Born to Lose (23 page)

Alice Dunford of Kelly Florist described the man in question as “polite, an ordinary customer who seemed in no hurry at all.” She said he was in his mid-twenties and was by himself. She did not see a young blonde woman or a child.

Back at the command center in New Kensington, when Chief Blackie DeLellis heard of the flowers episode he threw his hat across the room in
disgust. “You know,” he spat, “Joe wasn't in the ground an hour when his killer—the no-good shit!—is sending roses to some girl. Pray to God, that man is going to pay.”

As for Hoss, he was well within the radius the police had calculated. After sending the flowers, he drove south out of Wellington, then continued west sixty miles on 224 to Tiffin, Ohio. With Lori Mae beside him, Hoss had dinner at the L&K Restaurant. After coffee, in need of more funds, Hoss stole a car to use in the robbery of a gas station, later boasting it was the easiest robbery he'd ever pulled, as he did not even leave the car to obtain the loot. He got back to the GTO, registered at a motel under the name of William Matecka (husband of Betty, his sister), then called it a night.

In all this while, Hoss had never been much beyond four or five hours from Pittsburgh, where the rolling calamity had begun. For the most part, he was able to stay abreast of the news about him. The
Pittsburgh Press
had printed a map of the region with a time frame of September 11–23. Locations on the map, numbered 1–17, tracked Hoss's movements from the workhouse breakout through the florist shop in Wellington. The trail stitched an erratic crazy quilt. The press gave play to the “Dozen Red Roses.” To the public, the gesture demonstrated Hoss's temerity or, when time-matched with Joe's funeral, his vulgarity.

The number of reported sightings of Hoss in Pittsburgh alone neared one hundred. Some of these produced massive searches. More than one hitchhiker or citizen taking a walk in the woods was swooped down upon and required to explain himself at gunpoint. “Never in my memory of the police beat,” wrote Gloria Bradburn in her column, “has one man so terrified the people of the Allegheny Valley and so frustrated its many police departments…. Everything possible is being done to locate Hoss. Until that time, one has to view in awe this fantastic chase.”

Pittsburgh authorities now changed tactics. Instead of sending a sizable contigent to check reported sightings of Hoss, causing crowds to gather, two or three officers in casual dress were dispatched to the scene. The new approach was designed to gather information “so as not to excite the citizenry.”

In Washington, D.C., a spokesman for the FBI said the agency had circulated “tens of thousands” of posters on Hoss to police departments, post offices, and other public places. “Stanley Hoss,” the spokesman continued, “is being tracked down by foot, wheel, and in the air. At this moment Hoss is not officially on our Ten Most Wanted, but I cannot think of a man more wanted by the Bureau than Stanley Hoss.”

The U.S.S.
Luce
was two hundred miles out to sea when a Red Cross message was delivered to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The message, relayed to the ship at 11:15 P.M. on Tuesday, stunned Seaman Gerald Peugeot. The commander ordered the
Luce
turned around. Once back at port, Peugeot was flown to Pittsburgh by military transport and taken directly to FBI headquarters, arriving Wednesday afternoon. Three agents interviewed Peugeot, who said he'd been unable to think of anything but his wife and baby and was at a complete loss to explain their absence. He said his wife was in excellent health and emotionally stable; there were no significant problems in their marriage. Peugeot described Linda as very happy. She got along well with her parents and that it was out of the question that she would have voluntarily disappeared. It was his conclusion that his wife and baby had been kidnapped by the man he'd been told about, Stanley Hoss.

The husband added what details he could. “Linda has contact lenses, but without glasses her vision is poor. She wears a 3/8"-wide platinum gold wedding ring on her left hand. Her ears are pierced, does not smoke or drink, and has a vaccination scar on her upper left arm.” As for Lori Mae, said the young father, “she has all her teeth for her age, talks and understands well, and eats regular food. Her polio vaccination mark is on the back of her right shoulder and she has a noticeable red spot under her right eye.”

Gerald Peugeot furnished the agents with a color photograph of his wife and daughter taken in May. It was this photograph of the pretty pair that was blown up, transposed to flyers, and distributed nationwide.

. . .

