Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 15, 1993 TAG: 9302150049
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL BRUBAKER THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
FOR `IRON MIKE,' LIFE GOES ON BEHIND BARS
During his first year as an Indiana prison inmate, convicted rapist Mike Tyson has received visits from Spike Lee, Whitney Houston and Hammer; finalized the purchase of a $264,000 Lamborghini Diablo on the prison pay phone; assembled a library that includes Mao Tse-tung biographies and X-Men comic books and received sexually explicit letters from women who enclosed nude photos.He's also mused with friends about his ultimate quest: regaining the world heavyweight boxing title.
As recently as last spring, Tyson told visitors to the prison that he no longer thought about boxing and that he might never want to fight again. Not so anymore.
"I was shadow boxing the other day and I said to myself, `God, I look gooooood!' " Tyson said last month, according to his closest friend, Rory Holloway.
"Mike says, `As soon as I come out, I'm going to fight. That's the first thing on the list,' " said Camille Ewald, Tyson's "adopted" mother. A muscular 220-pounder, Tyson runs, lifts weights, does up to 700 sit-ups a day and calls the present crop of heavyweight boxers "pretenders," say to friends who have visited him.
But life hasn't been a Las Vegas fight night for Tyson, 26, who is serving a six-year sentence for the rape of Desiree Washington, a former Miss Black America beauty-pageant contestant.
As Indiana Offender No. 922335, Tyson has spent three days in a disciplinary cell for threatening a prison staffer, complained that guards have subjected him to rough and embarrassing body searches, quit high school equivalency classes because he felt he was being ridiculed and refused to eat most of the inmate-prepared food, fearing it might be contaminated, Tyson's friends said.
"I don't trust anybody in here," Holloway reports Tyson has said.
Tyson, who declined to be interviewed for this story, gets another shot at freedom today when his attorney, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, argues before the Indiana Court of Appeals why the rape conviction should be overturned and a new trial ordered.
A portrait of Tyson's new life emerges from interviews with friends and attorneys of the former boxer and from information and documents obtained from the Indiana Youth Center, the high-medium security prison in Plainfield, Ind., 15 miles west of Indianapolis, where Tyson has been confined.
A 10th-grade dropout from Brooklyn, N.Y., Tyson used his fists - and a furious style - to become one of the world's wealthiest and best-known athletes. "Iron Mike" grossed an estimated $100 million during his six-year career - he was heavyweight champion from 1986 to 1990 - and he brought new life to a sport that had lost much of its luster.
With fame came trouble, however. Tyson was accused in and out of court of sexually harassing or molesting more than a dozen women. He settled some lawsuits out of court and told reporters he was being victimized by fame- and money-seeking women. But his boxing career continued - until an Indianapolis judge sent him to prison.
Now Tyson is noticeably embarrassed by the depth of his descent from glory, say friends who have spent hundreds of hours with him on the phone and in the prison visitors' room.
"Mike tries to camouflage the pain but I can see it in his face," said Ewald, who has twice visited Tyson. "He says, `Camille, I don't want you to see me where I am at.' "
\ Bad food, bad dream
Tyson tells friends he is innocent, that Washington consented to have sex with him on their July 19, 1991, date in Indianapolis. Washington told a TV interviewer recently that as a result of the rape and the publicity brought on by the trial, "I can't heal and I can't get better." A jury found Tyson guilty of rape last Feb. 10 and he was sent to prison six weeks later.
Dershowitz will argue today that Tyson didn't get a fair trial because of misconduct by the prosecutors, errors by the judge and perjurious statements by Washington and her parents. Indiana prosecutors will argue that Dershowitz's allegations are baseless.
The court's decision is expected this spring. If a new trial is granted, Tyson could be released on bond - and his boxing career may resume. If the appeal fails, he will be eligible for parole no sooner than April 1995.
Meanwhile, Tyson is described by friends as being at various times angry, depressed, optimistic, resigned, perplexed and anxious to return to his 70-acre Ohio estate where he has an indoor pool, movie theater, multimillion-dollar jewelry collection and fleet of 27 telephone-equipped luxury cars.
"Prison is hell for Mike," said Ewald, 87, who helped raise Tyson in her 14-room house - once a haven for boxers - in Catskill, N.Y.
On a typical day, Tyson exercises, reads, sees visitors, opens fan mail and attends Christian and Islamic study-group sessions.
"Mike says, `Every day I go to sleep and it's like a dream when I wake up,' " said Holloway, Tyson's former assistant manager. "Mike says, `I wake up and say to myself, `I'm still here.' "
Prison superintendent Clarence Trigg said, all things considered, "Tyson has gotten along all right."
But life at the Indiana Youth Center - a complex of drab, concrete buildings dominated by a guard's tower and surrounded by fences topped with thick coils of barbed wire - isn't always that simple for Tyson.
