Empty Promises

and my mother and brother were gone.”
    Her father, Larry Banfield, was working far away from home on a dam project in northeastern Oregon. When he was notified that his wife and son had disappeared, he was just as dumbfounded as the rest of the family. The Banfields’ five-year-old Ford Thunderbird was also missing.
    There was good reason to worry. Elizabeth Banfield was described to lawmen as an extremely attractive redhead. In light of the attack on the Tigard motel clerk and the vicious killing of Carlton Smith, there was no reason to think that she would be safe. Her twelve-year-old son’s fate might be even bleaker. Once the youngster had been used to slide past roadblocks and was no longer of value to them, police feared that Bowles and Waitts would dump him.
    Teletypes were sent to all eleven western states, and police up and down the West Coast were alerted to watch for the Banfields’ T-Bird with Oregon plates. Radio and television news flashes warned people, “Do not attempt to stop this car. Ascertain the location of the vehicle and report it at once to your local police.”
    That Wednesday morning passed with agonizing slowness, and then, at noon, the stolen car was found. It was located 125 miles northeast of Eugene, ditched in a remote logged-off area high in the Cascade Mountains along the Santiam Pass. The two loggers who spotted it approached it slowly. They had heard the news broadcasts and they half-expected to find the bodies of the missing woman and her son inside. But the car was empty.
    The Oregon State Police expressed grave concern for the safety of the woman and boy when they saw the car; there was no longer any doubt that they had been taken as hostages by the ex-cons, but where were they now? The car had been driven to its resting spot along a rugged logging road. When the road came to a sudden end, the driver had obviously made an effort to turn it around but it had become hopelessly stuck in the soft sand; the tires had dug in so far that the back portion of the T-Bird’s frame actually rested on the ground. “Whoever left it here had to walk out,” one officer muttered. The unspoken question was whether the woman and boy had walked out, too. The area had been logged off, but acres and acres of waist-high brush had overgrown the fir stumps that dotted the area. Beyond that, the densest of forests soared skyward. If the hostages had been left here, they could easily die in the wilderness before being found. Worse, if they’d been gunned down like Deputy Smith, their bodies might never be found.
    Scores of human and canine searchers scoured the wilderness along the Santiam Pass. The dogs didn’t pick up a trail of any distance, and they kept circling back to their handler, M. D. Obenhaus. “There had to be another car here,” he said. “I’m sure of it. Whoever left the T-Bird must have gotten into another vehicle. They’re gone—otherwise my dogs would have picked up their trail.”
    He didn’t voice what they were all dreading. Most dogs will not home in on dead bodies; only specially trained necro-search dogs are adept at that. It was far easier to believe the hostages were still alive, even if they were being held captive in a car now miles away. But the question remained: how had the kidnappers found another car up here in the wilderness? They had to wonder if the fleeing killers had stopped a passing car and taken even more hostages.
    Roadblocks were set up on all likely escape routes in Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and California. Elizabeth Banfield and her son had been missing for more than twenty-four hours, and the fugitives could have crossed several state lines by now.
    At one o’clock in the morning, two full days after the Banfields’ disappearance, a deputy stationed in their home answered the phone and heard a tired woman say, “Are my children all right?” It was Elizabeth Banfield. She was alive and calling from Woodland, California. She told the deputy that both she and her son were safe in a motel there—along with other hostages. Yolo County authorities in Woodland, which is not far from Sacramento, were contacted and asked to take all the hostages from the motel and into protective custody. Elizabeth Banfield told the California deputies and FBI agents about her ordeal. Before she could stop him, her son had answered a knock at their kitchen door at about eleven-thirty on the night Deputy Smith was killed. Two men asked to