Hostage

I am not really sure where to start because I have never written about this or talked much about it outside the newsroom. But it was a major event in my life and one that I will never forget.

Perhaps I should start where the story began at the City Drug Store on Harrison Ave. It was Memorial Day in 1981, when Thomas Haskins and Darlene Bagget decided to commit armed robbery and take the pharmacist and ten customers hostage.

I was in the newsroom, which was only a couple of blocks away, when the call went out over the scanner. Quickly, I moved a reporter across the street from the drug store, while I grabbed a camera and set up at the back of the building. Police and Sheriff’s deputies were arriving in droves. Soon, Sheriff Lavelle Pitts and his chief investigator, Joe Coram, entered the back of the drug store. A few minutes later, the hostages came out.

I was a bit surprised when a deputy came over to where I was parked and told me that the Sheriff wanted me inside. I followed the deputy, Andy McKenzie Jr, to the rear of the building and asked, “Is the Sheriff inside?” I honestly thought it was over and the Sheriff wanted to make a statement. But I wasn’t certain because it all happened so fast.

“Yes,” he replied.
“Is he armed?”
“Yes, he is armed,” he told me as the door was opening and I was stepping inside. “I mean no. No, he is not armed!”

Then the door closed.

I turned to look into the building and was immediately confronted by Tom Haskins who was armed with a small handgun. I had no trouble evaluating my dilemma. Tom Haskins was dangerous and desperate. He would kill me if I failed to follow his instructions. He was nervous and shaking like a leaf.

“Turn the camera off,” he ordered.

I was speechless and in shock. How could a law enforcement officer send me into a building with an armed gunman? What ever happened to “protect and serve”? Who was protecting me? I was experiencing fear to the tenth power.

Fear is an odd thing, I learned. When it is so intense, so powerful, and so amplified, it is almost calming; replaced by the sudden jolt of adrenaline that races through every capillary. I could taste it in my mouth. Everything shifted into slow motion, like a scene from a bizarre movie. I was certain that I would die and there was nothing that I could do about it. I could hear my inner voice saying, “Just be calm. Just be calm.”

“I said turn the G** d*** camera off!” This time he screamed while waiving the handgun in my face.

I reached down and disconnected the cable which attached to the record deck with such energy that my hand slammed into the wall. I held the cable in the air to demonstrate that the camera was incapable of recording.

“It’s off.” I said calmly, then coiled the cable and laid it on the deck.

Haskins told me to stand there for a minute. I looked back outside at the police officers behind the patrol cars and was surprised to see Bill Hudson, the chief photographer from channel 7, waltzing up to the back door.

I say waltzing because Bill, like me, had no idea what he was getting into. He had this confident swing to his step as he opened the door and walked in. There was no way for me to warn him. He looked at me with a smile on his face, but it quickly disappeared when he discovered he had walked into a very dangerous room.

Haskins, still pointing the gun, locked the door and ordered us to place boxes against it. This especially worried me because now there was not a quick way out of the back of the building. We did as we were told and very quickly moved several boxes in our path of escape.

I assumed the front door, facing Harrison Avenue, was locked. It seemed a mile away from the back of the building. Haskins was running up to the front door to look out, then ran back to where we were stacking.

As soon as we finished, we were taken to the pharmacist’s office. There sat Sheriff Lavelle Pitts, Investigator Joe Coram, and Darlene Baggett. She was sitting at a desk grinding Methadone pills in a mortar and pestle while adding a solution that would later be placed into a syringe. I knew in an instant that this crime was not about money. It was about drugs; a powerful and dangerous motive for junkies.

Once the syringe was ready, Haskins began injecting his accomplice, but was having an extremely tough time finding a vein. It became increasingly clear that he had already taken drugs. He must have taken them before we arrived because I never saw him take an injection or pill. But, later, his speech began to slur and his actions became slow and fluid.

As he tried over and over again to inject the drugs into her vein, he became more disoriented and more dangerous with the needle. She removed her belt, put it around her neck to raise a vein, then Haskins repeatedly jabbed her with a syringe. It was all very strange.

At some point, I asked Haskins if we could turn on our cameras. Surprisingly, he told us it was okay. So, I picked up the camera, reconnected the cable, and began recording.

