Trooper Down!

by Marie Bartlett

  Slipping into the baby’s room, he leaned over the crib, picked up his sleeping grandson, and carried him into the living room.

  “This is my boy,” he said, patting the infant’s back. He turned to Edna and handed her the baby.

  “Here honey, you take care of him for me.”

  A few minutes later, as he was leaving, Edna asked what he wanted for Sunday dinner.

  “Charlotte loves round roast,” he answered. “Why don’t you fix that?”

  Dean then kissed her good-bye, and went out the door. It would be their last conversation.

  “His supper hour was between 7:00 and 8:00 P.M. and we had an understanding that if he wasn’t home within half an hour of the time he was supposed to be, not to look for him,” she said. “So as it got closer to 7:00 P.M., I waited. I began thinking about the leftovers I could fix for supper. Charlotte’s husband was planning to fly to Washington the next day and she had gone home for a while. I decided to go to the store and pick up what we needed for Sunday dinner. As I was heading back, I noticed a patrol car behind me and thought, ‘Good, Dean’s coming home after all.’ I pulled into the carport and the patrol car pulled in too. Then I saw another one. And a third one.

  “I was standing there with a bag of groceries in my hand and was just about to say, ‘What do you think we’re running here, a motel?’ when I saw the lieutenant step out of his car.

  “I remember saying, ‘How bad is he hurt?’ and thinking, ‘I want to go help him wherever he is.’ They were trying to tell me he was dead, but it took them the longest time to convince me it was true.”

  In a daze, Edna entered the house and called Charlotte at home.

  “As I was talking to my son-in-law on the phone, I could hear Charlotte crying in the background, ‘Not my daddy! Not my daddy!’ By the time she got to the house, several troopers were here. My other daughter, Deanna, arrived later. The officers stayed through the evening. The man who shot Dean was still at large so the patrol made a point of protecting us.”

  Dean had stopped a fifty-four-year-old man on Interstate 40 for drunk driving shortly after 7:00 P.M. About ten minutes later he arrived at the Buncombe County courthouse in Asheville and took the driver, identified as Edward Collins Davis, into the breathalyzer room where fellow trooper Lawrence Canipe was to administer the test.

  No one knows exactly what happened next except that three loud noises sounding “like doors slamming” were heard around 7:50 P.M. When the troopers failed to report their whereabouts, another officer went looking for them and found the door to the breathalyzer room locked. He got a key, turned the handle, and stepped inside.

  What he saw appalled him.

  Dean was kneeling against the desk. Trooper Canipe was facedown on the floor, his .357 Magnum missing from its holster, along with a watch that had been jerked from his wrist. Both men had been shot in the back at close range. (Later, the defense would argue that Dean had been killed accidentally when he interfered in a struggle between Davis and Trooper Canipe over the officer’s gun.)

  Davis, who had fled the building on foot, was captured the next morning. Five months later, he was sentenced to death by a jury who found him guilty on two counts of first degree murder. The execution never took place. Instead, Davis’s sentence was commuted to two consecutive life terms, leading to a final twist in the case that left Edna and her children understandably bitter.

  “I started getting letters from Davis in prison,” she said. “Even his wife wrote, wanting to come and see me. They were looking for my sympathy, but all it accomplished was to make my adjustment to Dean’s death even harder. Imagine his wife wanting to see me. What could we possibly have in common?”

  Through highway patrol efforts, the letter writing was stopped, while troopers and their wives offered Edna moral support.

  “They did everything they could to help rne.”

  Today, she is still a steadfast member of the state auxiliary for trooper wives and lives alone with her memories of Dean and the highway patrol.

  “It’s lonely,” she admits. “I don’t expect it to be otherwise.”

  Her advice to a young woman about to become a trooper wife is simple and direct.

  “You must have plenty of love, understanding, and stamina. Because he’s probably going to be married to the patrol. So the bottom line is that you have to love him enough to put up with it.”

  Other trooper wives—all with stories of their own—agree:

  There are two things you have to do to survive as a highway patrol wife. First, you don’t think about the bad stuff, the dangers, the women, and all. And second, you learn to build your own life. You get involved with your children and their lives. You get a job, make your own friends. Because if you don’t, the patrol will eat you up.

  *

  The worst part for me is all of the abuse my kids have gotten because their father is a highway patrolman. My son has been in several fights because someone called his daddy “pig.” We’ve even had people come into the yard and slash the tires on the patrol car, or come to the door unannounced to ask questions. And when we all go out together in public and he’s in uniform, we get looks, as though people are saying to him, “You’re not supposed to have a family.” It’s like troopers aren’t human or don’t have feelings. It’s not a normal way to live.

  *

  What surprised me most about the highway patrol was the closeness troopers feel for each other when there’s a crisis, and the pettiness they show over silly things. There are certain times in the year when an unmarked car comes around [for the troopers to use] and it’s always a matter of “Who’s gonna get it this time? Who’s pulled the right strings? Who’s the favorite child?” They’re like little kids fighting over a new toy.

