Fugitive on Lam Since ’79 Is Caught by FBI in Oxnard : Crime: Ex-policeman set four explosions in Upstate New York. Profiled four times on ‘America’s Most Wanted,’ he had been in Ventura County about a year.
A fugitive allegedly living under an assumed name in Oxnard was in the Ventura County Jail on Saturday after being arrested by FBI agents Friday for bombings he committed in Upstate New York while he was a police officer on duty in 1978, authorities said.
Joseph Hamilton Harper, 45, had been using the alias of Donald Nagy while living in Oxnard during the past year, said Gary Auer, supervisor of the Ventura office of the FBI.
Harper is a former Woodbury, N.Y., police officer who used dynamite in four separate incidents to blow up railroad tracks, a sewage treatment plant and an electric company transformer. The explosions caused $200,000 in damage, officials said.
Harper pleaded guilty to first-degree felony criminal mischief in 1979, but fled while he was free on bail awaiting sentencing scheduled for early 1980, the FBI said. Harper faced up to 25 years in prison for the charge.
Since his disappearance, Harper was charged in New York state courts with jumping bail and in federal court with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. He has been featured four times on the Fox Television program “America’s Most Wanted.”
New York state authorities asked the FBI for help earlier this year, officials said. The FBI office in New York traced Harper to Oxnard, but authorities would not say how he was found.
He will be returned to New York to begin serving his prison sentence, the FBI said.
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