Jo Rehm had been Evans’s baby-sitter, surrogate mother, friend and protector. As kids growing up in Troy during the late ’60s, Evans and Jo Rehm were inseparable. Jo took care of little Gary while Flora Mae and Roy Evans drank themselves silly. Years later, when Jo got married and moved away, she took Evans in for a summer after he had run away from home. After he left Jo’s home later that year, however, she never really saw him again—that is, until Evans was facing the end of his life and wanted to let her know how much she had meant to him all these years.
The letter Evans wrote to Jo was drenched with “don’t blame yourself” rhetoric that only Evans could dish out with his usual saccharine cadence. Jo had written to Evans and explained how she had been hard on herself for not taking better care of him when he was a child.
It was nonsense. Jo was just a kid herself, looking to get the hell out of Troy and begin a life of her own.
And listen, Evans wrote after demanding Jo stop beating herself up, this is important, I’m OK. I’m at peace with myself. I accomplished a very important thing. And when my time is up, I’ll laugh….
He wrote fervently that he never hurt a girl or innocent person ever. Every one of them was a criminal that did at least as bad as me—and a couple were worse.
“Gary Evans, the justifier.”
Apparently, he had forgotten the heartless fact that he had murdered one shop owner while he was asleep and another while he was viewing a piece of jewelry. Both were hard-working family men who never bothered anybody.
No more mail, Evans ended the letter with. I get too sad, OK?
Horton received another letter from Evans, on July 11.
Times running, Guy. I feel very sad and a little bit scared, too…. Lotta bullshit in the paper. I hope you’ll always be OK, I know you will. I’m so sorry about my life.
“The concerned Gary Evans.”
The local newspapers had been running daily stories about Evans and Horton now for the past three weeks. People were beginning to call Evans a “monster,” a term that infuriated him. He was worried that Robbie and his nephew, Devan, would get caught in the whirlwind of press reports. He didn’t want the media bothering them. And Lisa Morris, well: Can you figure out a way to get [her] in line? he asked.
Lisa was giving the press photographs of Evans and telling stories about her life with him. He wanted Horton to collect all of his personal items from her.
Major Bart R. Johnson, commander of Troop G, released a formal statement explaining how, on July 14, 1998, Michael Falco’s remains had been found in Florida and, with the help of dental records, positively identified.
With the death toll now at five and rising, when Horton asked Evans about the trip he took out west after murdering Tim Rysedorph, Evans said he was “finished giving up bodies.”
Horton figured when the time was right, he would start talking again.
Jo Rehm hadn’t seen Gary Evans for almost twenty-five years. They had bumped into each other at a local retail store back in 1995, but beyond that two-minute encounter, Jo hadn’t spoken to him.
When Jo read about how depressed he was, she picked up the phone, called the jail and made arrangements to go see him.
As soon as they made eye contact a day later, they started crying. It had been a long road. Yet here they were now at what seemed like the end trying to figure out what had happened and where everything had gone so horribly wrong.
“I’ve done a lot of bad things, Jo,” Evans said. “I’m sick.”
“Do they know you’re sick?” Jo understood him wrong; she thought he was physically ill. “The flu,” she later said, “or something.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Evans said, pointing to his head. “I’m sick here.”
For the next thirty minutes, they talked about old times. Then Evans launched into an attack against Robbie. He said he didn’t want to see her. He was mad at her, but he did want to see Devan.
The next day, Jo went back. Lisa Morris was there when she arrived. It was a short visit.
A few days after that, Horton called Jo after Evans asked him to, because Evans wanted to see Jo again, but said he was having trouble getting word to her.
Jo didn’t trust Horton. “I’ll pick you up,” Horton offered, “if you want me to?”
“No! I’ve read about you in the papers. I’ll take my own car, thank you.”
That day, when Jo saw Evans, she asked him about Horton.
“Jim is okay,” Evans said. “He’s my friend.” He paused for a moment, crying, “I…I love Jim Horton.”
Jo then thought, If he’s good enough for Gary, he’s good enough for me.
“Make sure you keep in touch with Jim,” Evans said after collecting himself. “He’ll always be there for you.”
“Okay, Gary.”
From there, Evans started talking in a manner that led Jo to believe the end was near—not, specifically, that Evans was preparing himself emotionally for a death sentence, but that he was planning on doing something to himself. Something big, something people would remember him by.
As the days dragged on and a capital felony murder case was being built against him, Evans started writing to Jo and Horton nearly every day.
On Tuesday, July 28, he wrote to Horton: It would have been nice to have you as a brother, growing up somewhere nice instead of the trolls that kidnapped me from nice people when I was a baby. Then he described a scene from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, comparing his life to the Ghost of Jacob Marley.
Next he initiated an attack on the justice system, pushing the blame for the murders he committed on a system, he said, that should allow a “thief to do a thief’s time” He wrote: Nothing would have happened to those people [Falco, Cuomo, Berry, Jouben and Rysedorph] if I didn’t have to worry about getting life for stealing.
In other words, if the courts would have just allowed him the opportunity to be a serial burglar without serious punishment, he would not have killed anyone.
Don’t you see? It’s all their fault! he was implying.
Near the end of the letter, he began to question whether what was happening had all been predetermined: So was it fate [that] we met in a dingy little holding cell in Cohoes and thirteen years later [we] say good-bye here? Were we meant to learn something from our interaction as cops n’ robbers and more?
Reading the letter, Horton could only shake his head in disbelief. “Gary had an excuse for everything; he wanted to believe it wasn’t his fault.”
Days later, worried about his emotional state, Horton stopped in to see him. As they talked, Evans admitted he was planning an escape.
“You don’t want to do that, Gar,” Horton encouraged.
“I have to, Guy. I can’t die in here.”
A few days prior to Horton’s visit, Evans had told Lisa Morris nearly the same thing, adding, “If I die in here, they win…. If I die out there, I win.”
“Well,” Horton said, “if you do try something, all I ask is that you don’t hurt anyone…. And don’t do it while in state police custody. Don’t make me or the state police look like fools for trusting you.”
Evans said he understood.
Leaving the jail, Horton put in a call to the DA’s office and the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office, who were responsible for holding Evans. He told both that Evans was planning an escape attempt. “I don’t know how or when, but he told me he is going to try.” Like he had said numerous times throughout his career to many different law enforcement agencies, Horton ended the conversation with a familiar caveat: “He will crawl through a straw if he has to. Don’t underestimate him. To get away, he will do anything he has to. Remember, he has nothing to lose.”
Please believe what I am telling you, Horton silently pleaded.