“Gary didn’t want me to leave, nor did I want to go,” Horton recalled. “But I had to delegate some things. Gary felt comfortable with Sully, who has a calming, trusting nature.”
So, as Sully and the boys made preparations for a trip to Florida, Horton and his family drove east to spend the weekend at a family-owned cottage in Connecticut. “I had worked many days in a row,” Horton said. “Gary just gave up Falco. The guys were headed south. Even if Gary had another body to give me during the time I was away, there was really nobody available (that I wanted) to help me. He was becoming more depressed and just wanted to talk, but he also seemed to change and become clingier toward me. He wanted me to come to the jail just to be there. I was interested in more bodies, while he was turning to me as someone he could talk to, a father figure, a friend, means of support.”
As it turned out, while Horton was in Connecticut climbing the walls—calling work four, five times a day with the feeling that something was going to happen in his absence—Evans ended up phoning him several times.
“There wasn’t a vacation I ever took where I wasn’t like this. I would call work every day, which is probably not too healthy. But being away from Gary, especially, gave me a lot of anxiety. I knew he was planning something—I just didn’t know what.”
Indeed, there were only three people who later admitted that they knew what Evans was planning, but they either didn’t take him seriously enough to go to the authorities with the information, didn’t think he could pull it off or abetted him the entire way.
CHAPTER 85
Isn’t it a pity, isn’t it a shame
Evans plays a vicious game
And seeing how you like to tell people things
I wish you could tell me…is it dark in that hole?
Discovered years later, Evans had written a letter in verse from prison to one of his victims before he had killed him. He didn’t name the person, but it was clear years later that it was either Michael Falco or Damien Cuomo, both of whom had been buried in holes.
Today is so nice, it’s a shame to die on such a day. Now I’m wondering if you feel anything—can you feel your death coming to meet you? Did you ever think that I spent every day + night for years thinking of how you should die? I wonder what you gained when you told on me?
The 1½-page letter was unrelenting in its accusatory manner. Evans wanted his victim to know that because he had “told” on him, he had to die. In what had become his trademark throughout the years, he began the letter with a smiley face and ended it the same way, as if speaking of death and premeditated murder was what made him the happiest.
Letter writing had always been an outlet for Evans while he was incarcerated. He used letters to manipulate people, and each letter was methodically tailored to coddle each specific person’s character.
In early July, as prosecutors prepared what was shaping up to be a death penalty case against him, Evans began a letter-writing campaign to those people in his life he trusted the most. In a letter addressed to Horton on July 3, he spoke about their entire life of cat and mouse together, flavoring the letter with anecdotes from his childhood and teenage years of burglary: I look at the things I’ve done and say in the mirror, “I did that?” And I know I did and I know it’s all over soon.
“The remorseful Gary Evans.”
Then he talked about his “magical princess,” Doris Sheehan, a woman he credited with getting him over the love of his life, Stacy.
Near the end of the letter, Evans reminisced about the “red light” he had run in Cohoes back in 1985 on the night he met Horton. As if fate were the driving force, he equated the meeting to some sort of astrological aligning of the stars.
He admitted he “looked up” to Horton, “because I can’t look down on you.”
Finally at peace, no more pain—that’s freedom. It’s over finally. Thank you Jim for being Jim. You’re a great guy and my friend.
He lastly told Horton he didn’t want him to love him: I’m that much better off.
On July 10, as the Bureau began looking for Michael Falco’s remains in Florida, Evans penned a letter to Bill Murphy, the only “true friend in the world” he claimed he ever had.
He begged Bill to come to the jail: It’s safe now, no filming, etc, no publicity…. Boy did I fuck up. He wrote he needed to say some serious things—views of life from the Evans observatory.
“The feel-sorry-for-me Gary Evans.”
He then explained how regretful he was for the reporters who had been bothering Bill at work. Then: I made mistakes and it’s almost finishing time.
Bill, he said, had been his friend longer than anyone: I hope you come see me soon, it’s almost too late already. Please come, I need to…say good-bye.
CHAPTER 86
Jo Rehm had been Evans’s baby-sitter, surrogate mother, friend and protector. As kids growing up in Troy during the late ’60s, Evans and Jo Rehm were inseparable. Jo took care of little Gary while Flora Mae and Roy Evans drank themselves silly. Years later, when Jo got married and moved away, she took Evans in for a summer after he had run away from home. After he left Jo’s home later that year, however, she never really saw him again—that is, until Evans was facing the end of his life and wanted to let her know how much she had meant to him all these years.
The letter Evans wrote to Jo was drenched with “don’t blame yourself” rhetoric that only Evans could dish out with his usual saccharine cadence. Jo had written to Evans and explained how she had been hard on herself for not taking better care of him when he was a child.
It was nonsense. Jo was just a kid herself, looking to get the hell out of Troy and begin a life of her own.
And listen, Evans wrote after demanding Jo stop beating herself up, this is important, I’m OK. I’m at peace with myself. I accomplished a very important thing. And when my time is up, I’ll laugh….
He wrote fervently that he never hurt a girl or innocent person ever. Every one of them was a criminal that did at least as bad as me—and a couple were worse.
