Phillips reportedly planned rifle attack on trooper barracks in Fredonia
Ralph “Bucky” Phillips was so enraged after authorities arrested his daughter and took away her children in August 2006 that he planned to start firing two high-powered rifles at state troopers as they gathered for their evening briefing at the Fredonia barracks.
“I don’t know how many of you I would’ve gotten,” Phillips told investigators in a January 2007 debriefing, according to an internal memo obtained by the Albany Times Union.
But the children were returned, so Phillips abandoned the plan, according to the newspaper’s quoting of the memo.
That is one of the nuggets from the internal memo that is said to have been written by one of three State Police senior investigators who interviewed Phillips for 4z hours Jan. 9, 2007, in Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora. Phillips, who fatally shot one trooper and wounded two others, is serving a life sentence without a chance for parole.
State Police officials in Albany declined to confirm Monday that such a memo even exists. And if it did exist, it wouldn’t be a public document.
“The Times Union claims to have an internal memorandum,” a State Police spokesman, Lt. Glenn R. Miner, said Monday. “That’s an internal communication that wouldn’t be releasable.”
Phillips, according to the newspaper, told the three senior investigators other details about his ability to elude troopers in what is considered the most exhaustive manhunt in State Police history:
• At times, Phillips told the investigators that he was a mere 5 to 10 feet from troopers in the woods but that “the woods were so thick they did not have any idea that he was there,” according to the memo.
• On one moonless night during the manhunt, Phillips was so close to troopers that he could hear them talking about the Buffalo Bills as he worked his way to a spot between two State Police cars.
• According to the memo, Phillips also told investigators that “using troopers in fixed-post situations was stupid,” because they could be targets, especially at night.
“He states that first of all, at night, they have their lights on and you can see them a mile away,” the Times Union quoted the memo as saying. “Also, all you have to do, and he said he did it [on] more than one occasion to exit a perimeter, was to go between the cars and escape.”
Phillips suggested that roving, unmarked police cars would be more effective, the newspaper quoted the memo as stating.
• Phillips survived for five months on the lam, from April 2 to Sept. 8, 2006, by relying on a network of family and friends and breaking into homes, although he seemed intent on not trashing those residences.
Phillips, according to the memo, told investigators that he entered through open windows or by slipping a lock with a credit card. He also said he “never trashed, ransacked, or damaged any home. If he showered, he would clean the tub and hang the towel back up.”
Whenever he ate in one of the homes, he told his interviewers, he would clean up, wash the dishes and sometimes even leave some money.
While Miner would not comment on such a memo, the spokesman did confirm that State Police conduct such interviews of convicted criminals.
“Historically, we have done debriefings of high-profile criminals after they’re convicted, if they wish to cooperate,” Miner said.
Those interviews, he added, are conducted with three basic purposes in mind: to try to close other unsolved crimes; to find additional evidence, including guns, money or even bodies; and to solicit opinions and criticisms of State Police procedures, in an attempt to improve those procedures.
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