|
Mysterious railroad brotherhood
gives train hobos
a bloody image
By KIM MURPHY
Los
Angeles Times
SPOKANE, Wash.-F-Trooper died as he had lived, with a cigarette in one
hand and a can of Schmidt's
Ice beer in the other.
They found him when the Montana Rail Link pulled into the repair shop.
F-Trooper was sitting
there in one of the boxcars as he so often had
before-except this time, he had five bullets in his head.
Police
had little to go on: A blood-spattered cardboard 12-pack between
Tracks 3 and 4. Bloody footprints in the boxcar. Some
spent shell
casings. A tattoo on F-Trooper that said "F.T.R.A."
It is a symbol that has become an unnerving part
of the railroad
landscape across the West, where the mysterious brotherhood known
as the Freight Train Riders of America
has gained a foothold in the
world of switching yards, bridge underpasses and boxcars-the realm of
the hobo for more
than a century.
Concentrated in the Northwest along the Burlington Northern Santa Fe's
1,500-mile High Line between
Seattle and Minneapolis, the FTRA claims
at least 1,000 itinerant train riders who police believe could be
responsible
for hundreds of deaths, assaults and thefts along American
rail lines over the past two decades.
Police say F-Trooper,
a rail-riding nickname for 30-year-old hobo Joseph
Perrigo, died when a fellow FTRA member exacted revenge for an
earlier
confrontation. The list of potential witnesses for the upcoming
trial reads like a Who's Who of the modern American rails:
Moose.
Hotshot. Desert Rat. Muskrat. Pennsylvania Pollack.
The fact that there's going to be a trial at all in the
May 1996 slaying
represents something of an exception in law enforcement's long-running
battle with the gang, whose
exploits usually produce witnesses who
disappear on the next train, a crime scene that travels from Spokane to
Klamath
Falls, Ore., a victim found dead in the middle of the prairie next
to a set of railroad tracks, leaving no known address
and an age-old
question: Did he jump or was he pushed?
"They're a criminal element that can do just about anything,"
said
Spokane police Detective Bob Grandinetti, who has compiled an
exhaustive data base on the FTRA. "You get two or
three of them
together, they'll roll a guy over and push him off the train. You're moving
at 50 or 60 miles an hour,
what do you think your chances are? We're
finding bodies like that all over the country."
Law enforcement officials
say the group, launched by a cadre of
Vietnam War veterans in a Montana bar in the 1980s, is composed
primarily of white
men, many with racist sympathies symbolized in the
swastikas and lightning bolts that often accompany FTRA graffiti. The
group,
authorities say, has terrorized other train tramps, set up rail lines
out of Texas as drug-running corridors and run a
massive food stamp
scam by filing thousands of fraudulent welfare applications at cities
along virtually every train
stop in the nation.
"There are 70 to 90 deaths a year (along the rail lines) all over the
country," Grandinetti
says. "Sure, some are natural causes. Some are
accidents. But some aren't. And the problem is, the suspects and all the
witnesses
disappear." "Everybody in the country's in the same spot,"
said police Detective James Neale of Saginaw, a Fort Worth suburb.
He
has unsuccessfully pursued a suspected FTRA member who he believes
tortured and murdered a transient at knifepoint.
"These
people, they fall through the cracks. They don't live in houses
like we do, they don't have cars. ... Our system is not
designed for these
kinds of people, so they can just ride the rails, they can commit murder
and mayhem almost at will."
The
fact that a growing number of college students and young
professionals are riding the rails for sport has heightened concern
about
potential conflict with a network of loners-some FTRA, some simply train
tramps-who count their possessions as
an extra shirt, a sleeping roll and
a dog. What, police ask, will happen as weekend "hoppers" pick their
way through
lonely switching yards into an underground network of the
deliberately dispossessed?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One
of the answers came in August of 1994, when 20-year-old Michael
Garfinkle of Tarzana, on summer break from college, strapped
on a
backpack and headed north through California on the rails. Police say he
met suspected FTRA member Robert Silveria
near Emeryville. Silveria
later admitted killing the young man with an ax handle.
