FREDERICTON - Richard McNair, a U.S. killer who was captured last month in Canada, is headed back to the Louisiana prison he escaped from 18 months ago by hiding in a pile of mailbags.
McNair, 48, was delivered to the U.S.-Canadian border between Woodstock, N.B., and Houlton, Me., on Thursday.
"He was taken to the border by Canada Border Service Agency officers and members of the RCMP and was met at the border by U.S. Marshals,'' Jennifer Morrison, a spokeswoman for the Canada Border Services Agency, said Friday.
"He has been deported.''
McNair was held in the Maine State Penitentiary on Thursday night. U.S. officials were arranging Friday to take him to Louisiana to face a charge of escaping custody.
McNair, one of America's 15 most-wanted fugitives, was captured near Campbellton, N.B., two weeks ago.
The convicted killer was in a stolen van when he was confronted by RCMP officers on a remote backwoods road. McNair fled the vehicle and ran about 400 metres before being tackled by a rookie Mountie in only his sixth week on the force.
On his capture, McNair told the arresting officers: "You've captured a big fish.''
Tommy Hancock, chief deputy U.S. Marshal in western Louisiana, said "neighbourhoods are a little safer now that he is off the streets.''
"We're looking forward to getting him back in Louisiana and putting him in lockdown in a jail facility and holding him there until he's moved to his final destination,'' he said.
McNair has a history of escapes.
In February 1988, he used a tube of lip balm to slip out of handcuffs at the Minot, N.D., police station. He was captured after jumping from the third floor of a building.
In 1992, McNair and two other inmates escaped from the North Dakota State Penitentiary by slipping out through a ventilation duct. He was on the lam for about nine months before being captured in Grand Island, Nab.
Eventually, with North Dakota authorities unable to hold him, McNair was shipped to a maximum- security federal prison in Louisiana. But on April 5, 2006, McNair escaped again by smuggling himself out in a mail shipment.
Hancock said authorities there would take no chances with McNair in light of his slippery nature.
"I can guarantee that,'' he said. "He'll be allowed some time to exercise, shower and take care of his basic needs, but essentially he's going to be in 24-hour lockdown while he's in Louisiana.''
McNair is expected to eventually be transferred to a supermax prison in Florence, Colo., where he will serve the remainder of his murder sentence, plus whatever he could get for his latest escape.
McNair was serving a life sentence for the 1987 killing of a grain elevator worker in Minot.
He was robbing the place when he shot and wounded an employee in the elevator's office. He then went outside to a rig waiting for a load of grain.
The driver, Jerome The is of Circle Pines, Inn., was eating ice cream in the cab when he was killed.
There were more than 300 reported sightings of McNair in Canada over the past year, but he managed to elude authorities until his capture in northern New Brunswick.
