Penalty of Death, Part 2: Bucklew abducts woman after murder, taking her on a nightmarish trip

Shoot him!"

Several Missouri State Highway Patrol cruisers circle a small, dark colored Honda along Interstate 270 in St. Louis. It's about 10 p.m., March 21, 1996.

The cops know the driver is dangerous.

He's apparently already killed a man, down in Cape Girardeau County, more than 100 miles south of here.

The driver has already led them on a high-speed chase along Interstate 55.

They saw him waving the gun at his hostage.

And then at them.

Guns are at the ready.

The driver isn't coming in easy.

May not come in alive.

From inside the car, the driver waves his gun around again.

He points it at his hostage, a blond woman who earlier today watched the driver kill her boyfriend.

He points the gun at them again, whichever trooper catches his gaze.

If something isn't done -- and quickly -- someone's going to get killed.

A trooper named J.T. Hedrick yells at his colleague, a cop named Jon Parrish.

"Shoot him!" Hedrick yells. "Shoot him or he'll shoot us!"

Parrish takes a knee next to Hedrick's cruiser, behind the open driver's-side door, directly in front of the Honda, bumpers touching.

Parrish is holding a shotgun.

Parrish pops up from behind the door, surveys the scene and bounces back down.

"I can't take a shot!" Parrish says. "I'll hit the hostage. I don't have a shot!"

After a long moment, Hedrick pulls his sidearm from its holster, and charges the Honda.

---

Torture.

That's what Stephanie Pruitt went through on the last day of Mike Sanders' life. Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle can't think of another word to describe it.

"In fact, those whole two weeks leading up to that were torture," Swingle said.

Swingle speaks about Stephanie in admiring terms. He wonders how many people on this whole planet could have done as well as she did under even remotely similar circumstances.

After the murder. In the interview rooms. On the witness stand.

Reliving the nightmare. Again. And again. And again.

"I was really impressed with how strong she was," Swingle said.

Swingle got to know Stephanie well in the weeks that led up to Bucklew's trial.

He came to learn, in great detail, what Bucklew did in that trailer and during those long twisted hours after.

And how that wasn't even the first time Bucklew had attacked Stephanie.

Swingle also discovered how Stephanie and Bucklew met, had come to live together and some of the details about when the relationship had first become violent.

It was a story that would be laid out in court, during that weeklong trial in 1997.

Stephanie first laid eyes on Russell Bucklew, Rusty to those who knew him well, in the summer of 1995, while she was still married to a man named Charlie Ray, the father of her children. Stephanie was still living with Ray on Frederick Street in Cape Girardeau when she met Rusty.

Bucklew later told police he helped Stephanie out of a "bad marriage."

It's not clear when or how the relationship between Stephanie and Rusty began. What is certain is that, by fall, Stephanie was divorced from Ray and she and Rusty were living with her mother on Cape Rock Drive.

Things were OK between them for a time. Rusty helped out with the girls. He fed them, changed their diapers. Bought them toys. Stephanie trusted Rusty to take care of Cristen and Charley when she was out running errands or at work.

For a time, they even called him Daddy.

In a matter of months, Rusty asked Stephanie to marry him. They once visited a bridal shop together.

Rusty sent her flowers, accompanied with the inscription: "To the three most important people in my life."

Stephanie helped take care of Rusty, too. Rusty had been diagnosed as a child with hemangiomas, which are essentially small, ball-shaped masses of blood vessels under the skin. The condition caused tumors to appear in his sinus cavity and in the upper portion of his mouth.

Rusty would complain about the pain and Stephanie would take him to the ER several times a week to get shots of Demerol.

Rusty wasn't employed. They were basically living off Stephanie's mom, along with Stephanie's meager paycheck from Ceramo in Jackson, where she inspected clay flowerpots to make sure they weren't damaged. It was a place she would eventually come to know, and love, a man named Mike Sanders.

In that fall of 1995, Rusty, Stephanie and the girls struck out on their own. They found a trailer in Cape Girardeau on Silver Springs Road.

By Christmas, Stephanie was pregnant.

Two months later, the relationship would be over.

A month after that, Mike Sanders would be dead.

---

It's been an hour since the murder. Stephanie is Rusty's captive.

She isn't sure where they are. Or where they're going. Or where they have been.

She watches from the passenger seat, with Rusty rambling, signs blurring past.

Burfordville.

Millersville.

Scopus.

Her head throbs from the smack Rusty gave her with the pistol. The smack that fractured her jaw would later require stitches.

She can't think straight. The cuffs are still digging into her wrists, but at least now she's cuffed with her arms in front of her.

Stay calm, she tells herself. Stay cool, or he'll kill you.

At one point, Rusty laughs.

"I know Michael is dead," he says. "I used hollow points."

He adds: "I might have killed his kid, too."

