29. "Auxiliary Document 5"

The following documents are all transcripts of recordings made by the Nottingham (DE) Police Department on Thursday, June 16, 2005; for ease of reading, our editing team has decided to present them all together; Documents 6 through 13 will be released as one (see subsequent installment).

Document 5 is an interview with then-Sheriff of the City of Nottingham and Nottingham County, Eddward Clair Woodland, regarding an incident that occurred circa 1998. Document 5 was provided to our editors as a transcript by the Department with the name of the interviewer already censored. (We also suspect that they took the liberty of cleaning up any stutters or Woodland's accent quirks from the record.)

Document 5

NOTTINGHAM POLICE DEPARTMENT

INTERVIEW LOG

Date of Recording: JUN 16 2005
Time of Recording: 3:00 PM

Interviewee: WOODLAND, EDDWARD C
Notes: INTERVIEWEE IS THE SHERIFF OF NOTTINGHAM COUNTY

START OF RECORDING

INVESTIGATOR:
This is [REDACTED] for the Nottingham City and County Police Department, interviewing Sheriff of Nottingham, Eddward C. Woodland. Sheriff Woodland, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed.

WOODLAND:
Wait, I had a choice?

INVESTIGATOR:
Now, Sheriff Woodland, it's understood that there are currently a group of criminals that you and your department are in the process of finding and apprehending; these criminals are known to especially occupy the area near the northwest edge of the city around the area of the Sherwood Forest Nature Preserve. It's also understood that you may have had an encounter with some members of this group many years ago but because of the bizarre nature of the incident, you were not able to file a formal police report about it. Is this correct?

WOODLAND:
Uh, yes, ma'am. I couldn't remember a lot of it for the longest time. Started coming back to me over the years, though.

INVESTIGATOR:
And now you believe you have a vivid enough memory of the encounter that you can put it on the record?

WOODLAND:
Uh, yes, ma'am, but I don't think it'll be enough for a formal report.

INVESTIGATOR:
That's quite alright, Sheriff Woodland, we don't need one just now; we might not ever need one. This interview is being conducted at the behest of Mayor Norman, he hasn't asked us for a formal report, and this might help us enough anyway.

WOODLAND:
Okay.

INVESTIGATOR:
Very well, then, Sheriff. So if we may start at the beginning. When would you say this happened?

WOODLAND:
Nighttime.

INVESTIGATOR:
I meant when as in how long ago, Sheriff.

WOODLAND:
Oh, I don't remember exactly, years ago.

INVESTIGATOR:
If you had to guess?

WOODLAND:
More than a few years ago.

INVESTIGATOR:
How many?

WOODLAND:
Well, a lot. It was before I was the Chief of Police-

INVESTIGATOR:
When did you become Chief of Police?

WOODLAND:
Uh, it was a while ago.

INVESTIGATOR:
Sheriff Woodland, if I may, the criminals you believe you saw have been sighted since the summer of 1998. Do you think this memory is from before or after that?

WOODLAND:
I think that might have been it, actually.

INVESTIGATOR:
1998?

WOODLAND:
Yeah, that summer.

INVESTIGATOR:
That summer specifically?

WOODLAND:
Yeah, that sounds about right. That would have been right when I got promoted from Sergeant to Captain. Yeah, I remember now, that's exactly what happened! I just got promoted and that night The Old Bull, Jersey*, wanted me to work with him to clean up Sherwood. He'd gotten some reports that there was repeated suspicious behavior in the woods. Could have been anything from Satanists to crackheads, all the reports just said there were some kind of shifty characters in there. And- wait, I remember now! It was on my birthday! Yeah, I- that's why- that's why I was so torn up over it happening on my birthday. June 19th, '98. I think it was a Friday night.

INVESTIGATOR:
Alright, great, very specific timeframe then. So what happened that night with The Old Bull?

WOODLAND:
It wasn't what happened with him, it was what happened without him. He showed up, a bunch of officers under my command showed up, they thought it would be best to split up, and since Jersey and I were the high-ranking officers, we'd lead the way together. So we made our way in, and every so often, Jersey would say, 'hey, you two, head off that way, you two, head off that way,' until it was just Jersey and me.

