Inmate found out he had a traumatic brain injury and is now helping others (exclusive)

After spending most of his life in prison, Marchell Taylor was facing a 300-year sentence when he learned he had suffered an undiagnosed traumatic brain injury from a childhood car accident. From that point on, he says, “my life changed.” Along with Dr. Kim Gorgens, the neuropsychologist who helped treat him, Taylor, 55, now advocates for others with traumatic brain injury in the prison system and elsewhere. Taylor tells his story in the current issue of PEOPLE, on sale now.

Nine years ago, Marchell Taylor walked into a Papa John's in Denver with a knife to finance his next binge. Taylor, then 46, was out on parole after spending nearly half his life in prison for drug and robbery offenses.

He had only been on bail for 36 days when he attacked the cashier at the pizzeria at knifepoint and demanded money.

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

Today, sitting in his Denver office where he connects community members with mental health services, Taylor is barely recognizable from the man he describes. With a wide smile, Taylor, 55, radiates energy and warmth that is palpable even over a video call.

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

Taylor's journey from serial criminal to public health activist began with a shocking discovery during a crisis in 2016. While awaiting trial for robbery in Denver County Jail, he was enrolled in a pilot program run by neuropsychologist and University of Denver professor Kim Gorgens. The program screened inmates for traumatic brain injuries and matched them with individualized treatment.

Taylor learned that, like more than three-quarters of the county system's inmates, he had suffered a traumatic brain injury, which can have long-term behavioral effects. “It changed my thinking and my life forever,” says Taylor, who is now a partner in Gorgens' research. Together, they helped pass legislation in Colorado in 2021 to fund a pilot program for state prisons similar to the one he says saved him.

“Despite all of his tragedies, he has built something,” Gorgens says of Taylor. “He is a force for good in the community. He overcomes adversity and makes a difference, one person at a time.”

Taylor's traumatic past dates back to his childhood growing up near Flint, Michigan. His father, a Vietnam veteran, was addicted to heroin and beat his mother in front of Marchell.

After his parents split up, his mother's boyfriend turned Taylor on to alcohol at age 9. That same year, he and his mother were in a car accident and hit his head on the dashboard. “They stitched me up and sent me away,” he says of the injury, which he later learned was the cause of his TBI.

The accident marked a change in his behavior. “I was no longer able to control my emotions,” he recalls. “I became snappy and violent.” By age 10, he was breaking into cars. When he was 12, his mother suffered a stroke and was partially paralyzed, so she sent Marchell to live with his father in the Denver area. Two years later, he was arrested for the first time for stealing a pack of cigarettes from a 7-Eleven. When his father went to pick him up from juvenile detention center, he stopped at the liquor store, got a bottle of Mad Dog for the two of them, and told Marchell, “You shouldn't get caught. You should be more sophisticated.”

After dropping out of school in ninth grade, Taylor got away with a series of robberies before serving his first real sentence for stealing a purse in Las Vegas in 1993. That began a cycle of prison, probation and reoffending until he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for a bank robbery in 1998.

He had been out of prison on parole for just a month when he was caught running from Papa John's. Back in prison, facing a 300-year sentence because of his lengthy criminal record, Taylor was desperate and suicidal. When his public defender played surveillance footage of the robbery, Taylor was in tears. “I didn't know how I ended up there,” he says. “I was heartbroken. I just thought, 'Why am I doing this?'”

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

After being diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, Taylor began dialectical and cognitive behavioral therapy and learned meditation techniques to control his impulsivity. Gorgens' students offered grief counseling. “It was like an exorcism where they pulled the stuff out of my soul,” Taylor says. “I was able to rewire my brain.”

Taylor finally met Gorgens five years ago after reading the legislation he wrote to expand her pilot program. “Marchell spent his whole life thinking he was scum and destined to spend his life in prison,” she says. “For him to realize that maybe he was worthy and could make a difference was profound.”

But she stresses that the idea that biological factors can influence behavior is not a free pass. “It's about responsibility,” she says. “We give someone strategies and a mindset that allows them to view their behavior as changeable.”

As Taylor learned more about his own brain, he organized his fellow inmates and, with the help of his friend and former prison inmate Corey Shively, who ran a marketing company, launched the Rebuild Your Mind Challenge, a viral campaign designed to encourage those working in and beyond the prison system to make short videos about their mental health struggles. His dedication so impressed the judge that, when he took a plea deal, the judge gave him a 16-year suspended sentence with eight years probation for mental health issues. Taylor will finish his parole next year.

After Taylor and Shively came home for good in 2018, after learning he, too, had a TBI, they started a company called AYBOS Advocacy. They provide TBI screenings (both men are trained to administer the test) and connect community members with treatment options. “People need this,” Shively says. Understanding how deeply TBI has affected their community “has changed all of our lives,” he says.

And now Taylor serves as a mentor and guest speaker in Gorgens' classes every semester. “He and Corey have become an integral part of these classes,” Gorgens says.

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