Aftershocks of a Crime Spree

Police removed shotgun shells from the weapon Bryan Doyle carried the day of the robberies. The mug shot of Doyle is from 1994, when he was in prison for drunken driving.

A string of drug-fueled robberies lasted just six hours, but that was only the beginning

Bryan Doyle has his finger on the trigger, the shotgun pointed at his head.

"If you don't like how I'm treating you," he screams, "then why should I live?"

Debra Dando runs to the bathroom and grabs a bottle of Dilantin, prescription medicine she takes for seizures.

"If you kill yourself," she says, "I'll kill myself."

She tries to swallow 30 pills.

This has been their plan all along. They will die together. Doyle wrote his suicide note days ago. She didn't bother.

Dando is 5-foot-4 and 97 pounds, her face gaunt and haunting from crack cocaine. She has dishwater blond hair and pale white skin. His initials are tattooed on her right leg.

Doyle stands 6 inches taller and weighs 60 pounds more than his girlfriend. He forces his fingers into her mouth, digging out the pills, and she bites him. He whirls and hits her on the back of the head, breaking his right hand.

They leave their house on Crescent Lake Road in Waterford late at night on Jan. 27 and go to a 24-hour emergency center, where doctors wrap his hand.

Someone from the emergency center calls the Waterford Police Department to report domestic abuse because of a bump on Dando's head. Two officers show up at the center, but Dando denies there was abuse, saying Doyle hit her to get the pills out.

She loves him. They've been dating for nine months and plan on getting married in the spring. She is convinced he is a good guy, kind and sweet. It's the crack cocaine that turns him into a monster.

Dando agrees to commit herself to North Oakland Medical Center in Pontiac because she is suicidal. She is taken from the center in an ambulance, strapped to a gurney, and he goes home. If the police or medical workers committed her, she would have to stay for two days or more. Since she has gone voluntarily, she is free to leave.

"Did you swallow any pills?" she is asked at the hospital.

"No," she says.

And she is released. She calls Doyle and he is awake, doing drugs. She falls asleep in the waiting room until he shows up a couple of hours before daybreak on Friday, Jan. 28, 2000. The air is crisp and cold, a light layer of snow on the ground.

They leave the hospital and stop at a red light. Doyle lights up his crack pipe, sitting behind the wheel of his maroon pickup truck. He doesn't care who sees him. He stopped caring weeks ago.

The pipe holds about $25 worth of crack and will give him a high that will last about an hour.

But the clock is already ticking.

He needs more drugs, more vodka, more money. The truck is almost out of gas and they are broke again, as usual. Dando, 29, will get her $189 Social Security disability check in 12 more hours, but they can't wait that long.

Doyle, 33, decides to sell his fishing pole. It's one of the few things he has left, after pawning the rest of his possessions to support a drug habit that has spun out of control in the last week. He's spending $200 to $500 a day on drugs.

But who will buy the fishing pole?

They drive through Waterford with a sawed-off shotgun on the front seat, hidden under a Carhartt coat, listening to Martina McBride before heading out on a journey that will turn into a violent crime spree, causing a manhunt and a police chase, leaving victims throughout Oakland County.

A journey that will end in death.

6 A.M.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Stacey Rabideau opens her eyes.

Must be the furnace, she thinks. She closes her eyes and tries to fall back to sleep. Nine months pregnant, she can't get comfortable.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

She realizes it's not the furnace. Somebody is banging on the bedroom wall of her mobile home in White Lake.

"Who is it?" she yells. "Go to the front door."

"It's Bryan!"

She unlocks the door and Doyle, an old friend, barges into the room. Dando is waiting in the truck.

"Where's Shane?" Doyle asks, walking toward the bedroom. "Did he get paid?"

"If he did, he gets paid at work and I don't get any money until tonight," Rabideau says. "I don't have any money."

She is lying. There is a $20 bill sticking out of her purse. She casually walks across the room and tries to hide the money.

She's tired of loaning money to Doyle.

"I need to get some money," he says. "My mom wrote me a letter and disowned me. You wanna buy my fishing pole?"

