Fugitive Defiant to the End

A Los Angeles street gang leader wanted in connection with a dozen homicides eluded police for more than six months by traversing the Southwest, shuttling from his home turf in Atwater Village to the Inland Empire, Las Vegas and northwest Arizona, where he was captured this week, authorities said Thursday.

Timothy Joseph McGhee, 29, one of the nation’s most-wanted fugitives, was tracked down and arrested in Bullhead City, where authorities discovered an assortment of items in his apartment that mocked police.

There was a T-shirt that read, “Fugitive. Can’t see me,” said U.S. Marshals Chief John Clark. Another T-shirt bore the slogan: “Three ways to get away from the cops: 1. Run. 2. Jump. 3. Throw a donut.”

McGhee showed a similar sense of bravado Thursday in a Kingman, Ariz., courtroom, where he appeared via closed-circuit TV from the county jail.

Dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, he told Mohave County Judge Richard Weiss, “I’ll waive extradition.”

Mohave County Sheriff Tom Sheahan said McGhee, who was being held in a high-security one-man cell, could be sent to Los Angeles as early as today.

McGhee faces one count of first-degree murder and is believed to have ordered or been the triggerman in at least 11 other slayings, all in northeast Los Angeles between 1997 and 2002.

The killings targeted gang rivals, potential witnesses and others, police said.

As the reputed leader of the Toonerville gang, McGhee led roughly 200 members who claim as their own an area around Los Feliz Boulevard between San Fernando Road and the Los Angeles River, police said.

In the neighborhood Thursday afternoon, several residents characterized McGhee as a genial and protective person who may have been involved in gang life but didn’t seem like a killer.

Capturing McGhee, police said, proved difficult because he did not stay in one place for more than a week, often moving across the state line.

McGhee’s father, they said, had a business in Bullhead City. Other relatives live in the San Gabriel Valley and San Bernardino County.

Even when he was in Los Angeles, detectives said, McGhee would sometimes throw police off his trail by staying in rival gangs’ neighborhoods.

McGhee also changed his appearance.

At the time of his arrest, his shaved head had sprouted hair and he had grown a beard. His numerous tattoos were concealed beneath a Polo shirt and his new hairline.

While detectives have suspected for more than a year that McGhee is linked to a series of murders, prosecutors first charged him last summer in a single case, the killing of Atwater Village resident Margie Mendoza in 2001.

At that point, investigators from the LAPD’s fugitive warrants section joined Northeast Division homicide detectives in the search.

When it became clear that McGhee was continuing to run the Toonerville gang from out of state, the LAPD teamed up with a U.S. Marshals Service task force, which brought in more investigators, vehicles and even aircraft.

“They were a godsend,” said LAPD Det. Scott Masterson. “They brought expertise, logistics and, very importantly, allowed us to extend our reach into Nevada and Arizona.”

Authorities thought they had located McGhee in Arizona around Thanksgiving when they received a tip.

They undertook round-the-clock monitoring for two days and the Marshals Service brought in officers from as far away as North Carolina and Georgia.

After they failed to find McGhee, the search continued until early February, when a fellow Toonerville gang member was arrested in connection with a shooting in Las Vegas.

Masterson said that crime indicated that McGhee might be trying to move the operations of the Toonerville gang because of the “heat” in the Los Angeles area.

Authorities redoubled their efforts in Arizona and Nevada.

They interviewed McGhee’s father in Bullhead City. While nothing came of it, they did learn that a man matching McGhee’s description had been seen at a local apartment.

Around that time, McGhee also had reportedly been seen across the river in Laughlin, Nev., casinos, police said.

According to federal investigators, McGhee rented an apartment on Ramar Road in Bullhead City about a year ago and lived there off and on.

The task force began watching the apartment Tuesday and an LAPD detective saw a man he thought might have been McGhee, but could not make positive identification without revealing himself.

Later, they saw a car leave the apartment and drive to a mobile home nearby.

Task force members were preparing to serve a search warrant on the mobile home Wednesday with the help of the Bullhead City police SWAT team when they saw McGhee leaving in a car driven by a female friend.

Officers stopped the car on a residential street called Roadrunner Drive.

“It is a residential, single-family-home street,” Clark said. “We waited until a part of the road where it was not going to be a problem.”

McGhee offered no resistance and glared at one LAPD officer who tried to engage him in conversation, investigators said.

Investigators later searched the apartment and found the T-shirts, along with a bag of hair clippings and other items that they say McGhee could have used to alter his appearance.

In the mobile home, investigators said, they found crystal methamphetamine.

“Finding one guy in this big, vast world isn’t easy under good circumstances,” Masterson said.

“When it finally happened and everything was done, it’s almost like being a kid at Christmas,” he said.

“You’re excited, happy and relieved. You have that rush of emotion.”

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Times staff writer Akilah Johnson and special correspondent David Hawkins contributed to this report.