Trooper Down! Read online

  Trooper Don Patterson remembers the first few frustrating hours of the search.

  “In the beginning, we had about thirty or forty troopers working on the scene, in addition to other law enforcement officers. Tracking dogs were brought in, but they didn’t find anything. Around 7:00 A.M. we realized we were hunting for two Tennessee escapees. We got a highway patrol helicopter from Raleigh but it was too foggy to go up. Later, when the weather cleared, I accompanied the helicopter crew since I knew the area, but that didn’t help either. All we could see from the air were patrol cars and roadblocks.”

  Troopers at ground level weren’t doing much better. Excitement mellowed to boredom as the hours dragged on and the search through rain-soaked woods led to one dead end after another. Bloodhounds picked up a scent near the abandoned Cadillac, which led to a cemetery half a mile away. Then the trail stopped. At one point, troopers thought they had someone cornered in a house, only to discover that their “fugitive” was an old man who had failed to open the door because he was hard of hearing.

  By mid-evening, bleary-eyed troopers—some of whom had been on duty eighteen hours or more—were beginning to feel the strain. Yet no one complained or asked to be relieved. A trooper was “down,” and they were determined to locate the men responsible.

  “It didn’t matter if we ate or slept or went home,” said Don Patterson. “We wanted to find those guys.”

  That night, Patterson went to the intensive care unit at Grace Hospital to check on Louis. During the visit, he recapped the manhunt and asked Louis if he could describe either of his assailants. But all Louis could remember was that both men were white.

  “He was alert and could talk,” Patterson said. “So I felt good about him when I left.”

  Just before dawn on Wednesday morning the McDowell County sheriff’s department got word that a man had broken into a house in Marion, five miles west of Nebo, wanting food.

  A town of 3,680, Marion was known as a tough mountain community where locals were raised to eye most strangers with suspicion. During the night, Freeman and Clegg had hidden in the fields along the railroad tracks in Nebo, working their way west toward Marion. When they reached town they had decided to split up and take their chances separately.

  Freeman made attempts to break into two east Marion homes but was shot at by gun-toting residents. He then ran into the woods before authorities could catch him. On his third try, he kicked in the back door of a house belonging to Rass and Molly Harvey in south Marion, and demanded something to eat. The Harveys were asleep, but a daughter-in-law living in the house fixed Freeman’s breakfast and pleaded with him to give himself up. He said no, he’d already vowed he’d never be taken alive. Then he told her he was taking her with him as a hostage. Frightened at this turn of events, she got up, went to check on the Harveys, and found them both wide awake, listening to every word Freeman said.

  Molly Harvey, sixty-three, was legally blind and diabetic. She knew about the manhunt in Nebo and Marion, but could not believe one of the fugitives was actually sitting at her kitchen table eating breakfast. The shock was more than she could bear, and she began having chest pains. In a strange show of compassion—or perhaps because he didn’t know what else to do—Freeman allowed the daughter-in-law to call an ambulance and admit relatives and a minister into the house. At the same time, he warned the family he would kill anyone who tried to notify the police.

  Emergency Medical Technician John Angley, the first person to reach Louis Rector after the shooting, was called to the scene.

  “Me and my partner, Joe, pulled up in the front yard about five in the morning,” said John. “The porch light was on and everybody was up. When we went in, there were eight or ten people, including kids, just sitting around the living room. I saw this guy standing against the door with his hands behind his back, but I didn’t know who he was. He was wearing an old army jacket and never said a word or offered to help. All I remember is the look on his face—a cold expression, like he knew where he was headed but he didn’t care.”

  The daughter-in-law took the medics into the bathroom where Molly, prostrate on the floor, was now in cardiac arrest.

  Angley radioed for more assistance while his partner tried to revive the stricken woman. He remembers the telecommunicator—who had heard about Freeman’s whereabouts—asking them if they were both all right, and feeling puzzled by her concern.

