Past Catches Up to Fugitive Murder Suspect : New York: David Galletti changed his identity and his way of life for nearly 20 years. Then a routine fingerprint check ended his double life.

For nearly two decades, Luis Gonzalez cloaked himself in the trappings of an ordinary life.

Family man, hard worker, upstanding citizen: All were apt descriptions. Murder suspect he was not--until last month.

Gonzalez, whose real name is David Galletti, was arrested Aug. 16 in South Carolina for a 1976 slaying in Brooklyn. A routine fingerprint check revealed his true identity, unknown even to his wife and two children, police said.

Galletti, 42, was extradited to New York City.

Authorities said the fugitive evaded the law for 19 years by skillfully reinventing himself and ending up in Hemingway, S.C., a town of 800 people about 30 miles west of Myrtle Beach.

New York homicide investigators knew Galletti as a drug-using street tough whose yellowing mug shot--taken in 1975 after he allegedly assaulted a police officer--was taped to their office wall, said Detective Bobby Alongi. They were astonished by what they discovered when they flew south to make the arrest.

“He turned his whole life around,” Alongi said. “We expected the guy in the picture. We found this clean-cut executive. He looked great.”

Galletti is accused of being one of two masked men who, in October, 1976, sprayed a group of people with gunfire on a Brooklyn street, killing Leutisher Johnson, 52, and injuring three others. Police think an argument between Johnson and Galletti’s sister sparked the shooting.

After witnesses identified Galletti as one of the shooters, police obtained warrants for his arrest.

But Galletti fled to Puerto Rico, leaving behind a wife and children, authorities said. He returned to the United States in the early 1980s.

Using the Gonzalez alias, he remarried and started a second family. He also landed a job with Aramark Food Services, a catering company, eventually becoming a manager in Miami, police said.

Time passed. Investigators gave up.

“Someone like him usually gets collared up for another crime at some point,” Alongi said. “We thought he was dead.”

Then, early this year, Galletti made a crucial mistake. Aramark gave him access to a company account at a Citibank in Miami, for which the bank required fingerprints.

Galletti complied, and the prints were sent to FBI headquarters. A routine check matched the prints to Galletti’s, which New York police had from the 1975 assault arrest.

“It really was a fluke,” said FBI Special Agent Joe Younginer.

Detectives in Brooklyn responded to news of Galletti’s whereabouts by tracking down witnesses to the 1976 shooting, Alongi said. After reviving the case, authorities gathered in Hemingway, where Galletti recently had been transferred.

New York detectives, FBI agents and a local sheriff went to the fugitive’s office and announced they were there to arrest an employee.