Just a few days back, Rosso, in the prison yard at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, of North Carolina, had handed Madoff a list of questions, and the most famous financial criminal in the world vouched to write out his responses. Rosso told me that he is not a journalist but he knew he had a story. Then, suddenly, Madoff’s communication with Rosso stopped. I soon got to know that prison officials had thrown him in the solitary confinement for taking the interview.

I got acquainted with Rosso while researching stories on Bernard Madoff. Other convicts had given me information that turned out to be little more than prison rumors. Rosso didn’t look like just another hustler. Madoff seemed to enjoy Rosso’s company. It had been Rosso who handed Madoff a letter from me, and when Madoff asked for a reference, Rosso had spoke for my credibility. Later Madoff said to me over the phone that he trusts Rosso.

Theirs was certainly an unlikely friendship. Madoff had been worth $1 billion before prison, and owned a series of homes and boats. Rosso had for years done hard time in maximum-security penitentiaries where he led a gang, ran a gambling operation, organized a drug ring, and kept up a heroin and alcohol habit, he said. Then he was diagnosed with bladder cancer and transferred to FCI Butner, which has a medical facility, and where he sometimes walked the track with Madoff. At Butner, Rosso had turned his life around. He’d become a writer, which he says keeps him sober and out of trouble. He’s posted the beginning of a memoir on gorillainc. com.

Rosso found that Madoff was approachable. When he went out to the recreation yard and met Bernie for the very first time, he wrote me, he realized that Bernie was normal. He didn't act like some kind of snob. He was a very friendly, and looked very down to earth types.

The writer in Rosso figured that in Madoff he had a scintillating subject, which can garner attention for his writing. Madoff had promised Rosso long back to give his first interview, but after the suicide of Madoff’s oldest son, Rosso hadn’t pursued for it. Then Rosso was told that he was being transferred, as prison officials seemed to fear that he’d attack a new inmate to punish on behalf of a friend.

And so out of sudden urgency, Rosso gave Madoff a dozen questions one day in the prison yard. Two days later, Madoff handed him written responses, which Madoff later confirmed to me by phone.