Cold Case Files - A Map to Murder / Life on the Run

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Cops finally close in on a serial killer with the help of the Internet. And a drug trafficker jumps bail, goes into the bike shop business, and helps pioneer the sport of mountain biking while he's on the lam.Apartments.com - To find whatever you’re searching for and more visit apartments.com the place to find a place.Boll & Branch: Go to BollandBranch.com/coldcasefiles and use code coldcasefiles to get 20% off your first order, plus free shipping!Hers: Start your free online visit at forhers.com/CCF for your personalized weight loss treatment options.Thrive Market: Go to ThriveMarket.com/coldcase for 30% off your first order, PLUS a free $60 gift!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This program contains subject matter that may be disturbing to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's April 1st, 2001 in St. Louis, Missouri. Around 3 a.m., a woman working the streets gets into the car of a patron. She is never seen alive again.

Just across the Mississippi sit the ruins of an Illinois town called Washington Park, a place locals go to buy drugs or sex. She was found on the east side of the 60th Street in the ditch. Jimmy Walker is a special agent with the Illinois State Police. His female victim has been stripped of her clothes and strangled to death. Forensics lift a set of prints from the corpse, providing Walker with the name. Alicia Greenwayde is 34 years old and a prostitute. Walker tracks Greenway's last known movements across the river and back to the St. Louis Street where she was picked up.

There, however, the trail hits a dead end. There really wasn't other than the basic investigation that you would do when you find a body. Other than that, as far as the clues, there were not alive. Jimmy Walker's investigation goes cold before it ever gets started. Meanwhile, 30 miles away, a second body turns up. On May 15th, a few yards off the shoulder of Highway 67, near the border of Missouri and Illinois, a body lies naked in the weeds. Jana Walters is a St. Charles County detective. There was nothing to identify.

There was no clothing, no ID, no purse. The body is badly decomposed, making even fingerprint identification impossible. At autopsy, forensics pulls a dental plate out of the corpse's mouth, plate that gives Jana Walters her first lead. And inside the plate was the inscription of Wilson. And from there, our investigation led to various dental offices and clinics where Teresa Wilson was identified as our body. Teresa Wilson is a prostitute.

Like Alicia Greenwayed, both had worked the streets to support a drug habit. Walters is just beginning her investigation when another body turns up. Approximately a month later, our second body turned up, and she was 16 feet from Teresa Wilson. Victim number three is Verona Thompson. She went missing on June 23rd. Six days later, her naked body is found dumped in a roadside ditch. That led us to send out a teletype to the surrounding agencies. if they had any similar homicides or bodies in that type of condition to contact the sheriff's department.

Walter's teletype catches the attention of Agent Jimmy Walker, working the Greenwayed case in Washington Park. As detectives Walker and Walters compare notes, they learn of yet another homicide with all too familiar circumstances. On May 23rd, in an alley on the north side of St. Louis, a local resident discovers the body of a black woman. naked and strangled to death. Tim Sacks is a St. Louis metro detective. There was no visible signs of any trauma, nothing that you could see with the naked eye, but there was tire tracks on her leg,

between her knee and her ankle. Police take an impression of the tire tracks and hope to find the car to match it to. Meanwhile, they also conduct a cross-check of prostitutes working the nearby streets. There, they get their victims' needs. name, Betty James. The victim was a known prostitute.

She was a drug user. She had no immediate family, nobody that would report her missing in a day or so. Betty James is the fourth prostitute to turn up dead in the greater St. Louis area in the past two months. Investigators believe the pattern to be more than coincidence. We believed that we had the same person

responsible, but we didn't have any evidentiary links at that time that could solidly link one body to another. Investigators pool their resources, then roll four murder cases into one. Captain Harry Hager heads up the task force. Most of these women had no family ties anymore. There was nobody to keep an eye on them, no one to report them missing if they didn't show up. So they were pretty much out there by themselves. Because all of the victims are working prostitutes, the job of tracking their whereabouts will be

long and difficult. We don't have anybody we can go to to say, when's the last time you saw them, who are their friends, where do they hang out, what do they do every day? You know, we had to start from scratch and all of them. As summer progresses, investigators turn up nothing that links the cases together

or provides even the beginnings of a lead, that is, until the bodies of two more prostitutes surface. In East St. Louis, on the 1100 block of St. Clair out, Locals discovered the body of a prostitute named Yvonne Cruz, naked and strangled to death. Six weeks later, and two miles away, a sixth prostitute named Brenda Beasley is found strangled in a field. The pathology of the Cruz and Beasley murders fits with the first four attacks. The last two, however, differ in one important way.

