Every Move You Make

by M. William Phelps

  “Jesus,” Horton said mockingly, “what a shock that is!”

  When Horton arrived at the barracks, Evans looked embarrassed, as if he had been scolded by a teacher and sent to the principal’s office. He was both humiliated and disappointed that he had let himself get caught for something so seemingly inconsequential. The last thing he wanted was to look bad in front of Horton.

  Cuomo, never one to talk to cops, said nothing when Horton introduced himself. Turning to Evans after not getting a response from Damien, Horton said, “I can’t help you much. This is your mess. Stay out of trouble and this won’t happen.” He could tell Evans didn’t want to talk.

  “I’ll try,” Evans said.

  “Yeah, right…just keep me out of it from now on,” Horton said, and left.

  Years later, Horton would find out that Evans and Cuomo had the entire inside of Damien’s car lined with stolen merchandise, but the cops never found it. It was in the side panels and underneath a rug in the trunk.

  “That day was a turning point for Gary Evans,” Horton recalled later. “He had been arrested for something trivial…in a sense, making a stupid mistake. He realized he was getting sloppy in his work. It upset him. But little did I know then, of course, what was going to happen next.”

  CHAPTER 57

  Located in the upper northern part of the state, hugging the northeastern tip of Lake Ontario at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, Watertown, New York, is just over two hundred miles—a 3½-hour drive—from Albany. A melting pot of mostly Irish, German, Italian and French immigrants, crime in Watertown is something residents worry little about. One murder in town per year is, generally, a shock to the nearly twenty thousand residents who call Watertown home.

  As the fall of 1989 brought thousands of tourists from all over the Northeast to take in Watertown’s wonderful views of the foliage, Evans and Cuomo targeted the town as a candidate to do some business. An added bonus, it was almost as far away from Albany as one could get in the state, offering isolation, yet easy accessibility to the interstate.

  One of Damien’s best friends had joined the military after high school and had been stationed at Fort Drum, an army base directly north of Watertown. The guy knew the area well. He called Damien one day and told him that there was a small coin and jewelry shop in downtown Watertown run by one man. It would possibly be an easy target to hit. The way Evans explained it later, Damien’s friend called and said, “I know of a perfect place for you to rob. There’s an old man there. No alarm system. He sleeps in the back on a cot with a gun.”

  Indeed, sixty-three-year-old Douglas Berry, owner-operator of the Square Lion Coin and Jewelry, located in the center of downtown Watertown, directly across the street from Public Square, was an unassuming businessman who had opened the shop back in the mid-1970s with hopes of leading a quiet New England life. Berry couldn’t afford an alarm system, so he occasionally slept in what Evans called a “loft,” which was in the back of the shop, and, for protection, kept a handgun underneath his pillow. Berry had been married for what seemed like forever and lived in a small single-family home in town with his wife. Some who knew Berry spoke highly of him for the fact that he didn’t much bother anyone. He kept to himself and was, more than anything, determined to succeed in business. He worked long hours and often ran the shop by himself. At six feet two inches, about 225 pounds, Berry sported a thick shock of brown hair he kept greased back in a ’50s fashion.

  Attached to a beam near the loft where Berry slept was a mirror. If he happened to hear something while in bed, he could look up at the mirror and see what was going on in his store without getting out of the loft.

  When Cuomo heard about Berry’s shop, he immediately called Evans and, excited, told him about it. Evans liked the idea of the location and the accessibility. Berry not having an alarm system was, of course, also a plus.

  Evans, however, was never one to take things at face value; he knew any job that sounded too good to be true probably was. “Let’s go up there,” he suggested to Cuomo, “and take a look before we do anything.”

  Damien was, Evans admitted later, always ready to jump in the water without first getting his toes wet, whereas Evans liked to scope things out and take his time, making sure there were no obstacles in his way he couldn’t overcome. Contingencies meant getting caught. In this case particularly, Evans wanted to be certain the information they were getting was solid. More important, he wanted to be sure they weren’t being set up.

