Scores of human and canine searchers scoured the wilderness along the Santiam Pass. The dogs didn't pick up a trail of any distance, and they kept circling back to their handler, M. D. Obenhaus. "There had to be another car here," he said. "I'm sure of it. Whoever left the T-Bird must have gotten into another vehicle.
They're gone— otherwise my dogs would have picked up their trail."
He didn't voice what they were all dreading. Most dogs will not home in on dead bodies; only specially trained necro-search dogs are adept at that. It was far easier to believe the hostages were still alive, even if they were being held captive in a car now miles away. But the question remained: how had the kidnappers found another car up here in the wilderness? They had to wonder if the fleeing killers had stopped a passing car and taken even more hostages.
Roadblocks were set up on all likely escape routes in Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and California. Elizabeth Banfield and her son had been missing for more than twenty-four hours, and the fugitives could have crossed several state lines by now.
At one o'clock in the morning, two full days after the Banfields' disappearance, a deputy stationed in their home answered the phone and heard a tired woman say, "Are my children all right?" It was Elizabeth Banfield. She was alive and calling from Woodland, California. She told the deputy that both she and her son were safe in a motel there— along with other hostages. Yolo County authorities in Woodland, which is not far from Sacramento, were contacted and asked to take all the hostages from the motel and into protective custody. Elizabeth Banfield told the California deputies and FBI agents about her ordeal. Before she could stop him, her son had answered a knock at their kitchen door at about eleven-thirty on the night Deputy Smith was killed. Two men asked to use the phone to call for help because they had an emergency. Then they pushed their way into her home and held her and her son hostage at gunpoint. They told her they had just
killed a police officer and had to get out of town in a hurry. "You'll drive us in your car," they ordered.
She protested that she had four children asleep in the house and couldn't leave. But the men insisted that she and her son leave with them. "One kid's enough," the tall, homely man said. "It will keep the cops from shooting at us if they should spot us. A flock of kids would be a mess."
When the men said they wanted to go to Idaho, Elizabeth Banfield directed them to take a route that ran past the dam where her husband was working. She held the faint hope that her husband might recognize the car and rescue her and her son. It was one chance in a million, and her heart sank when they passed close to the dam and she realized no one even saw their car.
Her kidnappers knew that the Banfields' car would soon be identified on both police and civilian radio broadcasts as a stolen vehicle, so they were anxious to dump it. Near Marion Forks, they came across a truck with an attached camper parked along the road. Inside, they found Mr. and Mrs. Rudolph Sternberg of Renton, Washington, their fourteen-year-old son, and his friend.
Sternberg, a civil engineer for the Boeing Airplane Company, was no stranger to conflict. He was a veteran of the Latvian Army, and he had lost an arm in World War II when the Germans pressed him into military service against the Russians. It took him only a moment to realize he dared not resist the armed men who commandeered his camper; he had his family to consider.
It was decided that Bowles would drive, with Sternberg sitting beside him. Waitts herded the five other hostages into the back of the camper and held a gun on them. Carl Bowles turned the camper south toward the California state line.
The hundreds of miles between Salem, Oregon, and the California line passed slowly. Bowles monitored the radio news intently and kept Waitts informed through an intercom system Sternberg had installed in the camper. They learned that Deputy Carlton Smith had died and that the police believed the two ex-cons had abducted the Banfields.
As they rolled up to the California state line, the hostages and their captors alike froze as a border inspector approached the truck. "You ready back there?" Bowles asked.
"Ready," Waitts muttered. "You keep the intercom on. I'll know what to do."
"Carrying any fruit or vegetables?" the inspector asked, his trained eye scanning the rig.
"No, sir," Bowles said, and Sternberg shook his head too.
"Any animals? Anyone in the back?"
"No. Just me and my buddy here," Bowles said, smiling.
"Have a good day," the border guard waved them on.
Luckily for both the border agent and the hostages inside, he didn't suspect that the camper held anything but a couple of fishing buddies.
