Robert King Wilkerson -- Freed After 30 Years

This is the story of one of Angola Three who was released, and now spends his days making candy.

Robert King Wilkerson eases out of bed. He pulls on a black shirt, a watch cap and sandals, and shuffles into the tiny kitchen of his East Austin duplex.

The shirt covers his tattoos, most self-inscribed decades ago using pencil lead. A long dagger extends down his left forearm; a spider rests on his left hand. The tops of his fingers say "L-O-V-E" and, below that, "H-A-T-E." The initials of a long-ago girlfriend grace his right forearm.

He assembles his ingredients: butter, milk, sugar, baking soda, vanilla and salt. He pulls a pot off a high shelf.

"I was arrested in 1961 for armed robbery," he begins. "Did I do it? Nah, not that one. But I wasn't ready to pay no poetic justice. Gee whiz, I was just a young man. I'd only been out of the reformatory for a year.

"I got sentenced to 10 years," he says. "That was the first time."

He moved to Austin last year after being chased out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, and some friends here offered to help out.

From the Real Cost of Prisons