Paradise Prison: Chapter 3

[suspenseful music] The Americans who'd been arrested in Turks and Caicos knew their situation was dire, but Michael Grimm's account of Grand Turk Prison put a steely edge on that anxiety.

To make matters worse, the sentiment on the islands was not in their favor.

The judge had sentenced Michael to prison to send a message.

Americans weren't immune from the law, and future offenders could expect even worse treatment.

With all that pressure bearing down on them, Ryan Watson found ways to cope however he could.

Every morning I wake up and I'm thinking, "Somebody plucked me from my life and dropped me into some Netflix true crime docuseries." Like, this isn't...

This is, like, the most extravagant joke of all time.

I had to check in every day at the jail, so I had to run to the jail and check in, and that run to the jail had kinda been, like, my form of, like, therapy or self-torture or whatever the case may be.

I wa- like, I want...

I needed to feel something, like, burn or le- you know, like, just something.

On May 10th, 2024, about a month after Ryan was arrested, he set off on one of these runs.

I had my AirPods in.

Hadn't dawned on me that I had taken the same route every time.

At one point, I'm running on a, a sidewalk, and I don't even know how I can explain it.

It's just if you f- like, sense, like, a flash or something, like, in your periphery that just causes you to jump.

I, I was jumping to the side before I even realized, my brain processed that I was jumping to the side.

Something grabs my heel.

It spins me around.

I do a 180.

I land, you know, on my face, and, you know, skin my elbows up.

And I stand up, and I realize, I'm like, "I just got hit by a car."

Ryan wouldn't have been the first inattentive jogger to be struck by a vehicle, but he quickly realized that this may not have been an innocent mistake.

For one thing, he hadn't been crossing a street.

He'd been jogging along a sidewalk.

Which luckily was a very tall curb, 'cause if that curb was any shorter, that car would've made...