Speaker 1: When people ask me, what are your brothers like? I
Speaker 1: turned my head and smile. How do you say camp fires,
Speaker 1: American trucks and wet grass. My brothers are w d forty,
Speaker 1: cast iron gates and thermal underwear. They're broken windows, shell
Speaker 1: casings and swinging screen doors. Ryan is my twin, Dylan
Speaker 1: is my opposite, but on the right day, we're the same.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you a story, a true story,
Speaker 1: but truth is always based in opinion, and who's to
Speaker 1: say that we're telling the truth. Welcome to The Dougherty Gang,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios, Episode
Speaker 1: two fifteen in the Morning. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a crime
Speaker 1: producer at Katie Studios with Stephanie Lydecker. We've been working
Speaker 1: with producer Beth Greenwald on The Dougherty Gang for months now.
Speaker 1: The three siblings have agreed to tell their story for
Speaker 1: the very first time, each from separate prisons. Lee Grace
Speaker 1: Dockerty is at Federal correction Institute Aliceville in Alabama, Ryan
Speaker 1: is in United States Penitentiary Tucson in Arizona, and Dylan
Speaker 1: is at the Federal Corrections Institute in Bennettsville in South Carolina.
Speaker 1: This call was from the Federal prison. Me and Dylan
Speaker 1: were just looking at each other like in a state
Speaker 1: of shock and surprise. If Dylan is under anxiety, you
Speaker 1: know that I'm going to be under anxiety, because Dylan
Speaker 1: is usually a very cool, calm collected person. I felt
Speaker 1: like everything was really stacked against us, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And I just felt like he was just
Speaker 1: unfair from the start. On the afternoon of August one,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, twenty one year old Ryan Dougherty
Speaker 1: came home from court, met with his probation officer and
Speaker 1: found out he was in a situation where he would
Speaker 1: soon be sent to prison, away from his son, who
Speaker 1: was days away from being born. Here he is speaking
Speaker 1: with Beth Greenwald, and so now this guy's at your
Speaker 1: home and he's telling you all these things in these threats,
Speaker 1: and is Dylan there. It was with the little shorty
Speaker 1: a k because he had put the majority of the
Speaker 1: firearms in there. And the guy goes over and jiggles
Speaker 1: it because it's got a log chain through two holes
Speaker 1: that are bored into the doors of the shed. And
Speaker 1: I'm already of the mind pretty much we're gonna rock
Speaker 1: and rolling it out of here. The guy gave it
Speaker 1: a mighty little job, and he you know, he came inside.
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, you're gonna did you give me a
Speaker 1: key to dad or open it for me or whatever
Speaker 1: some some ship like that. He leaves, and what happens, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he leaves, and then we started talking about things. And
Speaker 1: then my baby's mother tells my brother and sister. She's like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, I can't believe my fucking ears of what
Speaker 1: this guy just threatened. Feeling he was out of options,
Speaker 1: he and his siblings, twenty nine oldly Grace and twenty
Speaker 1: six year old Dylan, we're grappling with the reality they
Speaker 1: were facing. Here's the Grace. I think all that stress
Speaker 1: was coming out, and he was coming out in negative ways.
Speaker 1: And I think Dylan, being the older, protective big brother,
Speaker 1: was looking at this as a short term solution of
Speaker 1: let's run from the problem because the base officer does
Speaker 1: not want to work with Ryan. I wouldn't say I
Speaker 1: was thinking clear. It's hard to explain, but also stars
Speaker 1: had aligned. It was like the gravitational pool was just
Speaker 1: that's what it was. It was just a really bad
Speaker 1: situation for our family. All we knew about prison is
Speaker 1: from what we have seen on TV or movies. We
Speaker 1: basically thought, okay, well you go to prison and you die.
