The next sequence is one of those which I have memory gaps. From my arrest record I know that I escaped from Navy Shore Patrol early April 1975, and that my next official appearance was April 24, 1975. So only about three weeks passed, but it seems like more happened in that time than could have occurred in three weeks. With that in mind I will attempt to fill in the blanks.

From Jacksonville I must have hitch-hiked to Brownsville, Texas. I have a vague memory of wanting to leave the country, but little else. Brownsville is in southeast Texas, the southern most part of Texas and on the Mexican boarder. I crossed into Mexico and spent some time in Mexico, first in the border town of Matamoras then in Reynosa. Just floating around I ended back on the U.S. side, in McAllen, Texas, which is across the border from Reynosa and just a few miles up the Rio Grande River from Brownsville. I needed money, so I was looking for a score. In that part of the world money meant drugs and drug smugglers. I didn't have any qualms about stealing from those guys but I was pretty sure they all had guns, something I lacked. So I kept my eyes open until I spotted an opportunity. During the day I spotted a guy who looked suspicious getting out of a van and going into a small run down house on the outskirts of town. I waited around a while but didn't see him again. Being an optimist I walked to a store and spent some of my precious funds on a cheap backpack. After it got dark I hadn't spotted anything so I went back to that house. As soon as I got there I saw the guy carry a medium size bundle to the van, then go back inside. Always being one to seize the moment, I ran to the van and looked inside. It had a growing stack of bundles. I couldn't see what was in the tight wrapped plastic bags, but I could smell the marijuana plant just fine. I grabbed one of the bundles then ran back into the shadows. Before I could return for another the guy came out again and tossed another into the back of the van, but this time he closed the door and drove off.

The package felt like twenty pounds, so I decided to be happy with that. My quickly developed plan was to take the pot to Florida where it would be worth about $200 per pound. Four grand was a chunk of money back then, enough to set myself up with a new life in Mexico.

My next problem was that I was on foot. I had seen a number of Mexicans walking or catching a train out of south Texas, but I wasn't about to try that while wanted and with twenty pounds of pot on my back. Yet I did want to get away from the scene of the crime so I started walking north in the dark. It wasn't long before I cut across a road, which I followed until I reached a cross road. At the cross road was a big Kawasaki dealer. It was late and the place was closed so I broke in and stole a big Kawasaki KZ900. I wasn't into motorcycles, but I later learned the KZ900 was the fastest production motorcycle ever built (cir. 1975). I believed the claim.

The trip to Florida was going well. I stopped in Corpus Christy long enough to sell a pound of pot for $80, which was cheep for that far north but it was worth it as I needed cash for gas and food. Things were cheaper then so $80 was enough to get me to Coco Beach.

I'd decided to go to Ron Jon's and see if Captain Purple was still around. If he wasn't interested in the pot he might know who was. If not, I knew a few guys around there myself. When I opened the bag in Corpus Christi I discovered that I had twenty-five individually wrapped pounds. There was a nice nest egg in my back pack, especially if I sold it right. It wasn't until I reached Mobile Alabama that things began to go bad.

I made the mistake of waiting too long to get gas and had to stop in Mobile. I tried to avoid cities on the stolen motorcycle, but didn't have a choice this time. Fortunately I had already topped off my tank when the city cop tried to pull me over. I was pretty good on a motorcycle, but I had yet to be in a chase on one. It turned out to be pretty easy to loose the cop car in the city traffic but as soon as I lost the first one I'd run into another. This seemed to continue forever until I finally lost one and there were no others to take his place. After twenty minutes of hot dogging through traffic at high speeds I had to stop for gas again. I ended up north west of Mobile, the wrong side to reach Florida. I ran back roads until I was clear of Alabama and into Georgia, then drove south to Florida, picked up I-10 East and continued on my way.

In the early morning hours of April 24, 1975 I stopped for gas in the small town of Quincy Florida, just west of Tallahassee. After pulling out of the gas station a city cop tried to pull me over. I would later learn that he was a motorcycle enthusiasts who just wanted to talk to me about my Kawasaki 900. Of course we never had that conversation because I took off. The ramp for I-10 East was in front of me so I took it. The small town cop never got close to me. On the Interstate with little traffic I opened the Kawasaki up and ran it at full throttle. At those speeds things in front of you end up beside you so fast that it's not wise to look down at the speedometer, so I didn't know my speed. I was pretty sure it was the fastest I'd ever driven anything though.

