I Would Kill People for Money…But Then God Gave Me Life

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Speaker 1: And we returned to Our American Stories. Up next, a story of redemption out of Kansas City, Missouri.

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Speaker 2: Let’s get into it.

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Speaker 3: So, my name is Bill Crumb. I was the enemy of God for thirty-nine years. I just celebrated my fortieth year as a Christian. But my life, I started it. Let me tell you about the eight times I should have died. One specific time, my sister died seven years ago, and I never knew until she was on her deathbed. And we were talking one day, and I asked her if she was going to be buried in the same cemetery as my Mom and Dad, because I knew they had two other lots there. And she said, “No.” She said, “Lloyd and our to be buried down in another cemetery.” She said, “Why don’t you and Davy take those two lots?” And I said, “Why did Dad have four lots?” Anyway, she said, “You don’t know,” and I said, “No, I don’t know, Sharon.” My sister was seven years older than I was. And so she said, “When Mama was pregnant with you, the doctor told Mama and Dad that she would die had given birth to you, and you would die.” And so Daddy went and bought four lots, one for you and Mama, and then one for him and I when we died. And so, I now tell people this. I’ve known for years that the Devil’s tried to kill me. I’ve been in over twenty-five car wrecks and motorcycle wrecks. I’ve been in riots, in prisons. I’ve overdosed a few times. I’ve had two heart attacks to do it cocaine. The Devil’s been trying to kill me forever, but I just found out seven years ago. He was trying to kill me before I was even born. He didn’t want me to be born telling you how good God is, and the Devil did not want me to do that. But it took a long time to get there. When I was about eight years old, I started smoking cigarettes. I started looking at pornography. I started stealing, and it just progressed. My Mom and Dad took me to church as a kid, but I was always doing something wrong, even in church. At church, I was doing stuff wrong, and I was always doing stuff wrong. I had a rebellious streak in me, and the older I got, the worse it got. When I was eighteen years old, I was at a crossroads in my life. Let me back up. A year before that, I was shooting pool in the pool hall. I stayed in the pool hall about twelve hours a day. I didn’t go to school. I learned more in the pool hall that I did school anyway. So, that’s where I loved to go every day. And I was shooting pool one day, and a guy that I barely knew came up behind me and said, “Hey, Bill, let’s go join the Marines.” And I said, “Let me finish this game.” And that’s how serious I took life, because I knew if I didn’t like the Marines, I just quit. Because I quit everything. I quit jobs, I quit girls, I quit anything that didn’t go the way I thought it should go. And so I thought, “If the Marines don’t go right, I’ll just quit.” And so, when I was eighteen, I stood before a Marine Corps colonel. I’d already gotten in a lot of trouble in the Marines, and I stood before a Marine Corps colonel, and he said, “If you don’t straighten up, you’ll be in the penitentiary before you’re twenty-one years old.” And I was at a crossroads in my life right there. I had a choice of straightening up, taking his advice, and my life would have gone a different direction. But what do you think I did? I laughed in his face. And by the time I was twenty-one, I had ridden twenty-five hundred miles in handcuffs and leg irons and waite chains. I’d been locked up in several states. I’d seen murders and rapes and suicides and prisons. I came out of that prison a very hard hearted man. And when I came out of that prison in 1964, I said, “I had two goals. I’m never going back, and I’m never gonna get caught.” I had no intentions of living a law-abiding life. I had no intentions of straightening up. I was just going to be more careful. And I went for almost nineteen years before I got caught. And in that nineteen years, my life progressed from everything from small petty burglary, really, from as small as picking tips up off tables. I always picked up tips. If I had three or four thousand dollars in my pocket, I was walking out of a restaurant, and there was two or three dollars laying on the table, and nobody was looking, I had now three or four and two dollars in my pocket. I did anything that was illegal, and so I went from petty burglary to international gun smuggling. My partner was going to Columbia to Bogata to buy cocaine, and we were sending midnight specials over there. We’d buy pistols on the street for one hundred dollars, and in South America, a handguns illegal, and they would bring one thousand dollars, and so we would send ten handguns over there and turn one thousand dollars into ten thousand dollars. That’s pretty serious crime if you get caught for international gun smuggling. But that was the least of my worries, because I didn’t think I could get caught. I had moved up to where I wanted power and money and influence, and I had all three of those things. I had enough money to stay in five hundred dollars a night hotels; I rode in limousines. I bought twenty thousand dollars for a one-night party worth of cocaine. So I had the money had always wanted. I had enough power to make a phone call and have somebody killed, so I had the power it had always wanted, and I had enough influence that when I was arrested, it was September 5, 1982, and it wasn’t a traffic ticket. I’d put on sitches in the back of a guy’s head with a ball bat, and it was a very serious charge, originally attempted murder, and I got booked in the jail. I love to ask this questions in jails. I love to ask guys, “How many of you have ever been locked up on a weekend?” And every hand goes up, every hand goes up. And then I asked this question, “What happens when you get arrested on a weekend?” And everybody yells at the same time, “Nothing!” Because you’re not going anywhere on a weekend. Well, they booked me in the jail at two o’clock Sunday afternoon, September 5, 1982, and I walked out of that jail at one-thirty Monday morning. Because of the influence I had. When I got arrested, we made our first phone call, called a city councilman (and we were selling cocaine too), and said you knew who to call, and this city councilman called the judge that we were selling cocaine to. And I love to ask this question in prison: “How many of you know that when you’re selling cocaine to a judge, he doesn’t want you in jail?” So, we were out of jail in less than twelve hours on a weekend. I walked out of that jail at one-thirty Monday morning. And when I walked out of that jail, I said, “Bill Korm, you finally arrived. You got money, you got power, and you got influence.” But there was something missing in my life. I had this money and this power and this influence. The Bible says, “What’s it gained him? What is the profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” And that’s where I was. I had all this money and power and influence, but I had no peace. I was looking for peace all the time. I’d been looking for years. I mean, there was a time in my life I looked like a white Mister T. I wore my shirts on button down to my belly button, with gold chains around my neck and carrying guns—anything to, you know, look important. But I was really looking for peace. And I had no peace. If I was in a restaurant eating and a cop came in, I’d go pay my bill and get out the door. Or I might go in the bathroom, go out the window to pay on what stage of my life I was in. And guess what? The cop wasn’t even after me. He didn’t even know Bill Korm was in the restaurant. The cop came in there because he was hungry. He just came in there to get something to eat. And after I became a Christian, I was reading in the Bible, and it says, “A wicked man runs when no one’s chasing him,” and I went, “Wow, I left a lot of steak dinners sitting at the table because the waitress said, ‘Just set my meal down,’ and a cop walked in, and I got up and went and paid my bill and walked out the door.” And after I read that, I was like, “I could have eate all them dinners.”

