Near miss: the Andrew Patti incident - The Ayoob Files

American Handgunner, May-June, 2004 by Massad Ayoob

Situation: A pair of thrill killers have measured you and your young son for coffins ... and they're armed with high-tech fighting knives.

Lesson: A weapon in the hand beats two that are sheathed--and it takes more than two mad dogs to kill a man whose Father Wolf instinct is aroused.

Prelude

Generations before, there had been Leopold and Loeb. Now there was Tulloch and Parker. High-achieving high school kids from good families who had something missing in their hearts. They had decided to run off to exotic places and lead lives of criminal adventure. First, of course, they needed money. Their plan: raid a home, take everything of value (with emphasis on ATM cards) and repeat as necessary when they ran low on cash.

And, not incidentally, to murder all victims and witnesses. That way, no one could testify against them. Besides, they thought, it would be cool to see what it felt like to kill a human being.

They had picked a likely house in an area they thought sufficiently remote that no one would hear the screams of their victims. Nearby they had dug a shallow grave for the corpses they planned to create. If they took the victims' blue Beemer, maybe the summer house would just seem abandoned and no one would know anything had happened until the killers were long, long gone.

Robert Tulloch made sure his knife was in place, then strode to the door of the home they had targeted and began pounding on it insistently.

The Incident

It is the night of July 17, 2000. Andrew Patti, 47, is at the family's Vershire, Vermont vacation home. His wife Diane is away at work, and Andrew is alone reading to his 11-year-old son Andy. Andrew is on edge. Moments before, their dog has barked in a way its owner knows indicates the presence of a stranger, and he has felt a sudden sense of being watched, a sense that someone is outside the window. Andrew has done something uncharacteristic: he has drawn his Glock and gone to the window to look, but sees nothing. Now the Glock is back in his holster, but Patti has a nagging sense of foreboding.

In his native New York, most would look askance at a man who wore a pistol at home, but Patti is not your average New Yorker. A grown child of The City, he has long ago come to realize that bad things happen to good people, and it is the job of good people to keep themselves and other good people from suffering. He and his wife operate a business devoted to the care of special needs children. And he has come to understand that having a gun and knowing how to use it is like having a first aid kit or a fire extinguisher and knowing how to use them, too.

And now Robert Tulloch's fist hammers on the Pattis' door.

Andrew is on his feet instantly, giving a hand signal to Andy to stay where he is. Many people, including stranded motorists and such, have knocked on this door before. There is something demanding, something dangerous in the staccato pounding he hears. Andrew Patti does something that is unusual for him. He clears his Glock from its leather thumb-break scabbard under his untucked shirt, and holds the drawn pistol behind him as he goes to answer the door.

He knows enough not to open it without seeing what's outside. With his free hand, he pulls the blind aside and looks through the window. He sees a tall young man with a narrow, long-nosed, lupine face. It does not occur to him at the time, but the face bears a striking resemblance to that of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine High School mass murderers.

The face is not back away from the door where he would expect it. The stranger is poised at the very threshold, his breath steaming the glass, as if he is coiled to charge through the door the instant it is opened. Patti asks him sharply, "What's up?" The stranger tells him he has car trouble and needs help.

Everything is wrong: the posture, the body language, the sense of having been watched through the window moments before. Whatever alerted his dog earlier, Patti realizes, has frightened her enough that she hasn't come to answer the door with him. All his well-honed New York street senses are screaming alarms.

He tells the man on the other side of the door that he can't help him. The tall man remains insistent. "Do you have jumper cables?" No.

Then, as ominous as the Big Bad Wolf: "Let me in."

No.

"C'mon, let me use your phone."

Patti doesn't think one more "no" is going to make any difference. His life experience and everything he is seeing tells him this is not a motorist in trouble, this is someone who is very serious, and very dangerous, and almost certainly not alone. It is time to answer with a little body language of his own.

Andrew Patti raises his Glock.

It's not gunpoint, not a threatening gesture. He just lets the man see it. And the response confirms everything Patti has been sensing.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa," snaps the tall man outside. "I just want to use your phone!"

Suspicions confirmed. An innocent person would have been shocked. This man's voice holds only anger and frustration. It's the voice of a combatant, an aggressor.