Speaker 1: So with us going into that with that type of fear,
Speaker 1: that type of anxiety, we basically thought that any time
Speaker 1: in prison is a death sentence. You know that. There's
Speaker 1: the state of mind that we were in. We didn't
Speaker 1: know any better. You know, nobody in our family had
Speaker 1: ever been to prison. With the strict mandate the probation
Speaker 1: officer was laying out, Ryan felt like he was in
Speaker 1: an impossible situation. The probation officer comes to your job,
Speaker 1: and Florida's the right to work state. Your probation officer
Speaker 1: comes to your job, and your job's like, yo, you're
Speaker 1: on probation. Man. We don't want to deal with this
Speaker 1: ship or somebody like you. You're fired. You're like, bro,
Speaker 1: if I get fired, I'm going back into prison. Ran
Speaker 1: just felt like he couldn't do the probably Asian, there
Speaker 1: was no way with him having a newborn baby. How
Speaker 1: was he going to facilitate childcare? How was he going
Speaker 1: to drop in that school. There were so many questions
Speaker 1: that we didn't know, and it just seemed impossible to
Speaker 1: work around all these rules. After the probation officer left,
Speaker 1: anxiety and fearmounted and Lee Grayson Dillon met up with
Speaker 1: Ryan at his house to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: protect Ryan and keep him from being sent to jail
Speaker 1: for fifteen years. We were all at the house. We're
Speaker 1: sitting down. I'm writing shoot on paper because I'm dumb
Speaker 1: and paranoid enough to think that the fucking ankle bracelet monitor,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's got like a microphone on it.
Speaker 1: That's how young and stupid I was, and like fucking paranoid.
Speaker 1: That's that's how bad my thought process was at that age.
Speaker 1: We were sketching it out. We would go back and
Speaker 1: forth and kind of trying and figure out what seemed
Speaker 1: like something iron and for plotting. What we were plotting
Speaker 1: was relatively calm about it. So we sit there, we
Speaker 1: scotch out a rough plan and that was it as
Speaker 1: I sit now, granted up had ten years to think
Speaker 1: about it, But my brain works differently than did that right?
Speaker 1: You know, you can very a very basic litmus has
Speaker 1: is just to say things out loud and if they
Speaker 1: sound stupid, maybe don't do them. And for that one,
Speaker 1: it was just a dumb fucking idea. How long did
Speaker 1: it take for the plan to come into fruition? Was
Speaker 1: in a ten minute conversation? Was it an all night conversation?
Speaker 1: It was pretty much all night because I know, I
Speaker 1: was laying on the couch and I'm talking. Ryan's next
Speaker 1: to me, Dylan's pacing, so it was just everything was
Speaker 1: just happening so fast, and Ryan was just upset. He
Speaker 1: was shaking. It would go from anger to grief to sadness.
Speaker 1: You know, I felt kind of traumatized from the whole
Speaker 1: ship and I just snapped. So yeah, I wasn't exactly
Speaker 1: thinking right, and I was at the point where I
Speaker 1: was almost just happy, just happy that you know this,
Speaker 1: this will force a resolution. Hopefully somebody will pay attention
Speaker 1: once they've seen this fucking bomb that went off. Here's
Speaker 1: Dylan again. You know, we're just gonna do this. X
Speaker 1: y Z will get that, and then we'll be gone
Speaker 1: and everything will be all right. You know. The playoff
Speaker 1: was really fluid, but you know, Ryan's girlfriend was going
Speaker 1: to come down south and meet up with us, and
Speaker 1: the US settles will this will will be. The wheels
Speaker 1: began to turn and an off the cuff plan was hatched.
Speaker 1: Early the next morning, the siblings would pack up and
Speaker 1: head to Mexico, where they'd start fresh. Ryan would send
Speaker 1: for Amber and the baby once they got settled. The
Speaker 1: timeline was very last minute, because at no point did
Speaker 1: we ever look at each other and say, let's get
Speaker 1: in the car, let's load up the guns. Our plans
Speaker 1: were actually to stay under the radar, not just from
Speaker 1: the probation officer, but from anybody that was trying to
Speaker 1: track us. I'm not gonna say it was like blind
Speaker 1: in my rage, but I was like I was blinded
Speaker 1: by you know, just kind of me in that corner.
Speaker 1: You get to a point, I guess all people probably
Speaker 1: have it where whatever you do snap, it's it's very
Speaker 1: hard to come back to making like rational decisions. I
Speaker 1: just snapped in like a big way. Older sister Lee
Speaker 1: Grace wanted nothing more than to help a little brother
Speaker 1: out of the situation. I think he was under so
Speaker 1: much stress that my brother Ryan, he did not know
Speaker 1: what to do. You know, he's a young man, this
Speaker 1: is his first baby. He was under a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure from his baby's mother. I've sent some text messages
Speaker 1: that were inappropriate. If it was that bad. Why did
Speaker 1: you just give me probation? The judge in court saying
Speaker 1: in my transcripts, he's like, I'm sorry, I'm lumping you
Speaker 1: in with four year olds at rape eleven year olds,
Speaker 1: But unfortunately our legislator has no difference. He has. Dr
Speaker 1: Avidan Moleski. He's a PhD and associate professor who specializes
Speaker 1: in complex family difficulties and developmental psychology. He's also the
Speaker 1: author of Sibling Issues and Therapy. Dr Mlevski followed the
Speaker 1: doctor case closely. Here he is speaking with producer Beth Greenwald.
