Chapter 4
Plan A
It was mid-January 1998 and Todd Garton was serious about the hit on Dean Noyes. To prepare Dale Gordon and Norman Daniels for the bloodshed, he made them watch videos of assassination movies. Dale recalled these movies: “There were a lot of videos we used to watch. It would just be movies—superviolent movies. And Todd was showing me, this was the way you kill. There were movies like Sniper. He made a certain point in that movie. There was like another sniper in the movie, and when he went to kill somebody, he purposefully missed the person he was shooting at. Todd made a big deal about that. He was very concerned that when it came time to kill that I would not kill for him.”
Todd also had Dale and Norman watch the movie Bound. This was essentially about two women who ended up killing the abusive boyfriend of one of the women. Afterwards, they got rid of the evidence so no one knew that it had occurred. Todd stressed the point of not leaving a trace. He also had them watch The Jackal and The Day of the Jackal. Dale said later, “There’s two versions. We watched both of them. Also La Femme Nikita.”
Todd was especially keen on movies that depicted snipers killing from ambush. He said it was the best way of not being detected. Stealth and cunning were key ingredients. Why kill someone in a blaze of loud gunfire when you could do it from cover? He indicated that’s the way he had done things in Northern Ireland and in South America.
Along with the assassin movies, Dale said they also watched a lot of satanic movies. Todd’s point in this was that there was nothing ethically wrong about killing. Especially killing a man as despicable as the version of Dean Noyes that he presented to Dale and Norman. Todd was very concerned about Dale’s attitude for the upcoming mission to Oregon. He wasn’t sure that Dale had what it took to be a cold-blooded killer. He kept on drilling into him that Dean Noyes was a scumbag. He said he was stealing money from a hospital group and beating up his wife. He emphasized that the world would be a better place without him; Todd and Dale and Norman were doing society a service by getting rid of Dean.
“Todd said that Lynn wanted out of the marriage, but Dean said he would kill her if she ever tried,” Dale remembered.
In an attempt to see just how loyal Dale really was, Todd tried to set up a scenario for Dale to kill someone in the Anderson area. Dale remembered that “he wanted me to kill some drug addict or innocent bum. Something like that. There was also this person who bought my shop [Continental Alignment] and he wanted me to go kill him. He told me just walk in there and shoot him and walk out. And he planned to shoot him from a different angle. He [the owner] was in one building and we went to another building on the opposite side of the street. I remember there was a Dumpster there. We talked about sitting up on top of the Dumpster and taking a shot with the Ruger ten/twenty-two.”
The two men actually went there and Todd wanted Dale to take the shot. Dale didn’t and they walked away with the owner of the shop never knowing how close he came to being gunned down.
With Dale’s attitude still under suspicion, Todd turned to his other partner, Norman Daniels. He gave him the same spiel about what a horrible person Dean Noyes was. He mentioned there were several contracts out on Dean’s life, and they might as well be the ones who cashed in on it. This whole contract business took on a new twist when Todd remembered the name of Lynn’s friend in New York—Natalya. The name itself had a kind of exotic allure, straight out of a movie of intrigue. Todd told Daniels that Natalya was a broker in New York who dealt with assassins. She took information from people who wanted others killed and passed it on to the paid assassins. “He mentioned this woman who lived in New York,” Daniels recalled. “He explained she was an information broker. In an assassination business the broker is someone who picks up contracts or hits on people and trades black-market information. Underground type of information. I believe he also mentioned she was an assassin at one time and in the IRA.”
There was also another twist about how he was going to collect money for the hit that he told Daniels. This differed from what he had told Lynn Noyes and Dale Gordon. Daniels said, “Todd was independently going to hit Dean Noyes and then collect the contracts. Independent of what other people were doing.” In other words, Todd and his buddies would kill Dean first and beat the other assassins to the punch. Then they would collect the contract money that the others missed by moving too slowly on their target.
As far as his own role in the upcoming mission went, Daniels recalled, “I was there to watch Todd’s back. Anything that required other hands than himself. I was a support person. I would go up there and help him out with things that he could not do, such as a lookout if trouble was coming around a corner. I was also to provide him with an alibi if it was needed.”
Interestingly enough, Todd had one more job for Norman Daniels to perform. Norm was to watch his back against Dale Gordon. Daniels said later, “He let me know that Dale Gordon was involved and that he did not trust Dale. He asked me to help watch Dale Gordon, because Dale might do something crazy. Dale was very paranoid and Todd didn’t trust him. I was to watch his (Todd’s) back.”
