A grave marker at Tamborine Mountain Cemetery in Queensland, Australia, bears the identify John Vincent Damon.
For years, till he died on Aug. 6, 2010, at 69, that’s how he was identified to others, together with his household.
However his actual identify was William Leslie Arnold, and he had a secret, darkish previous that was unbeknown to his spouse and two grownup youngsters in Australia and three surviving stepdaughters from a earlier marriage in the US.
When he was 16 and residing in Nebraska within the Nineteen Fifties, he fatally shot his mother and father throughout what was later described as a struggle over using the household automobile after which buried them within the yard of their dwelling. It took about two weeks earlier than the crime was found, the authorities stated.
Mr. Arnold pleaded responsible in 1959 to murdering his mother and father, and he was sentenced to life within the Nebraska State Penitentiary. In his time there, Mr. Arnold was described by the authorities as a “mannequin prisoner,” however on July 14, 1967, he and one other inmate escaped.
The opposite inmate was quickly recaptured. However the authorities couldn’t discover Mr. Arnold for years, and the case finally went chilly. Over the previous couple of years, nonetheless, investigators with the US Marshal Service have been in a position to collect proof that finally led them to crack the case by means of DNA testing.
The invention got here as a shock to his surviving relations, who the authorities stated have been fully oblivious to Mr. Arnold’s previous. To them, he was John Damon, a father and husband. To the American authorities, he was a convicted killer and escaped inmate.
Surviving relations in Australia and stepdaughters of Mr. Arnold in the US declined to remark.
Matt Westover, the U.S. Marshal deputy who cracked the case, stated in an interview that connecting Mr. Arnold to John Damon was a course of that spanned a number of years and concerned sifting by means of hundreds of pages of paperwork and investigating a number of leads throughout the US in addition to in Brazil and Canada.
A number of regulation enforcement businesses through the years had tried to piece collectively what had occurred to Mr. Arnold after he escaped. The F.B.I. investigated the case into the Nineties. Then it was turned over to the Nebraska Division of Correctional Companies. In the end, it was handed on to the U.S. Marshals and assigned to Mr. Westover in August 2020.
“I used to be obsessive about the case,” Mr. Westover stated.
Quickly after being assigned to the case, Mr. Westover reached out to Geoff Britton, who had labored on the case from 2004 to 2013 when he was with the Nebraska Division of Correctional Companies.
Mr. Britton, who’s now chief of the Workplace of Legislation Enforcement Assist in California, stated that even after he left Nebraska, he continued to look into the case “as a interest.” Chief Britton stated that he and Mr. Westover talked steadily about it over the previous few years.
“I spent plenty of nights simply studying as a result of I used to be simply amazed in any respect the totally different info and simply looking for one thing, some type of lead,” Mr. Westover stated.
There have been loads of false leads.
One idea about Mr. Arnold’s whereabouts was that he had fled to Brazil. That was primarily based on an immigration doc with Mr. Arnold’s identify on it issued to somebody in Brazil lower than two years after the jail escape. However Mr. Westover stated Brazilian officers didn’t have any file of Mr. Arnold, and it was unclear why his identify was on that doc.
Mr. Westover tracked down an ex-girlfriend of Mr. Arnold, which led to a trove of letters that he had written to her and her household from jail. However there was no correspondence from after his escape that offered any clues as to the place he had ended up.
Mr. Westover additionally discovered a postcard from Canada and one from California with Mr. Arnold’s identify. These leads have been additionally fruitless.
In a wished poster for Mr. Arnold, the U.S. Marshals Service stated that he was “very musically gifted and most definitely used these abilities to financially survive.” That element of his life additionally didn’t yield any leads.
“It simply appeared like every part was working in opposition to us,” Mr. Westover stated.
Over time, varied leads led investigators to find out that after Mr. Arnold escaped jail, he had fled to Chicago, the place he began going by his new identify, John Damon, and shortly met and married a girl with youngsters. He then started to maneuver round, residing in Cincinnati and Miami, in response to The Omaha World-Herald, which has chronicled Mr. Arnold’s life by means of a sequence of articles and a podcast. Later, he divorced his spouse and moved to California, the place he remarried and had youngsters, and finally settled down in Australia.
Lastly, in November 2020, Mr. Westover tracked down a brother of Mr. Arnold in Missouri, who agreed to offer a DNA pattern. Later, in August 2022, Mr. Westover linked with a person from Australia who was attempting to find out about his late father, John Damon, who had instructed him that he was an orphan from Chicago.
DNA samples from Mr. Arnold’s brother and Mr. Damon’s son indicated a match, and proved that Mr. Damon was actually Mr. Arnold.
“It was thrilling,” Mr. Westover stated. “I received’t say it’s like hitting the lottery as a result of I’ve by no means hit the lottery — I’m certain that’s a reasonably good feeling — however I used to be simply ecstatic.”
Then got here the laborious half: Mr. Westover needed to break the information to the person from Australia that the daddy he knew as John Damon was truly an escaped convict who had killed his mother and father. Mr. Westover stated he had instructed the person over a video name.
“That was a extremely laborious dialog to have,” Mr. Westover stated. “Their household didn’t know any of these things, and so it’s laborious to not really feel dangerous for them.”
Chief Britton stated that he has since spoken to Mr. Arnold’s household in Australia, attempting to assist reply questions on his historical past that they knew nothing about.
“They’re getting a brand new perspective on a person that that they had a totally totally different view of,” Chief Britton stated. “That’s bought to be laborious to course of.”
In attending to know the Damon household, Mr. Westover stated that he realized that Mr. Arnold had gone on to turn out to be a businessman in Australia, and ended up residing a “nice life and apparently modified his methods.”
“He was a fantastic father to them,” Mr. Westover stated.
In March, Mr. Westover and different investigators traveled to Australia to wrap up the case. Whereas they have been there, they visited the grave of John Vincent Damon.
“I’m glad he’s lifeless,” Mr. Westover stated, explaining that if Mr. Arnold have been nonetheless alive, he can be dealing with arrest in his 80s.
“As dangerous as that sounds, I’m glad as a result of I actually wouldn’t wish to put their household by means of that,” Mr. Westover stated. “I feel that they had been by means of sufficient already, not to mention if I used to be to take their dad from them.”
Kirsten Noyes contributed analysis.
