While Horton finished reading Williams his rights, Wingate cuffed him at his wrists. Horton then bent down to put leg shackles on him.
“He must have literally shit his pants,” Horton said, “because I nearly passed out from the smell when I bent over. I wanted to be as professional as possible, so I didn’t say anything.”
Horton and Wingate’s case centered on, basically, circumstantial evidence. They needed more to seal the deal—ideally, a confession.
Evans was thrilled at the prospect of helping Horton nail Williams. Williams preyed on children and women. Evans said he hated that about him.
“Will you help us?” Horton asked.
Evans stroked his chin and thought about it for a moment. “You want me to kill him for you…. I’ll strangle the motherfucker!”
“No, no, no!” Horton said. “That is not what I am asking you to do, Gar. Come on, let’s be serious here.”
A moment later, Wingate came into the room and they explained to Evans what they wanted him to do. “We’ll put you in a cell next to him,” Wingate said. “Just talk to him. Maybe he’ll tell you things about any crimes he committed…just anything he would say.”
It didn’t take long for Evans to realize that, either way, whether Williams coughed up any information or not, he could manipulate the situation in his favor.
“Let’s do it,” Evans said. “I’ll get the motherfucker.”
CHAPTER 73
On January 10, 1994, Evans was placed in a cell directly next to Jeffrey Williams. At first, Williams seemed a bit scared of Evans, but Evans became pushy. Within a few days, they were talking regularly and, according to Horton, playing chess.
If there was one thing Evans did well, it was the way he methodically went about the tasks set in front of him. When he set his mind on something, he kept at it until he was satisfied with the outcome. Those first conversations with Williams consisted of the two of them just talking about “different jails and prisons” they had done time in. Evans would bring up different people he met along his incarcerated path to see if Williams knew any of them.
As the days passed, Evans became more ambitious with his comments. While watching The Getaway, a movie starring Kim Basinger, on television one night, Evans leaned over to Williams and whispered, “How nice it would be to have a partner like that Kim Basinger.”
“Yeah,” Williams said, “that would be good: having a woman like her who would keep her mouth shut and not talk to the police about anything, no matter what.”
Evans had followed Williams’s case in the newspapers. He knew he had been convicted of stealing a rocking chair and had been sentenced to twenty-five years to life for it. He saw an opportunity to bring up the Lonczak murder by mentioning the rocking chair. Laughing, he asked, “What the fuck is your girl going to talk about—you stealing a fucking rocking chair?”
“There’s a lot more to it than that,” Williams snapped. He seemed, Evans recalled later, a bit upset by the question, making it seem like the only notch in his belt was the theft of a rocking chair.
After the movie, they walked back to Evans’s cell and continued talking, discussing different enemies they had each accumulated throughout the years.
“I’m having a lot of problems with some fuck in Troy,” Evans said. “I’d like to see something done to that motherfucker.”
“I understand,” Williams said. “I’m having problems with this guy, Mr. Lonczak. I have a huge beef with him.”
“What’s it about?”
Williams explained that Karolyn Lonczak’s father wouldn’t let the case against him go. “He thinks I killed his daughter,” Williams said. “If he keeps this fucking case going…well…I might do something to that fucker.”
Evans got the impression from Williams that he was afraid of what Mr. Lonczak might do because he believed Williams had killed his daughter.
“No shit,” Evans said.
“What would you do,” Williams then asked, “if somebody killed your daughter?”
“I’d kill him myself. But why are you so scared of this guy? Can the police get you for the killing?”
“I don’t think so…. They were supposed to think retards killed her.”
It was apparent to Evans that Williams was somehow alluding to the fact that in some way he had botched the murder.
“Retards?” Evans questioned. “What the fuck do you mean—‘retards’?”
“Yeah. She worked with retarded people…. But I fucked up.”
“Huh?…I’m confused.”
“I fucked it up because a retard wouldn’t have had a license to bring her where she got—”
Evans interrupted, “A license?”
“A fucking driver’s license. A retard wouldn’t have had a driver’s license. A retard would have left her there. I should have left her there.”
Karolyn Lonczak worked at a rehabilitation home in Cohoes. She had been abducted out of the home in the middle of the night and found eight weeks later in a snowbank about twenty miles north.
From that, Evans assumed he had gotten out of Williams what Horton and Wingate were after. So, good to their word, after Evans reported back to them and explained what Williams had said, Evans was released on February 12, 1994. To make things appear more legitimate, Evans went back to Albany County Jail a week later and visited Williams. Horton and Wingate wired him to see if they could perhaps get Williams to implicate himself further, but he didn’t say anything more about the murder.
On the street now, Evans was grinning from ear to ear at being able to manhandle Jeffrey Williams like a puppet and get what he felt was a confession out of him. It had all been a challenge to Evans. He felt good about himself. He had not only helped Horton, but in his mind a “scumbag who killed women and children” was going to prison for life. If for some reason Williams got off, Evans told Wingate one day, he would see to it that he never hurt another human being again. “Let that fucker get out,” Evans said, “and your worries will be over, Doug.”
