22 Feb. 7th–Feb. 13th, 2019 phoenixnewtimes.com phoenix new Times | mUsIC | CAFe | FILm | CULtURe | nIght+DAy | FEATURE | neWs | oPInIon | FeeDBACK | Contents | well with the judge who’d cut his sentence. He was removed from the Witsec program, flown back to Phoenix, and spent seven months cooling his heels in the Central Ar- izona Detention Center, expecting any day to cross paths with one of his old partners in crime. His attorney convinced another judge to take him out of harm’s way. Witsec took him back. Goodbye, Wayne Baxter. Hello, Wayne Byrd. The marshals told him to find tempo- rary lodging at a hotel in Albany, New York. The front-desk manager was a woman in her early 20 from a small town on the Ca- nadian border. One morning, she saw the new guest get into an unmarked police car and figured he must be an undercover cop. She thought he was around 28 years old, maybe 30. He was 42. By the time she learned the truth about him, his real name, and his crimes and Witsec status and all of that, it didn’t matter, because she was in love. The wedding was June 10, 2006. “He made me feel confident and loved,” Betsy Hewey-Byerly says. “He was also the greatest gentleman I’d ever met.” Three months after the wedding, he completed his parole. Now nobody could send him back to prison except him. The awful dreams and night sweats stopped. A few more months, and the couple decided they’d had enough of the upstate New York winters. They moved to Phoenix with their newborn son. Climate wasn’t the only reason for the move, of course. It had been almost 10 years since Byerly had buried the cash- stuffed coolers in the woods. He hadn’t dared to retrieve them while he was still under federal supervision, his every move subject to scrutiny. But it was calling to him now, this jackpot at the end of the trail, this payoff for all he’d risked and done to earn his freedom. “I had to go get near that money,” he says. “No two ways about it.” Without going into details, he told Betsy that he had something “from the old days” to pick up. He left her and Owen, their tod- dler, at a tourist cabin in Strawberry and re- traced his path to the stash. When the shovel scraped at the hard plastic roof of the first cooler, the impact sent an electric thrill through his arm. It’s still here. He took the coolers back to the cabin. Betsy played with Owen in the grass be- hind the place while he brushed off the dirt and cat litter and inspected his treasure for signs of rot. Then he heard howls of pain outside. With typical bravado, Owen had started running downhill, his momentum carrying him forward. The slope ended abruptly with a sharp drop into a ditch. He had plunged into the abyss and hit his head on a rock. Betsy had lunged after him, trying to haul him in, and injured her leg. Trem- bling, Byerly picked up his shrieking son and put him in the car, returned for Betsy, and rushed them both to an ER in Payson, 18 miles away. There was no time to secure or even think about the heaps of money in the cabin. “I left that million dollars on the floor,” Byerly says. “That’s what it meant to me.” Later, he says, after Owen was laughing at the bump on his head and the exams in- dicated nothing was broken, he went back to the cabin and collected the money. By Byerly’s account, the cash dribbled out over the next few years, in untraceable amounts, helping him build his new life and aid friends in need of a boost. He doesn’t care if anyone believes him or not. If there’s ever an official inquiry, he’s pre- pared to say he made it all up. But that’s the thing about money — it’s there, and then it’s not. For Byerly, it was no longer as important as it once was. Not long after the Strawberry adven- ture, Byerly moved his family back to Ida- ho’s Treasure Valley, within a few miles of where he grew up. He changed his name back to Byerly. (Goodbye, Wayne Byrd.) Before they died, he sought his parents’ forgiveness for all the grief he’d caused them. His mother told him he’d come back “with a brand-new soul.” His father told him he loved him. He reconnected with his siblings, too. They’d seen him promise to change before, only to disappoint everyone. But he now seems very different, they say, from the im- pulsive, self-absorbed felon he once was. “For a long time, he was going the wrong way,” says Lois Morris, his younger sister. “I am super-proud of him and the way he’s devoted himself to his family.” “He was trying to get his life together, and it was always met with a ton of skepti- cism,” says his brother, Bill Byerly. “It took a while for me to figure out that the things he did were no reflection on our family. We all feel pretty good about where he’s at today.” He also reconciled with Steve Boyce. His former partner had managed to leave his past behind, too, stepping into steady work as an HVAC technician and an actor after his 2005 release. He took his chis- eled outlaw look to Hollywood and has appeared in numerous films, television shows and commercials, usually as a tough biker or bartender. (Highlights of his résumé include parts on Arrested De- velopment, Reno 911!, Hannah Montana, My Name Is Earl, and a recurring role on Days of Our Lives.) Returning to Idaho to help look after an ailing parent, he’s vis- ited with Byerly on several occasions, though the sting of his betrayal hasn’t quite been forgotten. “It still bothers me,” Boyce says. “Sure it does. I think he owes me. And if he hits it big, he knows I’m going to be there. And if I hit it, with all my acting stuff, I’m go- ing to hook him up. But there are no shortcuts in life.” Byerly’s dreams of hitting it big these days revolve around the music business. He put together a music studio behind his house, where he works on the songs he’s been writing for years. He’s performed at open-mic nights and songwriter show- cases in the Boise area, sometimes prefac- ing a number by explaining that it was written while he was on the run, or while he was trying to do good in the worst place on earth. People tell him he has quite an imagination. When he’s not playing music, he’s driv- ing a truck, hauling beets to a processing plant in Caldwell, or spending time at home. He has his music and his family — two boys and a girl now. By his own reck- oning, he is a rich man. “What I did in Florence makes me proud,” he says. “It’s what brought me here, to a life I never dreamed I’d have.” Read “Wayne’s Way” in its entirety at westword.com. Email the author at [email protected]. Dustin Honken (left) was the chemistry genius behind the most potent meth the DEA had ever seen; he and his girlfriend, Angela Johnson, were prime suspects in five murders. Murderpedia.org Way from p 21
