Head Games

Anderson stayed with his parents only a couple of weeks. He drifted to the streets, to old buddies and ways. In CSP he'd made so many plans. He'd studied to be a securities broker. He'd earned a certificate for anger management. Now that he was out, it all seemed like a joke. He couldn't even stand in line at the DMV for his driver's license without losing it. All that rage, just boiling, rattling the lid right off. What was the use?

"I was out three months," he writes. "I was cooking, shooting and selling meth. And chased some guy down the street with a knife. I got some county [jail] time. Stabbed two inmates, Danny Martinez and a guy named Alton. I stabbed Danny cause he raped and murdered Brandy DuVall ["Dealing With the Devil," February 25, 1999]. Stabbed Alton cause he was loud. Still ended up doing the county time. And got out. Went right back to the dope."

In late 1998, Anderson showed up at a motel in Commerce City, brandishing a .38 revolver and looking for someone who'd burned him in a dope deal. The police were called, and Anderson traded shots with them before being arrested. Three months later, after boarding a police bus that was supposed to take him back to jail from a court appearance, he kicked out a wire-mesh screen and grabbed a handgun from the dashboard. The Adams County deputies escorting him ran for cover. He fired eighteen shots and kept them at bay in the courthouse garage for thirty minutes before surrendering. He was handcuffed to another inmate the entire time.

No one was injured in the shootouts -- which could indicate that Anderson, who discharged a total of 26 rounds in the two incidents, is either the world's worst shot or was trying to accomplish suicide by cop. ("I wanted everything to stop," he would later testify.) Whatever his true motives, he was charged with multiple counts of attempted murder, and more charges piled on as he got into repeated fights with his jailers.

The judge who presided at his trial, Murray Richtel, was the same judge who'd handled his first case in juvenile court sixteen years earlier. Richtel gave him 75 years and recommended that the DOC consider sending him to San Carlos.

He wound up at CSP instead. By now his keepers' appraisal of his mental state had become so convoluted -- schizoaffective disorder, post-traumatic stress, plus a shopping list of untreatable personality disorders -- that a clear course of action was impossible. James Waters, an outside psychologist retained by the court for extensive neuro-psychological testing, had a different view. Waters concluded that Anderson probably had ADHD, among other issues. "While he does not seem to qualify for bipolar disorder, it is still possible that he has a disorder that might respond to mood-stabilizing medication," Waters reported.

The prison docs put him on Elavil and Neurontin -- an anti-depressant and an anti-convulsant, respectively. Anderson complained that the drugs made him feel manic. At a 2000 hearing, he burst into a rage and attacked the hearing officer. He was then sent to San Carlos and taken off the meds. A few weeks later, he was shipped back to the supermax.

He's been off drugs -- and locked down -- ever since.

---

Mark Jason Seibel sits and fidgets in a corner of a Denver Starbucks on a Friday afternoon. He's pale and thin, with short-cropped hair, and his eyes dart nervously around the room, looking everywhere but at the person he's talking to. He spent his last four dollars on the untouched iced drink, with extra shots of espresso, at his elbow.

His T-shirt reads: I USED TO HAVE A LOT OF FRIENDS TILL MY THERAPIST AND THE MEDICATION TOOK THEM AWAY.

At 31, Seibel has seventeen years of experience with the criminal-justice system -- and the tattoos to match. He also has a lengthy history of untreated mental illness. Talking about it is difficult. He squirms and speaks softly, but with intense deliberation.

"I feel more comfortable in a life-threatening situation than I do in a job interview or something like this," he says. "Like a couple weeks ago, there was a problem, and this guy came at me with a tire iron. Fortunately, I ended up with the tire iron. But this is harder than that."

Seibel is a parolee from the Colorado prison system, but he hasn't reported to his parole officer in months. Instead, he's launched a MySpace page airing his frustrations with his situation ("Parole Sucks") and gone back to what he knows best -- living by his wits, getting by on whatever money he can scrounge up. He knows it's only a matter of time until the law catches him and sends him back to prison for failing drug tests. All the same, he wonders if his life had to turn out this way.