We had lights from patrol vehicles and it was almost a full moon. Eventually our eyes adjusted to a mowed pasture of eight-inch high stubble by a farm house. Then came a five-hour emotional roller-coaster confrontation in that field leading to a face to face negotiation involving me and ranger Johnny A. We’re about ten feet apart, with Robert P pointing the gun toward me and Johnny alternately. Johnny and I are 90 degrees from each other to him. He’s got to turn his head from one to another. So if he tries to engage either of us he’s got to do it one at a time. Hopefully one of us can get a shot off.

He’s talking about his gal and “what a no-good bitch she is”

I interrupt him and say, “is this the woman you plan on spending the rest of your life with?”

He says, “hell, no!”

“Then, why are you letting her win?”

He’d said he wanted to see his brother, to make his peace. This was a very suicidal sounding prelude to a suicide by cop. At one point Robert P said he was going to make it to that farmhouse. Johnny who was standing between Robert P and farmhouse said, “Partner, that ain’t going to happen.” Whereupon the guy sat down.

He stops and thinks about what I said.

He turns to Johnny and says, “do you have a gun?” Johnny, who is six or eight feet from him at this point on other side of a fence, looks at him and says, “no.”

Robert P turns to me and asks, “Do you have a gun?”

I said, “Yes, I do.”

And he starts to get real pissed off

I say, “Wait a minute. I’ve not lied to you yet. I’ve been standing out here with you for five hours. Yes I’ve got a gun. I may be stupid, but I ain’t no fool.”

He starts laughing. We all start laughing. With that he gets real quiet. I look at Johnny, Johnny looks at me. We both figure, Oh boy, here it comes. He’s probably going to level that weapon at me first which will give Johnny an opportunity to take him out.

All of a sudden at 12:47 am he raised the muzzle of the shotgun up, racked six live rounds out onto the ground, then put the gun down.

His psychiatrist who joined team at airport said to me, “What you’ve got here is someone suicidal. He can’t commit suicide himself, so he’s going to force you to kill him. “

He was siting on an aviation fuel tank, a cylindrical tower about twenty feet high, with a rifle in one hand, a shotgun in the other and his former boss sitting ten feet away in view of FBI snipers. He said he was coming off at high noon. The tank had been filled to avoid fumes exploding from stray round. The doctor said expect him to force his killing then with his family watching. The FBI commander on-scene grew up in the same small community in Arkansas as the subject, whose mother was also his grade school teacher.

This guy’s sitting in the open on this tank. An agent rolls up in a bureau car, gets on its PA system, and said, “this is LB.” (Later number two man at the fbi.)

The guy says, “so what?”

LB says, “I see you’re from Mina, Arkansas.”

The guy says, “yeah, so what?”

“Well, I’m from mina.” There’s a pause. “Furthermore your mother was my teacher in fourth grade.” LB was trying to establish some rapport.

The subject stood up, “I hate my fucking mother!” He fired a round through the windshield of the Bureau car. Agent LB got the hell out of there. This was about ten thirty.

The small plane from Spokane lands about eleven fifty. The plane is taxiing up. He can see it. A couple cars are moving closer to the tower. At the stroke of noon the guy has his hostage start down the circular staircase wrapped around the outside of the tower. Halfway down, the hostage starts running down the steps out of the line of fire. Agents order the kidnapper to drop the guns. He turns on them. They shoot and kill him.

I roll up with other agents as this takes place. The plane with the family diverts. We jump over the retaining wall, rush up to render first aid to mr. Abernathy, now dead on the steps with aviation fuel from the penetrated tank bathing him.

We grab him off the steps, drag him over the retaining wall, put him int he trunk of a bureau car, speed out of the area to a waiting ems unit, which refused to approach after shots were fired.