A longtime rail rider who reportedly
has confessed to at least nine
slayings, Silveria walked up toward Garfinkle's camp, where the young
man told him: "This
is my area," Emeryville police Detective Wade
Harper said. Silveria apparently disagreed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"What
we're seeing is that these guys, because they made this
conscious decision to move away from society, as they feel encroached
on
by these guys who have jobs from 9 to 5, it's making them mad,"
said Salem, Ore., police detective Mike Quakenbush.
"I
can see where more Joe Blow Citizen people are going to get injured
and hurt," said Salem, Ore., police Detective Mike
Quakenbush.
"Because this riding the trains thing is increasing in
popularity, and it's pissing these guys off. They don't like you,
they don't
like you riding their trains, and if you're not willing to make that whole
transition over, then get the
hell out."
FTRA Graffitti Common on Bridges
Their calling cards can be found at almost any railway bridge or
overpass
in the West, the trademark scrawl of "F.T.R.A.," often
accompanied by swastikas or lightning bolts and other common slogans:
"STP"
for "start the party," "FTW" for "---- the world."
Grandinetti, who started documenting the emergence of the FTRA in
the
1980s, said it began with the railroads reporting bodies along the High
Line between Spokane and Sandpoint, Idaho,
and as far west as
Cheney, Wash.
The bodies had their shirts and jackets pulled up around their heads,
and their
pants pulled down, he recalls. "The first one or two, the
railroad was saying, 'Well, he fell off a train and cut his leg
and he bled
to death,' " Grandinetti said. "I could buy off on one or two of them. But
after the sixth, I said, 'My
God, wait a minute.' "
About the same time, he said, a freight train derailed west of Spokane
after the air line
to the rear cars' brakes was cut off. The suspect, who
was killed in the crash, was wearing a black bandanna around his
neck
fastened with a silver ring.
[Note that Kim has the account of this derailment all wrong, a rail fan
set
the record straight]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suddenly,
bandannas began figuring in a series of stabbings and
beatings. Police began documenting the theft of IDs from bodies found
along
rail lines that were used later to collect food stamps at cities along
train routes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A
key break came with the arrest last year in Roseville, Calif., of
Silveria, who subsequently confessed to a string of boxcar
killings from
Florida to Montana between 1981 and 1995. A native of San Jose, the
38-year-old Silveria occasionally
held down odd jobs but appeared
primarily to have made his living knocking off fellow train riders for their
welfare
and disability checks, authorities said.
Silveria is awaiting trial in Salem, Ore., in the bludgeoning of 39-year-
old
William Pettit Jr. in 1995. Oregon prosecutors plan to introduce
confessions to at least five other killings across the
country.
Silveria, who has the word "Freedom" tattooed on his neck, purportedly
explained his spree in a series
of letters to a former Placer County jail
mate, later filed with the court. He pronounced himself "the leader of my
nation:
the homeless," and added: "I could have tortured others of your
world, but I chose to torture my world, because I preyed
on the weak.
"People always said I looked like the devil when I was beating the s---
out of [someone]," he wrote.
Silveria
has subsequently denied FTRA affiliation, and authorities say he
now claims that purported confessions were coerced. His
lawyers have
declined comment.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But
one thing that your forgot to mention here is that on americas most
wanted they were accusing Toney of the totally different
murder of Mark
Burge in Big Springs Texas!
The only trouble is that at the time of the big springs killing Dog Man
Toney
was in jail.
Why did you leave this part about Dog Man Toney being framed for
murder out of your story? [Comments
in brackets in red are not part of
the original article but were added for clarity!]
In another high-profile case,
reputed FTRA member Anthony Hugh Ross,
[who after the show became]a suspect in the October 1995[Saginaw]
boxcar killing
that Neale is investigating, was picked up in La Crosse,
Wis., on July 20[on an unrelated charge in Big Springs for which
he was
cleared but]
It was after the america's most wanted frame job aired, that they
started accusing toney of the
Saginaw killing!
