American Predator

by Maureen Callahan

  Just over one hour later, Samantha’s card pinged again.

  This was the kind of moment Payne lived for. He alerted his team and rushed to the field office.

  That second alert came from Lordsburg, New Mexico, an hour’s drive from Willcox. Their suspect was heading east on the I-10, and again had made the mistake of trying to withdraw more than the daily limit, again at a Western Bank. Payne thought that this might be a longtime Alaskan thrown off by complications in regional time differences: Mountain Time an hour behind Central Time; Alaska Time an hour behind Pacific Standard Time.

  It was now 2:34 A.M. in New Mexico, 11:24 P.M. in Anchorage. Samantha’s card was working on Alaska time. Payne and Bell looked at a map and predicted that whoever had the card would stay eastbound on the I-10. It just made the most sense.

  Even though they didn’t have a make or model on the suspect’s vehicle, they could tell he wasn’t driving the white Chevy. He was probably in a rental. Payne put out a BOLO, or “be on the lookout,” to law enforcement in LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Albuquerque, and El Paso.

  At 2:35 A.M., at the same ATM, the card pinged again. This was a balance inquiry, showing $3,598.91 left in the account. Another minute went by, and another eighty dollars came out, the suspect pulling close to the daily five-hundred-dollar limit.

  Bell was as excited as Payne. He knew the ATM card was going to be it. They all did. But he also reminded himself that there was no way the FBI could rouse the small number of police officers in these tiny towns out of bed and have them patrol the I-10. By the time they even began trying, their suspect could be anywhere. Some of these towns had maybe twenty officers total. Wake up the ones not on night patrol—the majority—and by the time they’re on the interstate, their suspect would be long gone, probably doing eighty or a hundred miles per hour on an empty highway.

  So Payne and the team sat in a sterile conference room, midnight approaching, staring at the wall, waiting to hear about ATM activity way down in the Southwest. Reality set in. This was a tenuous lead, one they had to trust other agents not to screw up. And they had to hope whoever had that ATM card wouldn’t stop using it, even though he seemed smart enough to quit while ahead.

  SIX

  Steve Rayburn first saw Payne’s BOLO at 6:30 A.M. on Monday, March 12. He was having his first cup of coffee at home, scrolling through email on his BlackBerry. The BOLO read like an old-school cable.

  REF: KIDNAPPING SUSPECT

  KOENIG, SAMANTHA.

  SUSPECT WILL BE AN UNKNOWN MALE LAST SEEN WEARING A LIGHT-COLORED HOODED SWEATSHIRT. SUSPECT VEHICLE WILL BE NEWER, LIGHT-COLORED PASSENGER CAR.

  BASED ON ATM TRANSACTIONS, IT’S BELIEVED THAT THE SUSPECT IS TRAVELING EAST TOWARD EL PASO.

  Attached were three pictures. The first, which had been pulled off Facebook, was a picture of Samantha. Real pretty girl, he thought. It was a close-up, Samantha smiling, a green bandana around her head. The second picture was of a small white passenger car. The windows didn’t seem tinted. The third picture was the suspect wearing a hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and sneakers, his face completely obscured.

  * * *

  —

  Rayburn had been a Texas Ranger for three years. Before that, he’d been a Lufkin police officer for eight, a state trooper for ten. He knew US Highway 59, the over six-hundred-mile main artery linking Lufkin and Houston, extremely well. This roadway, he thought, would probably come into play.

  At 10:58 A.M. came an email from Kevin Pullen, Rayburn’s immediate supervisor. Pullen wrote that he had been contacted by the FBI for help. There were already three agents on the ground in nearby Humble, Texas, where the ATM card had been used two days before. Attached to Pullen’s email was an “Attempt to Locate” flyer. Rayburn opened the file.

  REF: KIDNAPPING SUSPECT FROM ANCHORAGE, ALASKA.

  SUSPECT USED AN ATM CARD TWICE: ONCE IN HUMBLE, TEXAS, AND AGAIN IN SHEPHERD, TEXAS.

  PLEASE SEND THIS FLYER AND RECENT ATM INFO TO ALL IN-CAR COMPUTERS. RANGER STEVE RAYBURN IN LUFKIN WILL BE THE MAIN RANGER ASSISTING THE FBI IN THIS MATTER.

