October 4, 2021 • 28 mins
20 minutes after Ryan Dougherty cut off his ankle monitor and the Doughertys run to Mexico started in earnest, Ryan’s heavy foot puts them in the crosshairs of law enforcement and a high speed chase ensues through the streets of Zephyerhills. Desperate and not willing to back down Dylan picks up an AK-47 setting off a chain of events that none of the siblings can turn back on.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
The car thumps to a slow halt. I lift my
head slowly. My dark brown hair is limp and greasy.
My mouth is like sandpaper. I feel it coming on,
like a dream. You can't wake up from it. Dawns
on me that we have no clue where we are.
I glance at Dylan in the front seat. Ryan and
(00:24):
him are pouring over a crinkled, worn roadmap. You should
be up here doing this here, remarks I don't have
the strength left to argue any sudden movements, and I'll
end up vomiting all over the door. Welcome to The
Doctor to Gang, a production of I Heart Radio and
Katie Studios, Episode three, You Let the Fish Out of
(00:45):
the Pond. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a crime producer at Katie
Studios with Stephanie Lydecker. We've been working with producer Beth
Greenwald on The Doctor to Gang for months now. The
three siblings have agreed to tell their story for the
very first time, each from Separate Prisons League Race Dockerty
is at Federal Correction Institute Aliceville in Alabama, Ryan is
in the United States Penitentiary Tucson in Arizona, and Dylan
(01:08):
is at the Federal Corrections Institute in Bennettsville and South Carolina.
This call was from the Federal prison. I just naturally
have a heavy foot anyways, but I was going a
little faster and what to feel them it was and
might have been doing like forty or forty one and
like a thirty five. And the cop was just sitting
there waiting for mornings leaders and he just pulled out
behind us, and he didn't know had anything to do
(01:29):
with us or anything like that. For him, it was
just a routine traffic stop that went kind of sideways.
We were only in the car about twenty minutes. We
had just come from the gas station, and that's when
everything began. As soon as the cops got behind us
on that little fight street in Zeppor Hills, there's maybe
about like a four minute pursuit and then there was
like a small other shootout and then that was It's
(01:52):
about five minutes in total. Once we ran from the
cops in Pepfor Hill, there was no way to go
back to Florida without attracting a large amount of attention.
That was what really started to get the ball rolling.
It was never personal, and to say that type of
ship I know it sounds asinine to a lot of people,
but to me, I mean that I'm twenty one years
(02:12):
old when that ship happened. You know, I didn't think
like I do now Now. I purposely slow down and
try and think things through. I don't always get it right,
but I do far better than when I was a kid.
You know, you got a shipload of testosterone and you're young,
and you just you don't think well. And when a
catastrophic situation like that happens, you're supposed to have like
(02:34):
parents filing on or somebody to say, hey, man, look it,
I know what the probation officer did was wrong. He
threatened you, and yeah, bro, you might have to go
to jail for thirty days to get before a judge
to kind of rectify this situation. But you need to
be cool. Forty five minutes into what the Doughertys hoped
would be a discreete run to Mexico, Ryan speeding put
(02:55):
them in the sights of local law enforcement. Despite the
officer giving chase, the Credis were not going to go quietly.
As soon as actually a muzzle flash from the A
K and it's you know, it's like, all right, let's
catch the bad guy. Taylor Gandy lived on the street
with a high speed shootout and chase took place. It
was definitely a time when I was sleeping, which at
(03:15):
the age of seventeen is totally like anywhere between you know,
six am too, like three pm, and my bed was
up against the windows that I had that was in
the corner of the house where the cars drove by
in the CBS parking lot, which is right next to
my house. And I remember being woken up out of
like a cold sleep just hearing like about how about
(03:37):
And I was like, okay, not normal son feud here.
And then you would hear the sirens after that, because
there were his hops that were definitely chasing these people down. Um.
I rolled over and peered through the blinds that I
had up, and I saw the tail end of the vehicle. Um, Like,
(03:57):
no way, these guys were actually firing like huge guns.
It's not like pistols or anything like that, which you
know certainly can do some damage too if you got
hit by like a straight bullet, But these were like
gun guns, like the big boys the K And then
a few moments had passed at that point and I
(04:18):
noticed that there was like a couple of officers that
were scouring the CBS parking lot and they were looking
at the ground. So I went outside and that's when
I found in my driveway the bullet casing. UM. I
remember holding it in my hand and the thing was
like almost the size of my palm. And I turned
to the office here and I was like, hey, UM,
I found this, and he was like kind of little
(04:40):
salty that I um picked up some evidence. Probably shouldn't
have done that. The Doperties were taught how to shoot
guns since they were kids. They knew what they were
doing and they weren't firing random shots. In their mind,
there was a method to their madness. Here's ryan. The
goal is always either just knocking hole on the radiotor
because you might have three to five minutes out out
with one of those Crown vics before it overheats that
(05:03):
shot at you from about forty or less away. And
I understand this right Like I might be a criminal,
I might do criminal things, I might not do the
right thing, but human life matters to me. You would
think that I'm like completely completely anti cop. I'm not.
I have a soun out there like without law and order.
(05:23):
You have no civilization, you have no society, and I
want the cops out there. They protect people. Of them
are good. You know. You see cops vilified today and
the news and ship, and it's like, yeah, that's like
one percent of them, you know, and they're shifty. One
percent of them deserve whatever it is that they getting court.
He has. Detective Widener recounting the day of the chase,
SPEs went back up to about a hundred miles per hour.
(05:44):
My front tire was flat, so I couldn't keep up
with them safely. I didn't even get close enough at
that point to tell you what the tag number was.
I'm only really good at like a couple of things
in life, and driving is one of them. I'm a
bad mom, a sucker behind the wheel. And we came
up to an intersection. Intersection was clogged with cars, and
(06:05):
I caught off the intersection by driving through a CBS
parking lot. When we cut through, their cop was following
us through close. I'll give it to the cop. He
still had some nuts and came up after me, and
they caught about forty rounds right above the driver's side tire.
All forty rounds are within like a one diameter foot circle,
you know. So I wasn't aiming for the cabby your vehicle, right,
(06:27):
And never in my life was trying to kill an officer.
