About midway through his sentence at Clinton, Evans was transferred to Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Washington County, New York, southeast of Lake Placid. It wasn’t because Evans had become unruly or had joined a gang. In fact, he had done everything by the book and became known, as the cliché goes, as a “model prisoner.”
Great Meadow was a facility geared more toward helping inmates acquire an education and deal with the many social and mental problems they either had before they became part of the system or developed as a prisoner. In terms of getting closer to freedom, Great Meadow was a stepping-stone; getting transferred to Great Meadow meant Evans was on his way out the door.
While at Clinton, Evans had developed such a respectable reputation as an artist that inmates began commissioning greeting cards from him. He would draw cards for birthdays, Mother’s and Father’s Day, along with other holidays and special events, dotting them with an incredible artistic hand that he had likely gotten from his mother. Making just $7 per week working, he would trade the greeting cards for commissary items: Twinkies, doughnuts and cookies.
On the street after serving two years out of a four-year bid, Evans wasted little time going back to his old behavior. Burglary was about the only thing he knew how to do, he would say years later. Burglarizing homes and antique stores came easy to him and he was good at it.
Since his release on March 31, 1980, he went back to living with Michael Falco and Tim Rysedorph. Run-down, seedy and unkempt, the apartment became more of a place to crash during the day rather than anything else. At night, Falco and Evans would go out and commit burglaries—either separately or together—and use the apartment as a place to store their stolen property and set up other jobs. Tim, who, some later claimed, was only dipping his toes into the pond of thievery his roommates were swimming in, began to focus more on his music. Tim, many claimed, was never a guy who had planned any of the crimes; he more or less went along for the ride, at times, to make some extra cash.
Evans and Falco fell into a routine: stealing and fencing stolen property. Day in and day out, they were either working on a score or setting one up. They had a “fence” in Troy who could turn stolen property over for them quickly, so it became a matter of “don’t shit in your own backyard” that initially drove them to commit burglaries in other parts of the state. They would bring the merchandise back to Troy to sell, but would rarely steal anything in town.
In the spring of 1980, Evans was caught with a few hundred dollars’ worth of stolen property he had lifted from an antique store in upstate. Already on parole, finishing two years of a previous two-to four-year bid, he was sent directly back to jail to await a court hearing to decide where he would serve the remainder of his previous sentence, along with any additional time from his most recent possession charge.
By May, Falco, now twenty-one, was sentenced to three years’ probation for his role in a local bookstore robbery in 1979.
For the time being, their burglary run was over.
Old Rensselaer County Jail, in downtown Troy, where Evans was being held awaiting sentencing, was a nondescript, two-story, white-brick building that took up an entire block. Out in back of the building was a steep incline. The city, on a weekday, bustled with the ebb and flow of daily life around the jail as if it weren’t even there. There was a large courtyard on the west side of the building with about a ten-foot-high barbed wire fence surrounding it.
For Evans, doing time in county jails was like living at a shelter, a dormitory atmosphere he could handle. Within days of being at Old Rensselaer County Jail, he befriended several members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, who had a large clubhouse in town. The Angels liked Evans. He kept his mouth shut, worked hard behind bars and never gave anyone any serious problems.
Sitting in his cell on Thursday morning, June 12, 1980, Evans came up with a rather unique—if not ambitious—idea. Because of his size, he figured that if he got together enough Angels—who were big, like NFL linemen—they could hoist him over the fence outside in the courtyard during “rec time” when the guards weren’t watching. Two Angels would start a ruckus in one area of the yard, while two others would literally throw him to freedom.
The plan couldn’t miss.
Like anything else Evans had ever set his mind to do, he proceeded to wait for the right moment. At about 10:30 A.M., while two Angels began to brawl on the north side of the yard, two other Angels, swinging Evans like a pendulum (one holding his arms, the other his legs), rocked his small body back and forth a few times. With one gust of strength, they heaved him over the fence as if he were nothing more than a fifty-pound sack of potatoes.
Just like that, Evans was on the other side of the fence, a free man.
During roll call later that morning, prison officials realized Evans was gone. Once word spread that he had taken off, guards sent word out and soon a posse of law enforcement was scouring the area.
About five hours later, he was spotted atop the Troy Public Library on Second Street, standing by the ledge.
“I’m not coming down,” he yelled as police, armed with shotguns, moved in on him.
“There is no possible way you can get away, Mr. Evans,” someone yelled up to him. Onlookers cheered him on as the fire department moved in with a cherry picker.
After an hour-long standoff, cops wrestled Evans to the ground by his hair and brought him back to Old Rensselaer County Jail, where he was put in solitary confinement.
When he was placed back into the prison population some time later, Evans would go on a rant, bragging how he had made a mockery of the guards and local police.
“It was all a joke to him,” Horton recalled later. “Gary told me about that day and remembered it with vivid precision. He knew he wasn’t going to get far—especially seeing that he had climbed to the top of the library. All he wanted to do was make a laughingstock out of all of them…and, in many ways, I guess he did.”
