Читать книгу Scottish Hard Bastards - Jimmy Holland & Stephen Richards - Страница 11

As I’ve said, Joe Boyle is a violent man disliked by the prison system. There are people I am going to put in this book who I don’t like either, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognise what they have done in the prison system – and you can’t ignore hard bastards like these.

But Joe is my friend. He was, and still is, a deep person and someone who is difficult to get to know. Perhaps that is why people don’t like him. The first time I met him, he was in the remand centre up in Longrigend, a place where one young boy thinks that he is the top man until some other young boy comes along and slashes his face off or stabs him up.

Joe had made a name for himself even back then. I have witnessed two or three boys trying to cosh and slash Joe, but he wasn’t, and still isn’t, anyone’s mug. Joe picked up a pool cue and smashed it over the three boys’ heads; he didn’t stop until the screws pulled him off them. As a result of this sort of behaviour, Joe was always in the seg units.

When he was twenty-one years old, he became classed as an adult con and the crazy diamond set out on a one-man mission to take over Perth adult jail. And by fuck, he gave it a very good shot. Most of the so-called gangster hard men didn’t want to know when Joe offered them a roll-about with his bare hands or with knives. Once, when Joe was sleeping in his bed, two men ran into his cell with knives in their hands and tried to murder him. However, Joe being Joe, and not giving two fucks about his own safety, ran at them head on in his cell. In fear, one dropped his knife and bolted; the other tried to stand his ground, but to no avail. Joe stabbed him.

I recall another incident when Joe was younger. A hard man by the name of Burnside used to hit him and his little brothers and sister. However, when Joe grew up, he waited until Burnside came to prison and evened the scores: he dragged the man kicking and screaming into his cell and proceeded to stab him in the eye. And that wasn’t all. He then stuck a teaspoon into Burnside’s damaged eye and scooped it out of the socket. Yes sir, Joe is one violent man.

He had only been out of prison for four days when he murdered a rival gangster who used to laugh at him when he was a kid. It was the first time that Joe had seen his rival in over ten years. He received a life sentence for his troubles and was put straight into the seg unit in Barlinnie, before being transferred to the Shotts maneater, along with some forty or more other hardened prisoners who were doing their rules (segregation punishment) for their part in a riot or a hostage-taking or a stabbing or some other incident. The forty-odd prisoners teased and taunted Joe at the windows, day in, day out. They never did so to his face.

Joe made it his personal goal in life to go to war with every single one of them and that is exactly what he did. He would make sure that he got let out to use the phone; it was an excuse to catch whichever hard man was going to a visit that night – to get there, they had to walk past Joe when he was on the phone.

I can tell you because I was there: some of the so-called hardest men in the system cancelled their visits because they didn’t want to have to face Joe. The screws and shrinks couldn’t place Joe into mainstream prison, so they marked him down as insane and shipped him up to the state hospital for his own safety, and even more for the safety of the screws and the other cons.

I still write to Joe. He has now been up in the state hospital for twelve years, is doing really well and could soon be up for release. If Joe had been forced to do his time in a mainstream prison, among the cons, there would definitely have been a string of murders; that is how dangerous Joe was and still can be, but let’s all hope that he can keep his cool. Joe, brother, you know that you have got so many good people around you now and that you don’t need to go back down that slippery slope of pure and utter violence. I hope to see you very soon when you get out. Give Linda, Scott, Maria and the kids my love. Your friend till the end. Love and respect bro.