An escaped prisoner convicted of the manslaughter of his wife, who went on to become a Christian minister having assumed the identity of his dead cousin, has been tracked down by authorities 37 years later.
Bill Burchfield, 67 and from Georgia, faces returning to prison for up to ten years after he was located by detectives in Laurel County, Kentucky.
Burchfield, who adopted the name of his late cousin Harold "Bill" Arnold, twice escaped jail after being sentenced to 15 years of hard labour for voluntary manslaughter in 1979, according to The Economist.
He broke out of the Jackson County Correctional Institute in 1975 before being captured and having his sentence increased to 16 years. Then, four years later, he successfully escaped a landfill site, reportedly after asking to relieve himself in some bushes.
Burchfield had pleaded guilty to the voluntary manslaughter of his wife Vera Sue in 1973, arguing that it was an accident and that a gun he was holding went off by mistake when she tried to wrestle it away from him.
The case is not well recorded because there was no trial due to Burchfield's guilty plea and because one of his former lawyers has since died and another cannot remember the case.
A petition in Laurel County demanding Burchfield's release has attracted hundreds of signatures. "Bill Arnold is as good a man as I've ever met," said Tom Johnson, an acquaintance the town. "I never know'd anybody that'd say he'd wronged them."
Jason Kincer, Burchfield's lawyer, said: "Shouldn't [his] debt be mitigated by the life that he has lived?"
Burchfield, who is awaiting charges for his escape, said: "I always tried to treat people the way I wanted to be treated. I think my cousin would be proud."
