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Continued from Page 5 seeing a man matching Leafs description walking along the road. “They must have just missed him,” Ms. Hart said.
After the search Thursday night failed, Ms. Hart said that they spent Friday in the bam, watching the activity outside through a crack in the barn’s wall.
On Friday night, Leaf broke into the house through a back window. They bathed and slept in beds for the first time in a week, Ms. Hart remembered.
On Saturday, they looked out in silence as a farmer plowed a nearby field, she said. Ms. Hart washed their clothes.
When the truck carrying the tactical team which was to search the house arrived, Ms. Hart said Leaf thought it was hunters coming to use the place for the weekend. “He planned to hold them up and take their truck and their money,” she said.
As the three huddled in the master bedroom upstairs, they listened as the police found cigarettes and some change Leaf had left in the barn’s loft. “We heard them talking to each other as they decided to go into the house.” The beginning of the end
Once the agents were inside, Ms. Hart said, Leaf waited until the first one started upstairs and stuck the gun around the comer. He yelled and told him to back off. The agents did, she said.
Then, the standoff began. She said that Leaf had her sit in front of him in the bedroom door, with Charlie sitting in front of her. Later, he, moved them back into the room, against the wall where he could watch the door.
After dark, Leaf shot out one of the upstairs lights, which accounted for two of the three rounds fired, Ms. Hart said. Later, he asked for a flashlight to be shone on the stairwell so he could see shadows if anyone attempted to come up the stairs.
At another point, as the negotiations dragged on, Leaf fired a shot into the wall and made Ms. Hart and Charlie stay completely quiet. “He hoped to scare them,” she said.
A death wish
On Sunday morning, after breakfast had been delivered, Ms. Hart said that Leaf told the negotiator that “this is it,” She recalled that he began ranting and told them “he would begin beating her until the police rushed upstairs shooting. Then, the baby would be by his side and when they shot him, they would shoot Charlie too.”
That was the threat he made unless the police agreed to his demand to have the FBI helicopter sitting in the field in front of the house fly them out.
The negotiator said he would have to ask permission from his su
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