  Throughout the summer, Evans and Damien drove to Watertown several times to check out the Square Lion. They had even walked into the shop and sold Berry a few pieces of gold they had stolen.

  On the morning of September 7, 1989, they once again headed north to Watertown in Damien’s car to check out the Square Lion and bounce around town to see how things looked. For the hell of it, they brought along ski masks, a crowbar and two handguns, a .38-caliber pistol Cuomo always carried with him, and a .22 automatic Evans had at times packed.

  Evans said later he made a point to bring along his .22 “because of the information we had gotten earlier [from Damien’s friend] about Berry possibly being armed.”

  The Gary Evans motto: “Kill or be killed.”

  Along the way, just outside of Watertown, Damien was stopped by a trooper for speeding. After getting a ticket, which “pissed him off,” Evans said, they pulled into the center of town and parked near the Square Lion.

  Evans explained to Damien on the way up north that they would drift into town, park near the shop, and hang out across the street for a few hours so they could watch the place. Damien was a bit antsy to get the job done, but agreed.

  While they were in town, Evans explained, Cuomo became “too anxious…pacing up and down the sidewalk, chain-smoking cigarettes.” Evans, who was methodical when it came to planning burglaries, tried calming him, he said, but it didn’t do much good.

  “Let’s just sit and watch, Damien,” Evans said at one point. “Let’s see what kind of traffic goes in and out, and what kind of business this guy does.”

  “I want to get this over with,” Cuomo said.

  “Just fucking relax.”

  Throughout the afternoon, they walked the streets of Watertown and got something to eat. It was a quiet town, for the most part. Evans liked that. It told him they could move around town stealthily without standing out. If they looked out of place for any reason, someone would remember them when it came time for the cops to interview people.

  Evans later said that he and Damien, months before they went to Watertown to burglarize the Square Lion, came up with what would turn out to be a brilliant idea—that is, if one is a thief.

  “Come on, Damien, we’re taking a drive up north.”

  “Where we goin’?”

  “Just get in the fucking truck and shut up.”

  The Canadian border was about 240 miles northwest of Albany. In what turned out to be a three-hour trip, by the end of that morning they were inside the borders of Canada shopping at a local convenience store.

  Damien bought Canadian cigarettes; Evans purchased snacks and several other items branded with Canadian price tags and bar codes.

  “We’re going to need this stuff when we do that Watertown job,” Evans told Cuomo as they left the store. “Hang onto it. Don’t fucking lose it.”

  Behind the Square Lion was a large parking lot, partially secluded. The entrance to the store was in front, on the first floor of the building, street level, leading out to the sidewalk. In back, there was a second-story picture window with two side windows that cranked open from inside. Berry’s loft was just inside the window to the right.

  As night fell on Watertown on September 7, Evans took a look at the window and figured they could pry it open easily and probably get in without being seen or heard.

  After casing the back of the shop, they took turns going into the store to check it out. Evans had even made it into the back room, where Berry had his loft, and saw the cot Berr
y slept on, he later admitted.

  Undeniably, Damien’s informant had been spot on with his information, which pleased Evans considerably. He now believed for certain it wasn’t a setup.

  Damien was an expert at scaling walls and getting into buildings through windows and small crevices. Evans assumed Damien could walk up the fire escape in the back of the shop, then crawl along the building, balancing himself on an electrical wire hugging the wall, until he reached the window. Once he shimmied the window open and got inside, Evans could climb up the same way and follow him in.

  In the back of the building, just below the window, was an office, Bear Construction Company. It was around 4:30 P.M. when Evans and Cuomo began scheduling the break-in, they figured workers in the building would be gone by 5:00, 6:00 P.M. the latest. They also knew from Cuomo’s informant that Berry generally closed the shop at about 6:00 and retreated to his loft after getting dinner.

  Sitting in Damien’s Fifth Avenue later that evening, parked in the back parking lot, waiting for Berry to lock down the shop and turn off the lights, Evans noticed something while staring at the building.

  “What is it?” Cuomo asked as Evans went quiet.