  This was the first Rayburn was hearing about his new assignment. He was nervous. He’d never worked with the FBI on an interstate kidnapping before.

  Attached to Pullen’s flyer was another photo. This was a close-up of the suspect’s face. His nose and mouth appeared to be covered with a light-colored mask, and he had glasses on, but the photos were extremely blurry.

  Rayburn was dismayed. This is what we’re working with? He’d known Pullen a long time, having worked directly under him since transferring to the Rangers in 2009. To be a Texas Ranger had always been a point of pride for Rayburn; they’re about as outlaw as a law-enforcement agency gets. Their motto is “One Riot, One Ranger.” They took down John Wesley Hardin and Bonnie and Clyde. The Lone Ranger is a Texas Ranger gone rogue. Journalist John Salmon Ford, who served as Ranger captain in the 1850s, described the Rangers this way:

  “A large portion . . . were unmarried. A few of them drank intoxicating liquors. Still, it was a company of sober and brave men. They knew their duty and they did it. While in a town they made no braggadocio demonstration. They did not gallop through the streets, shoot and yell. They had a specie of moral discipline which developed moral courage. They did right because it was right.”

  Rayburn tried to be that kind of Ranger. Now, with these bulletins flooding multiple law-enforcement agencies throughout Texas, he thought it best to draft yet another, emblazoned with the Ranger badge. Every police officer and state trooper knew what it meant when the Rangers affixed their logo to a bulletin: top priority.

  Rayburn called the FBI field office in nearby Conroe and learned that an officer in Humble reported seeing a white Ford Focus at an ATM around the time of that withdrawal at 2:23 in the morning. There were two surveillance photos of the vehicle—poor quality but, once again, Chris Iber at Quantico had been able to determine the make and model. The white Ford Focus, it turned out, was the most commonly rented vehicle in the United States. First the white Chevy pickup truck, now this. Their suspect certainly knew how to blend in.

  Rayburn sat at his desk and wrote his own, more detailed bulletin, a photo of the white Ford Focus attached, with his Rangers in mind.

  ON 2/1/2012, AT APPROXIMATELY 2 A.M. [MST], THE VICTIM WAS KIDNAPPED IN THE STATE OF ALASKA AT HER PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT. HER FAMILY AND BOYFRIEND HAVE SINCE BEEN CLEARED AS SUSPECTS.

  ON 3/7/2012, A DEBIT CARD IN THE NAME OF THE VICTIM’S BOYFRIEND, DUANE TORTOLANI, WAS USED AT AN ATM IN WILLCOX, ARIZONA, AT APPROXIMATELY 10:15 A.M.

  THE CARD WAS AGAIN USED IN LORDSBURG, NEW MEXICO, AT APPROXIMATELY 11:30 A.M. THE CARD WAS LAST USED IN SHEPHERD, TEXAS, ON 3/12/2012 AT APPROXIMATELY 2:47 A.M.

  SHEPHERD IS LOCATED ON US 59. OFFICERS ARE ASKED TO CHECK REST AREAS, TRUCK STOPS, AND MOTELS.

  OFFICERS ARE ASKED TO BOLO FOR THE VEHICLE WITH AN OCCUPANT MATCHING SUSPECT OR VICTIM DESCRIPTION. SUSPECT SHOULD BE IN POSSESSION OF TORTOLANI’S STOLEN ATM CARD.

  Rayburn had a feeling that the suspect would head up through Lufkin, which sat off Route 59. A lot of highways connect here, and on a map the conduits look like a wagon wheel. Lufkin was the next nearest city to Humble, about an hour and a half drive north, and the only one with nice hotels. The suspect could also reach Lufkin by heading north on I-45, but that would be a much longer drive, closer to two and a half hours.

  In these moments, Rayburn thought of investigative work like fishing or hunting. You had to look at where your target was most likely going. Rayburn also didn’t think the Ford Focus would have a Texas license plate. The suspect was probably from Alaska and had already driven through two other states. But Rayburn didn’t put that in his bulletin; that was his hunch, not a fact.

  He read through his draft once more, and at 1:18 P.M. he electronically distributed the bulletin to law-enforcement agencies in southeast Texas, plus Louisiana and Arkansas.


