LOCKED UP WITH A NUTTER (SOCIOPATH).

I was a remand prisoner in Malaga prison (Alhaurin de la Torre) in 2001. I spent twenty months in that hole and I was released on Christmas Eve 2002.

During my incarceration I had the misfortune to share a cell with a killer; a nutter with no conscience whatsoever, a real psychopath. This creature should never be allowed out of prison because he will kill and kill again. His name is David Baxendale, a name I’ll never forget because he bragged about the innocent lives he took. His glib tongue soon wore thin the superficial charm he tried on me before he started bragging about his crazy parasitic life.

Whilst high on heroin and all manner of pills he could find, he would relax on his bed in my cell and talk about how he stabbed this bloke and that bloke and how he liked the popping sound of lungs being punctured and especially the heart of the young man he killed in Fuengirola.

He is something of a Mummy’s boy. The only female he ever spoke about was her. One day he pleaded with me to call his mother because the duty prison officer wouldn’t allow him to use the phone. He knew I had privileges so he asked would I call his mother and pass him the phone. The duty prison officer was ‘Mad Jack’, a particularly nasty man who hated Baxendale. I called his mother and handed him the phone. That favour cost me dearly with Mad Jack.

Because I was the only Englishman on my wing, they put him in my cell with me, but I could only tolerate his company for a short time; I had to get rid of him. Luckily for me, he made many enemies in a very short time and was soon spending time in the infirmary nursing his wounds.

One of the quirky things about him was that he wrote poetry. Not that I could make neither head nor tail of it because it was quite strange and mainly about states of mind in a psychedelic way; he was often hallucinating because of the drugs he took.

At first he seemed to thrive in prison and was ducking and diving as though he knew his way around. He lived for the present and couldn’t hold a conversation about the past for very long, unless it was about stabbing somebody. He had no friends that he could speak of, not even past inmates from other prisons: a sure sign of the sociopath.

He started trading heroin, which meant treading on the toes of established gangsters who run the busy drugs trade in prison. But, more importantly for me, it meant storing the drugs in my cell. I could not allow this to happen. I wasn’t without influence in there so I had him removed to another cell; better for me, better for him.

After several fights with other drug dealers and the self inflicted abuse with all manner of drugs, it soon became apparent he was physically and mentally on a steep downhill slope. Following a particularly vicious beating from the chief gypsy on the wing, he was removed from my wing and fortunately from then on, I only saw him in passing in various places in the prison.

I read in the news he stabbed and killed a mother of three in Surrey on 10th May 2010 after being released from Rye Hill prison in Warwickshire 11 months earlier. He had been transferred from Malaga prison the year before to continue his sentence in the UK, but was released early to finish his sentence in the community.

Who is the incompetent prick who sanctioned the release of this sociopath back on the streets of Britain? I am in no way qualified as a shrink, but five minutes in the company of Baxendale is enough to realise I am sharing space with a nutter.

He is now serving a Whole Life Term sentence... too late for mother of three, Sarah Thomas, she's dead.

AN ANGEL IN DISGUISE.

It was winter, 2007 when I was extradited from France to Spain. After first being incarcerated in the Douai dungeon, I was transferred to Fresnes prison near Paris. Fresnes is notorious for being the harshest prison in France but I was soon to find myself in a much darker place.

 I stood on tiptoe to see through my cell window, the falling snow, wispily settling on the coils of razor wire mounted around the high walls of Daroca prison. The night was coming in fast so it was disheartening to see the shadows across the bleak countryside through the coils of wire as my spirits fell to a new low.


Even the name of the place sounds ominous; Daroca, say it to yourself, it is not a nice word is it? It goes well with the bleak landscape and approaching storm.



I climbed into my bed as the night enveloped the prison and the volume of the rumbling thunder increased. Pulling my blanket around me I listened to the sounds of the night in this evil place and thought about my day and the people I share my space with in this dark corner of the world.


A face looms into my thoughts, a calm face with bushy eyebrows over ice-blue eyes. He looks at me across the dining table in the comedor (canteen), his eyes look right through me as though he is elsewhere. I am sharing my space and the air I breathe with a man who has eaten his wife - a cannibal, and here he is within touching distance chewing on a piece of meat and looking at me!



To my right is a young man who chopped off his uncle's head with a Samurai sword. He chats amiably to the man next to him who raped and mutilated his thirteen year old niece, thirteen was unlucky for her, and especially considering the length of time it took for her to die. I could go on describing the creatures around me but it would become unbelievable for you and you will doubt my word.



