A star of Netflix series Unlocked was off drugs for a year and planned to start a future with a new girlfriend when he suddenly died in his jail cell, his family says.
John ‘Eastside’ McAllister, 29, was found dead at Randall Williams Correctional Facility in Arkansas the morning of June 2, just 28 days before his release.
His sudden death in his bunk remains a mystery with murder and suicide ruled out, and his family said he had no known health issues.
McAllister, who claimed to have been jailed 14 times since he was 19, was featured on Unlocked: A Jail Experiment where inmates were given the run of their cell block to see if they could govern themselves.
His cousin Michaela Kavanaugh told DailyMail.com the show prompted him to turn his life around and finally get off meth – the source of his life of crime.
‘John was never really one to make plans but the show made him want to better himself and give himself a future that he wanted,’ she said.
‘He knew that nobody was going to hand it to him… he had a hard life and he knew that it wouldn’t be any different if he didn’t do something about it – and the show really opened his eyes to that.’
McAllister planned to start by working as an electrician for a company owned by a family member, which was going to pay for his training.
He was at the end of a three-year sentence for 10 drug-related felonies, breaking and entering, theft of property, and gun possession after pleading guilty last year.
Kavanaugh, who spoke to McAllister just a few days before his death, said her cousin’s newfound sense of purpose made it even harder to deal with.
‘He loved his family and everyone was very close to him and we all hoped he would get to where he is now… that’s what really broke the family when we found out,’ she said.
‘You could hear the change in his voice and how happy he was, and how excited he was to get another chance to have a future.
‘He wanted nothing more than to be home with his family.’
Kavanaugh said McAllister also planned to move his new girlfriend, whom he met when she reached out to him after watching Unlocked, to Arkansas.
Should their relationship have worked out, McAllister was finally seeing himself being a dad and building a future for himself.
‘He knew he wanted to have a family at some point, he just didn’t know when,’ Kavanaugh said.
‘He wanted to get on his feet first and do things right… and he never got the opportunity to.’
Kavanaugh said the woman lived out west and only talked on the phone with McAllister, but his mother had spoken with her.
McAllister, whose family is split between Arkansas and Nebraska, was going to stay in the state where he served time to be close to his mom Angela Gove.
She was the last member of his family to speak with him, just two days before he died.
‘They were best friends, they went through a lot together… He was her last living son, so it hit her very hard,’ his cousin said.
McAllister was found dead on the birthday of his brother, who died as a baby, so that was even harder on his mother, she said.
He is survived by two sisters, his parents Gove and Cameron McAllister, and his extended family.
Kavanaugh said ‘as far they knew’ he was off drugs for just over a year and it would be surprising if he relapsed recently and she didn’t know about it.
McAllister’s body has not yet been released and would take up to 60 days before the autopsy result, including toxicology tests, was completed.
‘We know he had breakfast that morning and he didn’t have any food allergies, he was in very good health,’ Kavanaugh said.
Kavanaugh said her cousin ‘was completely OK with laughing at the dumb mistakes he had made’ and never let his ‘wrongdoing and choices’ define who he was as a person – which endeared him to viewers.
‘A few of his fans reached out to us saying how much they loved him and how much his death devastated them,’ she said.
McAllister’s drug addiction and related crimes have deeply hurt his family in the past, peaking in 2016 when he stole from them to buy more meth.
His aunt Melissa Schuman wrote on Facebook at the time that he and his girlfriend robbed her house and took her children’s electronics.
‘Please keep an eye out for 2 Xbox 360s, a HP laptop, Toshiba 1TB hard drive, Samsung Galaxy tablet, Verizon tablet and a Microsoft flash computer,’ she wrote.
Schuman, who is Kavanaugh’s mother, has since forgiven him and thanked Unlocked for setting her nephew on a positive path.
‘For the first time, John took a hard look at his life and was willing to make changes to become a better person,’ she said.
‘He was so excited to get out and start a new, better life for himself. The news of his passing is devastating, especially since he only had 28 days left in his sentence and had so many plans and goals.
‘The series gave him the chance to grow, and for that, we are forever grateful.’
Schuman set up a fundraiser to bring the family together in Arkansas for a ‘celebration of life’ after his body is cremated.
McAllister was taken to Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where he was pronounced dead just before 9am on Sunday.
He was in jail since August 2021, staying in the Pulaski County jail until October 31 after he pleaded guilty.
While at Pulaski, he participated in the Unlocked experiment along with his cousin Preston Wehrer, who was a secondary character on the show.
