Escaped prisoner found in Georgia 30 years later, using the identity of a dead child

Steven Craig Johnson, a fugitive who escaped from Oregon’s Mill Creek Correctional Facility in 1994, was apprehended in Macon, Georgia, after 30 years on the run. Johnson, now 70, had been serving a state prison sentence for three counts of sex abuse and one count of attempted sodomy. He fled during a prison work detail and assumed the identity of a deceased child named William Cox, whose birth certificate and Social Security number he obtained in 1995.

Using this alias, Johnson secured a Georgia driver’s license in 1998 and had been living in Macon since 2011. The Oregon Department of Corrections listed him on their “Most Wanted” list, describing him as a pedophile with a high risk of reoffending. The U.S. Marshals Service took over the search for Johnson in 2015, and new technology from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service helped uncover leads that led to his arrest.

Johnson was taken into custody at his apartment and booked into Bibb County Jail, where he awaits extradition to Oregon. Mill Creek Correctional Facility, a minimum-security prison without a fence, was closed in June 2021.

Source: NPR