INTERVIEWER:
Was there anything specific he was sending them off to look for? Were there noises they were off to go investigate, or was it just looking to see what they could see?

WOODLAND:
Yes, ma'am, it was just sending them off in the hopes they would stumble upon something. But… aw, you know where this is going. They didn't find anything. He didn't find anything. I found something, though.

INTERVIEWER:
What did you find? And how did you find it without him?

WOODLAND:
Pure dummy luck, and I wish I didn't. He and I were walking alone for a while, nowhere in particular, just trying to get as deep into the woods as we can. But then we get a transmission on the radio: 'Officer down, officer down,' 'He's hurt bad'. Jersey asked where they were, they told him, I don't remember where they were, but he heard them and knew immediately where they were talking about, and he ran off and told me to follow, but… when I got promoted, I had to do a lot more running. I know I don't look it, but I'm a good runner now. I wasn't back then, though. I had to stop running almost as soon as we started and when I looked up, he was gone. I couldn't see or hear him anywhere.

INTERVIEWER:
And you were alone?

WOODLAND:
I was alone in those woods. So-

INTERVIEWER:
I'm sorry, Sheriff, but you said an officer was down. There was no record of any other officer encountering the criminals that night, either. They didn't have a run-in with the criminals, did they? As far as you know?

WOODLAND:
Official record was that the poor son of a gun tripped over a tree root and broke his knee. Knowing those slippery sons of… knowing those guys in the woods, wouldn't surprise me if he tripped over some sort of booby-trap trip-wire. Also wouldn't surprise me if he really did just trip over a root, it was pitch dark out there. Couldn't see the nose at the end of my face. And I don't want to give them too much credit.

INTERVIEWER:
I see. Understood.

WOODLAND:
Where was I?

INTERVIEWER:
You had lost sight of the chief.

WOODLAND:
Right, right. And I couldn't hear him either, so I couldn't just follow his voice. I radioed him and he said 'Go here, go here' but I didn't know where 'here' was. So I started walking wherever. I guess I went in circles, because for, what, twenty minutes, I didn't seem to be making any progress. Still no sign of him. But then…

(brief silence)

INTERVIEWER:
But then what?

WOODLAND:
I heard them. Well, him. Or - I guess they spotted me first. I don't know how, maybe the fox could see me in the dark, but I thought that was just a myth that his people could still do that. But first it was the bear who said, 'Hey, what're you doing in our woods!?' Like, hollering at me. And I look and I see the bear and I see the fox, and it's either a really big fox or a really small bear, and at first I thought it was a small bear from how far away I was, I thought he was smaller than me, but… I started walking towards them and they started walking towards me, and we kept getting closer and closer, and then I realized they were actually a lot farther away than I thought at first. I was thinking, 'oh, nevermind, the bear's my size,' 'oh, no, wait, he's got a few inches on me,' 'oh, no, wait, he's got at least a head on me, and he's got a pretty big head at that.' And it was a really, really big fox with him. I'd have thought he was a coyote or something, but, no… he got close enough and I could tell he was a fox. Looked it and smelled like it. Old sense of smell ain't as great for us nowadays as it was for our ancestors, but every once in a while we'll just get a hunch in the back of our minds about something and we won't even realize that it's our noses telling us. Course, if my people lost most of our sense of smell and our night vision but his people got to keep both, it'll be all the more reason for me to hate that guy-

INTERVIEWER:
Sheriff, I'm pretty sure that just like how your people - and his people too, I think, and any other people this apply to - just like how your people have a better-than-average sense of smell even if it's weakened significantly after a few thousand years of progress, I think his people - and I'm fairly certain your people, too, and anybody else from a people whose ancestors led nocturnal lives - I'm pretty sure you'd both have an easier time seeing at night than the mammalian average, even if it is much weaker than your pre-agricultural ancestors. But-

WOODLAND:
Well I can't see that great at night, and I know that I couldn't see s*** that night when I was seven years younger, are my eyes just broken? I don't think my eyes are that much worse than anybody else in my family. Or does someone like you have an even harder time seeing at night? Your people weren't nocturnal, were they?

INTERVIEWER:
No, Sheriff, I can't see that well at night, either, and neither could my ancestors as far as I know, but as for you, well, at this point in history, plenty of people are just born completely without the senses of our ancestors that are just functionally obsolete now. Can't see as well, can't smell as well, can't hear as well, fewer and duller teeth in the mouth-

WOODLAND:
Well, I'd say being able to see in the dark isn't exactly an obsolete skill!

INTERVIEWER:
I'm sorry, Sheriff, but I don't have the power to change this.

WOODLAND:
Aw, I know you don't, I'm just saying that finding out now that this stupid fox got to keep the gifts of his ancestors and I didn't is making my blood boil. And he's huge, is he just a super-fox?

INTERVIEWER:
I understand, Sheriff, but it's the genetic luck of the draw and these things do happen. Some of us turn out more, shall we say, pre-evolutionary than others. Others don't even get a fraction of what those who came before us had.

WOODLAND:
Ha, alright, I'll tell myself I'm more evolved than him then! I'm a modern mammal, he's a caveman! Cave-fox!

INTERVIEWER:
Precisely. But if I may, Sheriff, we're getting wildly off-topic. You said that you approached the fox and the bear, or they started approaching you, or both at the same time?

WOODLAND:
I think I took the first steps and they went to meet me in the middle after that. Because at this point, I had nothing to be afraid of. They told us about suspicious characters in the woods, that's it. No dangerous criminals, just creeps. Maybe if there was a whole bunch of them I'd be more afraid, but it was just a big dumb bear and a skinny little fox, nothing I couldn't handle alone. Yeah, Jersey was pissed at me for approaching suspects without backup, but hey, in my defense, if it all worked out, he would have been even prouder of me for being able to handle them all by my lonesome. I knew the risk and it should have paid off. Besides, I did have backup, it was in my holster.

INTERVIEWER:
I see.

WOODLAND:
So I told them, 'Hey, I'm Police Captain Woodland of the NPD, the woods are closed at dusk, even if you're not slinging dope or worshipping the devil, you're still trespassing and I'm gonna have to arrest you.' And the fox is keeping his mouth shut, but the bear's talking all about 'I just told you, this is our woods, get the f*** out of here if you know what's good for you, you wanna go? You wanna fight?' And I'm not in any mood to take their crap, so I reach for my gun, and - at this point, he was just a few feet away from me and there was enough light to see his face, and when I reached for my gun, I'm sure he'd never admit it, but man to man I could see in his eyes that he had an 'oh, s***' moment when he saw I was ready to skip the macho threatening s*** and go straight to gunplay.

INTERVIEWER:
And you said this was the bear who was acting belligerent?

WOODLAND:
It was the bear, yeah. At this point, he was so close I had to look up to him, so I couldn't even see the fox in my line of vision anymore. But this bear - he looked like he was about to s*** his britches when I put my hand on my gun, but to his credit, he swallowed his fear and he said exactly what he needed to say: 'Get your paws off that thing, let's scrap like men, don't be a coward.' Now obviously with my accent anybody can tell I'm from the South, and he had an accent that had me wondering if he was from somewhere in Dixie too, so he must have known that accusing me of being a yellowbelly was a surefire way to get me to play his game. Foolish pride of mine, I know, I knew I couldn't take this guy, but I wasn't going to make myself look honorable unless I did it this way.

INTERVIEWER:
Question, Sheriff.

WOODLAND:
Yes, ma'am.

INTERVIEWER:
As far as you could tell, did these two have weapons?

WOODLAND:
Just like you said, not as far as I could tell. But maybe you can see where I'm going with this again. I'm not quite toe-to-toe with this grizzly, but I'm close, and he keeps talking about going to blows but he's not actually doing it. I don't remember exactly what he was saying, but we were exchanging heat, and at a certain point, he says something like, 'Who are you to come into our woods and tell us how to live?' And so I tell him, 'I'm a captain of the Nottingham Police Department,' and… I'm guessing they baited me with that question, because the next thing I hear from behind me is, 'Who do you serve?'

INTERVIEWER:
I'm sorry, what was the question the bear asked?