It's just not who I am. Life matters to me, right.
Sheriff Chris Naco has been the sheriff of Pascal County
since two thousand eleven. Here's what Sheriff Naco recalls from
that day. Remember getting coffee. I was g having coffee
with them and I get a phone call and he said,
we just had a shooting in Zephyr Hills. There's somebody
(06:49):
shooting at law enforcement. I remember I looked over the individual.
I said, I'm sorry, I gotta go, and I remember
heading out to the east side of our county, the
Zepper Hills, and I'm trying to get radio information what's
going on, and we're getting bits and pieces. I think
it was one of the things that just this wasn't
just your regular shooting. Dylan lived with his an and uncle,
(07:10):
Glenn and Suzanne Stanley, his adoptive parents, who had a
property in Florida. John and Yvonne Clinton lived next door
to the Stanley's. John is a prison chaplain and pastor
of the Grace Church of Zephyr Hills. His wife, Yvonne,
is a former probation supervisor and mother of five. The
morning of us shooting, our oldest son was at his school.
He called me and said, no, there's been a shooting
(07:32):
down the road and they shut the school down. You know,
we just never knew it was our neighbors, these people
we've known forever. We were watching the news and they
said their names and were like, oh my god. So
their family are really big into education and they're very
scholarly people. Um, so it's kind of unusual to have
(07:52):
these three go as far out as they did because
that's just thought what their family is about. Well, the
docrities have been in trouble for in their offenses in
the past. The reality of what they've just done began
to sink in. It just got really serious, you know,
things that have definitely taken turn for the worst. You know,
we're young kids, We're we're um, we're inexperienced as far
(08:13):
as the consequences of what's coming here. Sheriff Naco speaking
with producer Beth Greenwald. Obviously it was a serious incident,
but I know that it happens all over this country, unfortunately,
and on a daily basis. You were the first person
to kind of really sound the alarm that this is
going to be a spree of sorts, and you felt
very compelled to speak about it. So tell me it
was because they shot at your officer, because your gut
(08:36):
instinct was that this was going to be the first
of many incidences with these folks. So in this sense,
there was a doctor trio you know, just recognized and
this is outside that pattern saying okay, this is not
gonna end piacealy because these three were on a path too,
you know, either escape, you know, have a shootout with
(08:57):
law of course, and end you know, death by top um.
You know, those are those type of things that that's
why I think for a lot of for myself particularly,
but even for members of our organization, everybody had that
gut instinct that this is gonna end up and a shootout,
something bad was going to happen because of these three.
Definitely the shock of oh my gosh, that just happened. Um,
(09:19):
you know, how did it happen, Why did it happen?
Why did the cop pull us over? Why was Ryan speeding?
Ryan you're a dumbass. Why would you speed in the
middle of town? Did you see the cops? Did you
see what happened? Oh my gosh, Tim Harris, that are
in the Pascal County Sheriff's Office was assigned to investigate
the shooting after they disabled Wider's vehicle. We honestly didn't
(09:43):
know which direction they had gone because they had a
number of avenues that they could have escaped. At this point,
when you first learn about this, you know, did you
have any of the details yet? Did you know about
Ryan Docherty or any of that. When did the pieces
of that kind of puzzle come together? My sergeant got
a phone call from Probation and Parole out of Dade
(10:05):
City and they were reporting that Ryan Dougherty had been
placed on the strict probation, that the ankle bracelet had
been cut off around the same time that the pursuit initiated.
You know, Ryan Dougherty immediately became a person of interest
as far as we were concerned in the shooting, and
they were telling him that he wasn't even gonna be
(10:26):
able to be around his own child without it being supervised.
So that was accorded catalysts that kicked off the whole thing.
He felt that he could be better off if he
just absconded and took off, and so that's what they did.
Widener said there were two males and a female in
the vehicle that he observed when it passed it, But
(10:48):
at the time we didn't know it was Dylan and
Lee Grace. We thought it was only Ryan. But then
as it developed and we realized Lee Grace and Dylan
had went along with Ryan, then we updated a bolo
to include all three of them, which ended up identifying
them as the Daughter Dy gang. Can you just say
what a bolo is? It's a be able to look out.
(11:10):
The car was immediately reported as stolen by Ryan's girlfriend
at the time, the lady that was pregnant with his child.
Her name was Amber and she was the actual owner
of the Subaru, so she reported the car stolen, but
did you know they were leaving? Then we did an
interview with her and she wasn't a forthcoming he knew more.
(11:34):
She acted as if she had been asleep and that
Ryan had came in the bedroom and told her goodbye,
and she thought he was just going to work. But
at the end of the day that helped us a
little bit because either way, we had the tag number
for the vehicle and we had them in a felony
circumstance of firing on the law enforcement officer and fleeing
(11:56):
to elude. Here again is Ryan. I don't know what
I was thinking, man, I was just a kid, and
I was just scared. Remember, if not more than anything.
Wasn't like unlike a fear that you're used to or whatever,
fear that you can do something about. It's just the
fucking overwhelming anst like funck me in my life is
just shot now. Detective Harris began to subbed at home.
(12:19):
When I went to the house, initially I noticed a
pile of construction type equipment tools and things in the yard,
and I could tell it was obviously out of place.
So I asked Amber about the tools, and she said
that those tools had been in the trunk of her
car because Ryan used them for his job that he
(12:41):
had at the time doing construction work. We put two
and two together that they had taken those tools out
of the trunk to make room for something. Right, and
so we asked ourselves what was that? Something? You know,
we knew from the initial shootout that involved a pistol
and possibly a K forty seven, But we had no
(13:02):
idea that they had the number of guns that they
had with them. And then we executed the federal search
warrant and we found the safe and the safe was empty,
and so they had taken all of those weapons with them,
uh in the vehicle. So then of course we update
our BOLO that they were definitely heavily armed and dangerous.
(13:26):
We're going to take a quick break here, we'll be
back in a moment. I'm assuming these weapons were not registered.
Dylan had obtained all of the weapons that he had.