The killer left semen at each attack. Genetic profiles are called from both samples and compared against each other. The DNA that was discovered in the body of Cruz linked and was matched with the same DNA found in the body of Beasley. The DNA link between the Cruz and Beasley killings reinforces what police have suspected all along. A serial killer is loose on the streets of St. Louis. The question now is, can Cold Case detectives track him down before he kills again?

Now it is analyst Mary Beth Carr's job to put a name to that profile. The unknown male DNA that was found with the two victims became part of our databasing system here in the United States, which is called CODIS. CODIS, or the combined DNA indexing system, allows Carr to instantly compare her unknown profile against millions of samples taken from convicted felons across the country. Despite the power and scope of this tool, no matches are found.

Unfortunately, with any particular, whether it's a rape or homicide, there are sometimes where things get kind of stalled. And when we have a male profile, such as we get in this case, the only thing that we have is to start screening. Screening means going beyond CODIS and looking at individual samples taken from local suspects. The process is slow and ultimately goes nowhere. Despite Kars' efforts, the DNA profile remains unidentified. Then, in November of 2001, eight months after they first began, the killings suddenly stopped.

Well, plotting this out, we averaged about every six or eight weeks a new body was being found. Last one was found on October 8th. So I kind of theorized that before Thanksgiving, we'd see another body. And that didn't happen. We got through December and still no body. still no body. And we had several theories developed as to why they stopped in October. Perhaps the 9-11 crisis that occurred. Perhaps this person was in the military. Perhaps he was called, you know, up into the military. Perhaps this person was in prison, incarcerated.

Detectives had lots of theories, but no new leads. The investigation begins to lose steam, and ultimately, the six unsolved murders all go cold. In 2002, on the the fifth floor of the St. Louis Post Dispatch Building, reporter Bill Smith works the human interest beat, often writing about the edges of St. Louis society. In May, he looks over the unsolved prostitute murders, now cold for over a year. These women, I felt, had stories and had lives, and there was a need I felt, and some of the people at our paper felt also, to put faith and a humanity to these women. On May 19th, Smith pens an article about victim number two, Teresa Wilson.

Five days later, a letter addressed to Smith arrives at the newspaper. And it began with the words, Dear Bill, Nice sob story on Teresa Wilson. The letter goes on to read, Write one about Green Wade, write a good one, and I'll tell you where many others are, Others are to prove I'm real. As I was reading it, I realized that this was a person who was claiming to be the killer of these women.

Attached to the letter is the killer's proof that he is genuine, a map leading to what is identified as victim number 17. Unsure of exactly what he has, Smith takes the letter to police. At noon the next day, investigators set out with Bill Smith's letter and map in hand. They followed the map's precise directions along Highway 67, just south of where two of the victims were found. It was a very grassy, abandoned area, similar to the other areas that the other girls had been discovered. Back off the highway, they find a body that the letter referred to as victim number 17. The majority of the skeleton remains were found back in a very wooded area, and the skull was found in an open field where it was very noticeable if somebody were just walking by. But again, it's a desolate area and not too many passive bys.

As one team works in the field to process the latest body, a second pours over the letter, searching it for clues. This was the break and the lead that we were looking for. This was going to break the case. That letter to us was our suspect. We took that letter and did everything we could to it to try and identify the writer. Forensic technicians combed the letter for fingerprints or DNA with no luck. They researched the paper that the letter was written on and the envelope came in. But again, they hit a dead end. Then they turned their attention to the burial map attached to the letter.

We could tell it was computer generated, though he had cut off the board. And we didn't know what website it came from. Detectives enlist the help of the Illinois State Police Cybercrimes Unit. Investigator Mark McAmish recognizes the map as one from the website Expedia.com. They then contacted Expedia and asked them if they kept logs. Those log files would record IP addresses, internet protocol addresses of computers that had visited their website. Expedia provides detectives with a list of all the computers that had recently logged onto the website. and searched for maps with the coordinates in question.

