THE LOST SON OF SAM LETTERS

Closet Life

Leaving my grieving, money-hungry widow and the old man in the tan socks, I kept going over what had taken place inside her house: The woman's husband had been dismembered with a chainsaw, his body stuffed in plastic bags, and she was worried about money for his story. I had seen and heard many things throughout my book-writing career. I had been asked for money by at least one or two people per book. I always refused. But this time, I had never felt so disgusted, so dirty.

Gary Evans

Throughout the process of researching Every Move You Make, I had developed this "feeling" that Gary Evans was hiding his homosexuality. I had asked Investigator James Horton, a cop who knew Evans better than Evans knew himself. But he disagreed.

"Gary? No way! Look at all of the girlfriends he had. They all talked about how good a lover he was."

"That's my point. Gary always went above and beyond the norm to talk—even brag—about his sexual performance."

Horton wouldn't agree. And who was I to question a senior investigator with the New York State Police, who had been on the job for twenty years.

For months I wrote off my theory as just that—speculation. I had no evidence, nor did I have a reliable source claiming Evans was gay. I had a hunch. It wasn't that it mattered one way or another. All it did was make my serial killer that much more of an interesting subject to explore in the book. But I couldn't put hunches and speculation into print.

Gary Evans at Bruce Lee grave site

I also knew Evans was fascinated, if not obsessed, with celebrities and stardom. In the hundreds of letters I studied as part of my research for the book, there were several times when Evans talked candidly about a celebrity he thought he saw on the street, or some film company shooting on location in his neighborhood. Hollywood excited him. Bruce Lee was one of his favorites. He had even visited Lee's grave—as I would, too, while doing research for the book—while on his final run from Investigator Horton. Hiding out in the Pacific Northwest, while Horton was back in New York interviewing people who knew Evans, trying to find him, Evans mocked Horton by sending him a photograph of himself at Lee's gravesite, ingeniously insinuating, See, I'm right here ... you can't catch me!

Still, as I wrote the book and continued researching Evans's life, something about the tone of Evans's letters struck me. I didn't know what it was exactly. But as I got closer to finishing the book, I forgot about it, not thinking for one minute I'd find some of the answers to my questions at the end of the process in a stack of papers one of Evans's grammar school chums had stored away in a box somewhere in his house.