Avid chess players say that the most “obscure and least-used move” in the game is the En passant, which I used as a title for the third and final section of this book. Indeed, in keeping with the metaphorical nature of En passant, Gary Evans certainly used an obscure, if not bizarre, final move to avoid not only facing Jim Horton again, but one of his worst fears: spending his life behind bars. For me, writing about Gary Evans has been one of the most interesting and exciting experiences I’ve had as a writer. I could not have written a novel that—even remotely—compares to the life of Gary Evans.
Since September 9, 1999, Jim Horton has been deputy chief investigator for the New York State Attorney General’s Office, Department of Law. Leaving the state police wasn’t something Horton wanted to do; he lived for the thrill of the chase and loves the idea, I’m convinced, of hands-on work out in the field. Today he is confined to an office, supervising investigations of a different kind, an environment that contains his obvious talents as an investigator. I believe the public is suffering a great loss because of that.
“I didn’t even have a résumé when I got the call asking if I was interested in taking the job at the AG’s office,” Horton recalled later. “Hardest decision I ever had to make—leaving the troopers. It was a job that I loved and still do.”
As one might guess, Gary Evans had a major impact on Horton’s life. There’s not a week that goes by where Horton doesn’t field some sort of question about Evans. Today he looks at it all as an anomaly; he couldn’t control Evans, he says, “only react to his behavior.”
When I discovered that Evans was perhaps involved in a second life that may have included transsexuals, I posed a question we shall leave to the imagination to Horton, who was quite shocked—to say the least—by my findings.
“He fooled me all those years,” Horton said, shaking his head. “I should have known!” Horton seemed disappointed in himself that he had allowed Evans—in death—to one-up him one last time. “I believe I made the most out of every bad situation in every instance where it pertained to Gary. It was always a bad situation with him: burglaries, arson, guns, stolen property, murder. People have (and will) criticize me for the relationship Gary and I had. I will only say that those people are small-minded; they don’t understand the facts. Police have to deal with the worst society has to offer—and dealing with Gary was part of that.”
Throughout the many interviews, hundreds of e-mails and scores of phone calls with Horton, I got a sense that he would, occasionally, go out of his way to prove to me how compassionate he was to victims and their families. You see, there are some people who truly misunderstand Horton and the extent of his job, the people he deals with and the horrors he has seen human beings perpetrate against one another. Anyone who is not in his shoes cannot possibly comprehend the atrocities and violence and abuse he and his former Bureau colleagues dealt with every day. So it is easy for people to sit back, read newspaper accounts of Horton’s relationship with Evans, hear sound bites on radio, see clips on television and then judge him.
At best, the disparaging comments regarding Horton’s integrity I heard from a few people as I conducted interviews were immature and slanderous; at worst, they undermine the character and integrity of a cop who, at least in my opinion, went above and beyond the call of duty whenever the circumstances warranted it. If you re-read the first section of the book with this dynamic in mind, you will see how Horton taught himself to think outside the box in order to make sure he put those he believed to be an immediate danger to society in jail, where they belonged. He empathized with the criminals he tracked in order to understand them better. If we go back and look at history, we will find that some of our greatest generals did the same thing during the bloodiest of wars.
The USMS would not comment on whether or not procedures were changed as a result of Gary Evans’s escape. Yet, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that since Evans’s escape, policies have been changed regarding the way the USMS transports its prisoners—mainly, the vehicles they now use.
Off the record, I was told by a source close to the USMS that because of Gary Evans the USMS now chooses to use those white trucks we see on our roads; trucks that, in fact, entomb prisoners in cages during transport.
Regarding the USMS, Horton would only say this: “Gary Evans was going to do whatever he was going to do no matter who was transporting him. The individuals involved did everything and more as far as ‘official procedure’ was concerned, knowing full well about Gary and how dangerous he was. They [the marshals] were as white as ghosts when I saw them on the riverbank that day. I’m sure they changed their procedure, i.e., windowless vehicles or having a marshal in the seat with the prisoner. But I just don’t know for sure if it was because of Gary Evans.”
As I was finishing this book, I came across a few letters written by the Son of Sam to Gary Evans that I had not seen before. Mostly, the writing was that same dark, sarcastic nature I outlined in the book. Yet, in a few of the letters that the Son of Sam had written to Evans, he talked about the novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. Apparently, Evans loved the book, had ranted and raved about it, and was trying to get the Son of Sam to read it. The Son of Sam ultimately wrote off Evans’s persistence and told him he had no interest in “those types of books.”
I had always viewed the obvious parallels between Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, Harris’s follow-up to Dragon, and Gary Evans’s story as, at best, coincidental. Murder is murder. I’ve learned that killers will do the same things without even trying. Crime fiction is often based on real events. We all know that. Sure, there are certain elements of Evans’s story that one could easily argue he had pulled directly from the pages of Harris’s books. But is there a definitive connection?
Evans, it seemed to me, wasn’t necessarily using the books as a script for life, but instead had perhaps subconsciously incorporated some of the same situations from the books into his life without trying to.
After re-reading those letters between the Son of Sam and Evans, I decided to go back and re-read both books before I handed the manuscript of Every Move You Make into my editor. I wanted to be certain I wasn’t missing something obvious. It had been years since I had read both books; the images and characters I had in my mind were from film—hardly a way to make any comparison.
I found several comparisons. Not exact, mind you. But strangely similar. I encourage readers to e-mail me or write to me and tell me what you think regarding the comparisons between Gary Evans and Hannibal Lecter. I can be reached by e-mail at mwilliamphelps@mwilliamphelps.com, or by snail-mail at P.O. Box 3215, Vernon, CT 06066.
Amazing to me was that what started out as a journey to find a story that had certain elements I look for when choosing a true-crime story for a book then turned into a saga the best fiction writers of today couldn’t have dreamed up. Gary Charles Evans is probably the most interesting criminal I have ever had the opportunity to research and write about; he is the epitome of the criminal mastermind. There is a layer of his character no one will ever uncover; but I believe, in my fourteen months of full-time research and writing, interviewing dozens of people and spending, literally, hundreds of hours talking to Jim Horton, along with scouring thousands of pages of public records associated with the case, I’ve gotten to the core of who Gary Evans was as both a person and criminal.