Episode 49: The Editor

Criminal

Vox Media Podcast Network

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.7 • 38.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2016

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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 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 a friendship that changed the lives of both men. Contributor Daniel A. Gross has the story. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is though, let's see, we're all in the places.
0:11.0	Befford Road, these are some businesses, this is a liquor store here, this is a Chessie
0:16.7	Bank, they just built this not too long ago.
0:20.8	City Limits is right here, it's the intersection of Befford Road and Shades Lane.
0:27.6	So this is the place over here on the right hand side that I committed to breaking an
0:35.6	entering side.
0:37.7	This is Robin Woods.
0:39.2	In November of 1988 he was 26 years old when he stole a car and drove to an office building
0:45.1	in his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland.
0:47.5	Robin is African-American.
0:49.3	In that side door there's a still door with a glass window and I just knocked the window
0:55.7	out.
0:56.7	And I stole some stuff from computers, some typewriters, some telephones, ever called
1:02.1	Marlin phone systems.
1:05.8	When I took this stuff to a place I was staying at, it was just a little shack, it wasn't much
1:10.3	of a place and there wasn't much furniture in there and I had put all the stuff in there
1:16.8	that I banned in the car and I knew that I was going to be in trouble because I had
1:21.6	what they said was $20,000 worth of office equipment.
1:24.8	Well, what was I going to do with that?
1:28.3	Robin started trying to sell the stolen equipment as quickly as possible, offering it up for
1:33.5	cheap.
1:34.6	So a few people knew he had it and the next night while he was playing pool his plan fell
	...

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