HELENA, Mont. — A hitchhiker originally sentenced to be executed for the 1951 killing of a Montana man who picked him up during a blizzard has been found running a wedding chapel under an assumed name in Arizona 38 years after he skipped out on parole.
Frank Dryman was found after the victim’s grandson hired an investigator who tracked the fugitive to his Arizona City notary and chapel business, where he was known as Victor Houston.
Now 78, Dryman was awaiting extradition proceedings Wednesday, a day after his arrest by the Pinal County sheriff’s office.
Dryman initially received a hanging sentence after a quick trial in 1955.
His case became the focus of a battle over the death penalty and frontier justice, and he received a new sentence of life in prison with the help of the Montana Supreme Court.
In 1969, after just 15 years in prison, he was paroled. Dryman disappeared three years later.
No Montana offender had been missing longer.
