Last week Jalisco state police collared a fugitive from the United States found to be living in Guadalajara where he worked in a construction materials workshop.
An official press release revealed few details on the man other than to identify him as Oscar “N”, age 27, originally from Los Angeles and wanted up north on a homicide charge. He was taken into custody by immigration authorities charged to be turned over to U.S. authorities.
Coincidently, I pulled up a story published a day earlier on the website of the Mexico City daily El Universal entitled “Bad Hombres” de EU hallan escondite en México. The thrust of the headline was a play on President Donald Trump’s famed broad qualification of undocumented Mexican migrants as heinous criminals.
The article revolved around more than 20 U.S. citizens named on the FBI’s Most Wanted list who may well be on the lam south of the border.
The stand-out bad guy is Glen Stewart Godwin, wanted for unlawful flight to avoid confinement, murder and prison escape. His comes with an intriguing criminal history, outlined some years ago on the pages of this newspaper.
The FBI profile reads thus: “Glen Stewart Godwin is being sought for his 1987 escape from Folsom State Prison in California, where he was serving a lengthy sentence for murder. Later in 1987, Godwin was arrested for drug trafficking in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. After being convicted, he was sent to a prison in Guadalajara. In April of 1991, Godwin allegedly murdered a fellow inmate and then escaped five months later.”
Anyone catch a striking resemblance to the playbook of Mexico’s most notorious criminal Chapo Guzmán?
Godwin is described as six feet tall, of medium build weighing 170 to 200 pounds, with green eyes and black salt-and-pepper hair. He speaks fluent Spanish and goes by at least a dozen aliases. He may be hiding out somewhere in Mexico or points south. Keep your eye out. The FBI offers a $US20,000 reward for information leading to his arrest, a tidy sum for your retirement fund.
Over the years our little corner of the universe has had its share of criminals seeking undercover refuge from the long arm of law. Old-timers will recall convicted wife-killer Perry March had fled Nashville and hunkered down at lakeside during the 1990s before he was deported to face trial.
Do the names Wesley Thomason, Kenneth James Stopkotte, Alyn Richard Waage, Paul Jackson or Ethan Couch ring a bell? All of these scoundrels hid out in the Chapala area or elsewhere in the Puerto Vallarta-Guadalajara-San Miguel triangle to avoid prosecution and incarceration. Let’s not forget “bad chicas” who followed suit, namely Ohio fraudster Rebecca S. Parrett and compulsive wallet-lifter Teresa Lynn Owens from Georgia.
Batten down the hatches! Other fugitives from the north may head our way.