What I Want to Know About Daniel Wozniak

I asked Daniel a lot of questions in my early letters.   I was super curious about his day to day living.  

I'd stick to asking basic stuff.  Our correspondences are obviously not private and he still hasn't had a trial, so what is the point in asking questions he can't answer? 

I wasn't sure how he'd feel about me "interviewing" him, but clearly, that is what I was doing.

My Questions To Daniel

Here's what I wrote to him in September (I also mentioned that I hope he has plenty of that yellow legal pad paper):

• Did you study art at all?  I loved the card you made me and I was ridiculously impressed by your skill.  I’m limited to stick figures myself, ha ha. 
• What does your cell look like?  Do you always have a “celly?” (Yeah that’s right. I’m learning the lingo).
• I’m reading the biography of Damien Echols (West Memphis Three) right now.  One thing that struck me was his feelings of anger and hatred toward the guards.  He says “it’s the guards and not the other prisoners that make being incarcerated so much harder…”  So, your take on this?
• This might sound silly, but have you considered starting some kind of theatre group behind bars? Performance therapy?  You might be laughing at my prison naivety right now.   Maybe you could entertain the masses with Shakespearean monologues??
• Do you have a lot of family and friends supporting you through the trial?  I’d be interested in attending it.  I want to know the “more to what happened” because I’ve always believed there had to be...
• So why were you reconnecting with your parents?  Was it your drug use that caused a rift between you?
• Do you think she (his now ex-fiancee) ended your relationship out of anger or fear because of the charges she's facing herself?   Did you have a big wedding planned?
• OK, here’s a big question.  I’m not sure if you can even answer this one.  You seem like it bothers you that people would believe you were motivated by money… You don’t want people to think you had major financial troubles. The thing is, Daniel, to me it seems like society would consider it a lesser evil to believe that a person might do certain things when facing a desperate financial situation.  If you didn’t have money problems then what would you want people to believe motivated you?
• Is your lawyer a public defender?
• You said you were visited a couple times by one of  your victims’ dads.  HE had written in his letter  “one of my victims,” so I was just going with his terminology. Which dad? Has he explained his  motivation for wanting to visit you?
• Was "Lost" actually your favorite TV show?  I’d read that somewhere.  I was a huge fan of "Lost."
• I have to ask you how you are handling the possibility of getting the death penalty.  Are you afraid of this?

Answers For Daniel

The rest of my letter was answering his questions about me.  I called it a fair exchange of information.

• No, I don't consider myself to be a religious person.
• I was adopted as a baby and my adopted mother is an undiagnosed bi-polar, self-proclaimed born-again Christian.  Years of her craziness has left me with a bad taste in my mouth for organized religions.  (I told Daniel that for simplification, I could be considered an Agnostic who leans toward spirituality.)
• I told him about my adopted dad -- who passed away 8 years ago -- and that I loved him tremendously in spite of his unchecked alcoholism.
• I shared that I now have good relationships with both my biological parents (I just found my biological father last year).
• That I was reading the second Game of Thrones book (I didn't want him to think that when it comes to reading materials, I’m all crime all the time).

Oh, and I also included a copy of a good review he got when he was acting in the play "Nine" (his last performance before the arrest).

I finished my letter by asking if I could maybe visit him at some point...

I signed the letter with "your friend," and I meant it.

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My New Friend is in Jail

January 2015

(Post One)

I have a new friend.

Actually I met him for the first time in 2010, but he really only became my actual friend until a few months ago when I first wrote him a letter.

He is in jail.

He’s “awaiting trial.”  He’s been waiting a long time, too – 4 years and 7 months so far.  That is a longer-than-usual time to wait for your trial.  It’s especially a long time if you sit inside a cell 22 hours day.   My friend is being charged with “special circumstances,” so he can’t get bail, and the prosecutor is asking for the death penalty.

Let’s start by saying that I am NOT going to use my friend’s name in this blog; at least not at this point.

Obviously, anyone could Google what I’m going to tell you about the case.  You could find out my friend’s name and all about his alleged crime.  I’m not trying to hide anything, but I watch a lot of TV, and I figure if I don’t say his name, then nothing I write can be used against him in a court of law.

That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

I’m going to call him Pat.  My friend Pat, who is in jail.

When I first met Pat back in 2010, he was acting in a play at my theatre.  I’m calling it my theatre because I was one of the people who helped with the day-to-day running of the place.  I was a company member and a director.

Pat was just around for one show.  Even though he was the lead actor in a musical running at the theatre, it was Pat’s first time acting there.

The show was doing well and it was making money. That was all that mattered to me.

So, even though Pat was just a visitor, I liked him.  I didn’t think he was the greatest actor in the world, but he was doing a good job in the show and audiences responded well to him.

I started eyeing him for my summer musical.  He seemed like a nice guy.  He was good-looking and personable.  He was funny and polite.  He was even engaged to one of the actresses in the show,  and they were getting married the next week!  He seemed like he had his life pretty organized (at least organized enough for an actor in community theatre).

I chatted up Pat when I was house managing for his show one night.

This theatre was really small.  There were a lot of people in Pat’s show, and he ended up having to use the theatre’s office for his dressing room (he was the only man in the show).    I was selling tickets and snacks from the front of the office, while Pat was hanging out “back stage” in the back of the office.

A makeshift curtain hid him from the audience. He made me laugh, because every time someone would order a soda, Pat would hand it to me through the curtain.

A few days after the show ended, Pat was arrested.

He was at a restaurant having an impromptu bachelor party with some of his buddies.  The Sheriffs swarmed in and arrested him just as he’d finished paying the check (a fact that annoys him a bit).


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