Speaker 1: When this story first broke, What were your initial thoughts
Speaker 1: on this family, these siblings? My first knee jerk reaction
Speaker 1: to when you hear a story of three a young
Speaker 1: adults driving around violently, shooting at cops across several states
Speaker 1: and bank robberies, and right, your first initial reactions, these
Speaker 1: are criminals, let's go get them. What's sad? And more
Speaker 1: of a rational part of my brain kicks in and
Speaker 1: considering that it was a sibling story, I started reading
Speaker 1: up on this case a little bit further, and then
Speaker 1: as a story unfolds and more information comes around, and
Speaker 1: then I started realizing that It's much more complicated than
Speaker 1: the black and white of the good guys and the
Speaker 1: bad guys when you really look at the crime involved
Speaker 1: and how they were sentenced and how they were treated
Speaker 1: even initially. Why Ryan had to be registered as a
Speaker 1: sex offender, that whole story of how it developed is
Speaker 1: a system failure. These siblings, the entire system failed with them.
Speaker 1: The only system that did not fail them is the
Speaker 1: sibling system. It was the only system that took care
Speaker 1: of them, the sibling dynamic that they had. And let
Speaker 1: me ask you something. This thing that happened was going
Speaker 1: to destroy the rest of his life for all intensive purposes,
Speaker 1: register as a sex offender, ankle monitoring device, all these things,
Speaker 1: And did you feel like, just in your opinion, if
Speaker 1: something had been broken down a little bit, if things
Speaker 1: had been explained, if he wasn't looking at fifteen years
Speaker 1: in jails for sex thing? You know, was that a
Speaker 1: system fail as you said, or kind of unpack that
Speaker 1: a little bit if you don't mind, you have to
Speaker 1: register as a sex offender equal to someone a fifty
Speaker 1: year old perfort who raped a kid in a yard.
Speaker 1: They are registered in the same registry because as a
Speaker 1: nineteen year old he sexted someone who thought it was fifteen.
Speaker 1: Now we're obviously not condoining that behavior in any way,
Speaker 1: but do we really equate the actions of the nineteen
Speaker 1: year old that was basically sending a loot text to
Speaker 1: a rapist? We can now again legally we do. And
Speaker 1: that's part of the failure here. He did something far
Speaker 1: less severe than that, and that really spiral this in time.
Speaker 1: That's what got this entire story going. So when I
Speaker 1: say it was a system failure, this is one of
Speaker 1: the kegs that failed him. Here's Ryan speaking with Beth
Speaker 1: green Walt. Would you say it was Serve Bivle mode?
Speaker 1: Panic mode? You know your panic, and when you panic,
Speaker 1: you don't think Clark directly when it's a situation like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how clearly they were thinking.
Speaker 1: I don't know the thought process. I mean, I know
Speaker 1: in my whole life from my brother and sister, it's
Speaker 1: just difficult to say what was going through their head.
Speaker 1: I mean, as they were older than me, not carry
Speaker 1: guilt around with me, and I'm probably well for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life even though they tell me not to.
Speaker 1: Eventually I ruined their whole life and it's just hard
Speaker 1: to live with that. Frank Kazinski is the owner of
Speaker 1: Tampa Bay Monitoring. His company has been providing alcohol and
Speaker 1: GPS monitors for over a decade. He shared his thoughts
Speaker 1: on how Ryan's probation was structured. In his case, he
Speaker 1: was given this bracelet with the idea that one he
Speaker 1: was responsible for paying for it. And I'm guessing, and
Speaker 1: I don't know this for a fact, that he was
Speaker 1: placed on some form of house arrest, which meant you
Speaker 1: had to keep track of everywhere you went if you
Speaker 1: had anything any except pations that had to be approved
Speaker 1: by a probation officer or some authority. And in this case,
Speaker 1: also you have to make sure you kept up the payments,
Speaker 1: Like you gotta go to like meetings like three times
Speaker 1: a week, and you gotta pay like twelve a month
Speaker 1: to beyond that probation. You know, I'm pulling in like
Speaker 1: a month, So you want to under of that, and
Speaker 1: then you want me to sucking be at this place
Speaker 1: at that time. By like as soon as I tell
Speaker 1: my job, hey, I can't work today, I have to
Speaker 1: go to this meeting, they're gonna be like, yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: find another employee. It's the right to work state that's
Speaker 1: a problem. There's jurisdictions such as Tennessee that the state
Speaker 1: literally will pay for the bracelet if you can't because
Speaker 1: they figure it's a cheaper way of number one avoids overcrowding.
