The owner of the East Greenbush Plaza Flea Market called the state police as soon as she opened the doors the next morning and realized it had been burglarized.
The trooper who showed up to take her statement figured out immediately that whoever was responsible had gained entry from the ceiling—the hatch door on the roof had been left pried open.
After surveying the point of entry, the trooper took a walk out back and noticed two sets of footprints in the dirt leading to a set of tire tracks.
Initially this ruled out drug addicts and amateurs. It was clear the job had been done by thieves who, at the least, knew something about burglary. Thus far, though, all the state police had were a few smudged footprints and a list of about one hundred missing items valued at approximately $15,000.
Not exactly a lot to go on.
A few days later, on Wednesday, February 20, the East Greenbush police officer who had stopped Evans and Falco back on the night of the burglary notified the state police what had happened and told the Bureau investigator working the case that he had written down Evans’s and Falco’s names and addresses.
Just like that, the Bureau had two suspects.
Bill Morris, a Bureau investigator with more than a decade on the job, kept a desk directly next to Jim Horton’s at the Bureau’s East Greenbush barracks. It was Morris who had been given the flea market case first. So on that Wednesday afternoon, after the East Greenbush police officer had come forward with information about stopping Evans and Falco, a Teletype went out explaining that the Bureau was looking to question Evans and Falco about their possible involvement in the burglary.
Now they were wanted men.
Approximately one week after Falco and Evans burglarized the East Greenbush flea market—Evans wasn’t sure of the exact date later when he explained the event—Tim Rysedorph told him that while Evans was in jail, Falco had “ripped him off” by taking some “jewelry they had hidden underneath the floorboards” in their apartment on Adams Street.
This infuriated Evans. There was nothing worse, he had always said, than one of his “partners”—and they were always referred to as partners, never friends—stealing from him.
When he confronted Falco about it later, Falco insisted they had lost the jewelry during the heist. “Where is it?” Evans asked. “Somebody said they saw you take it!”
Faced with that, according to Evans, Falco changed his story and said the jewelry had been stolen, but not by him. Evans then dropped the subject and walked away without saying another word.
“The old cliché,” Jim Horton said later, “is true: ‘Thick as thieves.’ But also thieves among thieves. There is no honor among thieves. They steal from one another as well as stealing from anyone else.”
As Evans stewed over the next few days about what Tim had told him, he became increasingly worried that Falco would give him up for the East Greenbush job if the cops questioned him. He knew that when people felt backed into a corner, they did things to protect themselves. Evans was sure Falco would “roll over” after he had accused him of stealing from him.
That fear of going back to prison for twenty-five years to life was driving Evans’s every move now. It was all he thought about.
The next time he saw Falco, he confronted him about it again. They were loading clothes into the trunk of Tim’s car, which was parked in back of the apartment they shared.
At first, Evans offered Falco a chance to admit he had in fact stolen the jewelry from him. But Falco, Evans later said, wouldn’t go for it.
Tim was upstairs in the apartment. He had no idea what was going on.
After a few minutes of what Evans later described as typical yelling and screaming and threatening each other, the argument turned into finger-pointing and pushing.
“Calm the fuck down,” Falco said. “We’ll figure it out. Let it go. It’s only a fucking piece of jewelry.”
But Evans couldn’t. It wasn’t about the jewelry; it was about honor. He was full of rage. Someone had ripped him off—a partner, no less—and that person had to pay. Like he had written to his sister while doing his last bid in prison, it was payback time.
“Fuck you…,” Evans shouted as Falco was lifting a box of clothes, getting ready to put it into Tim’s car.
With Falco standing there, staring at him, Evans began breathing heavily, making loud grunting noises. He rarely carried a gun with him at any time. But tonight was different. He knew he’d need it. So as Falco turned and bent down to place the box of clothes into Tim’s trunk, Evans reached into his pants and took out a .22-caliber pistol that he’d already armed with a homemade silencer made from door screen and duct tape.
You son of a bitch! Evans raged.
Then, without warning, he placed the barrel of the gun to the back of Falco’s head as he leaned down into the trunk.
Pop.
It was over in a flash: one round fired into the back of Falco’s head at point blank range, by a man who acted with heartlessness, as if he had killed people professionally his entire life.
After killing Falco, Evans pushed his body into the trunk and ran upstairs to get Rysedorph.
In the apartment a minute later, out of breath, Evans said, “Come with me. I need your car.”
After grabbing a sleeping bag from his room, Evans bolted back downstairs, Rysedorph right behind him.
Looking to see if anyone was around, Evans opened the trunk and pointed to Falco’s body.
“What the fuck?” Tim screamed, looking away.
“You shut your mouth,” Evans said, waving his gun in the air. “Or you’re fucking next.”
Evans then grabbed the sleeping bag and ordered Tim to help him wrap Falco’s body in it.
When they were finished, Evans said, “I’m taking your car.”
Evans later claimed he had planned the murder days ahead of time. He knew he was going to kill Michael Falco that night, he said, and he knew he was going to take Tim’s car to dispose of the body. It was never a spur-of-the-moment crime. He had planned it the moment after Tim had told him Falco had ripped him off.
But Rysedorph’s entire story was a lie.
Some time later, Evans ran into a woman he, Tim and Falco knew fairly well. While they were talking, Evans noticed she was wearing the infamous missing piece of jewelry he had stolen during the job with Falco.
“Nice necklace,” Evans said in a patronizing tone.
The woman looked down at it, then lifted it up off her chest and stared at it. “Yeah…it’s beautiful,” she said. “Tim gave it to me.”
Evans paused for a moment. “You mean Timmy Rysedorph?”
“Yes!” the woman said, smiling.
Evans didn’t say anything. Instead, he walked away mumbling to himself. That lying motherfucker.
For two months, Bureau investigator Bill Morris had searched the entire Albany region for any sign of Evans or Falco. Every lead Morris followed turned up nothing. He would get what appeared to be a break and it would turn cold. He would hear from a source that Evans had been seen around town, but Morris always seemed to be one step behind him. Finally, word on the street was that Falco and Evans had split up and taken off: Evans to Colorado; Falco to California.