Richard Lee McNair

Richard Lee McNair (born December 19, 1958) is an American convicted murderer known for his ability to escape and elude capture. In 1987, McNair murdered one man and shot a second man four times during a botched robbery. He is currently serving two terms of life imprisonment for these crimes including escaping from prison.

After McNair's arrest, he escaped three times from three different institutions using various creative methods. On his first attempt, he used lip balm to squeeze out of a pair of handcuffs. He escaped a second time by crawling through a ventilation duct. In his last escape from a federal prison on April 5, 2006, he escaped by concealing himself in a pallet of used postal mailbags and successfully convinced a police officer he was not the prison escapee but actually a jogger. This resulted in his mugshot being featured a dozen times on the TV show America's Most Wanted, and made him one of the top fifteen fugitives wanted by US Marshals. McNair traveled to Canada twice in order to evade capture, traveling across the country for over a year before being apprehended in a random police check on October 25, 2007. Much of what the public knows about McNair's escape and his time as a fugitive is through McNair's prison correspondence with a Canadian journalist, Byron Christopher.

Early life McNair had previously been a military police sergeant at Minot Air Force Base and an informant for the Minot Police Department. He was removed from his position and demoted over a suspected theft.

Overview

On November 17, 1987, while attempting a burglary in Minot, North Dakota, McNair was surprised by two men and murdered one of them. After his initial arrest, McNair was handcuffed to a chair and left in a room with three detectives. McNair used lip balm, which he had in his pocket, as a lubricant to squeeze his hands free from the handcuffs. McNair then led police on a chase on foot through the town, eventually being chased up a three-flight stairway in an effort to evade capture. After becoming surrounded by police on the roof of a three-story building downtown, McNair attempted to jump to a tree branch to escape arrest, but the branch broke. McNair landed on the ground and hurt his back, after which he was easily apprehended. After McNair was released from the hospital, he was moved to the Ward County Jail in Minot. That same month, sheriff's deputies discovered another escape attempt when, after moving McNair to another cell, they found two cinder blocks partially chiseled out from the cell in which he was being held.

After his second recapture, the North Dakota Department of Corrections deemed McNair a problem inmate, and arranged his transfer through the Interstate Compact to Minnesota Correctional Facility – Oak Park Heights. After a number of years at this facility, and realizing he would not be able to escape, McNair participated in a sit-down strike that caused his return to North Dakota, and his later transfer to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He was assigned to the maximum security United States Penitentiary, Florence High which is next to – but distinct from – ADX Florence. Again realizing that escape would be unlikely, he arranged a transfer to United States Penitentiary, Pollock on the grounds that this was marginally closer to his parents' home in Oklahoma.

Hours after his escape from Pollock, McNair was stopped while running away on a railroad track near Ball, Louisiana, by police officer Carl Bordelon. This incident was captured on a video camera mounted in Bordelon's patrol car. McNair had no identification and proceeded to give Officer Bordelon the alias of Robert Jones. When asked again five minutes later, he gave a different alias, Jimmy Jones, though the officer did not notice the different answer. McNair laughed and joked with the officer, and even as the officer got a matching description of the inmate, McNair appeared collected and calm. He successfully convinced Bordelon that he was jogging and in town to help on a post-Katrina roofing project, allowing him to go back to "jogging" within 10 minutes.

One factor that made it easier for McNair to escape arrest was that the photo provided to police was very low-quality and six months old. Another was that the prison had told police that they were not completely sure that McNair had escaped.

McNair later wrote that he did not see the cruiser because it was blocked from view by trees, and that he planned to run if he was not able to convince Bordelon of his "innocence". McNair later denied the suggestion that he would have assaulted the police officer if confronted, claiming that he had renounced violence after his initial arrest. McNair described his escape as a "get out of jail free card", and described his feelings after the confrontation with Bordelon as "relief, disbelief, bewilderment." McNair agreed that he did not resemble his prison picture.

Fugitive in Canada

On April 13, 2006, US Marshals added McNair to their 15 Most Wanted list. They noted that McNair was the first prisoner to escape from a federal prison since 1991. Suspecting that the van was stolen, and/or being used to smuggle alcohol or cigarettes, Melanson noted the plate number and that the van was headed to Campbellton, a nearby city. Melanson did not attempt to apprehend McNair, but his report alerted other RCMP in Campbellton of the presence of McNair's vehicle.

Mounties later told the media that McNair was cooperative after his capture, and even joked with them. When one officer asked McNair what the reward was for his capture, McNair replied "$25,000." "That's not much," said the officer. McNair replied that was because "all of the government money is tied up in Osama bin Laden's reward." McNair later described the Campbellton RCMP as "good men doing their job." For eleven days, he was at the Federal Transfer Center, Oklahoma City.

During his time at ADX Florence, McNair described his location as the "most secure section of the most secure prison in the world", but expressed reservations about discussing specific details of his incarceration. "Thank God for prisons," McNair wrote. "There are some very sick people in here... Animals you would never want living near your family or the public in general. I don't know how corrections staff deal with it. They get spit on, shit on, abused, and I have seen them risk their own lives and save a prisoner many times." The book is a follow-up to "The Running Man" series, published by The Tribune newspaper of Campbellton, New Brunswick, in 2009.

Pop culture A documentary series called the prison breaker is about Christopher and his escape

Richard Lee McNair was profiled on the show America’s Most Wanted twelve times . Richard Lee McNair was featured on Unsolved Mysteries Season 5, Episode 9