He had purchased them legally. You know, he didn't portray
(13:46):
himself as the hardened criminal that you know we picture
stockpiling this uh this cash of weapons. He just basically
liked guns. This was extremely helpful to police once again,
and here Sheriff Naco getting that information that they did
have a lot of guns. Those are the set of
things that kept adding up. We found out that they
(14:07):
did have some experience with guns, and so that just
even further round the bell of we got to get
this alarm out there, we gotta get these three in.
Here's former neighbor Yvonne Clinton. We've never had any problems
with any of them. Ever. They like to shoot guns
that we live on the country, so that's just not abnormal.
Given the urgency of the situation, Sheriff Naco appeared on
(14:29):
both local and nationwide news. We know you are, we
are coming down to get you. It is very clear
that these three are on some type of mission and
we have to do everything possible to arrest them. We
want you to turn yourselves in. We want a peaceful resolution,
but at the same time we understand if they want
to battle with us. We had the resources and we
will learn at a fresh conference that we had Initially,
(14:52):
I've mentioned that our concern was the citizens and people
that these individuals would come in contact with, not knowing
who they were, and the dangerousness of the situation. The
media ran with the story and words spread across Florida
about the Doughertys and their high speed police chase that
ended in a flurry of bullets. There's a massive FBI
(15:14):
man hunt underway for three Pascal County siblings on the
run from the law. Again here, Sheriff not people are
calling in fighting whether they were real sightings or they
were just two guys and a girl in a car.
You know, we were getting calls and they're follow up.
People are engaged, so as soon as any story breaks,
you start getting a lot more tips. The tips are
(15:34):
always helpful. At the same same time, you have to
dig through the tips to find out which tips are
actually valid and which one. You know, people just got excited.
Former next door neighbors the Clinton's way in the local
media started to interview us on the local news because
we lived right next door and we were the neighbors,
and it was like they were wanting to know more about, Well,
(15:54):
who are these people that are you know, kind of
like a Body and Clyde type. It's a family, but
they're on the run from the police and they're shooting.
Who are these people? And I think one reason we
spoke because we weren't really in touch with the family
at that point. People had moved away or passed away,
you know, the grandfather and grandparents were gone and all
these different people. But we I just my thought was
(16:16):
I'm very pro law enforcement, you know, and I definitely
think that they were doing wrong, but I also wanted
to put a human face to it and kind of
be like, you know, things do happen, and sometimes people
just get caught up in stuff and it gets deeper
and deeper. We knew it was a very tight knit family. Um.
We knew those three were very close, and so having
(16:41):
that closeness, that willingness to hey, we're going out, we're
running together, also lead you to believe possibly that they
were also going to all go down together. When we
would speak to the media, that was just like, turn
yourself in and stop this. It's only going to get worse,
you know, because we didn't want to see them get killed.
They're willing to do anything, which then leads the fact
(17:03):
of bringing the belt more to the nicene saying, no,
be careful. If anybody goes, you know, teas than three individuals,
don't try to step in and joy anything. Called law
enforcement immediately. And if law enforce was gonna engage, make
sure you were sending more than one depth of year
one officer. Make sure you're sending a group, because you
have to send a platoon out because this was probably
(17:23):
not gonna end well. My front tire was flat, so
I had to stop because I couldn't keep up with
them safely. At that point, the question remained, where were
the Doperties. There was an impression by some that, you know,
they were going to follow that carridor so we thought
they would have dipped down into Texas first and try
(17:43):
to cross through Texas or at the worst, cross through
in New Mexico if they're going that right, there was
some thought they possibly were heading north in Canada. It's
difficult to always be in the mind of somebody who's
committing these crimes, but you're constantly trying to evaluate what
are they thinking, So you know, from that aspect, you know,
they probably felt they couldn't communicate with loved ones because
(18:07):
they knew the phones were not going to be, you know,
a wise way to communicate um. At the same time,
you know, social media was not going to be their
best way. They probably were feeling that are running out
of options. We look extensively within the Tampa Bay region.
We had all the agencies looking because we didn't know
if they were gonna hunker down somewhere or what they
were gonna do. That was a big question, Where are
(18:28):
they going next? Here's Detective Harris. They could have went
south towards Tampa. They could have circled back through the
southern part of Zephyr Hills and went towards Plant City
or Lakeland or Orlando. They could have went west on
some of the back roads towards Interstate sevent. Like I said,
we honestly didn't know which direction they went. How did
(18:52):
you lose them? They were dead in the middle of Florida.
There's cameras everywhere, there's cop cars everywhere. You know, you
can't drive from your house to a gas station and
in Florida and back again and not see at least
two cops. So how did you lose track of these kids?
And then you let them loose in the entire United States?
You let the fish get out of this little pond
(19:13):
in the ocean, and now we can't find them, and
it's all your fault. Thanks a lot, stupid Florida once
again for having crazy people and are criminals on then
unleashing them on us. Shooting at a police officer makes
you public enemy number one and a priority for all
surrounding law enforcement agencies. Here's Beth speaking again to Detective
(19:33):
Tim Harris. And when they popped up, I guess it
was a day or two later. Max, Were you surprised?
I mean at the path they were going on. I mean,
obviously they were trying to get away. They they had
the weapons, and what happens when you hear that news.
I got a phone call from the Tampa Airport Police
Department and they had found some gun parts that had
(19:56):
been discarded in the ladies room restroom at the airport.
And obviously they had seen our bolo, they were aware,
they knew that our circumstances involved at least one gun.
And so in my point in bringing that up is
is that we had to take into consideration that they
had went to Tampa International Airport and possibly got on
(20:18):
an airplane. So I ended up going to Tampa Airport
and we reviewed hours and hours of surveillance video, and
we checked plane registries for outgoing flights around the time
frame and things of that nature in an effort to
identify had they potentially left on an airplane. At the
(20:39):
end of the day, none of that panned out. Someone
had realized that they had got into the airport with
a handgun and they figured, oh my god, I can't
go back, put this in my car or whatever circumstance,
and it ended up being disposed of in the trash can. Totally,
totally unrelated circumstance. I don't think they ever identified how
(21:00):
the parts ever got in the trash. Get Yeah, there
are supposedly sightings of us everywhere. Supposedly we robbed the
liquor store in New Jersey, and supposedly we shot somebody
to death on the interstate in Kentucky. We were seeing
in Texas right next to the border. Man. So much
of it is logistically impossible. Stick a pin in a map,
draw a circle, figure out how fast the car can
(21:22):
possibly go, and the math and miles just don't add up.
