Ryanragtime
New Member
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2018
- Messages
- 6
- Reaction score
- 27
On April 19, 1979 a 34 year old Snap-On tool salesman was found dead with a bullet hole at the base of his neck, 14 hours earlier and 10 miles away his tool truck had been found engulfed in flames. My uncle was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 80 years in prison.
My name is Ryan Spence. I am writing from Atlanta, GA where I have lived for a year after moving from Savannah.
He died in prison when I was 10. His death came 12 years into an 80-year murder sentence, complete with two failed escape attempts. He had been in prison for threes years by the time I was born. I was raised to believe he was innocent as he maintained until the day he died. He died of a cocaine overdose which made the news in Illinois. He had a syringe in his cell and several baggies of a “white-powdery substance”. Uncle Mike was independent, meaning he was unaffiliated with any one gang in the prison. He was an artist, and soon after he arrived in the penitentiary, he started tattooing. He had a skill, a trade, which made it easier for him to move between crowds, survive, and get his hands on illicit substances.
I grew up visiting Uncle Mike at prison picnics and family visitation days. He was a big guy, with long red hair and a beard. He was sweet, and kind. Jolly, like an outlaw Santa Claus. He had sent my mom a full-color painted portrait of me from a school photo she had enclosed in a letter to him. The painting of me hung on my wall throughout my childhood. I was very proud to have such a talented uncle, and sad that he had to be in jail, because we all believed he was innocent.
My mom was at work when I got a collect call from the prison. Believing it to be Uncle Mike, I answered excitedly. I was 10 years old. Instead, it was his best friend inside. The man told me that my Uncle Mike had died from a heart attack. I was crushed. Being a 4th grader, I was old enough to know what death meant but hadn’t really experienced it yet, except maybe a pet.
As the years went by, Uncle Mike was talked about less and less. I was always fascinated by him. At times my mom would say, “you remind me too much of Mike” in a worried but loving tone, usually after I was caught in a lie, or getting into trouble at school. I was always getting into trouble, shoplifting, lying, smoking pot, and drinking. I often wondered how much like Uncle Mike I actually was.
Just before I turned 16, my Grandma died. My Mom passed away from cancer a couple months later. Her sister, my aunt, was in prison on drug charges. For the next 15 years I basically made a go at drinking myself to death while trying to convince everyone around me I was having a
great time. I was not. I was an alcoholic. At the age of 27, I had a daughter with my on-again, off-again high-school sweetheart. It didn't work out. After a few failed attempts to get sober, something finally clicked when I was 33. I was 15 months and 18 days, clean and sober when my 7 year old daughter, Bella, passed away unexpectedly.
Miraculously, I stayed completely clean and sober throughout, and since. After a few months I moved from Savannah to Atlanta with my wonderful, loving, and supportive girlfriend. I got a job with a union here working in film and television which gave me access to full union benefits. I couldn’t write a word for almost a year after Bella’s death but now I read and write everyday, go to meetings, I found a therapist on Psychology Today’ s Therapist Finder, since I now had decent insurance to help cover it. I figured some counseling wouldn’t hurt and I didn’t want to put a strain on my relationship with the grief that I was feeling.
The process of healing has lead me to examine who I am and where I come from. I found a chunk of a memoir my mom had written and she touched on her brothers trial but didn't go into detail. Still, it is a treasure to have from her. The spectre of my Uncle’s case has always haunted me and had a huge impact on the way I viewed law enforcement and authority in general. At times I would bring it up to friends and sometimes I thought having a convicted murderer and tattooer as my uncle, made me tough by proxy. It didn’t. It did have an affect on me though. In the past whenever I’d look up my uncle on google, the only thing I could find was the article about his overdose in prison, which was a bit of a scandal since he was found with drugs and a syringe. I googled him again recently, and dug a little deeper. I had to join a website, for a small fee, that granted access to millions of scanned newspapers going all the way back a hundred years.
I started to find articles about his case. The murder. The trial. His conviction. All i’ve ever known was what an adult might tell a child. My grandma, uncle, and mom, had all passed away. Now I was finding some real information. Including the name of his lawyer who was a young public defender at the time. I kept searching and saving every newspaper article I found. I looked up the lawyer and called the number for the firm he was with. To my surprise the receptionist connected me with him. I was not prepared for a real conversation but did my best to act professional while being honest and genuine about why I was calling. He was fairly guarded with his answers but told me some interesting things.
My next step was to find out if the court documents and trial transcripts still existed, as the case was 40 years old now. I contacted the courthouse in Illinois and turns out they have over 1200 pages of documents from the trial. However, i would need to go there to look at them since it was all converted to micro film. I was told it would cost a fortune to get the files sent to me. Road trip.
My aunt is the only surviving member of Mom’s immediate family and after many years of addiction and run-ins with the law around the country, now sober herself, she has settled back
in her hometown in Illinois where the murder and trial took place. My plan was to visit her, as i hadn’t seen her in maybe 15 years, ask her about their childhood and get her perspective on the whole ordeal. Then, hit the courthouse to scour the documents. Reconnecting with her and getting as many stories as i could about their childhood and make a sort of healing road trip of the whole thing.
I gave myself two weeks to drive from Atlanta to the midwest, and back, on country roads and two-lane highways in my old chevy van. I stayed at my aunt’s house for a week and got as much information as I could considering she had many years of substance abuse and this all happened 40 years ago. Between the news articles, my moms memoir, and my aunts stories, I was beginning to construct a narrative of the events and of my uncle as a person.
I got to the courthouse early one morning and spent over 6 hours reading through the files and taking notes. They finally had to ask me to leave. The system they used was old and clunky and it took an entire minute for each page to load. I was able to read some police reports and testimony from the trial but really only scratched the surface of the 1200-page document. I wasn’t able to go back but had all the information I needed to order the files and transcripts, although, it was going to cost a lot.
This is a personal story. As i've said, I was brought up to believe my uncle was innocent. I’m not looking to exonerate him, or to glorify him. I just want to know the Truth. I want to know about the victim, and the other men involved. Over the years i have heard a few theories about what may have happened, including that my uncle was taking the fall for some dangerous men. I still don’t know, but this is what i DO know based off what i have found so far...
On the day of the murder, the Snap-On truck had been spotted in front of a Van Customization shop (which my aunt alleges was a chop shop and drug front operation). Allegedly my Uncle showed up in the truck claiming that he and the Tool Salesman had made a deal to rip-off the insurance company. They would stage it as a robbery, sell the tools, and collect the insurance. Several other men were involved in unloading the tools and selling them. My uncle and another man took the Snap-On truck to the outskirts of town, and torched it. The owner of the Van shop testified to his involvement fencing the tools but denied knowing anything about the murder. As far as I know, there was no forensic evidence. My uncle never took any plea deal and maintained his innocence until he died. He tried to escape twice and both times had years added to his sentence. He narrowly escaped the death penalty, instead sentenced to 80 years after a 6 month jury trial. My grandmother, my uncles wife, and several of the men that had been involved all testified.
At the time of his arrest, my uncle was 20 years old and married, with two step-sons, but shortly after he was convicted, his wife filed for divorce and moved to another state. She is still alive. I believe several other key people that testified are alive as well, and as i've said, i've spoken to the lawyer that defended my uncle although attorney-client privilege extends beyond death at the discretion of the attorney.
I often wondered about the Truth to all this. Even though I was brought up to believe he was innocent, I wondered if, unfortunate as it may be, he was actually just guilty. My dad and my aunt both believe that the men at the van shop were a lot more involved than they claimed to be. Conspiracy theories abound. From what i’ve seen, there actually are a lot of holes in the official story, but I see how my uncle would be the prime suspect. I believe he was involved and it’s possible he even committed the murder. I in no way intend to disrespect the victim or his family, I just want to know more about it all.
Eventually i would like to speak to some of the people involved, including my uncles ex-wife and the victim’s family. This all went down 40 years ago, so the clock is ticking in regards to finding people that are alive and willing to talk to me. This is a story that has affected my family deeply and changed the lives of the people on the periphery. I’ve started a go-fund-me campaign to continue this research and not go broke in the process. I even have an old-friend with a private investigators license that could help me find the people involved in all this. Obviously, all of this costs money. I will work on putting together the elements in a more cohesive state and i’ll let you know how its going in the future. My hope is to one day include all this information in a book.