Horton met with Evans at the end of February to discuss what would happen next. There would be a trial. Evans would have to testify. “You can’t fuck up, Gar,” Horton warned him, “and get into any trouble before this trial. Your credibility is shit already. If you show up in leg chains and handcuffs, Williams’s attorney will destroy you.”
“Come on, Guy. Don’t worry about it. Trust me.”
Leaving Troop G in Loudonville after talking to Horton, Evans headed north to Vermont. Nestled comfortably in the Norman Williams Public Library in downtown Woodstock, Vermont, was the James Audubon book of rare prints called Birds of America. A large book, about the size of an average wall painting, Evans had put it on his list of items to steal long ago. It was worth nearly $100,000. He figured he could get in and out of town in one night with little problem. Slipping in through a back window and stealing the sixty-pound, leather-bound book, he figured, would be no harder than walking into a department store and lifting a pair of slacks. The only glitch in his plan, which Evans didn’t know, was that on the board of trustees of the library was a federal judge who took a considerable amount of pride in having Birds of America displayed in the library.
CHAPTER 74
Light snow fell on the night of March 20, 1994, a Sunday. It was cold, even by New England standards, for that time of year. The temperature had never risen above twenty degrees.
The Norman Williams Public Library on Park Street near the green in Woodstock housed more than thirty thousand books and periodicals. It was closed on Sundays, like many libraries in the United States. Evans had been inside the building, scoping it out, on several different occasions. He understood security in the place was lax.
Arriving in the middle of the night, he simply went around to the back of the building and removed the hinge bolts holding the irons bars on one of the windows in the basement. Within fifteen minutes, he was in the library and out—the James Audubon Birds of America book in hand.
Later, he said
it was one of the easiest burglaries he had ever pulled off, and laughed at how naive conservators of the book had been about protecting it from people like himself.
When the clerk came in the following morning and discovered the theft, word spread quickly that one of the library’s most valued possessions was gone. The federal judge on the board of trustees was livid. The book had been the library’s crown jewel, often bringing people to town specifically to see it.
“Once the judge became involved,” Horton said later, “he literally”—Horton laughed at the cliché—“made a federal case out of it.”
Indeed, by midmorning, FBI agents from all across New England had arrived in town to work on the case. Days later, agents from across the country were involved.
By this time, Evans was back in Latham. The book, he later said, was on the Canadian-Vermont border, sealed in a plastic bag, buried underneath the home of an old woman who had no idea he had even broken into her house and hidden it there.
As the FBI began its hunt, Evans started looking for a buyer.
Horton had finished his stint with the DEA around this same time and was now back working full-time for the Bureau in Loudonville. It felt good to be back in the captain’s chair. Narcotics had been a bore since the first day.
His reputation as having a relationship with Evans was not only common knowledge among state police, but the FBI was fully aware Horton was the one cop who knew more about Gary Evans than anybody else.
Near the latter part of March, the FBI contacted Horton about Evans. A federal informant in prison had come forward and said his brother had been contacted by Evans, who was looking for someone to buy a book he had stolen in Vermont. Evans had made the mistake of giving the informant his real name.
The FBI invited Horton and Wingate to its main office in Albany to debrief them about Evans. The head of the task force in charge of getting the book back had already set up a meeting between Evans and the informant to discuss the possible sale of the book.
“There had to be thirty agents involved in this case,” Horton recalled later. “When we walked in, it was like a Hollywood movie.”
FBI windbreaker jackets. Earpieces. Attitudes.
Horton and Wingate weren’t asked to participate in the investigation, but were there to more or less hand over whatever information they had that could be useful in capturing Evans.
“Don’t underestimate Mr. Evans,” Horton, standing, explained to the eager crowd of agents. “He may be armed. He will use countersurveillance techniques. He won’t have the property [book] with him.” A line that Horton had used numerous times throughout the years meant more now than it ever had: “He’ll crawl through a straw if he has to.”
As Horton and Wingate viewed the situation, the entire meeting seemed more like a political move on the part of the FBI. There were so many agents involved, none of which had any idea with whom they were dealing, or how well Horton knew him.
“It was funny, actually,” Horton said later. “Here was this big room. All these agents were standing around…all for Gary Evans.”
Just a couple of days after the meeting, the agent-in-charge called Horton and invited him and Wingate to a stakeout he had set up. Evans was scheduled to meet the FBI’s informant at 6:00 P.M. in a parking lot on Wolf Road in Colonie, which was not too far from Horton’s home.
“Sure,” Horton said. The agent made it clear, however, that they weren’t part of the team, necessarily, but could sit in on the arrest and watch.
There will be no arrest, Horton mused to himself.
At about 4:00 P.M., Horton and Wingate showed up at a hotel in Colonie that the FBI had set up as base camp. When they walked into the fourth-floor room, they couldn’t believe their eyes. Agents wore night vision goggles. There were telescopic lenses, tape recorders and several other pieces of James Bond–type equipment spread about the room. Agents were coming and going, talking on walkie-talkies as if they were about to make the arrest of their careers.
