The state of New York paroled Gary Evans, who was already a murderer, hell-bent on murdering again, on March 1, 1988. As Evans hit the street as a free man, Horton was digging his feet even deeper into his work at the Bureau, juggling no fewer than two hundred cases that year: murders, rapes, burglaries, drug deals and assaults—anything and everything.
In early March, Evans called Horton at his home to let him know he was out. “Hey, Guy! What’s going on?”
“How are things, Gar?”
Whenever he called Horton, Evans would open the conversation by telling him stories about prison life, which generally led into a rant, whereby he ridiculed every criminal in Troy whose name he had given Horton, always ending with the question: “Have you arrested any of those fucking assholes yet?”
He was frustrated with Horton for not going out and arresting people on every single piece of information he had given him. Although he never told Evans, Horton was fed up with a system that seemed to, at times, favor the criminal.
“Gar, I just can’t go out and arrest people on what you tell me,” Horton told him. “I need proof. I need a case.”
“You gotta arrest those motherfuckers, Guy. They’re bad people.”
“So, you want that job I promised you, or not?” Horton said, changing the subject. “Forget that criminal shit. Let’s focus on your life.”
“What is it?”
“I have a friend at a local nursery who needs help. Lots of heavy lifting. Meet some people. Show off your muscles. It’s perfect for you.”
“Sounds pretty good.”
In the course of a few months leading up to his release, Evans had turned the tables on Horton. “People ask me why I got him jobs and became what some said was ‘friendly’ with him,” Horton recalled later. “Well, when he befriended me, I believed, perhaps very naively, that I could change him. I tried to talk him into a life of good things because I saw good in him. He was smart. Articulate. Well read. I wanted to help him.”
A few days later, Horton met with Evans in the parking lot of Troop G. Evans seemed seriously interested in pursuing the nursery job. It was not only two city blocks from Horton’s home, but it was right around the corner from the motel where Evans had been living since getting out of prison.
Evans had what Horton later called “prison muscles.” He was extremely beefy, and wasn’t afraid to show it off by wearing tank tops and tight-fitting shirts. When he walked into the nursery around mid-March, the owner saw someone who could possibly lift shrubs and small trees onto customers’ vehicles without any help.
When it came down to it, however, Evans was never one to be bossed around by anyone; he just couldn’t stand someone telling him what to do. On top of that, his boss at the nursery turned out to be a female, who managed the place, and not the person who had hired him, a male.
After two weeks, he called Horton and told him that “it was way too hard. Anyway, I can’t work for a dyke,” he added. “It’s too busy a place. They push me and push me to do more.”
“Come on, Gar. Tough it out.”
Evans paused. Then, “I can make more money doing what I do!”
Horton wasn’t going to give up on Evans that quick, however. So he called a good friend who managed a local depot in town.
“Listen, I have this buddy of mine who needs a job,” Horton told the guy. “He’s a hell of a worker. He’s big, muscular. He can be a loader.”
At the time Horton was working to find Evans a job and keep him focused on an honest life, Horton’s family—his wife, Mary Pat, and kids, Jim and Alison—began to get to know Evans more personally. Evans would call and say hello to anyone who answered the phone. He would carry on conversations with Mary Pat as if they were old friends.
As Horton continued to work on his friend at the warehouse to hire Evans, he came up with an idea. “Listen,” he said to his friend one day, “Gary is a convicted felon. I know it’s hard to trust someone like that. But why don’t we have him act as an undercover while he’s working? He can keep an eye out for those workers who are robbing you.” There had been a rash of larcenies at the plant in recent months. Horton knew Evans would jump at the opportunity to act as a cop.
“Okay,” Horton’s friend reluctantly agreed. “That might work.”
Because Evans was a felon, the warehouse agreed to hire him—but only under a pseudonym.
It had taken Horton three weeks to convince his friend at the warehouse to hire Evans. It took Evans three days to decide that the work wasn’t for him. Again, he went back to his old way of thinking, and spared no words when giving Horton an explanation.
“You fuck,” Horton said when he found out Evans had quit, “you screwed me!”
“Come on, Guy, that shit was rough. Lifting boxes, loading trucks under the crack of a whip. It’s too hard. I’m not taking orders from those fuckers. I can make better money and not break a sweat doing what I do.”
Point in fact, he had never stopped stealing. Although Evans was complying with Horton’s suggestion to try out the high road, Evans was committing more burglaries during that time than he ever had, Horton found out later.