The Dorty Gang is still on the run, and tonight
we're getting new information. We've had a few spottings in
the southeastern night States. But what we're trying to tell
everybody about these three is that they can be anywhere.
This so called Dorty Game, the Dorty Gang, the Dorty Gag,
the Dorty Gang, And somehow, in all the media melee,
(21:43):
no one seemed able to get the name right. As
Dylan Grace and Ryan will tell you it's Dougherty, not Doherty.
That morning, Ryan began to note that Lee Grays was
not well. I didn't realize how about all of my
sister was, she's like more or less rehabbing in the backseat.
You know, I didn't really s telling until later that
the day after we had already gotten the shootouts for
(22:03):
the cops, and then the Graci just goes back to sleep,
you know, she sleeps all out in the back seat,
and then like I just noticed, I'm like, fun man.
You know, it didn't click in my head until later
that Damn, she's dope sick. You know, she's rehabing back
here in the back to seat, my stomach, my head.
I couldn't once I went to sleep, I could not
wake up. I mean I remember Dylan just screaming at me,
(22:25):
wake up, wake up. My body is saying, no, you
don't have drugs. You're going through a detox. Do not
wake up. Keep sleeping. So I was sleeping um for
ten or twelve or fifteen hours at a time, and
Dylan gets really annoyed with me. If he's awake, you're awake,
So you better be awake. If he's gonna be sitting,
you know, in the back seat of the front seat
(22:45):
and you want to be in the back seat sleep
and oh no, you're gonna be awake here, Get up.
And drink this bottle of water. It'll feel it'll Dylan
thinks he's he's a rehab counselor, so he is going
to beat the disease and drug youth out of your system.
And I'm just basically comple leaning like, oh, you know,
I'm dope sick. You know I don't feel good, I
mean by pills. And they're basically saying, no, you don't.
(23:07):
You know, so I don't have any pills with me.
It's just that constant detox and your stomach hurts and
your head hurts, and you're you're really struggling. Let's stop
here for another quick break. We'll be back in a moment.
(23:31):
Years earlier, Lee Grace had developed a dependency to drugs
to ease the pain of losing her dad, Doc and
her sister Aaron. The drugs I've always been most attracted
to our benzodiazepine ban its a lot of pin value
and out of the end, those are the drugs that
I always have wanted ever since I was probably about nineteen.
(23:53):
I would be able to obtain prescriptions, so I knew
the people that had options, so I would go to
them and offer them money. They would give me their
prescriptions for cash. And it was actually really very easy
for me to obtain drugs. I mean I was never
afraid to ask people. I mean the worst thing they
could tell me was no. I would tell them, listen,
(24:15):
I have a hundred dollars, open your purse, give me
that prescription. And they would need the money for gas
or food or you know sometimes. You know, it was
a working class family. You know, maybe they needed to
pay their electricity bill, maybe they needed to pay a
phone bill that a hundred dollars. You know, they were
very accepting of it because they actually want This call
(24:36):
was from the federal prison and maybe they didn't even
take the prescription. Maybe they just got it from their daughter,
and their whole their whole scheme was to sell the prescription.
So I was actually friends with a lot of people,
um a lot of people that I bought drugs from.
They were like some of my best friends. Here again
is Ryan, I don't know, it's really Grace has ever
really been to an actual treatment place. So she had
(24:57):
been been like a seventy two hour whole to make
sure that you're mentally not going to look out right,
the Grace is just gonna do her, like, you can't
really dissuade her wance she decided she wants to do something,
and then like if she ever wanted to be sober,
and you know there's options out there to go get sober,
It's like that's what she needed. You take the drug
addict out of my sister, like she would have never
(25:18):
gotten that car. Well, we had to believe that they
were going to have to get cash somewhere. Um we
knew that, you know, these three had to be smart
enough not to use credit cards, um even stolen credit
cards to some extent because we had the ability to
very quickly ascertain information that kind of tracked some of that. However, cash,
(25:40):
you know, you can obviously go into somewhere use cash,
So we knew they had to obtain cash somewhere. Unfortunately
for the Doughertyes, their first plan to get cash came
to a screeching halt. Jilan's friend was going to purchase
the guns from us and give us cash. We got
in the direction of his house, we were already being
pulled over by the hop so Pete pulled over except
(26:02):
for hills by Kevin Widener. That prevented us for meeting
his friend. Because we're not going to be chased by
the cops to someone's house. Here's Dylan explaining his state
of mind and decision making. I think we knew what
she needed money before we left Florida. At that point,
I don't. I wouldn't say I was thinking eight clear.
In that moment of desperation, the Doughertyes did the unthinkable,
(26:24):
as at that point you go south surrender, We're you
gonna say, hey, sorry, we shot it out with you
in the street. You're still gonna get the same amount
of time you're gonna get whether or not you keep
going from there. So it's like you've already started this party.
You might as well have fun. And and that's that's
what we did. And literally just got my heart back
to my resting heart needed, you know, fifty eight pieces
(26:45):
in minutes, and I would like, all right, let's rob
a bank. Now, the timeline was very last minute, because
at no point did we ever look at each other
and say, let's get in the car, let's load up
the guns, let's rob a bank, and let's have a
shootout with the cops. At no point was that ever
on the table. It makes a little bit to work
your nerve up to do it. So yeah, we hit
that rankin and we rolled out of Georgia, and we
(27:08):
weren't already committed after the Vinepeal in Florida, so we
were really committed after that. And finally, and it never
before heard interview, the Dougherty's mother weighs in on what happened.
Not once in ten years has anyone asked me what
happened my opinion, So I have had ten years to
(27:30):
think about what I want to say about my children,
and I want to say three things more on that
next time. The Dougherty Gang is executive produced by Stephanie
lie Decker and me Courtney Armstrong, along with Beth Greenwald,
Sean McEwen, and Joseph Morgan. Editing and sound design is
by Jeff Ta, mixing by Peter Nay. Additional producing by
(27:53):
Chris Graves and Jeff Shane. The Doctor Gang is a
production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more
podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
The car thumps to a slow halt. I lift my
head slowly. My dark brown hair is limp and greasy.
