The one thing that bothered Horton most, despite all the information Lisa had given him, was the fact that Evans hadn’t contacted her yet. Evans had said “years,” but Horton thought for sure he would have surfaced by the end of January or February. But thus far, at least according to Lisa, she hadn’t heard from him.
Because Evans was officially running from the law and considered armed and dangerous, Horton began showing up at Lisa’s apartment more frequently and stationed a cruiser nearby whenever the state police could spare one. During some weeks, he’d pop in three, four, even five times, at various intervals throughout the day.
“I knew we had gotten everything we were going to get out of Lisa by that point,” Horton later said. “However, I needed to stay in her face and keep reminding her that I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to believe Gary was going to call her sooner or later and emerge from wherever he had been hiding. I could feel it. I knew Gary. He wouldn’t disappear entirely without first rubbing it in my face.”
CHAPTER 20
The brilliant spring weather that had fallen on the Capital District during the first few weeks of May 1998 mattered little to Bureau investigators working day and night to find Gary Evans. To find Tim Rysedorph—who had been missing now for nearly seven months—Horton and his team needed to locate Evans. Every lead compiled during the past half-year had been followed up on, but nothing new turned up. Frustration was mounting.
Sitting at his desk one morning, staring out the window at the Siena College green across the street, Horton’s growing concern told him that if Evans didn’t come forward and contact Lisa soon, they were likely never going to see him (or Tim) again.
“Gary Evans could disappear and, if he wanted to, bleed into the countryside and live off the land forever,” Horton said later. “I was worried he had left the country. If he did, we were finished. Or if Lisa had tipped him off about what I was doing, he was long gone.”
The reality of police work, though, is this: just when a case seems to be running cold, a lucky break pops up—be it something investigators had missed all along, or a new lead.
The break Horton had been waiting for didn’t come in the form of someone spotting Evans and turning him in, or his getting “stopped somewhere by local cops for a bullshit traffic violation.” Instead, it came in an unceremonious phone call to a bar named Maxie’s in Colonie, New York. This would lead to a nondescript, small package delivery a few days later by an unwitting UPS driver to a second bar, Jessica Stone’s, a hole-in-the-wall not too far from Lisa’s apartment in Latham.
On May 12, 1998, Lisa was having a beer at Maxie’s when the barmaid took a call from someone named Louis Murray, who said he wanted to speak to Lisa. Murray, the barmaid said, had been calling the bar asking for Lisa for the past few days.
Lisa would drop by Maxie’s from time to time, usually in the afternoons. Apparently, Louis Murray knew that.
When she picked up the phone and said hello, she recognized Evans’s voice immediately.
First Lisa asked him how he had been traveling without getting caught.
Evans’s name and photo had been plastered all over the newspapers and on television. Missing person posters of Tim had been posted everywhere. The newspapers had made the connection between Evans and Tim only recently and were running stories about the Bureau’s interest in talking to Evans about Tim’s disappearance. Horton had even considered listing Evans on the FBI’s most wanted list and appearing on America’s Most Wanted, a nationally syndicated television show, after it called. However, the fallout from such widespread publicity, he decided, might beckon Evans to sink deeper into seclusion.
Evans admitted to Lisa that he had a full set of identification on him, but said he didn’t have a birth certificate.
“How are you traveling?”
“Rental cars. Things are going okay. I’m traveling the country.”
“Gary…”
“Just listen, Lisa,” Evans said at that point. “In a few days, you are going to receive a package at Jessica Stone’s from somebody named Jack Flynn. Make sure you get it.”
“What have you been doing?” Lisa asked, ignoring the package remark.
“The fucking package,” Evans screamed. “Make sure you get it!”
“Okay. Okay.”
Evans then talked about the places he had visited and how he had been financing his trip. But the conversation, at least to Lisa, took a turn for the more serious as he began to discuss a pickup truck he had tried to purchase along the way.
“I had a problem with some guy and a truck I wanted,” Evans said.
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say that that motherfucker will never give anybody a problem again.”
Lisa was mortified. There were so many thoughts rushing through her mind she didn’t know what to do or say next.
“You there, Lisa?”
“Yes, Gary, I’m here,” she answered in a broken tone, full of confusion, shock and worry.
“How’s that bitch Rysedorph doing?” Evans then asked in a mocking, condescending manner.
“I don’t know what you mean, Gary—”
“Has anyone been around…you know, cops? What about Horton?”
“No. I haven’t seen him for months.”
By that response, Lisa had, maybe without even realizing it, come to terms with the reality that she was totally committed to Horton now—frightened and scared to death of the same man she had slept with and let baby-sit her daughter.
Evans didn’t say much more during that first phone call, but insisted he would contact her again soon.
When Lisa called Horton shortly after speaking to Evans, she said, “Gary just called me at Maxie’s. I happened to be there having a drink.”
It’s about time, Horton thought.
This was the Gary Evans that Horton had known all those years: a criminal who just couldn’t let things be. “An egomaniac,” Horton said later. “Someone who loved to show you how smart and deceptive he could be if he wanted to. All he had to do was stay away [from the Albany region] and stay out of trouble. We would have never found him. But here he was calling the one person he must have known I would find sooner or later.”