  Next, he printed out a thick stack of color copies and walked them over to the state troopers at the Lufkin Police Department. Technology is a double-edged sword in cases like these; so much information comes through in-car computers and over the radio that even the best officers and troopers suffer information overload. An old-school approach like this, Rayburn always found, made a much more lasting impression: I’m walking this over to you, I’m talking to you, which means this is important.

  Rayburn then went over to the Department of Public Safety office and handed a copy of his bulletin to Corporal Bryan Henry, a Texas Highway patrolman. Henry had twenty years with Highway Patrol and twenty-two years with the troopers. He came from a long line of Texas law enforcement.

  “I need your help,” Rayburn told Henry. “This is the suspect vehicle we’re looking for. It’s a late-model Ford Focus with no decals or body damage, no tinted windows. We don’t know if it’s owned or rented.” Henry looked at the photos closely. “How can you know this is a white Ford Focus?” he asked.

  “That’s what the FBI tells us,” Rayburn said. “I talked to the field office in Conroe.”

  Henry was skeptical. So he took the flyer and drove over to the local Ford dealership. Turned out Chris Iber, who identified the Focus using windshield analysis, was right.

  * * *

  —

  Back in Alaska, Payne and his team had gone from elation to frustration. For Payne, Iber’s assessment that they were looking for the most commonly rented vehicle in the United States was just another instance of Murphy’s Law.

  Progress seemed minimal. They had a man, his age, race, and weight unknown, covered head to toe, traveling on major highways in a nondescript vehicle, picking small banks in small towns at odd hours, knowing the risk of getting caught was almost zero. He seemed to have a hyperawareness of video cameras, often parking his vehicle out of frame.

  What were the chances they’d ever catch him?

  Kat Nelson was a little more optimistic. She tried to encourage Payne. This guy made two bank withdrawals in Texas, one in Humble and one in Shepherd. Texas, of course, is much larger than Arizona or New Mexico, but these withdrawals were taking place in closer and closer proximity. It was entirely possible, Nelson said, that their suspect might be settling in for a few days. “Nesting,” she called it.

  Yet there was nothing Nelson could actively do. She was stuck up in Alaska, at the mercy of Texas Rangers.

  Jolene Goeden felt the same way. Like Nelson and Payne, she toggled between despair and excitement, but as the ATM withdrawals began escalating, she allowed herself to think that it was only a matter of time.

  Jeff Bell was less sure. This was one of the thousands of BOLOs going out through the United States every day. Their BOLO couldn’t even say for sure where their suspect was going or why, and Bell knew that most who read it would think to themselves, “There’s no chance. I’m not even going to try.”

  Steve Payne agreed. At this stage, he thought, they were relying on luck. They had to count on people to be decent, and last night he’d had one of the most disheartening exchanges of the entire investigation. After another withdrawal in Texas in the predawn hours of March 12, he called the local bank manager in Humble and asked her to go down and look at the security footage.

  No, she said.

  He was flabbergasted. He begged. Other bank managers across the Southwest had responded immediately, rousting themselves in the middle of the night. A young girl’s life is in danger, Payne told her.

  Sorry, she replied. But I’m not going to the bank and I’m not sending any of my employees. She told Payne he and his team would just have to wait until the bank opened at nine.

  * * *

  —

  As it turned out, that video was useless, but the whole experience left Payne deeply discouraged. When the day ended with no new leads and no new ATM withdrawals, Payne began to worry that his suspect just might vanish forever in the Lower 48.

  * * *

  —

  For Rayburn, this was only day two, and his anxiety had given way to cautious optimism. He got to the office early and began working on another BOLO; even though he lacked new information, pushing another one would remind everyone to remain vigilant. He was struggling with the wording when his phone rang.

  The voice on the other end introduced herself as Deb Gannaway. She was an FBI agent out of Lufkin, but had spent most of her thirty-three years with the Bureau in Houston. Kevin Pullen had given her a call, Gannaway said, asking if she knew about “this missing girl from Alaska and this debit card.” The suspect seemed to be moving up from Houston toward Gannaway’s area of responsibility. Could she come by?

  “Sure,” Rayburn said. It was 10:30 A.M. Minutes later, Gannaway was in his office.

