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Killers grip on cop holds |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Saturday, 04 June 2005 |
Ex-police investigator's bond with career criminal Gary Evans lingers, recalled in new book
By PAUL GRONDAHL, Staff writer
Friday, June 3, 2005
ALBANY -- Jim Horton holds one-third of the cremated remains of Gary Evans in the palm of his hands.
"This is Gary," Horton says, his voice flat.
They are contained in a heart-shaped, lacquered antique box. An angel adorns its cover.
Evans provided the box and stipulated it be given to Horton with remains inside.
"He probably stole it," Horton says.
The ashes and chunks of bone weigh only a few ounces, lighter than you might imagine for a career burglar, con man, escape artist and multiple murderer whose rap sheet stretched 15 feet long.
You could say there is something of Horton in those remains. The two men -- the cop and the killer -- engaged in a macabre and obsessive psychological dance that reached across 13 years and several states.
The detritus of Evans' twisted life of crime and punishment occupies a bookshelf in Horton's office on the 10th floor of Agency Building 2 in the Empire State Plaza, where he is deputy chief investigator for Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
"My wife thinks it's creepy," Horton concedes. "She doesn't want this stuff in the house."
Seven years after Evans' suicide plunge from the Troy-Menands Bridge in shackles and jail garb, clearly something of Evans is still lodged in Horton.
Out of all the cases Horton handled in a 22-year career with the State Police as senior investigator and head of the major crimes unit of Troop G, Evans' is the one that got under his skin -- and stayed there.
"I love you like a brother," Evans wrote to Horton.
"I played him. He played me," Horton says. "I was a cop. He was a bad guy. I don't glorify him."
Now, the long, strange trip of Horton and Evans is revisited in a true-crime book, "Every Move You Make." The Pinnacle Books paperback will be published next week.
Horton was extensively interviewed by author M. William Phelps, of Hartford, Conn. He made available to the writer his archive of case files, photos and letters from Evans.
Phelps' book chides Horton for using Evans as an informant and being on friendly terms with him even as he was on a murder spree. Evans confessed to killing five people, although both Horton and Phelps believe he killed more.
"I'll take a hit for this," Horton says. "There is no excuse for me not knowing he had killed people."
Evans felt oddly competitive with Horton. Among the possessions in Horton's office is a textbook, "Criminal Investigation: Basic Perspectives" that Evans stole from a Hudson Valley Community College student.
Horton busted Evans a half-dozen times between 1985 and 1998 for burglary. He spent two-thirds of his adult life behind bars before he died at 43.
"I don't take full blame on this," Horton says. "He was in and out of the criminal justice system. I wasn't the only one duped by Gary."
Horton, 50, always wanted the bizarre and gruesome Evans story to be captured in a book, but he now has concerns about a possible backlash. He is aware of the criticism stirred up by local author Denis Foley's 2001 book on notorious serial killer Lemuel Smith.
Horton and Evans connected by chance in 1985. Horton investigated a burglary of jewelry at an East Greenbush flea market. Evans was in jail, after being arrested for stealing $12,000 cash from a Troy drug dealer. Horton drew a confession out of Evans, who threw in his partner, Michael Falco, saying he had fled to the West Coast.
"Gary and I just hit it off," Horton says. "He said I was the first cop who treated him nice, like a human being."
Horton didn't realize then that Evans was playing him like a fish on a line. While he confessed to the jewelry theft, he didn't reveal that he had shot Falco in Troy, rolled the corpse into a sleeping bag and took it to Palm Beach County, Fla., where he buried the body in a ravine.
A few months after the confession, Horton received the first letter from Evans from Sing Sing prison on Sept. 25, 1985. Their relationship was forged.
"We were natural enemies, but it quickly became very personal for Gary. In his mind, I was his only friend," Horton says. "But I never felt threatened that Gary would do anything to harm me or my family, the way I worried about other criminals I investigated."
Evans often called Horton collect from prison and occasionally talked with Horton's two kids, who were teenagers at the time. "He was always very nice and polite to them," Horton says. "In a strange way, Gary became part of our family."
Once, when Horton changed his phone number, Evans tracked Horton's wife and daughter to a one-hour photo store. He sidled up close enough to overhear Horton's wife giving her home phone number to the photo clerk.
Evans called Horton that night, laughing and cocky that he had found out Horton's new number. He told Horton how he had done it and lectured the investigator that he should tell his wife to be more careful with that information since a criminal could get hold of it.
"I couldn't control Gary. I could only react to what he did," Horton says. "I had a very demanding job at the State Police and I was juggling a lot of major cases. Gary kept worming his way into my life. It became very cumbersome to have him along for the ride. He took a lot of my time just trying to manage him, which I never did very well."
