The Snake and the Spider

  If he was going to commit his work to the Lord and be successful at helping people who were hurting, he would have to ask for God’s help first.

  It was Thursday, November 9, and Mike and Rob had long since finished their trip up Interstate 10 with no luck. Bob had finished searching through the flophouses and checking with concession stand operators and souvenir shop cashiers and managers.

  No one had seen the boys or heard of their whereabouts. All of this meant that whatever had happened to them must have occurred in the hours after they arrived. Otherwise, with an investigation as intense as he and his assistants were performing, something would have turned up by now.

  That afternoon he was planning to continue his hunt through the motels along the strip. The boys had told their parents they were going to check into a motel after talking with them that August 12 night. So it would be up to Bob to locate the motel and from there retrace the teenagers’ steps.

  He was taking a late lunch break when he remembered something else that needed checking. The Michigan State Police had already investigated the locations where each of Jim’s traveler’s checks had been cashed and found nothing to go on. But the police hadn’t gone to the establishments in person.

  Suddenly he made a change in plans. He would finish searching the motels later. For now he was going to visit the places in Daytona Beach that had taken the traveler’s checks.

  MAJIK MARKET WAS THE FIRST ON BOB’S LIST. HE WENT through his file, took out a copy of the check that had been cashed there, and talked to the cashier. Yes, the cashier said, he had been working that afternoon. He worked every afternoon. Yes, he had probably taken the traveler’s check. He wished he could remember what the person had looked like, but he had no idea.

  “I’ve been through this before, man,” the young clerk said in an irritated voice. “Talked to the police a couple months ago. I just can’t tell you who brought that check in. We get traveler’s checks all the time.”

  At that instant, a customer walked up with long greasy hair and no shirt. He purchased a six-pack of Budweiser beer and paid for it with a rumpled traveler’s check. The clerk gave the man his change as Bob watched from a distance.

  “See? We get ’em every day.”

  BOB’S NEXT STOP WAS THE TRAILER PARK ON NORTH Beach Street. As Bob made his way to the area, he chided himself for not doing so earlier. This was perhaps the strangest place of all for two out-of-state teenagers to cash a traveler’s check. He drove into the parking lot and saw that the trailers were, for the most part, very run-down. Shady characters milled about the grounds working on old broken cars and sitting in lawn chairs drinking beer.

  Bob walked up to the manager’s office.

  “Can I help you?” A man stepped outside on the porch, shutting the door behind him. He was slightly disheveled and his clothes smelled of perspiration. Buttons had popped on part of his shirt from the pressure of his extended stomach.

  “Yes.” Bob pulled a copy of the traveler’s check out of his suit pocket. Now that he was no longer trudging along the sand every day he had once again taken to wearing suits. “Someone spent this traveler’s check at your establishment.”

  The man examined the copy of the check closely.

  “James Boucher,” the man repeated to himself. “Say, weren’t the police asking about that check?”

  “Yes, probably about two months ago.”

  “Right,” the man said. “I remember. But I told them it must have been a mistake. We’ve never had a James Boucher living at the trailer park. Don’t know how it got our stamp on the back. Must have been a bank error or something.” He handed the document back to Bob. “Anything else I can help you with?”

  “Yes,” Bob said, placing the document once again in the manager’s hands. “Please check your records and see if anyone used a traveler’s check to pay for rent on August seventeenth, the day the check was cashed.”

  “Listen, I never took a traveler’s check like this one. I’d recognize it. We don’t get these kinds of checks very much around the park.”

  “Are you the only one who collects rent checks?”

  The man thought about this a moment. “Well, I guess not. Once in a while the wife takes a payment or two. Depends on who’s in the office. Almost always it’s me and like I said I know I didn’t take that check.”

  “Your wife around?” Bob was moving past the man toward the office and the man held up his arm.

  “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll get her.”

  When he returned a few minutes later he had his wife and the payment record book from the office. The woman was a smaller, disheveled version of her husband and she looked at the copied traveler’s check, studying it for twenty seconds. Then, suddenly, her eyes lit up.

  “Why, yes, I remember that,” she said; then she turned to her husband. “You can take the record book back inside. I know who gave me that check.”

  “Who was it, ma’am?” Bob asked. He was so close to his first real lead in the case he could feel it, and now he could hardly wait for the woman to tell what she knew.

  “Got that check from Snake,” she said confidently.

  “Snake?”

  The woman looked up, squinting in the bright Florida sunshine. “Yeah, Snake.”

  The woman’s husband looked slightly embarrassed by this revelation.

  “Honey, the check’s signed by someone else. James Boucher, I think.” The man sounded uncomfortable. “Why in heaven’s name would you take a check from Snake when it was signed by someone else?”

  She put her hands on her hips and glared at her husband. “Look, you know as well as I do that rent’s hard to come by. Snake was always late. Always. So when he wanted to pay a week in advance, I took the check, no questions. Good as cash as far as the bank’s concerned. You’d have done the same thing.”

