Awesome - Wrongfully Convicted Ex-Inmate Comes Back For Those Who Put Him in Prison
Inmate 0283128
Once he saw the cop cars and the police officers waiting to arrest him, he tried to make a run for it. “I tried to get away, ducking and weaving, running through cars,” Miller said. But his attempt to escape only got him shot. A police officer shot at him, and that was it – he was going to jail. To the hospital, no doubt, but then to jail.
Source: Twitter/ arstechnica.com
Walter wasn’t only charged for that particular bank robbery, but he was also found guilty for committing another. After his trial, he was sentenced to 25 to 30 years in a maximum-security prison. No more juvenile detention centers – this was the real deal. And just as he was in the midst of his sentencing, he got some horrible news.
He Made His Bed
Walter received the devastating news that his mother had passed away. Heartbroken, he vowed that he was going to turn his life around. Miller went through the legal process of trying to make appeals, but none of them were successful. I mean, he robbed banks and tried to escape the cops. It’s not surprising that his appeals were denied.
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He had made his bed, and he was going to have to lay in it. Now that he was in prison, he seemed to get the hang of it. He got used to prison and later said that he worked hard at being the “perfect inmate” for years. But it got to the point that things were getting to be unbearable for him.
Minimum Security Prison
Harassment from a prison captain got to be too much for Miller and decided that the only way to make his life slightly better would be to request a transfer from maximum security to a minimum-security prison, which happened to be just down the hill. His hard work of being a good inmate worked in his favor.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
His good behavior earned himself a transfer to a minimum-security facility. And the new prison felt “more like a camp” to Miller. The place still had the looming gun towers and the high wired fences, but it also came with a wider sense of freedom. The inmates were even allowed to walk outside and talk on the phone with their families.
A Downward Spiral
Believe it or not, you can host a radio show in prison. Walter was allowed to host his own radio show during his time in the minimum security prison. Walter was enjoying his role as a radio host. He said that he felt “relaxed” for the first time in years. In a prison of all places! At first, since life there wasn’t as awful as he thought, he didn’t have any plans of trying to escape.
Source: ABC
But then everything changed. When a prisoner yelled profanity at one of the wardens, everything went downhill fast. The warden mistakenly thought that Miller was the inmate who yelled, and he just had it out for Walter ever since. The warden started picking on him.
Picking on Him
Walter remembered how the warden would taunt him. He would write him up for infractions regularly, whether legitimate or not. “The negative reports kept piling up until I was one mark away from being sent back up the hill,” Miller said. Walter couldn’t imagine having to go back there and start from ground zero, especially after all this time being on good behavior.
Source: Twitter
He knew it was high time to find a way to escape. Thanks to his buildup of negative reports, Walter was given one of the worst jobs around in prison. He, along with a handful of prisoners, were forced to clean up the roads. The job required Miller to wake up before the rest of the prisoners, get into a bus, and drive to Raleigh to pick up trash.
The Boiling Point
“It was awful,” he said of that degrading job. “People would be throwing hamburgers and milkshakes at you. And it was almost winter, so it was starting to get cold.” Despite the bad conditions, Miller was starting to see an opportunity with this new garbage-picking task. “That’s when I started planning and plotting,” Miller said.
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And so he started to save his money. “I memorized the bus route. I noticed that we always stopped at a certain intersection, right next to a wooded area. And I figured I could make that distance in no time at all. I also noticed that the guard who worked on Tuesday never searched the prisoners as they boarded the bus.” And then it came to the boiling point.
His Great Escape
On one Monday night, while they were watching the Colts game on TV, Miller made his decision and was going for it. “That was going to be my last night in prison.” As Miller was serving a 30-year sentence for robbery, he escaped Raleigh’s now-shuttered Triangle Correctional Center. How did he do it? Surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard…
Source: New York Times
In 1977, Miller escaped prison by cracking open the rear exit of a transport bus. Miller said how he waited for the “careless” guard stationed at his gate. He purposely didn’t leave anything behind that could be traced to him. Love also took the only pair of civilian clothing he was given when he worked at the prison’s radio station.
Hitting the Road
He sat in the last row of the bus and literally hopped out when they got to the wooded area that he had been waiting to arrive at. He ran and just didn’t look back. He later said that he knew he looked suspicious, so he avoided any “white neighborhoods.” But whenever he saw a Black man, he would ask him where the Greyhound Station was.
Source: Flickr
When he finally arrived at the Greyhound station, he convinced someone to buy him a one-way ticket to New York, which cost $10 in those days. He waited until the last minute to hop on the bus, right before the driver was going to close the door. A woman sat next to him and asked what his name was…
Becoming Bobby Love
Bobby Love hit the open road, heading for Manhattan. As any fugitive would, Miller knew that if he was going to succeed in his plan, he would need to make some changes. At the end of that bus ride, Miller found a new life. And a new name for that matter. Walter Miller re-named himself as Bobby Love. He took the name from the late son of an old friend of his named Ulysses.
