April 22, 1974 - 17 years old

I can't remember where I wanted to go when I got to the bus station, but I do remember no bus was going there any time soon. I started walking. I walked until I passed a store with a car sitting out front with the motor running and the driver's door open. A ride left there for me. I can't remember the model, but it was a GTO, or something similar. It was a nice car. Fast. Much better than the bus.

During my Florida drug dealing days I'd met a guy from Detroit. He'd come to Florida to buy a stolen boat, something that could make the trip to Jamaica and back. Told me he knew a big mob guy willing to pay big money for it. I was only sixteen and not really a criminal, just a petty drug dealer, so I declined. But at seventeen, AWOL, on my own and in need of a nest egg, the boat deal had some appeal. After what I experienced in the North Atlantic I was pretty sure I could handle a forty footer in the Caribbean. So I pointed the hot rod towards Detroit and drove even deeper into Yankee Territory.

Somewhere along the way I got into an ugly chase with a state trooper. Unlike the Florida cops I'd outran in my underpowered Pinto, this guy could drive. Since my days of running cops in Florida I'd now been professionally trained and was driving a proper get-away car, yet I still couldn't shake this cop. It was a back road with hills and and tight curves, all surrounded by deep woods. He managed to get on my bumper a few times, but I would pull away by driving aggressively, meaning recklessly. What worked best was passing on a blind curve. I nor the trooper knew if a vehicle was coming around the curve. Survival was a matter of chance. I was so reckless that the cop backed off a little. I could have killed someone, perhaps an entire family. I was too self absorbed to think about this, but not so for the state trooper.

Though he backed off, he was still behind me. Had there been a cross road or a turn I'd have taken it, but there was nothing. It wasn't long before the decision was made for me. I'd just come up behind a pickup truck on a curve, since the trooper wasn't in sight I tapped my breaks instead of passing blind. The break peddle went to the floor. With no breaks I whipped around the truck and passed blind. That time it was the closest I'd come to dying. Another pickup truck was in the opposite lane. The driver made a quick move to the narrow shoulder and saved both our lives. I hit the gas again and got back in my lane. Again I tried the breaks: nothing there. Not even scraping metal when the break pads are worn down.

This was an early lesson that I would pay attention to in future chase situations. The breaks were almost always the first thing to go. In an aggressive run, like this one, the breaks always went. Something I would learn to allow for.

My best option had been to abondon the car and run into the woods. Without brakes that would now take too long. I had already slowed down enough that I could see the trooper in my mirror more often than not as I went t though the curves. To speed up, or even to keep going was an invitation for disaster. I had no idea what to do until I spotted a restaurant with a large gravel parking lot. It was early in the day and the parking lot was empty so I aimed for it at about sixty miles per hour, then used the method I'd learned in the Coast Guard. As soon as I cleared the road I let off the accelerator and turned the wheel hard left. I expected the car to buck up a little and threaten to flip as the tires caught, (which is why I turned the wheel left, to use my own weight to help hold the wheels down) but instead the wheels slid across the loose gravel. It slid across the entire lot only stopping when it hit a railroad tie that marked the end of the lot. I already had my door open so when the car came to a sudden stop I fell out, rolled a few times then came up running.

I didn't look back (you never look back) but did hear the state trooper's screeching stop. I had entered the woods fast, but he wasn't far behind with his keys and handcuffs juggling behind me. Cops are always noisy when they run. I was seventeen, in great shape with boot camp only a few months behind me, and motivated. The cop was a great driver but he couldn't catch me on foot. After he gave up the hot pursuit other units began arriving. Knowing they would focus on the direction I had run in, I made a wide u-turn through the woods then crossed the road about a half mile from where I'd abandoned the car. When the helicopter showed up an hour later it searched the area on the opposite side of the road. When I heard dogs a few hours after that, they too were on the other side of the road. They never expected me to double back so they never got near me.

Four long hard days later I came out of the woods far from the place I went in. It was winter and I'd left my coat in the car. I learned a great deal about surviving in the woods in those four days. I also learned how to avoid capture. On the fifth day I stole another car. This one also had the keys in it. The rest of the trip to Detroit was uneventful.

Detroit was unlike any place I'd ever been. A rough and raw city. Dangerous in ways I had yet to experience. There was a heavy police presence so I dumped my stolen car and walked the last few miles. After a few blocks two guys tried to rob me with knives. I was unarmed so I improvised. I ran until I spotted a three foot piece of pipe on the ground. I picked it up and turned on them with a furry. This time they ran. I held on to the pipe and everyone left me alone.