The trio of gunmen started stockpiling a cache of weapons for the upcoming trip. All of these men already owned several guns, but they also went to Jones Fort, a gun supply shop in Redding, to look at more guns and ammo. Daniels remembered one trip with Todd. “We took a trip to Jones Fort—an armory filled with firearms, black powder, semiautomatics, rifles, shotguns. Different kinds of ammunition.” They eventually put together a cache of several rifles and pistols, including a semiautomatic Tech 9.
Daniels recalled that they added one more pistol to the list. “It was, like, for personal protection. It was really small [like a derringer]. The barrel had a breach, and to remove the bullet and casing from it, you broke it instead of charging it. The barrel would open like a shotgun.”
About the Tech 9 he said, “It’s like a submachine gun. It’s a nine millimeter and holds a twenty-five-round magazine. We took along four or five magazines for it. This gun was Dale Gordon’s.”
Dale spoke of other equipment besides guns that was being collected for the trip. “There were some latex gloves and plastic knives. I had a butterfly knife. I also had a Leatherman Knife. And a little first-aid kit. And flexy cuffs like handcuffs. So you could handcuff somebody if you needed to. If you wanted to transport somebody, and didn’t want them to get away, you could cuff their feet and hands. This included Dean Noyes.”
Todd also bought two-way radios for communication purposes. “We had little two-way radios. There was an earpiece and a piece you talked through,” Dale recalled. “The radio was about six inches tall, three inches wide and an inch thick. It ran on four AA batteries. They were black [with] a little antenna on it and volume control.”
As far as use of the radios, Norman Daniels remembered, “It was so we could stay in contact with each other when we were out of sight. And also for silence. When you were in an observation post hidden from view, you would be able to signal quietly in the communication device instead of yelling, ‘Look out!’ He [Todd] could be warned ahead of time if somebody was coming up from behind him.
Besides the guns and communication devices, Todd also had his team buy “appropriate clothing for Oregon,” but his taste for attire ran to the bizarre. Norman Daniels remembered, “We went to the Factory Outlet stores looking for shoes. We got ties, button-up shirts, pairs of slacks, belts and wool caps. It was meant as a disguise. It was explained to me by Todd that this is the type of clothing that Oregonians wear.”
In this choice of disguise, it was as if Todd were outfitting his crew to look somewhat like a cross between the Blues Brothers and Ninja warriors.
To ensure a “quiet hit” on Dean Noyes in Oregon, Todd began to manufacture homemade silencers for the guns. Even though he didn’t thoroughly trust Dale Gordon, he brought him in on the project because of Dale’s expertise with weapons. Dale recalled, “He used PVC pipe. There was some of that around the house. There was some that was two inches in diameter. And that’s what we used for the silencers. There was an adapter on the barrel of the gun. That was a metal adapter. And there was a PVC adapter. It took it down from two inches in diameter to one inch in size. And that’s so you could screw it onto the pistol or rifle.”
The silencers were adapted to be used on both a Ram-Line .22 pistol and the 10/22 rifle. Todd and Dale took foam from a large amount of material used for archery targets. The foam was self-healing. In other words, an arrow could be shot into the target, and when it was pulled out, there was no hole to show where it had been. It was very soft and spongy.
Dale remembered the material and said, “We tore off pieces of the foam and it’s real spongy. You could compress it with your fingers. It was more like a plastic-type foam. Real soft. You took off pieces, put it inside the silencers from the end that screws into the barrel. You fill a whole bunch of it in there. As you shot through the silencer, the stuff would want to come out. It would sort of squeeze to the side, then start flying out the side. So you had to tape the end of it with black electrical tape. And you could get, like, a hundred-rounds shot before you had to put some more self-healing stuff in there.”
The 10/22 was somewhat different from the pistol. Dale remembered that it had a metal insert, somewhat like baffles. There was also a foresight on that silencer to line up with the rifle’s rear sight. Todd made two silencers himself, and Gordon helped him with the third.
Along with the silencers, Norman Daniels remembered that Todd Garton had bought special ammunition to be used on the operation. He said, “Todd bought subsonic ammunition. The idea was that it traveled under the speed of sound. The 10/22 would generally make a loud noise when fired. Not so with the silencer and subsonic ammo.”
Norman recalled one more thing about the modified 10/22 rifle. He said that it had a point sight attached. When the red dot of the laser on the point sight beamed on a target, all the gunman had to do was fire the rifle at the target. It made the 10/22 very accurate.
