- [screaming]
- Cold-blooded murder in front of those kids.
- In the 911 call, Dykes directs law enforcement.
He says he has a hostage.
- If they could get a clear shot on Dykes,
it had to be a kill shot.
- Dykes wasn't getting what he wanted, and time was ticking.
- This guy's already committed a homicide.
I have no reason to think that he wouldn't do it again.
- He has been like a time bomb waiting to go off.
- He was losing patience with Ethan.
That was really concerning as well.
- The Alabama hostage drama is now in its seventh day.
Dykes remains underground with his five-year-old captive.
- Almost a full week into the standoff,
very little has changed.
- I said, Director, no assumption
can be made that Ethan is safe in his custody even one
more minute.
- We put the gear on, weapons checks, explosives.
- And nothing could dislodge him from his insistence
that he was going to tell that story,
or he and Ethan were going to die.
[loud explosion]
[dramatic music]
In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines...
♪
drug busts, mob stings,
terrorist takedowns.
- [shouting indistinctly]
- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.
- Mark it. - Freeze!
- FBI. - FBI!
- Action!
- But they don't know the half of it.
What really goes down?
We save that for each other,
when we're talking agent to agent.
This is "FBI True."
[tense music]
♪
- We knew the bus driver had been killed
and a kid had been kidnapped.
He says he has a hostage in a bunker that he
had built on his property.
- So from what I understand,
Dykes wants the reporter to come down
so he can tell his story.
- Yes.
- There was no good news about him.
And nothing, as it turned out, could dislodge him
from his insistence that he was going to tell that story
or he and Ethan were going to die.
- What are you figuring out at this point
about Dykes' personality?
- Who is Jim Dykes?
At his core, who is this man?
♪
And we figured out a few things, none of it good.
He was very isolated.
He had no friends.
He lost contact with his family.
He even really rejected his identity
as a Southerner, which simply isn't
done if one is a Southerner.
So that was bad, because isolation
is a risk-enhancing factor for violence.
- One neighbor told us Dykes spoke of making
worldwide news someday.
Others said he was often hostile
and convinced the government was out to get him.
But we've learned Dykes is a navy veteran who served
in the late '60s in Japan and California,
where he received awards for good conduct.
- He had a lifelong pattern of low
to no empathy for others,
which was real bad news for Ethan.
There was a story from one of the neighbors
that he had beat her dog to death with a pipe,
because the dog was crossing his property.
And he told her, if it happens again,
I'm going to kill your dog, and he did.
- He killed one of my dogs, and I had animal cruelty people
out then.
And he has... as I said, he's been a source of interest
for a long time, because he has been
like a time bomb waiting to go off.
- So he's been violent in the past?
- He was violent, but he wasn't just violent.
He was a violent promise-keeper.
Dykes saw people's actions or failures
to act as he said they should, as justifying violence.
In other words, please don't make me kill you.
Our profile was that he is a violent promise-keeper,
and so we must take him at his word when he says, this is it.
♪
He was isolated. He was angry.
He had no empathy.
He saw himself as a lifelong victim
of all kinds of injustices.
In fact, the term injustice collector
is one that we would use to describe
a guy like that... psychologically
brittle, rigid.
- So what are the next steps then?
Obviously, knowing the Bureau, what's on the ground
is reporting back to headquarters.
- There began to be a misconception,
I think, in some quarters that he genuinely cared for Ethan
and at a critical moment would not harm him.
- He's told us that he has an electric heater
and some blankets inside.
He's also allowed us to provide coloring
books, medication, toys.
I want to thank him for taking care of our child.
- And you're going to develop what they call Stockholm
Syndrome, named after a famous bank robbery in Stockholm
where the captor and the captive start to bond.
You can see those signs when Dykes asks for coloring
books, for crayons.
He allows the medication to come in.
He's trying to provide for this boy.
So as time goes on, that bond should increase.
- I didn't think that was true.
He had a whole life pattern of no empathy.
