After we got down to Toledo, Ohio, my friends Dad found me a ride with a trucker heading east, this first ride was going to take me into Pennsylvania, the trucker seemed like a nice guy, but I wasn’t 100% sure about him so I stayed awake the whole time, I had a pocket knife at the ready if I needed to defend myself. A few hours later we pulled into a truck stop in Pennsylvania and he got on the CB radio and after about 10 minutes he found another ride to keep heading northeast towards Vermont. This time it was with a female driver, and she was really nice and kind of talkative she noticed that I was very tired and told me to climb into the back and go to sleep, that she would wake me up when we got close to her drop off location, which was still in New York. She woke me up and I sat in the truck while she was doing the drop off, she told me that she would find me a ride further Northeast at the next truck stop. Which was the location she was going to rest, We got there and she bought me breakfast and then found me another ride, I had already called Jan, and told her where I was, she told me a few towns that would be an easy drop off point for her and her mom to come pick me up, so when the lady trucker was talking to other truckers they knew an area I was trying to get to. The next ride was with another guy, and he was cool as well, we drove for about 4 hours, and he pulled into a truck stop in New Hampshire a few miles over the Vermon State line and let me out and wished me luck. I never talked with any of my rides about why I was heading east, or that I was running from the police. For all they knew I was just getting a ride to get to my pen pal girlfriend, I got out of the truck and got to a pay phone and called Jan, and told her where I was, she told me that it would take about an hour to get there with her mom. I went into the truck stop restaurant and ordered some food and ate.
About an hour later I was picked up by Jan and her mom. We all talked on the way back, her mom worked at a little roadside restaurant in the town she lived in and told me that they were looking for a new cook. And that she could talk to the owner and get me a job. Jan did not live with her mom, her mom had made arrangements for me to rent a space from her other daughter and son-in-law, which worked out. It was a room like a basement under their house that had a wood burning stove in it, I built a wall and made a small bedroom area down there out of materials they had laying around over the next few weeks. About 2 days after I got there, I had a job interview with the owner of the little diner, he was an older gentleman and was kind of mean. But it was a job, he took me in the back and gave me an order to make, I made it, then he gave me another order to make, and I made it, the restaurant was open at the time, and I was just making orders for customers in the restaurant. I was a few months shy of my 18th birthday, so I wasn’t allowed to use the slicer, but I was hired into the position of lead cook when the owner wasn’t there, but there was a lady that was the prep cook, that was always on shift with me, and she was not happy that I got the lead spot, we did not get along. She took care of all the slicing that needed to be done because I was underage to use the meat slicer, and this just made her angry more. In a few months her and I would have a big argument; I will lose my job.
During this time, me and Jan were getting to know each other, on a deeper level than writing to each other, or talking over the phone, her mom was really cool, and let us hang out, her dad was a bit more strict, which was understandable, I was a guy seeing his baby girl, and I was not a local boy, so that had to make it harder. After a few weeks we were ready to take things to the next level, but we were never alone, I had a bicycle that I rode ever where,, the town was small so I could get everywhere I needed to be with that, the first time I went up the mountain to Jan’s house after dark, I thought I was going to die, I got a fast start at the bottom of the mountain and only made it up a little way and had to walk the bike up the rest of the way, I swear it felt like miles, but it was most likely only a ¼ mile, I got up to her house after 11 pm, her dad was asleep, I could hear him snoring at the other end of the house, we went into her bedroom, I had no idea what I was doing, this was my first time, and it was her first time, I’m not sure if she knew that is was my first time with a girl, I may have not told the truth, but I can’t remember, I do remember that it was amazing, and I wanted to do it again and again, which we did on a regular basis. I would call her from the pay phone outside the diner and ride or walk up that mountain. Every chance I got, we would spend a few hours together, and then I would go out the front door and get back to my bike that I hid in the ditch at the road and ride back down the mountain. I’ll tell you the adrenaline rush of riding that 10 speed bike back down that mountain at night was something I’ve never experienced before or after. One night we both fell asleep, and I did not leave like I normally would, I woke up and heard her Dad walking down the hallway with his boots on, I woke her up real fast, we were both naked, her Dad called her name and opened the door, she sat straight up in bed, with the blankets pulled up over her chest, in turn hiding me behind the blankets, as well as exposing both of my feet and her feet as well. He was waking her up for school before he went to work.
He closed the door, and I thought he had saw my feet and I was freaking out, I just knew he was coming back to that room with a shotgun, I got half-dressed and jumped out of her bedroom window into the back yard, they had 2 dogs in a pen out back, and they heard me for a second barked a few times they were quite. I was standing at the end of the house trying to get the rest of my clothes on when a skunk came out of the weeds and walked right up to my foot and smelled me. I was frozen, all I could think of was how I was going to explain getting sprayed by a skunk, and a skunk spraying at her dad’s house. The skunk turned around and walked away, without spraying me. I finished putting my jacket on and decided that I could not go down the driveway like I normally would do, because I didn’t know how long it would be before her dad would walk out of the house. I decided to run down the hill next to her house, I took off running to get to the wood line and go down the hill, I got maybe 10 feet from her house before I tripped on something and I fell down the hill half way, her dad had a little garden area that had barbed wire around it, and I had tripped on the barbed wire and took it with me half way down the hill, it was stuck in my shin and my pants, I heard her dad’s truck start up, and I froze, I waited on the side of the hill until he pulled out of the driveway, and drove down the road. I got to my bike and road back to her sister’s house and got into my basement room and went to sleep for a little while before I had to be at work.