She has a hard time understanding him. He tells her he has been up for two days, drinking vodka and smoking crack. He says he got into a fight in a bar, broke his hand and needs money for surgery.

"I'm sorry," she says, getting mad. "I'm pregnant and I got my own kids and my own life and I barely got any money and you aren't going to take it all."

He says he is going to take off and go to Mexico. He wants to get a boat and start charter fishing.

She doesn't know what to believe. Typical Bryan, she thinks. Big dreams, big exaggerations. Such a talker.

"Do you remember that gun I showed you the other night?" he asks.

How can you forget when somebody comes over to borrow money and whips out a sawed-off shotgun? He kept waving it around like he was Rambo. Doyle described how he filed it down, showing her the fine grooves and workmanship, the care and grace.

In reality, the handle is loose and the metal is rusty. It is a Remington 870 Express, a 12-gauge shotgun, strong enough to kill a deer with one slug, the same type that some cops in Waterford carry in their front seats.

"I'm just gonna go out and start robbing people," he says now.

He starts rambling about his mother again, about going to Mexico, and then, suddenly, he asks her which party stores are open.

"Party stores? I know the Shell is open," she says. "They have a food market, but you won't be able to buy your booze."

"No, that's not why," he says. "That's not why at all. Does Shell have that bulletproof glass?"

She laughs at him.

She can't imagine him using a gun to rob anybody. To her, Doyle is artistic and sentimental. He writes poems and loves to talk on the phone, the kind of guy who remembers everything -- birthdays and anniversaries, the kind of guy who becomes a woman's best friend. She has known him for almost 20 years, since they were in the eighth grade. He was one of the first boys she ever kissed. He was a crappy kisser -- wild and all over the place -- and they broke up, but they've been friends ever since.

But something is wrong. He looks different, more desperate.

He looks strung out and tired. He has been talking about suicide for weeks. He has told her several times that he won't go back to jail. After four drunk driving convictions, he was sent to prison in 1994 for three years and was on parole until 1999. He doesn't have a driver's license, though he drives all the time. "They won't take me alive," he has told her.

"Go home," she says.

She figures he will just give up, go to bed and sleep it off.

Just like always.

He leaves and she goes back to sleep. A few hours later, somebody is banging on her door again.

It's the police.

"Did you have a visitor this morning?" they ask.

6:15 A.M.

Outside an apartment building in White Lake, Doyle is waiting in the truck with the engine running and the radio blaring. Dando walks across the parking lot toward a white 1994 Geo Tracker.

George Cubitt, 50, sits in the Tracker, letting it warm up before going to Dunkin' Donuts, to drink coffee and hang out with some friends -- his morning ritual since he quit work as a carpenter to have heart surgery seven months ago.

"Can you give me a ride to Kroger?" Dando asks. "I want to go to Kroger. I live behind Kroger. I want to get home before my mom gets home."

She looks familiar, like one of his neighbors.

"Sure," he says.

It's on his way.

She gets into the passenger seat and doesn't say much. They drive down Highland Road, past the White Lake Township police station. A cop car is waiting to pull into the station and Dando holds her breath. She doesn't look in the rear-view mirror but she assumes that Doyle is following in the truck. That's the plan.

While smoking a Marlboro, she directs Cubitt to the back of Kroger.

When Cubitt stops to let her out, his door flies open and Doyle, in a red coat with a scarf around his face, sticks a shotgun in Cubitt's face.

"Don't move," Doyle screams. "Give me your wallet and car keys."

Dando gets out of the car quickly, afraid he is going to shoot and will hit her by mistake. She runs to the truck and gets in the passenger side. The radio is blaring Ozzy Osbourne. She loves Ozzy.

Cubitt stays calm. He reaches for his wallet in his back pocket.

"I said, don't move!"

"I'm getting my billfold."

Cubitt hands over his wallet and his keys.

Doyle gets into his truck and they speed away, heading east on M-59.

Dando searches through the wallet and finds $30 and two credit cards.

They go to the Amoco on Pontiac Lake Road and try to use the credit cards, but they are rejected. They fill up with $32 of premium gas and drive off without paying. The cashier calls the police. Later, she learns about the rest of the deadly crime spree on television. She will be rattled for weeks, afraid to work outside the bulletproof window unless all of the station's doors are locked.

