The Chemist

By AllanWoodman

My name’s Allan Woodman. My friends (and enemies) call me Woody.

I served three years in prison, bargained down from a life sentence for manufacturing illegal drugs because I had agreed to testify against some major criminals. I’m a college graduate with a degree in chemistry, which is what led me down the criminal path. And, oh yeah, I’ve got a 175 IQ.

The logical question would be how the hell did a bright guy like me wind up a criminal? I made the most potent PCP and crystal meth ever sold on the streets. I was the best at what I did.

And this is my story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AllanWoodman
• Release date: Nov 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310667848

Book preview

Diesel Therapy

March, 1993 - It was one of the few nights where I slept deeply. In my dream I was a kid again, home in my own room sleeping, hand slipped under a cool pillow. I was dreaming within a dream, and I didn’t want to wake up.

An interruption came from a distance. It started as indiscernible voices calling out to me. Sounded like two people. My parents? Whoever it was, I resisted leaving the place I was in; tranquility I hadn’t had in a while, peace, which for an unexplained reason wasn’t the norm.

Jostling now, neither subtle nor considerate. Fuck ‘em. I was staying put; maybe I could will them away, because I was certain they were part of the dream. Then someone screamed in my ear.

Woodman! Get the fuck up!

I opened my eyes to a hulking correction officer. Behind him was his clone. My brief respite into a peaceful place was over. An intense, overwhelming depression draped over me when I realized I was where I’d been for the last four months: Ray Brook Prison in upstate New York, midway between Lake Placid and Saranac Lake.

I swung my legs from the steel cot, the discomfort of sleeping with no mattress and a roll of toilet paper for a pillow deeply settled in my joints.

A flashlight’s beam pierced my eyes, and I looked quickly away, the jabbing pain of the light adding to my confusion. This wasn’t the way we were awakened every morning. That was handled remotely at 6 a.m. when the cell block’s overheard lights came on to signal the start of a new day of mind-numbing boredom interspersed with moments of sheer terror when violence ruled.

I shielded my eyes. What time is it? What the hell’s going on? I thought maybe the guards came up short a guy during a night headcount and the entire prison population would be lined up for a physical count.

You’re going on a trip. Someone tossed me an orange jumpsuit. Get dressed. C’mon, move your ass.

My cellmate, a veteran con doing time on a drug charge, feigned sleep while I zipped myself into my traveling duds, all the while bombarding my keepers with questions. Where was I going? Why was I going? What the fuck was going on? All I got by way of response was stony silence.

Can’t you at least tell me what time it is?

Quarter to two, one of the guards said. Now shut the fuck up and get moving.

Who was I to argue? I’d had quadruple bypass surgery after a heart attack a few months back, and I didn’t want to get my blood pressure up. I forced myself to calm down and do as I was told.

I was put into a room with about twenty other cons, all in orange jumpsuits. I knew some of them from the yard, and they all looked as confused as I was.

We were handcuffed in front and then shackled to belt restraints. Our ankles were cuffed, separated by a foot-long chain which would make it difficult to make a break unless we could gain any speed running like cripples. If I managed to pull a Houdini and break out of my cuffs and chains, my orange jumpsuit would single me out from most fashion conscious civilians.

A retrofitted bus was in the yard not too far from the front gate.

Another correction officer appeared. Okay, gentlemen, get on the bus.

This command caused a murmur among the prisoners. My first thought was of a scene from the movie The Great Escape, where a bunch of allied WWII POWs get herded on a bus for a short ride to a deserted field where they were lined up and unceremoniously machine gunned by a squad of Nazi SS goons. Since none of the guards addressed us in German, I figured that was a longshot.

The bus was fortified with blacked-out wire windows and a caged gate separating us from the driver and two heavily armed guards. We were led to seats, un-cuffed then re-cuffed to steel pinions in the floor, all the time peppering the guards with the same questions we’d been asking since the process started. The guards gave up telling us to be quiet, and we were just ignored.

##

We drove through what was left of the night, mostly on secondary highways and back roads. No one had any idea where we were. We tried to dope it out for ourselves, but that proved fruitless because twenty cons had twenty different ideas as to our location. One asshole volunteered Kentucky because we’d passed a KFC a few minutes before.

