Docs: Escapee expected police shootout

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Colorado court documents confirm details of two Lake County escapees' 12-day run from the law and explain how a 17-year-old girl got mixed up with them.

The documents corroborate information gathered by 24 Hour News 8 during interviews with Lauralee Grauman and Brittany Rector's mother Judy Olexa about why Gregory Bradshaw, 23, and Kenneth Grauman II, 32, escaped from a minimum security correctional facility and why they took their girlfriends.

Included in the documents are the details about how Kenneth Grauman ended up with Rector, which prove danger the 17-year-old was in went well beyond the risk of being a fugitive on the run.

The documents confirm what Rector's mother had told 24 Hour News 8: While in jail, Ken Grauman -- a known meth cooker user referred to as "Boss" by people in Allegan County -- decided he “wanted a pretty girl."

He told his cousin Laura Grauman, 29, to find one and get her hooked on methamphetamine if he approved of the girl.

Laura Grauman brought Rector to the Lake County correctional facility to meet Ken Grauman. Ken Grauman liked Rector and, with the help of his cousin, got her hooked on the drug.  

Soon, he decided to escape. He and Bradshaw broke out of the Lake County Residential ReEntry facility on Sept. 29.

A police informant told police Ken Grauman had said if he got caught, going to shoot Rector and then go out in a blaze of glory, the documents say.

Grauman said he refused to let Rector get away from him and the drugs.

According to the documents, Grauman often ranted about getting into gun battles with police. Law enforcement officials who knew Grauman were convinced that given the chance, that's how Grauman would end his run from them.

The court documents also say that Allegan County law enforcement has had to "hunt him (Grauman) down" every few months as he repeatedly avoided police there. He's also been known to attempt to "intimidate anyone who crosses him or is going to testify against him."

"He has been carrying guns for the past six months," court document say, and police have had reports "of him threatening others with the firearms, but the victims have refused to testify."

Bradshaw's court file provides a more clear picture of how authorities caught up with the four. The report list two confidential informants: The first placed the fugitives McCook, Nebraska and the other put the fugitives in Canon City, Colorado.

Laura Grauman told 24 Hour News 8's Joe LaFurgey in a jailhouse interview that she believes a friend she and Bradshaw tried to contact who lives in Colorado called police.

Authorities in Canon City said that they received a report on Oct. 10 from a Canon City resident that her license plate had been stolen off her vehicle and replaced with an Iowa license plate.

Surveillance was conducted at the Budget Host Royal Gorge Inn and found the missing license plate on a Nissan Altima allegedly stolen by the four in Glenwood, Iowa around Oct. 8.

The four were arrested on Oct. 11: Bradshaw and Ken Grauman at the motel and Laura Grauman Rector in the stolen Altima.
     
Found in the motel room where the four had checked in the day before their arrest was about $2,300, syringes, a glass meth pipe, methamphetamine, marijuana, a black folding knife, a box of ammunition, a Sturm Ruger revolver loaded with five rounds, and materials need to set up a meth lab in a backpack.

The Sturm Ruger, the documents say, was stolen during an Allegan County burglary.

Grauman and Bradshaw now face a misdemeanor and four felonies each in Colorado alone:

• Felony unlawful distribution, manufacturing, dispensing, or sale
• Felony contributing to the delinquency of a minor
• Felony theft by receiving
• Felony possession of weapons by previous offender
• Misdemeanor theft        

They will likely also face charges in other states, though details on their extradition back to Michigan -- where they will face the most serious of the charges -- have not yet been hammered out.