Source: Twitter
He made it to New York with $100 in small bills, a single pair of clothes. He lived in a “fleabag” motel for a couple of weeks and basically survived on “hotdogs and marijuana.” His money, of course, ran out, and he resorted to sleeping on the train.
A New Identity
The first official document he got was a social security card after he explained to the authorities that he lost everything. Then, he found his original birth certificate. He scratched out his name and put “Bobby Love” on the line. He photocopied it, “so many times that it didn’t look fake anymore.” He later found someone who put a notary stamp on his birth certificate.
Source: mirror.co.uk
Love even “found a brother at the DMV who pretended not to notice. And that’s how I got my driver’s license.” He slipped right into the identity of Bobby Love. His new name and identity didn’t erase his old family ties, though. He called his sister Jean Miller-Levette on her wedding day (May 19, 1979), and he told her about his escape, just not mentioning too many details.
Meeting His Future Wife
He used his new documentation to get a job at the cafeteria of the Baptist Medical Center. And that’s where he met his future wife, Cheryl. They met in the 80s when they were both working at the church. Their first dates included the Prince film “Purple Rain” and a concert by Gladys Knight and the Pips.
Source: NY Daily News
With his newfound relationship, Bobby turned his life around. The two got married on March 30, 1985. He was 34, and Cheryl was 21 and pregnant with their first child, Jasmine. Love invited his siblings to the wedding in Brooklyn at the community center at the Pink Houses housing project. Their marriage license identified him as Bobby Allan Love, born November 6, 1950.
Keeping Silent
Their daughter Jessica followed two years later, and twins Justin and Jordan came around 11 years down the road. In the end, the couple had four kids, and Love even became a deacon at his church. He was living a completely different life, and no one could ever know about his past. He never told his wife anything.
Source: Twitter
At times, Love, who newly found God, thought about telling Cheryl about his past, but he worried about what her response would be. “My thoughts were that Cheryl would probably tell me to turn myself in,” he told the Daily News. He kept his secret but asked his sister Jean to come clean and tell his wife if he were to pass away.
An Introvert of Sorts
Bobby had to work two jobs to support his family, and times got particularly hard for the family. The devoted dad, often surviving on just one hour’s sleep, always told his wife that they would make it through. “I’m not going anywhere,” he would think to himself, “unless somebody takes me.” He was living a new and better life and wasn’t planning on falling back on old times.
Source: Twitter
Relatives and friends of Love’s said that while he was somewhat of an introvert, he was never paranoid or too concerned about his past derailing his present. He wasn’t only active in the church; he also did charity work and attended community meetings – meetings in which the captain of the local police precinct appeared.
A Big Ol’ Check
All the while, Love kept his cool and was making a name for himself as a respected man in his community. No one, not even his family, would believe his criminal past. Then, in 2004, Love appeared at the state lottery offices in Manhattan to collect a $50,000 Pick 5 prize that he won. “They gave me a big ol’ check,” Love recalled.
Source: app.com
“I just wasn’t worried that anything bad was going to happen to me,” he said. “It felt good with my life, my family. I get up every day, and I thank God I’m alive.” Those words were said by a man who managed to spend 37 years as a fugitive, a man who felt all too confident with his new way of life. But that would all soon change.
Something Was Different
He seemed to be very much a family man, but he rarely spoke with strangers, hardly ever socialized with friends, and seemed a little nervous when people would stop him on the street to ask for directions. As time went by, the careful Love became bolder with his actions. He brought his family back to his home town in North Carolina for a vacation.
Source: thedailydot.com
“There was a piece missing,” Cheryl later said about her marriage to Bobby. “Something was different.” Bobby’s wife and his friends were starting to notice little oddities. For instance, Bobby didn’t like to be in pictures. He was wary of speaking to strangers and kept to himself most of the time. Something was off as if he was hiding something.
The End of the Road
As the years went by, Bobby was feeling a bit more comfortable. He attended funerals for two of his nine siblings; one was in North Carolina and the other in Washington, D.C. Authorities aren’t confirming it, but Love thinks that someone at one of those funerals – maybe even a relative in law enforcement – ratted him out.
Source: thedailydot.com
But Cheryl was far from comfortable. Bobby would close himself off during his arguments with Cheryl. “I remember during Christmas of 2014, I was on my knees in church, saying ‘Lord, please, I can’t do this anymore,’” Cheryl admitted. “That was a few weeks before everything went down.” Shortly after, the FBI was in his bedroom, strapping him into handcuffs. It was the end of Bobby Love… for now.