When bored, depressed, or both, most cons ruminate about the circumstances that landed them in prison. We had plenty of time to think about it, and I was no different, although I wasn’t your typical felon.

My name’s Allan Woodman, but my friends (and enemies) call me Woody. I was forty-two-years-old at the time of my road trip, serving three years, bargained down from a life sentence for manufacturing illegal drugs because I had agreed to testify against some major criminals. I’m a college graduate with a degree in chemistry, which is what led me down the criminal path to begin with. And, oh yeah, I’ve got a 175 IQ. The logical question would be how the hell did a bright guy like me wind up where I was?

I made the most potent PCP, crystal meth, and other drugs ever sold on the streets. I was the best at what I did, but apparently not good enough to avoid getting caught.

My stay in Ray Brook was in preparation for me to testify against Dr. Roderick Campbell a.k.a. the Doc, a criminal drug chemist of legendary proportions. He was also my mentor and partner. Doc had a PhD in chemistry from Brown University and at one time had been the director of Hunt Chemical’s research division before going over to the dark side. I don’t want to give the impression that Doc was a benevolent mad scientist. When he heard I was going to testify against him, I narrowly missed getting killed in a knife attack. I fought back with a shiv of my own and scared off the attackers (there were two).

Incarceration at Ray Book had been by way of Danbury and Lewisburg Federal Penitentiaries. I’d become friendly with some of the toughest cons in the system, and it was feared I was becoming too institutionalized and might decide not to testify despite the leniency deal. Doc had once been sentenced to twenty-four years and through guile and a lot of legal research managed to get the sentence reduced to four years. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that I could do the same.

My future was spelled out; testify, complete my reduced sentence, and get lost among law-abiding civilians.

By the time the bus was in first gear, the general consensus of the cons was we were being given diesel therapy treatment. This is psychological harassment to control unruly cons into compliance with rules and regulations. The treatment consists of moving the prisoner daily over a period of time by bus. The constant upheaval is supposed to lead to disorientation, depression, and utter reliance on the system

Diesel therapy was the government’s way of convincing me I’d better testify or I’d have a lifetime of being moved every day for the remainder of my sentence. There are prison urban legends of cons being in diesel therapy for years, but the average involvement is drastically shorter because the cons lose their minds after a few months of therapy.

By sunup we pulled into a small town, the name of which has been lost to the years. Whether I remembered it or not, I still had no idea what state I was in.

We drove straight to the county jail, a three-story building located behind a volunteer fire company garage. We were herded inside. Two correction officers dressed down in jeans and T-shirts greeted us.

Don’t say a fucking word, one said. Just stand there while we get ready to process you.

One con just couldn’t help himself. Where the fuck are we?

His answer came in the form of a nightstick across the back. You’re in jail, shit bird, the cop said. Would you like a tour of our hospital?

No response.

We were led to a shower room where we were stripped, cavity searched, and forced to shower under cold water until my testicles shriveled up like raisins.

Next came the medical exam. No surprise here; every time a con gets admitted to a new jail, he gets examined by a doctor, doctor’s assistant, or nurse. The guy who checked us out looked like an old farmer who was pressed into service because he could diagnose hoof-and-mouth disease. He also reeked of booze.

He went over my file and said, Heart surgery, huh?

Yeah, four months ago. I figured I’d give this civilian a shot: Where are we?

He made like he didn’t hear me. Roll up your sleeve.

I just got intake shots at Ray Brook four months ago.

He grinned at me. Well, you’re getting them again.

After the injections, I was housed in a cell equipped for two with three other guys. First thing I did was size them up to see who the weakest guy was. He’d get the floor for a bed. After a quick perusal I determined the weakest guy was me, thanks to my surgery. Wonderful. Upon reflection, I’d been sleeping on a steel cot with no mattress for four months at Ray Brook; maybe the concrete floor might be more comfortable.

We were fed what passed for three meals and it was lights out at ten o’clock. My last thought before I went to the floor was it took me four months to finally get used to Ray Brook and learn my way around and how to survive, and now I’d have to acclimate to a new prison society.