7:15 A.M.

Dando and Doyle are outside a gas station in Pontiac called On the Run, waiting for somebody to rob. A woman pulls up in a Lincoln Town Car.

Cheryl Gibbons, 32, of Pontiac gets out of the car and leaves it running. She is early for work and wants a cappuccino. Carrying an extra set of keys, she locks the door.

Walking across the parking lot, she notices two people in a truck.

She buys the cappuccino and returns to her car. She gets in and tries to shut the door, but something's blocking it. Figuring it's the seat belt, she turns to look and Doyle shoves a shotgun against her left cheek.

"Scoot over," he says. "Scoot over."

Shock runs through her body. One thought goes through her head: If I slide over, I'm gonna get raped.

"I'm gonna get out," she says. "I'm gonna get out."

"Scoot over," he demands, his voice growing angry and frustrated. She refuses to move.

You're gonna have to shoot me before you rape me, she thinks.

"Give me your money," he says.

"I'm getting out!" she says.

Dando is hunched down in the truck with her window open, listening.

Another car pulls into the lot, and the headlights scare Doyle.

He runs back to the truck.

"I didn't get nothing," he tells Dando.

Gibbons watches the truck drive away and turn right onto Baldwin. She gets out of the car and realizes she is soaked with cappuccino. It should be scalding hot, but she can't feel it. She doesn't remember spilling it.

Suddenly, the strangest feeling comes over her: She begins to think the whole thing was a joke. She has a good friend who lives by the gas station. Maybe it was one of the Curtis boys.

Yeah, maybe it was one of them playing a joke.

Until she realizes she is wet and shaking and thinking: Am I going crazy?

She walks into the gas station.

"Did you just see what happened?" she asks the manager.

Nobody did.

She goes home and calls the police. Over the next few months, she will grow even more terrified. She becomes afraid of being out in the open, especially at night. And she will jump when something brushes against her left cheek, where Doyle held the shotgun, even if it's her own hair.

"I feel like I'm a prisoner," she will say, "like he raped me of my freedom."

7:30 A.M.

Doyle and Dando go to a crack house in Pontiac and use Cubitt's money to get $30 worth of drugs: He gets a $20 rock and Dando is left with the rest.

They have their own glass crack pipes -- his and hers -- and smoke while driving the back streets of Pontiac.

For several days, their lives have been stuck in the same cycle: buying crack, smoking it and then trying to get more money by borrowing from friends and family, pawning things or cheating drug dealers. They haven't had sex in more than a week. Right now, Doyle has only one desire: the next rock of crack cocaine.

"If we get stopped by the police, I'm not going back to prison," he says. "I'd rather die. I'd rather take a couple of officers out."

9:06 A.M.

Doyle drives through the parking lot at Great Lakes Crossing in Auburn Hills, looking for somebody to rob. He spots a guy sitting in a black Olds Cutlass Supreme, reading a newspaper.

Doyle pulls up alongside and tries to get out, but gets his feet tangled in the fishing pole. He starts to fight it and he's getting mad and he can't get out. It reminds Dando of a scene from a funny movie, their favorite movie, "Gone Fishin'."

Scott Cooper, a 29-year-old who works in medical sales, is killing time before a 9:30 appointment.

Doyle rushes to the car with the shotgun and demands his wallet and car keys.

Cooper hands them over and watches them take off.

Dando is driving. Doyle is sitting in the passenger's seat, going through the wallet, throwing cards with disgust.

"He doesn't have any money!"

"People don't keep their money in their wallet anymore," Dando says. "They keep it in their socks and pockets. There are too many pickpockets."

She starts to make fun of Doyle, for picking victims with so little money.

But she has to be careful. She tries to avoid fighting with him because when he is mad, he hogs all of the drugs.

Doyle goes through the wallet and looks at the driver's license. He thinks he has a passing resemblance to Cooper. They both have blue eyes and blond hair.

He gets an idea: Go to a bank and try to use Cooper's credit cards. And then another idea: He will have Dando go into the bank and say she is Cooper's fiancee and she forgot the PIN number.

