The Prison Podcast Episode 2: A Life Worth Living
December 25, 2024
In the last episode, Melissa shared the heartbreaking story of losing her father, killed by Matthew in 1993 when he was just 22 years old. Now, after 30 years of incarceration, Matthew opens up about his experience, offering a powerful example of trauma, growth, and reconciliation even in the most unimaginable circumstances.
Since his conviction, Matthew has participated in a rare victim-offender dialogue with Melissa. This process allowed them both to engage in honest communication—giving Matthew a chance to take responsibility for his actions and Melissa a space to voice her pain and anger. In this episode, Matthew reflects on how this dialogue helped him confront the consequences of his crime and grasp the profound human toll of his actions in ways he hadn’t before.
Transcription
Michael: My name is Michael, and I’m the inside Communication Director for Humans of San Quentin. The contents of this episode include strong language and graphic descriptions of violent crimes that may include sexual assault. This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Diane: Welcome to The Prison Podcast. I’m your host, Diane Kahn, Executive Director of Humans of San Quentin, and we’re grateful to have you with us today. This podcast amplifies voices too often left out of public conversations—survivors of violent crimes and those convicted of committing them. At the heart of our discussions is the transformative process of victim-offender dialogue—a facilitated meeting inside prison walls that brings together someone who has experienced harm with the person responsible for it. Through these raw and powerful exchanges, we explore accountability, healing, and the possibility of change. Each episode delves into a candid conversation with someone who has completed the intensive victim-offender dialogue program, offering deep insights into the power of vulnerability and self-reflection. The Prison Podcast pulls back the curtain on the complex relationships shaped by harm, creating a platform for healing, empathy, and understanding. Unlike traditional true crime media, this podcast shifts the focus from sensationalism to personal agency, reconciliation, and transformation. Through these raw and powerful conversations, we aim to inspire change, foster healing within communities, and cultivate a more compassionate understanding of justice.
Matthew: That’s the hardest part for me today, because it’s easy to do wrong, but it’s hard to do right.
Diane: Today I’m talking with Matthew from his prison cell in California. In the last episode, Melissa recounted the tragic loss of her father, who was killed in 1993 at a family party on the eve of his sister’s wedding. The man who has been in prison since he was 22 years old at the time of the murder is Matthew. He was convicted and has served 30 years of his sentence. You might be able to recognize the sound of talking through a payphone on a wall, so the quality is not what you’d expect. You will often hear the abrupt interruptions of an automated voice telling us that we’re being recorded by the prison. That sounds like this:
Prison Recorded Voice: You have a prepaid call from Matthew Padilla. An inmate at the California Correctional Institution.
Diane: Welcome to the reality of communicating with people who are incarcerated. Here’s Matthew.
Matthew: So I was basically the youngest of ten boys because we all ran around together. All my cousins wrestled, all of my older brothers except for one boxed. So when I was a kid, they made me fight my brother, they made me fight other kids. I felt like an animal, basically. Being treated like a kid, treated like an animal. Made to fight. And they thought it was funny; it was joking. It was the ’70s. So I grew up in violence. As I got older, I tried to remove myself from it. Both my parents were alcoholics. They were abusive to each other and their kids. I was abused physically, emotionally, mentally, everything—any kind of abuse you could think of, even sexually abused as a kid. I always protected my mom from the abuse of my father. I fought my father at the age of twelve. I always stayed in the house where it was toxic, both kinds of wrong politics and abuse. But I had a brother who was paralyzed in that house, so I stayed there to make sure nothing happened to him or my mom. When my brother or my mom got into arguments, the guy would start yelling and screaming and fighting. He would leave. He would get away, and I stayed. I think the way my life was going—the violence—I tried to remove myself from it.
Diane: Matthew landed a job working construction on an underground pipeline in an effort to keep himself out of trouble. But he admits he ended up spending his paychecks on alcohol and drugs.
Matthew: At that age, I was making around 60 grand a year, which was way too much for someone like me. I spent it all on alcohol, drugs, women, and partying with friends—that was my lifestyle. During that time, I racked up 40 lives because of my drinking. Eventually, I did a year in county jail. When I got out, my boss wouldn’t hire me back, so it took a while for me to get my job back. When I finally did, I was living with my brother and my best friend, Robert—who, ironically, was my victim’s brother-in-law.
Diane: Just to clarify, Matthew served his time and faced difficulty getting his job back after being released from county jail. He ended up living with his brother and a guy named Robert, who happens to be Melissa’s uncle. That’s how Matthew eventually met Melissa’s father.
