Escaped Michigan murderer caught in Indiana, officials say

IONIA, Mich. — Police say a convicted killer who made a brazen escape from a Michigan prison has been captured in Indiana.

Indiana State Police Sgt. Ron Galaviz says Michael David Elliot was captured Monday evening in LaPorte County, Ind.

Galaviz says a sheriff’s deputy investigating a vehicle theft spotted the stolen automobile and tried to make a stop. The man ran, but authorities were able to capture him.

Authorities say Elliot peeled holes in two fences with his hands to escape from the Ionia Correctional Facility on Sunday night. They say he then abducted a woman and fled to Indiana, where the victim and her vehicle were safely recovered.

Elliot was convicted in 1993 of shooting four people to death and then setting their house on fire in Michigan’s Gladwin County. He was serving life sentences for first-degree murder and has convictions for arson and armed robbery.

Corrections officials were investigating the details of the escape. It appeared that Elliot was dressed in a white kitchen uniform when he got out between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. The white uniform allowed him to blend into the snow outside, officials said.

“It appears that he created a hole at the bottom of the two perimeter fences of the correctional facility and then crawled through those holes,” Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan told the Los Angeles Times.

Elliot then captured a woman from Ionia and the pair drove off in her Jeep to Elkhart, near the Indiana-Michigan state line. The woman escaped at the gas station and called police, Marlan said.

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