Ben Machell - The Unusual Suspect: The Rise and Fall of a Modern-Day Outlaw

I t is early autumn in rural Vermont, the hills and valleys are turning from green to gold, and two federal agents are driving along the tight winding road that leads to the Southern State Correctional Facility. One is a special agent with the FBI. The other is Special Agent Scott Murray, who works for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Both are experienced men who have worked to bring down everyone from arms dealers to white supremacist terror groups to heroin trafficking rings. The FBI agent is tall, middle-aged, with a dark suit, a long, impassive face, and a steady, methodical manner. Murray is shorter, with close-cropped black hair, and seems altogether more lively and convivial.

They are driving to the state prison in order to meet an inmate who had been moved there four months earlier, in July 2008. They already know he is like no criminal either of them has encountered before. He had committed a string of bank heists but escaped the authorities time and time again. In carrying out his crimes, he had used flamboyant disguises and elaborate escape routes. He had caused chaos. He had forced the deployment of bomb disposal squads, armed response units, police helicopters, and whole teams of detectives. An unpredictable lone wolf, he operated internationally. He was wanted for crimes in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Hed narrowly avoided arrest in Istanbul. Almost untraceable, he would strike, leave with a bag full of cash, and then just seem to vanish. The police did not even know his name or identity. There would be a robbery and the area would be flooded with cops, says one of the detectives charged with capturing him. But there would just be no sign of him.

In May 2008, though, hed finally been captured in Vermont. The authorities searched his car and found a diary in which hed meticulously planned and detailed his crimes. Slowly, they began to piece together exactly who he was and what he had done. And as the full scale of his crimes became clear, more and more agencies found themselves involved in his case. Dutch police. British police. The FBI. The ATF. The U.S. Marshals recommended that prison authorities take extra precautions when dealing with him. Possible links with terror groups were investigated. Interpol declared him a flight risk. The use of military personnel to escort him across national borders in order to stand trial was, at one point, seriously explored. Eventually, it was decided he would remain under lock and key in Vermont until all the various agencies could decide what to do with him.

Murray and the FBI man arrive at the prison and climb out of their cars. The air is cool and fresh with pine. The Southern State Correctional Facility sits atop a steep hill surrounded by deep, dense forest, giving it the look of a grim fairy-tale keep. The twenty-foot walls are gray and smooth. Immediately behind the walls is fencing, rising to thirty feet and topped with razor wire. Above everything, an American flag cracks and flaps in the wind.

The two agents begin the lengthy process of passing through layer after layer of security. This is because the man they have come to see is not with the general prison population. Instead, he has been placed in Foxtrot Unit, a separate self-contained wing of the prison. Technically, Foxtrot Unit is categorized as secure housing and is specifically designed for the close custody of particularly disruptive or dangerous prisoners. But these are just euphemisms. To inmates and guards alike, this is simply the Hole, a place where men are held in solitary confinement, kept in six-by-nine-foot concrete cells for twenty-three or more hours a day. Each tiny, claustrophobic chamber is a prison within a prison within a prison.

The two agents are shown to a small interview room where they wait. Meanwhile, down the corridor of Foxtrot Unit, a pair of large, solidly built prison guards approach a metal cell door and rap on it sharply. One of the guards peers through a viewing slot and tells the figure inside that he is coming with them to meet some visitors. The guard opens a second slot halfway down the door, and after a short pause a pair of white hands and ten thin fingers come through. For just a moment, it looks like some pale anemone emerging from a rock. Then a pair of handcuffs are firmly clamped around the wrists, and the heavy cell door is buzzed open from a central control room. The guards enter the cell, fit a pair of leg-irons on the prisoner, and then proceed to walk him to the interview room. The inmate keeps his head bowed low. Together, they pass other cell doors, where the voices of other inmates chatter, sing, shout, and whimper. The air is recycled and stale. The noise and echoes and anemic overhead lights combine to produce a low migrainous throb.

The prisoner enters the interview room. He is young and skinny, just under six feet tall, with short, dark hair and deep-set eyes that glance around the room from behind a pair of cheap glasses. As the two agents introduce themselves and sit down opposite him, he remains impassive, staring at his handcuffs. He glances at a pile of papers the FBI agent places on the table, and for a moment it seems as if he will instinctively reach out to them. But he checks himself, and keeps his eyes down.

So, Stephen, says Special Agent Murray, leaning forward and speaking with bright but concerned interest. How have you been?

The prisoner raises his head and looks directly at the two agents for the first time. Seconds pass. He shuts his eyes and lets out a long sigh.