The American Captive Inside Venezuela's Deadliest Prison

About this episode

James Luckey-Lange shares his harrowing experience of being detained in one of Venezuela's deadliest prisons.

Join The Hidden Third Patreon today! patreon.com/thehiddenthird Watch on Spotify. Spotify subscribers get fewer ads on my video. Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at http://square.com/go/hiddenthird! #squarepod James Luckey-Lange had one country left to visit in the continental Americas: Venezuela. He'd survived Haiti, Nicaragua, a husky he buried in Patagonia, and the loss of both his parents — including his mother, the late Q Lazzarus, the singer behind "Goodbye Horses" from The Silence of the Lambs. He crossed into Venezuela on the back of a motorcycle taxi from Brazil on December 7th. He was detained the next day. What followed was more than a month of beatings, starvation, a sham trial, and solitary confinement in Rodeo I — one of the most notorious prisons in the world — where he scraped the alphabet onto a wall to teach his cellmate to read, and carved the names of fellow prisoners into a bar of soap he smuggled out in his underwear. His release came only after the U.S. military captured Maduro — news he learned six days late, through prison whispers and an unexpected serving of chocolate cake. In this episode of The Hidden Third, Mariana van Zeller sits…

People in this episode

Host: Mariana van Zeller

Guest: James Luckey-Lange

Topics covered

• prison experience
• Venezuela
• survival story
• true crime
• personal narrative

Keywords

• Venezuela
• prison
• James Luckey-Lange
• Mariana van Zeller
• true crime
• survival
• detention
• U.S. military
• Maduro

Sponsors

Square

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Goodbye Horses, The Silence of the Lambs

Places: Venezuela, Brazil, Rodeo I

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