  The man looked helplessly at Bob, who had been taking notes throughout the conversation.

  “I need Snake’s real name,” he said.

  The couple stared at him blankly and then looked at each other and shrugged. “That’s it, just Snake,” the man finally said. “Everyone called him Snake. In fact, he and the wife and a few others moved out a couple months back.”

  Bob was amazed. “You mean you’d rent a furnished trailer to a man named Snake without taking any kind of first or last name?”

  “No, ‘course not. We got the trailer park owner for that part. She handles all the applications and then we handle the rent. Week to week. That’s all anyone’s good for around here.”

  “I’ll need her name, please.” Bob stared at the couple, waiting until one of them turned back into the office and returned with the woman’s name and telephone number.

  Bob copied the information into his notes and then pulled out the pictures of Jim and Daryl.

  “Recognize either of these kids?” he asked as the couple leaned closer and examined the photos.

  “Yeah,” the man said, pointing to the picture of Daryl. “I know I seen him before.” There was a pause while the man seemed to be lost in deep concentration. Then he looked at Bob excitedly.

  “Yeah, he was here one night in August. Snake threw a party one night,” the man said. “That’s it! That’s where I saw him. One of the cars was parked in the middle of the roadway near Snake’s trailer so I go over and ask the driver to move the car. Nice car, too. Especially for these parts.”

  “What kind of car was it?” Bob could hardly believe the information he was getting. It was the biggest break of the case and he was still getting more information.

  “Oh, nice car. Red, black top. If I remember right it had Michigan plates.” The man pointed again to the picture of Daryl. “That young man came out and moved the car for me.”

  “What else did you see?”

  “That’s about it. Snake disappeared for a long time after that night. Thought he’d skipped out on us.”

  “What did he drive, do you know?” br />
  “Well, Snake drove a blue bike, you know, Harley-Davidson. California plates.”

  “Did you see him leave on the bike after the party?”

  “Nope, can’t say that I did. But I heard from some of the guys that Snake had gone up to Mississippi with the boys.”

  “Did you ever see the boys again after that?”

  The man concentrated again for a moment. “No. But I saw Snake. He came back with the boys’ car.”

  Bob put his pen down and stared at the man. “Did you contact the police?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t that seem strange to you? A couple of out-of-state teenagers visit Snake, Snake disappears, and then he shows up with the car and the boys are gone?”

  The man was suddenly defensive. “Listen, I ain’t no cop! I take the rent and after that I don’t ask no questions unless someone breaks the rules. And there’s no rule against driving someone else’s car!”

  Bob decided to try another approach. “Did you ask Snake about the car?”

  “In fact, I did.” He was indignant. “Snake said he got the car fair and square in a big drug deal.”

  “A drug deal?” This confused Bob more than anything else he had just learned. Jim and Daryl were not involved in drugs and Bob could think of no reason why they would have given away their transportation in exchange for drugs. The only viable explanation was that Snake had been lying.

  “Yeah. Then he paid his rent—”

  “With the traveler’s checks?” Bob asked.

  “With the traveler’s checks,” the woman inserted.

  “And after that he and Spider and Fat Man and the girls moved out.”

  “Spider, Fat Man, and the girls?”

  “His roommates. Snake had a lot of roomies while he was here. Those were just a few of them.”

  “Do you know their real names?”

  The man and woman both shook their heads.

  “Have you heard from Snake?” Bob asked. “Since then?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Okay,” Bob checked over his notes. “Can you tell me anything else about Snake?”

  The man and woman paused and moved about nervously. “Well,” the man began, “he’s not a real nice guy, know what I mean?”

  Bob had guessed as much. “Tell me about him.”

  “He’s a Pagan, rides with the gang. You heard of them?”

  Bob felt his stomach sink to his feet. The Pagans were one of the most horrific gangs in Daytona Beach, and in many cases they were known for their ruthless behavior. “I know the gang.”

  “Let’s see, he’s a Pagan and he has brown hair, brown eyes. Lots of tattoos.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Maybe twenty-eight, twenty-nine,” the man said. “Hey, has he done something wrong?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out. The boys have been gone for ten weeks and no one has heard from them. Right now Snake’s the last person who’s seen them,” he said.

  The couple looked uneasy with the prospect.

  Bob gave them his card. “Call me if he comes back around, or if you see Spider or Fat Man or the girls, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Bob thanked them for their help and returned to his car. It was after six o’clock and he used his car phone to call the trailer park owner.

  Yes, she knew who Snake was. His real name was John Cox, according to his rental application.

  “Do you have a forwarding address?” Bob asked.

  “No. He left pretty quickly from what I understand,” she said. “You have to know, Mr. Brown, our tenants are very transient. We’re lucky to get a name and almost never does anyone leave a forwarding address. If I hear from him I’ll notify you.”

  Bob thanked her and gave her his number. His next call was to James Byrd. For the first time since the boys had disappeared there was something to go on. Someone had seen the boys with John “Snake” Cox and days later Snake had been seen with the car but the teens were nowhere to be found.

  After detailing the information to Byrd, Bob hung up the phone with mixed emotions. He knew he was far closer to solving this case now than he had been that morning. But his hope that the boys might still be alive had all but vanished. The boys had dared to tangle with one of the Pagans and in the process come across the path of a mean and ruthless Snake.

  CHAPTER 16

  In the late 1970s, anyone who knew anything about Daytona Beach knew enough to respect the Harley-Davidson motorcycle gangs. Not the way citizens might respect a civic group for its contributions to a community. Instead they respected the gangs in a way that many times proved beneficial to their health. Never mess with a gang member, was the city’s unofficial slogan.

  This was especially true for the two rival gangs who were possibly the most ruthless of all: the Pagans and the Outlaws.

  Daytona Beach was an unofficial center for motorcycle gang activity and what the Outlaws were capable of, the Pagans were capable of. If the Outlaws had no problem accepting responsibility on the streets for a murder or for some other heinous crime, the Pagans were equally willing. For the most part they were a fearless, heartless band of bikers who loved their bikes above all else, their fellow gang members above their women, and who thought nothing of breaking the law. The only things that distinguished the two gangs were their names and the fact that each held an intense, often deadly, dislike for the other.

  So fierce had the rivalry become that by the summer of 1978, the Pagans had actually begun migrating to sections of Maryland, where they apparently could terrorize communities in peace, without the incessant threat of running into an Outlaw along the way. That summer, about the same time Jim and Daryl left Metamora for their dream vacation, the Outlaws were in prime form.

  In December, an article ran in the Orlando Sentinel titled, “Outlaws: Terror on Two Wheels.” The article related two events that had occurred in or just outside of Daytona Beach that past summer.

  First, a group of men and women were being questioned after having drunk through the night at a biker member’s living room while in the next room three men beat a woman senseless. The woman was found dead hours later with fourteen stab wounds to her body, her throat slit from one end to the other. Two women in the house later testified that they had intentionally ignored the victim’s cries for help because they feared if they intervened the same thing would happen to them.

  Also that summer, ten white gang members had gotten into an argument with two black men one evening when the gang would not let the black men pass through a stop sign. These men were then taken from their cars, and in the middle of a deserted two-lane highway they were beaten with chains. Somehow, the men lived. When they reported the incident to the police, they met with little shock over the matter. Knowing who was probably responsible for the attack, the police showed the men pictures and dossiers on the likely suspects—all gang members. When the victims realized who they were up against they decided not to press charges.

  In both cases, the Outlaws were involved so that when the police told people, as they did whenever asked, that the Outlaws were one of the largest and roughest motorcycle gangs in the country, they had examples to prove it.

  The local chapter of Outlaws, the article went on to say, had only about twenty-five actual members with an unknown number of associate members. According to police, the gang—which again was almost identical in nature to the Pagans—had taken on the characteristics of an organized crime outfit. These traits included the fact that the motorcycle gang ruled by fear, intimidated witnesses, staked out territories of operation, and then dealt drugs and illegal weapons. Also the gang typically did its best to eliminate the competition—in particular, the Pagans.

  A man named “Dirty Tom,” identified by police as the Outlaws’ chapter president, vehemently denied these reports.

  “We don’t look for trouble; we try to avoid it,” he was quoted as saying. “People pick fights
with us and all we do is try to defend ourselves.”

  Rumor had it the police clipped that quotation from the newspaper and tacked it up in the station so that whenever they needed a good laugh, they could simply walk by and read it.

  “Dirty Tom” also confirmed that he and his fellow gang brothers were dropouts from the mainstream of society and many times at odds with local police. “What a club member wants is to be left alone and to ride the streets,” he was quoted as saying. “It’s not against the law to be an Outlaw.”

  But Sheriff Melvin G. Colman of nearby Orange County was quoted as disagreeing with the chapter president on many points.

  “These aren’t a bunch of fun-loving motorcycle riders,” he said. “These are a bunch of brutal animals.”

  One need only examine the lifestyle led by the Outlaws—and very likely the Pagans—to understand the utter truth of this fact, Colman noted. In particular, one need only look at the way the Outlaws treated rival gangs and the way they treated women.

  For instance, Steve Almond, who once rode on the fringes of both the Outlaws and the Pagans, said that nothing was done in either group without the permission of the local president. A group retaliation against a rival gang was not only something that required permission, it was something that was orchestrated in detail.

  Almond was a Pagans pledge in the summer of 1974 when he and two Pagans were kidnapped by members of the Outlaws. They were taken to the Outlaw clubhouse, tied up, and then beaten and kicked. Almond escaped. The other two were dumped in a local forest where their skeletons were found a year later.

  Almond chose to testify against the six Outlaws charged with the beatings and killings. As a result, he remains in hiding, taking part in the U.S. Federal Witness Protection Program. During the trial he was able to identify his attackers and shed some light on the inner workings of the gang lifestyle.