Life on the Run: No Rest for Hunted or Hunters

After nearly four years on the run, Orange County businessman Charles McVey II was dozing in front of the television when a Canadian Mountie tapped on his door.

The Mounties made it look easy, cornering one of the U.S. Customs Service’s 10 most-wanted fugitives and arresting him without incident after he was spotted in a restaurant in a remote Canadian fishing village.

But capturing fugitives from the law is not an amateur’s game. Expensive and dangerous, hunting down men and women who have fled rather than face criminal charges is a demanding--and sometimes obsessive--job.

“There is nothing like hunting a fugitive once you’ve done it,” Deputy U.S. Marshal Arthur Banks said.

“The Adrenalin is pumping when you go through a door and you don’t know what to expect,” said Joe Chefalo, supervisory agent in charge of the FBI’s fugitive squad in Los Angeles. “We don’t take chances. We always have them outnumbered, so when it actually goes smoothly it is anticlimactic.”

Between 1985 and 1987, the number of outstanding fugitive warrants in Southern California ballooned from 2,000 to 3,000, Banks said. He attributes the increase to two factors: the growing number of criminals fleeing from justice and the limited amount of money law-enforcement agencies are willing to devote to catching fugitives.

“We get new cases every day,” he said.

The average cost of catching a federal fugitive is between $400 and $900, according to recent estimates by the U.S. Marshal’s Service, the agency with primary responsibility for pursuing fugitives, but the big investigations can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Although no one keeps county-by-county statistics on fugitives, officials said Orange County produces its share.

Today, McVey, who is accused of shipping $15 million worth of restricted computer equipment to the Soviet Union, may be the best known fugitive from county because of the publicity surrounding his arrest in August.

Richard Smyth, however, remains the most mysterious. A Huntington Beach computer engineer and civilian consultant to the Air Force, Smyth vanished with his wife two years ago. He fled shortly after pleading not guilty to federal charges of illegally shipping nuclear triggering devices to Israel.

“I am really astounded that they (federal officials) would do this to me,” Smyth said after his May, 1985, arraignment on 30 federal charges.

After Smyth fled, leaving his grown children, parents and in-laws behind, his mother, Pauline, summed up how the family felt: “This is a nightmare--except in a nightmare you wake up.”

According to federal prosecutors, most captured fugitives say they fled because they could not face prison. But life on the run, except for the very wealthy, can be equally frightening. Fugitives usually are forced to sever all ties with their families and friends, change their identities and travel under false passports.

McVey, who lived in Switzerland after leaving Villa Park in 1982, obtained a Guatemalan passport in Rome and became “Carlos Juan Williams.” He said he was careful to avoid countries that might extradite him on the illegal export charges he was facing in the United States, and traveled mostly in Europe and South and Central America.

When Gerald Ramos left the country shortly before being indicted on wire fraud charges, the flamboyant Orange County real estate entrepreneur took his young son, Cy, with him. Spanish police arrested Ramos last spring in a small town near the French border, but his ex-wife still is searching for the boy, according to her attorney.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Patricia L. Collins is busy working to bring Ramos back from Spain to Los Angeles to stand trial.

Unlike most federal fugitives, Collins said, Ramos was easy to find. He was arrested shortly after one of his attorneys sent out letters to former business associates telling them where Ramos was living in Spain.

In addition to the time and money spent hunting them, fugitives create enormous feelings of frustration for federal prosecutors who cannot proceed in court without them.

‘Important to Catch Them’

“Any time you have someone who flees justice, the public view is that the system has gone awry. That’s why it’s so important to catch them,” Asst. U.S. Atty. William F. Fahey said.

Although there is active national and international cooperation between agents searching for fugitives, each group has its own special list of priorities.

At any one time, agents in the Los Angeles regional FBI office are pursuing about 150 fugitives. In a year’s time, they will arrest 75 or more, according to Jim E. Moody, assistant special agent in charge of criminal and organized crime matters for the region. Moody’s territory runs north to San Luis Obispo County, south to Camp Pendleton and east to the Arizona border.

“In the last year, we’ve arrested three of the FBI’s top 10 fugitives in this region,” said Moody, modestly adding, “It’s been a good year.”

The most publicized capture involved Claude Dallas, a self-proclaimed “mountain man” who fled after murdering two Idaho game wardens who had cited him for poaching in 1981.

In March, FBI agents learned that Dallas was in the Riverside area and traced him to a motel. At Moody’s direction, about 15 or 20 agents surrounded the motel. They were about to move in when Dallas emerged. The agents backed off and followed him to a nearby convenience store.

‘Wanted His Hands Full’

A few minutes later, arms full of grocery bags, Dallas was arrested without a shot being fired.

“We wanted his hands full,” Chefalo said.

Although there are thrilling moments, Chefalo and others said hunting fugitives usually is tedious and frustrating. Agents spend countless hours doing surveillance with no immediate results.

