A grave marker at Tamborine Mountain Cemetery in Queensland, Australia, bears the identify John Vincent Damon.
For years, till he died on Aug. 6, 2010, at 69, that’s how he was recognized to others, together with his household.
But his actual identify was William Leslie Arnold, and he had a secret, darkish previous that was unbeknown to his spouse and two grownup youngsters in Australia and three surviving stepdaughters from a earlier marriage within the United States.
When he was 16 and residing in Nebraska within the Fifties, he fatally shot his dad and mom throughout what was later described as a combat over using the household automotive after which buried them within the yard of their dwelling. It took about two weeks earlier than the crime was found, the authorities mentioned.
Mr. Arnold pleaded responsible in 1959 to murdering his dad and mom, and he was sentenced to life within the Nebraska State Penitentiary. In his time there, Mr. Arnold was described by the authorities as a “model prisoner,” however on July 14, 1967, he and one other inmate escaped.
The different inmate was quickly recaptured. But the authorities couldn’t discover Mr. Arnold for years, and the case finally went chilly. Over the previous couple of years, nonetheless, investigators with the United States Marshal Service had been in a position to collect proof that finally led them to crack the case by means of DNA testing.
The discovery got here as a shock to his surviving relations, who the authorities mentioned had been fully oblivious to Mr. Arnold’s previous. To them, he was John Damon, a father and husband. To the American authorities, he was a convicted killer and escaped inmate.
Surviving relations in Australia and stepdaughters of Mr. Arnold within the United States declined to remark.
Matt Westover, the U.S. Marshal deputy who cracked the case, mentioned in an interview that connecting Mr. Arnold to John Damon was a course of that spanned a number of years and concerned sifting by means of hundreds of pages of paperwork and investigating a number of leads throughout the United States in addition to in Brazil and Canada.
Several legislation enforcement companies over time had tried to piece collectively what had occurred to Mr. Arnold after he escaped. The F.B.I. investigated the case into the Nineteen Nineties. Then it was turned over to the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. Ultimately, it was handed on to the U.S. Marshals and assigned to Mr. Westover in August 2020.
“I was obsessed with the case,” Mr. Westover mentioned.
Soon after being assigned to the case, Mr. Westover reached out to Geoff Britton, who had labored on the case from 2004 to 2013 when he was with the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.
Mr. Britton, who’s now chief of the Office of Law Enforcement Support in California, mentioned that even after he left Nebraska, he continued to look into the case “as a hobby.” Chief Britton mentioned that he and Mr. Westover talked continuously about it over the previous few years.
“I spent a lot of nights just reading because I was just amazed at all the different information and just trying to find something, some kind of lead,” Mr. Westover mentioned.
There had been loads of false leads.
One principle about Mr. Arnold’s whereabouts was that he had fled to Brazil. That was primarily based on an immigration doc with Mr. Arnold’s identify on it issued to somebody in Brazil lower than two years after the jail escape. But Mr. Westover mentioned Brazilian officers didn’t have any document of Mr. Arnold, and it was unclear why his identify was on that doc.
Mr. Westover tracked down an ex-girlfriend of Mr. Arnold, which led to a trove of letters that he had written to her and her household from jail. But there was no correspondence from after his escape that supplied any clues as to the place he had ended up.
Mr. Westover additionally discovered a postcard from Canada and one from California with Mr. Arnold’s identify. Those leads had been additionally fruitless.
In a needed poster for Mr. Arnold, the U.S. Marshals Service mentioned that he was “very musically talented and most likely used these skills to financially survive.” That element of his life additionally didn’t yield any leads.
“It just seemed like everything was working against us,” Mr. Westover mentioned.
Over time, varied leads led investigators to find out that after Mr. Arnold escaped jail, he had fled to Chicago, the place he began going by his new identify, John Damon, and shortly met and married a girl with youngsters. He then started to maneuver round, residing in Cincinnati and Miami, in keeping with The Omaha World-Herald, which has chronicled Mr. Arnold’s life by means of a sequence of articles and a podcast. Later, he divorced his spouse and moved to California, the place he remarried and had youngsters, and finally settled down in Australia.
Finally, in November 2020, Mr. Westover tracked down a brother of Mr. Arnold in Missouri, who agreed to offer a DNA pattern. Later, in August 2022, Mr. Westover linked with a person from Australia who was attempting to find out about his late father, John Damon, who had informed him that he was an orphan from Chicago.
DNA samples from Mr. Arnold’s brother and Mr. Damon’s son indicated a match, and proved that Mr. Damon was actually Mr. Arnold.
“It was thrilling,” Mr. Westover mentioned. “I won’t say it’s like hitting the lottery because I’ve never hit the lottery — I’m sure that’s a pretty good feeling — but I was just ecstatic.”
Then got here the exhausting half: Mr. Westover needed to break the news to the person from Australia that the daddy he knew as John Damon was really an escaped convict who had killed his dad and mom. Mr. Westover mentioned he had informed the person over a video name.
“That was a really hard conversation to have,” Mr. Westover mentioned. “Their family didn’t know any of this stuff, and so it’s hard not to feel bad for them.”
Chief Britton mentioned that he has since spoken to Mr. Arnold’s household in Australia, attempting to assist reply questions on his historical past that they knew nothing about.
“They’re getting a new perspective on a man that they had a completely different view of,” Chief Britton mentioned. “That’s got to be hard to process.”
In attending to know the Damon household, Mr. Westover mentioned that he discovered that Mr. Arnold had gone on to turn into a businessman in Australia, and ended up residing a “great life and apparently changed his ways.”
“He was a great father to them,” Mr. Westover mentioned.
In March, Mr. Westover and different investigators traveled to Australia to wrap up the case. While they had been there, they visited the grave of John Vincent Damon.
“I’m glad he’s dead,” Mr. Westover mentioned, explaining that if Mr. Arnold had been nonetheless alive, he can be dealing with arrest in his 80s.
“As bad as that sounds, I’m glad because I really wouldn’t want to put their family through that,” Mr. Westover mentioned. “I think they had been through enough already, let alone if I was to take their dad from them.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed analysis.
Source: www.nytimes.com