Every Move You Make. M. William Phelps
last known contact Tim had with his wife was at 1:03 A.M. on Saturday, October 4. Horton assigned an investigator to go to the Dunkin’ Donuts in Latham to talk to anyone there who could identify him. A “lead desk,” an exclusive office inside the Bureau designed to generate leads, was immediately set up. Horton put all seven investigators he had available on the case.
While his investigators were off and running, tracking down people and finding out more about Tim, Horton put in a call to Ed Moore, the SSPD detective who had taken Caroline’s initial call.
“We’ve got a problem, Ed,” Horton told Moore. They had known each other for years, had worked cases together and respected each other immensely.
“What’s going on, Jim?”
“Well, I think we’ve got a homicide here with that Tim Rysedorph missing person case.”
Moore went quiet. Saratoga Springs, a twenty-five minute trip up Interstate 787 from Albany, was an artsy type of refuge that horse fans flocked to during racing season. It was spread out and rural, with thick wooded areas; homicides weren’t something the SSPD had to think about all that much.
“You’ve got to be kidding me?”
Horton gave Moore a quick rundown of his history with Evans, including his hunch that Evans might be involved with the disappearances of Michael Falco and Damien Cuomo. Moore said he’d put as many detectives as he could on the case, assisting the Bureau in any manner it needed.
Horton finished speaking to Moore and sat down at his desk, staring at a mugshot photo of Evans he had pulled from a file, contemplating his next move. Evans, Horton realized, was playing a game. Horton could sense it. Evans had always liked to be one step ahead of him. If he was responsible for Tim’s death, Horton knew he was gone; they were wasting their time looking in the Capital District.
As much as Horton didn’t want to admit it, having Evans back in his life was “exciting,” he later confessed.
“I had spent a lot of my time watching him watch me—and vice versa. Gary always made my job more interesting.”
By the same token, considering what Horton now knew, he didn’t view Evans as just another serial thief he had come to know throughout the years and developed a relationship with for the sake of the job.
“With Tim Rysedorph,” Horton added, “I knew it was going to be the last time Gary and I tangled. I really felt he had crossed a line at this point and was a murderer. The stakes were much different when Tim turned up missing. It wasn’t about a game of cat and mouse anymore; it was possible Evans was a serial murderer, which I took very seriously.”
Everything Horton had done for Evans (buying him food, stopping by his apartment just to say hello, getting him jobs) was done—ironically—with sincerity and deception. Horton cared about Evans, but he also kept tabs on him for law enforcement purposes.
“It was part of the game, yes—but also my job.”
Nevertheless, Horton knew Evans was a career criminal, and by nature would likely never change his ways. Ever since he suspected him of murdering Falco and Cuomo, Horton convinced himself that in order to get him to confess to everything—however horrific and brutal—he had to get into his head and gain his trust. There were even several unsolved murders in states Evans had visited that Horton had now suspected him of being involved in, but he had to play things out and allow Evans to admit to it all without being pressured.
“If I got him to like me, I knew one day he would confide in me and tell me everything. When Tim turned up missing and Gary’s name became part of the investigation, I knew it was the beginning of the end for Gary. How did I know that?”
Evans, Horton insisted, had warned him.
Nathan “Bud” York, a Bureau investigator, found out on October 7, Tuesday, that the Wappingers Falls, New York, division of the Bureau had been involved in an investigation with the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) regarding a burglary. The theft had taken place at the Emporium, an antique shop in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, about an hour’s drive over the New York state line. Nine thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry, antique vases, ceramic plates, statues, paintings and other assorted items had been reported stolen back in March 1997.
When Bud York explained to Horton what he had found, Horton knew right away it was another one of Evans’s jobs. Evans was so renowned and feared on the antique circuit, his photo had been published in several antique magazines throughout the Northeast. There wasn’t an antique dealer in the tristate region—New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts—who hadn’t heard of the notorious Gary Evans. Shops as far away as Maine, New Hampshire, Delaware and New Jersey even knew of Evans.
As new leads poured into the Bureau, it became pretty clear Evans had been on a serial robbery spree for about the past eighteen months. With that in mind, if there was one thing Horton was sure of, it was that Evans, over the years, liked to keep his stolen merchandise hidden in self-storage units.
Armed with that knowledge, he called two of his investigators into his office. “Track down all the storage units in the Capital District and find out if Gary rented a unit recently.”
In the meantime, he sent a pair of investigators in search of a visitor’s list for Evans’s most recent stay in federal prison. It would take some time, but if they could find out who was on the list and track down any names Horton didn’t recognize, they might get lucky.
In the federal system, inmates are allowed to compile a list of visitors. If someone isn’t on the list, that person is not allowed in to visit an inmate.
What turned out to be a laugh riot around the office was when the list came back, Horton’s name was at the top of Evans’s list.
After everyone had a good laugh, Horton pointed to a name on the list right below his. The name looked familiar, but he couldn’t place it: Lisa Morris, a woman who, ultimately, would end up breaking the Tim Rysedorph missing person case wide open.
CHAPTER 9
When Horton found Lisa Morris on October 15, 1997, she was living at Rolling Ridge Apartments in Latham, a mere stone’s throw from the Spare Room II self-storage facility on Watervliet-Shaker Road, where Evans and Tim Rysedorph, the Bureau found out, had rented two self-storage units, eight feet by ten feet, to house their stolen property.
Getting Lisa to open up about Evans, Horton realized quickly, was not going to be easy.
Like Damien Cuomo, Michael Falco and Tim Rysedorph, Lisa grew up in Troy. A bit on the “rough” side, she’d had her share of problems with alcohol and drugs throughout the years, but had no real rap sheet to speak of. A plain-looking woman with easy brown eyes, large shoulders over a medium build, long brown hair and a quiet demeanor, Lisa’s pale-white skin gave away her full-blooded Irish heritage. She had met Evans in 1988—to no one’s surprise later on—a few months before Damien Cuomo, her common-law husband, turned up missing. As calculating and manipulative as Evans was, he had moved in with Lisa after Cuomo disappeared. Shortly before moving in, he was showing up at her apartment, telling her that Cuomo had “run off” after committing several burglaries with him.
“He’s not coming back,” Evans said one day. “He told me to tell you that.”
In the beginning, the relationship between them wasn’t sexual, Lisa said later. Evans would stop by her apartment just to talk, “like friends,” and, at Cuomo’s request, “keep her company.”
As the months passed, he began giving her money, as if paying off a debt. When he stopped by her apartment with the cash, he would tell her that he’d heard from Damien, saying things like, “He’s hiding out down south. Write him off. Forget about him. He’s not coming back.”
In 1996, after Evans finished a two-year bid for burglary in Sing Sing, he began a more concerted effort to win Lisa’s affection.
“Gary and I became very close,” Lisa said later, “when he got out of