tell my mother, and not me. Phoebe Judge:
00:10:10
Why did you think you were in the hospital?
Mr. Pete: Well, because I had a little mark on
00:10:17
my side of my face, and when they take
test they find it was Hansen's disease. And at that time, people are very scared of the
disease, so they just bring me to the hospital.
00:10:36
My mother used to come visit me. She couldn't
touch me, I couldn't touch her. She stay outside
00:10:45
the fence, I stay inside the fence.
Phoebe Judge: Was that confusing to you when you were a little
boy, that you couldn't touch your mother?
00:10:52
Mr. Pete: Well, yes, it was confusing. She's
on the outside, and now I'm in the inside, and
00:11:01
I still didn't know what's going on. I couldn't
touch her, and she couldn't touch me either.
00:11:08
Phoebe Judge: He stayed in that hospital until
he was 21 years old, when his family packed him
00:11:14
aboard an army plane to Carville. Mr. Pete
never saw any members of his family again.
00:11:20
When a patient like Mr. Pete got to Carville, he
or she could not leave, but they weren't legally
00:11:26
prisoners either. It was this strange limbo where
you hadn't done anything wrong, but the outside
00:11:32
world saw you as a danger. For a long time,
patients couldn't even vote or get married.
00:11:38
Mr. Pete: Some of the family didn't want
them no more, and the friends didn't want
00:11:43
to have anything to do with them. So they
just came back and stay until they die.
00:11:48
Phoebe Judge: And when you got here, you did
realize that this disease people were scared of,
00:11:56
would you talk about it with other people
here, about how you were kind of kept away?
00:11:59
Mr. Pete: No, they didn't, they wasn't
interested, like now. You came here, that's it.
00:12:09
Nobody, even the patient, we never speak about
it. We never — see when we — that's it.
00:12:16
Phoebe Judge: You wouldn't talk about it with
your friends, about being outcast or away from
00:12:20
society, you were just here?
Mr. Pete: Yeah, I was just here. They were the same thing, you know? They was
outcast from society — outcast like me. So,
00:12:32
they didn't interested in all that.
Phoebe Judge: In 1941, doctors began testing a drug that could slowly reverse some
of the symptoms of leprosy. They made progress.
00:12:43
By the early '50s, doctors recognized that with
treatment, the disease was not contagious, and
00:12:49
they lifted the strict quarantine. Some patients
were discharged, and others were encouraged to
00:12:55
own cars and come and go as they pleased. But
most of them didn't want to go anywhere. They'd
00:13:02
been locked away for so long that the prospect
of leaving terrified them. As one patient wrote,
00:13:07
"We belong with the secret people."
Jim Krahenbhul: Pete, for example, if you look at his hands, his
hands are greatly deformed,
00:13:14
and his face and ears show the ravages of the
disease, and he just doesn't want to face what
00:13:20
he would have to face in the outside world.
Phoebe Judge: This is Dr. Jim Krahenbhul,
00:13:24
former director of the National
Hansen's Disease Programs, which is the official name for Carville.
Jim Krahenbhul: Basically patients have to
00:13:33
lie about their deformities — an industrial plant
accident, or something like that — and he just was
00:13:40
not willing to face that. I guess the parallel
is you've heard all the stories about a prisoner
00:13:46
being released from prison after 20 years,
and the first thing he does is he goes and
00:13:50
robs a bank so he can go back in again,
because they just can't deal with the outside world.
Phoebe Judge:
00:14:00
It's hard to imagine what the patients
must have thought when, after so long, the outside world was thrown at them in the form
of 500 convicted bankers, doctors, and lawyers.
00:14:10
The inmates were not supposed to interact with
the patients at any time, but Neil White worked
00:14:15
in the cafeteria, so there was no way around it.