I had been given a Seiko watch by my wife in January. When I looked down at it, I was shocked to see the crystal broken. It must have broken when I disconnected the camera cable earlier and my hand hit the wall. Seeing the broken watch sent a chill down my spine. Was time about to stop for me?

Thomas Haskins was no stranger to reporters. He had made several appearances before the Bay County Commission seeking funding for a heroine treatment center in the area. His request always fell on deaf ears. There was no way county leaders were going to fund a drug treatment center, much less acknowledge there was a drug problem in Bay County.

It is important to note that Bay County, Florida, was a drug Mecca during the early 1980’s. Federal and state officials were seizing drugs by the boat loads. It seemed almost every week that shrimp boats, airplanes, and tractor trailers were confiscated in our area, loaded with contraband. This part of Florida was clearly a hot spot for drug smuggling. That, however, is another blog.

Haskins was also known in the law enforcement community as a confidential informant. He exchanged information for drugs. Lavelle Pitts had recently been elected the new sheriff in Bay County and he was unwilling to make such a deal with Haskins. So, Haskins, sick from heroine withdrawals, walked out of the Sheriff’s office on Memorial Day in 1981, and into City Drug Store. One way or another he needed a fix, even if it meant a hold up.

During the several minutes Haskins was injecting Methadone into Baggett’s neck, he was talking. He told us that he and Baggett had been to every treatment center between Pensacola and New Orleans looking for treatment, but everyone had turned them away. He was sick and desperate.

There was this one crazy moment when Bill Hudson was trying to light a cigarette. Haskins, needle sticking into Baggett’s neck, turns to Hudson to help him find an ashtray. Here we are, substitute hostages, being held at gunpoint, needle stuck inside the neck of a drug crazed criminal, and Hudson needs an ashtray. What absolute lunacy! I looked at Hudson and thought, “I might be killed before this is over but I’m going to slap you! Would you shut up about the ashtray?”

Trapped in the small office, I recall vividly almost every detail; the calendar on the wall read May 25; the thick beveled glass in the window that would have surely sent a sniper’s bullet anywhere but its intended target; the “clinking” sound from the mortar as the pestle hit the ceramic sides; camera and microphone cables lying over our feet; Hudson’s Aramis cologne; the chrome on the gun. All of this is etched into my memory as if placed there by a sculptor’s chisel.

Haskins had the Sheriff read to us his court documents, but none of it made sense. Sheriff Pitts was trying to keep him satisfied all the while buying time and waiting for the drugs to take control. The phone would ring occasionally and the Sherriff would take the call and say things like, “the drug store is closed.” I guessed it was really his investigators calling to make sure we were still OK.

They were very high when Haskins laid the gun on the table next to him. Meanwhile, Baggett began telling us how she had been getting drugs.

“I’ve done sex favors for doctors…,” then suddenly Investigator Coram literally jumped across our camera cables and grabbed the gun.

It was over. We kept the cameras rolling. Sheriff Pitts immediately went to the front door, unlocked it, and let more officers into the building.

Baggett began to wail and cry pathetically, “I’ve been sitting here getting him off and I am still sick.” “I told you to give me that gun.”

“What was this all about?” I asked Haskins.

“They wouldn’t medicate us. They told us to break into a drug store,” he said as he was placed in handcuffs and let out the door.

It was some of the last words I would hear him say for many, many years.

I had rolled video tape of one of the most bizarre events I have ever recorded, but internally, I was a mess. When it was all over, I went back to the station to put the story and video on the air. We ran the video in a “raw” state, unedited with bad language and all. That was the first and only time we have ever allowed unedited tape on the air. But the story was huge and shocking.

I went home, sat in the dark all night with acute nausea. It seemed like days before I could eat or sleep.

Both Haskins and Baggett were ultimately sent to prison, although she was released by Circuit Judge Fred Turner with the stipulation that she never return to Bay County. She served only a small portion of her sentence. I do not know what became of her.

I can’t remember the specific date, but I believe it was about 1998, when I arrived to work early and found a school bus, converted into a camper, parked in the employee parking lot. I walked over to the bus to tell the driver he would have to move. When the door swung open, out stepped Haskins, wearing the same outfit (leather vest and straw hat) that he had been wearing the day I had seen him sticking needles into his girlfriend’s neck.

