Carolyn Arellano
Appearances
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I was offered a job in a strip club. My life went from hustling in the club to a legitimate life of crime. I got some people working under me and I remember being a maximum security person and he's like, you're going to escape. I'm like, just come get me. Like, yes. So he was a real one for this. I ended up moving to Newark, New Jersey when my parents had divorced pretty early on.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
That I didn't know that's what it was at the time. But I, you know, I'd seen him put stuff together. Like I knew it. I've actually helped maybe a couple of times, like just sorting things out. So I opened the book bag and I'm like, It's like, oh, you know what I mean? It was just like a bunch of stuff in there. And I'm like, and the phone and the phone just immediately rings.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I'm like, hey, who's this?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yes. So this is, I was like, it was like a ride along, I guess. Like I wasn't anticipating it, but yes, I was meeting, you know, the people, his clientele that he was dealing with. I met the plug. I was like friends with the plugs. Girlfriend who was pregnant at the time. So, yeah, I had access to his resources.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So him leaving that bag there and the actual the phone phone, not the one that he actually took with him. I was I was like, OK, the phone rings and it just happened to be this person that lived across the highway from the hotel we had checked in at. And I just remember walking over there and, you know, making that first exchange. And that's when I was like, I'm in business like.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
No. So I was making. So I remember this is like a long time ago. So the prices are I mean, I'm sure they're nothing like what they are now. But back then I'd make I'd spend 300 and I'd make 300. So nice.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Very nice. Right. And it was like it's just a repetitive thing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, yeah. Spend three, make three. I could even make four, you know, being a business model. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And like you said, I had kind of known the clientele. So and I'm much nicer than he was. He was so mean to these people. Like no matter how much money they were spending, he was just like a jerk, I would say. So like I had the customer service aspect of it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like I had the car, I had the friendly face. So I would say that's kind of when I took over his business. I ended up like changing the phone number. And during that time, I was like, this is awesome, right? So at first I was doing that while still working in the club. OK, so I'm working in the club now and now I have like the side hustle that's actually making me more money than the club.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I'm like, all right, I'm going to have to stop working in this club soon. So I ended up doing that. I ended up leaving from dancing because I'm like, I can't spend my Friday and Saturday nights here to make, you know, maybe five to a thousand dollars when I know that every Friday it's party time. Right. So eventually I ended up leaving the club, but I
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
It was a lot less work.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
That's true.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I was like, you know, if we have a baby, I can I can leave because she wouldn't let me emancipate myself. I tried going through the courts, didn't work because I didn't have enough money to take care of myself, didn't have proof that I could be an adult because I wasn't ready. But so I end up getting pregnant. doing exactly like I said, end up, you know, saying, well, I'm an adult now.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I like I definitely did. And it just didn't scare me. I don't know what it was like ever since I was young. And this is like also kind of like sad. But like I always knew I'd end up in prison. I don't know what it was. I know it's like usually people know they're going to like be a doctor or something. But like there was just something I don't know.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I felt like it was going to happen.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I was definitely, definitely, and, like, obviously, I'm an adult. I know that everybody makes their own decisions, right? Like, we have the will. We have will. But I will say that I am a firm believer just because of based on what I experience is that people are a product of their environment.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
For the most part, I would say.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yes, because I was around that, I suppose I thought, you know, I'm going to end up in jail one day. It's not like that. Right. I never like really thought too far ahead. I was just always like surviving. So for me, yeah, I was regular. So. My daughter's father, who I don't know, is my second daughter's father yet because he just gets arrested, goes to jail.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm in the club dancing and dealing to, you know, some of the girls, some of the guys. And I'm like, OK, you know, I want to get out of this. But like. How do I how do I make this this this change? So during that during that short time frame, the manager that I was talking about that had that crush on me, he knows what I'm doing. Right. So that's another thing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So now I'm kind of like I have free room of this bar. I barely got to get on stage. I barely have to do anything and I can deal to whoever I want that's coming in. Um, so he, you know, very soon after wants like a cut in it, or he wants to just do it on his own. So me being me being dumb, um, and young, I figured, okay, well, I don't want to be here anymore.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So you can, you can do what you want in here. You can absolutely do what you want in here. Cause I have plenty of like people that I can meet that, you know, or doctors, lawyers, uh, All these like decent people. I don't have to be in the club. So I kind of show him the ropes a little bit and get him going because he had no idea. Right. He grew up in like the suburbs. He's like, what do you do?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like I don't have to be here. Um, end up moving out somehow graduating high school a year early. Um, and actually I graduated high school here early because of a lot of the fighting that I was doing in high school. So I ended up having a fight, one of many in high school with one of these girls and, um, I ended up hitting her pretty hard and she lost her hearing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
How do you do this? Like, so I kind of showed him what to do and left the club. I ended up, you know, like no longer being friends with this guy because I found out that I was pregnant a few weeks later, ended up taking a pregnancy test. And I'm like, oh, my God. I'm like, are you kidding me? I'm like, this cannot be happening right now. This guy's in jail. I only met him like three months ago.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
You know, I just got off the club. I'm like, what is going on?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So they only had given him under a year. Yeah. It was like he... It was nothing. It was like a slap on the wrist. And it was because he was on a big probation already. Right. So they had only given him like 10 months. So he was only going to be in the county jail. So during this time, I'm making this money.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm also sending him money, of course, because this is, you know, it's kind of like his business. Although... It wasn't at that point, but I figured I'd have to. So I'm sending him money. I'm helping him pay his attorney. You know, I'm giving his mom a couple of dollars, but really like I'm building something for myself. Right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And like, now I got like some people working under me and it's like, like a whole Mary Kay thing, but. And so I'm sending him this money. The guy from the bar finds out that I'm pregnant because I have to tell him. Right. And I'm like, I'm like, listen, I'm not coming in. I'm not going to work. I don't want nothing to do with that place. I'm pregnant. Like, that's it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And he was like, what do you mean you're pregnant? And he was like.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Because again, like he thought like I was like his girlfriend.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Never slept with the guy. Never did anything with him. I would just act as if like I was super prude. So it kind of like enraged him a little bit. He's like, how could you? Like you're, oh my God, like blah, blah, blah. And we just stopped talking. Like we stopped, obviously stopped talking. I had no reason to talk to this guy anymore. I'm not in the club anymore.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm still just kind of like doing my own business. Well, as I'm doing business and just kind of like living somewhat of a normal life because I'm back in college full time, I'm going to school to be a teacher. You know, I'm not in the ghetto anymore. I moved like four towns over. You know, just kind of like living somewhat of a regular life. He gets pinched. The club owner.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
The manager. Yes, the manager. I had no idea because we hadn't been talking for months. Completely cut him off. Changed my phone number. I was done with that scene. We'll come to find out. He... ends up making some type of deal with them, right? They end up raiding his house.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I don't know how I didn't know he had gotten his house raided, but they raided his house and he made some type of deal with the police and he ends up going like undercover. So that's kind of how I got...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So because of that, they put me in night school. I also went to juvie for the first time.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
pinch the first time was because he called he set you up he wore a wire multiple times yeah so like he was coming to me you know i was giving him because i would never send him to my plug um or maybe i did at some point i don't remember but like i was i guess being greedy and i was seeing him he was wearing a wire and in this one particular day and i would never meet him at my house right because i just never wanted this guy to know where i live like i knew he was crazy and i
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I just remember one particular day he pulls up in front of my apartment that I was living in and he's like, I got to use the bathroom or I got to like, he's going to shit himself pretty much. He's like, I got, I'm like, well, I don't know what to tell you. He's like, let me use the bathroom. Let me use the bathroom. And I'm like, dude, like, no. And he was like, I have to go.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And like, he really fooled me. Like, I really thought this guy had to take a crap. So I'm like, oh my God. I'm like, all right, come on. Like, let's go. And that's, I fucked up. I fucked up. So he now knows exactly how to go down the stairs, you know, apartment in the back uses the bathroom this whole time.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I didn't know, like he was in and out literally like two minutes, but that's how he was figuring out where I lived. And then I would say I was only maybe a couple of weeks later that I got my first apartment raided and the doors got knocked, kicked in.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I was only in there for about a week. I think my mom left me in there to kind of just let me know, like, this is what life could be like.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Um, so at the first, yes, yes, I was, I was there.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. So, um... No. So, okay. So the first time, this is what happened. I was leaving. I was coming back from a shop, right? So I have like all these groceries with me. And, you know, the guy, my baby's father that I'm pregnant with, he's like in jail. So I started talking to this other dude, right? He's this guy that I had also met at the club. Also was a dealer.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And so we were just leaving the shop right together. And I just remember... He went to go sell somebody something and he went around the corner. And the next thing I know, I had like all of these like police undercover just like run up to me and kind of like just throw me against the wall.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
The truck that I had at the time, I'm like bringing my groceries out and like this really nice neighborhood, this like nice Italian neighborhood where like my landlord, everyone's going to hear about this nonsense. So I get arrested during this shopping trip up the steps. So he gets arrested. I get put against the car. And because I had just went and saw somebody, I just went and saw this guy.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah, exactly. That was an experience. But still, it was sickening because it was still a break from being home. Like, it was just... It was not fun, but it was just a break from being home. So... End up getting into that fight, fighting this girl who she was a gang member at the time. They had jumped me earlier in the day.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And this is me being greedy. He didn't have enough money for what I brought him. So I gave him one less than I should have left with. Right. So I put in my bra coming back from shop. Right. This happens. They get me with one freaking like one bag in my bra. And I'm like, oh, right. But they had a warrant anyway.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah, they had me on tape. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Exactly. But so I had that one bag on me and then they end up, you know, kicking the door in. You know, thankfully, my kids weren't home. Thank God there was like during school. And next thing you know, you know, they find all my stuff. Um, there's like a box with all my stuff. They ended up like, they ended up robbing me completely too. Like they took all my jewelry that I never got.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like they just, they wiped me out the police. And then I remember going to the police station and I'm with this new guy that I'm dating and he's with me and he's like, you know, don't worry about this. Like, It's it's on me. I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm like, this is not like you didn't get arrested for that little thing you did on the corner. Like, this is for me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
He's and he's like, no, no, whatever it is. Like, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I'm like, OK. So this guy ends up going on camera and saying that everything that was in that apartment was his. Right. Yeah. So that's what he ends up doing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So they took us to the police station, me and the guy that I was with. They take us down. They're like trying to shake me, right? Like, oh, they're trying to do what they did to the bar manager. They're telling me, oh, like, this is what you're looking at. Like without a lawyer, you know, this is what you're looking at.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah, your kids.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Everything. Just give us these guys names. And I'm like, you don't understand. I'm like, the people that I deal with. Like, they're Dominican. Like, I'm okay. Like, there's nothing that you're going to get out of me, pretty much. Right. And so, of course, I didn't say anything, right? So I'm just sitting there, and I'm like, wow. I'm like, okay, this is how this goes.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like, they're really trying to pressure me. But didn't crash or, you know, give them any information that they were looking for. But they had told me, like, oh, we have this really big investigation on you. Like, we know all about you. Like, you know, you're, like, dating all these people. Because I guess like everybody was kind of like getting pinched in this neighborhood.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So it was like they kept associating me with people because I was in the bar and because I was like doing all these things.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
you're somehow or another they they in their mind they turn you into like the puppeteer right like you're the one pulling the strings or something oh yeah it was pretty funny because i was seeing you know still going to the county every saturday to see my daughter's father who i had no intentions on being with whatsoever i was just like you know i'm keeping this baby because i'm like i just felt like i wanted to keep it i was like but we're not going to be together i'm going to support you while you're in here um so i'm going to see him so now they have like jail mail right um
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
My boyfriend at the time, who was with me during the first raid, while we're at the police station, I can hear him. They take him to another room, and he's like, I'm going on camera, and I'm going to tell them. This is what we were waiting. He's like, I'm going to tell them that everything in that house is mine. He's like, do not tell them any of that stuff is yours. And I'm like...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I don't think this is going to work because they have a whole investigation, but I'm like, okay. Right. So I go and I'm like, and I heard him already. He's given his statement. So he gives a statement and I'm like, it's none of that stuff is mine. And they're like, we know it's yours. Like bullshit. You're going to the County. You're doing this. You're doing that. I'm like, it's not mine.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
End up like going to another school after that school day after I get beat up. I find her there. End up beating her pretty bad.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I end up going to the county. Of course, I end up making bail in like about a week or two. While I'm in the county, I bump into my daughter's father, the second daughter's father who I was pregnant with, his sister. So she's in the county ready to go ship down to prison. This is nuts. Yes, I lived in the ghetto. Pauly, Jimmy, Tommy's here too. It was unreal.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So the first time I go into the county, I'm on the tier with my daughter's father's sister. And I'm just like, oh, my God, this is so crazy. Like, what are you doing here? She's like, I'm waiting to go to prison. She ended up catching like a really couple of big charges, like armed robbery, attempted murder. So she's got like 10 years that she's looking at.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I end up going in there for about a week or two. I end up making bail. I come out. Obviously, my family is a little bit disappointed with me. My landlord, I got to move out of that really nice apartment that I was staying in the three bed, two bath in that nice neighborhood because, you know, the door situation and the police. Right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I end up having to get another apartment, which I was able to do. I didn't go to the club because I was like, you know, I'm not going to go back there. But then and then the guy that I was dating ends up making bail also. So we end up coming out and now we're looking at, you know, maybe like a year's worth of court or something like that. Right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Another school, yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
We end up getting lawyers and we're like, OK, we're just going to figure this out. Like what? We're going to buy some time. So during that time. Right. I go on as business as usual, which was pretty stupid of me. I know. But to me in my head, and I'm like, I don't know, how old am I? Like 1920? I'm like, I'm scot-free. Like, I'm not going to prison for...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
They had like beat me up in our high school. And then there was a grammar school a few blocks away. So I knew she'd go pick up her sister after school because we both had younger siblings. So, you know, I was pretty beat up, took a little bit of time to like get myself together. And I'm like, all right, I'm ready to go see this girl again. The one who like initiated this gang jumping of myself.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah, for sure. So. So I go back to business as usual, still dating this guy. But I end up like breaking things off with him because he's just very clingy. But kind of, kind of, kind of. And oh man, by the way, this, I was like super young. I was completely dumb. I do not live a life like this anymore. I have one boyfriend, but I ended up dating, meeting somebody else.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
started dating this guy and he is also a dealer. So I kind of like start talking to this guy, poor guy. I ended up marrying him actually later on in life, but I kind of like started dating him. I remember pursuing him. So that's why I say poor guy. Cause like, I was like, Hey, like you're cute. Let's go out.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I think it was like before five years old. And my mother moving there is what kind of put me in that environment where I was, like, introduced to crime. Just being surrounded by, you know, gang members, drug dealers, all kinds of things that you wouldn't want your child to normally grow up around. Pretty much molded me into like the teenager that I was going to be, which was super rebellious.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I started dating him and he kind of knows like what's going on, like the drama and stuff. And cause he's hip to it. He also does, he's in the same business in the same area. So he's like, okay. we just start dating. And during that time, so there's a six month period from the first arrest to the second arrest, the first raid to the second raid, there's a six month period.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Honestly, I don't know what it was. Is it just because they're around? It was like, that's what I attracted. It was like, I guess too, like once I got in the business, it was like the guys that were in the business now really... We're like I had like my plug trying to date me like it was like, I don't know. I guess I was like the only girl in our space at that time, which sounds stupid.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
But then like it's what I attracted. It's terrible because now nobody even talks to me anymore. And now I'm like, why doesn't anybody hit on me? But I guess it's like the vibe that you give off. So I don't know. I was giving trouble, I guess.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
No, it's okay.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Six months period. So I, I, you know, I met my, my future husband at that time, ex-husband now, and we started dating and, um, I'm still kind of talking to that first guy who, you know, went on camera and stuff, you know, cause at least semi keep him happy.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Right, right. Exactly. So we're dating. You know, I am going to college. I'm like trying to like get my life together. And I remember going out one night and I had seen a police officer that was just like doing like the club IDs. And this guy and this was a warning from him. But like he's like this is during that six month period. He's like our lot. No.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So we go to the grammar school. And I ended up beating her ass pretty bad. And it just so happens that she, like, kind of lost a little bit of the hearing in her ear. So because of that, she called the police. Next day in school, I knew I was going to go to jail the next day. Like, I was, like, very aware of, like, everything that was going on as a kid.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I'm like, yeah, he's like, what are you doing out here? I'm like, what do you mean? He was like, you just don't get it. I was like. what the fuck is that about? You know what I mean? Like in my head, I'm like, did you just hear this guy? Like what the hell is this cop talking about? A couple of days later, my new apartment gets raided. Okay.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So my new apartment in the same neighborhood, a couple of blocks away ends up getting raided. I happen to have my future husband spend the night that night. He has his own place. He's not even supposed to be there. We had went out the night before and They kicked the door in at this apartment, and this time I was in bed. They didn't surprise me outside. I remember being in bed.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I remember hearing the door being kicked in. Knock, knock, knock. And I just remember jumping up. He jumped out of bed. I jumped out of bed. He took—I didn't know what it was at the moment, but it was a bunch of money I guess he had. He ends up hiding money somewhere under the trash or in the trash. I don't know what I was doing. I was probably just trying to get my clothes on or something.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
It was like I didn't know what to do in this situation. He was moving faster than I was. And then all I knew, the door was open and the police were there. And I'm like, OK, here we go again. Same police officers from the first raid are there. But now there's like more of them. And, you know, the one guy from the club is there. And he was like, he's like, I tried. I tried telling you.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
He's like, you know, this is. This is ridiculous at this point. They end up finding a bunch of drugs of mine. It was in a flower pot. I'll never forget. I was so stupid. I bought like this secret flower pot to hide yourself in. Never put soil. Never put a flower in there. So, of course, they see this empty flower pot. Find all this stuff. Arrest me and my future husband at the time. And...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So now I have officially two co-defendants. Right. So I've got the first guy that went on camera and this guy that I ended up marrying. And of course, he wasn't going to be like, oh, that's all my stuff. Right. If anything, it was like the reverse. Like when we got arrested in her house. Yeah. We got arrested. I remember going in there and I'm like, I'm like, everything is mine.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
He has nothing to do with it. It was like a full circle moment. Right. I'm like, he has nothing to do with this. Like he was this poor guy was just spending the night. But mind you, while they're doing this raid at the second apartment, they're going through like my mail and stuff. So I'm writing my daughter's father that's in jail.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I was writing actually, I think one other person that was in jail. So they're like going through my jail mail, the prison mail. They're like pulling it out and they're like, I'm not going to say any names, but they're like, so-and-so. And then this one, they're like, so-and-so. They're like, oh my God. They're like, what? Like, what kind of mess are like you into right now?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I'm just like, well, he was a friend and all this stuff. But it was like a big, a big, a really big thing. And then come to find out, I'm like, okay, so I know who told on me the first time, right? Guy from the bar that was upset that I never did anything with him and then end up being pregnant a couple of weeks later or months later.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I go to school the next day, get arrested in math class, had to go through, like, this whole trial process. They tried to kick me out of school. The high school, I end up getting just put into a night school instead. And which was good for me because I was having a safety issue now with the older girls. I was a freshman.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