The odyssey of fear continued for another eighteen hours. During the trip, Bowles and Waitts pulled into truck stops twice and bought hamburgers, coffee, and milk for the hostages, but there was never any possibility that the hostages could cry out for help. If they did, someone would be shot.
Late in the evening, Bowles announced that he had heard on the radio that the Banfields' Thunderbird had been discovered. It was time to get rid of the camper; authorities were now so close on their tail that it was
only a matter of time before the camper would be marked as a hot car, too. They allowed their captives to leave the camper to relieve themselves in a field.
The hostages noted that their captors seemed disorganized; neither had slept since Monday night and it was now midnight on Thursday. The kidnappers couldn't really sleep with six captives to watch. The best they could do was take turns with catnaps. The Sternbergs' teenage son watched Bowles and Waitts as they tossed their two shotguns into a pond outside Marysville, California; the boy pretended to be looking up at a nearby hill, but he was actually memorizing everything he could about the area. He saw exactly where the guns splashed into the pond. If he survived this ordeal, he figured he could lead FBI agents right back to the spot.
This was one of the most demoralizing moments of the endless trip down the interstate freeway. The hostages wondered if they would be dumped next. If their captors no longer wanted to be linked to their shotguns, it wasn't likely they wanted to leave any witnesses. The hostages were afraid that their bodies were about to join the guns in the pond. Or maybe the kidnappers were going to stuff them all into the back of the camper, shoot them, and leave them there.
The backs of their necks prickling with apprehension, the Banfields and Sternbergs followed Waitts's directions and walked back toward the camper, waiting for the crack of a pistol. But the shorter man— the one who looked like actor Robert Conrad— ushered them all back into the camper and got behind the steering wheel and they took off again. Even in the middle of the night, it was beastly hot, more so because the camper wasn't big enough to hold six people.
At 8th Avenue and J Street in Sacramento, the
camper slowed to a stop. In the wee hours of Friday morning, the streets were virtually empty. The men they knew only as Carl and Norbert stepped out of the vehicle. And then, miraculously, Carl told Rudolph Sternberg: "Drive this camper away from here for the next two hours and don't call the cops."
Norbert Waitts added, "And don't make no mistake about it. We may be following you in another car. You goof it up and somebody will get hurt." Still unable to believe they were free, Sternberg peeled out. He drove the camper fourteen miles to Woodland. He kept watching the rearview mirror for headlights and saw none. Finally convinced they were truly free, he stopped at the motel where Elizabeth Banfield called home.
* * *
Bowles and Waitts knew they were high on the Wanted list of every cop in Oregon and California. They needed another car, but this time, even though they still had money, they didn't dare buy one. They trudged on foot for four miles, looking for a vehicle that would be easy to steal.
The ex-cons happened onto an unlikely— and unfortunate— target. Sacramento is the capital of California, and the men and women who run the state live there most of the time. Ted Wilson was the finance director for the state of California— the highest appointed office in the state. He and his wife, Joan, their ten-year-old son, and their nineteen-month-old baby girl lived in a very nice house. There was a brand-new Ford Galaxie parked in their driveway.
Joan Wilson was scheduled to play golf the next morning with a good friend, the wife of the deputy director of motor vehicles in California. But Joan Wilson wasn't at home when her friend came to pick her up at
9:00 A.M., and her home was in a state of confusion. The Wilsons' ten-year-old son and a thirteen-year-old cousin had woken up to find no one else in the house. No one had gotten them up for school.
A baby-sitter who was supposed to care for the Wilsons' baby while Joan played golf arrived, but the baby wasn't there, nor were the Wilsons. Ted Wilson had already missed an important business conference and a long-distance call from a congressman. The phone kept ringing for him, but no one knew where he was. The boys said they had bunked out on a porch during the night and hadn't heard anything all night until they answered the phone when the congressman tried calling Wilson.