Matthew: So, the night of the incident was in ’93. We were having a party for my roommate, Robert Menier, at his brother Mike’s house. We had cake, beer, and a bunch of mixed drinks, and everyone was drinking heavily. I ended up leaving to get some methamphetamines with a friend. But when I came back, I saw that a fight was starting in the backyard. It was Robert Burnett—his brother—who had started trouble with one of my friends. When I went into the backyard, Robert said to me, “Matthew, do you see that guy over there? He’s been messing with me all night, and he has a knife.” I looked across the yard and saw the guy, along with his sister, standing there. I can’t remember the girl’s name, but they were both in the backyard. Robert pointed to the guy and said, “He has a knife.” As I looked over, I noticed that they were looking at me, and they said something like, “That’s not him…” They’re pointing at my friend and me. So, I realized they were throwing nothing at my friend because they believed he was me. So I told them, “See, I’ll go put that away; you’re acting stupid, I’ll take care of it.” So the next thing you know, a big fight breaks out where I beat the guy up. I walk away and go into the kitchen and tell my brother, “Hey, there’s three of these guys out there that are starting a fight.” My brother comes to the back door with me, his roommate Robert Meniere, and he talks to his in-laws. He says, “Hey, let’s fight one-on-one, your little brother and my little brother.” That’s what my brother tells the victim: “Let’s fight one-on-one, and your little brother, my little brother, fight one-on-one and end it.” One pulled out a bat, one pulled out a knife, and then just a big fight broke out. I ended up stabbing a brother who was Melissa’s dad. That night I went to jail, and I got a guilty commuter because it’s what I did. I’ve been in prison for 30 years now. I was 22 years old; I had just got my job back full-time that night, that day, and my whole life just changed that night.
Diane: And how were you feeling when you were arrested that night?
Matthew: Well, I was very intoxicated. I could not remember all the events of that night. It took me probably a year to just remember everything that happened that night. But when I woke up in the county jail, it was like my life was over.
Diane: Matthew bounced around to different prisons, acting out violently as his familial support system in the free world started to crumble.
Matthew: My life was heading in the wrong direction. By the time I was in Pelican Bay in 1997, I had an assault on staff and two assaults with deadly weapons on my record. My dad had passed away in 1995, and I was acting out violently. One of my brother’s friends worked at Pelican Bay as a correctional officer, and he kept telling me, “Hey, Matthew, you need to talk to me,” while pointing at his notepad. I kept refusing, but he kept saying it every time he saw me. So, I decided to write to my brother in New York, asking about Chris and why he kept telling me I needed to talk to him. My brother wrote me back and said, “Matthew, you need to sit down with Chris. He’s not playing with you. It’s serious.” I wrote to Chris, and he took me to his office. He opened up a folder and showed me some documents, saying, “Look, these guys want me dead.” I was shocked. He told me, “I can’t sit back and watch you die in here. Your brother was my friend, and I can’t let this happen to you.” He told me to write a history of everything I had been involved in, and he promised to get me out of the active prison and into another one. That’s when I was transferred to Mill Creek in 2001, where I stayed until 2005. But I was still fighting, still drinking, still doing drugs. Then, in 2010, my mother got sick. She told me she was dying and wanted me to change my ways. She visited me and said, “What do I have to do to get you to stay out of trouble?” I told her it was hard because I was so used to fighting and living that way. She said, “Well, you can’t do this for your mother?” And that really hit me. I thought, “Wow, that’s what I need to do.” So, I promised her I would quit all the things I had been doing and send her $100 a month as a commitment to change.
Diane: Since 2010, Matthew has mostly stayed out of trouble. However, after his mother passed away, he struggled to keep himself together mentally. The loss hit him hard, and it was difficult for him to cope with the emotional toll, even though he had committed to turning his life around.
Matthew: When my mother died, it felt like I lost everyone in my life—everyone I cared about. I didn’t have anyone to talk to anymore, no one I was close to, no one to confide in. Nobody would come to see me. A lot of us become defensive when it comes to affection because we don’t get that kind of connection in here. We don’t even get something as simple as a handshake or any kind of human touch. It’s just… nothing.
Diane: You can hear the pain and loneliness in Matthew’s voice over the phone. He had just lost the last pillar of a support structure and had no one to turn to. Now, Matthew was searching for purpose.
