I HADN’T CALLED the Eckersville police. Not first. No, first I called the FBI. Then I called Jack Faron at Channel 10. Then I called Janet, my friend—and, if needed—my lawyer. I wanted a record of my story with all of them in case things went wrong when the local police showed up and found me standing with a gun over their police chief.
I wound up talking to Gregory Wharton at the FBI. I thought that might be a problem, but it wasn’t at all.
“Where are you?” he asked when I told him what had happened.
“I’m not sure. It’s on a highway heading north out of Eckersville. About five miles or so. That’s all I can tell you.”
“You’re calling on Manning’s phone, right?”
“Yes.”
“Leave it on, and we’ll track you from that.”
“How long will it take you to get people here? I’m a little worried about dealing with the Eckersville police department at the moment.”
“I’ve got a team of agents that should be there in fifteen minutes.”
I didn’t understand.
“How can you get here so fast?”
“We’re already in Eckersville. Sent a team there earlier. Because of Manning.”
“Oh, right,” I said, thinking about Scott Manning and how Parkman had killed him, too, like he’d killed all those women.
“They just left him in the hospital.”
“Hospital?”
“Looks like Scott is going to make it.”
It turned out that Parkman had attacked Manning with the same crowbar he used on me, beaten him badly, and left him for dead in a parking lot. But Manning survived and was able to contact the FBI from his hospital bed and tell them what happened.
“He was very worried about you,” Wharton said.
“I thought he was dead.”
“Manning thought the same about you.”
“My God!”
“Hang on, Carlson. This is almost over. The cavalry is on the way.”
It took a while to sort everything out.
Parkman, as he said he would, denied it all at first. Denied being The Wanderer. Denied taking part in any of the murders. Denied abducting me or threatening my life. He said I’d grabbed his gun, forced him to drive there, and claimed I’d made up the rest of it because I wanted a sensational story.
He didn’t know at first Scott Manning was still alive.
And that Manning was talking and backing up everything I said.
But, even after Parkman found that out, he continued to maintain he was the chief of police, a man with an honorable record—not a murderer. He stuck to that story even as they were leading him away to jail.
No one believed him anymore though.
Not even the members of his own police force.
Faron sent a freelance video crew from Indianapolis to shoot a live broadcast with me from the scene. He said that he, Maggie, Brett, and Dani would also fly there and they planned to do the Channel 10 evening newscasts remotely from Eckersville, too. But, before that, I’d do a big “The News Never Stops” segment about everything that would break into regular programming.
And so, once the FBI and other authorities took Parkman away, I started to do my real job.
To be a journalist.
We shot video at the spot in the woods where Parkman had taken me. Then more in the town of Eckersville, at the police station and other places. And, finally, at Becky Bluso’s old house.
That’s where I was standing when they gave me the cue in my earpiece from New York that we were ready to go live.
And then I was on the air:
ME: Three decades ago, seventeen-year-old Becky Bluso was murdered here in this small town of Eckersville, Indiana. That brutal crime—unsolved all these years—eventually led to a series of 19 other murders of women around the country since that time. Today the man who committed these 19 murders was finally apprehended, and I was there. He tried to kill me, too. But now he’s in jail and can’t hurt anyone else.
Law enforcement and we in the media had called him The Wanderer.
But his name is Jeff Parkman, and shockingly, he was the chief of the Eckersville Police Department in this quiet town.
Here’s everything that has happened …
I then told the whole story. Parkman’s murders. His travels around the country to find female victims. His kidnapping of me when I got too close to the truth. His attack on FBI agent Scott Manning. His attempt to kill me. And how I turned the tables on him and was able to help the FBI finally catch the man we’d known as The Wanderer.
While I talked, the station ran pictures of his victims on the screen below me.
All nineteen of them.
Innocent women who Parkman had killed.
Like he almost killed me.
A newsbreak like this generally only ran a minute or two. But this one went on for much longer. It was quickly picked up by the cable news channels and the TV network news shows and went viral on a lot of social media and websites.
At the end of my live broadcast, I said:
Again, one of the worst serial killers of all time—the man who was known as The Wanderer—has been apprehended. More details about this sensational breaking story will be coming on the Channel 10 evening newscasts tonight at 6 and 11. For now, this is Clare Carlson reporting to you live from Eckersville, Indiana … and glad to be alive to do it.