Neil White: And I helped them with their trays,
00:14:20
and pushed their wheelchairs, and wrote their
menu board. You have to remember, in addition to
00:14:25
this weird convergence, the leprosy patients were
older, and nobody, they hadn't seen new residents
00:14:31
there in ages, and most of them looked on us as
children or grandchildren. They would talk to us,
00:14:37
and the guards would say, "You're not
supposed to talk to him." And they would say,
00:14:41
"You can't tell me what to do." Because they
weren't under the Bureau of Prisons. So it
00:14:46
really was something that got dropped as the
experiment went on, and we talked all the time,
00:14:51
and were friendly, and exchanged hellos. And when
guards weren't around, we talked all the time.
00:14:55
Phoebe Judge: Neil became especially
close with one patient in particular, an elderly woman named Ella Bounds.
Neil White: Well, the first time I saw her,
00:15:03
I was in the hallway, and I was trying to find
my room. It was the first day, first hour I was
00:15:07
there, and I saw her wobbling in a wheelchair.
Cranking those handles coming toward me, and I
00:15:14
knew she wasn't an inmate — it was an all-male
prison — I assumed she wasn't a prison guard,
00:15:18
so assuming she had leprosy. She had no legs,
her dress was hanging over the edge of her
00:15:24
wheelchair. I stood to the side and I held my
breath. And as she passed me, she cut her eyes
00:15:31
over and smiled and said, "There's no place
like home." And she went around the corner,
00:15:36
and an inmate came up behind me and said,
"That girl's father dropped her off here
00:15:41
when she was 12, and he never came back." And she
was about 80 at the time. And then he asked me if
00:15:46
I was still feeling sorry for myself.
Phoebe Judge: It didn't take Neil long to understand that it was basically
impossible for him to catch leprosy,
00:15:54
and with that fear gone, he was just trying to
keep himself occupied and finish out his time.
00:15:59
He remembers one night in the spring when the
leprosy patients were getting ready for a dance.
00:16:04
Neil White: Four of us inmates were setting up
the bandstands and the tables and the chairs,
00:16:08
and as the band was about to start, there were
no guards around, so Ella asked me if I wanted
00:16:13
to stick around for the first song. And so I did,
and so did the other inmates. And I pushed Ella
00:16:18
around the edge of the dance floor to the music
in her wheelchair. Two of the other inmates, big,
00:16:25
strong bodybuilders who were the steroid guru's
guinea pigs, went into the middle of the patients
00:16:31
and broke in on one of their dates during this
dance. And it really made the leprosy patient
00:16:37
mad. This woman he was with, we don't know, but
we think she may have been a prostitute. Anyway,
00:16:41
she was rather attractive, and at the end of the
song, the leprosy patient pointed what was left
00:16:47
of his index finger and said, "You're not invited,
no inmates at our dance." And it was very quiet,
00:16:54
and the four of us slowly walked out of the
ballroom. And as we were walking back toward
00:16:59
the inmate side of the colony, my roommate said,
"Did we just get kicked out of a leper dance?"
00:17:04
Phoebe Judge: If you ask him
now, Neil says he feels pretty lucky that he served his time at Carville.
Neil White: I was there for 18 months — actually
00:17:15
only spent a year — for mishandling close to a
million dollars, and I was standing in front of
00:17:21
people who had been quarantined for 68 years
because they were susceptible to a bacterial
00:17:27
infection. And it was almost impossible to muster
up self-pity in the face of that. They were such
00:17:36
remarkable people, and it put my problems,
albeit self-made, in such perspective.
00:17:43
Phoebe Judge: He was let out on April
25th, 1994. The prison experiment ended about four months later, and all of the
remaining inmates were reassigned.
00:17:53
Why was it so short-lived?
Neil White: The Bureau of Prisons wanted to turn the facility into this huge prison
with a couple of thousand inmates, and when they
00:18:05
became a tenant of the leprosy patients,
which is really Public Health Services,
00:18:09
they assumed that those 130 patients would be
dying off in a year or two. What they didn't
00:18:15
realize is that leprosy doesn't kill you. And
so there became this battle for the Bureau of
00:18:22
Prisons trying to evict the leprosy patients.