WOODLAND:
Not the bear, the fox. He was behind me all of a sudden, and he was holding a bow and arrow pointed at my head. He asked 'Who do you serve?' And like I said, it seemed like a setup question. So I turn around to face him and I'm asking 'What?' and he says again, 'Who do you serve? As part of your position, who do you serve?' And I say 'I serve my city,' and then behind me again, I hear the bear go 'And who is the city!?' I turn around again, back to him, and now he's holding just this big f***ing stick, like a staff I guess you would call it, I don't know where these two got these things from, seems like they pulled them out of their- excuse me, pulled them out of thin air, but I back up to the side so I can see them both, maybe that made them think I was afraid of them, and okay, I was a little caught off-guard, but I knew better than to leave my back exposed. Never a good idea to leave your back exposed in a fight.

INTERVIEWER:
Of course.

WOODLAND:
And the bear says again, 'Who's the city you serve?' and the fox says, 'Who do you answer to? Who's your boss? Under what authority do you serve?' And I'm just taking the question at face value, so I tell them, 'I serve under the authority of the city council, the mayor's my boss.' And then I just hear this… whiz.

INTERVIEWER:
'Whiz'?

WOODLAND:
I heard it and as soon as I did, I feel this pinch at the very tippy-end of my tail, and I look down, and… the son of a bi- the son of a fu- the son of a gun fox somehow managed to pin the very end of my tail to the tree behind me.

INTERVIEWER:
He did?

WOODLAND:
I mean, I realized later that he just barely got me. I mean barely. The point of impact was probably not even half an inch from the end of the skin. Like, think about someone getting an earring and taking it out after a while, a little ring earring; the hole would be as close to the edge of their ear as the puncture wound from this arrow was.

INTERVIEWER:
And you said… if I heard correctly, it went through your skin and stuck into the tree behind you?

WOODLAND:
Again, just barely. I didn't find this out till later though. And I've gotta say, they did a good job messing with my head. Bravo, boys, bravo. They basically do the least they can to physically hurt me, but it's dark and I can't tell that, all I know is that I felt a pinch that isn't unpinching and I can feel an arrow sticking out of my body, so they got me thinking I'm basically stapled to the tree. And I'm panicking so it doesn't even cross my mind to try to pull it out or radio for backup.

INTERVIEWER:
Apologies, Sheriff, but may I ask what they were doing immediately after they fired the arrow?

WOODLAND:
Oh… completely forgot to mention. So you remember that question they kept asking me? And the answer I gave?

INTERVIEWER:
Um… 'Who do you serve?' and 'I serve the city?'

WOODLAND:
'I serve the mayor.'

INTERVIEWER:
Right, I'm sorry.

WOODLAND:
'Wrong answer.,

INTERVIEWER:
Um… I beg your pardon?

WOODLAND:
No! No, not you, them. The fox shot me with his arrow and says 'Wrong answer.'

INTERVIEWER:
Oh! Oh, I see.

WOODLAND:
Yeah, he says 'wrong answer' as I'm freaking out, but I manage to get my words together enough to ask, 'Wait, what the h*** do you mean, "wrong answer"?' And he just says again, 'wrong answer'. I just keep saying, 'what the f*** do you mean,' pardon my French, and they keep saying 'wrong answer,' we go back and forth like this something like four or five times, and eventually the bear says, 'You're a public servant, dumba**, you're supposed to serve the public, not the government and the mayor,' and the fox says, 'You're supposed to serve those below you, not above you.' And at this point, I'm honestly not too scared about being stuck to the tree anymore because I'm pissed that they keep playing tiddlywinks with my questions, so I just tell them, 'Who the h*** are you to tell me I'm doing my job wrong?' And they said… they said, 'We're…' - and they said their names - '...and we're the ones doing your job for you. We're the real public servants, actually serving the public. You really ought to thank us, and maybe learn a thing or two from us.'

INTERVIEWER:
And I have two questions.

WOODLAND:
Yes?

INTERVIEWER:
Was it the box or the- excuse me, my gosh, was it the fox or the bear who was saying this?

WOODLAND:
They sort of took turns. I might not have gotten it exactly right what they said.

INTERVIEWER:
I see. And you said that they said their names, but… you didn't actually say their names. Not to me just now I mean. Did you not want to say their names out loud, or…?

