The Editor | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

[Inside a running car.] Robin Woods: This is the... We're on... What is this? Bedford Road.
These are some businesses. This is a liquor store here. This is a Chessie Bank. They just built this not too long ago.
City limits is right here, at this intersection of Bedford Road and Shades Lane.
So, this is the place, over here on the right hand side, that I committed the breaking and
enterings act. Phoebe Judge: This is Robin Woods. In November of 1988, he was 26 years old when he stole a car and drove to an office building
in his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland. Robin is African American. Robin Woods: And that side door, there's a steel door with a glass window, and I just
knocked the window out. And I stole some stuff: computers, some typewriters, some telephones.
They were called Marlin Phone Systems. When I took this stuff through a place I was staying at, it was just a little shack.
It wasn't much of a place, and it wasn't much furniture in there. And I had put all the stuff in there, then I abandoned the car, and I knew that I was
going to be in trouble because I had what they said was $20,000 worth of office equipment.
Well, what was I going to do with that? Phoebe Judge: Robin started trying to sell the stolen equipment as quickly as possible,
offering it up for cheap. So, a few people knew he had it. And the next night, while he was playing pool, his plan fell apart.
Someone turned him in. Robin Woods: Troopers came in. It was about six or seven of them.
They came in the side door and came in the front door. I was standing there talking to a friend, and I seen them come through the door and
I knew exactly who they was coming after. I knew they was coming after me. So, of course, there's no reason to fight six or seven state troopers.
You go ahead and you just went on to jail. And a friend of mine ended up turning me in for the reward.
He's since passed away, and there's no reason to throw any mud on him. When he passed away, oh, I didn't have any animosity against the man.
Phoebe Judge: Robin was convicted of two counts of warehouse breaking and entering, a nonviolent
felony. But he'd been arrested a half dozen times before. And because of prior convictions, he was sentenced harshly: 16 years at the notorious Maryland
Correctional Institute, or MCI, in Hagerstown. He'd been there before, serving two years for firing a gun through a woman's window.
But this time, he was going to be in much longer. Robin Woods: I think the words draconian...
Well, I know the words draconian. To just take all those years for this crime, and I had a couple of other things that I've
done prior to that, but nothing to justify the time that I got for it. But that's the way things are.
I had to deal with it. I didn't have any choice. And they gave me the time, and I went to prison.
And that was that. Phoebe Judge: Today, contributor Daniel Gross has the story of what happened to Robin during
those years in prison, and how his world got smaller in every way. Except for one.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [Rock ballad-style instrumentals.] Daniel Gross: Robin described MCI Hagerstown as one of the worst prisons he ever set foot
in, and he spent time in quite a few. The Baltimore Sun described it as "crowded" and "racially tense," and reported that numerous
inmates complained of beatings by guards. Robin Woods: Basically, they would use sheer brutality to bring you into line.
You could get beat severely for suddenly looking at an officer in the eye and standing up and
back-talking him. Daniel Gross: One day, a group of prisoners decided enough was enough and refused to leave
their cells until the prison warden agreed to meet with them. Robin Woods: The warden, instead of going down and finding out what the problem was,
he sent his goon squad in and what they call an extraction team, and probably within 12
hours time, they had beat probably 40 inmates. You didn't have to get beat up to be pissed.
I mean, it was a night of terror. Daniel Gross: The next morning, the rest of the prison heard about the beatings, and at
breakfast, a bunch of inmates attacked a group of guards and took the keys. Robin Woods: It was retribution time.
We went out and tore the jail up. Daniel Gross: Were you afraid for your own safety?
Robin Woods: Well, it's very disquieting. Because it's basically every man for himself.
I armed myself to the best of my ability to defend myself and— Daniel Gross: What did you have?
Robin Woods: Well, I had a, it's called a homemade knife, it's called a shank. Daniel Gross: According to the Baltimore Sun, the prison was filled with clouds of tear
gas, and some guards were firing shotguns. Robin Woods: And I'll never forget the look of terror in their eyes, as well, because
they had never, in their wildest imagination, imagined that they would lose their prison.
Daniel Gross: Robin alleges that he was taken down to the prison basement and severely beaten.
Robin Woods: The wonderful thing about it was I found out that day that I could take
a weapon. They surrounded me, and one of them hit me in the ribs from the back and another one
hit me in the kidneys. And I fell to the ground, and basically, they stomped the crap out of me.
Daniel Gross: As Robin remembers it, when the Baltimore officers arrived to transfer
him, he started shouting back at the Hagerstown guards. Robin Woods: I was telling the captain, "And you let those guys know in the basement they
hit like a bunch of sissies." And then, I got down and start doing pushups. So, everybody knew I was nuts.
Daniel Gross: But did you actually... I mean, were you proud of the riot? Robin Woods: Absolutely.
Absolutely. Daniel Gross: Would you have done it again? Robin Woods: Absolutely.
Daniel Gross: Robin was charged with helping to incite the riot, and seven years were added
onto his sentence. He was transferred to the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center, a supermax facility in
Baltimore. And from that day on, Robin was officially classified as one of the most dangerous prisoners
in Maryland. Robin Woods: And I don't claim anything, any such thing. I know dangerous people.
Believe me, I'm not. There's nothing dangerous about me. Daniel Gross: But the people around you, were they murderers?
Robin Woods: Yes. I've seen... people fighting each other with knives. I've seen people jump on — two or three people jump on one person with knives.
I've seen people murder each other. I've seen the worst of what men can do to each other.
[Driving drum and bass music.] Robin Woods: [Inside of a running car.] [Coughs.]
Now, this is where I grew up at. Daniel Gross: You actually grew up in these buildings?
Robin Woods: I grew up here. Yes. Daniel Gross: Robin is driving me around his hometown.
When he was a kid, he lived at the Fort Cumberland Homes housing project. He says it was a mix of poor white and poor Black families.
Robin Woods: This was a library. I used to go to this library all the time. Even though I couldn't read as a child, we would go in there and play.
Daniel Gross: At first, Robin loved school, but he wasn't great at it. He never paid much attention to his teachers, and he says he got in trouble a lot for acting
up and causing problems. Robin Woods: And I remember the teacher used to put me in the closet, in the coat closet.
They decided to put me in special education. Daniel Gross: Robin was kept in special education for five years, through seventh grade.
He remembers being told that someone like him didn't really need to learn things like
math or reading. Robin Woods: Back in those days, it was just a place to put someone and you didn't have
to deal with them. I would go around and pick up the attendance slips. Now, at the other end of the building here, right here to our right, is
the cafeteria, and I used to go in the morning time, the local milk company would drop off
crates of milk. And my job would be to go and stack the milk into the coolers, so at lunchtime the other
students could have cold milk. Daniel Gross: So, you're saying that instead of getting an education here, you were basically
doing the chores? You were doing the chores of the school. Robin Woods: Exactly.
And that's how I got through junior high school. Daniel Gross: Robin didn't make it through high school.
And when he was sent to prison, almost a decade later, he could barely read or write.
He knew enough to get odd jobs and to read a menu, but not much else. Robin Woods: I had never read a book in my life, so—
Daniel Gross: Really? Not even a kid's book? Robin Woods: Nothing. Not even Watch Spot Run.
Daniel Gross: Robin's prison in Hagerstown was organized by floors, or tiers. The inmates were alone in their cells for most of the day, and he says, they'd sort
of yell out and try to talk to each other. One day, a guy wound through the tiers with a cart yelling, "Library call."
Robin Woods: And I was thinking to myself, "Well, why would I want a book?" Daniel Gross: Robin was skeptical, but he figured, "Why not?"
He borrowed The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Sicilian, a mafia novel by the author
of The Godfather, Mario Puzo. The librarian slid them through the slot that was normally used for food.
Robin Woods: Many, many words I had to skip over because... I couldn't read them.
Daniel Gross: What did it feel like, staring at the page, only understanding some of the
words and trying to figure that out? Robin Woods: It was hard at first, because I may have been grasping maybe 30%, 40% of
what a page would say. But every time I would turn a page, I would become more confident that I was understanding
more of what was going on in the book. I mean, it's like, "Wow, this is pretty good."
Daniel Gross: Eventually Robin bought a dictionary from the prison commissary. He would copy words he didn't know into a notebook, then study them carefully.
Robin Woods: But I remember reading that Sicilian and getting done, and I wept like a child.
Because those people had lied to me. They had programmed me that, "Don't even try.
You can't do it. You're not capable of doing it." And then once I did it, it was like, I could go to China, I could go to Rome, I could go
to Greece, I could go to the Second World War, I could go to the Civil War, I could
go to the moon. Daniel Gross: He started a small library in his cell. Other inmates sometimes asked to borrow his books, or for his help reading legal documents.
Robin Woods: It was a marvelous thing. The whole world opened up. Even though I was confined in an institution, in a prison, in a building, in a cell, my
mind was free, because the only thing I had to do was wait for the library man to come
and bring me a book and I could escape. Daniel Gross: Robin tore through the books he could access in the library, and as he
became more confident, he also became more ambitious. Robin Woods: I wanted to know about the world that I lived in.
I wanted to know about Sir Isaac Newton and Socrates and Alexander the Great. Daniel Gross: In 2004, he ordered an encyclopedia from a Merriam-Webster catalog.
It contained 2.5 million words, a gigantic book of 1,800 pages. Robin Woods: By the time that I got ahold of the Merriam-Webster's Desktop Collegiate
Encyclopedia... I always give the whole thing out, because it's impressive for me.
By the time I got to that point, I had probably read 500, 600 books. That's not hyperbole.
That's the truth. Once I would find a subject, it would lead me to the next... It would all dovetail together.
Daniel Gross: While most people open an encyclopedia looking for a specific thing, Robin just started
anywhere and let one discovery lead him to the next. One day, he read an entry about the acquisition of Texas, and it didn't seem right.
Robin Woods: I believe the reference was that the acquisition was acquired through the American
and Mexican War, which of course, that happened after Texas became a state. And when I found it and I read it several times and I knew that it was wrong, I went
