Empty Promises

longer wanted to be linked to their shotguns, it wasn’t likely they wanted to leave any witnesses. The hostages were afraid that their bodies were about to join the guns in the pond. Or maybe the kidnappers were going to stuff them all into the back of the camper, shoot them, and leave them there.
    The backs of their necks prickling with apprehension, the Banfields and Sternbergs followed Waitts’s directions and walked back toward the camper, waiting for the crack of a pistol. But the shorter man—the one who looked like actor Robert Conrad—ushered them all back into the camper and got behind the steering wheel and they took off again. Even in the middle of the night, it was beastly hot, more so because the camper wasn’t big enough to hold six people.
    At 8th Avenue and J Street in Sacramento, the camper slowed to a stop. In the wee hours of Friday morning, the streets were virtually empty. The men they knew only as Carl and Norbert stepped out of the vehicle. And then, miraculously, Carl told Rudolph Sternberg: “Drive this camper away from here for the next two hours and don’t call the cops.”
    Norbert Waitts added, “And don’t make no mistake about it. We may be following you in another car. You goof it up and somebody will get hurt.” Still unable to believe they were free, Sternberg peeled out. He drove the camper fourteen miles to Woodland. He kept watching the rearview mirror for headlights and saw none. Finally convinced they were truly free, he stopped at the motel where Elizabeth Banfield called home.

    Bowles and Waitts knew they were high on the Wanted list of every cop in Oregon and California. They needed another car, but this time, even though they still had money, they didn’t dare buy one. They trudged on foot for four miles, looking for a vehicle that would be easy to steal.
    The ex-cons happened onto an unlikely—and unfortunate—target. Sacramento is the capital of California, and the men and women who run the state live there most of the time. Ted Wilson was the finance director for the state of California—the highest appointed office in the state. He and his wife, Joan, their ten-year-old son, and their nineteen-month-old baby girl lived in a very nice house. There was a brand-new Ford Galaxie parked in their driveway.
    Joan Wilson was scheduled to play golf the next morning with a good friend, the wife of the deputy director of motor vehicles in California. But Joan Wilson wasn’t at home when her friend came to pick her up at 9:00 A.M. , and her home was in a state of confusion. The Wilsons’ ten-year-old son and a thirteen-year-old cousin had woken up to find no one else in the house. No one had gotten them up for school.
    A baby-sitter who was supposed to care for the Wilsons’ baby while Joan played golf arrived, but the baby wasn’t there, nor were the Wilsons. Ted Wilson had already missed an important business conference and a long-distance call from a congressman. The phone kept ringing for him, but no one knew where he was. The boys said they had bunked out on a porch during the night and hadn’t heard anything all night until they answered the phone when the congressman tried calling Wilson.
    When the California State Patrol investigators learned that Carl Cletus Bowles and Norbert Waitts had dropped off their hostages only four miles from Ted Wilson’s house, they had a pretty good idea what happened to the state official. They only hoped that the kidnappers didn’t know they were holding a very important person.
    A bulletin was issued to city, state, and federal agencies listing the Wilsons’ green Ford Galaxie, LDG 311, as the latest getaway car. As soon as he heard the news, Governor Edmund “Jerry” Brown returned to Sacramento and took personal charge of the case. “I’m the baby’s godfather,” he told his troopers. “I don’t want any harm to come to her or her father and mother.”
    Wherever they were, Carl Bowles and Norbert Waitts were getting themselves deeper and deeper into trouble. A federal grand jury in Portland was called into special session and returned an indictment charging both men with bank robbery and set bail at $150,000 each. In Lane County, Oregon, they were charged with the first-degree murder of Deputy Carlton Smith. Federal authorities were also preparing kidnapping charges against them. The only good thing any law enforcement official had to say about them was that they hadn’t killed the Banfields and the