OZARK, Mo. — A British armored-car guard suspected of driving off with a fortune worth $1.5 million in 1993 has been captured in rural Missouri, where he had been working as a cable guy and raising a son who apparently knew nothing of his father’s past.
Edward John Maher was dubbed “Fast Eddie” in news reports after the heist in England, but he quickly vanished. After nearly two decades as a fugitive, he was arrested Wednesday in an apartment in the tiny town of Ozark, 160 miles southeast of Kansas City, where he had been living under a brother’s name, Michael Maher.
Maher’s guise began unraveling Monday, when Ozark police received a tip that a man going by that name was really a fugitive from Britain. An officer compared his driver’s license photo with a picture from 1993 and contacted the FBI, which also compared the photos and determined the two photos were likely the same man.
On the same day, Maher was bailing his adult son out of jail in the nearby town of Nixa when a police officer told him he knew Maher was wanted in England, but the officer could not arrest him.
According to an FBI affidavit, Maher’s son overheard what the officer had said and asked his father about it.
The father “was irate,” the affidavit said. “Maher told his son that they would have to leave again and threatened to kill the person who tipped the police off about his identity.”
The next day, Maher’s son, Lee King, was being interviewed by an FBI agent when his father called and said they had to leave immediately. The son refused to go. On Wednesday, the son
reported that his father had changed his mind about fleeing. Maher was taken into custody a short time later.
He is accused of driving off in an armored car while a fellow security guard was making a delivery to a bank in Suffolk, England. The van was later abandoned. Fifty bags containing coins and notes worth 1 million pounds, or $1.5 million, were missing.
Maher made an initial appearance Thursday in federal court in Springfield and asked for a court-appointed attorney because he didn’t have enough money to pay for representation.
