I should've been dead a long time ago.
Everybody in my family's dead, except for me.
I've always wondered why.
Why am I still alive?
I'm the black sheep of the family.
I'm the only one that caused trouble.
I actually think there's someone else besides me
playing tricks with my mind, or whatever.
But… I can clearly say that things I've done…
A lot of things I don't remember, I don't remember how I got there.
It's like I can hear another voice saying,
"Yeah, you did this."
You know.
I'm like, "No, I didn't do this."
And it's like me playing a game with myself.
My name is Deryl Wayne Madison.
Born August 29th, 1958 in Monroe, Louisiana.
I've been incarcerated for the last 33 years
for a crime that I committed in my neighborhood
in the year of 1988.
Well, I grew up in Texas.
My mother was…
a registered nurse.
She was a hard-working woman, Christian woman.
I got along with my mother better than I did with my father.
Me and my dad butted heads from the time I was five years old,
and I never got along with him.
I caught a lot of whippings from my dad.
A lot, 'cause, uh…
Extension cords and boards, mostly.
A lot of times I took off and I wouldn't come back.
You know…
And it just got… It just got worse and worse.
The first time I set a fire,
I set a calendar on fire, it was on the wall.
I set it on fire.
I'd just sit there and just watch it, you know?
And from that point on, it's like…
I was obsessed with fire.
I don't know if it was… aggression,
taking it out on my dad, or a part of my dad, I don't know what it was.
But it's…
I actually lost it.
Coming into my teenage years…
12, 13 years old…
I set a lot of buildings on fire,
a lot of empty houses.
And while the fires are going,
and some people think I may be crazy, but…
I would masturbate while the fire's going.
And when I'm done,
like, "Okay,
I'm good," and I'd just leave.
You know.
That's kinda weird.
That I'd stand in the middle of a fire
and masturbatin' while the damn fire's going.
You know, who does that?
Know what I mean?
It's like I can hear another voice saying,
"Fire time." Right?
It's like, "Fire time…"
I want to say it's another person.
I feel like…
there was something else, someone else inside of me, besides me.
I set my own house on fire one time.
Everybody was gone to church.
I set it on fire and I got back in bed
and I lay down.
I just stayed there.
Before I knew it, the fireman was snatching me out of bed
and dragged me out of the house, and I was full of smoke and stuff.
They're like, "Who set the house on fire?" I'm like, "I don't know."
Come to find out, it was me.
Was it me, or was it someone else?
I don't know, I can't tell you.
I… I don't do that.
It had to be someone else, it's not me. I don't do that.
Man, I started smoking weed and drinking wine
when I was, like, 12 years old.
Then I started taking Valium and white crosses,
walking on top of damn buildings.
It's like… when I'm doing stuff like that it's like, I'm bold as hell.
I feel like I'm ten feet tall, and I just start doing stuff.
By the time I was 16,
I was walking the streets of Houston, you know.
I was just getting off on all kind of stuff.
I'd go in a store and steal something, or I have a chance to take some money
from somebody, I'd do that.
I got out in '83.
Hmm.
I had a job working in an apartment complex
and stuff like that.
It was good while it lasted, but that's when I started smoking crack.
In order for me to keep that habit up,
I was robbing and stealing like crazy at that time.
That's when my life went straight downhill.
This particular day,
it was in April.
I was just walking down the street. I had, like, 1,800 dollars in my pocket.
And I had, like… three ounces of rock, coke, in my pocket.
And Miss Jolivet, she was sitting on her porch.
I waved at her, and she waved back.
I went around, I jumped over the fence and sat on the porch with her.
We was talking about the weather, how's everything going,
how's the garden and all that stuff.
I used to help clean out the garage and stuff, clean the yard.
I didn't need anything that day. I didn't need nothin'.
I had everything I wanted.
I was just sitting there.
All of a sudden I just snapped, I just popped off in my mind.
So she got up and she gettin' ready to go in and I said, "Okay."
