This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Hi, I'm Carrie Hartman, the senior producer on Burden of Guilt 2 with another bonus episode.

When our team visited Louisiana, we had the opportunity to meet some of Germain's childhood friends.

These were men he had relationships with going all the way back to elementary school,

and it helped to give us greater insight into Germain's young life. Before Germain saw the prison

walls of Angola, before the trial, the arrest, and the pain his family endured, he was just a kid

in the Fisher Projects,

a public housing development where childhood and survival unfortunately intertwined.

I'm stepping over by this, witnessing bodies, coming all from elementary school,

you've got police, amlams, fire engines, you know, because somebody was murdered.

It was a rough place for a kid. Well, for anyone really. The Fisher Projects was rife in

crime, a stomping ground for drug deals, and a place where residents sometimes had violent

clashes with police. It's also the place Germain met lifetime friends like Sam.

They were just 10-year-old kids when they first crossed paths.

Meet Sam.

Growing up in the Fisher Project, you can see somebody smoking crack in front of you.

Nobody liked to grow up in a project, you know,

but something we just had to deal with coming up young.

Germain and Sam attended the same school,

and they hung with the same crowd.

And for a lot of their childhood,

...