##

At 2 a.m. we were roused from our sleep by two cops. We were fed a boxed baloney on white bread and led to the bus. On the road again. Diesel therapy would prove to be a slow form of torture. We wound up going to eight different jails in seven days, roused out of a fitful sleep, constantly pushed around and threatened.

##

The bus was rife with a rumor I was a pedophile, which is an instant death sentence. There’s a societal pecking order in prisons: jewel thieves and organized crime figures are at the top and pedophiles are dead last, essentially walking dead people. I figured the Doc paid a guard to start the rumor.

On the third nomadic night, I was being processed at a new jail when one of the local cops asked me if I buggered little boys.

I tried to remain calm. After three days of looking over my shoulder and fitful sleep, I was a nervous wreck. A wise answer here could see my throat slit before my morning baloney sandwich.

Chapter Two

School Daze

I checked for witnesses.

Finding none, I placed the pipe bomb beneath the gas tank of the ten-year-old Buick, a location that would do the most damage. Even if the tank were empty, there’d be enough residual fumes to act as an accelerant when the device went boom to render the car airborne.

By professional bomb standards it was a crude device consisting of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter--the basic fixings for gunpowder--which were readily available. These ingredients were jammed into an eight-inch long pipe and sealed at both ends with metal caps, one drilled to accommodate a fuse. I chose a length of fuse which would allow me to put a safe distance between myself and the end result.

I lit the fuse and shimmied from beneath the car. By my calculations, I had approximately ninety seconds to find cover, jam my fingers in my ears, and watch my bomb do its thing.

The area was sparsely wooded, as were the outskirts of semi-rural Spencer, Massachusetts, where I lived. Today, I was about two miles from downtown proper, peering through the dead branches of brush about fifty yards away from the impending explosion, lying flat on my stomach and counting down.

The last ten seconds were excruciating. I was worried about many things, the most prominent being that someone would meander onto ground zero and go up with the car. With the countdown nearly completed and the landscape empty, I realized my worst fear wasn’t going to happen; there was no one in sight.

However, a second concern emerged: no explosion. I unplugged my ears--a mistake-- and raised my head above the shrub. Just then, about ten seconds after I’d expected the bomb to detonate, it did just that.

The shock wave hit me square in the face before I heard anything. My eyes instantly watered, and I felt my cheeks bulging like Dizzy Gillespie’s when he hit a high note. My head jerked back like I’d been bitch-slapped. Then came the noise of a pound of gunpowder exploding within the confined pipe. It was so friggin’ loud my ears would ring for the rest of the day.

As for the car, it was propelled into the air, flipped once and came to rest on its roof in a cloud of Massachusetts summer dust. A mushroom cloud rose fifty feet into the air, similar to the kind I’d seen in the movies when an atomic device was detonated on some hapless island in the South Pacific.

The rush was intense, the feeling of raw power intoxicating. After some trial and error and some inevitable duds, I had created a working bomb, and I’d done it with a home chemistry set.

My name is Allan Woodman, but everyone calls me Woody.

I was thirteen years old.

##

That bucolic summer in New England changed my life. It was 1962 and I’d discovered what I wanted to be: a chemist, but not just any chemist. Definitely not the school teacher variety of chemist who would work all his life trying to educate brats who didn’t give a rat’s ass what the science was all about.

I wanted to make my mark, even back then. Exactly how I was going to do that through chemistry was beyond my grasp at the time, but as years passed my goals would become clearer. I would create the most potent and in-demand methamphetamine the criminal world had ever seen. For now, however, I was satisfied with just blowing shit up.

That summer, and the few that followed, I became the Mad Bomber of Spencer. I stuck with blowing up abandoned cars, although I was tempted at times to demolish a car or two that belonged to assholes at my school I didn’t like. I restrained myself, however, my goal being to perfect my homemade bombs by making them more compact and powerful. While I had many friends, I kept my acts of terrorism to myself, a fact of which I was quite proud. I defy you to find a teenager who can keep any kind of a secret, let alone something as cool as what I was doing.

