Thursday, March 18, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

High-profile fugitives have come to hide out in Las Vegas for years

William Beith Ex-principal arrested in 2001 Richard D'Antonio Arrested in 2002 Tanya Hadden Calif. teacher arrested in 2002 Patty Hearst Heiress stayed here while on lam Buford Furrow Killer turned himself in to FBI in 1999 in Las Vegas

One of the cops present when accused Ohio sniper Charles McCoy was arrested early Wednesday noted that the case is yet another example of Las Vegas' odd ability to attract the nation's fugitives.

"They come from all over only to stop on the Strip or on Fremont," Las Vegas police Lt. Chris Van Cleef said. "When they get in trouble, they think this is the place to go for some reason. Why do they keep coming here? I don't know."

For years the pattern has repeated itself time and time again: a manhunt for a fugitive accused of heinous crimes in Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Oklahoma, Oregon or some other place hundreds of miles away ends with an arrest in Las Vegas.

Some say this is because criminals feel this desert city is a prime hiding spot where they have the best chance of avoiding detection.

"People perceive they are more anonymous here than anywhere else," said Hal Rothman, chairman of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' History Department.

"Las Vegas is a canvas for American neuroses, and the feeling about cities is that you can get lost in them, and that's projected onto Las Vegas in an exaggerated way because we are the city of leisure and excess, and that makes people think there are fewer controls here."

The vast majority of high-profile arrests of criminals hiding outs have been made by the Criminal Apprehension Team, a task force of police and federal agents.

In one of the most notable cases, former Baptist school principal William "Andy" Beith and the 11-year-old girl he was having sex with headed here after running away from Indiana in May 2001. Las Vegas police arrested Beith less than 24 hours after he arrived in Clark County and used his real name to rent a room at a Super 8 motel on Boulder Highway. He was extradited and eventually sentenced to more than 12 years in prison.

In July 2002, the CAT team arrested former Nashville record promoter Richard D'Antonio in connection with the "Music Row Murder," a case that gripped members of the country music industry in Nashville some 13 years before. Nashville authorities said they believed D'Antonio was working as a pit boss at Fitzgeralds and living in a home near Smoke Ranch Road and Jones Boulevard while hiding from authorities. A Tennessee judge sentenced him to life in prison following his conviction in September.

Two months earlier, Las Vegas police arrested teacher Tanya Hadden at the New Frontier and charged her with having sex with a 15-year-old student from her California school numerous times during a three-day Las Vegas getaway. A California judge eventually sentenced Hadden to two years in prison and barred her from the classroom for life.

The CAT team arrested fugitive Sage Weakland in July 1999, some two years after he faked his death in order to flee the law on the East Coast. He had disappeared in July 29, 1997, in Gloucester, Va.

The same month as Weakland's arrest, Tulsa Police Department homicide detectives flew here to arrest 61-year-old Patsy Woofter on charges that she killed her oilman husband in Oklahoma 19 years earlier. Woofter died in Oklahoma a week before her murder trial was to scheduled to begin.

In August 1999, white supremacist Buford Furrow traveled to Las Vegas by taxicab from Southern California, where he had killed a postal worker and wounded five at a Jewish center. He turned himself in at the FBI's Las Vegas office. He later pleaded guilty to murder and is serving life in prison. He told authorities he had initially planned to attack Las Vegas synagogues.

Of course, most of the scores of fugitives arrested here are not notorious. In fact, most receive little news coverage, even though they are often wanted for heinous crimes.

For instance, CAT officers only last week arrested two brothers who were fugitives facing charges in unrelated Midwest slayings. Keith Leon Wilcox was charged with first-degree murder in a 1997 Chicago-area slaying of a man in a dispute over a wallet.

During their investigation, police learned that Wilcox's brother, Toby David Wilcox, 25, was living at the residence. Toby Wilcox was wanted on murder charges in the 2003 slayings of a man and infant in Ohio.

The trend of high-profile criminals eventually finding their way to Las Vegas is not a new phenomenon. Such cases stem back decades.

After taking part in a 1974 armed robbery of a San Francisco bank, on the lam newspaper heiress Patty Hearst stayed several days in an apartment near the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She was reportedly on her way to a farmhouse hideout in Pennsylvania. Hearst was arrested in September 1975, but President Carter commuted her seven-year prison sentence in 1979.