and found that the chief editor, or the editor for the Merriam-Webster's Desktop Encyclopedia,
and this guy's name was Mark Stevens. Daniel Gross: In November 2004, 15 years into Robin's sentence, he wrote a letter.
"Dear Mr. Stevens, I'm writing to you at this time to advise you of a misprint in your fine
collegiate encyclopedia." Robin Woods: I thought maybe they would think, "Well, how arrogant is this guy, sitting in
a prison somewhere writing me to tell me that there was an error." [Bubbly electronic music.].
Probably about a month later, I get a letter. I went and sat on the bunk, and I opened it up very gingerly because I didn't want to
tear the envelope up real bad. And I read the letter. And Mr. Stevens congratulated me.
First, he thanked me. I mean, a person who had basically taught myself to read and write, and I found that
error. Daniel Gross: It's like getting an A in English class or something. Robin Woods: Absolutely.
Yes, absolutely. It was getting an A+. [Bouncy electronic music continues.] Mark Stevens: This was the beginning of a real correspondence, and he informed me, I
think fairly early on, that his ambition was to read the entire encyclopedia. Daniel Gross: Mark Stevens, editor of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Encyclopedia.
Mark basically assembled the book from scratch. Mark Stevens: And nobody before, or since, has ever told me that that was their ambition
for that book. Daniel Gross: Within days of his first letter, Robin caught more mistakes.
The entry for William the Conqueror mentioned Harold I when it should've said Harold II.
And a different entry said Uthman ibn Affan was the third caliph of the Umayyad dynasty,
but Uthman ibn Affan died five years before the dynasty began. Over the course of two years, Robin caught more than a dozen mistakes that were corrected
in later editions. Mark started to think of him as a freelance editor. There's actually a history of this.
Back in the late 1800s, a famous prisoner in England was one of the main contributors
to the Oxford English Dictionary. Anyway, Robin and Mark debated whether Lincoln deserved credit for freeing the slaves.
They discussed whether Cleopatra was Greek or African. Mark Stevens: He would move through a lot of subjects that you might find improbable
for an incarcerated person with, who I learned had, a ridiculously small amount of education,
of formal education. Daniel Gross: Robin may not have graduated from high school, but he was an incredibly
close reader. He'd read hundreds of books by this point, and he'd flipped through the pages checking
and cross-checking information, and then writing to Mark, lots and lots of letters going back
and forth. And in all that time, Mark did not know what Robin was in prison for.
He never asked, which seems funny, but maybe some part of him just didn't want to know.
[Staccato violin music.] In early 2006, Robin was transferred to a different prison, which happened a lot.
But this time, they told him he wouldn't be allowed to take his books. Robin Woods: Usually, they give you your property when you get there, and they had had all my
stuff. So I immediately went on a hunger strike within three or four days. Daniel Gross: Robin wrote to Mark, "I need my books, and I cannot afford to replace them."
He refused to eat until he got to speak with the Maryland Commissioner of Corrections,
Frank Sizer. Robin Woods: And I went from 220 pounds, roughly, to 147 pounds. You could see the bones in my face, the bone structure.
Mark Stevens: I got a very distressed letter from him. And he had been thrown into solitary confinement again — far from the first time, I believe.
But on this occasion, they had removed and evidently destroyed his books, his own private
library, including the encyclopedia. And this was the most distress he had ever indicated in a letter.
And in response to that, I looked for information about the institution and who its wardens
might be, and I sent a letter to the warden who I thought I had identified. Daniel Gross: What did you include in that letter?
I mean, what was your goal? Mark Stevens: I was trying to convince them of how really cruel, unnecessarily cruel,
it was that his library had been taken away from him. Robin Woods: Mr. Sizer came.
He had asked me, one of the questions he asked me after he asked about my health and a couple
other things, and told me what he was going to do... He was very curious, and he had a curious look on his face, and he said, "Who is this
Mark Stevens?" And I said, "Oh, he's a friend of mine that works for—" He says, "Well, what—" I said,
"He works for Merriam-Webster." And he asked me, "Well, what do you do? Do you work for them?"
And I was like, "Well, no, I don't work for them. But I found some errors in their Merriam-Webster's Desktop Encyclopedia."
Then I filled him into the relationship that me and Mark had had over the years.
Mark Stevens: It was a very few days after that, that I got another letter from Robin.
And he was not only getting his books restored, but he had been informed that he was on the
road to freedom. Daniel Gross: Mark and Robin didn't piece this together until later, but here's what
they figured out. The commissioner of Corrections was impressed that Robin was so determined, not only in
his hunger strike, but also in his obsession with learning. He offered Robin a deal.
Robin Woods: Mr. Sizer said, "If you do everything that I tell you to do, and you walk through
the door, I'll give you your good days back, but you have to be infraction-free for a whole
year. And I'll give you your good days back, and I'll let you go home." Daniel Gross: In short, even though Robin had once participated in a riot that left
a dozen guards injured, the commissioner was willing to let him out early. Robin had five years left to serve, but once he got his so-called good days back, there
was just one year left. Robin Woods: It was the craziest thing in the world to walk out of the prison gates
after all those years and be free. Daniel Gross: Eighteen years had passed. He went to prison as a 27 year old and left when he was 44.
