The End of the Dream (41 page)

They began with the outside of the red-and-white camper, noting that the east side almost abutted the fence. The front of the camper was about about seven feet from the alley. The homicide detectives could see now that copious amounts of blood had dripped through the floor onto the grass beneath. All the windows on the west side of the camper were shattered, as were the front windows in the cahover sleeping section.
 
There were sixteen bullet “defects” in that portion, all within an eighteen-inch diameter. “That would account for Jon Dittoe’s return of fire to cover Mont, “ one detective commented.

The west side of the camper which had faced the first officers at the scene had twenty-six bullet holes on that side. These were consistent with the covering fire that Cruzan, Mont, and Johnson had provided to allow Jon Dittoe to get out of the line of fire that might come from the camper. There were twelve exit defects on the other side of the camper, and two at the rear. The homicide detectives went inside and jotted down their description of the little camper that had become an abattoir, “With the entrance door open, there is a small dinette/eating area, with a small table and cushioned bench seats to the left .. .

to the right of the door is storage. Forward on the right are cabinets and a sink, and to the left a small reefer’ (refrigerator) and cabinets.. ..” l L The interior of the camper looked as though some giant had picked it up and shaken it vigorously. Drawers had been pulled out and were lying on the floor. The cupboard doors were open and their contents strewn all over. “There is broken glass, blood, and powdered CS chemical agent (from the tear gas) covering almost every horizontal surface, “ Sonny Davis noted.

Scott Scurlock’s body remained where he had died. The most severe visible wound was just beneath his chin. Except for the blood, he looked as if he had fallen asleep at the table and slid sideways on the bench.
 
He looked much younger than the age given for him forty-two and there was no gray at all in his curly dark hair.

An examination of his body revealed a black nylon shoulder holster attached to his belt. There was a magazine pouch with two loaded clips, and a hunting knife in a scabbard. On his right ankle, he had a black nylon ankle holster that contained a Beretta . 22 pistol.

Scott’s body rested in the trajectory of many of the bullets that had penetrated the camper shell. Only an autopsy would reveal how many wounds he had sustained, and whether they had occurred before or after death. At 10,30, Dr. Norman Thiersch and Investigator Don Marvin from the King County Medical Examiner’s Office arrived to begin their examination of the body.

The hands were bagged with plastic baggies before the body was moved.

As the ME’s men lifted it, a spent 9-mm casing and three projectiles fell to the floor, along with two keys and a banded packet of cash.

Scott had been dead for hours, and his body was in full rigor mortis.

The core temperature of his body had dropped to 95. 93 degrees. There were obvious postmortem wounds, but Dr. Thiersch found what appeared to be a contact wound beneath the chin and a corresponding exit wound just in the hair line at the top front of the forehead. The body was removed at 11,30 P. M. The camper was impounded and taken to a long-term storage facility, and the Seattle Fire Department came to wash the scene clean of any sign that a man had died violently in this quiet corner of a gentle lady’s backyard. When Cameron and his crew drove off, the streets were dark and quiet. The police, the FBI, the onlookers, the reporters, the helicopters, all gone now. Thanksgiving Day, 1996, was over. Down in Virginia, Kevin Meyers had had a good holiday with his mother. When the phone rang that Thursday evening, he had expected it to be Ellen calling to share a little bit of the day with him. He had not expected to hear her sobbing so violently that she could barely speak. He begged her to calm down, and finally she was able to blurt out the words that Kevin had been dreading. “Scott’s dead, “ she said, softly, “and Steve’s been shot. He’s in the hospital, and he’s under arrest.

They robbed a bank.” Kevin glanced at his mother. She had been through so much that he couldn’t bear the thought of what he had to tell her.
 
Dana was dead, his stepfather was dead, Randy was in Europe.

At least Steve was still alive. That was small comfort, but it was some.
 
Ellen was the kind of woman who cried if her cat killed a mouse, she bled for the whole world. Whatever Scott had been, Ellen had hoped that he would change, that he would tap some well of goodness inside himself.
 
She had tried to talk him through his night terrors, but now she remembered how frightened he was of the dark, red-eyed, creatures who lay in wait for him, and she began to sob harder, gasping for air.

Kevin asked her to put her daughters on the line. He told them that they must help their mom that she was very, very sad because of Scott and because of Steve. They weren’t little kids, they would be able to help her until he got home. And then he turned to his mother, took a deep breath, and told her the news that no mother should ever have to hear.
 
