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Jan. 26, 2007 Back in 1987, in Honolulu, Hawaii, when I was incarcerated for a short time in Oahu Community Correctional Center (OCCC), as I mentioned in my article about Borge, the hired triple killer who turned Christian, I met George Robello also. Robello was sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment for possession of marijuana. Many prisoners are physical specimens. There must be a demonstrable correlation between criminality and muscularity. However, Robello was not one of those physical specimens. He was just a typical Italian-American of smallish stature. About 5'-8" tall and weighing about 145 pounds, the overly hairy and darkly suntanned Robello looked like nothing so much as the employee of a pizzeria, not at all commanding or prepossessing in appearance. But Robello was a big-time operator. The Secret Service had arrested him with eleven tons, or 22,000 pounds, of marijuana. Estimating the street-value of marijuana at $1,000 a pound, the Secret Service appraised the total value of the haul at $22,000,000. Robello's case appeared in the Honolulu Star and some local television stations, as I recall. Here's how it went, according to Robello himself: He had had contacts in Thailand who packed the eleven tons of marijuana in a connex or shipping container with household appliances. The connex was received in the Port of Honolulu, and passed through customs apparently without a hitch. Robello appeared driving a flat bed trailer truck, picked up the connex, and suspecting that he might have been being followed, parked the truck at a public parking facility, and left it for a month. During the month, Robello appeared several times, opened the connex and withdrew small quantities of marijuana-one or two kilograms-and took them home in his car. This was a planned move, to see if there were any signs that anyone was watching. Eventually he was convinced that the coast was clear, so he came and drove the truck out of the parking facility onto the highway. This is when the Secret Service fell on him. Robello's defense was that he was an errand boy, and that he had been paid $4,000 to go fetch the marijuana, but somehow his version was thrown out of court. I wasn't there, so I don't know what happened. Maybe he couldn't substantiate his errand-boy story, or maybe the court just dismissed it summarily. Anyway, Robello was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment. Federal parole was abolished in November of 1987, at which time judges were supposed to impose determinate sentences, reducing the severity proportionately. So Robello made it just under the wire. He would be eligible for parole in 10 years, but in practise, applications for parole weren't being considered till mid-term. He therefore would have remained in prison till at least 2002. When I met Robello, he was waiting to be escorted to the mainland, as there was no federal facility in Hawaii. He would be taken by marshals to Terminal Island Prison in Los Angeles, there to be moved to another, undisclosed facility to do his time. Robello was certainly no genius, but his IQ must have been at least 100 or so. In his position, how could he possibly see any point in turning to Jesus? But that is what he did do. He was always moping around with his Bible, uttering a verbal diarrhea of parables, beatitudes and prophecies. Someone will undoubtedly mention the remark attributed to Jesus to the effect that he, Jesus, came to call sinners, not the righteous, to repentance. The fact of the matter is that Jesus didn't call anybody for anything. Robello just decided to start playing silly games; he wasn't going anywhere but to Terminal Island. Repentance or non-repentance simply did not figure into the equation. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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