‘Motive’ Episode 6: Mousey is dead

Brian Nelson’s arrest photo | Sun-Times files

Brian Nelson got the nickname Mousey as a teenager in the Simon City Royals because he could escape from almost anything. But in the early 1980s, he got caught for a murder and was sent to Stateville prison, where he became a leader in the gang hierarchy. He became friends with big-name criminals: Gangster Disciples kingpin Larry Hoover and Richard Speck, who killed eight nursing students.

Nelson escaped from Stateville, but was quickly caught. And that sent him on the “circuit.” He was moved around prisons in Illinois and other parts of the country. In 1998, he was sent to Tamms, a new super-maximum prison in southern Illinois where he was isolated from other inmates, often in the dark, for years. He copied the entire Bible by hand. He became friends with spiders. He nearly lost his mind.

Nelson completed his sentence in 2010. He tells us what prison — and segregation — can do to people, including T.J.

You can listen to “Motive” wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Motive extra features

Get a look at the real-life people and places covered in this episode of “Motive.” Meet T.J., his mother Victoria and the family members, friends and lawyers who tell his story.

Stateville Correctional Center

The front entrance of Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill.

Both T.J. and Nelson wound up serving time at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill. As Gangster Disciples kingpin Larry Hoover once described it, gangs had free run of the place and even had keys to most of the doors — except the main entrance and exits.

Larry Hoover

Hoover is the chairman of the Gangster Disciples street gang. He’s serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Colorado.

Richard Speck

Convicted murderer Richard Speck, with painting supplies, at Stateville in 1989.

Speck may be up there with John Wayne Gacy in terms of infamy in Illinois. In 1966, Speck murdered eight nursing students. While he was in prison at Stateville, however, life was hardly punishing. A leaked tape of Speck doing cocaine and having sex with an inmate showed the public what was really going on in Illinois’ prisons. He died in 1991.

Tamms Correctional Center

Tamms was a prison in southern Illinois that opened in 1995 as a minimum-security facility. Three years later, it add 500 beds for a super-maximum prison where Nelson was held and subjected to isolation. The prison closed in 2013. In recent years, some lawmakers have attempted to reopen the minimum-security prison.

Brian Nelson’s arrest photo

Nelson, 17, in an arrest photo for a 1982 murder. Nelson was allegedly acting as a lookout during a robbery.

The pen that copied it all

Nelson was the 13th inmate to be sent to Tamms Correctional Center. He spent 23 hours a day in isolation. He shows the pen he used to copy the Bible in longhand.

Brian Nelson’s senate testimony

In 2012, Nelson was invited by U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin to submit this written testimony to a congressional hearing on the use of segregation in American prisons.