Mervin "Ranger" Reyes - if you follow the news you may remember his name from 2002. He's the ex-BDF soldier and explosives expert who was caught after he robbed a Corozal Bank. At the time this highly trained soldier who'd attended the finest military academy in the UK was in the grips of crack cocaine addiction. It turns out that he did a lot more than just rob a bank - by his own account, Reyes used his military background to terrorize entire communities with crime sprees while he was chasing a high.
And now he's served time, cleaned up, and written about it. Reyes's biography is called The Prodigal Soldier and he launched it today at the Image Factory. Jules Vasquez has more about his compelling life story:….
Jules Vasquez Reporting
To understand the story of the man autographing these books - you'd first have to know this from March of 2002….
Indira Craig - March 2002
"At around 10 yesterday morning am man entered the Nova Scotia branch in Corozal, handed a teller a note and walk away with money. The note said "make no noise, I have a gun, just put the money in the bag" originally police said that she didn't hand over ant money but today it turn out that she did hand over 11 thousand dollars. Police are looking for 30 years old Mervin Timothy Reyes who wore no mask and was identified by a security guard."
Today former BDF Lieutenant and explosives expert Mervin Reyes has written the story of how the clean-cut, well spoken, sharp-dressed man we saw today lecturing and signing books was also the crack cocaine addicted criminal who robbed a bank - and did a whole lot of other lawless things - eight years ago.
He's written a book about the journey of personal transformation - which begins in the beginning - form a broken home:
Mervin Reyes
"I ran away at a very early age at age 6 so by the time I was age 12 I was already lock up in a juvenile institution for another 6 years - 6 years on the street - 6 years lock up. When I came out and decide to join the military it was just out of interest and because I grow up rough so I was good at that. I had to do my high schooling and everything in that institution so that came in handy but there was still a soar there, it was just a band aid effect and it turn out full blow after my 9th year in the military. In the military we tend to drink alcohol a lot and that was my window. That was what it took for me excessive drinking, excessive drinking with a gung hoe mentality, no respect again for my Christian wall and then the drugs because available through circumstances, thought I was invincible despite my education and my knowledge about the destructive effect of drugs."
Jules Vasques
"Thought you could handle it?"
Mervin Reyes
"Yes, I could handle it for one night and nobody would ever know about it and then it turn out that - you know what I miss 3 weeks, I could handle it again this 3rd week for the last time and nobody would know about it and so it went to every week to every day to every minute of every day and so it was."
He left the BDF and went on a drug and crime binge
Mervin Reyes
"it boils down to you have adopted to this new lifestyle and what the demand is the demand for a high and what it takes to get a high is what you will do and the consequences to your actions are thoughtless, you don't care, you are here to love or to die - it doesn't makes a difference. There is no purpose."
Jules Vasquez
"Except for the high."
Mervin Reyes
"Yes."
That eventually led him to a range of criminal assaults culminating at the Scotia Bank in Corozal
Jules Vasquez
"That day when you went into the bank, you have to know in your rational mind - that's crazy."
Mervin Reyes
"Of course, but that was the day I made up my mind to die. That was the day it was literally do or die. I was set, remember I was already escaping from the law, from the Orange Walk cell that I had escape the night in the prison house there coming through the jungles to Corozal. So something had to be done I was broke and I needed to get another fix."
He detailed that episode in the bank where he handed the teller a note saying: "I have a bomb put all the money in a bag and there will be no bloodshed here today".
It worked thanks in no small part to his military training which had him make a diversionary call to police about a bogus traffic fatality at the Libertad junction:
Mervin Reyes
"I rob the bank in 22 seconds and got away with so many thousands of dollars to another country. It was only when I had use that money for drugs, I needed more and coming back I got caught but I got away because of preparation and planning so I was still able to function on that level."
But from there he went to the lowest level
Mervin Reyes
"The lowest was the dungeon where I was shackle and confine without clothes. That was the lowest of the lowest because here I was, a high ranking military officer being saluted everyday by all the soldiers - being call sir, I mean I sat in the Winston Churchill Hall in the United Kingdom, i went to the top 1% school that only the top 1% British officers go to - the Royal School of Military engineering, I went to the school of the Americas in the USA, to the airborne path finder school and then now here I was in this hole sitting on rough concrete with no clothes in shackles."
Jules Vasquez
"Where were you without clothes?"
Mervin Reyes
"In the Belize Central Prison."
Jules Vasquez
"Why did they take your clothes?"
Mervin Reyes
"Well because I was an escape artist."
Jules Vasquez
"So you will not escape naked?"
Mervin Reyes
"No, I will no escape naked, that was the philosophy."
And from that pit of despair he mined a nugget of wisdom:
Mervin Reyes
"This is my whole story, no matter what you can pull yourself together by one single thought. One single thought like that (snaps fingers) you could start changing the course of the decisions you are making and changing whole course of your life to a positive life."
Jules Vasquez
"I will challenge you from a cynical perspective. No you can't because you are in prison, you must serve a sentence, you will be confined, you will spend a time in a place that gives you no freedom, you will not have any of the things you want including the drugs, the family. So you can't make a change if fact you are in a hole and you just have to keep dig down. What will you respond to that?"
Mervin Reyes
"Well there is a thing that's called faith and that faith is believing what you are not able to touch or see."
And that faith led him along - what has been a journey
Mervin Reyes
"Change is progressive, that is my philosophy. You make a decision now to change, you might fall next week, don't condemn or beat up yourself. Get up again then you might go two weeks, then you fall again, don't beat up or condemn yourself. Eventually you will find yourself start going for 6 months, then it goes for a year and then form there it just keeps going. Change is a journey."
He's been out of prison 2005 - after serving 30 months - and now embodies the change he writes about
Mervin Reyes
"After that I have been fortunate to get into tourism and that was another story by itself, another miracle, but I got into that and I am doing very well."
Jules Vasquez
"So you are in...?"
Mervin Reyes
"Yeah, I am in tourism and I'm into my writing, I'm into my karate."
And now he's promoting the Prodigal Soldier - which he wants people in difficult circumstances to read:
Mervin Reyes
"I think that this story can help many others that are in similar situation in our country today."
The 200 page book is also loaded with compelling vignettes of his outlaw life including the time he used his explosives training to detonate an explosive device in the Adventist church in Orange Walk….
The book is available for $49.95 at Brodies and the Image Factory….
