Hunt nets suspect in N.H. killings

FRYEBURG, Maine -- Authorities waging a massive manhunt through the White Mountains captured a Maine man yesterday walking alone along a barren railbed and charged him with shooting three men to death at a military surplus store in Conway, N.H., about 8 miles away.

Michael L. Woodbury, 31, of Windham, Maine, had been freed from a Maine prison in May after serving a five-year sentence for robbery, police said. Upon release, officials said, Woodbury embarked on a multistate, monthlong criminal rampage in which he looted and burned buildings from South Carolina to Florida, before surfacing in New Hampshire Monday.

Woodbury seemed increasingly desperate, police said, when he allegedly opened fire at the Army Barracks store, killing the manager, James E. Walker, 34, of Denmark, Maine, and two customers from Massachusetts, longtime friends William J. Jones, 25, of Walpole, and Gary Jones, 23, of Halifax, who were returning from a weekend of biking and hiking in the Maine wilderness.

At a press conference outside the Fryeburg Police Department last night, Assistant New Hampshire Attorney General Karen Huntress said Woodbury had been charged with three counts of first-degree murder.

Huntress said authorities have no reason to believe he knew his victims and no reason to think anyone else was involved in the shootings. A statement on the store's website said the killings appeared to follow a botched robbery.

"We all felt this was going to end up tragically for him or someone else, and unfortunately it was someone else," Detective Sergeant Tim Compton of the Florence, S.C., police said last night.

Relatives of the Joneses, who were not related, said they had been friends since high school, part of the same crew of BMX dirt bikers.

"Bill and he were great pals and loved to go hiking and camping," Gail Jones, Gary Jones's mother, said in a telephone interview yesterday. "So, it's just two really great kids that were in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess."

A friend of the two, Sean Burns, 23, of Pembroke, recalled how the Joneses built ramps out of garbage cans and wooden pallets and invited others with a taste for flipping bikes in the air to compete in their annual Bone Death Dead Man Challenge bike competition. Hundreds turned out for the two events, which were held in New Bedford and Philadelphia.

"They were two peas in a pod," Kenneth Jones, William Jones's father, said yesterday, as he sat at his kitchen table in Walpole with his wife, Barbara, and son Bobby, 23, amid a collection of snapshots of William Jones strumming a guitar and hoisting his bike above his head. "They loved to travel. They loved to do BMX biking. They loved life."

But their paths crossed with the flight of a known and violent criminal, police said.

Authorities said Woodbury's rampage began June 6 in Florence, S.C., where he handed a note to a teller at a Wachovia Bank, flashed a fake gun, and made off with some cash. He escaped, South Carolina police said, in a getaway car with two teenage women from Windham, Maine.

Police said the women were friends of Woodbury's younger brother, who had been told they were going on a road trip with him to Arizona.

According to authorities, Woodbury showed up next in Georgia, where he broke into, robbed, and then torched a million-dollar home in Brunswick. From there, he drove south to Florida, where he forced the women to pawn their jewelry. He also threatened to kill them, police said, and tried to force them to kill a homeless man, police said. One of the women, a 17-year-old, managed to escape.

Woodbury then headed north, to Franklin, Ky. where the other woman escaped by running into a convenience store and telling the manager she had been kidnapped. Woodbury fled on foot, broke into a house, stole keys to a car, and drove off, authorities said.

He arrived next in Chattanooga, Tenn., where he is accused of robbing a clothing store. He then allegedly tried to steal a car in the parking lot, but was stopped by a fruit vendor who fought with him. Police searched the area, but Woodbury slipped away.

Authorities said Conway was his final stop.

Outside the Army Barracks on busy Route 16 yesterday, mourners placed bouquets near a stain on the pavement.

"God Bless those that are gone and the family that remain," read a message in one card left on the ground.

"It's just mind-boggling to us why someone would go in there and start shooting," Barbara Jones said.

Relatives grieved for Walker, who left a wife, Tessa, a 1-year-old son, and an 8-year-old daughter.

Army Barracks, a small chain, is based in Salem, Mass. Vice president Marilyn Brabantes called Walker "a great guy" and said that Tessa manages an Army Barracks store in Scarborough, Maine. The store sells camping equipment and gear such as knives, stun guns, and paintball guns, but no firearms, Brabantes said.

Friends and relatives of the Joneses recalled how the friends worked long hours but lived for adventure.

William Jones was known as Bill Death, a nickname he earned by jumping his BMX bike off the roofs of houses and doing backflips off curbs. Gary Jones was known as Wildcard, willing to pull any stunt at any time -- sliding down a railing or barreling down stairs.

Williams Jones worked for his father's excavation company, and Gary Jones was a plumber for a Duxbury company. They had driven to Acadia National Park on Saturday with their bikes and planned to hike Mt. Katahdin and return to be with their families on July 4.

Relatives said they were focusing on their loved ones, not the gunman.

Kenneth Jones said his son had just bought his first house, in Medway.

"It was yellow; it looked like a McDonald's, but he loved it," he chuckled.

Gail Jones said her son was also saving to buy a house.

"Both were upstanding young men that were trying to just make the American dream," she said.

Jenna Russell contributed from Fryeburg, Maine, and Michael Levenson from Boston.