Ellen said that Steve had been shot in his arms and his shoulders. Kevin looked at the pieces of his brother’s sculpture in his mother’s house, and he asked himself, How could he have sacrificed the wonderful talent that God gave him in a search for gold? And now God had taken away his arms. Marge Violette Mullins was startled to hear her phone ring late on Thanksgiving night.

And more surprised to hear Kevin’s voice on the line. “Scott’s dead, Marge, “ he said. “And Steve’s all shot up. They got caught robbing a bank.” After a moment of shocked silence, Marge remembered Scott telling her about his being involved in something about banking. She had never imagined this. “Where are your boys?

“ Kevin asked. “They’re asleep.”

“Wake them up, Marge. Wake them up and tell them.”

“Why, tonight? “

“I want to be sure that they know that crime doesn’t pay. Somebody told us that once, but I guess Steve didn’t believe it.”

“OK, I’ll wake them up.” And she did. When she had finished explaining what had happened to the man who had been so good to them, the man who lived in the treehouse, her oldest son looked at her with a dawning expression of understanding. “Mom, “ he said, “that’s where he got so much money, isn’t it? That’s why he could give us twenty dollar bills and not even care. Because it wasn’t his money at all, was it?

“

“No, it wasn’t.” Marge sat 2,000 miles away from Seattle, and remembered a night in Hawaii from two decades past. Try as she might, she could not understand how the sensitive young man she knew then the man whose biggest ambition was to save someone’s life had ended up dead in a gunfight with the police. Ren Talbot was returning from Thanksgiving dinner at her parents’ home in Olympia with a friend when the news came on. She was surprised but not shocked when she heard that Scott Scurlock was dead and how his life had ended. But then, the report continued, and she heard Mark Biggins’ name. She was more than shocked, more than stunned.

She hadn’t seen or heard from Mark in many years, but the man she remembered could not have changed enough that he would become a bank robber. The Mark she remembered was the gentlest man she had ever known.
 
Friday, November 29, was still a holiday for most people, but the Seattle Homicide Offices were open for business at 7,45 A. M. Mike Magan had spoken with Traci Marsh, who said that she was Mark Biggins’ common-law wife. He told Greg Mixsell that apparently Mark and Scott had been friends at Evergreen College and that Mark had gone to Olympia to work in Scott’s “construction business.” At Harbor view Hospital, Mark was ready to tell all of the truth. With tears in his eyes, he admitted to Cynthia Tall man, Greg Mixsell, and Walt Maning that he lived in Oxnard, California, with Traci and his teenage daughter. He had tried so hard not to involve Traci and Lori, but the worlds that he thought he could keep separate had collided. How had he thought that they would not? Scott Scurlock’s autopsy took place at noon on Friday, with the trio of homicide detectives observing. Dr. Thiersch pointed out the chin wound, and the distinctive contact impression of the muzzle of a Glock pistol. It was clearly a self-inflicted wound, one that would have been instantly fatal as the . 40 caliber slug tore through the frontal lobe of the brain, causing multiple fractures of the skull as it exited.
 
There were six other wounds, all of them attributable to bullets fired by someone else, and almost surely, they were postmortem. One bullet had entered the back of Scott’s neck, fracturing the cervical spine at C3.
 
Had he lived, he would probably have been a quadriplegic. The third bullet entered the back and caused hemorrhaging into his left lung.
 
Another had pierced the back and fractured his spine at the L5 level, and the last three sliced through the soft tissues of his arms and legs.
 
It would be of some comfort to the many people who loved Scott Scurlock to know that he never felt anything after he placed the muzzle of his Glock beneath his chin and fired. The legend of Hollywood was over, although people in the Northwest would talk about his exploits and his motivations for years to come. His crimes and his death made headlines in Reston, Virginia, and in cities all over Washington State.
 
Ironically, one Seattle Times headline read, “Scurlock, Known for his Looks, Charm, and His Big Tips.

“ A photograph accompanying the article showed a handsome, bare-chested Scott.

It was a shallow memorial to a man whose whole life was modeled on the movies. His memorial service was in Olympia, on the twenty acres where he had built himself a perfect world. Mourners built a huge bonfire in his honor. There were many, many people who had loved Scott Scurlock and most of them were there. They spoke of how he was now free. And, in a sense, he was. But the two friends who bought into his dream were not.
 
