Sherry hung up and dialed the condo. No one answered. She kept trying into the night, hoping Benny and the others were on their way back to Miami. She gave up and tried to sleep and rang again early Thursday morning. Benny answered, but she could barely hear him, there was so much noise in the background. Partying.
“Benny! What’s going on? Are you crazy? They’ve got warrants for you all! You got to leave! Don’t you know they’s bound to find you?”
Benny hung up. Sherry called Pat Mason. “I’m leaving Benny,” Sherry said. What she did not say was that she had a premonition that Benny was about to be arrested, probably killed, because he had been insisting for weeks that they would never take him alive.
The truth was that Benny and the others had been acting even more recklessly than Sherry could imagine. The party had begun Wednesday afternoon over drinks at the Pelican Lounge. Roger was in a frenzy of largesse. He decided to buy the Pelican Lounge, settled with the owner on a price of fifty thousand, and took five thousand out of his briefcase right then and there and plunked the bills down on the bar as an advance. Quite a crowd piled in, swollen by Roger’s generosity. He bought rounds of drinks and offered lines of coke. Men in tank tops, women in bikinis—the place was like Daytona at spring break. Donnie poured beer over a girl’s T-shirt and she happily pulled it up to display her breasts. Hands plunged into pants, girls dropped to their knees. Bob Loturco, celebrating his take from all the cars his new benefactor had bought, was there with his wife, assuring Roger that he could find him a new Corvette over at Jon Hall Chevrolet. Several old Kentucky pals of Roger’s crowded in. Roger loaned one of them five thousand in cash, out of the goodness of his heart, and paid another fifteen hundred for his gold bracelet. The fellow selling the bracelet was from Perry County. His name was Travis McDowell.
On Tuesday afternoon, when the FBI helicopter descended into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn at Orlando, Travis McDowell was speechless. It wasn’t until they were up in the air whirring off toward Daytona that he began to get the picture. The agents weren’t interested merely in interviewing him. They wanted his help. They wanted him to show them exactly where Roger Epperson was living and to lead them to Epperson and his pals.
Travis was reluctant to cooperate. It seemed too much like being an informer, something Travis had never been and never wanted to be. But he felt trapped. When Agent Fluherty, who was six-feet-seven and two hundred and fifty fat-free pounds and talked slowly and distinctly and looked clean through you with the steady, cold eyes of a man whose favorite recreation was hunting, explained how Roger and the others had stabbed a young woman up in Letcher County eleven times through the back with a butcher knife and nearly strangled her father to death, Travis wavered. And when Fluherty counseled, fatherly but firm, that what Travis would be doing was not really informing but rather helping to save innocent lives by speeding up the arrest process and enabling the FBI to organize a plan that would protect innocent people like him, Travis saw matters in a different light and capitulated. He just could not find a way to argue with Bill Fluherty.
From the FBI office in Daytona, McDowell directed Fluherty and Special Agent Chuck Boling north on Atlantic Avenue to Ormond Beach, around a few corners to the Garden of New Britain and No. 55 Chippingwood Lane. The agents then drove Travis back to Daytona and dropped him off at the Treasure Island Inn, across the boulevard from the Pelican Lounge. Travis promised to hang around with Epperson and the others when, as he was sure they would, they came in for cocktails. Other agents would be keeping track of him, Fluherty assured him, and he had no reason to be frightened.
That evening Fluherty and Boling paid a discreet call on the manager of the condo complex, sizing him up to judge whether he would be cooperative and could be trusted. What about the people living in the condo that was kitty-corner across the driveway from No. 55? Would they be willing to stay in a hotel for a day or two, so that agents could watch 55 from their upstairs window? It would probably also be a good idea to evacyulate Epperson’s next-door neighbors. They would be happy to go, the manager said. They had complained several times about the noise in 55 and visitors appearing at odd hours.
Back at the Daytona office—like those in most medium-sized cities, it was located on the top floor of a bank—Fluherty calculated that fourteen agents would be needed for the operation and summoned several down from Jacksonville. He targeted the condo as the prospective site of the arrest: there would be relatively few civilians around, and it was the likely place to catch the fugitives in possession of evidence. Using maps and making drawings of the New Britain complex, Fluherty and Boling devised a battle strategy. To the residents of the complex, it was a retreat from traffic and crowds, and its enclosed layout, with only a single entrance from the street, offered a sense of security. To the FBI, it had become a fortress to be liberated as efficiently and bloodlessly as possible.
Four agents would keep No. 55 under surveillance from the vacated condo across the way. Ten others, under Boling’s command, would form a SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team, using the beach at the end of Cardinal Drive, about a quarter-mile away, as a staging area. At Fluherty’s radio signal, the SWAT team would move in. Here the lone entryway to the complex was key: some SWAT members would seal that off. Others would deploy at No. 55 and outside the perimeter of the complex, to prevent escape over the fence. Fluherty and the other members of the surveillance squad would make the actual arrests. Such a large show of force would, Fluherty hoped, discourage Epperson and the others from trying to resist.
Talking to Travis McDowell and, by phone, to Rod Kincaid, and observing the fugitives as they roamed around Daytona and Ormond Beach partying and flashing money during the next twenty-four hours, Fluherty concluded that Epperson was the leader of the trio. Hodge was the muscle man and probably the most dangerous. Bartley seemed to be a hanger-on sort of a twerp. Ideally, they would get to Epperson first, and the others, with no one to lead them, would surrender. That was the hope, anyway.
* * *
Before dawn on the morning of Thursday, August 15, Bill Fluherty and three other agents, one of them a woman, watched from the upstairs window of the borrowed condo as Epperson, Hodge, Bartley, and other revelers arrived in various cars and entered No. 55. There were more than a dozen people, Travis McDowell among them, coming to continue the partying that had begun at the Pelican Lounge.
Rock music and shouting drifted out into the hot, wet night. There were too many people in there to risk making the arrests now, Fluherty said, and besides, the plan was to maneuver in daylight, to be sure of the targets. He would not order the SWAT team to begin staging until some of the guests, at least, had left. Whenever Epperson, Bartley, and Hodge were sleeping it off—that might be the moment.
When, by ten o’clock that morning, only one male guest had left and music was still blasting, Fluherty telephoned the manager and asked him to go to No. 55 to ask Epperson to shut the party down. That worked, people began to leave; but unfortunately one of them was Epperson, who drove away with a middle-aged woman. Agents followed them to a Chevy dealer’s in Daytona and reported over the radio that, after more than an hour, Epperson had driven off alone in a new red Corvette that he had apparently just purchased. They would be tailing him.
At about two, Hodge and Bartley left, Hodge driving a black and gray Dodge van, Bartley in a gray Datsun 300 ZX. They would be back, Fluherty said. They had taken no extra suitcases with them and had not been in a hurry. Even cokeheads had to sleep eventually.
Fluherty rehearsed various contingencies. He ordered the SWAT team to begin staging, and he asked the manager to put up a sign to say that the swimming pool was closed for cleaning. Fortunately, it was too hot for anyone to be out on the tennis courts.
Hodge and Bartley returned at about five that afternoon. All we need now is Epperson, Fluherty said. He calculated that it would take the SWAT team less than two minutes to arrive, once signaled. Local police were on the alert to stop traffic on Atlant
ic Avenue so that the team, with their M16 rifles and protective equipment, could cross the busy boulevard unimpeded in three unmarked cars.
At ten past six, Fluherty watched as Hodge, shirtless in jeans, carrying several hangers hung with clothes, came out the front door and began walking toward the van, which was parked in an alleyway beside the condos across from 55; the van’s rear end was pointed toward the street. Just then the automatic garage door at 55 was raised up and Bartley appeared, also carrying clothes, and walked toward the Datsun, parked directly in front of the garage.
“This is it,” Fluherty said. “Move up now!" he radioed Chuck Boling with the SWAT team—but Fluherty instantaneously decided that he could not wait for them to arrive. Bartley and Hodge might be leaving for good. An impulse born of the instincts of a seasoned hunter flashed through his mind. You cannot hit all the birds at once. Pick off one or two quick as you can and worry about the rest of the flock later. He saw Hodge take hold of the door handle of the van.
