My name is Ian Bick, and you're tuned in to Locked in with Ian Bick.

On today's episode, I'll be interviewing Jesse Crosson, who at 18 years old was sentenced to 32

years in a Virginia state prison.

On today's episode, we're going to be diving in to his prison experience, the charges

that got him there, and what life is like for him after. I owned one of the biggest music

venues in Connecticut. I got out of prison in 2019, and since then I've been featured on

HBO and vice. I quit my job to start making content, and I've amassed over 70 million views.

Incredibly crazy stuff happened.

Reflection on what put you into prison in the first place.

It's responsibility for their own actions.

So I want to start at the beginning, the beginning of your story, what life was like for you growing up, what your family was like, how did you grow up? My parents are both recovering addicts or alcoholics, but they stopped when I was younger. So there was some stability and there was some kind of growth. They got divorced when I was seven. It was kind of ugly. I mean, it brought out the worst in both of them, but at the same time it wasn't the traumatic experience that a lot of people here. I was really fortunate to have their support and eventually having the support of really strong step families.

Like those stepfamilies in many ways began to feel like my family because those were the ones that I spent Christmas with or those are the ones I spent Thanksgiving with and those are most of my memories. So it was just kind of the average middle class. You know, my mom was an attorney, but she didn't do criminal work.

She only did property stuff and probably made less money than any attorney I've ever met. My dad was a substance abuse counselor. They were really passionate about what they did. And, you know, I had that upbringing. I got to play a t-ball. I got to go to school. I got to be engaged in things. Now, even with that upbringing, by the time you're 17, you're abusing alcohol and cocaine.

What brought you down that path and how did you get into that? So I think, at least for me, all the choices I made reflected an inability to cope. There was some skill that I didn't understand or something I didn't know how to deal with or some trauma that I didn't know how to process. And the easiest way to deal with that was to avoid it. And so I had this avoidant

behavior when I was a little kid and I was eat too many Oreos sitting behind the couch or I would find some other way to distract myself or to numb the pain. And so when I found alcohol, I was like, oh, this does. This makes me feel better. This makes me feel confident. When I found cocaine, that was like the supercharger because it made me feel like a superhero. It made me feel

amazing, made me feel all the confidence that I'd always been lacking. So as soon as I found it, I never wanted to let it go. Now, by this point in time, you decide not to go to college or take a year off. Was college accessible to you? And why did you ultimately decide not to go to college?

Basically, I just didn't want to go through the application process. And I've grown up with this, let me know where it came from, but this scarcity idea. I never liked to spend money. I'm really cheap. So I always said I wouldn't apply for college. I would go to community college, because I could go for two years for really cheap and then get into a state school. That was really my plan. Now, I had a gambling addiction at one point, and I knew some of the crazy things that I would do to fuel that addiction. What were some of the crazy things you were getting into to fuel your addictions? The kind of, until cocaine, the addiction process was fairly mild. Like, I always, you know, worked a job. I always had a hustle. I sold weed. Like, I had a way to support myself. I didn't really get out of control. But then with the cocaine, it went from being able to support this hustle to being completely gone. And that was how I committed the robbery and that eventually led to the shooting. And who are the types of people you were hanging around with? Were they different than from who you were initially hanging out with in high school? Were you drifting more towards like a bad crowd that led you down to the shady

past or the shady route? So the, my three co-defendants, two were illegal immigrants who I ran into

because of guys that I used to buy coke from because I spoke Spanish so I could get better deals on

cocaine than anybody else, which was initially how I supported myself. The other one was a kid that I went to high

school with, that we just connected over this kind of like interest in drugs and this kind of outlaw

lifestyle. And so 18 years old, you get arrested for charges relating to a robbery and a shooting.

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