It was one thing to make plans, collect clothing, ammo and weapons, but Todd wanted them to do more than that. He wanted actual hands-on firing of the weapons with silencers. Dale recalled a field just off I-5, near Red Bluff, where they went to fire the pistols and rifle. Norman Daniels didn’t even have to go that far. He and Todd walked to the back edge of Todd’s property on Adobe Road and fired out toward the woods. This wasn’t exactly in a city, but it wasn’t in the wilderness, either. Norman test-fired not only the 10/22 but the Tech 9 as well. He tested the 10/22 for calibration of the point sight. Daniels recalled, “Todd Garton’s backyard was pretty much all open. It’s a large field area and the backyard actually looked out over Bureau of Land Management land (often called BLM), near Reading Island. There was no problem about firing there.”
During this training regimen, perhaps the most bizarre incident occurred with Dale Gordon. Whether Todd told him to do it or he thought it up on his own, Gordon decided to hunt and kill cats with the silencer-enhanced pistol. He roamed the area shooting every cat he could lay his sights on. Dale remembered, “We killed just about every cat in the neighborhood. Lots and lots of cats.”
In the last week of January 1998 the pace picked up even more. After every gunfire session, Todd met with the others at the Anderson Moose Lodge to discuss strategy. Daniels recalled, “We sat away from everybody else and discussed the area around Gresham (a suburb of Portland where Dean and Lynn Noyes lived). We discussed which way the streets ran, the rail line, and he started pointing stuff out. He didn’t have a map, but he explained the area. He also discussed what alibi Dale and I should have for being up there.”
The first alibi that Todd would tell Carole Garton was that he and the others were going to try and sell camouflage gear up in the Portland area, but somewhere along the line the story would change.
Todd told Dale and Norm one more important thing. He said that Lynn Noyes was not only aware of the plan to kill Dean, but she was helping it by providing valuable information and material. Lynn said later, “Dean had tons and tons of family photos, and a few of himself. I sent Todd one of these. Also a scrap of paper about where Dean parked after he got off work. A couple of after-hour pubs he went to. The gym where he had a membership and worked out. These were all the things Todd knew about but wanted me to specifically write down.”
One of the most important things Lynn sent to Todd was a set of keys to the house and vehicle. Lynn remembered, “I sent him a whole key ring. I was always losing my keys and we had several sets. There were keys to all our vehicles. And we had one key to our home that unlocked all the doors.”
Lynn also gave Todd a list of the garages where Dean parked his car when he went to work in downtown Portland. This was invaluable information for Todd. His top priority was to kill Dean in one of the parking garages. They could make it look like a mugging or a carjacking gone bad. They could get in and out of there fast.
Todd originally told Lynn he would need $10,000 to conduct this hit. He said it wasn’t a direct payment for the hit, but rather it would cover expenses for him and Dale and Norman. But Lynn balked at the $10,000 figure. She said, “I was a stay-at-home mother. I needed the money for the kids. So, I told him if we end up together, the insurance money would be split fifty-fifty. If not, I really didn’t think he needed the ten thousand. But he insisted and it was basically something we agreed to disagree on. Todd never came out and said we would be together afterward. It was always, what if, what if. But there was also, could I handle being with him, knowing that he was responsible for killing my husband. I said I wasn’t sure.”
Sure or not, Lynn did nothing to stop the plan and kept on giving Todd information that would help eliminate Dean. In fact, she gave information on all the vehicles that Dean and she owned. They had a 1977 Jeep Levi’s Edition CJ-5. It was in the garage more often than not. They had an older classic Mercedes. Dean generally drove back and forth to work in a little black two-door Fiero. And they also had a Bronco, which Lynn generally drove.
All this information, a photo and the key ring, Lynn sent to Todd in a small cardboard box. Daniels recalled, “He physically showed me the set of keys. And a photo of Dean Noyes. She also gave Todd schedules of his day-to-day activities. About the keys, he said they were keys to the front door of Lynn Noyes’s house and to the vehicles. We discussed what was going to take place during the crime in question. That it was a backup plan. The original plan was to hit Dean away from his house when he was at work. [In the alternate plan] we would remove Dean from the house and kill him. Todd said that in case something went wrong with any plan, that if there was an opportunity to hit Dean Noyes at the house, then that’s what the keys were for, so there would be no breaking and entering.”
