Authorities: Fugitive Tennessee murderer caught in Ohio 32 years after her escape

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Posted 2:58PM on Monday, May 20, 2002

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A convicted murderer has been captured nearly 32 years after she escaped from a Tennessee prison and assumed a new identity and life in her hometown of Columbus, Ohio, authorities said Monday. Margo Freshwater, 53, was arrested Sunday at her home by state and local authorities. She was using the name Tonya McCarter and worked at an insurance company, said Larry Wallace, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. While a fugitive, Freshwater married several times, had two children and kept her criminal record clean except for minor parking and traffic violations, Wallace said. "We don't believe her current husband or the son who was with her at the time of her arrest knew anything about her past," Wallace said. Freshwater was denied bail at an extradition hearing Monday in Franklin County, Ohio. Tennessee Correction Department Commissioner Donal Campbell said Freshwater may not return to Tennessee for several weeks. Freshwater escaped from the Tennessee Prison for Women on Oct. 4, 1970, when she and another woman "broke formation" and scaled a single perimeter fence, Department of Correction authorities said. She had served just 1½ years of a 99-year sentence for the first-degree murder of a Memphis liquor store clerk. The other woman was recaptured in the early 1990s, Department of Correction spokesman Steve Hayes said. For years, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation traced women of similar age and physical description to Freshwater. They got a break about a month ago when their research led to Tonya Hudkins, the name Freshwater was using before her most recent marriage, Wallace said. Investigators confronted the woman at her home. At first she denied her true identity, but after her fingerprints matched those on file for Freshwater, she admitted who she was and was arrested, Wallace said. "For someone to have avoided arrest for 32 years and appeared on America's Most Wanted several times -- she did a pretty good job," Wallace said. "But we do not forget." Freshwater was one of the fugitives placed on the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's original Most Wanted list on May 5, 1993, and is the 104th person apprehended since the program's inception. She was the only woman on the TBI's Top 10 wanted list, and only two other Tennessee escaped convicts have been missing longer -- one since 1957 and the other since 1965. "This is a message for other fugitives," Wallace said. "If you're out there, we'll continue to hunt you down. We will not stop searching for escapees regardless of how long they've been gone." ------ On the Net: Tennessee Bureau of Investigation: http://www.tbi.state.tn.us/Fugitives/fwater.htm Tennessee Department of Correction: