Читать книгу Every Move You Make - M. William Phelps - Страница 17

When Horton found Lisa Morris on October 15, 1997, she was living at Rolling Ridge Apartments in Latham, a mere stone’s throw from the Spare Room II self-storage facility on Watervliet-Shaker Road, where Evans and Tim Rysedorph, the Bureau found out, had rented two self-storage units, eight feet by ten feet, to house their stolen property.

Getting Lisa to open up about Evans, Horton realized quickly, was not going to be easy.

Like Damien Cuomo, Michael Falco and Tim Rysedorph, Lisa grew up in Troy. A bit on the “rough” side, she’d had her share of problems with alcohol and drugs throughout the years, but had no real rap sheet to speak of. A plain-looking woman with easy brown eyes, large shoulders over a medium build, long brown hair and a quiet demeanor, Lisa’s pale-white skin gave away her full-blooded Irish heritage. She had met Evans in 1988—to no one’s surprise later on—a few months before Damien Cuomo, her common-law husband, turned up missing. As calculating and manipulative as Evans was, he had moved in with Lisa after Cuomo disappeared. Shortly before moving in, he was showing up at her apartment, telling her that Cuomo had “run off” after committing several burglaries with him.

“He’s not coming back,” Evans said one day. “He told me to tell you that.”

In the beginning, the relationship between them wasn’t sexual, Lisa said later. Evans would stop by her apartment just to talk, “like friends,” and, at Cuomo’s request, “keep her company.”

As the months passed, he began giving her money, as if paying off a debt. When he stopped by her apartment with the cash, he would tell her that he’d heard from Damien, saying things like, “He’s hiding out down south. Write him off. Forget about him. He’s not coming back.”

In 1996, after Evans finished a two-year bid for burglary in Sing Sing, he began a more concerted effort to win Lisa’s affection.

“Gary and I became very close,” Lisa said later, “when he got out of prison. He would often stay with me.”

As she and Evans described it later, they began having what Lisa termed “marathon sex” around this same time—and Lisa, then a thirty-two-year-old single mother, said she couldn’t get enough of it as she began to fall in love with Evans.

During the week of October 15, Sully and Ed Moore took one more stab at interviewing Caroline Parker. They needed Caroline to sit down and write out a formal statement. Tim’s photo had been all over the television news lately and missing person posters had been hung around the Capital Region. His siblings were pleading for his return. Caroline and Sean, devastated, had given interviews to local reporters, hoping, naturally, it would help.

Ed Moore, Sully and other members of the Bureau felt different, though. They knew if Evans was involved with Tim, it wasn’t going to be good news. Keep the faith and hope for the best, but understand it may not turn out so pleasant at the end of the day.

When Moore and Sully first arrived at Caroline’s apartment, they explained how Tim had been involved in the trafficking of stolen property. They needed Caroline to fess up to what she knew about Tim’s criminal behavior. It had been weeks now. No more bullshit. It was time to talk truth.

Caroline was taken aback by their candor. “I know of no criminal activity that Tim was involved in and do not believe he would do anything illegal like that,” she said with stern assertion.

After a bit more prodding, however, she finally admitted that she and Tim’s relationship hadn’t been as trouble-free as she might have first let on. Tim had left in 1996 for a period of time, she explained. They fought. They had financial problems. But Tim, she insisted, was a family man all the way. “I believe our lifestyle does not reflect Tim having a lot of money from illegal activity….”

Moore and Sully looked at each other: You are so full of shit.

About a week prior to his disappearance, Caroline recalled, Tim had taken a day off from work. Moore and Sully knew—but didn’t share it with her—that on that particular day Tim was south of Albany with Evans selling stolen merchandise to an antique shop that the two of them had been doing business with for years. The owner of the shop had picked Tim and Evans out of a photo lineup. The Bureau had three checks in the neighborhood of $10,000 written out from the shop owner to Tim Rysedorph.

Caroline continued to talk about Tim’s mood around the house during the last few weeks, relating how he was an incredibly private person, especially when it came to whom he was speaking to over the telephone.

“Do you recall any strange calls the past few weeks?” Sully asked.

“I cannot remember any unusual calls except for one. About two months ago, I answered a telephone call from a person I thought was my uncle Gary Ashton. ‘Hello, is Tim there?’ the caller asked when I answered. I said, ‘Hi, Gar, what’s the matter?’ The caller replied, ‘Just let me talk to Tim.’ He sounded mad.”

Caroline said she realized later it wasn’t her uncle Gary, but it was Gary Evans. Everyone in their old Troy neighborhood, where Michael Falco, Evans, Damien Cuomo and Tim had all grown up, she said, believed Evans had murdered Falco.

The last time, Caroline said, she saw or heard from Evans had been when Sean was born. Evans brought over a card and gave them an air conditioner because he was concerned that the temperature in the apartment was too hot for Caroline and the newborn. As the years passed, Caroline said she would mention Evans’s name around Tim, but he would always get upset.

“Don’t ever mention that name again,” Tim would snap angrily at Caroline at the mere mention of Evans. There was obviously some tension and resentment between the two men, but Caroline continued to maintain she had no idea why.

“Anything else you can recall about your husband and Gary Evans,” Moore prodded, “would be of great help to us.” He knew she had more information.

“Well, I remember Tim telling me that if anything ever happened to him, or if he ever became missing, ‘like Mike Falco,’ that I was not to say anything to the police about Gary Evans…. He is dangerous.”

Moore and Sully wondered why she hadn’t offered the information weeks ago.

Continuing, she said, “Tim said that if anything ever happened to him, I should change our last name and move away.”

Considering what had happened the past few weeks, Caroline perhaps realized for the first time that Evans had likely had a hand in her husband’s disappearance. She said she now believed it was Evans, using the alias “Lou,” who had called her the weekend Tim disappeared. Tim was scared of Evans, she added, and had probably gone with him reluctantly because Evans had threatened Tim with Sean’s safety.

It was one of the last conversations she’d had with Tim that really scared her, she admitted. The night before Tim disappeared, a Thursday, she said they had a fight and talked about getting a divorce. “‘I love you…but if you want a divorce,’” she said Tim wrote in a note to her that night, “‘I will give you money for the divorce.’”

Later in the note, after he apologized for being “moody” lately and even “mean” at times, as if he had a premonition of what was to come, Tim wrote of his concern for Caroline and Sean’s safety, should he ever not return home. He speculated that Evans would harm her and Sean and was worried about not being around to protect them.