The storm is now a tempest and the thunder is reminiscent of ice cracking across a pond, but a million times louder. The lightning is alarming and illuminates my dank cell like a disco strobe light giving me the awful feeling that it is heralding the arrival of something evil and malevolent.



I can hear the cockroaches scratching the floor under my bed as they search for food and beneath that I hear the susurrations of the sleet and rain as it runs in rivulets down my cell window. The muffled sounds of the screams of madmen are barely audible through the thick walls, but they are there; the storm taking its toll on the warped minds of my fellow prisoners.



I feel sleep is near so I curl into my foetal position before taking a last look at the window and falling into sleep.



I could see condensation on the glass, fogging my view of the night sky through the bars of the cell window. The pale glow of the sodium security lights shone through the rivulets of rain on the cracked glass creating a ghostly shimmer.



My heightened sense of imagination played havoc with my mind's eye as I peered through the sparkling glass to see two shimmering points of light which slowly changed colour to that of red glowing coals. Pinpointed in the centre of each red glow is a glittering diamond which formed the eyes of Satan. He is here, hovering over Daroca prison, sinister and threatening.
His murky features taking shape and form with the movement of cloud and the upward glow of prison lights, El Diablo is here, spreading his evil shadow over the netherworld of Daroca.



A numbing sensation sweeps over me, paralysing me with a feeling of total helplessness as the fetid face looms near.



His fangs move as though gnashing his teeth and every sinew of his monstrous form drips with evil as I realise he has come for me. In the silence of the moment I freaked out internally and choked on the scream that didn't come out.



It was as though I was lying face down on a water bed and it was suddenly flipped over so the water bed was suffocating me with its weight. The terrifying emotion of stress and panic created feelings of intense heat across my back followed by ice under the hot skin. My arms and legs felt like they were covered with raspberries because of the size of the goose bumps.



I was frozen with fear as I felt his force searching my soul. 'My God and His son Jesus Christ are in there; so get ye behind me Satan.' The prayers spilled out of me as the fear intensified and the terror gnawed into my heart as the evil loomed over me, trying to consume me.



My heart was racing as the monster's face descended towards me. My chest felt crushed and my stomach started to liquefy as the brilliant white light hit my face.



'Recuento, recuento!' Shouted the duty prison officer, as he performed the final head count of the day, his voice and bright light dissipating the evil red eyes of Satan.



In his accented English, Don Gabriel, the duty screw said, 'Good night, Christopher, the storm has gone. Sleep well, Englishman.'



He slammed the big steel door and noisily crashed the massive bolt home and was gone to chase the demons from the minds of his charges.



I got out of bed and knelt in seizan, the martial arts meditating posture and meditated on my mind cleansing waterfall method of dissipating stress. I then said The Lord's prayer and jumped into bed, never again to be disturbed by Satan, thanks to Gabriel, the angel in prison officers' uniform.

Kenny Noye - Public Enemy No 1.

Kenny Noye With Me In Prison.


Valdemoro Prison, Madrid, Spain. 1998.

I arrived on wing 9 (the international wing) after being processed through ingreso, the reception wing of Spain's top security prison. I was carrying my bag of personal belongings and a mattress, sheets and blankets. With aching arms and much relief, I dropped the lot at the bottom of the stairs next to the wing office.


A screw (prison officer) told me to search out any Brits here who I might share a cell with, or he will allocate me a cell. Not wanting to be placed with Arabs, Turks or Gypsies, I hurriedly entered the sala (recreation room) and searched for Northern European faces. I spoke to several frogs, clogs and krauts (French, Dutch and Germans) before I hit on an English face who talked out of the side of his mouth.


He very cautiously questioned me about why I was in Valdemoro. I told him I had been transferred from La Moraleja prison in Dueñas, near Palencia to attend my trial in Madrid. He asked if I knew Kenny Noye was in here. I told him I didn't. He asked if I would like to meet him. I said that I prefer to find a place to live before the screw finds one for me. He told me not to worry because there was a bed in his cell. I immediately went back to the screw and told him I am in with the Brit face.


