FEBRUARY 2020 55
shall not engage in any form of gambling, betting
or wagering, or be in the possession of gambling
paraphernalia,” reads the Standards of Inmate
Behavior section of the New York State Codes,
Rules and Regulations.
But most guards, who very well may bet on par-
lays and play in their own fantasy leagues, don’t
sweat it. (They’re looking to bust more dangerous
things, like drugs and weapons.) Plus, prisoners
are smart about it, ripping off the parlay odds at
the bottoms of the tickets. It’s hard for guards to
prove that a list of games and spreads, or Red’s
fantasy lineups, are gambling paraphernalia.
Red, 45, is Daniel Connelly. He has a bald head,
crazy eyes and a red goatee that wraps a mouth
with some gnarly teeth. He’s got an athlete’s body,
though it’s broken down from too many winters
powerlifting in prison-yard weight pits. In 1994,
at 20, Red was hosting a house party that turned
violent. Two young men were stabbed to death. Red
was convicted of double homicide and got life in
prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years.
Over the years, the wild redhead has had to
continue showing his tough side. The full-tacklefootball league at Attica was a good outlet for his
aggression. His team won three championships,
even in the year when the opposing team’s middle
linebacker, frustrated at Red’s team for playing too
rough, shanked the center during a play. There’s
no real football league in Sing Sing, so Red plays
fantasy football, pinochle and dominoes instead.IN 2002, AT AGE 24,
I got locked up for murder and selling drugs, sen-
tenced to 28 years to life. I came in with only a
ninth-grade education, but in a creative writing
workshop at Attica, taught by a volunteer English
professor, I learned to be a writer. In ’13, I sent
an essay to The Atlantic, and to my surprise, it
was published. For a guy like me, who had been
steadily losing in life up to that point, landing that
story was like coming off the bench and catching
a Hail Mary pass in the end zone.
Doing journalism in the joint, though, requires
walking a fine line, and this story was particularly
tricky. “Some things you just shouldn’t write about,”
an old-timer told me. “You know Donald Goines
was killed because he revealed too much.” I didn’tc4
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