Empty Promises

by Ann Rule

  When he left, she called the police. She was upset, but she gave a good description of her attacker and she remembered his explanation for raping her. Hearing that, they knew where to look; there is only one place, short of a desert island, where a man is forced to go two years without a woman, and that is prison. Detectives checked descriptions of recently released inmates at the Oregon State pen and came up with a balding, horse-faced man with tattoos on his arms: Norbert Tilford Waitts.

  They didn't know where Waitts was, but they didn't have to wonder for long because he surfaced again at 1:40 P.M. the next day. Two men held up the 42nd Street Branch of the First National Bank in Portland. The man holding the shotgun was handsome, in a baby-faced way, and looked to be in his early twenties; the man who actually collected the stacks of money while he held a pistol was older and taller and far less attractive. He hadn't bothered to put a hat over his bald head or a mask over a face that was a study in misalignment. When he reached for the money, his shirtsleeves slid up and the tellers noted his tattoos. He picked up $15,514 in cash and beckoned to his partner to move out of the bank.

  The two bank robbers slipped out into the street and disappeared into the crowds in downtown Portland before the first police arrived.

  Waitts's description was becoming familiar, and it wasn't hard to find out whom he had buddied with in the penitentiary: Carl Cletus Bowles. They certainly made an unlikely pair, but prison officials said they had been good friends— who had, incidentally, been released within a month of each other.

  The bank employees picked out Waitts and Bowles from the lay-downs— the glossy sheets that showed photographs of six other men mixed in with the true suspects. Witnesses were positive that this was the pair who had robbed the bank. Within hours, a two-state search was under way for Waitts and Bowles. Both were charged with bank robbery, and Waitts faced an additional charge of rape.

  It was 11:15 that night in Springfield, Oregon, some 110 miles south of Portland, when Lane County Deputy Carlton E. Smith patrolled on his first night shift. He was in a one-man car, something departments try to avoid but are sometimes forced to resort to due to a shortage of manpower.

  Smith was thirty-three years old. He had a wife, four children, and a stepchild to support, and he'd chosen police work because it gave him an income while he studied to become a teacher. He had served two years on the Eugene, Oregon, Police Department, and then had resigned to drive a dairy route because the money was better. But Smith couldn't get all the credits he needed to be accredited as a teacher in night school. He'd already taken a number of night courses in education at the University of Oregon, and now he needed to attend day classes in order to get his degree. So he'd gone back to police work, working 8:00 P.M. to 4:00 A.M. and attending classes during the day. Somehow he would find time to study.

  The Lane County sheriff's dispatcher heard Smith's voice on the police radio: "This is fifteen at Goodpasture and the Delta Interchange. I have a 1959 Triumph, license 9F 6773. 2–10." It was a routine call. Something about the sports car had alerted Smith; maybe the driver was speeding or had a headlight out. The next communication would normally be his request for a wants-and-warrants check. Instead, Smith's voice said, "Fifteen to thirty-three. Can you come?" He was asking for backup.

  Thirty-three was Watch Commander Sergeant Howard Kershner. Kershner was not alarmed when he heard the call. Smith sounded calm, and it was standard operating procedure to request a watch sergeant in certain situations. Only later would Kershner wonder if Smith had some inkling of the danger he was in and had really been calling for help. Before Kershner could respond to Smith, he heard the most dreaded words any policeman can hear "Oh, my God!" Smith cried. "I'm shot."

  As Kershner sped to Smith's location, he held his mike in one hand, broadcasting the description of the Triumph, instructing all law agencies in the vicinity to set up roadblocks. If the shooter had slipped through the dragnet, he could be on the I-5 freeway, which was a straight shot south to the Mexican border, or a straight shot north to Canada.

  Kershner was the first officer to get to Smith. A passerby was already bent over the deputy, who lay sprawled on his back beside his patrol car. "I think he was alive when I drove up," the white-faced man said, "but I'm afraid he's dead now."

  Two men from a nearby home said they heard shots and ran out to see the stopped patrol car and a red sports car racing away.

  Carlton Smith hadn't had a chance. An autopsy revealed that he had taken the full blast of a shotgun at close range in his left side. Just to make sure he died, his killer had pumped seven bullets from a handgun into his body as he lay helpless.

  There appeared to be no motive except pure evil, unless the gunman needed to make sure that he would never be identified. Whoever drove that red Triumph must have had more than a traffic stop on his mind.

  Two Eugene police officers spotted the Triumph in south Eugene and gave chase, but they lost it. They later recalled that they had never wanted so badly to stop a car, and they'd felt searing frustration as they watched the powerful car pull away from them. But the investigators did have the Triumph's license number. Carlton Smith had given it to the sheriff's dispatcher when he radioed in. The Oregon Motor Vehicle Department in Salem, the state capital, always had someone on duty, and the night clerk checked the records and told the Eugene investigators that the car had recently been taken in on a trade by a car dealer in Salem.

