A convicted pedophile who got away from jail 30 years ago has been caught. He is said to have been living under the name of a child who died in 1962.
A statement from the U.S. Marshals Service on Wednesday said that 70-year-old Steven Craig Johnson was arrested on Tuesday, July 16, from a home in Macon, Ga. Johnson was reportedly living under the name “William Cox.”
A 2019 alert from Oregon officials says Johnson got away from the Mill Creek Correctional Facility in Salem, Oregon, on November 29, 1994.
The USMS said that he was in prison at the time for sexual abuse and attempted sodomy. An arrest warrant was issued for his escape after he got out of the building while on work duty at the jail.
The USMS says that since then, Johnson, who Oregon police say pre-teen boys were his targets, had been living under the fake name of a child from Texas who died in January 1962.
According to the USMS, Johnson got a copy of the child’s death certificate and used it to get a social security number in Texas in 1995, a year after he went free. Johnson is said to have gotten a driver’s license in Georgia in 1998.
The police didn’t say how he got Cox’s names.
In a 2019 bulletin, Oregon police called Johnson a “pedophile” who “has a high probability of victimizing pre-teen boys.”
Part of the bulletin said, “Fugitive Johnson should not be allowed contact with children.” It also said that he was thought to be on his way to Texas at the time.
The USMS says Johnson has lived in his Macon flat since 2011.
Oregon Live reported that his apartment building neighbors were shocked when they found out who he was.
“He was a great person.” “Everyone liked him,” April Walker, a neighbor, told the news source.
She said that Johnson worked out daily and went for walks in the morning.
“Everyone called him Bud,” Eddie Rozier, a neighbor, told the news source.
According to Oregon Live, KOIN, and KGW 8, Johnson was arrested and taken to a Georgia jail. He is now waiting to be sent back to Oregon. It wasn’t clear right away if he would be charged with anything else.
