Post by Scumhunter on Oct 5, 2016 8:41:51 GMT -5
(Above photo credit: Virginia Department of Corrections (DOC) website))
Fugitive Profile as of October 5th, 2016: (Based on Virginia DOC website)
Name: Thomas Brooks
D.O.B.: 8/8/1948
Race: Black
Sex: Male
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5' 6"
Weight: 148
TIPS: Anyone with information on this fugitive's whereabouts should call the Virginia Department of Corrections at 1-877-896-5764
From pilotonline.com:
Within hours of Richard Boucher's arrest in a Georgia trailer park last week, the Virginia Department of Corrections updated its Web site with a single word across his three-decade-old mug shot: Captured.
Boucher was gone for almost 27 years, living a quiet and meager life under an assumed name with his wife in the mountains of northern Georgia.
The case is exceedingly rare; most prisoners on the lam are quickly retrieved by law enforcers dedicated to the job.
Though remarkable, Boucher's life on the run was far from record-breaking.
Thomas Brooks disappeared from Nansemond Correctional Field Unit No. 3 in 1970, a dozen years before Boucher.
The Newport News man would be in his 60s now. He's been a wanted man almost four decades - twice the length of his original sentence. But the state prison system continues searching.
Around 5:15 p.m. on April 3, 1968, Milton Powell was closing up Powell's Hardware Store on Roanoke Avenue in Newport News when two men walked in, shot the 68-year-old manager and made off with $400.
A story in the Daily Press announced a break in the case five days later, amid news from Vietnam and unrest following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The death of Milton Powell had elicited a deep reaction in the Peninsula community, the newspaper reported, "and there was a movement to post a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible."
Police quickly arrested four teenagers and charged them with murder and robbery. Thomas Brooks was among them, accused of serving as a lookout.
A jury found the four guilty. Brooks received a 20-year sentence and was assigned to the Nansemond Correctional Field Unit in Isle of Wight County.
He did not stay long.
Brooks was part of a road gang clearing ditches along Va. 662 in Isle of Wight one August morning in 1970. It was the last time he was accounted for.
The records are old and the details scarce, Larry Traylor of the Department of Corrections said in an e-mail.
Prisoner No. 91333 seemed to just vanish.
The grainy, black-and-white photo of Thomas Brooks is featured on the Department of Corrections Web site, just below those of Richard Boucher and two other men who made a run for it on a Saturday earlier this month - and were caught the following Tuesday.
"That's the thing about this agency," said Capt. Clyde King of the extradition/absconder unit.
"Once they're on the Web site and entered into a national database, we continue to look for them until the end of time."
The state prison system had no such unit when Brooks escaped. It would be formed 15 years later.
Law enforcement agencies are more connected than ever, King said. So are people. He and others with the Department of Corrections still regularly run escapees' names through databases. They still check out tips. They still stay in contact with relatives.
King hopes to solve the mystery of Thomas Brooks and the more than 20 other men who escaped from Virginia prisons as far back as 1943 and were never accounted for.
"Some have been gone longer than we've been born," he said. "The million-dollar question is what do you do with someone who's gone 50 years."
The answer, King said, is that you don't forget.
He spent thousands of hours trying to find Boucher, who was less than two years into a 10-year sentence in a Chesapeake prison for robbery when he and another inmate struck a guard in the head with a clothes iron and escaped.
The other inmate was recaptured in 1984. Boucher worked odd jobs and raised a daughter with his wife some 600 miles away.
"He didn't commit any crimes, didn't put himself in the spotlight or cause any problems in the community," King said. "However, somebody had information on who he was and made a phone call."
pilotonline.com/news/nearly-four-decades-later-no-sign-of-elusive-escapee/article_5377c298-2f15-5596-8bdf-9e50b0aaf718.html
Thoughts? The article above is from 7 years ago but I still feel is not outdated even today. The irony of at all is now Brooks himself would be 68 years old as of this posting, the exact same age the hardware store manager was when he killed him back in- 1968. Let's hope the number 68 is a theme here and Brooks is caught before his next birthday.
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