Dallas: How the FBI Captured Escaped Killer

BOISE, Ida. — In their yearlong pursuit of escaped killer Claude Dallas Jr., FBI agents relied on patience, persistence, a keen sense of human nature--and a little help from his friends--the bureau’s lead agent in the manhunt said Thursday.

“I read where Claude Sr. (the fugitive’s father) said something about us being like fleas on a dog--well, I like that,” FBI Special Agent George Calley said. “We were like fleas on a dog--because most everywhere he went, we went, too.”

Patience was particularly important to Dallas’ pursuers after the fugitive narrowly escaped capture in Eureka, Nev., last July--and was essentially lost to the FBI for the next eight months, Calley, who is stationed here, said in an interview.

‘Friends Didn’t Know’

“Even a lot of his friends didn’t know where he was” during that time, Calley said. “We think he just showed up (at friends’ houses) when he needed help.”

But the FBI was confident that it would eventually reconnect with Dallas if it simply kept tabs on his friends and waited for the fugitive to show up, Calley said.

“We’re all creatures of habit, and Claude Dallas is no exception,” Calley said. “We do what we feel comfortable doing . . . and for Claude Dallas, that was getting help from his friends.”

Calley said some of Dallas’ helpers eventually agreed to help the FBI.

“We were winning his friends over, and I think Claude knew that,” Calley said. “I talked to a lot of people, of course, who were angry with us, but we were winning some of them over.” This was accomplished, the FBI man said, by “being nice to them.”

Calley’s remarks represent the first FBI account of the search for Dallas since the killer was captured Sunday in Riverside. The interview took place shortly before Dallas returned Thursday to the Idaho capital from Southern California in a private plane chartered for security reasons by the Ada County Sheriff’s Department.

Dallas, who waived his extradition rights after being caught outside a Riverside convenience store Sunday by FBI agents, is being kept in a high-security lockup at the Ada County-Boise City Public Safety Building. He was arraigned Thursday afternoon through a closed-circuit television hookup with the Ada County District Court. “Video arraignment” is usual procedure here, for reasons of efficiency and safety, Sheriff Vaughn Killeen said.

By nightfall, Dallas was back in the Idaho State Prison from which he escaped last March 30.

‘Paper Trail’ Missing

Calley said that some of the time Dallas spent on the run may never be accounted for, because the FBI has not yet found the same sort of “paper trail”--job applications, paycheck stubs and other such documents--that helped the agency piece together Dallas’ travels after he shot and killed two Idaho fish and game inspectors in 1981. During that first flight from justice, Dallas ranged from Sioux Falls, S.D., where he worked in a steel-fabricating factory, to Leggett, Calif., where he earned money stripping the bark from fallen trees. Dallas was arrested after a shoot-out in Nevada in 1982.

Calley said FBI agents were also hampered this time by a plethora of false and sometimes conflicting leads--including some people who said they had seen Dallas, but actually had spotted men resembling Matt Salinger, the actor who portrayed Dallas in a controversial CBS docudrama last October.

Despite evidence of premeditation in the wardens’ deaths--particularly the point-blank shots to the head the men received after being wounded--Dallas was convicted only of manslaughter. However, he received a stiff 30-year sentence in the Idaho State Prison five miles544436085last March and had been vigorously pursued by the FBI and Idaho authorities ever since.

Dallas, an Ohio-born cowboy-turned-poacher, has received much attention as a “mountain man” and survivalist, but Calley and Killeen said that after the escape, Dallas did not spend much time hiding out in the scrub lands he seemed to prefer: the harsh, uninviting Owyhee Desert country of Idaho, Oregon and Nevada.

Indeed, Killeen speculated that once Dallas escaped, the only time he spent in Idaho was the time needed to leave it. The fugitive, who escaped by using bolt cutters to snip the two rows of chain-link fence around the state prison, went almost immediately to the San Francisco Bay Area, Calley said.

