Dan “D.B.” Cooper hijacked a plane in 1971 and is believed to have parachuted from the plane with $200,000, never to be seen again. (FBI image)

Despite technology, many fugitives hard to net

The well-used saying goes, "You can run but you can't hide."

But countless criminals try to do just that, whether to avoid going to jail for doing drugs or for killing several people.

According to June 2005 testimony before a U.S. Homeland Security committee, nearly 50,000 fugitives and "individuals of interest" are flagged in a passport lookout system.

Some fugitives gain such notoriety that they become household references, such as three men who escaped from Alcatraz in 1962 and vanished. Or there was D.B. Cooper who hijacked a plane in 1971 and is believed to have parachuted from the plane with $200,000 in ransom money.

But with all sorts of modern technology — which is exaggerated on hit TV shows like "CSI" — shouldn't fugitives be easier to find? Not necessarily, say police. And prosecutors and defense attorneys regularly grumble that shows like "CSI" aren't exactly realistic.

David Brian Bernal, 27, who is being sought in the Feb. 20 Flag City shooting death of his girlfriend, 29-year-old Jennifer Bushnell, remains at large, despite the coordination of several law enforcement agencies.

The hunt for Bernal has included Fresno and Kings counties, but "we haven't ruled anything out," San Joaquin County Sheriff's spokesman Les Garcia said Friday.

What it often takes, police say, is investigative techniques that have been around for ages — talking to witnesses, methodically following leads, using word-of-mouth and the media, and pure luck accompanied by experience.

For instance, there was the case of Jeffery Allen Manchester, dubbed the "Roofman robber" by local police after he robbed numerous fast food restaurants through the roof, including a 1998 robbery at a Lodi McDonald's. He was ultimately captured in North Carolina when police managed to get to the restaurant fast enough.

But then in June 2004 Manchester escaped from prison. During the next seven months, he set up house in a closet within a vacant Circuit City store and started a new life, complete with a girlfriend and a church. Seven months went by until an adjacent Toys "R" Us store was robbed — likely by Manchester, investigators alleged — and officers found a door into Manchester's hideout.

He remains in prison, as does Charles Avitt, a Lodi man convicted of killing his wife in 1990 and then escaping from a Montana prison in December 2003. He hadn't expected cold weather and was found the next day, drying his clothes in a nearby veterinarian's office.

Police and sheriff's officials were hesitant to say what techniques they use to track down fugitives, though TV shows and Internet searches show plenty of options.

Telephones, for instance, can be tracked to some degree. Investigators can narrow cell phones to the nearest tower to narrow the search area, Lodi Police Lt. Chet Somera said.

That's what searchers did this winter when they were searching for a Bay Area family that got stranded in snowy Oregon mountains. The couple and their two small daughters, who were far from being fugitives, had almost no cell phone signal but one call briefly made it through so searchers could eliminate many snowy miles as they looked.

Garcia, with the sheriff's office, said authorities also try to use the media to broadcast suspects' faces on TV, in newspapers and, in recent years, on the Internet.

For instance, Lodi police last month released surveillance photos of a bank robbery suspect. Internet discussions quickly arose because the man's race didn't quite seem to match the photo, but it also meant that plenty of people scrutinized the man's face.

No arrests have come as a result of that photo, but on Friday police were called to another bank where someone thought a man resembled the suspect. Officers found him and ruled him out as a suspect, Somera said.

Contact reporter Layla Bohm at layla@lodinews.com.

First published: Saturday, March 10, 2007