Empty Promises

Sternbergs. That gave them hope that the Wilsons might survive, too. In California, every state trooper, fish and game official, forestry officer, and even highway work crew member was sent out along back roads to look for the Wilsons’ car. But the search was fruitless all that day and into the evening. By midnight on Friday, July 9, Bowles and Waitts had gone another twenty-four hours without sleep, and a crisis was brewing. They were headed toward the hamlet of Tonopah, Nevada, which is halfway between Reno and Las Vegas.
    Deputy Thomas Wilmath spotted a green Ford stopped beside the road about four miles out of town. The plates were familiar; they’d been etched on every lawman’s brain over the last twelve hours. But the Wilsons’ car was empty. Wilmath figured that the occupants were out in the brush relieving themselves or that the kidnappers had ditched the car when they found a less recognizable vehicle.
    Wilmath walked quietly over to the car and was bending over to look inside just as two men stepped out of the brush with drawn guns. “Don’t try anything, cop,” an icy cold voice said. “You’ll get it, and so will the people with us.”
    The people with them were the Wilsons and their baby girl. Wilmath had no choice; if he resisted, the Wilsons might be killed. So instead of risking their lives, the deputy sheriff became the duo’s tenth hostage. In a move that must have made sense to them at the time, the desperadoes crowded everyone into the police car. They used the squad car’s police radio to contact the Nevada State Highway Patrol headquarters.
    The man on duty was Dispatcher Dave Branovich. The sixteen-year patrol veteran swallowed his shock when he heard Waitts’s voice on the police radio. He listened as Waitts told him they wouldn’t kill the hostages if they got what they wanted. What they wanted first was relatively simple—or seemed so; they wanted food and ammunition. Their plan was for Deputy Wilmath to go into a club in Tonopah and get sandwiches while Bowles and Waitts waited outside with the hostages. There were seventy people in the nightclub when the deputy strolled in with elaborate casualness. He waited for the sandwiches, which were delayed because the kitchen was so busy, and he was prepared to leave without saying a word.
    Every law agency within a hundred miles had been notified that two of the most-wanted criminals were now in a county squad car, along with a deputy, the finance director of the state of California, and his wife and baby. The roads surrounding Tonopah were beginning to bristle with patrol cars. The net was tightening. But the word was “Do nothing that might jeopardize the hostages.”
    Carl Bowles and Norbert Waitts were getting jumpy, and they didn’t trust Deputy Wilmath. They grew restless waiting for him to come back with food. They stood in the doorway of the club for a while, with one eye on Wilmath and one on the hostages. Then, without warning, they began firing into the club at random. Patrons hit the floor and scrambled under tables when Carl and Norbert shouted that they were coming in for food and that nothing could stop them.
    Predictably, those inside who were still standing raced for the exits in a panic. A card dealer pulled a revolver and started firing back. Wilmath yelled at him to hold his fire because there were hostages just outside in the car. But it was too late. Bowles and Waitt made a dash for the squad car, and three of the shots fired at them pierced the police car, one of them smashing the rear window as the car careened out of town.
    “Come in … come in,” Dispatcher Branovich pleaded over the radio. “Has anybody been hurt?”
    Bowles answered, “This guy Wilson has been shot.”
    Although Branovich tried to cajole Bowles into taking Wilson to a hospital, the fugitive refused. “Don’t tell me what to do,” Bowles spat. “I’m telling you. We’re a couple miles out of town. There’s a service station on the left side and it’s closed. We’ll leave him there, and you can pick him up. He ain’t bad hurt. We’re taking the woman and the kid with us. If you try to stop us, you know what’s going to happen to them.”
    Wilson begged to stay in the car with his family, but Bowles pushed the bleeding man out of the car at the gas station. Deputies who picked him up a few minutes later were relieved to see that his thigh wound wasn’t as serious as it looked; he waved away medics and agreed only to