Robin was released with around $50 in cash, the minimum required by law. He knew about Julius Caesar and the Mexican-American War, but he couldn't remember how to count
money. He had trouble finding work back home in Cumberland. He couldn't pay rent.
And all this time he stayed in touch with Mark. Every so often, they talked on the phone.
Mark Stevens: Of course, I have no dependents myself. There's nobody who I'm supporting in the world.
Daniel Gross: Eventually, Mark decided to send Robin a little bit of money. The first time it was a loan, but then he sent a bit more and a bit more.
And eventually, Mark started thinking of it as a gift, a gift that added up to thousands
of dollars over the years. And remember, they'd never even met. If you had a family of your own, do you think that this story would have happened?
Mark Stevens: No, probably not. I don't think people tend to put themselves out in a personal way, maybe, when they have
families of their own. Daniel Gross: But you must've had friends that would have said, "What if this is a bad
idea?" Mark Stevens: My friends didn't know I was doing it. My friends didn't know.
Daniel Gross: How did that happen? How did it happen that, for so many years, a relatively significant part of your life
was invisible to your friends? Mark Stevens: I don't know. I don't know. There's just things like, I just don't necessarily tell people everything about.
I'm not sure if I've ever told one single soul how much I might've sent to Robin.
They would struggle to believe it, actually, I suspect. [Sweet, floaty orchestral music.]
Daniel Gross: Here it is. Stevens. Robin Woods: OK. Should we knock on the door?
Mark Stevens: Oh my goodness. You must be Robin. Robin Woods: How are you? Daniel Gross: After a decade of phone calls, Robin finally met Mark at his house in Massachusetts.
Robin Woods: Give me a hug! Oh, it's nice to meet you. Mark Stevens: Great to meet you.
[Emotional.] It really is. Robin Woods: I told you I was going to cry, and doggone it...
Mark Stevens: [Laughing.] Oh, no. Not really. Anyway. Well, great to meet you. Robin Woods: I didn't know what we was going to do, so I brought a couple of different
outfits. But I'm going to tell you, the only way I could tell you, I've never met you till today,
but I love you very much. You're a good man. Mark Stevens: That's really sweet of you.
Robin Woods: I'm not surprised you have a lot of books. I'm not... Mark Stevens: [Laughs.]
You see, all behind the piano there is all stacked books. Robin Woods: I remember in prison, again, a lot of people that had a little bit of means,
they would have five or six pair of $100 tennis shoes, and I would have a whole cell full
of books. But I had my sanity because of it. I'd have went nuts. Mark Stevens: Yeah.
Yeah. Robin Woods: I would have went nuts. Mark Stevens: It is impossible to imagine being in there and not having...
God, and not having printed material and not having stuff to read. I just can't — it's just unimaginable, just unimaginable.
Daniel Gross: Over the weekend, Robin and Mark went for a hike and went to see a play.
They even visited the house where Emily Dickinson grew up. And then, Robin drove seven hours back to Cumberland.
When he got home, he was in for a shock. One of his windows was hanging open. Someone had broken in.
The irony of the situation wasn't lost on Robin. Robin Woods: No one has ever broken into my residence and robbed me, so what poetic justice
is that? That now I know what it feels like to be invaded, to have someone to come into your home and
steal your meager possessions. Daniel Gross: What does it feel like? Robin Woods: It feels like you've been violated and you're helpless to do anything about it,
and now, the old me... But now I have to depend on the law to deal — to get satisfaction.
Because, certainly, I'm not going to go out and retaliate because someone stole some material
possessions. Daniel Gross: What would you want to happen to the person that did this?
Robin Woods: Well... They need to go to jail. There's probably a lot of people that would look at this and say, "Well, this man spent
years in jail," but they need to go to court and answer up for it. [Melancholy guitar music.].
But things happen. Now I know what it feels like to be robbed. And maybe if I would have felt this way before, I would have never robbed anybody in the first
place. [Laughs.] Daniel Gross: Robin turned 54 this year. He still has a copy of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Encyclopedia, but he told me he
doesn't really read much anymore. In prison, books connected Robin to the outside world, but now he's in it.
Robin Woods: I actually do have time to read, but to my shame, I don't. I don't read as much as I should.
Daniel Gross: I called Mark last week to check some facts, and he told me that after 24 years,
he was just laid off by Merriam-Webster. He's 66, and he spent years working on encyclopedias, but people just aren't reading them anymore.
[Melancholy guitar music continues.] Phoebe Judge: Daniel Gross. Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and me.
Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to Alice Wilder and Julie Shapiro. Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal.
You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. The New Yorker is running a companion version of this story.
You'll find it at newyorker.com. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.
We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of the best podcasts around.
Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight Foundation and MailChimp. And thanks to Adzerk for providing their ad-serving platform to Radiotopia.
We'll be going on a little tour this fall. We'll be stopping in cities all around this country.
We'd love to see you. We'll be in New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Portland...
You can find out all about it at our website, thisiscriminal.com. I'm Phoebe Judge.
This is Criminal. Jingle: Radiotopia. From PRX.

