Former Inmate Facing 300 Years Behind Bars Learned He Had a Traumatic Brain Injury — Now He’s Helping Others (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Marchell Taylor, photographed for PEOPLE in August 2024.Photo:Rebecca Stumpf

Rebecca Stumpf

After spending most of his life in and out of prison, Marchell Taylor was facing the possibility of a 300-year sentence when he learned that a car accident during childhood had left him with an undiagnosedtraumatic brain injury. From that point, he says, “my life was changed.” Together with Dr. Kim Gorgens, the neuropsychologist who helped him get treatment, Taylor, 55, now speaks out for others with TBIs in the prison system and beyond. Taylor shares his story in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on sale now.

Nine years ago Marchell Taylor walked into a Papa Johns store in Denver with a knife, looking for a way to pay for his next high. Taylor, who was 46 at the time, was out on parole after spending nearly half his life in prison on drug and robbery charges.

He’d only been on the outside for 36 days when he held up the pizza shop’s cashier at knifepoint and demanded money.

“I was a monster,” Taylor says of his past. “I was the guy people were afraid of."

Taylor in prison in 2002, at 29 years old.courtesy Marchell Taylor

courtesy Marchell Taylor

Today, sitting in his Denver office where he connects community members withmental healthservices, Taylor is nearly unrecognizable from the man he describes. With his broad smile, Taylor, 55, vibrates with energy and warmth, palpable even over a video call.

“When Marchell comes around,” a colleague says of him, “he pours a bucket of love into your heart.”

Taylor learned that, like more than three-quarters of the inmates in the county system, he had suffered a TBI, which can have long-term effects on behavior. “It transformed my thinking and my life forever,” says Taylor, who has since become a partner in Gorgens’s research. Together they helped pass a bill in Colorado in 2021 to fund a pilot program for state prisons, similar to the one he says saved him.

Taylor (center) with his mother and siblings in 1979.courtesy Marchell Taylor

Taylor’s history of trauma stretches back to childhood when he was growing up near Flint, Mich. His father, a Vietnam vet, was addicted to heroin and would beat his mother in front of Marchell.

After his parents split, a boyfriend of his mother’s introduced Taylor to alcohol at 9. That same year, he was in a car crash with his mother and smashed his head on the dashboard. “They stitched me up, sent me on my way,” he says of the injury, which he later learned was the cause of his TBI.

Taylor at 9, the year he was in a car crash.courtesy Marchell Taylor

After dropping out of school in the ninth grade, Taylor got away with a string of robberies before doing his first real time for stealing a purse in Las Vegas in 1993. That began a cycle of prison, parole and re-offense until he was sentenced to 25 years for a bank robbery in 1998.

He was just a month out of prison on parole when he was caught fleeing from Papa Johns. Back in jail, facing the possibility of a 300-year sentence because of his long record, Taylor was distraught and suicidal. When his public defender played the security footage of the robbery, Taylor was in tears. “I did not know how I ended up back there,” he says. “My heart was broken. I just thought ‘Why do I do it?'"

While he was awaiting trial, his public defender was able to move Taylor into a pilot mental health program in the county jail where one of Gorgens’ students gave him the TBI screening, an assessment interview that’s part of the Colorado Brain Injury Model. Gorgens’s model is now used in criminal-justice settings in more than two dozen states. “I was traveling blind, and she opened my eyes to how to live a healthier life,” Taylor says of Gorgens, whom he calls “our Wonder Woman of brain science.”

Taylor and Denver University neuropsychologist Dr. Kimberly Gorgens.Rebecca Stumpf

Once his TBI was identified, Taylor began dialectical and cognitive behavioral therapy and learned meditation techniques to control impulsivity. Gorgens’ students offered grief counseling. “It was like an exorcism where they were pulling this stuff out of me,” says Taylor. “I was able to rewire my brain.”

Taylor finally met Gorgens five years ago after reading the text of the bill he wrote to expand her pilot program. “Marchell thought his whole life he was garbage and destined to spend his life in prison,” she says. “For him to realize, ‘I might be worthy’ and be able to make a difference, it’s profound.”

Taylor, Gorgens and Shively (L-R) with Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in 2021 signing the bill they co-wrote to fund a TBI screening program.Courtesy Dr. Kimberly Gorgens

Courtesy Dr. Kimberly Gorgens

But, she stresses, the idea that biological factors can influence behavior isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. “It’s about accountability,” she says. “We give someone strategies and a way of thinking about their behavior as fixable.”

As Taylor learned about his own brain, he organized his fellow inmates and, with the help of friend and former prisonmate Corey Shively, who was running a marketing business, they launched theRebuild Your MindChallenge, a viral campaign to encourage those working in the criminal justice system and beyond to film short videos about their struggles with mental health. His advocacy so impressed his judge that when Taylor took a plea deal, the judge gave him a 16-year suspended sentence with eight years of mental health probation. Taylor finishes his probation next year.

Taylor (right) with friend and business partner Corey Shively.Rebecca Stumpf

After coming home for good in 2018, Taylor and Shively, who learned that he too had a TBI, started a business,AYBOS Advocacy, offering TBI screenings (both men trained in administering the test) and connecting community members to treatment. “People need this,” says Shively. The understanding of how deeply TBI has affected their community “changed all of our lives,” he says.

And now Taylor acts as a mentor and guest speaker in Gorgens’s classes each semester. “He, and Corey, have become an integral part of those courses,” Gorgens says.

Taylor (foreground), friend and business partner Corey Shively (right) , Prof. Kim Gorgens and students at Denver University.courtesy Marchell Taylor

“My life is amazing,” says Taylor, who also works as a peer counselor for a mental health center. His fiancée (whom he refers to as his wife), Crotisha, is a medical technician, and although Taylor lost two of his three sons to fentanyl overdose, the couple enjoy time with their combined 18 grandchildren. “I moved away from my old self. I moved away from the trauma and I’m thriving. I have the tools to deal with my trauma, and I can help others. And that helps me.”

TBI in Prisons: What the Research ShowsLess than 10 percent of the general public have experienced a brain injury, but it’s estimated that about 50 percent of those in the criminal justice system suffer from a traumatic brain injury. University of Denver professor and neuropsychologist Kim Gorgens says the figure is even higher for certain incarcerated populations: Her studies show that 80 percent of those in Colorado county jails and up to 97 percent of women repeat offenders have a TBI.“It’s not that brain injury causes incarceration, but for people with vulnerable brains” — people who may have undergone childhood abuse or neglect — “if they sustain a brain injury, the risk is much higher for poor outcomes, including incarceration.”A history of brain injury also increases the chances that an individual will re-offend, says Gorgens. Targeted therapy lowers the risk of recidivism. And, she says, training people who work in the criminal justice system is crucial, because what looks like noncompliance can be the effects of a TBI.Gorgens suggests simple changes that can help. “With someone who’s inattentive, make eye contact before you tell them to come out of the cell so you know they’re paying attention. Someone with a poor memory also benefits from written instructions,” she explains. “Once you see this problem and how treatable it may be, you can’t unsee it.”For more information on TBI, and to take an online TBI screening test, go to:www.nashia.orgorwww.biausa.org

TBI in Prisons: What the Research Shows

Less than 10 percent of the general public have experienced a brain injury, but it’s estimated that about 50 percent of those in the criminal justice system suffer from a traumatic brain injury. University of Denver professor and neuropsychologist Kim Gorgens says the figure is even higher for certain incarcerated populations: Her studies show that 80 percent of those in Colorado county jails and up to 97 percent of women repeat offenders have a TBI.“It’s not that brain injury causes incarceration, but for people with vulnerable brains” — people who may have undergone childhood abuse or neglect — “if they sustain a brain injury, the risk is much higher for poor outcomes, including incarceration.”A history of brain injury also increases the chances that an individual will re-offend, says Gorgens. Targeted therapy lowers the risk of recidivism. And, she says, training people who work in the criminal justice system is crucial, because what looks like noncompliance can be the effects of a TBI.Gorgens suggests simple changes that can help. “With someone who’s inattentive, make eye contact before you tell them to come out of the cell so you know they’re paying attention. Someone with a poor memory also benefits from written instructions,” she explains. “Once you see this problem and how treatable it may be, you can’t unsee it.”For more information on TBI, and to take an online TBI screening test, go to:www.nashia.orgorwww.biausa.org

Less than 10 percent of the general public have experienced a brain injury, but it’s estimated that about 50 percent of those in the criminal justice system suffer from a traumatic brain injury. University of Denver professor and neuropsychologist Kim Gorgens says the figure is even higher for certain incarcerated populations: Her studies show that 80 percent of those in Colorado county jails and up to 97 percent of women repeat offenders have a TBI.

“It’s not that brain injury causes incarceration, but for people with vulnerable brains” — people who may have undergone childhood abuse or neglect — “if they sustain a brain injury, the risk is much higher for poor outcomes, including incarceration.”

A history of brain injury also increases the chances that an individual will re-offend, says Gorgens. Targeted therapy lowers the risk of recidivism. And, she says, training people who work in the criminal justice system is crucial, because what looks like noncompliance can be the effects of a TBI.

Gorgens suggests simple changes that can help. “With someone who’s inattentive, make eye contact before you tell them to come out of the cell so you know they’re paying attention. Someone with a poor memory also benefits from written instructions,” she explains. “Once you see this problem and how treatable it may be, you can’t unsee it.”For more information on TBI, and to take an online TBI screening test, go to:www.nashia.orgorwww.biausa.org

source: people.com