Light snow fell on the night of March 20, 1994, a Sunday. It was cold, even by New England standards, for that time of year. The temperature had never risen above twenty degrees.
The Norman Williams Public Library on Park Street near the green in Woodstock housed more than thirty thousand books and periodicals. It was closed on Sundays, like many libraries in the United States. Evans had been inside the building, scoping it out, on several different occasions. He understood security in the place was lax.
Arriving in the middle of the night, he simply went around to the back of the building and removed the hinge bolts holding the irons bars on one of the windows in the basement. Within fifteen minutes, he was in the library and out—the James Audubon Birds of America book in hand.
Later, he said it was one of the easiest burglaries he had ever pulled off, and laughed at how naive conservators of the book had been about protecting it from people like himself.
When the clerk came in the following morning and discovered the theft, word spread quickly that one of the library’s most valued possessions was gone. The federal judge on the board of trustees was livid. The book had been the library’s crown jewel, often bringing people to town specifically to see it.
“Once the judge became involved,” Horton said later, “he literally”—Horton laughed at the cliché—“made a federal case out of it.”
Indeed, by midmorning, FBI agents from all across New England had arrived in town to work on the case. Days later, agents from across the country were involved.
By this time, Evans was back in Latham. The book, he later said, was on the Canadian-Vermont border, sealed in a plastic bag, buried underneath the home of an old woman who had no idea he had even broken into her house and hidden it there.
As the FBI began its hunt, Evans started looking for a buyer.
Horton had finished his stint with the DEA around this same time and was now back working full-time for the Bureau in Loudonville. It felt good to be back in the captain’s chair. Narcotics had been a bore since the first day.
His reputation as having a relationship with Evans was not only common knowledge among state police, but the FBI was fully aware Horton was the one cop who knew more about Gary Evans than anybody else.
Near the latter part of March, the FBI contacted Horton about Evans. A federal informant in prison had come forward and said his brother had been contacted by Evans, who was looking for someone to buy a book he had stolen in Vermont. Evans had made the mistake of giving the informant his real name.
The FBI invited Horton and Wingate to its main office in Albany to debrief them about Evans. The head of the task force in charge of getting the book back had already set up a meeting between Evans and the informant to discuss the possible sale of the book.
“There had to be thirty agents involved in this case,” Horton recalled later. “When we walked in, it was like a Hollywood movie.”
FBI windbreaker jackets. Earpieces. Attitudes.
Horton and Wingate weren’t asked to participate in the investigation, but were there to more or less hand over whatever information they had that could be useful in capturing Evans.
“Don’t underestimate Mr. Evans,” Horton, standing, explained to the eager crowd of agents. “He may be armed. He will use countersurveillance techniques. He won’t have the property [book] with him.” A line that Horton had used numerous times throughout the years meant more now than it ever had: “He’ll crawl through a straw if he has to.”
As Horton and Wingate viewed the situation, the entire meeting seemed more like a political move on the part of the FBI. There were so many agents involved, none of which had any idea with whom they were dealing, or how well Horton knew him.
“It was funny, actually,” Horton said later. “Here was this big room. All these agents were standing around…all for Gary Evans.”
Just a couple of days after the meeting, the agent-in-charge called Horton and invited him and Wingate to a stakeout he had set up. Evans was scheduled to meet the FBI’s informant at 6:00 P.M. in a parking lot on Wolf Road in Colonie, which was not too far from Horton’s home.
“Sure,” Horton said. The agent made it clear, however, that they weren’t part of the team, necessarily, but could sit in on the arrest and watch.
There will be no arrest, Horton mused to himself.
At about 4:00 P.M., Horton and Wingate showed up at a hotel in Colonie that the FBI had set up as base camp. When they walked into the fourth-floor room, they couldn’t believe their eyes. Agents wore night vision goggles. There were telescopic lenses, tape recorders and several other pieces of James Bond–type equipment spread about the room. Agents were coming and going, talking on walkie-talkies as if they were about to make the arrest of their careers.
“Doug and I,” Horton recalled later, “we kind of looked at each other and whispered…‘They’re fucked.’ We told them what to do and they totally ignored all of our advice.”
Not only hadn’t the FBI taken Horton and Wingate’s advice, but they disregarded a couple of key factors. For one, Horton had been adamant about setting the operation up twenty-four hours in advance. The FBI, he learned when they got there, had been at the hotel for only a few hours. Second, Horton told them to “keep it simple…a few undercover agents, no more.” By 5:00 P.M., there were about twenty agents spread all over the place, some of whom were walking in and out of the building while wearing those loud blue-and-gold FBI windbreaker jackets that screamed FEDS.
Evans later laughed about the ordeal when he explained to Horton what he was doing while the FBI were setting up. “I counted sixteen agents,” Evans said, “in the diner, walking around the hotel, in cars, on the street.”
Evans was on foot when he showed up to meet the informant. He had parked his truck about a mile away and walked to the parking lot. An undercover agent and the informant met with him, but he said absolutely nothing about the book. He let the informant do most of the talking and never once mentioned that he even had the book. At one point, he said, “I may know someone who knows someone who has the book…. What if I did?”
Generally speaking, if a thief smells something funny while meeting with a fence, he will take off and never contact the fence again. Evans, however, viewed the entire operation with the FBI as a challenge and yearned to see how far they would take it.
Ten minutes into the conversation, Evans decided he wasn’t interested in talking anymore. The FBI had nothing to arrest him on, so it had to let him go. He had never mentioned the book specifically, nor had he said he could get it. Even if he had, the book was nowhere in sight.
As he took off on foot, the FBI scrambled for position. With a plane already waiting, it was decided a tail would be put on him for the night to see where he went. Perhaps he would lead them to the book?
From there, Evans left in his truck and, realizing he was being followed the entire time, took the FBI on what he later called a “joyride” for the next six hours.
“All he did,” Horton said, “was drive around in a huge circle while twenty FBI agents wasted the night watching him. It was typical Gary Evans all the way…. He was in charge from the moment he set up the buy.”