Detectives come up with a hit, a specific IP address assigned to the service provider, UUNet. That evening, we contacted UUNet and advise them that we were looking at a specific address, the date time and time zone on this IP address, and ask them if they would have those records available, and they indicated that they would. Hours later, UUNet comes back with the name Mori Travis

and an address just outside St. Louis, The cyber link, however, is just a starting point. A background check provides even more compelling evidence that Travis might be their killer. The person that was assigned that IP and we believe lived at the address was a convicted felon. And the funny thing was he was actually locked up from November until February. Travis's time in prison coincides with the period of time when the prostitute murders suddenly. stopped. The suspicions of cold case detectives are now peaked, and they want to take a look inside the home of Mr. Travis. At 7 a.m. on June 7, 2002, detectives armed with a search warrant,

pay a visit to Mori Travis. And he wasn't real happy. First words out of his mouth were, it's 7 o'clock in the morning. What are you doing here? Detectives walk inside Travis's home, and downstairs, they discover a basement. full of torture and murder. There comes a point where sleep just stops being optional. You spend years juggling work, responsibilities, everything else. And then you realize your energy, your mood, your focus, it all comes back to how well you're actually sleeping.

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that. We're here to talk and discuss about your computer. After 90 minutes of back and forth, Detective Sacks tells Travis, crime scene technicians are coming to search the home for trace evidence. And he began cussing. The internet, damn computer. What we knew right away, he was the letter writer. Travis is ushered out of the house and the forensic team begins to work. Upstairs, the home is immaculate. The basement is a different story. It was interesting to me that he, for his clean of a person and tidy a need of a person as he was upstairs, the downstairs was a little bit different. Of course, the downstairs had an entirely different purpose. When you get down to the basement, you're in the basement, it's finished as any other den would be in any other house.

There's several rooms off of the hallway, and the hallway is where his computer was ultimately discovered and there's a bed in there. On the floor and walls are traces of what look like blood. It is the first hint that something sinister might have happened in Mori Travis's basement. As crime scene technicians began collecting samples, Sacks and Morton begin to push their suspect. Pull open a briefcase and it falls open and there's three different huge folders with his name on it and there's pictures in there. What are those? Take out a handful of pictures and show them. Do you know any of these girls?

Oh no, I've never seen before in my life. About 10 minutes into our conversation, we're speaking about different things. And he asked the question, can I see the pictures of those dead girls again? Mori, we didn't tell you these girls were murdered. We asked if you'd ever known any of them. He gets real silent, drops his head. Mori Travis appears to be vulnerable, and all cold case detectives need to do is wait. Come on, I'll take you.

Where are you taking us? You know where I'm taking you. It's what you've been asking for it a whole time. He said, I'll give you what you want. So we confirmed the fact that we were still talking about the same thing. He was going to take us to another victim, and he said yes. And he said drive to East St. Louis. Detectives jump in the car with Travis and head towards East St. Louis.

Suddenly, their suspect changes his tune. Coming up on the bridge, you can see the bridge across the Mississippi River, and he saw the bridge and said, I've changed my mind, take me to jail. I said, I'm sorry. He said, no, take me to jail. Lock me up. What am I taking you to jail for? You know, just lock me up.

And he started getting real loud then. Lock me up. With his conscience fading, Mori Travis confesses to nothing. Detectives honor his request and transport him to a jail cell on suspicion of murder. On the fourth floor of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, Mori Travis sits across a table from Harry Hager, a seasoned investigator intent on finding the truth. Hager's secret weapon, a can of Diet Coke.

Well, I went to talk to him a couple times while he's been interviewed, and I asked me if he wanted something to drink or eat. And he asked for a soda. And after he finished drinking the soda, once he discarded it, the can was taken to the lab. At the DNA lab, a genetic profile is pulled from saliva left on Mori Travis's soda can. and compared against DNA samples from two of the crime scenes.

The result is a match. When I sat down and I compared against the profiles, I was, you know, I was shocked, but I wasn't shocked, but I was just relieved that it was going to be over. The DNA match ties Travis to the murders of Yvonne Cruz and Brenda Beasley. But that's just a small glimpse of Travis's career as a killer. Detective sees his car and compare the tires with the truck. tread marks found on the leg of one of their victims.

The tire tread on one of his vehicles physically matched the tire mark that was on the leg of Betty James. Cold case detectives now have evidence linking their suspect to three murders. Back inside the Travis basement, they find videotapes that link him to more. The tape was titled Wedding Tape. And the first part of that tape started off as a wedding ceremony. And then suddenly we came across a site in a basement where you had a woman handcuffed. And on that tape there, he eventually kills her. A group of detectives sit in shock, watching a murder videotaped by the killer himself.

