No Place Like Home | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

Neil White: I mean, we weren't driving $100,000 sports cars and snorting cocaine,
which was the drug of the day, but we had a boat, we had three cars, we had a 4,000
square foot house. I mean, we were leading what I would consider an upper middle class life.
Phoebe Judge: In the early '90s, Neil White owned Coast Magazine Corporate, a magazine
publishing company in Gulfport, Mississippi. Neil White: We had lots of perks from the
magazine that don't really go into any account. It's, "Oh, we'd love for you to wear our suits,
because people pay attention to what you wear." And, "Oh, we'd love for you to drive our cars,
and we'd love for you to come eat at our restaurant, it's on us." And so there are
all these benefits. Business people would say, "We're flying to Jackson, or Memphis,
or whatever. If you need a ride, let us know, you're welcome on our plane anytime." And so we
led a lifestyle that we didn't even have to spend money for because we owned these media companies,
and nobody really was paying attention. Phoebe Judge: No one was paying attention,
and so for a few years, no one noticed that Neil White was kiting checks. He had two corporate
bank accounts, and he'd transfer large sums of money back and forth constantly, so that
both accounts always appeared flush with cash Neil White: Because the way it used to work is you
could write a check from yourself to yourself from one bank, deposit it in another bank,
and that money would be there. But the next day the check would bounce because there was
a 24-hour float. So you would write a check to yourself from yourself, from a secondary account,
and deposit it in the original bank to cover it. Phoebe Judge: So you're just buying time.
Neil White: Yeah, I was cheating time, is what I was doing. Phoebe Judge: It's sometimes called circular kiting, and you can't do it that easily anymore.
Banks have changed the way they operate. Checks are now cleared with electronic imaging that
takes much less time to process. But back in the early '90s, Neil was able to pull it off,
and he wasn't even that stressed about it. Neil White: I remember that I was doing this
during a period before Christmas, and our family was planning this five-day vacation,
and you can't leave town if you're doing this unless you have somebody who's going to make
these transfers for you. And I was $200,000 in the hole on December 21st, and on December 23rd,
we were leaving town for five days, and I was in a panic, but the money came in, a guy came through
with the loan that we had been talking to. I made the $200,000 deposit on the 23rd and left town.
Phoebe Judge: How did you get caught? Neil White: The FDIC came in and did an audit,
and pointed it out to both banks, and they called me to the bank and said, "We will not accept any deposits that aren't cash or money orders, we're closing your accounts,
I sure hope you have money to cover this." [Music.] I called my dad and said, "Dad, I just need to let you know, because you'll hear
through the grapevine, I've been caught short, I was kiting checks." And he said,
"Well, the first thing we need to do is cover it. How much do you need?" He was
ready to write the check. And I said, "Dad, you can't cover this." He said, "No." I mean, my dad's a judge and a lawyer, he's middle-class. I think he was thinking 30,
$40,000, we'll mortgage the house, we'll take care of it. I said "$750,000." And he said, "Oh, well,
we need to get you a lawyer." Phoebe Judge: And the lawyer couldn't get you out of it? Neil White:
Oh God, no. I mean, the only way you can get out of it is if you cover the loss, and then it's
still a crime, you just, the federal government sentences you based on how much — in bank fraud
anyway — how much a financial institution lost. So had I been able to cover it, I probably would've
gotten home confinement, or probation, or a fine, or something like that. But because I couldn't
cover the amount, and ultimately they lost that money, the sentencing guidelines said I should
be sentenced to between 18 months and 24 months. And the judge took the lower recommendation and
gave me an 18 month sentence. Phoebe Judge: On May 3rd, 1993, Neil White self-surrendered at a minimum security prison in Carville, Louisiana. His wife, Linda,
dropped him there 45 minutes early. Neil White: Well first of all, I took my children to school that morning, to first grade and to preschool, and hugged them and reminded
them that, as the psychologist suggested, that daddy was going to camp, and that I would see them
in a week when they could come visit. And Linda and I got in our blue Ford Explorer
and drove the hour and 10 minute drive to Carville, and it was deafening silence.
Phoebe Judge: Was she mad at you? Neil White: She was mad at me, but more than that,
she was hurt. She lost everything, too. She had believed my story, that I was going to take care
of everything, and so in the overall scheme of life, what these things I'm about to say are not
awful, because there are people who are homeless and can't afford food, but we were members of
all these country clubs and yacht clubs, and we got banished from there, and all of her places
that she shopped and had charge accounts, they closed them, and her friends who were still in
this elite social area with very few exceptions were shunning, at some level. I mean, she was