“Gary Evans, the justifier.”
Apparently, he had forgotten the heartless fact that he had murdered one shop owner while he was asleep and another while he was viewing a piece of jewelry. Both were hard-working family men who never bothered anybody.
No more mail, Evans ended the letter with. I get too sad, OK?
Horton received another letter from Evans, on July 11.
Times running, Guy. I feel very sad and a little bit scared, too…. Lotta bullshit in the paper. I hope you’ll always be OK, I know you will. I’m so sorry about my life.
“The concerned Gary Evans.”
The local newspapers had been running daily stories about Evans and Horton now for the past three weeks. People were beginning to call Evans a “monster,” a term that infuriated him. He was worried that Robbie and his nephew, Devan, would get caught in the whirlwind of press reports. He didn’t want the media bothering them. And Lisa Morris, well: Can you figure out a way to get [her] in line? he asked.
Lisa was giving the press photographs of Evans and telling stories about her life with him. He wanted Horton to collect all of his personal items from her.
Major Bart R. Johnson, commander of Troop G, released a formal statement explaining how, on July 14, 1998, Michael Falco’s remains had been found in Florida and, with the help of dental records, positively identified.
With the death toll now at five and rising, when Horton asked Evans about the trip he took out west after murdering Tim Rysedorph, Evans said he was “finished giving up bodies.”
Horton figured when the time was right, he would start talking again.
Jo Rehm hadn’t seen Gary Evans for almost twenty-five years. They had bumped into each other at a local retail store back in 1995, but beyond that two-minute encounter, Jo hadn’t spoken to him.
When Jo read about how depressed he was, she picked up the phone, called the jail and made arrangements to go see him.
As soon
as they made eye contact a day later, they started crying. It had been a long road. Yet here they were now at what seemed like the end trying to figure out what had happened and where everything had gone so horribly wrong.
“I’ve done a lot of bad things, Jo,” Evans said. “I’m sick.”
“Do they know you’re sick?” Jo understood him wrong; she thought he was physically ill. “The flu,” she later said, “or something.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Evans said, pointing to his head. “I’m sick here.”
For the next thirty minutes, they talked about old times. Then Evans launched into an attack against Robbie. He said he didn’t want to see her. He was mad at her, but he did want to see Devan.
The next day, Jo went back. Lisa Morris was there when she arrived. It was a short visit.
A few days after that, Horton called Jo after Evans asked him to, because Evans wanted to see Jo again, but said he was having trouble getting word to her.
Jo didn’t trust Horton. “I’ll pick you up,” Horton offered, “if you want me to?”
“No! I’ve read about you in the papers. I’ll take my own car, thank you.”
That day, when Jo saw Evans, she asked him about Horton.
“Jim is okay,” Evans said. “He’s my friend.” He paused for a moment, crying, “I…I love Jim Horton.”
Jo then thought, If he’s good enough for Gary, he’s good enough for me.
“Make sure you keep in touch with Jim,” Evans said after collecting himself. “He’ll always be there for you.”
“Okay, Gary.”
From there, Evans started talking in a manner that led Jo to believe the end was near—not, specifically, that Evans was preparing himself emotionally for a death sentence, but that he was planning on doing something to himself. Something big, something people would remember him by.
As the days dragged on and a capital felony murder case was being built against him, Evans started writing to Jo and Horton nearly every day.
On Tuesday, July 28, he wrote to Horton: It would have been nice to have you as a brother, growing up somewhere nice instead of the trolls that kidnapped me from nice people when I was a baby. Then he described a scene from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, comparing his life to the Ghost of Jacob Marley.
Next he initiated an attack on the justice system, pushing the blame for the murders he committed on a system, he said, that should allow a “thief to do a thief’s time” He wrote: Nothing would have happened to those people [Falco, Cuomo, Berry, Jouben and Rysedorph] if I didn’t have to worry about getting life for stealing.
In other words, if the courts would have just allowed him the opportunity to be a serial burglar without serious punishment, he would not have killed anyone.
Don’t you see? It’s all their fault! he was implying.
Near the end of the letter, he began to question whether what was happening had all been predetermined: So was it fate [that] we met in a dingy little holding cell in Cohoes and thirteen years later [we] say good-bye here? Were we meant to learn something from our interaction as cops n’ robbers and more?
Reading the letter, Horton could only shake his head in disbelief. “Gary had an excuse for everything; he wanted to believe it wasn’t his fault.”
Days later, worried about his emotional state, Horton stopped in to see him. As they talked, Evans admitted he was planning an escape.
“You don’t want to do that, Gar,” Horton encouraged.
“I have to, Guy. I can’t die in here.”
A few days prior to Horton’s visit, Evans had told Lisa Morris nearly the same thing, adding, “If I die in here, they win…. If I die out there, I win.”
“Well,” Horton said, “if you do try something, all I ask is that you don’t hurt anyone…. And don’t do it while in state police custody. Don’t make me or the state police look like fools for trusting you.”
Evans said he understood.
Leaving the jail, Horton put in a call to the DA’s office and the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office, who were responsible for holding Evans. He told both that Evans was planning an escape attempt. “I don’t know how or when, but he told me he is going to try.” Like he had said numerous times throughout his career to many different law enforcement agencies, Horton ended the conversation with a familiar caveat: “He will crawl through a straw if he has to. Don’t underestimate him. To get away, he will do anything he has to. Remember, he has nothing to lose.”
Please believe what I am telling you, Horton silently pleaded.
CHAPTER 87
Evans would write notes for Lisa Morris on the back of chewing-gum wrappers or small pieces of paper, roll them into tiny scrolls, stuff them up in his sinuses and, when no one was looking, slip them to Lisa when she visited him at Albany County Jail. In one, he explained how he wanted Lisa to find him a special handcuff key, and even drew a picture of it after explaining where she could find it. Although Lisa had turned Evans in and he had vowed never to see her again, the game, so to speak, was over. Lisa still loved Evans, she said later. She was one of only a handful of people he had left and she wasn’t about to turn her back on him now.
Lisa would never admit that she had fulfilled Evans’s request, but it would be clear in the coming days that Evans either had a handcuff key already, or obtained one from someone who visited him. When asked about it later, Horton said he believed Evans had smuggled a key into the jail by swallowing it in Vermont and kept it hidden inside his nose the entire time he was in jail.
Regardless, it was clear he was going to make an escape attempt. The questions were: when and how?
By August 3, a grand jury had convened to decide Evans’s fate. In all likelihood, he would be indicted by week’s end and charged with eight counts of first-degree murder. Would the case, in the end, meet the strict guidelines for capital punishment, which had been reinstated in New York on September 1, 1995? District Attorney Kenneth Bruno, who was in charge of prosecuting Evans, was doing his best to prove it did. The one item of importance, Bruno suggested, was the fact that Evans had killed Tim Rysedorph in an attempt to stop him from testifying against him for a string of burglaries they had committed together.
The death penalty issue only instigated a new wave of media coverage. Evans was being billed as a serial killer. To assuage his insecurities over being put into the same monstrous category as Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and several other high-profile serial killers, Horton set up an exclusive interview between Evans and the Albany Times Union newspaper. The two-page interview, including photos of Evans behind bars, gave him the opportunity to explain himself. Like he had all along, he said he never wanted for his life to turn out the way it had. “The things I did,” he told the Times Union, “related to business.”
Evans looked tired in the photographs that ran with the article. He had bags under his eyes. His demeanor appeared dark. Cold. Vacant. Horton later said he had taken on an entirely new persona by this time: from remorseful and saddened over everything he had done, to an admitted killer, both terrified and paranoid of the future.
Meanwhile, family members of Evans’s many victims assailed him in the press. Caroline Parker, for one, was telling any reporter who would listen that Evans had chosen to kill, and for that reason he should die a horrible death like that of his victims.
With his first court appearance to face charges of murder only a week away, and the information Horton had provided to the DA regarding Evans’s desire to escape, Evans was placed in solitary confinement. With nothing left to do, he began to pen what would be his final two letters to Horton—letters that would, later, serve as a crystal ball.
On August 5, it appeared that he wanted to—if only half-heartedly—take responsibility for his actions. He wrote to Horton: I fucked up my life repeatedly…my decisions, my fault. I thought I was too smart and I was, for a long time. But I got stupid and here I am. My fault.
He wrote he especially felt sorry for Christina Morris, Lisa Morr
is and Damien Cuomo’s daughter. He apologized for misleading Lisa all those years and, in turn, Lisa having to lie to Christina: I wrecked lives. I was unfeeling toward survivors of victims…. It’s cold but true. So I deserve what’s coming. I got worse and worse and when the trap was coming I killed to avoid it. Cold bloodedly…. And I don’t want someone like me in society myself.
Two days later, another letter showed up on Horton’s desk, the most bizarre to date.
Evans’s handwriting fluctuated from steady and readable, to blurry and scribbled. He used large and small font. Cursive and print. A fan of haiku and poetry his entire life, he wrote in verse:
Many strange dark paths
led me to this place and time.
Sad I am I came.
Oh, buddy, y’know it’s hard to do a ‘no fear’ act when you’re a little, l-i-t-t-l-e bit scared.
I’m so far gone
I ain’t never comin’ back.
It’s getting hard to keep the head right.
Hey, does it snow?
Ha, ha, oh, man…I’m fucked up here.
Then he gave Robbie’s phone number in Florida to Horton, encouraging him to call her when “it” was “all over.”
“He was really breaking down,” Horton said later. “At that time, a lot of what he was saying and writing wasn’t making much sense. But, boy, did it all add up a week later.”
There was a two-page addendum attached to the letter: a drawing and more verse-like musings. The drawing was of a man breaking through a piece of glass, flying through the air while holding on to what looked like a surfboard. Evans drew shards of broken glass and clouds all around the man: Turning and bending and all I can hear is the wind—even. That is trying to push me off and my hold keeps crumbling away. If I look up, I get dizzy and lose my balance, so I can’t look up or I’ll fall. I can’t shut my eyes because I have to watch which way it’s going to turn. And I’m getting tired.
Every Move You Make Page 38