He sits there in a daze all day in a tiny cell, sometimes staring out the tiny hole in the wall, the only window to the outside world. He spends his days daydreaming, sometimes planning outlandish but ingenious schemes. Anything to take his mind off the 144-year sentence he’s serving.
He spends 23 hours a day in total isolation, only getting out for an hour a day. The state of Texas wasn’t taking any chances with this inmate and they certainly weren't going to be fooled by him again.
For the first few decades of Steven Russell's life, he might have been considered an upstanding businessman. He lived in the Tidewater region of Virginia and worked in his father's produce-wholesaling business in Norfolk. He had friends in law enforcement and his uncle was a retired district attorney. So, when Steven was arrested in 1990 for stealing $11,000 from a Jewellers, it probably came as a surprise to a few.
Whether it was a strange reaction to a mid-life crisis, or maybe it was just his first time getting caught, this crime was a turning point in Steve’s life. While waiting for the outcome of his court case he left his wife and moved to Houston and quickly started racking up fraud charges.
The Charges ranged from making false claims on a passport to insurance fraud. He was eventually sentenced to 6 months in prison. For most con artists 6 months would be considered a slap on the wrist, but for Steven, he considered it a joke. He didn’t plan on staying very long and decided he was going to just walk out the prison doors and the guards were going to let him.
Steven managed to get a hold of some civilian clothes and a walkie-talkie. Dressed as a workman he tapped on the window of the guard station and the officer on duty opened the door and Russell walked to freedom.
His new adventure as a fugitive from the law was short-lived and he was caught three days later boarding a flight to Mexico. The judge set his bail at $20,000, but somehow, he managed to post it and he went on the lam again. This time, freedom for Russell lasted a bit longer, and he managed to elude the police for another two and a half years. He claims that during this time he worked in Chicago as an executive for Nutra Sweet until he was arrested with another man in 1994 on Federal bank fraud charges.
According to the indictment, when Russell went to work for Nutra Sweet, he used his friend James Kemple's birthdate and Social Security number to obtain insurance through the company. His friend James was dying of Aids and used his medical records to get an advanced payment of $200,000. They were caught as the money was being wired to them from the insurance company.
After the arrest, a company called Medical Diagnostic Centre of Philadelphia sent a letter to the court. A Dr. Richard Kone wrote that Russelll had been diagnosed with AIDS in 1990: "It is with great sadness I tell you, Mr. Russelll is in the final stages of his illness and will soon succumb to it within the next months." Since the money from the insurance scam was returned and the fact, he didn’t have long to live they decided to drop the case and extradite him to Houston. He was never dying and the whole thing was fabricated.
On his return to Houston, he was given a 3-year prison sentence for his previous escape attempt. Feeling a bit more subdued at the time and the fact he was only going to serve a year and a half, he decided to stay, but the real reason for his change of attitude was, in his words, “Love.”
It was in the law library of the Harris County Jail when he first set eyes on Phillip Morris. Morris, a blond, bony petty criminal, was trying to reach a book on a high shelf when Russell intervened and got it for him. It was love at first sight and the two of them began writing to each other every day.Their romance soon blossomed, and Russell got more obsessed and protective over Morris, eventually managing to get transferred to Phillip’s cellblock. Russell had started off the relationship with a few white lies, telling Phillip he worked as an attorney and he was only in prison because he refused to rat on the Mafia. Russell always seemed to have access to large amounts of cash and hired an attorney for Morris and put money in his commissary account. Morris was all too happy to sit under the protective wing of Russell and not question anything. He even paid people to beat up a guy who was keeping Morris awake at night with his incessant screaming. Although this didn’t turn out well for the pair and the prison authorities had them separated. Apart from a 72-hour prison van Journey together, they wouldn’t see each other again until they were both free.
Russell was paroled in 1995 and began setting up a life for himself and Morris. The young Morris was soon paroled and they both ended up sharing a two-bedroom apartment in Clear Lake Houston. Russell had decided he was going to give Phillip everything he wanted. He continued with the lie that he was an attorney and even defended friends in personal civil cases. He wrote an impressive C.V. with an outstanding education and work background, none of it true. He took his C.V. to a headhunting firm that didn’t even bother checking his background and in January 1996, he was hired as the Chief Financial officer of North American Medical Management.
The Job came with a $90,000 a year salary but still didn’t seem enough for the high living pair of ex-cons. They bought and moved into a patio home on Burwood Way in Clear Lake. Spent hundreds and thousands doing it up. They both drove around in expensive cars bought and wore high-end clothes and Jewellery. Even with a $90,000 salary, it was still hard to explain where all the money was coming from.
Russell’s criminal genius saw no bounds and he managed to get Morris and another friend of his on the company’s payroll. After 5 months of working at NAMM, he stole over a Million Dollars, and when he wasn’t stealing, he did a pretty good job as a financial manager, according to company sources. By now the jig was up and Russell left the company. Russell hoped that the company would be too embarrassed to prosecute, but unfortunately for Steven, they quickly began filling fraud charges against him. Russell tried to control the damage by making a series of bizarre phone calls pretending to be a Judge. Eventually, he was tracked down to his address and arrested.
When he was arrested, he was already thinking ahead and planning his next escape. He told the officers he was diabetic and needed an insulin shot, not true of course, and when the cops were questioning him at the station, he went into Insulin shock and was rushed to the hospital, but unfortunately for Russell, the security at the hospital was too tight, and he couldn’t escape.
Russell was a criminal mastermind and continued to manipulate the Jail system from behind bars. He managed to get his bail slashed from $900,000 to $45,000 through a series of bogus calls he made using collect-call from the prison phone. He then managed to get a rookie Bail Bondsman to post his bail with a check that later bounced. He even got the Bails Bondsman to drive him from the prison to his house, stopping on the way to buy him a soft drink.
On the lam again he persuaded Morris to Jump bail and meet him at the bus station so they could flee to Florida. It wasn’t meant to be for Russell and his lover, and he was arrested before he got the chance to see him again.After his arrest, the authorities made every precaution to prevent him from escaping, but as soon as he was arrested, he was already putting plans in motion. As soon as he got to state prison, he put his plans to work. He tried to blend in with a work crew, fixing elevators in the prison, but he was quickly rumbled. He wasn’t dismayed and managed to get hold of a green felt-tip-marker that he soaked in the water allowing him to dye his clothes green to look like surgical scrubs.
He donned the scrubs and walked up to one of the officers on duty, thinking he was the prison doctor she opened the door for him, allowing him to walk free. He soon met up with Morris and they finally managed to get to Florida. They somehow managed to elude the police for some time while working in Florida. While there he did what he did best and conned people out of their hard-earned cash. It didn’t take people long to realize who Russell was and after a tip-off, led police to Russell, he and Morris were soon behind bars.
In total, for his crimes, he was given 144 years in prison. He sits in Maximum security Prison, under strict conditions, where he gets periodically moved from cells to prevent him from escaping. He’s 15 years into his sentence with his last parole hearing being denied. He was asked recently if he ever plans on leaving prison early. “I do, when the Parole board says I can,” he says with a cat-like smile.
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