Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
What the Streets Took From Me | Ex-Gang Leader Tells All
Fri, 18 Apr 2025
Travis breaks down his past being a gang leader and life in prison incarcerated with Matt. Travis's Book & MerchBook: https://a.co/d/7QLCIytMerch: https://www.finallyconscious.world/Follow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrimeDo you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [email protected] you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: What led Travis to join a gang at a young age?
I got in the bloods when I was in the sixth grade. I had two kids by the time I was 16 years old. My old mother, she was not like the other average gang leaders. I got plenty of money. I got four or five cars. I got houses, and I'm only 16 years old. I ran in front of the gun and get shot in this hand first. That's why I missed this finger. But I don't know him.
I don't know my little brother here. I don't know. I don't know nothing. The only thing I'm going to try to do is save my brother. Knocked off this finger. Knocked off this finger. Knocked off this finger. Now, I remember looking over and seeing my little brother on the ground. I'm in the hospital bed. I just keep asking, like, where's my brother? Where's my brother?
Now, I got this hospital guy on. So I go to the door. And I, like, look out the door. And, like, the police officer, he ought to have talked to the nurses. Look again. I strike out running.
snatch the shit off and just went around the heads if somebody wanted to kill me today i would never see it coming because i've started i've been in tour with so many different people different cities different states i don't know what it's gonna cost so i gotta live every day of my life like damn where it's gonna come from tell people this all the time i was more happy and comfortable locked up than i was free
Hey, this is Matt Cox. And I feel funny with you being here. All right. Listen, just for your information, I feel silly doing it, okay? So don't think, boy, he's taking it natural. He's very natural. I feel silly, okay? So I know what I sound like. All right. Just don't be an asshole the whole time. I'm not. So, what's so... Is that I know how hard... How you want to come off hard.
And I was telling my wife, I was like, you don't have a problem because... I said, you're going to be telling stories and I'm going to be like, come on now. Did you feel bad about that? He's going to be like, Matt, Matt, Matt, Cox, stop it. It's all right. All right. Hey, this is Matt Cox and I am here with, I'm going to say Travis. That's cool. Is that cool? Okay.
Hey, this is Matt Cox and I am here with Travis Luke. He is a former, he was the, he is a former gang leader in South Carolina. Man, all the time we need to get on from George. Damn it. Damn it. Let me try it again. I feel like, honestly, like leaving all the cuts in, like leave all that. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm here with Travis Luke, and he is a former gang leader from Georgia.
He and I were incarcerated in Coleman, I'm going to say Coleman Federal Complex, because I don't want to say hello. Right. That makes it sound like you're soft. And I don't want anybody to know, because I know, I know. I ain't no soft man, I just. I know you're, I get. So anyway, yeah. So we're going to be doing a very serious interview and I appreciate you guys watching. So check this out. Hi.
So Colby then plays some, you know, he does, and then that, you know, it'll, and then he'll cut this part out and then it'll play. And then I'll be like, well, you know, I'll do the whole, well, I appreciate you coming. Okay.
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Chapter 2: How did Travis's childhood influence his life choices?
she was gonna get the other one put them there together with a feed everybody right so it was like yeah my mom was raising six kids but my aunties were there too but it was no male figure so what that left for me be at a young age which pushed me to the streets was i was the older male figure my grandmother raised me even though you're just a kid i was just a kid you know what i mean but i'm the older male figure like i could remember being probably i had to be still in middle school and i would work at the store
In the community. Now, at the time, like, I don't join the gang, but I really like doing something like selling nine liters and shit for money. Like, I'm hustling candy. Because I'm working in a store. Yeah, I'm hustling. Yeah, that's how the shit started. Yeah, I see how you smiling. That's how the shit started. I started selling candy. Nine liters, two four quarters.
Everybody like to put down the flavor. And, like, speaking of that hustle, I used to mix sugar and Kool-Aid and crave the thing about it. My grandma used to help me do it. So, I would mix sugar and Kool-Aid together, bag it up, and I would just tell the kids at school to make them run faster. And I would say to them, that it was what? Make them run faster. I would miss sugar and Kool-Aid.
We just make them right. Well, I would miss sugar. I would miss sugar and Kool-Aid together. Let's bag it up. Take you to school. I would have candy, sugar and Kool-Aid. I would go to school to sell it.
And so we're still here. So what were your brothers? Did your brother join gangs or? That's the crazy thing about brothers, right?
So my brothers didn't really join a gang until later. Until later in life.
I single had to live later in life. You're like 13 years old. I was later in life. I mean, when they were 15.
