ST. JOHNS, Ariz. — Over the past three weeks, an escaped Arizona prisoner and his girlfriend bedeviled the hundreds of lawmen hunting them across the desolate highways and thick forests of the West.
There would be sightings of John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch. One in Montana. Another as far away as Arkansas. And then sometimes nothing.
Until Thursday, when an alert forest ranger’s tip led police right to them. The self-styled “Bonnie and Clyde” offered little resistance. A few threats. No shootout. They didn’t even try to run.
As the nation kept a lookout for them and law enforcers put up alerts at campgrounds and truck stops, the couple somehow slipped back into Arizona, their beat-up Nissan hidden at a campground across the state from the prison where McCluskey escaped, police say, with Welch’s help.
When a SWAT team descended on the campsite at dusk, Welch reached for a weapon but dropped it when she realized she was outgunned, police said. A shirtless, tattoo-covered McCluskey told officers that he regretted not shooting them with the gun he had in a nearby tent.
“He has no remorse,” said Apache County sheriff’s Cmdr. Webb Hogle.
The capture brought an end to a manhunt that began July 30 when McCluskey and two convicted murderers broke out of a medium-security prison in Kingman, 185 miles northwest of Phoenix. Authorities say Welch threw a set of wire cutters onto prison grounds, allowing the convicts to cut open a fence.
One inmate was caught after a shootout in Rifle.
The other was nabbed in a small Wyoming town after he was spotted at a church.
Police on Friday were still trying to piece together details about the couple’s time on the lam.
McCluskey and Welch are suspected in several crimes, including the killing of a couple in New Mexico whose torched bodies were found in Santa Rosa. Officials said the Nissan had New Mexico license plates and was stolen about the time they were killed.
During the arrest, McCluskey suggested that the gun used in the killings was in his tent, police said. Police were looking through the campsite for any evidence that could link them to other crimes.
McCluskey, 45, was serving a 15-year prison term for attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm, and previously did time in Pennsylvania related to a string of armed robberies in the 1990s.
The other inmates who escaped, Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick, were serving time for murder.
