Sid: My guest by way of telephone is Pastor Ricky Sinclair Pastor of Miracle Place Church in Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Unbelievable he just started out with the good life; a little alcohol; a little marijuana it won’t hurt anyone and he went as low as a human can go. He was facing life in prison and he escaped from the jail when they were booking him and he was in the woods for 56 days. When you were in the woods running from the police what did you eat; what did you drink?
Ricky: Oh my Sid listen I was in the woods for 56 days eating raw Armadillo. Look I’m talking Dillon on the half shell. (Laughing)
Sid: I haven’t seen that in a restaurant lately. (Laughing)
Ricky: No you see oysters on the half shell (Laughing) I call it Dillon on the half shell; literally and it’s the reality of drugs Sid. You know for our listening audience today I really want them to understand the real reality of drugs. It seems like it’s a party; it seems like it’s fun; it seems like it feels good but in the end it’s like a snake; it biteth like a serpent. At the end you got to pay the piper so ever you sow you also reap. And so here I am in the woods eating raw Armadillo. Now what you do is and I’ll give a little survivor course in case there are some folk that are listening to us today and they say that they want to have a career in drugs. And I want to tell them the real reality; I give them a little survivor course in case they may have to escape because they got busted because they’re in trouble by the law. And here they are running in the woods; and what you do is that you go back into survival mode; you eat whatever is in the woods. You don’t have any kind of knife or any kind of match.
Sid: What did you do for water?
Ricky: I’ll tell you Sid, I laid 4 days and 4 nights 25 feet from the Angola guard line and after 4 days my tongue was welded to my mouth. There’s one thing that you cannot go without and that is water. So after 4 days I was literally dying; I was starting to hallucinate really bad and so what I did was I got out of the spot that I was laying in and went deep into the woods.
Sid: Now why were you deep in the woods; why didn’t you just come on out and…
Ricky: There’s standards all around me; I’m in a 4 mile 4 mile square block and there’s standards, chase team standards every 50 yards around the blacktop road all around the woods that I was in.
Sid: You’re just a 22 year old kid doing drugs; what are they after you like this for?
Ricky: Twenty-two years old busted in in 92 distribution of cocaine, marijuana and Diazepam, which is Valium; 1986 distribution of marijuana. Running from those charges in New Orleans busted again with intent to distribute 14 pounds of marijuana and an ounce of Ecstasy. So let me just tell you Sid now a days in your schools throughout the world every person in that school has got to say yes or no to marijuana; it’s that prevalent it’s everywhere. So yeah I’m 22 years old caught up in the drug scene but many many people in our world today are facing the same kind of peer pressure and the same kind of temptations because of drugs; this is what is in our world. This is what is in our schools. So yes I’m 22 years old and I’m caught up with a terrible habit. Caught up in the bondage of addiction; of drugs…
Sid: So you’re surrounded your stuck in the woods for 56 days trying to survive? What are you drinking you got to have something.
Ricky: I am drinking water out of the creek in a little whole that’s got mosquito lavas; I’m running from the chase team.
Sid: So these things you’re going to swallow and they’re going to grow inside of you?
Ricky: Down the hatch; I’ll never forget my tongue was like welded to my mouth after 4 days of laying there. Walking up the creek backwards because I didn’t want my… if they did find my tracks I wanted them to think I was going in another direction. Came to a little water whole in the creek and there’s a mosquito lavas that’s in there. And what I’m thinking is if I drink this water out of the little whole in the creek and mosquito lavas are going down my throat I’m thinking that at least this is some extra protein. And you know what that’s the kind of sick thinking that you think. You know what when you’re desperate you’ll do desperate…
Sid: And so you were catching animals; killing them and eating them raw you didn’t have any knives even did you?
