I met Harold Jenks in Terre Haute federal prison in the spring of 1976. I was working in the plumbing shop in the prison as a clerk. Harold had been assigned to the plumbing shop.

When I looked up and saw him for the first time the only thing that went through my mind was, "My God, I hope he’s on our side."

He had a sheepish grin on his face, like he knew the effect he had on people who saw him for the first time. He stood every inch of 6' 9" and weighed in the neighborhood of 280 pounds. He was a giant.

What I didn’t know at the time was that he was just as tough as he was big. From the time he had entered reform school at the age of 13 until I met him he had learned to fight. He was so good at it, he made his living for many years doing what Patrick Swayze did in the movie, "Road House."

Unfortunately, he also made part of his living as a "fence"—when I met him he had just started a 4-year sentence for fencing a load of stolen guns from New Tazewell, Tennessee.

Jenks was my "running partner" for almost two years in the Terre Haute prison. I did his legal work (and got him out early); he kept other prisoners from making life unpleasant for me. In fact, with a little guidance from Jenks in how to think, I became the best jailhouse lawyer in the federal prison system. You’ll see some of the work we did together in my Brown’s Lawsuit Cookbook.

One of my most treasured memories of those years is one thing Jenks said to me about a week before I was released from prison.

"Brown, they only made one mistake with you."

"What was that?" I asked.

"They didn’t kill you."

Read my books on the legal system and you’ll see why he said that.

Almost six months before my release I came across a copy of Vigilante Magazine. It contained an article on knife fighting. The author was so full of it I couldn’t contain myself: I sat down and wrote an article countering all his nonsense. My article was titled, "Knife Fighting: Practical On-the-Spot Observations."

By that time I had been in federal prison for three years, and had seen 14 men stabbed to death. It just didn’t happen the way the Vigilante author said it did.

When I got out I hadn’t heard from Vigilante Magazine. I sent them a terse note, asking for my manuscript back. I assumed they hadn’t published it.

Not only had they published my article, they had sent me a check the prison returned and wanted me to do a "how-to" book on knife fighting. I tried, as patiently as I could, to explain to them that I was no more qualified to do a book on knife-fighting than an observer of a "hit" at point-blank range with a 12-guage loaded with 00-buck was qualified to write a book on marksmanship.

They wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Finally, when Jenks phoned me one day (he was still in), I asked him if he knew enough to provide the material for such a book. Of course he did.

What I didn’t know at the time was where his training and expertise in the field came from. We wrote the book in 1978. I didn’t learn of his "source" until the early 1990s.

Back in 1963 Jenks, then 22 years old, was doing time in Leavenworth. There he met a 60-year-old farmer German SS colonel who was doing a life sentence for killing allied prisoners of war. The government had agreed to let him do his time in Leavenworth federal prison instead of the Leavenworth military barracks if he would agree not to teach anyone what he knew.

For some reason, he didn’t feel that agreement extended to Jenks.

During the war the SS colonel had been offering allied prisoners of war their freedom if they could survive a knife fight with one of his SS troopers, who he was training for the Russian Front. Most (if not all) of them lost.

That knowledge was then passed on to Jenks, who in turn taught me. At the time our book was published, in 1978, I thought Jenks had learned the moves and techniques from Gypsies.

Finally, in 1991 or 1992, Jenks told me "the rest of the story." By that time the ex-SS colonel would have been 90 years old. Nobody lives that long in the federal prison system.

Jenks drowned in Florida while fishing. He was in failing health from years of mistreatment by the federal prison system. Much of his misfortune can be laid at the feet of United States Senator Michael Dewine. Dewine, while a state prosecutor in Green County, Ohio, turned a child molester named John Puckett loose in order to "set up" Jenks on a counterfeiting charge. Puckett had an attack-trained Rotweiler also trained to have sex with little girls.

The character "Junker" in my book, Escape from Outer Alcatraz, is based on Harold Jenks.

This year, 2002, is the first year I have written anything about our ex-SS colonel. If he were still alive, he would now be 100 years old.

Now, when you buy a copy of Bloody Iron, you’ll know who taught you.