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Photo: Bob Shell

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Bob Shell

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……….Do you know the work of Austrian artist Egon Schiele? I’ve been a great fan of his work since I first discovered it in the 1960′s. On a trip to Austria in the late 90′s I was finally able to see some of his originals at a little museum in Linz. I feel that I have a lot in common with Schiele because he was arrested for “making improper drawings” and put in prison, and much of his work was destroyed. He was still a relatively young man when he died in the worldwide influenza epidemic in 1918. The puritanistic Austrian burgers of the day did not understand or appreciate his art. I’m sure he was subjected to the same kinds of taunts and insults as I was in court before a jury with no appreciation or understanding for my work.

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I guess this experience has radicalize me, but after seeing so much suffering around me for five years I have reached the conclusion that no human being has the right to do this to another human being. It is simply wrong. And a very good demonstration of the old axiom that two wrongs do not make a right.

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How can it be right to uproot me, a man who has never intentionally hurt anyone in my life, and separate me from everything that gives meaning to my life? How can any political system justify this? How can any system hope to survive that mistreats its citizens, and ignores its own rules an laws? I don’t have any answers.

Copyright 2012
To Be Continued……….
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 32-1/2 year sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia for involuntary manslaughter for the death of one of his models, Marion Franklin. At age 65, he has served 4 years and 10 months at the time of this posting. His mandatory release date in 2035. He is currently working on his appeal.
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Editor’s Note: To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click the green icon. To learn more about the case log on to www.BobShellTruth.com.

Photo: Bob Shell

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Bob Shell

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……….Photography is just another aspect of art, whose goal was always capturing the present, this fleeting instant, and holding it on canvas or paper, or any other medium. A painter captures an instant, an instant that will never be again, and used his mind as the fixative to hold it until it can be captured. Photography changed all that by turning it into a mechanical and chemical process, but still with the intent of grabbing and holding an instant of time, the present when the shutter is clicked. That’s what got under my skin and made me turn from drawing, painting and sculpture to photography. Initially I was just interested in capturing and fixing instants of life around me, but it was not long before I was creating artificial moments for my camera to capture.

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I wanted to control the whole process, beginning to end. I think that’s when I really became a photographer, and not just a technician. My early work was technically proficient but lacking in imagination, and it was only in the last 20 years or so of my career that I began to finally achieve something like I’d wanted to create all along. I feel like I was at the peak of my artistic creativity when it all came down on my head. I only hope that I can get back into the groove of it all once this nightmare is over. In many ways it will be like starting all over from the beginning. I know my computer skills have lapsed after five years with no computer access. I’ll have a lot of catching up to do.

Copyright 2012
To Be Continued……….
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 32-1/2 year sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia for involuntary manslaughter for the death of one of his models, Marion Franklin. At age 65, he has served 4 years and 10 months at the time of this posting. His mandatory release date in 2035. He is currently working on his appeal.
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Editor’s Note: To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click the green icon. To learn more about the case log on to www.BobShellTruth.com.

Photo: Bob Shell

Posted on August 4, 2012 by Bob Shell

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THE ALLMAN BROTHERS CONNECTION

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……….Many people who attended my presentations and workshops asked me why it was that so many of my favorite models came from the mountains of western North Carolina, when I lived in Virginia. The answer to that question is my old friend Johnny Meeks. Johnny was a very interesting character. Originally he set out to be an artist and attended the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida. While in Sarasota he ran into three brothers who were going to start a rock band, three brothers named Allman. Johnny played the drums, so he signed on with the brothers and their friends and became the original drummer for the Allman Brothers Band. When the rock and roll lifestyle became a bit much for him he moved to Blowing Rock, NC, and went into the photography business.

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I met Johnny when he called me up one day and asked for some photography advice, and we became friends. He was shooting layouts for several men’s magazines and when he found a model he particularly liked he often would send her up to me for a test shoot. Over the 30+ years that I knew Johnny, he sent me dozens of models, and some of them became favorites of mine.

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It was Johnny who introduced me to Marion Franklin in early 2002. he felt she had more potential than most of the other models he found, and he always somewhat blamed himself for my troubles after Marion died and the cops needed someone to hold responsible. Johnny came to my trial and testified for me a week after going down to Sarasota for a band reunion. A couple of months after my trial Johnny’s house caught fire in the night and he didn’t make it out.

Copyright 2012
To Be Continued……….
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 32-1/2 year sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia for involuntary manslaughter for the death of one of his models, Marion Franklin. At age 65, he has served 4 years and 10 months at the time of this posting. His mandatory release date in 2035. He is currently working on his appeal.
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Editor’s Note: To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click the green icon. To learn more about the case log on to www.BobShellTruth.com.

Photo: Bob Shell

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Bob Shell

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HATE CRIME

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……….I believe that my prosecution was a hate crime. Radford, Virginia, for all its pretentions, is a small town. Because it is technically an independent city, it is not part of the surrounding counties, and has its own police force, sheriff, courts, prosecutor, etc. I’ve lived there since 1991 and had my photography studio there since 1981, right in downtown, for its last ten year right on Main Street, two blocks from the police department. I was fairly low profile because my clients were national and international, not local, but hardly invisible since regional newspapers and TV had done stories about me.