Back in the parking lot, Cooper's first instinct is to chase them. He reaches for the ignition and realizes the keys are gone.

Angry and frustrated, he calls 911 on his cell phone. Cooper spent 10 1/2 months in the Persian Gulf, calling in coordinates for field artillery, safely positioned about 1 1/2 miles from the targets. He survived a war and never had a gun shoved in his face. Until now.

The police respond in about five minutes. Forty minutes later, they have stopped two red pickup trucks. Cooper is asked to drive by the suspects but he doesn't recognize them.

After the robbery, Cooper will have one impulse that returns again and again: He wants to buy a gun.

"If I had a gun," he will say, "I would

have used it."

Officers from White Lake take Cubitt, the first victim, to the Oakland County crime lab to create a composite sketch of the white female. While they are there, they learn about the robbery at Great Lakes Crossing.

Doyle stops at a small liquor store in Waterford. He tries to buy a 12-pack of Michelob Light and cigarettes but Cooper's credit card is rejected. Dando uses cash to buy strawberry milk and a box of chocolate doughnuts.

She forgets to eat when she is doing drugs, so she drinks strawberry milk. She thinks of it as a meal, hitting two of the main food groups, fruit and dairy.

She gets into the truck and Doyle yells at her for spending $5 -- money that could have been spent on drugs.

They pull up to a stoplight and a cop pulls up alongside them.

Dando tries to cover her face. She slides down in the seat and turns away quickly.

When the light turns green, the cop car speeds off.

"Oh my God," she says. "My heart stopped beating."

She is scared.

"From now on, we'll take the back streets," he says. "Cops never use back roads."

They drive to a crack house in Pontiac and Doyle buys $50 of crack by writing a bad check. He has been passing bad checks for weeks. He hogs the rock, smoking it all himself.

They go to a friend's house and take a break, helping him return a rental car. Doyle and Dando go back to their house on Crescent Lake Road and hang out for a couple of hours.

11 A.M.

Steve Ryner, a 29-year-old patrol officer, starts a 10-hour shift at the Waterford Police Department and is informed about a series of armed robberies.

Ryner is assigned car No. 25, because his usual vehicle is in the shop. He is a rising star in the department. Smart, eloquent and quick-witted, he is the union president and has a knack with people. His superiors view him as someone who will become a captain someday, or maybe the chief.

As Ryner goes out on patrol, his girlfriend, Deb Mathewson, is preparing to work a shift as the Waterford PD dispatcher. She is a petite blond with a bright smile. And he's the jock who grew up to be a cop, a basketball star from St. Florian, a small Catholic high school in Hamtramck. They've been dating for 1 1/2 years.

Last night, Ryner threw Mathewson a 30th birthday party at her condominium on Crescent Lake Road. Several cops were there, including the chief of police, but they had no idea what was happening down the road.

Just 400 yards away. On the same side of the street. At Doyle's house.

Ryner carries a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol, made in West Germany. The pistol has 15 bullets in the magazine, with one in the chamber. He carries two more magazines in a pouch on his hip, giving him a total of 46 rounds. The lead bullets have hollow points and a copper jacket designed to flower upon impact. He has carried the same gun since going through the academy 4 1/2 years ago. At the practice range, he can get off three or four shots in a second. He has drawn the gun 25, maybe 30 times in different situations, but he has never fired it in the line of duty.

He has never been shot at, either.

12:20 P.M.

Doyle and Dando pull into Shenanigan's, an exotic dance club in Pontiac.

They need money again.

He walks into the bar wearing blue jeans, a dark Carhartt jacket and tan boots. He moves to the middle of the bar and looks around, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness.

It is around noon, a time when the bar is usually packed with customers, including off-duty police and sheriff's officers. The dancers love when the police are around because it makes them feel safe. Shenanigan's features adult entertainment but no nudity. The dancers prance around in skimpy bikinis, on stage or between the tables, but no touching is allowed.

There are seven or eight dancers working this shift, but no bouncers are on duty. It's a light crowd, maybe 10 customers. No cops.

Nicki is onstage, wearing a white tiger outfit.