The videotapes themselves are very graphic. There is a murder. You can physically watch him take the life of another human being. There are brutal physical assaults. There are brutal sexual assaults. They are very graphic, very brutal tapes. Travis's torture was psychological as well as physical. Here is an audio excerpt of Travis exerting control over one of his victims.

I can't hear you with you say it clear. You want the master that pleases me to serve you. You love the master that pleases me to serve you. Stop, boy. With you, I said, I'll just get your ass down like I said. With control established, Travis's voice softens, and the psychological torture continues. You sorry? Yes.

You sorry about what? You're jumping in the car with a mom, you don't know? You're sorry? Yeah. You want to say something to your kids? I'm sorry. Murder victims Teresa Wilson and Betty James appear on the videotapes. At one point, Travis even boasts about his work.

This is first kill, number one. First kill was 19 years old. The name of... First kill was nice. In total, cold case detectives linked Travis to at least 12 unsolved killings. Prosecutors from local, state and federal agencies, line up to file charges against Mori Travis. But it's a measure of justice they never get to extract.

On June 10, 2002, in the hours after his arraignment, Mori Travis returns to the quiet cold of his jail cell. There, using bedsheets, he fashions a crude noose and hangs himself. Authorities recover a suicide note written by Travis. In it, he apologizes to his mother, for any pain he may have caused her. Noticably absent from the letter is any confession or any hint of remorse

for what investigators believe to be at least 12 women, Travis allegedly tortured and killed. I was devastated. It was terrible. It was the worst thing that could have happened in the investigation was for him to kill himself. We had a great case. That wouldn't have been a problem taking this to trial and getting a conviction.

But all the information that we could have gleaned from him not only about his crimes, but looking into the mind what makes people do things like this. We had a million questions, a million and one questions, and he took every answer with him. At the end of a runway at the Albuquerque International Airport, a warehouse stands in the desert sun. Inside, U.S. customs inspectors sort through airport cargo, large and small. One morning in November of 1973, agents unseal a box of four carved statues from South America. Rubin Gomez is a former special agent for the DEA. One of the statues between the base and the actual statue itself,

there was a little corner of plastic sticking out. It was pretty obvious that something was inside that thing. A plastic package filled with 100% pure Bolivian cocaine. So then they opened the other three statues, and sure enough, each one of them was packed with cocaine. And I think, I believe it came out to a total of 22 pounds. 22 pounds. In the drug market of the early 70s, it carries a street value of $5.2 million. Drug agents confiscate the merchandise and prepare to arrest the dealer.

The addressee listed on the trunk is Richard G. Bannister of Taos, New Mexico. Agent set a trap, replacing the cocaine with a look-alike white powder. We surveilled as Bannister came up and received a package. It was like an old thing for him. He just nonchalant and went up to the counter and received the packages and signed for him and walked out. From the air and on the ground, a team of officers trailed the suspect home. He left directly to his residence, which was up towards Cuestra, New Mexico, and that was a Hippie commune.

Once Bannister brings the package into the house, agents descend on the property and make the arrest. 32-year-old Richard Gordon Bannister is charged with importing cocaine and possession with intent to distribute. After his arrest, the suspect is released on bond and promptly disappears. Richard Gordon Bannister begins a life on the run that will span more than two decades. 22 years later, Conyop Lake is a quothouse. Neop Lake is a quiet town in northern Pennsylvania and home to summer cottages and one of the state's largest bike shops. Dick Leppley owns street, track, and trail. Business is good until 1995 when Leppley tries to buy an RV and gets an unexpected call from his banker.

Had a good relationship with a banker and he called me while I was putting the loan together and said you ought to take a look at your credit. There's some real weird stuff showing up on it. Weird stuff, like delinquent credit card accounts Leplie had never heard of, and a $60,000 loan for a home in Crested Butte, Colorado. The problem is, Dick Leppley didn't own a home there. Then what happened is I began to get calls from a collection agency in Denver asking me when I wanted to take care of these bills. Dick Leppley's Social Security number is no longer his own.

According to three major credit bureaus, it now belongs to the bankers. to Richard Neil Murdock in Crestabute, Colorado. The interesting thing was, Murdoch's name actually supplanted mine on all my credit reports. It was kind of like I was the guy that didn't exist or I was the bad guy. Leppley writes letters and makes calls to credit agencies

in an effort to clean up the mess. For three years, he gets nothing but frustration, an endless string of automated voice recordings, and a growing pile of unanswered letters. Finally, Leppley takes his case to the one government agency he believes might be able to offer some help. Ray Plummery runs the Denver office of the investigative unit of the Social Security Administration. I received the call from Dick in January of 1998. He indicated to me that there was a person in Crested Butte, Colorado that was using his social security number.