My mouth is like sandpaper. I feel it coming on,
like a dream. You can't wake up from it. Dawns
on me that we have no clue where we are.
I glance at Dylan in the front seat. Ryan and
(00:24):
him are pouring over a crinkled, worn roadmap. You should
be up here doing this here, remarks I don't have
the strength left to argue any sudden movements, and I'll
end up vomiting all over the door. Welcome to The
Doctor to Gang, a production of I Heart Radio and
Katie Studios, Episode three, You Let the Fish Out of
(00:45):
the Pond. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a crime producer at Katie
Studios with Stephanie Lydecker. We've been working with producer Beth
Greenwald on The Doctor to Gang for months now. The
three siblings have agreed to tell their story for the
very first time, each from Separate Prisons League Race Dockerty
is at Federal Correction Institute Aliceville in Alabama, Ryan is
in the United States Penitentiary Tucson in Arizona, and Dylan
(01:08):
is at the Federal Corrections Institute in Bennettsville and South Carolina.
This call was from the Federal prison. I just naturally
have a heavy foot anyways, but I was going a
little faster and what to feel them it was and
might have been doing like forty or forty one and
like a thirty five. And the cop was just sitting
there waiting for mornings leaders and he just pulled out
behind us, and he didn't know had anything to do
(01:29):
with us or anything like that. For him, it was
just a routine traffic stop that went kind of sideways.
We were only in the car about twenty minutes. We
had just come from the gas station, and that's when
everything began. As soon as the cops got behind us
on that little fight street in Zeppor Hills, there's maybe
about like a four minute pursuit and then there was
like a small other shootout and then that was It's
(01:52):
about five minutes in total. Once we ran from the
cops in Pepfor Hill, there was no way to go
back to Florida without attracting a large amount of attention.
That was what really started to get the ball rolling.
It was never personal, and to say that type of
ship I know it sounds asinine to a lot of people,
but to me, I mean that I'm twenty one years
(02:12):
old when that ship happened. You know, I didn't think
like I do now Now. I purposely slow down and
try and think things through. I don't always get it right,
but I do far better than when I was a kid.
You know, you got a shipload of testosterone and you're young,
and you just you don't think well. And when a
catastrophic situation like that happens, you're supposed to have like
(02:34):
parents filing on or somebody to say, hey, man, look it,
I know what the probation officer did was wrong. He
threatened you, and yeah, bro, you might have to go
to jail for thirty days to get before a judge
to kind of rectify this situation. But you need to
be cool. Forty five minutes into what the Doughertys hoped
would be a discreete run to Mexico, Ryan speeding put
(02:55):
them in the sights of local law enforcement. Despite the
officer giving chase, the Credis were not going to go quietly.
As soon as actually a muzzle flash from the A
K and it's you know, it's like, all right, let's
catch the bad guy. Taylor Gandy lived on the street
with a high speed shootout and chase took place. It
was definitely a time when I was sleeping, which at
(03:15):
the age of seventeen is totally like anywhere between you know,
six am too, like three pm, and my bed was
up against the windows that I had that was in
the corner of the house where the cars drove by
in the CBS parking lot, which is right next to
my house. And I remember being woken up out of
like a cold sleep just hearing like about how about
(03:37):
And I was like, okay, not normal son feud here.
And then you would hear the sirens after that, because
there were his hops that were definitely chasing these people down. Um.
I rolled over and peered through the blinds that I
had up, and I saw the tail end of the vehicle. Um, Like,
(03:57):
no way, these guys were actually firing like huge guns.
It's not like pistols or anything like that, which you
know certainly can do some damage too if you got
hit by like a straight bullet, But these were like
gun guns, like the big boys the K And then
a few moments had passed at that point and I
(04:18):
noticed that there was like a couple of officers that
were scouring the CBS parking lot and they were looking
at the ground. So I went outside and that's when
I found in my driveway the bullet casing. UM. I
remember holding it in my hand and the thing was
like almost the size of my palm. And I turned
to the office here and I was like, hey, UM,
I found this, and he was like kind of little
(04:40):
salty that I um picked up some evidence. Probably shouldn't
have done that. The Doperties were taught how to shoot
guns since they were kids. They knew what they were
doing and they weren't firing random shots. In their mind,
there was a method to their madness. Here's ryan. The
goal is always either just knocking hole on the radiotor
because you might have three to five minutes out out
with one of those Crown vics before it overheats that
(05:03):
shot at you from about forty or less away. And
I understand this right Like I might be a criminal,
I might do criminal things, I might not do the
right thing, but human life matters to me. You would
think that I'm like completely completely anti cop. I'm not.
I have a soun out there like without law and order.
(05:23):
You have no civilization, you have no society, and I
want the cops out there. They protect people. Of them
are good. You know. You see cops vilified today and
the news and ship, and it's like, yeah, that's like
one percent of them, you know, and they're shifty. One
percent of them deserve whatever it is that they getting court.
He has. Detective Widener recounting the day of the chase,
SPEs went back up to about a hundred miles per hour.
(05:44):
My front tire was flat, so I couldn't keep up
with them safely. I didn't even get close enough at
that point to tell you what the tag number was.
I'm only really good at like a couple of things
in life, and driving is one of them. I'm a
bad mom, a sucker behind the wheel. And we came
up to an intersection. Intersection was clogged with cars, and
(06:05):
I caught off the intersection by driving through a CBS
parking lot. When we cut through, their cop was following
us through close. I'll give it to the cop. He
still had some nuts and came up after me, and
they caught about forty rounds right above the driver's side tire.
All forty rounds are within like a one diameter foot circle,
you know. So I wasn't aiming for the cabby your vehicle, right,
(06:27):
And never in my life was trying to kill an officer.
It's just not who I am. Life matters to me, right.
