Every Move You Make. M. William Phelps
a place called New Scotland Antiques, back on July 18, 1997. He had used his given name when he filled out the paperwork. On top of that, Tim had sold a total of thirty-eight Hummels (extremely expensive statuettes) between April 1997 and August 1997 to the same shop.
The connection between Evans and Tim, it seemed, ran deeper with every stone the Bureau turned. It certainly wasn’t a stretch now to believe Evans had felt at some point that Tim had ripped him off or was going to turn him in.
“And if Gary felt threatened,” Horton said Evans had told him on numerous occasions, “he said he would have to kill that person. He couldn’t risk jail time, he’d say, for what he called ‘scumbag criminals worse than [he] ever was.’”
If nothing else, the Bureau now had enough evidence to issue a second “local” arrest warrant for Evans, which would secure his return back to Albany if he was picked up outside the state or county. Troop K in Cold Spring, New York, had already issued a warrant, but, as Horton put it later, “that was two hours away. We wanted Gary here in Albany because, ultimately, we knew we weren’t going to find Tim without him.”
CHAPTER 15
Pestering Lisa Morris for information now became priority number one for Horton. She was the connection to Evans. It was clear by her showing up at Spare Room II, and then lying about it, that she was Evans’s puppet. Getting her to open up was the problem. Horton had been stopping by her apartment nearly every day, sometimes just to say hello. But she wouldn’t talk. Within the past few weeks, however, Lisa’s daughter, Christina, started warming up to Horton.
Christina said she trusted Evans. He had always treated her well and seemed to make time for her.
As Christina became closer to Horton, Lisa opened up more, too. Because of that, Horton said, he decided to finally explain to Lisa why he was so interested in finding Evans.
“Tim Rysedorph has been missing,” Horton told her one night. “We have reason to believe Gary is involved. We have a warrant for his arrest. If you know where he is, you need to tell me now.”
Lisa still wouldn’t confess to knowing any more than she had said already. But she began to talk in more detail about her relationship with Evans, which told Horton she was beginning to come around.
October 31, 1997, Halloween, was a dreary day in the Capital Region. With cloudy skies, the temperature had hovered around forty-four degrees all day. There was some fog, but nothing that would hinder the unusual project Horton had on tap for the day. A plus was that it hadn’t been cold enough the past few weeks for the ground to freeze, and it hadn’t recently snowed or rained, so the ground was in prime condition for…well…
Digging.
Horton had called his team of investigators together the previous night, shortly before they were about to go home, and explained what they were going to be doing the following day, Halloween morning.
Evans had a fascination for historic graveyards and contemporary cemeteries, Horton explained. An outdoorsman, he would frequently sleep in cemeteries and just roam around at night after the groundskeepers had gone home. For the most part, his interest was criminal. He would study the different statues and headstones, writing down descriptions of them. Then he would go to the local library and look them up in books and magazines to see what they were worth. Then he’d make a few phone calls and find out what the black market was paying. If he found something worth his time and effort, he would steal it. A friend later claimed that at one time he wanted to steal the remains of “Uncle Sam,” who was born in Troy and buried in town, and hold them for ransom, but in the end Evans decided the risk was too high.
“Since Gary has a propensity to frequent graveyards,” Horton addressed his team, “I want to go to his favorite spot: Albany Rural Cemetery,” which was, ironically, only about two miles from Bureau headquarters, “and look up all the fresh graves.”
Digging up the fresh graves from the past few weeks and sifting through the tons of dirt and gravel would be time-consuming and expensive. What was the point?
Horton thought Evans might have waited until he saw that there had been a funeral during the day and, later that night, when no one was around, dig up the fresh grave and dump Tim’s body inside it. It was the perfect location. No one would ever look there.
To save time and money, Horton devised a plan whereby investigators would use steel rods about eight feet long to poke down into each new grave site to see if the rod, on its way down, was interrupted by an object in its path. If someone hit an object on the way down, Horton would call in a backhoe and, like an archaeologist, begin excavating the ground. They knew most caskets were, just like the cliché, set six feet underground. If Evans had buried Tim in one of the graves, he would have likely put him on top of the casket as opposed to inside it. One man by himself, Horton figured, couldn’t manage digging up hundreds of square feet of earth and then lift up the concrete outer box caskets are placed in. Even Evans, who was as strong as a bull, had his limitations.
When Horton approached the director of the cemetery with his idea, the man was bowled over by the thought, but could do little, in the end, to stop the exploration. It took a while, but after compiling a list of the most recent burials, Horton and his team had about a dozen graves to locate and search.
One grave after the other produced no results. Each time they sank a steel rod into the earth, it slipped through the freshly dug dirt easily, as if it were a bamboo skewer piercing a piece of fish.
“It was worth a shot,” Horton said later. “Gary had told me how much he loved cemeteries. I was trying to put myself in his shoes…trying to think like him. At the time, I thought if he had murdered Tim, he would put his body in the least possible place I was likely to look. When I found out later what he had actually done to Tim, believe me, it shocked the shit out of me. I thought I knew Evans better than I knew members of my own family—but I would have never guessed he would have taken things to the extreme he did with Tim Rysedorph.”
The month of November turned out to be uneventful as far as finding Evans. Cold leads were followed up and new leads were explored, but the sum total of what the Bureau found was zero. Horton continued to stop by and chat with Lisa and Christina, but Lisa continued to deny she knew anything more.
CHAPTER 16
On some days, Lisa emerged from the shadows of her living room looking weak and pale when she greeted Horton at the door. On others, she seemed flush with the color of life. Horton guessed it was the consequence of a hardened life of booze, poverty and single motherhood. Evans had affected her greatly—and it showed.
Horton was a human being who had feelings like most people, but he also had a job to do. It would have been simple for him to leave Lisa alone so she could work out whatever demons she was fighting. But Tim Rysedorph was still missing and a potential serial killer was on the loose—emotion couldn’t become part of it.
By early December, with pressure mounting from the Rysedorph family and Horton at a complete loss for where Evans might be holing up, Horton stopped by Lisa’s to explain to her that she needed to come with him to Bureau headquarters to give a formal written statement. Their relationship the past six weeks had been building. They were beginning to trust each other. Horton wasn’t denying that. Still, he needed to have most of what they had talked about down on paper in case Evans was picked up. There was no way to know what kind of spell Evans had cast on Lisa and how it would play out if Evans was ever arrested. Moreover, Horton wasn’t all that sure Lisa hadn’t been in contact with Evans all along. Once the courts got involved and lawyered Evans up, Lisa would be considered a witness. Getting her to agree to give a written statement now would secure her testimony, or at least get her to admit to some things on paper so prosecutors could call her on them later.
There were times when Lisa had been picked up by the local police for getting drunk and harassing old boyfriends with threatening phone calls. Horton had used his pull to bail her out of trouble a number of times. He had even been giving her money out of his own pocket when she had little food in the house for Christina. But those days