The survivalist who allegedly shot a school bus driver before taking a five-year-old boy hostage has said that he will release his hostage if a reporter is sent in to tell his story.
MailOnline has learned that Jimmy Lee Dykes made the extraordinary offer on the first day of what has now turned into a siege situation with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team on site, emergency services and a host of media focused on the piece of Alabama bluff under which Dykes and the boy, Ethan, are holed up.
A source with the local sheriff’s office has revealed that a CID Lieutenant spoke with Dykes for the first four hours of the hostage situation, communicating via a pipe sticking out from the ground – the only surface sign of the bunker’s location.
In those first crucial hours, Vietnam veteran Dykes attempted to strike his bargain – the boy in return for a reporter to tell his story of ‘how the government had screwed him.’