After Hoss and Lori Mae had breakfasted in Tiffin, Ohio, on Wednesday morning, they journeyed barely fifty miles west before stopping in Ottawa, still in northwest Ohio. Earlier, Hoss had rummaged through the GTO. In the glove box he found two postcards of Florida scenes. He drove to a restaurant to sit over coffee and, borrowing a pen from the waitress, wrote messages on both postcards.

A little later, Hoss made a phone call to Walter and Connie Penn. Connie was Jodine's sister. Calling from a phone booth, Hoss spoke casually.

“Connie, how are you?”

“I'm okay, but where are you?”

“Never mind. How is Jo?”

“She's okay too, I guess, but Stan …”

“Did the police lock Jo up?”

“No, they didn't do that.”

“Are they watching her house?”

“I don't know.”

“Okay, I'm heading to Canada.”

“Stan, what did you do with the baby and woman?”

“What baby and woman?”

“C'mon, Stan, from Maryland …”

“I don't know anything about that. I couldn't say when I was last in Maryland.”

Soon after, Hoss hung up. He told Connie he didn't want to talk long as he was afraid the call would be traced.

After thinking awhile, Connie talked with her husband.

“Walt, that was Stan again,” Connie explained. “I don't know where he is … wouldn't say. Maybe Canada.” Miffed at being dragged into this situation, Walter asked his wife what she planned to do.

“I have to call Jo, tell her about this call. She's the one that loves him but we're the ones getting caught up in this. Can't he call her, dammit?” The authorities were not notified about the call.

About the time Hoss was writing out postcards in Ottawa, an FBI agent employed tried-and-true gumshoe tactics in Tiffin. On a guess that Hoss had headed west after he sent the flowers in Wellington, the agent followed the most logical course—Route 224—and stopped at gas stations, restaurants, and motels as he went along. Two miles west of Tiffin, the agent entered the office of the Will-O-Motel. He rang the bell on the counter.

“Good afternoon, Miss. I'm John Gunther.” He flipped open his leather badge case. “I'm with the FBI, out of the Cleveland office.” For the umpteenth time in recent hours, Gunther gave his spiel. “We're looking for a man who may have been this way. Could be he's traveling with a young woman and small female child.” Gunther laid a photograph on the counter. “Have you seen this man, Miss … I'm sorry, your name?”

“Beth … Beth Evans.” She lowered her head to study the picture. “Lord be, I think … this man
was
here. Goodness! What's he done?”

The agent's pulse quickened.

“A number of things. We do consider him dangerous and suspect him of holding hostage the woman and child I mentioned, but first, are you sure this”—Gunther tapped the photo—“is the man you saw?”

“Yes, it's him. He would not be so memorable but for the little girl he held in his arms. A precious thing, so sweet-looking.”

“The woman, did you see the woman?”

“No, I …”

“Twenty-one, blonde, five foot, a hundred pounds?”

Agent Gunther rushed for more details. “When was he here, when did you last see him?”

“He came in last night about nine. My sister signed him in and took his room fee, but I was here with her. He paid in cash and didn't really say much … left at 8:30 this morning.”

“Did you see the car he was driving?”

“Yes, it was parked right in front, a green or blue Pontiac convertible.”

“Miss Evans, a license plate…. Do you mark in your book plate numbers of customers?”

“I'm afraid not, Mr. Gunther.”

Gunther felt sure it was Hoss and Lori Mae who'd spent the night at the Will-O-Motel. But where was Linda?

As Gunther left the Will-O-Motel in Tiffin and Hoss ended his phone call to Connie Penn in Ottawa, hunter and hunted were only an hour's drive apart. Had Hoss only lingered longer in Ottawa, his game would almost certainly have been up, for already, all area towns, including Ottawa, had been put on highest alert. Yet by plan, whim, or gut instinct, Hoss jumped into the GTO, left Ottawa behind, and shot straight west, out of Ohio, across Indiana, and well into Illinois.

After dark, he finally stopped in the town of Fairbury. Hoss knew he had let the Peugeot license plate remain too long on the GTO. At a residence on Elm Street, he removed a plate from a car and put that plate on the GTO. That night Hoss stayed at the Indian Trail Motel, again using the alias of William Matecka. After checking in, Hoss drove to Eddie's Standard Gas Station. He had the gas tank filled and the car washed, which included cleaning from the seats stains that Hoss told the attendant were caused by food and drink spilled by the small child with him.

