Scott became convinced that a group of people in St Davids wanted to kill him. He packed his computers, a few changes of clothes, and four dogs into his 2017 Ford KUGA Vignale and fled.
The above is kind of a dramatic statement, and it was a very dramatic event for Scott. He had very specific beliefs about what was happening and who was involved, and he explained them to the police (in several jurisdictions) and to me many times. But ultimately, shortly before he died, he realized that his brilliant mind had wandered down a twisty unmarked path and led him astray. Because of this I am not comfortable giving too many names and details. I know some of the people involved, and am positive that very little of what terrified Scott at that time was actually true. I will go into more detail about this in future stories.
One of Scott’s many habits was to not throw much away. To be a bit more specific, he could probably be classified as a hoarder. That isn’t necessarily bad, and when it comes to trying to track down what he did over time it is kind of handy to have pretty much every receipt he ever got, from about 2003 on. At one time I had all his receipts from the 70s through about 2000 in a storage unit I maintained for him in Sequim, Washington. Then in early 2017 he asked me to get rid of almost all that stuff and ship the few things he wanted to keep to him in the UK.
After Scott died and I went to the UK to help organize things, I found the plastic bags of receipts and pulled out those for 2017 and 2018 to help get an understanding of what he was doing when I wasn’t there. The following is based mostly on those receipts.
1. Between 4:32 and 4:33 on the morning of July 12th, 2017 Scott withdrew £200 each from two of his Barclay Bank accounts.
2. At 5:37 he stopped at Euro Garages in Pembrookshire, about 27 miles east of St Davids, to fill his car with £53.93 worth of diesel fuel. In notes he wrote he said that several cars were trying to follow him, but he took evasive action and ended up on secondary roads where it was easy to see anyone behind him, and easier to pull off onto another smaller road.
3. After leaving Pembrookshire he drove another two hours or so to Newport, where he checked in at a police station and told them about the plot. He told me later that this took several hours. In the end they said they would look into it.
4. He may have napped a bit after that, because the next receipt was at £13:29 at a nearby Roadchef where he stopped for a bite to eat.
5. At 13:52 he stopped at a nearby Rontec Magor fuel station and spent £20 to top off his tank.
6. After that he drove another hour or so, ending up at the house of a friend near Devizes, where he spent the night.
Scott spent the 13th around Devizes.
1. He bought £47.75 worth of dog stuff at Rangebourne Pet care.
2. He bought a new cellphone at The Carphone Warehouse.
3. He bought clothing and some computer magazines at Morrisons.
On the 14th Scott headed for a cottage that his friend had rented for him. He was still living there when he picked me up on the 24th. During that 10-day period he spent about £1000 on stuff for the dogs…the largest expense being a Dyson Animal vacuum to vacuum up all the dog hair at the places he would be staying. Scott doted on the dogs, but also felt responsible for cleaning up after tyhem, and not leaving a mess in the cottages he rented. Unfortunately the dogs weren’t very well trained, and I think were pretty nervous…probably responding to Scott’s fear…and peed and pooped wherever they were when the urge struck.