Early reports say nothing about Saginaw, only big springs! after a
segment of TV's "America's Most
Wanted" produced a tip.[dog became
a suspect in a different killing in Saginaw]
Neale had gone for months without
a good lead on the body of a 43-
year-old transient found on a train sitting on a Saginaw side track.
The man
was identified by way of a food stamp voucher out of Pueblo,
Colo., as Francis Terry.
In addition to the deep throat
gash that ended his life, his body showed
several healing knife wounds, indicating he also had been cut days or
weeks
earlier.
Just who was this other member? Fucking side track that is who is was,
but you forgot to mention that it was
Side Track that fingered dog man,
for this and another murder while he was in jail. It was a buch of horse
shit! Quakenbush
called from Oregon and said an FTRA member there
claimed to have witnessed the slaying. "He described the murder, the
scene,
the kind of railroad car, the time of death, the weapon. . . .
Things only he would know," Neale said. "He said it
was over dirty
laundry, which means dope. They were hauling dope up from Mexico
through Yuma. My victim stashed some
of it for himself, and Dogman
Tony [Ross' road name] got mad at him.
Black guy? Hanging out with Dog Man Toney,
I thougth that the F.T.R.A
was supposed to be racist?
I thought that according to Grandinettie if you are black
or brown and
you get on a box car with one of them you don't get off.
Neale, you should check with Grandinettie
before you start talking shit
like this! You cops really need to get your story straight! "He said there
was another
guy with him who helped, a black guy by the name of
Bushman. He said Bushman held [Terry] down and hit him on the head
with
a stick," Neale said. "The witness said Dogman Tony . . . was
waving the knife back and forth and saying 'I could kill
you in a
heartbeat.' He [Terry] was begging for his life. And then he said
Dogman Tony killed him. . . . And then he
said something, and this
witness told me this several times. He said Dogman Tony said, 'Another
one bites the dust.
Oh, well.' "
Fucking no wonder, you guys need to keep your story straight, but I
think that they are talking about a
secound witness here, in additon to
side track? This guys name was never mentioned. Ross was released
last month without
charges. Washington state declined to extradite him
on an outstanding warrant. And Neale couldn't get a warrant of his
own.
His witness--an unreliable hobo under the best of circumstances--got
run over by a train. Neale hopes other leads
will pan out.
"He's free," Neale sighs. "He's riding the rails. He's out there.
He could be found. It might take
a couple, three weeks, maybe. . . .
Building a case with solid evidence is the problem because the crime
scene is
mobile.
The minute I got through with the crime scene and released it to the
railroad, they were out of there. The
scene was mobile. The victim was
mobile. The suspect was mobile."
Railroad officials tend to play down the impact
of the FTRA, saying it has
not had a major role in official incident reports along rail lines.
"We are aware that
this organization exists. We have had minimal
encounters with anybody who claims to be a part of this group. We've
probably
heard more about them than we've actually heard from them,"
said Jim Sabourin, spokesman for Burlington Northern Santa
Fe.
"Some of these people [arrested as transients] sometimes identify
themselves as members of this organization,
but they don't do anything
different than anybody else that takes chances and gets on trains," said
Edward Trandahl
of Union Pacific.
Still, railroad officials admit they are fighting an uphill battle against a
rail-riding culture
whose idea of freedom is, as it has been since the
days of Jack London, a set of tracks and an open boxcar. Union Pacific
last
year spotted 4,200 trespassers a month, averaging 600 arrests.
"There are people nowadays, a lot of them are young,
college-age types
that do this for fun, regardless of the fact that it's very, very dangerous,"
Sabourin said. "The
other type is a transient, who sort of lives from
town to town, and from train to train. We treat both of them the same
way.
They're trespassers."
'A Loaded Stick of Dynamite'
Look up on the concrete supports of the Freya Way Bridge
in east
Spokane, over the Union Pacific tracks, and you can find him.
"Dogman TW. F.T.R.A.," it says in scrawled
letters.
"I don't even wanna see Dogman Tony. He'll kill you in a heartbeat. He's
a loaded stick of dynamite," says
a thin, blond-bearded man stretched
out under the bridge.
