Man who escaped Oregon prison 30 years ago was found in Georgia with a stolen identity, authorities say

By Jamiel Lynch and Dalia Faheid, CNN

(CNN) — A man who escaped from an Oregon state prison nearly 30 years ago and stole the identity of a deceased child was captured in Georgia on Tuesday, according to authorities.

Steven Craig Johnson, who had been convicted of sexual abuse charges, escaped from a prison work detail at the Mill Creek Correctional Facility in Salem, Oregon, on November 29, 1994, according to officials. He had been in Oregon Department of Corrections custody since June 1989.

Johnson, now 70, was arrested Tuesday afternoon at an apartment complex in Macon, Georgia, by the US Marshals Service and one of its fugitive task forces, according to the service.

He had been living at the apartment complex under the name of William Cox since 2011, the service said in a release.

An investigation revealed that Johnson had stolen the identity of a child who died in Texas in January 1962, according to the release. Johnson obtained a copy of the child’s birth certificate and was eventually able to get a Social Security number in Texas in 1995, according to officials. Johnson obtained a Georgia driver’s license three years later.

In 2015, the Marshals Service adopted the case at the request of the Oregon Department of Corrections, according to the release. The discovery of the stolen identity came after new investigative technology employed by the US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service developed new leads in the case this year, the Marshals Service said without elaborating about the technology.

Johnson was booked into Georgia’s Bibb County jail and is awaiting extradition back to Oregon, according to the Oregon Department of Corrections. It is unknown if he has an attorney.

Johnson was one of Oregon’s most wanted fugitives, according to the corrections department’s website. He “is a pedophile and presents a high probability of victimizing pre-teen boys,” a 2019 wanted poster from the corrections department warned. “Fugitive Johnson should not be allowed contact with children.”

Mill Creek Correctional Facility closed in 2021 by order of then-Gov. Kate Brown as part of her sentencing reform efforts, according to the Oregon Department of Corrections. It originally opened in 1929 as the Farm Annex of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Until 1998, inmates processed milk from a farmers’ cooperative for use by other state institutions, according to the Oregon Historical Society.

“MCCF was a minimum-security prison located five miles southeast of Salem on 2,089 acres. The facility was unfenced and housed approximately 290 adults in custody who were within four years of release,” the department said.

Brown’s decision to close three Oregon prisons, including Mill Creek, was made to save the state more than $44 million, according to The Associated Press. Brown said she wanted to reduce reliance on incarceration and invest more into preventing people from entering the criminal justice system.

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