It was just horrible. The inmates and
00:18:28
the leprosy patients got along fine, you would
think that's where the problem was — it was
00:18:32
these two government bureaucracies. And what
happened was Public Health Services and the
00:18:37
leprosy patients, and the Carville Historic
Society, clandestinely got the facility on the
00:18:44
National Registry of Historic Places, and so the
Bureau of Prisons could not make the modifications
00:18:50
they needed to make the building secure, and
they abandoned the prison and went home.
00:18:54
Phoebe Judge: But Ella and Mr. Pete and other
patients continued their lives at Carville,
00:18:59
many of them entering their seventh or eighth
decade there. In 1998, about four years after
00:19:05
Neil left, the remaining patients were offered
an annual stipend of $33,000 to leave Carville
00:19:12
and move to a nursing home. Mr. Pete declined.
He chose to stay. When I met him two years ago,
00:19:18
he was one of six patients left. They had the
whole place to themselves. Mr. Pete rode around
00:19:24
the giant empty hallways on his bicycle. He'd
been there for 63 years. I asked him whether
00:19:30
he'd ever consider leaving, even for a night.
Mr. Pete: Sometimes I wish I was out on the
00:19:37
outside, and I could get out, but when I look,
I say, well, people are going to ask me a lot
00:19:43
of questions. "What happened to your fingers? Why
you got this spot? Why this?" I say, well, I don't
00:19:51
want to go through all that. I stay here.
Phoebe Judge: It was easier to stay here.
00:19:57
Mr. Pete: It was easier, because we're all the
same patient, you know what I mean? When you go
00:20:05
out there, some people [inaudible],
most people wouldn't, even now. Phoebe Judge: Will you stay here
for the rest of your life?
00:20:15
Mr. Pete: Oh yeah. I'm supposed to be getting out
now. I'm almost 85 years old, so this is it. I got
00:20:27
my spot over there in the pecan tree.
Phoebe Judge: This spot he showed me under the pecan tree was part of the
cemetery at Carville. The cemetery is
00:20:35
a big one. There are a lot of graves there.
Mr. Pete: I told them, put me in a nice shady
00:20:42
pecan tree.
Phoebe Judge: You plan to be buried at Carville here.
Mr. Pete: Yeah. You have your choice,
00:20:50
and I know my family are not going to take me
home. It costs too much money to ship the body.
00:20:59
Phoebe Judge: Have you ever left
Louisiana since you got here? Mr. Pete: No, never left Louisiana. I went to
Mississippi, but I come back the same night.
00:21:14
But I never been up to New York and all
them places, if that's what you mean. Phoebe Judge: Would you like to?
Mr. Pete: So much people, I might get lost.
00:21:26
I know in New York people ain't going to turn
to look at you, they're just busy, busy doing
00:21:30
nothing, but they're busy.
Phoebe Judge: It's unclear whether Mr. Pete will get his
wish to be buried at Carville. Last month,
00:21:41
the remaining patients were finally forced to
move to a nursing home in Baton Rouge, so
00:21:46
Carville now sits empty. Neil White still talks
to Mr. Pete on the phone sometimes. They spoke
00:21:52
last week.
[Music.] Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer, and
me. Audio engineering help from Rob Byers.
00:22:10
Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations
for each episode of Criminal. You can find
00:22:15
them at thisiscriminal.com.
Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.
Criminal is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,
00:22:26
a collective of the 13 best podcasts around.
If you're interested in supporting us,
00:22:31
and shows like ours, email [email protected].
You can find out more about Neil White's time
00:22:38
at Carville in his book, In
the Sanctuary of Outcasts. This month, the show Reveal is doing a four-part
investigative series called Left for Dead,
00:22:46
which examines the national phenomenon of missing
and unidentified persons, the John and Jane Does
00:22:52
of America. They've also created a new tool,
which allows anyone to view cases and try to
00:22:59
match the missing to the unidentified by comparing
characteristics and case information side-by-side.
00:23:05
You can find out more at revealnews.org.
Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight
00:23:11
Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating
creativity, chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal.
Jingle: Radiotopia, from PRX.