Feel free to contact me, my information is at the bottom. Any advice or connections you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
All the love!
My name is Ryan Spence. I am writing from Atlanta, GA where I have lived for a year after moving from Savannah.
He died in prison when I was 10. His death came 12 years into an 80-year murder sentence, complete with two failed escape attempts. He had been in prison for threes years by the time I was born. I was raised to believe he was innocent as he maintained until the day he died. He died of a cocaine overdose which made the news in Illinois. He had a syringe in his cell and several baggies of a “white-powdery substance”. Uncle Mike was independent, meaning he was unaffiliated with any one gang in the prison. He was an artist, and soon after he arrived in the penitentiary, he started tattooing. He had a skill, a trade, which made it easier for him to move between crowds, survive, and get his hands on illicit substances.
I grew up visiting Uncle Mike at prison picnics and family visitation days. He was a big guy, with long red hair and a beard. He was sweet, and kind. Jolly, like an outlaw Santa Claus. He had sent my mom a full-color painted portrait of me from a school photo she had enclosed in a letter to him. The painting of me hung on my wall throughout my childhood. I was very proud to have such a talented uncle, and sad that he had to be in jail, because we all believed he was innocent.
My mom was at work when I got a collect call from the prison. Believing it to be Uncle Mike, I answered excitedly. I was 10 years old. Instead, it was his best friend inside. The man told me that my Uncle Mike had died from a heart attack. I was crushed. Being a 4th grader, I was old enough to know what death meant but hadn’t really experienced it yet, except maybe a pet.
As the years went by, Uncle Mike was talked about less and less. I was always fascinated by him. At times my mom would say, “you remind me too much of Mike” in a worried but loving tone, usually after I was caught in a lie, or getting into trouble at school. I was always getting into trouble, shoplifting, lying, smoking pot, and drinking. I often wondered how much like Uncle Mike I actually was.
Just before I turned 16, my Grandma died. My Mom passed away from cancer a couple months later. Her sister, my aunt, was in prison on drug charges. For the next 15 years I basically made a go at drinking myself to death while trying to convince everyone around me I was having a
great time. I was not. I was an alcoholic. At the age of 27, I had a daughter with my on-again, off-again high-school sweetheart. It didn't work out. After a few failed attempts to get sober, something finally clicked when I was 33. I was 15 months and 18 days, clean and sober when my 7 year old daughter, Bella, passed away unexpectedly.
Miraculously, I stayed completely clean and sober throughout, and since. After a few months I moved from Savannah to Atlanta with my wonderful, loving, and supportive girlfriend. I got a job with a union here working in film and television which gave me access to full union benefits. I couldn’t write a word for almost a year after Bella’s death but now I read and write everyday, go to meetings, I found a therapist on Psychology Today’ s Therapist Finder, since I now had decent insurance to help cover it. I figured some counseling wouldn’t hurt and I didn’t want to put a strain on my relationship with the grief that I was feeling.
The process of healing has lead me to examine who I am and where I come from. I found a chunk of a memoir my mom had written and she touched on her brothers trial but didn't go into detail. Still, it is a treasure to have from her. The spectre of my Uncle’s case has always haunted me and had a huge impact on the way I viewed law enforcement and authority in general. At times I would bring it up to friends and sometimes I thought having a convicted murderer and tattooer as my uncle, made me tough by proxy. It didn’t. It did have an affect on me though. In the past whenever I’d look up my uncle on google, the only thing I could find was the article about his overdose in prison, which was a bit of a scandal since he was found with drugs and a syringe. I googled him again recently, and dug a little deeper. I had to join a website, for a small fee, that granted access to millions of scanned newspapers going all the way back a hundred years.
I started to find articles about his case. The murder. The trial. His conviction. All i’ve ever known was what an adult might tell a child. My grandma, uncle, and mom, had all passed away. Now I was finding some real information. Including the name of his lawyer who was a young public defender at the time. I kept searching and saving every newspaper article I found. I looked up the lawyer and called the number for the firm he was with. To my surprise the receptionist connected me with him. I was not prepared for a real conversation but did my best to act professional while being honest and genuine about why I was calling. He was fairly guarded with his answers but told me some interesting things.
