He retired from the navy and joined the national guard, retired from the national guard and then started going to the county for a job. he retired as the county jail administrator. my mom, she s a secretary. she s very educated, very knowledgeable about things. she quit her job to stay home with me so that i would have someone there for when i got home from school. do my homework, make sure i do what i had to do. but that didn t keep steele out of trouble. i never had to face consequences, so i figured i was pretty much untouchable. and i rebelled against them being so straight and i went crooked bad. steele s rebellion culminated in a 60-year sentence for residential burglaries, armed robbery and false imprisonment. i was robbing a house, boom, someone came home, i laid in wait or whatever. they came through the garage door. i put the gun in their face, told them to shut up, sit on the couch. finished robbing the house and left and that was it. we had numerous off-camera con
i remember i was wearing a white shirt, my tie was off to the side, and i looked and there was a hole in my shirt and i was bleeding. . the stab wound itself was not considered serious. the bigger problem was the risk of infection. i went to the hospital, i was at the emergency room, i went through a series of shots, they cleaned out the wound. it took several blood tests and i remember picking up the blood result and looked and looked for hiv. and hepatitis negative, hiv negative. so i was like, well, all right, i ll go ahead and take that. we asked steele for his version of the story. and in spite of all of the witnesses, he claimed absolute innocence. they re saying i stabbed him in court in front of judge, jury, and executioner. what are you saying? i m saying i had nothing to do with it. were you there? nope. really?
They think that badge gives them power, that badge is only an illusion of power. that power can be stripped and taken away in a moment s notice. and you help them see? no, allegedly. yes, alejandro was playing a cat and mouse game, absolutely. part of it it could have been the convict code not to reveal too much information, and part of it could very well have been the fact that he was kind of delighted to be out of his cell and able to have this exchange and kind of get people going. but eventually, steele came clean about the attack on the d.a. couple months before a month before, i knew he was the one that was going to. when they told the jury all rise, i saw that that was my opportunity and i stabbed him in the chest. steele s candor was short-lived. in terms of what you did, what was your goal? honestly, you re not going anywhere.
There s a convict code that many of these guys have to live by. and part of that code is to not reveal too much information. the most challenging part of interviewing alejandro steele was when i started asking him about his most visible crime. that crime occurred while steele was serving his original sentence and got him an additional 23 years. it was an assault that he carried out literally in front of a jury of his peers. i saw basically the whites of his eyes and i saw him coming at me. i didn t see his hands, but he moved relatively quickly on me and i feel i feel a punch in my chest. in 2001, steele was in court acting as his own attorney for allegedly throwing urine on a correctional officer. during a lunch break, steele extracted a plastic shank from his anal cavity. when he returned to the courtroom, he attacked chief deputy district attorney a.j. salazar.
what do you admit to? i admit to being prison number 50857 and admit to my mistakes i made to come to prison. steele was convicted of attempted murder in the assault on salazar. he was also found guilty of the charge that brought him to court that day, throwing urine on a correctional officer. and it wasn t the first time he had assaulted an officer. allegedly they say i ve slipped my cuffs. and when they opened my door i started swinging and i made the c.o. jump off the tier and run out of the pod. left me on the chair by myself, went back to my cell and that was that. why assault on staff? about 90% of the staff they get working here are the people who got picked on in school. they come over here and now it s payback time.