Wednesday, March 10, 1976
1
Ex-convict
From nage one
"One week we hit four places and got a total of $28." Sherman said, sitting quickly forward. He clenched his hands and shook them. "It seemed like the only aim was to get into the penitentiary. It all seemed so senseless."
The racket he ran in encompassed all types of hoods, Sherman said, including short-chance artists, safe crackers and confidence men. But they all shared an attitude that brought them together in a life of crime and fear of authority.
"That prison crowd, that type of people all believe there's larceny in everyone and that all you have to do is bait people to bring it out and make money." Sherman rubs his strong, square jaw. "But I know now that trying to live an easy life is not easy," he says. The mass may be greener on the other side of the fence, only it's artificial turf."
But before Sherman arrived at this philosophy he had to travel through many episodes of crime. With some partners he developed an elaborate confidence game designed to cheat the man who had been in a fight. The other partner, Sherman bought $200 in uncirculated 1941 bills from a bank and presented them to his fence. He told the fence, the stolen goods dealer, that the money was left from an armored car robbery that took place in 1941 and that the man who had pulled the robber's weapon was best of the uncirculated money for $25,000.
"But it didn't work," Sherman said. "The fence was from Iowa and associated absolutely no psychological fear with the rangers. He just laughed when they came in with their phony uniforms and called the cons."
There was no money and there'd been armored car robbery. But the fence was locked, and the police were for friends to break in on the man in a motel room and steal his money. His friends were dressed as Texas Rangers, lawmen that knew every criminal in the Deep South feared.
"Here we were, turned in for arrest by our fence who'd gotten rid of stole goods
University Daily Kansan
Then no schoolboy suit and tie would help Sherman. He'd dealt with local police but never faced federal charges and the FBI. He was convicted of interstate transportation with intent to defraud and sentenced to three years in Segoville province for security-related Dallas. There, Sherman says, rehabilitation was a loke.
Sherman arches his thick eyebrows and now at his turquoise skirt, as if pulling nature at his feet.
"Many of my fellow prisoners at Segovian were millionaires who'd been caught at large scale con games, not harrowing them, but nothing anything there is how it was to be caught."
When he was released, Sherman felt no remorse, only a need to hustle, "to live and make money by my wis." He pilfered businessmen in poker games, won money at rigged golf events and was initiated into organized crime when he drove a car for his girlfriend in Minneapolis. He drank heavily and ran errands for plumps. He robbed and borrowed money. All of it culminated in a fantastic robbery and escape attempt.
Sherman and a partner pulled an armed robbery in Wichita and escaped from police in a souped-up getaway car equipped with a police radio. They were dodging roadblocks when a patrolman stopped and identified them. Sherman was daring to escape the patrolman and hurried his car. He ordered the patrolman to drive to a county airfield and then warmed
up a plane for takeoff. As Sherman tied and covered the patrolman from the cold Kansas night, his friend zoomed down the road to another state. Later, both men were caught.
Sherman was convicted of multiple charges, including armed robbery and kidnapping. He was 21 years old at the Kansas State Pentitentiary in Lansing. For awhile he wallowed in despair. There would be no relations with women and no freedom in movement. Only harsh punishment was necessary.
Sherman said one of his first acquaintances in prison warned, "Be careful of who you insult around here, Shermie. Some of the men here will kill ya just to keep up their
Sherman found he was accepted into the prison's upper echelon: many of the inmates heard he'd tried to steal a plane and had flown it. He was "a store" in his cell where he illegally sold candy bars and pop to the prisoners and guards. Money wasn't permitted in the prison so cigarettes served as currency. Sherman said he never loaned money to leaner cigarettes. Sherman said.
One night Sherman was dealing a pinochelle game when another con man asked to borrow his shank, a homemade knife, to use on an inmate who owed him money.
"I was right in my place," he said. "Wake up by the bell, eat by it, the bell tells you what to do. I literally didn't even realize I was in the pen for three years."
"I told him no," Sherman said. "And he said, 'I'm gotta hit that guy anyway.' The next morning the guy was owed him was found stabbed to death. He'd owed $1.35, been killed for $1.35. Life's that cheap in the penitentiary."
By just realizing his situation, he says, he began to understand himself, where he was and how his life had developed. He said he began to observe those around him, the killer community and the jewel thieves, the strongmen, and their "queens."
Still, Sherman felt at home in the criminal still. He was the only kind of life he'd known to be human.
"The penitentiary was a gathering spot for all these losers and I saw that I'd been wrong."
