Spratt checked into the Charleston, SC hotel around 9:00am and took a nap for a few hours. Upon awakening, he went to Toys-R-Us to buy the things that he had promised his children and stopped at a fast food restaurant for lunch. He then picked up a case of beer and returned to the hotel room. Sometime that afternoon, Spratt went to the hotel bar and had a few drinks with other hotel guests and a couple of locals. He met another out of town contractor who offered Spratt a decent paying, albeit temporary, position on a construction project. Spratt wanted the job but had a couple of things to take care of before he would be able to accept any employment (it’s one thing to know that there is a warrant for your arrest…quite another to know that the cops that may serve that warrant believe you to be a ‘dangerous’ fugitive. Spratt had to get the ‘dangerous’ designation removed somehow before he would be able to even halfway concentrate on a job). The contractor gave Spratt his phone number and told him he could start working the next week if he wanted to. Spratt thanked him and went to his room to sleep for the night.
The next morning, Spratt went to the lobby and made himself a plate from the complimentary breakfast buffet and returned to his room to eat and wait for a good time to call the reporter back. Finally, he placed the call and the reporter answered immediately. The reporter told Spratt that he had been able to reach his contacts at the Puerto Rico Police Department and they had, officially, provided him with a version that was slightly different than what had been previously released but that it still was not exactly like Spratt’s version. He stated that he was glad that Spratt had called because he was about to submit the story and wanted Spratt’s response to the newer version.
“What did they tell you this time?” asked Spratt. “They admitted that they were not in the airport when the escape took place but that they had taken you to a hotel room for the night because of a delay in flights” the reporter responded. He continued by reading from his notes, “They stated that you were duly chained and restrained with handcuffs and shackles and that they took turns sleeping with one officer constantly awake and watching you while the other slept. Taking advantage of the fact that one of them was asleep, you were able to physically overcome the other officer and beat him up prior to stealing the handcuff key, removing your handcuffs and shackles, and then escaping through the door of the hotel. They denied that any alcohol, whatsoever, was involved.” The reporter stated that this revised version sounded a little more credible than Spratt’s version and the Police explained the discrepancies away by saying that they did not release the details of the hotel in the original version because they needed to keep extradition details and procedures a secret to prevent future escapes.
Spratt laughed out loud! “Are you fucking kidding me? Who the fuck would believe that story?” asked Spratt incredulously. “Don’t you realize how SMALL a hotel room is? If a chained inmate started struggling with a trained police officer who would win? I must be one badass motherfucker to be able to beat up a cop with my hands and legs chained up! Don’t you think that, once the struggle started, the cop would holler out to his partner who would then wake up and lend a hand in the fight?” Spratt continued with, “I’m telling you the truth! They got drunk and passed out! There was no fight!” Then Spratt remembered a detail that the reporter could use to verify his story with, “Look, the Sergeant paid for all of those drinks with the Police Dept. American Express card….surely you could get a copy of that bill. It wouldn’t prove that he had a bottle of Smirnoff in his luggage but it would prove that drinks were consumed at the restaurant and, since they stated that absolutely no alcohol was involved, that should undermine their credibility.” Spratt told the reporter the exact date and time that they were in the restaurant and the amount of the total bill. The reporter said that he would look into it and then get the official response to this prior to publishing the story. They hung up with Spratt promising to call back no later than the next day.
Spratt then called the Head of the Puerto Rico Department of Justice’s Extradition Division who would not speak with him about the details of the escape but told him that he was actively being hunted by the U.S. Marshal’s Service and that his wife’s phone was being tapped in order to find him. Spratt believed the part about the phone being tapped (he didn’t care though because he felt secure with the process of using the AT&T card and also knew that he would immediately leave anywhere that he had called from) but called bullshit on the part about the U.S. Marshal. To prove the point, she put him on a conference call with a guy that claimed to be a Marshal. He told Spratt that he would hunt him down and Spratt asked why they were even involved since he hadn’t been a Federal inmate. The ‘Marshal’ replied that they had jurisdiction due to Spratt’s designation as a violent fugitive. “But I didn’t fight anybody goddamnit!! Those cops got DRUNK…I just walked away!” The ‘Marshal’ said that, regardless, he had that designation and that he was going to hunt Spratt until he was captured. Spratt told him to fuck off and hung up.
Spratt then called the Idaho Department of Correction and spoke with their attorney who basically confirmed what the ‘Marshal’ had said. Additionally, he told Spratt that there was a fugitive warrant from the State of Idaho and that he had been charged with escape by Idaho authorities in Ada County. Spratt asked which other jurisdictions had charged him with escape and he was told that only Idaho had charged him. “But, you can’t charge me with escape” stated Spratt. “You don’t have jurisdiction. A criminal charge has to be tried in the jurisdiction where the alleged crime occurred and I didn’t escape in Idaho!” “Additionally,” Spratt informed him, “an inmate can only be charged with escape if he is in ‘lawful’ custody and there is no way that a person can be in the ‘lawful’ custody of two drunk, and passed out, cops!” “Well, you can bring that up at trial” stated the attorney who advised him to turn himself in to the nearest law enforcement agency and hung up.
