more details:
The week before, Cummins had met with ET at the restaurant parking lot to plan their departure.
Cummins had also visited websites about teenage marriages, searched for mattresses that would fit inside his Nissan Rogue and watched a YouTube video on how to dismantle a car GPS system.
On the day he left, he cleaned out a lockbox in his home of $4,500 and two guns and left his wife a note saying he was heading to Virginia Beach or maybe Washington, D.C., to “clear my mind of this crap.”
After picking ET up at the Shoney’s parking lot on March 13, Cummins drove south on Interstate 65 and headed to Decaturville, Ala., where he and ET each threw their cellphones into the Tennessee River.
Cummins dismantled his in-car GPS system and replaced his license plate with an Alabama tag taken from an abandoned car. He then drove the pair to Birmingham before spending their first night in Mississippi.
From Mississippi, Cummins headed northwest to Oklahoma City for the night, where the pair were caught on surveillance video at a Walmart, although authorities would not see the video until two weeks later. They spent two nights in Oklahoma at Super 8 motels before reaching Colorado, where they spent another two nights.
In Cortez, Colo., Cummins bought a tablet from Walmart to be able to view news coverage about ET’s disappearance. Cummins also reportedly admitted to seeing the plea from his wife, who spoke at a press conference on March 17 asking her husband to “do the right thing.”
It’s in Colorado that Cummins decided on pseudonyms and new identities for the pair. They become a married couple, 40-year-old John and 24-year-old Joanne Castro. Cummins told investigators he chose a Spanish-sounding name because he planned to go to Mexico.
Heading west, they spend three or four nights in Utah, a night in Nevada and then landed in San Diego where Cummins purchased a $1,500 two-seater kayak to boat into Mexico.
While testing the kayak in Coronado Bay, he ran into a law enforcement officer who gave them tips about the boat. He and ET were out on the water when that same officer came out to warn them the water was rough. Cummins assumed they’d been found out and became scared.
Cummins decided against heading to Mexico by land, saying the political environment made it “too hot.” Instead they drove to “Slab City”, a commune in the Sonoran Desert in southern California, where Cummins slept with his gun because he was concerned about their safety. It’s not known how long they stayed before they began travelling north.
They then drove north, stopping in Los Angeles to sell the kayak at a bar. By the time they reached Cecilville in northern California, Cummins was running out of money.
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2017/05/12/tad-cummins-remain-custody-pending-trial/319887001/
http://wate.com/2017/05/13/fbi-agent-details-tad-cummins-cross-country-trip/