Sherman began to read in the walking yard, the locked hallways and in his cell. He devised books on Zen Buddhism by the author of books by George Gurdjeyj about Sufism.
"I was beginning to learn about me then," he said. "Those books all helped me, see myself in a different light. And then I just quit the prison system."
Sherman sat up from his chair and got a tape measure. He marked off the exact size of his cell on the carpet with the tape, 144 inches by 120 inches. For a moment he stared at the imaginary prison he'd fashioned on the floor.
"I spent my time relaxing myself in my cell and creatively imagining my parole," he said slowly. "I put the picture in my cell, very clearly, of a new life of prison."
"I realized I had a conscious decision to make," he said. "I had to form a different lifestyle." Sherman paused and lit up a cigarette. He hard did on it. "But not, and to make this conscious decision I had to take care of myself so that I was a good person, a worthy man."
He said he did awareness meditations and exercises regularly, to probe himself.
There are few 'bubs' in Sherman's speech these days. He says he's done away with compromises in his life. When he lets slip a punch, the term 'he'll correct himself and continue.'
From his jail observations and inner
Possible cigarette tax hike may provide cancer funds
Twenty-five per cent of the one-cent tax revenues would be distributed to Kansas counties on the basis of population. The distributed money is then split between the county general fund and the cities in the county, also by population.
Ten per cent of the revenue collected by Senate Bill 987 would go to the University of Kansas Medical Center radiation treatment fund, which the bill creates.
Hearings are to be held in Topeka this morning on a one-cent cigarette tax increase that may eventually provide cancer research funds for the KU Med Center.
cigarette tax generated about $2.2 million in revenue.
Senate President Ross Doyen, R-
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Sherman said the criminals he'd known were unwilling to take any responsibility for them.
"Convicts are emotionally immature," he said. "I saw 50-year-old killers with the emotions of kids just entering into puberty."
"I don't lie to myself then I can't lie to them, so the whole world he said." I know that wasn't a good idea.
Sherman said he thought prisoners' problems are emotionally rooted and that rehabilitation programs only teach a vocation. They weren't treating the cause of crime and so they were doomed to fail. Rehabilitation programs he participated in were too compromising because of their lack of social skills, ideally, programs with a dedicated core of professional therapists should help prisoners discover themselves, he said.
"The prisoners have to learn to love themselves before they can see that they're destroying themselves by crime," he said. "They are unconditional love for all that is."
After living with and watching the criminal fringe for years, Sherman is convinced that most crime is psychologically rooted.
searching, Sherman says he's found an essential truth to live by.
"I believe that a lack of love during formative years leaves a hole in the psyche that causes you to do various acts to get attention," she said of getting attention to fill up this hole.
Sherman served five and one-half years of his sentence and was paroled six months early for good behavior. He's on parole until August and restricted to a 60-mile radius around Lawrence. But he envisions his future as an unlimited horizon. He's taught himself aadvanced degree in psychology. Sometimes he finds college work a struggle.
Sherman said he knew of five other exconvicts enrolled at KU and guessed there were at least five more he didn't know personally.
"That would create a division between
what I can be and what I say will be," he
"I've always read a lot, but studying is a skill that takes time to develop," he said.
Sherman plans to work at helping people after he graduates but won't specify what they will do.
Still, he promises to attain what he wants. And he says he will never forget his past. "I'm not proud of where I've been, but I still want to be proud of what I wouldn't change a thing." He said.
Sherman's up again, feeding water to the growing plant in the sunshine by the win-
"This river of life has been a journey," he says. "You must split out what you don't like from the river, but always appreciate that journey."
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Fiscal budget requests heard
Subcommittee recommendations are to be made to the entire House Ways and Means committee in Topека this afternoon concerning KU budgetary requests for new programs, program improvements and general-use funds.
plant personnel, general research, law enforcement training center operations in Hutchinson and the capital complex public housing, including House Ways and Mega committees.
The final committee vote on House Bill 228, which contains KU's fiscal 1977 budget.
The committee made general policy decisions related to budget requests for the requestor.
Items included in those decisions for KU were an 8 per cent merit salary increase for faculty (10 per cent was requested), a 10 per cent increase in other operating expenditures (12 per cent was requested), $130,000 to purchase library books and journals ($150,000 was requested) and grants ($60,000 was requested) unclassified positions on the basis of enrollment growth (24.7 classified and 74 unclassified, totaling $125,974).
Fiscal year 1977 requests in House Bill 2928 include funding for additional physical
recommendations must go through the House, the Senate committees, the Senate and a possible compromise committee. Bennett will receive the bill for signature.
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