  Freeman, intent on watching the medics attempt to revive Molly, didn’t notice that a family member had slipped out the back door. Moments later, the Harveys’ son-in-law notified the sheriffs department that Freeman was in the house.

  A few minutes later, as Angley was bending over Molly to help get her onto a stretcher, a deputy sheriff tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “Where is he, John?”

  “What are you talking about?” John whispered back.

  “That convict,” said the officer. “We were told he’s here in the house somewhere.”

  Somewhat shaken, John replied, “I think he went into the bedroom behind us.”

  “You boys go ahead and get her out of here,” instructed the deputy, pointing to Molly. “There may be some shooting.”

  Freeman, hunched over a bed with a pistol in his hand, was waiting when officers entered the house. Following a brief exchange of gunfire, Freeman escaped through a bedroom window, ran down an embankment, and into a neighboring yard.

  Desperate, Freeman ran almost a mile before he came upon a green, two-room, tar-paper shack. Close behind him was a group of determined state and local police, including Trooper Larry Carver. Within seconds, the shack was surrounded by officers and Freeman was told to surrender. In response, he fired several times from behind an unhinged door he was using for cover, hitting Carver in the shoulder. Suddenly, there was a barrage of gunfire and Freeman was struck repeatedly. He died almost instantly.

  At Grace Hospital, when Louis Rector heard that Freeman was dead, his only reaction was one of relief.

  Throughout the tense hours leading up to Freeman’s death, Clegg was never more than half a mile away.

  About four-fifteen on Wednesday afternoon, state trooper “Junior” Arrant and a small group of other officers were conducting a house-to-house search when they noticed a pants leg protruding from under a pile of plywood. Arrant motioned for a deputy to come over so he could show him what he’d seen. As the deputy flipped back the plywood, Clegg looked up and placed one hand on his chest, the other palm up, letting the men know right away that he was unarmed.

  Cold, tired, and hungry, he was ready to surrender.

  “He knew his life was hanging by a thread,” said Arrant.

  Shortly after James Clegg was captured, Molly Harvey died at Grace Hospital in Morganton.

  Louis continued his recovery, keeping tabs from his hospital bed on all aspects of the manhunt. Clegg was taken to the McDowell County jail where he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury, and assault with a firearm on a law enforcement officer. He was also served with a fugitive warrant for escaping from prison. Extradition proceedings began almost immediately. Clegg was sent back to Tennessee where he faced charges of murder and kidnapping in connection with the slaying of the Brownsville businessman and the abduction of the man’s wife. Pleading guilty to the first set of charges involving Louis Rector, Clegg was sentenced to twenty years in a North Carolina prison, with the term to begin after he had served his time in Tennessee. In a statement issued by his attorney, Clegg asked that the $10,000 reward for the capture of him and Freeman be given to Molly Harvey’s family.

  Louis spent the next three months at home recovering from his gunshot wounds. Physically, he did fine. But Scottie Rector recalls that after the shooting, her husband underwent a distinct personality change.

  “He was very quiet and withdrawn, almost passive,” she said. “I worried about what would happen when he returned to work. If I could have, I would have kept him from going back.”


  Every night for weeks, Louis tossed and turned, wondering how he could have prevented the shooting, or how he might have killed the two men who had assaulted him. Then, turning the episode over and over in his mind, he’d seethe with rage.

  “It didn’t take me long to realize that my animosity toward Freeman and Clegg was consuming me,” he said. “I knew that before I could get on the road to recovery, I’d have to resolve my anger,”

  For help and comfort he turned to friends, and for spiritual guidance, to his Baptist faith.

  On June 1, 1984, Louis went back to work. The first night proved traumatic for both him and his family. Not only was he confronted with his own fears, but Scottie and the children all burst into tears, pleading with him not to go on patrol.