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In 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Lawrence v. Texas, that private sexual activity of any sort between consenting adults was none of the government’s business, and was a constitutionally protected right. The whole case against me was based on the theory that Marion could not possibly have been a consenting participant in our sexual activities. But there was absolutely no evidence of this, and even their head detective stated under oath that he thought she was not only a willing, but an enthusiastic, participant.

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Simply put, Marion needed to be restrained to achieve a good orgasm and liked anal intercourse. Due to her early experiences she had trouble reaching orgasm unless she was, in her words, “ravished”. This bothered me at first and I had a hard time going along with her, but she showed up one time with a bunch of Polaroids taken by an old boyfriend that showed her tied up with rope, and she convinced me to try it. She also told me that her last boyfriend before me had also tied her up for sex, but complained that he tied her too tight. My first ventures into bondage photography were at her instigation, but I realized that we seemed to have a talent for it. Later when we worked with other models she was often the rigger.

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To put things in simple terms – we were different, and at least since the Salem witch trials in 1692, small town America does not tolerate those who are different. My trial was a modern-day witch trial, with predictable results. Had I been gay, I would have support from many organizations and groups, but I’m straight and heterosexual from birth. Throughout my career, though, I’ve been known for tolerance, hiring openly gay writers for the magazines I ran, even against opposition.

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In the U.S.A, even in the 21st Century, it’s still dangerous to be different. The great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that in his long experience he had not found juries to be much interested in truth, that they were farm more interested in upholding community standards. My case proves this point.

Copyright 2012
To Be Continued……….
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 32-1/2 year sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia for involuntary manslaughter for the death of one of his models, Marion Franklin. At age 65, he has served 4 years and 10 months at the time of this posting. His mandatory release date in 2035. He is currently working on his appeal.
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Editor’s Note: To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click the green icon. To learn more about the case log on to www.BobShellTruth.com.

Photo: Bob Shell

Posted on July 16, 2012

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……….One thing people ask me is why photography is so important to me. The answer is that it is not photography, per se, but visual creativity. I didn’t start out to be a photographer, even though I learned the mechanics and technical aspects at a young age. I thought I’d be like my father, doing something for a living and having photography/cinematography as a hobby. My dad was a TV news reporter, anchorman for the local NBC news in Roanoke, Virginia. But he always had cameras around, still and cinema. And he had a darkroom in our basement which housed an old Federal enlarger and developing trays. I was shooting with his cameras by my early teens. He had Exakta and Leica still cameras and Bell & Howell spring-wound 16mm cine cameras, as well as a very nice Bolex at one time. I learned to use them all.

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I’ve always been very interested in time. What it is now, how it works. The flow from future to present to past. What physicists call causality has never made sense to me. Causality is the proposition that cause must precede effect in time. That never made sense to me. Maybe it’s genetic from my Native American ancestry. One of my great grandmothers was 100% Cherokee, a shaman, what they used to call a “yard doctor”. Anyway, I’ve always felt that the past is just as fluid, as mutable, as the future. Neither is fixed, and it is only the instant of present that is real and fixed.

Copyright 2012
To Be Continued……….
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 32-1/2 year sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia for involuntary manslaughter for the death of one of his models, Marion Franklin. At age 65, he has served 4 years and 10 months at the time of this posting. His mandatory release date in 2035. He is currently working on his appeal.
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Editor’s Note: To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click the green icon. To learn more about the case log on to www.BobShellTruth.com.

Photos: Bob Shell

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Bob Shell

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………..If you’ll look at page 48 of the July/August issue of Playboy magazine you’ll see part of a letter I wrote to them about the idiocy of the US’s current policy on drugs. The original letter, of course, was longer, but they used one of the more important paragraphs. I’m sorry they couldn’t use the whole letter, but from being in the magazine business I fully understand space limitations. My point was that it makes no sense to lock someone up for twenty years at massive expense to the governments for simple possession of two pills. Ten years per OxyContin pill is ridiculous overkill, and an unsustainable burden to the taxpayers.

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Marion

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It’s time for us to come to our senses and realize that the “war on drugs” was lost a long time ago, and no matter how many people we lock up it’s not going to change that simple fact. It’s time to begin to see this as a medical and social problem, not a criminal problem. Locking up nonviolent drug abusers with violent hardened criminals, as the current system is doing, is just creating schools for crime where impressionable, mostly young, people are immersed in the lifestyle and philosophy of professional criminals. No wonder so many come back to prison after release, when they receive no treatment for the underlying problem – the sheer hopelessness of their lives.

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Please post the above in my Letters From Prison. I’ve become very passionate about this problem, even though it doesn’t directly impact me. No one has ever accused me of being a drug user.

Copyright 2012

To Be Continued……….

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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia for involuntary manslaughter for the death of one of his models, Marion Franklin. He is currently working on his appeal.
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Editor’s Note: To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click the green icon. To learn more about the case log on to www.BobShellTruth.com.

