Blood Echoes Page 9

  For many years the spiritual center of Ernestine Alday’s life, Spring Creek had also become the church of her family. Ned had helped to build it, and all of her slain sons, as well as Mary, had either been officers in the church or teachers in its Sunday school.

  But if the Spring Creek Baptist Church had sustained the Alday family in life, it was physically unable to accommodate the enormity of the deaths that had suddenly swept down upon it. Over a hundred years old, and in serious disrepair, its small, modest sanctuary was incapable of handling the six full-sized Alday coffins, along with the incalculably large crowds that were expected to attend the funeral. As a result, Ernestine had already decided that the funeral would be held on the cemetery grounds so that everyone who wanted could attend the full service, rather than the burial alone.

  Consequently, the coffins were brought to the cemetery and arranged side by side, then decked with the enormous number of flower arrangements that had been arriving with steadily increasing frequency at both the church and the Alday home since the murders.

  ‘It was probably the biggest funeral ever held in Georgia,” Nancy remembered. “I’d never seen anything like it. People everywhere, hundreds of them, and flowers stacked on flowers around the caskets and the graves.”

  Over the next hour, eulogies were given by four separate ministers while a crowd, which included various state dignitaries along with both Governor Carter’s special assistant and his mother, Lillian, listened quietly.

  As the service progressed through the long afternoon, each of the murdered Aldays was given his or her moment of remembrance in simple eulogies that recalled their hard work, their service to their church and community, the devotion they had shown to their families. Ned was remembered for his liveliness and humor; Aubrey for his skills as a farmer; Shuggie for his strength and comic zest; Jerry for the quiet dignity with which he’d lived his life; Mary for her work in social service and devotion as a wife; Jimmy for his energy and youth; and all of them for their service to the church and their community, the long stewardship they’d maintained as husbands, brothers, sons, and wife.

  These eulogies would be among the last times that Ned, Aubrey, Shuggie, Jerry, Jimmy, and Mary would be presented as individuals with separate and distinct identities. Increasingly from this point onward, they would be fused together, their personalities melded by a single phrase used repeatedly to describe them: the Alday victims. It was as if a single bullet had felled them all, pulverizing their individualities by reducing them to lumps of flesh spread over beds, couchs, a forest undergrowth.

  “I remember that at one of the trials,” Nancy said years later, “they were showing the jury a picture of the trailer, and in the background, you could see Mary peeping out the front door. The defense objected to the picture right away. They didn’t mind the trailer, they said, but they didn’t think the jury should be allowed to see Mary Alday’s face.”

  Hundreds of miles away from Mary Alday’s trailer, a dark green Chevrolet Caprice was winding northward along the back roads of northern Virginia. Behind the wheel, Carl felt he had done very well indeed so far. Since Mississippi, he’d moved everyone forward without a hitch by keeping to the back roads as long as possible, hour after hour effectively concealing their northbound flight.

  But now, once again, they were growing short of cash. Without a new influx of gas and money, even continuing along the back roads would be impossible. Because of that, Carl told the others that it would soon be necessary to strike again, even at the cost of revealing where they were.

  Chapter Twelve

  At approximately 4:15 on the afternoon of Thursday, May 17, the dark green Chevy Caprice, which had been stolen in Livingston, Alabama, nearly twenty-four hours before, pulled into the driveway of Mullins Grocery, a remote country store at Slate Fork, a tiny commercial crossroad near the town of Grundy in Buchanan County, Virginia.

  Utterly isolated on a winding country road, it was perfectly situated for what Carl had in mind. Having successfully eluded an impressive array of redneck cops, he had grown increasingly confident that he could make it back to Baltimore, drop Billy off, then head farther north, Canada now replacing Mexico as the ultimate refuge.

  For a moment after Carl pulled into the driveway, he, along with the others, lingered in the car, carefully observing the store. Several customers were inside, more than expected in so remote a place. There were a man, two women, and a couple of teenagers, certainly a number sufficient to deter any but the most reckless kind of man.

  By that time, of course, Carl had had a considerable amount of experience in dealing with unexpected crowds, and the few isolated individuals he could see moving idly along the store’s narrow aisles hardly served to threaten him. He was soaring on a wild wind by then, and five people in a grocery store only meant the robbery would require the full team’s active participation. Neither he nor Wayne could pull it off alone.

  Accordingly, all four eased themselves out of the car and made their way into the store. For a time they casually cased it, standing together around the soda machine as their eyes swept here and there about the store’s cluttered interior.

  Then, without giving any signal to either Billy or George, Wayne stepped forward and made the first move.

  Standing by the door, Billy could see him advance on the sole adult male in the store. When he reached him, he thrust a pistol into his face.

  Instantly Billy and George pulled their weapons and brandished them before the remaining, now utterly terrified, customers while Carl moved haphazardly about the store, firing orders in all directions. Billy was commanded to stand lookout while Dungee was told to begin the rather daunting task of tying up all the store’s customers.

