The Fort Worth Star-Telegram today details its wide array of letters from jail and prison inmates, including a few that result in bona fide stories for the paper.

“Locked inside Texas prisons and jails, offenders are forever casting their version of a message in a bottle,” the story notes.

To whoever reads this,

Please, maybe you think my story is nothing. But I am in a jail for something I didn't do. I start to lose my head and I'm talking to myself. I don't sleep no more. Help me ...

The story adds: “Letters from prisoners arrive in the Star-Telegram mailroom with relentless regularity. Carefully folded, they are often in envelopes bulging with copies of case filings, affidavits or grievance reports against jailers.”

The report notes that some 413,000 pieces of mail marked “media” or “legal” are sent from Texas inmates each year: “To peruse the letters is to get a glimpse into the minds of the incarcerated, the hustlers and the repentant, the articulate and the belligerent, the hopeless and the bizarre.”