A Life Wasted

The Cause

This was a new chapter in my life. Unlike anything I had ever done before. Different on many levels. Though I had led a full life and experienced many terrible and interesting things, the journey I had just begun would put everything else in the shadow of what would come. Before this chapter in my life ran its course I will be hated by entire segments of our population and loved by others. I will have come close to death from exposure to freezing temperatures and I will experience loneliness as I never imagined. I will also become the most wanted man in America, with my name on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List, the ATF's Most Wanted List, and the United States Marshals Most Wanted List. I'll have become the only person in history to make all three most wanted lists. I will also have been featured on the America's Most Wanted television show numerous times and the subject of two press confesses by the Attorney General of the United States and the Director of the FBI.

This new chapter in my life will have made me infamous in ways I never wanted. It all started by believing I was doing the right thing.

I'm going to start with an explanation so the informed reader doesn't think I am trying to hide something. When all of these events began I had a helper. Someone who joined with me a few months after I started. He was a friend who shared my grief. It has been widely reported that this friend was with me in the event that first brought what I was doing to light. After a high-speed police chase I managed to get away, but he was arrested. I haven't talked about him before, nor shall I now because of my personal code. However, as my friend died a year ago (natural causes) I will say this. When he was arrested he gave them my name and put everything on me. He even testified against me at trial. He did these things because I told him to. He had never been arrested before so I knew that when we were caught he could get off easy if he turned against me. In the end I was the one the authorities would want to hang, so I saw no reason for him to suffer more than he had to. My friend didn't turn against me, he followed the plan.

That is the last I will mention him other than to give the point he was arrested. Some of the times before that point he was with me and some he was not. I will not distinguish which is which. This is not to hide anything on my account, but to protect the name of my friend. Even though he has passed on, I will not betray his trust.

From the beginning I deceived everyone about what I was doing. While I worked on building a database of abortion clinics I told my wife I was working on the tool and die customer's software. I told the customer the same thing that I was working on their software. Every week I would drive to Erie to pick up my $1,000-dollar check and give them a fake status report. I felt so bad about doing this that every time I returned for a visit to my customer I would try to work on their software, but it was a waste of time. Where I'd been struggling with the job before, it was impossible now. I could not focus on anything other than the abortion stuff. Nothing else mattered to me.

I have almost no memories of anything other than "The Cause" during the first part of 1998 as it was my complete focus. However, I do remember one day that I drove Rebecca to gymnastics practice. She was fifteen and there had been a lively discussion around the house about who would teach her to drive; Mary or me. Rebecca was leaning towards Mary as her mom was a responsible driver where as I always drove fast and aggressively. Mary wanted to teach her for the same reason. I wanted to teach her because, well, because I was her dad and I wanted to do it. Plus, I felt like I was a better defensive driver than anyone. The matter was settled on this trip to the gymnastics studio. As a bit of background, Rebecca had been in a bad accident a few years earlier when riding to a different gymnastics studio with a girlfriend's mom, so she was leery of traffic accidents.

We were almost to the studio when a guy turned in front of us. There was a green light that I was going through when he made a turn directly in my path leaving me no time to stop. If I had hit my breaks we would have crashed before my car had a chance to decelerate. So rather than try to brake I cut my wheel to the right and hit the accelerator. We jumped a curb at the corner of the intersection, went between two telephone poles missing both by inches, then skidded to a stop before hitting a building. Amazingly we didn't touch a thing. In the silence that followed Rebecca said, "I want you to teach me to drive."