'Bonnie and Clyde' couple captured in Arizona

Escaped fugitives John McCluskey and his fiancee, Casslyn Welch, arrested at campsite after tip-off from forest ranger
John McCluskey
Fugitive John McCluskey is arrested by US Marshals in Arizona. Photograph: AP

For almost three weeks, Americans have been captivated by the tale of the self-styled Bonnie and Clyde who went on the run across the country after allegedly killing two holidaymakers.

But the game was up for John McClusky and his fiancee and cousin, Casslyn Welch, last night after they were captured on an Arizona campside.

There had been several sightings of the fugitive couple since McClusky escaped from jail on 30 July when Welsh reportedly threw wire cutters over the prison fence. Witnesses said they had spotted the duo in New Mexico, in the US south-west,and in Montana, near the Canadian border.

Police caught up with the pair when a park ranger in the Apache-Sitgreaves national forest, in eastern Arizona, noticed their campfire and then discovered a stolen vehicle partially hidden by trees.

He called police, who arrived to find Welsh with a gun. She dropped it when she saw the Swat team, said David Gonzales, US marshal for Arizona.

McCluskey was found in a sleeping bag nearby and was taken into custody without incident. Other firearms were found at the campsite, and authorities said McCluskey expressed regret at not having killed the ranger who found them.

"The nightmare is over, but it is still continuing. There's a lot more for law enforcement to do," Gonzales said, referring to investigations into crimes the pair may have committed while on the road, including the possible killing of a couple in New Mexico.

"We want to tie them to as many crimes as we can," Gonzales said. "We want to ensure that the New Mexico murders are looked at carefully, working with those agencies. And if there are any more crimes that were committed while they were out, we want to make sure we tie those to them."

McCluskey was among three prisoners who escaped on 30 July from a privately operated state prison in Kingman, allegedly with Welch's help. Arizona Corrections Department officials said Welch helped McCluskey and fellow inmates Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick escape by cutting through a security fence.

Renwick was recaptured in Rifle, Colorado, on 1 August, and Province was found in Meeteetse, Wyoming, on 9 August.Both were serving time for murder. McCluskey was serving a 15-year prison term for attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm.

Province, McCluskey and Welch have been linked to the killings of Greg and Linda Haas, of Tecumseh, Oklahoma, whose burned bodies were found in a travel trailer on 4 August on a remote ranch near Santa Rosa, New Mexico. They had been travelling to Colorado on a camping trip.

Officials said the stolen car found at the campsite had New Mexico license plates. Gonzales said the relatively quiet arrest of the pair was the result of smart work by law enforcement at the scene. All along, authorities feared the fugitives were armed and extremely dangerous, and would not surrender without a fight.

"We were convinced this was going to go down into a bloody shootout," he said. "There was no question about it."

The arrests came hours after officials discussed a report that outlined a series of embarrassing security breakdowns that allowed the escape. The prison had a badly defective alarm system, a perimeter post was unstaffed, an outside dormitory door had been propped open with a rock and the alarms went off so often that prison personnel often just ignored them, the report said. Also, operational practices often led to a gap of 15 minutes or longer during shift changes along the perimeter fence.

Prison staff told a review team that the dormitory door was left open because it was in frequent use. The open door allowed the three inmates to reach a 10-foot chain-link fence that hadn't been topped with razor wire. They scaled that fence and hid out for a time behind a building in an area that wasn't visible to staff from the yard.

Using the wire cutters, which Welch tossed into the prison yard shortly before a shift change, the inmates cut a hole in the outer fence and held it back with a dog leash.

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