Evans had always kept a copy of Criminal Investigation: Basic Perspectives throughout most of his criminal life. He valued greatly what the book offered him as a thief. If cops studied the book to learn more about their prey, Evans pointed out later, why couldn’t he study the book from a criminal’s standpoint? It seemed only logical that he could stay one step ahead of law enforcement if he knew what they were doing.
Found later, the copy Evans owned was marked up with notes he had handwritten. He had also highlighted portions of text he wanted to remember. The most tattered and worn pages were from a chapter titled “The Investigation of Burglary.” He had studied this section, obviously, more than any other. He wrote notes, circled phrases and words, underlined pieces of text.
The method Evans and Damien had used to gain entry into Douglas Berry’s coin shop, according to Criminal Investigation: Basic Perspectives, was called the “stepover or human fly move.”
Authors Paul Weston and Kenneth Wells wrote, “The burglar is an aerialist. The ‘stepover burglar’ steps from a fire escape, balcony, or other building to a nearby window….”
This was the exact procedure they had used to gain entry into Berry’s shop. In the book, Evans had underlined the passage, seemingly pushing down hard with his pen, indicating to himself, perhaps, that he would ultimately run across this exact situation at some point during his career.
“There is no doubt that Gary Evans was a professional thief, burglar, arsonist, murderer,” Horton recalled later. “He knew his ‘trade’ very well, and would tell me that he spent hours and weeks and months studying crime and how to be the most effective criminal he could be. But his weaknesses, in the end, overcame his strengths. I wouldn’t realize it until years later, but while committing that burglary in Watertown with Damien Cuomo, he crossed a line I never thought he would.”
Once Evans crossed that line, Horton acknowledged, there was nowhere left for him to go but further down.
Damien had taken an “army zip-up type of bag” with him into the Square Lion. He planned on filling the bag with as much jewelry, gold, coins and rare baseball cards as he could find while Evans watched over Berry.
“When we got into the place,” Evans said later, “we tried to be real quiet, but the floors were squeaky. Damien went toward the front of the store and started putting stuff in the bag.”
That was when, he added, things took an unexpected turn.
Evans had hopped up on top of a glass jewelry case to get up where Berry was sleeping in his loft. The jump up was noisy, but not enough to wake Berry.
Squatting at the “head end” of Berry’s cot, Evans held his .22-caliber pistol an inch or so from Berry’s head.
If the motherfucker moves, he’s done.
As Damien tried desperately to be quiet, the floorboards, squeaking and squawking, refused to cooperate. Every step produced a tired-sounding, slow and loud creak in the floor, like the whine of an old screen door closing.
As Berry snored, he began to shift in his cot as Cuomo moved about the shop.
“Keep fucking quiet,” Evans whispered.
Cuomo then took a tray of diamond rings, gold chains and necklaces and dumped it all at once into his bag. This startled Berry, Evans recalled later, and he “seemed to be waking up. He stopped snoring and started to move around a bit.”
After Cuomo finished dumping the load into his bag, he took another tray and did the same thing.
This time, Berry woke up and began looking around.
I had my gun pointed right at his head, Evans wrote in chilling detail, [when] the guy definitely woke up and picked his head up and turned towards me.
When Evans saw that Berry was slowly waking up and, perhaps still half-asleep, figuring out what was going on, he “shot him once in the head.”
There was no blood, struggle, or loud popping sound. After Evans fired the shot, Berry simply fell back down on his pillow, as if he had been knocked unconscious.
Even though Evans had equipped his .22 with a homemade silencer, the gun still produced a muffled sound that startled Damien.
Hearing a quick pop, Damien rushed toward the loft, looked up and said, “What the fuck was that?”
Evans didn’t say anything at first. Instead, he looked into Damien’s eyes and, ignoring what he asked, said, “Are you finished?”
“No. There’s more.”
“Fuck it, we’re leaving right now.”
By the time they were finished burglarizing the Square Lion, and Evans had murdered Douglas Berry, daylight had arrived. When they made it to the back window to get out, Evans spied a street sweeper working in the parking lot over near where Damien’s car had been parked. Lucky for them, the guy hadn’t heard a thing because the sweeper was so loud.
Before Evans and Cuomo sneaked out the window, Damien took the pack of Canadian cigarettes he and Evans had purchased in Canada out of his bag, crumpled it up and threw it near Berry’s body.
With over $30,000 worth of jewelry, baseball cards, coins and gold loaded in Cuomo’s bag, he and Evans drove back to Troy without a problem.
Once they got back to town, they made a date to meet in three days. It was agreed that Damien would hold on to the stolen merchandise. He knew someone who would buy most of it, he said. “I’ll get rid of it,” he told Evans, “and pay you when I see you in three days.”
“I’ll be there.”
At about 10:00 A.M., on September 8, Shirley Berry, Douglas Berry’s wife, decided she’d drive down to the Square Lion after trying unsuccessfully to reach her husband by phone all morning. Something, Mrs. Berry thought, was wrong. It was out of character for Douglas not to answer the phone.
When Shirley entered the shop at a few minutes after ten that morning, she saw a few of the jewelry cases opened. It appeared as though some items were missing, but she wasn’t sure. Confused, she said loudly, “Douglas?”
After not getting an answer, Mrs. Berry then went up to the loft, where she found him lying on his cot, seemingly still asleep.
Her first thought was that he’d had a heart attack in his sleep. He looked so peaceful just lying there. With a .22-caliber weapon, the hole it leaves in the human body is so small that if the wound isn’t on an easily accessible part of the body, it is almost impossible to see.
With her husband dead, Mrs. Berry phoned the local Watertown Police Department (WPD) to report a possible break-in, and what she now believed was the murder of her husband. “It’s suspicious,” she told the dispatcher, “because I noticed diamonds and gold coins missing from one of the display cases.”
By 2:20 P.M. that same day, state police investigator Keith Fairchild from Troop D in Oneida, New York, was on the scene. After some preliminary interviews with Shirley Berry, the medical examiner and a few other local law enforcement, all he could come up with was one .22-caliber spent projectile found near Berry’s head, a “fired bullet casing” by his right elbow, a crumpled pack of Canadian cigarettes and a size-ten “latent footprint” found on a piece of glass in the back of the shop.