Todd Garton ran even more ideas by Dale Gordon. Dale recalled, “I remember there was a house key and there was one for the full-size Bronco. We talked about killing Dean at his house. The style Todd said would be like cowboy style. Get in there, kill him sloppy and get out. Sloppy just meant get in there and do it. Do it quick. We also talked about taking him from the house, and take him someplace where there was nobody around and kill him in the car. We also had two lock-pick sets. One to go through a window. Todd had all this stuff and a picture of Dean in a marine corps green pouch. Something from when he went to sniper school.”
On February 6, 1998, the waiting and planning and practicing were over. Todd phoned Dale Gordon at Redding Four Wheel Drive, a place where he was working part-time. He told him to tell his boss that his mother just had a heart attack and he needed to go to the hospital immediately. With Norman Daniels, there didn’t need to be an excuse to get off work at the Kickin’ Mule. Todd already had instructed him to take the weekend off. Todd picked Daniels up at his residence on Gas Point Road in Cottonwood and took him to his home on Adobe Road. They began stuffing the Jeep with guns, ammo, clothing, silencers, latex gloves and all the equipment they would need.
Daniels recalled that the firearms they loaded included a .357 Rossi pistol, 10/22 rifle, Tech 9 and two .22 pistols. There were boxes of ammo and the communications devices as well. He said, “We took nine-millimeter full-jacket ammo for the Tech nine. A couple of boxes of twenty-two shells.”
When Dale Gordon joined them, he would bring along his Colt .45 1911 model pistol as well. Dale also remembered taking a speed loader for the .357 Rossi. It was an awful lot of firepower to kill one man.
The Jeep was all loaded by the time Dale Gordon arrived from work. Garton was very antsy to get on the road. Dale remembered, “He was all upset. It was ‘We need to get there right away. We’re fighting time. We’re fighting the weather.’ So I jumped right in the Jeep and we took off.”
The trip to Oregon from Anderson, California, in the wintertime isn’t always a smooth ride. It snows heavily on I-5 as the road rises past Mount Shasta. By the time it reaches Siskiyou Summit, at 4,300 feet, it can be slow going with passenger cars and big rigs reduced to driving with chains. The time would be a little faster with a Jeep, but not exactly a racecourse. And it wasn’t a straight-through shot for the team. Todd wanted to pick up one more item. They only had two walkie-talkies. He determined each member of the team needed one, just in case.
Todd stopped at a Circuit City electronics store in Eugene. While Todd went to buy another radio, Dale walked over to a Sears store, and Norm guarded the Jeep. Someone had to stay there and guard the cache. Dale Gordon walked around in Sears and contemplated buying Norman Daniels a watch. For something that might depend on timing, it was incredible that Daniels didn’t have one.
While Gordon was wandering around in Sears, Todd phoned Lynn Noyes on his cell phone. He told her that he and Dale and Norman were on their way up to Portland. He didn’t tell her what they planned, but she could guess. Lynn said later, “He called and said he was on his way up to Oregon for business, and that I should know what he was referring to. I shouldn’t see him. If I did see him, there was a problem.”
Todd hung up his cell phone, thinking everything was now going according to plan. Tomorrow they would find Dean Noyes in his parking garage, kill him—hopefully without being seen—and split. But his phone call to Lynn Noyes had repercussions that he couldn’t have imagined. As Lynn said later, “This call put it all into real perspective for me. I got really scared. I panicked.”
Her sudden panic attack had ramifications that would put them all in danger.
The first thing the trio of gunmen did when they reached Gresham, Oregon, was to drive by Dean and Lynn Noyes’s house on Burnside Road. It was already late and fairly dark outside, but all three could plainly see a Bronco and Fiero parked in the Noyes driveway. After their trip to the Noyes residence, Todd drove to downtown Portland where they checked out the two parking garages near Dean’s place of employment. Daniels recalled, “We stopped in there [the first garage] and scouted out the stairwell and the elevator. We were looking over the layout and for escape routes.”
They went into both garages and looked around. Gordon recalled, “We scoped it out. We went all the way from the bottom to the top. I remember Norman walking through the staircase and I was, like, at the top of the stairway. I had a radio. I was talking to Norman, seeing how the radios were working. Also, looking how we could get away from this place.”
After the scouting of the garages, Todd drove to a Quality Inn on the corner of Burnside Road and Hogan. He booked one room for all three of them and made sure the room was on the ground floor. Not wanting to draw attention to themselves and all the guns they were carrying in dark plastic cases, Todd pulled the Jeep around to the window of their room. But what he did next could have hardly been more conspicuous than if he’d drawn a large bull’s-eye on all of them. Todd went inside, lifted up the window and took off the screen. Then he had the others pass the guns and equipment directly from the Jeep through the window and into the room. Luckily for them it was late, and no one saw them.