Speaker 1: Two that allows you to keep your job. Three you
Speaker 1: sleep in your own bed with your family. Mommy and
Speaker 1: Daddy are they're not in jail in this case. They
Speaker 1: basically told him that he was responsible for paying for
Speaker 1: this thing and he couldn't do it, and they didn't care.
Speaker 1: It was basically being set up for failure. People charge
Speaker 1: anywhere from eight to fifteen dollars a day, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know too many people can pay fifteen or
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes ten dollars a day plus a deposit
Speaker 1: or whatever else is necessary. But why they insisted on
Speaker 1: a payment here when they know the guy you didn't
Speaker 1: have the pot or the window to throw it out
Speaker 1: of his is nonproductive. Ryan was feeling hopeless as he
Speaker 1: processed what this one mistake from two years ago would
Speaker 1: do to the rest of his life. Once you get
Speaker 1: a felony, you're fucking pigeonholed into a goddamn mediocre job
Speaker 1: and a mediocre life and like just barely making it.
Speaker 1: Go figure out what the minimum wage's in Florida at
Speaker 1: the time when I was there, it's like fucking eight
Speaker 1: dollars or some ship. Go figure out what rent costs.
Speaker 1: Go figure out what food costs. Figure out what a
Speaker 1: car payment costs. Are out the cell phone payment costs,
Speaker 1: figure out what insurance costs. There's no way to cover it.
Speaker 1: You know, you get to a point where you're just
Speaker 1: sitting there and you're like, well, what is the point
Speaker 1: of me even being alive anymore? You know, what's the point?
Speaker 1: What could I do? The deathbed promised Dylan made to
Speaker 1: his dad to look out for his little brother with
Speaker 1: something Dylan took very seriously. He felt powerless, and as
Speaker 1: a result, his frustration intensified. The part that really, you
Speaker 1: know bothers me is we've all made mistakes. We've all
Speaker 1: done things that we maybe regret a little bit or
Speaker 1: or a lot of it later. I'm not saying everybody's
Speaker 1: committed a felony. You know, my brother made an automistakes
Speaker 1: as a kid. It's just another one of those things.
Speaker 1: It's like not unfortunate advance the way that at all unfolded.
Speaker 1: It was like we were all on pins and needles.
Speaker 1: I could just see anger Dylan and just build with
Speaker 1: his anger. It's just coming out of him. And it
Speaker 1: was just a really anxious time. Lee Grace was struggling
Speaker 1: with her addiction to drugs and was coming off the vendor.
Speaker 1: The situation was forcing her to quit pills cold Turkey.
Speaker 1: I don't feel good. I need my kills, and they're
Speaker 1: basically saying no, you don't. You know, so I don't
Speaker 1: have any pills with me. I don't have any drug footsoever.
Speaker 1: So you know, all my zanex are gone. I'd eaten
Speaker 1: all of them. We're going to take a quick break here.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment. The plan was to
Speaker 1: try to get some sleep and leave first thing in
Speaker 1: the morning. I remember I was extremely drowsy. I had
Speaker 1: only slept for about four or five hours, and I
Speaker 1: got up and it was early in the morning. I
Speaker 1: just remember being on the porch and looking and I'm
Speaker 1: looking now and it's it's very bright and everything is
Speaker 1: just kind of happening. But I'm just physically there. I'm
Speaker 1: not my emotions are just somewhere else. I was almost
Speaker 1: kind of emotionally shut down. But I remember carrying things
Speaker 1: and putting them in the back of the subaru, and
Speaker 1: I'm just looking at Dylan and I'm just following him.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to kind of gauge how everything is
Speaker 1: gonna happen. But at the same time, you don't know
Speaker 1: something bad is going to happen. You just have a
Speaker 1: very ominous feeling. As the Doctrity has packed up the car,
Speaker 1: it was obvious their plan came from a place of panic,
Speaker 1: not common sense. The siblings weren't prepared on any level
Speaker 1: for the journey ahead. You're not gonna be honest with you.
