El Dorado County fugitive back in custody after escaping 36 years ago
By Matt Kawahara, Sacramento Bee
When federal agents finally tracked down William Walter Asher III in Salida last week, the 66-year-old was going by an assumed name, retired after years working for trucking companies, and living with a woman who apparently had no idea he’d been running from the law for 36 years.
Asher, who escaped from Growlersburg Conservation Camp No. 33 in El Dorado County in 1975, was arrested Friday, agents with the Sacramento division of the FBI said Monday.
A pair of calls to a Stanislaus County home in 2005 at the behest of his dying mother, agents said, ultimately led authorities to his doorstep.
Asher escaped from the inmate camp while serving a seven-years-to-life sentence for his involvement in the 1966 robbery of a San Francisco bar, during which a bartender was shot and beaten to death, according to a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation news release.
Gee, took ’em long enough!
Maybe let him go.. Sounds like he became a contributing member of society. Now he is gonna cost the tax payers more money meanwhile his 401k will be earning interest. Aren’t there more important criminals to catch?
Let him go no way! He broke the law lock him up.
If we locked up everyone that broke the law we would be broke. Oh ya.., we already are:… Theirs higher profile criminals out there…
so shooting and beating to death someone is not high profile enough for you? Then what is… I personally am good with spending my tax dollars locking someone like that up for the life duration of his sentence.
The article said he was involved… There is not enough info in the article. He obviously wasn’t a repeat offender and he also worked 36 years and retired. The hardcore gangbanging repeat offenders of today are way more of a threat than this guys sounds.