Tracy Province told Mohave County sheriff’s Detective Larry
Matthews that he had wanted to go up on a mountain, inject a gram of heroin and
“be bear food.” As he was preparing the drug, a voice told him not to go
through with the plan, and he changed course in favor of trying to hitchhike to
Indiana to see family.
“He called it divine intervention,” Matthews wrote in an
August report.
Al Nash, a spokesman at Yellowstone National Park, said it’s
certainly possible that Province’s plan would have worked, but it struck him as
improbable.
“We have a fair number of bears in the ecosystem,” Nash
said. “They eat about anything. A bear would rather get an easy meal than a
difficult meal, but human bear encounters are very infrequent.” Authorities say
Province asked fellow convict John McCluskey and their alleged accomplice,
Casslyn Mae Welch, to take him to Yellowstone, so they drove him to the Wyoming
park from New Mexico. Province doesn’t name anyone else in the interview with
Matthews, but it’s clear whom he’s with.
Their travels took them to the Phoenix area to get clothing
and to an eastern Arizona Walmart to buy sleeping bags, and they got turned
around in Oklahoma and Texas, Province said in the interview first reported
Thursday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The trio face capital murder and carjacking charges in New
Mexico, where they’re accused of killing an Oklahoma couple and burning their
bodies inside a camping trailer.
Province has pleaded guilty to Arizona charges of escape,
kidnapping, aggravated assault and armed robbery and is scheduled to be
sentenced Friday. He then will be sent to New Mexico to face charges there.
Province, McCluskey and a third inmate, Daniel Renwick,
escaped from a minimum-security prison near Kingman on July 30. Authorities say
Welch helped them flee by throwing cutting tools over the perimeter fence.
Province told Matthews about his plan to commit suicide
after he was returned to Arizona following his Aug. 9 capture in the sleepy
town of Meeteetse, Wyoming.
He was serving two life sentences for murder and robbery and
told Matthews he fantasized about fleeing but became nervous after scaling a
fence topped with barbed wire and cutting through another fence. The trio’s escape
went unnoticed for hours.
“He didn’t know why anyone would want to escape because all
you do is look over you(r) shoulder the entire time,” Matthews wrote.
Province told the detective he had put a gun under a pillow
at an Albuquerque motel, then turned on the TV and saw a story about the
escape, so he panicked and left without the weapon.
Province also discovered that he forgot how to drive during
their time in New Mexico, telling Matthews that he almost hit other motorists.
The group of fugitives ended up leaving the vehicle he was driving behind.
“Everyone drives too fast now,” Matthews quoted Province as
saying. “When he went to prison the speed limit was 55” mph, or 80 kph.
Province recounted to Matthews that he told his traveling
companions he was upset after the New Mexico killings and that “he wasn’t in
for it.” The two suggested Yellowstone, and they dropped him off there.
The escape that Province said was planned over a couple of
weeks spurred a nationwide manhunt for the fugitives.
Renwick had split from the group right away and was captured
days later after a shootout with police in Colorado.
Authorities caught up with McCluskey and Welch in eastern
Arizona, where a Forest Service employee spotted the beat-up Nissan they were
driving at a campground. They are set to go to trial on Arizona charges April
19.
