Fugitive says life on run was full of loneliness, loss and lies

WAVERLY

Sitting on the steps of their trailer in handcuffs, the couple called each other by their real names for the first time in almost 30 years.

The aliases they devised for themselves had long rolled off the tongue as naturally as if they'd been born with them. Now they struggled with the sound of the truth: Richard Boucher. Debbie Boucher.

Inside, police searched closets and drawers.

Debbie Boucher had never been in trouble and wouldn't be now, her husband thought, if not for his foolhardy escape from a Chesapeake prison. Richard Boucher thought he could make things right on the outside, so he'd asked her to meet him with a car near Tidewater Correctional Unit No. 22 one October night in 1982.

He did not imagine the price they would pay for his freedom, the vastness of the lies and the losses. He didn't expect the blessings, either.

Richard Boucher shuffled into a tiny no-contact visitation booth at Sussex I State Prison last week and spoke from behind double-paned glass. He is 57, has lost the use of his right hand and walks with a slight limp.

More than half a dozen remotely operated doors and gates trimmed in barbed wire separate him from the outside; until his capture May 13 in Murray County, Ga., he was one of the Virginia Department of Correction's most wanted.

On Wednesday, he will face 27-year-old felony escape and assault charges in Chesapeake General District Court. Together they carry maximum penalties of 15 years behind bars, said Anne Coughlin, a University of Virginia law professor. It will be up to a parole board to decide whether he must finish the 10-year sentence for the robbery that put him in jail in the first place. He served less than two.

Except for a glimpse at the Georgia jailhouse, Richard Boucher has not seen his wife since the police carted them from their trailer, shocking the tiny town of Eton where they lived in the Appalachian Mountains.

They had been there almost since the beginning, scraping by as two people who dropped out of nowhere with nothing to do.

Richard Boucher, his long, unruly hair cut short since his arrest, nervously tapped his fingers at the bottom of the window. He didn't want to come across like a crazy person on an afternoon talk show. He wanted people to know this: Something traumatic happened while he was in jail that sent him fleeing south in the dark with little more than fishing line, a pocket knife and a few sets of clothing.

What that was might come out in court, he said, but until then he doesn't want to talk about it.

"It wasn't like I had to have a beer and a pizza," Richard Boucher said. "This is the way I thought I had to do this."

He can't remember when they got to Georgia, only that the weather was turning cold and he had big blisters on his feet. The car ran out of gas somewhere in North Carolina, so they'd sold it, bought camping gear and set out on foot, taking the Appalachian Trail for a while, then sticking to the highway, where people occasionally offered rides.

In Murray County, Ga., they got permission to camp at the Saddle Club, a place that hosted equestrian events. They'd planned to move on until a big storm left it damaged and the owners paid them to clean up. Then some club members offered them a place to stay in exchange for work and keeping an eye on the place.

They became Eric and Diane Coleman.

He missed his parents. She missed her mother. Each had a sister. They dared not contact them for fear of being caught. At Thanksgivings, Christmases and birthdays, the mood fell. They wondered if their families were well - or even alive.

"You know they're wondering the same thing," Boucher said.

He planned to stay gone for a decade, thinking that if he avoided trouble he could return to Chesapeake and finish his time.

"I know it sounds stupid," he said, and it never happened because life did.

The Bouchers did not think they would have a child. Years earlier, Debbie Boucher had carried twins nearly to term before losing them. But by the end of 1983, they were expecting.

They named her Pamela for Debbie Boucher's sister. "We never forgot."

The holidays got easier with their daughter 's birth, the loss of their families bearable. Daily struggles didn't.

It was, Richard Boucher said, like looking at your favorite food. Smelling it. Touching it. But not being able to take just one bite.

He helped build houses he couldn't live in. He watched people buy homes and cars and wished he could give his wife and child the things he thought they deserved. More than one holiday was celebrated with just a can of Spam.

He and Debbie Boucher never drove a car. They never owned anything they couldn't pay cash for.

He took jobs that paid under the table, some good, some not so. He chipped mortar off bricks and cinder blocks and broke down wooden pallets for $20 a day.

Hospitals weren't good for people like them. Bills were expensive and they didn't have insurance.

Debbie Boucher only went twice, in addition to the birth of their daughter. They paid in cash installments.

Richard Boucher never regained use of his right hand after a kitchen accident. There was no money for the surgery.

He and Debbie Boucher ate at a restaurant once, on an anniversary. It wasn't expensive, he said. He remembers he got the chicken.

As their daughter aged, she realized they weren't well off, that things didn't seem exactly right. They smoothed it over with white lies, Richard Boucher said. He had too many traffic violations to drive and Mama was too nervous.

"She was the one I tried to make sure I couldn't hurt," he said of his daughter. "I figured she'd forgive me on that."

Every six months or so, he thought about turning himself in.

Every day for 27 years, he got up and told himself he could get through one more. He wanted to see his daughter come of age, and he did. She married and had two babies. They called him Pop-Pop. He wanted to see them grow up.

Richard Boucher knew the sham could be over at any time.

Police once stopped him as he walked along the highway with the bookbag he always carried. They figured he was a transient. He explained he lived just up the road. That was always the end of it.

He never slept well. Noises made his heart pound.

When the police came for him at the trailer on Hooker Road, appearing in the woods with guns drawn, he thought they were looking for someone else. Then they used his real name. That one he hadn't heard in so long.

He wondered, in his soft, polite manner of speaking, how much longer he could have done it?

The carpet companies, Murray County's lifeblood, were laying people off. There wasn't much work for people like Richard Boucher. His blood pressure was high. He couldn't swing a hammer anymore.

It ended abruptly, perhaps for the best.

Police hauled him back to Virginia while his wife, daughter and grandkids stayed behind.

Debbie Boucher's mother and sister visited them over the Fourth of July.

Richard Boucher called his dad from jail.

His mother, he learned, died five years ago. He regrets that she never knew what had become of her son; that so many people expected the worst for so many years.

He still doesn't sleep well.

"There are too many things," he said. "I couldn't list them all. I'll never get that back."

Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5555, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com