Can DIY Flipbooks Become the YouTube of Prisons?

When a five-decade sentence puts bars between a friendship, one couple dreams up a low-tech way for inmates to experience those magical moments the rest of us take for granted.

Photos & video by Anastasia Young

On August 11, 2008, a SWAT standoff took over a Colorado Springs neighborhood. Since his early teens, Nicholas Wells had engaged in numerous burglaries and stolen countless vehicles. As a habitual offender, Nick had already spent much of his adult life in and out of jail. On that sweltering Monday, he was cornered for his long-time active role in a theft ring. Finally, it seemed, everything had come to a head and Nick found himself holed up with his mother and twin sister, who had contacted the police out of fear he might hurt himself.

Peering anxiously out a window, he called his ex-girlfriend and close friend, Liza Tudor. “The cops are all around me,” he fretted. Liza assumed Nick’s claims resulted from methamphetamine-induced paranoia or fatigue, but she drove to the house, finding it surrounded by police officers who had cordoned off a four-block perimeter.

Still on the phone, Liza urged her friend to surrender, “You’re gonna have to deal with the co…