Chapter 8: A Reason to Believe

(Homer, Alaska, on the tip of the Kenai Peninsula)

As the CIB team worked to unravel the trail of Manny Pepper, he seemed to move farther down the peninsula to the town of Homer, at the very tip. Ben Langley seemed to think they were getting close, but Tim suspected that he would make a jump. The AST at Homer were watching the airport, and the ferry. As if to taunt them even more, a girl in Homer was snatched waiting for her father outside the restroom at one of the restaurants near the airport.

Tim Sealy and Ben Langley were in Anchorage looking at the evidence that Pepper apparently wanted them to find. When Julie Burrows was taken in broad daylight, the officers from the Homer Airport and the Alaska State Ferry terminal rushed to investigate. It was then that Pepper departed Homer in a 28-foot cabin cruiser out of Kachemak Bay. Much of Cook Inlet remains ice-free throughout the winter.

Two days later, no traces of Pepper or Julie were found in the Homer vicinity. Pepper had made his way to English Bay across Kachemak Bay, where knew a charter pilot willing to take him across Cook Inlet, to Pedro Bay, on Lake Iliamna. The charter fee was the nine-year-old Julie Burrows, now locked in the closet of Ralph Yost's home near English Bay. Pepper had enabled himself to now travel without the girl, after they both repeatedly assaulted her the two nights before. He knew that Yost, and not he would be found with her, thus throwing his pursuers off of his trail, and at a dead end.

While they had been in Anchorage, Jerry Ingram had alerted Tim and Ben to two men in the sex offender database in the Homer area. One of those was Ralph Yost, now anxiously flying back to enjoy his private plaything. The other was Andy Thornton, who owned the "Golly G" that Pepper sailed unnoticed across the bay on.

Pepper and Thornton had tied Julie to the bed below deck, and took turns fondling her, while they waited for Yost to arrive.

Thornton had gone back to the Golly G to vacuum for any traces of evidence and replace the sheets taken from the bed when he returned from taking his friend Pepper across. As he entered the marina carrying the box with the linens and the portable vacuum, Thornton noticed two men walking towards him from where the Golly G was docked. Footsteps behind him alerted him to two more, only these were uniformed State Troopers delivering the Search Warrant for the boat.

When they discovered the Golly G had left Homer shortly after Julie Burrows was abducted, Thornton became the focus of the investigation. Two other CIB investigators executed the warrant on Thornton's home, but the sheets had already been washed. Measurements determined that they were for a 3⁄4 -sized bed, and not the one in his house. That meant they probably came from his fishing boat.

Thornton was brought to the Post for questioning while the forensics team went over the boat. Between the mattress and headboard, they found hairs from seven different people besides Thornton. Now they had to get a hair sample from Mr. Burrows from Julie's hairbrush.

Ben decided to try a bluff on Thornton, and said, "You know we found some hairs on your boat that match Julie Burrows. We also found hairs matching three of the victims that were found in a freezer in a storage building in Soldotna a while back."

None of them knew it would actually turn out to be from four of the dead girls when DNA results came back. Thornton now looked like he knew that he would be the fall guy. He also knew he was not going to get off with six years this time.

"Do you want to help yourself on this," Tim asked, "and help us find Julie before she ends up like the others. We know you are just the middleman here. We need Manny Pepper."

"Who's that?" asked Thornton.

"Maybe you know him as Damon Fisk?" Ben suggested. "He's on the FBI's Most Wanted List. He usually kills his accomplices when they are no further use to him, or if the authorities start closing in like we are."

"Look, all I did was give Damon a ride to meet a pilot across the bay," Thornton admitted. "Ralph Yost, he has an air taxi out at English Bay."

"What about the girl?" Tim asked. "Who has the Burrows girl?"

"Ralph and Damon do," Thornton confessed. "Look all I did was touch her. I didn't have sex with her."

"You are part of a conspiracy to abduct young girls for illegal sexual purposes," replied Ben. "Where are they? What are they going to do with her?"

"What do you think they are going to do," Thornton shot back. "Are you going to help me or what?"

"That depends on whether or not the girl is alive when we find her," suggested Ben. "Personally, I am tempted to leave you alone in a room with the fathers of all these girls you helped murder for a couple hours."

"You think it will take them that long?" asked Tim. "That's right, the one guy wanted to draw it out over several hours."

"Look, Yost has an old bomb shelter under his bedroom closet. That is where he hides them," Thornton confessed. "I've seen it. You have to lift up the carpet in the closet and then there is a wooden panel. He has all sorts of bondage stuff down there. Ralph is one sick dude."

Ten minutes later, the CIB team was aboard a helicopter headed across Kachemak Bay to English Bay on the south side of Seldovia. Deputy Comdr Clark pressed the local JP for Search Warrants based upon Thornton's information, and arrest warrants for Damon Fisk and Ralph Yost. Ralph was still returning from the west side of the inlet, and when the officers arrived at the airport, the Cessna 185 was not where they were told it would be. Tim silently prayed for the girl's safe recovery while two troopers from Kenai flew towards English Bay Airstrip in an unmarked Turbo Skylane with the warrants.

