This is an end-of-year video wrap-up about my book, CHAINED BIRDS, appearing on my new YouTube channel … every video’s theme is about the high cost of truth.
For a long time, the only price I thought I’d pay was the ten years I spent writing it. I was wrong. The story—a true-crime memoir centered on my attorney-friend Scott Powell and his client, federal inmate Kevin Sanders—became so serious a liability that we wanted to burn the paper trail.
You can now watch the 40-second video from June 2024 of Scott burning the early manuscript draft of Chained Birds** that he read and approved. This was five months before my original publisher, WildBlue Press, released the book.
**Astitute readers will note that the draft’s first subtitle, Chained Birds: A Crimemoir, finally became the book’s lasting and current subtitle after I regained my book rights this summer and left two previous meh subtitles in the dust.
Burn Baby Burn
There’s something eerily poetic about Scott choosing to burn this manuscript when my initial request was that he simply destroy it. He didn’t have to carry it out to his fire pit and torch it in a Coors box with a utility lighter.
The dramatic effect is an echo of my initial involvement in the criminal case at the heart of this book. In late 2012, before I became part of Kevin’s defense team—and long before I committed to telling his true crime story—Scott warned me to burn something.
Scott had passed along to me a secret letter written by Kevin, detailing the inner workings and prison politics of the Aryan Brotherhood (AB), one of the most ruthless prison gangs in existence.
As I wrote in Chapter 8, The Journalist:
I tried to lighten the mood with a joke about his “burn the letter” business regarding his client’s ten-page narrative.
“A bit dramatic, no?” I said. “It struck me as very cloak-and-dagger … or should I say, cloak-and-shank?”
“Ha ha,” he said, unamused. “It’s no joke, Car. You don’t fuck with the Aryan Brotherhood. When you’re done with the letter, burn it.”
JESUS, I thought. OKAY.
Of course, I didn’t burn that letter, because I used it as source material for the book that took me 10 years to write. What else is a journalist supposed to do?
How Dangerous Did it Get?
The AB was, to put it mildly, not pleased that Scott’s defense strategy involved putting Kevin on the stand to testify about the gang and its secrets. And in the most irresponsible act of trial negligence, or possibly malice, the prosecutor in Kevin’s assault case made Kevin name names on the stand, despite knowing the gang code of conduct and what would likely follow.
Sure enough, because of that testimony, a Texas Aryan Brotherhood associate was sent to carry out a hit order on Kevin in a Florence, Colorado, max-security prison. You can watch the raw surveillance attack footage, with additional commentary, here.
Imperiled by Association
Three of us on Kevin’s defense team, Scott, his sage pro bono friend Jack, and I, felt imperiled by association. Adding to my personal stress, rumors had leaked that someone might be writing a true crime book about Kevin’s case. Prison gang members, via their girlfriends and wives, reached out to me with warnings, but also wanted to know when they could buy the book. It was a terrifying and bizarre chapter in my life, and one of many reasons I waffled on writing the book over that decade.
As if That Weren’t Enough
Kevin, it turned out, had entanglements with not one but two prison gangs. A powerful Hispanic gang that I refer to as the Montañistas in the book, wanted revenge on Kevin for an old infraction. When Kevin’s personal address book (a directory that contained Scott’s and my information) went missing, Kevin feared it was in their hands. Kevin told us both that our lives were in danger, and that “everyone knows” about the book I was writing.
As if I needed another reason not to tell this story.
Time, Distance, and Precautions
The risks were real, but the story survived … with some name and location changes for everyone’s protection. Why I eventually decided to write it is explained in the last chapter in a conversation I had with Scott. That conversation also reveals why the book title is CHAINED BIRDS plural.
If you want to learn more, grab a copy or listen to me chirp in your ear for 14 hours. Then drop me a message to let me know what you think. All correspondence and reviews are welcome and appreciated 😊📚
Carla Conti is a former journalist and the award-winning author of Chained Birds: A Crimemoir. Her true crime debut won multiple 2025 national book awards, including 1st Place in True Crime from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Winner in True Crime from the Indie Reader Discovery Awards, Silver in True Crime from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), Finalist in True Crime from the National Indie Excellence Awards, and a 1st Place Nellie Bly Journalism award from the Chanticleer International Book Awards. Carla is at work on her next true crime book, The Jacklighter, scheduled for release in 2026. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, who supports her true crime habit.
