PORTLAND, Ore. — Nearly 30 years after escaping prison in Salem, Steven Craig Johnson, alias William Cox, was arrested in Macon, Georgia, by the U.S. Marshals Service.
Johnson had fled while on a work crew at the former Mill Creek Correctional Facility in November 1994. He had been serving time on charges of sexual abuse and sodomy. According to his 'most wanted' poster, Johnson presented a "high probability of victimizing pre-teen boys."
U.S. Marshals Service and Southeast Regional Fugitive Task Force arrested Johnson at an apartment building, where he had been living under his alias since 2011. Johnson was booked into a county jail in Georgia and is awaiting extradition back to Oregon.
An investigation leading to Johnson's arrest found that he had stolen the identity of a child who had died in Texas in 1962. The U.S. Marshals said Johnson was able to get a copy of the child's birth certificate and later obtained a Social Security number in 1995. Two years later, he got a driver's license in Georgia.
The U.S. Marshals said that leads in the case developed in 2014 with new technology through the Diplomatic Security Service.
Two years ago, former Gov. Kate Brown closed down the Mill Creek Correctional Facility, a minimum-security prison, along with two other prison to save the state more than $44 million.
According to the Oregon Department of Corrections, the facility was unfenced and housed approximately 290 adults that were typically within four years of release.