“Doug and I,” Horton recalled later, “we kind of looked at each other and whispered…‘They’re fucked.’ We told them what to do and they totally ignored all of our advice.”
Not only hadn’t the FBI taken Horton and Wingate’s advice, but they disregarded a couple of key factors. For one, Horton had been adamant about setting the operation up twenty-four hours in advance. The FBI, he learned when they got there, had been at the hotel for only a few hours. Second, Horton told them to “keep it simple…a few undercover agents, no more.” By 5:00 P.M., there were about twenty agents spread all over the place, some of whom were walking in and out of the building while wearing those loud blue-and-gold FBI windbreaker jackets that screamed FEDS.
Evans later laughed about the ordeal when he explained to Horton what he was doing while the FBI were setting up. “I counted sixteen agents,” Evans said, “in the diner, walking around the hotel, in cars, on the street.”
Evans was on foot when he showed up to meet the informant. He had parked his truck about a mile away and walked to the parking lot. An undercover agent and the informant met with him, but he said absolutely nothing about the book. He let the informant do most of the talking and never once mentioned that he even had the book. At one point, he said, “I may know someone who knows someone who has the book…. What if I did?”
Generally speaking, if a thief smells something funny while meeting with a fence, he will take off and never contact the fence again. Evans, however, viewed the entire operation with the FBI as a challenge and yearned to see how far they would take it.
Ten minutes into the conversation, Evans decided he wasn’t interested in talking anymore. The FBI had nothing to arrest him on, so it had to let him go. He had never mentioned the book specifically, nor had he said he could get it. Even if he had, the book was nowhere in sight.
As he took off on foot, the FBI scrambled for position. With a plane already waiting, it was decided a tail would be put on him for the night to see where he went. Perhaps he would lead them to the book?
From there, Evans left in his truck and, realizing he was being followed the entire time, took the FBI on what he later called a “joyride” for the next six hours.
“All he did,” Horton said, “was drive around in a huge circle while twenty FBI agents wasted the night watching him. It was typical Gary Evans all the way…. He was in charge from the moment he set up the buy.”
CHAPTER 75
The FBI’s informant made contact with Evans a few days later and said he wanted to set up another meeting to discuss buying the book.
To make sure he had all bases covered, Evans had Lisa Morris, with whom he had been living on and off since killing Damien Cuomo, move the book from place to place while he dealt with the FBI. Before the meet at the hotel, Evans had driven up to the Canadian border to get the book, just in case the buyer was legit. But when he found out he was dealing with a snitch, he gave it to Lisa and had her move it from state to state while he met with the informant.
To say the least, the FBI highly underestimated Evans. And there was certainly some type of power struggle going on between it and the state police. Egos aside, if the FBI wanted the book back, they must have known there was only one cop who could get it for them.
Still, before handing the case to Horton, the assistant special agent-in-charge, Joe Flynn, whom Horton described later as “a good guy who knew his job,” decided to take one more chance with his informant, who was able to renegotiate another meeting with Evans in the parking lot of a restaurant in Lake George, New York.
The FBI decided to show up in Lake George in a recreational vehicle. A team of agents pulled up in an RV several hours before the meeting was to take place. At least this time they had taken some of Horton’s advice.
According to Evans, he had been camping out in the woods near the parking lot of the restaurant for three days. That morning, he later said, he looked through a set of binoculars as the RV “pulled into the parking lot and the agents got out
, stretched and went into the restaurant to get breakfast and go to the bathroom.
“I watched the entire operation,” he added, “laughing my ass off.”
Around the time of the meet, with agents nestled in the RV waiting for Evans to show up, Evans got on his mountain bike, strolled into the parking lot and, he later claimed, approached the RV slowly. After scoping out where the informant was located, he then began circling the RV on his bicycle, knocking on the windows, banging on the sides. “I know you’re in there…. Come on out,” Evans said as he drove around the vehicle a few times.
Playing out his hand, he then rode up to the informant and told him to “go fuck himself.”
“He was lucky I didn’t kill him right there in the parking lot in front of all those federal motherfuckers,” Evans explained to Horton later.
“With their tail between their legs,” Horton said later, the FBI called after the incident in Lake George and “asked for my help in getting the book back.”
Horton told them, “I can get it back, but I really haven’t had much contact with Gary lately.” Then, without saying “I told you so,” Horton said he would do it, but it had to be done on his terms.
The FBI, perhaps just wanting to get the book back any way it could, agreed.
Months went by before Evans contacted Horton. And that’s the way it had to be, Horton said. “He had to come to me. It couldn’t be the other way around.”
Horton was already looking to rip into Evans because of the deal they had made after Evans made bail and said he would stay out of trouble so he could testify with a clean slate against Jeffrey Williams. Now Horton was looking at not only bringing a convicted felon into court to testify, but he would be dressed down in shackles and an orange jumpsuit.
Every Move You Make Page 33