Crowded into a motel room with guns, ammo and equipment, Todd gave them a final briefing about their alibis for being there. Instead of the alibi about selling camouflage clothing at a gun show in Portland, he told Dale and Norm to say, if ever asked, they were up there seeking out bids for G and G Fencing contracts. Each one of them was to stick to this story. He also told them what their individual roles would be the next day. Dale Gordon was to be his main backup in killing Dean at the garage. Norman Daniels’s role was more complicated. Daniels said, “I had the Tech nine. If anything went wrong, such as being pursued by the police, I was to shoot at them to keep their heads down while we made our escape. I was not to shoot to kill.”
Todd gave them the rundown on the area in case they somehow got separated. They were to get to the rail system and make their way back to its end near Gresham. Todd indicated a little park near there. That’s where they would congregate and he would pick them up.
There was one more duty to be done before lights out. Norman Daniels stood near the edge of the Quality Inn while Todd and Dale took off in the Jeep. They kept in constant communication by the radios so Norm could tell what the maximum distance was for their use. After determining this, Todd and Dale came back and everyone went to bed. But it was not a restful night for either Dale or Norm. These two were wound up and had a hard time sleeping. The only one in the group who seemed relaxed was Todd.
It wasn’t daylight yet when Todd got the others up. According to Norman Daniels, Garton made them put on their “Oregonian disguises.” These included a button-up shirt, tie, socks, shoes, slacks and raincoat. This last item was a curious one. It wasn’t raining outside.
Once again Todd had the others help him pass the guns and equipment directly out the window and into the back of the Jeep. And once again they were lucky. No one saw them do this in the early-morning hours. Loaded up and ready to go, Todd Garton drove them all by the Noyes residence on one last scouting expedition. But he must not have gone directly by the house or he would have noticed one disturbing thing. Dale didn’t see it, either, but Norman Daniels did. He recalled later, “It was still dark. As I glanced over, it didn’t register at the time, but there was one vehicle missing. The Fiero was still there. The Bronco was gone.”
Not having registered this fact at the time, in part from lack of sleep and jangled nerves, Norm didn’t mention this to Todd or Dale. Instead, they all went to a local Denny’s and Todd bought them breakfast.
Breakfast over, it was time to go and kill Dean Noyes. Todd drove about fifteen miles to downtown Portland and parked across from the entrance of the parking lot where Lynn said Dean normally parked his Fiero. It was still early, and Todd was sure that it would be easy to spot Dean’s car when it went into the parking lot. Even though it was a Saturday morning, Dean had to work that day. There weren’t many people around at that hour and his Fiero should have been very con-spicous as it drove up. Daniels remembered, “It was Lynn’s plan to tell Dean to take the Fiero that day. She was to say that the heater in the Bronco wasn’t working. So he wouldn’t take that vehicle. He would take the Fiero which had a heater. Our plan was to follow him. Then when he parked, we were going to take care of him in the parking lot.”
But the minutes ticked by and there was no Fiero. The men fidgeted and looked nervously at their watches in the crowded Jeep. More than an hour went by and there was no sign of Dean. Frustrated and angry, Todd started the Jeep and they slowly cruised through both parking lots, looking for the Fiero. It was at this point that Daniels suddenly remembered what he had seen on their drive by the Noyes house that morning. He had seen the Fiero sitting in the driveway and the Bronco was gone. There was no reason that Lynn Noyes should have taken the Bronco anywhere that early in the morning. Dean must have taken it.
Daniels told Garton what he had witnessed, and Todd was extremely angry. They searched the garages for the Bronco and couldn’t find it. There was a good reason neither vehicle was there. On Friday night, about the time that Todd, Dale and Norm drove into Portland, Lynn Noyes had a tremendous loss of nerve. She related later, “I knew that Todd and Norman Daniels and Dale Gordon were in town and they were going to try and attempt to kill Dean. I got scared. I specifically asked him, pleaded with him, to take the Bronco to work. By him taking the Bronco—the parking structure he normally would have parked at, the Bronco wouldn’t fit in the parking structure. So he would have to park near a loading dock at work. Somebody has to clear him in, clear him out. And they didn’t know about that.”
Dean eventually agreed to take the Bronco. It probably saved his life that morning. But the day was far from over. Todd Garton, furious about the missed chance to kill Dean in the parking lot, drove across town to another motel and began to put Plan B into action.