His companion, Pamela Dawn Pierce--who calls herself "Spitfire"--claims
she
was raped by an FTRA member. Fighting them has become her
passion. She holds up a sign that she has carried on rail lines
across the
country.
"We aren't FTRA. But we are people, too," it says. "We don't beat each
other up to prove
our brotherhood. . . . Leave us alone. We used to be
safe. Now we aren't. Only because of FTRA. They seem to think they
own
everyone, to beat them to DEATH."
She points up the tracks, where the Union Pacific joins the Burlington
Northern
out along the river. "You want FTRA," she says. "They're up
there."
In a camp near the old rendering plant, a thin,
weathered man wearing
a black bandanna shrugs. "It's just a bunch of guys who ride trains,"
says the man, who identifies
himself as "Sideline."
"It started out as a family thing. It was a brotherhood. They call us
racist, but I get on
white people same as I do anyone else.The
bandanna, he says, is a symbol. "It just means I earned my place. I
proved
myself. I wasn't a user. I wasn't a taker. I gave. I was a brother.
He talks about Horizontal John, the FTRA member
who died of alcohol
poisoning under the Freya Street bridge earlier this year. "They said we
kill each other when we
have our little rituals. Like we killed
Horizontal John. Well, America killed Horizontal John. He had Agent
Orange
from Vietnam." "Me," he said, "I just don't like people. I prefer
to be off by myself.
It's hard for me to deal
with a job, because I don't take orders well. I
don't got a job, but I got what I need. I got a tent, a sleeping bag, a
dog.
I'm good to go. What do I need with a house, a mortgage, 12 kids
running around? I'm not bothering anybody. My camp's clean."
Further
up the river, the hum of city traffic gets more distant, the squeal
of the freights more pronounced, and there are signs
of a small camp
nestled in a grove of trees on the water's edge. Here, according to the
rumor of the rails, can be found
Melford Lawson, one of the founders of
the FTRA. Lawson, it is said, has come to town for the veterans' clothing
handout
scheduled the next day.
Like visiting royalty, the gray-bearded Lawson, clad in combat fatigues, a
black Rottweiler
at his side, holds court at the very back of a tent of
trees, narrowing his eyes to the sunlight as a visitor walks in.
Eventually,
Lawson is persuaded to tell the story of the late-night meeting in Libby,
Mont., when FTRA founder Daniel
Boone, now a Pentecostal preacher in
Montana, got together a group of friends in 1982 and suggested forming
a group
called "F--- the Reagan Administration."
"It started as a joke. There were 12 of us. They said, 'What are you?,'
and
we said, 'FTRA.' " Only later, says Lawson, did they come to be
known as Freight Train Riders of America.
"Now,
they're trying to accuse us of every murder between here and
Montana," says Lawson, shrugging. "Sure, there was Sidetrack
[Silveria],
but how many Jeffrey Dahmers, John Wayne Gacys are there?
He's like a bad apple, everybody's got one.
"I swear to
God, all we do is ride trains and stay drunk."
"They call us a gang," scoffs Lawson. "How do you organize 5,000
drunks?
We can't even agree on what kind of beer to drink."
* * *
Indeed, the FTRA has taken on a kind of romance on
the rails.Internet
train-hopper discussion groups catalog its purported exploitsand carry
mug shots of Dogman Tony.
[I
think that this is supposed to be talking about me, thanks a lot kim for
saying that I give a romantic picture of riding
the rails]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The world, say
many train hoppers, has become a more perilous place.
Said Todd Waters, a Minneapolis advertising executive who has
ridden
the rails as a hobby since 1972: "You want to know what I think the
biggest difference is between now and 20,
30 years ago? You know, one
of the most dangerous places to be 30 years ago was a freight yard at
midnight. Now, I think
it's the communities that surround the freight
yards."
George Lin of Palo Alto earned his doctorate in Soviet history
at Stanford
University while riding the rails. "Just speaking generally, the FTRA has
become nearly mythical," he said.