Rusty has already made her do things she will never be able to erase from her memory.

As soon as they had pulled out of the trailer park where Mike died, Rusty forced Stephanie to give him oral sex.

"Either do it or I'll kill you," he told her. "I'll break your neck."

Now, after, Rusty is telling Stephanie that he has been watching her all day.

That he knew she wouldn't meet him like she had promised. That she was lying.

Rusty had followed her to pick up her check, then to her grandfather's. Rusty had watched from a distance as she worked in his backyard, the rise and fall of the ax she used to bust up the concrete to make way for a fence.

Later, Rusty had followed her to Bottom Dollar Bobs. He sat in the Honda while she shopped for clothes for the children.

He followed her to pick up her check. Later to Food Giant, where she had bought ham and milk.

Then to the baby sitter's to pick up the girls.

"Why didn't you do something then?" Stephanie says. "Why wait and do that in front of the kids?"

Rusty tells her he wanted to catch her with Mike.

And he had.

Rusty had also followed her back to Mike's mobile home. Had seen Mike greet her in the yard with a kiss. He had watched as Stephanie gathered up the girls and the four of them had gone into the house.

Rusty had decided then and there, he said, to go in and get her.

Now, here they are. On this lonely stretch of gravel, somewhere west of Jackson.

Rusty is pulling the car up to the edge of a dark, abandoned field.

He pulls the Honda to a stop.

"I'm going to have sex with you," Rusty says.

Horrified, Stephanie resists, says "No you're not."

Rusty puts the gun to her head. "Yeah, you are."

She knows he's right. He has the gun. She knows he won't hesitate to use it.

The fight leaves her.

"Don't get stupid and I won't kill you."

That's what Rusty tells her just before he rapes her.

---

On Valentine's Day, Stephanie lost the baby. That was really the end of her relationship with Rusty.

She'd had it with him not working, having to take care of him. She suspected he was making a big show out of the tumors in his mouth. She doubted they were as serious as he let on.

Stephanie later testified in court that she told Rusty that it was over. That she broke up with him and drove him to Troy, Mo., and dropped him off at his parents' house. Rid of him, she thought.

Rusty had a different version. He later told police that losing the baby had taken its toll on both of them. His medicine wasn't easing the pain and the alpha interferon, meant to shrink the tumors, wasn't doing its job either.

The two of them, by Rusty's account, just decided they needed a few days apart. He admitted they had been fighting more, but nothing serious. Nothing that warranted ending it.

It was a break, not a breakup.

"She'd always been with me, side by side, and we was just in love with each other," he told police. "When we fought, it was just a few cross words and then we'd separate to cool off. Like anybody."

Two days. Maybe three. At most.

Sometime after Bucklew left for Troy, Stephanie's friendship with Mike, with whom she worked at Ceramo, deepened.

They were friends at first, she said later. But they began spending more time together. Mike gave her guitar lessons. Whatever Mike and Stephanie were at that point, by the time Rusty returned from Troy, Mo., 15 days before the murder, he found Mike in his trailer. The one Rusty had shared with Stephanie.

Their home.

And he didn't like it. Not. One. Bit.

Rusty walked into the trailer, along with toys for Stephanie's girls and a rose for Stephanie.

Mike had left his guitar and amp at the trailer Rusty and Stephanie had shared and Mike had stopped by to get it. Stephanie had given Mike a key, told him to pick up his guitar on his way home.

But when Rusty saw Mike in the trailer, he grabbed a kitchen knife and put it to Mike's throat.

"You'd better get the hell out of my house or I'm going to kill you," Rusty said.

Mike tried to explain that he and Stephanie worked together and were just friends.

"OK, fine," Rusty said, pulling the knife away from Mike's neck. "Just don't ever come back."

Mike left, but Rusty was going to get to the bottom of it. He had some serious questions for Stephanie. She had to come home sooner or later.

Rusty sat down and began to wait.

---

Interstate 55. Heading north.

After he had raped her, Rusty did not put the handcuffs back on Stephanie. Now there is duct tape wound tightly around her wrists, binding her hands together. Throughout the drive, Rusty alternates between handcuffs and duct tape, seemingly without reason.

Rusty is talking again. He has a gun in the hand he's not using to steer. The other gun rests in his lap.

Stephanie considers grabbing that one. Decides not to.

Rusty is pretty much talking nonstop. He speaks of his mother and father. He talks of the two of them starting over in Colorado. About how much he loves her.

Rusty says he won't go back to jail like he had in 1988 for burglary. He refuses. He can't stand the thought of going to prison.

He knows he will get the death penalty.

And there's no glory in that.

Stephanie knows about Rusty's blaze of glory line of thinking. Rusty had told her once he wanted the Bon Jovi song, "Blaze of Glory" played at his funeral.

If he dies tonight, he tells her, it will be in a shootout with the cops. That would be a blaze of glory, in Rusty's eyes.

And if he plans to die, he is going to take as many of those cops with him with him as he can.

They're watching the towns fly by again.

Old Appleton.

Perryville.

Ste. Genevieve.

Rusty notices they need gas. He pulls off at a 7-Eleven in Festus.

He cuffs Stephanie to the steering wheel. He takes one gun with him and one is left lying on the driver's side floorboard. Just out of her reach.

He gives Stephanie a warning: "If you scream, if you honk that horn, I'll shoot every son of a bitch in this place."

She believes him.

When he returns, he brings back cigarettes, a soda and two Tylenol for Stephanie. He steers back onto the interstate. Rusty tells Stephanie he has decided he is going to let her off at a hospital and he is going to run. He doesn't know where he is going -- he mentions Denver again -- but, wherever it is, he is going to get as far away from here as he can.

That's when Rusty sees a police car pull from the median and fall in behind them.

---

When Stephanie and her daughters got home from work, she was tired. She was glad they were alone. Desperate for rest.

She and the girls were still at the mobile home on Silver Springs that they had shared with Rusty. Rusty, she believed, was still in Troy, Mo., with his parents.

She closed the door behind her and heard a voice: "Hi, honey, how are you?"

Rusty was behind the door, holding a butcher knife.

He grabbed her collar, pulled her to the ground and dragged her through the house to the back bedroom.

The two tussled before Rusty finally got her pinned to the bed.

He put the knife to her throat. He cut her left cheek.

Stephanie struggled. Somehow, she got up. Cursed him.

Rusty decided to leave. But not before ...

Rusty had once told Stephanie that only a punk would hit a woman.

Now, he turned and punched Stephanie in the face.

"Now I'm a punk," he said and left.

Stephanie reported Rusty's punch to police, who photographed her injuries.

She hoped it was over. It wasn't.

She heard from Rusty the next day, while she was working at Ceramo. He called her on the phone.

"I know you've been cheating on me," Rusty said. "If I ever see you around that guy again, I will kill you and the kids. I will cut them up in front of you."

She contacted the police again. This time, she got an order of protection, ordering Rusty to stay away from them. Stephanie was scared. She knew she could not stay at that trailer on Silver Springs anymore.

The first night, she stayed with her mother.

The night after that, she moved in with Mike.

Sometime between March 8 and March 21, she and Mike became boyfriend and girlfriend, and she decided to move in with him permanently. Mike was a stark contrast with Rusty. He was kind. He didn't have a violent bone in his body.

At some point, she said, she and Mike had fallen in love.

On March 14, a week before the murder, Stephanie returned to the trailer she had shared with Rusty. Perhaps she hoped it was the last time she'd have to go there.

She was throwing some clothes in a box when Rusty came home.

She was scared, but she had to go back to get some more of their things.

This time, Rusty begged her to come back to him.

She said she wouldn't. Not after what he had done.

Rusty grabbed her, put her in a choke hold. Slammed her against a wall.

She faded from consciousness.

When she came to, she was tied to the bed with a dog chain.

He had cut her shirt off. He tried to gag her, but she got loose. She ran for the door. Made it outside to the neighbor's trailer.

Rusty jumped her. Stephanie fought back. She head-butted him. He showed her that he had a butcher knife.

Stephanie fell, hit her head on some concrete.

She faded from consciousness again. When she came to, she was back on the bed.

Rusty was calm.

"I didn't want to hurt you," Rusty said softly. "I didn't want to hit you. I promise I'm not going to hit you anymore."

Stephanie was going to try something different. She would tell him whatever she needed to get out of here.

She told him she did want to be with him. She had missed him. She convinced him that she would meet him Thursday.

"I don't care that you hit me," she told him.

She just had to get her things from Mike's house. Go see her mother. Tie up a few loose ends.

"I'll meet you Thursday and we can be together," she promised.

Bucklew made a promise of his own.

"If you don't meet me Thursday, I'll come back with a vengeance," Rusty said.

---

Missouri State Highway Patrolman J.T. Hedrick is keeping his eyes out for a killer.

He is sitting in the median on Interstate 55. He had just pulled his cruiser into position a few minutes before. Only about four cars have gone by.

The broadcast had come over the radio about 10 p.m. to be on the lookout for a dark-colored Honda.

The driver is dangerous. He is wanted for a murder that had happened earlier in the day down in Cape Girardeau County, about 75 miles or so south of Hedrick's Jefferson County zone.

The guy, Russell Bucklew, apparently has a female hostage.

Hedrick is barely settled in, had just put the cruiser in park less than a minute ago, when he sees the Honda.

And the plates are a match. Or close.

He pulls the cruiser into drive and falls in behind the Honda.

Hedrick radios to dispatch that he is behind a vehicle with a matching description for the murder suspect.

Hedrick keeps the cruiser back, about a quarter mile. He's watching.

As they pass under the mile marker 181 overpass, two other unmarked patrol cars move in front of Hedrick, just behind the Honda.

Now there are three patrol cars directly behind the Honda. Other fully marked patrol cars are moving in position on the shoulder of northbound 55. Hedrick is directed to move his vehicle to the left side of the Honda as another pulls along the right.

A rolling roadblock. Block the vehicle in, decrease speed, get the car to stop.

But it doesn't work. A Suburban inadvertently gets between the cars.

He thinks he's the target, Hedrick thinks of the Suburban's driver.

Surprisingly, the Suburban stops directly in front of the Honda and the Honda is forced to a full stop, with highway patrol cruisers on either side.

Hedrick hops out of his car. He approaches the back of the Honda near the trunk.

He sees the driver hold up a revolver.

He's pointing it at the hostage's head.

Now, while still in the Honda, the driver waves the gun in all directions, at the girl, the cops, everyone.

Hedrick finds cover.

"Stop!" Hedrick yells. "Drop the gun and get out of the vehicle!"

But the driver of the Suburban, perhaps sensing danger, speeds off, leaving the Honda an escape route. The Honda takes it.

Hedrick hops back into the cruiser. He speeds up and pulls directly behind the Honda again. The other cruisers are behind Hedrick. The Honda pulls onto northbound Interstate 270.

There are now at least 12 highway patrol cruisers in the mix.

Hedrick is told over the radio to pull ahead of the Honda. Hedrick races past the Honda to its left. Hedrick is told to get in front of the Honda, decrease speed and they'd try another rolling roadblock on northbound 270.

As he passes, Hedrick looks inside the Honda.

The man is still holding the gun to the woman's head.

Hedrick is told over the radio that tire deflators, or spike strips, have been laid down in two center lanes of the highway.

"Try to keep the Honda in those lanes," Hedrick is told.

The driver of the Honda tries to get off to the right on to the exit ramp. Hedrick and the Honda swerve toward each other, the cruiser keeping the Honda in the direct path of the spike strips. Another cruiser gets on the other side of the Honda. The Honda is heading right for the spikes.

He sees the driver of the Honda point the gun at the trooper on the other side.

He's going to shoot him, Hedrick thinks.

That's when Hedrick puts an end to this.

He accelerates, pulls in front of the Honda and slams on his brakes. The driver, this Bucklew, has no choice but to stop.

Hedrick looks behind him. He's now in front of the Honda. Hedrick sees now that the driver is pointing the gun directly at him.

Hedrick slides down in his seat. The driver moves the gun back to the woman's head. Then at another trooper, who has gotten out of another cruiser. Parrish.

Hedrick opens his door and Parish jumps behind it for cover, kneels down.

The driver keeps alternating the gun.

One second, he's pointing the gun at the girl.

The next at them.

"Shoot him!" Hedrick yells to Parish. "He's going to shoot us if you don't!"

"I can't take a shot," Parrish says. "I'll hit the hostage! I don't have a shot!"

The engine of the Honda roars and the Honda slams into the front of Hedrick's cruiser, trying to push it out of the way. The driver is trying to create room for another escape.

The collision knocks Parrish to the ground and jostles Hedrick from behind the wheel and he tumbles to the pavement.

Hedrick is exposed. He sees the driver pointing the black semi-automatic gun directly at him.

Hedrick raises his sidearm and almost instinctively fires two rounds into the Honda's windshield. He can see the driver's "blue, blue" eyes and sets his sights directly on them.

Hedrick fires once more, leaps to his feet and charges the Honda.

Hedrick sees flashes from inside the Honda. He sees smoke and glass exploding from the windshield.

The driver is shooting at him.

Hedrick breaks right, ducking and dodging. Hedrick returns fire, four shots.

Hedrick jerks open the driver's side door, places his gun against the driver's head. He searches him for a weapon.

The driver is slumped into the passenger's side and the weapon is no longer in view.

Hedrick holsters his sidearm.

Sighs.

It's over.

The other patrolmen move in.

Hedrick walks down the highway as he hears ambulances in the distance. He feels a sharp pain in his leg. Glass is piercing his skin.

The driver is in custody. He doesn't know much about the man. His name, that he's accused of murder. He knows the man will go to jail. There's no doubt about that.

And Bucklew does go to jail, where the plan is to try him for capital murder. The death penalty will be sought.

In a perfect world, Bucklew would never be able to hurt anyone again.

But the world is far from perfect. And a man obsessed is far from predictable. Unfortunately, the Cape Girardeau County Jail would not be able to hold Russell Bucklew for long.

Next: The escape