“There is nothing to indicate to me that he spent any time in Idaho after his escape,” Killeen said.

Agents Watched Girlfriend

Calley said Dallas spent April, May and early June bouncing around Newark, Menlo Park and other San Francisco-area suburbs. He fled the region on June 6, when news spread that federal agents were watching a woman described as his girlfriend, Margaret Lundy, a Boise native who visited Newark and once applied for a California driver’s license using a Palo Alto address. Lundy and Dallas were last reported seen in the Bay Area driving east on California 4; Lundy has not been seen since.

Calley said the bureau is not sure how Dallas supported himself while a fugitive, although he suspects that Dallas subsisted primarily on handouts from friends and supporters. A small cult of Western buffs and right-wing extremists has grown up around Dallas, whom they see as a self-sufficient, free spirit hounded by authorities.

Some were evident outside the jail-courthouse complex here Thursday. About half a dozen people protested Dallas’ imprisonment, carrying signs with messages such as “A Man’s Home Is His Castle.”

Killeen discounted the level of aid Dallas may have received from such groups. “They were people who wouldn’t necessarily turn him away, but they wouldn’t necessarily invite him in (their homes), either,” the sheriff said. “They might give him a meal or some money.”

Dallas was living in an inexpensive motel at the time of his arrest.

House Was Vacant

After leaving San Francisco, Dallas made his way to the remote Nevada town of Eureka, more than 200 rugged miles east of Reno. More than two dozen heavily armed FBI agents descended on that town of 350 people just after the Fourth of July weekend, but they found no one in the house in which Dallas was thought to have been staying. Although Eureka residents said they never saw Dallas, Calley and Killeen said they know he was there shortly before the raid.

In the eight months between then and last week, Calley said, the fugitive’s movements are not entirely known by the authorities. Tipsters have reported Dallas as far north as Oregon, south to Mexico and east to South Dakota, but those reports have not been confirmed.

Police Lt. Gerry Beck of Sioux Falls, S.D., for example, said he was not even aware that the FBI was considering his area as a potential Dallas hide-out.

“We certainly haven’t picked up any ripples of that,” he said. “As far as I know, they didn’t do any searching around here.”

Information Still Important

Calley said he hopes that news of Dallas’ recapture will prompt new tips about his flight.

Such information still is important, Killeen said, “because Claude Dallas was and still is considered a flight risk--and while we hope it doesn’t happen again, if it does, we want to have a good idea where we can look for him.”

If convicted of escape, Dallas could have five years added to his sentence, which he began serving in 1983. Already he has lost 365 days of compensatory “good time” he had accrued toward an early release.

Meanwhile, in Riverside County, Greg Davis, 35, a self-employed welder who was briefly held on suspicion of helping Dallas, said he only met the fugitive on the day he was captured.

Davis, who lives in a rural area near Lake Mathews, said in an interview that he was introduced Sunday morning to a man calling himself Al Schrenk. The introduction came from a mutual friend, Dan Martinez. Over breakfast, Davis said, Schrenk, who was actually Dallas, spoke of “traveling around the country doing odd jobs and now wanting to settle down in this area.”

Davis said Martinez, 38, who trains, breaks and sells horses, had to leave for a job and asked Davis if he would take Schrenk to a motel in Riverside. Davis said he complied.

That afternoon, Dallas was captured a block from the motel.

“The FBI followed me,” Davis said. “They knew Dallas was at Danny’s. They bided their time and arrested him. They did a professional job.”

Davis and Martinez were arrested Sunday afternoon by FBI agents on suspicion of harboring a fugitive, but both were released the next morning.

“I honestly don’t think Danny was harboring him,” Davis said. “I think this guy just showed up on his doorstep and Danny used as much finesse as possible to get him away.” Davis added, “Danny apologized to me for getting me involved.”

Martinez has declined to comment on the incident.

Times staff writer Louis Sahagun in Riverside County contributed to this article.