Wallace Daniels sat on the front row of the courtroom in District Court Monday afternoon, a great white bandage taped to his bald head and watched intently as the two men accused of kidnapping, beating, stabbing and leaving him for dead stood before Judge Bob Armstrong for a bond hearing.

Daniels did not waiver as Dallas County Sheriff’s Investigator John Hatfield testified that Williams James Goodman, 20, and Jonathan Samuel Wayne Pitts, 24, went to Daniels’ house last week to force the 74-year-old man to take them to get fuel.

After Daniels refused the two men jumped him, beat him on the head with brass knuckles, ripped an electrical cord from a lamp, and tied up Daniels, Hatfield said.

“They took him on a 20.4-mile drive with the intention to drown him,” Hatfield said of the circuitous route the two suspects were supposed to have taken to a lake off Arrowhead Road in rural Dallas County. “That didn’t work.”

Hatfield told the court the two stabbed Daniels repeatedly in the back, until the man fell in the water. The two suspects took off in the victim’s 1992 blue Chevrolet pick-up truck.

They went back to one of their houses to pick up an 18-year-old female. Hatfield said originally

authorities believed she was 17 years old, but it turned out she was a year older.

They drove to Annistion, where they contacted a woman and asked her for money. Authorities there believe when she refused them, the pair broke into a local car shop and took some money. Then, the pair went to Tennessee, Hatfield said.

The investigator told the court the pair pawned a ring that belonged to the 18-year-old with them at a pawnshop just outside Chattanooga.

The trio went back into Alabama and got to Gadsden, where they ran out of gas.

Hatfield said they called the woman in Anniston again, who notified authorities. The two were taken into custody without incident in Gadsden.

Initially, the court had set the bond of the two men at $2.3 million each. Then, authorities asked the court to issue no bond, but Armstrong said the law requires bond for all except in cases of capital murder.

The prosecution and representatives of the sheriff’s department asked Armstrong to raise the bond, which the judge did.

“Words cannot describe how brutal this is,” Armstrong said as he turned to Daniels. “I’m sorry for this. It makes us so sick at our stomach, it was so brutal.”