2 Bounty Hunters, Motel 6 Ordered to Pay Family $1.15 Million

A family terrorized in their Costa Mesa motel room by armed bounty hunters looking for a bail-jumping prostitute has been awarded $1.15 million by a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury.

The judgment helps bring a two-year nightmare to an end for Geoffrey and Pamela Read of Coventry, R.I., and their children, who were 5 and 18 years old at the time, Geoffrey Read said Thursday.

The family was wrapping up a nine-day trip through Southern California in October 1994 when two bounty hunters crashed into their motel room using the manager’s passkey and held a gun to Pamela Read’s head. The men then checked her identification and realized she was not the person they were searching for, police said.

After a week of testimony and a day and a half of deliberations, a jury Wednesday found Motel 6 negligent and responsible for 70% of the damages, with the bounty hunters, Gary Michael Eppley, 44, of Long Beach and Dean Thaddeus Stair, 29, of Anaheim, responsible for the rest, said Anthony Michael Glassman, an attorney for the family.

Representatives of Motel 6 maintained during the trial that the manager had seen badges and Sam Brown gun belts on Eppley and Stair, assumed that they were law enforcement agents, and believed he had a duty to cooperate by letting them into the Reads’ room.

Emmett Gossen, a spokesman for Dallas-based Motel 6, said Thursday: “We’re shocked and dismayed by the jury’s verdict. It seems the verdict has the allocation of liability just completely wrong. Our manager was deceived by these two bounty hunters who flashed badges.”

Gossen said Motel 6 managers “follow the guiding rule that they need to cooperate with the authorities.”

The corporation is evaluating the possibility of an appeal, he said.

But Geoffrey Read, 39, said Thursday as he prepared to return to Rhode Island with his family that the manager “should have at least demanded identification instead of someone just looking like police.”

Read, a mechanic for the city of Coventry who also does volunteer mechanical work for the city fire department, said the judgment “will never take away what happened, but in a way it brings some closure.”

The family still suffers from nightmares, fitful sleep and nervousness, he said.

Geoffrey and Pamela Read and her 20-year-old son, David Simpson, each were awarded $275,000. Their younger son, Walter, was awarded $325,000 because “he doesn’t have anywhere near the same coping skills as the adults,” Glassman said.

Walter had remained curled in a fetal position throughout the incident. And he “has for a year and a half, insisted on sleeping with a picture of his mom and dad under his pillow,” Glassman said. “For several months he wouldn’t go out and play with his friends.”

Eppley and Stair pleaded guilty in November 1995 to four counts each of assault with a firearm. The Orange County district attorney’s office dropped four counts each of false imprisonment by violence.

The family had checked into the Motel 6 in the 1400 block of Gisler Avenue after a vacation in Southern California that included Disneyland, Magic Mountain, Hollywood and the San Diego Zoo.

By 10:30 p.m., everyone was asleep in room 118 except Pamela Read, a T-shirt saleswoman and volunteer firefighter, Glassman said.

“A humongous racket erupts from outside their door,” he said. “She hears pounding and kicking and she hears obscenities shouted.”

According to Glassman, when Geoffrey Read saw the men with guns drawn and asked who they were, they said they were “bail rescue” and demanded in profanities that he open the door and shut up. The Reads, perplexed and frightened, called the front desk for help, and then called police. But before officers arrived, the manager gave a passkey to the men and they kicked through the safety latch, Glassman said.

One man pulled Pamela Read from her bed and held his 9-millimeter semiautomatic weapon to her face before checking her identification and acknowledging the error. The other man held Geoffrey Read and the children at gunpoint.

Glassman said the prostitute the men were looking for had stayed in room 118 for 11 days, but recently had checked out.