  *

  People want to look at you as Trooper So-and-So’s wife. That doesn’t set well with me because I know who I am and how I want people to know me. I have my own friends who are not associated with the patrol. And I am not active in the auxiliary—which I’ve avoided on purpose. I got into it at first but I lost too many friends through divorce and once you’re divorced on the patrol, it’s like no one else is supposed to be friends with you anymore. So I separate myself from all of that and lead my own life.

  *

  If any woman tells you she’s never felt threatened by the fact that other women are attracted to her husband in uniform, don’t believe it. It’s a very common reaction among trooper wives, and one of the more aggravating things we have to deal with. When I was young, it upset me something terrible every time my husband got phone calls from girls he had given tickets to. One time it went on for days on end. Now it’s more of a nuisance than anything else.

  I’ve always said of the women who come on to him, I wish they could see him first thing in the morning. Or do his laundry for about a week. Maybe then they could see past the uniform.

  *

  It seems like the public goes out of its way to see if they can catch a trooper doing something wrong. I was coming home from my mother’s one day and my husband stopped me. He was standing there talking to me on the side of the road, and the next day, we found out someone had called the station and filed a complaint. Another time, he used his supper hour in order to attend a Christmas event for our daughter, and that got back to the patrol station too. So you have to constantly be on guard.

  *

  I’m proud of my husband’s role as a highway patrolman, especially the things he does the public never knows about. One night he called from the courthouse at 2:00 A.M. and wanted to know if he could bring a teenage girl home. I asked him what happened.

  “She’s a runaway,” he said. “And she’s only fifteen. If I don’t take her somewhere she’ll have to spend the night in jail.”

  So I told him to bring her home, and I made a bed on the couch. We fed her and took care of her until her parents came to pick her up the next day.

  Another time, a boy from Ohio wrecked his car coming through Myrtle B
each and had only five dollars in his pocket. He had spent all his money at the beach. We put him up until his parents could wire him the funds to get home.

  Unfortunately, the public never learns about that part of a trooper’s work. They only hear the bad things.

  *

  What I like about being a trooper’s wife is when your kid gets a ticket, at least you know how to handle it.

  When my daughter got a speeding ticket, she asked me, “What’s Dad going to say?”

  “He’s going to say, ‘Fifty dollars,’ and make you pay it,” I told her. And that’s what he did.

  *

  What I dislike most about being married to a trooper is that we have no privacy. We go out to eat and people recognize him and come over and sit down. The next thing you know, they’re spending the entire evening discussing the highway patrol. I resent that.

  What I like most is that if I’m late for work and I’m speeding down the road and see a trooper I know, I just wave at him because I know he’ll give me a break.

  *

  I don’t worry too much now about other women coming on to my husband. But it was a problem at first. He’s very talkative and flirtatious and it took time for me to learn to deal with it. We discussed it—not very calmly either—because I’d rant and rave.

  “I’m not doing anything!” he’d say. And I’d come back with, “Well, it doesn’t look like it to me!”

  We fight like cats and dogs but overall, we’ve got a good solid marriage and I trust him.

  Some troopers worry more about their wives having affairs than the other way around. I can understand how it happens because the guys focus so much of their time and attention on the patrol, it leaves their wives out of the picture. When it does happen, the women usually go outside the patrol, because this organization is a hotbed of gossip. You can’t get away with anything and not have somebody find out about it.

  *

  My husband and two other troopers went out to a club one night and I got a phone call.

  “Do you know where your husband is?” the caller said.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I don’t believe you know what he’s doing though. He’s having a big time here, dancing and carrying on.”

  I thanked her and hung up. Then it got to be midnight and I thought, “Where is he?” About one-thirty in the morning I heard him tiptoeing in with another trooper. They admitted they had been dancing, but only with some friends of mine from work.

  I said, “Look. Number one, I’m not gonna put up with this nonsense. And number two, it looks bad on you guys and the patrol.”

  They were also accused of getting into a fight that same night. That part of it turned out not to be true, but it shows how closely troopers are watched and judged, even off duty.

  I don’t like that aspect of the patrol. And I don’t want to have to worry about getting any more calls.

  *

  My father thinks that because I’m married to a trooper, we can get anything done for him. When my brother got into trouble, my dad called us wanting my husband to get him out of it. He couldn’t understand why his trooper son-in-law couldn’t “fix it.” And it caused some hard feelings. As a result, my husband and my father don’t get along anymore.

  *

  People don’t realize what troopers go through. They say, “Oh, your husband’s a highway patrol officer. Rides around all day in a car and hands out tickets.”

  I lost one of my best friends because she said she wouldn’t have anything to do with someone who issued citations and arrested people.

  At work, I’ve heard others say it’s unfair that my husband gives out tickets in an unmarked patrol car. But that’s not the main thing he does. He’s in that unmarked car to catch drunk drivers and to help protect the public. I wish people understood that.

  *

  He gets phone calls from girls just wanting to speak to him. It got so bad we finally had to buy an answering machine to screen them out. You can’t have an unlisted number either, or take the phone off the hook, because the patrol might need to reach you. It’s a pain, but you learn to live with it.

