Two weeks later Ross boarded a flight on Con Air (a nickname given to the prison airline that transports inmates) to New York City. When he landed, after an arduous zigzag across the country, picking up and dropping off other prisoners, Ross was placed into the general population in a Brooklyn jail, where he would live until his trial began.
His devastated parents flew up from Austin to see him, friends made the pilgrimage to show their support, and Ross met his new lawyer, Joshua Dratel, a stalwart attorney who was known for defending some of the most notorious criminals on American soil, including two men who were involved with the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Ross had chosen Dratel because he saw him as a lawyer who subscribed to the philosophy that someone’s beliefs shouldn’t be a crime and that the system should offer everyone—even alleged terrorists—a fair trial.
The FBI had tried to find the bodies of the people murdered on the site, the ones DPR had paid to have killed, but no database matched the crimes. It appeared that either the Hells Angels had disposed of the bodies perfectly or, more than likely, no one had actually been killed at all. Rather, the Dread Pirate Roberts had been scammed for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The government offered Ross a plea deal of ten years to life, but he wasn’t willing to take the chance of a judge handing down the latter of those two sentences. Ross still very much believed that he could get himself out of this. He declined the offer. In response, and in frustration, the U.S. Attorney’s Office decided to throw everything it had at Ross and to make an example of him.
What Ross didn’t know at the time was that the laptop the FBI had managed to slip out of his hands had not been as secure as he hoped. Ross’s booby traps had failed, and his password (“purpleorangebeach”) had too, as the FBI team managed to find the password hidden in the computer’s RAM. The forensics team had uncovered a trove of digital evidence, including Ross’s diary entries, Silk Road financial spreadsheets, and, worst of all for Ross, some documents that Ross didn’t even know were on the machine, including millions and millions of words of chat logs among DPR and his cohorts Nob, Smedley, and good ol’ Variety Jones.
After turning down the plea deal, Ross was officially charged with seven felonies. Count one against him was narcotics trafficking, which, he was told, could result in a sentence of ten years to life. Count two was distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet, which could also result in ten years to life. Three was narcotics trafficking conspiracy; ten to life. Count four was the most terrifying, even for Ross: a charge of running a continual criminal enterprise. This was known as the “Kingpin Statute” and was reserved for the big boss of an organized criminal enterprise. While the kingpin charge carried a minimum of twenty years in jail and a maximum of life, if it was proved that the kingpin had murdered someone, the sentence could be upgraded to death. Finally there were counts five through seven, where Ross was charged with computer hacking, money laundering, and trafficking in fake IDs and false documents; if he was found guilty, these could tack another forty years onto his sentence. It was a hefty and sickening list of charges. While Dratel assured him that they were going to come up with a plan for his defense, the severity of the situation started to sink in for Ross.
Thankfully, there was some respite from all this bad news. Julia was going to fly out to New York to visit.
When they saw each other for the first time, they both wept. “I told you, Ross,” she said. “I told you.” He knew exactly what she was talking about without her actually saying the words. She then asked Ross if he would read the Lord’s Prayer with her. The scruffy boy she had met years earlier at a drum circle, now sitting in his prison uniform, said he would be happy to—he knew he needed all the help he could get.
She uncrumpled a piece of paper and began reading. “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” Ross remembered the words from his childhood in church and recited along in tandem. His voice followed a few breaths behind Julia’s. And then they came to the end of the prayer, and he said the last sentence aloud. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Afterward Julia handed Ross a couple of dollars to go to the soda machine, and she slipped the prayer in between the bills she placed in his hand. Julia, it seemed, still wanted to save Ross, even though she now knew he could no longer save her.
Chapter 68
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. ROSS WILLIAM ULBRICHT
All rise,” the clerk bellowed. “This court is now in session. The honorable Judge Katherine Forrest presiding.” Ross placed his hands on the oak table in front of him as he pushed himself upward; his legal team and two U.S. marshals rose beside and behind him in unison. He looked at the judge, an attenuated, stoic woman a few court cases away from turning fifty.
In front of Ross a group of lawyers from the U.S. Attorney’s Office stood and greeted the judge with the appropriate “your honor” as the court proceedings were set in motion. Judge Forrest was terse and to the point, cognizant of the fact that time in room 15A of the Lower Manhattan United States Courthouse was other people’s money, tax dollars at work. She announced dates for jury selection and scheduling and noted that expert witnesses would be approved, travel plans agreed upon, and some of the agents involved in the case against Ross, including Jared, Gary, and Thom, called to testify.
Judge Forrest had a tough reputation for handing out harsh sentences for drug offenders. But Ross’s legal team, headed by Joshua Dratel, stood ready for a fight.
It had been months since Ross had arrived at the prison in Brooklyn. But as autumn had become winter and the leaves fell off the trees, Ross was transferred across the bridge to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, which would serve as his new home during the trial.
MCC Prison, as it is called, was a chilling tower of concrete and steel that stood just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center and even closer to the FBI and IRS headquarters. The jail had, over time, had its share of famed residents, including John Gotti, the Gambino crime family boss, and several al Qaeda terrorists. When Ross arrived, whispers scurried through the walls that a new prominent resident had joined the ranks. A pirate.
While he waited for the trial to commence, life inside MCC became as monotonous as in its Brooklyn counterpart. Ross made friends. He taught yoga classes to some inmates, offered others help with their GEDs, and gave impromptu explanations of physics, philosophy, and libertarian theory to the guards.