Ricky: Here’s what I ate Sid and this is my knife; I found the top of a can like a soup or a cat food can top where it’s open with a can opener. And that became what I called my knife. And what I do is I sneak up for instance an armadillo and you go right back into the caveman survival mode. And I’d knock an armadillo over the head and he’d be kicking he’d be jerking and I’d turn him over on his back and start sawing on that hard skin on his stomach. And I would pull that armadillo out of the shell and cut the back side. Now I’m a country boy and I’d cut the backside right out and it would be sushi Dillon on the half shell. Now let me tell you the worst thing that I put in my mouth to this day and that’s black stink turtle or mud turtle. Those are those little round black turtles; it’s like a snapping turtle but it’s not even a snapping turtle he lives in the water. And what you do is you bust his shell over like a hard stump with a stick in the woods.
Sid: You’re not selling me on that life style one bit you realize that. (Laughing)
Ricky: (Laughing) I’m hoping that someone today gets the revelation today that drugs will destroy your life and it’s not what it seems to be. No matter what the alcohol commercials are saying today and it looks like a big party and it looks like everybody is having fun. Actually it’s bondage; it’s slavery; it’s a snake in one day it’s going to bite you.
Sid: So Ricky, let me ask you so you go through 56 days and you started that way in about 160 pounds; what are you weighing now?
Ricky: I lost 30 pounds at the end so I lost actually over 30 pounds in the woods.
Sid: And why did you come out of the woods to your mother’s house?
Ricky: What happened was after 56 days I had a deer-stand in the woods and that’s where I stayed and after 56 days one morning when I woke up it was so foggy that I couldn’t see but 10 feet in front of me. And I thought that today is the day that I’m going to make it out of these woods. And so what I did was I went to the road where the road was and I low crawled. I’ll never forget I was still scared that the standards were going to see me low crawling like a soldier would in the army through the grass. And I’ll never forget I ran into a wasp nest. A guinea wasp nest and as I ran into it the wasps started stinging me in the face; I was so scared to slap and alert someone I just started smashing them in my face.
Sid: Listen wasps are no fun; go ahead.
Ricky: And there they are in my face Sid and stinging me all in my face and I’m scared to slap them; so I just start smashing them in my face. Ultimately made it through that crossed over the road and ended up at my mother’s house 8 miles up the road. And I’ll never forget I was in the house when my mother had gotten home and she didn’t know if I was dead or alive. Nobody knew I was in the woods for 56 days eating raw armadillo; frogs and turtles and blackberries and thistles and anything else I could find in the woods.
Sid: You know in your book it says the first time you saw yourself in a mirror tell me what happened.
Ricky: I looked like Bin Laden to tell you the truth that’s what I really looked like. You know when people get the book and they see my mug shot it really looks like Bin Laden on the front. And so when I looked at myself and I saw skin and bones; I saw a big old beard; I saw in my eyes there was no light it was death. I had nothing but death in me; that’s what I looked like Sid. And ultimately at my mother’s house my mother walks in and she didn’t even recognize me; as a matter of fact when my mother saw me for the first time her own child her first born she didn’t even recognize me. And ultimately I had to say mom it is me; and then she’s scared to death because I had been running crazy and armed and dangerous and I never was a killer. Here’s my thing I came from a good middle-class family, raised on a Wayfield plantation 1900 acres of land. Good farm people middle-class. So I never had a killing spirit it just wasn’t in my heart. I’ll tell you Sid just for our audience today that’s listening to us I really want them to get the message that drugs, living for yourself and living in sin doing your own thing astray from God will destroy your life. That’s really was the message that God gave me as I went through. And that is if you live for yourself and do your own thing it brings a curse on your life.
Sid: Well, they ultimately caught you at your mother’s house, booked you. What happened next, what were you facing?
Ricky: Facing a life sentence again down in the cell in the jail; the jail that I escaped from. And here comes Ernest James the guy that actually chased me out of the jail and he tells me he says “Ricky, you have a purpose in life. You’re not just created to live the life that you’re living; that is not what you were created for and you have a purpose.” And what he did was he gave me a Bible and here I am sick and tired and tired of being sick thinking about suicide and thinking about hopeless that I don’t have anything to look forward to. And here’s…
Sid: And you explained that you had lifetime in prison at age 22; what a horrible fate. No wonder you were suicidal.
Ricky: Facing life; lost my whole life. I’ll tell you what starts to register now; what really matters now is my wife and my child that I neglected. The one that…
Sid: Ricky, we’re out of time.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth