By Russ Rizzo
The Salt Lake Tribune
ROY, Wyoming— A self-described loner, Bill Johnson says he’s not a hero.
And Johnson hopes people can understand why he has shied away from publicity, despite being credited with triggering the capture of two murderers who escaped the Daggett County jail last week and kept an entire region — and families of the two women they killed — on edge.
“It’s silly,” Johnson said of the fuss everyone is making about him.
“I ain’t no hero. I’m just a victim of circumstance and lucked out.”
Johnson asked authorities to keep his name, and especially his age, private.
“I’ve been lying about my age for years, but I guess they know now,” Johnson said Monday.
After six nights on the run, convicted murderers Danny Gallegos, 49, and Juan Carlos “Blue” Diaz-Arevalo, 27, broke into Johnson’s trailer while he was away and waited for him. They stuck a knife to his back and tied him up with duct tape and strips of bedsheets before taking off in his Ford Explorer.
Johnson wiggled free and flagged down a Roy couple, who called 911. The escapees were caught just minutes later.
It didn’t take long for police and the public alike to start calling Johnson a hero for outwitting the bad guys by getting loose and calling the cops.
But to Johnson, the real saviors are the couple from
Roy who stopped to pick up a 79-year-old man who was jumping up and down on the side of a road in the dark during a blowing snowstorm.
The man driving the truck passed Johnson initially, Johnson said, but his wife persuaded him to go back.
“They’re the ones who saved the day,” said Johnson, who lives alone in Sandy. “If they hadn’t come along, those guys would probably be in Mexico by now.”
Johnson figured all along Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo had made it to Mexico.
He learned Saturday evening he was wrong.
After about three hours at a barn dance hosted by a local millionaire, Johnson drove his closest friend, Doug Anderson, to his car, parked at the junction of State Road 414 and Spirit Lake Road, and went back to his camper. He entered the front door of his camper about 7:30 p.m. and was immediately accosted by the pair.
One of the men grabbed Johnson from behind and held a knife to his back. They threw him to the floor.
The camper was dark, and the men wore cloth — possibly handkerchiefs — over their faces. But from the first second, Johnson said, he knew it was the escapees police had been looking for since Sept. 23.
On the floor, Johnson said, he worried the convicted killers would also do away with him.
“They said to behave and I wouldn’t get hurt,” Johnson said. “I just kept my mouth shut and answered their questions.”
The escapees, whom Johnson described as calm, had many questions: Where was his wallet? Why did he keep coming in and out of the trailer all day? How much gas was in his car?
They kept the camper’s light off - turning it on for just a brief moment at one point - while they rummaged through his things.
Johnson was relieved, he said, when one of the men - who he believes was Diaz-Arevalo - began binding his wrists and ankles with duct tape in the back of the camper. They wouldn’t bother tying him up if they were going to kill him, he figured.
Diaz-Arevalo used strips of a bedsheet to tie Johnson to a bed post that spans the floor to the ceiling as Gallegos took things to Johnson’s Ford Explorer.
Johnson said he was careful to keep his wrists apart as Diaz-Arevalo bound them with tape to allow him room to work out the knots later.
But he shrugged off the notion that he learned the trick from his days as a Salt Lake City patrol officer.
“I might have watched it on TV or something,” he said.
A tense moment during the 30-minute ordeal, by Johnson’s estimation, came when Johnson made a comment about not being young anymore, he said.
Diaz-Arevalo looked up from tying him up with a concerned look, he said. He was apparently worried Johnson had gotten a good look at him, he said.
Then the killers committed a big blunder. They asked Johnson where the road in front of his trailer led. He told them that at the crossroad, they could turn left to go to Mountain View, right to get to Manila, where the jail is, or straight to get to Green River, Wyo. - which was all true.
The men seemed interested in the route that took them to Green River, he said.
“Does that take us to Rock Springs?” one of the men asked, letting Johnson know their intended route.
After loading Johnson’s car with camping gear, his only flashlight, a box of matches and his “good” sleeping bag, the men threw another sleeping bag on Johnson and left him tied to the bed post. Johnson kept a rifle and two handguns with ammunition in the Explorer and had groceries in the back, he said. They took the keys to his all-terrain vehicle.
As the men left, they made a bizarre promise.
“They said, ‘We’ll have somebody come up and untie you in a couple days,’ '' Johnson said. “I didn’t dare ask who that would be.”
It was the second time one of the men - Johnson believes it was Gallegos, based on his age - said that, Johnson said.
Once the men left, Johnson worked himself free. He got his right hand free from the duct tape first then undid the knots in the sheets and took the tape off his ankles, he said. He went to the road and flagged down the Roy couple, who drove him five miles to the end of the road, where they got cellular phone service and called police.
Eight minutes later, a Sweetwater County, Wyo., sheriff’s deputy spotted the Explorer in Green River and chased it for 11 miles at speeds exceeding 100 mph, onto Interstate 80.
After troopers punctured the SUV’s tires, Diaz-Arevalo stopped the Explorer between Green River and Evanston and the men exited with guns, police said. A deputy shot Gallegos, and officers chased down Diaz-Arevalo.
Johnson’s quiet, secluded life has been anything but since, he said.
“I haven’t shaken so many hands, probably, in my entire social career,” he said, describing officers thankful to have two killers back in custody.
Johnson returned to his home in Salt Lake County on Saturday and said his phone has hardly stopped ringing since, with friends congratulating Utah’s newest “hero.”
Most everyone tells him it’s a wonder the duo didn’t kill him, Johnson said. And he agrees.
He said it “doesn’t look too good” for an ex-cop to be apprehended by criminals, but he doesn’t plan to dwell on it. He wants to know when he’ll get his Explorer back and needs to get a new license because his wallet was in the car.
Johnson said he would accept the $15,000 the U.S. Marshals Service and Utah Department of Corrections plan to give him for helping capture the escapees, and he is glad the Roy couple will get the other $5,000 of the reward.
Despite his humble nature and insistence on deflecting credit for the capture, Johnson said he was relieved the bad guys were caught.
“It turned out good. They got them bastards.”
Copyright 2007 Salt Lake Tribune