Armed and Dangerous: The Hunt for One of America's Most Wanted Criminals

Chapter 1 Everyone called him the mountain man. They said he was the most dangerous, gun-crazy renegade seen in the hills and valleys of Southern California since the days of the Wild West outlaws. The local police departments and sheriffs' offices all said it would be next to impossible for any cop or federal agent to bring him down alive from his mountaintop hideout. In April 1986, when I first caught wind of Mark Stephensthis "mountain man" terrorizing the Inland Empire communities (those in Riverside and San Bernardino counties)I was only in my third year as a special agent with the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. But I'd been a law enforcement officer for over a decade, and I'd made my bones as a local cop in North Carolina and as a federal border patrol agent before becoming an ATF agentI'd certainly heard my share of war stories. Some so-called badass or another was always being touted as the hardest, most cold- blooded criminal in the county, the scariest dude to make the most- wanted lists. I seen this guy whip a dozen cops, other cops would tell you. This guy, he ain't gonna be taken alive. He's crazy. If you try to get cuffs on him, he'll kill you. Ninety-five percent of the times when I confronted these so-called tough guys, all the fight instantly drained out of them. Their ruthlessness turned out to be nothing more than a front, an actor's persona. When I cornered them, they folded up, dropped their guns, and surrendered without so much as a peep. But there are those few criminals out there who are righteously bad. Guys who won't give up without a fight. And when you do decide to confront them, you'd better be ready to fight for your life. Mark Stephens was one such criminal. Stephens was the real McCoy, the most brazen and fearless criminal I encountered in my early years with ATF. He proved to be equal parts gunman, mountain man, drug trafficker, and out-and-out thug. Mark Stephens was a paradox for a criminal investigator. He didn't fit the stereotype: He didn't come from the wrong side of the tracks and wasn't abused as a kid; he wasn't semiliterate or lacking in career opportunities. His parents were well-educated, fairly affluent people who lived in an upscale neighborhood in Rancho Cucamonga, a city of nearly one hundred thousand, located under the majestic San Gabriel mountain range in the Inland Empire, thirty-seven miles east of my ATF desk in downtown Los Angeles. Sometimes the path to a criminal personality can't be easily explained; the factors that determine one's character defy reason. Mark Stephens wasn't a typical bully, the kind of person who seemed to get emotional gratification from picking on the weak. It didn't make any difference to him whether you were male or female, old or young, black or whiteif you stood in his way, he was going to hurt you. Stephens was a man who had no conscience when it came to taking what he wanted by force. And he'd learned early on in life that hurting people was the way to get what he wanted. The intelligent man locked inside of him may have known that violence was wrong, that he had an uncontrollable problem. But violence physically possessed him; it was an overwhelming force he simply couldn't rein in. He understood that it would land him in prison one day, and prison wasn't an option for Stephens. So he decided to separate himself from societyliterally. He headed for the hills, disappearing into the vast, impenetrable San Bernardino Mountains. Stephens put together a basic plan. He would live off the land. He'd grow marijuana in prodigious quantities, smoke as much of it asCentury, Douglas is the author of 'Armed and Dangerous: The Hunt for One of America's Most Wanted Criminals', published 2009 under ISBN 9780345505989 and ISBN 0345505980.