The Joseph Palczynski Story

For nine days after Tracy escaped, Palczynski eluded police.

At first, the young woman went with her family to stay at her aunt's home in East Baltimore. She checked and double-checked the doors to make sure they were locked. Crying in her sleep, she would be awakened by her mother and momentarily imagine Joby was in the room.

Three days after her escape, on March 11, she learned Joby had stolen guns in Virginia and forced a man to drive him back to Baltimore. Police asked her to write Joby a letter, an appeal they would make public.

"You told me you never loved anyone like you love me," she wrote. "If you really love me, show me by turning yourself in."

Police placed Tracy under 24-hour guard at the Holiday Inn in Timonium. There was little to occupy the time except to watch the constant television coverage of the search.

Each time Tracy saw the televised faces of Gloria and George Shenk, she cried. They had been like parents to her. They had offered her refuge in their home, encouraged and applauded her for taking action, for leaving Joby and that abusive relationship behind. Tracy sent a card to the funeral home for their services. It was she who should have died, she told the officers protecting her, not them.

Suddenly one day, police told her they were cutting off her contact with the outside world: No more TV or radio, no more phone calls to family and friends. The replaying of events, they said, was upsetting her. She would be better off this way.

Two more days passed before Tracy was awakened at 3 a.m. by a phone call from the FBI. The agents quizzed her about the health of her mother, her mother's boyfriend and her young stepbrother.

"What's wrong?" she cried. They wouldn't say.

The next morning, two counselors came to tell her Palczynski had taken her family hostage.

On Friday evening, March 17, he had stormed the house on Lange Street where Tracy's mother lived with her boyfriend and his son. Immediately, Joby had reached police on the phone.

"Give me Tracy, I'll give you the hostages," he ordered. "If you don't have her here in 25 minutes, they'll die."

Later, he demanded Tracy be brought to the phone. But police would not allow it. They feared he would torture Tracy by using the occasion to kill her mother.

For four days, the hostages contended with Palczynski's threats and suffered his mood swings. Negotiators tried to soothe him, flattering him by marveling at his skills as an outdoorsman and meeting his requests for food.

When he asked for pizza, not just any pizza would do. It had to come from his favorite place on Eastern Avenue. The more Palczynski felt in control, negotiators advised, the less volatile he was.

At the Holiday Inn, Tracy cried and slept. She played Yahtzee with an officer to keep her mind off the uncertainty of what was happening. And she waited.

In the end, the hostages plotted their own escape. Tracy's mother, Lynn Whitehead, spiked Palczynski's iced tea with crushed tablets of Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug. When he fell asleep, she and her boyfriend, Andy McCord, escaped through a window, leaving his 12-year-old son Bradley behind. A SWAT team burst in and shot Palczynski while other officers rescued the boy.

Late on the night of March 21, an officer interrupted Tracy's Yahtzee game with the news: Her family was safe.

And Joby?

Joby was dead.