  “I bet that motherfucker won’t even lock the window.”

  CHAPTER 58

  Contingencies are an unpredictable part of even the best-laid plans. Where burglary is concerned, the unexpected always happens. Throughout Evans’s career as a thief, whenever he set out to burgle, he rarely took into account the nature of the people he was stealing from. He generally took people for granted and believed he was smarter than everyone else—including law enforcement, Horton especially. Innocent people were, to Evans, merely obstacles. He believed he would always escape the jobs he did unblemished because he had thought every aspect through in detail. As for the Square Lion in Watertown, because of the uncontrollable greed he harbored, Evans was about to break one of his golden rules of never entering a building while someone was inside.

  Douglas Berry, for some reason, still had the lights on in the Square Lion as 9:00 turned to 10:00 P.M., and 11:00 crept up on midnight. He was either watching television or working late. Either way, as Evans and Damien waited patiently for the signal—lights out—to go in, they wondered whether the opportunity would ever arise.

  “What the fuck is this guy doing?” Evans wondered out loud at one point.

  Then, at about midnight, Berry emerged from the shop and walked up the street to Mr. Sub, a local grinder shop. Inside, he chitchatted with the girl behind the counter about collecting baseball cards. After about twenty minutes, the girl finished making Berry’s favorite grinder, a turkey sub, handed him an orange soda, and, after Berry paid, before he left, he said, “Stop by the shop tomorrow about ten A.M.”

  “You’ll be there?”

  “Yes, I’m sleeping there tonight.”

  As Berry left, four white males, who had been hanging around inside the sub shop while he had been talking to the clerk, followed him out. The clerk recalled later that there were two more white males waiting outside. And they “might have overheard her conversation” with Berry about the baseball cards.

  Seeing that Berry wasn’t going to be going to sleep any time soon, Evans and Damien decided to go out and get something to eat.

  By 12:30 A.M., September 8, Berry finished his grinder and nestled himself up in his loft to watch television and fall asleep.

  At about 4:30 A.M., nearly daylight, Evans recalled later, he made a decision that Berry had been sleeping long enough for them to get in without being heard. But there was a slight change of plans, he mentioned to Cuomo. Evans said he would now go in first, but he wanted Cuomo right behind him. As soon as Evans got inside, as Damien Cuomo crawled through the window, Evans explained, he was going to sneak up behind Berry while he slept, hold his .22-caliber pistol to Berry’s head and watch him until Damien zipped around the shop and collected what they wanted.

  If Berry so much as twitched, Evans promised, he was going to shoot him in the back of the head.

  “Sounds good, Gar,” Damien said.

  With that, Evans remembered later, he “grabbed the fire escape and got a good hold…then reached down and pulled Damien up.” From there, they walked across the piping the electrical wire was housed in and made it to the window in under a minute.

  Looking at the window, Evans whispered, “It’s fucking open! I told you.”

  Not a few minutes after they had emerged from Damien’s Fifth Avenue, Evans and Damien were standing inside the Square Lion Coin and Jewelry, and no one—including Douglas Berry—had seen or heard a thing.

  Once inside, Evans pointed to where he wanted Cuomo to begin. Then he sneaked up behind Berry, who had shuffled a bit as he approached but didn’t wake up, and knelt quietly behind him, the barrel of his .22 pointed directly at his head.

  Don’t you fucking move a muscle, old man.

  CHAPTER 59

  Evans had always kept a copy of Criminal Investigation: Basic Perspectives throughout most of his criminal life. He valued greatly what the book offered him as a thief. If cops studied the book to learn more about their prey, Evans pointed out later, why couldn’t he study the book from a criminal’s standpoint? It seemed only logical that he could stay one step ahead of law enforcement if he knew what they were doing.

  Found later, the copy Evans owned was marked up with notes he had handwritten. He had also highlighted portions of text he wanted to remember. The most tattered and worn pages were from a chapter titled “The Investigation of Burglary.” He had studied this section, obviously, more than any other. He wrote notes, circled phrases and words, underlined pieces of text.

