“The way I understood it was, there was two men out in the parking lot with Lloyd,” said Pat.
“I don’t think they are pressed about Dick; I think they know it’s Thomas Junior,” Dollie said.
“I heard there was somebody else there, you know? They have to know who it was.”
The day after this call, Pat and Dick lost whatever self-possession they had, when the squad and the FBI searched their house. This was September 19. Pat was not home when the teams swarmed in with the warrant. Mark Janney cornered Dick in the front yard, sharply questioning and accusing him.
“Here’s the thing, Dick,” said Mark. “I think you have kind of been expecting this day, you know what I mean. You’ve probably been carrying around a lot of weight on your shoulders the last few months, wondering what’s going on with us. We’ve been investigating this thing very thoroughly. It’s over. It’s time to put this thing to rest.”
“What did I do?” Dick asked.
“You know what your role was.”
“I don’t know. What did I do? I didn’t do anything.”
“Our objective is to mainly find those girls.”
“I don’t know where they are at! I had nothing to do with it!”
“It’s time for you to tell us the truth.”
“I had nothing to do with it. On my mother’s grave, I had nothing to do with it.”
“Well, Dick, we’ve got a lot of evidence. We’ve talked to a lot of people. Put people’s stories together, including Ted and including Lloyd, and the main thing I want is to hear your version of things.”
“I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t there. I didn’t do anything. I was accused of doing it, but I did not do it. I didn’t even know the boy [Lloyd]; he was off from the family. I did not do it.”
“There’s no point in going down this road right now.”
“It’s the honest road. It’s the honest road. It’s all I can say; it’s the honest road. I had nothing to do with it.”
“It’s time. It’s time, Dick.”
Mark said that not everyone involved shared the full weight of the blame, and they needed to hear from him what his role was.
“I didn’t have no role,” said Dick. “I didn’t do anything. I did not do nothing.”
“It could very well be a case where people were drunk, their judgment was screwed up, they got into something that they didn’t expect to get into, and it just went the wrong way. And if that’s the case, and if something accidental happened to those girls, and people got scared and freaked out, then that’s what we’re here to clear up.”
“I don’t even know the girls you’re talking about. I never seen ’em. Of course, I know the girls you’re talking about. I seen their picture. I didn’t know ’em. I have not done nothin’.”
“It’s time,” said Mark. “You’ve been carrying this a long time.”
“I ain’t been carrying nothing!”
“It’s time to tell the truth.”
“I AM telling the truth!”
“It’s time to clear this up.”
“This is clearing it up! Right here! I have done nothin’!”
Mark kept at him hard, but Dick didn’t budge. He had not been running from this case. He had not been hiding anything. He didn’t know anything. His distress made him unsteady, and at one point he keeled over. They placed him on a bench and brought him water. Dick kept insisting he had nothing to do with the crime.
“I am so sorry you think I do,” he said, “but I don’t.”
“Our evidence says you do, Dick. That’s the problem. Dick, you’ve done things.”
“I have not. I don’t know what evidence you got, but it’s not on me. Am I under arrest?”
“No, you are not under arrest.”
“Can I call my wife?”
“No, you can’t.”
“If I’m not under arrest, why can’t I call my wife?’
“Because I said you can’t.”
Dick laughed with astonishment. “So you’re the Man, and I’m the dummy, right?”
“You’re not dumb. We’re serving a search warrant at your house, and we don’t want you calling your wife right now. We’ll let you call her in due time.”
Dick kept repeating over and over that he had never been to Wheaton Plaza. “I have not been there. I have not been there.”
Mark said that their evidence indicated otherwise. “The bottom line is this isn’t going to go away.”
“The bottom line is I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do it, sir.”
Dick demanded to talk to a lawyer. He broke down.
“Everybody has made mistakes in their life,” said Mark.
“I didn’t make no mistakes.”
When Pat came they wouldn’t let her near her husband. She threw a fit, screaming for all the neighborhood to hear, “Somebody call an ambulance! Everybody, remember this! They’re denying help to a dying man!”
In the middle of it, Pat phoned Dollie.
“They’re tearing my house up,” she said.
“Where’s Dick?”
“He’s been on the ground a couple of times.”
“He’s gonna have a heart attack,” Dollie said.
“I don’t think it’s fair that nobody knows what’s going on,” said Pat. “They say people in Bedford are giving them information. There must be twenty-five or thirty of them. They lie so fucking much. I want the people in Bedford to know.”
A day later, sounding drunk and crying, she called Dollie again.
“I’m not a bad person. I told that detective I’m gonna call down to Bedford and tell them what’s going on. I have caught them in lies several times. I told them I’m gonna talk to everyone down there who is feeding them information.”
“I believe Lloyd implicated Dick,” Dollie said.
“Junior too. I don’t think they know what they’re talking about.”
“I guess they think I’m hiding secrets for your family,” said Dollie.
“They implicated you as one of the people talking about Dick, saying he did something like that,” said Pat.
“They ask me a hundred million questions a day. They ask me if I’m loyal to my family, and ‘Do you have family secrets?’”
“They tell me you implicated Dick.”
“How could I implicate anybody? I was twelve years old!”
“They said Junior implicated Dick. There are other people down there saying things.” Pat said the police kept hammering at Dick, telling him that they knew he was the driver. “Over and over and over,” she said. “They did take him a bottle of water.”
The search found nothing incriminating. And despite Dick’s assertions of complete innocence, the Montgomery County police went ahead with the press conference that named him another person of interest. Called before a grand jury in Virginia months later, under oath, Pat denied having urged others to be uncooperative. Recordings of her doing just that were then played. She was indicted for perjury, and cameras caught a glimpse of her with her hands over her face as a sheriff drove her away.