Escapee Found 38 Years After He Fled Prison

After 38 years, Michael Robert Smith figured no one was still looking for him.

He escaped from the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, Calif., on June 7, 1968, after serving three years of a five-years-to-life sentence for robbery. He headed first to Nevada, then New Jersey and into a marriage that didn’t work out, and finally five years ago to a tiny travel trailer in a heavily wooded area of Creek County, Okla.

That’s where sheriff’s deputies found him Thursday, his clothes paint-splattered from one of the few jobs he could hold without a driver’s license or other identification after taking his mother’s maiden name as his own.

“He looked at the ground a little bit, then he looked up and said, ‘Yeah, that’s me,’ ” Creek County Sheriff’s Det. Les Ruhman recounted Friday. “He didn’t dream people would be looking for him for so long.”

The case had long grown cold until December 2003, when Judy Foster, a special agent with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Office of Correctional Safety, reopened the investigation. Smith’s family and friends all denied knowing where he had gone, but Foster eventually discovered that he was using the last name of Gallion and living outside Sapulpa, southwest of Tulsa.

“Some people who work for us weren’t even born yet when this guy escaped,” said department spokeswoman Terry Thornton. “Thirty-eight years, I think this is a record.”

In January 2004, Foster found Donald Johnson after he had spent 36 years on the run. Johnson escaped in 1967, while serving one to 15 years for stealing beer and cigarettes.

“The truth is, we never stop looking for these people,” Thornton said.

She wouldn’t reveal how Foster found the men, saying she didn’t want to tip off future escaped convicts.

“It’s just amazing he made it all these years and never had a run-in with the law,” Ruhman said. Smith had found a fine hide-out, Ruhman said, on a rough dead-end road in a rural area, his tiny trailer hidden by trees.

Smith, now 63, is being held without bail and probably will be returned to California within 10 days, after an extradition hearing.

“He escaped from prison because there were a lot of killings going on ... and he didn’t want to be a part of it, so he escaped,” Ruhman said.

Smith was unusual in that he fled a prison, whereas most escaped convicts walk away from a work camp or community program, said department spokeswoman Elaine Jennings.

A department report says 21 inmates escaped from prisons and camps last year, and 20 from community programs. Thirty-one of those 41 have been recaptured.

The number of escapes has dropped sharply since the 1980s and ‘90s, according to the report. Since 1975, 99% of escaped convicts have been recaptured.

Creek County detectives are satisfied that the owner of the property didn’t know he was harboring a fugitive.

“His jaw dropped” when deputies led Smith out in handcuffs, Ruhman said. “He gave [Smith] a hug and said, ‘Michael, I just wish you would have told me the truth.’ ”