humiliated and mortified at all sorts of levels, and the father of her children, who were 6 and 3,
were about to be away for a year. They would miss every significant event in their life,
and if she wanted to keep us all in touch, she was faced with driving that distance every weekend,
spending her weekends in a prison visiting room. Phoebe Judge: Here's the thing. It wasn't just a
prison visiting room she'd be bringing her kids to. White collar criminals weren't
the only ones who'd been locked up in the enormous old facility in Carville, Louisiana.
And the other people living there, they were all but forgotten by the outside world.
I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal. Neil White: I showed up with my leather bag with books and racquetball rackets and tennis shoes and shorts
like I was going to camp, and as I waited for the guard to come collect me, I saw a man limping down
the hallway. And when he got to the window closest to me, he waved and had no fingers, and that
was the first time I knew anything was awry. Phoebe Judge: Neil went inside and checked in,
and immediately asked the prison guard about the man with no fingers. Neil White: And he said, "That's a patient." And I said, "What kind of patient?" And he said,
"A Hansen's disease patient." And I said, "What is Hansen's disease?" And he said,
"It used to be called leprosy." Phoebe Judge: What was your thought? Neil White: And that's when I began to panic. I knew that I could survive a
one-year prison sentence, but I thought if I contracted a disease that disfigured me,
that I would never be able to touch my children again. I thought, my life will be over.
Phoebe Judge: Neil White was to serve his sentence at a minimum security prison located inside the
last remaining leprosy colony in the continental United States. An LA Times article from 1993 said
prisoners are being brought in to, "Use the spaces left empty when older patients die."
Everyone we asked credited the idea of putting the prison inside the leprosy colony back to one man,
Dr. John Duffy. He was the Director of Carville at the time, but he was also the
former director of the Bureau of Prisons. He knew that Carville's patient population was dwindling,
and he saw a business opportunity. Neil White: There were all these empty rooms,
and he was fiscally responsible and said, instead of spending money building a new
prison, let's put invalid inmates, people who need healthcare, here, because there was a hospital for the leprosy patients, and non-violent offenders who can
maintain the grounds. It sounded like a decent financial decision, but what he didn't realize
is you would have the last 130 Americans who are in prison for a disease, 500 federal inmates,
including Jimmy Hoffa's lawyer and the man who gave Arnold Schwarzenegger his first steroids,
100 prison guards, all thrown together in this colony, a convergence of cultures
like there's never been before or after. Phoebe Judge: When Neil White says that the
leprosy patients were imprisoned, he's not kidding. The facility opened in 1894 as the
Louisiana Leper Home. By 1921, leprosy was thought to be so contagious that the federal
government began moving patients to Carville from all over the country. If people refused to go,
the police, or bounty hunters, would put them in shackles and bring them against their will.
Mr. Pete: See this here, this is the shackle. Phoebe Judge: Shackles, what were they used for?
Mr. Pete: When the patient here, if you don't come voluntary, then they put the shackle and bring you here. Phoebe Judge: This is Mr. Pete. He was
the first person I met when I flew to Louisiana to see Carville for myself, and he told me to call him Mr. Pete. He's a short man with glasses that seem just a
little too big for his face. He was dressed in a flannel shirt with suspenders and a khaki jacket.
It wasn't until he reached out to shake my hand that I realized he was missing fingers,
part of his ear. He's the guy who waved at Neil White. He showed me the shackles that are now
part of a small museum at Carville, and he also showed me a collection of former patients' shoes,
specially made because the loss of toes is one of the biggest challenges leprosy patients deal with.
Mr. Pete told me he was born in the Virgin Islands, and when he was 6 he was diagnosed
with leprosy and quarantined in a hospital there. He had no idea what was happening.
Mr. Pete: They never tell me anything. They just tell my mother, and not me. Phoebe Judge:
Why did you think you were in the hospital? Mr. Pete: Well, because I had a little mark on
my side of my face, and when they take test they find it was Hansen's disease. And at that time, people are very scared of the disease, so they just bring me to the hospital.
My mother used to come visit me. She couldn't touch me, I couldn't touch her. She stay outside
the fence, I stay inside the fence. Phoebe Judge: Was that confusing to you when you were a little boy, that you couldn't touch your mother?
Mr. Pete: Well, yes, it was confusing. She's on the outside, and now I'm in the inside, and
I still didn't know what's going on. I couldn't touch her, and she couldn't touch me either.
Phoebe Judge: He stayed in that hospital until he was 21 years old, when his family packed him
aboard an army plane to Carville. Mr. Pete never saw any members of his family again.
When a patient like Mr. Pete got to Carville, he or she could not leave, but they weren't legally
