Richard Lee McNair’s job in the prison factory was mending U.S. mailbags. Thousands of the leather pouches were routinely delivered to the shop at the federal maximum security penitentiary here, and the middle-age convict worked quietly each day, helping stitch them back up.
Once the bags were refurbished, they were stacked on pallets. McNair watched for four months as forklifts scooped up the pallets and hauled them to a warehouse just outside the prison walls.
One morning they carried off McNair–hidden under the bags.
And he was free again.
Twice before, in nearly two decades in custody, McNair has tasted freedom. Once he spread lip balm on his wrist and slipped out of handcuffs. Another time he crawled to freedom through an air vent. Two other times his breakout attempts were foiled.
His latest escape was the first from a federal maximum security prison in 13 years. McNair, a confessed murderer, had just been moved to Pollock from Supermax in Florence, Colo., the nation’s most secure lockup.
He was serving two life sentences–for shooting one man from behind and killing another at point-blank range during a 1987 burglary.
Since his April 5 run, he has crisscrossed the United States and Canada and has left behind intriguing clues, almost as if daring police and federal marshals to find him.
“Oh, he’s taunting us, all right,” said an exasperated Vern Erck, the North Dakota lawman who first arrested him.
For example, at one point McNair jumped from a stolen car and ran off after the Royal Mounties pulled him over in Penticton in northwest Canada. Inside was a digital camera full of photos he had taken of himself, along with a travelogue of scenic sites he had visited.
What makes McNair, 47, tougher to catch and all the more dangerous is that he once worked in law enforcement. He is a stickler for details and so methodical he used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the FBI records on his last escape so he could study how they tracked him down.
Military career
McNair grew up the son of a jewelry store manager in Oklahoma. He joined the Air Force, was promoted to sergeant and was stationed at the air base in Minot, N.D. He worked as a military policeman and later, as his service was ending, assisted as a volunteer undercover officer with the local drug task force.
He also developed a compulsion for stealing things. Carpets. Electronics. An air compressor. He rented a storage locker and filled it up.
On a November night in 1987, when McNair was 29, he was bent over the safe at a grain elevator when the manager, Richard Kitzman, unexpectedly showed up to assist a trucker with a late load.
McNair shot Kitzman three times from behind and left him for dead.
“I thought I was a goner, you betcha,” Kitzman said.
McNair did not want to leave the trucker as a possible witness. So he reloaded the five-shot revolver, hurried outside, leaped onto the truck’s running board, stuck the gun in Jerome Theis’ face and emptied it.
Then McNair ran.
His undoing came when he fell behind on his storage locker rent. The owner opened it and found it full of loot, including spent shells from the grain elevator shootings.
McNair was arrested the next morning when he showed up at the offices of the drug task force.
McNair pleaded guilty to the shootings.
“He didn’t have any defense,” said Richard Thomas, his 73-year-old defense lawyer. “He had given exhaustive statements to the cops about the killing. He confessed it all. And he was colder than a mackerel. He showed absolutely no remorse.”
He got two life sentences and, in 1988, was dispatched to North Dakota’s maximum security prison in Bismarck.
Three years later, McNair was about to bust out again, planning to flee through a prison air vent. But another inmate snitched on him.
A year later he pulled off the escape, crawling through another ventilation chute with two other inmates. His accomplices were found in fairly short order. It took about 10 months to find McNair.
Finally, in July 1993, he was caught trying to burglarize a Grand Island, Neb., car dealership. He was captured with a stolen Chevy van and was armed with a stun gun and police scanner.
More prison time
With each escape and each attempt, McNair got more prison time. Eventually he was traded to the federal government and, with his record of unruliness and escapes, sent to Supermax.
Because McNair was well-behaved in Supermax, he was transferred to Pollock, one of the newest federal prisons, in September and, in December, was assigned to the prison shop repairing postal bags.
“He seemed very low key,” said Jane Haschemeyer, an administrator in the warden’s office. “He hadn’t had any disciplinary reports.”
Somewhere between the prison shop and the outside warehouse, McNair swapped his work khakis for the white T-shirt and white shorts allowed in his cell. As Haschemeyer put it, “he wormed his way out of the pallet and made his run for it.”
Alerted to the dragnet, Carl Bordelon, a police officer in Ball, La., stopped a man running along railroad tracks about a dozen miles from the prison.
Bordelon’s brief encounter with McNair was recorded by the video camera on the dash of his patrol car.
“Do you have any form of ID on you?” Bordelon asked.
“No.”
“What’s your name?”
“Robert Jones. I’m not supposed to be out on the tracks?”
“What’s your address?”
“I don’t have an address,” McNair said. “I’m at a hotel. We’re working on houses and stuff like that. Roofs.”
McNair shifted his feet. He giggled. He explained he was just out jogging.
Bordelon told McNair there was an escapee on the loose.
“There’s a prison here?” McNair laughed.
The officer called in McNair’s description and was told about the photo issued of the escapee. “You know the bad thing about it?” the officer said to McNair. “You’re matching up to it.”
“That sucks,” said McNair, tossing in a few more laughs.
To deflect suspicions he described a nearby Wal-Mart, the building behind it and the state highway that passes through. He said he was an Army veteran, his father a reserve cop. He said he grew up in Dallas.
“I promise you, I’m not no damn prison escapee,” he said. “Nope. Nope. Nope.”
True, the officer agreed, “you’d-a run by now.”
They laughed and shook hands.
“Be careful, buddy,” the officer said.
And off McNair went.
