An Airman who disappeared from an Air Force Base in North Dakota 40 years ago is in custody of the U.S. Air Force after he was discovered last week living in Florida. 
 
 Jeffrey Michels, 64, was arrested Thursday on charges of desertion after he failed to report for duty at North Dakota’s Minot Air Force Base on July 6, 1977, WFTV reported. 
 
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 Michels, originally from East Liverpool, Ohio, was found living a double life in Sanford, Fla. — under the name “Jeffrey Lantz,” according to a police report. 
 
 The man reportedly used the fake name to obtain a business license in Florida in 1998. Online records show the name Jeffrey Lantz had a certified general contractor license for construction business Atlantic Development Corporation. 
 
 A photo of Michels was posted on July 9 to the Facebook group “Veteran Doe” — a website dedicated to bringing “attention to the many missing veteran/active duty cases and unidentified person cases where there is a possible military connection.” The post was deleted after Michels was discovered. 
 
 It’s unclear if the Air Force opened an investigation into Michels' disappearance due to the Facebook post. 
 
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 Michels, according to WFTV, is in the custody of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. 
 
 Because there is no statute of limitations for deserting a military post, Michels will stand trial in military court. 
 
 Reports of Michels’ arrest come one day after Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl pleaded guilty to desertion charges after he left his post in Afghanistan in 2009. Bergdahl was subsequently held captive by the Taliban until May 2014. ||||| A serviceman who disappeared 40 years ago from an Air Force Base in North Dakota has been tracked down and charged with desertion after leading a double life. 
 
 Jeffrey Michels, 64, was arrested and is being held by the US Air Force and will stand trial for failing to report for duty at Minot Air Force Base on 6 July 1977. 
 
 Michels was unearthed last Thursday (12 October) in Sanford, a city in central Florida, where he lived with his wife and kids under an alias which he had used for years, investigators said. 
 
 According to a police report, Michels had been using the name Jeffrey Lantz. Records showed he used that name in 1998 to obtain a license from the state of Florida for his construction business called Atlantic Development Corporation. 
 
 There is no statute of limitations for desertion, and Michels will stand trial in a military court. 
 
 However, the military rarely enforces the highest sentences for desertion. This ranges from a dishonourable discharge, a prison term typically between two to three years, up to the death penalty. But soldiers are only executed for desertion during wartime, and even then, it has to be demonstrated that their action left serving personnel in danger. 
 
 For instance, even at the height of the Iraq war fewer than one per cent of deserters served prison time, according to New York magazine. 
 
 Also, this week Bowe Bergdahl, the US soldier held as a Taliban captive in Afghanistan for five years, pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehaviour before the enemy. 
 
 The 31-year-old Army sergeant entered his plea on Monday (16 October) before a military judge at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. 
 
 The Idaho native's lawyers have argued he cannot get a fair trial following criticism from Donald Trump during last year's presidential campaign. Trump had called him "a no-good traitor who should have been executed". 
 
 The military does not keep strict records for servicemen and women who have deserted, but the outstanding number is estimated to be around 50,000 based on internal military data, according to New York magazine. ||||| Young Mother and Air Force Veteran Mysteriously Vanishes: 'She'd Never Leave Her Daughter,' Says Friend 
 
 The surveillance video is unremarkable: Tricia Williams Todd, a 30-year-old Air Force veteran, mother and nurse, purchases some groceries at a Publix in Hobe Sound, Florida. She smiles happily and chats with the clerk.That was the evening of April 26 – the last time that Todd was seen in public.Later that evening, Todd met her ex-husband, who was spending time with their 2-year-old daughter. According to police, Todd dropped off some medication for the toddler.Todd didn't show up for work the next morning at the Treasure Coast Hospice, where she worked as a nurse. When she didn't pick up her daughter later that afternoon, her father called authorities.Police soon found Todd's car, purse and keys, but no trace of the 5'4, 110-lb. redhead. Her wallet and cell phone were missing, but there has been no activity on her credit cards. Investigators searched a five-mile radius but turned up nothing. The Sheriff's Office tells PEOPLE that "no significant leads" came from the ground search.The disappearance has baffled those close to Todd. "She would never have left her daughter on purpose," family friend Michelle Rocker tells PEOPLE. "That baby was her entire world. She'd never leave her and run off."The family has set up a Facebook page to post and gather updates on the case. A Crowdrise fundraising page has been established to offset the expenses for the family's search.Todd's former husband is stationed at an Air Force base in North Carolina. He has returned to the base from Florida, but remains in contact with investigators. Sheriff William D. Snyder of the Martin County Sheriff’s Office told WPBF that he has been very cooperative with investigators."This is still an active search," said Snyder. "We have no plans to stop searching for Tricia Todd." ||||| For 28 years, David A. Hemler said Sunday, he has lived a secret, though rather mundane life in Sweden, far from his native Pennsylvania. Under an alias, he married and fathered three children and worked at a hamburger restaurant and a nursing home before finding a job with the Swedish government. 
 
