Today is Thursday, March 4th, 2021.

On this day in 2005, television personality, businesswoman, and white-collar criminal Martha

Stewart was released from prison.

She'd been confined there for almost five months

on charges of insider trading.

Welcome to Today in True Crime,

a Spotify original from Parcast.

Today we're covering the incarceration and release of celebrity Martha Stewart.

Let's go back to Alderson, West Virginia on March 4, 2005 at around midnight.

It had been almost five months since prisoner number 55170-054, nicknamed M. Diddy by her fellow inmates, had entered the facility. After having her life completely upended, returning to the outside world felt almost anticlimactic. She stepped out into the freezing

West Virginia air with relief. Though it was dark outside, somehow everything seemed just a little

bit brighter. She took her time walking across the parking lot, feeling the cold wind on her face.

Stewart wasn't exactly free, per se, as she still had five- of house arrest to look forward to. But now, at least she wouldn't

be forced to consume food that had expired before Y2K, or make improvised jam out of the local

crabapple trees so she could eat something halfway decent.

Her time behind bars was brief and not very glamorous.

She didn't go into too much detail to the press,

but she did release a statement via her website,

expressing gratitude for the lessons she learned.

You can be sure that I will never forget the friends that I met here,

all that they have done to help me over these five months,

their children, and the stories they have told me.

...