Matthew: But I had to keep my mind on, it was on Melissa, my victim’s daughter. They were reaching out to me, giving me a reason to live.
Diane: Melissa reaching out to you gives you a reason to live!
Matthew: It’s what I did to her, what I took from her—her father. To know that I was the one who did that, and to think back to when she was a child, when she was just a little girl, maybe three or four years old—I didn’t know her then. I remember seeing her, but I didn’t really know her. Still, I remember that little girl, and every time I thought about her, I thought about that baby. How could I do that to her? How could I do something so drastic, so life-altering? And how would she feel about it? I went before every board, trying to make sense of it all. I had lost everything by that point. But when we met in November of 2022, my whole life changed.
Diane: Matthew and Melissa met in November of 2022, but there was a bit of a logistical mix-up about who was going where and who was entering the room first. As Matthew waited to enter, he could hear Melissa asking if the guards would let him go in first. What she didn’t know was that Matthew had just asked the guards to let her go in first, wanting to make her feel more comfortable. It was a small gesture, but it meant a lot to him—to do whatever he could to ease her nerves at that moment.
Matthew: Well, I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable. So I told them, “Hey, can you sit me in this other room?” Because when she comes in, I want her to be comfortable. Then they’d come in, you know, not see me in cuffs and stuff. So they said, “Well, we can’t put you in this conference room.” And I go, “Well, then put me in that closet over there.” So I told them, “Two COs took me in the closet, a mop closet.” So I’m sitting in the mop closet. But when she comes in, she’s telling the COs, “No, I asked you to let him go in first because I don’t want him to be uncomfortable.” So we’re both trying to make each other comfortable. So it’s kind of cool to hear that.
Diane: Was this actually the first time you talked to her or did you talk to her previously?
Matthew: This was the first time I ever met her.
Diane: Have you ever talked to her on the phone?
Matthew: I hadn’t talked to her on the phone before that. But later on, some of the victim’s family members in jail came to meet with me. They were my mediators. They met with me five times and explained how the process was going to go. They really helped us navigate everything. When we finally met that day, I was sitting in the room first. When she walked in, I just got up, and we hugged each other. We both cried together. That moment was huge for me personally, and I think it was just as significant for her, too.
Diane: Matthew struggled deeply with the pain he felt as he listened to the fallout of his actions and the devastating impact it had on Melissa and her family.
Matthew: But to hear all that she had gone through— how her mother turned to alcohol and drugs after what I did and how she was treated as a child and the things that she went through, the anger issues she had growing up— just to hear the impact that my actions had on her life. It moved me. It was very emotional because I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that part, the abuse that my actions had upon her. It was very moving. It gave me a new perspective on my life and the way I was living my life. And from that day forward, I have to live a life of events, not only for myself. I forgive them. The hardest thing was when she said, “I forgive you, but I want you to forgive yourself.” I told her, “I can’t forgive myself.” It was just so hard because every time I went to the board, I would deny myself—three years, five years, sometimes I wouldn’t even go to the board at all. It felt like I didn’t deserve to move forward or to be given a chance.
Diane: And explain that to people who don’t understand how you can deny yourself parole.
Matthew: When you go to the board, you have your hearing, and the commissioner can deny you anywhere from three to 15 years. But you also have the option to stipulate, saying, “I’ll stipulate for three years,” or “I’ll stipulate for five years.” Essentially, you’re choosing to delay your own hearing. You can go in and say, “I’m not ready today. I don’t want to have my hearing.” So you deny yourself for three or five years. I did that for 11 years—three-year denials, five-year denials. It was my way of avoiding facing the reality that I wasn’t ready to move forward.
Diane: Oh my gosh, I’ve never heard anybody doing that before.
Matthew: It was just so hard because I couldn’t forgive myself. I hated myself for what I did. This wasn’t just some stranger—I knew these people. This was my best friend’s sister’s husband who died. My actions led to another man’s death, and I had to live with that. So when she came to see me, I told her, “I can’t forgive myself. I can’t admit it. It’s hard.” But today, I do forgive myself. I’m trying to move on, trying to move forward, and trying to be a better version of myself. I recognize what I did in my past, but I never want to be that person again. That’s the hardest part for me now—because it’s easy to do wrong, but it’s hard to do right. I don’t know if you can understand that, but for me, it was always easier to get in trouble than it was to do the right thing. Melissa’s life after my crime was a piece of the puzzle I could only imagine. Hearing the concrete ways her life had changed because of my actions really hit me hard. It made me want to share my experiences in the victim-offender dialogue with other men in prison. People look at me today and say, ‘Matthew, tell me your story,’ and I do. And they’re like, ‘Wow.’ We cry. Grown men in prison, we cry. People think it doesn’t happen, but it happens here all the time. When I go to my groups, I share my story, and we cry. We’re emotional. It’s a real, raw experience.
