This sixty-eight-year-old white man in a leather vest held my mixed-race newborn against the glass while I sobbed and begged God to let me hold her just once. My name is Marcus Williams and I’m serving eight years for armed robbery. I was twenty-three when I got sentenced. Twenty-four when my wife Ellie died thirty-six hours after giving birth to our daughter Destiny. And twenty-four when a stranger named Thomas Crawford became the only reason my baby didn’t end up in foster care. I made terrible choices. I know that. I take full responsibility. I robbed a convenience store at gunpoint because I owed money to the wrong people. Nobody got hurt physically, but I terrorized that clerk. I see his face in my nightmares. I deserve to be here. But my daughter doesn’t deserve to grow up without both parents. And my wife didn’t deserve to die alone in a hospital room while I sat in a cell sixty miles away, not even allowed to say goodbye. Ellie was eight months pregnant when I got arrested. She was in the courtroom when I got sentenced. She collapsed right there when the judge said eight years. The stress sent her into early labor. They rushed her to the hospital. The prison wouldn’t let me go. I found out she died from my court-appointed attorney. He called the prison chaplain who came to my cell. “Mr. Williams, I’m sorry to inform you that your wife passed away due to complications from childbirth. Your daughter survived.” That was it. Sixteen words that destroyed my entire world. I wasn’t there when Ellie took her last breath. Wasn’t there when my daughter took her first. I was sitting in a concrete box because I’d made the worst decision of my life. I had no family. Grew up in foster care myself. Ellie was all I had. Her family disowned her when she married me. They wanted nothing to do with a Black man who’d gotten their white daughter pregnant. When Ellie died, Child Protective Services took Destiny. She was three days old and already in the system. Just like I’d been. The cycle repeating itself. I called every day begging for information. Where was my daughter? Who had her? Was she safe? Nobody would tell me anything. I was just a convict. Just a criminal. My parental rights were “under review.” Two weeks after Ellie died, I got a visitor. I shuffled into the visitation room expecting my attorney. Instead, I found an old white man with a long gray beard and a leather vest covered in patches. He was holding my daughter. I froze. My legs stopped working. My heart stopped beating. “Marcus Williams?” the man asked. His voice was gruff but gentle. I couldn’t speak. Could only stare at the tiny bundle in his arms. At the face I’d only seen in one photograph the attorney had brought me. “My name is Thomas Crawford. I was with your wife when she died.” I found my voice. “What? How? Who are you?” Thomas sat down on the other side of the glass. He positioned Destiny so I could see her face through the barrier. She was sleeping. So small. So perfect. “I’m your daughter’s real father….
This biker brought my baby to prison every week for 3 years after my wife died and I had no one left to raise her
