‘Anger Led Me to Prison’

April 22, 1994 was the last day I ever spent outside of prison. I turned 21 on April 5 of that year. I have been in prison over half of my life.

What I did caused so much hurt, pain and anguish to my victim’s family. Not a day passes that I wish I could take their hurt and pain away. I pray my story can help at least one person to avoid having to go through what I have been through, and what I have put my family, and my victim’s families through.

I grew up with my mom and step-dad, who was a drunk. He was always yelling and degrading everyone. I knew he was not my real father. I still remember going into stores and supermarkets and I would be staring at the grown men passing by me to see if they looked like me, to see if maybe one of these men could be my real dad.

I went through most of my life angry at the world.

It wasn’t until I was 43 that I came to realize that I had abandonment issues. My grandfather, who was the father figure that I looked up to, passed away when I was five years old. No one ever sat me down and explained to me why he had passed, or why it had happened.

The passing of my grandfather added more to my confusion and my emotions turned cold. I would fight and push people away from me when they started to get close to me. I grew up on a dead-end street and when a new kid moved in on the cul-de-sac I would go outside, befriend them, and then fight them to show my dominance.

I could still remember the first fight I ever got into. I am half Mexican and half white. So, when I was a kid I had red hair, and because of my hair, I was bullied. That’s how I got into my first fight. I remember when I beat that kid up, and I remember how good it felt because I got acceptance and attention from all the other boys.

It made me feel like fighting was the key to popularity and acceptance. It boosted my ego and from then on, I went through all my childhood fighting and being a bully, just to feel that sense of acceptance. I tried to make up for my abandonment issues that I felt by the acceptance I would get from my friends.

I felt like the king of the school yard. I never let my buddies down, and I would fight for them to show them that I deserved their friendship and acceptance. \

One day in junior high when my friend Tommy was having an argument with another kid, I ran up and kicked that other kid between the legs. I got suspended from school. Even my friend Tommy was in shock when I did that.

It never failed. Every single school I ever went to I always got into fights.

After all these years of anger and a need for acceptance, led me up to the night that I committed my crime, which I got a life sentence for.

I took the life of Mario Olivio at a red light, and nearly murdered his brother in-law Mr. Anthony Orosco. I let my anger erupt because I felt like they disrespected me.

I took a life that day, almost two lives, because I was so angry and full of resentment from my childhood and life’s expectations. That night it all came out as violence towards two innocent men.

I went to my parole suitability hearing in 2017 and I was denied for seven more years. But that wasn’t the worst part. While I sat there, my victims’ families shared their stories of the agony and pain that I have put them through each and every day of their lives.

Hearing their pain was one of the worst things I ever had to experience. My heart hurt more that day than it ever has in all of my life. Tears filled my eyes and I could feel their pain. I will never forget that day.

I pray none of you ever have to experience this.

Please understand that being tough only leads you down bad and painful paths, paths that lead to bad decisions and life-changing mistakes. These paths can lead you to prison and loss of freedom. Please, choose the right path in your life.

Being tough, what does it get you?

We come to prison and continue in the exact same downward cycle of trying to prove you are the toughest, downest man in here. Except now you are playing for real with prison knives and decreasing your possibility of ever getting a parole date.

Year after dreadful year, heartache after heartache, you’ll be living like a caged animal and making your family suffer. Until, finally when you get to be my age, and look back on your life, and think “What was I thinking all those years?”

My daughter is 29 now and I am just starting to act like an adult. I am trying so hard to put into words to explain to her why she wasn’t important enough for me to stay out of trouble and be there for her.

I am desperately trying to figure out myself why I was able to commit such a horrific act, and take someone’s life, and nearly another life.

Why did I have to rob Mario’s son of a father? Why did I rob my own daughter of her father? Why did I put myself through this misery of prison life, and rob the kid that I was of all the opportunities I could have excelled at? I could have had a bright happy future, a home, and a family.

Why did I allow my biological father not being in my life get me so angry and take it out on the world? I just wanted to be happy and successful in life.

Please ask yourself: do I want to spend the rest of my life in prison? Do I want to hurt my family? Other’s families? Do I throw my life away?

Ask yourself now these serious life changing questions before it’s too late, and you are asking yourself these questions in a cell. Learn from my mistakes. Take the right path.

Instead of holding onto resentments, being angry at the world, by being happy and successful. Make the right choices. Life is a living hell here at times. You don’t want to be in here at all. Thank the Lord I am finally able to be free on the inside, finally.

It took me 23 years in here to figure out that God is real, to escape misery. Please allow the memory of. Mario Olivio to encourage you to be a better, more positive person in life.

If one person could change their life because of my story, my struggles in this prison would have been worth it.

Frank P. McMurray is serving a life sentence at Avenal State Prison in Avenal, CA. This essay is published in collaboration with The Beat Within, a San Francisco-based justice system writing workshop.