Speaker 1: I don't even think we packed any food or water.
Speaker 1: You know, later on down the line, we thought we're like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: we should probably get a water bottle, just a really
Speaker 1: simple water bottle. At one point, I was going back
Speaker 1: and forth. Am I gonna go with them the whole
Speaker 1: way to Mexico with them? Or maybe I was going
Speaker 1: to stay with Amber because you know, she's about to
Speaker 1: give birth to this baby, and I wanted to be
Speaker 1: there for my nephew and help out with the baby.
Speaker 1: And even if it was only in my own head,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, well, maybe I need to stay with
Speaker 1: Amber as you know, her older sister, or you know,
Speaker 1: to look out for the rest of the family that
Speaker 1: we would be leaving behind. Um. Now, when I got
Speaker 1: in the car and um we we left, that's why
Speaker 1: I decided, well, this is this is where I'm at,
Speaker 1: This is I'm going to continue to stay with Ryan
Speaker 1: and Diylan because they need me. I think we knew
Speaker 1: we should need the money before we left Florida at
Speaker 1: that point, you know what I mean, it was it
Speaker 1: was just a whirlwind. I had so many tools. I
Speaker 1: probably could have you got on the arnet and had
Speaker 1: a you know, on eBay and had a yard sale
Speaker 1: and come up with dollars. In retrospect, it's easy to
Speaker 1: see that selling the tools would have been a smarter
Speaker 1: plan than packing up the guns to sell. We were
Speaker 1: going to cross into Mexico once we had cash, because
Speaker 1: we didn't want any credit cards. We didn't want any
Speaker 1: ties to where we were going. The docertees didn't have
Speaker 1: much money on them and they knew they would need
Speaker 1: cash to make it to Mexico undetected. We actually had
Speaker 1: my brother's guns and he was going to sell them
Speaker 1: to make money. Dylan's friend was going to purchase the
Speaker 1: guns from us and give us cash. I feel like
Speaker 1: I did, would uh, you know anybody? We do as
Speaker 1: far as you know, maybe not as going to the
Speaker 1: degree that I carried in, but I know the great
Speaker 1: set of shumen. On the other foot, I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: have to ask something on They would have been there
Speaker 1: for me just as much as I was there for Ryan.
Speaker 1: And Ryan loving Amber the way he did. If he's
Speaker 1: separated from someone he loves, he's going to go off
Speaker 1: the deep end. So a lot of his thought process
Speaker 1: was what do I do without my baby's mom? What
Speaker 1: do I do without the baby? So you know that
Speaker 1: really factored in. It was harsh. It was very harsh
Speaker 1: on him. He was very sad, He was very lonely.
Speaker 1: You know, he was expressing a lot of distress. Amber
Speaker 1: was due to give birth in a matter of days
Speaker 1: and it crushed Ryan to leave her. Here again is
Speaker 1: Ryan speaking with Beth greenmalt So you knew it was
Speaker 1: a son before you left, correct you guys found out
Speaker 1: the sex of the baby? Yeah? I did. I went with.
Speaker 1: I took off of work. You know what, man, it
Speaker 1: was the weirdest thing that would make her happy. Man.
Speaker 1: She was just so happy that I would be willing
Speaker 1: to take off of work to come, and I'm like
Speaker 1: taking her myself. I'm like, man, she's crazy if she
Speaker 1: thought that she could keep me from coming to go
Speaker 1: to the ultrasound, whether to see if it was a
Speaker 1: boy or a girl. I had a ritual with her.
Speaker 1: I would always come back in and uh, kids her
Speaker 1: goodbye before I went to work. I'd leave, I get
Speaker 1: all the way out, and I have like a little ritual.