"They seem to have become boggy
men"
On this home page, I'll introduce myself and talk about my reasons for wanting a web site. I might put a picture of myself
on this page...or just a picture that I especially like.Mysterious railroad brotherhood
gives
train hobos
a bloody image
By KIM MURPHY
Los Angeles Times
SPOKANE, Wash.-F-Trooper died as he
had lived, with a cigarette in one
hand and a can of Schmidt's Ice beer in the other.
They found him when the Montana
Rail Link pulled into the repair shop.
F-Trooper was sitting there in one of the boxcars as he so often had
before-except
this time, he had five bullets in his head.
Police had little to go on: A blood-spattered cardboard 12-pack between
Tracks
3 and 4. Bloody footprints in the boxcar. Some spent shell
casings. A tattoo on F-Trooper that said "F.T.R.A."
It
is a symbol that has become an unnerving part of the railroad
landscape across the West, where the mysterious brotherhood
known
as the Freight Train Riders of America has gained a foothold in the
world of switching yards, bridge underpasses
and boxcars-the realm of
the hobo for more than a century.
Concentrated in the Northwest along the Burlington Northern
Santa Fe's
1,500-mile High Line between Seattle and Minneapolis, the FTRA claims
at least 1,000 itinerant train riders
who police believe could be
responsible for hundreds of deaths, assaults and thefts along American
rail lines over the
past two decades.
Police say F-Trooper, a rail-riding nickname for 30-year-old hobo Joseph
Perrigo, died when a
fellow FTRA member exacted revenge for an
earlier confrontation. The list of potential witnesses for the upcoming
trial
reads like a Who's Who of the modern American rails: Moose.
Hotshot. Desert Rat. Muskrat. Pennsylvania Pollack.
The
fact that there's going to be a trial at all in the May 1996 slaying
represents something of an exception in law enforcement's
long-running
battle with the gang, whose exploits usually produce witnesses who
disappear on the next train, a crime
scene that travels from Spokane to
Klamath Falls, Ore., a victim found dead in the middle of the prairie next
to a set
of railroad tracks, leaving no known address and an age-old
question: Did he jump or was he pushed?
"They're a criminal
element that can do just about anything," said
Spokane police Detective Bob Grandinetti, who has compiled an
exhaustive
data base on the FTRA. "You get two or three of them
together, they'll roll a guy over and push him off the train. You're
moving
at 50 or 60 miles an hour, what do you think your chances are? We're
finding bodies like that all over the country."
Law
enforcement officials say the group, launched by a cadre of
Vietnam War veterans in a Montana bar in the 1980s, is composed
primarily
of white men, many with racist sympathies symbolized in the
swastikas and lightning bolts that often accompany FTRA graffiti.
The
group, authorities say, has terrorized other train tramps, set up rail lines
out of Texas as drug-running corridors
and run a massive food stamp
scam by filing thousands of fraudulent welfare applications at cities
along virtually every
train stop in the nation.
"There are 70 to 90 deaths a year (along the rail lines) all over the
country," Grandinetti
says. "Sure, some are natural causes. Some are
accidents. But some aren't. And the problem is, the suspects and all the
witnesses
disappear." "Everybody in the country's in the same spot,"
said police Detective James Neale of Saginaw, a Fort Worth suburb.
He
has unsuccessfully pursued a suspected FTRA member who he believes
tortured and murdered a transient at knifepoint.
"These
people, they fall through the cracks. They don't live in houses
like we do, they don't have cars. ... Our system is not
designed for these
kinds of people, so they can just ride the rails, they can commit murder
and mayhem almost at will."
The
fact that a growing number of college students and young
professionals are riding the rails for sport has heightened concern
about
potential conflict with a network of loners-some FTRA, some simply train
tramps-who count their possessions as
an extra shirt, a sleeping roll and
a dog. What, police ask, will happen as weekend "hoppers" pick their
way through
lonely switching yards into an underground network of the
deliberately dispossessed?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One
of the answers came in August of 1994, when 20-year-old Michael
Garfinkle of Tarzana, on summer break from college, strapped
on a
backpack and headed north through California on the rails. Police say he
met suspected FTRA member Robert Silveria
near Emeryville. Silveria
later admitted killing the young man with an ax handle.
