Over the next few days, Tyler Jacobs, looking to trade information for jail time, continued to talk to Doug Wingate about Gary Evans and, moreover, the burglaries Jacobs knew Evans had been involved in.
This, of course, piqued Wingate’s interest. Perhaps Evans could shed some light on some of the Bureau’s unsolved burglaries. In particular, there was a jewelry store heist in Oneonta, New York, Jacobs said Evans had masterminded. The Bureau had been trying to solve the case for nearly a year.
“Gary went down there one day with a kid named Mike Falco,” Jacobs said, “and they cased the place out. They went back there that night and, for whatever reason, Mike chickened out.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, they took off. But Gary went back the next day with Raymond Bosse.”
“You didn’t go with them?”
“No. Evans decided they should take a Greyhound bus to do the job,” Jacobs continued. “They wouldn’t be noticed that way.”
“What?”
“Yeah, a fucking Greyhound. Gary is smart.”
“What’s he look like?”
“He wears a bandanna all the time. You can’t miss him. Once you see him, you won’t forget him.”
Wingate began by running Evans’s name through the system. After a quick search, Evans turned up at Saratoga County Jail. He was halfway through his most recent bid, with a release date set for September 1984.
When Wingate showed up at Saratoga, he and Evans had, what he called later, a “standoff.” Evans just stood there, sizing Wingate up. Then, after a few moments, asked, “Why the fuck would I ever talk to you?”
Wingate said, “I don’t know much about you. But my goal right now is to do Raymond Bosse. I need help on a couple of cases he was involved in. One is a meat market job in Guilderland…you know all about that, don’t you?”
Evans became enraged. “I didn’t do that!”
“Well, I know you didn’t.”
“I don’t do anything in Albany County.”
“You do know about it, though—”
Evans wouldn’t let Wingate finish a sentence without interrupting.
“Still, why the hell am I going to talk to you?”
“Look, if you’re just going to stonewall me,” Wingate said, “fuck it. I’ll just go to Ray and we’ll talk about going to Oneonta on the bus and…”
That seemed to lighten Evans up some. Wingate hadn’t given up Tyler Jacobs as his informant, and wasn’t about to. But he wanted Evans to know—without coming out and saying it—that he wasn’t just dangling a carrot. He was working with solid background information.
As Wingate continued, Evans stared at him in disbelief: How do you know so much about this job?
“I know you went down there with Mike Falco. I know he chickened out. And I fucking know you went back with Bosse.”
“Wait a minute,” Evans said.
“You know, Gary, when you take a bus to a little town like Oneonta, you really shouldn’t wear that bandanna. You went in and cased the place…. Who is going to forget you? Just look at yourself!”
“Okay…okay,” Evans said. “What do we need to do?”
“You need to start by telling me all about the meat market job.”
In the end, Wingate and the Albany County DA’s Office used Evans and Jacobs to nail Raymond Bosse on the meat market heist, and within a few months, Bosse was indicted.
That one chance encounter Wingate initiated with Evans, however, would turn out to be much more. It was, for Evans, the first time in his career as a thief he had truly trusted law enforcement and wasn’t burned.
What was odd about Doug Wingate and Evans’s first encounter, and the fact that information Evans provided ended up putting Raymond Bosse behind bars, was that Evans, in his letters during that same period, blamed Bosse for his latest stint in prison.
I talked to the state police investigator, Evans wrote on September 29, 1983, that (so far) hasn’t lied to me (that I know of, anyway). He says I have no problems anywhere…. Later, in the same letter, he added, I positively learned one thing: Don’t ever let anyone know what I’m doing. [Raymond] got talkative to the wrong people and here I sit.