A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

told him I didn’t have snow tires.”
    Olds had then directed him to go south to Salem, Albany, and then east again through Sisters and Bend toward Idaho. It was certainly the long way round and had made little sense to Young. They had been close to the Idaho border when they started. He figured that “Mike” had expected a roadblock, and was trying to find an unexpected route out of Oregon.
    “He told me to push it to the floorboards and get through anyway I could,” Young said, “if we ever came to a roadblock.”
    But there were no roadblocks. They had driven endlessly. They hadn’t even stopped to eat. First they devoured the sandwiches Mrs. Young had made, and then Olds had cleaned out Mary Lindsay’s refrigerator and they ate her food as they drove.
    Mary Lindsay hadn’t lasted even a day with her kidnapper. Frightened and sick, she had been excess baggage for him. They were heading east again on an insane back-and-forth trip across Oregon, and it was about midnight on Wednesday night when Olds told Young to stop the car near Burns. Olds left the car with Mrs. Lindsay, and Young said he’d tried to see where they were going. But they had walked away into pitch darkness.
    A few minutes later, “Mike came back alone,” Young said sadly. His captor had brushed aside questions about what had happened to the old woman. He hadn’t heard gunfire so Young tried to hope that she had been left unharmed and would be picked up and taken to safety. “I had my doubts, though.”
    Ida Burley was next. Olds had abducted her at gunpoint when she answered a knock on her door on Thursday afternoon. By that time Tom Young was exhausted from driving all night, and Olds told Ida she would have to drive for awhile to spell Tom.

    Tom Young said the nightmare had continued as they crossed over into Idaho, and they had had a moment of terror when they saw a state police car coming up behind them. But then it had passed them at high speed.
    “And then just a couple of minutes later, another state trooper was right alongside us. I thought, ‘My God, man, don’t you stop us!’ ”
    He knew his kidnapper well enough by then to realize they might all die if a shootout occurred. “Mike would have started shooting if they came up to the car,” he said. “God must have answered me because the police car continued on its way.”
    When half an hour passed and no one stopped them, Young had realized the trooper hadn’t spotted them. He was partly relieved, partly worried. He kept wondering when it would be his turn to be walked into the countryside. Once he stopped being useful, he didn’t expect to survive.
    By late Thursday night, they were approaching Brigham City, Utah. Mike said he wanted to go to a bus station. They took him there, and watched him walk away from Young’s car, half-afraid he would spin around and shoot at them. But he kept walking.
    Ida Burley gunned the motor and they were free; they had outlasted him, although Tom Young hadn’t slept for three days and nights. But the gunman’s brainwashing power over them continued for three more hours as they raced back toward Idaho, bound by their promise not to call police, emotionally immobilized by their terror and shock.
    On Friday night, an unmarked Oregon State Police car delivered Tom Young to Pendleton to be reunited with his grateful wife. Unshaven and weary, he was still able to joke, “What are all the flowers for? I’m not dead yet. I smell like a hog and I need a shave,” he added, smiling ruefully.
    His wife had never expected to see him alive again, but she scolded him, “Don’t ever do that to me again.” Then she hugged the man she had been married to for forty-three years.
    “I get hell as soon as I get home,” Young laughed as he hugged her back.

    The investigators were relieved that Tom Young and Ida Burley were safe, but understandably frustrated that Olds had such a substantial lead on them. In the three hours that had elapsed before his whereabouts in Brigham City were reported, he could have gone anywhere. Buses leaving Brigham City were stopped and searched, but Michael Olds wasn’t on any of them. He might very well have only pretended he was going to take a bus out of Utah. He could be hitchhiking, driving a stolen car or riding the rails of a train.
    Robert Davenport, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Salt Lake City office, said that they had no leads as the weekend passed. “We just hope a lead will come