Man on the lam for 56 years is arrested in Florida trailer park; he appears in court in a wheelchair
A man who walked away from an Ohio honor camp for inmates in 1959 is back in custody after authorities used a fingerprint ruse to identify him.
Frank Freshwaters, 79, was arrested this week at a trailer park in Melbourne, Florida, where he was living under an alias and receiving Social Security checks, according to the Associated Press and a summary of the AP story by the Washington Post. He appeared in court on Tuesday in a wheelchair.
Freshwaters was identified after U.S. marshals and deputies in Florida used a ruse—authorities didn’t provide details–to get him to sign papers, leaving his fingerprints on the document, according to the stories.
Freshwaters was originally given a 20-year suspended sentence for striking and killing a pedestrian while speeding in his vehicle in 1957. He violated probation by getting a driver’s license and driving, and ended up in an honor camp in Sandusky, Ohio. He was reported missing in September 1959.
Freshwaters had another run-in with the law when he was arrested in Charleston, West Virginia, in 1975, based on his former wife’s complaint that he had threatened her. Freshwaters told police he was using the name William Harold Cox and driving a mobile library for state government. West Virginia’s governor refused to extradite him, and Freshwaters disappeared again. U.S. marshals recently reopened the case and found Freshwaters living in Florida using the Cox alias.