They also spend days and nights watching inanimate objects, such as cars, airplanes and suitcases. The two FBI agents who recently arrested former Newport Beach businessman John Hancock on federal fraud charges found his luggage in an Irvine hotel and waited for him to return for it.

Hancock, a resident of Aspen, Colo., pleaded not guilty to defrauding four lending institutions of about $2.5 million.

No matter how boring or aggravating a search may be, agents insist they do not give up easily.

“We’ll hunt fugitives until we catch them, prove they are dead, or the prosecutor gives up,” said the FBI’s Moody. “There is no clock as far as we are concerned. We don’t allow an agent to throw up his hands in disgust.”

That same tenacious attitude paid off for Jim Propotnick, chief deputy U.S. marshal in Honolulu.

His capture of smuggler Patrick Anthony Muscarella is legendary among those who chase fugitives for a living.

Deputy Marshal Murdered

In 1985, after the chief deputy marshal assigned to the Jacksonville, Fla., office was murdered, Propotnick was summoned to calm things down and temporarily take over the job.

It was during his six-month stint in Florida that he managed to catch Muscarella, a convicted arms and drug smuggler.

Muscarella, 40, had escaped from prison at least twice, leading marshals on a chase across the United States and into South America. An accomplished pilot, he was once arrested at John Wayne Airport after marshals located the two-engine plane he used to smuggle guns and drugs.

Marshals seized the plane and arrested Muscarella, but he managed to escape from the federal prison at Terminal Island and returned to smuggling, Propotnick said.

A prolific writer, Muscarella chronicled his crimes and travels in a collection of pocket-size spiral notebooks. As the marshals chased him, he left the notebooks behind for them to find. A recurrent theme was his vow to die before returning to prison.

“He was just a free spirit--he never believed he could be held,” Propotnick said.

On Nov. 20, 1985, Propotnick and his partner finally tracked Muscarella to a motor home on a farm near Gainesville, Fla. A high-speed chase ensued and the fugitive finally turned off the road, jumped out of the motor home and began running into the darkened woods.

‘Like a Ton of Bricks’

“We caught him in the glare of the headlights about 40 feet away. I whacked off three fast rounds. He went down like a ton of bricks,” Propotnick said.

While waiting for the ambulance, Propotnick said: “I asked him, ‘Why the hell did you run? He said, ‘I’m not going to prison.’ ” But he did. Muscarella is currently in the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan., serving a five-year sentence for importing and distributing drugs.

One of the many captures that lacked the drama of Muscarella’s was that of Orange County businessman McVey.

He had been spotted in a coffee shop the day before, on Aug. 18, by Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Daniel Fudge in the tiny Yukon Territory fishing town of Teslin. Fudge, newly assigned to the remote area, recognized McVey from a wanted poster.

Since his capture two months ago--except for one night of freedom when a judge released him on a technicality, prompting a brief but intensive manhunt--McVey has been living in the hospital unit at the Pre-Trial Services Center in Vancouver, B.C.

In a recent interview, McVey said he is reading a chess book and making weekly court appearances while his two Canadian attorneys fight his extradition to Los Angeles. He declined to discuss his medical problems, but sources said McVey suffers from diabetes and other ailments.

When asked why he didn’t leave Canada when the judge freed him, McVey said he couldn’t get far because he was released without Canadian money, his passport or identification.

He said he wandered around Vancouver, changed some English pounds into Canadian money and checked into a hotel near the airport. “I managed to have a hot dog and an orange juice while I was out,” he said.

The Mounties blanketed the city with McVey’s photograph by passing copies to scores of cab drivers and hotel clerks. They figured he might try to leave by plane, so they concentrated their efforts near the airport, according to Staff Sgt. Tom Hill, a member of the RCMP’s customs and excise section.

Spread Word Widely

“It was good, solid, old-fashioned police work,” Hill said. “Our guys just got around to a lot of places and let a lot of people know we were looking for him.”

McVey was re-arrested in a hotel room after he was recognized from a flyer.

In March, 1983, McVey and two foreign nationals were indicted by a Los Angeles federal grand jury on export charges stemming from equipment shipments to the Russians between 1977 and 1982. The indictment alleges that McVey shipped computer equipment from Orange County to a colleague in Switzerland, who forwarded it to the Soviet Union. McVey also allegedly hired a consultant to conduct computer software courses for Soviet technicians in Minsk, the indictment said.

Instead of listing the true contents of each shipment, McVey allegedly reported that the crates contained televisions, copying machines and typewriters.

McVey said he remained in the export business throughout his time as a fugitive, traveling on his Guatemalan passport.

He said he resents being labeled a “techno-bandit” because “no one ever stole anything.”

In a tired voice, he said the government’s charges against him have “by and large been fabrication and imagination.”

In addition to the pending criminal charges, the Department of Commerce last year fined him $1.2 million and revoked his export privileges for 30 years.