Montana, a redhead, sits at the bar in her usual chair facing the door, drinking coffee and waiting for her regulars. Montana has been dancing for nine years and knows how to play the game, how to be safe. There are mirrors on every wall and she uses them to watch her back.

Doyle looks around. The video security system is off because it needs to be rewired.

Manager Tracy Allin is on the phone, talking to her friend.

"What's going on?" she is asked.

"Nothing," Allin says. "We're dead here."

Thirty seconds later, Doyle returns wearing a camouflage face mask and carrying the shotgun. As soon as he walks through the door, Montana sees the gun and rushes into a back room.

Jennifer Sanchez, a 28-year-old waitress, is behind the bar, filling drink orders. She sets a root beer on the bar and starts to make another drink.

Doyle stands at the bar, pointing the gun at Allin and Sanchez.

Allin drops the phone and runs to the kitchen, then out the side door.

Doyle swings the gun and knocks over the root beer, splashing it on Sanchez.

She is staring down the shotgun barrel 2 or 3 inches from her face.

"This is a robbery," Doyle says calmly, standing next to the register. "Give me all of your money."

"I don't have any," Sanchez tells him. "I don't have any way to get into anything. I don't have a key to get into the register. I don't have a key to get into the box. I don't have any money on me. I just started."

She looks into his eyes, cold blue eyes that look odd -- like he is stoned, like he is dazing in and out in slow motion.

She thinks she is about to die. Thoughts flash through her mind. She sees her children, all three of them, standing over her grave.

Nicki, a 21-year-old who cuts grass during the summer and tried plowing snow in the winter but hated it and took up dancing, is the featured performer on stage, dancing to the Black Crowes, one of her favorite sets. Suddenly, she notices that nobody is paying attention to her.

And that never happens.

She watches Allin run to the kitchen and she sees Doyle pointing the gun at Sanchez.

She keeps dancing, afraid if she stops, it will cause an even bigger commotion.

Montana hides with three other dancers in a small dressing room, 5-by-15-feet, with a big mirror at one end for the dancers to do their makeup and hair. The door can barely open without scrapping the lockers on the other side.

"You guys, stay in here and shut up," Montana says, and explains they are being robbed.

"Are you for real?"

Somebody moves and her high heels click against the floor.

"Take your shoes off," Montana says.

She gets a cell phone out of her locker and calls the cops and the club's owner.

I wish I had my gun, she thinks, but her 22-caliber pistol is hidden in her truck. Several of the dancers carry guns for protection, but they got in trouble from management a few weeks ago for bringing the guns into the club.

One of the dancers wants to hide in the cabinet under the mirror, but they decide it wouldn't be fair to let one person hide and have the other three out in the open.

Instead, they try to arm themselves.

The iron has been on for hours and one dancer holds it in the air, ready to slam it against the bad guy's face.

Montana is armed with the cell phone.

The other two are holding their shoes, heels pointed out, ready to use them like spikes. "That will mess him up," Montana says.

After several minutes, the dancers are still hiding. The music is still playing.

They watch the door, afraid it's going to open.

When the music stops, they push a chair under the doorknob. "OK," Montana says. "There are four of us. Two of us are going to knock him down, the other ones are going to fry him with the hot iron."

Nicki is still dancing. She sees Doyle spin around and rush out, empty-handed.

The cops surround the building, but Doyle and Dando are gone.

"What's he look like?" the cops ask.

"He's a white trash punk on dope," Montana says. "He ain't big at all, and he looks skinny because he's been on crack so long. I mean, I could take him down. He's so small framed."

The cops continue to take reports and search for clues. After a few minutes, there is a report of another robbery less than a mile down the road, at Figa Brothers Market.

When the cops leave, the dancers stand around the bar, doing shots of hard alcohol.

A day later, it will take Sanchez an hour to write her statement because her hand is shaking so badly. She asks the police officer if he knows how long the nightmares will last.

12:30 P.M.

Dando parks the truck outside Figa Brothers, a small neighborhood liquor store. Joe Figa opened the store in 1941. His four sons have worked there for the last 50 years.

At one time, this store was the center of the neighborhood. When times were tough, Joe Figa used to let people buy food on credit. Now, the neighborhood has disintegrated and the store has become a place to rob.