CHAPTER 38
September 11, 1980, would be forever etched in Gary Evans’s mind as a day his life took a remarkable turn for the worse. After revoking his parole, he was sentenced for the second time in four years to another two-to four-year bid at Clinton Correctional, a prison that had already, in his mind, stripped him of over a year of his life, for second-degree possession of stolen property and first-degree escape.
On October 7, 1981, Evans spent his twenty-seventh birthday behind bars at Clinton. It was the third time in his young life he had celebrated his birthday while incarcerated. Once again, as he settled into a routine of being told what to wear, when to eat, sleep, shit and work, he started writing to Robbie.
For Robbie, the dysfunction she had grown up in as a child and the cold feelings she developed for her father as the years after his death passed were now nothing more than memories. She had set up a rather productive and healthy life for herself in Florida with her boyfriend and son, Devan. She was happy. Her only contact with family came in the form of letters from Gary and phone calls to Flora Mae once in a while. Over the years, Gary had taken a particular liking to his nephew, Devan, and talked about him as if he were his own child.
Between April 1981, seven months into his bid, and December 1981, he wrote Robbie about a half-dozen letters. For the most part, he talked about a new passion he had developed while in prison for making stained-glass-window portraits. I smeared my fingers with shit and drew pictures, he jokingly wrote. Then, more seriously, he explained in detail to Robbie how to take an everyday piece of glass and turn it into a “new art medium,” always reminding her that there was “money” to be made in doing it.
Prison life was rough for him this time around. He couldn’t “practice martial arts,” he said, because “stretching and kicking” weren’t allowed. In fact, at one time he had been locked down for two weeks for doing what he called “kung fu–looking” moves.
In some respects, the bigotry he had fostered throughout most of his young life began to dominate the tone of his letters.
In the same letter: There’s a nigger fag all my friends are busting on me about, because he always says “hi” and goes wiggling by me when we’re lifting weights.
Throughout the letters, it was clear that the time was once again “doing” Evans.
I’ve gotten no mail at all! Doing ok…. I hate this place and wish I could go someplace nice.
Robbie wasn’t writing back to him on a regular basis. She would answer some of his letters, but not within the time-frame he would have liked. In just about every letter he wrote, he began by asking her why she wasn’t writing back.
The further into the bid he got, the more he began thinking about parole: In nine months I’ll see the parole board…and in 22 they have to let me go!! That’s in 684 days—I did 433 so far!!
Then, I’m wheeling, dealing and stealing anyway I can….
By November, now a year into his sentence, the regimented structure of prison life had taken its toll. His interaction with other inmates, the surroundings and being confined nearly twenty-four hours a day began to wear on him.
Robbie, in the few letters she had written, encouraged him to move to Florida when he was released. Start fresh. Begin a new life. She was family. He loved his nephew. Why not, Robbie kept insisting, move to Florida and start from scratch?
Just back from talking to [Devan], Evans wrote. The more I talk to you guys the better an idea it sounds to go there. I just hope they’ll parole me this coming spring…. Later, in the same letter, he added, Sometimes I feel like I’d just like to get a shotgun and payback about a dozen people, but I know I’d have to go back to living on the road.
There were certain people in Troy, he insisted, who had “rolled” over on him and traded information about crimes he had committed to save their own ass. Enemy number one was Michael Falco, he said, who, he believed, had given him up in trade for a lesser sentence.
I know if I end up staying in New York, I’m not hanging out with anybody. I’ll be thinking real hard if I feel I have to do something—it won’t be just any “random” quick-money thing. I can’t stand being in jail anymore. I’m falling apart physically & mentally….
And then came the most disturbing section of the letter: The Civil War against the niggers will be happening soon—and I’m going to be a hero in that. I’d like to have a place in New York for all of you guys to come because there’s bad odds in Florida.
Ending the letter with his standard phrase, write soon, he added, I just read that Florida is 8th city [sic] for crime, Miami first, West Palm Beach 3rd…full of niggers + spiks. I hope there’s places where they ain’t. And if I have to cut my hair for a job, that’s out!
Life for Gary Evans was about living under his rules. If whatever happened to him didn’t fall under a set of guidelines he had constructed, he blamed everyone but himself. In all the letters he had written to Robbie throughout his first year back behind bars, he never once took responsibility for any of the crimes he committed. It was always somebody else’s fault.
CHAPTER 39
Gary Evans hadn’t planned on being in prison for much of 1982. But as February came and went, he was still wondering when the parole board was going to hear his case and release him.
On March 19, a Friday, the parole board finally called him in. That night, he sat down and explained to Robbie in a letter what had happened.
The reason why he was refused parole, he claimed, was because it had been his second time upstate and he was still on parole from a previous sentence: They want me to speak to a counselor regularly regarding my anti-social behavior.
