It was then when Uncle Bill began to “let his guard down,” my source explained later. And make a decision to allow me to see the additional items they had hidden before my arrival.
Enter Son of Sam.
Chapter 5
AS WE SAT AND TALKED, I LEARNED THAT THEY were hardworking, middleclass people. I enjoyed their company from the moment I arrived. It was just the thought of having to drive ten hours to and fro in order to hear a few stories of what I assumed was a guy who knew a now-famous serial killer and wanted his voice in my book. I understood it. But it pained me to think that I had come all this way for nothing.
Boy, was I ever wrong.
“Don’t turn on your tape recorder yet,” Bill told me as I placed it on the dining table.
That’s when things took an interesting turn.
“Oh,” I said. “What’s up? I record everyone.”
“Yeah, I understand. But I want to tell you something first.”
One of those off the record moments.
The man I had traveled all this way to interview then bellied up to the table he was sitting at opposite me, leaned in, and said, “Gary was a thief in school! He stole records [LPs] for us and we paid him.” He was whispering. Sort of smiling.
I nodded my head. “Wow. That’s fascinating.”
“Before we get started,” Bill said next, “I was wondering if you’d be interested in looking at something I have?”
“Sure. Why not.”
Bill disappeared into the bowels of his house.
Leaving my grieving, money-hungry widow and Hume Cronyn, I kept going over what had taken place inside her house: The woman’s husband had been dismembered with a chainsaw, his body stuffed in plastic bags, and she was worried about money for his story. I had seen and heard many things throughout my book writing career. I had been asked for money by at least one or two people per book. I always refused to pay. But this time, I had never felt so disgusted, so dirty.
Throughout the process of researching Every Move You Make, I had developed this “feeling” that Gary Evans was a closet homosexual. I had asked Investigator James Horton, a cop who knew Evans better than Evans knew himself. But Horton disagreed.
“ Gary? No way! Look at all of the girlfriends he had. They all talked about how good a lover he was.”
“That’s my point. Gary always went above and beyond the norm to talk—even brag—about his sexual performances.”
Horton couldn’t agree with me. And who was I to question a senior investigator with the New York State Police, a guy who had been on the job for twenty-plus years.
For months I wrote off my theory as just that—speculation. I had no evidence, nor did I have a reliable source claiming Evans was gay. I had a hunch. It wasn’t that it mattered one way or another. All it did was make my serial killer that much more of an interesting subject to study and explore in the book. But I couldn’t put hunches and speculation into print.
I also knew Evans was mesmerized, if not obsessed, with celebrity and stardom. In the hundreds of letters I studied as part of my research for Every Move You Make, there were several times when Evans talked candidly about a celebrity he thought he saw on the street, or some film company shooting on location in his neighborhood. Hollywood excited him. Bruce Lee was one of his favorites. He had even visited Lee’s grave—as I would, too, while doing research for the book—while on his final run from Investigator James Horton.
Hiding out in the Pacific Northwest, while Horton was back in New York interviewing people who knew Evans, trying to find him, Evans mocked Horton by sending him a photograph of himself at Lee’s gravesite, ingeniously insinuating, See, I’m right here... you can’t catch me! He also sent photos of himself in the wilderness of Washington, one inside a fresh grave Evans was lying in, and several of him just out and about.
Still, as I wrote the book and continued researching Evans’s life, something about the tone of the Evans letters struck me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it exactly. But as I got closer to finishing the book, I forgot about it, not thinking for one minute I’d find some of the answers to my questions at the end of the process in a stack of papers one of Evans’s grammar school chums had stored away in a box somewhere in his house.
As Bill disappeared into his house, his wife said, “You wait until you see what he’s bringing back.”
“No kidding.”
I expected to be shown a grainy photograph of Bill, Gary and the rest of their fifth-grade class. Horned-rimmed glasses, high waters, Converse sneakers, pocket protectors. Maybe a note Evans had written to Bill, and perhaps an old school paper Evans had written about a love for psychotic serial killers he had as a child. All that would have made the trip worthwhile and easy enough to weave into my manuscript.
But what came, well, I could not have never imagined.
After a few minutes, Bill walked into the dining room area where we had been sitting. He had two boxes.
“Before Gary went to jail that last time,” Bill explained, “he stopped by here to drop off some of his personal possessions. Would you be interested in any of it?”
I thought I had heard him wrong. “Uh... yeah,” I said, barely getting the words out. “I’d like to see that stuff, if I could.”
He smiled and opened the first box.
Before I continue, I should say that Gary Evans was not only a serial killer, but probably one of the most prolific antique thieves New England has seen in the past twenty-five years. The guy could steal a wallet from a cop at a policemen’s convention. He once wanted an antique piece of jewelry so bad that, after realizing there was no way into the building without tripping the alarm, he spent several days tunneling underneath the building, so he could come up inside, beyond any of the alarm system’s laser devices. Once inside, he took the antique and left a note in its place: “Thank you, the Mole.”
Evans was able to get into any jewelry store he wanted, and antique shops throughout New England feared this guy. He would go so far as to scope out a shop for weeks, set up a camping tent in the woods in back of the property, gain the trust of the shop owner, and then, when he felt he knew enough about the shop and its security, burgle the owner blind and leave without a trace. He had even burned down an antique barn he burgled in order to cover up his crimes. The guy had escaped from prison twice and was able to get out of any situation. After Horton finally caught him, Evans was suspected then of killing three people. Yet he somehow managed to hide a handcuff key in his right nostril, a razorblade underneath his gums, and escape from two armed U.S. Marshals. I didn’t believe this when Horton first told me.
Then Horton reached into a notebook and took out the photos to back up his claims.
Knowing all of this and writing about it, by the time I sat down with Bill, I believed there wasn’t much left in Evans’s life that would shock me. Evans is one of the most interesting, compelling, conniving and surprising murderers I have ever studied and written about. I thought there was nothing in his criminal life of twenty-five years he had not done.
But then Bill opened those boxes. And that was when everything changed.
Chapter 6
BILL STOOD OVER THE BOXES AND STARED DOWN at them for a moment. Speechless, I joined him. Here, in front of me, was the entire life—from his point of view—of my serial killer. Anything important to Gary Evans was inside these boxes: photographs, letters, little trinkets he had stolen and kept, drawings, paintings, stained glass windows he made while serving time in prison throughout his life on a variety of charges.
“Can I start with one of his photo albums?” I asked Bill.
“Sure,” Bill said. He smiled.
I picked up the book and sat down at the table. Flipping through the pages, I saw scores of photographs I had in my possession already. In fact, they were already on my editor’s desk, typeset with captions, ready for the photo layout of the book.
Damn, I thought. Turning page after page of photographs I had seen before, I have
all this stuff already….
I put the album down for a moment, took out a package of letters in the box and started reading.
Again, I recognized the letters. Evans’s sister had sent me over one hundred letters Evans had written to her throughout a twenty-year period. These were copies of some of the same letters. What at first seemed like a great journalistic discovery was turning into that Capone’s vault thing that almost sunk Geraldo.
Exactly what I feared most: excitement that fizzled into nothing.
But then Bill, perhaps sensing my disappointment, looked at me with this bashful smirk, as if he knew I had already seen all of this stuff.
We made eye contact.
“Keep looking,” Bill said, still smiling.
By now we had sat down. Bill moved a bit in his seat and, after taking a moment (to gloat, I think—and how could he not), said, “Did you know Gary and Son of Sam were friends?”
I had heard this throughout my research. Investigator Horton had mentioned it to me, saying Evans had bragged about knowing Son of Sam. But Horton could never prove it—and Evans was in no position to talk about his life anymore. Horton believed Evans was lying about Son of Sam, just another one of his fantasies of having been close to someone he viewed as a celebrity. I had my suspicions, too, that Evans might have been blowing smoke to raise his profile as a high profile serial killer.
“I’ve heard that,” I said to Bill. “But I don’t think it’s true.”
Bill, his wife, and those family members standing by watching us, laughed. It turned into a joke, actually, of which I believed at that moment was directed at me. I was confused. It seemed as if they were having some fun with me, and maybe even playing me.
“Oh, it’s true all right,” Bill said after a moment. He was serious.
“How so?” I quipped. “How do you mean?”
“Let me show you.”
Bill reached into the second box and pulled out a photograph of Evans standing beside Son of Sam. They were in front of a paneled wall.
“No kidding,” I said, startled by the photograph. Here was proof, indeed, that Evans had at least met Son of Sam. I could put the two of them in the same, standing next to each other, but as a skeptical journalist (for the most part), I thought that it still didn’t prove Son of Sam and Gary Evans had been friends. At least not in the way Evans had described to Investigator Horton.
Maybe Son of Sam, like a retired baseball player forced to show up at trading card shows and hock himself, charged for photographs. A pack of cigarettes and you can take your photo with the Son of Sam. A box of Ho Hos and Twinkies and Sam would throw in a handshake.
Knowing Evans the way I did, I had to consider that his “friendship” with Sam was perhaps more in his head.
Again, the laughter came. I felt as if they were pointing at me now and laughing (which they weren’t) in my face. Sucker. You fell for it all, didn’t you! You drove all the way up here for nothing.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What else do you have?”
Bill bent down and took out another photo album. He slid it slowly across the table. “Open that up and take a look. I think you’ll like what’s inside.”
I must admit, I was hesitant. I believed in them as people, sure. But at this point, I was questioning everything I knew about Gary Evans. Was there a second life he had that no one except my new friends had known about?
Indeed, there was.
Chapter 7
THERE COMES A POINT WHILE WORKING ON A book when you have to decide if you’ve covered every base, turned over every rock, and time to end your search and be happy that you’ve managed to cover at least eighty-five percent of the story. No reporter or book author can ever get an entire story. It’s just not possible. With Every Move You Make, I had reached that point somewhere around the day Bill’s wife called and told me her husband wanted to meet me. I had interviewed scores of people, some no fewer than a dozen times. I had stayed at Horton’s house and went through the thousands of pages of documents he had amassed about the case. I shadowed Horton. Near what I thought was the end of my research, I was starting to hear the same stories. I knew then I had reached the point where I had covered everything I was going to get.
Or so I thought.
As I opened the photo album, I couldn’t have imagined this story of Gary Evans’s life and crimes could have gotten any better. I mean, I already had, as I wrote in the author’s note of the book, what I believed was the most “incredible true story, which, in my opinion, includes the most shocking and surprising ending in the history of true crime” in my hands. The book had turned into a cat and mouse game between a serial killer and a cop, who had befriended, arrested and chased his prey for twelve-plus years. My goodness, Evans had broken into Horton’s home at times and wandered through Horton’s belongings while Horton and his family were not at home. He’d followed Horton and his wife. Horton had gotten Evans jobs. Evans had set up drug dealers for Horton. They were polar opposites, but appreciated the idea of interacting on a professional level. For ten years, Horton never knew Evans was a serial killer; he thought he was dealing with a burglar and wanted to help redeem him. Catching Evans, realizing he was a serial killer, was the apex of the story. What Evans did after he was captured became legendary (and I won’t get into that here, because it would truly spoil the ending of Every Move You Make for anyone wanting to read Evans’s entire story). Seriously, with all that, what more could I ask for in a crime story?
Inside the album Bill had slid across the table were scores of letters between Son of Sam and Gary Evans. They had done time together at Clinton State Prison in Dannemora, New York, through which they had developed a close personal relationship.
“Are you kidding me?” I said out of excitement and maybe even fear. Excited for obvious reasons. Fearful, of course, because I now had this new vein to my story that hadn’t existed before that day. I would have to rewrite much of my book, which wouldn’t be a problem under normal circumstances. But with a 500-page book already sitting in my hard drive, rewriting it would be a daunting task. Thinking about having to reshape and keep the book somewhat in the neighborhood of its original page-count, flow and narrative was overwhelming.
“Can I take these back to my office?”
To my surprise and delight, Bill said, as if the entire visit up to that point had been some weirdly staged gag, “Of course. That’s why you’re here.”
Chapter 8
SITTING IN BILL’S KITCHEN, grateful I had been called up to this house and actually sucked up my pride and ego and made the drive, I understood why it had been so important for me to meet with everyone. They couldn’t have told me any of this over the telephone. They had to meet me in person to see if I was worthy of such exclusive information. They had studied my work and believed I was thorough, but they like to read people—God bless them—by the way they interact and communicate. They knew the difference between a hack looking for an easy story and a journalist digging and scratching his way to the bottom.
“Wow,” I said, “I feel honored.” They probably realized the sheer enthusiasm I had glowing over my face. I had a tough time containing it.
“But there’s more...,” Bill said.
I dropped my head. This guy likes saying stuff like that...
“What do you mean, there’s more?” I wanted to get back to my office immediately, brew a large pot of coffee, break out the Son of Sam letters and get to work.
“Take a look at this photo album,” Bill said, sliding another one across the table. Gary Evans was a bit obsessive compulsive. Especially where it pertained to photo albums. He kept things in meticulous order. These were memories to him. He was a braggart, too, and these was his chance to leave behind a record of his accomplishments, if you’ll allow me to use that word.
Going backwards for a moment, I want to repeat that Evans had gone out of his way to tell people he despised homosexuals. To call him a homophobe was beyond an understatement. But as I heard
this from several different sources, I kept telling myself that he who screams the loudest is at once someone who has skeletons regarding the same issue. Someone yells fire in a crowded room, check first to see if he started it!
I opened the album. Stunned doesn’t begin to describe my reaction to what was before me.
For practical purposes, homosexuality and Gary Evans were an important part of my book, only because Evans had such strong opinions throughout his life regarding his hatred for any relationship that wasn’t between a man and woman. So, to find out that this same man was in fact experimenting with his own sexuality (at the least) was not only shocking to me as a researcher, but was going to throw my book into a second tailspin. If true, I would have to go back and re-read the letters Evans had written, re-interview several sources, and look at Evans under an entirely new light. This revelation would also change Evans’s victim pool. For the most part, Evans had killed people he believed had victimized him in some way. He was staunchly against killing women and/or children. But there was always a feeling with cops that he had killed others—several others. This new information would change all that completely.
As I sat and opened the album Bill had slid across the table, there in front of me was Evans dressed as a female.
Beyond that, there were scores of photographs of transsexuals and transvestites. This was amazing for several reasons. First, no one knew about this side of Evans, at least no one I had spoken to for the book. Not cops. Girlfriends. Family.
Nobody. Except, of course, Bill and his posse.
Secondly, this changed the dynamic of the relationship Evans had with Son of Sam. I was now more eager to crack open those letters to see what Son of Sam and Evans had talked about.
MADNESS, SEX, SERIAL KILLER: A Disturbing Collection of True Crime Cases by Two Masters of the Genre Page 11