Sheriff Chris Naco has been the sheriff of Pascal County
since two thousand eleven. Here's what Sheriff Naco recalls from
that day. Remember getting coffee. I was g having coffee
with them and I get a phone call and he said,
we just had a shooting in Zephyr Hills. There's somebody
(06:49):
shooting at law enforcement. I remember I looked over the individual.
I said, I'm sorry, I gotta go, and I remember
heading out to the east side of our county, the
Zepper Hills, and I'm trying to get radio information what's
going on, and we're getting bits and pieces. I think
it was one of the things that just this wasn't
just your regular shooting. Dylan lived with his an and uncle,
(07:10):
Glenn and Suzanne Stanley, his adoptive parents, who had a
property in Florida. John and Yvonne Clinton lived next door
to the Stanley's. John is a prison chaplain and pastor
of the Grace Church of Zephyr Hills. His wife, Yvonne,
is a former probation supervisor and mother of five. The
morning of us shooting, our oldest son was at his school.
He called me and said, no, there's been a shooting
(07:32):
down the road and they shut the school down. You know,
we just never knew it was our neighbors, these people
we've known forever. We were watching the news and they
said their names and were like, oh my god. So
their family are really big into education and they're very
scholarly people. Um, so it's kind of unusual to have
(07:52):
these three go as far out as they did because
that's just thought what their family is about. Well, the
docrities have been in trouble for in their offenses in
the past. The reality of what they've just done began
to sink in. It just got really serious, you know,
things that have definitely taken turn for the worst. You know,
we're young kids, We're we're um, we're inexperienced as far
(08:13):
as the consequences of what's coming here. Sheriff Naco speaking
with producer Beth Greenwald. Obviously it was a serious incident,
but I know that it happens all over this country, unfortunately,
and on a daily basis. You were the first person
to kind of really sound the alarm that this is
going to be a spree of sorts, and you felt
very compelled to speak about it. So tell me it
was because they shot at your officer, because your gut
(08:36):
instinct was that this was going to be the first
of many incidences with these folks. So in this sense,
there was a doctor trio you know, just recognized and
this is outside that pattern saying okay, this is not
gonna end piacealy because these three were on a path too,
you know, either escape, you know, have a shootout with
(08:57):
law of course, and end you know, death by top um.
You know, those are those type of things that that's
why I think for a lot of for myself particularly,
but even for members of our organization, everybody had that
gut instinct that this is gonna end up and a shootout,
something bad was going to happen because of these three.
Definitely the shock of oh my gosh, that just happened. Um,
(09:19):
you know, how did it happen, Why did it happen?
Why did the cop pull us over? Why was Ryan speeding?
Ryan you're a dumbass. Why would you speed in the
middle of town? Did you see the cops? Did you
see what happened? Oh my gosh, Tim Harris, that are
in the Pascal County Sheriff's Office was assigned to investigate
the shooting after they disabled Wider's vehicle. We honestly didn't
(09:43):
know which direction they had gone because they had a
number of avenues that they could have escaped. At this point,
when you first learn about this, you know, did you
have any of the details yet? Did you know about
Ryan Docherty or any of that. When did the pieces
of that kind of puzzle come together? My sergeant got
a phone call from Probation and Parole out of Dade
(10:05):
City and they were reporting that Ryan Dougherty had been
placed on the strict probation, that the ankle bracelet had
been cut off around the same time that the pursuit initiated.
You know, Ryan Dougherty immediately became a person of interest
as far as we were concerned in the shooting, and
they were telling him that he wasn't even gonna be
(10:26):
able to be around his own child without it being supervised.
So that was accorded catalysts that kicked off the whole thing.
He felt that he could be better off if he
just absconded and took off, and so that's what they did.
Widener said there were two males and a female in
the vehicle that he observed when it passed it, But
(10:48):
at the time we didn't know it was Dylan and
Lee Grace. We thought it was only Ryan. But then
as it developed and we realized Lee Grace and Dylan
had went along with Ryan, then we updated a bolo
to include all three of them, which ended up identifying
them as the Daughter Dy gang. Can you just say
what a bolo is? It's a be able to look out.
(11:10):
The car was immediately reported as stolen by Ryan's girlfriend
at the time, the lady that was pregnant with his child.
Her name was Amber and she was the actual owner
of the Subaru, so she reported the car stolen, but
did you know they were leaving? Then we did an
interview with her and she wasn't a forthcoming he knew more.
(11:34):
She acted as if she had been asleep and that
Ryan had came in the bedroom and told her goodbye,
and she thought he was just going to work. But
at the end of the day that helped us a
little bit because either way, we had the tag number
for the vehicle and we had them in a felony
circumstance of firing on the law enforcement officer and fleeing
(11:56):
to elude. Here again is Ryan. I don't know what
I was thinking, man, I was just a kid, and
I was just scared. Remember, if not more than anything.
Wasn't like unlike a fear that you're used to or whatever,
fear that you can do something about. It's just the
fucking overwhelming anst like funck me in my life is
just shot now. Detective Harris began to subbed at home.
(12:19):
When I went to the house, initially I noticed a
pile of construction type equipment tools and things in the yard,
and I could tell it was obviously out of place.
So I asked Amber about the tools, and she said
that those tools had been in the trunk of her
car because Ryan used them for his job that he
(12:41):
had at the time doing construction work. We put two
and two together that they had taken those tools out
of the trunk to make room for something. Right, and
so we asked ourselves what was that? Something? You know,
we knew from the initial shootout that involved a pistol
and possibly a K forty seven, But we had no
(13:02):
idea that they had the number of guns that they
had with them. And then we executed the federal search
warrant and we found the safe and the safe was empty,
and so they had taken all of those weapons with them,
uh in the vehicle. So then of course we update
our BOLO that they were definitely heavily armed and dangerous.
(13:26):
We're going to take a quick break here, we'll be
back in a moment. I'm assuming these weapons were not registered.
Dylan had obtained all of the weapons that he had.
He had purchased them legally. You know, he didn't portray
(13:46):
himself as the hardened criminal that you know we picture
stockpiling this uh this cash of weapons. He just basically
liked guns. This was extremely helpful to police once again,
and here Sheriff Naco getting that information that they did
have a lot of guns. Those are the set of
things that kept adding up. We found out that they
(14:07):
did have some experience with guns, and so that just
even further round the bell of we got to get
this alarm out there, we gotta get these three in.
