‘Escape Artist’ Back in Jail Here After Eluding Officers for 4 Years

After an extensive national manhunt, a fugitive who slipped from the grasp of a sheriff’s deputy four years ago was returned to Orange County on Friday to face charges of attempted murder in a 1983 attack on a reserve police officer.

Michael Mohon, described by Sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson as “an escape artist,” was arrested April 19 in Eight Mile, Ala., after FBI agents were contacted by a woman who recognized his picture while watching the NBC television program “Unsolved Mysteries.”

Mohon escaped from Orange County Jail in 1985 and repeatedly eluded investigators who had come “literally footsteps behind him” in their search, Olson said.

Orange County investigators traveled to Alabama this week to bring Mohon back to California, after a U.S. magistrate ordered his extradition.

On Friday, Mohon, wearing the same T-shirt he wore when he was captured in Alabama, walked through the rear entrance of the County Jail accompanied by the two investigators who spent the last few years looking for him.

His cuffed hands were shackled to a chain around his waist, and he walked stiffly because of restraining leg braces under his pants legs. He said nothing to the media on the walk from the car to the jail.

After flying into Orange County, Mohon was transported to the jail in a caravan of police cars and trailed by a police helicopter hovering above.

“It’s been a long time,” Olson said. “This is like a movie.”

Olson said Mohon, who is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday, will be placed under maximum security.

“We felt that we were footsteps behind him in Northern California once, and I mean literally footsteps,” he said. But their search had come almost to a standstill in the last few years, as clues to his whereabouts dried up.

Mohon is wanted for the 1983 attempted murder of Devin Arnold, a reserve Fountain Valley police officer, after an alleged burglary attempt in Huntington Beach.

Gun Thought Planted by Wife

But with the help of a gun allegedly planted by his wife, Mohon escaped from an Orange County sheriff’s deputy in January, 1985, as he was taken to the UCI Medical Center for physical therapy.

“He’s a real escape artist,” Olson said.

“He’s an intelligent guy. He’s an intelligent crook,” Olson added. “He’s a master of disguises and using aliases.”

Eight days after Mohon escaped from Orange County Jail, he was arrested in Mesa, Ariz., on charges of car theft and attempted kidnaping after leading authorities on a 1 1/2-hour chase. Olson said that when he was arrested, Orange County investigators had just returned from Arizona, where they had been looking for him.

While an Arizona investigator who saw a wanted poster of Mohon called Orange County deputies to say he thought he had the fugitive, Mohon was making his escape by using a comb to somehow slip his handcuffs, Olson said.

A few days after he fled from Arizona authorities, Olson said, Mohon and the other inmate he had escaped with were stopped in Los Angeles on suspicion of driving a stolen vehicle.

Because the other man was wanted on charges in San Diego, both of them were transferred to San Diego and Mohon, who again gave a false name, was released because authorities could not tie him to any of the charges, Olson related. Again, Orange County authorities learned that Mohon was in another agency’s custody just as he was disappearing.

Mohon’s capture finally came in April, when an unidentified woman called the FBI to say that a man who, along with a woman, had painted her house a few months before resembled a man in a segment of “Unsolved Mysteries.”

Mohon’s wife, Sharon Rose Mohon, 34, is wanted on charges of aiding in her husband’s escape from Orange County Jail and for parole violation in Northern California, Olson said.

The couple apparently lived in a camper near Mobile since January, 1988, under the names of Steve and Mary Bostwick.

Mohon, who had been working as a self-employed painter, was arrested as he was leaving an auto parts store. His wife, waiting in a car nearby, also was arrested.

“Mohon had just disappeared from the face of the Earth” after he was arrested in Los Angeles, Olson said. “There was no indication of where he was for a long period of time until ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ did the show on him on April 12.”