CHAPTER 4 — THE FIRST BOX (B9) | Criminals Behind The Badge

On September 13, 2024, at two o'clock in the afternoon, LeRoy Nellis told Williamson County Jail he wanted protective custody. It was the same request he had made in January, fifteen minutes after first stepping into the jail.

Both times, the answer was no. The cell that followed — B9, on the third floor of Southside Second South — is the subject of this account.

The denial:

Sgt. Young looked him in the eye and said protective custody was “reserved for judges and celebrities.” He added that Nellis would be “among my peers.”

That word — peers — was the tell. The sergeant knew exactly who Nellis was. It was the first sign that Nellis was an HVT, a high-value target.

The first box:

By September, Nellis had had enough. He had been spit on and threatened. He refused to stay in open bars any longer.

He told Sgt. Young, “fuck it, I'll take anything — a closet, a broom locker, a dog cage.” That is when they slid him into B9.

Of three boxes total in Southside, this one became his classroom in hell.

The cell:

B9 sat on the third floor, buried deep in Southside Second South — the last row of runs, first box on the right. The smell hit like a wall: piss, thick and gagging, ammonia-burn piss baked into the concrete.

The first thing Nellis did was grab rags and start wiping. He already knew their mop trick from B5 — mop buckets laced with piss water.

They thought it was funny. They thought he would not notice. He notices everything.

The cell was twelve feet by fifteen. Steel-blue walls, light-blue paint.

Toilet paper plastered everywhere like a lunatic's wallpaper — stuffed in vents, stuck to walls, hanging in strips. There was a smear, too: a black streak across one wall, like someone had used a one-inch paintbrush.

An inmate in solitary does not get a paintbrush. It was staged.

The bunk was an elevated steel slab, ADA-illegal. They knew he was disabled — the white Reeboks proved it.

White shoes meant medical classification, velcro straps instead of laces. Everybody in that jail knew white shoes meant disabled. Yet they stuck him in a box where a five-foot fall off the bunk could split his skull on concrete.

The rule of the box:

The toilet worked. The sink barely had pressure — it spit water like a dying fountain, and to drink you had to catch it in a bowl. The hot tap was lukewarm.

The shower was stainless steel, a push-button plate, cleaner than most — but still a cage. Everything in that place reminded you that you were not human.

Above the desk sat a light that did not work. The overhead light never turned off.

The rule of the box: “You don't get night.” You get buzzing fluorescent daylight twenty-four hours a day.

Sometimes a faint strobe flickered through the wall. At first he thought it was a bad bulb; later, seeing the same flicker in different cells, he realized it was orchestrated.

The surveillance:

There was a visible camera above the steel slot on the door. Across the hall, the dayroom TV lined up perfectly with his cell.

Inside the vents were hidden cameras; when guards shined flashlights, the lenses glinted. Every conversation in the officer station leaked through the duct above his bunk.

He could even smell Sgt. Bullock's perfume when she was in the office. He never heard her speak, but the perfume overpowered the piss smell.

They laughed about the piss, about him scrubbing the floor. They did not realize he heard every word.

Outside each cell sat little red RFID boxes, supposedly for fifteen-minute checks. Guards scanned them with handheld readers.

But the checks were random — sometimes hours apart. The red light flashed inward.

Those were not just trackers. They recorded. Audio. Video.

The experiment:

Southside was not a jail. It was a lab.

And Nellis was the experiment. But experiments sometimes bite back.

“reserved for judges and celebrities”

What the Record Shows:

On September 13, 2024, a disabled inmate asked Williamson County Jail for protective custody and was refused. He was placed in B9, a twelve-by-fifteen-foot cell with an ADA-illegal elevated steel bunk, an overhead light that never turned off, and a sink that spit water like a dying fountain.

The cell was staged with toilet paper and a painted smear; the floor smelled of piss baked into concrete. Cameras — visible, hidden, and inside the red RFID boxes — watched and recorded.

The open question is who authorized it, and whether anyone outside the jail will act on what the record shows.