When I had the formula for the gunpowder as perfected as it was going to get, I expanded my targets to abandoned shacks. What few I could find in the woods, mostly dilapidated hunting structures, were soon leveled. Later in college, I would make TNT and nitroglycerin, professional quality high-explosives. But I never used them, fearing I might hurt someone, myself included. Once I was satisfied I had an impeccable formula, I’d flush the explosives, content I’d accomplished what I’d set out to do.

##

I was born and raised in Spencer, Massachusetts, a burg of 8,000 people, as near to the fictional town of Mayberry as you could find, and ten miles outside of the much larger city of Wooster. But it might as well have been on another planet. Spencer was small town America personified, where no one used their turn signals when driving because everyone knew where you were going anyway. A typical weekend pastime for me was shooting rats with my .22 rifle.

My parents were normal, middle-class, and hardworking. Growing up was uneventful (if you don’t count my forays into bomb making) in a comfortable house located across from the town cemetery. I had two brothers: Brian, six years older, attending the University of Miami, and another older brother, Charlie, doing his bit in the Marines. I remained home with my mother, Jenny, and father, Charles. My mom was a school cafeteria cook for twenty-five years. She actually cooked food that was edible, and she had a following of truck drivers and cops who’d buy their lunches at the school where she worked. My dad put in thirty-nine years at the local watermill. We’re not talking about overly ambitious parents here, just solid Americans whose happiness hinged on that of their kids’. How I would end up like I did will forever remain a mystery to me; it certainly wasn’t for lack of instilled values.

We weren’t a materialistic family. Happy with what we had, my parents never went into uncontrollable debt or wished for the next big car or newest gadget. We were taught to make do with what we had and to save for things we wanted. When I got older and started leading the life of an illicit major drug manufacturer, I was joined sporadically by my brothers in my criminal endeavors. My brother Charlie preceded me into a life of crime by working for Big Nose Sam, a Springfield gangster, while I was still in high school. My brother Brian would become involved in his own criminal dealings later on. Don’t think I led them over to the dark side; they were already there, despite our wholesome upbringing. Easy money was the lure, and not many people would be able to resist its draw. Our ideals, taught to us by our solid parents, evaporated like a morning fog when big money came within grasping distance.

##

In 1968, when I was eighteen and a senior in high school, I broke my wrist on a carnival ride, which was later deemed to be the fault of the ride’s drunk operator. I was awarded an $8,000 insurance settlement.

This money, my father said, as he held the check between two fingers like a winning lottery ticket, will help pay for your college education.

Right.

Almost immediately I withdrew some of the cash and became a capitalist. I bought a spiffy used ’59 Corvette ($900) and decided to invest some of the rest of what I considered found money. The seeds of my criminality emerged with what I thought was the easiest way to realize a quick profit: I bought a pound of marijuana, my goal being a quick turnover in the form of individual ounces peddled to my school buddies.

These were the 1960s, the height of the Vietnam War, where weed and other soft drugs were evolving into a lifestyle for the tuned out and turned on. It was cool to play the part of rebel and non-conformist, all the time enjoying the fruits of easy living courtesy of my parents, who grew up during the Depression and who had vowed to make life for their kids as comfortable as possible.

As a self-styled hippie, I began smoking weed as a means of becoming socially relevant. Discovering I really liked the drug convinced me, and anyone else who’d listen, that it was harmless and anti-establishment.

I was a retail customer up until the time I got my insurance settlement, scoring from my friends with no thoughts of dealing the stuff. My desire for a quick profit, however, overwhelmed my good sense, and I sought out the guy who was dealing to one of my friends--a high school kid like myself from another school--and scored a pound of weed for $150.

I quickly divided up the smoke into sixteen, one-ounce baggies with the help of a penny-weight scale and sold each bag to my buddies for $40, the going rate at the time. I turned a profit of almost $500 virtually overnight.

An entrepreneur was born.

##

I did maybe ten more one-pound marijuana buys during my senior year, quickly packaging ounce baggies for a fast turnover. My profits fueled my ever-expanding partying lifestyle and kept me in weed twenty-four-seven. Surprisingly, I was a good student, running a B+ average, and had no trouble being