A longtime rail rider who reportedly
has confessed to at least nine
slayings, Silveria walked up toward Garfinkle's camp, where the young
man told him: "This
is my area," Emeryville police Detective Wade
Harper said. Silveria apparently disagreed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"What
we're seeing is that these guys, because they made this
conscious decision to move away from society, as they feel encroached
on
by these guys who have jobs from 9 to 5, it's making them mad,"
said Salem, Ore., police detective Mike Quakenbush.
"I
can see where more Joe Blow Citizen people are going to get injured
and hurt," said Salem, Ore., police Detective Mike
Quakenbush.
"Because this riding the trains thing is increasing in
popularity, and it's pissing these guys off. They don't like you,
they don't
like you riding their trains, and if you're not willing to make that whole
transition over, then get the
hell out."
FTRA Graffitti Common on Bridges
Their calling cards can be found at almost any railway bridge or
overpass
in the West, the trademark scrawl of "F.T.R.A.," often
accompanied by swastikas or lightning bolts and other common slogans:
"STP"
for "start the party," "FTW" for "---- the world."
Grandinetti, who started documenting the emergence of the FTRA in
the
1980s, said it began with the railroads reporting bodies along the High
Line between Spokane and Sandpoint, Idaho,
and as far west as
Cheney, Wash.
The bodies had their shirts and jackets pulled up around their heads,
and their
pants pulled down, he recalls. "The first one or two, the
railroad was saying, 'Well, he fell off a train and cut his leg
and he bled
to death,' " Grandinetti said. "I could buy off on one or two of them. But
after the sixth, I said, 'My
God, wait a minute.' "
About the same time, he said, a freight train derailed west of Spokane
after the air line
to the rear cars' brakes was cut off. The suspect, who
was killed in the crash, was wearing a black bandanna around his
neck
fastened with a silver ring.
[Note that Kim has the account of this derailment all wrong, a rail fan
set
the record straight]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suddenly,
bandannas began figuring in a series of stabbings and
beatings. Police began documenting the theft of IDs from bodies found
along
rail lines that were used later to collect food stamps at cities along
train routes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A
key break came with the arrest last year in Roseville, Calif., of
Silveria, who subsequently confessed to a string of boxcar
killings from
Florida to Montana between 1981 and 1995. A native of San Jose, the
38-year-old Silveria occasionally
held down odd jobs but appeared
primarily to have made his living knocking off fellow train riders for their
welfare
and disability checks, authorities said.
Silveria is awaiting trial in Salem, Ore., in the bludgeoning of 39-year-
old
William Pettit Jr. in 1995. Oregon prosecutors plan to introduce
confessions to at least five other killings across the
country.
Silveria, who has the word "Freedom" tattooed on his neck, purportedly
explained his spree in a series
of letters to a former Placer County jail
mate, later filed with the court. He pronounced himself "the leader of my
nation:
the homeless," and added: "I could have tortured others of your
world, but I chose to torture my world, because I preyed
on the weak.
"People always said I looked like the devil when I was beating the s---
out of [someone]," he wrote.
Silveria
has subsequently denied FTRA affiliation, and authorities say he
now claims that purported confessions were coerced. His
lawyers have
declined comment.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But
one thing that your forgot to mention here is that on americas most
wanted they were accusing Toney of the totally different
murder of Mark
Burge in Big Springs Texas!
The only trouble is that at the time of the big springs killing Dog Man
Toney
was in jail.
Why did you leave this part about Dog Man Toney being framed for
murder out of your story? [Comments
in brackets in red are not part of
the original article but were added for clarity!]
In another high-profile case,
reputed FTRA member Anthony Hugh Ross,
[who after the show became]a suspect in the October 1995[Saginaw]
boxcar killing
that Neale is investigating, was picked up in La Crosse,
Wis., on July 20[on an unrelated charge in Big Springs for which
he was
cleared but]
It was after the america's most wanted frame job aired, that they
started accusing toney of the
Saginaw killing!