Lisa explained how Evans had told her to “expect a package” delivered to Jessica Stone’s within the next few days.
“That’s good, Lisa. What else? Did he say where he was calling from?”
“Not sure…but he said he had gone to Alaska and found a job on a fishing boat…. He also said he went to South America. He was doing ‘small jobs,’ he said, you know, shoplifting.”
“Nothing else?”
“He said he was returning to Albany soon, and for me to expect the package to be sent by someone named Jack Flynn…from, I believe, Sacramento, California.”
“I need to be there to receive that package, Lisa,” Horton said.
Lisa didn’t fight the suggestion.
After Horton hung up, he called Sully into his office.
“I want you to find someone named Jack Flynn in Sacramento and see if he knows anything about this package. Who knows? Maybe he’s holing up with the guy?”
“Sure, Jim.”
“Send a Teletype to the Alaska State Police and let them know Gary might be there. It’s a long shot, but what the hell.”
When Horton finally had a chance to contain his adrenaline rush, and thought a moment about what Lisa had done, he recognized the fact that she trusted him now completely. If he had ever questioned her loyalty, this one phone call proved she was entirely on his team.
On May 14, the barmaid at Jessica Stone’s, a rather seedy little bar located directly next door to an off-track gambling parlor, called Lisa and told her the package she was waiting for had just arrived. It was a small box, the woman said, sent from someone named Jack Flynn. “I’ll hold it here at the bar for you.”
Jessica Stone’s was Evans’s favorite place in the Albany area to eat French fries, another favorite fo
od in his strict high-carbohydrate diet. He loved the way Stone’s prepared the spuds. It only seemed fitting he would choose it as a place to make initial contact.
Lisa called Horton immediately. “I think that package from Gary is here.”
“Just wait. I’ll be right over.”
A ten-minute ride under normal circumstances, Horton couldn’t drive fast enough to Lisa’s apartment. From there, Jessica Stone’s was five minutes away.
Inside the bar, which smelled of stale beer and cigarette butts, it was dark and dingy. Horton took a look around and knew right away why Lisa liked it, but couldn’t picture Evans rubbing elbows with the barflies who frequented the place. With the exception of the women he dated, Evans hated people who drank alcohol and did drugs.
Observations aside, Horton walked over to the bar with Lisa and asked for the package.
Lisa looked at him as he held it in his hands for a moment and just stared at it. It was a cardboard box, about one foot square. Jack Flynn, Sacramento, California was written on the return address, just like Evans had promised.
Placing it on a table, Horton snapped on a pair of latex gloves and grabbed a steak knife from the table next to him to cut the box open.
Inside was a letter Evans had written on May 6, but, for whatever reason, had never sent. There were three small stuffed animals, several brand-new sets of Winnie the Pooh earrings, a few antique vases and a handful of photographs of Evans in various poses and places. In morbid fashion, one photograph showed Evans lying on his back inside a freshly dug grave, the photo of him taken from ground level, directly over him. His fists were clenched, yet both middle fingers were raised and pointed directly at the camera lens.
For everyone who wants me caged or dead, he wrote on the top of the photo. The free Gary Evans was scribbled across the bottom.
It was easy to tell he had visited Seattle, Washington, because there was a photo of a dedication that Bruce Lee, the late martial artist and actor, had written to his wife, Brenda, and son, Brandon—a photo that could have been only taken at Lee’s grave site in Seattle, where the dedication is set in stone at the foot of Brandon and Bruce’s headstones. Evans was consumed by celebrity status and had often talked about his absolute fascination with dead celebrities.
One of the other photos included in the package consisted of Evans sitting in a large tree. He was wearing a tank top T-shirt, his large biceps, triceps and chest muscles easily visible, while his muscular thighs, like ten-pound ham shanks, burst out of the cutoff shorts he was wearing. He was smiling, sporting a full beard and mustache. It was incredible to think he had been on the run for so long but had no trouble maintaining the chiseled physique of a professional bodybuilder.
Several other photos, it was clear, had been taken with a noticeable amount of precision and knowledge of photography. In one, Evans was photographed near a lighthouse Horton would later trace to California. The photos, Horton also discovered, were taken by Evans himself using a tripod and camera equipped with a timer. He had always expressed a love for photography to Horton and had stolen several different cameras throughout his life, and always traveled with them.
By far, the most interesting photo in the bunch turned out to be a headshot of a brown-and-white spotted dog, the eyes of the dog drawn in with pen to look as if they were popping out, large as cue balls. Below the photo, Evans had written: Lost dog!! Free dog!! Rude dog!!! Shocked and shocking dog!!! Arf, arf, woof and bark.
The only explanation that one could conclude from the writing was that Evans must have seen himself at the time as an escaped caged animal that had nowhere left to go, and was just wandering around aimlessly trying to figure out his next move. Add to it Evans’s monstrous ego, and it seemed that by sending the photo to someone who, he knew, would eventually crumble to Horton, he was making a mockery of the entire situation as if he had planned it all.
Oddly enough, the final photo depicted Evans on a bicycle, just standing, posing for the camera, one foot on a pedal, the other on the ground. Wearing a ball cap, he was half-smiling. On the surface, to anyone who would have crossed paths with him during his journey, he must have appeared to be nothing more than a harmless trail rider out for a pleasant afternoon bike ride. Little would anyone who happened to bump into him know they were staring at a wanted fugitive and dangerous, convicted felon, a man who was being sought for questioning about the deaths of several people.
CHAPTER 21
The letter Lisa received from Evans, for the most part, was an attack on law enforcement, and continued to add validity to what Horton believed was Evans’s peculating hatred, in general, toward cops. Additionally, while the photo of Evans lying in a grave, flipping the world the bird, pointed to a direct hatred for all cops, it seemed almost adolescent when compared to what Horton would take from reading the letter.
Don’t forget they are all enemies, Evans had written, underlining the entire sentence. Will say and do ANYTHING to get their goals—and I am their goal bigtime!
Near the end of the letter, Evans told Lisa not to worry: I’m on my toes. Kicked into survival mode. The word “survival” was underlined. Bigtime. My life depends on no mistakes.
Evans had, basically, two different sides to his personality: One included characteristics of a happy-go-lucky weight lifter who liked to string along as many women as he could and impress them with stolen jewelry and exotic trips paid for by a life of crime. The other was a professional, sociopath mastermind criminal who would take off into the wilderness if he thought the cops were on his trail and live like a U.S. Navy SEAL, gearing up for what he believed was an approaching war.
During this particular trip out west, Horton would later learn, Evans ran into several problems, which would ultimately force him back east, mainly logistical problems and financial constraints. He was running low on cash. Despite having displayed a “wad” of money to the clerk at Mail Boxes, Etc., in California when he mailed Lisa her package, Evans admitted later he was having a problem finding antique stores to rob. New England, specifically, is a haven for antique shops and barns filled with valuable artifacts. People come from all over the world to travel around New England “antiquing,” as they call it. On top of that, Evans had several locations in the Northeast where he could fence stolen property. Out west, he was on his own.
The “jobs” he was pulling out west consisted of breaking into cars, boats and shoplifting small items from department stores. But these were considered “high exposure” crimes that offered little return. A smart criminal like Evans could get caught a hell of a lot easier breaking into a parked car than if he took the time and planned an antique shop burglary, where he was in his element. He simply couldn’t find, as he later noted, that “one big score” out west that could have set him up for a few months financially. Moreover, the West was as foreign to Evans as red meat and alcohol; he was out of his league. There were even times when he had become so obsessed with the notion of being caught, he swore in his mind that Horton was stalking him.
“His paranoia snowballed,” Horton said, “and he had no escape or release from it—even in his mind. He told me later he mostly camped while out west. He would have crazy dreams at night and wake up in a cold sweat, thinking we were surrounding him. Add to that what he had already told [Lisa]—that he wasn’t going to be taken alive and couldn’t bear the thought of spending twenty-five years locked up like a ‘caged animal’—and you have a desperate sociopath, literally losing his mind, prepared to do anything to survive.”
Indeed, Evans’s psychological meltdown would never be more evident than when Horton found out what he had done to Tim Rysedorph.
Besides giving an explanation of how scared he was of being caught, and dissing the cops, seemingly, in every other sentence in his letter to Lisa, Evans made a point to say he was concerned about the welfare of Lisa and Christina: I wonder about you guys all the time. He encouraged Lisa to date a man she had seen in the past: For security, even if it’s not what you want in yo
ur heart. Do the smart thing…. My life is fucked.
The most important section of the letter for Horton was a section where Evans had given Lisa dates when he was going to contact her next: I am going to try to contact you [at Jessica Stone’s]…on the 13th, 14th or 15th. I’m traveling on those days.
Then came the words Horton wanted to hear more than anything else: I miss you very much and think I can see you somehow. It’ll take some doing.”
When Horton read those words, he wanted to pump his fist in the air. We’ve got him. Because if there was one part of Evans’s character Horton could count on, it was his stringent practice of keeping his word to his women. He’d lie, of course, where it suited his needs; but when it came to females, Evans meant what he said.
In addition, what drove Evans’s desire to reunite with Lisa perhaps more than anything else was his hearty appetite for sex.
Hey, hound dog, Evans wrote at the end of the letter, I’m super horny. I need your sweet ass for some “marathon sex” like we did so nicely.
Horton laughed as he finished reading the letter, thinking that Evans was prepared to travel three thousand miles across the country for a piece of ass.
Or, did Evans know Horton was going to ultimately read the letter? Was the entire event scripted by Evans himself—a setup?
A cautious, if not stealthy, plan had to be put into effect immediately in order to try to trap Evans when, as he had promised, he made contact with Lisa. A phone tap had to be placed on Jessica Stone’s and Maxie’s, the two bars Horton knew Evans would call. Placing a tap on the line would take time, though, which Horton didn’t have.
To think that Evans was just going to hand himself over to Horton seemed too simple. It was more likely he was playing one of his games, strategizing and planning a way to slip into town to meet up with Lisa, turn over a “big score” and zip back out of town without being detected.
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