  The sleepy dealer answered his phone at 3:30 A.M. "Yes," he said groggily. "I know that car. In fact, I just sold it tonight— last night now, I guess. I was just getting ready to close at nine P.M. These two fellows walked in, looked the car over, and bought it for $895 in cash money. They gave me mostly twenty-dollar bills and this one guy said he'd been saving up his money to buy a good sports car."

  The buyer's name? Norbert Waitts. The salesman identified mug shots of Waitts and Carl Cletus Bowles as the men who had bought the red Triumph. Buying the car was a clever move because if they were stopped, Waitts would have proper legal registration for the vehicle. But they were stopped, and something had gone terribly wrong.

  What had made them shoot Carlton Smith? Had they simply panicked at the sight of a uniform? Or were they such confirmed cop-haters that their reflexes took over? No. It was most likely they knew they would be in trouble from the moment Smith picked up his radio to check on wants and warrants. If there was a "want" out on them for the bank robbery that afternoon, Waitts's name would have brought an immediate hit. Their names had not been broadcast on civilian radio stations yet, so they couldn't be sure that they were wanted— but they hadn't taken that chance.

  Their new car was useless to them now. Waitts and Bowles realized that, and officers found it abandoned in a field adjoining a residential area only an hour after Deputy Smith died. That probably meant they were on foot. Police, sheriff's deputies, and FBI agents covered the area like an army of ants on a sand hill, and yet the two killers evaded them again. Searchers realized that they must have stolen a car or hidden in some house in the neighborhood next to the field.

  Lane County Sheriff Harry Marlowe was of the opinion that the fugitives had somehow gotten ahold of a car. At eight the next morning, a young girl called the police to say that her mother and brother weren't in the house. Elizabeth Banfield and her twelve-year-old son had simply disappeared during the night, leaving four other children alone in the house. The Banfield home was only three blocks from the site of the abandoned Triumph.

  The child who had alerted the police said her mother would not leave her children at home alone without at least telling them where she was going. The child had a vague memory of voices in the night, but she had rolled over and gone back to sleep, believing that she was only dreaming. "Then when I got up this morning," she said, "I found the lights on in the kitchen and my mother and brother were gone."

  Her father, Larry Banfield, was working far away from home on a dam project in northeastern Oregon. When he was notified that his wife and so
n had disappeared, he was just as dumbfounded as the rest of the family. The Banfields' five-year-old Ford Thunderbird was also missing.

  There was good reason to worry. Elizabeth Banfield was described to lawmen as an extremely attractive redhead. In light of the attack on the Tigard motel clerk and the vicious killing of Carlton Smith, there was no reason to think that she would be safe. Her twelve-year-old son's fate might be even bleaker. Once the youngster had been used to slide past roadblocks and was no longer of value to them, police feared that Bowles and Waitts would dump him.

  Teletypes were sent to all eleven western states, and police up and down the West Coast were alerted to watch for the Banfields' T-Bird with Oregon plates. Radio and television news flashes warned people, "Do not attempt to stop this car. Ascertain the location of the vehicle and report it at once to your local police."

  That Wednesday morning passed with agonizing slowness, and then, at noon, the stolen car was found. It was located 125 miles northeast of Eugene, ditched in a remote logged-off area high in the Cascade Mountains along the Santiam Pass. The two loggers who spotted it approached it slowly. They had heard the news broadcasts and they half-expected to find the bodies of the missing woman and her son inside. But the car was empty.

  The Oregon State Police expressed grave concern for the safety of the woman and boy when they saw the car; there was no longer any doubt that they had been taken as hostages by the ex-cons, but where were they now? The car had been driven to its resting spot along a rugged logging road. When the road came to a sudden end, the driver had obviously made an effort to turn it around but it had become hopelessly stuck in the soft sand; the tires had dug in so far that the back portion of the T-Bird's frame actually rested on the ground. "Whoever left it here had to walk out," one officer muttered. The unspoken question was whether the woman and boy had walked out, too. The area had been logged off, but acres and acres of waist-high brush had overgrown the fir stumps that dotted the area. Beyond that, the densest of forests soared skyward. If the hostages had been left here, they could easily die in the wilderness before being found. Worse, if they'd been gunned down like Deputy Smith, their bodies might never be found.

  Scores of human and canine searchers scoured the wilderness along the Santiam Pass. The dogs didn't pick up a trail of any distance, and they kept circling back to their handler, M. D. Obenhaus. "There had to be another car here," he said. "I'm sure of it. Whoever left the T-Bird must have gotten into another vehicle. They're gone— otherwise my dogs would have picked up their trail."

  He didn't voice what they were all dreading. Most dogs will not home in on dead bodies; only specially trained necro-search dogs are adept at that. It was far easier to believe the hostages were still alive, even if they were being held captive in a car now miles away. But the question remained: how had the kidnappers found another car up here in the wilderness? They had to wonder if the fleeing killers had stopped a passing car and taken even more hostages.

  Roadblocks were set up on all likely escape routes in Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and California. Elizabeth Banfield and her son had been missing for more than twenty-four hours, and the fugitives could have crossed several state lines by now.

  At one o'clock in the morning, two full days after the Banfields' disappearance, a deputy stationed in their home answered the phone and heard a tired woman say, "Are my children all right?" It was Elizabeth Banfield. She was alive and calling from Woodland, California. She told the deputy that both she and her son were safe in a motel there— along with other hostages. Yolo County authorities in Woodland, which is not far from Sacramento, were contacted and asked to take all the hostages from the motel and into protective custody. Elizabeth Banfield told the California deputies and FBI agents about her ordeal. Before she could stop him, her son had answered a knock at their kitchen door at about eleven-thirty on the night Deputy Smith was killed. Two men asked to use the phone to call for help because they had an emergency. Then they pushed their way into her home and held her and her son hostage at gunpoint. They told her they had just killed a police officer and had to get out of town in a hurry. "You'll drive us in your car," they ordered.

  She protested that she had four children asleep in the house and couldn't leave. But the men insisted that she and her son leave with them. "One kid's enough," the tall, homely man said. "It will keep the cops from shooting at us if they should spot us. A flock of kids would be a mess."

  When the men said they wanted to go to Idaho, Elizabeth Banfield directed them to take a route that ran past the dam where her husband was working. She held the faint hope that her husband might recognize the car and rescue her and her son. It was one chance in a million, and her heart sank when they passed close to the dam and she realized no one even saw their car.

  Her kidnappers knew that the Banfields' car would soon be identified on both police and civilian radio broadcasts as a stolen vehicle, so they were anxious to dump it. Near Marion Forks, they came across a truck with an attached camper parked along the road. Inside, they found Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph Sternberg of Renton, Washington, their fourteen-year-old son, and his friend.

  Sternberg, a civil engineer for the Boeing Airplane Company, was no stranger to conflict. He was a veteran of the Latvian Army, and he had lost an arm in World War II when the Germans pressed him into military service against the Russians. It took him only a moment to realize he dared not resist the armed men who commandeered his camper; he had his family to consider.

  It was decided that Bowles would drive, with Sternberg sitting beside him. Waitts herded the five other hostages into the back of the camper and held a gun on them. Carl Bowles turned the camper south toward the California state line.

  The hundreds of miles between Salem, Oregon, and the California line passed slowly. Bowles monitored the radio news intently and kept Waitts informed through an intercom system Sternberg had installed in the camper. They learned that Deputy Carlton Smith had died and that the police believed the two ex-cons had abducted the Banfields.

  As they rolled up to the California state line, the hostages and their captors alike froze as a border inspector approached the truck. "You ready back there?" Bowles asked.

  "Ready," Waitts muttered. "You keep the intercom on. I'll know what to do."

  "Carrying any fruit or vegetables?" the inspector asked, his trained eye scanning the rig.

  "No, sir," Bowles said, and Sternberg shook his head too.

  "Any animals? Anyone in the back?"

  "No. Just me and my buddy here," Bowles said, smiling.

  "Have a good day," the border guard waved them on.

  Luckily for both the border agent and the hostages inside, he didn't suspect that the camper held anything but a couple of fishing buddies.

  The odyssey of fear continued for another eighteen hours. During the trip, Bowles and Waitts pulled into truck stops twice and bought hamburgers, coffee, and milk for the hostages, but there was never any possibility that the hostages could cry out for help. If they did, someone would be shot.

  Late in the evening, Bowles announced that he had heard on the radio that the Banfields' Thunderbird had been discovered. It was time to get rid of the camper; authorities were now so close on their tail that it was only a matter of time before the camper would be marked as a hot car, too. They allowed their captives to leave the camper to relieve themselves in a field.

  The hostages noted that their captors seemed disorganized; neither had slept since Monday night and it was now midnight on Thursday. The kidnappers couldn't really sleep with six captives to watch. The best they could do was take turns with catnaps. The Sternbergs' teenage son watched Bowles and Waitts as they tossed their two shotguns into a pond outside Marysville, California; the boy pretended to be looking up at a nearby hill, but he was actually memorizing everything he could about the area. He saw exactly where the guns splashed into the pond. If he survived this ordeal, he figured he could lead FBI agents right back to the spot.<
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  This was one of the most demoralizing moments of the endless trip down the interstate freeway. The hostages wondered if they would be dumped next. If their captors no longer wanted to be linked to their shotguns, it wasn't likely they wanted to leave any witnesses. The hostages were afraid that their bodies were about to join the guns in the pond. Or maybe the kidnappers were going to stuff them all into the back of the camper, shoot them, and leave them there.

  The backs of their necks prickling with apprehension, the Banfields and Sternbergs followed Waitts's directions and walked back toward the camper, waiting for the crack of a pistol. But the shorter man— the one who looked like actor Robert Conrad— ushered them all back into the camper and got behind the steering wheel and they took off again. Even in the middle of the night, it was beastly hot, more so because the camper wasn't big enough to hold six people.