  They obeyed without hesitation, and while George struggled with the petrified customers, Carl walked to the cash register, popped it open, and extracted its modest contents. He was methodically counting it when yet another customer entered the store. Billy let her in and stepped aside while Wayne turned his pistol on her, marched her over to George, and watched a few feet away while he tied her up.

  George had just completed the task when still another customer entered the store, this time an older woman in a trenchcoat. Quickly robbed, then tied up, she was lowered to the ground, where she watched helplessly as the men continued to fumble about the store, their movements typically disordered and time-consuming, as if they’d learned nothing from their disastrous experience in the Alday trailer.

  Still posted as lookout by the front window, Billy, now frantically concerned that another slaughter was about to take place, glanced back and saw George inexplicably disappear into the rear of the store. Moments later he heard Dungee calling nervously for Wayne. In response, Wayne also disappeared into the rear quarters of the store to confront a scene that would have been comical had it not been so perilous to those involved.

  In the store’s crowded stockroom, George had stumbled upon an additional three people, a young woman and two children, one a toddler, the other no more than ten months old. The baby had begun to cry loudly as it squirmed in its mother’s arms, an unexpected and uncontrollable response that had thoroughly unnerved the far from resourceful George. Unable to think through to his next move, he had called Wayne for the necessary assistance.

  It had not been the best of choices. Equally confused, and apparently just as unable to deal with the complications Dungee had suddenly flung upon him, Wayne simply stared in disbelief at the crowded room.

  “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “It’s like we can’t get out of here.”

  “What are we going to do?” George sputtered.

  For a moment, Wayne seemed lost in a vague trance, as if unable to find a way out of these new complications. Then he suddenly snapped out of it and set to work, moving as quickly as his own mental disarray would allow, first tying up the young woman, then returning to the front of the store, where he grabbed the older woman, dragged her back into the rear of the store, and laid her out beside th
e younger one.

  It was only then that the four men headed out of the store, all of them running at a frantic pace that captured the attention of two other men who’d just pulled into the store’s now crowded parking area.

  Both supremely suspicious and heavily armed, the new arrivals called to the four men they saw running toward a green Caprice, and when they received no answer, drew their rifles from their truck and fired upon them.

  Once inside the car, and while still under an unexpected barrage of gunfire, Carl slammed into reverse, hurled backward onto the main road, and raced northward, taking a narrow, winding road that led almost immediately across the state line into West Virginia.

  As the road began to twist and turn, Carl eased off the accelerator to accommodate their increasingly tortuous route. They were rising into the mountains now, the dense wooded ridges pressing in toward them from all sides. Unable to negotiate the curving road at high speeds, Carl continued to ease his foot off the accelerator so that when he saw a West Virginia State Police patrol car approach from ahead, he was traveling well within the prescribed speed limit.

  The officer behind the wheel of the patrol car was Hoyt C. Ryan, and by the time he glimpsed the Caprice heading toward him, he and his partner, D. J. Meadows, had already been advised that an armed robbery had been committed in nearby Slate Fork, Virginia, and that the suspects had been seen heading west on State Route 83. The all-points bulletin Ryan and Meadows had just heard included a description of the car, which matched in every detail the one that had just drifted past them, and Ryan slammed on his brakes, made a tight U-turn, and began his pursuit.

  Up ahead, the Caprice speeded up, swerving from one side of the road to the next as it rocketed along the winding mountain roads before making a hairpin turn onto the even narrower and more remote mountain road known as Route 16. For a time, Ryan was able to keep it in view, but finally lost sight of it as it disappeared into a shady labyrinth of twisting roads and tight, bone-crunching curves.

  Then, suddenly, the green Chevy Caprice appeared again. Only this time, rather than careening from side to side in its wild dash through the hill country, it was pulled alongside the road, its occupants nowhere to be seen. Ryan and Meadows knew that the suspects had to be somewhere in the surrounding countryside, since there was nothing but thick woods from where they’d abandoned their car to Yukon, West Virginia, the nearest town.

  For the next few minutes, Ryan remained in the area, his eyes fixed on the abandoned car, while Meadows radioed for additional assistance. Within minutes, other troopers had arrived, along with police officers from the nearby town of War, West Virginia.

  By then, Ryan and Meadows had been told that the men in the car were very heavily armed, and that they should proceed against them with extreme caution. While other officers secured the car, Ryan, Meadows, and two local constables headed down Route 16, moving slowly along its forested edges toward the general area in which local residents had seen the men flee after abandoning the car. They had not gone far before they saw three men dart across the road. They called for them to halt, and when they didn’t, chased them into the woods, firing as they ran. In the distance, over the barrels of their guns, they could see the three men’s heads bobbing in the brush, but by the time they’d reached the place where they had crossed the road, they had disappeared into the surrounding woods.

  Rather than returning to their car, however, Ryan and the others, realizing that the fourth man must still be hiding somewhere in the hills above the road, recrossed Route 16 and fanned out into the woods. Only a few seconds later, at a distance of little more than one hundred yards from the road, they found a black man crouched in the bushes, frantically fumbling to load a pistol, the heavy shells dropping like enormous raindrops on the forest floor beneath him.