WOODLAND:
So about that. I remember… that I don't remember.

INTERVIEWER:
I'm sorry?

WOODLAND:
I've been piecing this memory back together over the last seven years, ma'am. This experience broke me, and when it broke me it broke my memory, and when it broke my memory it shattered like a mirror or something into a million tiny pieces. And some pieces I never lost, a bunch I just got back recently, and… it's like I've got most of it and at this point I know what happened, but I still don't have all of it, but since I know what the big picture is, I know what's on the missing pieces. Make sense? So I can remember most of it now, but I can't, I cannot even pretend to remember the two seconds they told me their names. I can remember the rest of the same sentences, but I can't remember their names. I know what their names are because I've heard them since then, but I can't even imagine in my head them looking me in the eye and telling me their names. That's what I meant by not having the piece of the jigsaw but I still know what's on that piece because I can see everything around it. You understand me?

INTERVIEWER:
I believe I might. Um… so you say you've heard the names since?

WOODLAND:
I actually think I've overheard it in passing over the years but just never picked up on who they were talking about.

INTERVIEWER:
Overheard it from…?

WOODLAND:
Civilians. Other officers who probably regretted saying their names around me less I make them go and get the criminals themselves since clearly they know so much. But then they just realized that I wasn't in on it and they probably sighed a sigh of relief. And just the other day my deputy actually said point-blank, 'Their names are this and this,' and… it just seemed like that was what should be in the missing jigsaw piece. I heard it and I thought about those names for the rest of the day and by the time I went home that night, I knew those were the names.

INTERVIEWER:
And may I ask what Deputy Nutzinger said their names were?

(brief silence)

WOODLAND:
Robin Hood and Little John.

INTERVIEWER:
I see. That does match the hypothesis of their identities.

WOODLAND:
Yeah… yeah, that's it. That's gotta be their names. Their nicknames at least. Secret identities. I mean, how many men named 'Robin' have you met? It's a girls' name!

INTERVIEWER:
Well, off the top of my head… Robin Williams? And I think there was a baseball player who played for… Milwaukee? Or was it Minnesota? I don't know, my husband's more into baseball than I am. And then I think there's that-

WOODLAND:
Aw, okay, whatever. But they tell me who they are, they tell me they're better than me at my job, and they know I'm fuming. And they also know I'm stuck, and they know I know that. So after saying I ought to thank them and take after them - after them saying that, I mean - one of them, the bear I think, he says, 'You really ought to repay us, you really ought to repay us,' and the fox, snarky little s***, pardon my French again, he says 'don't worry about drafting a check, we accept cash.' And that's when I realized what they were getting at.

INTERVIEWER:
Which is to say...?

WOODLAND:
They were trying to mug me. And that's when I remembered, oh yeah, I have a walkie-talkie on me. I grab it off my chest, and the bear just reaches in and grabs the receiver and stretches the cord out and cuts the wire with a switchblade. It's a strong cord so he doesn't cut all the way through but he gets the job done, it's clearly dead. Then I reach for my gun and it's not there, I see motion to my side and I see the fox got it and he's throwing it into the darkness. Then the bear's got the knife at my neck and he's telling me not to move a muscle while the fox goes through all my pockets. I still had the guts to tell them they were f- fricking stupid for tossing a loaded gun like that, but he tells me that if I- the bear said this, I mean - he said if I didn't like what they did to my gun I should just be glad that they did what they did because they just as easily could have shoved it up my a**, and that they still might if they don't like how I'm behaving. And they're snarking to each other but at this point I'm just fuming at them so I'm not paying attention-

INTERVIEWER:
Were you afraid at all?

WOODLAND:
Me? Afraid? Come on now, honey. Of course I wasn't. And if I was, would I tell you?

INTERVIEWER:
I suppose not.

WOODLAND:
D*** right. But they clean me out, they must have gotten a few hundred bucks off me, plus my other weapons - my knife, my taser, my-

INTERVIEWER:
I'm sorry, Sheriff, but may I ask why you were carrying that much money on you while you were on duty?

