How the Georgia fugitives were apprehended in Tennessee
A man's voice, panting and numb with shock, rang through the 911 dispatch phone line at 5:22 p.m.
“We’ve had an armed home invasion,” he said. “It’s the two people from Georgia."
“Escapees.”
For at least three hours, the man and his wife, residents of the bucolic town of Shelbyville, Tenn., were tied up and held captive by two fugitives wanted in a dramatic national manhunt.
The horror began days earlier and 350 miles away in Georgia with a prison transport escape. The two convicts, according to authorities, killed two guards and became two of the most wanted men in America. It ended with gunfire on the interstate and a final harrowing citizen apprehension in rural Christiana on Thursday.
"We need help out here quick," the Shelbyville man urged the Bedford County dispatcher Thursday evening, giving his address.
"Hurry."
In the background, his wife's heavy and heart-wrenching cries carried over the phone.
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"It's alright," the man said, beckoning his wife nearer to him as he communicated with the dispatcher.
"You survived," he tells her, his voice calm and reassuring. "You survived. You did a good job.
"Come here and let me hold you."
'We’ve already killed, we don’t mind killing again'
Ricky Dubose, 24, and Donnie Rowe, 43, — fugitives fleeing across the country — at one time were cellmates.
Rowe was serving a life prison sentence without parole stemming from armed robbery in October 2001. Dubose — a member of the "Ghostface Gangsters" prison gang, according to authorities — was serving 20 years for an armed robbery, aggravated assault and theft from an incident in 2014.
Both men, white males with skinny faces and slim bodies brandishing bold tattoos, were on a prison transport bus early Tuesday morning with 31 other inmates from the Hancock State Prison in Sparta, Georgia.
Somehow, in details still undisclosed by investigators, they escaped the inmate cage, overpowered the drivers and fired multiple shots with the guards' own guns. Georgia State Corrections Department officers Christopher Monica, 42, and Curtis Billue, 58, were dead.
None of the other prisoners broke free.
Armed with the officers’ .40 caliber Glock pistols, Dubose and Rowe carjacked a 2004 green Honda Civic and fled west toward nearby Eatonton, about 70 miles southeast of Atlanta.
From there, they headed north to Tennessee.
In Lynchburg, with a population of 6,300 and home of the Jack Daniel’s Distillery, the men ditched the Civic and changed vehicles, taking a white Mercury Cougar from a farm off Highway 231 near Chestnut Ridge in Moore County.
"Yesterday morning, we noticed it was stolen,” the car's owner, 48-year-old David Boyce, said Friday. “We didn’t use it very much. The last time I saw it was Tuesday.”
In the Cougar, the men sped to Shelbyville. The rural town 50 miles southeast of Nashville is best known for walking horses and high school girls basketball, not rampant crime.
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It's believed the convicts had some connections nearby, "possibly some kinfolks in Marshall County, which is just west of us," said Bedford County Sheriff Austin Swing.
Rowe did have a history in Middle Tennessee. Nearly 22 years ago, the man was arrested in Rutherford County, charged with burglary and theft of property on Oct. 15, 1995. The theft of property was dismissed.
On Thursday, Dubose and Rowe pushed their way into the Shelbyville couple's home at gunpoint. "Both had handguns, high-powered handguns," the Shelbyville man said to the 911 dispatcher. They forced the husband to the floor, tying his arms and hands and leaving bruises by the binds. At one point, they gagged his wife.
"They said, 'We’ve already killed, we don’t mind killing again,'" Swing detailed. "'Because we’re going to be dead in probably 24 hours, and we’re going to take out as many officers as we can before they take us.'
"Thank goodness that didn’t happen."
The fugitives ate the couple's vegetable soup and pilfered valuables, possibly taking some cash, a watch and a gold chain, said Swing, noting the couple was too traumatized to talk publicly.
