Fugitive a ‘normal guy’

Jason Vonstraussenburg worked at UC Santa Barbara for 14 years, a skilled technician who could whip together repairs on complicated pieces of lab equipment when scientists needed them in a hurry.

At 61, he was a genial colleague, a homeowner, an avid metal sculptor, a father, a husband and a registered Republican.

He was everything, police said, except Jason Vonstraussenburg.

He was arrested last week by Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies, 36 years after he had escaped from a prison camp in Michigan.

Despite a record of nonviolent crimes, he was listed there -- under his real name of Roger Lee Crona -- as one of the state’s most-wanted fugitives.

On Tuesday, those who knew him at UC Santa Barbara were stunned.

“I totally couldn’t believe it,” said project scientist Eileen Hamilton. “He’s a normal, nice guy. He’s a valuable member of our campus community, and I’m going to miss him.”

University officials said the job he held in the biological sciences machine shop required no background check, unlike jobs that involve handling cash, access to student residence halls and tasks in a number of other sensitive areas.

Vonstraussenburg was asked on his 1994 application whether he had been convicted -- under any name -- of misdemeanors or felonies that led to a prison sentence or probation.

“There was nothing in his responses that would have disqualified him from working here,” said university spokesman Paul Desruisseaux.

In the machine shop, he was known as a high-tech Mr. Fix-It with a knack for innovation. At one point, he hooked up an alarm system on a laboratory freezer so researchers would know if delicate cells inside were in danger of thawing. Using mostly spare parts, he fashioned a device capable of processing 36 DNA samples at once instead of six.

One of more than 30 fugitives on Michigan’s “most-wanted” list, Crona was convicted as a young man of offenses that didn’t make the kind of local headlines sparked by his recent arrest.

In 1971, he was on parole after a conviction for receiving stolen property when he was found driving a car with someone else’s registration and a license plate that had been altered with a phony number painted on it. His previous offenses included breaking and entering, reckless driving and larceny, said Russ Marlan, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections.

Crona was sentenced to 2 1/2 to four years at a minimum-security work camp and escaped June 20, 1972.

“After a couple of months, I guess he just walked out the back past the cows and off he went,” said Tony Tosta, a retired Santa Barbara private investigator who said he and Vonstraussenburg had been friends for more than 30 years.

Tosta said he was unaware that Vonstraussenburg was an alias. “He occasionally alluded to a nickname of Roger. Other than that, I had no idea,” he said.

The two had bonded over a mutual love for building outsized, outrageous contraptions. They collaborated on a 60-foot-long conveyance that combined the body of a small plane with the chassis of a motor coach. Equipped with a hot tub, it appeared in local parades and in car shows as far away as the Midwest.

As Vonstraussenburg, Crona worked at an airport machine shop and as an auto mechanic in Isla Vista, near the UC campus, before being hired at the university, Tosta said. He is married, with a stepson, and has a grown son from a previous marriage.

“Other than one DUI, he’s kept his nose clean,” said Tosta. “I can’t believe why they’re making such a tremendous stink out of this.”

An anonymous informant e-mailed details of Crona’s present life to Michigan authorities last week. Who did it -- and why -- remain a mystery.

“It surprised me that anybody would turn him in,” said his ex-wife, Anna Vonstraussenburg, an accountant in Mesa, Ariz. “Pretty much everyone likes him.”

Divorced for 12 years, the two remain friendly. He asked her for advice about refinancing his mortgage about two months ago. She said she knows his current wife and is friendly with some of her former husband’s ex-girlfriends.

“I knew he had a little bit of a past, but I didn’t know everything,” she said. “As a kid, he was caught riding a homemade go-kart around his neighborhood -- hardly the crime of the century.”

He told her that he grew up happily in Michigan, hitting a rough patch in his teens when his parents divorced and he was sent to a boarding school in Florida.

Crona is in Santa Barbara County Jail, awaiting extradition to Michigan. He could be charged with escape from prison, a felony that carries a five-year maximum term.

“At the least, he’ll have to serve about a year and a half -- the remainder of his original term,” said Marlan, the Michigan corrections spokesman.

Tosta, Vonstraussenburg’s longtime friend, sees no justice in that possibility.

“He’s been a good citizen,” Tosta said. “He complains about his taxes but still pays them. Hopefully, some clever judge in Michigan will get this, look at the dates and see it for what it is.”

steve.chawkins@latimes.com