WOODLAND:
I have my reasons. But they make off with a lot, my pockets are empty, and I'm still stuck to the tree. They say stuff to the effect of, 'Here's another thing you can thank us for, we're gonna use this to make up for the mistakes you've made and the damage you've caused,' and something fancy and poem-y like 'Remember, power lies with the rich, but strength lies with the poor.' Something dumb and philosophical like that. And then they did what was honestly the cruelest thing they did that night: they said 'Goodnight, officer,' and they laugh their a**es off as they walk away…

(brief silence)

WOODLAND:
...And they just leave me there.

INTERVIEWER:
Oh, dear.

WOODLAND:
And remember, I can't see that I'm barely stuck to the tree. It feels like the arrow's at least a few inches through my tail and into the tree. So… I just wait there. I don't know for what, part of me thought they were gonna come back and realize how messed up it was to just leave me there. But they never did. And eventually a bunch of hours pass and I can't just keep standing there, I lay down and try to sleep, it gets cold, I get hungry, and even though I'm starving I still have to go to the bathroom, but I can't go elsewhere and, uh... relieve myself, so I do it right there, and I lay down and pass out next to my own s***, and I wake up suddenly… and I don't realize at first why. But it's like a bodyshock that woke me up. And at first I think it's because I rolled over into my- the pile of it, if you catch my drift. And stupid me, the first instinct I had was to touch it to find out what the weird squishy sh- stuff on me was. And then I'm so pissed I just stare up at the sky thinking, what am I gonna do? Just scream and hope someone hears me? We're not far from civilization, but it's still a big forest out there. And part of me is worried about what if someone does find me? Do I want them to see me like this? But what else am I supposed to do? And… and then it hits me. It wasn't rolling over into my own s*** that woke me up. It was… hey, I rolled over. How did I do that if my tail's nailed to the tree? And I look… and sure enough, the arrow popped out somewhere in the night. Out of the tree and out of my tail. My tail's free. It's caked with blood crusted all over it, but it's free. And I look at the arrow and the bloodstains are hardly even an inch onto the point. Never even crossed my mind that it was in that shallow. I guess I really could have pulled it out at any time, but I just didn't think about it.

INTERVIEWER:
Wow. I'll admit, Sheriff, that's a lot to take in.

WOODLAND:
I'd bet. It's a lot to remember, too. And when I woke up that morning, I really couldn't remember everything. Just bits and pieces. Stuff like, the arrow, getting robbed, the 'public servants' thing. Not enough for a full story. So when I wander back into town - tired, hungry, disheveled, disoriented, broke, covered in my own s*** - and the Chief himself, Jersey, he asks me what the h*** happened, I didn't know what to tell him. I just tell him, I got lost, I got robbed, they took my gun, they took my radio, they went way, way out of their way to take my dignity.

INTERVIEWER:
I agree, that was pretty sick of them to trick you into thinking you were trapped and then leaving you there.

WOODLAND:
And it wasn't just that they stuck me in a trap that was all in my head. It was that they robbed me, belittled me… h***, on my birthday! They took my wallet, the fox read my name off my driver's license with his caveman super-fox night-vision eyes! He had to notice my DOB too! Even if they made another sarcastic quip about it like 'oh, for your birthday, we're fixing your mistakes for you, we're robbing you for your own good and you should thank us for the birthday present' - I'd have taken it over them not even acknowledging it! I mean, hey, I'm an adult, I know the world doesn't owe me a happy birthday, but I'd like to imagine I'm not a manchild for saying that I'd rather not have a terrible day like that day on that specific date of the year!

INTERVIEWER:
Perhaps they noticed it was your birthday but didn't mention it because they felt a little bit bad for the bad timing of your encounter with them?

WOODLAND:
Then why didn't they just let me go if they felt so bad about it?

INTERVIEWER:
I don't know, maybe they felt like they couldn't abandon what they'd started? I'm sorry, Sheriff, I'm just hypothesizing.