When the California State Patrol investigators learned that Carl Cletus Bowles and Norbert Waitts had dropped off their hostages only four miles from Ted Wilson's house, they had a pretty good idea what happened to the state official. They only hoped that the kidnappers didn't know they were holding a very important person.
A bulletin was issued to city, state, and federal agencies listing the Wilsons' green Ford Galaxie, LDG 311, as the latest getaway car. As soon as he heard the news, Governor Edmund "Jerry" Brown returned to Sacramento and took personal charge of the case. "I'm the baby's godfather," he told his troopers. "I don't want any harm to come to her or her father and mother."
Wherever they were, Carl Bowles and Norbert Waitts were getting themselves deeper and deeper into trouble. A federal grand jury in Portland was called into special session and returned an indictment charging both men with bank robbery and set bail at $150,000 each. In Lane County, Oregon, they were charged with the first-degree murder of Deputy Carlton Smith. Federal authorities were also preparing kidnapping charges
against them. The only good thing any law enforcement official had to say about them was that they hadn't killed the Banfields and the Sternbergs. That gave them hope that the Wilsons might survive, too. In California, every state trooper, fish and game official, forestry officer, and even highway work crew member was sent out along back roads to look for the Wilsons' car. But the search was fruitless all that day and into the evening. By midnight on Friday, July 9, Bowles and Waitts had gone another twenty-four hours without sleep, and a crisis was brewing. They were headed toward the hamlet of Tonopah, Nevada, which is halfway between Reno and Las Vegas.
Deputy Thomas Wilmath spotted a green Ford stopped beside the road about four miles out of town. The plates were familiar; they'd been etched on every lawman's brain over the last twelve hours. But the Wilsons' car was empty. Wilmath figured that the occupants were out in the brush relieving themselves or that the kidnappers had ditched the car when they found a less recognizable vehicle.
Wilmath walked quietly over to the car and was bending over to look inside just as two men stepped out of the brush with drawn guns. "Don't try anything, cop," an icy cold voice said. "You'll get it, and so will the people with us."
The people with them were the Wilsons and their baby girl. Wilmath had no choice; if he resisted, the Wilsons might be killed. So instead of risking their lives, the deputy sheriff became the duo's tenth hostage. In a move that must have made sense to them at the time, the desperadoes crowded everyone into the police car. They used the squad car's police radio to contact the Nevada State Highway Patrol headquarters.
The man on duty was Dispatcher Dave Branovich. The sixteen-year patrol veteran swallowed his shock when he heard Waitts's voice on the police radio. He listened as Waitts told him they wouldn't kill the hostages if they got what they wanted. What they wanted first was relatively simple— or seemed so; they wanted food and ammunition. Their plan was for Deputy Wilmath to go into a club in Tonopah and get sandwiches while Bowles and Waitts waited outside with the hostages. There were seventy people in the nightclub when the deputy strolled in with elaborate casualness. He waited for the sandwiches, which were delayed because the kitchen was so busy, and he was prepared to leave without saying a word.
Every law agency within a hundred miles had been notified that two of the most-wanted criminals were now in a county squad car, along with a deputy, the finance director of the state of California, and his wife and baby. The roads surrounding Tonopah were beginning to bristle with patrol cars. The net was tightening. But the word was "Do nothing that might jeopardize the hostages."
Carl Bowles and Norbert Waitts were getting jumpy, and they didn't trust Deputy Wilmath. They grew restless waiting for him to come back with food. They stood in the doorway of the club for a while, with one eye on Wilmath and one on the hostages. Then, without warning, they began firing into the club at random. Patrons hit the floor and scrambled under tables when Carl and Norbert shouted that they were coming in for food and that nothing could stop them.
Predictably, those inside who were still standing raced for the exits in a panic. A card dealer pulled a revolver and started firing back. Wilmath yelled at him to hold his fire because there were hostages just out
side in the car. But it was too late. Bowles and Waitt made a dash for the squad car, and three of the shots fired at them pierced the police car, one of them smashing the rear window as the car careened out of town.