The guy I met claimed a mob connection. He didn't go into detail and I didn't know enough to ask intelligent questions. The mob seemed like the kind of folks who would pay a good price for a stolen sea worthy boat. All I had was the name of a guy and a tattoo parlor. There was only one guy in the tattoo parlor and he was the named contact. He was a huge guy with biker DNA. I told him that a friend of his had sent me. When I said the guy's name he pointed a gun at my chest.

Turns out the guy I met had become a government witness. A rat. Tattoo guy thought I was a federal agent, a cop, or another rat. After taking a good look he relaxed a little and asked for my wallet. He pulled out my Florida Driver's License, my military ID, and the nine dollars I had. When he asked about the military ID I told the truth. The guy relaxed further and told me the sordid story about the guy I'd met in Florida. There was a contract out on the guy. Had I mentioned his name to someone else I'd be in serious trouble. He suggested I leave Detroit this minute. When I told him I only had nine bucks and no car he shook his head. He went into a back room and made a phone call, then came back and gave me a hundred dollars in small bills and told me to wait. Five minutes later there was a knock on the back door. An old Ford station wagon sitting there with the motor running. It was brush painted sky blue and had been hot wired. Leave Detroit, he said. Don't stop for gas. I'd been in Detroit for less than an hour, was nearly robbed, had a gun pulled on me and was threatened with death if I didn't leave immediately. I was more than happy to put Detroit behind me. I hated the place. I swore I would never return.

A few days later I was in Orlando. While hitchhiking into town I got a ride from a guy who asked a lot of questions. I dodged enough of them that he liked me. He liked guys who talked little and didn't like questions. Guys with something to hide. That was me. He offered me a place to crash and took me to his apartment. It was a nice place, well furnished. Too well furnished. He had a dozen nice TV's, as many stereos and speakers. The spare bedroom was so packed with nice furniture that I had to sleep on the couch. After I looked around I raised my eyebrow and looked him in the eye. Burglary, he said. Sweet gig. All I said was "I'm in."

He'd figured a way to get the master key for several dozen apartment complexes. He had cars, a van and a pickup truck. With me added to the crew there were six of us. A few weeks later I had my own well furnished apartment. In one of those strange twist of fates that followed me, I knew the girl next door. Cheryl. She'd lived across the street from my family when we first moved to Orlando. Two years earlier I was in lust with her, but she was a few years older than I, which matters when your fifteen and she's seventeen. Now I thought she might be my girlfriend but it didn't work out that way. We became friends. Trusted friends. She knew I was AWOL and knew how I made money and was cool with it. We'd smoke pot together and hung out a lot.

June 18, 1974 - 17 years old
She was at my place one Sunday afternoon smoking a joint when I noticed a gardener out the window. "Do the gardeners work here on Sunday," I asked. She'd never seen a gardener, so I looked at the grounds closer and sure enough it looked like all they did was cut the grass. This guy was pruning a hedge. I looked out the back door and another guy was up on the telephone pole fiddling with wires. On Sunday. "Go home now," I told her. She made it as far as the front door before they entered. They let her go, arrested me.

Our gang had fallen apart. One guy was arrested and he rolled on the rest. I'd been with the crew just over a month, but was charged for the hundreds of burgleries they had committed over the past two years. At the time they called it the largest burglary ring in central Florida's history. So I went to the Orange County jail charged with burglary and possession of marijuana. Since I was AWOL from the military there was no bond. At seventeen I was an adult in Florida so it would be prison for me.

July 2, 1974
Two weeks after my arrest charges were dropped and I was taken out of the jail. I had no idea why until I was delivered to the juvenile detention center. The Governor had just signed into law a bill that made eighteen the age of adulthood. I'd become a juvenile again. My eighteenth birthday was less than two months off.

The juvenile authorities were not at all comfortable having a military "man" in with their kids, so my charges were dismissed immediately and I was picked up by shore patrol from the Naval Training Center there in Orlando. They held me in a cell in their small brig for three hours before I escaped. The place where I climbed the fence to get off the Navy base was across the street from where I'd went to junior high school. I ran into the orange grove behind Glen Ridge Junior High and back into my old stomping grounds. In a single day I went from rotting in the Orange County jail with serious charges against me, to juvenile hall, to the Navy stockade then to freedom. It had been a busy day which included my first escape.

It had only been nine months since I left home, a few miles from the Navy base where I escaped, but what a packed nine months it had been. I had covered so many miles, caused so much trouble and experienced such diverse things as to defy logic. As unusual as this short period of time would seem, it was actually the beginning of a pattern that would last through most of my life.