Anna

Photo: Bob Shell – Copyright 2012

Posted on June 21, 2012 by Bob Shell

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……….. I know that my convictions will be overturned – eventually. Too many constitutional rights were violated, too many laws broken.
I just saw a newspaper article saying that more than 2,000 wrongly-convicted people have had their convictions overturned. I believe people are becoming aware of this problem from all the media coverage. It’s rare for a week to go by without some new report about someone who has been freed after a wrongful conviction. It’s a major problem. And it is in all states of the U.S.A. Senator Jim Webb has been drawing attention to the problem. He point out that the U.S.A. has about 5% of the world’s population, but about 25% of the world’s incarcerated people.

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Anyone with a brain can see that something is very wrong. It’s far too easy to convict an innocent person in America today. A big part of the problem is that prosecutors have almost no liability, and, even if it is proved that they violated ethics and laws to get a conviction they are immune from most legal action. So there is no real incentive for them to clean up their acts. They just go on puttingd innocent people behind bars and getting re-elected by a populace with a false sense of safety. With our record of incarceration in the U.S.A, this should be the safest country in the world. That it is not is a sound indictment of a system that is badly broken, and does not do what it was designed to do; protect the public from crime.

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I’ll climb down from my soapbox now.

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To Be Continued………
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia for involuntary manslaughter for the death of one of his models, Marion Franklin. He is currently working on his appeal.
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Editor’s Note: To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click the green icon. To learn more about the case log on to www.BobShellTruth.com.

Photo: Bob Shell

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Bob Shell

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………..Did you know that the USA passed an important landmark recently? We now have more than six million people in prison. That’s more people than were imprisoned by Stalin during the old Soviet Union’s gulag. Somehow we have to stop this insanity.

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Senator Jim Webb tried to pass a law to establish a commission to investigate the USA’s criminal justice system and recommend reforms, but when it came to the floor for vote it was filibustered and died. And this was just a proposal to study the problem. Recommendations of the commission would have been non-binding. Even that was too much for our “law and order” Congress. I guess that until the brownshirts start knocking down their doors most people will be complacent about this. I hope everyone I write to realizes that if it could happen to me, it could happen to them.

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I just heard recently from one of the models I worked with on the bondage book. She got to wondering what ever happened to me and did a Google search on my name and found the address of the prison. I last photographed her in 2003/4. She’s now a professor of English at a college in Michigan! I told her to check out TWS. When I write to her again I’ll ask her if she still has any of the outtakes from our shoots that I emailed her at the time. I’ll write to the other models I am still in touch with and see if they have any photos TWS can publish.

To Be Continued……….

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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia for involuntary manslaughter for the death of one of his models, Marion Franklin. He is currently working on his appeal.
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Editor’s Note: To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click the green icon. To learn more about the case log on to www.BobShellTruth.com.

Photo: Bob Shell

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Bob Shell

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……….Nothing new to report on my case. But I really don’t expect to get a ruling from the court until around the middle of the year. Courts move at their own speed, and the general rule seems to be the longer the better, because that means they are actually considering everything. My case generated a massive amount of paperwork, and the court must go through all of it to consider my claims.

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I got a letter the other day from one of the models who worked with me on the bondage book back in 2003-04. She said she got to wondering about what had happened to me and did a Google search and found out where I am. Like every model I ever worked with, she knows that I am not guilty. I told her about TWS and suggested that she post here about what it was like to work with me, so maybe she will.

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One lawyer I know made the point that the cops and prosecution had from June 2003 until my trial in August of 2007 to search for any model I worked with who would say anything negative about me. They couldn’t find anyone. If I really had been the serial molestor they portrayed me as being, they ought to have been able to find at least one of my earlier victims, but they found no one. That should have meant something to the jury. I don’t think they really thought things through and simply voted with a knee-jerk reaction.

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I also don’t think the jury understood how sentencing works. Not one of the sentences they gave me was very long, and I believe they assumed that all of them would run concurrently. Indeed, running sentences concurrently is the norm. But in Virginia the judge makes that decision, not the jury, and the jury can’t even be told that they have the option to recommend concurrent sentences. My judge ignored the VA sentencing guidelines and ran my sentences consecutively. The guidelines called for 1 1/2 to 3 years. But the Virginia guidelines are merely recommendations, they carry no force, and judges routinely ignore them. I don’t know why they even bother to have guidelines.

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If the jury in a state of Virginia case asks the judge if sentences will be run concurrently or consecutively, the judge will tell them that it is none of their concern! The jury is not allowed to know!! But the law requires that jurors be fully informed prior to their deliberations. None of this makes any sense, since a jury can intend a light sentence and a judge can arbitrarily convert it into a very long sentence. The more research I do on this, the less sense it makes.

About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia for involuntary manslaughter for the death of one of his models, Marion Franklin. He is currently working on his appeal.
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Editor’s Note: To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click the green icon. To learn more about the case log on to www.BobShellTruth.com.