Plumery decides to run a background check on the name showing up on Leplie's credit report. I tried to find out as much information as I could on who Murdoch might be. I tried to track down where he might have been born, where he might have lived, and basically establish who he might really be. And essentially, I got nowhere. Everything I tried to track down and the guy came up blank. Plummery then places a call to police in Crestabute. On the off chance, they might know a local named Murdoch.

And he said, oh yeah, he's lived here for 20-plus years. used to run a bike shop and he works in the health food store now and he, you know, a nice guy, kind of one of the leading citizens of town. And I'm thinking myself, this doesn't add up. Ray Plummery realizes he needs to travel to the mountains west of Denver to sit down with Richard Neil Murdoch. Tucked into the shadow of the Colorado Rockies, Crestabute is known as the wildflower capital of Colorado. For more than two decades, a major. man named Neil Murdoch has also called it home. Ted Connor is a town marshal. Neil Murdoch was an interesting person who resided here in town. I didn't personally know him

that well, but I think everybody who's lived around here for a while knew who he was. According to Connor, Neil Murdoch is one of the local experts in the sport of mountain biking. He's active in community theater and well liked by people in town. Although not many actually know very much about Murdoch's past. You'd always kind of look, I would personally look at him and think. I wonder where he came from. That's the question on the mind of Special Agent Ray Plummery. Connor and Plummery catch up with Neil Murdoch in town

at the health food store where he works. Well, I told him that we had a report that the Social Security number he'd been using belongs to someone else. And he seemed taken aback by that. I was like, well, I don't understand this. I mean, I've been used, this is my number. I don't know what to tell you. It's very strange.

I don't know what to do. You know, I don't know how to respond to this. It was kind of his attitude. Plummery asks Murdoch to set the record straight by proving his identity. Murdoch agrees to be photographed and fingerprinted. I couldn't resolve it any other way. If he'd have admitted who he was or something, then I probably wouldn't have bothered, but he didn't.

And I knew he wasn't who he was saying he was. So I had to have something to try to find that out. Agent Plummery returns to Denver with Murdoch's photo and prints. Two days later, he gets a phone call from the bookkeeper at the health food store where Neil Murdoch works. I asked her what social security number was on his original application for employment. And she pulled it out and looked at it and it was a different social security number. Agent Plumery runs the new number through NCIC, the National Crime Information Center Database. And up popped a warrant on Richard Bannister.

Richard Bannister, a fugitive, wanted on international drug smuggling charges, now almost 25 years cold. I thought, well, now I know what he's doing in Crested Bute, and he's apparently been hiding ever since he was wanted because he's been there for 20 years. In the U.S. Marshal's office, the prints and photos from Neil Murdoch are compared with prints and photos from Richard Bannisters, 1973 arrest record. We matched the thumbprints and it was the same guy. Then they said they had photographs faxed out. You could see it was the same guy. He was a lot younger, obviously, but it was the same guy.

Cresta Butte's Richard Neil Murdoch is actually fugitive, Richard Gordon Bannister. U.S. Marshals returned to Colorado with an arrest warrant. By the time they get there, however, Richard Bannister is long gone. If you tried everything to lose weight and still feel stuck, this summer, can be different. Weight loss by hers is designed to support you in reaching your goals with access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wagovi pill and the Wagovi pen. With Wagovi through hers, you can lose up to 20% of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise. It works by helping regulate your appetite so you feel fuller, eat less, and keep weight off.

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Ron Halverson is a U.S. Marshal working out of Denver, Colorado. On the afternoon of May 1, 1998, Deputy Halverson is assigned to track down Bannister. I was approached about 1 o'clock in the afternoon saying there's a sheriff down in Crested Butte, Colorado, who has information on a possible fugitive locative of ours. The assignment comes at a bad time for Halverson, who was on the trial of another fugitive in Denver. We had already had other investigations lined up and arrests ready to go. So the decision was made not to go down to Crested Butte that night, but go at first thing in the morning at 5 o'clock in the morning. In the pre-dawn darkness, Halverson begins the trial. from Denver to Crestabute, nearly 250 miles through mountainous terrain.

