His mother went to the sheriff’s office in tears the next day to tell Cuddie that her son was indeed alive. She said she was afraid he’d robbed Guns and Stuff and hit old man Robinette.
That night, Rowan said, he went to Saginaw, where he gave Gomez six of the stolen guns to pay down his debt, worth $1,000 per handgun. Gomez later told the authorities that he bought only one pistol from Rowan, according to a police report. Gomez was arrested soon after on charges of possessing weapons as a felon.
Rowan and his girlfriend were still hiding out. They booked a room at the Knights Inn in Saginaw, where a bed cost $50. “I was on edge all night, me and Rosa,” Rowan said. “I knew I was fighting a losing battle.”
Betrayal and Regret
They stayed on the run for about 48 hours, moving from one spot to another. The scrambling didn’t throw off Cuddie and his colleagues.
On March 20, two days after the robbery, they tracked Rowan and his girlfriend to a friend’s apartment in union ville. The couple were arrested about 7:15 A.M.
It was all over—and Cuddie had a definitive answer. Charlie Rowan was not dead. But he would be going away for a long, long time.
He told Cuddie that he didn’t mean for it to happen this way. He walked the officers through the robbery and told them where they could find the guns, the Batman mask, the stolen wallet.
The news was out. A front-page headline in the Traverse City Record-Eagle read, “Fighter Accused of Faking Death.”
The cage fighters felt betrayed, furious that Rowan had sullied their sport’s name.
“He’s lucky the cops got him before the fighters did,” Big John Yeubanks, the promoter, said. Organizers of the Fight for Charlie recently filed a police report in Traverse City accusing Rowan of fraud.
After the hoax was exposed, the cage fighting promoters decided to hold another benefit, this time to raise money for the Robinettes, the owners of Guns and Stuff. They have collected more than $15,000.
“We got sick of hearing about Charles Rowan and we thought, What about the Robinettes?” Yeubanks said. “Everybody was looking at this guy like he was an MMA fighter from Michigan, but in fact he was a small-time tough guy who got in a cage a couple of times.”
Today, Richard Robinette is back home after a recovery that’s surprised even his family and his doctors. He started playing his banjo again. He recently fixed the bathroom sink.
He doesn’t remember much of the robbery, but he showed off a horseshoe of stitches on the left side of his head.
“You can’t sit and cry about it,” he said. “They thought I was going to die.”
A few miles away, Rowan sits inside another cage, in the Gladwin County Jail. He pleaded guilty last month to armed robbery. He’ll be sentenced in October.
In jail, Rowan wrote letters to his mother, trying to atone. “I did not mean to hurt that man and his family,” one letter read. “I hope to see you at my visit.”
Rowan’s mother usually goes to see him once a week. On a recent afternoon, the two put their hands against the clear divider that separated them.
“I’m sorry you did this too,” his mother said. Rowan, wearing an orange jumpsuit, told her he figured he’d be locked up for the rest of her life.
He reads mysteries in jail. During his first few weeks behind bars, he tried to catch glimpses of his girlfriend, who was being held nearby. She recently pleaded guilty to armed robbery charges.
He goes over the whole strange story, step by step. He finds himself returning to the fake memorial, and the sounds of people sobbing for him.
“I didn’t realize how I impacted other people’s lives,” he said. “I don’t hold myself in high regard. I’m not a good person, I’m not a good dad, and most of the time I’m not a good son.”
He thinks about his girlfriend, Rosa, and wonders whether they’ll ever be together again.
“It’s like . . .” He struggled to get the words out. “It’s like we just died.”
JAY CASPIAN KANG
The End and Don King
FROM GRANTLAND.COM
IN THE BACK ROOM of Manhattan’s Carnegie Deli, Don King picked at a pastrami sandwich with his fingers. He had just been asked a question about his electric hair and, for the first time in a day filled with radio and television interviews, King paused before he spoke. A cautious look crept over his graying eyes. As he silently deliberated between several well-worn origin myths about the height of that hair, King tweezed a scrap of pastrami between two well-manicured fingernails and dragged the meat through a puddle of deli mustard. “My hair is God’s aura,” King explained while chewing. “Everything went up when I got home from the penitentiary. One night I went to lie down next to my wife and my hair started popping and uncurling all on its own—ping, ping, ping, ping! I knew that it was God telling me to stay on the righteous path so he could one day pull me up to be there with him.”