Search for fugitive focuses on Montana, SW Canada

WEST GLACIER, Mont. — Authorities today focused on western Montana and southwest Canada in the search for an escaped convict from Arizona and his suspected accomplice who fashion themselves a present-day “Bonnie and Clyde.” U.S. marshals say there have been reports that the accomplice, Casslyn Welch, was spotted Monday at a restaurant in St. Mary, Mont., near Glacier National Park as well as somewhere in southwestern Canada. Montana’s acting marshal, Rod Ostermiller, said there were multiple other tips from the Glacier area, but he didn’t say whether any included sightings of the escaped convicted, John McCluskey. The national park abuts the Canadian border in rugged terrain, but the border to the east, along the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, is fairly flat. “These guys have the ability to get in the car and move relatively easily,” said Fidencio Rivera, chief deputy U.S. marshal for the Arizona district, explaining the wide search area. A border patrol helicopter joined the search Tuesday. Marshals also said they’re pursuing leads in Indiana and Pennsylvania, where the fugitives have family and connections. They promised more arrests of people suspected of helping the pair. The Arizona attorney general’s office on Monday charged two women, including McCluskey’s mother, with helping the inmates after they escaped. Another prisoner who escaped with McCluskey waived his right to fight extradition to Arizona. Tracy Province, 42, appeared in court in Cody on Tuesday, one day after he was captured in the small town of Meeteetse. He waived the right to fight extradition to Arizona and signed a waiver form in handcuffs. Given the attention the case has received, Judge Bruce Waters said he expected Province to be returned to Arizona shortly. Province was caught Monday as he walked in sleepy Meeteetse, Wyo., steps from a church where he sat in the pews a day earlier and sang “Your Grace Is Enough.” A woman he talked to after church recognized him from a photograph shown on television, but he went undetected at one of the town’s two bars the night before, even though his photo was broadcast on The Cowboy Bar’s television during the news. Owner Jim Blake said Province was staring at the TV but no one “put it together” at the bar, where Butch Cassidy was arrested before being sent to prison in 1894. “If you compare the photograph they took in Cody yesterday with the one that they were showing on TV for the last week or so you would have never thought it was the same guy,” Blake said. Province, McCluskey and Daniel Renwick escaped from the medium-security Arizona State Prison near Kingman on July 30 after authorities say Welch threw wire cutters over the perimeter fence. Welch, 44, is McCluskey’s fiancee and cousin. Province was serving a life sentence for murder and robbery out of Pima County, Ariz. McCluskey was serving a 15-year prison term for attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm out of Maricopa County, Ariz. Renwick, who was serving a 22-year sentence for second-degree murder, was captured Aug. 1 in Colorado. Efforts to find McCluskey, Province and Welch intensified after they were linked to a double homicide in New Mexico, with the case airing Saturday on “America’s Most Wanted.” Forensic evidence linked them to the killings of an Oklahoma couple. New Mexico State Police spokesman Peter Olson declined to elaborate. The badly burned skeletal remains of Linda and Gary Haas — both 61 and from Tecumseh, Okla. — were found in a charred camper Wednesday morning on a remote ranch in eastern New Mexico. Their pickup truck was found later 100 miles west in Albuquerque. Authorities believe the two inmates and Welch went to Wyoming, where Province separated from McCluskey and Welch on Wednesday morning at the southern entrance to Yellowstone.