  “It was a real scene,” he said later. “My wife said she wasn’t going to be subjected to this again—having someone call her and tell her I'd been shot. The whole thing was emotionally draining for us all. Finally, I hit rock bottom. So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I went into my bedroom and got down on my knees. I told God I was afraid, and so was my family, and I asked Him to give us more strength and courage than any of us had at the moment.”

  A short time later, Scottie walked with her husband to his patrol car, waiting while he radioed to a telecommunicator that he was now on duty. As the clock struck 6:00 P.M.,Trooper Louis Rector was offically back on patrol.

  Yet problems stemming from the shooting continued to plague him. Trooper Don Patterson and other colleagues weren’t sure what to expect out of Louis from one day to the next.

  “None of us knew his feelings or could identify with what he’d gone through,” said Don. “He’d be short-tempered, flying off the handle at the least little thing. Then he’d withdraw. We discussed his behavior among ourselves, but we didn’t know how to help him. It was a hard thing to cope with, but we tried to understand.”

  From Louis’s perspective, he felt he was constantly being tested to see if he still had what it takes to be a trooper.

  “I thought everyone was watching me, waiting to see when I was gonna break under the pressure, when I was gonna mess up.”

  On patrol, Louis worked hard at hiding his fears. Then one night something happened to shatter the fragile wall he had built around himself.

  “Not long after I came back to work, I clocked a car speeding in the eastern part of the county,” Louis recalled. “I chased him for about seven miles until he turned down a dirt road and stopped. The guy jumped out of the car and I followed him. We ran across a concrete barrier but I tripped and fell. I looked up as he was entering a wood thicket and saw him pointing a gun. He fired on me twice and I drew my weapon and fired back. Then he disappeared into the woods. At that point, I lost control.”

  The shooting made Louis so physically ill that he crawled to a nearby ditch and threw up.

  Several months later, Louis’s anger finally came to a head.

  A trooper had been shot and killed in western North Carolina and Louis was scheduled to join other officers in the manhunt. At the last minute his name was taken off the list.

  “I wanted to go up there bad, to be accepted again as part of the group. I felt that after my recovery I’d earned the right to help my fellow officers. When I found out I wasn’t allowed to go, I went crazy. It was like they still had reservations about me. I couldn’t handle it.”

  That night, Louis, upset and angry, stomped into the first sergeant’s office at Morganton headquarters.

  “Why in the hell can’t I join the manhunt?” he ranted. “It’s not fair that you’re leaving me behind!”

  The sergeant tried to calm him down.

  “I won’t tolerate that kind of behavior,” he said. “All we’re doing is looking out for your best interests. This is more a scheduling problem than anything else. We put you where we need you the most.”

  But for Louis, the emotional turmoil persisted. In fact, he says now he was headed towards a downward spiral.

  “I had a lot of family problems, and still a lot of anger. My wife almost left me and my job became a daily struggle. Worst of all, despite my faith, I was trying to handle it alone. I kept telling myself I was doing fine. But I really wasn’t.”

  The turning point came when a new supervising officer, First Sergeant Cliff Walker, arrived at Morganton. Walker, who had suffered through a serious auto accident while on patrol, recognized the trauma that Louis was going through. He strongly suggested—even demanded—that the trooper seek professional counseling.

  Louis’s wife, Scottie, was urging him to do the same.

  “At first I refused,” he said. “When I finally gave in and went, I was able to admit to myself that I needed some help. I also realized the importance of getting it out into the open so I could learn how to deal with it.”

  Before the shooting, he said, the highway patrol was his first and most important love.

  “I still love the patrol. But I’ve rearranged my priorities so that my family and my faith are now the most important part of my life.”

  He also has a zealous desire to promote safety, and often appears by request at the highway patrol’s school to share his experience with troopers who attend the patrol’s Officer Survival Training courses.

