By Maxine Bernstein
oregonlive.com
PORTLAND, Ore. — An Oregon fugitive who escaped from a prison work crew 30 years ago was arrested in Georgia, where he was found at an apartment complex living under a stolen identity for more than a decade, according to federal authorities.
Steven Craig Johnson, now 70, was arrested about 2 p.m. Tuesday in Macon, Georgia, where he was known as “William Cox,” a name he had assumed that belonged to a child who had died in Texas in January 1962, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Johnson had obtained a copy of the dead child’s birth certificate and Social Security number, according to federal officials.
Johnson had been serving a prison sentence for sexual abuse and sodomy when he escaped Nov. 29, 1994, from a prison work detail at the Mill Creek Correctional Facility, about five miles southeast of Salem.
The minimum-security prison wasn’t surrounded by a fence and housed about 290 prisoners who were within four years of release. The prison closed at the end of June 2021.
After Johnson’s escape, authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. The Oregon Department of Corrections called him a pedophile who presented “a high probability of victimizing pre-teen boys,” according to a wanted poster it released. The poster said Johnson shouldn’t be allowed to have any contact with children.
The U.S. Marshals Service took on the search for Johnson in 2015 at the request of the Corrections Department.
Through the use of undisclosed new investigative technology used by the U.S. Department of State’s diplomatic security service this year, marshals were able to develop leads that led them to Johnson, according to the agency.
He was living in the Clisby Towers apartments on Vineville Avenue in Macon, according to federal law enforcement officials. He first obtained a driver’s license in Georgia in 1998, according to investigators.
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Eddie Rozier, a tenant of the Clisby Towers, said the apartment building is for seniors and people with disabilities. He said the man who represented himself as Cox was living in a one-bedroom apartment in the building when he moved in five years ago.
“I’ve seen him in passing all the time. Everyone called him, ‘Bud,’” Rozier recalled. He said the man who went by Cox lived on the fifth floor, one floor above his.
All the tenants are talking about the arrest, Rozier said. “We’re all in a state of shock,” he said.
April Walker said the man who went by Cox was her neighbor in the building. She had no inkling he was wanted out of state and was surprised by his arrest.
“He was a very nice man. Everyone liked him,” she said. He took care of himself, she added, noting that he walked and exercised every morning.
The Bibb County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia, U.S. Marshals based in Georgia and members of the U.S. Department of State assisted in the investigation.
Johnson was booked into the Bibb County Jail, awaiting extradition to Oregon.
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