Dark and Bloody Ground (21 page)

Bobby Morris’s father had traded with Roger’s father for decades.
How
was
his daddy, Roger inquired of Bobby, and did Ed Morris still carry a big fat roll of bills? Old Ed Morris, he’d always had enough on him to buy a Cadillac, Roger said in a jocular way. No, Bobby Morris replied, his father had been sick and didn’t fool much with cars anymore. His mom and dad stuck pretty close to home these days.

Roger did not buy a car that night. He and Benny and Donnie spent the next week visiting Roger’s friends at Isom, where they took in a race at the speedway, and in Hazard, Viper, Vicco, Delphia, and Cumberland, where Donnie also had contacts. Cumberland (pop. 3,172) was just over the Letcher line into Harlan County, about twenty miles from the Virginia border. Donnie decided that it was worth sneaking that far into Harlan because of some information they had to check out. With all of the dope they had been scoring—Benny had brought a set of weights with him and usually worked out while the others snorted, smoked, and drank—they were low on funds and decided they ought to try to do at least one lick before heading back to Tennessee. Cumberland was a place to pick up accurate, inside scuttlebutt because it was the center of gang activity in the area. Men from there ranged into several states, pulling jobs and distributing narcotics, sometimes managing operations of surprising sophistication. It was a gang from Cumberland that had masterminded the burglary of a South Carolina art museum, making off with a Frederic Remington bronze and other works.

Cumberland was also close to Linefork, on the Letcher border, where, Roger had been told by friends in Tennessee, a fence lived whose house was supposed to be a veritable warehouse of hot goods. A Cumberland contact expanded on the rumor and helped plan the job. The only problem was supposed to be a night watchman.

Around midnight on May 13, 1985, Roger, Benny, and Donnie drove to an isolated house near Linefork. They had already cased the place by daylight and conceived of a plan to make entrance easy. The blue light atop the T-bird threw the watchman off guard. Donnie and Benny ran up the drive with guns drawn, took the watchman’s gun, tied him up, and warned him to keep quiet or be dead. Roger, who had been waiting in the car for fear of being recognized, followed them into the house. They roused a husband and wife and their small son, tied them up, and ransacked the house.

It was less than they had hoped. They emptied every drawer, even
checked out the refrigerator—and ended up with about four thousand dollars in cash and a number of rifles, shotguns, and pistols. They headed south on 160 through the town of Appalachia, west through Virginia and down to Knoxville, and were home before dawn.

If the victim was actually a fence, he did not behave as if he had anything to hide, because he immediately reported the crime to the police. The watchman stated that the men had at first identified themselves as federal agents, whether IRS or FBI he could not say; nor could he describe their car.

Benny withheld from Sherry any details of the adventure in Kentucky. She knew only that they had done some minor job and that money was running short.

As if resigning herself to a new phase in her life, Sherry had formally discharged herself from the Ridgeview psychiatric clinic while Benny was away. On May 12 she attended a final session. Her clinician on that occasion, a man with a Ph.D. in psychology, noted that Sherry, who gave her last name as Hodge, was terminating treatment of her own volition, for “reasons unknown.” His “Final Formulation” was that the patient was “very emotionally deprived,” unable to break with a harmful relationship, was suffering “terror at the thought of being alone,” and was “impulsive and self-destructive.” “Followup Plans” included only “will await further patient contact.”

When the boys announced that they were heading across state lines again, targeting the Memorial Day weekend for a robbery in Rome, Georgia, Sherry, ever determined to make the best of things, decided that they might as well have some holiday fun along the way. Some of her happiest times with Benny had been spent visiting various tourist attractions around Tennessee, especially Gatlinburg, a resort on the banks of the Little Pigeon River, at the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where they rode quaint, brightly colored trolleys, shopped for handicrafts, and where even Benny had to admit that the country music was great. They had taken Renee and Benny’s daughters there several times. Looking at a map, she saw that Rome was only some fifty miles above Atlanta and Six Flags Over Georgia, a vast amusement park that several of her friends and relatives had raved about. She persuaded everyone that a Sunday spent at Six Flags would make a festive prelude to the robbery, set for Monday.