Early reports say nothing about Saginaw, only big springs! after a
segment of TV's "America's Most
Wanted" produced a tip.[dog became
a suspect in a different killing in Saginaw]
Neale had gone for months without
a good lead on the body of a 43-
year-old transient found on a train sitting on a Saginaw side track.
The man
was identified by way of a food stamp voucher out of Pueblo,
Colo., as Francis Terry.
In addition to the deep throat
gash that ended his life, his body showed
several healing knife wounds, indicating he also had been cut days or
weeks
earlier.
Just who was this other member? Fucking side track that is who is was,
but you forgot to mention that it was
Side Track that fingered dog man,
for this and another murder while he was in jail. It was a buch of horse
shit! Quakenbush
called from Oregon and said an FTRA member there
claimed to have witnessed the slaying. "He described the murder, the
scene,
the kind of railroad car, the time of death, the weapon. . . .
Things only he would know," Neale said. "He said it
was over dirty
laundry, which means dope. They were hauling dope up from Mexico
through Yuma. My victim stashed some
of it for himself, and Dogman
Tony [Ross' road name] got mad at him.
Black guy? Hanging out with Dog Man Toney,
I thougth that the F.T.R.A
was supposed to be racist?
I thought that according to Grandinettie if you are black
or brown and
you get on a box car with one of them you don't get off.
Neale, you should check with Grandinettie
before you start talking shit
like this! You cops really need to get your story straight! "He said there
was another
guy with him who helped, a black guy by the name of
Bushman. He said Bushman held [Terry] down and hit him on the head
with
a stick," Neale said. "The witness said Dogman Tony . . . was
waving the knife back and forth and saying 'I could kill
you in a
heartbeat.' He [Terry] was begging for his life. And then he said
Dogman Tony killed him. . . . And then he
said something, and this
witness told me this several times. He said Dogman Tony said, 'Another
one bites the dust.
Oh, well.' "
Fucking no wonder, you guys need to keep your story straight, but I
think that they are talking about a
secound witness here, in additon to
side track? This guys name was never mentioned. Ross was released
last month without
charges. Washington state declined to extradite him
on an outstanding warrant. And Neale couldn't get a warrant of his
own.
His witness--an unreliable hobo under the best of circumstances--got
run over by a train. Neale hopes other leads
will pan out.
"He's free," Neale sighs. "He's riding the rails. He's out there.
He could be found. It might take
a couple, three weeks, maybe. . . .
Building a case with solid evidence is the problem because the crime
scene is
mobile.
The minute I got through with the crime scene and released it to the
railroad, they were out of there. The
scene was mobile. The victim was
mobile. The suspect was mobile."
Railroad officials tend to play down the impact
of the FTRA, saying it has
not had a major role in official incident reports along rail lines.
"We are aware that
this organization exists. We have had minimal
encounters with anybody who claims to be a part of this group. We've
probably
heard more about them than we've actually heard from them,"
said Jim Sabourin, spokesman for Burlington Northern Santa
Fe.
"Some of these people [arrested as transients] sometimes identify
themselves as members of this organization,
but they don't do anything
different than anybody else that takes chances and gets on trains," said
Edward Trandahl
of Union Pacific.
Still, railroad officials admit they are fighting an uphill battle against a
rail-riding culture
whose idea of freedom is, as it has been since the
days of Jack London, a set of tracks and an open boxcar. Union Pacific
last
year spotted 4,200 trespassers a month, averaging 600 arrests.
"There are people nowadays, a lot of them are young,
college-age types
that do this for fun, regardless of the fact that it's very, very dangerous,"
Sabourin said. "The
other type is a transient, who sort of lives from
town to town, and from train to train. We treat both of them the same
way.
They're trespassers."
'A Loaded Stick of Dynamite'
Look up on the concrete supports of the Freya Way Bridge
in east
Spokane, over the Union Pacific tracks, and you can find him.
"Dogman TW. F.T.R.A.," it says in scrawled
letters.
"I don't even wanna see Dogman Tony. He'll kill you in a heartbeat. He's
a loaded stick of dynamite," says
a thin, blond-bearded man stretched
out under the bridge.