At five o'clock reveille on Thursday, September 25, soldier Jim Knott heard a news alert on the radio of a nationwide manhunt for a Stanley Hoss, suspected kidnapper of Mrs. Linda Peugeot and her young daughter. This did not register with Knott until Linda's maiden name of Stewart was mentioned. Then Knott remembered his trip to Kings Department Store just four days earlier, where he'd seen Linda and Lori Mae and they'd chatted about what they'd been doing since graduation. Early the next day, Knott returned to Fort Bliss in El Paso. He still hadn't heard anything about the events back home. “This really upset me,” Knott said. “I told my commanding officer and was allowed to make a call home and my mom confirmed the story. Like I said, this upset me real bad. Linda was such a sweet girl, would always talk to anyone.”

State's attorney Donald Mason of Allegany County announced that the disappearance of the Peugeots has touched off “perhaps the greatest manhunt that the area has ever seen.” Remembering the Lindbergh kidnap case of 1932, billed as the Crime of the Century, Mason told colleagues, “Maybe Stanley Hoss is our own Bruno Hauptmann.”

If even a sliver of justice came this day, it did so in a roundabout way, thanks to Hoss. Ronald Floyd Davis was hitchhiking near Cumberland. Two state cars converged on the surprised man. In a wink he was handcuffed. It came to light that Davis was wanted in Florida for burglary. He got pinched because several youths saw him hitchhiking and thought he looked like Stanley Hoss.

Now officially on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, the first criminal from the Allegheny-Kiski Valley to achieve such notoriety, Hoss had proven himself ruthless. He had crossed from bad to damned. The little information police learned about Hoss during the hunt, notably from victim Karen Maxwell, the florist clerk in Wellington, and the motel clerk in Tiffin, provided a picture of a man well in control of himself. Rape and roses were all the same to him. The police would come to see Hoss as a psychopath—without conscience. Given this assessment, the FBI, for one of the few times in their history, directed army units and helicopters to join the search for a single criminal. All helicopters available to the Maryland State Police were also drafted into the search, along with a Civilian Air Patrol plane donated by the Cumberland wing.

While clues were scarce, there was always the possibility the Peugeots, with or without Hoss, could still be in northwestern Maryland. For the upcoming weekend, the FBI appealed for more assistance from local residents and from the influx of autumn visitors. Campers, travelers, and cottage owners were asked to keep a special lookout, especially in the Deep Creek Lake area, and to report any unauthorized use of properties. From ground or air, searchers were told to look for the clothing worn by the Peugeots when they went shopping the Monday before: light blue sweater and black bell-bottoms for Linda; black-and-white checked blouse and blue slacks for Lori Mae.

Then news came from Pennsylvania. At 4:00 P.M. on this Friday, the postman delivered two postcards to Jodine Fawkes. Both cards had been postmarked two days earlier with “Ottawa, Ohio, September 24, 1969.” One card pictured Mayport, the other Jacksonville Beach—where Gerald Peugeot was stationed.

The first card bore this message:

Well my Darling by this time you should have gotten those flowers I sent you. I hope you like them Jo. I am missing you more and more every day. I would give anything to have you with me. It is so beautiful. Jo please don't believe all they say about me. A lot is not true. They just want to put it all on me. I'll love you forever. Stan

As for the other, it read:

My Darling as I write this letter I am hoping you still love me and want me. I know that I've made a mess out of are life. But, I did not mean it to go this way. My love for you will always be strong. I will be okay as long as I have you loving me. Give my love to the boys. Love Stan.

If any further evidence had been needed to put Hoss in the Peugeot vehicle, these cards provided it. Further, police finally had three points on a map—Wellington, Tiffin, and Ottawa—where Hoss had definitely been and indicated a westward route. Still, since Hoss could change direction at any time, the local searches would go on and all tips would be investigated.

Planes, boats, and copters covered western Maryland; cruisers, dogs, and roadblocks did likewise around Pittsburgh. Ohio and Indiana were in the crosshairs, all forces pitch kemp, yet a full weekend of such zeal brought the same borne down result—nothing.