  Ryan leveled his rifle at the man’s head. “Don’t move,” he said.

  The black man froze.

  “Now, put your hands on your head,” Ryan commanded.

  Trembling, the man let the pistol and ammunition drop to the ground, and raised his hands into the air.

  While the other officers stood by, Ryan quickly handcuffed his prisoner, read him his Miranda rights, and after that, began going through his pockets. They were empty, except for a small Timex watch with Roman numerals. Ryan looked at it closely, then back up at his prisoner. He wondered what such a man was doing with what was obviously a woman’s watch.

  After gathering the pistol and ammunition, Ryan led Dungee back up the road. On the way it struck him that his prisoner had to have been frightened out of his wits at the time of his arrest, because he’d been trying to do the impossible, load .380-caliber ammunition into a .32-caliber revolver.

  Once back at the roadblock, Ryan placed Dungee in the back of his patrol car and radioed patrol headquarters that an arrest had been made. While he waited for further instructions, he slid in behind the wheel. In his rearview mirror, he could see Dungee trembling almost uncontrollably in the back seat.

  “What’s your name?” Ryan asked.

  “George Dungee.”

  “Where you from, George?”

  “’Round Baltimore.”

  Ryan radioed to headquarters and requested an NCIC report on Dungee. Within minutes NCIC had responded, and Ryan learned that the cowering little man in the back seat of his car was a prime suspect in the murder of six people.

  “You’re in a lot of trouble, George,” Ryan said to him after listening to the NCIC report.

  Dungee nodded softly, but did not reply.

  At approximately 8:15 P.M. Ryan arrived at his headquarters in Welch, West Virginia, with Dungee still sitting silently in the back of his patrol car. Dungee was then turned over to the local sheriff, at which time he was read his constitutional rights once again.

  In the meantime, Ryan called Wade Watson, the assistant district attorney of McDowell County. He told him that Dungee had been captured, and that he’d indicated his willingness to make a statement.

  Watson arrived at the Welch headquarters fifteen minutes later. He glanced through the building’s back rooms until he found a small wood-paneled office that had what he was looking for, a desk with a typewriter. Then he summoned other officers to escort Dungee to the room.

  Dungee appeared a few moments later, and as Watson observed, the considerable time that had passed since his capture had done nothing to relax him. He looked utterly panic-stricken, his eyes darting about in all directions until, at his first remark, the source of Dungee’s terror was entirely revealed.

  “Do they have the death penalty in West Virginia?” Dungee asked.

  “In West Virginia?” Watson said. “Well, I’m not sure you’ve done anything in West Virginia that would call for the death penalty anyway.”

  Dungee nodded silently.

  “Of course,” Watson added, “Georgia has the death penalty, and there might be some things down there you’d be worried about.”

  Dungee said nothing, and while he remained silent, Watson ordered that he be handcuffed in the front, rather than behind his back, and asked him to sit down.

  “You got a cigarette?” Dungee asked as he took his seat. “And something to drink?”

  Watson supplied both, his eyes still trained on the small, terrified man before him.

  “I understand you’re ready to make a statement,” Watson said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Watson read Dungee his constitutional rights, the third time he’d heard them in less than two hours. In response, Dungee signed a waiver of those rights, after which he indicated that he was now ready to begin his statement.

  Watson pulled up a chair and looked closely at the small, curiously inconsequential man before him. It hardly seemed possible that such a person could have committed the acts of which he was accused. He was small, his voice soft and somewhat whining, so that in general he gave off a sense of innocence and gentleness that was even further supported, as Watson noticed, by the odd fact that bits of forest debr
is were still clinging to his hair.

  “I was never in no trouble before,” Dungee said.

  “Well, you’d escaped from a prison in Maryland, hadn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I was just in there for not paying child support,” Dungee said. “That’s all I ever done ’til we ducked out of there. Then there was some things.”

  Watson raised his fingers to the typewriter. “All right, Mr. Dungee,” he said, “let’s hear it.”

  Two hours later, Watson felt certain that he’d gotten as much of the complete story as Dungee was likely to tell at the moment. It was a horrible tale of mass murder, rape, and both psychological and physical torture, all of it told in a flat, emotionless voice that neither rose nor fell as it related the terrible details. Only at the very end had Dungee indicated any feeling whatsoever concerning the events he had so meticulously related. Then, suddenly, he’d looked at Watson almost plaintively, his large, slightly bulging eyes even larger behind the thick lenses. “I haven’t been able to sleep since what we done to the woman,” he said.

  Watson nodded, but said nothing, since his only concern after hearing Dungee’s hellish tale was that he do absolutely nothing that might hinder for the briefest instant his full and forceful prosecution.

  Chapter Thirteen

  By the time Angel reached Donalsonville at just before dawn on the morning of May 18, he’d already been radioed that the car which had been stolen in Livingston had been recovered in West Virginia, and that one of its occupants, George Dungee, was in custody in the little town of Welch, West Virginia.

  As he began making plans for an immediate flight to Welsh, he was informed by Director Beardsley that several high officials of the Georgia Department of Public Safety had decided to go along as well.