Eventually, the helicopter located Yost's home and the special warrant that allowed the police to break down the door were in hand. Since Yost planned to move Julie that afternoon, he landed not at the airport, but in a clearing in the woods behind his house. There he saw the troopers enter his house as he approached through the trees.

Julia was bound and gagged in the bomb shelter, and it had an escape route out the rear of the house. That is what he was planning to use to get Julie out just in case they accidentally found the bomb shelter. In the fading daylight, Ralph removed the panel to the crawlspace and scooted beneath the house. Above him he could faintly hear the voices of the troopers inside.

The escape hatch was one that rotated to the side rather than open on hinges. Ralph moved it to the side and peered in, seeing the faint light at the other end of the twenty-foot long, ten-foot wide bunker. He then saw his target zipped up in a mummy bag move her feet, encased by the bag. He turned to lower into the hatch and get a foot onto the ladder rungs below.

As he felt with his foot for the ladder, he felt a strong hand grab his calf and guide his foot to the rung. At the same time Tim Sealy said, "Put your hands behind your back. I will guide you down."

Ralph, totally surprised, complied, as Ben climbed out from the sleeping bag from where he covered his partner. It was his feet that Ralph had seen move and Julie Burrows was already bundled in Ben's Parka, and on her way into the helicopter to meet her father in Homer before going to Anchorage for treatment.

Their work was just beginning once they turned Ralph Yost over to the other two troopers from Kenai. It would be morning before Jerry Ingram came from Anchorage to go through the bomb shelter and his house collecting evidence. Lt Collins arrived around 7:00 in his helicopter with three other officers who located Ralph's airplane and had one of the troopers fly it to the airstrip in Seldovia where it could be secured, and searched. They didn't know who might remove it during the night if left behind Yost's house, especially if he was late for a rendezvous.

Ralph had yet to be convinced to give up Damon Fisk. Fisk, AKA Manny Pepper, had stolen a Piper Super Cub on skis that belonged to a fishing lodge that was closed for the season, and was heading north up towards Port Alsworth on Lake Clark where he would have to stop for fuel. It was there that the weather closed in on Fisk, bringing less than a mile visibility, and clouds down to almost ground level. The instrumentation on the Cub was very basic, and didn't allow for modern avionics.

The airport attendant refueled the Super Cub, but recognized it as belonging to the Pedro Bay Fishing Lodge, and knew that Fisk was not one of the pilots that often flew it. He helped him cover the plane after tying it down and showed him to the bunkhouse and lit the stove for him. As he pondered his map, plotting his course to Sleetmute farther north, a man came into the pilot's bunkhouse, and asked him about the Pedro Bay Lodge plane.

Fisk answered, "The owner asked me to bring it to Merrill Field for its overhaul."

"You don't happen to have his number so I can verify that, would you?" asked the attendant.

Fisk gave him the first number that came to mind who would verify the story, Ralph Yost's cell phone, now in the possession of the CIB. When the attendant called the officer noted the caller ID and five minutes later called the attendant back on another line. When the man described Fisk, the officer warned him not to confront or approach him further. He offered to disable the plane, but Lt Collins advised strongly against upsetting him. They would have officers in Port Alsworth before daylight.

To arrive without raising suspicion, eight SWAT team officers would arrive aboard a commuter airline Piper Navaho Chieftain. The Commuter had just had an upgrade to the most recent avionics mounted in what is called a "glass cockpit". That is an all-digital instrument panel behind a safety glass panel. With weather radar, Stormscope, and the latest instrumentation, the former Air Force pilot could navigate through the clouds and snow to get the troopers on the ground.

In Anchorage, Julie Burrows was undergoing surgery to repair the damage done by Yost and Fisk during their assault. That would heal long before the emotional wounds that would stay with her throughout her life. Thankfully she would survive, and identify her attackers.

When Fisk noted the attendant watching the bunkhouse all night, he got nervous. At 5:15 a.m., he gathered his gear and quietly made his way to the plane and uncovered it. He then untied the tie-down ropes and started the plane. This brought out the attendant who scurried back and forth as Fisk quickly lifted off the snow-covered airstrip. The attendant hurried inside to call the troopers to let them know that he had taken off again! Flying by compass heading 230 until he had climbed to over 5000 feet, Fisk then turned to heading 330 degrees north.

He then climbed to 9000 feet, leveled off and set the autopilot to hold the little plane level and on the set heading. The little Super Cub was tossed about as it flew over the mountains with little to spare. Once, Fisk dropped almost a thousand feet when he encountered a wind shear.

The ground being obscured by clouds, Damon Fisk had only the airspeed indicator that told him how fast his forward motion was in relation to any wind, the altimeter that told him how high he was, if it was set correctly (it wasn't), and the one that told him his magnetic heading. Add a fuel gauge, temperature, and oil pressure gauge, and that was about as enhanced as the avionics were.