Here's former neighbor Yvonne Clinton. We've never had any problems
with any of them. Ever. They like to shoot guns
that we live on the country, so that's just not abnormal.
Given the urgency of the situation, Sheriff Naco appeared on
(14:29):
both local and nationwide news. We know you are, we
are coming down to get you. It is very clear
that these three are on some type of mission and
we have to do everything possible to arrest them. We
want you to turn yourselves in. We want a peaceful resolution,
but at the same time we understand if they want
to battle with us. We had the resources and we
will learn at a fresh conference that we had Initially,
(14:52):
I've mentioned that our concern was the citizens and people
that these individuals would come in contact with, not knowing
who they were, and the dangerousness of the situation. The
media ran with the story and words spread across Florida
about the Doughertys and their high speed police chase that
ended in a flurry of bullets. There's a massive FBI
(15:14):
man hunt underway for three Pascal County siblings on the
run from the law. Again here, Sheriff not people are
calling in fighting whether they were real sightings or they
were just two guys and a girl in a car.
You know, we were getting calls and they're follow up.
People are engaged, so as soon as any story breaks,
you start getting a lot more tips. The tips are
(15:34):
always helpful. At the same same time, you have to
dig through the tips to find out which tips are
actually valid and which one. You know, people just got excited.
Former next door neighbors the Clinton's way in the local
media started to interview us on the local news because
we lived right next door and we were the neighbors,
and it was like they were wanting to know more about, Well,
(15:54):
who are these people that are you know, kind of
like a Body and Clyde type. It's a family, but
they're on the run from the police and they're shooting.
Who are these people? And I think one reason we
spoke because we weren't really in touch with the family
at that point. People had moved away or passed away,
you know, the grandfather and grandparents were gone and all
these different people. But we I just my thought was
(16:16):
I'm very pro law enforcement, you know, and I definitely
think that they were doing wrong, but I also wanted
to put a human face to it and kind of
be like, you know, things do happen, and sometimes people
just get caught up in stuff and it gets deeper
and deeper. We knew it was a very tight knit family. Um.
We knew those three were very close, and so having
(16:41):
that closeness, that willingness to hey, we're going out, we're
running together, also lead you to believe possibly that they
were also going to all go down together. When we
would speak to the media, that was just like, turn
yourself in and stop this. It's only going to get worse,
you know, because we didn't want to see them get killed.
They're willing to do anything, which then leads the fact
(17:03):
of bringing the belt more to the nicene saying, no,
be careful. If anybody goes, you know, teas than three individuals,
don't try to step in and joy anything. Called law
enforcement immediately. And if law enforce was gonna engage, make
sure you were sending more than one depth of year
one officer. Make sure you're sending a group, because you
have to send a platoon out because this was probably
(17:23):
not gonna end well. My front tire was flat, so
I had to stop because I couldn't keep up with
them safely. At that point, the question remained, where were
the Doperties. There was an impression by some that, you know,
they were going to follow that carridor so we thought
they would have dipped down into Texas first and try
(17:43):
to cross through Texas or at the worst, cross through
in New Mexico if they're going that right, there was
some thought they possibly were heading north in Canada. It's
difficult to always be in the mind of somebody who's
committing these crimes, but you're constantly trying to evaluate what
are they thinking, So you know, from that aspect, you know,
they probably felt they couldn't communicate with loved ones because
(18:07):
they knew the phones were not going to be, you know,
a wise way to communicate um. At the same time,
you know, social media was not going to be their
best way. They probably were feeling that are running out
of options. We look extensively within the Tampa Bay region.
We had all the agencies looking because we didn't know
if they were gonna hunker down somewhere or what they
were gonna do. That was a big question, Where are
(18:28):
they going next? Here's Detective Harris. They could have went
south towards Tampa. They could have circled back through the
southern part of Zephyr Hills and went towards Plant City
or Lakeland or Orlando. They could have went west on
some of the back roads towards Interstate sevent. Like I said,
we honestly didn't know which direction they went. How did
(18:52):
you lose them? They were dead in the middle of Florida.
There's cameras everywhere, there's cop cars everywhere. You know, you
can't drive from your house to a gas station and
in Florida and back again and not see at least
two cops. So how did you lose track of these kids?
And then you let them loose in the entire United States?
You let the fish get out of this little pond
(19:13):
in the ocean, and now we can't find them, and
it's all your fault. Thanks a lot, stupid Florida once
again for having crazy people and are criminals on then
unleashing them on us. Shooting at a police officer makes
you public enemy number one and a priority for all
surrounding law enforcement agencies. Here's Beth speaking again to Detective
(19:33):
Tim Harris. And when they popped up, I guess it
was a day or two later. Max, Were you surprised?
I mean at the path they were going on. I mean,
obviously they were trying to get away. They they had
the weapons, and what happens when you hear that news.
I got a phone call from the Tampa Airport Police
Department and they had found some gun parts that had
(19:56):
been discarded in the ladies room restroom at the airport.
And obviously they had seen our bolo, they were aware,
they knew that our circumstances involved at least one gun.
And so in my point in bringing that up is
is that we had to take into consideration that they
had went to Tampa International Airport and possibly got on
(20:18):
an airplane. So I ended up going to Tampa Airport
and we reviewed hours and hours of surveillance video, and
we checked plane registries for outgoing flights around the time
frame and things of that nature in an effort to
identify had they potentially left on an airplane. At the
(20:39):
end of the day, none of that panned out. Someone
had realized that they had got into the airport with
a handgun and they figured, oh my god, I can't
go back, put this in my car or whatever circumstance,
and it ended up being disposed of in the trash can. Totally,
totally unrelated circumstance. I don't think they ever identified how
(21:00):
the parts ever got in the trash. Get Yeah, there
are supposedly sightings of us everywhere. Supposedly we robbed the
liquor store in New Jersey, and supposedly we shot somebody
to death on the interstate in Kentucky. We were seeing
in Texas right next to the border. Man. So much
of it is logistically impossible. Stick a pin in a map,
draw a circle, figure out how fast the car can
(21:22):
possibly go, and the math and miles just don't add up.