I turned 18 while living in Vermont, after I turned 18, I called my case worker John to tell him that I was ok and that I was doing good, I told him that I was out of state, and I thanked him for all that he had tried to do for me growing up. About a week after I talked with John is when me and the prep cook got into it at the diner. We had a very intense argument, we did not talk the rest of the night, the next day the owner fired me, he said that I told the prep cook that I was going to slice her throat. Which never happened. But it was her way of getting rid of me, so that she could get the job she thought I took from her. A few days after I got fired, I was hired at another company in town, I really can’t talk much of this company because it was a government contract company, and out of respect for Jan and her family it would reveal to much about the town. But it was a good job, that I really did enjoy. I spent thanksgiving with Jan and her mom and sister, and I talked with my mom and she begged me to come home for Christmas, I made arrangements with my job to take a few weeks off to go back to Michigan for the holidays, the facility I was working at was going to be closed the last 2 weeks of the year and the first few days of the new year. I was going to take a bus back to Michigan on December 12th, 1988, I wouldn’t get there till the 14th, and I was supposed to go back to Vermont on the 9th of January, I can still remember Jan and I sitting in the back seat of her mom’s car on the drive up to a major city for the bus, she was crying asking me not to go, and me telling her I would be back, Not knowing that I was about to make the biggest and most costly mistake of my entire life.
My mom picked me up from the bus station in Detroit, and within 2 days she was under the impression that I was there to stay, she started saying that I needed to find a job, I didn’t go back around my old chop shop friends, I stayed away from that crew, and only seen a few friends that I knew were cool and not into a lot of shit. I stayed out of trouble. Christmas came and went the New year came went, I went to a few parties and had fun but never got into trouble, my mom was still on me about getting job, and telling me that I was not going back to Vermont, I got a job at Bob Evens just to stop her from harping on me and to make some money, I pushed back my return date to Vermont because I had run out of Money to buy my bus ticket to get back to Vermont. I was trying to go back on January 19th,1989. On January 14th, 1989, I went to a party at a friend’s cousin’s house, everything was going well, then all hell broke loose. The parents came home to a house full of kids drinking and having a good old time. The parents were very religious, and their 2 daughters decided to run away from the party, and they were following me as I was running from the party, I didn’t want to be there when the police showed up. We ended up back at my buddy John’s house, who was their cousin. And they kept saying that their parents were going to send them away, and that it was the last straw for them. They were 15 and 16 years old, so they were going to be sent to the juvenile detention center, I decided to help them. I asked them where they wanted to go, they both said California,
I remember thinking about just going out and stealing a car to drive them out of state, then I started thinking about the steering column being messed up, I decided to find a car that was started in someone’s driveway warming up. I got up and told the girls that I was going to find a car, I spent 2 hours walking up and down the streets in the neighborhood in Lincoln Park, on three different occasions I was walking towards a car, that was started and warming up in a driveway, when the owner would walk out of the house and get in the car. I was looking for a specific kind of car, I needed a 4-door sedan, my original intent was to avoid direct person to person contact, it was close to 9 am when I decided that I would just go up to the strip mall and take a car from someone. I walked towards the strip mall at Dix and Champaign Rd, in Lincoln Park, about a block and a half away from my dad’s new house or my grandmother’s old house. And 2 blocks away from my buddy’s house, where the girls were waiting for me. There was a family dollar situated at the corner of the strip mall, next to a Kroger grocery store, there was a dumpster area within 20 feet of where a 4 door Ford Taurus was parked, I saw the car come into the parking lot as I was walking into the parking lot, I see it pull back into the side building parking area, out of the way, I had a 12 inch bowie knife on me, and I was going to pull the knife out and demand the car keys from whoever came to the car.
I was standing next to the dumpster surround for about 20 minutes, and an older lady came around the corner and walked up to the car. I ran out from the dumpster surround and confronted her, as I was looking around, I noticed a pay phone on the wall for the family dollar store, I freaked out, and I told her to give me the keys, she told me no, then I told her to give me the keys again and to get into the truck of the car, she dropped the keys and her purse and the bag she had from the store and the ballons she had purchased, and took off running back towards the store front. We never had any physical contact whatsoever, I picked up the keys and her purse, and jumped in the car, I started the car, put it into reverse and pulled back and took off. I drove on the back side of the stores to the exit on Champaign Road, I waited for traffic to clear and turned right onto Champaign and then made a left onto Porter Ave. drove down 2 streets to McLain Ave. and made a left this road split off into a street called Regina Ave. I took the split to the left and drove up to Dix as I was coming to the major road a Lincoln Park city police car was flying by with lights and sirens, I waited for traffic to clear and I made a left hand turn to go in the same direction as he was going, but I jumped to the right lane and made a right hand turn on the next street which was Markese Ave, I pulled down the street half way and parked the car, I was basically right behind Johns house just on the next block, I walked into the back yard of his neighbor that lived behind him and jumped the fence, I went to his side door and went inside. The Girls were sitting there waiting for me, Johns Mom was not up yet, and I got the girls out of the house, and we all jumped the fence and went to the car.