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Speaker 2: And you’re listening to Bill Korham, and what a line that is.

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Speaker 1: A wicked man runs when no one’s chasing him. And he, well, he was running, and he was running toward peace. He couldn’t find it. He tried power, he tried money, he tried influence. None of them worked. He made one phone call and got himself out of jail. Had the power to kill a person, and would routinely have large parties, large limos, fancy tell rooms. Something was missing in his life. And boy, the young Bill Korum, and I can just see the scene of him looking at a superior officer in the Marine Corps and just laughing in the guy’s face. And all he was trying to do, that officer was warn him that if he kept going down the road he was going, he’d end up in prison. I love the way this started. “I was the enemy of God for thirty-nine years.” When we come back, more of Bill Korum’s story from Kansas City, underworld enforcer to prison ministry. Here on Our American Stories. And we returned to Our American Stories and the redemption story of Bill Korum. He’s the author of The Ultimate Pardon. Pick it up at Amazon or wherever books are sold. You won’t be able to put it down. When we last left off, Bill was telling us about how he was a criminal, the enemy of God in his own words. Now Bill turns to telling us about his parents and reading from his aforementioned book. “Take it away, Bill.” Oh.

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Speaker 3: My mother was on her knees for her life. Her knees were wore out. There is no one I know of on my mother’s or Dad’s side of the family whoever went to prison or got into trouble like I did. I have to take responsibility for my own actions. No one held a gun in my head. I made choices. If there was ever a black sheep in family, it was me, and I was the blackest of them all. There’s one commandment in the Bible that comes with the promise that says, “If we honor our father and mother, we will have long life.” I would not be honoring my parents if I didn’t tell you this about them. I have personally never known anyone whose parents loved them like mine. I’m not saying there is no one. I have just not personally met them. Most inmates I have talked to over the years have come from broken homes. My parents were married sixty-three years. Drugs and alcohol have plagued most inmates’ homes since their birth. My folks never touched the drop of alcohol in their lives. My mother and father didn’t smoke or use any kind of drugs. I never heard a curse word come out of either one of their mouths. The only time in my life I remember my Dad saying anything that could be considered cussing was when I was with that fifteen-year-old girl in the hotel, and he asked me what I’d done to her. I worked by my Dad’s side building houses and never heard him swear or tell a dirty joke. I did see him walk away when other people told him. My mother died when she was ninety-three years old, and she had never been in a movie theater or to a dance. They were the most loving, unselfish people I’ve ever known in my whole life. I remember Mom would put me and my sister to bed at night, and if Dad asked for a bowl of ice cream, she would not get him one unless she got Sharon an eye up and gave us one. They visited me everywhere I got locked up. When I got locked up in Clarksdale, Mississippi, they drove five hundred and fifty miles to see me. When I was waiting to go to Try And, Oxford, they drove six hundred miles to see me. Dad told me years later that sometimes they drove down, visited me, then drove home, bathe changed clothes, and drove right back. It was a twelve hundred mile round trip, and they made him many times. I remember one time they came to see me and ask if I wanted a chocolate malt. I wanted one, for sure, but there were ten or twelve guys in the big cell I was in. Dad asked the jailer if he could bring everyone malts. The jailer gave him me okay. In a few minutes, he returned with the malts for everyone, including the jailer. When my friends and I hopped the freight trade and got locked up in Took Them Carey, New Mexico, my Dad made the thirteen hundred mile round trip to get us out of jail and take us home. When I was sent to Ashland, Kentucky, for sixty-day observation, they made a fourteen hundred mile round trip to see me. I was there with guys who had been locked up for years, and their families only lived an hour or two away, and they never got a visit. They visited me in San Diego when I was in boot camp, which was sixteen hundred miles one way. When I was in the brig in Millington, Tennessee, they drove over five hundred miles to see me. Inglewood, Colorado, was another place they drove six hundred miles to see me. I figured it up once. My Dad drove over twenty-five thousand miles in one year visiting me. The average Miley on a car back then was ten thousand miles a year. If I came in at eleven o’clock at