FAQGO.com- breaking, latest, most searched news

A prosecutor on Monday charged a California mother of three with escaping a Michigan prison 32 years ago, complicating attempts to win back her freedom.

If convicted, Susan LeFevre could face probation or up to five more years in prison. She’s already back in Michigan serving at least 5 1/2 years for selling heroin in 1974.

The 53-year-old Lefevre was arrested in April outside her home in an affluent area of San Diego. She had served about one year before climbing a prison fence in 1976 and starting a new life.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, whose jurisdiction covers the suburban Detroit prison from which LeFevre escaped, said Monday it’s admirable LeFevre made something of her life, but she must accept responsibility for what she did.

“Inmates must know there is a consequence for escaping prison,” Worthy said in a statement. Arrangements were being made to arraign LeFevre on the new charge.
If convicted, she would be serve the escape sentence after her drug sentence.

Barbara Klimaszewski, one of LeFevre’s attorneys, said she regrets that prosecutors “decided to allocate the time and resources of Wayne County taxpayers to this case. I hope we can achieve a result that’s appropriate.”

Prison officials have said it wasn’t uncommon for prisoners to walk away from minimum-security prisons in the 1970s.

Last week, LeFevre asked a Saginaw County judge to set aside her original heroin sentence.

Her attorneys said that at the time of her sentencing, when she was 19, the circuit court’s policy was to give all Saginaw defendants in heroin cases 10 to 20 years, regardless of their individual characteristics or criminal records. The policy later was ruled improper by the Michigan Supreme Court.

While the motion didn’t specify how long her new sentence should be, Klimaszewski said a first-time offender such as LeFevre pleading guilty to dealing a small amount of drugs likely would get probation under today’s law.

Saginaw prosecutors have until mid-August to respond to LeFevre’s motion.

LeFevre was arrested during an undercover drug operation in Thomas Township, outside Saginaw, in 1974.

LeFevre has said she agreed to plead guilty in hopes of winning leniency from the judge but was given 10 to 20 years. Under sentencing laws from the 1970s, LeFevre will have to serve until 2013 before being eligible for parole, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections.

In jail, LeFevre has said, she was threatened by other inmates at the Detroit House of Corrections, now known as the Robert Scott Correctional Facility. One night, her grandfather and another relative agreed to meet her, and LeFevre walked across an open yard, threw her jacket over a barbed wire fence and climbed over, then started running.

“They had helicopters looking for me. … You don’t think about fear, you don’t have time. You just run,” she said.

When she got to the car, her relative was saying a rosary for her.

A few weeks later, friends let her ride with them to California, where she went by Marie, her middle name.

LeFevre said only a few people knew about her secret past. She said she told a fiance, who broke their engagement. She decided to keep it secret when she married her husband of 23 years, Alan Walsh.

“We’re still just getting over this, but it’s been a tremendous shock to us,” Alan Walsh told the AP in a brief telephone interview.

He described his wife as a woman of “the highest integrity and compassion.”

A brother said he periodically heard rumors that she was living in California.

“As far as I was concerned, I lost a sister back then,” said David LeFevre, of Cass City, Mich. “There was always a big question as to where she was, but then when this happened. Well, it surprises you after all these years.”

Steve Jurman, the U.S. Marshals Service officer who arrested LeFevre, said the fugitive established her new life with a Social Security number belonging to someone who died in 1981, a number she says she made up. She obtained a California driver’s license using a false date of birth but didn’t risk renewing it after it expired in 1999.

“Obviously, she had done a good job of obtaining and maintaining a new identity and could have gone another 10 years undiscovered if it hadn’t been for this tip,” said Jurman, supervising deputy of the U.S. marshals’ fugitive operation in San Diego. “She was extremely comfortable with her new identity. It wasn’t like she was actively trying to hide or anything.”

Jurman said LeFevre initially denied her identity but admitted it once he told her she could face additional charges for lying to a federal agent. She told him her husband and children knew nothing of her past.

“Can you imagine? You think you know everything about your spouse,” Jurman said. “She immediately broke down and said, ‘I was a child; I don’t know why I got involved in this.’”

Alan Walsh said he will support his wife.

“Our family is threatened to be destroyed by something that happened to her as a 19-year-old teenager 34 years ago in Michigan,” he said.

An attorney for LeFevre did not respond to message left with Walsh. Prosecutors in Saginaw County did not return a message left seeking comment.

Popularity: 1% [?]