“Thomas Haskins, you old sack of dog crap.” I am not even sure why I strung such odd words together, they are not even in my vocabulary, but that is what I told him. I was shocked to see him, but it felt like seeing a long, lost friend. It was odd, really.

He explained that he had been released from prison and that he wanted to get a copy of the video tape I had shot that fateful day because he wanted to apply for Social Security. He needed proof that he was mentally incompetent by virtue of his addiction.

I agreed to give him a copy in exchange for an interview. He was more than happy to agree because he had “a story to tell.” It was a story of drug abuse, lives lost, families lost, shame, sorrow, sadness.

He came into the building and I retrieved the tape and a photographer. He began to cry as he watched the images of himself and Darlene Baggett injecting methadone. His cry was horrible, desperately lonesome, and painful. It came from a very deep place. It made me cry. I told our photographer to take the camera and leave the room. Sure, he was guilty of his crimes, but he had paid his debt. The television interview was over as far as I was concerned.

He told me he was camping at Econfina Creek so I decided to stop by on my way home that night. I had questions and only he had the answers.

When I got to the camper, he was making a fried potato sandwich. He was there alone except for his dog. The air was heavy with the smell of cooking oil and pot smoke. .

“I thought you told me you were off drugs?” I scolded as I stepped inside the bus.

“Oh, I am. I only smoke a little pot.” I accepted his answer because I am sure that marijuana seemed harmless to him compared to the stuff he had taken during his addictive life.

He offered me a sandwich. I declined. We sat in his camper and begin to talk. I only had two basic questions.

I asked him how his story was supposed to end. I reminded him that he had pointed a gun at my head and refused to let me and the others go. He said he had two bullets in the gun that day; one for him, and one for Darlene Baggett.

I asked him why he wanted reporters in the room during the hold up.

He said that he had too much information about how law enforcement operated and he was afraid “they” would kill him before he got high. We were his protection until he got totally “drugged” and then he had planned to end his life.

He talked a little about the drug syndicate in Bay County, but mostly about his son who he did not get to see grow up. He talked about his sadness and all the bad decisions in his life. He talked about disappointing his parents and how much trouble he had caused them and how he wished he could take it all back and live his life over again. He grieved for what he could have been, for what he could have done.

I did not stay long.

Haskins called a few days later and told me he had to leave the camping area. He said he was heading out west. Weeks later, he was found dead, apparently the victim of a heart attack. He was found in his camper. This is what I was told. I was unable to confirm any of it.

Hudson and I were given a lot of awards. We were called courageous and dedicated. I can’t speak for Hudson, but let me make it perfectly clear. It was not courage or dedication that put me in the drug store that day. It was luck; pure, silly, stupid, luck. It was not my choice, and I would not have gone inside had I been given one. I am a reporter, not a fool.

There is a footnote to this story. After word spread that a drug store hold up and hostage situation had been recorded on video tape, the FBI requested a copy. The tape, I am told, was used in FBI training to show hostage negotiators the “wrong way” to handle a hostage situation. Never trade hostages, and never invite reporters in with cameras.

For me however, Sheriff Pitts and Investigator Coram were heroes. They may have broken all the rules; but everyone, including the ten hostages, lived to tell our stories. My story may be a little different than the others, but it is the way I remember things. Most of what happened is on video, though it is uncomfortable to watch. So, you can draw your own conclusions.

It has been very hard to recall the facts in the story without a great deal of sadness. Both Tom Haskins and Darlene Baggett went to prison, served their time, and were ultimately released. But, in truth, they were in prison long before the drug store hold-up. They built their cells one pill and one syringe at a time.

Comments (2)

Posted on Sep 19, 2007 - 12:46 AM by Larche Hardy

Page 1 of 1 pages

About Me

The life of any News Director is stressful most days... so, when the weekend rolls around I find myself on the back roads of our bountiful and beautiful part of the state looking for bluegrass music, interesting things to do, and, of course, fried chicken. I will try to share some of these "finds" with you. There are a thousand stories left to be told or simply remembered. Don't expect to find them all here; maybe just a little stroll down memory lane or maybe a little skewed insight into topical issues.
Larche Hardy,
News Director

Hostage

About Me

All My Entries:

Other News13 Blogs:

ABC/News13 Headlines:

Monthly Archives