Doyle grabs the shotgun.

The Figas have taken several precautions against crime. They replaced the old wood door with a steel one after somebody tried to break in a few years ago.

They close the store at 7:30 p.m., 1 1/2 hours earlier than they used to, because they were sick of dealing with drunks and addicts later at night. They stopped selling the cheapest whiskey and wine, as well as tobacco rolling paper, because of the customers they drew to the store.

Doyle opens the door and pulls a mask over his face.

"Give me all of your money," he says, pointing the shotgun at Mike Figa's chest.

Mike Figa, 77, opens the cash register, trying to stay calm. His father was shot while trying to resist two armed robberies, but he survived.

During another robbery, his brother Fred was told to kneel down behind the counter and a robber held a gun to his head, but never fired. About seven years ago, Mike Figa asked someone for identification and the man pulled a gun, shoved it in his face and said, "This is all the ID I need." Both of the Figas' wives have been robbed at gunpoint in the last 10 years.

"Give me the money," Doyle demands, the sawed-off shotgun waving over the register.

Mike Figa gives him $100.

Doyle runs out the door, and Figa yells to his brother Theodore in the back room.

Theodore Figa looks out the rear door and watches Doyle get into the passenger side of the pickup truck. He glances at the license plate but it's dirty.

Doyle screams at Dando: "Floor it, he's got a gun!"

But the store owner doesn't.

The Figas don't think that arming themselves would do any good.

Dando speeds off, hits a car and races down the road.

The Figas are shaken but thankful. The brothers feel blessed that they have faced so many guns and nobody has ever gotten killed. A religious family, they feel a guardian angel has been looking over them.

Since the robbery, the Figas have installed a video surveillance system. They hope it is a deterrent.

"We are fortunate," Mike Figa says. "But there is no joy in this anymore."

Ryner learns about the robbery at Shenanigan's.

Dispatch gives a description: a tall, skinny white male, buzz haircut, dark coat and a camouflage mask.

And a description of the female: A petite white female, long blond or strawberry blond hair.

Ryner drives through Pontiac, in Car 25, looking for the pickup.

Police in White Lake figure out that the suspect is Doyle and he's driving a maroon GMC pickup.

Dispatch gives Doyle's address: 685 Crescent Lake Road in Waterford.

Waterford? That's one of my guys, Ryner says to himself.

He parks at Dixie and Kennett, near a little grocery story by a flea market, watching for the truck.

About 200 yards down the road from Figa Brothers Market, Willard Ousnamer and his wife of 50 years, Dorothy, are watching television.

On the wall, above the couch, there is a small picture of their granddaughter Debra Dando, in a collection of photos of their 10 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

Dando was over about a week ago, asking for money as always.

They know she's on drugs. They know she needs help. But they don't know what to do. As a teenager, Dando spent three years in mental hospitals for children. But it didn't really help, in Dorothy Ousnamer's eyes. They see her as a simple person, someone who doesn't understand the consequences of her actions.

On television, there is a report of a series of armed robberies in Oakland County. The female suspect is described as a petite blond.

"That could be Deb," Will Ousnamer says.

His wife nods.

"Could be."

And they go on watching television.

Dando and Doyle go to a crack house and buy drugs. He gets a $60 rock of crack and she gets $20 worth, using the money from the liquor store.

They smoke it while driving the back streets of Pontiac.

2:30 P.M.

There is a sighting of Doyle and Dando at a bank, but they disappear before police arrive.

Ryner is on his way to the bank, but since the scene has been cleared, he stops at Waterford Party Shoppe to see his friend Eddie Hamama. When Ryner works the road, he goes there every day to get a pop and talk to Hamama.

"Be careful, Eddie," Ryner says.

"Why?"

"There is a wacko driving around with a girl and he's robbing people."

Ryner describes Doyle and Dando and tells him they're driving a maroon pickup.

"He was just in here," Hamama says. "I got a videotape."

Then he remembers that the man tried to use a credit card, but it was rejected. Hamama digs through the garbage and finds the receipt.

"His name is Scott Cooper," Hamama says. "He acted really weird. He tried to buy beer. When I told them it was canceled, they left and squealed out."

