Way from p 13 jured and was going to take some time off. He and Boyce ran up staggering tabs in dance clubs in Scottsdale, played a lot of golf, partied lavishly. When their funds got low, they hit another bank, this time for $50,000. “I knew this couldn’t last,” Byerly says. “But it’s crazily addictive — the adrena- line, and then the money. The only people between you and the money are Mary, Jim, and Steve, who are trained to give it to you if you ask.” It lasted only a few weeks, thanks to his weakness for cocaine, women, and coke- addled sex. Vacationing in Marina del Rey, he managed to convince a local cokehead that he was a big-time dealer and could deliver a kilo if the man fronted him $10,000 and let him borrow his Camaro IROC Z/28 for a couple of days. He was in no hurry to deliver, and the car was soon reported stolen. Police dining at a Denny’s in Phoenix spotted it in the parking lot of a La Quinta next door. Which led them to a 26-year-old white male, in the middle of an epic binge at the motel with a girl he’d picked up in a bar who was younger than her ID said she was. Which led them to the guns, marijuana, and co- caine on the premises and confirma- tion that the male, who called himself Tony Martin, was Wayne Byerly, a parole absconder from Idaho. A little more investigation in- dicated that their man was a suspect in at least three bank robberies. A car used in one of the getaways had been traced back to a prior owner, who claimed he’d sold it to this Mar- tin-Byerly person. As the evidence mounted, Byerly could and other parole violations kept sending him back. He was either behind bars or a fugitive for months at a time over the next four years. He was still on parole when he started robbing banks again in Phoenix, leading a crew drawn largely from associates he’d met in prison — in- cluding Robert Brad Leonard and broth- ers Dennis and James Tigue, known as “Red” and “Irish,” respectively. The new crew became known as the Wells Fargo Bandits because of their pref- erence for exploiting the security flaws of Wells Fargo banks. Byerly had nothing but contempt for “note guys” and other ama- teurs, and he liked to think he’d sur- rounded himself with takedown professionals, guys who could put every- vacation, and because of his fugitive status, he spread cash around to crew members who fronted for him whenever it was time to rent a new place or get fresh wheels. It made him uneasy, all these sponges hang- ing around with their hands out; he called them Klingons. Too many people knew his real name and where he lived, and what if one of them decided to drop a dime on him because he wasn’t generous enough with the gratuities and bonuses? His vulnerability to snitches became painfully apparent during a ski trip in Col- orado, a few weeks after the Thunderbird Road robbery. As he and Boyce wandered around Crested Butte, he couldn’t shake the feeling that people were staring at them. They went to rent snowmobiles, Gunnison airport as they tried to slip back to Arizona. The police had nothing on them but their respective parole viola- tions, but the FBI continued to question Byerly about his rumored involvement in the Wells Fargo robberies during the next nine months he spent in custody. Sharene Farr, who was Byerly’s fiancée at the time, remembers the FBI showing up at his house with a search warrant the day after his arrest, looking for loot. “They didn’t find anything,” she recalls. “They kept asking me if he had lots of money, did I see stacks of money. I didn’t have anything to tell them because I didn’t know anything.” Byerly was released to a halfway house in September. He walked away from the place 10 days later, relying on his crew to arrange for new digs. He had one more score in his sights — a busy bank in Tucson that promised to be the biggest haul yet. Enough to pay off all his Klingons, set up a new identity, and disappear. CASH STASHED I At the peak of his operations, Byerly had money to burn on whatever he wanted, including the occasional Corvette. feel the tissue-thin efforts he’d made to cover his tracks beginning to shred and blow away. Cursing his stupidity and fac- ing the prospect of spending most of his life behind bars, he took a plea deal for a 15-year sentence. He could have cut his time significantly by giving up his partner, but Byerly refused to name Boyce, insist- ing that his accomplice was a mysterious biker known only as “Spider.” (Arrested months later on the basis of other tips, Boyce elected to take a four-year deal on a conspiracy charge rather than roll the dice in court.) Byerly’s wife divorced him. He disap- peared into the federal system, where he was known as a stand-up guy for not rat- ting on his partner. At a prison in Mem- phis, Tennessee, his