Not long after Horton and Evans had worked together on the Archie Bennett drug bust, Evans began showing up, it seemed, wherever Horton went. By early 1991, Horton was bumping into Evans routinely in Latham. Near his home. At the market. The local sub shop. The diner. Wherever Horton went, Evans was right behind him.
“Hey, Guy,” Evans might say, coming up from behind. “What’s going on?”
“What are you doing here?” Horton would ask.
After Horton realized it wasn’t a coincidence, he started to turn the tables and “pop in” on Evans wherever he was living. Evans would be sitting on the floor in his hotel room, studying alarm system manuals, browsing through antique magazines, reading astrology books and true-crime books and magazines.
“What’s up, Guy? Come on in.”
Horton tried to center his conversations on why Evans couldn’t focus his passion on something legal. But Evans would always spin the discussion back to burglary, so Horton learned to play into it.
“Tell me about burglarizing homes, Gar? What is a good target?”
Evans perked up. “I would never hit a house with an alarm system sticker on it, or a house with a Beware of Dog sign.”
Horton made a mental note: Get alarm system stickers.
“What about those manuals…why study them?”
“Most antique shops have alarm systems; they help me understand how they work. I’ve never been caught inside while doing a job.”
Then Horton found out Evans had camped out in the woods in back of his house. “He was watching me watch him,” Horton recalled later. “Both of us had our own agendas by that point.”
It was no secret that Horton and Doug Wingate were investigating Jeffrey Williams. Local newspapers and television had covered the Williams case extensively.
Evans would raise the subject once in a while, but Horton was careful about what he said. It was an ongoing investigation. Sharing information with anyone—better yet a convicted felon—would jeopardize the case.
“Let him [Jeffrey Williams] get out,” Evans said one day to Horton and Wingate, “and your worries are over!”
“You let us take care of Williams, Gar. Don’t worry about it,” Horton said.
This seemingly casual conversation planted a seed in Horton’s mind, however. “I knew then that the day would come where I could possibly use Gary to help me with Jeffrey Williams. We just didn’t know how at that point.”
The relationship between Horton and Evans began to work its way to the Horton family dining-room table.
“Jim and Gary’s relationship never bothered me,” Mary Pat Horton recalled later. “After all, Jim and I thought he was just a local thief—a guy, according to Jim, who didn’t have a favorable childhood or solid role models, a guy who ‘never had a chance.’ I knew Jim was developing a rapport with him and that Gary trusted him because Jim treated Gary like a human being during their encounters. I felt sorry for Gary—because of what I knew about his childhood. As the calls by Gary became more frequent, it just reinforced to me that this guy really had no one else he could turn to. The kids and I started to refer to him as ‘Uncle Gary,’ because he called the house much more often than any of our real uncles.”