Speaker 1: I'm all the way back in the house and I
Speaker 1: pull the cover down just a little bit because she
Speaker 1: always goes back to bed because I get up so
Speaker 1: fucking early to work, and I always give her a
Speaker 1: kiss and I always tell her I love her, some
Speaker 1: thing I would always do before I went to bed,
Speaker 1: and uh, I got to go back inside. She's all pregnant,
Speaker 1: belly and big and standing on like the front stoop
Speaker 1: on the inside crying, you know, And I told her
Speaker 1: I loved during goodbye. Driving away, I drive about fifteen
Speaker 1: miles away from the house. Twenty miles away from the house,
Speaker 1: I'm like, ah, I can't have this ankle pricelet no
Speaker 1: more cut it off. I wrapped it up with its
Speaker 1: box neatly, and I said it nicely on the side
Speaker 1: of the road in a place where they could easily
Speaker 1: locate it and get their ship back. Once you line out,
Speaker 1: of course, and you commit yourself to it for some
Speaker 1: things that you just can't take back. You know, once
Speaker 1: you cross that rubicon, you're just fucked like you to
Speaker 1: that cause and you've got no choice but to see
Speaker 1: it through. Here's some additional inside from dr Abbadan Mileski's
Speaker 1: conversation with Beth Ryan. Obviously commit a crime two years
Speaker 1: earlier than the start of this quote unquote crime spree,
Speaker 1: and he was labeled as sexual offender, and he's the
Speaker 1: first to admit and take ownership of that what he
Speaker 1: did was wrong. But he was eighteen or nineteen and
Speaker 1: he sent sexually an appropriate text to a minor. Now
Speaker 1: a nineteen year old is not functioning completely in terms
Speaker 1: of decision making. Our magic reaction is, oh, he's a criminal.
Speaker 1: That's it. Either he's got a rap sheet already. And
Speaker 1: we think in this black and white way when it
Speaker 1: comes to cool criminals, when you start puling white, and
Speaker 1: I think this story is a window into this larger
Speaker 1: issue of how do we deal with quote criminals, and
Speaker 1: we just boxed them all in. And this sex registry
Speaker 1: is the greatest example of that. But socially, psychologically, developmental, psychology, neurologically,
Speaker 1: it's a whole different story. So again, the system, many
Speaker 1: systems failed them, except for the symboling system. And let's
Speaker 1: go back a little bit, because you know, their father
Speaker 1: really instilled in the children from a young age the
Speaker 1: importance of family. So how does that land. You know,
Speaker 1: in that family dynamic, they were clearly a close knit
Speaker 1: a bunch of siblings, and then you add all these
Speaker 1: stressors to it, and that closest just survives even further,
Speaker 1: and that sibling closeness or that sibling compensation is kicking
Speaker 1: in now in a very powerful way in order to
Speaker 1: help the siblings continue working together to deal with this
Speaker 1: new life adversity. The Doperties were looking forward to a
Speaker 1: fresh start. Unfortunately they did not foresee what would happen next.
Speaker 1: We're only in the car about maybe twenty minutes, maybe thirty.
Speaker 1: You know, we had just gotten in the car and
Speaker 1: I had just we had just come from the gas station,
Speaker 1: and I was very drowsy. I was sleeping on and off,
Speaker 1: and as soon as the cops got behind us, That's
Speaker 1: when I immediately woke up and realized there's a problem.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm looking at Dylan, well what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do? And you know, we're all in that state
Speaker 1: of panic. I think when the cop um when he
Speaker 1: put his lights on. I don't remember if he actually
Speaker 1: put the siren on, but I do remember him putting
Speaker 1: the lights on, and at that moment, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like seven or seven fifteen in the morning, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: there's no turning back now, because now the police are involved.
Speaker 1: At any point before that, I think we could have
Speaker 1: made a different decision. We could have gone a different
Speaker 1: way and the police would never have gotten behind us,
Speaker 1: and we would have just had continued our merry way
Speaker 1: to getting rid of the guns, selling them legally and
Speaker 1: getting the money and just leaving the United States. Remember
Speaker 1: somebody asking, you know, hey, are you are you gonna
Speaker 1: pull over? Or you know, what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Was there ever a moment where you thought about pulling
Speaker 1: overt from like the first little bit, I have an
Speaker 1: asshole lo the guns in the car. I'm a convicted felon.
Speaker 1: I just caught off my ankle brace that monitor for me,
Speaker 1: that ever got crossed as soon as I cut that
Speaker 1: bright set up and a cop pulls out and Cherry's
Speaker 1: up pops his lights on me. Here's Detective Kevin Widner.