"Come in… come in," Dispatcher Branovich pleaded over the radio. "Has anybody been hurt?"
Bowles answered, "This guy Wilson has been shot."
Although Branovich tried to cajole Bowles into taking Wilson to a hospital, the fugitive refused. "Don't tell me what to do," Bowles spat. "I'm telling you. We're a couple miles out of town. There's a service station on the left side and it's closed. We'll leave him there, and you can pick him up. He ain't bad hurt. We're taking the woman and the kid with us. If you try to stop us, you know what's going to happen to them."
Wilson begged to stay in the car with his family, but Bowles pushed the bleeding man out of the car at the gas station. Deputies who picked him up a few minutes later were relieved to see that his thigh wound wasn't as serious as it looked; he waved away medics and agreed only to minor first-aid treatment. He was taken to the Mineral County sheriff's headquarters to await news of his wife and baby.
The hostage situation was becoming more volatile with every passing minute. Half crazy with lack of sleep, the two gunmen had gotten spooked just because they had to wait for sandwiches. There was no telling what they might do as the pressure on them increased. The Wilsons' baby had to be screaming from hunger and exhaustion by now, and Joan Wilson was probably worried to death about her husband.
Dispatcher Branovich continued to urge the fugitives to release Mrs. Wilson and her baby. "You make
the terms," he said convincingly. "We'll do it any way you say."
But Bowles and Waitts were having none of it. "I wouldn't trust a cop any further than the end of my gun," Waitts snarled at Branovich.
The stolen squad car had a conga line of police vehicles following it now, but no officer dared try to force it off the road or take a shot. For more than an hour, the strange procession rolled down the road. When they reached Coaldale, the army of officers trailing Carl Bowles watched incredulously as he parked and walked into a bar. They could have shot him easily enough, but they knew that Norbert Waitts was in the car holding a gun on Joan Wilson and her baby. If they brought Bowles down, they had no doubt that Waitts would shoot to kill.
The parade of official cars, their light bars flashing red, blue, and yellow, stopped and waited. Their frustrating convoy would one day be the inspiration for a critically acclaimed Goldie Hawn movie called
Sugar-land Express.
But
this
real drama was terrifying, galling, and fraught with danger.
Finally, Bowles emerged from the bar, got back into the stolen squad car, and the procession of police vehicles continued down the road.
As they crept along Highway 6, perhaps fortified by alcohol from the bar, Carl Bowles came up with a deal: "We'll leave the woman and kid in the car if you'll give us a half hour on foot."
Dispatcher Branovich quickly agreed. If Bowles kept his promise, it would be the best possible scenario for getting the woman and baby to safety, but he wouldn't believe it until it happened.
Actually, the sleep-deprived killers had another
scheme in mind. They had spotted an empty pickup truck along the road and they planned to steal it. With a half-hour head start, they could slide into Vegas where they would be swallowed up by the crowds and bright lights. Odd that men without honor expected the police to honor them, to keep a promise to two ex-cons who had killed one of their brothers in cold blood.
Bowles and Waitt walked away from the squad car and headed back toward the pickup. They planned to hot-wire the truck, but Special Deputy Jerry Minor had a gun on them before they ever got the engine to turn over. They took off running through the brush on foot. Minutes later, California Highway Patrolmen Bill Rich and Howard Hoffman from Bishop, just across the state line, spotted the pair.
The outlaws surrendered meekly.
The officers on the scene approached the stolen police car, afraid of what they might find inside. As they drew closer, they heard a sound and saw someone sit up. Joan Wilson and her baby were alive.
Reunited with her worried husband, Joan Wilson told him that Carl Bowles had made a bizarre final gesture. "He tossed $900 in my lap when he left the car," she said. "And he told me, 'You don't need to tell your old man where you got the dough. I don't think I'm going to have a chance to spend it, so go out and have a ball on a spending spree.' "