Fluherty raced downstairs and through the back door, jumped into his car, and jammed the key into the ignition. Squealing rubber, he streaked past the tennis courts into the street, past the fence surrounding the complex, and screeched to a stop inside the entryway just in time to block the van as it was backing out.
With no time for thought, improvising all the way, relying on training and instinct, Fluherty jerked his steering wheel to the left as he skidded, leaving his car at an angle, so that as he blocked the van, he could get out with the car between him and gunfire—he hoped not from a machine gun. Drawing his pistol, he leapt out and ran thirty feet to protection around the corner of a building, where he had a clear view and a clean shot at the driver’s side of the van, about thirty-five feet away. He had only his pistol. Neither Hodge nor Bartley had been carrying weapons—with Hodge stripped to the waist, that was another good reason to abandon the battle plan and move fast—but there was no telling what guns Hodge had in that van.
Fluherty could not see through the van’s tinted glass. He wondered whether Hodge might try to roll out the passenger side and counted on other agents to catch up to the action quickly. For now, it was one-on-one.
“FBI!” Fluherty shouted. “Hodge! You’re under arrest! Come out with your hands up!”
After a short pause, Fluherty saw the door open a crack. A hand slowly emerged. A gold watch and a big ring glittered in the sun. The fingers took hold of the rain gutter. Then there was no movement, only the glint of gold and jewels. For fifteen to twenty seconds, there was silence, broken by distant shouts.
Fluherty did not dare move forward. He was wearing a protective vest, but his head was bare, and he knew he presented a big target. Foremost in his mind was that Hodge had supposedly vowed never to be caught alive and was now probably trying to figure out how to get hold of his gun, if one wasn’t already gripped in his right hand.
“FBI!” Fluherty repeated. “You’re surrounded! Come out with your hands on your head!”
At last, very slowly, Hodge climbed down and out of the van and placed his hands on his head. With his bare, golden upper body, the gold chain around his neck and all the hardwear on his wrists and fingers and all those muscles shining with sweat, the sun lighting up his dark blond hair, he might have been an awe-inspiring sight to someone other than Bill Fluherty—who hurried over, shoved Hodge around to brace him against the van, and handcuffed him. As he clicked the cuffs shut, Fluherty glanced into the van and saw a chrome-plated, pearl-handled .45 semiautomatic pistol resting on the console between the driver’s and the passenger’s seats. In that brief interval before surrender, Hodge must have been trying to decide whether to live, or to die trying to kill once more.
Other agents now rushed up to help. Finally able to look around, Fluherty saw that the SWAT team was deploying around No. 55.
“Did you get Donnie?” Hodge asked.
“I don’t know. Is there anyone else in the condo? Are there weapons in there?”
“If Donnie’s not inside, there’s no one else. I think there’s guns in the van. Can I have my wallet? It’s on the dash. There’s a lot of money in it and I don’t want to leave it in the van.”
Fluherty reached in to pick up the wallet, which was so stuffed with bills that it could not be folded in half. Did he really have to explain to Hodge that this was evidence and could not politely be handed back? Among all the vagaries of the criminal mentality Fluherty had observed over many years, the sense of utter unreality was constant. He recited to Hodge the Miranda formula, looking into his eyes and wondering what he understood, since he appeared to comprehend so little of anything. A moment before he and Hodge had been a hair’s breadth from shooting it out and possibly killing each other. Barechested, Hodge would have stood little chance. Now he was worried about his money. For what? Fluherty’s anxiety gave way to disgust.
Chuck Boling trotted over to relay that SWAT members had caught Bartley as he ran and tried to scramble over the fence. He had surrendered meekly.
Fluherty patted down Hodge’s jeans and in the right rear pocket felt a slender, hard object. He removed a six-inch butterfly knife with dragon designs on the case. He opened it; the surgical steel blade gleamed. As he shoved him into an Ormond Beach squad car, Hodge glowered back over his shoulder: “That’s not my knife. You did not take that off of me.”
I didn’t? Fluherty said to himself. Funny you’re so sensitive about a knife.
Less than half an hour later, Chuck Boling watched as agents and local police forced a red Corvette to the curb on Atlantic Avenue about three miles south of the condo. Monitored by a police airplane, Epperson’s new car had been trailed after it had left the Castaways parking lot.
Epperson refused permission to search the Corvette. It did not belong to him, he said. It was the property of a guy who had loaned it to him that afternoon. There were papers to prove that the owner was named Travis McDowell.
At the Ormond Beach cell where he was held before being transferred with Bartley and Hodge to Orlando, Epperson continued to refuse to sign a “Permission to Search” form, repeating that the Corvette and its contents belonged to Travis McDowell, with the exception of a leather briefcase stashed behind the seat. He would like that returned to him. It contained personal papers.
The police kept the condo sealed off through the night, with two FBI agents on guard. The next day, after warrants were issued and Letcher County Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Mike Caudill arrived with two KSP troopers to join Fluherty, Boling, five other agents, and an Ormond Beach police lieutenant, a search was made and an inventory compiled. The place looked as if it had been in the process of being vacated, but evidence remained.
One item caught everyone’s eye at once. On the coffee table in the living room sat a vase holding two dozen red roses, tagged with a card addressed to Roger Epperson from Bob Loturco of Terry Taylor Ford, “in grateful acknowledgement of your valued patronage.”
The hapless Loturco, however, had already been fired. On his way to negotiate for the Corvette, he had been the first guest to leave that morning; his wife had accompanied Roger to the Chevrolet lot. Loturco was sacked, not for accepting cash of dubious origin, but for committing a Ford salesman’s unpardonable sin, encouraging and assisting a customer in the purchase of a Chevy.
Items less sentimental than the flowers included a police scanner, a 9-mm shell found in an ashtray, a map of Kentucky, a police radiofrequency booklet with Kentucky codes marked, currency wrappers from the Bank of Whitesburg, and more than seventy-five thousand dollars in cash. Bill Fluherty discovered one fifty-dollar bill at the bottom of a bed in an upstairs room.
Searches of the various cars yielded drug paraphernalia, small amounts of cocaine and marijuana, a two-way radio, a brown cotton glove, knives, and guns. A homemade garotte, consisting of a rubberized cord knotted at both ends, led Fluherty to request a check of recent Florida homicides to see whether any involving strangulation remained unsolved. The Moon Mullins murder quickl
y stood out because of the victim’s Tennessee background and the information that his house showed no sign of forced entry, which suggested the possible use of fake IDs. The victim’s occupation made solving this case less than urgent, but Epperson, Bartley, and Hodge became top suspects.
Roger had indeed listed Travis McDowell as the purchaser of the ‘85 Corvette, for twenty-seven thousand. Since the owner of the 300 ZX and the conversion van was recorded as Ron Dykes, the FBI quickly located him, the Oldsmobile, and the second Dodge van. Dykes’s account of how he had unwittingly become an overnight automobile freak led the FBI to Autoputer and Pat Mason who, admitting that she knew Sherry but professing ignorance of the group’s sources of income, added the MR2 to a list that now totaled an expenditure of about a hundred and eleven thousand dollars in six days. Adding this to the cash found at the condo, cash and the down payment receipt for the Pelican Lounge discovered in Roger’s briefcase, and twelve thousand in Benny’s wallet, investigators could account for about two hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars—more than half the amount stolen, according to Dr. Acker’s estimate.
Becky Hannah had left her 200 SX parked in the condo garage. It had a faulty throttle spring, she told Agent Burl Cloninger when he found her, back in the bosom of her family in Tennessee, eager, she said, to begin her senior year in high school. She provided an account, filled with innocence and bewilderment, of her experiences with Donnie Bartley and his pals, saying that she had no idea where they got their money but had worried that they might have robbed someone. The woman she knew as Booger, or Sherry, had put her on a plane from Miami as soon as news of the arrests became known.
When Mike Caudill came down from Kentucky to interview her, he asked her to describe the personalities of the three men with whom she had been associated, or vacationing, or however she had spent her summer. Becky replied in a dreamy voice that Benny had been like a big brother to her. He reminded her a lot of her own brother:
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