Spratt then called the front desk and requested a wake-up call for the next day before taking all of his belongings out to the stolen car and leaving. Before leaving Charleston, he stopped at a Western Union and sent his wife some money. In, North Charleston, he stopped at the U.P.S. facility and paid to have the children’s toys shipped overnight to Puerto Rico. He used a local address as the return address in the hopes of throwing off the cops for a while. He then drove up I-26 to I-95 North and kept driving until he reached Fayetteville, NC where he spent the night.
Upon waking the next morning, Spratt decided that he may continue heading north but needed to make more phone calls prior to doing so. He was worried about having the U.S. Marshal’s looking for him and wanted to speak to the reporter and his wife again before leaving North Carolina. His reason for wanting to call while in North Carolina were because he planned on making these the final phone calls and, if they were being traced, they would be traced back to this State instead of the actual State that he was going to; hopefully a dead end for the cops. He didn’t want to call from his current location though since it was right on the main North/South Interstate on the east coast. He wanted to keep them guessing about his direction of travel and decided to drive back to Charlotte, NC place the calls from there before heading north. There was no Interstate Highway between Fayetteville and Charlotte so he had to take State highways which made him nervous since these were heavily patrolled by local Sheriff’s Departments. He finally arrived without incident in Charlotte and checked into a cheap motel near the airport. After checking in, he got some more food and some beer before unpacking his things and settling in for the night.
The next morning, Spratt finally purchased a pre-paid cell phone so that he could make calls without being stuck in the motel room and started using his ‘minutes’ immediately. He called his wife and made sure that she had received the money and the package. She told him that she had received both but also informed him that she had told the prosecutor about it before picking up the money and accepting the package. The prosecutor sent a couple of investigators to her house to take possession of the shipping label but ‘allowed’ her to keep the toys for the children. Spratt hoped they followed up on the fake address just to waste their time but did feel as if the noose may be tightening a little.
The next round of calls were to the Puerto Rico Department of Justice, I.D.O.C., and the U.S. Marshal’s Office in Hato Rey, Puerto Rico but he didn’t glean any new information from those calls; just the same scripted bullshit of “We’re hunting you!” “We will find you!” “You’d better turn yourself in!” Blah, blah, blah!
Finally he called the Puerto Rican journalist. Again, he answered his phone pretty quickly and Spratt, out of paranoia now, asked if he was working with the cops to try to trace his calls. The journalist reassured him that, although he was a crime reporter, he was not big fan of the cops and had written as many articles about police corruption as he had about criminals. Spratt noticed that he hadn’t directly denied assisting them though.
The journalist told him that he was able to get a copy of the receipt from the hotel restaurant and confronted the Police Superintendent with it. He said that the official response was “No Comment” but a press release given out later in the day stated that both officers had been suspended without pay pending official investigation of the incident. This gave Spratt some measure of satisfaction and he was elated when the journalist told him that he would print Spratt’s version of events in the next edition of the newspaper. Spratt thanked him and the reporter asked him to call back the next day after he was able to do some follow-up investigations into some other details of the story. He promised that he would.
The cheap hotel that Spratt was currently staying in did not have a computer in the lobby for its guests so Spratt drove to a nearby Kinko’s and bought some computer time to access the online version of the Puerto Rican newspaper. He was able to print out a copy of the latest story filed by the journalist and returned to the hotel room where he made another round of calls seeking vindication.
He called the Extradition Division of the Puerto Rican Dept. of Justice but they didn’t want to speak with him about the story. Same thing at I.D.O.C. He then called the Puerto Rico Police Department and spoke to the two cops’ supervisor who told him that Spratt was the most hated guy in Puerto Rico and he was going to ensure that Spratt and his family suffered greatly for putting the Sergeant’s and Hector’s careers in jeopardy. “I didn’t put their careers in jeopardy!” screamed Spratt, “Those motherfuckers ruined it for themselves! They’re the ones that got drunk!” “Yeah,” said the Supervisor, “but you’re the one who escaped!” “It was my fucking job to try and escape…I’m a criminal, not a choirboy! Their job is to keep me from escaping; not get drunk like they were on vacation or something!” “I’m just letting you know that, when you get to Puerto Rico, I’m going to personally fuck you up! Those guys are my friends and you have fucked with their ‘rice and beans’!” said the Supervisor using a common Puerto Rican phrase to mean that somebody has interfered with another person’s ability to provide for their family (rice and beans being the traditional food in Puerto Rico). Spratt told him to fuck off and hung up.