So for him to suddenly empathize with and truly care
for Ethan... in other words, have formed a genuine
emotional attachment...
that would be a deviation from his whole life pattern,
and I didn't think so.
However, here's the hitch.
I didn't think that was true for Ethan...
five years old, under traumatic circumstances,
was now being cared for by this man in the bunker.
So my concern, especially for a five-year-old like Ethan,
was that he was genuinely forming a bond to Jim Dykes.
And in a critical moment like a rescue...
Bill and I talked about this...
he might run in the wrong direction.
[ominous music]
- At one point, he told the negotiators
that he had taught Ethan how to detonate that IED.
So if something happened to him...
for instance, we fatally shot him or something like that...
that Ethan would then detonate the IED.
- Now, I don't know that Ethan would have done that,
but the fact that he was teaching Ethan that starting
around day five, losing patience with Ethan,
that was a concern as well, because you're talking about
a five-year-old in a bunker.
His behavior's not likely going to be perfect.
So that was really concerning as well.
- Wow.
- Here at home, negotiations are continuing this evening
with the Alabama man who is holding
a five-year-old boy hostage in an underground tornado bunker.
And Manuel Bojorquez is there.
- People who know the hostage say he has
autism and needs medication.
Scott, they tell me he has never been away
from his mother this long.
- We didn't feel like... based on what Molly was telling us,
what the negotiators were telling us,
we felt less and less confident that
there was going to be some sort of peaceful
resolution [inaudible].
We needed something else.
We needed an edge.
- We talked to his adult daughters, who were...
wanted nothing to do with it.
They were very fearful of somehow
making the situation worse,
which I can completely understand.
We did eventually secure the cooperation of one
of his adult daughters to come to Midland City
and be willing to speak with him,
which was very heroic on her part.
- They called and informed me that my dad had murdered
somebody and had kidnapped a child
and was down in a bunker.
And I told them, whatever they needed, because I had a...
I have a little boy at the same age.
I was willing to do anything.
- What we'd set up was a call between Dykes
and the daughter.
- And that was really tough.
It was tough on her.
She hadn't seen him in many years.
She was worried about all the same things
that anyone would be worried about.
Will I make this worse?
Will I be able to help in a positive way?
- She would have a computer, and he would have a computer,
and she could see him, and he could see her.
Of course, unbeknownst to him,
I would be able to see what she could see.
And the conditions that had to be met
to make this thing successful was,
Ethan had to be away from the hatch,
and Dykes had to physically be in that space.
And if we could have those two conditions met
at the same time, we would have at least reasonable
odds of a successful rescue.
We rehearsed it using the rehearsal bunker dozens of
times, full-scale rehearsals.
♪
We have a plan.
This was the first time that we were called in, I think,
to brief a director on what our plan was.
- So you were on that call, too, Molly, right?
- I was, yeah. - OK.
- It was in the command trailer.
It was like command-post city, all trailers
and mobile vehicles, if you can picture it.
But it was in the command trailer.
It was full house.
- So you guys each had your own part to say.
And what was your feedback?
- It kind of went around the room.
I briefed what we could do, which was this assault that we
think will take this long, and here's our plan,
and we can't guarantee success on this,
but this is what we can do.
And then we went around.
The negotiators, I think, spoke for a little bit.
And we got to Molly.
- I don't remember what I said the first time I spoke.
And I recall Director Mueller saying, well,
in my experience, patience usually
wins the days in these things.
He appears to be treating Ethan relatively well,
so I think we should hold position.
And we started waving at the on scene, pointing at myself,
doing this, and pointing at the speakerphone.
He put me back on the phone.
And I said, Director, there has been a lot
said about Jim Dykes
and the nature of his relationship with Ethan.
His whole life pattern was one devoid of empathy
for other human beings.
For him to break that pattern now and genuinely care
for Ethan, no assumption can be made
that Ethan is safe in his custody even one more minute.
The situation appears to be deteriorating,
and he's losing patience.
I pretty much cut it at that,
and I sat back and hoped that I wasn't going to be fired.