prisoners either. It was this strange limbo where you hadn't done anything wrong, but the outside
world saw you as a danger. For a long time, patients couldn't even vote or get married.
Mr. Pete: Some of the family didn't want them no more, and the friends didn't want
to have anything to do with them. So they just came back and stay until they die.
Phoebe Judge: And when you got here, you did realize that this disease people were scared of,
would you talk about it with other people here, about how you were kind of kept away?
Mr. Pete: No, they didn't, they wasn't interested, like now. You came here, that's it.
Nobody, even the patient, we never speak about it. We never — see when we — that's it.
Phoebe Judge: You wouldn't talk about it with your friends, about being outcast or away from
society, you were just here? Mr. Pete: Yeah, I was just here. They were the same thing, you know? They was outcast from society — outcast like me. So,
they didn't interested in all that. Phoebe Judge: In 1941, doctors began testing a drug that could slowly reverse some of the symptoms of leprosy. They made progress.
By the early '50s, doctors recognized that with treatment, the disease was not contagious, and
they lifted the strict quarantine. Some patients were discharged, and others were encouraged to
own cars and come and go as they pleased. But most of them didn't want to go anywhere. They'd
been locked away for so long that the prospect of leaving terrified them. As one patient wrote,
"We belong with the secret people." Jim Krahenbhul: Pete, for example, if you look at his hands, his hands are greatly deformed,
and his face and ears show the ravages of the disease, and he just doesn't want to face what
he would have to face in the outside world. Phoebe Judge: This is Dr. Jim Krahenbhul,
former director of the National Hansen's Disease Programs, which is the official name for Carville. Jim Krahenbhul: Basically patients have to
lie about their deformities — an industrial plant accident, or something like that — and he just was
not willing to face that. I guess the parallel is you've heard all the stories about a prisoner
being released from prison after 20 years, and the first thing he does is he goes and
robs a bank so he can go back in again, because they just can't deal with the outside world. Phoebe Judge:
It's hard to imagine what the patients must have thought when, after so long, the outside world was thrown at them in the form of 500 convicted bankers, doctors, and lawyers.
The inmates were not supposed to interact with the patients at any time, but Neil White worked
in the cafeteria, so there was no way around it. Neil White: And I helped them with their trays,
and pushed their wheelchairs, and wrote their menu board. You have to remember, in addition to
this weird convergence, the leprosy patients were older, and nobody, they hadn't seen new residents
there in ages, and most of them looked on us as children or grandchildren. They would talk to us,
and the guards would say, "You're not supposed to talk to him." And they would say,
"You can't tell me what to do." Because they weren't under the Bureau of Prisons. So it
really was something that got dropped as the experiment went on, and we talked all the time,
and were friendly, and exchanged hellos. And when guards weren't around, we talked all the time.
Phoebe Judge: Neil became especially close with one patient in particular, an elderly woman named Ella Bounds. Neil White: Well, the first time I saw her,
I was in the hallway, and I was trying to find my room. It was the first day, first hour I was
there, and I saw her wobbling in a wheelchair. Cranking those handles coming toward me, and I
knew she wasn't an inmate — it was an all-male prison — I assumed she wasn't a prison guard,
so assuming she had leprosy. She had no legs, her dress was hanging over the edge of her
wheelchair. I stood to the side and I held my breath. And as she passed me, she cut her eyes
over and smiled and said, "There's no place like home." And she went around the corner,
and an inmate came up behind me and said, "That girl's father dropped her off here
when she was 12, and he never came back." And she was about 80 at the time. And then he asked me if
I was still feeling sorry for myself. Phoebe Judge: It didn't take Neil long to understand that it was basically impossible for him to catch leprosy,
and with that fear gone, he was just trying to keep himself occupied and finish out his time.
He remembers one night in the spring when the leprosy patients were getting ready for a dance.
Neil White: Four of us inmates were setting up the bandstands and the tables and the chairs,
and as the band was about to start, there were no guards around, so Ella asked me if I wanted
to stick around for the first song. And so I did, and so did the other inmates. And I pushed Ella
around the edge of the dance floor to the music in her wheelchair. Two of the other inmates, big,
strong bodybuilders who were the steroid guru's guinea pigs, went into the middle of the patients
and broke in on one of their dates during this dance. And it really made the leprosy patient
mad. This woman he was with, we don't know, but we think she may have been a prostitute. Anyway,
she was rather attractive, and at the end of the song, the leprosy patient pointed what was left
