Everything She Ever Wanted (12 page)

there was already a statewide want out on it-and on its alleged driver,

Patricia Taylor Allanson.
 
Callahan noted the license plate number, CY

242, a 1974 Georgia-issued plate.
 
A quick radio check with "Wants and

Warrants" elicited the information that the plate had been issued for a

new jeep, purchased three months before in Marietta, Georgia, and that

it indeed was registered to Patricia R. Taylor of the Kentwood Morgan

Farm in Zebulon.

In the rapidly dimming light, the three policemen could make out the

form of a woman sitting in the jeep.
 
There was no way of knowing if

she was alone, or if someone was crouching down beside her or behind

her.

They leaped from their police unit and approached the jeep from behind

with guns drawn.
 
The woman in the vehicle didn't move at all-not even

to turn her head to glance at them.

"Get out of the jeep!"
 
Callahan shouted.
 
"Get out of the jeep with

your hands up!"

For a moment there was no movement in the little blue ragtop jeep, and

then a pretty, slender woman wearing a miniskirt and a halter top poked

one bare leg out, slid to the ground, and turned to stare back at

them.

She held up one arm and gestured that she could not raise the other

because it was injured.

"Anyone else in there?"
 
Callahan called.

She shook her head.

"You sure?"

"I'm all alone."

Callahan and Jones moved to either side of the woman they presumed to

be Pat Allanson and led her inio the police car.
 
She didn't resist,

but she winced as if her shoulder hurt her.

"What is going on?"
 
she asked.
 
"What has happened?
 
Where is Tom?"

"Are you -A4rs.
 
Allanson?"

"Yes.

"Well, he shot his mother."

Pat sagged a bit, and then said forcefully, "No, he couldn't have s of

"Well, his ex-wife said he did."

Pat didn't care about what Tom's ex-wife said.
 
She insisted that if

anybody did any shooting, it wouldn't have been Tom.

At this point, they couldn't argue with her.
 
The only thing they could

be sure of was that the elder Carolyn Allanson was dead.
 
For all they

knew at this point, Tom might be dead too and, as improbable as it

seemed, they might be looking for Walter Allanson.
 
The basement up the

street had been so obscured by walls, doors, and junk that they

couldn't be sure of anything, and they hadn't yet been informed about

what the investigators back at the house might have found.

None of the police units circling the area had made any definite

sightings of Tom.
 
His new wife seemed to be in shock.
 
All she knew

was that she had been waiting for him for hours.
 
She was worried

sick-so much so that she had called her parents, Colondl and Mrs.

Clifford Radcliffe, to come and be with her.
 
She would, of course, be

glad to talk with the officers about anything they wished-if only she

could wait for her mother and daddy to get there.

She appeared panicked that the officers would remove her from the

parking lot before her mother and father arrived.
 
"Please don't take

me away.
 
They're on their way, and they won't know where to find me if

you take me away from here."

She said she had no idea where her husband might be at the moment.
 
He

had been wearing a brown shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots when she

last saw him.

"How tall is your husband, ma'am?"
 
Lynn asked.

"Tall.
 
Real tall-six foot three or better.
 
He's a very large man-but

very gentle.
 
I believe he weighs over two hundred pounds.

Captain Lynn got on the radio and broadcast a BOLO (be on the lookout

for) on Tom Allanson, giving the additional descriptive information on

his appearance.
 
The details fit the running man that Officer Cecil

McBurnett had observed just after hearing the report of "Burglar in the

house" at 1458 Norman Berry Drive.
 
The man had been running toward the

intersection of Cleveland and Norman Berry, and, incidentally, the King

Building.

Of course, that man had been hunched over and no one knew how tall he

was.
 
Had it been Walter?
 
Or Tom?
 
There was no way Lynn could be

sure.
 
Tom had last been seen in blue Levi's and Callahan had said

Walter was wearing blue trousers when he talked to him earlier.

Lynn, Jones, and Callahan had far too much to do to wait for Pat

Allanson's parents.
 
They took Pat with them as they drove slowly

around.
 
the neighborhood.
 
They stopped now and again to check garages

where a shooter might be hiding.

Pat heard the radio chatter constantly and tried to understand the

police codes.
 
They had told her only that Tom's mother was dead.

Shot.
 
They hadn't said anything about Tom's father.
 
Or Tom.
 
She bit

her lip and stared nervously out the squad car's window.

They turned from Cleveland onto Stewart Avenue and drove right past the

very spot-Nalley's Chevrolet-where Pat's brother, Kent, had died eight

years earlier.
 
Shot too.
 
Pat looked away, her thoughts known only to

herself.

After a while the police took Pat back to the King Building, where the

colonel and her mother were waiting for her.
 
Her mother took her hand,

and the colonel demanded to know just what was going on and why his

daughter was being detained.

The police retrieved Pat's pocketbook and sewing things from the jeep,

and they instructed the Radcliffes to follow them to the East Point

Police Department.
 
And there they waited, the three of them.
 
The

police were too busy even to talk to them.

Pat thought about sewing on her Fourth of July parade costume-just to

keep her panic down-but there didn't seem much point.

Probably she and Tom wouldn't be riding in the parade Saturday after

all.
 
She didn't even know if Tom was alive.

The blue jeep was towed into the city garage.
 
The detectives saw a

container of take-out fried chicken in the front seat, and noted it

along with their other observations.

. . .

Back at 1458 Norman Berry Drive, East Point officers had completed

their search of the basement.
 
Milford Carolyn Allanson still sat on

the basement steps, shot through the heart.
 
They had found another

body there too.
 
Walter Allanson lay on the floor parallel to the

steps; his body had been hidden by the stack of doors.
 
His new rifle

was on the floor four feet from his body, and a few feet from the body

of his wife.
 
There was no way of telling which of them had fired the

rifle, or if, indeed, either had.
 
One round had been fired from it,

and it was partially cocked with a live round half into the chamber.

Walter Allanson had obvious gunshot wounds in his face, neck, and

torso.
 
In all likelihood, it was his blood that had left trails of

gore over half the basement-particularly near the hole in the base of

the fireplace and then pooled beneath him as he bled out.

After Detective Marlin Humphrey, Jr took photographs, Lambert, Vance,

and Patrolman Bob Matthews removed the bodies of Walter and Carolyn

Allanson, carrying the victims up the steps to be laid out on the wet

grass of their side yard for more police photographs and to await

transportation to South Fulton Hospital.

They could not be declared legally dead without a physician; the bodies

would then await postmortem examination.

Bob Matthews, who worked as an identification officer, bagged the

.45/70 carbine rifle and the .32 pistol, which had six empty

chambers.

The investigators could not hope to do a thorough crime scene

investigation until daylight, which was still hours away.

Lieutenant Thornhill ordered the property cordoned off and stationed

patrolmen to guard it until morning.
 
They now knew what had

happened.

It would take them a long, long time before they knew how and why.

Jean Boggs, Walter Allanson's sister, hadn't felt well all day.
 
She

was standing at her stove fixing something to eat at 8:30 on the night

of July 3 when a neighbor came to the back door.
 
"I don't want to

frighten you, but I think something's wrong at your brother's house.

Maybe you'd better call him.

There are ambulances and police cars and everything up there."

Alarmed, jean heard the phone at Walter's house ring six, ten, twelve

times with no answer.
 
She didn't know, of course, that the phone line

was severed and the rings she heard were silent in her brother's

house.

When she called Mae Mama's house, a policeman answered and suggested

that she had better go on down to her brother's house.
 
He wouldn't

tell her anything else, nor would the desk sergeant at the East Point

police station.
 
That scared her.

Her husband wasn't home, but her neighbor said he would drive her over

to Walter and Carolyn's place.

"When we got up there," Jean said later, "I remember seeing oodles and

oodles of people going up and down the bank where my brother lived and

up and down the driveway-many strangers.
 
I also remember seeing a

television station there .
 
. . Channel Five."

Jean walked up to a policeman who was holding people back with his

extended arms.
 
When she told him who she was, he summoned Captain