Late Sunday night, Sgt. William Ward of Henry County, Ind., watched an evening news report of two fugitive teenagers going cross-country and thought of Interstate 70, which he was soon to patrol on the night shift.
He thought to himself that it would be quite possible for someone to take the Interstate from New Jersey, where the boys were last seen, to California.
Little did he know that, within hours, he and Interstate 70's Flying J Truckstop would be the focus of a media frenzy.
Early Monday morning, Ward overheard a CB radio message from a trucker who said he was carrying two teens who were looking for a ride to California.
Ward went on a hunch.
"I actually didn't expect it to be them, but I thought it was worth checking out," he said.
He got on his radio, posing as a trucker, and offered to pick up the teens at a nearby truckstop and take them west. Ward then called other officers to meet him at the truckstop.
45-year-old Trucker James Hicks, who was en route to Chicago with a load of M&Ms candy, told the Associated Press that he decided to give the pair a ride from Columbia, N.J. because they reminded him of his 17- and 13-year old sons back home in Sumter, S.C., and a 14-year-old son who died in a motorcycle accident in October.
The boys told Hicks when he picked them up in New Jersey that they had hitchhiked from California to Massachusetts to find work, but were unsuccessful so they were headed back to the west coast, Ward said.
Parker and Tulloch did not appear scared, but they were "worn out," according to Hicks.
Hicks let the boys climb into the bunk of his cab and they quickly fell asleep.
After hearing Ward's radio offer, Hicks -- having no idea that the boys were wanted for murders -- dropped the boys off at the Flying J Plaza just before 4 a.m. Monday. They hopped out of the truck and went to wait in the gas station.
Meanwhile, Police Deputies Chris Newkirk and Landon Dean parked their cruisers out of sight of the truck. In plain clothes, they approached the suspects and asked them to step out of the station.
The deputies asked the boys simple identification questions, but Parker and Tulloch were apparently unable to give straight answers to several of the questions.
Tulloch did not know his Social Security number and one of the boys said he was born on the 40th of the month.
Newkirk and Dean quickly arrested the boys without a struggle as Ward arrived at the truckstop.
As the police took the boys away, one of them looked Hicks in the eye and said, "'I'm sorry.' They seemed sorry they did that to me."
Hicks had given the boys $10 for breakfast, but one of the deputies got his money back for him. "There is free food in jail," Hicks said.
"Everything seemed so set up for them to be captured here, maybe it's just the way it was supposed to happen," he said.
In an unfortunate side to the story, Hicks was fired by his company, Marten Transport of Mondovi, Wis., which has a strict policy against transporting hitchhikers.
But Hicks says he has no regrets.
"I actually feel lucky," he said.
But while this national news story was unfolding outside in the truck-fueling lot, most people inside the Flying J Plaza restaurant didn't even notice.
A manager at the Flying J truck stop told The Dartmouth that overnight employees had no idea know police had arrested two teenage murder suspects at the fuel station outside, until reporters called the morning after to capture worker reaction.
The first call came from a local radio station at about 7:30 a.m. as the story began to break across the nation.
Rick Farias, dayshift manager for the gas station, said none of the employees working in the gas station part of the truck stop even remembers seeing the two boys.
Farias said officers from the Henry County Sheriff's Department were very slick in the 4 a.m. apprehension Parker and Tulloch.
Employees don't remember there being any commotion during the arrest, Farias said.
Until now, workers have fielded calls only from the press, and have not been questioned by police.
"We've been inundated with calls," Farias said. "This is the location [the arrests] just happened to be at."
The Flying J truck stop is open 24 hours, seven days a week, and the nightshift runs from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Farrias said five employees worked the nightshift.
Three monitor the customer service area at the gas station, two serve as janitors, and one is assigned to the small food store.
On average, hundreds of highway motorists might stop at the truck stop between 4 and 5 a.m. on any given morning, Farias estimated. But a majority of those customers would likely use the larger restaurant portion of the station.
The two suspects did not enter the dining area Monday, only the gas station, Farias said.
But last night, things began to return to normal. Time marches on for the rural Indiana truck stop that was one minute an average highway oasis and the next minute at the epicenter of a national news drama.
J.M. Brown of the The IUPUI Sagamore, student newspaper at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, contributed to this report.