To him, it was all a joke. He said he would do what he had to do to make parole, but refused to admit there might be something wrong with him. He viewed everyone around him as “lowlifes” and “scumbags.” He saw his future as being no different from his past. He was in prison not because he was a criminal, but because he had gotten caught.
There’s a lot of things I have to do in N.Y. and I know it’ll be stupid of me, but I can’t help it—I’ll end up coming back…. I’ll never return to jail again—I couldn’t do that to myself. This one here has totally wrecked my head. I have to try everyday not to let myself come out of this shit too vicious, but it’s hard when I think how I got fucked over by all those people. And it’s still continuing.
Flipping back and forth, he would say how much he wanted to move to Florida when he was released, but then explain how Florida is really getting overrun by all those stinking spiks….
One of the more bothersome aspects of doing time, he said, was that he wasn’t allowed to lift weights or work out regularly: I trimmed off a lot of excess weight. I lost some muscle, too, because I don’t have weights. But when I get into lifting my bag of books or my bed, I tighten up again.
If there was one dominating characteristic that seemed more evident as Evans’s time behind bars accumulated, it was his remarkable nerve. Whether he was building it up more for his big sister, he made it clear he wasn’t afraid of anyone: I have a lot of serious problems with the Hell’s Angels [sic], but I ain’t worried about them on the street.
Indeed, his problems with the Hells Angels had only just begun.
By September 12, 1982, the New York State Department of Corrections (DOC), knowing Evans would be getting out on parole within the next few months, transferred him nearly four hundred miles west to Attica State Prison, one of New York’s most feared, legendary and hardened institutions, where the worst of the worst were housed. Serial murderers. Serial rapists. Child killers. Mobsters. Black Panthers. Deviant sexual predators. And high-profile criminals of all types.
Attica had a history fraught with blood and violence. Back on September 13, 1971, after what amounted to a four-day “revolt,” NYSP troopers stormed the prison and ended up killing thirty-two inmates and eleven corrections officers. Since then, the prison was reviled as a place of bigotry and hatred toward African Americans and Puerto Ricans, who had staged the “revolt,” demanding to be heard about their concerns for “poor living conditions” inside the prison.
The DOC, in sending Evans to Attica, was perhaps sending him a message—because in all actuality, he had never committed a violent crime. He was a burglar who had, by that time, never been involved in an armed robbery. He had, however, been arrested eight times (burglaries and petit larcenies) within the past ten years, which made him a habitual offender. On top of that, on September 8, 1981, just a few days before he had been sentenced, he had threatened a few inmates he was being corralled with at Albany County Jail and had to be isolated from the general population. A few months in Attica before he was released, many were saying, might just teach him a lesson.
As soon as he arrived at Attica and got settled, he began writing to Robbie: Well, if you got the telegram, you know I’ve been sent to Attica. I got a real Shanghai job! It was done just to spite me, also with the hope that some harm would happen to me here. I’m now in protective custody because there are too many Hell’s Angels [sic] here….
Isolated by himself, letter writing became Evans’s only way to vent his frustrations. He wasn’t allowed into the general population of the prison, and the time he spent by himself, alone, cut off, insulated, began to weigh on him mentally: I cannot do anymore time in a cage! …There’s a lot of people who would love to see me…hurt or dead, and I’m not going to please anybody by letting any of that happen to me.
As the time beat him up, Evans started to mention a former girlfriend, Stacy. He hadn’t seen her in years, but a tattoo of her name on his chest indicated he’d had a rather intimate relationship with her at one time. From his viewpoint, one would guess they were long-lost lovers, involved in perhaps a ten-year relationship. But, in truth, Stacy had been one of his high school sweethearts. Anyone who knew Evans had gotten an earful of Stacy at some point. He was obsessed with her. Sitting in his cell, confined twenty-four
hours a day, Stacy became the object of his affection—someone with whom he could create a fantasy world around. And so, as he fixated over her, obsessing over her in letter after letter, he began making plans to see her when he got out: I believe that I’m going to begin looking for [Stacy] and there’s going to be some obstacles to that. I haven’t figured out what I’ll have to do about that.
Stacy had moved out of Troy years ago. She was married. Had a family. Lived a normal life with her husband and children. It was a good bet she hadn’t even thought about Gary Evans since leaving Troy: A lot of things concern [Stacy]…. I don’t want to ruin my life for some bitch, but I will see her again, and if I have to force the info out of somebody where to find her, that’s what I’ll do…. There’s a lot of people who deserve some bad deeds after all they’ve done to me.
It was clear that his main source of vitality became revenge as he plotted and planned what he was going to do when he got out of prison. In one breath, he would talk about finding a job and settling down to a normal life, and then go on about getting back at every person who had ever, in his opinion, done him wrong.
Time and again, he blamed his burglary colleagues for his being locked up: Man I hate this place more than anywhere or anytime in my life. I’d strangle the bastards responsible for sending me here if I could.
Every Move You Make Page 18