(4 of 4)
Tom did turn up in Mazatlan. He was probably safer there than he had been in Washington Park. He probably took a bus--the last cheap and anonymous transportation left to an American fugitive. He hooked up with three dozen classmates, who had flown down together. Though many had supported him, Tom's presence, for once, was a downer. One girl wouldn't stand next to him in photos, and many just pitied him. When they returned, news of his whereabouts traveled quickly. One tearful girl called a detective directly.
Tom fled again, this time to Arizona. Short on cash, he applied for a job at the Fountain Cafe in Mesa, using his real name and Social Security number. Working his charm, he befriended the owners, Mike and Gale Moran, who later told reporters they thought Tom was just wonderful. He always took out the trash, liked to wear the red apron, that sort of thing. They let him drive their car, and he was friends with their daughter. "We had no idea," they would later say, over and over.
Back in Portland, the cops looked like idiots for letting the 18-year-old slip through their fingers, especially after the Oregonian in July reported the Mazatlan trip. They called in the big guns of U.S. law enforcement: America's Most Wanted. Detective Kelly Krohn, a tall, goateed man running the investigation, appeared on the TV show on July 25. Tom saw the segment and freaked. He ran again, to Las Vegas. But he knew it was over. He called his dad from a casino, told him he wanted to come in, and three FBI agents arrested him.
The city lashed out. Commentators complained that Tom's friends hadn't turned him in during the Mazatlan trip--"Portland, we have a problem," a columnist lamented. Prosecutors were even harsher. Five of the six people involved have now pleaded guilty, and because of mandatory-sentencing laws, most have received at least four years. Even Celia Reynolds, who reluctantly drove Tom and Ethan to and from a supermarket robbery (and somewhat less reluctantly took a share of the proceeds afterward) will spend a full two years in prison for her role.
Tom's case is likely to be over soon, and he will begin his sentence. He's trying to stay optimistic, stay Tom. He writes friends joking letters--he says he tells the days apart by watching a different daily parade of freaks on Jerry Springer. But lately he has been housed in a jail dorm with depressing and depressed people, folks on medication and not all there. It can be harrowing.
That emotion is familiar to Pamela Hartley. She still is the manager at the Rustica, where she was eating a late dinner that ghastly night when Tom and Ethan burst in. One of them pointed a gun at her and told her to "open the f______ drawer." The experience is with her every night at the restaurant. "You know, people say they were kids, or they weren't really going to shoot, or whatever," Hartley says. "But they were in a very violent state of mind, screaming, just all over the place. They wanted everyone to think they would hurt them. And we did. I want them to think about that." They will have years to do so.