But you remember now, I'm from the hood, so we grow fast. Right. I'm going to tell you, I was a kid at the store. I was working at a store, and instead of the man paying me, I would get a box of sausage and rice, and I would take it back to my mama. loaf of bread, you know what I mean? Or whatever the case may be, I take it back to my mother. So that's how I fed, helped feed the family.
Like you said, so at a young age, I was already becoming a man. So that forced my brothers to grow up fast too. Because they looking up to me. Yeah, everybody's got to contribute. Everybody has to. They got to contribute. You know what I mean? So they looking up to me. But really, I wholeheartedly put my mama, her kids, my auntie, their kids, my other auntie, her kids,
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Chapter 3: What experiences did Travis have in prison?
Do you realize, are you conscious that this is what's going on or you're not even paying attention to it?
I think, see the way they attacked us, it was more militant. They just ran, basically that's their restraining to them. You know what I mean? But as far as like guys started going to jail and started getting picked out, that was like late on. Like we had, besides me getting locked up, handed off with drugs, We had a good run before he was able to start locking something up.
I saw what happened with my little cousin Bo and the guys that were so caught over me when the gang thing first started. I told you. So my older brother, he ended up getting like 30 years for murder. Him and two other guys, they went and did some shit. He ended up getting like 30 years for murder. So early on, it basically was just, I'm going to say...
18, about 18, 19 years old, when they just really started picking us up. I would start getting drug cases, but before the gang shit, they ain't start catching us late.
Is there tension between your gang and... and the Crips at that point, what is it? Is it just for territory? Is it... You see, probably just out of board.
Yeah, for real, because it really wasn't Like I just told you, like, as far as the territory go, you only need territory if you really just making money right now. Right. You know what I mean? So really, they wasn't really making no money. It was really out of border. You crib on blood. I don't like you. Fuck you. I see you. You kill me. I kill you. We fight, whatever the case may be.
That shit really out of border. And honestly, I don't think, I know, I ain't don't think because I live this shit. We knew the logistics of being in a gang. Like, we didn't know. Think about it. This shit trickle down and trickle over. Trickle from Cali, trickle from New York. So the purpose of the game, that shit got all the way to Michigan True by the time it got to us.
We was given the knowledge, we was given all the shit that you needed to run the game, but we really didn't know what the hell we were doing. That's why there's so much killing going on now because the first rule of being a blood is do not allow your community to be oppressed. But what the fuck are we doing? Right. You know what I mean? So it's all it. We didn't we didn't we didn't know it.
We still don't know.
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Chapter 4: How did Travis navigate life after prison?
And then they would have something. And everybody's like, come on, man. Are you serious?
You remember they used to make it in this cold. And they do this. This was one of the reasons why I knew for a fact I wasn't making it cold. When they need to see your phone calls and he's talking to more than one woman. Yeah. And then they make you call. They'll make you call and be like, tell the other woman, okay, I told this woman, like, what?
No. Yeah. So they had a guy one time. There was two things. I have one guy's talking to two girls working both of them. Right. So they made him pick which one and call the other girl and tell her, I've been talking to this other girl, this other woman. And I've been telling her this and this, and I wanted to come clean and tell you the truth.
And then calls the other girls as look, I've been talking to her and I, I'm going to be with her when I get out and basically kick the other one. Another time was a guy was, he was about the goddess time off. Like he's literally, he's about to graduate and go straight to a halfway house. The girl had put a couple thousand dollars on his books. Oh, yeah.
He convinced this chick to put a couple thousand on his books so that he had money. When he hit the halfway house, he could get a phone. Now, she could have bought all that for him, but he had her convinced because he was going to cut her loose. Right. Like, give me three grand. She'd saved up money, sent him three grand.
And so the DTSs found out, listened to the call, probably somebody else told on them, but you were probably bragging about it. Bragging about it. But they listened to the call, they brought them in, and they were like, either you can get kicked out of RDAP, lose your year, you're definitely not coming back to this RDAP, so I don't know where you're going to do RDAP.
So you just lost a year, you're going to do another year, or you give her the money back. Of course I'm going to give her the money. Thank God you told me about that. I'm embarrassed I took the money. I never took the money. I don't know what I was thinking.
I don't know. I should have never took the money. I would have been manipulative. It was no way that I could have completed it all cold. It was no way possible. That's why I never tried. Like, they would call me. Until I turned that program on, I probably, like, two or three times. But it is for your program? Oh, this bitch program, man. Everybody graduated unless you learned anything.