His companion, Pamela Dawn Pierce--who calls herself "Spitfire"--claims
she
was raped by an FTRA member. Fighting them has become her
passion. She holds up a sign that she has carried on rail lines
across the
country.
"We aren't FTRA. But we are people, too," it says. "We don't beat each
other up to prove
our brotherhood. . . . Leave us alone. We used to be
safe. Now we aren't. Only because of FTRA. They seem to think they
own
everyone, to beat them to DEATH."
She points up the tracks, where the Union Pacific joins the Burlington
Northern
out along the river. "You want FTRA," she says. "They're up
there."
In a camp near the old rendering plant, a thin,
weathered man wearing
a black bandanna shrugs. "It's just a bunch of guys who ride trains,"
says the man, who identifies
himself as "Sideline."
"It started out as a family thing. It was a brotherhood. They call us
racist, but I get on
white people same as I do anyone else.The
bandanna, he says, is a symbol. "It just means I earned my place. I
proved
myself. I wasn't a user. I wasn't a taker. I gave. I was a brother.
He talks about Horizontal John, the FTRA member
who died of alcohol
poisoning under the Freya Street bridge earlier this year. "They said we
kill each other when we
have our little rituals. Like we killed
Horizontal John. Well, America killed Horizontal John. He had Agent
Orange
from Vietnam." "Me," he said, "I just don't like people. I prefer
to be off by myself.
It's hard for me to deal
with a job, because I don't take orders well. I
don't got a job, but I got what I need. I got a tent, a sleeping bag, a
dog.
I'm good to go. What do I need with a house, a mortgage, 12 kids
running around? I'm not bothering anybody. My camp's clean."
Further
up the river, the hum of city traffic gets more distant, the squeal
of the freights more pronounced, and there are signs
of a small camp
nestled in a grove of trees on the water's edge. Here, according to the
rumor of the rails, can be found
Melford Lawson, one of the founders of
the FTRA. Lawson, it is said, has come to town for the veterans' clothing
handout
scheduled the next day.
Like visiting royalty, the gray-bearded Lawson, clad in combat fatigues, a
black Rottweiler
at his side, holds court at the very back of a tent of
trees, narrowing his eyes to the sunlight as a visitor walks in.
Eventually,
Lawson is persuaded to tell the story of the late-night meeting in Libby,
Mont., when FTRA founder Daniel
Boone, now a Pentecostal preacher in
Montana, got together a group of friends in 1982 and suggested forming
a group
called "F--- the Reagan Administration."
"It started as a joke. There were 12 of us. They said, 'What are you?,'
and
we said, 'FTRA.' " Only later, says Lawson, did they come to be
known as Freight Train Riders of America.
"Now,
they're trying to accuse us of every murder between here and
Montana," says Lawson, shrugging. "Sure, there was Sidetrack
[Silveria],
but how many Jeffrey Dahmers, John Wayne Gacys are there?
He's like a bad apple, everybody's got one.
"I swear to
God, all we do is ride trains and stay drunk."
"They call us a gang," scoffs Lawson. "How do you organize 5,000
drunks?
We can't even agree on what kind of beer to drink."
* * *
Indeed, the FTRA has taken on a kind of romance on
the rails.Internet
train-hopper discussion groups catalog its purported exploitsand carry
mug shots of Dogman Tony.
[I
think that this is supposed to be talking about me, thanks a lot kim for
saying that I give a romantic picture of riding
the rails]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The world, say
many train hoppers, has become a more perilous place.
Said Todd Waters, a Minneapolis advertising executive who has
ridden
the rails as a hobby since 1972: "You want to know what I think the
biggest difference is between now and 20,
30 years ago? You know, one
of the most dangerous places to be 30 years ago was a freight yard at
midnight. Now, I think
it's the communities that surround the freight
yards."
George Lin of Palo Alto earned his doctorate in Soviet history
at Stanford
University while riding the rails. "Just speaking generally, the FTRA has
become nearly mythical," he said.
"They seem to have become boggy
men"
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