He has lost 50 pounds since last winter's trial (when he weighed as much as 270) because he refuses to eat most of the prison's food. It stinks, he tells friends. Literally.
Tyson has heard stories that inmate-cooks in some prisons urinate and defecate in food, said Jay Bright, a long-time friend and Tyson's former assistant trainer. "So Mike only eats things that are packaged, like tuna fish or crackers," Bright said.
Friends say he looks undernourished at times.
"When I visited him on Thanksgiving I said, `Mike, why don't you eat?' " Ewald said. "Mike said, `Camille, the food is horrible.' I said, `You don't look black or white. You look green. You've got to eat.' He said, `Camille, when you smell it you don't want to eat it. That's how bad it is.' "
Trigg said the food is not contaminated.
"No, because our staff eats the same food as the inmates," he said.
Tyson can have unlimited funds sent to his commissary account. So he often makes do with food from the commissary, which sells potted meat (55 cents), spreadable tuna ($1.55), nacho tortilla chips ($1) and other snacks.
Tyson hasn't found school appetizing either: He quit General Equivalency Diploma classes last summer because instructors "were trying to embarrass him, make a mockery of him," Holloway said. Trigg said he doesn't know why Tyson stopped coming to classes.
"In general," Trigg said of his most famous inmate, "he's fairly low-key if people leave him alone."
But they don't.
\ Time in chains
Tyson complains that some inmates have taunted him about the nature of his crime.
" . . . One day [they said], `You [expletive] tree jumper,' " Tyson told CBS-TV's Ed Bradley last spring. ". . . [I said], `What's a tree jumper?' And they said, `A tree jumper's a rapist. You know, you wait for little kids to go by. You jump up a tree and grab 'em.' I said, `Oh, Christ.' "
Other inmates have phoned supermarket tabloids with details of his daily life. One inmate allegedly stole his ID tag, apparently figuring it's a collectors' item. And Tyson has complained to friends that prison guards have treated him rudely and aggressively at times.
"When an inmate comes down to see a visitor, it's normal for guards to pat him down," Bright said. "But Mike says they've gone to an extreme, giving him a body search. Then when they're searching they've said things that aren't very flattering."
Holloway said, "Most of the time he lets it rub off - you know, he doesn't say anything [to the guards]. But a lot of times, man, it's almost like protecting your manhood. You know, they just want to belittle you.
"Mike says, `I would never hit one of these guys. Christ, I know I'd kill him.' But, you know, Mike says he has to tell them, `You just can't be treating me in any old kind of way now, just trying to make a name for yourself.' "
Trigg said the guards treat Tyson fairly.
\ A threatening incident
His most serious confrontation came one evening last May after a guard told him a visitor was waiting to see him. Dershowitz reported Tyson asked the guard if the visitor was "my mother," as he refers to Ewald, because he didn't want to waste his visiting time - he's allowed two two-hour visits a day - on a stranger.
"The guard said, `I'm under no obligation to tell you who it is. You just have a visitor. You can either take it or don't take it,' " said Dershowitz, recounting Tyson's description of the incident. "And Mike . . . said, `Why are you being such a son of a bitch about this?' "
Said Holloway, "Mike said, `You're being an [expletive],' that's what he told the guard."
Prison officials accused Tyson of threatening the guard with bodily harm and, in a related incident later that night, of threatening other guards. A hearing officer found him guilty of threatening a guard and disorderly conduct. The prison did not release details.
For punishment Tyson had 15 days added to his term and lost 30 days' commissary privileges. He also spent three days in a barred detention cell, segregated from other offenders. During those three days, he was allowed to see friends and lawyers with one stipulation: He would have to wear handcuffs, shackles and leg-irons.
When Dershowitz came to the prison that week, Tyson refused, at first, to come to the visitors' room. Ten minutes passed. Twenty. Thirty. Finally, after an hour, Tyson appeared, noticeably embarrassed.
"He looked like a character from `Roots' being brought over on a galley slave boat," Dershowitz said. "It was the most appalling sight I'd ever seen. The chains were across his chest, around his body. Remember, we're in a [high-medium] security institution. The unit where we meet is utterly escape-proof.
"Mike was very, very upset. He said [in a whisper], `Why me? Why me? Imagine. Me being chained like this.' "
Trigg said the chains were necessary because, "Segregated offenders must be secured during visits to protect visitors, staff and other offenders."
"Basically, Mike's attitude is: `I haven't done anything wrong. I haven't hurt anybody. I'm not going to let these people change me,' " Holloway said, recalling one of his whispered conversations with Tyson.
"Mike says, `Change what? I feel I was a good human being from the beginning. What are they going to change?' "
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