  “Sometimes, especially at night,” he tells them, “I have to literally force myself to get out of the patrol car and walk up to the driver. When I do, I can see that hand coming around, the gun pointed toward me. But you know, I still feel like I’m rendering a valuable service out there. When I investigate a wreck, or assist a stranded motorist, for instance, I’m doing something to help people. And I find that very satisfying. I just wish the public realized we’re not out there to ‘get’ anyone. Sure, there are a few bad apples in our organization—what company doesn’t have them? But the majority of us are people who have an inward desire to serve the public, and that’s all we’re trying to do. Yeah, I still like being a trooper. In fact, I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be.”

  2. Cadets

  “We’re gonna eat with you, sleep with you, and sweat with you, twenty-four hours a day. But you’re gonna have to do the work when I tell you to do it. This is not the YMCA. And if you don’t like it here, I don’t give a shit.” —Instructor to new cadets, North Carolina Highway Patrol Training School

  Most troopers share Louis Rector’s feeling that, no matter how dangerous or frustrating the job can be, there is no career they would rather pursue. Such collective dedication to the highway patrol bonds them to each other and contributes to the sense of brotherhood that runs like a thread throughout the organization.

  “If I need help in a dangerous situation, I can call any fellow officer in that black-and-silver patrol car, whether I know him by name or not,” said one trooper. “And he knows he can count on me for the same.”

  The bonding process begins in cadet school when fifty or more carefully selected individuals come together and gradually merge into one strong, cohesive unit.

  Enlistment procedures operate basically the same for state police agencies around the country, but North Carolina’s standards are considered somewhat more stringent than most. The highway patrol in North Carolina accepts between one and two thousand applications each year from men and women who want to become state troopers. Out of those applicants, about two hundred are chosen for a ten-hour screening, led by a high-ranking officer on the patrol’s administrative staff.

  “First, I answer questions about the highway patrol, from what it’s like chasing cars to basic requirements and benefits,” said Lieutenant Billy Day, director of administrative services. “Then I tell them if they’re just looking for a job, they won’t make it in the highway patrol because there’s something special they’ve got to have.

  “I explain they’ll be gone from home half their lives and their wives will be doing all the grocery shopping and raising the kids. I tell them they can’t go to beer joints and nightclubs because people will watch and judge them by th
eir actions. I tell them they’ll have to move whenever and wherever the patrol commander wants them to go and they’ll be lucky if they get stationed within a hundred miles of home.

  “I tell them that law enforcement is one of the worst jobs in the world as far as the pay and the hours are concerned. Then I tell them if they don’t want to meet all of our requirements, or no longer think they want to be a highway patrolman, they’re free to go. We want each person to make the decision about what he really wants to do.”

  Those who stick around for the second phase of the screening fill out a series of forms and write a narrative explaining their reasons for joining the highway patrol. Applicants are then given a psychological test that measures their attitudes about use of force, the role of authority, race relations, and police work in general.

  Steve Wollack, a California psychologist who designs attitude tests for a number of highway patrols around the nation, says he’s found that, contrary to public opinion, there’s no single personality “type” who goes into law enforcement as a career.

  But according to Lieutenant Day, who’s had fifteen years of experience in screening potential troopers, there is a “typical” highway patrol applicant. The average cadet, says Day, is a white male, twenty-two years old, and a high school graduate (though an increasing number are college-educated). He often has conservative political opinions and a prior connection to law enforcement.

  The psychological test that applicants undergo is followed by a basic reading and writing exam, then a two-hour physical skills course (also designed by Wollack) that simulates on-the-job experiences, from changing a flat tire while being timed to removing an “injured” person from a burning vehicle.

  Until 1983, the North Carolina Highway Patrol had height requirements that excluded anyone under five feet six, a requirement that eliminated otherwise qualified men and women. Part of the reason for this restriction was the patrol’s belief that a smaller person, particularly a female, could not physically handle the job. The other part was pure public relations: since 1929 the patrol had built its “don’t-mess-with-me” reputation on the size and toughness of its men.