And by the time we got the Crested Butte at about 8 o'clock in the morning, he had already departed. Bannister is not at home or at work. Once again, he's given authorities the slip. There was frustration on all the agencies' parts because it appeared that we'd had an opportunity to possibly apprehend him and it didn't happen. Deputies questioned the locals in Crestabute about Bannister, but don't get much information. It was a very guarded community.

We actually became stonewalled with a lot of individuals, and we felt like they weren't telling them all the truth that they knew. The people in Crestibute, Colorado, really liked Bannister. Finally, investigators were able to track down a woman who is willing to talk. She saw Richard Bannister get in the car with a friend of hers at about 7 o'clock in the morning. And she said they looked like they were, they mentioned they were headed to Four Corners, Colorado. Four Corners is a place where four Western states come together at a single point. Here, according to the woman, Bannister made a dramatic exit. Lee White is a U.S. Marshal.

Basically, he took off on his bicycle and disappeared either into the sunset or the sunrise. Personally, at the time, I thought it sounded too much like Casa Block. In the following weeks, Marshall's Chase Bannister through dozens of leads and suspected sightings. We began receiving reports from all over the western states that we had seen this guy in the bike and the photo had been widely distributed and we had 65 different sightings that came in. And we sent out local police departments, local sheriff's department that tracked down each and every lead. None of them turned out to be our guy Bannister. For the second time, Richard Bannister alludes authorities and vanishes into the American West without a trace.

Three years later, at the foot of the Crystal Mountains, sits the small rugged town of Taos, New Mexico. Lisa Alfonso is one of two U.S. marshals who cover northern New Mexico. In the fall of 2001, she gets an anonymous tip about a man named Grafton Maller. Basically, what we had here was we had an individual in the Touse area using a name of Grafton Maller. Grafton Mahler purchased a piece of property in Thresbietas, New Mexico, using the fugitive Richard Bannister's original Social Security number. Alfonso reaches out to the investigator assigned to the case, U.S. Marshal Lee White. She said, I have a source that says he's living in Taos, New Mexico,

under the name of Grafton Mahler. I said, listen, guy's been a fugitive for 27 years. I will start towards Taos, but do not wait for me to be. to get there. If you see him, put handcuffs on him. Let's bring him in. With Bannister's photo in hand, Alfonso begins to ask around Taos about Mahler. Came across a woman, a merchant there, and asked her if she knew a gentleman by the name of Grafton Mahler. And she said, oh, sure, I know Grafton really well. And so I asked if she would review a photo. And so I showed her the photo. She said, oh, yeah, that's Grafton. And he has

very distinct eyebrows. And so I knew that if his eyebrows remained the same, there was no doubt in my mind that I'd be able to positively identify him. Just like Neil Murdoch in Crestabute, the tall, balding, bushy, broad Grafton Mahler has many friends in Touse, friends who direct Deputy Alfonso to the thrift shop where Mahler works. Walked into the store and Grafton Moller, a.k.a. Richard Bannister, Neil Murdoch is walking towards me. And I said, Mr. Moller, and he just stared at my badge. And he blinked. quite a bit. I remember that, but he didn't move. He froze. He was shocked. After 27 years on the run, Richard Bannister hits the end of the road in Taos.

Alfonso arrests Bannister and escorts him to jail. When I got him to the jail, I told him, you know, we could spend the next 30 minutes here, taking your fingerprints, and then I'd have to run them through the FBI database to get confirmation that you are Richard Gordon Bannister, or you can just sit here and tell me. that you are. And he said, I am Richard Gordon Bannister. In a federal courtroom, Richard Bannister pleads guilty to trafficking cocaine and jumping bail. A judge sentences him to nine years in prison. For many who knew Bannister, the sentence on charges now more than 25 years old seems severe. For Dick Leppley, the man whose social security number Bannister stole and whose credit Bannister

ruined, the sentence isn't harsh enough. Now let me see, I'm an honest guy. employ 50 people, have paid my bills, have contributed to this community for 35 years now, spent five years cleaning up that mess that he got me in, nine's not enough. He could sit there for the rest of time for all I care. For U.S. Marshals who chased Bannister through three states and over 20 years, the lesson is clear. Where the FBI is concerned, men like Richard Bannister can run, sometimes for decades, but they can't hide. I always expect to end the day with an arrest. When I leave to work a warrant, I leave with a positive attitude that I'm going to come back with the body.

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