A man who escaped from an Oregon state prison nearly 30 years ago and stole the identity of a deceased child was captured Tuesday in Georgia, authorities said.
Steven Craig Johnson, who had been convicted of sexual abuse, escaped from a prison work group at Mill Creek Correctional Facility in Salem, Oregon, on Nov. 29, 1994, according to civil servantsHe had been in the custody of the Oregon Department of Corrections since June 1989.
Johnson, now 70, was arrested Tuesday afternoon at an apartment complex in Macon, Georgia, by the U.S. Marshals Service and one of its fugitive task forces, according to the service.
He had lived in the apartment complex under the name William Cox since 2011, the department said in a statement.
An investigation revealed that Johnson had stolen the identity of a child who died in Texas in January 1962, the statement said. Johnson obtained a copy of the child’s birth certificate and was eventually able to obtain a Social Security number in Texas in 1995, authorities said. Johnson obtained a driver’s license in Georgia three years later.
In 2015, the Marshals Service took over the case at the request of the Oregon Department of Corrections, the statement said. The discovery of the stolen identity came after new investigative technology employed by the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service helped develop new leads in the case this year, the Marshals Service said, without providing further details about the technology used.
According to the Oregon Department of Corrections, Johnson is booked into the Bibb County Jail in Georgia and is awaiting extradition to Oregon. It is unclear whether he has an attorney.
Johnson was one of Oregon’s most wanted fugitives, according to the Department of Corrections websiteHe “is a pedophile and has a high likelihood of victimizing pre-adolescent boys,” a spokesperson for the organization said in 2019. Wanted poster Prison officials warned: “Fugitive Johnson should not be allowed to have contact with children.”
Mill Creek Correctional Facility The penitentiary closed in 2021 on the orders of then-Governor Kate Brown as part of her sentencing reform efforts, according to the Oregon Department of Corrections. It opened in 1929 as an agricultural annex to the Oregon State Penitentiary. Until 1998, inmates processed milk from a farmers’ cooperative for use at other institutions in the state, according to the Oregon Historical Society.
“MCCF was a minimum-security prison located five miles southeast of Salem on 2,089 acres. The facility was unfenced and housed approximately 290 adult inmates who were less than four years from release,” the department said.
Brown’s decision to close three Oregon prisons, including Mill Creek, was made to save the state more than $44 million, according to The Associated PressBrown said she wants to reduce the use of incarceration and invest more in keeping people out of the criminal justice system.
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