The eight-episode series documented 46 inmates including 13 accused murderers, along with drug dealers and wife beaters, in Block H in February to April 2023.
The experiment was the brainchild of local sheriff Eric Higgins, who unlocked all the cell doors in the ‘pod’ during the day and moved guards outside, giving the inmates the relative freedom to govern themselves within the jail rules.
Pulaski County Detention Facility is a remand center where inmates are locked up until they face trial or make bail. Some who appeared on the show were later convicted and sent to jail elsewhere and two were acquitted.
They included Raymond ‘AJ’ Lovett, 24, who was in December jailed for life without parole for shooting dead Leighton Whitfield, 21, as he visited his fiancée in hospital.
McAllister explained his criminal backstory early in the show, where he was one of a half-dozen prisoners prominently featured.
He said he never got his driver’s license but had been in high speed chases and ‘some worse s**t’, and used meth since he was eight.
‘All I’ve been around is criminals… I love that adrenaline rush high, knowing you could get caught,’ he said.
McCallister’s first crime was robbing a pet store at age 19, while high on meth, pills, and acid, when he stole a pillowcase full of snakes and reptiles.
But an iguana bit his penis when he ran from the cops, and he was caught when a snake tightened around him and he couldn’t breathe properly.
McCallister was part of the younger crowd within H block that clashed with the ‘oldheads’ who tried to maintain order.
He stayed mostly out of the internal politics and tried to enjoy the new freedoms as a ringleader for brewing illegal ‘hooch’ prison wine.
He also ran a tattoo business behind bars, charging $5 for a name and $15-20 for more complicated art.
McAllister explained that he made tattoo ink by lighting a makeshift candle in a metal alcove in his cell, and scraped off the soot that collected on the metal.
To keep this going – and to light cigarettes loaded with coffee instead of tobacco – he was in charge of maintaining a ‘wick’ made of wound-up toilet paper that would burn like a fuse.
When the ‘oldheads’ regime broke down due to internal squabbling, there was a period of anarchy where McAllister and his cellmate Tyler made three gallons of hooch.
‘Now that no one’s in charge, we’re all just gonna get wild. We’re gonna have fun, and we’re just gonna party. Because the hooch makes everything feel nice,’ he said on the show.
Tyler explained to the film crew how to make it, starting with putting hoarded fruit in a bag and leaving it in hot water and adding Kool-Aid due to its high sugar content, and bread crust to release yeast.
Guards remained none the wiser about these illicit operations until one of the wicks set off a smoke alarm at the end of episode 5.
After contraband was found in rooms nearby, deputies dressed in riot gear were sent in to search the entire pod and strip search everyone.
McAllister decided to take the fall for the entire pod, as he was the instigator.
‘Jail helps you look at your whole life… I’m going to evaluate myself and some of the stuff I’ve been doing,’ he said.
‘You hit a spot in your life where you don’t even want negative stuff in your life anymore. And I feel like I’ve hit that spot this time.’
He was given restrictions for a week, but allowed to stay as the sheriff was impressed with him taking responsibility.
This was a major turning point for McAllister that began the growth his family said he planned to continue after his release.
He was one of the inmates who spoke about how the experience made them better people who wanted to turn their life around, and improved their social skills.
‘Before, I was just wanting that adrenaline rush high, and anything to get that fix, I was with it,’ he said.
‘Now, I feel better as a person where I don’t have to look over my shoulder… I know this has helped me, and I want it to continue to help me.’
McAllister resolved to swear off drugs and hooch – but would keep doing tattoos.
Despite the prisoners eventually achieving tentative harmony, learning to work together, and creating a system to run the block, there was plenty of drama.
Several fist fights were caught on camera where inmates punched each other in the face, but they were usually broken up by other prisoners in a few seconds.
However, in the last few days of the experiment a new inmate joined the block and was caught cheating at cards, enraging the losing player.
The pair agreed to settle the score in a cell out of sight of the cameras, but instead the card cheater was jumped by three and viciously beaten.
The beating almost derailed the entire experiment, which would have put the inmates in lockdown up to 23 hours a day.
Higgins is a Democrat and longtime supporter of prison reform, introducing programs after his 2019 election that help inmates re-enter society.
These programs caught the attention of Lucky 8, a production company that made several other jail-focused documentaries, which approached him in 2021.
Higgins was frustrated with inmates often being locked down for 23 hours a day due to staff shortages, especially during Covid.