Claude Dallas, who killed officers, due to be released

BOISE – Claude Dallas, a self-styled mountain man who shot and killed two Idaho Fish and Game officers in 1981, will be released from prison next month, Idaho Department of Correction spokeswoman Tracy McBain said.

Dallas, 55, was moved from a Kansas prison to the Idaho Correctional Institution in Orofino on Jan. 15, McBain said.

He will complete his 30-year prison sentence, minus administrative reductions, on Feb. 6 for two counts of voluntary manslaughter and a weapons charge for the deaths of Bill Pogue and Conley Elms.

The two Fish and Game officers approached Dallas at his desert camp in Owyhee County accusing him of poaching game. They took a pistol he was wearing.

According to trial testimony, Dallas then pulled another pistol that was strapped to his leg, shot both officers and shot them again execution style in the head with a nearby rifle.

He was charged with first-degree murder, but claimed he shot the officers in self-defense.

A jury acquitted Dallas of murder but found him guilty of two counts of voluntary manslaughter, concealing evidence and using a firearm in the commission of a crime.

After he served several years of his sentence, Dallas escaped from the Idaho State Penitentiary in March 1986 by cutting though two chain link fences.

A massive manhunt ensued. Dallas was able to avoid capture for almost a year, despite several sightings and an unsuccessful FBI raid on a suspected hiding place in Nevada.

He was caught in Riverside, Calif., on March 8, 1987.

Several months later, a jury acquitted Dallas for the escape after he testified he had to leave the Idaho prison because the guards threatened his life.

Since then, Dallas has been incarcerated on his original conviction in prisons in Nebraska, New Mexico and Kansas, where he had been since 1989.

He was denied parole in 2001 after telling Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole he would not follow requirements including drug testing and electronic monitoring.