Arizona fugitives captured at campsite

The fugitive couple had zigzagged across much of the West, ducking authorities, kidnapping two truckers and allegedly killing a couple near a remote New Mexico ranch.

Though authorities were besieged with hundreds of tips about the elusive pair’s location, the last credible sighting of John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch was Aug. 6. And that was in Montana.

Then, on Thursday, a ranger in the Apache and Sitgreaves National Forests in eastern Arizona noticed a campsite that looked somewhat odd.

The Gabaldon Campground is a favorite of equestrians, but instead of horses, the U.S. Forest Service ranger found an untended fire and a grayish Nissan Sentra nearly hidden amid spruce trees. The unkempt camper at the site was so jittery, authorities said, that the ranger hurried off to check the Sentra’s license plate number.

The ranger had an inkling of what he’d find.

On July 30, McCluskey escaped from a medium-security private prison in Kingman, Ariz., where he’d been incarcerated for attempted second-degree murder. Welch, his fiancee and cousin, had allegedly tossed wire cutters over the prison barrier, allowing McCluskey and two convicted murderers to slice through a fence.

Inmate Daniel Renwick took Welch’s vehicle, unaware it held several weapons and $2,000. He sold cigarettes for gas money before he was apprehended in Colorado on Aug. 1.

Inmate Tracy Province, accompanied by McCluskey and Welch, forced two truckers to drive them to Flagstaff. The trio made it to New Mexico, where on Aug. 4 investigators found the charred bodies of a couple who’d been on their annual camping trip.

Sometime before his Aug. 9 arrest in Wyoming, Province called family members for help. Turn yourself in, they said, according to Fidencio Rivera, chief deputy U.S. marshal for Arizona.

But McCluskey and Welch continued to elude authorities. Investigators hounded family and friends in Pennsylvania, Arkansas and San Diego, said David Gonzales, U.S. marshal for Arizona, in hopes of eliminating hiding places.

Two weeks passed. Then came the call from the ranger. Acting on his tip, authorities discovered that the battered sedan’s license plate had been stolen in New Mexico, near where the couple’s bodies were found.

At least a dozen officers swarmed the campground Thursday and waited. Just after 7 p.m., with McCluskey sprawled on a sleeping bag outside a tent, they pounced.

McCluskey — shirtless, in jeans and with “Arizona” tattooed below his pectorals — was quickly arrested. Welch reached for a gun near the small of her back, but officers subdued her.

Officers told each other to be careful with Welch’s weapon in case it had been used in the New Mexico slayings, but McCluskey interjected: “No, the murder weapon is over in the tent,” Apache County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Webb Hogle told reporters Friday.

Hogle added that McCluskey said he would have lunged for the weapon if officers hadn’t sprung so quickly.

ashley.powers@latimes.com