This particular job was arranged in cahoots with a pair of brothers from Ooltewah, a suburb of Chattanooga near 1-75 and the Georgia border, about seventy-five miles north of Rome. The target was a reputed drug dealer whom the Ooltewah boys had been checking out and following around. They knew his car; they figured that the man would likely be at home on Memorial Day at his house in rural Floyd County, a few miles outside of Rome—a city of thirty thousand souls built on seven hills and notable for its city hall statue of the Capitoline wolf and her sucklings, Romulus and Remus, a gift from Benito Mussolini in 1929. Roger and the others decided that this would be a good opportunity to run a full-scale test of their federal agents scam. They elected to pose as IRS agents, since drug dealers were always paranoid about unpaid taxes on illegitimate income.

May 26 was a sunny Sunday at Six Flags, perfect for the whitewater rafting adventure, the triple-loop roller coaster, banter with a strolling Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig, and several rides on Sherry’s favorite, the Octopus, with her and Carol snapping pictures to immortalize the occasion. They gorged on hot dogs and cotton candy; they had so much fun that for a few hours Sherry was able to cast her anxieties aside and giggle like a kid. She showed great form in knocking over six milk bottles with a Softball, winning a cuddly stuffed pink buffalo she named Big Ben.

Donnie had a new girlfriend along, a seventeen-year-old from Oliver Springs whom he had met through his sister. She was Rebecca Jane Hannah, and she had first been attracted to Donnie when, early that May, she had seen him riding a motorcycle on a visit to his mother and sister’s trailer. Her birthday had been on Friday, so the outing at Six Flags was a belated celebration for her. Sherry disliked her immediately, thinking there was something both snotty and stupid about her and ridiculing her when she said proudly that she was related to a governor of Tennessee, without saying which one. Sherry suggested it must have been Ray Blanton, who had gone to jail in 1979 for selling pardons.

Rebecca was not told about Monday’s plans. They sent her home in her own car Sunday night, while the rest of them stayed at the Ooltewah brothers’ house. The next evening Sherry and Carol prepared to wait as the men took off, Roger driving his T-bird with one of the brothers, the other brother in his green Dodge with Benny and Donnie as passengers. Donnie and Benny, who would do the talking, wore suits; Sherry had done her best to make them fit their roles, trimming their hair short and slicking it down, ironing their white shirts. She noted how convincing Benny looked with his muscles hidden by the jacket she had tailored to hang loosely on him.

But she was nervous. It was more than the usual adrenaline. She was not confident of the brothers’ intelligence. As the evening wore on and she watched the clock and fidgeted, she felt like socking Carol, who was driving her batty with chatter—how everyone needed to discover the inner child within herself; how parents could be toxic to their children; something about a female guru in the West who believed that it was all right to murder your husband because you would have a new one in the next life anyway. “Can’t you cool it, Chop, you scatterbrained rumdum?” Sherry pleaded, turning up the volume on the TV. By ten o’clock Carol was Patty Hearst again. Sherry hugged her buffalo and tried to think positively.

15

A
T ABOUT NINE O'CLOCK THAT EVENING
they found the address in a well-lit subdivision beyond the Rome city limits. Except for bright street lamps, everything looked good. Only one car was in the driveway. Roger switched on the blue police light and stuck it onto the roof of the T-bird. Donnie and Benny piled out of the Dodge and hustled up to the front door and banged on it, Benny shouting, “Open up! This is the IRS!”

A man opened the door a crack. “IRS,” Benny said, flashing his badge—as did Donnie, but as briefly as possible, as his was merely a toy made of tin. When the man hesitated, Benny wedged his foot in the door and, drawing his gun, forced his way in, with Donnie following. “You better be real peaceful,” Benny said. “We’re here to collect back taxes.” Donnie signaled for the others to come on in as the man protested that he did not owe any taxes. Two teenage girls and an older woman clung together on a couch.

“Tie ‘em up,” Roger ordered as he burst in with the brothers. Benny handcuffed the man. The girls and the woman submitted to being tied with rope and gagged with duct tape. Benny demanded that the man show him his stash of drugs and any cash he had in the house. The man insisted that he had nothing and that there must be some mistake. Roger looked at the Ooltewah boys. “Bullshit,” one of them said. “It’s got to be him. He’s lying.”

