Some follow-up on that article.
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWSApril 25, 1993, Sunday, HOME FINAL EDITION
Fugitive Cathey forged new life;
He lived life of Oklahoma woodsman
BYLINE: Pete Slover, Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 35A
LENGTH: 1234 words
DATELINE: HODGEN, Okla
One thing distinguished the well-spoken 51-year-old psychologist from the dozens of other Texas land buyers Monte Shockley had seen.
"He was probably the single most intelligent person I've ever met,' Mr. Shockley said Saturday, recalling the balding stranger he met in May.
The man had tooled five winding hours of highway to seek his corner of paradise amid the verdant rolling mountains of southeastern Oklahoma. Leaning on the bumper of his white Lincoln Continental, he handed Mr. Shockley a card stamped with his oddly alliterative name -- soon to be penned on papers closing a 20-acre sale -- Preston Primm.
But as suddenly as he appeared, Preston Primm -- or at least the fiction of Preston Primm -- disappeared, wiped out Wednesday in a shootout with local lawmen. He is jailed in lieu of $ 2 million bail on charges that he shot at officers.
His real identity, discovered after his arrest: Bill Cathey, former University of North Texas English instructor, a fugitive whose Texas charges include kidnapping and forcing a Dallas woman into sexual slavery in the summer of 1991.
In the same way that Dr. Cathey's Dallas associates reeled at his original kidnapping arrest, his Oklahoma acquaintances have watched in shock as the Preston Primm they knew melted like a carefully built snowman in a warm rain.
Last May, Dr. Cathey, as Preston Primm, answered Mr. Shockley's land ad in a Dallas newspaper. He said he was a widower, mourning his wife's recent death in a car crash, in need of a place to heal his withered psyche.
In truth, he was about to jump bond and flee Texas and faced a July trial on a kidnapping charge. After closing on the Oklahoma property in June, he bought about $ 1,400 in camping equipment and disappeared from Texas.
About that time, Mr. Shockley said, Dr. Cathey arrived to work his claim, a scenic square sandwiched between the clear-running Black Fork River and the Ouachita National Forest. Access to the plot requires a 20-minute, four-wheel-drive creep along a rocky trail, covered in spots by foot-deep streams.
The newcomer sank a well, hauled in wood and began building a cabin, the locals recalled. With a small cash down payment, he bought an adjacent 20 acres, regularly making total mortgage payments of $ 300 to Mr. Shockley for his $ 30,000 debt. Unlike other settlers, he told folks that he wasn't a hunter and couldn't shoot another living being.
"He just seemed real, real nice,' said Danny Baxter, an exterminator from Poteau, Okla.
The woodsman's friendly face and bushy beard became known among the 8,000 residents of Poteau, the LeFlore County seat. He would sip coffee with the regulars at the new car showroom, chatting wittily about any and every subject: religion, politics, history. The man is a genius, the word got around.
"He was real likable, and I liked him,' said Sara Allen, a Poteau lawyer.
Mr. Shockley recalled that he last drank coffee with "Preston' Wednesday morning, the day of the fateful shootout. Preston said he was headed to the courthouse to check on his property taxes and inquire about getting a utility hookup.
Confrontation over car
Authorities say that about 2 p.m. that day, Dr. Cathey approached two deputies who were investigating a stolen car found abandoned near a minimum-security prison a few miles from his encampment.
After saying that he owned the car, stolen from Paris, Texas, Dr. Cathey learned that the deputies planned to tow the vehicle, deputies said.
It was then that he reportedly pulled a 9mm pistol and threatened to shoot one of the deputies. The other officer distracted Dr. Cathey, and the first deputy shot him. Dr. Cathey shot back, missing the deputies but hitting their car, deputies said.
Dr. Cathey was wearing a bulletproof vest. He was nicked on the cheek, and another bullet neatly pierced his left ear, according to a friend who visited him in jail. Another shot hit him in the chest of his protective vest, then careened into the fleshy part of his upper chest.
After two days in a Fort Smith, Ark., hospital, Dr. Cathey was moved to the LaFlore County jail Friday, where he is being held in lieu of $ 2 million bail. He has pleaded not guilty and faces up to life in prison on several felony charges stemming from the shootout.
Police speculate that Dr. Cathey parked the stolen vehicle because it could not make it through the rough road leading to his camp. When they searched his encampment, they reported finding a cache of stolen vehicles, including a pickup truck and a sedan taken from the Dallas area about the time he fled last year.
They also confiscated Dr. Cathey's dwelling, a 2-year-old motor home stolen from a Garland dealership about the same time as the other cars.
All of the vehicles had altered identification numbers, and police say they found equipment for doctoring those vehicle numbers, similar to rigs that Dallas-area police seized during their investigation of Dr. Cathey.
The contents of the cram-packed motor home, now parked at a Poteau bank, include keymaking equipment, gun silencers, a small quantity of amphetamines, evidence of 20 aliases and numerous books, including survivalist manuals and volumes on concealing identity.
A visit to Dr. Cathey's camp Saturday showed that he left behind a finished outbuilding, power tools, lumber and empty boxes of blanks for making duplicate keys. Also visible were a sturdy pumphouse, electrical generator, kerosene lanterns and an open-air toilet -- a frame of two-by-fours perched over a hole in the ground.
On the building door was a computer-generated note asking, "In case of emergency, please call Preston Primm,' with a Dallas phone number.
That number apparently was a voice-mail service, still answered by a recording of a voice resembling Dr. Cathey's.
Dr. Cathey has asked for a court-appointed lawyer, saying he cannot afford to pay one. Dallas authorities say they will wait until Oklahoma charges are disposed of to prosecute the kidnapping charge and related drug and driver's license forgery cases.
The Preston persona
It was with a mixture of puzzlement, shock and embarrassment that the LeFlore County citizenry learned the truth behind the man still commonly called by his assumed name.
"Preston' had not operated a lucrative counseling practice, as he had said. He wasn't a Vietnam veteran, a motivational weight-loss lecturer, a published author or a computer programmer. Preston, in short, wasn't Preston.
Heck, even his bald patch turned out to be fake, a shaved disguise that revealed a coating of stubble after several razorless days behind bars.
"I never would have guessed it. Never,' said Jim Kersh, who met Dr. Cathey over coffee at the local car dealership. "Preston was just a real decent guy.'
But Assistant LeFlore County District Attorney Gary Buckles offered a concise summary of Dr. Cathey's adventures in Oklahoma.
"He conned everybody,' Mr. Buckles said.
On the tip of many Poteau tongues was a tough question: Why would a fugitive, comfortably out of sight, risk his future in a confrontation over a stolen car?"Maybe he liked it here. Maybe he wanted to live here the rest of his life,' Mr. Shockley said, taking a slow glance around Dr. Cathey's rustic settlement, the shadowy woods, the bass-laden river nearby.
"Maybe he knew it could all be taken away from him, and he couldn't handle that.'