I got up and helped her in, I held the door open for her,
and for some damn reason,
I pushed her all the way-- I pushed her inside the house.
You know…
I pushed her inside the house, she hit the floor.
I hit her three or four times.
She was screaming.
I drug her to the back,
I ran in and got a knife out of the kitchen drawer,
and I stabbed her twice.
Just like that, like…
I don't know what that was. I don't know why I did it.
Then I sat down on the floor.
I just sat there, right next to her, I just sat there.
I was told I did a lot of shit. I was told I tore the house up…
I… I really didn't believe none of that, but I didn't tear nobody's house up.
At least I don't think I tore the house up. I don't…
I was so full of drugs back then, there's no telling what I did.
Man, I don't know.
I ran so far, I just ran till I couldn't run no more.
I sat down on the curb…
of Tuam and Main, I just sat there.
And it dawned on me that I had killed someone.
No, I didn't kill nobody.
I couldn't kill nobody, right?
I was about 14.
I was in class.
Everybody in the classroom was staring at me.
So the teacher said,
"Who are you talking to?" I said…
"What do you mean? I wasn't talking to nobody."
Everybody in the classroom was watching me, I was talking,
but I was unaware that I was…
talking.
I didn't know I was.
So I know that's another personality, it had to be.
It just pops up all of a sudden.
I don't know why I killed Miss Jolivet.
I really don't.
But it was like a rage.
A fit of rage that come out of nowhere.
I mean, she never did nothing to me. You know, but…
Why did I take her life?
You know…
Believe it or not,
I ain't have no feeling at all when they gave me the death penalty.
I didn't know what to feel. It's like, I don't feel anything.
I don't know why it's like that.
It's like when my mom died, my brothers, my sisters…
I never shed a tear for anyone.
I don't know what it feels like to be…
loved by people.
I don't. I don't know what that is.
I couldn't tell you what that is.
As a sane person, I wouldn't have done it.
You know?
I actually think there's someone else besides me.
Maybe, it's me doing drugs
that this… other personality I have,
usually pops up.
It's like I can hear another voice saying,
"Yeah, you did this," you know?
I'm like, "No, I didn't do this."
It's like me playing a game with myself.
During my trial, after going through everything,
after listening to all the testimony,
and looking back on my life,
and what I've done,
at that time, yes, I did deserve the death penalty.
You just don't take a life
from someone that's been living that long, you know?
And you deserve to be punished for it.
I deserved the death penalty for doing what I did.
Yeah, I understand.
That's how the law works, huh? So…
At the same time, I'm locked up for the rest of my life.
I'm never getting out again…
you know.
I'm not a monster, right?
But I did commit a crime,
and I am paying for it.
She's the detective that was in my case, right?
They kept asking me questions,
and I told them exactly what I did.
I didn't lie about anything.
I did take stuff out of the house.
I had no plans of that before, but when I went in there,
and after she was dead, yeah, I did. I started just taking stuff out the house.
It was stuff that I sold for crack.
I was thinking like a dope fiend. I didn't have a clear head.
I was a dope fiend. I wanted drugs.
That's what that was.
I did not plan to murder Miss Jolivet.
That happened while I was there, right? It just… all of a sudden, it just…
It was a different thing.
Once I was in there,
my whole… my whole mindset changed.
I don't consider myself an evil person, but…
we have to pay our…
debt to society anytime we do anything wrong.
I may not like it, but,
as the saying goes, "You make your bed, you have to lie in it."
Bubba was the name that my grandmother gave me when I was born.
That's what I call my other personality.
Bubba is…
I wouldn't exactly say my alter ego, but…
Sort of a Jekyll and Hyde type.
You know, he gets me in trouble. I'll put it that way.
He's…
it's more like me asking myself questions, right?
You know, "What the hell did you do that for?"
I'd get up in the middle of night and walk back and forth in the cell.
He would say, uh…
"Can't sleep?"
It's just crazy, man… I dunno…
I hope he doesn't do anything stupid one of these days.
It's not scary because I'm in here, huh?
If I was out there, it'd be different.