A Life Wasted

Slow Get-a-Way Car

The van was old and slow. Far too slow for a police chase. I immediately started looking for a place to dump the van and go it on foot, but in the Mississippi Delta country there were few such places. So I kept driving east, away from the Mississippi River, expecting to see a police car in my mirror at any moment. But no police cars showed up so I kept driving east. A half-hour later, when I was beginning to think that I would get away, I drove around a curve and saw two Mississippi State Police cars sitting at a cross road. The two cars were on either side of the road I was on, facing in my direction. They were waiting for me and it was a perfect ambush. There was nothing I could do but give up.

I tossed my gun to the floor and pulled to a stop at the stop sign. I was about to put the van in park and get out with my hands up when I realized that neither Trooper was looking at me. Both were still looking down the road I'd just come up, like they were waiting for some desperado to come blasting by. I was confused, but not stunned into inaction. Having come to a complete stop at the stop sign, I looked both ways then pulled across the cross road. I watched the two State Troopers in my mirror but they hadn't moved. When they were out of my sight I floored the van.

Having no idea what had just happened I again started looking for a place to hide the van and take off on foot, but there wasn't anything good. A car passed me going the opposite direction and flashed his lights at me. I had been speeding, so I slowed down. Another car passed and flashed his lights too, but this one also did a twirl with his finger to let me know there was a cop ahead of me. This I understood. I U-turned the van and drove back the way I had come. Now I had it figured out: the two state troopers let me go by because there was a road block ahead of me and they were now behind me, herding me in. But as I drove back the way I came I didn't see the pair of State Troopers behind me. It wasn't until I reached the intersection again that I saw them. They were sitting in the exact spot I had originally seen them, looking back the way I'd come. Waiting for someone. Had to be me. I just couldn't figure it out.

I came to a complete stop at the stop sign, my left turn signal already blinking. I made a slow left turn and drove east. As soon as I was out of sight from the two state troopers I floored it again. I drove down that road for twenty miles, then turned north again. Almost immediately I crossed the border into Tennessee. Earlier, when I had been warned of cops ahead of me they had to have been waiting at the state border. Most likely the Tennessee State Police. However you looked at the whole thing, I should have been caught. How I got away that day is still a mystery.

A few months earlier I had set up an "emergency escape plan." Given all that had just happened I knew now was the time to enact it because things were about to get hot for me. My plan required me to get to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, so I drove north. I was so emboldened by the Mississippi State Troopers not being able to see me that I drove that old van all the way to Pennsylvania without even changing the plates. I spent a night in a motel room half way to Pennsylvania, then drove all the way to Reading, Pennsylvania. I parked that van, still with its original plates on it in a Holiday Inn parking lot. Despite the fact that it was the most sought after vehicle in the country, and that is a fact, not an exaggeration, it was still in that parking lot three months later when I told the FBI where they could find it. They were shocked that it had hidden in plain sight that long. I was not.