![]() ![]() A glimmer of sweat appears on the flesh just beneath his right eye and he wipes it away rapidly with the sleeve of his shirt. "It's about what a person will do, who is in love, who can't see the forest for the trees." He smiles his crooked smile and sits back in his chair. "This is a love story," he says, light and breezy as a chatshow host. Ask him why he is here, incarcerated and alone, and he will answer without missing a beat that it is because he was a fool for love. Several months ago, a fellow prisoner shook him by the hand while he was being walked to his cell – it was the first time Russell had been touched for almost a decade.Īnd yet, despite his desperate situation, Russell insists his story is not a dispiriting tale of crime and punishment. We have to speak into connected phone receivers to make ourselves heard through the thick screen and the line is crackly and unclear even though he is sitting only two feet away from me. His skin is pale and puffy from the 23 hours a day he spends in solitary confinement and he has almost no contact with the outside world. Nine years into a 144-year jail sentence for assorted charges, including felony escape and embezzlement, Russell is one of the Michael Unit's most notorious and closely guarded inmates. His upbeat demeanour is at odds with his predicament. "Hotdogs, hamburgers, pork this and pork that," he says with a laugh. ![]() Curiously, one of the first things he mentions when he starts to speak is the poor quality of the prison food. He is wearing white prison overalls and the collar of his shirt is stained with what looks like faded tomato sauce. I n the Michael Unit correctional facility of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Steven Russell sits on the other side of a bulletproof screen with an out-of-place smile on his face. ![]()
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