By Rhonda Cook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

First there was a picture sent to Jimenna Whitner’s cell phone of her brother, who was bloody and beaten.

Next, she got a text message from somewhere inside Baldwin State Prison 950 miles from her home in Michigan, demanding $1,000. Otherwise her inmate brother, Thomas Maher, would be killed.

“From the pictures and stuff we knew they weren’t playing,” said Whitner, who earns $800 to $900 a month cleaning rental mobile homes for new tenants. “We don’t have money.”

But Whitner found a way to pay the inmates who had allegedly punched and kicked her brother, a convicted rapist, for about two hours in a cell block shower. She raised the money from relatives and paid the inmates through “Green Dot” cash cards that carry VISA or MasterCard logos.

Read more at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution