From Jail to Jesus
The story of Vince Rizzo

Growing up in a non-Christian home in Sturtevant, Wisconsin, I was the first born son to my parents, my mother being a homemaker and my father being trained as a chef. I had three other brothers, one of, which died when he was two years old and as long as I can remember the word “dysfunctional” applied to our family. I grew up working in many of the restaurants that my father ran and was always either at school or working in a hot kitchen. Periodically my father would take us to church and it seemed that he looked for God in all of the wrong places. First, it was the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW’s) when I was young which I later returned to in my own search for God and then my father delved into the occult as the years went on. Unfortunately, he saw more power there than in the churches he looked into. Previous to this, our family reached back into three known generations of witchcraft and the occult, my own great-grandmother having been a “strega” or witch in Sicily as well as my grandfather and aunt’s involvement in the occult.

While I was in my teens, I have memories of my father’s occult bookstore where he practiced satanism. I remember the satanic altar and other “tools” he used in his rituals and I witnessed many supernatural, unexplainable happenings that my family experienced. Thankfully I was never really involved myself but in our family weird was the norm. We definitely were not your “Ozzie and Harriet” family. We were more of an “Ozzy Osbourne” family!!**

At about 12 years of age we visited a Lutheran Church and I was led to Christ by the Youth Pastor after a service. Even then I felt a calling into the ministry and began to pursue it, experiencing a great zeal for God and carrying my Bible everywhere I went. However, the scriptures say that satan comes immediately to steal the seed of the word planted in a person’s heart and due to a lack of encouragement at home and peer pressure at school, I forsook it all and decidedly became very rebellious.

I spent the next several years on a search of my own to find myself, some purpose for life and to find God. My parents were never attentive or affectionate, never gave guidance or instruction and never got involved in my brothers’ lives or mine. We were the free labor that my father used at his restaurants. As a result of the lack of everything at home, I began to do anything to blend in with the popular crowd by growing my hair very long, smoking pot and drinking. I tried everything to fit in with the party crowd seeking acceptance anywhere I could find it. Occasionally something terrible would happen to me and I would straighten up my act for a period of time but then quickly fall back into the old rebellious, abusive lifestyle when everything seemed back to normal.

After one particularly bad experience, as stated before, I did go back to the JW’s because my father had said this was the closest that he had found to the truth but he found that he was too weak to live it out in his life. There I too found some of the truth and they had a form of godliness but no power in their lives and I noticed they only helped and ministered to one another. The Bible said that we would know the true disciples by the love they had but their love was only for other JW’s. They had no love or compassion for anyone else.

At this point I was becoming very disillusioned and began sinking deeper and deeper as my life began spiraling downwards. The only thing I looked forward to was the next party and if any of that involved sex, drugs or alcohol, I was an avid participant.

Little did I realize that the next series of events would bring me to my knees and then bring me to the feet of my Savior.

At about age 19, I was living in a downtown rooming house. I was practicing being a very good sinner living an ungodly lifestyle. I had totally given up my search for God and was serving myself thinking I was having a great time when I was completely miserable.

One evening I was bored and was walking around downtown around 1:00 a.m. looking for drugs, a party or whatever. A guy walking down the same street approached me and wanted a light for his cigarette. I obliged him and left the immediate area to see a friend who lived nearby. We visited for a while and then I left but on my way home in that same area I recognized another guy I knew from the streets. We talked for a while and then we noticed the police arrive at the area where I gave the guy a light for his cigarette. Right after that the ambulance arrived. I asked him if he knew what was happening and he stated that he didn’t, so I decided to go on home.

The next day the guy I last spoke to the day before came to my room at the rooming house and said that the police wanted to talk to me. I went down to the police station and they began questioning me about a guy on the street. At the time I really didn’t recognize his picture but this was the guy I had given the light for the cigarette. We had such a brief encounter that I really didn’t recognize who the guy was. Apparently someone had shot him in the face, point blank and robbed him and left him there to die and I was the last person seen talking with him. Worse yet, the guy who told me to go to the police station said he saw me shoot the guy and steal his wallet so they had an eyewitness!! They released me that day but the next day I received a phone call from the police station. Shortly after that a S.W.A.T. Team surrounded the rooming house, kicked my door down, threw me against the wall, frisked me, hand-cuffed me, read me my rights and charged me with aggravated battery and armed robbery. Then they dragged me off to jail wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. My bond was set at $25,000 but I was very optimistic that I would be released any day because I was innocent.

The victim was in and out of a coma most of the time, however, after three months the guy died in the hospital. At that point they took me out of my cell to change my charges from aggravated battery and armed robbery to first degree murder and took away the bond all together.

The jail I was in had been condemned. There was no heat, no air conditioning, the food was terrible and it was a truly disgusting place. And there I sat for nine long months - through my birthday, through spring and summer and then through fall, into Thanksgiving and Christmas. My parents would occasionally visit me but I had a lot of time on my hands to think about my life and where I might be headed. As in most American jails and prisons, many church groups and ministers visited the facility and I began to hear the gospel preached powerfully like never before. I soon came to the realization that I needed a Savior and that I had to be saved from myself, my sin and my shame.

One night in the jail cell, I bowed my head and rededicated my life to Christ. From that night on, I was filled with an awesome peace even when faced with desperate and dangerous situations while incarcerated. Other prisoners with much lesser charges were practically having nervous breakdowns over what the results would be from their crimes, however God had given me overwhelming peace which passed all understanding. My commitment to God began to be so solid that I answered the calling God had placed upon my life by holding Bible studies with other inmates. I would read the Bible to those who were illiterate and pray with many prisoners.

Meanwhile the investigation of my case involved my clothing being sent to the FBI lab in Washington, D.C. to check for traces of blood and a search of my room was conducted to find a weapon and the wallet. My clothes came back clean and they couldn’t find any evidence of the crime. They also used infrared cameras taking pictures of the crime scene. The distance that the “eyewitness” said he saw me commit the crime was scientifically proven false because he was too far away to be able to identify anyone from that distance. When they tried to locate him, they found that he had left town so it took time to find him to bring him back for the trial. I was also faced with another prisoner turning State’s evidence against me to get a lighter sentence for himself.

The trial itself took three days with a full jury, with television and newspaper coverage. Once all the evidence was presented and the jury convened for the verdict, they took me into a small holding cell adjacent to the courtroom. While in that cell I hit my knees and found myself desperately crying out to God telling Him that I deserved those nine months in jail for the petty crimes I had committed such as shoplifting and dealing drugs. I then reminded God that He knew that I didn’t kill this man and then I made a promise to God that if He would give me a second chance and release me free of all charges, I would serve Him in the ministry He had called me to many years earlier.

After about 20 minutes (an actual eternity to me but a real miracle for a murder trial!), they came and got me. They had reached a unanimous decision of “Not Guilty”. I openly wept in the courtroom as my parents came to hug me. They found me innocent of all charges and they never found who did this crime. They could have easily pinned this on me but God rescued me
from a horrible future and true to my word, I have tried with all my heart to serve God faithfully since that day. What satan had meant for evil, God turned around to good.

However, life after jail is not easy. I felt like my life was over as my reputation was ruined, I had no possessions of any kind and my family never let me forget this ordeal. But then God opened the door for me to get a job making bank runs with a courier service. That HAD to be God after just getting out of jail!!!

Then came the day I had the opportunity to face the guy that turned me in to the police. I was in the Edison Mall at the time when I noticed him there. I took a deep breath and walked straight up to him and said, “Hi, John, I’m Vince Rizzo.” He immediately cursed and looked as if he were going to melt from fear on the spot. Then I asked him why he did that to me. He then told me that the police had suspected him and he told them that he saw me do it so that they would leave him alone. I then told him how through it all I had turned my life over to God. God had forgiven me and had given me a wonderful wife, a fabulous ministry, peace of mind and an incredible future in Him. I told him that he would never lose a thing if he turned his life over to Christ. Then I said, “John, you will never have to look over your shoulder wondering if I’m ever going to be there in the darkness of night to get you back for what you have done to me. John, I forgive you.” And with that I turned and walked away, so joyous that God had transformed my heart to this degree. This showed me how deeply God’s love had truly taken hold of my life, transformed it and now it was spilling out onto the life of the one man who should have been my archenemy for the rest of my life.

This was over 20 years ago and now God is beginning to open international doors of ministry in many countries through our International School of Ministry and Christian University.

Going to jail was worth it all just to find the greatest treasure in all of life - to find Christ. He is the greatest discovery of all time whose greatness is so very great that, the Bible terms it as “unsearchable”. Psalm 145:3