For Mark Biggins and Steve Meyers and for all the people who loved them, the years ahead loomed ominously. .

Epilogue

By the time Steve

Meyers and Mark Biggins had recovered enough to be transferred from Harbor view Hospital to the King County Jail, the Christmas season was well under way. But not for them. They saw the world now through the slit-like windows in the jail that sits high on a hill above Elliot Bay.
 
What had seemed unbelievable was all too real.

Ren Talbot hadn’t seen Mark for years, but she remembered the sweet guy she had known in Olympia. She was working as an investigator for Seattle criminal defense attorney, Fred Leatherman, and she hoped that she could help Mark. “I went up to the jail to see him, “ she recalled. “At first, I barely recognized him, but then he saw me and he just hung his head.
 
He was so ashamed.” Fred Leatherman agreed to defend Mark, and Steve retained defense attorney Joann Oliver. The prisoners faced serious federal charges. Katrina C. Pflaumer, United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington and William H. Redkey, Jr. , Assistant United States Attorney, filed the charges, One count of Conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery, one count of Armed Bank Robbery, two counts of Assault on a Federal officer, and one count of Use of a Firearm (a semiautomatic assault weapon shotgun). The maximum combined prison time for the five charges was fifty years for the first four, and an additional ten years on the firearm charge a mandatory term and which, by law, had to run consecutively to the other sentences. In addition, there could be fines totaling a million dollars.

Somewhat ironically, the smallest monetary penalty called for one hundred dollars (on each count) to be paid to the Crime Victims Fund.

If Mark and Steve went to trial, they each faced the possibility of spending sixty years in prison, and they could be fined almost as much as they had stolen. They had no money, so that was mootbut they were over forty, and, if they should receive the maximum penalty for their offenses, they would have to serve virtually a life sentence. Usually mitigation packages are used only in cases where convicted killers face the death penalty.

Now, Ren Talbot and Kevin Meyers set out to show the federal prosecutors and Judge William Dwyer the kind of men Mark Biggins and Steve Meyers had been before they became involved in Scott Scurlock’s plans. They encouraged family and friends to write letters, they gathered photographs and remembrances, incorporating them in two albums They were albums that reflected the most positive aspects of two lives, lives that anyone could be proud of. Would it be enough to spare Mark and Steve from life in prison? No one knew. Both men had admitted their complicity in the Lake City bank robbery.
 
Despite her better judgment, Ren Talbot found herself drawn to Mark Biggins. She had always liked him, and now she tried very hard not to love him. She watched as his daughter Lori came to visit for Christmas. His agony as he realized that he wouldn’t be there for Lori any longer was painful to see. When Traci Marsh abandoned Mark and Loriren did what she could to convince him not to give up. The intertwining of lives continued, only at a muted pace.
 
Scott Scurlock, who may have believed that he would live forever, died without a will. His parents hired an attorney to oversee the assets that were now theirs. Bill Scurlock was anxious to look through the property that the FBI was holding from their searches and impounds of Scott’s homes and vehicles. He contacted Shawn Johnson, who told him he was quite welcome to do that.

Scott’s father and one of his sisters appeared a few days later to catalogue what now belonged to them. With the FBI agents, the elder Scurlock was cordial. He still refused to talk at all with the Seattle Police Department, apparently blaming them for Scott’s death. The Scurlocks allowed Sabrina Adams to stay on in the treehouse and she became a sad and lonely caretaker. Her hope was to buy the property.

However, the asking price was reported to be over $300,000, far beyond her assets. She still owed $30,000 on the credit card loan she had taken out to give Scott. At night, intruders with shovels and flashlights prowled Seven Cedars, enticed by rumors that Scott had buried thousands of dollars around his land. And, indeed, he had. The question was, was there any left? The $114,000 taken in the May 1996 robbery was probably gone by November. And the $40,000 from the Wells Fargo robbery only five days before the failed Lake City robbery was pretty well accounted for after the FBI search. If there was any buried treasure out among the cedar trees, no one has ever admitted finding it. Sabrina stayed on in the treehouse until the spring of 1998, even as it deteriorated around her. There were no more work parties to repair it and, finally, it became too dangerous to live in.