The girls got into the car and started asking me all sorts of questions about where I got the car, I told them I had stolen it, I took all side streets and worked my way out of Lincoln park and made to Ecorse, I needed to go home to pack a bag to leave, I parked the car on the next street over from my mom’s hose and walked to my mom’s and went inside, my mom was at work, I grabbed my stuff and put it into a duffle bag and left. I got back to the car and put the bag in the trunk, then the girls were talking about needing stuff as well, so they asked me to take them by their house to grab bags for themselves, we got back into Lincoln Park by the side streets, and I pulled onto St. Johns Blvd. and parked the car about 6 houses away from their house. We waited until their mom and dad left, about an hour later their parents got into their car and we all ducked down in the car as they passed us. They were in the house for about 15 minutes, I thought about leaving them there, and dumping the car, but I just kept thinking about them being placed int the juvenile detention center, so I stayed and waited. They put their stuff in the trunk as well and we pulled away from their house, I knew of an area where it was kind of abandoned in Delray, and drove over there, knowing that Delray didn’t have a police force or police cars, and it was right off I-75. I wanted to travel at night. As we were sitting there the girls started talking, and came up with the idea to get to a pay phone and call a few friends, and see if they could get some people to come with them to California, they got out of the car and walked to a store nearby and made a few phone calls, they came back and asked me to drive over to a friend’s house. In later thoughts, I wish I would have driven off when they went to that pay phone.
I drove over to their friends house and two boys came out of the house with them, both had bags, and they put the bags in the trunk as well, now I had 4 run a way kids in the car under the age of 18, we made to back to Delray and I waited another 2 hours for the sun to set, and I drove onto I-75, I headed south toward the Michigan Ohio state line. About 45 minutes into driving, it was lightly raining, and the temp was in the mid 30’s when everyone in the back seat said they had to use the bathroom, we were now in Monroe County, about 6 miles from the state line. I exited the freeway onto Erie Rd. and made a right, looking for a gas station, I was unfamiliar with the area, and did not find a gas station, I pulled into a driveway, of what looked like a farmhouse, the girls and guys got out of the car, and they all went pee. They came from around a barn and got back into the car, as soon as they got in all 4 of them lit up cigarettes, the smoke was so thick it was making my eyes water, I put the car into reverse and started to back up, I mis judged the width of the country road and backed up into a ditch that was very deep. During this back up, I also ran over the mailbox for the house we were just in the driveway for. One of the girls decided to go up to the house and knock on the door, to ask for help. The owner came out and was pissed that his mailbox was run over yet once again, I guess this was the third or fourth time he had to replace that mailbox. He yelled to have his wife call the police. Just then another guy was driving down the street with a pickup truck, and he stopped and said he could pull us out of the ditch, We hooked up the car, and the guys pick up pulled the car out of the ditch, the owner of the mailbox was still bitching about his mailbox, and I gave him 25 dollars, and he was yelling at me to wait for the police. I got back into the car and drove off, back towards I-75 I was about a ¼ mile down the road when I saw the State police car coming towards me, no lights on or anything. I seen his break lights in the rearview mirror, and he stopped for a second, the next thing I saw was his lights come on. And his headlight turned my way. I punched it, the girls in the back seat were freaking out yelling and screaming, I told them to shut the hell up and be quiet, it didn’t work, I was speeding at about 90 miles an hour when I saw other lights coming at me, from several different directions, At this point I decided that I was going to turn down the I -75 freeway in the wrong direction in hopes of losing them, I was coming up to the exit ramp from the freeway when I hit the brakes and turned the wheel left to go down the exit ramp. Big mistake, the road was wet, the bridge was starting to ice over, and when I turned that wheel, I went into a full 360 deg spin, at about 75 or 80 miles per hour. I remember the ass end of the car hitting the concrete wall on the bridge, then the front end hitting to other wall of the bridge, I later found out that I spun the car 5 full times in the wreck, I ended up back into a ditch, I asked everyone if they were ok and I restarted the car, I was trying to pull out of the ditch, when a lot of police cars pulled up to where I was at, I thought about jumping out and making a run for it, the girls were all freaking out in the back seat, yelling that they were pointing guns at us in the car. I couldn’t see much, the driver’s door window was covered in mud, I couldn’t get the car out of the ditch. I turned it off. At this point with the engine off and not revving up, I could hear the police yelling at me to raise my hands and get out of the car. I opened the driver’s door and out fell my big knife. I got out of the car into the ditch, and the police were yelling at me to not reach for the knife, they had me step away from the knife and get on my knees, as I was getting onto my knees a got kicked in the back and face planted right into the muddy ditch,