WOODLAND:
Well, whatever. They may have robbed me on my birthday, but I'd say I got my birthday money back over the years. Oh, and as for Jersey. He wasn't totally happy that I didn't have a concrete story about what happened, but he was glad I was alright, and when he saw how messed up my tail was, he saw that I wasn't messing around. They made me take a polygraph, they proved that I wasn't lying to cover for getting blackout drunk and pissing off a bow-and-arrow birdhunter or something. They officially decided I didn't have enough memory of the incident in my head to file an official police report, wasn't worth their time and resources to try, and they let it go, officially.

INTERVIEWER:
Until now, of course.

WOODLAND:
Right. And you know what? The more he thought about it, the more Jersey was impressed with how I handled it. He thought that by all means it should have messed with my head, but instead I was taking it like a champ. I think that going through what they put me through is a big reason why Jersey started to take a shining to me. So… hey, maybe I should thank them for that! Without them messing with me and me proving I could take it, I might not be where I am today!

INTERVIEWER:
Hm, perhaps not. Funny how things work out like that sometimes. Good things that could only happen when bad things happen first.

WOODLAND:
Hey, maybe. But they didn't do any lasting damage to me and that's what matters.

INTERVIEWER:
Alright, is there anything else that you wanted to add? Any other memories of that night?

WOODLAND:
No, that's kind of the end of the story. Just… although I couldn't remember a lot of that night, it's like it lingered in the back of my head. Because when I first heard about reports being kept on the hush-hush that powerful rich people were getting hoodwinked by bandits in the woods, and we thought they were giving the stolen money to the poor, kind of like an Adam Bell or Jesse James sort of thing, I remember when we were first informed about it, a few people in the department were saying, hey, if they were gonna be criminals, this was probably the best kind of criminals they could be. But right from the get-go, I didn't like them. It wasn't just the fact that they were criminals, duh, but when I first heard that there were wanted men who stole from the rich and gave to the poor… something in my head just told me that those guys were no good, as people. I just had a gut feeling that these must have been bad dudes, for completely unrelated reasons from their criminal activities. I guess… I guess you could say that it's almost like I knew in the back of my mind the that kind of guys who would steal from the rich to give to the poor were also the kind of guys who'd trick a guy in the pitch black of the night into thinking that he was trapped when he really wasn't and then robbing him and leaving him there to panic until morning, all the while cracking jokes at his expense every two seconds. And now that I have all the pieces back together in my head, I can say for certainty that I will never believe that those two guys are good people deep down. Because you know what? Let's say I was the bad guy. The way they treated me was overkill. That's not a very heroic way to treat a villain. If The Old Bull found them before they'd ever done anything to me, I could swear on a bible that I wouldn't want him doing that to them. That's just too much. Just bound them and arrest them, that's enough.

INTERVIEWER:
I see, subconscious memories. Not uncommon.

WOODLAND:
Yeah, I guess that explains why ever since I got wind of these guys I've had such an urge to bag them myself. I didn't have some love of rich people and desire to protect them specifically, I grew up in a piss-poor hick town myself, I just… had a hunch that these guys couldn't be as good as the poor people thought they were. And I'm glad I did, because now I know I was right.

INTERVIEWER:
Well, Sheriff Woodland, if that's the end of the story of that night, that's all we need.

WOODLAND:
Oh, am I free to go?

INTERVIEWER:
Yes, sir, Sheriff, as soon as we wrap up this recording.

WOODLAND:
Do you know if the Bojangles' in the food court is open again? I know they were supposed to finish remodeling last week, but they're behind schedule.

INTERVIEWER:
I don't eat fast food, Sheriff, so I wouldn't know. Anyway, yes, so this is [REDACTED] for the Nottingham City and County Police Department, interviewing Eddward C. Woodland, County and City Sheriff.

WOODLAND:
So can I leave-?

END OF RECORDING

*Our editing staff reached out again to the NPD for clarification about this person. "The Old Bull" and "Jersey" refer to Stephen P. Jerzykowski, who served as City of Nottingham Chief of Police from 1990 until his death in a road accident on January 4, 1999. Woodland had been appointed Chief Deputy under Jerzykowski's recommendation on November 16, 1998, after the previous Chief Deputy, Mabel "Mitzi" Berlin, resigned citing displeasure with corruption in the Department; Woodland therefore inherited the title of Chief of Police after spending less than seven months combined as a Police Captain and the Chief Deputy of Nottingham.