After three hours of terror, the convicts fled in the couple's black Cherokee Trailblazer. The wife freed herself using scissors she could reach, and the husband escaped his binds before calling 911.
"We were tied up," the husband told the Bedford County dispatcher. "We were all tied up. We just got loose."
'I prayed like I have never prayed before'
The men drove up Interstate 24, police soon following thanks to the 911 call.
When Rutherford County Sheriff's deputies caught up to the Trailblazer, the ensuing high-speed chase shut down Interstate 24 about 10 miles south of Murfreesboro for several hours.
The fugitives fired several shots at deputies, crashed into the treeline and sprinted from the wreckage, starting a 6-mile foot chase toward the town of Christiana.
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Residents who live on Pruitt Road in the rural community were on guard when the fugitives came their way.
Bordering hundreds of acres of lush forest, the two-lane road winds through the countryside. Wild turkeys wander the road and dogs run free on the rolling hills.
Patrick Hale said he loaded every gun in his house after neighbors called to warn him about the chase and shootout nearby.
It was 6:46 p.m.
One minute later, he saw the convicts cross a barbed-wire fence 300 yards away from his back door and come onto his property.
"I prayed like I have never prayed before," said Hale, 35, during a news conference on Friday with his wife and young daughter by his side.
After calling 911, Hale said he was confronted with the choice of whether to lock his family and himself in a panic room or to flee.
"We got in the car and backed up quick only to find the gentlemen had been running and got much closer to my house," Hale said. "They began to take off their shirts and wave them at us as if to slow us down."
Although his weapon was on him, Hale said he did not have to draw his gun.
"I began to slowly back up as they came closer," he said. "At that point, I realized I had two ex-cons wanted for murder who just shot at law enforcement and nothing to lose. And for some reason, they started to surrender and lay down on their stomachs on my concrete driveway.
"If that doesn't make you believe in Jesus Christ, I don't know what will."
Hale said deputies arrived three minutes later, but before they came, the fugitives rose to their feet to get a drink of water.
"I was ready to do whatever I could. It was just me and my daughter that day," he said, referring to his 3-year-old girl.
During the chaos of the manhunt, a 911 dispatcher described the scene at Hale's house: “They are walking over to our complainant now with their hands up in their air. They’ve taken their shirts off."
Hale said the men, after getting a drink from a faucet, laid back down on his driveway.
"Is it the two suspects in question?" the scanner dispatch buzzed.
"That’s a 10-4. That’s confirmed."
Holly Morelock, who works in the small town, said neighbors there typically keep their weapons handy.
"I feel like it was a good thing. When you mess around out here in the country, most of us here have carry permits and carry (weapons),” Morelock said. “And it's our job to protect our families and our homes.
"And I'm very proud of the family ... because they didn't just turn around and mind their own business. They did what they had to do to protect everybody else around."
Both men appeared in a Rutherford County courtroom Friday morning. They have waived their rights and are being extradited to Georgia.
"These are murderers," TBI Director Mark Gwyn said. "Cold-blooded murderers.
"We did what it took to bring them into custody."
Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and jbliss@tennessean.com. You can also find her on Twitter @jlbliss.
Timeline of the fugitives capture
1. Early Tuesday morning, a bus carrying 33 inmates including Ricky Dubose and Donnie Rowe leaves the Hancock State Prison
2. 6:52 a.m. Tuesday. A 911 call reports a carjacking and a prison bus on the side of the road
3. Thursday morning: A man reports that his white Mercury Cougar is missing. He last saw the car on Tuesday.
4. Approximately 2 p.m., fugitives invade the home of a Shelbyville couple, tying them up and fleeing in their stolen Jeep just after 5 p.m.
5. 6:47 p.m. on Thursday. Patrick Hale man sees the fugitives cross a fence to his property, following a shootout with police on Interstate 24. Armed with a weapon, grabs his young daughter and begins to flee before the men voluntarily surrender, laying face-down on his driveway.