  *

  My husband’s really honest with me. If a woman comes on to him, or some incident happens, he’ll tell me about it—just in case someone else tells me first. I trust him totally because I know it’s against his ethics to do anything wrong on the job. So I really don’t let the patrolmen’s reputation with women bother me.

  But I think more things happen than what he tells me.

  *

  I don’t really know my husband as a trooper on the road. I just know what he’s like at home—kind and gentle. But I realize what it’s like out there. I have a police scanner and I listen to it because the patrol is such a big part of our lives that I want to be involved in what he’s doing, even when it’s hard to deal with.

  *

  To make a trooper marriage work, you have to be patient, be a good listener, and most of all, be there. When he comes in at midnight, it’s like he’s getting off at 5:00 P.M. and you have to understand that he needs to relax and unwind.

  You’re always apprehensive. You do a lot of praying and have a lot of faith the patrol has trained its officers as well as possible. And you come to realize that troopers are not there for any other reason except that they like what they’re doing. It gets in their blood and it stays there and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  *

  It’s a perilous thing to love a man in the highway patrol. Because every time he walks out the door to check on duty, it’s like a piece of yourself goes with him.

  Then one night you’re watching TV and a bulletin comes across the screen that a trooper has been shot. And your heart jumps clear into your throat. You don’t know if it’s him, but you can see him in your mind, lying dead or hurt somewhere. The fear becomes so great that you sit there, rooted to the chair. Even if it isn’t him, the chances are good that it’s someone you know or have heard of within the patrol. So it’s a very bad feeling either way.

  When it’s over and you know that he’s okay, the cycle starts again. You are aware there’ll be a next time and that when it happens, he might not be so lucky.

  9. “Trooper Is Down”

  “We tend to forget that law enforcement is a dangerous business and that it demands a devotion to public service beyond anything ever asked of most Americans.” —James J. Kilpatrick, Washington columnist

  It is a trooper and his family’s worst nightmare. What begins as a routine patrol turns suddenly violent when someone pulls out a weapon. Moments later, the officer is down—wounded or dead.

  Assaults on law enforcement officers are not uncommon. According to FBI statistics, nearly 62,000 city, county, and state police personnel were assaulted while performing their duties in 1985. Of those, seventy-eight were killed.

  Within the North Carolina Highway Patrol, forty-four troopers have died while on patrol, either through accidents or assault. Seventeen of those deaths involved a shooting, three of which occurred less than six months apart in 1985.

  When it happens there is shock, anger, and grief within the ranks, followed by a grim determination to find the culprit and bring him to justice.

  “Everybody knows that individual better watch out,” said one civilian who has no ties to the highway patrol, “because whenever someone does something injurious to a trooper, it’s like turning loose a swarm of bees.”

  I

  On March 5, 1985, in the early hours of the morning, 100,000 tons of rock thundered down a mountain in Haywood County some sixty-odd miles from Asheville, North Carolina.

  The slide blocked the major east-west twin tunnels leading to and from the North Carolina–Tennessee lines. As a result, the highway was closed for eighteen days and traffic was slowed for months. Before the episode was over, the state would spend more than four million dollars to clean up the mess.

  To provide access to and from the state line, a graveled U.S. Forest Service r
oad that bypassed the tunnel was designated as a temporary detour. Department of Transportation (DOT) workers quickly paved the half-mile road, and debris was removed from the mouth of the eastbound tunnel. Westbound traffic was then diverted through the newly opened passage. A twenty-mile-per-hour speed limit was posted around the slide area and traffic began to flow again.

  Since it was important to enforce the slower speed limit in order to prevent accidents near the rock slide, DOT requested that the highway patrol maintain two troopers on duty twenty-four hours a day—one moving east and one moving west. On March 20, 1985, troopers throughout western North Carolina were notified of the special assignment and rotating shifts were announced.

  The following week, Trooper Giles Harmon received word that he was scheduled for duty on this stretch of the highway.

  Two states away in Lexington, Kentucky, Billy Denton McQueen, Jr., was having run-ins with the law. A volatile young man with a history of aberrant behavior, most of his troubles involved crimes such as burglary, trespassing, and criminal mischief stemming from problems with his ex-wife. After he was charged with kidnapping and harassing her, she moved to Statesville, North Carolina.

  In early April 1985, McQueen decided to pay her a visit.

  On Monday, April 8, Giles Harmon began his special assignment at the rockslide in Haywood County.

  “I’m so bored out there I can’t stand it!” he told his wife, Melinda, that night. “All we do is ride up and down the highway. I want to work.”

  At one point, desperate for something to do, he pulled onto the shoulder of the road, reread his motor vehicle manual, and thought back to the series of events that had led him to the highway patrol.

  Ever since he was twelve years old, he knew he wanted to be a state trooper. Growing up in Brevard, North Carolina, he would watch for patrol cars to pass, hop on his bike, and follow the black-and-silver cruisers as far as he could go.