ST. LOUIS - A St. Louis man released from prison after serving a decades-long sentence says he couldn’t keep up with the world that left him behind, so he robbed a bar to get back to jail.
In his first TV interview, Paul Borroni told 5 On Your Side, “"I figured I'd do something to go to jail because that's what I know."
He spent most of his life in prison.
When Borroni was 17, he says he fell in love with a girl named Diane Kramer.
"I thought she liked me, but she didn't,” he said.
On a night in June 1978, their argument turned violent. He choked her. He stabbed her. He killed her.
"I wish I could take it back, of course,” he said. "I pray for her, I pray for her that's all I can do."
Borroni admitted his guilt in court, and a judge sentenced him to more than three decades in prison. That sentence ended last month.
"It was like here, you're free. Do your thing,” he said.
But Borroni didn't know what to do with that freedom. The world had changed.
"I started to feel overwhelmed and I couldn't keep up. And technology man, that's just crazy,” he said.
He says he tried working at the Fox Theatre as a stage hand - a job he had as a teenager -- but it wasn't steady work. Finding a stable place to sleep at night was even more difficult.
"I was riding the Metrolink back and forth trying to keep warm,” he said.
The train is where he devised a plan.
"I came to Clayton, I see the Clayton stop. It popped into my head: I could go to jail, the jail was here, you know the county jail.”
So Borroni got off the train, and went into the first business he saw: CJ Muggs.
"I put my hand in here like I had a gun, and I told her this is a robbery,” he sid.
He first demanded the bartender to give him money.
"Then I told her, ‘OK, call the police.’ She was kind of dumbfounded by that,” Borroni said.
Borroni says this time, he didn't want to hurt anyone. He didn't even want the cash.
"It was just a means to get back to jail,” he said.
The officers who responded say he waited there for them to arrive. They've never heard of anyone else committing a felony because they wanted to go to jail.
"I should have thought of something less severe that carries less consequences, but I wasn't thinking yet, I was through, I was through,” he said.
Borroni says he was desperate for help, for a chance to succeed. And he says that's still his goal -- even though he fears he’s now on the fast track to another prison sentence.
He’s charged with first degree robbery and due back in court Monday, March 26.