The sun was just coming up hitting me in the eyes when I spotted two Florida State Trooper cars sitting still on the side of the road. I saw dirt sprayed from both car's rear tires, which is the only way I knew they were giving chase. I saw them for that second then they were miles behind me. This was before radar was available to track your speed, but Florida had something called Vascar. They were running their Vascar when I blasted through and they clocked me at 147 miles per hour.

Since they were sitting still when I went past them at full speed I wasn't worried about those two catching up to me, but I knew there would be more down the road. Tallahassee was coming up fast so I had decided to take the next exit and get away using the back roads. I had a full tank of gas, but I'd already learned it didn't last long at high speed so I planned on grabbing a back road and slowing down. When the next exit appeared I let off the accelerator, and nearly tapped the break before I caught myself. Somehow I realized I couldn't break at that speed and I was going way too fast to down shift. In the seconds that this occurred I had passed the exit. I had slowed a great deal so I looked at the instrument panel and saw that I was still doing 125. I slowed a little more with intentions of flipping around in the medium and taking that exit from the other side. While processing this I looked in my rattling rearview mirrors and saw one State Trooper (I would later learn that the other had blown an engine) and he was gaining on me.

With no other choice I turned the throttle to full power, but before I reached the Kawasaki's top speed the cop car was behind me. In court I learned the state trooper cars were Plymouths with a special Police Interceptor package. Their speedometers went up to 200 miles per hour, and both State Troopers testified that they buried the needle to catch me. I believed every word of it. Those cars were so much faster than the Kawasaki that I didn't have a chance to out run them. My only chance was to out drive them.

We begun to get close to Tallahassee and it's morning traffic was beginning to build. I had my first ray of hope when I saw a long line of cars and tractor trailers running two abreast. At 145 mph I went between the traffic. The trooper couldn't follow that but did a great job of getting the traffic out of his way. I put distance between us, then he would catch up on an open stretch. This repeated several times and every time he managed to catch up with me again. Traffic was getting heavier as we got closer to the State Capital so I figured I would eventually win the race in traffic. I was thinking this when my motor died.

I assumed I'd blown the engine, but what I later learned was that I had accidently hit the emergency kill switch and shut the engine down. I still wore a cast on my right hand from the motorcycle accident in Maryland and was having trouble holding the throttle at high speeds, so I had to constantly adjust my grip on the handle. The cast had a large bump between my thumb and finger, and this is what hit the shut off switch.

At the point where the engine died I had built a small gap between the cop and I, and he was still held back by the growing traffic. As I slowed down we could see each other but he couldn't get to me. To my right there was a slight hill of cut grass with the interstate's perimeter fence running along the top of the rise. I was still doing more than 100 mph and with the trooper getting dangerously close. I don't recall thinking about what to do, but I have a vivid memory of doing it. I hit both brakes and slowed to 60 mph then leaned to the right and ran the bike up the grass hill. When I reached the top of the hill I put both feet on the seat while still holding the handlebars, then stood up as the bike's front wheel hit the fence. Not sure how fast I was still going when I hit the fence, the bike had slowed considerably climbing the small hill across the soft grass, but it was still going fast enough to launch me through the air.

I easily cleared the fence and was thrown for about ten feet then hit the ground and rolled. I looked and saw the trooper out of his car with his gun pointed at me. Again, without thought I was on my feet and running. I was still wearing a helmet, so my hearing was muffled, but I heard rapid gun fire. None hit me, but two of the rounds passed close enough that I felt the pressure of their passing. Not sure how else to explain it. It was like the bullets pushed air out of the way as they traveled and I felt the air being moved by those two bullets. One was near my left hand and the other near the side of my head.

I ran until I was in the woods then paused long enough to take the helmet off, then kept running deeper into the woods. It wasn't long before I reached a fair size river. Without considering the cast on my arm went into the water and began swimming down the river. The cast was a dangerous weight, but my Coast Guard training in something called "Drown Proofing" came back to me, so I was never in danger of drowning, just slowed down by the cast. By the time I left the river the cast had "melted" to the point where I was able to easily cut it off with my pocket knife. The chase started at first light in the morning and I ran through the woods all day. As it begun to get dark I figured I'd covered thirty miles or more. Most of this was going north, with the Georgia border as my destination. At this point I figured enough time and distance had passed that it would be safe to come out of the woods and find a ride.