Every Move You Make
What people are saying about M. William Phelps:
“M. William Phelps is the rising star of the true crime genre, and his true tales of murderers and mayhem are scary-as-hell thrill rides into the dark heart of the inhuman condition.”
—Douglas Clegg, Bram Stoker Award-Winning author of
Afterlife, The Abandoned, The Halloween Man, The Hour Before Dark,
and
Nightmare House
Praise for
Perfect Poison:
“Captivating, exciting, a jolt-a-minute. With this tour de force M. William Phelps earns a deserved place among the best true-crime writers. Plain and simple,
Perfect Poison
is one of the best true crime books I’ve ever read!”
—Harvey Rachlin, author of
The Making of a Detective
and
The Making of a Cop
“
Perfect Poison
is [the] horrific tale of a nurse Kristin Gilbert’s insatiable desire to kill the most helpless of victims—her own patients. A stunner from beginning to end, the story expertly rendered by Phelps with flawless research and an explosive narrative. Phelps is the best nonfiction crime writer to come along in years…the future of the genre.”
—Gregg Olsen,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Abandoned Prayers
“M. William Phelps isn’t content with a retelling of what people think they already know…. He is reporting and writing at a level that has become rare in today’s true crime genre. The result is the kind of compelling account of terror that only comes when the author dedicates himself to unmasking the psychopath with facts, insight and the other proven methods of journalistic leg work.”
—Lowell Cauffiel,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Forever and Five Days
and
Eye of the Beholder
“Phelps is a first-rate investigator.”
—Dr. Michael Baden, host of HBO’s
Autopsy,
author of several books
Praise for
Lethal Guardian:
“An intense roller-coaster of a crime story. Phelps’s book
Lethal Guardian
is at once complex, with a plethora of twists and turns worthy of any great detective mystery, and yet so well-laid out, so crisply written with such detail to character and place that it reads more like a novel than your standard nonfiction crime book.”
—Steve Jackson,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Monster
Also by M. William Phelps
Perfect Poison
Lethal Guardian
EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE
M. WILLIAM PHELPS
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
In memory of my brother,
Mark Anthony Phelps, Sr. (1957–2004),
and all the good times.
And to his children,
Mark Anthony Phelps, Jr., Tyler Phelps
and Meranda VanDeventer—
he loved you.
Contents
FOREWORD
This incredible true story, which, in my opinion, includes the most shocking and surprising ending in the history of true crime, begins and ends at a section of the Hudson River near downtown Troy, New York. Because the Hudson, called “the River of Steep Hills” when adventurer and explorer Henry Hudson discovered it in 1609, plays such a figurative role in this story—as if it, too, is a character—I feel obligated to give you, the reader, a brief description of the river, the towns and cities along its banks where the book takes place, and the surge of crime that has infected the region throughout the years.
Considering the role the river plays in this story, in a twist of irony only nature could invoke, the Hudson—315 miles of stunning waterway that empties into the Atlantic Ocean at the southern tip of Manhattan—is fed by Lake Tear of the Clouds, a body of water about the size of a football field, shaped like a teardrop, in the Adirondack Mountains. As one travels north from Manhattan along the Hudson’s banks and into upstate New York, there are areas littered with debris: pieces of old Styrofoam cups that take decades, if not centuries, to decompose; beer bottles without labels floating aimlessly; used condoms; bits of newspapers and magazines; driftwood; and just about anything else the river decides to consume, or people discard inconsiderately. Along certain sections of the river, large, boulderlike rocks, sharp and jagged to the touch, are grouped together like swarms of gnats, the water crashing off them as high and low tides rise and fall against the ebb and flow of the moon. The sand along the shore is like clay: gritty, the color of coffee. The water, in some areas, is as clear as cellophane straight down to the bottom, the pebbles and rocks on the river floor staring up at you; while in others, it is as murky as melted milk chocolate. In recent years, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been the hot topic of debate when communities along the river get together and talk about dredging the bottom to clean it up. Some say it will only stir up tons of poisons collected throughout the years, while others argue it is essential to the ecology and survival of the river’s two hundred different species of fish.
Located 138 miles north of New York City and 144 miles west of Boston, Massachusetts, the city of Albany is not only the capital of New York, but the crossroads of the Northeast. Described as the “humblest city in the state,” always taking a backseat to its more popular sibling, New York City, this industrial town of about 130,000 residents sits thirty feet above sea level, with the hum, serenity and mirrorlike reflection of the sky bouncing off the Hudson on its doorstep.
Shortly after World War II, Albany, the unassuming hub of New York’s government, enjoyed its most populated era with about 140,000 residents. That number has declined some over the years as people have moved outward into the suburbs of the “Capital District”—Rensselaer County, Saratoga County, Schenectady County—which is about eight hundred thousand people strong today.
Metropolitan areas around the Capital Region include four central cities—Albany, Schenectady, Troy and Saratoga Springs—and are surrounded by dozens of suburban and rural communities. Interestingly, Chester A. Arthur, the twenty-first president of the United States, is buried in Albany. Up the road from Arthur’s grave is the burial site of Erastus Corning, who sat in the Albany mayor’s chair for an unprecedented forty-one years. William Kennedy, the acclaimed novelist, whose most esteemed books include
Ironweed, Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game
and
Legs—
“the Albany trio”—writes of a fictional Albany, dark and unfashionable, during the hardscrabble Depression-era times of the late ’30s when the city was brimming with thieves, mobsters, union busters and murderers. In the popular film
Ironweed,
actor Jack Nicholson plays Francis Phelan, perhaps Kennedy’s most famous creation. Phelan is a drunkard, an ex–baseball player turned gravedigger who bounces around Albany with his drinking partner, Helen, trying to figure out where he fits into society.
Like a majority of its surrounding counties, Albany County has its lion’s share of crime to contend with, and has, historically, been marred by the highest crime rates in the north country. Between 1996 and 2000, for example, the county reported some fifty murders, which is rather low considering the population boom in the county during that same period. Rape is a crime that is hard to track because the numbers fluctuate so much from year to year—sixty-four rapes were reported in 1996, while, just a year later, the numbers doubled. By far, however, the most popular crimes in Albany County have always been burglary, robbery and aggravated assault. During that same five-year period—1996–2000—there were nearly 2,500 robberies and 4,000 reports of aggravated assault—staggering numbers by any count.
Under New York State penal code, robbery is the “forcible taking” of someone’s possessions and/or cash—a convenience store or bank holdup, for instance. Also under the robbery code is “taking from a person forcibly”—walking up to someone on the street, perhaps, and demanding their money or possessions.
Burglary falls under three different degrees. Third degree is “unlawfully entering a building and committing a crime therein.” Second degree is entering a “dwelling.” First degree involves breaking and entering someone’s residence and forcibly taking a “person or thing.”
This story is about one of the Northeast’s most prolific burglars—whom authorities later found was also a serial murderer—and the cop who pursued (and befriended) him for thirteen years. Nothing in this book has been made up; every bit of dialogue, every circumstance and thought, and every single fact in this book is real. I conducted over 150 hours’ worth of interviews, studied thousands of pages of public records and had access to nearly one hundred letters written by Gary Charles Evans. That research, plus the scores of other documents, court records and interviews I used, have convinced me that this true-crime story is the most incredible you will likely ever read. There are events in this book that may be hard to believe; but trust me, everything in this book actually happened.