Twice, Horton tried to steer Evans into a legitimate livelihood by pulling strings to get him jobs with UPS and a landscaper. Evans lasted less than a week in both.
"He said the jobs were too hard and didn't pay enough. He said crime paid better," Horton says.
According to the book, Evans was neglected as a child and physically and sexually abused by his alcoholic parents. He turned to crime at a young age.
"When you were playing Little League, I was stealing cookies from the back of Freihofer's trucks to survive," Evans once wrote to Horton.
Horton compares the 5-foot-7, 170-pound, heavily muscled felon to a feral animal. "From the moment he woke up to the moment he went to bed every day, he thought about crime," Horton says. "He was a predator. He was a loner and anti-social. He was a known informant who ripped off other criminals. A lot of guys on the streets were out to get him and he was on the run from the cops. He was always looking over his shoulder."
Evans worked at his trade. He had a high school education and spent hours in the library, poring over books on coins and antiques to learn what the most valuable loot was to pluck during burglaries. He fenced the items across the Northeast and as far away as Florida and Phoenix.
But his fences paid only pennies on the dollar, so he had to steal more and more to support his lifestyle. He liked to travel and to spend lavishly on girlfriends.
"He was a very good burglar, but got more brazen and did so many crimes the odds built up against him," Horton says. "Then he committed arsons to cover the burglaries and then he murdered his partners so they wouldn't roll over on him."
In Seattle, where Evans had fled while Horton and others were conducting a multi-state manhunt (pausing to have a photo of himself taken at the grave of a hero, Bruce Lee), Evans shoplifted a $600 sleeping bag from an upscale outdoor gear store.
A short time later, he walked back into the store. He told the young clerk he had received the sleeping bag as a gift and wanted to return it, but didn't have a receipt. Evans raised a stink until the clerk reluctantly told Evans he could have store credit. Evans then picked out a mountain bike and waited while workers assembled it. He rode it away from the store.
When Horton orchestrated Evans' capture on May 27, 1998, in St. Johnsbury, Vt., the bike was confiscated. Evans argued with Horton for weeks that it was an illegal seizure.
"In his mind, he earned that bike fair and square and he considered it his property," Horton says.
Among the items Horton keeps in his office is a green fanny pack filled with Evans' burglar tools. Also inside are the leg shackles he died in, a razor blade he had taped to his ankle and the handcuff key he had forced deep into his sinus cavity to prepare for his escape.
Horton thought he knew most things about Evans, but Phelps' dogged research surprised the investigator by turning up a theme of bisexuality.
Phelps interviewed a friend of Evans' who had boxes of personal correspondence and photos Evans left. Along with numerous Polaroid photos of women Evans had sex with posing naked were a cache of letters from "Son of Sam" serial killer David Berkowitz written when both were in Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora.
"There are a lot of undercurrents of sexual energy between the two in the letters," Phelps says. Berkowitz referred to Evans as "my knight in shining armor" and "triceps king" and implored Evans to "keep swinging your royal sword."
Berkowitz ended the relationship and cut off Evans cold when he passingly referred to the serial killer as "Berserkowitz."
The boxes Phelps was allowed to peruse also included a snapshot of Evans dressed in drag and photos of transsexuals Evans befriended in prison and kept in touch with after he got out.
"He always acted very macho, almost homophobic around me," Horton says. "But the evidence is pretty strong that he was bisexual."
Evans' long road of evil came to an end on Aug. 14, 1998. He was in the custody of U.S. marshals when he kicked out the side window of a prisoner's van and hurled himself off the Troy-Menands Bridge.
He hit rocks and an inch or two from Hudson River water on the shoreline below.
Evans had predicted a similar end to his life in letters to Horton from jail a week before.
"Thank you Jim for everything," Evans wrote to Horton on Aug. 5, 1998. "This has to be one of the strangest friendships in history."
The conniving, controlling con man didn't foresee that his bridge leap would land on the precise spot where a rare piece of steel bar protruded -- impaling his skull.
Among the numerous autopsy photos Horton keeps in his office are closeups of this horrific wound. One of the photos shows the middle finger of Evans' left hand, still in handcuffs, formed into a profane gesture.
Evans' cremated remains were divided into thirds and went to his sister, an ex-girlfriend and Horton.
"I don't know why I kept this stuff all these years," Horton says. His voice trails off and he gazes out the window as state workers crisscross the Empire State Plaza, enjoying their lunch hour on a warm spring day.
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=366644&category=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=HOME&newsdate=6/3/2005 |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“The final reward of the dead - to die no more.” Nietzsche
Shirtless and Sculpted
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