Speaker 1: At the time, he was an officer on the Zephyr
Speaker 1: Hill Police Department. Here he is speaking with Beth Greenwald.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear from your perspective what you
Speaker 1: remember about that day and how it started for you
Speaker 1: and what happened from there. Started out like any other
Speaker 1: day for me. I just went and I got my
Speaker 1: cup of coffee, and then I was going to run radar,
Speaker 1: do some traffic control. I set up a sixth street,
Speaker 1: which is a one way street and Zephyr Hills speed
Speaker 1: limit was thirty through there. And as I was running
Speaker 1: and car passed me doing and pulled in behind it
Speaker 1: turn on my lights. I knew they wasn't going to stop,
Speaker 1: just based off the way that they was acting. Let's
Speaker 1: stop here for another quick break. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: a moment. The docertees wanted to fly under the radar,
Speaker 1: but less than thirty minutes into their ride to Mexico
Speaker 1: did engaged police and I'm like, well, funk I can't
Speaker 1: pull over, So then I take off and I started running,
Speaker 1: and then they made a right hand turn onto fifty
Speaker 1: four from sixth Street, and as soon as they made
Speaker 1: that right turn, they started shooting at me several rounds.
Speaker 1: And then at that point again that I pursued them,
Speaker 1: there were still more shots being fired from the past
Speaker 1: or side of that vehicle. Whoever was in in that
Speaker 1: fast seat, it was still firing at me as we
Speaker 1: just one down fifty four. It was just me at
Speaker 1: that time. I didn't have any backup unit, so I
Speaker 1: tried to keep some distance between us, just keep a
Speaker 1: little bit of visual on speedis were about a hundred
Speaker 1: miles are a little over. With his focus on his
Speaker 1: family and his future, Ryan made a life altering decision
Speaker 1: and a split second wasn't personal. It was between me
Speaker 1: and my freedom. I did what I thought I had
Speaker 1: to do. From a lack of good options came a
Speaker 1: shitty option. We were not that the type of family
Speaker 1: to physically harm somebody, because we know what physical harm
Speaker 1: can do to somebody's body. You can become paralyzed, or
Speaker 1: you know, you could end up in a wheelchair. So
Speaker 1: in no way, what do we actually aim a gun
Speaker 1: at someone's physical body. From the sound of it, I
Speaker 1: thought that they sprayed the whole side of my car,
Speaker 1: but actually they just got the front driver's side tire.
Speaker 1: Speedes went back up to about a hundred miles per hour.
Speaker 1: My front tire was flat, so I couldn't keep up
Speaker 1: with them safely. At that point, Officer Widner had vowed
Speaker 1: to protect and serve and he was not going to
Speaker 1: be deterred right away. It's game on. They are obviously
Speaker 1: a danger. If they're gonna shoot at me like that,
Speaker 1: then obviously they're a danger to a citizens. So we're
Speaker 1: going to do what we need to do to stop
Speaker 1: that threat. At the end of the day, I made
Speaker 1: a plan. It was shitty. It was take enough money
Speaker 1: to get out of country, to be somewhere that doesn't
Speaker 1: have extradition treaties, and to try and start a light there.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a good idea. It was never a good plan.
Speaker 1: It was never a good idea. But I didn't think
Speaker 1: well when I was that age. As soon as I
Speaker 1: come around the corner and I see a muzzle flash
Speaker 1: from the a K and it's one of those old
Speaker 1: ship moments. And to be honest with you remember being
Speaker 1: woken up out of like a cold sleep, just hearing
Speaker 1: like some hell on wheels behind anything with the motor
Speaker 1: and some wheels in a car probably outran the cops
Speaker 1: a hundred times. I did not get this tag number
Speaker 1: right off the bed. Also, I knew it was an
Speaker 1: out of state tag. End of the car that was speedy.
Speaker 1: Anything north of a hundred is a pretty good clip.
Speaker 1: But for me, like you know, I'll hang out of
Speaker 1: like a hundred twenty or a hundred thirty on the
Speaker 1: interstate and think nothing of it. They was showing total
Speaker 1: disregard for everybody's safety. Pull it over as an option.
Speaker 1: It's too easy in that area to hit some left
Speaker 1: and rights on him and disappear people. They're like, you
Speaker 1: cannot run the radio. Bull it. More on that next time.
Speaker 1: The Dougherty Gang is executive produced by Stephanie lie Decker
Speaker 1: and me Courtney Armstrong, along with Beth Greenwald, Sean McEwen,
Speaker 1: and Joseph Morgan. Editing and sound design is by Jeff Twa,
Speaker 1: mixing by Peter Nay. Additional producing by Chris Graves and
Speaker 1: Jeff Shane. The Doctor Gang is a production of iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.