"I'm looking for someone known as Doyle, not Cooper," Ryner says.

He watches the black-and-white surveillance video: A guy comes into the store wearing dark sunglasses. He slips on the floor and falls into the counter. He gets some beer and puts it on the counter but leaves when the credit card is rejected. A moment later, a woman enters the store and buys some strawberry milk and doughnuts.

The couple matches the description, except for one thing that Ryner thinks is significant: When the man walks into the store, he has a cast on his right hand.

Ryner calls the station. "Does anyone have any information that Doyle possibly has a cast on his hand?"

Nobody has heard that, so Ryner assumes it isn't the guy.

But he keeps the tape.

4:30 P.M.

Back at the station, Ryner is hanging out with the other officers, talking about the crime spree.

One of the officers says, "We had Doyle last night. It was a domestic."

"What happened?" Ryner asks.

"She was trying to O.D. on pills and he said, in order to get the pills out, he punched her in the head. And the idiot broke his hand."

"Did he have a cast or a sling?"

"I'm pretty sure he has a cast."

Ryner realizes the man in the party store was probably Doyle.

More significantly, he has evidence suggesting Doyle committed another crime: credit card fraud.

This bizarre crime spree is now personal. They tried to rob one of his friends.

Ryner takes the videotape to a technician to convert the image into a Polaroid picture. The police have been using an old photo of Doyle.

"This night is going to end bad," Ryner says. "Either he is going to get shot or he's going to shoot somebody. This guy is a wacko."

2002 Dart Award Judges

PRELIMINARY JUDGES:

Garry Boulden is the supervisor of Crime Survivor Services, a unit of the Seattle Police Department that serves victims of person-to-person felony crimes. Boulden worked for five years as an advocate in the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens and as the senior specialist advocate for the police department for seven years. He is a member of Seattle's Domestic Violence Council, the Domestic Violence Criminal Justice Committee, POET (Protecting Our Elderly Together) Group, and other victim-services committees. Boulden holds a B.A. in philosophy, an M.A. in theology (ethics), and is a licensed Washington state mental health counselor.

Susan Gilmore has been a reporter at the Seattle Times since 1979. Currently a general assignment reporter, she has also covered City Hall, the environment, fisheries, politics (including a U.S. Senate race), new features, demographics and census, and she wrote for Pacific Magazine. In 1992 Gilmore was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for stories involving allegations of sexual misconduct by former U.S. Senator Brock Adams; these stories also received the Worth Bingham Prize for investigative reporting, the Associated Press Managing Editors Public Service Award, and the Goldsmith Prize. Before joining the Seattle Times, Gilmore was a reporter at the Juneau Empire and the Fairbanks News Miner.

Janet Grimley is an assistant managing editor and part of the senior management team at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She is lead hiring recruiter for the paper, oversees national newspaper contest competitions, and monitors the newsroom budget. Over the past 27 years, Grimley has worked as a reporter, copy and layout editor, and assignment editor. Before moving to Seattle, Grimley was a reporter for the Quad-Cities Times in Davenport, Iowa. She is a member of the Center for Human Services in Shoreline, Wash., and board member and past president of the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors.

Paul McElroy is an author and visiting instructor at the University of Washington School of Communications. Previously, he spent 21 years as a reporter and editor for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Chicago Sun-Times, and other newspapers. In 1979 he covered the crash of an American Airlines DC-10 at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, which killed everyone on board. McElroy's first book, Tracon, a suspenseful novel about air-traffic controllers, won both ForeWord Magazine's bronze Book of the Year Award and Independent Publisher's IPPY Award in 2001.

April Peterson is a doctoral student at the University of Washington School of Communications and a research assistant for the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. A former reporter for the Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., Peterson's interests include communications history, mass media law, representations of race and gender in the news, and entertainment media.

