The Thin Blue Line

In October, my brother and I left Ohio.

We were driving to California.

We got into Dallas on a Thursday night.

Friday morning, while I'm eating eggs

and drinking coffee, I get a good job.

All these people

are supposedly out of work.

I'm not in town a half a day,

and I've got a job.

Everything clicked.

It's as if I was meant to be here.

I'd run away from home a couple

of times. Once or twice. I don't know.

And this all started,

David is running away from home.

And he takes... I took

a pistol of my dad's and a shotgun.

Took a neighbor's car.

I had broken into their house

and got the keys to it.

I forget exactly what it was.

Ended up coming to Dallas.

I went to work and no one showed up.

Being a weekend, sometimes

they worked, sometimes they didn't.

On the way home, I ran out of gas.

And as I was walking down the street

with the gas can...

a person, at that time, pulled over.

I guess since I had the gas can...

he figured I was out of gas.

I wasn't 100 yards from the car.

And being Thanksgiving weekend,

there was no gas stations open.

He stopped and asked me

if I needed any help.

I'm driving down some street

somewhere in Dallas.

I had just turned 16.

And there was a guy over there,

I think he'd run out of gas...

I took him to get some gas.

This was Randall Adams.

Ended up following him where

him and his brother were staying.

Eventually, that evening...

we went out and got some beer.

We smoked a little marijuana

and what have you.

Went to a movie that night.

I get up, I go to work on Saturday.

Why did I meet this kid? I don't know.

Why did I run out of gas at that time?

I don't know. But it happened.

The day they picked me up, December 21.

They took me upstairs.

What floor, I don't know.

But they put me in a little room.

Gus Rose walked in.

He had a confession there

he wanted me to sign.

He said that I would sign.

He didn't give a damn what I said.

I would sign this piece of paper.

I told him I couldn't.

"I don't know what the hell

you people expect of me.

"But there's no way I can sign that. "

He left. He came back in 10 minutes.

And threw a pistol on the table.

Asked me to look at it. Which I did. I looked.

He asked me to pick it up.

I told him no, I wouldn't do that.

He threatened me.

Again, I told him no.

He pulled his service revolver on me.

We looked at each other for...

To me, it seemed hours.

I do not like looking down

the barrel of a pistol.

I do not like being threatened.

When he finally saw

that he would either have to kill me...

or forget the signature...

I guess he forgot the signature,

because he put his pistol up.

He took the pistol on the table,

put it up and stormed out.

I had a casual, friendly conversation

with him to start with...

to try to size him up...

to see what he liked and what he didn't like.

I found almost immediately

that he didn't have much conscience.

Anything he had done,

it never really bothered him.

He had done other things

that he told me about...

that didn't seem to bother him in the least.

He showed no expression whatsoever.

It's just like he's sitting here

talking about the color of this wall...

or the shooting of the police officer.

He showed no reaction

to any of the questions.

He almost overacted his innocence.

He protested he hadn't done anything.

Couldn't imagine

why we were bringing him in.

He didn't fight or he didn't resist.

He just protested his innocence.

I told them what happened that

Saturday, that I had met this kid.

I kept telling them the same thing.

They didn't want to believe me.

Never once was I allowed a phone call.

Never once was an attorney there.

I don't know how long this had been.

I had smoked two packs of cigarettes

and had been out for a long time.

Wood didn't take his ticket book

out of the car.

He left it in the car on the front seat...

which indicates

that he was not going to write a ticket.

What he was probably going to do

was have them turn on the headlights.

He didn't know that the car was stolen.

I think that there's a very good chance...

that he was going

to check the driver's license...

and tell him to turn on his headlights,

and let the guy be on his way.

Officer Wood's wife had purchased him...

a bulletproof vest

and had it under the Christmas tree.

Or had it stored away,

to give to him at Christmastime.

His partner was one of the first

female police officers...

that was assigned to patrol.

They were from the Northwest Station.

Just patrol officers following the clock.

Working the graveyard shift and everything.

They had been into a fast-food

restaurant. And she had a malt.

This car came by, these

two dudes in it, with no lights on.

It wasn't a serious problem...

but he just pulled up,

turned his lights on to stop him.

Just to warn the man

that his lights were off.

Got out of the car and walked up.

Before he got to the window,

where the driver was...

he was in the right position.

This man just turned around and just...

with a little small-caliber pistol.

The first shot hit him in the arm.

He had his flashlight. It hit

the flashlight and went into his arm.

The next one hit him right in the chest.

The officer falls in the street

and he was in the first traffic lane.

He lay there and bled to death.

So she's out of the car.

She empties her pistol

at the fleeing suspect...

and she runs to his aid.

Procedure says you grab the radio

and call for an ambulance.

Common sense would tell you that.

But what do you do?

And that time, she's so... just tore down.

And the blood.

An enormous amount of blood.

How do we hold her responsible

for not following procedure?

But the main thing was, she

couldn't remember the license number.

When we started putting facts together

on how much information we had...

from the leads we had,

we found out we didn't have anything.

The only thing that we knew

we were looking for was a blue Vega.

Probably every Vega that was

registered in the state of Texas...

was stopped and checked.

We had people calling the office...

saying, "I've got a Vega and it's not blue.

"But would you come out

and be sure to check it.

"Be sure it's not mine, because

I don't want to get stopped anymore.

"I'm afraid. "

If you're the investigator

assigned to the murder...

you get frustrated with other witnesses.

But when you got a police officer

that witnessed it...

you expect that they would know

a little more than she knew.

Procedure.

When there's a two-person unit,

when either one approaches the car...

the other positions himself

to the right rear...

where they can watch

all the activity in the car.

And if the man on the left of the driver

gets in trouble...

their partner is in a position to help.

Speculation was, at the time...

that his partner was sitting in the car.

That's where the discrepancies were.

Just a matter of time, and whether

or not she was out of the car...

completely out of the car,

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