I really did learn everything. I really did. I taught classes. I was the teacher. I taught the material. I did great. Everybody graduated on time. Everybody went home.
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Travis face with law enforcement?
I really couldn't deal with nobody but this one nurse. And this lady, she had been taking care of me for a long time. They had me with this morphine shit. Like dripping, I'm going to sleep. I'm out of it. For days, like I'm out of it. Probably every day they feed me this morphine.
And just at this one part of time yesterday, they had made their mind they were just going to let me out, let me out of the hospital. And this lady, she said, you know my son. I said, I don't know y'all. She said, baby, please don't kill my son. I know your son is. So she tell me her son name and this same dude, he didn't do that to my brother, but he just had a crazy mouth on him.
You know what I mean? He rapped and shit. He did music and shit. And she just like, don't kill my son. I was like, I ain't get the same lady that been here taking care of me for like four or five days. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. And they, they, she was crazy because they didn't let me talk to my mama, my kids, my brothers, my sister. I couldn't talk to nobody.
He just literally isolated me from the world. And it didn't help because all kinds of stuff, even to this day, even to this day, on that day that my little brother got something going to happen. Even to this day, somebody going to get into some type of fights or somebody going to get shot or something going to get shot up. Even to this day, it ain't my doing.
People used to tell me, you can't tell me how to feel about taking a kid because I had my own love for Taye.
right you know what i mean so when the police that one of the reasons why the feds really came in and got on me to get me out of out of the pitch which only made worse because but prior to me going to jail i had it was just like me and my group of bloods and one more other group now and man so many different blood sets in that city i can't even keep up with so what happened to the guy that you were
you were wrestling with the gun that shot your brother. What happened to him? Oh, you know, going to prison. Okay. Did they get him right away?
No, he went on the run. He went on the run and some of the other guys with him shot each other. They tried to make it seem like I shot them and it was just a bad situation. All the reason, yeah, it was. All the reason why, and they tried to charge me with all this stuff, but how I got out of their charges was they were trying to put me in two places at one time.
Remember I told you the situation happened at the sand truck, at the club. So it happened back to back so fast. It's like, oh, he did this and he did this. And my lawyer just like, there's no way he did both. So what did he do?
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Chapter 6: How did Travis become a gang leader?
I don't know about the other prisoners, but by the time I met you, you were just mad. Yeah.
I mean, I just... I mean, like I went, yeah, I guess Lance was trying to, like, I remember he, you know, they sent him, he went to trial, lost. They sent him to the pen. Like he got the shit kicked out. You remember he was missing a tooth. He got the living shit kicked out of him in the pen. Like a couple times.
They kept him in his shoe until they sent him to the, they held him long enough to like, they sent him to like the low, I think. So I get that. Yeah. But I mean, you know, to me it was like, I got, I was just like, I'm just going to have to make the best of it here. And I remember thinking to myself, Either you're going to not mouth off.
You're just not going to talk to anybody the whole time you're here. Or you're going to run your mouth. And every once in a while, you're going to get fucking slapped. Which one do you want to do? And I thought, I'll survive the bitch slapping more than I will just not talking to anybody. So I'm just going to walk around and joke around and fuck around.
And if every once in a while I piss somebody off and they get in my face, well, that's all right. That's going to happen. Nobody expects me to be a tough guy. Right. So that's why I was just like, I'm just, let's joke around and fuck around.
And as a result of that, I think I met some great people, people that literally I got out and I still communicate with, people that I got out and they would, you know, they'll ask me to send them some money or can you mail me a book? Absolutely. I don't have a problem with that because nobody was doing that for me. So, you know.
No, you're a good guy, man. Because I could tell you like, When we talk about me coming to your podcast, I'm not going to do it. You do it over the phone. You know what I mean? You my partner. I'm going to pay the key. I'm going to pay for it. I didn't ask you to do nothing because I knew the shit that I learned from you for real estate and credit and just being around, just watching you.
Even though with the book writing shit, by the time I met you, it was like I knew I wanted to write books. I knew I wanted to write movies. I knew I wanted to do all this shit, but I had no idea how to do it. So just hanging around you, watching you doing, watching your work ethic. Little simple shit like that. You probably didn't pay attention to this shit. You were just being mad.
Little simple shit like getting up every morning, racing to that library to do something with your date. That shit kept me from getting out of prison doing some bullshit. Because mind you, I just told you, the prior prison I was at, I was just meeting more people that were going to help me get more drugs. So when I made it to the Coleman, it was like, oh, man, you need to meet Matt.
