As Horton and Charles “Sully” Sullivan made their way over to Caroline Parker’s apartment on Monday evening, October 6, to begin trying to find out where Tim Rysedorph had been for the past three days, they had no reason to believe it was anything more than a cheating husband running off on his family, regardless of the wild accusations and theories Caroline had whipped up while talking to Detective Ed Moore.
“Why are we even getting involved in this?” Horton lamented as they trekked up the pathway toward Caroline’s apartment.
“Don’t know, Jim. It’s our job, maybe?”
Before they got to Caroline’s front door, Horton told Sully to take care of the introductions. Sully would act as the quiet cop who took notes, while Horton would be the abrasive cop, asking the tough questions, trying to empathize with Caroline and, at the same time, pulling information out of her without her even knowing. They wanted to wrap up the case as quick as they could and move on to what they presumed were more important cases: homicides, missing children, rapes.
Horton, who had worked for years as a polygraphist, was a first-rate interviewer, well-versed in these types of interviews. They hadn’t called Caroline to warn her they were coming. The element of surprise worked best. A cop could learn many things by just studying body language and listening to the way a person spoke when he or she was confronted with certain questions.
When Caroline came to the door, Horton and Sully could tell it had been a long three days for her. She looked distraught. Crying. Shaking. Her face vacant, withdrawn.
Earlier that day, Horton had run Tim’s name through the system to see if anything came up. Besides a child endangerment charge when Tim was in his early twenties—most likely buying alcohol for someone underage—and a petit larceny—a stolen car stereo or something—he was clean.
On the surface, Tim and Caroline appeared to be middle-class people living in a clean apartment in a good section of town. Nothing more, nothing less.
“The apartment was very neat and clean,” Horton said later. “I remember what looked like a brand-new leather couch in the living room and several expensive-looking items—knickknacks, that sort of thing—all around the place. The couch was gorgeous. I recall saying to myself, ‘How the hell does a guy like Tim Rysedorph afford a couch like this?’”
Horton and Sully already knew Tim was pulling down no more than $350 a week as a truck driver for a garbage company. So, as Horton walked into the apartment and began looking around, his instincts told him immediately that Tim was also making money somewhere else.
How can he afford to live like this?
Running his hand along the smooth leather of the couch, Horton, dressed in his customary dark blue suit, white shirt and tie, began by offering casual conversation. “Boy, what a nice couch. This thing is gorgeous. How much was it? How do you afford something like this?”
“Tim’s in a band,” Caroline said. “He probably makes more money with the band than he does driving a truck. He’s a drummer.”
Superficially it made sense. Horton shook his head. Okay.
Over the next ten minutes, Caroline explained how Tim was supposed to be home for her sister’s wedding. There was no reason for him to be missing. At times, she would become a bit impatient, as if she felt Horton and Sully weren’t taking her seriously.
“Can we look around the apartment?” Horton asked at one point.
“Okay.”
The kitchen was nothing special, Horton remembered. But he noticed a few incredibly expensive appliances most families don’t have the means to afford. There was also a chrome refrigerator that piqued his interest.
Must be a pretty damn successful band Tim is in.
“Why aren’t you out there looking for him?” Caroline blurted out as they made their way around the apartment.
“Well,” Horton said, “these questions may seem trivial to you, but we have to ask.” Then he tried to lighten the mood a bit. “The questions may seem obvious, ma’am, but I’m not the smartest guy in the world. I need to keep asking the same things over and over.”
Sensing Caroline’s anger, Horton decided to hit her with a few hardball questions: Did she know of any girlfriend Tim might have had? How had the sex between them been recently?
Caroline seemed blindsided at first, yet kept her composure. It was clear she honestly believed Tim was a stand-up guy—that he didn’t have a girlfriend, or a second life she didn’t know about.
“Has he changed recently?…Has anything come up lately?”
“No,” Caroline said.
Dead ends. They were getting nowhere.
Tim and Caroline’s bedroom was in the basement of the apartment. Tim had a practice drum kit set up by the foot of the bed. The bed itself was made. The room neat. Horton checked the closets.
Everything looked pretty normal.
On and off, Caroline cried and whimpered. Horton and Sully, studying her the entire time, began to sense after some time, as perhaps Caroline did, too, that something was horribly wrong. Tim wasn’t coming home.