  With little to discuss—Rayburn knew as much as Gannaway—they talked procedure. Gannaway marveled at the Bureau’s ability to identify the most commonplace vehicles in the country through subtle design quirks; Rayburn boasted of Henry taking photos over to the Ford dealership and holding them up, side by side, to an actual Ford Focus. For a Texas Ranger, no job was too small.

  Rayburn’s cell phone rang. It was nearly eleven o’clock now and Henry was on the line. He’d been driving around local hotel parking lots and had just come upon a white Ford Focus. The car was parked in front of the Quality Inn on South First Street, and what do you know? That was right off US 59.

  Henry had been about to go on his lunch break, but would stick around until Rayburn got there.

  Gannaway grabbed her jacket. Rayburn, who followed the Rangers’ strict dress code, removed his cowboy hat and necktie. As best he could, he didn’t want to look like a Ranger, but he still wore his long-sleeved dress shirt, immaculate blue jeans, and cowboy boots.

  Gannaway and Rayburn hopped into his pickup truck and headed over to the Quality Inn. There, they found the Ford Focus parked in front of room 115. This might be it.

  Rayburn called his friend Mickey Hadnot, a lieutenant he’d known since the early 1990s when they were on street patrol together. Hadnot now supervised undercover narcotics agents. “I want to put eyes on this car,” Rayburn told Hadnot. “Would you send an undercover over?”

  Hadnot told Rayburn he was on his way. He’d do it himself.

  Meanwhile, Henry told Rayburn he was skipping lunch. This was getting exciting. He’d hang back and keep his eyes on rooms 115 and 215 right above.

  In the parking lot, Gannaway got out of Rayburn’s truck and walked around the Ford Focus, noting the bar code on the rear window. A rental. There were little girl’s clothes in the backseat. The car had Texas license plates. Rayburn ran them through the system.

  With Hadnot and Henry keeping watch, Rayburn and Gannaway walked into the hotel lobby and asked for the manager. He gave them the guest list, but nothing connected the Ford Focus to anyone registered at the hotel. Among the Quality Inn and neighboring Holiday Inn and Comfort Suites, there were hundreds of rooms. Anyone could have parked anywhere.

  Henry called Rayburn. “I’ve just seen a guy on the upper floor looking down at this car I’ve got eyes on,” he said.

  Then Hadnot radioed in. It was 11:30.

  “A white male adult exited room 215,” Hadnot said. “He’s placing items in the white Ford Focus. He’s getting ready to go.”

  “Henry,” Rayburn said. “I need you to set up on US 59. Once that car leaves, you need to find a reason to pull him over. Don’t let go of that car.” Henry immediately pulled out and drove over to US 59’s center median, which gave him an unobstructed view of the hotel’s entrance and exit.

  Within minutes, Henry saw the white Ford Focus slowly make a left on US 59 and head north. Henry followed, keeping two cars between him and the Ford.

  The driver was doing nothing wrong. Minute after minute elapsed. Once through the residential part of US 59, there would be no traffi
c lights to stop the driver. And there was a higher speed limit looming.

  Rayburn wanted to know what was happening.

  “Find a reason,” he said again. “Find a reason.”

  The Ford was now stopped at a traffic light, seven minutes out from the Quality Inn. Henry lasered in on his in-car radar screen. When the light turned green and the Ford Focus accelerated to fifty-seven miles per hour, two miles over the speed limit, Henry switched on his emergency lights and watched incredulously as the driver calmly pulled over and stopped in the parking lot at the Cotton Patch Cafe.

  * * *

  —

  Henry walked over to the vehicle. The driver was a white man, midthirties, alone. He wore black wraparound sunglasses.

  “Texas Highway Patrol,” Henry told him. “Where are you from?”

  “Alaska,” the man said.

  * * *

  —

  In his twenty-two years doing traffic stops, Henry had never pulled over anyone from Alaska. “I need to see your driver’s license, sir,” Henry said. “Please step out of the vehicle.”

  The man pulled out his wallet, handed his license to Henry, and got out of the car.

  An Alaskan in Texas. This was an awfully long way from home. Henry looked at the license, then back at the man. Henry said nothing. “I’m in town for my sister’s wedding,” the man said. “It’s in Wells, fifteen minutes from here.”

  Henry looked at the license again. The name: Israel Keyes. Born January 7, 1978, living in Anchorage. Henry could see a knife tucked in the man’s front jeans pocket, another in the rear.