  The method Evans and Damien had used to gain entry into Douglas Berry’s coin shop, according to Criminal Investigation: Basic Perspectives, was called the “stepover or human fly move.”

  Authors Paul Weston and Kenneth Wells wrote, “The burglar is an aerialist. The ‘stepover burglar’ steps from a fire escape, balcony, or other building to a nearby window….”

  This was the exact procedure they had used to gain entry into Berry’s shop. In the book, Evans had underlined the passage, seemingly pushing down hard with his pen, indicating to himself, perhaps, that he would ultimately run across this exact situation at some point during his career.

  “There is no doubt that Gary Evans was a professional thief, burglar, arsonist, murderer,” Horton recalled later. “He knew his ‘trade’ very well, and would tell me that he spent hours and weeks and months studying crime and how to be the most effective criminal he could be. But his weaknesses, in the end, overcame his strengths. I wouldn’t realize it until years later, but while committing that burglary in Watertown with Damien Cuomo, he crossed a line I never thought he would.”

  Once Evans crossed that line, Horton acknowledged, there was nowhere left for him to go but further down.

  Damien had taken an “army zip-up type of bag” with him into the Square Lion. He planned on filling the bag with as much jewelry, gold, coins and rare baseball cards as he could find while Evans watched over Berry.

  “When we got into the place,” Evans said later, “we tried to be real quiet, but the floors were squeaky. Damien went toward the front of the store and started putting stuff in the bag.”

  That was when, he added, things took an unexpected turn.

  Evans had hopped up on top of a glass jewelry case to get up where Berry was sleeping in his loft. The jump up was noisy, but not enough to wake Berry.

  Squatting at the “head end” of Berry’s cot, Evans held his .22-caliber pistol an inch or so from Berry’s head.

  If the motherfucker moves, he’s done.

  As Damien tried desperately to be quiet, the floorboards, squeaking and squawking, refused to cooperate. Every step produced a tired-sounding, slow and loud creak in the floor, like the whine of an old screen door closing.

  As Berry snored, he began to shift in his cot as Cuomo moved about the shop.

  “Keep fucking
quiet,” Evans whispered.

  Cuomo then took a tray of diamond rings, gold chains and necklaces and dumped it all at once into his bag. This startled Berry, Evans recalled later, and he “seemed to be waking up. He stopped snoring and started to move around a bit.”

  After Cuomo finished dumping the load into his bag, he took another tray and did the same thing.

  This time, Berry woke up and began looking around.

  I had my gun pointed right at his head, Evans wrote in chilling detail, [when] the guy definitely woke up and picked his head up and turned towards me.

  When Evans saw that Berry was slowly waking up and, perhaps still half-asleep, figuring out what was going on, he “shot him once in the head.”

  There was no blood, struggle, or loud popping sound. After Evans fired the shot, Berry simply fell back down on his pillow, as if he had been knocked unconscious.

  Even though Evans had equipped his .22 with a homemade silencer, the gun still produced a muffled sound that startled Damien.

  Hearing a quick pop, Damien rushed toward the loft, looked up and said, “What the fuck was that?”

  Evans didn’t say anything at first. Instead, he looked into Damien’s eyes and, ignoring what he asked, said, “Are you finished?”

  “No. There’s more.”

  “Fuck it, we’re leaving right now.”

  By the time they were finished burglarizing the Square Lion, and Evans had murdered Douglas Berry, daylight had arrived. When they made it to the back window to get out, Evans spied a street sweeper working in the parking lot over near where Damien’s car had been parked. Lucky for them, the guy hadn’t heard a thing because the sweeper was so loud.

  Before Evans and Cuomo sneaked out the window, Damien took the pack of Canadian cigarettes he and Evans had purchased in Canada out of his bag, crumpled it up and threw it near Berry’s body.

  With over $30,000 worth of jewelry, baseball cards, coins and gold loaded in Cuomo’s bag, he and Evans drove back to Troy without a problem.