My next step was to find out if the court documents and trial transcripts still existed, as the case was 40 years old now. I contacted the courthouse in Illinois and turns out they have over 1200 pages of documents from the trial. However, i would need to go there to look at them since it was all converted to micro film. I was told it would cost a fortune to get the files sent to me. Road trip.
My aunt is the only surviving member of Mom’s immediate family and after many years of addiction and run-ins with the law around the country, now sober herself, she has settled back
in her hometown in Illinois where the murder and trial took place. My plan was to visit her, as i hadn’t seen her in maybe 15 years, ask her about their childhood and get her perspective on the whole ordeal. Then, hit the courthouse to scour the documents. Reconnecting with her and getting as many stories as i could about their childhood and make a sort of healing road trip of the whole thing.
I gave myself two weeks to drive from Atlanta to the midwest, and back, on country roads and two-lane highways in my old chevy van. I stayed at my aunt’s house for a week and got as much information as I could considering she had many years of substance abuse and this all happened 40 years ago. Between the news articles, my moms memoir, and my aunts stories, I was beginning to construct a narrative of the events and of my uncle as a person.
I got to the courthouse early one morning and spent over 6 hours reading through the files and taking notes. They finally had to ask me to leave. The system they used was old and clunky and it took an entire minute for each page to load. I was able to read some police reports and testimony from the trial but really only scratched the surface of the 1200-page document. I wasn’t able to go back but had all the information I needed to order the files and transcripts, although, it was going to cost a lot.
This is a personal story. As i've said, I was brought up to believe my uncle was innocent. I’m not looking to exonerate him, or to glorify him. I just want to know the Truth. I want to know about the victim, and the other men involved. Over the years i have heard a few theories about what may have happened, including that my uncle was taking the fall for some dangerous men. I still don’t know, but this is what i DO know based off what i have found so far...
On the day of the murder, the Snap-On truck had been spotted in front of a Van Customization shop (which my aunt alleges was a chop shop and drug front operation). Allegedly my Uncle showed up in the truck claiming that he and the Tool Salesman had made a deal to rip-off the insurance company. They would stage it as a robbery, sell the tools, and collect the insurance. Several other men were involved in unloading the tools and selling them. My uncle and another man took the Snap-On truck to the outskirts of town, and torched it. The owner of the Van shop testified to his involvement fencing the tools but denied knowing anything about the murder. As far as I know, there was no forensic evidence. My uncle never took any plea deal and maintained his innocence until he died. He tried to escape twice and both times had years added to his sentence. He narrowly escaped the death penalty, instead sentenced to 80 years after a 6 month jury trial. My grandmother, my uncles wife, and several of the men that had been involved all testified.
At the time of his arrest, my uncle was 20 years old and married, with two step-sons, but shortly after he was convicted, his wife filed for divorce and moved to another state. She is still alive. I believe several other key people that testified are alive as well, and as i've said, i've spoken to the lawyer that defended my uncle although attorney-client privilege extends beyond death at the discretion of the attorney.
I often wondered about the Truth to all this. Even though I was brought up to believe he was innocent, I wondered if, unfortunate as it may be, he was actually just guilty. My dad and my aunt both believe that the men at the van shop were a lot more involved than they claimed to be. Conspiracy theories abound. From what i’ve seen, there actually are a lot of holes in the official story, but I see how my uncle would be the prime suspect. I believe he was involved and it’s possible he even committed the murder. I in no way intend to disrespect the victim or his family, I just want to know more about it all.
Eventually i would like to speak to some of the people involved, including my uncles ex-wife and the victim’s family. This all went down 40 years ago, so the clock is ticking in regards to finding people that are alive and willing to talk to me. This is a story that has affected my family deeply and changed the lives of the people on the periphery. I’ve started a go-fund-me campaign to continue this research and not go broke in the process. I even have an old-friend with a private investigators license that could help me find the people involved in all this. Obviously, all of this costs money. I will work on putting together the elements in a more cohesive state and i’ll let you know how its going in the future. My hope is to one day include all this information in a book.
Feel free to contact me, my information is at the bottom. Any advice or connections you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
All the love!