In November of 1988, Robin Woods was sentenced to sixteen years in the notoriously harsh Maryland Correctional Institution. In prison, Robin Woods found himself using a dictionary to work his way through a book for the first time in his life. It was a Mario Puzo novel. While many people become highly educated during their incarceration, Robin Woods became such a voracious and careful reader he was able to locate a factual error in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. He wrote a letter to the encyclopedia’s editor, Mark Stevens, beginning an intricate friendship that changed the lives of both men.

Contributor Daniel A. Gross has the story: https://twitter.com/readwriteradio

The New Yorker’s website ran a print version of Daniel’s story in September: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-encyclopedia-reader

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 49 originally published 8/25/2016 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-49-the-editor-8-26-2016

Brief Summary

Robin Woods shares his journey from crime and prison to self-education and friendship with Mark Stevens of Merriam-Webster.

Key points

Robin Woods' Crime and Conviction. In 1988, Robin Woods stole a car and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
The Brutality of MCI Hagerstown. Robin describes the harsh conditions and violence in the prison where he served time.
The Power of Reading. In prison, Robin discovered the joy of reading, which transformed his life.
A Life-Changing Correspondence. Robin wrote to the editor of Merriam-Webster about errors in their encyclopedia, sparking a friendship.
A Long-Awaited Meeting. After years of correspondence, Robin finally meets Mark Stevens in person.
Robin's Love for Books. In prison, books were Robin's lifeline, keeping him sane during tough times.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I had to deal with it. I didn't have any choice.

Robin Woods reflects on his prison sentence.

3:13WatchNov 20, 2022

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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