 Before that, though, he was an airman who had enlisted straight out of high school and joined the United States Air Force’s 6913th Electronic Security Squadron based in Augsburg, Germany. But on Feb. 10, 1984, distraught over a broken relationship and angered by the foreign policies of President Ronald Reagan, Mr. Hemler, then 21, deserted and hitchhiked to Sweden. Until a month ago his family had presumed he was dead. 
 
 “I never planned on it being this long,” Mr. Hemler said by telephone from Uppsala, the university town where he has lived for nearly three decades. “Days went and weeks, and I started to realize that maybe the military police weren’t coming. I just felt so good. I had a delayed teenage rebellion, you could say.” 
 
 This month, Mr. Hemler, 49, who was born in Cleona, Pa., said he decided it was time to call the family he had left behind, first telling his story to the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. He also sent an e-mail to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, which still considers him a fugitive, opening up a host of legal questions that could cloud his future even as he seeks to clear up his past. 
 
 Linda J. Card, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, confirmed in an e-mail that a man identifying himself as Mr. Hemler contacted her agency 10 days ago. She said it was investigating the veracity of his claim. “We really want to catch this guy,” she added. 
 
 It is not precisely clear how Mr. Hemler eluded detection for so long. He said he was picked up by at least 10 drivers on his way to Sweden, failing to arouse notice even though an international warrant had been issued for his arrest. His desertion was all the more embarrassing to the Air Force because he once had top secret security clearance for work that he said involved a covert American program directed against Russia. 
 
 “It’s just unthinkable that I could just disappear in one city and turn up 800 miles away,” he said. 
 
 But he did. A year and a half after he arrived in Sweden, he was given a residency permit. He adopted an alias, which he would not reveal, and he told new acquaintances, his new girlfriend and the Swedish government that he was the son of drifters. He learned Swedish and now speaks English with an accent. 
 
 He currently lives with his wife, a Swedish citizen, and their two young children. He also has a 22-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. And now he is trying to reconnect with his mother, father and younger brother, Thomas. 
 
 Reached by telephone, Thomas Hemler, who is 46 and lives in New Jersey, said Sunday that when he heard the man who claimed to be his brother speak over the phone for the first time in years, he believed it was him “almost immediately.” Just to be sure he tested him, asking a few personal questions, including the name of their childhood pet turtle, Scooby. He passed the test. 
 
 Thomas Hemler said his immediate reaction was joy, with little room for anger. “Twenty-eight years ago we thought we had lost him forever, and him coming back is just a blessing,” he said. “We’re only interested in today and tomorrow, not the past.” 
 
 He said the family wanted to reach some sort of resolution with the Air Force so that his brother could return to the United States to visit their parents, who are in their 70s. 
 
 The military may not be so forgiving. “Once you run from the military and you desert that’s something that follows you for the rest of your life,” said James Dillard, a spokesman for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. 
 
 He and Ms. Card acknowledged, however, that punishing Mr. Hemler, if he is who he says he is, would be difficult if he remained in Sweden. Sweden has an extradition treaty with the United States, but it does not allow for extradition for military or political offenses. 
 
 But even so, after all these years, David Hemler said, he just wanted to go home. 
 
 “I may be safe, but my parents may never able to see me if I cannot come home,” he said. “I think I have been punished. I’ve been worrying my parents to death for 28 years.”
– Jeffrey Michels disappeared from an Air Force base in northern North Dakota on a summer day in 1977—and was found last week in Florida living a double life, Fox News reports. Michels, 64, was arrested Oct. 12 on desertion charges filed against him after he went missing from Minot Air Force Base near the Canadian border. Police say the former airman had taken the name Jeffrey Lantz, married, and had kids, per WFTV. In 1998, "Lantz" applied for a business license and started a construction company, Atlantic Development Corporation. Michels, originally from Ohio, was nabbed after the Facebook group Veteran Doe posted his photo in July, nearly 40 years to the day after he failed to report for duty. (That photo has since been taken down.) The site calls "attention to the many missing veteran/active duty cases and unidentified person cases where there is a possible military connection." The Air Force hasn't explained how Michels was found, per the Miami Herald. But Seminole County authorities identified him by a scar on his left leg near the ankle. There's no statute of limitations on desertion, so Michels will stand trial in a military court, per the IB Times. He was turned over to the custody of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations. Why Michels walked away from the remote base is unknown, but the Herald notes it's known for its nuclear missile silos and hard winters. (One of the first women Army combat engineers was accused of desertion.)