“The major thing that bothered us as we walked around the apartment and talked to [Caroline] was that Tim had missed his sister-in-law’s wedding,” Horton said later. “He had told her he was going. He also left his son a note. That was a big deal to us. He had planned to make that wedding, but something kept him from doing it.”
When they made it back up into the kitchen, Horton figured he’d ask one more question to see where it led.
“Has anything changed recently? Tim’s attitude? His demeanor? Anything? How did you two get along?”
“Well, there’s this guy that Tim grew up with in Troy who’s been hanging around lately…. I don’t like him. I don’t trust him.”
Horton looked at Sully. Now we’re getting somewhere.
“Do you know his name?” Horton asked.
Caroline went quiet for a moment, trying to think of the name. Then, “I know he is suspected of killing another guy Tim knows, Michael Falco.”
Falco? Horton hadn’t heard the name in years. “Go on,” he encouraged.
“Michael Falco is the guy this guy is suspected of killing. Michael and Tim were best friends. They grew up together. This guy also grew up with Tim and Mike.”
Gary fucking Evans, Horton thought. Without knowing it, Caroline had been talking about Evans, who was the last person to see Michael Falco, a convicted thief and former partner and roommate of Evans’s, alive. They had done several jobs together throughout the late ’70s and early ’80s. Falco had been missing, along with another former partner of Evans’s, Damien Cuomo, since the mid-1980s. Both men hadn’t been seen for years, and as far as the Bureau was concerned, Evans was the prime suspect in both disappearances.
“At that moment,” Horton said later, “the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I couldn’t wait to get out of that apartment so Sully and I could talk about what Caroline had just said.”
Horton then asked Caroline if the name Gary Evans meant anything to her.
“Yes!” she said instantly. “That’s the guy Tim has been hanging around with lately. I don’t like him….”
Tim Rysedorph is dead. Michael Falco is dead. Damien Cuomo is dead, Horton told himself as Caroline spoke of her hatred for Evans. If there had ever been a doubt that Cuomo and Falco were dead, it was wiped clear by the simple fact that Tim Rysedorph and Evans had been hanging around together recently and now Tim was missing, too.
Liabilities, Horton thought, all three of them.
In recent years, Horton had been accused—mostly by the press and a few local defense attorneys, but also a few cops—of carrying on a relationship with Gary Evans, Tim Rysedorph and Michael Falco’s friend and burglary partner.
When it came down to it, Gary Charles Evans was a twisted sociopath who had burglarized dozens of antique shops in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Horton had been playing a game of cat and mouse with Evans for the past twelve years, using him as an informant, while at the same time arresting him for various crimes. Evans, a master escape and disguise artist, had even helped the state police on a number of unsolved crimes, but Horton had developed a personal relationship with Evans throughout the years, which had infuriated some people.
Horton thought he had rid himself of Evans two years to the day prior to Tim Rysedorph’s disappearance. They’d had an argument. After arresting Evans for the theft of a rare and expensive book, Horton told Evans he never wanted to see him again. Their relationship was over. Too many things had happened throughout the years. And after testifying in a case Evans and Horton had worked on together, Evans did just that: he disappeared from Horton’s life and they hadn’t seen each other since.
So it would have been a safe bet to assume the last name Horton had ever expected to hear while investigating the disappearance of Tim Rysedorph on October 6, 1997, was Gary Evans.
For a number of years, Horton and other members of the Bureau had suspected that Evans had killed Damien Cuomo and Michael Falco, but they had no proof. Cuomo’s and Falco’s cases, which were considered missing person cases, had gone cold years ago. No law enforcement agency had worked on the cases in over a decade and no family members of either men, according to Horton, had put any pressure on law enforcement to revive the investigations. Like many missing person cases that are actually unsolved murder cases, Damien Cuomo and Michael Falco were mere numbers on files in the state police records room. Sadly, until a hungry investigator decided to reopen the cases, or a family member began complaining to the district attorney’s office, they would remain in the records room collecting dust like hundreds of others.
As Horton began working his way out of Caroline Parker’s apartment, Sully by his side, he told himself that Caroline was never going to see her husband alive again. If he’s been with Gary Evans, he’s as good as dead.