Horton thought he was making some progress in finding out where Michael Falco had supposedly run off to after committing the East Greenbush burglary with Evans. He had no idea, of course, that Falco had been wrapped in a sleeping bag like a mummy and had been buried in a shallow grave in Florida. Thus, he had no reason not to believe Michael Falco had pulled off the burglary and relocated to California, like mostly everyone on the street had been saying.
By the fall of 1986, what at first seemed like a break in Falco’s whereabouts surfaced. A Bureau investigator had heard that Falco had been seen in Troy. So two investigators went out and swept the neighborhood, looking for anyone with information about his whereabouts. After talking to a few people, the investigators were led to the one person they knew who could either dismiss the rumor that Falco had returned, or back it up: Tori Ellis, Falco’s common-law wife. If Falco had come back to the area, they believed he would have certainly made contact with Ellis.
She immediately admitted that if he had been back in town, she would have seen or, at the least, heard from him. She claimed she hadn’t. “I believe…and I am just speculating,” Tori Ellis told police, “that Michael is dead.”
“Well, ma’am,” the investigator said, “if he does return, you need to call us.”
“I’d encourage him to give himself up,” Ellis said. “I won’t be involved with a wanted man.”
The Bureau conducted a nationwide search for any vehicles registered to Falco or any of his known aliases, but came up with nothing. A few weeks later, they tracked down one of his brothers. But he, too, said he had no idea where Falco was, and hadn’t seen him in almost a year.
Over and over, as reports filed in, Horton began to realize Falco was either extremely good at ducking out of sight, or something was keeping him from contacting anyone. Whatever the reason, Horton promised himself, he was going to find Michael Falco.
It seemed like an odd thing for Steve Harrington, Evans’s archnemesis, to do, but after visiting Evans in prison on a few occasions, Steve promised Evans a job working on a construction site after he was released from prison. Horton later speculated that there could have been only one reason why Steve would have done that.
“Evans must have had something big on Steve and was threatening to drop a dime on him. There is no other explanation. They hated each other. It was well documented.”
Not sure about what he was going to do when he was released, Evans told Steve he’d think about the job offer. But when it came down to it, there was no chance in hell Evans was ever going to earn an honest living. It just wasn’t part of his makeup. He had made it perfectly clear in his letters that he was not someone who could take orders from another human being. More than that, he had a new plan now for when he got out of prison—and it hardly included working on a construction site with a man he hated.
Whatever Evans did while in prison—be it painting, drafting classes, or just sitting around thinking about how his life should have turned out—he couldn’t get over the fact that Stacy was someone he would never see (or have) again. He just couldn’t let her go. And as his projected release date drew closer, he began to focus on Stacy more than he ever had. The poor girl was living on the West Coast somewhere with a husband and kids, and had no idea a murderous sociopath was spending his days and nights in prison plotting and planning how he would win her love once he was released. It was a good bet that Stacy, in all her days since she had last seen Evans, hadn’t thought about him more than in passing. While Evans, on the other hand, was consumed with the notion of finding her and living out some sort of twisted fairy tale.
On…the day before [Stacy’s] birthday, I drew a picture of her, he wrote in spring 1986. Then I drew a bunch of crows and told them to find her for me.
He went on to explain how he had gone out in the yard of the prison one day and “made a crow noise” back at a crow he believed was “talking” to him. Sounds like bullshit, right? But I have a thing for crows that I don’t talk about, he wrote. Continuing, he said that he was planning on getting a “crow tattoo” when he was released because he had “promised” the crows.
Whether it was the crows talking to him, or thoughts of Stacy, Evans continued to have delusions of grandiosity as his release date neared. He had been locked up for so many years that whenever he began a bid, he tended not to look ahead for fear of having to face the extent of his stay. Yet, whenever it seemed like he could put his arms around a release date, he relished in finishing the time.
Most sociopaths display the same set of common characteristics. Among the most universal: a manipulative and conning manner, shallow emotions, incapacity for love, lack of empathy, impulsive nature, lack of any realistic life plan, paranoia, repressive control over most aspects of their victims’ lives, a way to justify the means to every end and a goal of enslavement for some (or all) of their victims.
At various times, Evans displayed all of them.
With parole less than a year away, it seemed—at least from the memories Evans was recalling about Stacy and their childhood romance—that perhaps he had reached a point of no return.
I drew a picture of [Stacy] on a stone bridge…. She lived in the country and we built a bridge over a stream out of old barn wood. She used to sit there playing melodie songs on her guitar and singing for me, and she used to wait there for me when I’d come through the woods to her house, he wrote.
This was, of course, a fantasy. It had a fable, visceral quality to it. The story lacked reality and resolve. He was picturing what the relationship could have been, not what it was. Because as quick as Evans could paint a picture of the perfect romance, he could, in the next sentence, turn vulgar and callous: The only thing I hate myself for is not putting all my efforts into finding her right away. Because she’s the most important thing in my life…. But there’s only one way to find her and that requires hurting 1 or 2 people and I was trying to avoid that. But now I see there is no other way.
He added, before ending the letter: As soon as I get released…I’m beginning. I know just what to do. And when I finally arrive at wherever she is, what a meeting that’ll be. It’s scary thinking about it.
In his next few letters, he didn’t let up about Stacy. In one sentence, he would say he had abandoned the idea of finding her, and in the next talk about how he was going to end up back in jail as he began trying to track her down by “making” certain relatives of hers talk: I fantasize talking to her. Seeing her smile at me…. And I know I am going to shoot every asshole that puts an obstacle in front of me. There’s an asshole in Troy that married her sister. They split to California. If he doesn’t know where [she] is, I’ll make him tell me where she is…. They were afraid of me when I was comparably harmless, wait till they meet me now. I’m through with these fools blocking my wishes, and for no reason except for they want to.
Evans could be melodramatic in his writing, especially when he allowed the more psychotic side of his character to take precedence over what amounted to superficial charm. I’m going to be all nice and humble and polite, he wrote, talking about when he showed up on the front doorstep of Stacy’s brother-in-law’s house to ask him where she was, and they’re going to give me that polite ‘no’ shit….
Then, as he began to talk about what he was going to do to Stacy’s brother-in-law, he related the situation to Hollywood. He said if her family gave him any trouble, they would be starring in a private Halloween, Friday the 13th Part 5, Nightmare on Elm Street movie and I’m the fucking producer and director.
Here was a maniac coming apart at the seams, centering his obsession on a group of people he hadn’t seen in well over fifteen years. These were harmless people going about their normal lives. Yet, unknowingly, they were the focus of a madman’s torment, lust and uncontrollable urge to blame anyone and everyone but himself for the life he had created.
As time moved forward, he became even more paranoid over the things in his life he had little control over. He believed, for example, “someone on the street was screwing” with his mail. He thought people he hadn’t seen or heard from in years were out to get him. He thought the prison guards were zeroing in on him and watching him because of what he “knew” about other inmates. And he wholeheartedly believed there was some sort of conspiracy between Stacy and her family to keep him locked up and away from her.
By Christmas, Evans was thinking seriously about his release date, which he had been told was now a little over a year away. Still, he continued planning what he was going to do when he got out. Thus, as the Christmas season approached, he started once again writing to Horton, all for the purpose of setting up a relationship with him he would need to cultivate and exploit once he was released. Indeed, a relationship that turned both bizarre and violent as the years passed.