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Chapter 7: What were the consequences of Travis's gang activities?
See, a lot of people, they talk about the Fed, you can't beat the Fed. It's the tactics. I remember my federal judge and I was like, man, I'm not. I'm not. I'm going to trial. I remember dudes looking me dead in my eyes and saying... This is not the state. We do a self-heal thing. Yeah. I just went back to my sin. I'm just like, here's that. What's that? What do you mean? I can't self-heal.
So it just went by the same. Yeah.
Yeah. I figured it out. That was Sally. Go get on your cellmate. They locked you up for two weeks. Your cellie in prison will say, he told me that he was a part of the conspiracy with that guy. And if you think the feds won't put that cellie in a room and hand you the indictment along with all of all the FBI 302s or the DEA 6s and let him read all about your case, you're wrong.
They'll put it right on the stand. And they'll know blatantly that he's lying. Just keep in mind, even if he got on the stand and turned around and said, you know what? I am lying. He didn't say that. The AUSA stuck me in a room, gave me all the DEA sixes, let me read up on the case, and told me he'd cut me loose if I testified against it. Do you know what happened to that U.S. attorney?
And then they could prove that they did remove him and put him in a room and give him all that stuff, right? Do you know what happened to the U.S. attorney? That's right. Nothing? Nothing at all. The judge would say, this is a horrible, egregious act. That's it. Don't do that again. That's it. That's it. Prosecutorial, they have immunity.
Well, people don't care. They can't be prosecuted. Don't bother. I tell people all the time, hey, just stay state. And it be so crazy because when I was in the state prison, I was telling them, hey, they're going to take the feds. They're going to get me. That's all I was saying. Well, they're going to take the Fed. They can't write it down. A lot of people say that.
A lot of people that go to state president for selling drugs or say shit like they're going to take the Fed. I'm going to Fed next time. I'm going to Fed next time. I should have badgered on or something. I should have stayed.
That's a mistake. You know what? There's only one time that only one situation I know of that you're better off in the state, or I'm sorry, you're better off in the feds is like with like oxycodone, like the pills in the state of Florida. And they changed this like five, six years ago, they were weighing the pills.
So the weight, so it could be a five milligram pill that weighs that five milligram pills weighs less than a 20 milligram pill. But they would weigh the pills and they had a weight scale for, well, you had this much weight of oxy and they would charge you.
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Chapter 8: How does Travis view his past now?
I was a dude and he was just like, man, these people just act like you're such a bad dude. Like, you ever notice when I come to your house to report, I always have two or three gang tabs for cars. I was like, yeah, I know. He's just like, I was ordered to never approach you or never come to your community or your neighborhood, brother, by myself.
That's why I always have to alert the gang tabs for us. They don't come in over and they just basically come over, park up and down the street. Why you report? Why did I come by to check your residence? I just like, I don't know, bro. Now, look, at this point, how long you been out? Two years. I've been out of the halfway house.
I got out of the halfway house last year. My sister and brother-in-law are friends with a federal judge. And he told my sister, he said, If he makes it past the first year, he said he's going to be, he's all right. He said the first year is the absolute hardest for these guys. He said after that, they've pretty much have figured something out to survive and he'll probably be okay.
You got to think about it, man. I've been hearing about your podcast for a while. And I was like, bro, I'm going to do the podcast. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I just got to get, because I was still in that stage of trying to figure it out. Like, boy, shh. If something don't happen soon, then just try to pay the rent. You know what I mean?
But I just like, because I didn't want to bring no type of heat your way. You know what I mean? So like, once I get my shit together, know I'm going to do the right thing, got something to sell, I'm going to come do the podcast. Because like you say, that first year, it's like, Not right now, man. I'll get with you later, but not right now, man, because I'm probably 50-50 about to do something.
Something got to give. But that first year, but even, I'm telling you, even now, I got boundaries and obstacles just to even tell my story and help these kids. I'm just not getting my first couple contracts
with a turning school with a fresh start program and dj j out of and i've been doing this october or this year will be a year i've been eating hard every day consistently where they just like they didn't trust me you're gonna do something or the craziest thing yeah what they were saying i'm gonna recruit some games what what yeah from from the from from the people i'm talking to like you you don't think i couldn't walk out my front door and recruit some
Like, you really don't understand. Like, they don't.
They don't have a clue. I promise you that they don't have a clue at all. And that's the sad part about it. That's what we talked about earlier about them bringing in people such as us. You know what I mean? They don't be through it. Instead of them wasting all these millions and millions of dollars on nothing. Right.
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