- It was very unusual for us to sort of
be able to speak our mind directly to the director.
And I think it was particularly unusual
for someone to stand up and re-explain to the director
that he wasn't understanding what it was
we were trying to convey.
And she did a pretty darn good job with that.
- I didn't have time to be nervous.
I was so alarmed for Ethan's safety,
and I thought I had the knowledge,
so I knew I had to speak up.
And there was nothing else on my mind.
- You did your job.
- I did what I thought had to be done.
I didn't think about anything else.
And I just sat there and waited.
And it felt like an eternity.
I don't know how long it was, but he changed his mind.
♪
- That's awesome.
- And then he used the words "rolling green."
I didn't know what that meant, but I could guess.
- A rolling green means, basically,
we have authority to execute.
- I left that meeting with the director
in the command trailer and just...
there was no place for me.
I was sitting in this quiet little room in Destiny Church
all by myself, really ruminating.
I was starting to think things like,
I know there's going to be assault at some point
if an operator gets killed.
Am I the one who made that happen?
I'm not, of course.
Jim Dykes made it happen.
But I mean, am I the one that did that?
- The Alabama hostage drama's now in its seventh day.
Dykes remains underground with his five-year-old captive.
Manuel Bojorquez is in Midland City, Alabama.
- Good morning, Charlie and Norah.
Police tell us they still have an open line
of communication with Dykes.
But almost a full week into the standoff,
very little has changed.
- So we put the gear on, did the final checks,
radio checks, weapons checks, explosives,
and we got into position.
♪
- The daughter, we always hoped that that conversation
would happen and would be beneficial.
- Yep. - And ultimately she was never
able to talk with her father.
- The first part of that assault
was to deliver toys to Ethan.
♪
So we brought up the toys.
The deputy brought them up like always, yelled at Dykes.
Hey, I'm here. I've got Ethan's medicines.
I've got his toys.
Dykes undid the lid just a couple of inches,
so he could slide them in and slid those in.
But unbeknownst to Dykes, while we're doing that,
the breaches are setting their charges.
Second thing we did, we had visual on Ethan, where he was.
He was actually where he was supposed to be, as far away
from the hatch as he could.
Right, so that was the first condition we had to meet.
The second condition was, we wanted to lure
Dykes up into the access tube.
We lowered the computer monitor just low enough to where he
would have to come out and reach up to get it
but not so high that it would kind of tip our hand that it
was a trick or something like that, 'cause he's pretty smart
that way.
So I think we lowered about 3 and 1/2 feet,
so he would have to stretch to reach it.
- Mm-hmm.
- We lower the laptop in there, and first thing we hear
is Dykes yelling for more slack.
He says, I need more slack; I need more slack.
The deputy yells back, that's all we got.
That's all the cable we got.
And I can see a hand reaching up to grab for the computer.
And at that point, I signal the breacher
with a slap to his shoulder, and he executes the charge.
[loud explosion]
The charge goes boom.
Our guys run up.
They peel back what's left of the hatch.
Our number one guy, just as rehearsed,
goes down in the hatch with an access bar
that we had developed to lower himself down a little bit,
gets in pretty quick.
Number two guy goes in right behind him,
and he's stuck, right?
Number two guy doesn't disappear in the hatch
like he's supposed to.
Unbeknownst to us, Dykes had a separate trap down lower
in the hatch.
It was probably about six feet down, halfway down,
and it was just a man trap.
It was another set of cables that we
didn't know about stretched across the access tube.
Dykes starts shooting at the guy who's hung up
in the access tube, probably from a distance of 3,
4 feet, right?
He's shooting blind from around the corner.
[gunshots]
But we pull him out.
I asked the medic to look for holes, look for leaks,
because we're pretty sure he's been shot.
And at that point, we're pretty fucked.
- We run the risk of losing momentum.
We tried to get a dog in there, but poor Ella,
who's a shepherd, a black shepherd,
she wasn't having anything of it either.
