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later, as Angley was bending over Molly to help get her onto a stretcher, a deputy sheriff tapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “Where is he, John?”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” John whispered back.
    â€œThat convict,” said the officer. “We were told he’s here in the house somewhere.”
    Somewhat shaken, John replied, “I think he went into the bedroom behind us.”
    â€œYou boys go ahead and get her out of here,” instructed the deputy, pointing to Molly. “There may be some shooting.”
    Freeman, hunched over a bed with a pistol in his hand, was waitingwhen officers entered the house. Following a brief exchange of gunfire, Freeman escaped through a bedroom window, ran down an embankment, and into a neighboring yard.
    Desperate, Freeman ran almost a mile before he came upon a green, two-room, tar-paper shack. Close behind him was a group of determined state and local police, including Trooper Larry Carver. Within seconds, the shack was surrounded by officers and Freeman was told to surrender. In response, he fired several times from behind an unhinged door he was using for cover, hitting Carver in the shoulder. Suddenly, there was a barrage of gunfire and Freeman was struck repeatedly. He died almost instantly.
    At Grace Hospital, when Louis Rector heard that Freeman was dead, his only reaction was one of relief.
    Throughout the tense hours leading up to Freeman’s death, Clegg was never more than half a mile away.
    About four-fifteen on Wednesday afternoon, state trooper “Junior” Arrant and a small group of other officers were conducting a house-to-house search when they noticed a pants leg protruding from under a pile of plywood. Arrant motioned for a deputy to come over so he could show him what he’d seen. As the deputy flipped back the plywood, Clegg looked up and placed one hand on his chest, the other palm up, letting the men know right away that he was unarmed.
    Cold, tired, and hungry, he was ready to surrender.
    â€œHe knew his life was hanging by a thread,” said Arrant.
    Shortly after James Clegg was captured, Molly Harvey died at Grace Hospital in Morganton.
    Louis continued his recovery, keeping tabs from his hospital bed on all aspects of the manhunt. Clegg was taken to the McDowell County jail where he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury, and assault with a firearm on a law enforcement officer. He was also served with a fugitive warrant for escaping from prison. Extradition proceedings began almost immediately. Clegg was sent back to Tennessee where he faced charges of murder and kidnapping in connection with the slaying of the Brownsville businessman and the abduction of the man’s wife. Pleading guilty to the first set of charges involving Louis Rector, Clegg was sentenced to twenty years in a North Carolina prison, with the term to begin after he had served his time in Tennessee. In a statement issued by his attorney, Clegg asked that the $10,000reward for the capture of him and Freeman be given to Molly Harvey’s family.
    Louis spent the next three months at home recovering from his gunshot wounds. Physically, he did fine. But Scottie Rector recalls that after the shooting, her husband underwent a distinct personality change.
    â€œHe was very quiet and withdrawn, almost passive,” she said. “I worried about what would happen when he returned to work. If I could have, I would have kept him from going back.”
    Every night for weeks, Louis tossed and turned, wondering how he could have prevented the shooting, or how he might have killed the two men who had assaulted him. Then, turning the episode over and over in his mind, he’d seethe with rage.
    â€œIt didn’t take me long to realize that my animosity toward Freeman and Clegg was consuming me,” he said. “I knew that before I could get on the road to recovery,