The Dorty Gang is still on the run, and tonight
we're getting new information. We've had a few spottings in
the southeastern night States. But what we're trying to tell
everybody about these three is that they can be anywhere.
This so called Dorty Game, the Dorty Gang, the Dorty Gag,
the Dorty Gang, And somehow, in all the media melee,
(21:43):
no one seemed able to get the name right. As
Dylan Grace and Ryan will tell you it's Dougherty, not Doherty.
That morning, Ryan began to note that Lee Grays was
not well. I didn't realize how about all of my
sister was, she's like more or less rehabbing in the backseat.
You know, I didn't really s telling until later that
the day after we had already gotten the shootouts for
(22:03):
the cops, and then the Graci just goes back to sleep,
you know, she sleeps all out in the back seat,
and then like I just noticed, I'm like, fun man.
You know, it didn't click in my head until later
that Damn, she's dope sick. You know, she's rehabing back
here in the back to seat, my stomach, my head.
I couldn't once I went to sleep, I could not
wake up. I mean I remember Dylan just screaming at me,
(22:25):
wake up, wake up. My body is saying, no, you
don't have drugs. You're going through a detox. Do not
wake up. Keep sleeping. So I was sleeping um for
ten or twelve or fifteen hours at a time, and
Dylan gets really annoyed with me. If he's awake, you're awake,
So you better be awake. If he's gonna be sitting,
you know, in the back seat of the front seat
(22:45):
and you want to be in the back seat sleep
and oh no, you're gonna be awake here, Get up.
And drink this bottle of water. It'll feel it'll Dylan
thinks he's he's a rehab counselor, so he is going
to beat the disease and drug youth out of your system.
And I'm just basically comple leaning like, oh, you know,
I'm dope sick. You know I don't feel good, I
mean by pills. And they're basically saying, no, you don't.
(23:07):
You know, so I don't have any pills with me.
It's just that constant detox and your stomach hurts and
your head hurts, and you're you're really struggling. Let's stop
here for another quick break. We'll be back in a moment.
(23:31):
Years earlier, Lee Grace had developed a dependency to drugs
to ease the pain of losing her dad, Doc and
her sister Aaron. The drugs I've always been most attracted
to our benzodiazepine ban its a lot of pin value
and out of the end, those are the drugs that
I always have wanted ever since I was probably about nineteen.
(23:53):
I would be able to obtain prescriptions, so I knew
the people that had options, so I would go to
them and offer them money. They would give me their
prescriptions for cash. And it was actually really very easy
for me to obtain drugs. I mean I was never
afraid to ask people. I mean the worst thing they
could tell me was no. I would tell them, listen,
(24:15):
I have a hundred dollars, open your purse, give me
that prescription. And they would need the money for gas
or food or you know sometimes. You know, it was
a working class family. You know, maybe they needed to
pay their electricity bill, maybe they needed to pay a
phone bill that a hundred dollars. You know, they were
very accepting of it because they actually want This call
(24:36):
was from the federal prison and maybe they didn't even
take the prescription. Maybe they just got it from their daughter,
and their whole their whole scheme was to sell the prescription.
So I was actually friends with a lot of people,
um a lot of people that I bought drugs from.
They were like some of my best friends. Here again
is Ryan, I don't know, it's really Grace has ever
really been to an actual treatment place. So she had
(24:57):
been been like a seventy two hour whole to make
sure that you're mentally not going to look out right,
the Grace is just gonna do her, like, you can't
really dissuade her wance she decided she wants to do something,
and then like if she ever wanted to be sober,
and you know there's options out there to go get sober,
It's like that's what she needed. You take the drug
addict out of my sister, like she would have never
(25:18):
gotten that car. Well, we had to believe that they
were going to have to get cash somewhere. Um we
knew that, you know, these three had to be smart
enough not to use credit cards, um even stolen credit
cards to some extent because we had the ability to
very quickly ascertain information that kind of tracked some of that. However, cash,
(25:40):
you know, you can obviously go into somewhere use cash,
So we knew they had to obtain cash somewhere. Unfortunately
for the Doughertyes, their first plan to get cash came
to a screeching halt. Jilan's friend was going to purchase
the guns from us and give us cash. We got
in the direction of his house, we were already being
pulled over by the hop so Pete pulled over except
(26:02):
for hills by Kevin Widener. That prevented us for meeting
his friend. Because we're not going to be chased by
the cops to someone's house. Here's Dylan explaining his state
of mind and decision making. I think we knew what
she needed money before we left Florida. At that point,
I don't. I wouldn't say I was thinking eight clear.
In that moment of desperation, the Doughertyes did the unthinkable,
(26:24):
as at that point you go south surrender, We're you
gonna say, hey, sorry, we shot it out with you
in the street. You're still gonna get the same amount
of time you're gonna get whether or not you keep
going from there. So it's like you've already started this party.
You might as well have fun. And and that's that's
what we did. And literally just got my heart back
to my resting heart needed, you know, fifty eight pieces
(26:45):
in minutes, and I would like, all right, let's rob
a bank. Now, the timeline was very last minute, because
at no point did we ever look at each other
and say, let's get in the car, let's load up
the guns, let's rob a bank, and let's have a
shootout with the cops. At no point was that ever
on the table. It makes a little bit to work
your nerve up to do it. So yeah, we hit
that rankin and we rolled out of Georgia, and we
(27:08):
weren't already committed after the Vinepeal in Florida, so we
were really committed after that. And finally, and it never
before heard interview, the Dougherty's mother weighs in on what happened.
Not once in ten years has anyone asked me what
happened my opinion, So I have had ten years to
(27:30):
think about what I want to say about my children,
and I want to say three things more on that
next time. The Dougherty Gang is executive produced by Stephanie
lie Decker and me Courtney Armstrong, along with Beth Greenwald,
Sean McEwen, and Joseph Morgan. Editing and sound design is
by Jeff Ta, mixing by Peter Nay. Additional producing by
(27:53):
Chris Graves and Jeff Shane. The Doctor Gang is a
production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more
podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.