She couldn't get through the obstruction.
There was bullets flying out.
[gunshots]
We're tossing in flashbang grenades,
which make a lot of smoke, a lot of noise, a lot of flash...
anything we can do to keep his attention focused on us
and away from Ethan.
♪
We hear this loud boom behind us, explosion behind us.
[loud explosion]
And the shots kind of stop.
What Dykes has done, he's moved into the IED mode.
Papers, smoke, all kinds of particulate matter
just comes flying out at us as that explosion's going off.
And about that time, the same number one guy
that we had pulled out... and he just drops into the hatch,
into the smoke, the debris, all that,
drops 12 feet straight down.
Complete smoke and darkness.
Unfortunately for him, he's got his handgun in his hand,
right, which literally hits his arm on the way in,
knocks the pistol loose from his hand.
So... - Ah, shit.
- ...he hits the ground, and he is literally unarmed,
can't see anything.
He lunges forward the first time, gets nothing.
A little bit deeper, and he feels
what he knows to be a child.
He has a small child at home.
And he kind of says, hey, I knew what that felt like, so...
♪
You know, ten years later, I still get
a little emotional about it, get a little choked up.
♪
Let me start again.
So he wraps Ethan up, covers him with his body,
and that gives the number two a chance to get in.
Number two lunges into the darkness,
and he's now hands-on, basically hand-to-hand combat
with Dykes.
They're engaged in this mortal struggle.
He gets one round off with his pistol,
which he had in his hand.
[gunshot]
It's a Glock, so the weapon doesn't cycle.
- Sure.
- He pulls the trigger again, and nothing.
And about that time, the number three guy
is in the fight with a pistol.
And...
that was the definitive end to the situation.
We had a kill shot.
♪
Ethan, little Ethan, we extracted him from the hole.
He ended up... had a small scratch on his leg.
That was it, pretty much, so incredible
that he wasn't hurt more.
- Awesome.
I mean, that could have gone sideways so many ways.
- Yeah.
- FBI agents safely recovered the child, who's been held
hostage for nearly a week.
Within the past 24 hours, negotiations deteriorated.
FBI agents, fearing the child was in imminent danger,
entered the bunker and rescued the child.
The child appears physically unharmed
and is being treated at a local hospital.
The subject is deceased.
♪
- This is probably the scariest photo of all.
Each one of those tape marks is a round impact.
- And your guy was right there...
- Yep. - ...in that area.
- And those impacts are from Dykes shooting up blindly
from around the corner, but he's only literally
3 feet away at the most.
- And he's so lucky.
- And he was hanging literally right there
when these shots are being fired, so grace of God.
Yeah, but...
- Wow.
- Yeah, there's a lot of factors at work there for sure.
- Hundreds gathered Sunday to remember slain bus driver
Charles Poland Jr.
Robby Batchelor is also a school bus driver.
- He laid down his life for the kids on that bus.
♪
- I mean, I think for me, personally, it was...
it was the pinnacle of my career.
So I think it was just an incredible act of confidence,
I guess, in the team's capabilities and the crisis
negotiators that that was our last hope,
really, for saving Ethan, so...
but yeah, the takeaways is that preparation is everything.
We rehearsed that so many times,
and we were ready for anything to go wrong.
We couldn't predict what was going to go wrong,
but we had the tools we needed when it did.
[gentle music]
- Do either one of you know where Ethan is today?
Is he OK?
- He's doing great. - He is.
I do.
I talked to him probably less than a year ago.
And he is just an amazing kid, has very few memories,
some vague memories of what happened,
but he's forever grateful, super bright,
just well-adjusted kid.
And it makes me feel good.
♪
- So does this case bring up feelings ten years later?
- Those guys could have died.
Not a scratch on them.
And Ethan... you know, I'm a parent,
so to know that he's healthy and happy
makes me very emotional.
- What our guys did in the moment
and no regard for their own safety... and it
makes me proud of those guys.
And it definitely makes me emotional thinking about it.