My name is Dortell Williams
In 1992, I was arrested for Conspiracy to Commit Murder. At the age of 23, I knew everything! I had never even read a book, yet you couldn’t tell me a thing. The one thing that did stick, when I desperately approached my high school counselor for help was that I “wasn’t college material.”
I have since come to recognize that ignorance is the supreme enemy of us all. Ignorance is what causes us to make mistakes, to make errors, and bad decisions — in my case, very bad decisions. One thing I was ignorant of was how deeply damaged I was from the abusive and dysfunctional household I was raised in. I embraced my father’s drug dependence, womanizing and praise of the criminal model he laid out for me. This negative mindset was reinforced as I found others that clung to the same destructive lifestyle.
It wasn’t until 1989, after I killed my wife, Kimberley Susan Williams, that I came to terms with just how messed up I was. I have innocent blood on my hands. Acknowledging my dysfunction was just the beginning. It was a devastating realization that meant I had to stop blaming others and look at myself. What I found was a man who ended the life of my best half, a man who cut off such a beautiful potential; and utterly destroyed two families. I am so sorry for the damage I have made, and my amends is about carrying forward the vision and values of Kimberly.
During the course of my 31 years of incarceration, self-help classes and books helped me name my faulty thinking, confront my traumatic past, and replace my very negative coping mechanisms. I have come to understand actions and consequences — the negative and positive ripple effects. Ripple effects challenged my motivations and potential, and made me consider the power in making amends, and sending positive ripples.
Through our academic group, Men For Honor, I was motivated to help raise over $15,000 to various charities; we published a youth diversion anthology called, “Dark Tales from the Dungeons: Horrors From the ‘Hood for Youth to Beware’,” and we published a historiography/anthology called “Striving for Redemption”, that describes what it took for us to replicate a successful rehabilitative prison model. Over ten years, our classes helped prepare hundreds of men for life, as we all grew together.
Studying the Bible through Channel Islands Bible and Seminary and earning a doctorate degree gave me the moral guidance and strength to go against prison norms and work toward larger, empathetic and universal goals I could be proud of, rather than a past I was tired of running from. Positive ripple effects, build don’t destroy.
The theories and frameworks of the Cal State LA Communication Studies prison BA program validated the inner work that we were doing and reinforced my new positive coping skills in a formal way.
I was written off by my high school counselor and deemed incorrigible by the State three decades ago, but through self-reflection and concentrated study, I have come to see that through pro-social thinking, I can contribute to society, my family and my friends in a host of constructive ways.
With the sentence of life without the possibility of parole, my pro-social work is all I have to affirm that my existence is not a total waste. And while my biggest regret is obvious, what forever haunts me is the question of what could have been???? Unfortunately, no amount of personal transformation can answer that question.