Armed and Dangerous
The Hunt for One of America's Most Wanted Criminals
Chapter 1
Everyone called him the mountain man. They said he was the most dangerous, gun-crazy renegade seen in the hills and valleys of Southern California since the days of the Wild West outlaws. The local police departments and sheriffs’ offices all said it would be next to impossible for any cop or federal agent to bring him down alive from his mountaintop hideout.
In April 1986, when I first caught wind of Mark Stephens—this “mountain man” terrorizing the Inland Empire communities (those in Riverside and San Bernardino counties)—I was only in my third year as a special agent with the Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. But I’d been a law enforcement officer for over a decade, and I’d made my bones as a local cop in North Carolina and as a federal border patrol agent before becoming an ATF agent—I’d certainly heard my share of war stories. Some so-called badass or another was always being touted as the hardest, most cold- blooded criminal in the county, the scariest dude to ...
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