The police tell me, they were like, well, you really pissed somebody off. And I said, well, who did I piss off? They were like, the guy whose business you wouldn't give back. So my daughter's father actually, I don't know at what point, he cut some kind of deal.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah, he got out of jail. He got out of jail from the county.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
No, no, no. He no. So at some point, yes, I did skip that. My apologies.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, no, no, no. I'm sorry. So, yeah, just to go back a little bit. I'm still going to see him. He ends up he ends up coming out. He ends up coming out of the county. And of course, you know, I don't want to be with him at this point. I'm dating somebody. And I'm like, look, you're not getting your phone back. You're not getting I don't know what you want from me. Right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
First of all, that number doesn't work anymore. But before he came out, I knew this was going to be an issue. So I had exactly what he left me, a starter pack.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I gave him exactly what was left with a brand new phone and maybe a couple hundred bucks. And I told him, like, this is what I owe you. You know, I paid for all your lawyers. I took care of your mother. I took care of everything. Nobody wants to deal with you anymore. And we're done. So I end up giving him that when he comes out. He goes back to obviously doing what he was doing because...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I gave him what he needed.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And at some point, he gets pinched really quickly from being released. And that's when he told on me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah. I think that's what it had to be because I was trying to avoid this man because he was obviously upset with me. I think that's what it was. It had to be because I was not trying to be around him at all. But, yeah, so the two people that did tell on me were guys that I was somewhat involved with.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah, pretty much.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
At this point, now they have, they had like a whole investigation again.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yes, there were buys. There was like, my discovery was like, I couldn't even read it all. Like, it was just so big. I was like, I believe whatever, you know, like whatever it says in there to my lawyers, I'm like. It's probably all true. Yeah, I'm not going to read it. I'm not going to read it. But he did, they did a whole blown investigation again during those six months.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I guess whatever input he had given them, which was my new apartment, which was, I guess, my schedule. Right. Yeah. He definitely did add to that, though. I end up going back to the county. I'm in there. I see my, you know, my future sister-in-law at this point. Oh, not really. My daughter's aunt. And so this time is a little bit harder to make it out the county. Right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
These are like junior seniors that are messing with me because of the guy that I decided to date because he was in a gang and they were like in a rival gang. So this wasn't just because like they didn't like me. This was like, oh, look at that new girl. She thinks she's so cool. Like, you know, she's not a part of what we're doing. So.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Because I'm already out on bail. Right. I'm out on like. I don't know how much, maybe like $100,000. It wasn't huge the first time. I remember we had enough cash. And then the second time, bless my grandmother's heart, she put her house up to get me out because they needed collateral. My God. I know. I know. Shout out to my grandma. She's like, she's the best.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I come out and now I'm fighting two charges, pretty much two cases. Uh, I'm going to court with my ex-boyfriend, my current boyfriend. And it's just like all of this, this mess, this whole entire time that we're going through, uh, the court process, which I had never really been through other than being a juvenile. And that was like very brief, but, um, I'll tell you, it was stressful.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
It was really stressful. I kept changing my lawyers. I kept pushing my date further out because I wanted to get my shit together, which what does that even look like? You know?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
But I'll tell you this, because one of my friends, my one of my ex-boyfriend's mothers had been to prison and came out while I was this was all going on. She was like, you know, I heard what's happening. She was like. sign your children over right away. Right. This was the first time, the first, after the first raid. And I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, did Dyfus come?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I said, no, no one ever called Dyfus. The cops were nice enough to be like, call your mother. You've got 20 minutes or we'll call on CPS.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Child Protective Services. Sorry. Yeah, I guess they're called CPS. And so I never got CPS called on me. So they had my mom come get my kids because they were, I think, believe in the house at second rate. So...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
This friend of mine, my friend's mother goes, you know, go give custody over to your daughter's, your first daughter's father or your mother, somebody before you go through the whole arraignment process thing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I ended up doing that, which was the smartest thing I ever did, because when CPS eventually did approach me about like a year into going to court, they were like trying to challenge me about my custody. And I was like, well, my father has custody of my youngest. My oldest father has custody of her. So thankfully, like I never had to go through any of that. That was like probably.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Right. We went right down to the courts and I had done that. And that was probably the best move I had ever made was signing that custody over to my other family. Just so that when I was going to go to prison, you know, they could be taken care of.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
end up going to juvie because of that get kicked out put into night school my mom actually showed up for me once and didn't let them expel me completely and actually in night school i ended up completing my work a year ahead of time so they would hand you the packets and they'd say okay here's the homework do what you have to do and then you get to test out of it so once i like caught on to the fact that the faster i do this packet the more i'd move up um
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Exactly.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
At this point, I'm not selling anymore because...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
No, but I'll tell you what. I did go back to bartending.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah. That's not illegal. No, it's not. By default. So I'm back in the club. A different club, obviously.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah, about 21. Yeah, about 21, 22. And like, so we're doing, you know, I'm just trying to get my stuff together. I end up. You know, being with the last guy that caught that second charge with me, who actually got into putting on a bracelet because he was on parole. He was on parole the day that they kicked the door into my second apartment.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So they only give him an ankle monitor because I said it was mine. So there's a lot going on. He's on an ankle monitor.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So he's on this anklet. You know, I'm going to fight this case. I keep pushing it as far as I can. whatever it was that I did to piss these police officers off this drug task force, they wanted to make an example out of me. So I had spent a lot of money, like most of my money, like I was pretty broke at this point in lawyers and stuff. And, you know,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
That money that I had told you that my boyfriend at the time hid, we ended up getting robbed for that. That's another story. And I'll get to that. But I end up, you know, just getting myself prepared. They end up giving me five years. So the first sentence, they ran them concurrent, thankfully. So they're like, look, we're going to give you... 18 months stipulation with five years maximum.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And then I believe one of the other charges was 18 months stipulation, three years maximum, but altogether I could have done a total of five years. But before I had all these lawyers that were working on my case, I was looking at like 10, 15 years. They were like really, and maybe that was just trying to scare me, but that's what they were trying to literally get me on because of, you know, uh,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
What is it? Controlled substance, you know, school zone, like everything that you could possibly think of. They were trying to make like an example out of me. And I think that I really pissed them off during that six month period of me just going on another tangent.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And kind of laughing at them like, you know. Yeah, he's going to jail. Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
No, I don't have that. I don't have it at all. So I end up, you know, preparing myself a couple months before my sentencing date is coming. I end up kind of transitioning my kids to not living with me at this point. So my oldest goes with her father, the one that I met in high school, and the youngest went with my father because her dad, you know, was the one that got me in trouble.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And he kind of just took off. He ended up catching a really big charge and he's been on the run ever since.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
He's still on the run. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So that year that he got me arrested, he ended up I'll just tell you, he ended up smoking and this is why we kind of broke things off. I found out that he was doing drugs. He was smoking dust one night and he like went bananas, ends up breaking down the door to my house is before the police came.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Of course I got, you know, kicked out of this apartment, but he ends up breaking down the door and like, he goes crazy. I didn't even know he knew where I lived. Um, but he's on, I could smell, I'm sorry. He's on dust. I could smell it coming through the door. Um, Um, he breaks down the first door of my apartment.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And again, he's still upset with me because I took the business and then, and I didn't want to be with him when he came out. Um, breaks down the door. I ended up calling the police. Cause this guy is really strong. Like the Hulk. Cause when you're on this stuff, you don't, you're like, you get like the strength. I don't know what it is, but he ends up breaking all these door down doors down.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
You know, I ended up graduating a year ahead of my class, which you would think is great because it's like, oh, you're out a year early. But I still didn't have my stuff together.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I call the police and, um, They come. It took so many of them to get him in the car. He ends up getting in the car, kicks the freaking cages out. He's running around the streets. I mean, it was really it was it was like dramatic. But after that night, I pretty much didn't see him again because now he's on a new charge, which is like.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
hitting the police officer, breaking and entering because he had grabbed my cell phone. It was robbery. And it was just like, and I didn't want this for him at all. Like I wasn't, I didn't have any like male feelings toward the guy. I just knew he was like, obviously back to using drugs. And I'm like, guys, don't do it. Like, please, please. But there was nothing I could do for him.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So he ended up catching a whole slew of charges, made bail. And he's been on the run for like the last, I don't know, 12 years.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So he's still on the run. My second daughter's father, which sounds like it's like, oh, so sad. But honestly, I'd rather I'd like that. I don't have to deal with him. Right. To be honest. I mean, he was obviously, you know, he had he had some issues.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
No.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
No, he bolted. He's like in Wyoming or like somewhere by Canada or what is that? Michigan, I think. Um, last I heard he was in Michigan, he friend requested me on Facebook recently. I just deny it. So I ended up going to prison, right? So I go back into the county and I'm like, okay, I'm going to prison. Like, this is it. Um,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I end up going from the county to prison pretty quickly, thankfully, because I was, you know, once when you have a lawyer and you're like a legitimate lawyer, you get moved through the system pretty quick. Unlike people who have public defenders. So like this was like a two year time span now.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And like now that I'm going to serve my sentence, my daughter's aunt is still there because she's still waiting two years later to get moved from the county to the prison on these charges. No attempted charges. So she's like, so that's it. Like. You're doing this now. I'm like, yeah, there's no more getting out of here. Like, this is what we're doing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So we ended up actually moving from the county to the prison around the same time together.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, I ended up getting so minimum 18 months, maximum five years.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And if you behave yourself... I can get out in that 18 months. After the 18 months is up, I can get out. If I don't behave myself, I can stay up to five.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
