The fact that Lisa Morris knew Evans and Damien Cuomo were thieves told Horton that she knew a hell of a lot more than she was admitting. With certain sources, especially “key” sources, experience told Horton patience was his most productive asset. Lisa would come around. It would take time, but she would crack. All he had to do was continue pestering her: stopping by on his way home from work, and on his way to work, calling her and just keeping the pressure on. Establish a rapport, maybe even a personal relationship. He had to break that bond between Lisa and Evans and somehow make her trust him. Since Lisa was the last known person Evans had contacted before leaving the area, and had made a point of telling her he was going to get in touch with her, Horton felt she could ultimately be his “lady in red.”
Horton recalled later, “In thinking about how to handle Lisa Morris, I figured I had to become her Columbo. It wasn’t my style…bothering people like that until they just got sick of me. But Lisa knew something. She had been sleeping with Gary Evans.”
A day later, Horton popped in unexpectedly. “Can I do anything for you?” he asked.
“Come in,” Lisa said, opening the door.
She looked like she hadn’t slept. It was either that, Horton guessed, or she had been drinking most of the night.
“What’s up?”
“I wasn’t all that truthful with you yesterday,” she admitted.
Here we go…, Horton thought as Lisa fired up a cigarette, took a deep pull from it and, while exhaling, ran her hands through her hair.
“Go ahead. I’m all ears, here, Lisa.”
“Gary showed up that Saturday morning, not Sunday. I don’t know, maybe nine or ten o’clock. He came to the door”—her hands were shaking—“and wanted to come in.”
“So you let him in?”
“Not at first. He was dirty…covered with mud. I told him to go hose off downstairs in the laundry room and come back up.”
“Relax, Lisa,” Horton said, trying to calm her. She was getting antsy, getting up and walking around the apartment, thinking about things before she spoke.
“He was sweaty and really scared,” she continued. “He kept some of his things here, so he had a change of clothes. ‘I have to leave town,’ he told me. He was nervous.”
“Did he leave right away?”
“I guess. He was jumpy, looking out the window while getting dressed. He didn’t want to hang around too long. He sensed you guys were on his trail.”
“He didn’t say anything else: where he was going, who he had been with, what happened?”
“No,” Lisa said. “He gave me a few hundred dollars and told me he’d be in touch with me in a few years.”
“Listen, I appreciate what you’ve told me here. If Gary happens to call you or make contact with you in any way, just promise you’ll contact me.”
Horton gave Lisa his business card, flipped it over and wrote his cell phone and home number on the back. “If you need anything, Lisa, just call.”
Holding the card, Lisa stared at it for a moment. “I will, Jim. Thank you.”
A clearer picture of Caroline Parker’s relationship with Tim and his family began to emerge as Bureau investigators began talking to Tim’s siblings.
Molly Parish, Tim Rysedorph’s sister, said she hadn’t seen Tim for almost a year, and no one in her family cared much for Caroline. “If Timmy left,” Parish said, “it was because of [Caroline] and his not being able to provide for her needs.”
According to Parish, the last time she saw Tim he had asked her to co-sign a loan so Sean, her nephew, could attend summer camp. She refused. When investigators asked whether Tim was inclined to do drugs, she said she’d never seen him under the influence and he never talked about it.
At one point during the interview, Parish offered one of her most vivid memories of Caroline. At Caroline and Tim’s wedding, she said, Caroline had rummaged through the wedding gift envelopes long before the wedding ended. When she finished, all she could do, Parish added, was complain about “not getting enough money” from guests.
For members of the Bureau, that telling little anecdote only added to how much they didn’t know about Tim and Caroline’s relationship—and maybe Caroline hadn’t been as forthcoming as she should have been about what else she knew.
Horton and his team of Bureau investigators sat around during late October and brainstormed over what they had learned the past week. Thus far, they had a wealth of information regarding Tim and the days before he went missing. They knew he had called Caroline at 1:03 A.M. from the local Dunkin’ Donuts—which was the last time Caroline, or anyone else, had heard from him. They also knew Evans had shown up at Lisa Morris’s apartment later at 9:00 A.M. He was dirty, gaunt, sweaty and scared. From there, they picked through the interviews they had done and pieced together the hours and days in between.
“With Tim not showing up for his sister-in-law’s wedding on that Saturday after he vanished, and Gary Evans,” Horton said later, “showing up disheveled at Lisa’s apartment on Saturday morning, Tim’s car abandoned at Amtrak, I knew for certain that Tim wasn’t being help captive somewhere against his will. He was definitely dead.”