Where's Bucky?
He's everywhere.
Known officially to the Erie County jailers he escaped with rather disturbing ease on April 2 and the state troopers who have been hunting him ever since as Ralph Phillips, the most famous fugitive in Western New York -- at least -- has reportedly been all over the region in the last 100 days. The sites of reported Bucky sightings range from his home base of Chautauqua County as far east as the Chemung area, where troopers say he shot a state trooper last month, and as far north as the Tuscarora Indian Reservation in Niagara County, where a woman says he visited shortly after his escape.
The face of the man who cut his way through a metal kitchen roof at the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden has become ubiquitous, his eyes glancing down and slightly to his right, his expression revealing someone who has posed for many, many mug shots.
With or without facial hair, his rather haunted visage peered from wanted posters on Thruway toll booths, television news backdrops and, on Saturday, from the pages of The New York Times and the welcome screen of America Online.
He's on T-shirts, coffee mugs, hats, license-plate holders and even thong underwear sold online. And on the menu at Grandma's Kitchen on the Cassadaga village line, where last week's special was the Bucky Burger (which was, in the interest of full disclosure, delicious).
Where's Bucky?
He's nowhere.
Most of the sightings, including more rumors floating around Niagara Falls on Friday that he's holed up on the Tuscarora, remain unsubstantiated.
State police officials confirmed a sighting last week in the woods near Cassadaga, the epicenter of a massive manhunt, and say he's probably responsible for wounding Trooper Sean Brown in Chemung County on June 10.
A man said he gave directions to Pennsylvania to someone fitting Phillips' description, who then took off on a motorcycle, leaving two pistols as payment.
And any number of break-ins around Chautauqua County -- stores, diners, homes, hunting cabins and camper trailers -- have been attributed to him.
But the last place he was seen with absolutely certainty was the parking lot at the jail more than three months ago, running toward the woods and freedom, of a sort.
If he is in the forests or fields of Chautauqua County, it can't be a very restful existence. Along the highways and dirt side-roads that crisscross the search area, troopers stop cars every few hundred yards, while others comb the wilderness on foot and from helicopters hovering above.
Having spent a couple days last week reporting on the search for the Times, I could see the constant surveillance is clearly wearing on even the most law-abiding of locals.
Ed Hamlet, whose family has operated a farm in Sheridan since 1880, said many of the problems stem from a lack of understanding of the customs and rhythms of life in a place where all-terrain vehicles and farm machinery are common modes of transportation.
Hamlet said his grandson-in-law, who works for an agricultural equipment distributor, was stopped and questioned at length while delivering a hay baler on a flatbed truck by troopers who seemed skeptical about his explanation of the machinery's purpose.
The massive manhunt has affected just about every aspect of life in the area. Residents report helicopters hovering overhead at all hours and being interrogated on their own property.
"It's unnerving -- every time I hear a noise, I jump," said Michele Jones, the owner of a breakfast-and-lunch diner called Gobbler's Knob across the street from Hamlet Farms.
Jones's business was the site of a break-in last month in which $50, a block of cheese, some ham and a few cans of coffee were taken. She said sheriff's deputies who investigated theorized Phillips may have been responsible for the crime, as well as a rash of others in the area around the same time.
Hamlet told of an incident at a United Way-sponsored camp outside Cassadaga when troopers ordered a busload of severely disabled adults, many of them in wheelchairs, unloaded twice on its way onto the grounds.
"Can you imagine how scared they must have been?" Hamlet said. "You can't criticize (the troopers) for trying to find Bucky. But if you deal with people who know the area and are country people, you'll get a lot further trying to find people who are hiding out in the country."
Trooper Rebecca Gibbons said authorities realize the impact the search is having.
"We want to bring this back to the quiet community it was," she said. "We know we're inconveniencing people and we're hoping for their patience."
The death of Bradley Horton, who was shot after an altercation with a state trooper who attempted to stop him while he was riding an ATV in Sheridan on June 25, heightened both tension and skepticism, particularly after officials said the search and Horton's demise were unrelated.
"A lot of people are afraid these troopers are trigger-happy, because of what happened to Bradley Horton," Hamlet said. "That's the first and only stop I've ever heard of troopers making on Center Road, and I'm 77 years old."
For some, particularly those who knew the 25-year-old Horton, the shooting squelched any lightheartedness regarding the search.
"I had coffee with him every morning. He was a really nice kid," said Kathleen Reardon, a cashier at a gas-and-tobacco store on the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation, where Horton worked as a carpenter on a remodeling project completed weeks before his death. "No doubt, that made people take it more seriously. It really hit home."
A poster on the store's door advertised an Aug. 19 fund-raiser to benefit Horton's family. As of Thursday, hundreds of people had signed a petition on the counter in front of Reardon that called for a grand jury investigation into the shooting. Chautauqua County District Attorney David Foley said such a probe is likely, though he's awaiting the autopsy report and a reconstruction of the incident, in which state police said the trooper involved was dragged for a mile after becoming entangled with Horton's ATV, before making a final decision.
There are some sympathetic to the fugitive, though perhaps not as many as indicated in some local media reports. Count Bob Ferguson, who lives in Dunkirk and regularly camps within the search area, among the supportive.
"I think it's funny. Here you've got hundreds of cops and they can't catch one guy. Every few hundred feet there's a trooper. Taxpayers' money is being wasted. They should go right into the woods and hunt him down."
And if Phillips turned up in his garage?
"I'll give him a sandwich and a beer," Ferguson said. "Go, Bucky, go!"
Another reservation store was sold out of "Run, Bucky, Run" T-shirts. Another, with a decidedly different perspective, carried the same words, but with an ominous subtitle: "We like a moving target."
The online outlet offered more neutral slogans: "Where's Bucky?" "Got Bucky?" and "Bucky Went That Way," accompanied by an arrow pointing both left and right. Over the weekend, ongoing hype spurred two new entries: "I Saw Bucky" and "Bucky Hunter." The thong apparently contains only enough material for a simple "Bucky?"
Lori Zandrowicz, the owner of Grandma's Kitchen, bristled at criticism of the Bucky Burger.
"They say, 'How can you profit from that?' I say, 'Did you see the price?'" she said, pointing at a chalkboard spelling out the anagram (Bacon Under Cheese with Ketchup and Yellow mustard) and the cost -- $3.99, with fries.
The troopers have been tight with information, citing concerns that their target may use media reports of their activities to his advantage.
While that may be sound strategy, it's not helping from a public relations standpoint.
As is usually the case, the lack of official details about the search, as well as Horton's death, fuels speculation and doubt about the information that is released. Suspicion also grows among residents that Phillips, a Seneca, has slipped away to one of Western New York's reservations, or perhaps to points south. That he won't be taken alive -- whether he wishes to or not -- was a given in the mind of just about every resident I spoke to last week. A priest went so far as to offer his church as a place to surrender safely.
Despite the shooting in Chemung County -- Brown appeared to be in good health and spirits when visiting his fellow troopers in Cassadaga on Wednesday -- and Phillips' reported long-ago threat to "splatter pig meat all over Chautauqua County," Trooper Gibbons said police hope for a peaceful end to the search.
"There's one person who can guarantee that -- Ralph Phillips," she said. "He can end this today by turning himself in."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 18 2006 |