How Not to Pick Friends in Prison

When I was first came down, I flailed around and stuck out. I was white, thin, and ink free. I wanted to belong so I didn’t exercise too much judgment in whom I hung around. 

The first dude to approach me asked if I wanted to play spades. I jumped at the chance. I wanted friends. He was stabbed two weeks later for an unpaid dope debt to the Bloods. 

0 for 1.

Soon after, a guy named Steve moved into the unit. He was bald, covered in tattoos, and in the joint for a dozen years. He ran with the GD’s, who normally don’t let whites in their gang, so I figured he had some street cred.

He became block rep, involved himself in everyone’s business, and worked every low-level hustle: suckers, fudge, mocha shots, chocolates. He pursued only one vice–gambling.

I played pinochle against him for a soup a game. He always seemed to win. I suspected he was cheating, so we quit playing.

Afterwards, I’d sell him phone calls and he’d try to pay me with his homemade candies. That way, he’d always come out on top. Every transaction was a struggle.

Later, one of his friends, who was sorta slow, asked Steve to contact his girl to let her know he was on sanctions and wasn’t able to call her. Steve remembered the phone number, and seized the chance to turn that dude’s girl against him, telling her he was getting high and sucking dick. None of it was true. It didn’t matter- she was now in the car with Steve. Only the slimiest slime balls steal another inmate’s girl. Worse, she was now supporting Steve financially.

Then, I was moved to another unit still owing him two soups for some candy. I didn’t get my commissary bag, either, due to the discrepancy between store deadlines.

Steve did not take that news graciously. He accosted outside of the unit, made a threatening cutting motion at his throat, then wagged his finger, and said I was dead to him. It was the biggest overreaction to an incredibly minor setback. I thought he was joking.

I recalled something a former cubie had said about Steve: he acts like he was never loved as a child.

So, 0 for 2. 

But the story doesn’t end there.

I haven’t thought about Steve in years. Then yesterday, I saw his mugshot on the front page of The Detroit News. 

The cover story detailed a grisly murder plot of an ex-girlfriend that he orchestrated with a crew of flunkies and sycophants. I took notes:

“On the day after their wedding in 2023, Steve and Narena Bails didn’t go on a honeymoon . They carried out a murder plot. Most of the wedding party joined them. They were members of a group calling themselves the Grim Reapers…The leader called himself Grimm. Bails, 46, went to prison for a dozen years after having sex with a 13 year old girl in 2002, according to court records. He returned to prison in 2015 and 2018 after failing to register as a sex offender.”

(I forget what Steve claimed to be in prison for when I met him in 2019. It definitely wasn’t a sex offense. Chomos are reticent when it comes to their crimes. He didn’t “run” with the GD’s–he was their crash test dummy.)

The story goes on to describe how seven people lived in a one room apartment lorded over by Steve. He came up with the plan to kill his ex, Kayla Sedoskey, after several altercations, telling his crew that “she had to go.” 

Pretending to be romantically interested in her (she *had* to have been slow, if the picture was any indication), an accomplice lured Kayla to an old, dilapidated juvenile facility where Steve and another accomplice waited to kill her. They shot Kayla twice, hiding the body in one of the old showers, where teenagers discovered it a month later.

The police investigation drew scrutiny on the group. Steve posted on Facebook and told a local TV reporter that he knew who the killer was.

“Bails and Smith [the accomplice who lured Kayla] had concocted a plan to extract the confession… The two men were in Florida…when they called Ramsey [the other accomplice] in Monroe. Bails used a tablet computer to record the video call between Smith and Ramsey…Ramsey said she shot Sedoskey and stressed that Bails wasn’t involved. She said she drove to the killing in a white van and threw the gun into the river, both of which weren’t true. When she mentioned the van, a reflection from Smith’s phone showed Bails pumping his fist.”

While it was not clear who actually pulled the trigger, it was obvious to detectives that Steve was the mastermind behind this harebrained scheme. That fist pump reflection detail encapsulates Steve as a whole.

I wondered how they convinced Ramsey, who was a 40 something woman Steve had had a brief affair with, to both commit murder and take sole responsibility. His cousin provided the answer. She “told authorities he[Steve] preyed on the vulnerable, including young adults who were intellectually impaired or had no families.”

The average IQ of this group had to be 75, at best.

Eventually, they were smart enough to cut deals with the prosecutors and turn against Steve. They still got fried (the two accomplices got 20 & 40 years a piece) while Steve got life in prison. He’s at Oaks, a Level 4 prison.

I guess I won’t have to give him those two soups after all.