It was a modest tract house that betrayed no sign of wealth. They
went from room to room turning over beds, emptying drawers, hurling clothes from closets and found—nothing. No cocaine, no cash, not so much as a joint. Was it under the house? Buried in the yard? They demanded, threatened—the man pleaded that he had nothing to hide and begged them not to hurt his mother and and daughters.

“A fuckup,” Roger said at last. “Take what you can and get out of here.”

They threw jewelry, a few firearms, bank certificates, odds and ends, even a marble-topped table into the trunk of the T-bird. They wrapped the man in tape, sealed his mouth, and were on the way out when one of the girls began to writhe and squeal. Taking pity, an Ooltewah brother stripped off her gag. She begged him to loosen slightly the rope around her wrists. He did so and fled.

Within minutes the girl wriggled free and untied the others. Discovering that the telephone lines had been cut, she drove her father to a service station and helped him phone the police. He described a big black and white Thunderbird.

A trooper based in Rome was on patrol in Chattooga County when he received the all points bulletin. Almost immediately he spotted what looked like the rear lights of a T-bird up ahead. Drawing close enough to make out a Tennessee tag, he followed as the car turned from Highway 100 onto 114, slowed down, and headed toward a Pay and Tote store.

In the Dodge, Benny and Donnie argued with their driver about whether the victim had cleared out his stash because his family was visiting for the holiday or whether, as seemed more likely, he was not a dealer at all. Could they have invaded the wrong house? It was entirely possible; the police made that mistake frequently. Turning onto 114, the driver pulled over to the side of the road to wait when he saw through his rearview mirror that the T-bird was stopping at a convenience store.

“What are you doing?” Benny asked. “Look at that! Keep moving!”

A police cruiser bounced into the store’s parking lot and slid to a stop beside the T-bird. Under the bright lights a trooper emerged with his gun drawn.

*    *    *

The trooper confronted Roger and his companion and asked for permission to search the trunk. Roger refused. Holding his gun on the suspects, the trooper radioed for help; backup officers arrived in minutes, and a sheriff’s deputy brought a warrant.

Yet another trooper drove up accompanying the victim, who identified the T-bird and its occupants and the stolen goods in the trunk—everything except two pairs of Bermuda shorts he said did not belong to him. Searching these, officers discovered keys, small change, and two men’s wallets.

The Dodge was equipped with a fuzzbuster on the dash, but they kept to the speed limit because they quickly realized that getting stopped would finish them. Benny and Donnie knew that they had left their wallets, including driver’s licenses, in Roger’s trunk. They had worn shorts to Six Flags, the better to enjoy the weather and the whitewater adventure and other rides. When they had changed into suits Monday afternoon, they had tossed their casual clothes into the trunk and had forgotten about them until now. They knew it may have been a fatal carelessness. The police would already have their names, addresses, heights, weights, the colors of their eyes, even their photographs.

From a service station outside Chattanooga Benny telephoned Sherry and told her to leave the Ooltewah house immediately and go to a coffee shop down the street to wait for them. Roger had been busted. They would have to start running.

Sherry and Carol had barely made it to the coffee shop when the Dodge pulled up and they jumped in. Sherry, who prided herself on never panicking under stress—"I’ll have a nervous breakdown later” was one of her mottoes—grasped the seriousness of the situation when she heard about the wallets and, screaming at Carol to shut up or get clobbered, told the Ooltewah brother to drive straight to her Harriman house. It was a gamble, because the address was on Benny’s license, but she knew that it would take the police at least a few hours to organize a search across state lines; she would have to improvise something from Harriman—what this might be, she had no idea as yet. She asked where the Dodge had been parked during the robbery and figured it must not have been identified, or they would already have been stopped.

It took nearly an hour and a half to reach Harriman; it was now
past midnight. Sherry told Carol to go to her house in Clinton and pretend she had been asleep all evening if the cops showed up. They would have to decide later what to do about bailing Roger out. For now, the important thing was to take Benny and Donnie somewhere. Their only other option was to turn themselves in. Since this would mean at least a twenty-year sentence for both of them, it was not an attractive alternative. After being warned to keep his mouth shut, the brother headed back to Ooltewah, saying he had relatives who would hide him.