Tip Leads to Capture of Escaped Rapist by FBI : Crime: Thirteen years of freedom end for Connecticut prison escapee. He raped a college student in 1974.

Acting on a tip sparked by a wanted-criminal flyer, FBI agents have arrested a Connecticut rapist who escaped from prison 13 years ago, tracking him to a College-area neighborhood where he lived with his wife of 2 1/2 years, authorities said Monday.

Peter Scott Martin, 40, an unemployed locksmith who went by the alias Richard Alan Miller, was arrested Saturday afternoon at his Mohawk Street house, the FBI announced in a statement.

The arrest came after FBI agents sent a flyer to locksmiths and alarm installers nationwide that said Martin was unemployed but had worked previously for a San Diego alarm company. Describing Martin’s fascination with locks and alarms, the mailer generated a tip, FBI spokesman Ron Orrantia said Monday in an interview, but he declined to elaborate.

Martin appeared Monday in San Diego federal court before U.S. Magistrate Barry Ted Moskowitz and was turned over to California authorities, the first step in extradition to Connecticut, Assistant U.S. Atty Debra Torres-Reyes said.

Martin and another inmate escaped May 2, 1978, from a Connecticut prison, the FBI said. In August, 1979, using the Miller alias, Martin obtained a California driver’s license in San Diego, the FBI said.

Convicted in December 1974 of raping a Southern Connecticut State College student on Jan. 20, 1974, Martin had been sentenced to seven to 15 years in prison.

Martin attacked the woman after striking up a conversation with her on the Hamden, Conn., campus near New Haven and offering her a ride home, the FBI said.

He instead drove to a nearby beach and to his Hamden apartment, where he hit her on the head with an object that caused a severe wound and then raped her, the FBI said.

Martin was arrested at 12:35 p.m. Saturday, the FBI said.

He tried to escape through a back door of the house when FBI agents knocked at front, but other agents were waiting for him in back, the FBI said. He also refused to identify himself but was identified by his fingerprints, the FBI said.

The FBI provided no details of the marriage. Joseph Johnson, the special agent in charge of the bureau’s San Diego office, said in a television interview Monday evening that Martin’s wife was a local woman. Johnson could not be reached for comment.