Evaristo Salas Jr. (Junior)

Well, my name is Elristo Salas, Jr.

I was wrongly convicted of first degree premeditated murder when I was 15 years old.

And I was sentenced to 32 years, nine months.

I've been incarcerated for 26 years and six months.

I'm going to be 42 on the 17th of December, so in about a week, a week and a half, I'll be 42.

Well, I grew up in a small farming town of Sunnyside, Washington, United States.

And growing up there was actually, as a kid, I have a lot of good memories of Sunnyside.

you know, being in the community, riding my bikes, you know, having a lot of friends.

Well, not a lot of friends, but having the ones in the neighborhood and everything.

And outside of the house was nice, you know, being out there enjoying, you know, the summer heat, you know, because it gets really hot in the summer times and we have all three seasons there in Sunnyside.

And so we, you know, we rode our bikes around town, those kind of things, you know what I mean?

But the, it was pretty chaotic.

My family was pretty chaotic because my mother was, and my father, they split up when I was about

six or seven years old, and this was my stepfather.

So I never actually knew my biological father.

Even though he lived in the same town, I never actually knew who he was.

I carry his name, but that's pretty much all that I carry of him, you know, and even the way I look and everything.

But I didn't know him personally.

I seen him a couple times, you know, it was a strange kind of, you know, atmosphere to grow up in because the father that I knew, you know, my stepfather, who, you know, is all I've ever known, I call him my father,

He raised me, and I only have small memories of him and my mother actually together because they split up when I was so young.