But it wasn't. You would think. You would think. But it wasn't, right? You'd think it would be incentive to behave, but... I don't know. I literally, I don't know. I really needed like a therapist when I was younger. I needed someone to talk to. I needed a role model. Like I needed so many things that I just didn't have. And I was just like, I was just like crazy.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So that was the plan. I did want to go to college. I did apply to college. I started to go to community college, yes. I thought I wanted to be a teacher because I just wanted to have the weekends off, thought the summers off was going to be nice. And so I started to go to community college to be a teacher. However... On my 18th birthday, I was offered a job in a strip club.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like, I don't know what it was, but I ended up going to, to the prison. So they tell me, okay, you're going to have to do 18 months minimum, five years maximum. So I ended up going and I, At first, you know, I mean, obviously prison for me, it was a humbling experience.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
It was for me, I feel like not just humbling, but I feel like it was somewhere that I needed to be for me to get my shit together. Like, I'll never go back, right? Like, I learned my lesson. But even still, like, my prison sentence was not average. It wasn't normal. I still kept continuing on to be a little bit of, like, a degenerate still. So...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm in prison with, you know, an actual prison with all these women in there. And my daughter's aunt is in there, which, you know, somehow, some way out of all the places that I could go, we end up in the same unit in the same room, one bunk over. So if I stand up, we could see each other like we were in the same wing, which was really crazy. But I end up going there.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
to the prison and I'm like, you know what? I'm going to stick to myself. I'm going to do this 18 months. Um, I'm not going to get involved with anybody because like I had heard of all these like stories that could happen, right? Like, oh, you're going to ask to get like into this group and that group. And I had already been through that crap in high school. So I'm like, I'm sticking to myself.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm not going to go one way or the other. And, you know, I was approached by the Spanish girls, the Latina girls. My Spanish wasn't perfect, but they're like, you know, you're going to rock with us. And I'm just like, you know. I like everybody.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And that's kind of how I was like doing my sentence was like it was I got along, you know, with the African-American girls, with the white girls, Latina girls, with the mentally ill. Like I was trying to literally befriend everybody because I'm like, I'm very like social. And I'm like, you know, if I'm nice to everybody, then I don't have to worry.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I shouldn't have a problem. Right. So I end up going into prison. I'm in like low security because it's the first time that I'm there. I end up, you know, they put you in reception for two weeks, which is like a gym. You have to stay there for two weeks to make sure you don't have like all these like different things. It's just like a check in process. You don't really have like too much clothes.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
You don't have access to a lot. It's kind of like probably the roughest part of it. And so I go through the two weeks and then I end up getting put in like a low security prison on the grounds is what they called it. And for me, it was I had never been I had been to community college. I had never lived on campus. But I remember looking around and thinking like.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I feel like I'm living on campus right now because the cottages, they were like houses. This is in New Jersey. It's like this huge like farm area, but there's like all these cottages, like legitimate houses with all these different girls. They have like the community center. It looked like a college campus.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I'm like, OK. So like I had like a little job there. Like I forgot what I did. So I had a schedule. It was very low security. I was obviously still in my khakis. You know, I was in prison, but it didn't feel like prison enough, I guess. Yeah. Right. So so here I am. I'm like doing the things, going to my job, you know, going to my room, doing all this stuff.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I get picked up by a halfway house. They're like, okay, you've done, I don't know, maybe like three months. And I'm like, damn, this is moving along pretty fast. Right. I'm like, this is moving along pretty fast. I'd only been like three or four months that I'm in prison. And now they're like, oh, we're going to move you to another facility. It's what comes before the halfway house.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I'm like, okay. I'm like, let's go. So I end up leaving prison and I'm going to this other facility where it's not quite a halfway house, but it's not prison. It was like almost reminded me of like a hospital. It was weird. And you could be in your regular clothes and like work release. It's like what comes before that. It's like a holding center for that.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
It's like it's just it was weird because it was like a lot of programs. I felt like I was like in a drug program kind of thing that I had never been into one before. But I imagine that's what it was like. We had regular clothes. I remember my husband being able to bring me like all these new clothes and stuff and like perfume and.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So literally 18th birthday. It just so happened that my aunt worked there. She was a bartender.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And they were going to sort us out and decide what halfway house we were going to. It was called Bull Robinson. And I had to stay there. I think it was a month. You have to stay there to get until you get into the right facility or halfway house. So that's when I would say that, like, I started getting into some trouble.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I end up going to this transition house as I wait to be placed into the halfway house that I'm going to. And that's when I would say, like, I started to kind of get into some trouble with, you know, with me being incarcerated, meaning that I started to get involved with people that I shouldn't have gotten involved with, you
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I end up at this transition house, you know, we're in these regular clothes and you're meeting girls from all over the place. It's like a weird, it was a weird vibe. It was like prison, but regular clothes, a schedule, a lot of drama. And somehow, you know, by the grace of God, I end up leaving that place. But before I leave that place, I end up meeting a girl.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I ended up meeting this girl who, she dressed like a boy. She was like, you know, tomboyish or whatnot.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
You're deep. I know. It's just like, it's a big... It's a movie, but... So I turn 18. My mom and my aunt approach me, who, again, my mom's not well. My aunt is also unwell. And they're living whatever life that they're living. And they're like, you're 18. Like, you can go to work now. So I'm like... like, what am I going to do? Like, you're going to bartend with your aunt. And I'm like, okay.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, a stud. A stud or an A.G., right?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I think it means aggressive or aggressor. Really? A.G., I believe.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I ended up at this transition house and I ended up meeting a stud and we ended up being friends for those like two or three weeks. She was really it's really cool. Puerto Rican girl seemed like somewhat normal. So we ended up becoming friends and we end up getting shipped off. Everyone ends up getting shipped off to the halfway house in which they're going to go to.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So at this friends, just friends at this point, at this point. So we're just friends at this point. And at this, I end up getting put into a halfway house for people that were on medication. Right. So I'm with like the mentally unstable. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Because if you're on any kind of like medication, it could be heart, heart medication, blood pressure, anxiety, anything to do with meds like you'd get put into this one house. OK, so because I was on some kind of anti-anxiety medication because I was originally when I came into prison, I was on anxiety meds. They continued my medication. So I end up getting put into this halfway house medication.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
In Newark, where it's just a bunch of girls, again, that are either like mentally unstable or they have some type of medical condition. So this is where it really started to kind of get dramatic because I ended up against my own agenda, my thoughts, better judgment, end up getting into a relationship with this girl, this stud. And I had never been in a relationship with a woman before.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Was I attracted to women prior to prison? I think I was curious. I think I've always been kind of attracted to women. I think they're beautiful. But in terms of a relationship, it was never anything that I thought I wanted to do.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Right. So for me, it was definitely, you know, obviously me being in this environment around all these women, I'm looking at like at least another looking at about a year still, maybe like 14 months or something like that. So I'm like, all right, haven't, you know, been intimate with anybody for quite some time. This girl is a stud. I really liked her.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
You know, she dressed really nice to care of herself, end up starting to have a relationship with her in there. And that's where the drama started, of course, because. Girls are just too much. They're catty. I didn't realize that, you know, she had had, I guess, past relationships in there or she had girls that liked her in there.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So that time that I was in the halfway house was not fun for me, even though it should have been. Right. I'm in this building, this halfway house where I can wear regular clothes, you know, I'm My fiance at the time is still coming to see me. He doesn't know about this study yet. He's coming to see me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I didn't have my children coming to see me because I didn't want them to see me at all for that year and a half. I didn't want them to have.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
See me in that environment. Right. Just know that, you know, I'll deal with it later. But I did have, you know, my my fiance at the time coming. I think my mom maybe came once and my dad came once. I really didn't want anyone to see me too much. But yeah. so in there, there was a lot of jealousy again, cause you can wear your street clothes.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I had my fiance at the time buy me like brand new everything. So I have like popping the tags off of my clothes where they fancy. No, but to people that don't have much, um, you know, it could look like I was maybe trying to be flashy and that wasn't the case, but so it was a lot of jealousy among, you know, the girls, um, you could have makeup in there, you could do your eyelashes in there.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So of course, you know, it was always like doing my makeup, doing the other girls makeup, but, um, Dating this one girl got me into some trouble because she had all of these other girls that I guess she had stopped talking to and whatnot. And I just remember, you know, getting into fistfights with other women over this woman.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I knew she like bartended. I knew it was a club, but, and I, and I had a child at this point already. Right. I had a two year old. So I know, you know, what sex is, but I had never been in a place like this before. Like,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I remember specifically fighting her in particular a few times because like I'd catch her like talking to another girl or like she'd be like in the bathroom with another girl. She was clearly like this was I didn't know this at the time because I had just met her. I was getting to know her. But this was a reoccurring thing for her. I guess she was in and out of prison. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
For most of her adult life. So, like, in there, she thought she was, like, you know, the shit. And she'd get a lot of attention. So, I would get a lot of hate because of that. And I got into, like, a lot of fistfights. A lot of fistfights with her. To the point where...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I felt like I was like losing my shit right like here I am it's not even the fact that I'm in prison right that is like bothering me now it's the fact that I have these other girls that are trying to mess with me in a sense that like they're trying to get me in trouble now they're putting stuff in my room that's not mine uh you know like paraphernalia it could be like coffee yeah it could be like coffee that you're not supposed to have on the street all this stuff
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And so in there, you know, they're like trying to mess with me or whatever. And I dealt with it for like a couple of months. I was like this close to getting out on job release. And I just couldn't take the pressure anymore. Like I couldn't take it because I knew that I was going to hurt somebody because these girls were just like fucking with me too much.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So rather than putting my hands on somebody to the point where like I catch another charge, I thought it'd be a good idea to leave.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
To like kick the door open and run.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yes.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I had heard.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I had no idea. So this is all I know. People were doing it. Like people were doing it. Like while I was there, people were kicking the door and leaving. And it was just like, oh, it's that easy. Like you literally, just a magnet, you kick the door and you go. And like people were doing it for all different reasons, right? I'm sure like some people were like,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
doing it to have sex, doing it to go do stuff that you're not supposed to. But for me, it was just like this pressure that I had of, I don't want to, I don't want to hurt somebody.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Cause I was very, this girl like kind of drove me like a little bit crazy, a little bit like the jealousy, the, and I, and I'm just like, I give you guys so much props for dealing with us because that relationship, I only needed that one, one to realize that I am meant to be with a man.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Because the emotions, the jealousy for me was like being hurt by a woman actually hurt more than a guy hurting me for whatever reason. So I'm sure some women can relate to that. But so she had me going pretty much nuts. I was getting in fistfights with her. I was getting fistfights with this other girl that she had been dating before me and some other girl that she had been dating before me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I'm like, you know what? Fuck this. Like, I'm out of here. So. Did my fiance at the time know about this relationship? He ended up finding out toward the end, right before I left. And the reason being was because we would have these visits and like this stud would make sure to come get food and stuff out of the damn vending machine when he was there.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
It was pretty raunchy. It was like, yeah, it was raunchy. It smelled like cigarettes you could smoke back then. I just remember walking in there and it just being so dark that it took like my eyes to focus until a couple of minutes, right? Because I'm like, and then when I can see, I'm like, there's ass and boobs. And I'm just like, oh, my God, what is going on?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And it was like this whole big, this shit show. And I'm like, you know what? So when I called him, I said, I need to get out of here. Like, I'm going to get into some real big trouble if I don't leave here. Like, I could just feel the pressure, the anger, the stress building up. I'm like, I'm going to leave at this time on this date. Like, come pick me up. And he's like, are you fucking serious?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
He's like, you're going to escape. I'm like, just come get me. Like, yes. So he was a real one for this. But he ends up renting a car because, of course, he doesn't want to come get me in his car. Right. He ends up renting a car, listening to my crazy ass. I don't know why. I would have been like, no, you're staying in there. But he's like, I guess there was no change in my mind. And he knew that.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So he's like, okay, I'm going to come pick you up. So I end up leaving. And... Actually, another girl that I had made friends with came with me and I told her not to. I kept telling her, I said, do not leave this place because she was like she had a thing going on with her kids. And I kept telling her, I'm like, her name was her name was Donna. I really liked her.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I was like, Donna, do not fucking leave with me because I don't I don't. First of all, I don't know where you're going from here. Secondly, you need to handle your stuff. She didn't want to hear. So anyways, me and Donna end up leaving and he picks us up and he's like. Who the fuck is this?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Right. Who the fuck is my friend Donna? Don't worry about it. Donna ended up, like, going home the next day, like, to her family or something. I ended up going on the run for two weeks. Um... And during those two weeks, I was back in my apartment that I was in before. I only turned myself back in after those two weeks because the bounty hunters were going to my father's house, my mother's house.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
My grandma was like, I'm about to lose this house if you don't bring yourself back.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I think they're just trying to scare her. They're just trying to scare her. It was them going to my father and my grandmother that I was just like, okay. I was like, why not this last known address? But whatever. So I'm like, okay. They're like, listen.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
They never came. So I end up saying, all right, you know what? And at that point, too, two weeks is a really long time. 14 days to be on the run. I did a lot in those 14 days, though. I did a lot. I ended up buying a car, registering this car at DMV. I ended up doing all this. I don't know. I went and got a manicure, a pedicure. I was like... I was like, I don't know.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I was like, I lost it at this point.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
He's just like, well, what's the plan? The whole two weeks, he's like, okay, you got your break, you know, a couple of days. You got your manicure, your pedicure. You went shopping, like... What are we going? What am I taking you back? And I'm like, oh, you know, just a little bit longer. I'm like, I don't know if like we squeeze a trip in there. Like I'm crazy.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like I was being really reckless, but I was like out in public, out and about. So finally, the reason why I stopped being on the run was because they were going to bounty hunters were after me and they were going to my family. And now my dad's like calling him like, listen, we know she's with you. Tell her to bring her ass back to that prison right now, because she's
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I end up getting a job at the strip club completely. I wouldn't say completely innocent. Right. Because I've grown up, you know, in the ghetto, had a baby by now trying to get like figure out what I'm doing in life. But to that kind of lifestyle.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
The neighbors are seeing these people, you know, my dad lives in a very nice neighborhood, so I'm like, all right, it's over. I'm like, all right, what do I do now? So I'm obviously like scared that I'm going to catch a street charge for this. Right. They call it like a green sheet or something because you can catch charges in prison and they can amount to actually if you turn yourself back in.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Right. Right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Exactly. That's what it was. Actually, it was absconding the charge. So, again, I was like, OK, it's over. Take me back. So rather than, you know, going to like the police station nearby or having to go through the county to get back to prison, like driving to the prison gates. And he's like, are you fucking serious?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I have two of our friends that were there with us actually had like got a tattoo. So it's like my tattoo artist, my friend who we're all friends. Right. And then my fiance at the time. And he's like, I was like, you know what? Just take me back today. They were like tattooing me. And I'm like, you know, let's just go back today. They're like, what do you mean?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm like, right now I have the nerves for it. I'm like, let's just go. And they're like, like right now. I'm like, yeah, drive me to the prison yard. So I'm like. You know, ready to go back at this point because I'm like, I have to face the music. I got to get this over with. I still have like a whole year ahead of me. It's only like six months at this point. So what do I do?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Well, I know how it works in there. Right. The first time. So, of course, I go in there with goodies.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Right. So tobacco, they were they were slowly phasing tobacco out at this point in the jails in New Jersey. So having tobacco was like having gold.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Having matches was like having gold. Having Xanax was like having gold. Right. So I made sure to bring some with me in there.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
the only way you can think of you brought it with you in your prison purse right in my prison purse right um because i knew like i had already gone through i'm like they're only going to scan you for like you do sit on this thing but i'm like they're looking for metal right this is i didn't have any metal it's like the smallest thing ever so i just go in there i wake up the next morning because of course i made sure that i was like a little bit messed up doing that right like i think i had taken some xanax um and so i wake up and i'm like
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I was bartending.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm looking around. I'm back in the reception area. I'm like, fuck, I really did leave and I'm back here. So I'm in prison and they're like, well, first when they welcomed me at the gates, I called. I'm like on speakerphone. I'm like, hey, I ran away from the halfway house two weeks ago. This is my prison ID number. I'm at the front gates. They're like, what do you mean?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm like, open the door, open the gates. So they checked me right in, end up in that reception area. I wake up. And my sister-in-law was back in there. And I'm like, what are you doing in here? Because she had went off to another part of the prison. She's like, what are you doing in here? I was like, well, I was just gone for the last two weeks. She's like, are you crazy?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like, you're not leaving prison. maximum security now. And I'm like, oh, I don't think I thought about that. So end up waking up, you know, spending those two weeks, my sister-in-law or my daughter's aunt had gotten into a fight or something. That's why she was back in reception. We ended up getting put again in the same place on the same wing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Um, you know, obviously during that time, those two weeks I was in there, I had, um, you know, I was like getting rid of the tobacco, you know, getting rid of pretty much that was it. I really did keep the pills for myself because I was like, I need to sleep like the next two months away.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Um, But that's when I really I feel like I started my prison prison sentence because now I'm stuck in maximum security. I'm high risk. And me going down to that little area where they had the cottages and the job like that was no more. No, as a matter of fact, I think I spent two weeks in solitary confinement. I think when I got out because I had to get punished for obviously leaving.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
But, yeah, so I pretty much made like the next year. a lot harder on myself than it needed to be because I had freedom. I was so close to having a regular job. But honestly, for me, and I know this sounds crazy, but I knew I could only do prison in prison. I couldn't do prison in a halfway house. I don't know why, but I needed...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I felt like I needed that solitude and I needed to not have that mix of being home. If that makes sense.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
There's a lot of temptation.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
They don't go to the bank.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Temptation. Temptation. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
The little time that I was there, like, I mean, obviously it was the pressure of like the whole, these girls messing with me. And I felt like I was back in high school being like somewhat bullied, but like, I also know like I need to control myself and I didn't want to hurt somebody. That's why I just really couldn't take it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
But in there, I mean, they were drinking, people were doing, I'll never forget. I spent a New Year's Eve in the halfway house. People were fucked up. They were on pills. They were on alcohol. Like not me. Cause I was trying to, just be my regular self. And I knew not to trust these people. But for me, I was like, I thought about that for a while before I actually left.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm like, I think I would be better back in prison. I think I would be better over there where we're all in the same clothes, where I don't look different than anybody, where people are not just having it out for me. So I ended up going back there, being stuck in the maximum security now.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
For the remainder of my year, which was very tough at times, obviously, because, you know, you're you're just stuck kind of like in this building and get to go out a couple of times a day and stuff like that. But there's not movement like I had before. So while I'm in there, you know, I had that little care package that I brought in with me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah, we, we do get there though.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I almost got into a gang during high school. I was about 15 years old. Thankfully, I didn't go all the way through it. But there was like a lot of drama with even just going to high school every day because of the people that I was like affiliated with and hanging around and dating at the time. So I was a freshman, pretty much dating a senior. So four years difference. And he was in a gang.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I would say that's where I actually started to run a business in there. I started a full blown store, if you will.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I do start bartending. You know, I'm exposed to this nightlife that I was never exposed to before. Lots of sex, lots of, you know, drugs, lots of money, different, just people coming in and out of there. And yeah, So, of course, you know, I wasn't drinking. I was only 18. But I slowly started to start drinking. Right. Because, you know, people are like having these huge parties or bartending.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Um, there were a couple of them. It's pretty much, I'm sure you're familiar. You know, you show up there, you don't have any money. It's not time to order commissary for two weeks. What do you do? You come to me, get one bag of potato chips. You got to give me two when it's time to order that kind of thing. Um, so I ended up, you know, opening a little store, which obviously is still illegal.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
You're not supposed to be doing business in there. Um, so I opened up a store. I end up, um, I ended up offending a, uh,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
police officer in there what are they called a correctional officer right and the friending a correctional officer in there he was uh from like i guess the area we would talk and stuff and he was like pretty much like an asshole um but he knew about the cigarette thing that was coming so he had like dropped a hint to me one day he was like look just want to let you know like they're banning tobacco
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like for eternity. And nobody really knew this was happening. He was like, so if you're smart, like you'll order as much as you can. So like the weeks that were up and coming to that huge ban of the tobacco, I was like hoarding cigarette tobacco. I never smoked them myself, but I was just buying, buying, buying.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So that way when they did cut it off, I was just like sitting on money, like huge, huge money. I mean, the way that people go for like crazy for a cigarette in there was just insane. Right. But, yeah, I ended up opening a store in there. I ended up actually the one guy who had went on record for me and got in trouble that I stopped dating.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
He ended up going to prison for that, actually, along with something else that he had done. So he ended up getting like four years. And during that time, I had started that store while I was in prison. And with some of that money, I was, like, paying his mom's bills. I was sending money orders home to my best friend to start an account for me. Like, I had opened a bank account.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I was, like, just—I didn't want my husband or my future husband to know or anything. I was, like, I just want to come out and have some cash. So pretty much I was doing that while I was in there and trying to figure out, okay, what do I want to do with myself and, like— when I get out of here. So now I have 12 full months where I can't go anywhere. I can't do anything.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
There's no halfway house. There's no privileges. But I felt like I needed that because that was like the ultimate timeout for me. Like literally I'm sober, right? I'm not drinking. I'm not taking the anxiety meds that I'm not supposed to be taking. I'm pretty much just like reading books and like stuck on my unit. So during that time, I really just like wanted to like kept thinking about my life.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like, what do I want to do with myself? Like, OK, I turned 25 in prison and I remember being in maximum security prison and just bawling my eyes out. And like the whole wing is like, what is wrong with you? And I'm like, I turned 25 today. And they're like, you're so young.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm like, no, I'm like a quarter of the way through my life because, you know, I figure I'm going to be 100 one day, God willing. And I'm just like, what am I doing with myself? Like, I'm in a maximum security prison. I haven't even thought about what parole is going to say when they see me in like nine or 10 months. Like, what am I fucking doing? You know?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And during that time, I just really reflected on all of the shitty things that I had done in my life. Um, and I also was like planning my future in a sense. Cause like I had my mom sending me in like the college booklets. Cause I was going to school to be a teacher during this whole thing, obviously caught all these charges could no longer be a teacher, not allowed in a school zone.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I'm like, what am I going to do with these credits that I did have by somehow some way during all this dealing and dancing and doing all this nonsense, I was still kind of keeping up with school somewhat almost got kicked out a few times. So, and, um, I'm like, what am I going to do with these credits? So I was like, you know, I'm going to go to school for business.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Because when I get out of here, nobody's going to want to hire me. That was like one of the big things. So I was like, no one's going to want to hire me. Like, that's all I kept thinking about was I need to get a job. I need to get a job. So my mom sent me in to Pampa for school. And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to finish a business degree. Not that I advise against it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
They want you to take shots with them. I had gotten warned maybe two or three times, end up getting fired as a bartender because I was drinking under age 18.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Because you don't have to go to school for business. But at that time, I'm like, what is the next move? Right? So... That's pretty much how I spent like the next 12 months was just thinking, OK, what do I want to do? I'm going to go to school for business. I don't know what business I'm going to open. I can't work for anybody. I'm obviously good at selling things like I'm very personable.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like, how do I take this talent that I have home with me? And I ended up seeing parole. Um, and of course they hit, they smacked me and they gave me another, I think year. So they were like, oh, they, they looked at my record and they're like, oh, okay. They're like, but you absconded. And they were like, they were like, yeah, another 12 months. They're like, we'll see you back in a year.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I'm coming from parole now. I kind of had that, like, I knew it was going to happen. And I still felt like, I felt weird. Like, I don't know what it was. Like, I was just like, God, I'm going to be here for another year. Like, I can't stand these women. Like this is the, this is like, this is the worst place that I could possibly be.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Cause women are just not the people to be around, not in a place where there's a lack of everything, you know? Um, and, and hormones. And I don't think we're meant to be pulled together like that. And, um, So pretty much. Is that like a recurring theme?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
No, we shouldn't be pulled together like that. It was too much cattiness.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
In the state of New Jersey, you can legally bartend at 18, but you cannot consume alcohol.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm telling you, it's like it's tough.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I didn't have a great high school experience, obviously, right? Like the whole thing, me going to night school. So I had been like bullied before. But then to see it at an adult level was something like I had never thought existed. Like people fighting over...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
A microwave.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Which made no sense. Right. So I ended up getting fired from the manager because it was his ass on the line. And he's actually really important to the story. So this manager fires me, says, you know, you keep underage drinking. We're going to lose our license. Whatever. I said, OK, fine. Next day, I get a phone call. Hey. Do you want to come back to work? And I'm like, well, I thought I was fired.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Exactly.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'll tell you, and that's why I had said it was really humbling earlier on in the interview because I obviously got to see how other people live, right? So for me, it was like all of my complaints, everything that I was ungrateful for, seeing people that have nothing, that have no family, that don't have a bar of soap, that literally don't have anything. For me, it was very humbling.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And then like, you know, I'd listen to people's stories and I always want to know why people were there. And I'm like, wow, I'm like, I don't fucking belong here. Like I have, I have a choice. Like I have, my family's not the best, you know, but I have family, you know, I have some, I have people that I can ask for money to, or ask for help or that care about me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Some people are in there completely by themselves, mentally ill, you know, and it's, it's really sad. Yeah. And the whole jealousy thing, it's crazy for me though. I felt like I needed that because I, I don't ever want to go back there. I don't want to spend another day in there. it was, it was definitely challenging.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So for me, when I heard that I had a whole nother year to do, I kind of like put my head down. I walked back to my unit and I'm like, you know, I obviously wasn't excited. So they're like, Oh, so parole gave you another, another, a hit. I'm like, yeah. I'm like, of course I left the halfway house.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So now I'm sitting there like, Oh fuck, I'm going to be here for a whole year, another year before I can leave. And by the grace of God, um, Within like two days, some program came to see me and they were like, oh, you know, we have this program. It's called Intensive Supervision Program, ISP. We think you'd be a great candidate. Are you interested? I'm like, of course I'm interested.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So they ended up picking me up. Thank God. So I didn't have to do that extra year in prison, but I did have to have an ankle bracelet and be home. So I end up leaving at the end of my 18 months, even though that's not what parole wanted. Some outside program picked me up and pretty much I came out of prison. I went back to that apartment that I was in.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
When parole told me no, that I was staying, within two days, three days, ISP came in, interviewed me, approved me, and pulled me out.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Within a three-day span of parole seeing me and ISP.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I went from, oh, my God, I have a whole nother year to you're going home in three days. Get your shit together. But you're going to be on a bracelet and you're going to be in. So I don't care. Yeah. They're like, you're going to be in some kind of drug program and this and that. And I'm like, I don't do drugs. But you sold them. I'm like, OK. I end up going out in the program.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
It was, you know, obviously a new experience. I have a bracelet on. I can't leave the house at certain times. I have to go every Saturday and report to this community service. And like, you know, they make sure you're not drinking, make sure you're not drugging, make sure you're looking for a job. So immediately, though, part of that is that you have to get a job right away.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
They were like, yeah, from bartending. And I'm like, okay. So that's actually when I started to get into the dancing. So I'm still about like 18 years old because I had only been bartending for about two months. I started dancing, not, you know, anything I'd imagine I'd ever be doing, but making that money, like you said, that $800 a night, you know, drinking, you
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like if you don't come up with a job in 30 days, you're going back.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
It was so difficult.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
It was and it wasn't. Difficult in a sense that It was challenging emotionally. I would say that's why it was difficult because here I am, I have this big ass ankle bracelet on. And my first thought is who is going to hire me? Okay. I'm used to making my own money or bartending or, you know, dealing who is going to hire me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So my first thought is, and I don't even know why I did this, but it just seemed easy was to go be a waitress because I don't know what it is, but it seems like women, when they leave incarceration, waitressing is just one of those jobs. They'll take you with the record. Okay. So I tried a waitress for like two weeks. I absolutely hated it. I hated food. I hated messing up orders.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I started applying for office jobs online. I ended up getting a job at one of these at this establishment. They needed a secretary. So they hired me at like 17 bucks an hour, which was amazing at that time. That was a lot of money like 12 years ago. And I'm like, OK, 17 dollars. But.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
The deal was I had to tell my employer 30 days from the day that I'm hired that I'm on a program, that I have a bracelet, that I have an officer that they're going to have to report to.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Exactly.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Right. And I was so grateful for that because I did my best. Like, I did my best at that job. And it was very, like... It was it was tough because I had this thing on and I'm like wearing trying to wear bell-bottom pants and like I can't wear a skirt. I can't wear a dress to the office. And it's just like they want to go get dinner after work and I can't. So like for 30 days, I am on point.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm trying to do my best. I'm learning how to answer the phones. I'm cleaning the place up, vacuuming like I'm doing the most.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I end up sitting down with my boss at the time and I tell her, I was like, look, I really need to talk to you. You know, I was so nervous. I was sweating. I was pushing this off to the last minute. And my officer's texting me, Tracy. She's like, you got to tell her by tomorrow. Like you have to, like, I have to report this back to my boss. Like I need to call that office tomorrow.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I end up having her in the office and I'm like, look, you know, I really appreciate the opportunity to work here. Like, I love this place. I'm really, really nervous. Like, I was shaking, sweating. My voice was cracking. I was like, I have to share something that I don't even know how to say this. And I'm like, I've recently been released from prison 30 days ago.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm like, I have an ankle monitor on. I've had one on for the last four weeks. And the reason why I'm telling you this is because I have to report to an officer that you're going to have to report to twice a month or something. She's going to ask you how I'm doing. And that's the only reason why I'm telling you this. And I was like, and like, if you want to let me go, like, I understand.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
But like, I really, really am not a bad person. Like I, you know, I was I was involved in some stuff and like I want to be a better person. And she just looked at me. She was shocked. And she was like. she's like, I need a minute. I think she went and like smoked a cigarette or something and like came back and she was like, well, I'm going to go talk to Mike about this, the owner.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And she was like, I think it's okay. Um, I think I'm fine with it as long as, you know, you do what you have to do. Like, I think you're great. Like, so she goes and talks to Mike and he's like, we're going to give you another chance. Like, you don't even have to really get into it too much. Um, you know, just do your thing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I ended up actually like, I don't know if they were overworking me or if I was overachieving, but I ended up being really good at the job. I kind of like, you know, excelled. I went from like secretary to like customer service and I had my own clients. So I was like now living a regular life somewhat, you know? Right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
just learning more about the business of being like a regular person and like dressing normal and waiting for a $700 check at the end of the week. Like, what am I going to do with this? You know, like, what the fuck is this? It's a Friday night. Like, what is this? But I was like, I'm on this program. I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to go back.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
start, you know, using some stuff, uh, to just want to go to work and be happy and, you know, want to show up there. Cause like nobody really wants to be there. It's kind of like, you just go there to do your job and leave. So from bartending to dancing to now like messing around drinking and, and trying all this different stuff out. Um, And actually, I start meeting guys now. Right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I, my, my main focus was like my deal with my dad and my daughter's father was finish this program and we'll give you the kids back and they can move back in with you, but you have to finish this program. It's going to take you about a year, year and a half. I said, fine. So for that year and a half, I really did try my best. Uh, what I did, like I did a really good job at not doing anything. Um,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
You know that I really shouldn't have been and kind of just selling from that job ended up going to another. I ended up going to another company that hired me. So I left that company. And then within like two weeks, they let me go because I don't know, some kind of budget cut. So I'm devastated. I'm crying in the car. I'm like, I just left this amazing job for someone that paid me more.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And then that actually opened up the opportunity for me to go to school full time. I didn't know if you went to school full time, unemployment that I've never used before will give you an extension for like up to like a year, year and a half. So that gave me the opportunity to kind of just go to college. you know, finish my degree, even though I still didn't know what I wanted to do.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
That was like a complete also waste of money and time going to school. Because every time they asked me, what do you want to do? What do you want to do?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Well, I'll say this. How I feel about college is like if you're going to be a doctor, a lawyer, something that needs it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Absolutely.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Right. A lawyer, a doctor, a therapist. But for business, I learned more about business.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Well, on YouTube and actually when I was running my legal life. Activities. There was a lot of, it was business that I was doing. Like, it was business. And then, you know, you learn it actually starting a business. But, so I ended up going to school for business. And, you know, I graduate. And I'm like, everyone's like, what business do you want to start?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I don't know what business I want to start. So now I just go, I'm in the cycle of going to school. So now I'm going to school for a master's in business. And what does that even mean? Like, I want to be a master. All right. But I ended up during that time. I always really liked and I enjoy having a clean space. Like I'm a very neat person. I like order. I have a little bit of OCD.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So at that time, you know, I had another job and I was helping my boss at the time. move offices. So we're like cleaning. I had like my friend and my sister at the time, we pretty much packed his one office, cleaned it, helped them move to the other office, clean that, unpacked it. I was cleaning on the weekends for my dad at his office.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Um, and I was just like picking up like small, like cleaning jobs. And I wasn't even doing it intentionally. It was like, he'll be like, Oh, can you come help me? So then what happened was I actually, um, I, again, didn't know what I wanted to do. So three people in one week were like, hey, you know, you should start a cleaning business. It was, like, so random.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
All these people were like, oh, you should start a cleaning business. You like it so much. And I'm just like, maybe I should start a cleaning business. I didn't even know this was, like, people made money off of this, other than my dad giving me $100 every Saturday to clean his business. So that's kind of how I started my own business, actually. I started a cleaning business.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
cleaning homes and cleaning offices. Prior to that, though, I will tell you, I had tried starting a party planning business, which was completely dumb because it wasn't a regular party planning business. I'm like, all right, how about this business experience? What am I going to do with all this? So I had like a little bit of money. I built a website.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I was like, actually, at this time, I ended up going back to bartend. I was doing part time bartending at night, but I wasn't drinking. I wasn't using anything. I wasn't selling anything. I was literally going in there, making my money, leaving and still working this job. Actually, no, I was like on the unemployment. And so I'm like, well. why not start a bachelor party planning business? Right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Cause like, I know all these girls, I know all this stuff ended up not happening. Like it didn't work because we're, we're in New Jersey. It's not Vegas. Right. So like, it wasn't the market for it. So I ended up starting a party planning business. Never even had my first client wasted a couple thousand dollars, a couple of months.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Because this is like new to me. So I have all these guys that are coming in. They're spending like thousands of dollars buying bottles, you know, throwing money at me. And it just so happens that a lot of them were, you know, dealing. So I then I started this cycle of dating. Right. These guys that come into the club.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Then I started the cleaning business and I remember doing some research and doing, figuring out how much can somebody get paid to clean a house than actually watching all this YouTube on how to clean, like how to make a business and, and whatnot. And I actually met my boyfriend at this point in time. Um, I had met my boyfriend at this point in time who I will say this. It's an interesting story.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I also met him at the club this time. This is post prison. This is like I'm focused. I met him at a club. It was just on chance. He ended up walking in. I wasn't even supposed to be working that night. He sat down to have a drink. This was a juice bar that I was working at, the first one I ever worked at. It was very strange. And he's like, let me get a shot of tequila.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I'm like, well, we don't serve alcohol here. He's like, what do you mean you don't serve alcohol? This is a strip club. And I'm like, well, this is a different strip club. I can get you a coffee or a tea or a juice. And he's like, well, that a-hole just took my 20 bucks at the front. He didn't tell me there was no alcohol.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So it was completely by chance that he walked in there thinking he was going to grab, you know, a shot of tequila. I wasn't supposed to be working there. We ended up talking. He's like, what are you doing here? I'm like, just trying to make some extra cash and I'm going to school. I have a daytime job, whatever. He came to see me like three nights in a row on the third night.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
He was like, listen, it was so nice getting to know you, but I'm never coming in this place again. So I ended up taking his number. We started talking and he was the one that was like, look, You know, we started dating. He's like, you shouldn't be in this place. Like, just leave this place. This place is gross or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, I know, but I don't know what I'm doing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm still going to college. He's like, why don't you start your own business? Like, just do it already. And I was like, because I don't like I really don't know what I want to do or how to do it. So at that point, he was like, look, come work for me because he's a business owner. He's like, come work for me. Answer my phones, you know, doing customer service and just pick something that you like.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So that's when I had tried the party planning. They don't work out. The cleaning business started. It took off. I obviously stopped working for him. First house that I cleaned, I was handed two hundred and fifty bucks. It was me and my sister. We cleaned this lady's house for about three hours together. So six hours total. I got handed almost $300. And I'll never forget walking out of that house.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I was like, why haven't I been cleaning homes this whole time? What the fuck was I doing? I'm like, what was I doing? And then we just kept like working on it, working on it. The first year, her and I cleaning together, 40 to 70, 80 hours a week. God knows how much. We were up and down New Jersey, New York. I'd clean anything. You had roaches. I didn't care. You had an apartment.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
You had, we did crime scene cleaning. I didn't even do it properly. Like I went and cleaned up. With no, like, PPE. I only charged, like, 300 bucks. Someone got shot in Hoboken and died, and I went and cleaned $300. Now I know I could have gotten, like, three grand.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I would say that is kind of where my life went from kind of just, like, hustling in the club to now, like, a legitimate life of crime, I would say. Right. Because I wasn't doing anything that I shouldn't have been in the club, like some of the other girls. I was, like, brand new to it. Thank God, like, I didn't get sucked in that deep. Right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yes. Because you have to do all the things that I wasn't aware of. So cleaning business ended up taking off. We did like a little bit on a little bit over like 300K and 12 months in sales. Obviously, you know, there was expenses, but we were living at my dad's. We're working out of our dad's home. So that's like was eye opening for me.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And I was like, OK, this this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
This is it. This is my new hustle. I'm like, I'm going to clean home. So I cleaned homes with her for eight months. Then we ended up hiring my sister-in-law, the one that did the 10 years.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Okay.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
She got out. I probably shouldn't be sharing this. That's okay. I'm background. So I know her, obviously. So I ended up giving her a job. She ends up doing great. You know, she changed her life. Thank God. She's got, you know, got her kids back. She's living a sober life now. And then I ended up hiring like another girl that she knew.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So then I'm like, you know, I kind of like working with people, like giving people a second chance, as long as it's like nothing that like, it's not theft or something, you know, like, or like kids or anything weird. You know, we were very selective, but it was, it was pretty funny. Cause it was like at one point, my whole team of mine, it's my little sister.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
We hit, we're all convicts, like pretty much running this, this cleaning business. Like, but like,
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
like different people like we were like look let's let's let's do this like the right way you know like you don't get into trouble you don't get in trouble and let's kind of um go from here so you'd be screwing everybody if you did if you did anything wrong or took something or fucked oh yeah that was a big thing with me i'm like look you're not hurting you're not hurting the person that you took right you're the business right so we we did everything by the books
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
you know, my sister-in-law, she was a huge, well, my daughter's aunt, not my sister-in-law, but she was like a huge part of it. She was like my first employee. Her girlfriend that had just came out was my second employee. Me and my sister just kind of did like business development. And we just started like cleaning, just cleaning full time.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah. So now I'm six years in business now. I stopped cleaning toward the end of first first year, but it's been officially two or three years that I've been completely hands off. So I have an assistant that runs the business. I run ads. I have, you know, cleaners that want to work with me and I kind of just connect everything.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Um, so I did the cleaning business and at that time I'm like, okay, this is life changing. I can, you know, actually be a regular person, make good money. And then, um, Slowly after I started my YouTube channel.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I wanted to be able to help other people just learn business basics because I felt like I had spent all this money and student loans going to business school, but it wasn't anything that I was actually implementing in that first year. So I'm like, Let me just bring it back to the basics.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I started a YouTube channel to help people learn how to open a business, how to start a business, you know, how to start a cleaning business in particular.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, yeah. And you can replicate it. Right. So there's a low hanging fruit. Very, you know, the barrier entry is very low. You can literally start a cleaning business with forty dollars. You know, obviously it's not you're not going to be a legal cleaning business, but you can start to get clients to then, you know, obviously register and do all that stuff.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
But it's for people that are looking to start money. I mean, start a cleaning business to make money. And that kind of opened up another door for me, which is not like coaching. So I do have my cleaning business. We still run, you know, I still run my cleaning business with my assistant and my team, but I focus on YouTube and really just trying to help people.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
start their cleaning business and then also like I happen to know a lot about like web design and like all that stuff so it's been interesting I've been doing like a lot of speaking recently um and I don't really know like where it's gonna go from here but like what I've realized is that Because before I was so nervous to tell anybody about like this whole thing.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Like I never thought I'd be on camera telling people about my past because it's just so like not blue collar. And for me, it's like, oh, I have to relive the ghetto-ness of it all. But it's important because I've and I've learned this only through social media that there are people watching and listening that have been in similar situations or currently in the same situation or can somehow relate.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And they feel the same way. They feel like they can't do it or they feel like they're not good enough or smart enough or, you know, they have a background or a felony. And for me, it's like. I love working with underdogs like I love it because it's like we're just such hustlers and like we want for the most part, we want to do better for ourselves.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So, yeah, it's pretty much what I've been up to is just teaching people how to, you know, start a business and that and know that it's OK, you know, to have a past to talk about it. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, for the business. We run Google ads and like Facebook ads, retargeting ads. So like when I started this business, you know, shout out to my boyfriend for even giving me the opportunity to be like, let's, you know, he like gave me like my first five grand. He was like, this is an investment. He's like, I'm going to get this back. He's like, this isn't a gift. He's like.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I know you can do better. You know, he's like, you just... To him, and, you know, I take full responsibility, but he's like, you know, you've just... been put in these situations where it's like, you just kind of make the most out of what you have. And he's like, you know, if, if maybe if your mom was different or maybe if you didn't work in that club, maybe things would be different.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
But he gave me the opportunity to start my first business. And it's definitely been challenging, but I've learned so much. Like I learned about social media marketing. Like now I build websites for other cleaning companies. I run ads for other cleaning companies and, my YouTube is doing like pretty awesome. It's just, it's crazy. I just like, it's like opportunity after opportunity.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And like, I'm very grateful for it. And I, now I realize like, cause before I'd always be like, what am I going to do with my life? Or like, even one of my daughters right now is going through it. She's like, I don't know what I want to be. I'm like, Enjoy the journey because nobody knows exactly what you want to do or where maybe some people do. They're lucky. They're blessed.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
They know they're to go to be a doctor. Everything works out. But for me, I'm kind of just like enjoying the journey now of like, OK, here I am filming this with Matt Cox. You know what I mean? I don't know what next week holds for me, but. eventually what I would like to do is I do want to write a book.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'd love to write a book because I could talk for hours about, you know, a story within a story within a story and kind of just help people understand that, like, no matter what kind of trauma you go through, you know, it could be sexual, it could be physical, mental, like you can take all of that energy and like really focus that on, you know, being a better person.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And people that go to jail, I feel like We're criminals, yes. Those that are not doing anything like crazy, right? Like if you go in there for selling drugs or doing something illegal, we're just, we have like, we have what it takes to be business owners. It's just, we don't, we don't either have the opportunity or have somebody to tell us that we can do it. So we kind of just...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, yeah. I suggest it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah. I thought that's why I went to go waitress. Cause it was like, What do you do? They don't really help you figure that part out.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah, they don't help you figure that out.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm just really grateful for, you know, obviously, thank you for having me here, the opportunity to be here. But I, you know, I will say that I feel like everything that did happen in my life, it had to happen for me to be here. I don't know why I was so hardheaded and like rebellious.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
But that time of being away, really, like I said, I was able to reflect on myself and think like, OK, what do I do now? You know, like I'm not a spring chicken. I'm twenty five.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I would love to. That's like that. And, you know, coming here, I was like. I was telling my family, I'm like, I really feel like being on Matt's show is going to give me the push that I need to write the book. Because if I get the response that I'm hoping for, which is interest, obviously, right?
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Then... will do it.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So I ended up having a kid with this guy, which was... How old were you? I was actually super young and embarrassing, but I was 15 when I gave birth. So I was, I think I got pregnant when I was about 14 years old with my first child. So yeah, rough beginning. Yeah.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, yeah. It's all about the money. Like what's going on behind the scenes? It's like it's definitely it's a cash cow for sure.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Oh, yeah. Yeah. But these places are, I would say, definitely like, you know, corrupt, corrupt itself. But so I end up. you know dancing i end up making friends with um the manager who has like this huge crush on me right this like older um caucasian gentleman not attractive at all like Didn't have a chance. Yeah, no, not to be mean, but he really looked like the guy from the Goonies.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Hey, you got... Yeah, that's who he looked like. He was, like, super unattractive, like, repulsive almost. But he was, like, the manager, and he kind of, like, ran everything. So this guy ends up having, like, a crush on me. And, you know, of course, me being young and seeing, like, what he was doing for all these other girls, I kind of took a little bit advantage of it in the sense that, like...
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
now that I'm dancing, like I don't have to go up on stage whenever I, like whenever I want, I could go up, you know, and I'm doing all these things, but, um, So me and him have, like, a friendship. He has this crush on me, and we're just kind of, like, working together.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
During this time that I'm dancing, like I mentioned, I met a few different guys, you know, that were coming in regulars that, you know, had all this money. And I started to date some of these guys, right? So I'd, like, let them take me out to dinner, hang out, and then they'd come see me at the club. Well, I ended up meeting my daughter's father, my second daughter's father. at this club.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And we kind of just had like a fling for, I would say like a summer, right? It wasn't anything serious for me. But we were dating for like, maybe like two months. And during those two months of being his girlfriend... What did he do? He dealt.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
Yeah, he dealt. So he, yeah, he dealt powder. And... So I'm dating him for two months, you know, working in the club, the time that I'm spending with him, he's like making deals, like I'm in the car. So I'm just kind of seeing like what he does or whatever. This is kind of important also. So I'm dating my daughter's father, you know, watching what he's doing. I'm going to the club.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I'm like, whatever. This is like a fun summer, I guess, like not really thinking, you know, I'm going to get pregnant or like all this drama is about to happen. But yeah. During that time, I'm telling the manager at the club because now I'm kind of like just like just using him so I don't have to be at work on time. So I don't have to go up on stage more than like twice a night.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
I wouldn't get charged for like food and stuff like that. It was like nothing major. It wasn't like he was buying me any like lavish cars or anything. But I'm pretty much stringing this guy along and, you know, not really telling him that I'm dating my daughter's father because he just thinks, you know, all these customers are coming in or whatever. Right.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
During that time that I was dating my daughter's father, I ended up getting pregnant by surprise within those two months. I actually didn't find out until after he got arrested. So during this summer fling that we're having, we end up, we had like an awesome weekend at the Jersey Shore, like the Atlantic City area. We like did all the shopping.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
And even crazier, I actually, you know, I kind of almost planned my first kid because I wanted to get away from my mother so bad at that point in my life. At that time, my mom was bipolar, but undiagnosed, which I kind of knew, like, growing up as a kid. But... So she was she was a mess, pretty much. I wanted to get out of the house, met this guy.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
We like were at the beach, come back up to the Elizabeth area of New Jersey. And I just remember putting our stuff down. Like we got like a new hotel, put our stuff down. And he's like, I'm going to go meet somebody outside. And I'm like, okay, no problem. Like this was regular. Well, he ends up not coming back for like 25 minutes. So I'm like, what is going on? He actually had two phones.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So he ends up calling me from the back of a cop car. And he's like, I'm in the back of a cop car. Like, I'm going to jail. And I'm like, oh, my God. Like, what? I'm like, OK, I guess I'll figure figure out what's going to happen. So he ends up like serving some like undercover. Right. And they get him. They take him to jail.
Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Exotic Dancer Becomes Crime QueenPin, Escapes Prison & Builds an Empire | Carolyn Arellano
So now I am in this hotel room and I'm like, OK, what am I supposed to do? Right. Like this guy just went to jail. What's my next move? Like right in this moment. So I look over at the table and I'm like, well, he left his book bag. He left his other phone. He left what I call a starter kit.