of his index finger and said, "You're not invited, no inmates at our dance." And it was very quiet,
and the four of us slowly walked out of the ballroom. And as we were walking back toward
the inmate side of the colony, my roommate said, "Did we just get kicked out of a leper dance?"
Phoebe Judge: If you ask him now, Neil says he feels pretty lucky that he served his time at Carville. Neil White: I was there for 18 months — actually
only spent a year — for mishandling close to a million dollars, and I was standing in front of
people who had been quarantined for 68 years because they were susceptible to a bacterial
infection. And it was almost impossible to muster up self-pity in the face of that. They were such
remarkable people, and it put my problems, albeit self-made, in such perspective.
Phoebe Judge: He was let out on April 25th, 1994. The prison experiment ended about four months later, and all of the remaining inmates were reassigned.
Why was it so short-lived? Neil White: The Bureau of Prisons wanted to turn the facility into this huge prison with a couple of thousand inmates, and when they
became a tenant of the leprosy patients, which is really Public Health Services,
they assumed that those 130 patients would be dying off in a year or two. What they didn't
realize is that leprosy doesn't kill you. And so there became this battle for the Bureau of
Prisons trying to evict the leprosy patients. It was just horrible. The inmates and
the leprosy patients got along fine, you would think that's where the problem was — it was
these two government bureaucracies. And what happened was Public Health Services and the
leprosy patients, and the Carville Historic Society, clandestinely got the facility on the
National Registry of Historic Places, and so the Bureau of Prisons could not make the modifications
they needed to make the building secure, and they abandoned the prison and went home.
Phoebe Judge: But Ella and Mr. Pete and other patients continued their lives at Carville,
many of them entering their seventh or eighth decade there. In 1998, about four years after
Neil left, the remaining patients were offered an annual stipend of $33,000 to leave Carville
and move to a nursing home. Mr. Pete declined. He chose to stay. When I met him two years ago,
he was one of six patients left. They had the whole place to themselves. Mr. Pete rode around
the giant empty hallways on his bicycle. He'd been there for 63 years. I asked him whether
he'd ever consider leaving, even for a night. Mr. Pete: Sometimes I wish I was out on the
outside, and I could get out, but when I look, I say, well, people are going to ask me a lot
of questions. "What happened to your fingers? Why you got this spot? Why this?" I say, well, I don't
want to go through all that. I stay here. Phoebe Judge: It was easier to stay here.
Mr. Pete: It was easier, because we're all the same patient, you know what I mean? When you go
out there, some people [inaudible], most people wouldn't, even now. Phoebe Judge: Will you stay here for the rest of your life?
Mr. Pete: Oh yeah. I'm supposed to be getting out now. I'm almost 85 years old, so this is it. I got
my spot over there in the pecan tree. Phoebe Judge: This spot he showed me under the pecan tree was part of the cemetery at Carville. The cemetery is
a big one. There are a lot of graves there. Mr. Pete: I told them, put me in a nice shady
pecan tree. Phoebe Judge: You plan to be buried at Carville here. Mr. Pete: Yeah. You have your choice,
and I know my family are not going to take me home. It costs too much money to ship the body.
Phoebe Judge: Have you ever left Louisiana since you got here? Mr. Pete: No, never left Louisiana. I went to Mississippi, but I come back the same night.
But I never been up to New York and all them places, if that's what you mean. Phoebe Judge: Would you like to? Mr. Pete: So much people, I might get lost.
I know in New York people ain't going to turn to look at you, they're just busy, busy doing
nothing, but they're busy. Phoebe Judge: It's unclear whether Mr. Pete will get his wish to be buried at Carville. Last month,
the remaining patients were finally forced to move to a nursing home in Baton Rouge, so
Carville now sits empty. Neil White still talks to Mr. Pete on the phone sometimes. They spoke
last week. [Music.] Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer, and me. Audio engineering help from Rob Byers.
Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can find
them at thisiscriminal.com. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. Criminal is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,
a collective of the 13 best podcasts around. If you're interested in supporting us,
and shows like ours, email sponsor@prx.org. You can find out more about Neil White's time
at Carville in his book, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts. This month, the show Reveal is doing a four-part investigative series called Left for Dead,
which examines the national phenomenon of missing and unidentified persons, the John and Jane Does
of America. They've also created a new tool, which allows anyone to view cases and try to
match the missing to the unidentified by comparing characteristics and case information side-by-side.
You can find out more at revealnews.org. Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight
Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal. Jingle: Radiotopia, from PRX.

Wealthy magazine publisher, Neil White, was convicted of fraud in the 90s and received an 18 month sentence at a minimum security prison. When he arrived, White received a rude awakening that he wasn't just doing time with fellow white collar criminals. He realized that there were other prisoners that been forgotten about by the outside world for decades.

Learn more about Neil White’s time at Carville in his memoir, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts.http://www.amazon.com/In-Sanctuary-Outcasts-Memoir-P-S/dp/0061351636

We have a brief update about Mr. Pete in Episode 50. http://thisiscriminal.com/episode-50-this-is-criminal-9-9-2016/

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://link.chtbl.com/n33u0HsA

Say hello on Twitter (@CriminalShow), Instagram (@criminal_podcast), and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ThisIsCriminal/.

Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice https://bit.ly/accomplicenewsletter.

We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery.

Artwork by Julienne Alexander http://www.yssrs.com/.

Check out our online shop https://store.dftba.com/collections/criminal.

Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 27 originally published 9/25/2015 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-27-no-place-like-home-9-25-2015

Brief Summary

Neil White discusses his financial crimes and unique prison experience among leprosy patients in Carville, Louisiana.

Key points

Neil White's Check Kiting Scheme. Neil White describes his elaborate scheme of kiting checks to maintain his lifestyle.
Life Inside Carville. Neil White recounts his experience in a prison located within a leprosy colony.
Mr. Pete's Life Story. Mr. Pete shares his experiences of being diagnosed with leprosy and living in isolation.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I was cheating time, is what I was doing.

Neil White reflects on his actions.

1:43WatchNov 3, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

More from Criminal | A Podcast About Crime

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.