cellmate showed him how to play a few chords on the gui- tar. Byerly taught himself to read music and started writing his own songs. It was like something inside him was shifting, trying to get his attention, show him that maybe he could do better than terrorize bank employees for a living. But it was easy to ignore that small voice. He was a convict, true-blue and old-school, and well on his way to an advanced degree in knuckleheadology. He was paroled in 1993, but a series of failed drug tests, halfway-house escapes, one on the floor and take what they wanted. Their aim was to hit every cash station and get out in 90 seconds or less, moving from front to rear and tapping the drive-through tellers on the way out. Over a period of several months, the crew robbed four banks in Phoenix, coming away with six-figure hauls. On the last two, Boyce joined in. On July 1, 1996, the Wells Fargo on West Indian School Road was hit for $156,114. According to court documents, the Tigue brothers drove a diversion vehi- cle and another man waited outside with the getaway car while Byerly and Boyce and the proprietor seemed so stunned that Byerly asked him what was up. The man showed them a wanted poster. “I gotta say, you guys don’t look like bank robbers,” he said. The poster had their names and pho- tos. It advised citizens of Crested Butte to be on the lookout for two convicted bank robbers, both federal fugitives from Albu- querque, who were said to be on their way to town to rob a bank or two. The tip had come to county law enforcement from the FBI. There were posters all over town, Byerly soon discovered, including on the front doors of the town’s banks. “MOST OF THE TIME I HAD GOOD INTENTIONS. BUT PART OF MY BRAIN WAS ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT FOR AN OPPORTUNITY.” — WAYNE BYERLY went into the bank, wearing wigs, fake beards, and facial putty. On November 15, 1996, the Wells Fargo on West Thunderbird Road was robbed of $144,720 by two men wearing Reagan and Nixon masks. The getaway driver would later admit to receiving $14,000 from the take, while Byerly and Boyce split the rest. Byerly burned through his share in next to no time. A hardworking fellow could always use a new Corvette or a fancy It was a loony idea: What kind of mo- ron would rob a bank in a place with only one viable road out of town? But from some of the incorrect details in the poster, Byerly knew instantly where the tip had come from. He’d told the girlfriend of one member of his crew that he was going to Crested Butte, and he’d lied to her about moving his residence to Albuquerque be- cause he didn’t trust her. Byerly and Boyce were arrested at the n fall 1997, while preparing for the bank robbery in Tucson, Byerly also worked on a side project of his own making. The project can’t be verified in the same way his other activities can be- cause it involves a crime that, if it hap- pened, was never reported. Byerly’s account of this interlude raises more ques- tions than answers, perhaps. But he’s talk- ing about it now, he says, because it helps to explain the dramatic change of direc- tion he took soon afterward. In the course of his journeys through the halfway houses of greater Phoenix, Byerly had become acquainted with a man named Max. Diagnosed with schizo- phrenia, Max preferred meth to his pre- scribed medication, even though that preference frequently got him into legal trouble. But Max also had connections in the rarefied world of international dia- mond and gold traders. As they discussed possible future ventures, he told Byerly about one jeweler he knew who dealt in merchandise of dubious provenance — a five-star fence. Max had been in this man’s house and seen a safe stuffed with cash and jewels. That safe could be a big score for some- body, Max suggested. Nothing sweeter than stealing what was already stolen. “He’s not going to report it,” he said. Byerly knew nothing about jewels, but he was interested. He gave Max a ride once in his beater Corolla to the man’s house, just to check it out. The place was a palace. But then Max got revoked out of the halfway house, and Byerly was on to other things. It was only in the last weeks before the Tucson robbery that he started thinking about building an extra cushion for himself, just in case. He found the jeweler’s mansion again. A horse trail on a ridge behind the prop- erty offered just enough cover that Byerly could sit there with binoculars and watch the man puttering among the flowers and bushes in his well-kept back yard. He came back to the same observation post several times, until he was con- vinced that the man lived alone. >> p 17 15 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES JAN. 31ST–FEB. 6TH, 2019 COURTESY OF WAYNE BYERLY