FINAL JUDGES:

Angelo B. Henderson is a special projects reporter with The Detroit News, covering race, crime, culture and other issues that impact urban cities. Previously, he was a senior special writer for Page One of The Wall Street Journal. While at the Journal he won the Pulitzer Prize (1999) for his account of the lives affected by an attempted drugstore robbery that ended in the robber's death. He was named one of 39 African-Americans Achievers To Watch in the next millennium by SuccessGuide magazine, and in 2000 was honored by Columbia University as one of the nation's best reporters on race and ethnicity in America. Other journalism awards include the Detroit Press Club Foundation Award (1993), Unity Award for Excellence in minority reporting for Public Affairs/Social Issues (1993), National Association of Black Journalists Award for outstanding coverage of the Black Condition, and Best of Gannett Award for Business/Consumer Reporting (1992). Henderson has also been a reporter for The St. Petersburg Times and The Courier-Journal (Louisville). He earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from the University of Kentucky in 1985, and is currently pursuing a degree in Urban Ministry at Ecumenical Theological Seminary.

Danny G. Kaloupek, Ph.D., is deputy director for the Behavioral Science Division of the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Boston, where he conducts research and provides training on topics related to traumatic stress. He also holds a faculty appointment in both the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Behavioral Neuroscience at Boston University School of Medicine. Since 1994 Kaloupek has served the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies in various roles, including service on the Scientific Publications Committee, the Program Committee, and Chair for the 1997 Annual Meeting. He has been a member of the ISTSS Board of Directors since 1998, Treasurer and Member of the Executive Committee since 1999, and Chair of the Finance Committee since 2000. Kaloupek was a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Concordia University in Montreal from 1980 through 1989. He received his degree in clinical psychology from Binghamton University in 1981.

Mark Klaas founded KlaasKids in 1994, after the kidnap and murder of his twelve-year-old daughter, Polly. Previously the owner of a rental car franchise, Mr. Klaas is now dedicated to stopping crimes against children. Through the KlaasKids Foundation, he has promoted prevention programs for at-risk youth, stronger sentencing for violent criminals, and governmental accountability and responsibility. Klaas is regularly called upon as a resource for television and radio news channels, and has written editorials for Newsweek, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He travels extensively through the United States, encouraging innovative solutions and proven programs to positively impact issues of crime, abuse and neglect. He also works with numerous victim families and families of kidnapped children offering advice, counseling, support and expertise on ways to promote cases through the media, the court of public opinion and the criminal justice system. Besides his duties as president and executive director of the KlaasKids Foundation, Klaas sits on the advisory boards of the Center for the Community Interest, Fight Crime Invest in Kids, and the Crime Victims Report. Mr. Klaas is a member of Team H.O.P.E., a program assisting the families of kidnapped children.

Penny Owen is a staff correspondent for The Daily Oklahoman, writing both news and feature stories in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. She began her career as an intern at The Oklahoman in 1992, working up from the obituary desk to police and general assignment reporting. In 1995 Owen was one of the key reporters covering the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, and one of two staff reporters sent to Denver to cover the trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in 1997. She also covered McVeigh's execution in Terre Haute, Ind. In 2000 Owen was a fellow for the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, and a William Randolph Hearst fellow at the University of Texas at Austin in 1998. She was also one of four staff members to participate in the 1999 Knight Foundation Newspapers-in-Residence program at Michigan State University, where she spent an intensive week teaching 11 journalism classes about the profession. A Navy Reserve public information officer, she served at the World Trade Center site and on the hospital ship USNS Comfort, which offered respite for rescue workers following 9-11.

is the director of photography at the

. She began her nearly-20 year journalism career at the Rocky as a lab tech, was a staff photographer for nearly a decade, and became a picture editor in 1991. Two years later she was named Director. Under her direction, the photo staff won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for their coverage of the Columbine school shootings, as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Award, Alfred Eisenstaedt Magazine photographer of the year, National headliners, numerous SND awards including a Gold Medal for photojournalism and editing, and numerous POY awards. In 1998, 1999, and 2000 her photographers won the National Scripps Foundation Award for photojournalism, and have swept the Colorado Press and AP Awards since 1994. A Rochester, N.Y. native, Reeves studied fashion and commercial photography in New York at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Reeves taught at the Colorado Institute of Art for five years, and has been part of the faculty of the Stan Kalish Picture Editing Workshop and the Mountain Workshops at Western Kentucky, and guest faculty at the Poynter Institute.