A Regular Morning
The day Cheryl Love found out about her husband’s past was when the FBI came to their door in January of 2015. Cheryl woke up and began her morning routine like she usually did, making herself a cup of tea. Meanwhile, Bobby was asleep in their bedroom when she heard a knock at the door. “I opened it slowly and saw the police standing there.”
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“At first, I wasn’t worried,” she admitted. The married couple lived next to a “crazy lady” for years, and the cops were known to come and check in on her from time to time. Cheryl figured that they must have knocked on the wrong door. “But the moment I opened the door, twelve officers came barging past me.”
He Had a Long Run
Cheryl didn’t know it yet, but this day marked a moment in her world would that would completely shake her to her core. The officers that rushed by Cheryl and into her house had the unmistakable letters “FBI” on their jackets. Cheryl didn’t know what was happening, but she knew it was bad. So she followed the officers into her home.
Source: NY Daily News
“They went straight back to the bedroom, and walked up to Bobby,” she recalled of that moment. She heard the officers ask Bobby, “What’s your name?” his response: “Bobby Love.” They asked again: “No, what’s your real name?” and that’s when Cheryl heard her husband mumble something under his breath. “You’ve had a long run,” the officers told him.
More Disappointed Than Embarrassed
Suddenly, the Feds were putting Bobby in handcuffs. Cheryl stood there in shock and pleaded with them, asking them what was happening. “This goes way back, Cheryl. Back before I met you,” Bobby told her as he was pushed out the door. “My world came crashing down,” said Cheryl. She also said that her disappointment trumped her embarrassment.
Source: Raleigh News and Observer
“Bobby had deceived me for all those years. There was no truth in our house.” Cheryl remarked that the moment was “like I was in a movie; a Lifetime movie.” But despite the intense wave of emotions, she felt that she needed to do something. Despite all of the lies and deception, Cheryl decided to stay with her husband of nearly 40 years.
Grim Circumstances
Let’s face it, a fugitive who was on the run for 37 years was clearly going to face grim circumstances. He was being held in New York’s infamous Rikers Island while he awaited extradition to North Carolina. There, he would face the prospects of having to serve the final ten years of his original sentence. Not to mention the added time for his escape.
Source: newsone.com
Cheryl went to visit her husband at Rikers and saw exactly how serious the circumstances were. “When I first visited him in prison, he broke down crying. His head was in his hands, and he told me: ‘I know, you’re going to leave me.’” But Cheryl made up her mind already, and leaving him wasn’t an option.
For Better or For Worse
Cheryl told her husband behind bars: “No Bobby Love, I married you for better or for worse. And right now, this is the worst.” Cheryl started a mission of her own. She did everything she could think of to try to get her husband home again – where she felt he belonged. She would write letters to the governor, and she even sent one to President Obama himself.
Source: Twitter
She got her children and everyone in Bobby’s life to write testimonials. “I didn’t know a thing about Walter Miller. But I told them all about Bobby Love.” After gathering every piece of character defense she could get her hands on, Cheryl brought everything with her to Bobby’s parole board.
“We Love”
While it seemed like an impossible task, Cheryl’s hard work paid off. After a year in prison, the parole board agreed to let Bobby return to his freedom. He was thus released in 2016, about a year after the FBI stormed his home. The 69-year-old has legally changed his name to Bobby Love and has since focused on rebuilding his marriage.
Source: Oprah Magazine
“The day after he was set free, I sat him down and asked: ‘What is it? Are we the Loves? Or are we the Millers?’” Bobby said: “We Love. We Love.” Cheryl, who stood by her husband’s side through the whole thing, in the end, forgave the man who disguised himself and deceived her for so many years.
Forgiving Bobby
Cheryl ultimately forgave Bobby, and their marriage grew to be better than it had been before Bobby’s secret was revealed. His persona shifted, and he was no longer jumpy. He engaged more with people and was open and attentive to his wife. The two were connected like never before. “I feel like a big burden has been lifted off my shoulders,” Miller told the Daily News.
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“I’m trying to put my life back together.” As for Cheryl, she confessed that she still has her resentments. “I used to walk on eggshells. I used to just go along. But I told him one thing. I said: ‘Bobby, I’ll take you back. But I’m not taking a backseat to you no more.’”
No More Secrets
For many couples, prison and being on the run usually ruins lives and marriages. But for Cheryl and Bobby, it only made their marriage better in the end. Cheryl said how she’s glad to see that there are no longer any secrets in the family. “He doesn’t have to hide anymore,” she said. She was finally in the marriage she always wanted.
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As for their daughter’s perspective. “I’m not ashamed of my father or what he did,” Jessica, 27, said. “Shocked, surprised, yes. My father was determined to change his life, and for 40 years or so, he did just that.” according to attorney Rita Mavunda, to ignore all that he had done and put him behind bars would be the real miscarriage of justice.
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