A notorious U.S. fugitive who was captured this week in northern New
Brunswick told RCMP officers who tackled him on a remote gravel road:
“You have captured a big fish.”
Richard Lee McNair, a convicted killer who was considered one of
America's 15 most-wanted fugitives, was captured near Campbellton on
Thursday, more than a year after escaping from a Louisiana prison where
he was serving a life sentence.
The RCMP held a news conference in Campbellton on Friday to reveal the details of the dramatic capture.
Mr. McNair, 48, was in a van that had been stolen in Belleville, Ont.,
when he was confronted by officers. He bolted from the vehicle and ran
about 400 metres before being tackled by one of the officers.
He spent the night in an RCMP lockup in Campbellton before being
transferred to the maximum-security Atlantic Institution in Renous, N.B.
The Mounties said Mr. McNair won't be turned over to U.S. authorities
until they investigate if he was involved in any crimes in Canada.
Inspector Roland Wells said investigators were combing the van for evidence .
“I'll tell you right up front we're not ruling anything out,” he said
during the news conference. “We're having them look for blood. We're
having them look at computer equipment that's in the vehicle.
“We're having them look for all physical evidence that's there. We're
not letting this guy leave the country until we're sure that nothing
more serious has happened here that we're not aware of yet.”
The RCMP said Mr. McNair didn't have any weapons when he was captured
but had computer equipment in the van that they suspect may have been
used to make fake identifications. They also found lock picks and said
Mr. McNair had $600 on him.
The RCMP said Mr. McNair was friendly and forthcoming after he was
captured, but clammed up quickly. They said he was fingerprinted and
signed his fingerprints with an alias.
On the night of Nov. 17, 1987, Mr. McNair armed himself with a
snub-nose .38 and broke into a grain elevator building in Minot, N.D.,
for a robbery.
He shot and wounded Richard Kitzman in an office, then went outside to
a rig waiting for a load of grain. The driver, Jerome Theis, of Circle
Pines, Minn., was eating ice cream in the cab when he was shot and
killed.
“I've been waiting for this for a long time,” Vern Erck, sheriff of
Ward County in North Dakota, said Wednesday after hearing word of the
capture. Mr. McNair killed a grain elevator worker in Minot during a
burglary in 1986.
Mr. McNair has a history or legendary escapes.
In February 1988, he used a tube of lip balm to slip out of handcuffs
at the Minot police station. He was captured after he jumped from the
third floor of a building.
The second escape came from the North Dakota State Penitentiary.
Officials said Mr. McNair and two other prisoners escaped through a
ventilation duct on Oct. 9, 1992, and was on the lam until the
following July 5, when he was captured in Grand Island, Neb.
Eventually, with North Dakota authorities unable to hold him, Mr.
McNair was shipped to a maximum-security federal prison in Louisiana.
On April 5, 2006, Mr. McNair smuggled himself out in a pile of mailbags.
While on the lam, he sent a Christmas card to Tim Schuetzle, warden at the North Dakota prison.
Mr. Schuetzle called Mr. McNair's capture “great news,” adding Wednesday that he was confident he would eventually be found.
The warden plans to make Mr. McNair the first state prison inmate to be
placed on indefinite lockdown, allowing him to leave his cell for one
hour a day and only in restraints.(GM)
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