View Full Version : Fugitive found in California 37 years after escape



Achilleslastand
02-05-2014, 05:37 PM
Yahoo! (http://news.yahoo.com/fugitive-found-california-37-years-escape-174324734.html)


SAN DIEGO (AP) — A woman who escaped from a Michigan prison nearly 37 years ago while serving time for attempted larceny was found living under an alias in San Diego, police said Tuesday.

Acting on a tip from the Michigan Department of Corrections, San Diego police went to an apartment on Monday in the Hillcrest neighborhood, where a woman matching the description of fugitive Judy Lynn Hayman answered the door.

She identified herself as Jamie Lewis and produced government documents with the name, San Diego police Lt. Kevin Mayer said. Officers, however, remained suspicious because of inconsistencies in her story and her resemblance to an old Michigan mug shot they were holding.

"Her eyes gave her away," Mayer said. "The eyes in the picture matched the eyes of this woman."

The officers took her to a police station, where she eventually acknowledged being Hayman, Mayer said.

Hayman, 60, was being held in a San Diego County jail awaiting extradition to Michigan, where she escaped from the Ypsilanti prison in 1977 while serving time for attempted larceny, Mayer said. He did not know if she had retained an attorney and no court date had been set.

When she escaped, Hayman was about halfway through a minimum sentence of 1 1/2 years for attempting to steal clothes from a Detroit-area store.

"We can't just write it off," he said. "We don't have the ability to say it's been a long time, you're free to go," he said.

Authorities in Washtenaw County, Mich., where the prison is located, would decide whether additional charges related to the escape are filed, Marlan said.

It was not immediately clear how long the woman had been living in San Diego. Her 32-year-old son was visiting when police arrived, and officers said he appeared stunned by their questions.

"This seemed very much a surprise to him," Mayer said.

He did not have the son's name, and public listings for the residence under the name Jamie Lewis did not include a phone number.

Neighbors said Hayman had lived in the complex for several years and mostly kept to herself.

Neighbor Maria Lopez, 60, told the U-T San Diego newspaper that Hayman did not appear to work. She said people came by the house to do her laundry, and she had frequent visits from her son.

Mayer said he was impressed by the investigators' ability to "put some dots together" and provide San Diego officers with the right address after nearly four decades.

"I commend them for their tenacity," he said. "This is a very old case."

The case is similar to that of Marie Walsh, who also escaped from a Michigan prison when she was known as Susan LeFevre.

Walsh had served 14 months of a 10-year prison sentence for a heroin deal when she fled in 1976. She was found living under an alias in San Diego, in 2008.

Walsh spent 13 more months in prison then returned to San Diego where she resumed her life with her husband of more than 20 years and wrote a book called "A Tale of Two Lives" about her ordeal

RadicalModerate
02-05-2014, 05:57 PM
Wow. Looks to me like "The Pigs" on the Left coast be spendin' way too much time in donut shops and online when they should be capturing fugitives on the lam for 37 years . . . geez . . . they even have computers in their cars. does "facebook" need to be blocked 'r whut?

Plutonic Panda
02-05-2014, 07:36 PM
Huh.... honestly, I'd just let her go. She's gone 37 years without committing any sort of crime(that we know of), so just let her be. Her first offense wasn't really serious anyways(nonviolent crime), so I don't see why letting her go would be much of an issue.

gjl
02-05-2014, 10:02 PM
I agree. For the type of crime she was charges with, just let her go. I doubt a crime like that today would get you any more punishment than probation. Besides, we need the jail room for pot smokers.

Mel
02-05-2014, 10:07 PM
The price she paid in anxiety should be enough.

Plutonic Panda
02-05-2014, 10:12 PM
The price she paid in anxiety should be enough.Oh man, you're not kidding. Unless you had no emotion at all or just completely careless, that would be brutal. I guess at some point you would just have to accept the fact you could wake up with cops standing over you saying lets go back jail.