Diane: Reflecting on the day he met Melissa, Matthew never anticipated forming such a deep emotional bond with her by the time she had to leave.
Matthew: Then she wanted to hear my story—how I ended up here, how I became who I became. So I shared my entire life with her, everything that led me to this point. A few days after, when we were there together, we cried. We both shared that moment. I’ll tell you something—after our eight-hour meeting, when everyone was about to leave, she stopped and looked at everyone and said, “I feel like we’re leaving somebody behind.” She told my friend Luke, and she said to him, “Matthew, this is amazing that she said that.” It was one of those moments that really stuck with me.
Diane: Ever since that day in November of 2022, their conversation has become an ongoing dialogue.
Matthew: I share everything with her. I write to her and keep her updated on all the progress I make in person. In 2018, I took a three-year denial, and she wrote to me, telling me, “I don’t want you taking denials anymore. I want you to go with your board.” Her words really pushed me to take responsibility and move forward.
Diane: Thanks in large part to Melissa, Matthew now understands that he has control over his life and the person he chooses to become. Through their conversations and the victim-offender dialogue, he’s learned that while he can’t change his past, he can decide who he wants to be moving forward.
Matthew: I realized that what I need to do is work on myself and change the person I am today, compared to the person I was then. And I’ve got support for that—my friends, Tammy, my family, and even my baby. She visits me, she goes to see Melissa, and she goes to see my brothers. I don’t know when all of this will end, but I know what it does for me—it helps me grow, and it pushes me to help others. I want to be part of the solution, to help change people’s lives. And I truly believe that Melissa and I can do that together. I want us both to tell our stories. She’s been to San Quentin, and she shared her experiences with me about what it’s like there. She’s even talked to people in the prison, and she’s involved with the GRIP program. She’s helping people today, and she just wants me to get out so we can share our story together. I know it’ll be impactful.
Diane: Matthew spends his time helping other incarcerated men review their cases and practice speaking in court.
Matthew: We both get nervous when we go to board hearings—it’s not easy for either of us to articulate everything. We’ve lived this life surrounded by violence, where talking about feelings and experiences wasn’t something we did. But I told him, we have to get comfortable speaking. We have to push ourselves to do this. So, he and I are going to apply for the OMCP to become mentors. We want to start telling our stories and helping others inside the prison. It’s the best we can do—use our experiences to give back and make a difference.
Diane: As we did in Melissa’s episode, we’ll let Matthew share a brief anecdote about the impact his experience with the victim-offender dialogue had on those around him, highlighting how these conversations foster healing and understanding within the community.
Matthew: I’m 52 years old now, and I’ve been incarcerated since I was 22. I just wanted to share something with you. We had what’s called Community Day, where counselors from all the yards, along with the free staff, come onto the yard and sit with the inmates. So, I stood up and told my story about me and Melissa—it was really emotional. One of the counselors started crying, and another counselor had to console her. A week later, we had another Community Day, and more counselors came. They asked me if I’d tell my story again, and I agreed. Melissa’s story touched everyone, and once again, people were crying. After that meeting, the counselor who had cried the week before came up to me. She said, “I just want you to know that my brother was a victim of gun violence, and hearing your story has been moving. I’m in the process of forgiving the person who killed him.” That was incredibly impactful for me—seeing how stories of forgiveness and healing can affect others.
Prison Recorded Voice: You have 60 seconds remaining.
Diane: Thank you, Matthew, for sharing your vulnerability with us. It serves as a powerful reminder that even in the most difficult circumstances, our voices can reach far beyond our immediate surroundings, touching lives in ways we may not expect. The stories we hold within us have the power to ignite change, heal wounds, and bring us closer to understanding each other. Next episode, we’re joined by Jane, who was the victim of a violent crime in the back of her SUV. If you or someone you know is interested in participating in a victim-offender dialogue, reach out to your local department of corrections. If these services aren’t available, consider advocating for them through your local representatives. Lastly, if you’re enjoying the podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform and share with those who might find it meaningful. We’ll see you next week, meanwhile, behind yourself.
