"They picked the wrong man to mess with," Deputy Michael Wingert of the U.S. Marshals Service in Utah said Sunday.

After a week on the lam without a trace, Danny Martin Gallegos, 49, and Juan Carlos "Blue" Diaz-Arevalo, 27, broke into a 12-foot camper trailer 15 miles from the Daggett County jail Saturday afternoon and waited for the elderly owner they had been watching from afar to show up.

They had no way to know 79-year-old Bill Johnson is a former Salt Lake City police officer who learned a thing or two about kidnappings during his days in street patrol.

When Johnson opened the door to his summer camper about 7:30 p.m., the pair grabbed him and put a hunting knife they found on a table to his throat, Wingert said. They bound his legs and wrists with duct tape and tied him to a bed post using strips of cloth they ripped themselves.

The escapees demanded Johnson's wallet, Wingert said, but he wouldn't tell them where it was. The pair asked him why he had come in and out of his trailer so often on Saturday as they watched from an abandoned trailer nearby.

Then, they took the keys to Johnson's Ford Explorer and asked for directions to Green River, Wyo. Johnson lied, telling them to turn a way that would take them "back to the hornet's nest" in Manila, Wingert said, although it doesn't appear they took the bait.

Inexplicably to Wingert, the convicted murders then left the only person that had seen them alive unhurt and tied to the bed post.

That's when Johnson's police instincts paid off, Wingert said. He had been careful to pull his wrists apart as the killers bound them so he had room to work the knots out later, Wingert said. It took nearly an hour, but Johnson got himself free and made it out to the road.

With wind gusts blowing snow sideways in the dark, Johnson hopped up and down - hands and feet still bound by tape - on the side of the road until a Roy couple passed by. They drove Johnson 5 miles to the end of the road until the woman could get reception on her cellular phone, Wingert said.

At 9:30 p.m., about an hour after Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo fled in the Explorer, Johnson called 911.

"We were waiting for the one big break - and this was the big break," Wingert said.

But the development came with new concerns: the two convicted murderers now not only had a vehicle, police learned, but also had access to two handguns, a rifle and ammunition that Johnson kept in his Explorer.

A Sweetwater County sheriff's deputy spotted the Explorer eight minutes later at a Pizza Hut in Green River, Wyo. - right where the murderers told Johnson they were going, Wingert said. After a five-minute police chase, Diaz-Arevalo stopped the Explorer - with tires blown out from a spike strip - on the side of Interstate 80 between Green River and Evanston.

Both men got out holding guns - Diaz-Arevalo with a .38-caliber revolver and Gallegos with a .22-caliber rifle, Wingert said.

Gallegos swung around as if he were going to shoot at officers, police said, and a Sweetwater County sheriff's deputy fired off a single round from a .308-caliber high-powered rifle. The bullet entered Gallegos in the back and exited through his stomach, Wingert said.

After the shot, Diaz-Arevalo ran, police said. He dropped the handgun and made it about 100 yards before officers tackled him to the ground. The officers didn't fire on Diaz-Arevalo, said Sweetwater County sheriff's Detective Dick Blust, because of houses nearby that might have been hit.

Without Johnson's quick thinking and decisive action, the pair may have made it much farther - armed with three guns and holding his wallet, which they had found in the car, Wingert said.

"We frankly got fortunate that more of a travesty didn't happen," said Tom Patterson, director of the Department of Corrections, which contracts with Daggett and other counties to house about a fourth of the state's prisoners.

Attempts to reach Johnson on Sunday were unsuccessful, but Jim Elmar, a lifelong friend of Johnson's whose brother owns the land he keeps his trailer on, called him an "unlikely" hero because of his unassuming nature. Johnson retired form the Salt Lake City Police Department as a patrol officer in 1986 but never once mentioned the action he saw, Elmar said.

"With someone who led a life that was kind of exciting, you'd expect to hear about it," Elmar said.

Elmar, too, is puzzled that Gallegos and Diaz-Arevalo didn't kill him to silence the only person who knew their whereabouts. Elmar said Johnson, who he has known for 60 years, was likely to avoid the spotlight.

But he's likely to get it anyway. The corrections department and U.S. Marshals plan to give Johnson a "lion's share" of the $20,000 offered for the escapees' capture, Wingert said, and are urging him to speak publicly about the experience. Johnson will likely get $15,000, with the other $5,000 going to the Roy couple who picked him up and dialed 911, he said.

Elmar expected that the typically thrifty Johnson "wouldn't spend a dime" of the reward money.

Johnson was more composed than one would expect after being threatened at knifepoint and tied up by two murderers, Wingert said.

"He was a little excited, as you can imagine, but he was pretty level-headed," Wingert said.

Gallegos was in critical condition at University Hospital in Salt Lake City on Sunday after being flown there from a Wyoming hospital.

Diaz-Arevalo remains under close watch at the Sweetwater County jail and will likely remain there until he goes before a judge today for extradition, according to Utah Department of Corrections spokesman Jack Ford. Gallegos must also face a judge in Wyoming before returning to Utah, he said.

In addition to federal charges of flight to avoid prosecution, Diaz-Arevalo and Gallegos will likely face kidnapping charges for apprehending Johnson, Ford said.

Gallegos was convicted in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Tammy Snydergaard in a South Salt Lake apartment on March 11, 1990. He was sentenced to five years to life for capital murder, and has a parole hearing scheduled for 2025.

Diaz-Arevalo received seven years to life for the slaying of his ex-girlfriend - 22-year-old Lindsey Rae Fawson - in Draper on May 16, 2005. He has a parole hearing scheduled for 2030.

Robert Seneca, Fawson's father, said he owes a debt of gratitude to Johnson.

"He's awesome," Seneca said of Johnson. "I'm just glad he wasn't hurt. He was lucky he didn't get shot. I need to talk to him because I want to give him my thanks for ending my turmoil."

Seneca and his wife had kept word of the escape a secret from Fawson's two sons, 5 and 7, for most of the week to avoid worrying them. Seneca finally told the children of the escape on Saturday, just a few hours before their mother's killer was recaptured.

"They said, 'How can you let a guy loose, that killed my mommy?' " Seneca said. "After we tell [them] he's gone away for good, we'll never see him again, then two years later he's out and about? How do you talk to kids like that?"

Seneca said he plans to follow up on the state's promise for more oversight of the county jails that house state prisoners.

"Hopefully this will never happen again," he said.

rrizzo@sltrib.com

---

* NATHAN GONZALES and ERIN ALBERTY contributed to this report.