Spratt then called his wife who wasn’t impressed by the story in the newspaper even though it did give some credence to Spratt’s version. She said that she didn’t want to be bothered with it anymore and the publicity was complicating her life. She then went on to berate Spratt saying, “You didn’t have very much longer until you finished your sentence and you would have been released. I have suffered the past couple of years waiting for you and then you went and fucked everything up by escaping!” “What kind of future can I have now?” she asked. “How can I expect to have a normal life with my husband? How can the children expect to have a normal life with their father if you are either going to be continually ‘on the run’ or in prison for the next twenty years for escape?!” “I don’t think that I can handle this anymore,” she continued, “maybe we should just go our separate ways and end it right now.” Spratt was heartbroken. He was mad that the cops had involved her so intimately in all of this but also realized that he wasn’t without blame either. He was frustrated, though, that she didn’t act as he thought that she would and come to the defense of her husband. He thought that she should see the justification in his escape but it appeared that she was swallowing the rhetoric that he was just a common criminal with no chance of redemption. He told her that he would work everything out and they hung up with no expressions of endearment.
Spratt’s cell phone was almost out of minutes now so he left to go buy another card to ‘top up’. On the way back, he bought a twelve pack of beer and drank six while contemplating his legal and personal situation. He knew that he couldn’t be with his family while on the run but he certainly didn’t want to turn himself in after all of the threats from the Puerto Rican cops. He couldn’t figure out a way to reconcile the two situations and became more angry with each beer. He finally resigned himself to the fact that he would have to remain a fugitive and only send financial support to his family without ever being able to see them. This pissed him off but his options were limited; he hoped that his children would understand when they became adults and wouldn’t hate him for not being there. He knew that this hope was irrational (a child desires a father…a real father; not a figment) and the realization just angered him more. He decided to call Hector again and hoped that Hector’s life was now as miserable as Spratt’s was.
Hector answered the phone with a tirade of Spanish cuss words that went on long enough for Spratt to wonder if he was reading from a dictionary of curses. Spratt tried to interrupt several times but had to wait until Hector ran out of breath. Finally Spratt was able to ask, “Hey, Hector…how does it feel to be unemployed?” Hector repeated his list of cuss words in response and then said, “Let me tell you something ‘cabron’! I have been a cop for 15 years! Fifteen motherfucking years! I have NEVER had an incident on my record and YOU have fucked it all up for me! If I ever see you again, I will be the last thing you see before you die! I’m going to KILL you motherfucker!” Spratt screamed back, “YOU are the one who FUCKED up Hector!! YOU!! If you hadn’t gotten drunk then you wouldn’t be in this situation!! Take some responsibility for your own actions!!” “As a matter of fact,” Spratt continued, “you wouldn’t be in this situation right now if you hadn’t lied and said that I beat you up to escape! I never would have told anybody about the drinking if you hadn’t lied! Why didn’t you just say that I escaped while you were asleep? Fuck you, Hector! It’s your fault for getting drunk…your fault for passing out…your fault for lying about it!” Spratt and Hector continued cussing each other out until Spratt’s cell phone cut off from exhausting the minutes that he had purchased. “Fuck him!” Spratt said aloud as he remembered that he hadn’t used *67 to disguise his number prior to calling Hector. He hurriedly packed his duffle bag and left Charlotte heading north in I-85.
Spratt didn’t drive very long before deciding to spend the night in Greensboro, NC. He spent the night drinking and wondering what to do next. He didn’t think he had enough money to continue north and support himself while looking for a job and he was concerned about the stolen car attracting attention. He remembered the contractor in Charleston, SC and decided to return there to go to work. He would be able to ditch the car somewhere, maybe Charlotte, and take a bus the rest of the way. Spratt decided on this plan: he would drive back to Charlotte; make some final phone calls to use up the minutes on his AT&T calling card; leave the car there and take a bus back to Charleston, SC and begin a new life with the waiting job. From that point on, he would just take a bus to some far away city to wire money to his family. Hopefully, the cops WOULD trace his calls to Charlotte and, along with the discovery of the car, make them think that he was in North Carolina…surely they would abandon their search in Charleston with the newest evidence of his whereabouts! He felt confident in his ability to divert their attention.
Spratt started the next day with a return trip to Charlotte and tried to figure out a good location for his ‘intentional’ scent trail. Downtown was not the best place due to the amount of traffic and the sheer amount of police in that area (it being the headquarters for the huge Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Dept.). Spratt decided to stay in one of the cheaper motels on the ‘strip’ near the airport. He felt this would be a good location and, if he actually WAS traced then it would give further distraction as to his true destination due to the proximity of the airport. Spratt wasn’t sure if his calls were actually being traced but his plan was being implemented ‘just in case’. He actually hoped that he was being able to make all of his calls anonymously and attached himself to that hope; the famous tactic of ‘hope for the best but prepare for the worst’. With his money running low, he decided to check into one of the crappier motels but would dress in good clothes the next morning and go to a nicer place for his phone calls.
Um where is the next chapter?
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