The Brit accompanied me through the noisy sala into another large recreation room lined with bookshelves and men quietly reading and writing at tables dotted about the place. My new cell-mate told me to wait while he approached a lone figure hunched over a writing pad. He whispered something out of the side of his mouth and stepped back so the man could eyeball me. A perceptive little nod and the Brit face beckoned me over. I walked over to the table to look down on the hard face staring back at me. He looked a bit younger than me and looked tanned and fit. He gave me a craft (masonic) handshake, which I responded to and asked if I needed anything. I pulled a chair and joined him and that was the beginning of getting to know each other. I had just met Britain's public enemy number one, Kenneth Noye.


We didn't become big pals or anything like, but we dined together three times a day, we trained in the gym and we marched around the yard day after day chewing the fat about all kinds of things. There is a lot more to say, but that and what I think about Kenny Noye can wait till my next blog.

Guantanamo Bay Holiday Camp.

Guantanamo Bay does not compare with some European prisons today.

Guantanamo Bay is a holiday camp compared to European prisons. Christopher Chance was arrested and thrown into the Douai Dungeon in France last year.
He was arrested and held for extradition to Spain to complete a prison sentence he started in 2001. He was released from Malaga prison after serving twenty months of a three year sentence for hashish smuggling between Spain and Morocco.
His slick lawyer wangled his release on an appeal scam and Chance was released on Christmas Eve 2002. A subsequent hearing decided he should return to prison to complete the sentence, but Chance had returned to England for medical reasons and was having surgery in St. Albans City Hospital when these decisions were made.
Chance travelled around the world oblivious to the European Arrest Warrant issued by the Spanish. In 2005 Chance went to Cyprus for eighteen months to write another book. He returned to England by driving through Greece; Italy, France and then by car ferry across to Dover.
After a short Christmas break he decided to move to France to start another book. On 3rd January last year he drove off the ferry at Calais into the arms of the waiting French police to start a nightmare journey through French and Spanish prisons.
He was separated from his wife who was ordered out of the Calais port and advised to continue her journey alone because Chance was going to Spain.
Chance was then taken to holding cells near Bologne-Sur-Mer, where he was stripped naked for an orifice search. He was then put in a cold, filthy cell where he remained on the concrete floor with a dirty blanket for 36 hours.
On 5th January 07 he was taken to the Douai Dungeon, a 17th century prison famous for its busy guillotine, where he was again stripped naked for another orifice search. For the next 15 days he was fed bread and water every morning for breakfast. In all this time he was allowed only three showers.
Chance was put in a cell with the infamous French surgeon, Doctor Jean Beclet who sliced his wife to death with a meat cleaver in her chemist shop in Douai as customers ran screaming in terror. Chance slept badly in this cell with the homicidal doctor lying in the bunk opposite him.
On 10th January he was taken in leg-irons and manacles to the Douai courts where he was paraded in front of shoppers across the square and into the courts. Papers for extradition were signed and he was returned to the Douai Dungeon where he again was stripped naked and searched by his escorts who had never left his side throughout the day.
On 16th January he was again trussed in leg-irons and manacles for the journey to Fresnes prison, France’s harshest prison where he was again stripped naked and searched. He was fed bread and water every morning and locked in solitary confinement for three days and nights in a cold, dirty cell.
During his time in French prisons Chance was verbally abused constantly by his jailers and each time he was moved, even from cell to cell he was stripped naked and intimately searched by prison officers with a penchant for rolling back foreskins and gawping up arseholes.
On 19th January Chance was heavily manacled and taken to Orly airport with four armed guards, who on arrival at Orly were joined by two legionnaires armed with machine-guns. Chance was escorted through the busy airport concourse with weapons trained on him as shocked tourists moved out of the way, some taking pictures probably thinking he was bin Laden in disguise.
Chance was handed over to his Spanish escorts for the flight to Madrid.
He had never committed a crime in France, he was held merely for extradition.
A report on how he was treated by the Spanish follows soon.

Interview on the Roy Basnett Show.

The Roy Basnett Radio Show.
At 0200 hours on 23 Sept, I went on air for two hours in an interview with Roy Basnett of City Talk Radio in Liverpool.
This is the link: http://www.whatson.com/citytalk/Click on 'Roy Basnett' and you can listen to the interview. The programme producer, Jay, told me the feedback was terrific and fans of the show were delighted at the candid, shocking and brutal revelation of life inside Spanish prisons.
I will be doing another show to talk about how I was treated by the French in the Douai Dungeon and Fresnes prison.
Next weekend 4th and 5th Oct, I will be at Borders book shop in Speke, Liverpool for my first book signing. I will be there from 1pm on each day.