One Of America’s Most Wanted Captured In Canada

He’s been one of America’s Most Wanted for months. His escape is worthy of a movie plot. And now that film finally has an ending – a convicted murderer and repeat escapee has been found on Canada’s east coast.

The saga of Richard Lee McNair is one of both terror and chutzpah. He was convicted of killing a man in North Dakota during a robbery in November 1987. He was caught, convicted and was serving a life sentence for murder when he hatched an escape plot in April 2006 that’s as remarkable it its brazenness as it is for the fact he actually pulled it off at all.

With the help of other inmates at a federal pen in Louisiana, McNair was repairing torn mail bags and was able to secret himself into a tiny shrink wrapped space that even the most non-claustrophobic person in the world would find hard to take. The “package” was then shipped to a nearby warehouse with McNair still inside. Once he was away from the prison walls, the convicted killer managed to get out of his hiding spot and run.

He was on the loose for more than a year and was spotted several times in B.C., but continually  eluded authorities.

Until Thursday.

Cops in Campbellton, New Brunswick decided to investigate a stolen car and pulled the vehicle over. McNair was inside and took off running from the RCMP. But this time, he didn’t get far. “Officers caught him about a quarter-mile later down a gravel road,” relates Vern Erck, a sheriff in North Dakota, where McNair had escaped twice before.

Those two escapes were also incredible and show how careful the Mounties will have to be to keep track of this prisoner before they send him back. In February 1988, he employed a secret lip balm to grease up his hands and slip out of his handcuffs in a police station. He was captured after jumping from the third floor of a building.

He was sent to the North Dakota State Penitentiary but he and two other prisoners didn’t stay there long. The trio wriggled through a ventilation duct in 1992, and he was free for nine months before being recaptured.

And he nearly escaped a third time after chipping out two cinder blocks in his cell.

After his last getaway, a police dashboard camera showed McNair talking his way past a curious police officer, assuring him he was simply a jogger out for his morning run. When the cop asked if he was McNair, the convict laughed and joked with the lawman and then calmly ran off.

Authorities are adamant he won’t be doing that again. “It’s been a great day for both Canada and the U.S. to get him off the street,” Van Erck exults. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”