The former Army private was convicted of murder in 1974, while stationed at New Jersey's Ft. Dix, and ordered to carry out his 23 year sentence at the US Disciplinary Barracks on Ft. Leavenworth. Barry Golden, a senior inspector with the US Marshals Service in Miami, which coordinated the investigation that led to Jones arrest, described his initial escape nearly four decades ago as "very elaborate." In January, Army investigators, believing Jones to now be living in Florida, contacted Golden's office for assistance. Marshals ran a prison photo of Jones through a database, and it matched closely with the photo on a Florida driver’s license first issued in 1981. Marshals began observing the man they thought to be Jones, now living under the false name Bruce Keith, and on Thursday morning, arrested him outside his work location in nearby Pompano Beach.
– A convicted murderer who escaped prison and made a new life for himself in Florida is back in custody after 37 years, reports AP. James Robert Jones murdered a fellow Army private and got sentenced to 23 years at the military's maximum security prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas back in 1974. Three years later, he busted out and landed in Florida, where he assumed a new identity as Bruce Keith, authorities say. He had been on the Army's "15 Most Wanted" list. Jones' life on the lam began unraveling when US marshals, acting on a tip from Army investigators, used a photo database to find a match between his prison photo and one on a bogus Florida driver's license issued in 1981, reports KSHB. That led to surveillance of "Keith" and his uneventful arrest yesterday in Pompano Beach. "I knew it would catch up to me one day," he reportedly told the arresting officers. It's the second recent story about a fugitive from 1977 being recaptured.