Man who escaped from Oregon prison 30 years ago found in Georgia using dead child's identity, officials say

A fugitive was arrested this week in central Georgia after being on the run for nearly 30 years, authorities said. The man escaped from an Oregon prison in 1994 and subsequently stole the identity of a child who had died in Texas decades earlier, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

Steven Craig Johnson was taken into custody Tuesday by members of a regional task force in Macon, Georgia, who found him at around 2 p.m. at an apartment complex in the city, the Marshals Service said in a news release. Now 70, Johnson had been living under the alias William Cox since 2011.

He fled from a prison work crew in Oregon on Nov. 29, 1994, while serving a state sentence for sexual abuse and sodomy. His convictions more specifically included three counts of first-degree sex abuse and one count of first-degree attempted sodomy, CBS affiliate KOIN-TV reported.

Johnson had been serving his sentence at the Mill Creek Correctional Facility in Salem, about halfway between Portland and Eugene, the Oregon Department of Corrections said. The Mill Creek facility was a minimum security prison located just a few miles outside of the city of Salem, on an unfenced property covering around 2,000 acres, according to the department. Before it closed in 2021, the facility housed roughly 290 inmates who were within four years of release.

Johnson was wanted on an arrest warrant for escape in Oregon, where he has been listed for years among six of the state's most wanted people. A wanted poster for Johnson issued by the Oregon Department of Corrections noted Texas as one potential location where he had fled, although authorities did not give more details as to his connection to Texas, if any. The poster said Johnson is "a pedophile and presents a high probability of victimizing pre-teen boys." It cautioned that he "should not be allowed contact with children."

The Marshals Service said that it took on Johnson's fugitive case in 2015 at the request of the Oregon Department of Corrections. After spending nine years trying to find him, the agency said that "new investigative technology employed by the Diplomatic Security Service" finally helped develop meaningful leads in 2024.

In addition to adopting a fake name, the investigation also revealed that Johnson had stolen the identity of a child after escaping prison. The child died in Texas in January 1962, the Marshals Service said. Johnson obtained a copy of the child's birth certificate and, soon after, obtained a Social Security number in Texas in 1995. The earliest record of Johnson with a Georgia driver's license came in 1998.

Following his arrest in Georgia, Johnson was booked into the Bibb County Jail in Macon. He is awaiting extradition back to Oregon.

In:
• United States Marshals Service
• Georgia
• Oregon

Emily Mae Czachor

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

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