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January 21, 2001
Police removed shotgun shells from the weapon
Bryan Doyle carried the day of the robberies. The mug
shot of Doyle is from 1994, when he was in prison for drunken
driving.
A string of drug-fueled robberies lasted just six hours, but
that was only the beginning
Bryan Doyle has his finger on the trigger, the shotgun pointed
at his head.
"If you don't like how I'm treating you," he screams,
"then why should I live?"
Debra Dando runs to the bathroom and grabs a bottle of Dilantin,
prescription medicine she takes for seizures.
"If you kill yourself," she says, "I'll kill
myself."
She tries to swallow 30 pills.
This has been their plan all along. They will die together.
Doyle wrote his suicide note days ago. She didn't bother.
Dando is 5-foot-4 and 97 pounds, her face gaunt and haunting
from crack cocaine. She has dishwater blond hair and pale white
skin. His initials are tattooed on her right leg.
Doyle stands 6 inches taller and weighs 60 pounds more than
his girlfriend. He forces his fingers into her mouth, digging
out the pills, and she bites him. He whirls and hits her on
the back of the head, breaking his right hand.
They leave their house on Crescent Lake Road in Waterford late
at night on Jan. 27 and go to a 24-hour emergency center, where
doctors wrap his hand.
Someone from the emergency center calls the Waterford Police
Department to report domestic abuse because of a bump on Dando's
head. Two officers show up at the center, but Dando denies there
was abuse, saying Doyle hit her to get the pills out.
She loves him. They've been dating for nine months and plan
on getting married in the spring. She is convinced he is a good
guy, kind and sweet. It's the crack cocaine that turns him into
a monster.
Dando agrees to commit herself to North Oakland Medical Center
in Pontiac because she is suicidal. She is taken from the center
in an ambulance, strapped to a gurney, and he goes home. If
the police or medical workers committed her, she would have
to stay for two days or more. Since she has gone voluntarily,
she is free to leave.
"Did you swallow any pills?" she is asked at the hospital.
"No," she says.
And she is released. She calls Doyle and he is awake, doing
drugs. She falls asleep in the waiting room until he shows up
a couple of hours before daybreak on Friday, Jan. 28, 2000.
The air is crisp and cold, a light layer of snow on the ground.
They leave the hospital and stop at a red light. Doyle lights
up his crack pipe, sitting behind the wheel of his maroon pickup
truck. He doesn't care who sees him. He stopped caring weeks
ago.
The pipe holds about $25 worth of crack and will give him a
high that will last about an hour.
But the clock is already ticking.
He needs more drugs, more vodka, more money. The truck is almost
out of gas and they are broke again, as usual. Dando, 29, will
get her $189 Social Security disability check in 12 more hours,
but they can't wait that long.
Doyle, 33, decides to sell his fishing pole. It's one of the
few things he has left, after pawning the rest of his possessions
to support a drug habit that has spun out of control in the
last week. He's spending $200 to $500 a day on drugs.
But who will buy the fishing pole?
They drive through Waterford with a sawed-off shotgun on the
front seat, hidden under a Carhartt coat, listening to Martina
McBride before heading out on a journey that will turn into
a violent crime spree, causing a manhunt and a police chase,
leaving victims throughout Oakland County.
A journey that will end in death.
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