the information Lisa had given him, was the fact that Evans hadn’t contacted her yet. Evans had said “years,” but Horton thought for sure he would have surfaced by the end of January or February. But thus far, at least according to Lisa, she hadn’t heard from him.
Because Evans was officially running from the law and considered armed and dangerous, Horton began showing up at Lisa’s apartment more frequently and stationed a cruiser nearby whenever the state police could spare one. During some weeks, he’d pop in three, four, even five times, at various intervals throughout the day.
“I knew we had gotten everything we were going to get out of Lisa by that point,” Horton later said. “However, I needed to stay in her face and keep reminding her that I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to believe Gary was going to call her sooner or later and emerge from wherever he had been hiding. I could feel it. I knew Gary. He wouldn’t disappear entirely without first rubbing it in my face.”
CHAPTER 20
The brilliant spring weather that had fallen on the Capital District during the first few weeks of May 1998 mattered little to Bureau investigators working day and night to find Gary Evans. To find Tim Rysedorph—who had been missing now for nearly seven months—Horton and his team needed to locate Evans. Every lead compiled during the past half-year had been followed up on, but nothing new turned up. Frustration was mounting.
Sitting at his desk one morning, staring out the window at the Siena College green across the street, Horton’s growing concern told him that if Evans didn’t come forward and contact Lisa soon, they were likely never going to see him (or Tim) again.
“Gary Evans could disappear and, if he wanted to, bleed into the countryside and live off the land forever,” Horton said later. “I was worried he had left the country. If he did, we were finished. Or if Lisa had tipped him off about what I was doing, he was long gone.”
The reality of police work, though, is this: just when a case seems to be running cold, a lucky break pops up—be it something investigators had missed all along, or a new lead.
The break Horton had been waiting for didn’t come in the form of someone spotting Evans and turning him in, or his getting “stopped somewhere by local cops for a bullshit traffic violation.” Instead, it came in an unceremonious phone call to a bar named Maxie’s in Colonie, New York. This would lead to a nondescript, small package delivery a few days later by an unwitting UPS driver to a second bar, Jessica Stone’s, a hole-in-the-wall not too far from Lisa’s apartment in Latham.
On May 12, 1998, Lisa was having a beer at Maxie’s when the barmaid took a call from someone named Louis Murray, who said he wanted to speak to Lisa. Murray, the barmaid said, had been calling the bar asking for Lisa for the past few days.
Lisa would drop by Maxie’s from time to time, usually in the afternoons. Apparently, Louis Murray knew that.
When she picked up the phone and said hello, she recognized Evans’s voice immediately.
First Lisa asked him how he had been traveling without getting caught.
Evans’s name and photo had been plastered all over the newspapers and on television. Missing person posters of Tim had been posted everywhere. The newspapers had made the connection between Evans and Tim only recently and were running stories about the Bureau’s interest in talking to Evans about Tim’s disappearance. Horton had even considered listing Evans on the FBI’s most wanted list and appearing on America’s Most Wanted, a nationally syndicated television show, after it called. However, the fallout from such widespread publicity, he decided, might beckon Evans to sink deeper into seclusion.
Evans admitted to Lisa that he had a full set of identification on him, but said he didn’t have a birth certificate.
“How are you traveling?”
“Rental cars. Things are going okay. I’m
Because Evans was officially running from the law and considered armed and dangerous, Horton began showing up at Lisa’s apartment more frequently and stationed a cruiser nearby whenever the state police could spare one. During some weeks, he’d pop in three, four, even five times, at various intervals throughout the day.
“I knew we had gotten everything we were going to get out of Lisa by that point,” Horton later said. “However, I needed to stay in her face and keep reminding her that I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to believe Gary was going to call her sooner or later and emerge from wherever he had been hiding. I could feel it. I knew Gary. He wouldn’t disappear entirely without first rubbing it in my face.”
CHAPTER 20
The brilliant spring weather that had fallen on the Capital District during the first few weeks of May 1998 mattered little to Bureau investigators working day and night to find Gary Evans. To find Tim Rysedorph—who had been missing now for nearly seven months—Horton and his team needed to locate Evans. Every lead compiled during the past half-year had been followed up on, but nothing new turned up. Frustration was mounting.
Sitting at his desk one morning, staring out the window at the Siena College green across the street, Horton’s growing concern told him that if Evans didn’t come forward and contact Lisa soon, they were likely never going to see him (or Tim) again.
“Gary Evans could disappear and, if he wanted to, bleed into the countryside and live off the land forever,” Horton said later. “I was worried he had left the country. If he did, we were finished. Or if Lisa had tipped him off about what I was doing, he was long gone.”
The reality of police work, though, is this: just when a case seems to be running cold, a lucky break pops up—be it something investigators had missed all along, or a new lead.
The break Horton had been waiting for didn’t come in the form of someone spotting Evans and turning him in, or his getting “stopped somewhere by local cops for a bullshit traffic violation.” Instead, it came in an unceremonious phone call to a bar named Maxie’s in Colonie, New York. This would lead to a nondescript, small package delivery a few days later by an unwitting UPS driver to a second bar, Jessica Stone’s, a hole-in-the-wall not too far from Lisa’s apartment in Latham.
On May 12, 1998, Lisa was having a beer at Maxie’s when the barmaid took a call from someone named Louis Murray, who said he wanted to speak to Lisa. Murray, the barmaid said, had been calling the bar asking for Lisa for the past few days.
Lisa would drop by Maxie’s from time to time, usually in the afternoons. Apparently, Louis Murray knew that.
When she picked up the phone and said hello, she recognized Evans’s voice immediately.
First Lisa asked him how he had been traveling without getting caught.
Evans’s name and photo had been plastered all over the newspapers and on television. Missing person posters of Tim had been posted everywhere. The newspapers had made the connection between Evans and Tim only recently and were running stories about the Bureau’s interest in talking to Evans about Tim’s disappearance. Horton had even considered listing Evans on the FBI’s most wanted list and appearing on America’s Most Wanted, a nationally syndicated television show, after it called. However, the fallout from such widespread publicity, he decided, might beckon Evans to sink deeper into seclusion.
Evans admitted to Lisa that he had a full set of identification on him, but said he didn’t have a birth certificate.
“How are you traveling?”
“Rental cars. Things are going okay. I’m
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