night with a couple of buddies, my Mom would get out of bed, ask if we were hungry. All one one of them had to do was nod his head, and she whipped up a five-course meal. She loved to cook for me and to watch me eat. I think she tried to kill every friend I brought around with food. There was no one who could cook like my mother. She didn’t use recipes, and everyone in our family has tried to copy her cooking since she’s been gone, but no one’s mastered it. Are you starting to get the picture of how much my parents loved me? No matter what I did. They loved me, and my sister and I came first, and they were second. They did everything possible to help me, and still I was a rebel. If there was ever a human on this earth who should have excelled and never been in trouble, it was me. I had their blessing from the time I was born until they died. And see, when I wrote this, I didn’t know I was supposed to die before I was even born. If they did all that for me when I was rebellious, how much more would they have done for me if I had not been rebellious? I don’t believe they would have done anymore, because their love was not conditional. Mom used to have dreams about me. She wore her knees out praying for me. She told me so many answers to the prayers she prayed for me. I could fill another book. When Debbie started praying for me, Mom encouraged her, and they prayed together. My Saint Me. Mother prayed for almost forty years for me. “Just surrender to Jesus.” She prayed, many times, “Not my will, but that will be done.” My Dad gave me godly advice all my life. He tried everything he knew of to point me in the right direction, although I didn’t listen to him at the time. Thankfully, he saw me walk out of the darkness and into the light before he died in 1991. We got to spend eight years together on the same page. Mom got to enjoy seeing me love God and loved my Dad those last eight years of his life. Mom died in 1999, but she spent the last sixteen years of her life praising the Lord for his answer to her prayers for my salvation. We had many good times together. Mom and her best friend and life Dad are together and get in Heaven. I look forward to the day I joined them. No wonder. I hated and cussed that psychiatrist at Ashland when he told me that it was my Mom and Dad’s fault that I turned into a criminal. So, you know, I was doing five hundred dollars worth of cocaine to day. I was drinking two quarts of whiskey to day. I was kissed my wife goodbye and say, “I see tonight.” And I’d come home for weeks. My kids had called, come over and say, “Where’s Dad?” Debbie sav and senr Dad. In weeks, I was doing every kind of legal drug there was. I mean, I would have took a earth control pill if I thought I could get eige on it. There was nothing I wouldn’t do, and I did it in massive amounts. If everybody else was doing three of them, I wanted to do six. I wanted to do more than anybody. Getting implicated as one of the leading cocaine dealers in Kansa, Missouri, I had a lot of money being an enforcer for the Kansas City Underworld. I was out there doing enforcement, doing contract work, doing some serious, serious stuff. I wasn’t thinking about my kids. I was thinking about what I was doing for the family out there, and that’s all I cared about was my job I was doing, making sure I did it right. Didn’t care about anybody except me. I carried a flamethrower on my back, and it was always lit. I’d burn up every bridge I went over because I wasn’t going back. I had no reason to go back. I was only going forward. My motto is, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” And I was out there, going, going, going. My wife says, “I was going two hundred miles an hour in the world, just doing cocaine and drinking,” and people go, “Well, you couldn’t drink two quarts of whiskey!” And I said, “You never did cocaine, did you? Because when you’re doing cocaine, you could drink ten quartz of whiskey.” You can’t get drunk when you’re doing cocaine. That’s why people die of speedballs. They do heroin and cocaine together because your heart’s beating so fast. Like I used to go home when I’d been gone for three four weeks at a time, there was a Seven Eleven not far from our house. Remember that Seven Eleven used to be up there on the Right Time Road, and we lived at 6224 Willow. And I’d be gone three weeks, and I decided to go home, and I didn’t have nothing. I didn’t have any downers or no pills. I’d pull in that Seven Eleven, I’d buy four or five bottles a n iquill, and I’d start driving toward the house because I was trying to slow my heart down so she wouldn’t hear it, because I thought it was going to jump out of my chest. That’s why I had two heart attacks from doing cocaine, because your heart’s getting go so fast. And that’s why people mix it with heroin, and they do. That’s what John Belushi died of was speedballs, heroin and cocaine mixed.

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Speaker 1: And you’re listening to Bill Korha.