Man Who Escaped Army Prison Finally Caught 37 Years Later
A man on the run from the law since 1977 has finally been caught and will return to the prison he initially began serving his time at in Kansas. James Robert Jones was serving a 23-year sentence at a military prison for murdering a fellow soldier in 1974 when he managed to escape.
Jones managed to escape the maximum-security prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and went to Florida. Facial recognition software failed to identify Jones when he applied for a driver's license in Florida. He was able to live and work in the state until this week, when officials managed to track him down and arrest him at work.
"He stated that he knew this would catch up with him one day … After all these years, the first words out of his mouth was, 'I knew this would catch up with me one day,'" Barry Golden of the Marshals Service told NBC.
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Jones was living under the alias Bruce Walter Keith since at least 2005, U.S. Marshals said. The Marshals were the ones responsible for tracking down one of the U.S. Army's "15 Most Wanted" fugitives. They were able to trace him to Pompano Beach, where they arrested him. A fingerprint matched that of Jones and was taken into custody and booked into the Broward County Main Jail on a military hold.
He will be held there until the Army arranges transport back to Kansas, where he will serve out the remainder of his sentence and may face new charges for escaping. It's unknown how long Jones will actually serve.
"Capturing a cold case fugitive who has been on the run for almost 37 years is a great arrest for law enforcement, but it is also comforting to the families of the original victim to know the person who escaped from custody is now behind bars again," William Snelson, another member of the Marshals Service, said.
